—

The dining hall is decorated with lighted paper lanterns and real white tablecloths. Real plates and wineglasses.

The dinner is the best Chuy’s had in his life. A big steak all to himself, roast potatoes, vegetables, flan and tres leches cake for dessert.

And wine.

By the time dinner is over, Chuy’s a little lightheaded.

And proud.

He’s lean and mean, in terrific shape, and has a feeling that he’s earned membership in a brotherhood of elite warriors.

It feels wonderful.

After dinner, the instructors lead them up a little knoll to a building none of them were allowed to enter during their training. One by one, they’re led into a room in the back of the building. Chuy sits and waits. One by one, the recruits come out and walk right past him. None of them speak, but look straight ahead and walk out of the building.

Finally, it’s Chuy’s turn. Esteban comes and gets him, opens the door, and ushers him into the room.

Forty and Heriberto Ochoa, Z-1, El Verdugo himself, are there to greet him and tell him what he has to do to graduate. A man, his hands tied behind his back, kneels on the floor. One of the Kaibiles stands behind him, and he hands Chuy a serrated knife. For the rest of his life, whenever he can sleep, Chuy will have nightmares about what happened in that room.

What he sees is the man’s face.

—

Chuy ain’t living in no shack anymore.

No cinder blocks, no cold shower.

He’s living in a rented five-bedroom house on a leafy cul-de-sac in an expensive suburban Laredo subdivision. Chuy and Gabe each have their own bedroom, the living room has a flat-screen TV with an Xbox, the kitchen has a fridge full of food. Three Mexican dudes live there with them, but they’re pretty quiet and don’t go out much.

Esteban comes over every Friday and hands each of them $500 in cash, their weekly salary.

For doing nothing.

So far all they’ve done since they got back from the training camp is sit on their asses, play Call of Duty and Madden, go to the Mall del Norte, hit Mrs. Fields, and try unsuccessfully to pick up girls. (This is frustrating to Chuy. He can’t tell them that he’s a man, a killer, an elite trained warrior. To them he’s just a middle schooler.) Otherwise, they sit around, drink beer, smoke weed, jerk off, and sleep until noon.

It’s teenage boy heaven.

Except for the nightmares, it’s a good life.

One Friday Esteban comes around and says he has a job for them. There’s a guy living in Laredo who’s been messing around with a woman of Forty’s.

“Guy’s gotta go,” Esteban says.

Tell the truth, Chuy’s a little disappointed. He thought he was a soldier, fighting in a war against the Alliance (“It’s like Star Wars, bro”), but the first mission they send him on is over some chica.

But orders are orders and five hundy a week is five hundy a week and if you’re going to live in a nice house you pay the rent, so he and Gabe go out in a car the Mexicans stole for them to the address that Esteban gave them.

“You drive and I’ll pull the trigger,” Gabe tells him.

“Why don’t you drive and I pull the trigger?”

“Because I’m older.”

“By a year.”

“Year and a half,” Gabe says.

“Big deal.”

But Chuy drives. He don’t have no license, but they’re going to kill a guy, so he’s not exactly sweating the underage driving thing. He pulls up on the curb, Gabe checks the load on the 9mm and gets out. “I’ll be back in a sec.”

“Cool.”

“You better be here.”

“I’ll be here, bro. Just go do your thing.”

Chuy watches Gabe put the pistol behind his back, walk up to the door, and ring the bell. Door opens, Gabe pulls out the 9 and shoots twice, then walks back to the car.

“Mrs. Fields?” Gabe asks.

“Sure.”

They dump the car at the mall.

Mission accomplished.

Except it’s not.

Esteban comes over in the morning, wakes them up, and he’s pissed. Shows them the morning newspaper. “You malandros fucked up! You didn’t shoot the guy, you shot his son!”

Chuy looks at the picture in the paper.

Kid was eleven.

“Told you I shoulda done it,” he says to Gabe.

“This is serious,” Esteban says. “Forty wanted me to whack both of you, but I talked him out of it. But you idiots are on a short fucking leash. Your next chance is your last chance, comprende?”

They comprende.

Chuy’s disconsolate.

“We had our chance to prove ourselves and we fucked it up,” he says to Gabe. “Couldn’t you see it was a kid?”

“The door opened and I shot.”

“You were too jacked up, bro,” Chuy says. “You gotta chill out.”

They wait months for their next chance. Then Esteban tells them, “The three of us are going on a mission together. Can I trust you not to fuck up?”

“You can trust us, man,” Chuy says. “One hundred percent.”

It’s important, Esteban tells them. This former Nuevo Laredo city cop flipped and went over to the Alliance. Now he’s in Laredo, providing protection for the opposition. Before we can get to them, we gotta take this guy out.

Tonight.

Chuy gets into the work car and sees it’s serious because Esteban hands him an erre.

“You remember how to use this?” Esteban asks.

“Sure.”

“I hope so.”

Gabe drives. They wait outside a strip club out by the airport until the guy comes out and then follow his Dodge Charger along an access road along a bunch of factories and warehouses. Esteban takes out a police flasher, puts it on the car roof, and sets it off.

“Bad boys, bad boys,” Gabe sings, “whatcha gonna do…”

“Shut up,” Esteban says.

The Charger pulls over.

Chuy sees the dome light come on but can’t make out whether the guy is reaching for his registration or a gun. He don’t wait to find out. As they pull up alongside, he rolls the window down, sticks out the AR, and melts the guy.

It’s the small hours of the morning, though, so Mrs. Fields is closed.

That’s okay—Esteban gives them each ten grand in cash instead.

—

Chuy and Gabe don’t play Call of Duty so much anymore. After you’ve done the real thing, a video version is…boring.

Their next job is big.

A big step up.

“ ‘Bruno,’ ” Gabe says when they get the assignment. “Isn’t that, like, a cartoon character?”

“I thinks that’s ‘Bluto,’ ” Chuy says. He watches a lot of Cartoon Network.

Bruno Resendez ain’t no cartoon. He’s a major marijuana dealer based in Rio Bravo, Texas, right on the border, and he’s with the Alliance. He’s so much with the Alliance that what he does is finger Zetas on the Mexican side for assassination. Esteban figures Bruno’s responsible for about a dozen dead Zetas.

Forty wants him dead.

“You guys take Bruno out,” Esteban tells them, “you’re gold.”

They spend a week scoping out the town and blend right in because of the five thousand or so citizens of Rio Bravo, about four thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight of them are Hispanic.

Bruno tools around Rio Bravo like he owns it.

Maybe he does, Chuy thinks.

Bruno rolls up and down Route 83 in his black Ford pickup, in a straw cowboy hat, with his nephew in the passenger seat. No bodyguard, no follow car, so he must think he’s safe on this side of the border.

The man has a routine as he makes his rounds. Bruno waits in the truck, the nephew goes in and picks up the money. Nephew looks to Chuy like he’s fifteen, sixteen. Nice work, riding around with your tío picking up the cash.

“How you wanna do this?” Gabe asks Chuy.

“I dunno, the highway?”

“What about the nephew?” Gabe asks. “Nobody said nothing about him.”

“Fuck the nephew,” Chuy says.

They take Bruno on the 83.

Bruno don’t want to be caught. Must have seen trouble in the rearview mirror because he takes that Ford up to eighty, then ninety. Gabe’s gotta be doing a buck ten in the Escalade when they pull into the lane beside Bruno’s truck.