“Excellent,” Ben lies.
Wants to tell him.
Can’t.
Even when Chon asks, “How’s business?”
“Business is good.”
Because it seems cruel to tell someone about a problem he can’t do anything about but sit and worry. And the last thing Ben wants to give Chon is a distraction. Take his mind off what he’s doing.
And Chon looks tired, worn down.
So Ben commits a
Lie of omission.
So instead they make small talk, O assures Chon that she’s taking good care of his plant, and then Chon’s time is up and his face disappears from the screen.
71
Ben’s lying.
Chon could see it on his face.
Something’s wrong at home, something with the business, but he pushes the thought aside to focus on the mission.
The mission is simple.
He’s done it a few dozen times now-night raids on a house.
Chon’s team isn’t involved with complicated counterinsurgency operations-gaining the trust of the people, setting up village security, building clinics, clean water systems, schools, winning hearts and minds.
Chon’s team does “antiterrorist” ops.
“Degrade and disrupt” the enemy’s command and control systems.
Put simply:
Find enemy leaders and kill them.
The theory being that dead people are probably degraded but definitely disrupted, death being more or less the maximum kink in someone’s day.
The collateral theory being that if you kill enough leaders, it discourages middle management from applying for the job vacancy.
Nobody wants that promotion.
(More money
More responsibility
Corner office
Laser dot.)
Most Salafist leaders want to go to Paradise eventually, not immediately, generously yielding that privilege to lesser beings. Otherwise that cocksucker bin Laden would be standing on the top of the Sears Tower waving his arms like Come and get me, not hiding out.
Anyway, over the course of a couple of wars, Chon’s unit morphed from counterinsurgency to antiterrorism because the latter is
Cheaper,
Faster,
And easier to tabulate.
Bodies (especially dead ones) being easier to count than hearts (fickle) and minds (transitory).
So he’s used to missions like this.
There’s just so goddamn many of them.
So many Bad Guys to kill.
72
Dennis has put Bad Guys away to see other Bad Guys take their places
Dennis has looked into the dead, tortured faces of his sources
Dennis has seen You’ve heard the expression “truckloads of cash”? And thought it was a figure of speech?
Dennis has seen, literally — truckloads of cash headed south for Mexico to people who have kitchens with granite countertops, and he turns those trucks in to his bosses, who pose beside them while he dutifully puts a little money away each month for his kids’ college educations and his wife clips coupons because while Paradise is Paradise, Paradise is also expensive.
Dennis sees his face get a little older, hair a little thinner, belly no longer taut. Knows that his reflexes are a little slower, memory not quite as acute, that there might be more calendar pages behind than in front of him.
So maybe that little nudge of discontent was fear. Maybe not. Maybe it was just discontent, as in “the winter of” in a place that knows no real winter.
Anyway You need to know that Dennis hoards information. He feels justified in doing so because he’s worked hard to develop sources-they’re his — and he doesn’t share them because he doesn’t want to share the information they develop. This does not make Dennis particularly popular among his peers, but he doesn’t give a shit-the life plan isn’t to make friends among his peers, it’s to rise above them, and then they’re not going to like him, anyway.
So Dennis’s modus operandi is to work his sources to develop information right up to the point of making a bust, then dole those busts out for the best possible political and promotion-creating effect.
That’s why when one of his CIs-that’s “Confidential Informants,” and D has given a whole new meaning to the “Confidential”-tells him about this isolated little ranch house way the fuck out in East County near Jamul, he goes by himself.
The Lone Ranger
Or “the Lone Stranger,” as he’s known in the office.
(Undercovers are natural loners-they don’t trust anybody-paranoia is a survival strategy.)
Sans Tonto, as Paqu might say, recalling that she’s in her French phase.
To check it out.
Solo Surveillance.
Dennis has balls-big, clanging brass-so he drives out into the dark desert all by his lonesome, parks his vehicle on a ridge overlooking this ranch, and trains his nightscope on the house.
It’s a cash dump.
(There’s a phrase, huh?)
What’s happening is that the dealers are bringing their cash there to be counted, sorted, and stacked for the relatively short dash down across the border. On any given night, there’s going to be hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars in that house.
Dennis takes one look at this and knows it’s the bust that could Put Him Over.
Because what he also sees through that scope is
Filipo Sanchez.
Number Three in the Baja Cartel.
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