The night is eerie green.
Through Chon’s night goggles.
Monster-movie green.
He rolls out of the APC
(Armored Personnel Carrier) behind his team and rushes toward the compound of two-story concrete buildings where the CIA boys said the AQ honchos are holed up.
Pressing the butt of the M-14 rifle to his shoulder, he keeps it at firing position as the C4 charges blow the gate off its hinges and the team goes in.
Chon has a photo of the AQ asshole that is Target Number One burned into his memory pan.
Mahmud el-Kassani.
Where are you, Mahmud?
74
Dennis knows Filipo-hells yes, he does, he has Filipo’s picture pinned up on the bulletin board in his office. He knows the names of Filipo’s wife and kids, knows what futbol team he follows, knows that Filipo subscribes to the Padres games on satellite TV. This must be an important cash dump for Filipo to chance coming over the wire, so he must be up there checking up on things, making sure that all of the money goes south and none of it gets lost and wanders toward other points on the compass.
While Dennis would normally keep this house under surveillance for a couple of weeks and then turn it over to his superiors so they could get the credit, now he’s thinking about playing leapfrog. The San Diego SAC is looking at retirement, and a pop like this could put Dennis’s ass into his empty chair.
So this is totally a cowboy move, highly discouraged by the Powers That Be, but Dennis knows that he has a justification-he can always say that he had to take the chance-who knew when and if Filipo would ever come back, be on this side of the border, and there’s a federal trafficking warrant on the guy, anyway, so He clips his badge onto his jacket, finds his DEA cap in the backseat, pulls his weapon, and goes in.
75
Chaos in the compound
(foxes in the henhouse) as women shriek, children scream, goats bleat.
No chaos for the team-they know exactly where they are and where they’re going: up some stairs to the second floor.
Bullets zip past them as the AQ fight back.
Chon moves the rifle around smoothly Target, shoot
Target, shoot
Target, shoot
He makes it to the door and heads up the stairs.
One of the AQ shot out the lightbulbs at the sound of the explosion and it’s black and tight in there.
Chon feels someone come out of a doorway beside him and he swings the rifle to take him out and sees it’s a kid, can’t be twelve in the traditional vest the waskath
(from which Chon knows we got the word “waistcoat”) and skullcap big black eyes
Shoot every male is the order but Chon isn’t going to follow that order so he shoves the kid back in the room and moves up the stairs into a room that becomes a charnel house as the team shoots everyone inside and Chon sees
Mahmud.
Who doesn’t want to become a martyr this night.
He puts his hands up to surrender.
Chon drills him twice through the chest because
Chon wants him to be a martyr.
(Paradise is Paradise, but it’s also expensive.)
76
Yeah, they might try to slug it out with him.
In which case he’s dead.
More likely they’re just going to bolt
In which case most of them will make it
But it’s Worth the Risk.
Nailing Filipo Sanchez? Come on.
So Dennis charges down there in his Jeep like a movie cowboy on his horse. There’s no fence, no gate, because the narcos don’t want to call attention to the house and Dennis just drives right up, slams the brakes, and jumps out, badge in one hand, pistol in the other, and announces, “DEA! This is a raid! Nobody fucking move!”
Dennis has balls.
Three gunmen are just standing there, open-mouthed, staring at him, clearly trying to figure out what to do. And this is the moment when, if they were going to shoot him, they would.
In the Jerry Bruckheimer version they do just that-they whip out the weaponry and let fly, missing almost every shot while Dennis guns them all down and-hit in the shoulder-bursts into the house and has a shoot-out with Filipo.
Roll credits, sweep up the popcorn.
Except a multi-billion-dollar poly-drug cartel doesn’t get to be a multi-billion-dollar poly-drug cartel because they have a lot of stupid people working for them. And while this isn’t your typical DEA raid with the typical cast of characters, it’s still a DEA raid and these guys know that killing a federal agent on American soil — is going to cost a lot more money in the long run than is in the house
— subjects them to the needle instead of fifteen to thirty, and — even Filipo Sanchez is expendable.
That’s just the truth, that’s just life in the vida narco. Money is just money-they lose it all the time. Same with people-they go to jail, they come out-it’s the chance you take. That even applies to Filipo-royal family or no royal family-it happens and the family goes on.
So what happens is they do freeze, and Dennis strides right past them into the house, where Filipo Sanchez looks up from a folding table stacked with cash and looks mildly surprised. And calmly says, “There’s five hundred and fifty thousand dollars on this table for you if I go out that door.”
77
Back down the stairs now.
Mission accomplished.
Everyone gets to go home, drink a beer, watch a DVD.
Women are already mourning, keening, ululating, but Chon no longer hears that.
White noise.
He’s almost down the stairs when the kid steps out again.
Chon sees the kid’s innocent black eyes and says,
