“I’m on,” Chon says.
“You insulted me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry isn’t good enough.”
“Whatever you want,” Chon says.
“I assume you have a pistol. Get it.”
Chon gets his .38. “I have it.”
“Stand in front of the camera where I can see you.”
Chon does.
“Now stick it in that big mouth of yours,” the voice says.
They can hear O scream, “Chon, donnnn’t!!!”
But they also hear a chain saw start up and the voice say, “Her hands first …”
“I’m doing it, I’m doing it!”
Ben’s in shock. Weird, sick, nightmare shock.
Chon opens his mouth and swallows the barrel.
“Now pull the trigger.”
Chon squeezes the trigger.
99
“Stop!”
“Jesus Christ.” Ben’s knees give out from under him and he’s suddenly sitting on the floor with his face in his hands.
“Take the gun out.”
Chon slowly pulls the barrel from his mouth. Slowly because he feels like he’s moving underwater, and also because he doesn’t want to fuck up and shoot himself taking the gun
“The next time that I ask you to do something, I assume that I will not hear ‘Fuck you’?”
Chon nods.
“Good. There is a man in San Diego who is giving me a problem. You will be called with details. If I don’t hear about his death within five hours, I will kill your friend.
Audio goes dead.
Screen goes blank.
100
What to do, what to do?
Go to the FBI?
The DEA?
Ben is perfectly willing to do that, even though it would doubtless mean years in prison for him, if that would save O. But it wouldn’t—it would only kill her. If the feds could handle the cartels, they would have shut them down already.
So that’s out.
Their other alternative is …
They’re fucked.
This is Ben’s mistake, and it goes back a long way. Ben always figured that he could live with a foot in two worlds. One Birkenstock in the officially criminal marijuana-dealing demimonde and the other in the world of civilization and law.
Now he knows that he can’t.
He has both feet stuck in the jungle.
Chon never harbored such illusions.
Chon has always known that there are two worlds:
The savage
The less savage.
The savage is the world of pure raw power, survival of the fittest, drug cartels and death squads, dictators and strongmen, terrorist attacks, gang wars, tribal hatreds, mass murder, mass rape.
The less savage is the world of pure civilized power, governments and armies, multinationals and banks, oil companies, shock-and-awe, death-from-the-sky, genocide, mass economic rape.
And Chon knows—
They’re the same world.
“What are we going to do?” Ben asks.
“As soon as the intel comes in,” Chon says, “I’m going to hop in my car and kill whoever they ask me to. You’re going to get your ass off the floor and deliver the dope.”
“You’re going to kill someone for him?!”
“I did it for Cheney and the Sock Puppet,” Chon says. “What’s the diff?”
The phone rings.
Chon grabs it.
“Yeah … yeah … got it.”
“They gave you the address?” Ben asks.
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean, sort of?”
“It’s a freaking boat,” Chon says.
It’s a freaking boat—
—at last, at last, putting Chon’s SEAL training to use.
101
This Chon is a very brave man, Elena thinks.
And he must love this girl very much.
It makes her a little sad, nostalgic for passion.
But now she knows what she wanted to know—
These men will do anything—anything—for this woman.
It is their strength and their weakness.
102
O looks up at Lado’s black eyes.
He looks at his watch.
Says nothing.
It’s good O doesn’t know what he’s thinking, doesn’t have access to this particular interior monologue:
Five hours,
Five hours,
