Sadeed reached the machine shed to find six of his valiant defenders of the faith cowering behind a massive pull motor. They were holding unused rifles to their chests and staring with wide eyes.

  “You have guns! You have grenades!” Sadeed shrieked. He tried to control his excitement but his voice rose in tone until he sounded more like a hysterical woman than a courageous mujahedeen. His terrified monkeys failed to notice and scurried from hiding to take up positions along the shed wall. From there they sprayed blind volleys into the dark.

  Ripping the tarp from the work table in the center of the shed, Sadeed uncovered the pile of electronic detritus they had pried from the crashed American machine two days ago. Something must be rescued from this but he had no way of knowing what was of value and what was junk. He scooped the smallest components together into a cardboard carton. There was a steel junction box with a colorful fan of severed wires sticking from it like the tail of an animal. A black plastic ovoid set in a metal panel. The body of what looked like a camera. A bundle of lenses and the tray of what he thought he recognized as a hard drive like the one in his computer back home in Riyadh. He struggled under the weight of the box and scuttled away from the shouting jihadis left behind to cover his escape. They were too busy watching for movement in the dark to notice his departure.

  At the rear of the shed, away from the tapestry of tracers ripping the night apart, Sadeed found the Land Rover. It was slammed into the wall of the machine shed where it came to an abrupt stop that crumpled the hood. The engine was still idling with an uneven ticking sound. The rear tailgate was punched through with holes and the back window panel was gone.

  He pulled the driver’s door open to find Miguel slumped lifeless against it. Bullets had come clean through the steel body and two rows of seats to strike Miguel in the back and spill his insides over the dashboard and floor. Sadeed had no trouble lifting Miguel’s body but met resistance when he tried to pull the man from the car. A loop of intestines had caught around the gear shift. Sadeed could not bring himself to touch the greasy snag. He fought down the urge to vomit. He tugged with all his weight and finally the stinking mass of his dead mechanic came free and both of them fell to the mud.

  Sadeed was spurred back to his feet by the sharp report of a grenade somewhere within the compound. After tossing the box of components on the passenger seat, he slid behind the wheel ignoring the puddle of warm slush on the seat. Hands shaking, he threw the gear shift into first and tried not to think of the filth his hand was touching. A slimy layer of tissue and fluids were spattered everywhere. The windshield was filmed over with it. Sadeed used his hand to smear a clear place on the glass. He shifted gears without tapping his foot to the clutch and the engine promptly died.

  The rate of gunfire from within the machine shed picked up and he heard the whoosh of another discharged RPG. He whimpered a prayer to a merciful God and turned the key in the ignition. It ground and clicked for what seemed an eternity before coming to life with a snort. A popping sound came from above him. A choking smoke descended around the Rover. It turned the world outside the vehicle a dingy ochre.

  Careful to use the clutch this time, Sadeed slammed the shifter back into reverse and stomped the pedal to the floor. The Rover bucked and rocked but was stuck fast to the wall of the shed. Fresh sweat beaded on his face as he threw the shifter back into first and gunned it again. He sensed rather than saw forward movement. The Rover was engulfed in a thick fog now and he could see nothing beyond the crazed glass of the windshield against which to measure his progress. Tears streamed from his eyes. He just felt tired all at once. The adrenalin rush of danger was melting away. He was experiencing the extreme fatigue that fear leaves behind. A grinding noise and a splintering sound from outside and he felt himself free of the shed wall and rolling. The smoke was thinning. He fought to keep his speed steady but slow. He was not quite sure where he was going yet.

  His only desire was to leave the thump and pop of gunfire far behind him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  BORDER CROSSING, ARIZONA

  The border crossing was quiet but not dead quiet at two in the morning.

  Beto drew his truck up behind a line of three cars pulled up at one of four stations. There were four cars at another and the other two were closed for the low traffic hours. The US border guards stood speaking to drivers and waving them on after a few routine questions. Tourists and campers mostly. Folks getting back to Arizona after a late start.

