The Power Of The Dog (91 page)

A dozen houses are set on the isolated stretch of coast. A few sit on the beach itself, but most are up on the low ridge above. Three are plainly unoccupied; there are no vehicles or recent tire tracks. Among the remaining nine it’s hard to choose. They all look normal—from space, anyway—although Art is hard-pressed to determine what abnormal would be in this case. All of them appear to have been built on lots cleared from the rocks and agave brush; most of them are plain, rectangular structures with either thatched or composite roofs; most of them—

Then he spots the anomaly.

He almost misses it, but something catches his eye. Something not quite right.

“Zoom in on that,” he says.

“What?” Shag asks. He doesn’t see anything where Art is pointing but rock and brush.

That is a shadow made by some rocks indistinguishable from the millions of others, but the shadow—the shadow is an even line.

“That’s a structure,” Art says.

They download the frame and enlarge it. It’s grainy, hard to tell, but examined under a magnifying glass there is depth there.

“Are we looking at a square rock?” Art asks. “Or a square building with a rock roof?”

“Who puts a stone roof on a house?” Shag asks.

“Someone who wants it to blend in,” Art answers.

They zoom back out, and now they start to spot other too-regular shadows, and pieces of brush that have even lines. It’s difficult at first, but then a picture starts to emerge of two structures—one smaller than the other—and shapes that could disguise vehicles underneath.

They coordinate the frame onto the large map. The house sits off a track that turns off from the main road, such as it is, forty-eight kilometers south of San Felipe.

Five hours later, a fishing boat beats its way up from Puertocitos through a heavy headwind. It anchors two hundred yards from shore, puts out its lines and waits for dusk. Then one of the “fishermen” stretches out flat on the deck and trains an infrared telescope on the beach in front of two stone houses.

He spots a woman in a white dress walking unsteadily down to the water.

She has long blond hair.

Art hangs up the phone, drops his head into his hands and sighs. When he looks up again, he has a smile on his face. “We got her.”

“Don’t you mean ‘him,’ boss?” Shag asks. “Let’s not lose focus here. Getting Barrera is the point, isn’t it?”

Fabián Martínez is still in his cell, but he’s feeling a little better about life in general.

He’d had a good meeting with his attorney, who had assured him that he didn’t have to worry about the drug charges—the government’s witness was not going to appear, and certain people had been given information about the soplón.

The arms charge is still a problem, but the attorney has a genius idea about that, too.

“We’ll see if we can get you extradited to Mexico,” he said. “On the Parada murder.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“First of all,” the lawyer said, “Mexico doesn’t have a death penalty. Second, it will take years to bring you to trial and in the meantime …”

He let it hang. Fabián knew what he meant. In the meantime, things will get fixed. Technicalities will emerge, prosecutors will lose enthusiasm, judges will get vacation ranchos.

So Fabián lies back on his mattress and thinks he’s in pretty good shape. Fuck you, Keller—without Nora you’ve got nothing. And fuck you, La Güera. I hope you’re having a nice evening.

They won’t let her sleep.

When she first got there, they wouldn’t let her do anything but sleep, and now they won’t let her shut her eyes. She can sit down, but if she starts to doze they pick her up and make her stand.

She aches.

Every part of her—her feet, her legs, her back, her head.

Her eyes.

Worst of all, her eyes. They burn, they throb, they feel raw. She’d give anything to lie down and close her eyes. Or sit, or stand—just close her eyes.

But they won’t let her.

And they won’t give her any Tuinol.

She doesn’t want it; she needs it.

She has an awful pins-and-needles feeling in her skin, and her hands won’t stop quivering. Add to that the slamming headache and the nausea and … “Just one,” she whines.

“You want things, but you don’t want to give anything,” the interrogator says.

“I don’t have anything to give.”

Her legs feel like wood.

“I disagree,” the interrogator says. Then he starts in again, about Arthur Keller, the DEA, the tracking device, her trips to San Diego …

They know, Nora thinks. They already know, so why not just tell them what they already know? Just tell them and let them do what they’re going to do, but whatever it is I can get some sleep. Adán isn’t coming, Keller isn’t coming—just tell them something.

“If I tell you about San Diego, will you let me sleep?” she asks.

The interrogator agrees.

He takes her through it step by step.

Shag Wallace finally leaves the office.

Gets in his five-year-old Buick and drives to a parking lot outside the Ames supermarket in National City. He waits there for twenty minutes before a Lincoln Navigator pulls into the lot, slowly cruises around, then pulls up beside him.

A man gets out of the Lincoln and into the Buick with Shag.

