Luis hopes for heaven.

Keller fears hell.

Vera fears only death, and that because he takes such pleasure in life.

—

Sosa calls that night.

“I’m taking Contreras from Nuevo Laredo to his niece’s birthday party in Matamoros tomorrow,” he tells Keller. “After that, he’s going to have a party of his own at one of his safe houses.”

“I need an address.”

Sosa gives it to him—a three-story apartment building on Agustín Melgar in the Encantada district.

“Anyone flying with him?”

“Ochoa,” Sosa says. “And Forty. And another Zeta named Segura. Crazy guy who wears a grenade on a chain around his neck. Other Zetas are coming to the party. Look, I don’t want to stay on the phone too long.”

“Okay,” Keller says. “Here’s what you do. You drop Contreras off. You go downtown. You walk across the Puente Nuevo into Brownsville. A DEA agent will be waiting for you on the other side.”

“You promise?”

“You have my word.”

Keller gets on the horn to Vera. Thirty minutes later, he’s sitting in the SEIDO office with him and Aguilar.

“What do you have to do with this?” Aguilar asks Keller.

“He helped me with the informant,” Vera says.

“That’s not—”

“You want Contreras or not?” Vera snaps.

“I should have been informed of this operation,” Aguilar says. “My God, gypsy fortune-tellers…what’s next?”

“What’s next is that we take Contreras,” Vera says, “and three top Zetas.”

Aguilar warns, “They won’t give up Contreras without a fight.”

“Good,” Vera says.

“I want him alive,” Aguilar says to Vera.

Keller gets on the phone to Tim Taylor. “I’m going to need an agent to pick up an informant on the New Bridge in Brownsville. And I’m going to need an S-visa for him.”

“What the hell, Keller? What are you doing in Matamoros?”

“The op is out of Mexico City.”

“What does it have to do with Barrera?”

“Nothing,” Keller says. “It has to do with Contreras.”

“Keller—”

“You want him or not?” Keller asks, echoing Vera.

“Of course we want him.”

“Then get an agent there tomorrow afternoon,” Keller says. “He’s picking up an Alejandro Sosa and putting him into protective custody. Then get the extradition papers going for Contreras.”

“Gee, is that all? Anything else?”

“Not right now.” He hangs up and turns back to Aguilar and Vera. “We’d better get going.”

“You’re not coming,” Aguilar says.

“Do you know the address of the safe house?” Keller asks.

“No.”

“Then I guess I’m coming.”

Vera laughs.

—

Matamoros makes cars.

Perched on the south bank of the Río Bravo where it flows into the Gulf, the city is home to over a hundred maquiladoras, many of which build parts for GM, Chrysler, Ford, BMW, and Mercedes-Benz.

Once the odd combination of a cow town and fishing village, Matamoros came of age during the American Civil War, when it became an alternate port from which to ship Confederate cotton after the North closed New Orleans. Now it has the feel of an industrial city, with factories, warehouses, pollution, and endless rows of trucks carrying its products across four bridges into Brownsville, Texas, just across the river.

Matamoros is the home of the Gulf cartel, and Osiel Contreras is throwing a party.

—

Ten o’clock in the morning, Ochoa thinks, and the boss is sound asleep, naked, wedged between two similarly unconscious and unclad thousand-dollar whores in a bedroom on the second floor of the safe house.

It was a hell of a fiesta.

The women were exceptional.

But he’s starting to worry more and more about Contreras. The boss is doing too much cocaine, his paranoia is becoming treacherous, and his ego has led to acts of terrible misjudgment.

The assault on the American DEA agents had come one second from what would have been a catastrophe. Even what did happen put the CDG on the radar in ways that just aren’t good.

Ochoa doesn’t like it—it’s bad for business, bad for his money. And Ochoa has come to like his money.

“Patrón, patrón.” Contreras had ordered his plane to be ready by eleven. They have business in Nuevo Laredo. “Patrón.”

Contreras opens one jaundiced eye. “Chíngate.”

Okay, fuck me, Ochoa thinks, but—

Miguel Morales, whom they call Forty, comes up the stairs. A thick, squat man with a thick mustache and curly black hair, he’s pulled on his jeans but nothing else and he looks both hungover and fucked out.

And alarmed.

Which in turn alarms Ochoa, because Forty isn’t one to panic. He’s risen quickly in the Zeta ranks despite not being one of the original special-ops veterans. In fact, he’s half American, a pocho from Laredo, with no military experience but a long history with the Los Tejos gang along the border. He took to the military training like he was born to it and didn’t blink at the rougher stuff.

A story going around has it that Forty once tore the heart out of one of his living victims and ate it, saying that it gave him strength, and while Ochoa doesn’t really believe the story, he doesn’t really disbelieve it, either. So when Forty says, “There’s a problem”—there’s a problem.

He follows Forty to the window and looks out.

Police and soldiers are everywhere.

—

The Zetas fight.

For six hours, fifteen of them, surrounded, hold out against over three hundred AFI, SEIDO, and army troopers trying to storm the house.

Ochoa never goes into any building without working out fields of fire, and his disciplined men are laying it down. First they drive the federales from the door, then across the street, but that’s the best they can do.

The soldiers have armored cars, and after an initial burst of overexcited, incontinent fire, they’ve settled down and are picking their targets. They’ve fired tear-gas grenades through the shattered windows, and the helicopters have swept Zeta snipers off the roof.

If we could hold out until dark, Ochoa thinks, there’s a slim chance of getting Contreras out in the confusion, but we can’t hold until dark.

He looks at his watch.

It’s only 1:30 in the afternoon.

They already have one KIA and two wounded, and they’re running out of ammunition.

A bullhorn once again demands Contreras’s surrender.

—

Vera lowers the megaphone.

“It’s time to storm the house,” he says.

“Why?” Aguilar asks. “We have them surrounded. They’re not going anywhere.”

“It makes us look weak,” Vera says. “The longer they hold out, the worse it makes us look. I can hear the corridos already.”

“Let them sing,” Aguilar says. “We’ll have Contreras. Without him, these Zetas are nothing.”

He’s missing the point, Keller thinks. Vera wants bodies, the more the better. Contreras and his troops in handcuffs sends one message—Contreras and his troops in pools of their own blood sends another:

If you form an army, we don’t arrest you.

We kill you.

You want a war, you get a war.

“Strap your vest on,” Vera says. “Five more minutes and we go.”

“You should reconsider that,” Keller says.

Vera looks at him, surprised.

Same with Aguilar.

But for once, Keller thinks, the lawyer is right. Contreras is trapped, he can’t possibly escape. Those aren’t just narcos in that house, they’re highly trained elite soldiers.

“Whatever message you want to send,” Keller tells Vera, “it’s not worth a bloodbath. Which there will be if we storm the house.”

Vera stares at him.

“Make them surrender,” Keller presses. “Make them come out with their hands in the air. That’s the footage you want. Dead, they’re martyrs; alive, they’re bitches. That’s the song you want sung. That’s what makes some kid look at you and not them as the hero.”