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  Santiago reached the bottom of the steps. “I’ll show you to the kitchen. Word to the wise, if you want food, get there early. With all the trouble that’s been going on lately, most of the guys are staying in the compound.”

  He was chock-full of friendly shit.

  “Families too?” Walker made the question sound like idle curiosity. “I thought I heard a woman,” he said without looking back as they left the mansion. Then he slowed and gave a suggestive wink. “I don’t suppose I can bring a chica back to the bunkhouse every once in a while.”

  Santiago laughed. “Only if you’re prepared to share.”

  Walker puffed out his chest, forcing himself to crack jokes instead of going for the jugular. “Once a woman had me, what would she want with the likes of those losers?” He gestured with his head toward the men in the courtyard.

  “No woman would ever want a gringo when she could have a hot-blooded Latin lover.” Santiago thrust his hips suggestively. “Maybe if you stick around, you’ll learn some moves, amigo.”

  Weren’t they just best friends?

  They kept joking as they walked toward a long, single-story brick building in the back, but Walker’s mind kept replaying that sound of female laughter. And kept going over the fact that Carlos had not looked as if something was troubling him. He certainly didn’t look as if his sister was missing or dead.

  Maybe he had no attachment to Rosita. Maybe they didn’t even know each other. Or…

  Was it possible that Rosita was hiding out at her brother’s compound for some reason? Walker had briefly joked to Clara about that but hadn’t really meant it. Nothing pointed in that direction. Still, he would keep an eye on the mansion, see if he could catch sight of the mystery woman.

  Santiago slowed as they passed the bunkhouse. He checked out the SIG stuck in Walker’s waistband. “You need something bigger?”

  Walker shrugged. “A rifle would be nice. M14, AR-15, whatever you have.”

  He’d come with just the SIG. Showing up with his full arsenal would have been suspicious.

  Santiago said, “I’ll make sure you get something. A new shipment is coming up tonight. I want you to go and meet it at the border, give escort. What happened the last time can’t happen again.”

  “Pedro’s boys have been taken care of.”

  Santiago shook his head. “But the Tamchén seem to suddenly have a death wish. They might send their own people.”

  “Sure.” Walker couldn’t say anything else, even if he didn’t want to go. He wanted to be at the compound when shit went down tonight. He wanted to be the one to take out his brother’s killer. He rubbed his hand over his face, dropped it. He would just have to hurry back.

  “You staying here?” he asked.

  Santiago was a pretty big boss on his own. He had a nice place nearby, built with some serious drug money, had his own crew for protection.

  The man’s face clouded. “I don’t like the look of things lately. It’s as if everyone’s gone crazy.”

  “Maybe it’s the heat,” Walker offered.

  But Santiago shook his head. “We have good business here. Everybody from the coyotes to the banditos to the cartels. Why mess it up? Why suddenly? What did Pedro gain? And now the Tamchén? When business is disrupted, everybody loses.”

  “What can you do?” Walker said.

  Santiago stopped as they reached the kitchen. “Wait and see if common sense returns.”

  Walker didn’t like that sentiment. “Or initiate a decisive strike first. Instead of a prolonged war that’ll do a lot of damage, start the war and finish it in the same hit. The sooner it’s over, the sooner things go back to normal.”

  Santiago pulled a cigar from his pocket and ran his fingers over it in a distracted gesture, then pulled another one and offered it to Walker. “That’s what Carlos said.”

  “Yeah? Soon?”

  Santiago bit off the end of his cigar and spit it on the ground. “Just get the shipment inside the walls safely first.”

  “What time are they coming?”

  “Should cross the border this afternoon.”

  Good. Then he’d be back by tonight. “I should head down there in a while, then.”

  Santiago pulled a lighter from his pocket, and they lit up. “I’ll send a couple of men with you.”

  A couple of men.

  No good way to refuse. Didn’t matter. Walker couldn’t take this shipment like the previous one. Another ambush would be way too suspicious. He was the one who’d found the scene of the massacre, supposedly, then the shipment, and now if the new shipment went missing while he was escorting it—he’d be the common denominator.

  “There you go.” Santiago ducked into the kitchen, puffing on his cigar, stashing away his lighter.

  The first time he’d ever deigned to talk to Walker was when Walker had brought in a crate of Cubans to sell. They’d bonded over tobacco.

  If only Walker had known back then that this was the bastard who’d killed Ben…

  He knew now.

  Cold fury had him clenching his jaw as he followed Santiago through the door.

  A lot of places in this part of Mexico had the kitchen apart from the main building so the heat of the stoves wouldn’t further heat the house, a practicality when temperatures regularly soared to a hundred and most houses had never heard of air-conditioning.

  Food simmered on the stove in colorful pots, but the cooking women were someplace else, maybe out back, peeling or grinding something, or chasing a chicken. An industrial-size refrigerator hummed in the corner.

  Walker watched Santiago go for a cold beer.

  The two of them alone in the room. No witnesses.

  Walker’s hand moved toward his knife. He stopped himself halfway. Not yet.

  He had a better plan that would provide him with more alone time with the bastard. He intended to have a long talk with Santiago about Ben.

