“No shit,” Eddie says.

Tapia’s people, the Zetas, the federales, they’ve all probably already heard he’s here. There are halcones everywhere. He gets up and walks away along the boardwalk, takes out his phone, and hits a number.

The thing of it is, he’s just tired of it all.

Been there, done that.

“I want to cash in my chips,” Eddie says. “Turn myself in.”

“Go ahead,” Keller says.

“Not in Mexico,” Eddie answers. He’d last maybe five minutes in a Mexican lockup. If Diego’s people didn’t get him, the Zetas would. If they swung and missed, Barrera wouldn’t. That’s if he got as far as a cell anyway, which is doubtful. “You got to get me out of here.”

“Have you ever killed an American citizen?” Keller asks.

“Not since I was seventeen, and that was an accident.”

“You know where the U.S. consular agency is?”

“The Hotel Continental.”

“Walk there now,” Keller says. “Are you heavy?”

“What do you think?”

“Drop it somewhere,” Keller says. “Any dope, anything else. Walk straight there, use the name Hernán Valenzuela. Do whatever the consul tells you to do. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Keller? I need to tell you something first.”

“Shit. What?”

—

The Acapulco police find Yvette Tapia in a vacant lot, bound hand and foot, blindfolded and gagged, dirty, but otherwise fine.

A cardboard sign is draped around her neck with the message THIS IS TO TEACH YOU TO BE MEN AND TO RESPECT FAMILIES. I’M GIVING YOU BACK YOUR WIFE, SAFE AND SOUND. I DO NOT KILL WOMEN OR CHILDREN. EDUARDO RUIZ—NARCO POLO.

Crazy Eddie is gone.

San Fernando, Tamaulipas

2011

Chuy sits on the crowded bus as it rolls up Highway 101, which they call the “Highway of Hell,” and looks out the window at the flat, dusty Tamaulipas terrain, so different from the green hills of Michoacán.

He helped bury Nazario on one of those hills.

Chuy and some others spirited the Leader’s body away to the hills for a secret burial, and in the weeks since, shrines have appeared all over Michoacán, and it is said that Nazario is a saint whose spirit has already performed miracles.

A new leader took over, but Chuy is finished.

Now he is heading home.

To Laredo.

There has been so much fighting, and Chuy was in on most of it.

He was there when they attacked the convoy of federales. His unit killed eight policemen, but the convoy got through. And when the army captured Hugo Salazar, Chuy personally led fifty men in an attack on the police station, with rocket launchers and machine guns. They ambushed police and army convoys, made attacks on eleven cities in eight days.

But they couldn’t rescue him.

They did capture twelve federales in those attacks, tortured them to death, and dumped their bodies on the highway outside La Huacana.

The army sent in more than five thousand troops then, with helicopters, airplanes, and armored cars, and the war went on. Sometimes La Familia won, sometimes the army won, capturing more La Familia leaders, but always more leaders took their place.

Sometimes they fought the federales, sometimes the army, sometimes the Zetas, and after a while Chuy wasn’t always sure who they were fighting and it didn’t really matter to him—he fought for Nazario and he fought for God. Chuy was vaguely aware that an order had come down to keep fighting the Zetas, which was fine with him—he’d never stopped fighting the Zetas.

He never stopped taking heads.

He lost count.

Six? Eight? Twelve?

He left them by the sides of roads, he hung them from bridges, he did it again and again as if in a dream.

Some things he remembers.

Others he doesn’t.

He does remember the ambush on the convoy of federales, when he led twelve men onto a highway overpass outside Maravatío and waited for the convoy to finish getting gas at a station down the road. When the convoy came close, they popped up from behind the railing and opened fire, killing five and wounding seven others.

They used the same trick again a month later, this time killing twelve, and then the federales caught on and started sending helicopters ahead of their convoys, but Nazario himself praised Chuy for those attacks.

He remembers the day when they marched six thieves around the traffic circle in Zamora and whipped them with barbed wire and made the thieves carry placards that read I AM A CRIMINAL AND LA FAMILIA IS PUNISHING ME. And they hung up a banner—THIS IS FOR ALL THE PEOPLE. DON’T JUDGE US. LA FAMILIA IS CLEANSING YOUR CITY.

Chuy remembers when Nazario announced “La Fusión de los Antizetas,” allying them officially with Sinaloa and the Gulf to rid the country of the Zeta menace, and this was one of the best days, because the Zetas had raped and murdered Flor.

He took four Zeta heads in Apatzingán that week.

And Nazario made him one of the Twelve Apostles, his personal bodyguard. He went everywhere with the Leader, keeping him safe as he gave out loans to needy farmers, built clinics and schools, dug wells and irrigation ditches.

The people loved Nazario.

They loved La Familia.

Then it happened.

Nazario was giving a Christmas party for the children of El Alcate, outside Apatzingán. It was a happy day, and Chuy stood guard as Nazario handed out toys, clothes, and candy. Chuy heard the helicopters before he saw them, the bass rumble splitting the sky. He grabbed Nazario by the elbow and ran him toward a house as federales and troops came in with trucks and armored cars.

With Nazario inside the house, Chuy and some of the others set fire to cars and tried to block the roads, but the troops came in by helicopters. Bullets ripped through the air, striking, yes, La Familia soldiers, but also parents and children who were outside for the fiesta.

Chuy saw the teenage girl go down, smoke coming from the back of her blouse where the bullet hit. He saw a baby shot in its mother’s arms.

He made it back into the house, knocked the glass out of a window, and started to return fire with his erre. Another man in the house phoned comrades in Morelia to block roads and attack barracks to keep the army and policía from sending reinforcements.

All that afternoon, that night, and all the next day they fought. Chuy led the covering fire as they moved Nazario from house to house and the soldiers came on with grenades, rockets, and tear gas, setting fire to houses and little shacks. The townspeople who could, fled; others huddled in bathtubs or lay flat on floors.

The comrades in Morelia told them that there were two thousand soldiers surrounding the village. Bullhorns called for Nazario to surrender, but he wouldn’t, saying that if this was the garden of Gethsemane only God could take the cup from his hand.

By the afternoon of the second day, the La Familia troops were out of ammunition and the six Apostles who were still alive decided that they would try to punch a hole in the soldiers’ line and break Nazario out when the sun went down.

They settled into a siege as the battle slowed to a match of sniper against sniper. Marshaling ammunition, two rocket launchers, and some grenades, the six gathered with Nazario in a house at the west edge of the village, nearest a tree line, and waited for dark.

Two of the six were already hit, their wounds bound up with strips torn from their shirts.

As the sun went down, Nazario led them in prayer.

Our Father, Who art in Heaven

Hallowed be Thy Name

Thy Kingdom come

Thy will be done…

Two comrades who volunteered to stay laid down cover fire as Chuy burst from the door, shielding Nazario behind him. Another comrade had Nazario’s left arm, a third his right.