“Let’s be honest,” Marisol said one night during one of her starkly darker moods. “We had this little faux family going here, didn’t we? Faux marriage, faux child? Then reality hit, didn’t it?”

“Let’s get married for real, then,” Keller suggested.

She stared at him incredulously. “Do you seriously think that’s going to help?”

“It could.”

“How?’

He didn’t have an answer for that.

The rest of their mutual ennui, he supposes, is simply cumulative. He had read that the Puritans used to execute heretics by placing stones on their chests until their rib cages were crushed or they suffocated. And that’s a little what he feels like—and he supposes that Marisol does as well—the sheer cumulative weight of death after death, sorrow after sorrow, crushing them, taking the air out of their lives.

But they don’t split up. They’re both too stubborn and honorable, he thinks, to go back on the unspoken vow, the silent understanding that they would see this through together, wherever it led.

So they stay together.

Well, sort of.

He spends more and more time in the Mexico City bunker, in Laredo, on raids with FES, or on whatever front of the Mexican drug war is especially hot at the moment. Marisol is kind enough to feign sadness when he leaves, but they’re both (guiltily) relieved for the breaks from the weight that they enforce on each other.

The painful truth is that they can’t look at each other without seeing Erika.

Despite his urgings, his imprecations, his angry arguments, Marisol has stayed in Valverde, and stayed in office. She forced herself to make a brilliant, defiant speech at Erika’s funeral, made herself go through a press conference in which she again openly defied both the government and the cartels while managing to imply that there was small, if any, difference between the two. She once again made herself a target, almost as if she could not tolerate living after so many have died.

“Survivor guilt,” Keller said to her one night.

“Just as you did not appreciate my amateur psychoanalysis,” Marisol answered, “I don’t appreciate yours.”

“I don’t care if you appreciate it—”

“Thank you.”

“—I care only that you don’t carry out this death wish.”

“I don’t have a death wish,” Marisol said.

“Prove it. Move to the States with me.”

“I’m a Mexican.”

“Then come to Mexico City.”

“No.”

He’d already sold his soul to the devil, so a bonus payment that bought security for Marisol didn’t matter. Keller put out word to Adán, who sent word back to the army in the valley that La Médica Hermosa was now a friend, the lady of an important ally, to be protected at all costs.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” Marisol asked a few days later. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice soldiers patrolling outside the house? The office? The clinic? They’ve never been there before. Nor have they ever followed my car except to harass me.”

“Are they harassing you now?” asked Keller, concerned that his demand hadn’t been met.

“In fact they’re elaborately polite,” Marisol said. “What did you do?”

“What I should have done sooner,” Keller said. Except I didn’t have the power then, the goddamn alliance with Adán.

“Such a powerful man,” Marisol said. “I don’t want them.”

“I don’t care.”

“You don’t care what I want?” Marisol asked, arching an eyebrow.

“Not in this case.” He hated arguing, but it was better than the long silences, the averted eyes, the sidelong glances, the lying in bed side by side wanting to touch or at least speak but not being able. “I’m trying to protect you.”

“You’re patronizing me.”

That’s exactly what I’m doing, Keller thinks now.

Being a patrón.

It’s what I do now.

Fourteen Zetas skinned alive.

And I provided the intelligence that located them.

He buys “dinner” at 7-Eleven before going back to his room.

—

The Zetas strike back less than two weeks later, killing twenty-three of Barrera’s people. Fourteen of them are decapitated and nine hang from a bridge next to a banner reading FUCKING BARRERA WHORES, THIS IS HOW I’M GOING TO FINISH OFF EVERY FUCKER YOU SEND TO HEAT UP THE PLAZA. THESE GUYS CRIED AND BEGGED FOR MERCY. THE REST GOT AWAY BUT I’LL GET THEM SOONER OR LATER. SEE YOU AROUND, FUCKERS.—THE Z COMPANY.

The Nuevo Laredo police quickly come out and deny that the Sinaloa cartel is in the city, prompting Barrera’s people to leave six severed heads in ice chests outside the Nuevo Laredo police station with the message YOU WANT CREDIBILITY THAT I’M IN NL? WHAT WILL IT TAKE, THE HEADS OF THE ZETA LEADERS? KEEP IT UP AND I ASSURE YOU THAT HEADS WILL KEEP ROLLING. I DON’T KILL INNOCENT PEOPLE LIKE YOU DO, FORTY, ALL THE DEAD ARE PURE SCUM—IN OTHER WORDS—PURE ZETAS. SINCERELY, YOUR FATHER, ADÁN.

Once again, the grisly images appear on Esta Vida.

Once again, the Zetas vow that they will find Wild Child.

—

The problem, Keller thinks, is that we can’t get to Forty or Ochoa, and until we decapitate that two-headed snake, we won’t crush the Zetas. We can take down as many underbosses as we want, but until we get Forty and Ochoa, the Zetas just keep marching on.

Forty is apparently again in charge of defending Nuevo Laredo from Barrera, but he’s never spotted in the city. Barrera’s people are looking for him, the FES is looking for him, American intelligence is looking for him, but so far, he’s invisible. They just find his handiwork, hanging from bridges or dumped on the sides of roads.

And Ochoa is easily the most elusive cartel leader since, well, Adán Barrera. He moves from safe house to safe house, in Valle Hermoso, in Saltillo out in Coahuila. He’s said to meet with Forty once a month at ranches in Río Bravo, Sabinas, or Hidalgo. Or they go hunting zebras, gazelles, and other “exotics” at private game ranches in Coahuila or San Luis Potosí. Or they watch their horses race as they sit in armored cars near the track, surrounded by bodyguards.

In all the Zeta territories, they hire ventanas—lookouts. Ambulantes, store clerks, neighborhood kids, who watch for the police or the marines, and use whistles or cell phones to give warnings. Los Tapados—“the Hidden Ones”—are poor children hired to put up pro-Zeta banners, chant slogans, and protest the presence of the military and the federales.

The government can’t find Ochoa, and he shoves the fact in their faces. Just three hundred yards from an army base in the 18th Military Zone, he endowed a church, where a plaque reads CENTER OF EVANGELIZATION AND CATECHISM. DONATED BY HERIBERTO OCHOA. He uses a Nextel phone once, and then throws it away. Like Barrera, Z-1 eschews the showy persona of other narcos. He doesn’t frequent clubs and restaurants, doesn’t show off his wealth.

He just kills.

It’s the hunt for Barrera redux, except this time the Mexican government is putting massive resources into the effort. MexSat, the national security system, operates two Boeing 702 HP satellite systems, costing over a billion dollars, from ground control stations in Mexico City and Hermosillo. It scans the country for signs of Forty and Ochoa and finds nothing.

American drones fly over the border area like hawks hunting for mice.

And find nothing.

“What if we’re looking on the wrong border?” Keller asks Orduña one day in Mexico City. “What if they’re not in Mexico at all? What if they’re in Guatemala?”

Ochoa has a grasp of military history. What if he’s adopted the classic guerrilla strategy of basing himself in an extraterritorial sanctuary across a border in a neutral country?

Where Barrera is relatively weak, and where the FES can’t get to him. Even Orduña won’t cross an international border. It makes sense—the Zetas have been increasingly active in Guatemala, and maybe Ochoa has decided to run his war from there.