The John Milton Series: Books 1-3 (64 page)

Caterina set her face and turned a little. “What do you want?” she said into the back of the car.

“Those girls—you want to know what it was like?”

“Shut your trap,” Beau ordered.

“Come on, Caterina. You’re a writer. You’re curious, I know you are. This is your big story. What about that girl you were with in the restaurant? You want to know how it was for her?”

“No, she don’t.”

“Delores. That was her name. I remember—she told me. I don’t normally remember the names—there’ve been so many—but she stood out. She kept asking for her mother.”

“I won’t tell you again. Any more out of you and you’re getting gagged.”

“She’s the proof, though, isn’t she? Look at what happened to her. You can’t escape from us. It doesn’t matter where you are. It doesn’t matter who is protecting you. Eventually, one way or another, you’ll be found and brought back to me.”

Beau slammed on the brakes. “All right, you son of a bitch,” he said, reaching for the roll of duct tape. “Have it your way.”

THEY FOUND a motel on the outskirts of Presidio. The place was a mongrel town, full of trailer parks and strip malls. They had crossed the border an hour ago. Beau had pulled the Firebird to the side of the road as the steep fence and the squat immigration and customs buildings appeared ahead of them. He had taken out his cellphone and made a quick call. A few shops had collected next to the crossing: Del Puente Boots, a Pemex gas station, an Oxxo convenience store, a dental clinic. An all-night shack with flashing lights advertised “Sodas, Aguas, Gatorades.” It was practically empty, and only one of the northbound gates was open. Beau slotted the car into it, wound down the window, and reached out to hand over his passport. The customs agent, a nervous-looking forty-something man who reminded Caterina of a rabbit, made a show of inspecting the documents as he removed the five hundred-dollar bills from within their pages. He handed the passport back. “Welcome to America,” he had said, opening the gate. Beau had thanked him, put the car into gear, and driven them across the bridge and into the United States.

It was as simple as that: they were on the 67 and across. A neat line of palm trees on either side of the road. A smooth ribbon of asphalt. A large sign that welcomed them to America and invited them to “Drive Friendly – The Texas Way.”

The Riata Inn Motel was a low, long line of rooms on the edge of the desert, set alongside a parking lot. They had taken a single room, and now the dawn’s light was glowing through the net curtains. They had cuffed González to the towel rack in the bathroom.

“Is this it?” Caterina asked him.

“It is for him. My employer will be here in a couple of hours.”

“And then?”

“Not our problem any more. He’ll take him off our hands, and then he’ll sort you out with what you need: papers, money, someplace to live.”

Beau sat and tugged off his boots. He unbuckled his holster and tossed it onto the bed.

“What do you think happened to Smith?”

“I don’t know. That boy’s as tough as old leather, though. I wouldn’t count him out.”

Beau looked at her. She was tired, but there was a granite strength behind it. After all she had been through, well, Beau thought, if it had’ve been him? He might’ve been ready to pack it all in.

“Long night,” she said.

“Tell me about it.”

“I’d kill for a cold drink.”

“There’s an ice machine outside. I’ll get some. Thirty seconds?” He pointed at the door to the bathroom. “Don’t—well, you know, don’t talk to him.”

Her smile said that she understood.

The machine was close, but even though the door to the motel room was going to be visible the whole time, he didn’t want to tarry. González was resourceful and smart—thirty or forty or however the hell old he was, practically ancient in narco-years—and although Caterina was smart, too, he didn’t want to leave him alone with her for any longer than he had to. He went outside in his stockinged feet and walked across to the machine. He filled the bucket with crushed ice, took a handful and scrubbed it on the back of his neck and then across his forehead and his face.

He was getting too old for this shit.

When he got back to the room, Caterina had taken his Magnum .357 out of the holster. The bathroom door was open. González was on his knees, his hands in front of his face. She was pointing the gun at his head.

“How do you get paid?” she asked him.

“Cash on delivery.”

“So, what?—he’s got to be alive?”

“He don’t got to be. More for me if he is, though.”

“Ah,” she said. “Sorry about that.”

The gunshot was audible all the way across the scrubby desert.