  He’d already been waved through on the Mexican side. Nothing unusual about a semi pulling a flatbed loaded with a forty foot Sun Ray. Lots of boats were transported from marinas down in Mexico and back home to the USA when the owners’ vacations were over. This boat was once a luxury pleasure craft worth over half a million dollars. The plaza picked it for chump change at a salvage auction and fixed it up enough to make it pretty on the outside. The engines were burnouts with tens of thousands of hours on them. But they both shone like glass with new finishes on the casings. Inside it was stripped empty. And the hull was a paper-thin layer of Bondo in many spots and all covered with epoxy paint.

  The boat by itself was worthless. But packed down in the keel and sealed tight under a layer of fiberglass were hundreds of 3 mil plastic bags stuffed with the purest crystal meth that Sinaloa could produce. A thousand pounds of crank that would put the Pecadores Norte back in the black.

  It was Beto’s turn now and he drew up to the station, the agent giving him a lazy come-on gesture.

  Beto handed down his papers. His commercial hauler license identified him as Albert Francis Dellamo out of Provo, Utah. His picture matched. His plates matched. Everything was cool, cool, cool. Muy bueno.

  The agent eyed the shining white boat secure-strapped down to the long bed of the trailer and made a remark about how it must be nice. They all said the same thing every damned time on the gringo side. On the Mexican side they just took the envelope of cash and nodded without saying anything. Here in the USA everyone had to say something. An asshole and an opinion. Everybody had one.

  “Yeah, well, keep playing the lottery,” Beto said in his best gabacho English.

  The agent gave him a polite chuckle and handed back his ID packet before waving him on.

  “Welcome back to the United States.”

  Ten miles on, up a four lane surface road, Beto saw the flashing lights in his rearview.

  Arizona staties. Had to be them. He geared down and pulled over onto a wide gravel shoulder. The cab was resting at an angle, the outside wheels at the top of a downward grade and no guardrail.

  Beto got the ID packet out again and sat practicing his smile. He could bullshit his way past this. It was a hassle stop, that’s all. In the tall sideview he could see the statie walking up the driver’s side silhouetted by the swirling blue lights atop the vehicle parked in the dark behind the trailer. Smokey Bear hat, short sleeve uniform shirt and gun rig.

  Something about the way the statie walked was wrong. Beto glanced at the passenger side mirror and saw a second statie moving up with a twelve gauge in his fists. Moving up fast. Back to the driver mirror. The first statie was drawing his piece.

  From the sleeper behind him Beto snatched out his own shotgun. A cut-down Mossberg with pistol grip. He had a round chambered and the safety slid off and shouldered his door open and let fly as he dropped.

  Double-ought took the statie on his side full in the gut and the man flipped back to fall hard on the gravel. Beto dove prone to the road surface and fired under the trailer bed catching the second statie in both legs with another load of buck. Statie Two crashed to the ground, his pump gun skidded from his hands and Beto let him have a second load in the chest and head and spun the man’s body away to tumble down the grassy incline.

  Beto was up and chambered a fresh round as he walked to the first statie. The next one in the tube magazine was a rifle slug the size of a pinball ball.

  The man was panting through clenched teeth and clutching his gut. His heels gouged twin furrows in the loose gravel. Dark blood streamed between his fingers. He wore jeans and cowboy boots and his uniform blouse was unmarked by a badge or patches. The Smokey Bear hat was real but no emblem on the front. You could pick one up at any western wear shop either side of the border.

  Faux cops. It looked like a hijacking. But it wasn’t.

  The gutshot pendejo on the ground had three black tears tattooed by his right eye. Three falls for trafficking. On his forearm was inked a red letter “Z” over an outline of the state of Tamaulipas wrapped in ganga leaves.

  Los Zetas.

  Some wetback motherfuckers taking advantage of the power struggle inside the Pecadores Diez to rip off a shipment.