  Patience.

  Santiago held the fridge door open long enough for Walker to see the piles of jammed-in food. “Grab what you want, eat, then come and find me. I’ll have directions ready for you, a good rifle, and some car keys.”

  Walker nodded. He needed food to have energy for the fight that was to come. Before the day was out, the compound would be ablaze. And Santiago would pay.

  The upcoming night would bring danger and death. Thank God, Clara was away and safe.

  He’d sent her home.

  In all this mess, he’d done one thing right at least.

  Chapter Twenty

  Walker wiped the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand as the convoy rolled into Mercita at last, cutting through the sleeping town, following a prearranged path.

  Nearing midnight, the streets were empty.

  Although the police had night patrols, Walker hadn’t seen a single cruiser as they passed block after block of dark-windowed houses and shuttered stores. Santiago had probably taken care of that. Carlos Petranos had plenty of cops on his payroll, same as he had border guards, DEA agents, and even politicians.

  Walker’s Land Rover led the convoy, then the two trucks, then a Jeep. He was the only one in the Land Rover, behind the wheel. The three men Santiago had sent with him had moved over to the trucks.

  The convoy turned down the last street. The street lights were off. No lights on at all at the compound, not even at the gate. The convoy vehicles turned their lights off too and navigated with the help of men running to direct them with flashlights. Should there be any kind of surveillance, government or competitors, taking photos of the trucks entering the compound would be next to impossible, especially from a distance.

  The gate opened when the Land Rover was halfway down the street. The convoy kept rolling, everyone eager to get out of the vehicles to stretch their legs and aching backs, take a piss, get a hot meal and a cold drink.

  Once the small convoy crossed through the gate, the guards sealed the compound once again. Walker parked in the empty space to the left, right next
to the gate. The trucks rolled into the oversized garage on the right where they’d be unpacked in the morning. The Jeep parked in behind Walker, blocking the Land Rover.

  Fine with him.

  The gas tanks were near empty, but both vehicles carried five-gallon cans of fuel for emergencies. No gas stations in the jungle. The gasoline would come in handy for Walker’s plans later, increase the size of the fire following the explosion. And the tires he’d gotten from the dump, now in the back of the Land Rover, would burn with a thick, choking black smoke, nearly as good as tear gas.

  Most of the men who’d escorted the shipment went straight to the kitchen. Walker followed, dropped into an empty chair, and shoveled in food without tasting it. Barely anyone talked. The original crew had been riding over washed-out jungle roads for days, through heat and bugs and rain, sneaking through multiple countries. They just wanted to eat then hit the sack.

  Walker got up when they got up. But when they shuffled off to the bunkhouse to sleep, Walker stayed behind in the courtyard and pretended to be looking at the clouds drifting in.

  Four guards at the gate, plus double the usual perimeter guards in position. Security was definitely beefed up, but nobody paid much attention to him. They were all watching for outside attack.

  The streetlights came back on. Even at the compound, a handful of outdoor lights flickered on here and there.

  Walker moved along, keeping to the shadows. He knew how to walk without making a sound, how to slip through tight places.

  He wanted to know where all the players were so he could make an exit plan and figure out how to spirit Santiago out of the place. He wanted to be at least several blocks from here, preferably halfway across town in one of the boarded-up warehouses with the man when the Tamchén attacked. He had questions to ask and a score to settle.

  He moved carefully and tallied everything he saw. One guard on the kitchen’s flat roof, awake and moving. The gate guards had their backs to the courtyard. The perimeter guards were walking in slow circles along the wall. Santiago kept them moving like that all night, on the premise that falling asleep while moving was less likely than falling asleep while standing still.

  When the opportunity presented itself, Walker darted to the nearest deep shadow—created by a pile of stacked pallets—and crouched there.

  He could see a little more from his new position. He spotted another guard, smoking outside the oversized garage that housed the drug shipment. Most attention would be on that area tonight, so Walker identified his next possible hiding spot in the opposite direction.

  He darted close to twenty feet in a crouch and dove under an empty truck. He pulled his body into a ball and hid behind the front driver’s side tire, stayed motionless. He could see the main house’s front steps from there. One man stood guard on either side of the door.

  Santiago was in there, so Walker would have to get in and find a way to drag the man out unseen. The relative dark of the courtyard, the sliver of moon that kept hiding behind clouds, were in his favor.

  A loud truck rattled by on the street on the other side of the wall. All the guards turned that way, stiffened. They were probably wondering if the Tamchén were coming. Let them wonder.

  Walker darted behind the mansion. Here, only a thirty-foot-wide gravel strip stood between the house and the wall. A security camera stood on the top of the wall, but it faced outward. The perimeter guards would walk by regularly and monitor the inside.

  Walker pulled into the cover of a bush and waited.

  He didn’t have to wait long until a guard strolled by. He appeared alert, looking around, walking at a pace that allowed him to take careful stock of his surroundings. One full minute passed before he disappeared from sight.

  Walker stayed where he was and waited for the next guard. Fifteen minutes passed before the man appeared. He walked slower than the first guy and didn’t look much at anything, shoulders slumped, eyelids at half-mast. Only moving around kept him awake. He’d be asleep the second he sat.