He sets the briefcase on his lap. The latches open with a metallic snap, then he turns the briefcase so that Shag can see the stack of wrapped bills inside.

“Are police pensions any better in America than they are in Mexico?” the man asks.

“Not much,” Shag says.

“Three hundred thousand dollars,” the man says.

Shag hesitates.

“Take it,” the man says. “It’s not as if you’re giving information to the narcos, after all. This is from one cop to another. General Rebollo needs to know.”

Shag blows a long breath.

Then he tells the man what he wants to know.

“We need some proof,” the man says.

Shag takes the proof from his jacket pocket and hands it over.

Then he takes the three hundred thousand dollars.

A south wind blows up the Baja Peninsula, pushing warmer air and a layer of clouds over the Sea of Cortez.

With no more satellite photos, Art’s latest intelligence is now eighteen hours old, and a lot could have happened in those hours—the Barreras could have left, Nora could be dead. The cloud cover shows no sign of breaking up, so the intelligence is only going to get older.

So what he has is what he’s going to get, and he has to act on it quickly or not at all.

But how?

Ramos, the one cop in Mexico he could trust, is dead. The head of the NCID is on the Barreras’ payroll, and Los Pinos is backpedaling on the campaign against the Barreras in six gears of reverse.

Art has only one choice.

And he hates it.

He meets John Hobbs on Shelter Island, the sailing boat marina in the middle of San Diego Harbor. They meet at night, across from Humphreys by the Bay, and walk along the narrow stretch of park that flanks the water on the way out to the point.

“You know what you’re asking me to do,” Hobbs says.

Yeah, I do, Art thinks.

Hobbs tells him anyway. “Launch an illegal strike on the sovereign territory of a friendly country. It violates about every international law I can think of, plus a few hundred national laws, and could trigger—you’ll forgive the unhappy phrase—a major diplomatic crisis with a neighboring state.”

“It’s our last chance at the Barreras,” Art argues.

“We stopped the Chinese shipment.”

“This one,” Art says. “You think Adán will quit? If we don’t get him now, he’ll set up the arms-for-drugs deal and FARC will be fully equipped inside six months.”

Hobbs is silent. Art walks beside him, trying to read his thoughts, listening to the sound of the water as it laps on the rocks beside them. In the distance, the lights of Tijuana sparkle and wink.

Art feels like he can’t breathe. If Hobbs doesn’t go for this, Nora Hayden is dead and the Barreras win.

Finally, Hobbs says, “I couldn’t use any of our normal assets. We’ll have to outsource this, double-blind.”

Thank you, God, Art says to himself.

“And Arthur,” Hobbs adds, turning to him. “This can’t be a bag job. We could never explain to the Mexicans how we got the Barreras into custody. This will not be a law enforcement operation, it will be a covert intelligence action. This will not be an arrest, it will be an extreme sanction. Are you all right with that?”

Art nods.

“I need to hear you say it,” Hobbs insists.

“It’s a sanction,” Art says. “That’s what I want.”

So far, so good, Art thinks. But he knows John Hobbs won’t walk away from this without extracting his price. It doesn’t take long.

“And I need to know your source,” Hobbs says.

“Of course.”

Art tells him.

Callan walks from the beach back toward the cottage he’s renting. It’s a cool, foggy day on the NoCal coast, and he likes it that way.

It feels good.

He opens the door to the cottage, pulls his .22 and points it.

“Eeeeezy,” Sal says. “We’re good.”

“Are we?”

“You walked off the reservation, Sean,” Sal says. “You should have talked to me first.”

“You’d have let me go?”

“With the right precautions, yeah,” Sal says.

“What about the hit on the Barreras?”

“Old news.”

“So we’re good,” Callan says, not lowering his aim. “Thanks for telling me. Now leave.”

“I got a job offer for you.”

“Pass,” Callan says. “I don’t do that kind of work anymore.”

That’s okay, Scachi tells him, because we’re not talking about taking any lives this time. We’re talking about saving one.

They decide to go in from the water.

Art and Sal pore over detailed area maps and decide it’s the only way to get in quickly. A fishing boat will go up from the south at night, and they’ll embark on Zodiacs and land on the beach.

Now it’s a matter of time and tide.

The Sea of Cortez has extreme tides—the low tide can ebb hundreds of yards, and that distance would make a quick raid impossible. They can’t get across hundreds of yards of open beach. Even at night, they’d be spotted and mowed down before they got near the houses.

So the window for a successful raid is narrow—it has to be night, and high tide.

“We have to go between nine and nine-twenty,” Sal says. “Tonight.”