Now the voices come from grown men—howls of pain, fear, and rage as tracers fly up and rounds smack the chopper’s fuselage like a sudden rainstorm. But it’s too late to abort the mission, Keller thinks, even if we wanted to, because we’re going down.

The chopper spins crazily as it falls toward the earth.

—

Adán topples out of his quarters.

His hair is singed, his face scorched, and he’s deaf—all he can hear is a horrible ringing. He realizes that he’s on his stomach in the dirt, and thinks that he should be doing something, but he can’t figure out what it is.

Looking up, he sees one of his men run toward him, yelling something, but Adán can’t hear his words, only sees his mouth open and close in what seems to be slow motion, and then Adán slowly comes to the realization that he’s concussed.

The man runs right past him. It’s almost funny because he has no pants on, only a shirt, and his ass is skinny and flabby at the same time, and then Adán realizes that he’s naked as well and he yells out—or thinks he does, because he can’t hear his own voice. Yells out to stop and wait for him, come back and help him get up, but the man just keeps running, his ass bouncing, then bullets cut him down from behind and he claws at the air before toppling forward into the dirt.

Adán thinks he should be doing something but can’t think of what it is and then remembers that he’s the leader, El Patrón, he should be taking command, giving orders, organizing his men who are running around shooting in all directions, but then he realizes that would mean standing up and he’s too afraid to do that. A bullet smacks into a man near him and he wants to get up and take command but his legs won’t let him do it, they’re like water under him.

Adán belly-crawls toward the bush.

—

The landing is “hard.”

The pilot manages to bring the spinning helicopter down at the western edge of the village, but it hits hard, rattling Keller’s spine and snapping his head back against the bulkhead, and he almost blacks out.

The interior of the chopper is on fire. A couple of men work to suppress the flames as others get the wounded men out. Keller realizes that half his kill team is already out of action and then he hears Downey yell, “Out! Out! Deploy!” so he jumps out of the chopper bay.

Muzzle flashes crackle and bullets zip around his ears, so he flattens himself to the ground, flips his night-vision goggles over his eyes, and then risks looking up to get his bearings.

The school and the church are ahead to his right; in front of him and to the left, Zetas are taking position in huts, houses, and in the bush. Heavy firing is coming from about a quarter of a mile ahead, and Keller realizes that Zetas were attacking Barrera in his camp when the chopper came in. The Zeta camp is directly behind him, on the other side of the narrow belt of jungle, so they have enemy on all sides.

The second chopper has landed safely and its men are deploying, creating a firing line between them and the Zeta camp behind them. But there’s no screen between them and the Sinaloan camp in front, and Zetas are starting to come back from there.

Our only advantage is chaos, Keller thinks. The Zetas seem to be confused as to who the crashed helicopter belongs to, and they’re running in all directions, pouring fire at the chopper but also fighting in the Sinaloan camp and back in their own.

He notices that some of the fighters are women, dressed up as if to go to a party, some in masks, but carrying AR-15s and pistols, even lobbing grenades. They must be Panteras—he thought it was an urban legend, the “Zeta Amazons,” but now he sees that it’s true as figures move in and out of the darkness toward cover and good firing positions.

The old dictum is that “no plan survives first contact with the enemy,” and the special-ops team is already regrouping and improvising a new plan. He hears the sharp, disciplined fire as they use their night-vision advantage to pick out targets and create space to form a defensive perimeter. Short bits of talk come across the earpieces as Downey distributes his people and firepower.

They had expected to go into a sleeping village in an environment of surprise, not a hot combat zone. The plan was to perform the sanction and get out, not take on the entire Zeta force, and now the helicopter is destroyed and they’re going to have to fight their way out across the border.

“K-1,” Keller hears on the bone-phone. “This is D-1.”

“Acknowledge.”

“Aborting mission.”

“That’s a no.”

“Not a lot of time here, K-1,” Downey says. “Kill Team G is fifty percent down, Kill Team F is engaged and I can’t spare them. And we’re going to have to get our wounded back to Chopper 2 and medevac.”

Keller gets what Downey is saying—

He and Ruiz are the only members of Kill Team G left, and Team F has all it can do just to keep from getting overrun themselves.

The mission is fucked.

And where is Barrera? Dead already, or did he survive the Zetas’ attack?

First things first, Keller thinks as he hears Downey say, “We’re going to hold this perimeter until we can evac two eagles down.”

“Acknowledge.”

It’s the right move, Keller thinks. They have to get two wounded men back to the second chopper and then hold until it can deliver the wounded and then come back for them, because twenty men are too heavy a load for a single Black Hawk, already weighed down with special noise-suppressing gear.

Looking over his shoulder, he sees F start to move back into the jungle toward the Zeta camp. Bullets zing over his head and he trains his M-4 on a house to his left and returns fire. It feels good to be doing something, it lets loose his adrenaline, and he realizes that he didn’t come here to not kill Forty and Ochoa.

“Moving,” Keller says into the bone-phone.

“Negative that,” Downey answers.

Keller gets up into a crouch and sees Eddie Ruiz to his left.

Eddie nods.

It’s on.

Keller dashes toward the school.

—

Forty’s bodyguards lay down a sheet of fire.

Eddie hits the ground and looks up to see a woman with a pink Uzi trying to spot him, but he shoots and blows Commander Candy away first. She clutches at her stomach as if she can’t believe that this has happened, drops the pretty pink gun, and sits down and howls for her mother.

Then Eddie sees Forty make a dash for the jungle. Eddie leads and pulls the trigger. Forty stumbles and then goes down, gets up again, and Eddie’s about to finish him when another spray of gunfire from the Zetas forces him to squeeze the earth.

Then there’s a whoosh and an explosion and Eddie sees the bodyguards blown off the school’s porch like toy soldiers in a kid’s game. He looks to find Forty but can’t see him.

He does see Keller get up and head for the church.

Ochoa.

Z-1.

El Verdugo.

Works for me, Eddie thinks.

He gets up and follows.

—

Chuy’s done.

He drops the rocket launcher and walks back into the brush. Carefully picking his way along the narrow trail he’s walked so many times, he crosses the stone terrace of the Mayan temple, picks up his fútbol, and crawls into his cave.

There is nothing to fight for here.

Not Flor.

Not Nazario.

Not Hugo, or God.

One side will win, one will lose, and it doesn’t matter which. He has his own mission now and he can’t carry it out during this fight.

He curls up into a fetal position and hugs the ball tightly to his chest.

—

Adán trips over a root and falls face first.

He hurts.

His right leg is burned and blistered, he’s scratched and cut from the thorns and razorlike leaves, the soles of his feet are cut and bleeding. He’s exhausted, and part of him just wants to stay down and sleep, but if he sleeps they might catch up with him, and he wants to live to see his sons again, to hold them. That’s all he wants in the world, all he wants from life.