“Still and all, you should have asked permission.”

“Would I have received it?” Keller asks.

“No.”

“I’m asking now.”

“Now that you’re eight months pregnant.”

“The clock is ticking,” Keller says. “If the PRD wins the election, they’re going to throw our asses clean out. If PRI comes through, they’re going to tolerate us, but they’re not going to let us or FES go after Ochoa. If we’re going to get the Zetas, we have to do it soon. You know and I know that if they get caught selling weapons to jihadists, we go to Pennsylvania Avenue and come back with a sanction on Ochoa and there won’t be a thing that State or Justice can say about it.”

“You’re piece of work, Art.”

“You want Ochoa or you don’t?”

“You know I do.”

“So?”

Taylor gets up from his chair. “I don’t want to know a fucking thing about it until it succeeds.”

“You got it.”

“If it blows up,” Taylor says from the doorway, “do me a favor. Stay in Mexico. Better yet, go to Belize. Somewhere you can’t be subpoenaed. I’m going to retire soon, and I want to retire to a cabin near a lake, not a federal prison.”

—

There are seven thousand arms dealers within a few hours’ drive of the Mexican border.

That’s three a mile.

Most of those guns aren’t going to shoot deer in Minnesota.

Now Keller sits across the street from one of them, in Scottsdale, Arizona, and watches the straw purchaser go in.

The Mexican government claims that 90 percent of the weapons used by the cartels come from the United States, but Keller knows that isn’t true. Most of the weapons the cartels use are looted from the armories of Central American military, but the gun stores that line the border are there for a reason, just like the narcos on the other side are there for a reason.

As soon as Keller got the go from Taylor, he put a tap on Rolando Morales’s cell phones and e-mail, which led him to five gun stores in Scottsdale, Phoenix, Laredo, El Paso, and Columbus, New Mexico.

Now he watches the straw purchaser go in and buy three Romanian-made AR-15 assault rifles—any more would get the attention of ATF. The purchaser fills out a Form 4473 with himself listed as the real buyer. The store owner knows exactly what’s going on and who the guns are ultimately for.

It’s so pat that this particular guy is only in the store for about thirty minutes before he comes out and puts the newly acquired weapons in the trunk of his Dodge Charger. A tail follows him to his house in the suburbs. He goes inside, has dinner, watches some television, then later that night drives to a house out in the desert where he delivers the guns to a Zeta cut-out.

This transaction is being repeated all along the border until Morales collects the fifty assault rifles he’s putting in the package for delivery to the “jihadists.”

To cross the border, a similar process is used for guns going south as for drugs coming north. The weapons are loaded into compartments in cars and trucks and driven across the border. Keller’s people follow the shipments to Veracruz, where the guns and cocaine are put in containers and loaded onto a freighter bound for Barcelona.

Rolando buys a first-class air ticket.

—

Keller looks at the video feed—coming from inside the warehouse on the industrial dock at Barcelona’s Free Harbor—and profoundly wishes that he could be there instead of in the situation room at Quantico.

But Rafael Imaz is in the warehouse with twenty heavily armed CNP troopers. More troops wait several blocks away in unmarked vehicles. Looking into the surveillance monitor, Keller watches the man they know as “Ali” and three of his jihadist comrades wait for Rolando.

It’s tense.

Keller believes that they’ve tracked the drug and weapon shipment and that Rolando will make his rendezvous with Ali. But if they’re wrong, if there’s been a leak, if the Zetas’ own impressive intelligence network has sniffed out the trap, then Rolando doesn’t show up, and the drugs—and more important, the weapons—are headed somewhere else.

Fast and Furious—the European version.

Rolando has been in Barcelona for two days, enjoying the sun, the food, the pretty women on La Rambla. He treated the two port officials to another night at Top Damas, another reason that Keller believes the arrangement with Ali is still on. But it could all be misdirection—Ochoa is well versed in military intelligence, and Keller wouldn’t put it past him.

The freighter arrived early yesterday morning and started offloading right away, but so far, Rolando hasn’t gone close to the port. And Ali had made it very clear that he would only deal with Morales personally—no cut-outs, no wire transfers. Now Rolando is thirty minutes late. It’s worrisome. The delivery could be going somewhere else while we’re chasing Rolando around Barcelona.

Ali is wearing an earpiece.

“Anything?” Keller hears Imaz ask.

“Not yet.”

Then a call comes through from the tail that Imaz has on Rolando. He and two other men left the hotel in a car headed in the direction of the harbor.

They wait.

An hour later, a loader pulls into the warehouse with two shipping containers. Rolando and his two guys come in right after it.

Rolando is in a jovial mood. “Allahu akbar!”

Ali plays his role. “You’re late.”

“We just wanted to make sure there were no other guests at the party,” Rolando says.

“Next time,” Ali says, “if there is a next time, be on time.”

“Next time, don’t make me come personally.”

“You don’t like Barcelona?” Ali asks. “My people seemed to think that you’re having a nice time for yourself.”

“We have whores in Oklahoma,” Rolando says.

“Let me see the merchandise.”

Rolando’s guys open one of the containers. He takes a package of cocaine and holds it up.

Keller watches through the monitor. The whole thing is on tape, with audio.

“You want to sample?” Rolando asks.

“You’re too smart to cheat me on the dope,” Ali says. “I want to see the weapons.”

They open the other container.

Ali steps over and looks in.

“Be my guest,” Rolando says.

Ali picks up one of the rifles and hefts it in his hand. “Ammunition?”

“Gun isn’t worth much without ammo,” Rolando says. “It’s all there.”

Sticking with the script, Ali asks, “Can you get me grenade launchers?”

“Grenade launchers,” Rolando says. “Wow.”

“Can you?”

“For a price,” Rolando says. “We can get them out of Guatemala, El Salvador. And speaking of a price…”

Ali gives a curt nod and his guys bring up four attaché cases. They open them and Ali shows Rolando the U.S. dollars wrapped in neat packages inside. “Do you want to count it?”

“No, I trust you.”

Ali’s guys shut the cases and then hand them to Rolando’s men.

“Go!” Imaz says into his mike.

His CNP troopers burst out of the back room into the warehouse. At the same time, the men outside rush to shut off the exit. They’re very fast and very good, and Morales has no choice except to throw his hands in the air.

Keller watches Imaz walk up to him. “Sorpresa, hijo de puta.”

Surprise, motherfucker.

—

“Can you get me grenade launchers?”

“Grenade launchers. Wow.”

“Can you?”

“For a price. We can get them out of Guatemala, El Salvador…”

The State Department NAS rep turns off the tape player and looks across the table at Keller.

Keller looks back at the NAS rep as if to say, Well?

“I get it,” the rep says. “But you stopped the purchase and busted the network. Case closed. Well done.”