"I have no idea what that means."

"I know."

Aguilar might not be nervous, Keller thinks, but I am. Barrera is in that village. I know it for a reason that Aguilar would contemptuously dismiss-I can just feel it. I've been hunting Adn Barrera in one form or another for over thirty years-we're connected by the psychic hip-and I can feel him there.

In twenty minutes, thirty minutes, this could be over. And then what? Keller wonders. What do you do with your life then?

You're getting ahead of yourself.

First get Barrera.

Keller nervously fingers the trigger.

Then there's crackle of the radio signal open and he hears Vera order, "Stand by."

"Are you ready?" Aguilar asks.

Fuckin' A, Keller thinks.

- Vera gives the signal and the car lurches ahead and pitches down the steep grade. The AFI driver makes no concession to the sharp curves and sudden edges that could send the vehicle somersaulting hundreds of feet down.

But they make it into the village and race down the main and only street. A few early risers stare at them in shock and Keller hears one or two raise the alarm "Juras! Juras!"

Police! Police!

But it's too late, Keller thinks as the car speeds past the new well, the new school, the new clinic, and races toward the house at the end of the road. If you're here, Adn-and you are here-we've got you.

The car comes to a stop in front of the house while other vehicles circle it like Indians in a bad western and then form a circle. The AFI troopers in their dark blue uniforms and baseball caps spill from the cars with American-made AR-15s and .45 pistols, bulletproof vests and heavy back combat boots.

With Vera in the lead, they storm the house.

Keller jumps out of the car and trots toward the back door. Aguilar keeps up with him, looking awkward with a .38 in his hand. Keller goes through the door, his Sig Sauer out in front of him.

It's the kitchen, and a terrified cook raises his hands over his head.

"Where is Adn Barrera?!" Keller shouts. "Where is the seor?!"

"No se."

"But he was here, wasn't he?" Keller presses. "When did he leave?"

"No se."

"Was a woman with him?" Aguilar asks.

"No se."

"What was her name, 'no se'?" Vera walks in, pulls his pistol, and jams it against the cook's cheek. "Do you know now?"

"He's terrified," Aguilar says. "Leave him alone."

"I'll put you and your whole family in jail," Vera growls at the cook as he pushes him away.

"There is no criminal statute that I'm aware of that prohibits making black bean soup," Aguilar says, looking at the stove. "What do you think-that Barrera told his cook where he was going?"

Keller goes through the house.

The bedrooms, the bathrooms, the sitting room, anywhere. He looks under beds, in closets. In one bedroom he thinks he smells the scent of expensive perfume. The AFI troopers rip up bathtubs and floor tiles, looking for tunnels.

There isn't one.

They sweep the house for cell phones and computers and find nothing. Walking back to the vehicles, Aguilar mutters to Keller, "I told you so."

As they drive back through the village, Keller sees that the troopers are going through each house, tossing the people out into the road, smashing windows and furniture.

He gets out of the car.

"I'll burn this shithole to the ground!" Vera yells, his face flushed with fury.

The same mistakes, Keller thinks. Vietnam in the '60s, Sinaloa in the '70s, we make the same dumbass mistakes. No wonder these people shelter the narcos-Barrera builds schools and we wreck houses.

The troopers are lining people up against the stone wall of the little cemetery, dishing out slaps and kicks as they interrogate the villagers and demand to know where El Seor is.

Keller walks up to Vera. "Don't do this."

"Mind your own business."

"This is my business."

"They know where he is!"

"They know where he was," Keller says softly. "This will do more harm than good."

"They need to be taught a lesson."

"Wrong lesson, Gerardo." Keller walks over to the line of people, who look terrified and resentful, and asks, "Where is the family of Juan Cabray!?"

He sees a woman put her arms around her children and turn her face away. It has to be Cabray's wife and kids. An elderly woman standing next to them looks down. He walks up to her, takes her by the elbow, and walks her away from the group. "Show me his grave, seora."

The woman walks him to a new headstone of handsome granite, much better than a campesino could afford.

Juan Cabray's name is carved into the stone.