CAPITÁN VICENTE ALAMEDA lived with his wife and three children in the upscale neighbourhood of Campestre. The district rubbed against Highway 45, just before the crossroads with Highway 2, and massive
maquiladoras
were gathered on one edge of the neighbourhood. Plato continued along an avenue that could have been in any city north of the border: a Starbucks, Chili’s, Applebee’s and strip malls. He turned into Alameda’s street and parked. Razor wire lined the top of brick and stucco walls. Uniformed guards stood watch at gated entryways. Gold doors on one home reflected the lamplight. Parked in the driveways were BMWs and Lexuses, many with Texas license plates. Alameda’s house had an Audi in the driveway. There was a large garden. A pool. Four or five bedrooms judging from the windows on the second floor. A set of gates, although they hadn’t been closed.

It wasn’t a policeman’s house.

Plato got out of the car and looked up. The sky was full of stars, a rind of moon hanging over the silhouette of the factories on the edge of the neighbourhood. He made his way up the street to a small
zócalo
where the grackles in the eucalyptus trees called out in drowsy alarm.

He pressed the intercom.

“Yes?”

“
Capitán
—it’s Jesus Plato.”

“Plato? It’s late. Do you know what time it is?”

“I know. But I need to talk to you.”

“Tomorrow, Jesus, all right?”

“No, sir. It has to be now.”

The intercom cut out. Plato stood at the gate, staring through the bars at the home beyond. The curtains in one of the large windows on the first floor twitched aside, and Plato saw Alameda’s face.

He held his finger on the intercom for ten seconds.

He would wait as long as it took.

After a minute, the front door opened, and Alameda came outside. He was wearing slippers and a dressing gown.

Plato slipped between the gates and met him in the garden.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Alameda hissed. “You’ve woken the children!”

“I must be some kind of idiot. How long have we known each other?”

“Ten years.”

“Exactly. Ten years and you’ve never invited me here. We’ve had barbeques at my place and at Sanchez’s, but you never did the same. Don’t know why that never struck me as odd. Now I can see why.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The first thing I would’ve asked is where you could possibly be getting the money to afford a place like this. It’s not on a captain’s salary, I know that much. Not wondering about that could all have been stupidity on my part, I’m capable of that, but I don’t think so, not this time. I think it was wilful blindness. I didn’t want to look at what was staring me in the face.”

“I had an inheritance. My father-in-law.”

“No, you didn’t. Drug money bought all this.”

“Come on, Jesus. That’s crazy.”

“I don’t think so. I’m sorry it’s come to this, sir, but you’re under arrest.”

“You want to do this now?
Now?
You’re retiring.”

“I’ve been thinking about that. I’d have to talk to Emelia, of course, but I’m thinking maybe I can stay on another six months. There’s a lot of cancer that needs to be cut out. Now’s a good a time as any. Maybe I can do something about that.”

“You know what that’ll mean for you and your family?”

“I know I swore an oath. When I retire, I aim to have done what I promised to do.”

“You’ve lost your mind, Jesus.”

“That’s as may be,
Capitán
. But you’re still under arrest.”

Plato took out his cuffs, and with Alameda’s wife and children watching open-mouthed from the windows, he fastened them and led him back out and onto the street.

“AND THERE YOU HAVE IT,” Felipe said with a grand gesture. “The best equipped methamphetamine lab in Mexico.”

Isaac and his two colleagues looked suitably impressed. That was good. Felipe had been struggling to maintain their confidence after what had gone down at the mansion. He had struggled a little during the flight south to maintain his mood. The day since the attack had been an ordeal. There was nothing from Adolfo. One of the men thought that he had seen the foolish boy led out of the house at gunpoint, but he couldn’t be sure. There had been no word from him. No ransom. No gloating message. Nothing.

Felipe had very little idea of who had been responsible. He only knew who it was not. It wasn’t the cartels. Only Los Zetas had the kind of military training to do what had been done, and even then, it would have taken more of them than the six that had been counted. But if not them, then who? The army? Special Forces? The Americans? His sources said not. The Luciano family seeking revenge? Hired mercenaries? Again, there was no suggestion that it was them.

Who, then?

The Englishman?

He was at a loss.

Isaac was admiring the thorium oxide furnace. The gleaming new laboratory had restored his faith.

Felipe knew why: greed.

The promise of great wealth had a way of doing that.

The American Drug Enforcement Agency classified a lab as a “superlab” if it could produce more than ten pounds of meth every week.