  Once he passed out of hearing distance, Walker reached for his phone and dialed his Tamchén connection. Now that his cell phone had dried out, it was working again.

  The man on the other end of the line picked up with, “You’re fucking dead, gringo.”

  “I didn’t know the truck was rigged, I swear. They set me up. I bet the guy who tipped me off to where the drugs were is working for the Xibalba. They were watching me when I took the truck to you and blew it with a remote. I could have been in the cab, man. I swear, I had nothing to do with this.”

  “Then why did you run?”

  “Fucking people were shooting at me!” He put as much righteous indignation into his voice as he could while still keeping the volume down. “I step out the back to take a piss, next thing I know, some idiot guard is pointing a gun at me and shouting. I moved to pull up my zipper. Idiot thought I was going for a gun, started shooting. Of course, I ran.”

  He drew a breath. “Then the freaking hangar blew, and everyone was shooting at everything. I got the hell out of there before somebody decided to blame me.”

  A reasonable story that explained the preexplosion gunfire. If anyone had seen Clara, they’d likely mistaken her for one of their own in the dark in that getup she’d been wearing. If Walker had any luck at all, the men who’d seen him and Clara running from the storage buildings had been blown up in the explosion.

  “I figured once things calmed down,” he said, “you’d see that I couldn’t have anything to do with this. I could have been blown to pieces.”

  But the man on the other end just kept shouting at him, promising death that would be slow and imaginative.

  “Let me make up for my mistake,” Walker begged. “The Xibalba just got in a shipment. Two new truckloads. Plus they have the other half of the shipment I took to you.”

  Originally, he’d planned on enticing the Tamchén with that single load, but being able to add a whole new shipment was even better. The sheer size of the bait made it irresistible.

  “I’m tipping you off so you can come and grab the whole jackpot,” he said.” And I’ll get you in, too. I’m going to blow the gate.”

  More swearing sounded on the other end, but not as heated.

  “I’m in position right now,” Walker added. And then he told the guy the number of people at the compound, the location of the sentries. “It’d be a quick hit.”

  Silence. Then a tense, “I’ll call you back.” Then the line went dead.

  Walker waited. The phone buzzed in his hand in five minutes. He’d talked for about three minutes to the guy before, so he had seven more minutes before the next guard would walk by.

  He spoke fast. “Are you coming?”

  “One hour. When you hear the trucks, blow the gate. If this is a trap, I’m personally going to hunt you down to the ends of the earth.”

  “The gate will blow before you’re halfway down the street. The trucks are in the garage on the right, ready for unloading in the morning. You grab them. Drive them away. Done deal.”

  He hung up. He had five more minutes. He called Jorge.

  “Hermano, want to stay on the right side of history tonight?”

  “Got something?” Jorge sounded sleepy. With the gang war, he’d probably not had a lot of restful nights lately.

  “I know where Hernandez’s crew is hanging out these days. But I have a favor to ask.”

  “Whatever you need.” Excitement pumped up Jorge’s voice as he came instantly awake.

  “They’re guarding the new Xibalba drug company. The Tamchén are taking out the Xibalba tonight. The cartels will be busy. You can get Hernandez.”

  “You threw in with the Tamchén?”

  “Just the way it played out.”

  The line went silent for a moment before Jorge asked, “And the favor?”

  “I’d appreciate it if the factory burned to the ground.”

  “That’s it?”

  “It’d be a big help.”


  “Consider it done, hermano,” Jorge said with full confidence, and then Walker had to hang up because the next perimeter guard was coming.

  As Walker tucked away his phone, he glanced at the time and thought about Clara, glad that by now, she was on her plane.

  * * *

  Clara sat on the ground in some kind of a storage room, alone, her hands bound behind her back with coarse rope that bit into her skin when she tried to free herself.

  She’d been waiting for hours for someone to come for her so she’d know what enemy she faced, so she could negotiate.

  She doubted they knew she was with the DOD.

  She wanted to tell them they were messing with an official of the United States.

  But nobody came.

  The room was around ten feet by ten feet, brick floor, adobe walls, no window, relatively cool, which made it ideal for storage. A dozen sacks of corn were stacked in one corner, leaving the space otherwise empty. The handful of shelves nailed to the wall held nothing.

  Clara was grateful that the men who’d kidnapped her had at least taken off the blindfold before they threw her in here. At least she could see. Sitting here blind would have been a hundred times worse.

  Judging by the distance they’d driven, she was at the Xibalba compound in Mercita. They’d only spent maybe twenty minutes on the road. The Tamchén compound in Torelmo and the Tamchén camp in the jungle would have been farther.

  Of course, she based her speculations on the assumption that the men who’d grabbed her were cartel men. But they weren’t dressed like the banditos. They were older than the teens and twenty-somethings she’d seen with Jorge, and they weren’t American, so not corrupt DEA agents either.

  And there’d been a cop with them. Walker had said the cops worked for the cartels. God, she missed Walker. But missing him wasn’t going to conjure him, so she focused on how to save herself.