"It's beautiful," Keller says. "It honors your son."

The old woman says nothing.

"If El Seor was here," Keller says, "shake your head."

She stares at him for a moment and then shakes her head violently, as if refusing to answer.

"Last night?" Keller asks.

She shakes her head again.

"Do you know where he went?"

"No se."

"I'm going to handle you a little roughly," Keller says. "I apologize but I know you understand."

He takes her elbow, shoves her away from the grave and back to her family. The villagers lined up against the wall avoid his look. Keller walks back to Vera and Aguilar, who is arguing with his colleague to "stop this fruitless and illegal barbarity."

"He was here last night," Keller says. "You know that if you burn this village, every campesino in the Triangle will know about it within twenty-four hours and we'll never get their cooperation."

Vera stares at him for a long moment then snaps an order for his troopers to stand down.

Barrera slipped out of this one, Keller thinks. But at least they have a hot trail, and now Vera turns his energies to directing the hunt and ordering resources. Army patrols go out, local and state police, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft go up, covering the roads.

But Keller knows that they aren't going to find him. Not in the mountains of Durango, with its heavy brush, impassable roads, and hundreds of little villages that owe more loyalty to the local narcos than to a government far removed in Mexico City.

And Barrera owns the local and state police. They aren't hunting him, they're guarding him.

As they drive away from the village, Aguilar says, "Don't say it."

"What?"

"What you're thinking-that Barrera was tipped off."

"I guess I don't have to."

"For all you know," Aguilar snaps, "it could have been someone from DEA."

"Could have been."

But it wasn't, Keller thinks.

- Adn got out just before they came.

He was at the house in Los Elijos when Diego sent word that the AFI was on the way. Now he's tucked away in a new safe house across the state line in Sinaloa.

"Someone tipped them off," Adn asks Diego. "Was it Nacho?"

Maybe he decided to turn the tables, cut a deal of his own.

"I don't think so," Diego says. "I can't imagine it."

"Then who was it?" Adn asks.

"I'm not sure it was anyone," Diego says. "Listen, the government has brought someone in."

"Who?"

Adn can't believe the answer.

"Keller," he repeats.

"Yes," Diego says.

"In Mexico."

Diego shrugs an assent.

"In what capacity?!" Adn asks, incredulous.

"There's something called the 'Barrera Coordinating Committee,'" Diego says, "and Keller is the North American adviser."

It makes sense, Adn thinks. If you're going to trap a jaguar, get the man who's trapped a jaguar before. Still, the nerve of that man is outrageous, to come down to Mexico and stick his head in, as it were, the jaguar's mouth.

And just like him.

Keller had once risked his own life saving Adn's. It was back before Adn was even in the trade, but was caught up in an army sweep of the Sinaloa poppy fields. They beat the shit out of him, poured gasoline up his nose until he thought he was going to drown, then threatened to throw him out of a helicopter.

Keller stopped them.

That was a long time ago.

A lot of blood under the bridge since then.

"Kill him," Adn says.

Diego nods.

"You can't," Magda says.

Those aren't words Adn is used to hearing, and he turns around and asks, "Why not?"

"Isn't there enough pressure on you already?"

Truly, the pressure has been as heavy as it was unexpected. After taking off from the prison, the helicopter flew just a few miles and dropped them off in a small village. They rested for a few hours, then left in a convoy. They'd been gone for just an hour when the army and police pulled in and burned every house in the village as a punishment and an example.

It didn't do any good.

The government set up a "Barrera Hotline" that got a call every thirty seconds, none of them accurate, none of them from people who had actually seen him. Half the calls were "flak," made by Diego's people to create hundreds of false leads that the police had to waste time chasing down.

Diego even hired three Barrera lookalikes to wander the country and provoke more false leads.

For weeks Adn moved only by night, changing safe houses as often as he changed clothes. He dressed as a priest in Jalisco and as an AFI trooper in Nayarit. All the time, the pressure was brutal. Helicopters flew over their heads, they had to skirt army checkpoints, taking back roads that were little more than ruts.