Vicente eases his hand away.

He believes he's too handsome to die, Adn thinks, that it would be too great a loss to a world in need of beauty. Alberto waits for Vicente to back down first, and then, grinning, takes his hand away from his gun.

But it could have happened that fast, Adn thinks. Plans that I've spent years constructing could have fallen apart in a stupid exchange of insults. We run a billion-dollar business and act like nickel gangbangers. He makes a mental note to tell Diego to get his little brother under control.

Martn Tapia steps into the awkward gap. "Gentlemen-and lady-dinner is served."

They take their seats.

Adn hates making speeches.

It was his uncle's speech almost thirty years ago-at a dinner like this-that created the Federacin, and Adn knows the men at the table are expecting an equal performance.

He's afraid that he's not up to it.

"We Sinaloans created the pista secreta," Adn says. "The trade is in our blood, in our bones, in the water we drink and the air we breathe. We made it flourish. When the yanquis destroyed our homes and our fields and scattered us like dry leaves in the wind, we refused to die. We re-formed, we created La Federacin, we divided the country into plazas and ran it."

The men around the table nod in agreement.

"When Sinaloa ran the drug trade," Adn continues, "it ran efficiently and everyone made money. It was a business."

He's telling them what they already know, letting them remember his uncle and the reign of peace and plenty-brief but beautiful-he engendered.

"Now we are going to take back what is ours," Adn says. He lets it sink in for a moment, and then says, "All the plazas, all the so-called cartels-the big ones and the small ones-I intend to reunite under our leadership. They will be run by us-by Sinaloans and only Sinaloans. That is why you're here tonight. We are blood. Therefore I want to propose an alliance. An alianza de sangre. An alliance of blood."

Adn waits for a few seconds to let the precisely chosen words sink in. An alliance of equals, not an empire with himself at its head. An alliance based on the old family and cultural relationships that go back centuries. He lets them also hear what he didn't say. No mention of the Cartel del Golfo-they are not Sinaloans.

He's talking to all the men in the room, but his real target is Vicente.

The Tapias are already on board, of course, so is Nacho, but if Adn is going to achieve what he wants, he needs Vicente, he needs the Jurez plaza through which to move his product.

"How exactly would it work?" Vicente asks. "This 'alliance of blood'?"

Adn answers, "We will protect each other's interests, defend each other in the case of an attack from outsiders, agree to allow each other to move product through our plazas, with a piso, of course."

"But Adn doesn't have a plaza," Vicente says to the others, pointedly ignoring Adn. "Barrera is offering something he doesn't have. I hear he doesn't even have Tijuana anymore."

You "hear"? Adn wonders. Or you're behind Solorzano? But he doesn't say it. Instead, he turns toward Vicente and says, "What we have is product and protection. We have police and politicians. We are willing to share. But only with blood."

Vicente won't let it go. "Are you saying you'll only move your product through Jurez? Not Laredo, not the Gulf?"

Diego has had enough. "We'll move our product where we want."

"Not through Jurez," Vicente answers. "Not if I don't allow it. Not when Adn is already poaching on my territory, stealing my people."

This is starting to go badly, Adn thinks. Not what he wanted at all.

Then Magda says, "We are all friends here, we are all family. Families have little quarrels-they mean nothing. Let's be honest-at the end of the day, we all need family. Family is all we can trust."

She touches her hand on Vicente's.

He hears what she's saying. His territory is flanked on the east by the Gulf cartel, on the west by Tijuana, where Solorzano may have ambitions of his own. But it's the Gulf that worries him-Contreras's power is growing every day, and it's only a matter of time before he starts glancing at the rich plaza next door.

Vicente needs protection, and if Adn is offering that...well, what are a few defectors, especially if Adn is guaranteeing that they will all pay the piso. If they pay Adn as well, it's money out of their pockets, not his.

An alliance of blood is an alliance against Contreras. Not a declaration of war-that would be foolish-but a statement of strength that might prevent an invasion. It might discourage Tijuana. And Adn's woman, by framing it as a matter of family, has given him the chance to step down from this argument without losing face.

Adn can virtually watch the man think. Finally-finally-Vicente speaks up. "Blood is blood. If Adn will agree that anyone moving product through our plaza will pay the piso-"

"I will," Adn says.

"-and offer us the benefit of his connections, then we will join in this alianza de sangre." Vicente stands, raises his wineglass, and proposes a toast. "To the alianza de sangre."