  Beto met the man’s eyes. They were glazed with pain but the hate was there burning deep down inside.

  “No regrets, hermano,” Beto said and trained the barrel of the Mossberg between those scalding eyes.

  The man’s head vanished in a crimson mist and his heels kicked no more.

  Beto was back in the truck and driving away. Just another couple of dead Mexicans along the road. That’s the way the law would see it. They’d have to be blind to not see what happened. Two rip-off artists met someone meaner than them. Case closed.

  But Beto knew it was more than that. He knew that, as much as Gordo tried to stay out of what was happening down south, the war had come to them.

  Gordo and the others would have to know.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  DEAD RUN

  “The target is on the move!” Priest called. He was walking through the thinning yellow haze feeding rounds into the machine shed, popping shots in the direction of the muzzle flashes blooming in the fog. Cries of panic or pain answered him. Either way the skinnies were keeping their heads down. Even over the discharge of weapons he could hear the sounds of a high revving engine moving away.

  He spared a glance to his left to fix Chili’s position before pulling the tab on a Fatty canister and pitching it into the shed.

  “Fire in the hole!”

  Both SEALs hit the deck just before the ground shivered under them. The concussive blast of lethal air rushed through the shed and dispersed the yellow fog in an instant. A resonant crack was dying away in their ears to be replaced by a high keening shriek of a dying animal.

  “Pig! Can you see the Rover?” Priest said and stood to move on the machine shed. A young skinny clawing the earth in agony. His body was gone from the waist down. He left a smoking trail of chopped flesh behind him as he crawled. His mouth was a bloody open hole from which an undulating howl was emerging. Priest put two in his chest and the shrieking stopped.

  “On it!” said Pig’s voice through the earjacks.

  Pig could see the Rover making a wide circle around the outer edge of the camp along the tree line. It was on a rough trajectory for the only road that led out and disappeared from view behind outbuildings and stacks of timber cullings and appeared only in flashes between obstacles. Trusting his bros to have his back, Pig ran full out across the open center of the camp. If he hauled ass in a straight line he could reach the road around the same time as the Rover. He sensed rather than saw the flashes of gunfire at the extremes of his peripheral. Gobbets of mud leapt up behind him. One hot round buzzed close enough to feel its backwind on the nape of his neck. Pig sprinted on until he saw the battered vehicle clear the last of the buildings. It raced for the incline heading for the road that looped north then west around the camp and into the woods and gone.

  The Rover was leaping and juddering over the rough ground and struck the bottom of the thirty-degree incline at its best speed. Pig laid down fire as he ran to intercept it. He punched holes all along the doors front and back. A rear tire blew out but the Rover dug in and powered up the hill anyway. His M4 was empty and Pig stopped to steady his aim and poured rifled slugs and fléchettes from the fore-mounted shotgun until the box mag of that weapon went dry. The rest of the window glass vanished all around and the body shuddered under the multiple impacts. The body was scarred and sieved all over as it climbed spraying twin eruptions of mud behind it. Pig dropped the rifle on its combat sling and jerked his automatic free and emptied it toward the Rover rapid fire.

  By some sheer fucking miracle the vehicle crested the rise to reach the road and vanished out of sight into the dark trees leaving only a rising blue cloud of exhaust behind.

  “The Rover is gone!” Pig called out. “Fuck!”

  ***********************************************************

  Sadeed was sobbing uncontrollably and tears blinded him as he braced himself, body rigid, to keep the accelerator pinned to the floorboards. The Rover leapt and shimmied over the torn up ground. There was a sudden hammering down the length of the vehicle. He felt the rear fishtail a bit and the right rear wheel rim settled down but still he gunned it. He was thrown forward as the front wheels struck the bottom of the hill. In spite of this, he maintained steady pressure on the pedal. It felt as though the car was ambling up the incline at a slower and slower pace even though he could see that the rev counter was nailed to the post and he was doing a good forty kph.