The one that Felipe had built could produce twenty pounds
a day
.

Wholesale, a pound of methamphetamine was worth $17,000.

The lab could produce one hundred forty pounds a week.

One hundred forty pounds had a value of over two million dollars.

The lab stood to make him over one hundred million dollars a year.

Isaac wandered further down the line: the hydrofluoric acid solution vat, the aluminium strip and sodium hydroxide mixing tank, the huge reaction vessel, the filtration system, the finishing tanks. The first cook had been completed overnight, and the meth had been broken down and packed in plastic bags, ready to be moved. “May I?” he asked, looking down at the bags.

“Please,” Felipe replied.

The gringo opened the bag and took out a larger-than-usual crystal. He held it up to the light and gazed into it.

Felipe knew it was pure.

C
₁₀
H
₁₅
N.

Eight-tenths carbon.

One-tenth nitrogen.

One-tenth hydrogen.

The formula didn’t mean much to him apart from this: it would make him a whole lot of money.

“I knew it was good,” Isaac said, “but this is remarkable. How pure is this?”

“Ninety-eight per cent,” the chemist said. He looked up and down the line like a proud father.

“Very good,” Isaac said. “Very good indeed.”

“Have you seen enough, my friend?”

“I think so.”

“We should get you back to the plane. You have a long flight ahead of you.”

Felipe stepped out of the laboratory and into the baking heat. The land dropped down on all sides, covered with scrubby brush. The horizon shimmered as if there was another mountain range opposite this one, a thousand miles away. A trick of the heat. His cellphone rang. He fished it out of his pocket and looked at the display. He hoped it might be Adolfo. It was not a number he recognised.

“Hello, Felipe.”

“Who is this?”

“You know who I am.”

He frowned. “The Englishman?”

“That’s right.”

“Then I am talking to a dead man.”

“Eventually. But not today.”

“What do you want?”

“I told you.”

“You told me what?”

“That I’d find you.”

There was a loud
crack
, and one of Felipe’s guards fell to the ground. He looked over at the man; the initial response was one of puzzlement, but as he noticed the man’s brains scattered all across the dusty track, the feeling became one of panic. Isaac screamed out. Felipe spun around, staring into the mountains for something that would tell him where the Englishman was—a puff of smoke from his rifle, a glint against a telescopic sight, anything—but there was nothing, just the harsh glare of the sun, a hateful kaleidoscope of refulgent brilliance that lanced into his eyes and obscured everything.

“Felipe.”

He still had the phone pressed to his ear.

“Listen to me, Felipe.”

“What?”

“I wanted you to know—your son is in America now. He’s been delivered. The Mafia, isn’t it? How will that go for him?”

Felipe pulled his gold-plated revolver from its holster and shot wildly into the near distance. “Where are you, you bastard?”

He started in the opposite direction, towards his second guard. The man was on one knee, his AK-47 raised, scanning the landscape. A second
crack
echoed in the valley, and a plume of blood fountained out of the guard’s neck, bursting between his fingers as he tried to close the six-inch rent that had suddenly been opened there.

“Felipe.”

“Show yourself!”

Isaac and his men ducked down behind the car.

“I should thank you, really,” the Englishman said.

He crept backwards towards the entrance to the lab. “For what?”

“I thought I was bad. Irredeemable. And maybe I am.”

He backed up more quickly.

A bullet whined through the air, slamming into the metal door and caroming away.

“Stay there, please.”

He wailed at the rocks, “What do you want from me?”

“You reminded me—there are plenty worse than me. I’d forgotten that.”

The rifle shot was just a muffled pop, flat and small in the lonely quiet of the mountain. He turned in time to see the muzzle flash, fifty feet to his left and twenty feet above him. A stinging pain in his leg and then the delayed starburst that crashed through his head. His knee collapsed. Blood started to run down his leg, soaking his pants. He dropped forwards, flat onto his face, eating the dust. He managed to get his arm beneath him and raised his head. Through the sweat that was pouring into his eyes and the heat haze that quivered up off the rocks, he could see a man approaching him. The details were fuzzy and unclear. He had black camouflage paint smeared across his face, the sort that gringo football players wore. He had a thick, ragged beard. He was filthy with dust and muck. He had a long rifle at his side, barrel down.