Adn clinks his glass.

"To the alianza de sangre."

- Adn stretches out on the bed next to Magda.

The meeting almost turned into a disaster, which Magda averted but at the end he got what he wanted-an alliance that will counterbalance Contreras and make him think twice about another assassination attempt.

The susurro is that Contreras is making a move on Nuevo Laredo, right on Fuentes's doorstep. Since the old Chinese opium days at the turn of the century, Nuevo Laredo has been controlled by two families, the Garcas and the Sotos, and the Barreras have happily done business with the Garcas for years, at a discounted piso. The CDG owning Laredo would be a catastrophe, costing us billions, Adn thinks. Worse, it would give Contreras yet more power.

It can't be allowed to happen.

Magda runs her index finger along his temple. "That mind of yours-doesn't it ever get tired?"

"It can't."

She leans over and unzips his fly.

"Even when I do this?" Then she stops for a second and asks, "Are you still thinking?"

"No."

"Liar."

"I need you to go to Colombia now," Adn says.

"Right now?"

"Not right now."

"Oh."

Later he asks, "Where did you learn that?"

Magda gets out of bed. "I'll pack tonight, leave in the morning. You'll miss me."

"I will."

"You'll find another woman," Magda says, "some silly virgin. But no one who could do that to you."

He will miss her.

But he'll be busy.

It's almost time to move against Contreras in the Gulf. I have justification, Adn thinks-Contreras started the war when he tried to kill me in Puente Grande.

First the Gulf.

Then Tijuana.

Then Jurez.

The new alianza de sangre will become the old Federacin.

And I'll become El Patrn.

- Keller lies on the bed in his apartment.

His loneliness is a faint ache, like the reminder of an old wound, a scar you no longer notice because it's just a part of you now.

Like your Barrera obsession? he asks himself. Is there a legitimate purpose, a reason, a cause, or is it just part of you now, a disease of the blood, an obstruction of the heart?

It felt good, didn't it, pulling the trigger on the man you thought was Barrera. Seeing the fear in his eyes. At the end of the day you have to account for the fact that it felt good.

Aguilar's right-the ambush at the house was probably meant for me. Kind of funny, when you think about it, that Barrera and I each thought we'd killed each other.

And were both wrong.

The Gulf War

They bought up half of southern Texas, That's why they act the way they do.

-Charlie Robison "New Year's Day"

1.

The Devil Is Dead

Some say the devil is dead, The devil is dead, the devil is dead Some say the devil is dead And buried in Killarney.

I say he rose again, He rose again, he rose again...

-Irish folk song Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas 2006.

Keller watches the girl writhe on the pole in a pathetic parody of lust.

He's sitting by himself at a cantina in La Zona-the "Zone of Tolerance," more commonly known as Boy's Town-a walled-in section of bars, strip clubs, and brothels frequented mostly by teenagers and college kids coming over the bridges from Laredo, Texas, just across the Rio Grande.

Los dos Laredos, Keller thinks.

The Two Laredos.

One in Mexico, the other just across the river in Texas.

Collectively the two cities form the busiest inland port in the hemisphere. Something like 70 percent of all Mexican exports to the United States pass through Nuevo Laredo into its sister city across the border.

That includes dope.

Lots of dope.

Keller sits and watches the girl tiredly do a routine that is almost prophylactic in itself. She's young and thin, her eyes vacant even as they try to stare down men into slipping money under her ill-fitting yellow G-string, her motions more robotic than erotic.

The girl is on autopilot and Keller bets that she's high.

The joint is almost impossibly depressing. Drunk American college kids, sad middle-aged men, sadder bargirls and whores, and, of course, narcos. Not top guys, but low- and midlevel traffickers and wannabes, most of them dressed in full norteo narco-cowboy gear.

Keller takes another sip of beer. This bar, like most of them in La Zona, serves only beer and tequila, and he chose a bottle of Indio.

These are bad and brooding days for Art Keller.

Adn Barrera's trail is colder than a bill collector's heart.

After the Atizapn shootout, Barrera went off the radar. No cell phone or Internet traffic, no discernible movement, no "Adn sightings" that used to light up the phone boards like Times Square at sunset. Keller can't get a solid lead, just rumors, some of which say that Barrera has retired from the pista secreta and is content to live out his life in peace and seclusion.

Keller doesn't buy it.