Maybe that’s why he has an AK-47 across his lap. Wouldn’t think you’d need it in Badiraguato, which is Sinaloa cartel country, but paranoia is not such a bad thing in his business. He also has his diamond-encrusted .45 holstered on his hip, the jewels spelling out the legend “Live Free” in Spanish. He’s a little sleepy, though, after a long hard night of fucking. So he has his eyes closed and his head leaned back when the shit happens.

Four SUVs roar in from all directions and block the road. Alberto wakes up and flips his AK to full automatic, then hears, “Federal police! Come out of the vehicle with your hands on your head!”

Federales rousting him in Sinaloa? This has to be some sort of joke, or this bola de idiotas pendejos didn’t get the word, and Alberto starts to get out of the car to tell them so when one of the security guys says, “What if they’re Solorzano’s people?”

Because it’s possible, it’s been done before—shooters dressed in AFI uniforms. Alberto sees a lot of rifle barrels sticking out at him from those cars, and then he hears, “Come out now!”

Rolling down the window, Alberto resorts to a line usually associated with Hollywood starlets who can’t get a lunch table: “Do you know who I am?!”

“Step out of the vehicle!”

“I’m Alberto Tapia!” Like, you know how much food I put on your tables?

“We’re not going to warn you again!”

Yeah, and I’m not going to warn you again. “You’d better talk to your boss and ask him—”

The bullet takes him squarely in the forehead.

A barrage quickly follows, after which all that remain intact in the Navigator are two suitcases full of cash and a case of expensive watches.

Still ticking.

—

Eddie watches the cars race up to the safe house.

AFI troopers jump out and move toward the house in military formation, rifles to their shoulders. He’s seen this on TV, when they took Contreras down in Matamoros.

Diego is staring, wide-eyed for a nice change.

“Madre mía,” he says.

No shit, your mama, Eddie thinks. He tosses his burrito wrapper in the trash can and says, “We’d better get out of here.”

He walks Diego away from the sidewalk café. Luckily, the federales are focused on this house. Eddie hears them shout, “Diego Tapia! You’re surrounded! Come out with your hands on your head!”

Eddie’s a block away when Diego says, “You see? La Niña Blanca protected me.”

Yeah, Eddie thinks.

It was that white candle.

No question.

—

Adán waits by the phone.

When it finally rings, he wishes it hadn’t.

Alberto and three of his men are dead. Adán’s furious—he had specifically ordered there was to be no killing, and now Alberto’s dead? Diego’s brother is dead?

He waits for the next call.

It comes quickly.

If the first call was a disaster, the second is catastrophic.

The federales missed Diego. They raided four safe houses and didn’t find him. How could those fugeda idiots miss him? And now Diego Tapia is out there—grieving, outraged, and most likely insane for revenge.

Which he will get.

Adán goes into damage control.

“We have to find him,” he tells Nacho over the phone.

Even Nacho sounds shaken up. “He’s in the wind, Adán.”

“Find him.”

As it turns out, they don’t have to find Diego. He phones Adán. “Alberto’s dead. Those bastards turned on us. They killed Alberto.”

He’s weeping.

“Diego, where are you?”

“They killed Alberto.”

“We have to get you somewhere safe,” Adán says. “Tell me where you are. I’ll send people.”

It’s a terrible risk, Adán thinks. Diego has people, more than enough people to move him, hide him, protect him, and if he were thinking clearly, he’d know that I know that and be suspicious of the offer.

“I want them dead,” Diego says. “All of them. Dead.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m safe, primo. But I want to die.”

“Don’t do anything crazy, Diego.”

“I want them dead.”

Diego clicks off.

—

Keller gets a phone call at his desk from Aguilar. “It’s a mess. Totally botched. Gerardo is beside himself.”

It’s a debacle, Aguilar goes on. Alberto Tapia is dead, Diego and Martín in the wind…The botched arrests are a shame…justice for two families tossed away…it’s sickening…

It’s working, Keller thinks as he clicks off.

This “debacle” is a keg of dynamite with a short fuse, sitting under Adán, the Tapias, the Mexican law enforcement establishment, even Los Pinos. All it requires is a match to set it off, and it will blow up the whole system that Adán has carefully built.

Keller walks outside the building and uses his own phone to contact Yvette Tapia. “I’m calling as a friend. There’s something you need to know.”

He lights the match.

“Adán Barrera flipped on your family,” he says.

—

“Adán doesn’t have a brother,” Diego whines.

Dude is in bad shape, Eddie thinks—coked up, hasn’t slept since he put his baby brother in the dirt. They’re back in Monterrey, which is relatively safe, and the topic is revenge. Diego wants payback for Alberto’s death, but the problem is…well, as stated.

Alberto’s funeral was ridiculous, a display of hypocrisy that would have made a Louisiana televangelist blush. Adán and Queen Eva I showed up, hugged Diego, and gave the widow a fat envelope, and Diego hugged him back, pretending that he didn’t know.

That sleazy cocksucker Nacho was there, too, looking all sad and grim and sympathetic, as if he hadn’t put Barrera up to it.

All the top narcos came to pay respect, even though, truth be told, no one really liked Alberto all that much. He was a pint-sized pain in the ass—a mouthy, showy, yapping little shit like one of those mini-dogs that women like to bring to restaurants these days to aggravate everybody.

The only good thing about Alberto is his wife—his widow now—she of the hydraulically engineered rack.

She doesn’t know, Eddie thought as he watched her accept Adán’s condolences and cash. No stripper is that good an actress. The family hadn’t told her that the man handing her the envelope sold her husband out.

At least Barrera didn’t stick the envelope into her panties.

The Tapias will take care of her, Eddie knows that. They’re not going to let her go back to the pole. Kind of a shame, though, because that is something that Eddie would truly like to see.

Not as much as he’d like to see Yvette Tapia out of that black dress she wore to the funeral. He bets she has a black bra and panties under that, and it’s hot. And he knows just looking at her that the husband standing there beside her isn’t delivering the goods on a regular basis.

Come to a cowboy, darlin’. Let me take you out of the gate. I’ll stay on a lot longer than eight seconds, I’ll tell you what.

Even the Zetas—who hated Alberto—showed up, and they’re here now, helping Diego figure out how to go up against the Evil Empire. It’s tricky, because Barrera has federal cops in his pocket, and politicians. They used to be in everyone’s pockets—one big, happy family—but that’s over now.

Martín says, “Before we can move directly on Adán, the ground has to be prepared. We have to get rid of certain powerful enemies in the police.”

“Won’t that alert Adán to the threat?” Ochoa asks.

They’re allies now, Eddie thinks. The old quid for the quo is in—the Tapias have allowed the Zetas to take refuge in Monterrey; in return, the Zetas have agreed to join in a war against Barrera.

It’s just the start, Eddie thinks. All the cartels will realign, and the relationships with the cops and the pols will shift. The deck is going to be reshuffled, and who knows where the aces and kings—the cops and the politicians—are going to end up? Right now they sure seem to be in Barrera’s hand.