  Glass beads pelted him and air whistled through fresh holes that appeared all at once around him. He pressed his eyes shut and every speck of his being was concentrated on what he could feel through the sole of his one sandal as it jammed the gas down and fed the Rover life. The engine growled and screamed and protested but did not fail. He only opened his eyes when he felt the front wheels lift high then come crashing back to the ground with a double thump and the vehicle was moving on a level plane once more.

  The Rover had all four wheels on the road surface. Praise the Prophet. Praise the Lord. He is merciful and just.

  Sadeed fought to keep the wheels straight and sped away along the uneven grading of the packed-gravel roadway. He was bounced in the seat and struck his head again and again on the unupholstered roof of the cab. The rubber of the blasted tire tore free and he course-corrected as the bare wheel rim kept threatening to dig itself into the road surface.

  He was laughing. He had wet himself during his escape. It did not matter. He was released from the grip of death. Paradise would be his one day but not this day.

  ***********************************************************

  Thirty-two seconds.

  That was the total time elapsed since the SEALs heard the Rover come back to life.

  Pig moved back toward the buildings through fresh smoke spreading from a pair of canisters pitched by Chili. Twin clouds of red smoke spilling over the ground. Skinnies were firing from the tree line to the north end of the camp. Their cajones were growing back. They were returning in force, egged on by each other and their own shame at running off. They were still piss-poor shots but every asshole gets lucky now and then. Pig was grateful for the enveloping cloud of sheltering crimson smoke.

  “We’re moving back to the creek.” Priest’s voice in his earjack.

  “Roger that.”

  “Keep the buildings between you and them. We’re laying down suppression.” Priest again.

  White tracers were leaving pinkish trails through the smoke to his left. Pig angled toward their source using his memory of the camp layout to guide him. He trotted out of the cloud behind the largest shed and could see Chili firing single shots as he backed into the trees.

  “At your ten o’clock,” Pig said.

  “I see you,” Chili said in his earjack. “Pig coming in on my side.”

  “I have you both.” Priest’s voice. “Withdraw to the water.”

  “Did we find what we were looking for?” Pig said.

  “Negative on that. We found some goods but the primary wasn’t with them.”

  “It’s in the Rover then. The runner has it.” Pig said. It was a clusterfuck. A two day hump and nothing to show for it.

  “I called it in,” Priest said with a level voice. “Our priority is evac. We did all we could.”

  “Shit,” Pig said to himself between his teeth and suddenly felt tired all over.

  ***********************************************************

  The Rover was slowing down.

  The engine threw a scalding mist of steam back in Sadeed’s face through the gap left when the windshield blew out. Smoke was rising through the dash. The bare wheel was acting more and more like a drag. It was slowing his progress and angling the Rover right to bring down its speed more and more. He bucked in the seat to urge it onward. He cursed it with vile profanities, then implored it with sweet promises. It must carry him from here. It must take him to safety from the Americans dogging his every step; the hundreds of infidels he knew were stalking the forest for him at this very minute. He could feel the guns sighting in on his skull. He expected, at any moment, to look down and see the angry red dots of their laser-aiming devices swarming over his chest like he’d seen in so many Hollywood movies. He saw in his mind his picture on a television and the Americans celebrating his death. He would die for the Word, the Lord and the Prophet. He longed to do so. Some day. But please, merciful God, not here, on this road, his pants soaked with his own fear in this piece of shit Rover in the middle of this terrible, filthy place. His dreams of martyrdom were of glory and revenge, not simple execution on a jungle road in a country he hated.

  His dreams were not to be.

  Sadeed’s last thoughts in this world were ones of curiosity inspired by the sudden gust of wind that dispersed the smoke from his engine and flattened the leaves of the plants along the road. His face was washed by a blast of hot, wet air. A thrumming sound like the beating of many impossible wings drowned out the protesting grind of the Rover.