- Eddie's having a relaxing evening cocktail at the Punta Bar down by the beach in Acapulco, scoping out this tourista chick who looks like she's either Danish or Swedish or Norwegian, but definitely a Scandinavian Ten.

Blond hair.

Rack.

Yoga ass.

Eddie knows he's looking tight-new plum-colored polo, white jeans, huarache sandals. It's annoying that the shirts have to be a size too large these days to accommodate the Glock, but war is hell.

The chick is drinking a mojito-of course she is-and Eddie has the bartender set up another for her. She looks over at Eddie, lifts her glass in thanks, and Eddie smiles back.

He's going to get up in that tonight.

Then an explosion goes off.

- Chuy goes in heavy.

Okay, a little too heavy.

Okay, a lot too heavy.

He knows Ruiz's rep. He's seen the video and doesn't want to star in Ruiz's next movie, and he knows that the Punta Bar is a Tapia hangout and that Ruiz will have people there.

Chuy got orders to go to Acapulco to take out this guy, this Eddie Ruiz.

Because what the fuck, right?

Why not?

Ruiz is looking for men, Zeta sicarios. He's not going to have his eyes open for some eleven-year-old kid. Plus, this is a chance. If Bruno Resendez was worth $150K, Eddie Ruiz-public enemy nmero uno-has to have a price tag of what, half a million? A mil? More? And if Esteban could buy him a car, he could also buy him a house. Two houses-one for him and one for Mami and Papi.

It's Chuy's fantasy, rolling up on the house in his sled, walking in and saying, No more digging ditches, Papi, no more cutting hair, Mami-and handing them the keys to their new house on the other side of Laredo. A nine-bedroom house-a room for everyone and a Guatemalan maid to keep it clean.

If he takes Eddie Ruiz off the count, Forty and Ochoa will throw him a party, give him coke, make him an officer, give him his own plaza to run. He'll boss Gabe around, shit, he'll boss Esteban around. People will treat him with respect, whisper, That's the guy who did Eddie Ruiz. That's Chuy Barajos, Jesus the Kid, the macho who walked into the Punta Bar on his own and...

Chuy opens the door and tosses in a grenade.

Then he unslings the erre and opens up.

- Eddie jumps on Ilsa, throws her to the floor, and lies on top of her.

Pulls the Glock and looks up.

It's ugly. People hold their bleeding faces, shards of glass sticking out. One of his flunkies looks down, staring, at his severed left arm. Bottles behind the bar shatter and then the mirror goes. Bullets zing, people go down, women scream, men scream...

Fucking Zetas, Eddie thinks-the place is packed with civilians. This is not the way you do things. He looks for the shooters but only sees one, a spindly-looking little dude standing in the doorway spraying fire like this is some sort of video game.

Ain't no replay, asshole, Eddie thinks.

He sights the bead on the shooter's chest.

The shooter sees him, swings his rifle, and fires.

- Chuy drops the AR and runs.

Runs the way that only a scared boy can run, fast and fluid, through the streets. Doesn't dare turn his head to see if they're coming after him.

Tells himself you gotta be alive to spend the money. Gotta be alive to buy your mom and dad the house. Except the Zetas will take care of them-that was the promise, that was the oath. A soldier falls in combat, his family will be taken care of. Ochoa told him that himself, on graduation night before...

Chuy runs until he's out of breath.

Stops and looks around.

Hears the sirens, sees the ambulances speed past him, going the other way, toward the Punta Bar.

An hour later he's on a bus, heading up the coast to the port of Lzaro Crdenas, Zeta country, to collect his beautiful reward for killing Eddie Ruiz.

- Four dead, twenty-five wounded.

A real mess.

It takes Eddie three hours to get Forty on the phone, but when he does he says, "What the fuck? You're so desperate for men now you're using midgets?"

"What are you talking about?"

"That pygmy you sent," Eddie says, "was even smaller than your dick. Good job, by the way-he hit a dozen civilians and one of them's dead. Lobbing a grenade into a public place? Is this the way we play now?"

Forty hangs up.

Eddie turns to Ilsa, who's sitting on his bed.

The sex had been incredible-something about that near-death experience thing, he guesses.

"Crazy night, huh?" he says.

- Chuy goes to the address of the safe house they gave him.

Gabe and Esteban are there waiting for him, and Chuy smiles at them.

"Forty wants to see you," Esteban says.

Chuy smiles. Of course Forty wants to see him. When he gets into the room, Forty stands up and slaps him so hard across the face Chuy thinks he might black out. His head spinning, he says, "But I killed Ruiz."

"No you didn't," Forty says. "You missed."

"I saw-"

Forty slaps him again. "A grenade?! You throw a grenade into a bar full of tourists, and then start shooting?! Are you stupid?! Are you crazy?!"

"I'm sorry."

"Make it hurt," Forty snaps.

Gabe and Esteban grab Chuy and drag him up the stairs. They strip him, tie his wrists to a rope, run the rope through a pulley, haul him up until he's barely on his toes, then tie the other end of the rope off on a bolt in the floor.

Esteban hands Gabe a thick leather strap. Walking behind Chuy, Gabe says softly, "Sorry, dude."

He takes a swallow of Coke, the good Mexican Coke in a bottle with all the sugar, then starts in with a leather strap on Chuy's back, on his ass, on his legs. Takes another hit of Coke, sets the bottle down on the floor, and starts whipping him again.

Chuy tries not to scream, but his determination doesn't last past the third stroke.

It hurts bad.

He screams and twists and cries.

Begs.

Like the little bitch he knows he is.

Finally, Esteban says, "Enough."

He picks up a length of two-by-four and shows it to Chuy. "You know what I'm going to do?"

Chuy knows.

La paleta is a Zeta specialty they taught at the training camp.

You take a piece of board and hit someone in the lower back. Slowly, rhythmically, again and again. The victim wants to die a long time before he does. Sometimes they stop before they kill him, and then the man is a cripple, barely able to walk, groaning every time he takes a piss.

Chuy had seen those guys and laughed at them.

Now Esteban steps behind him.

Chuy breaks down sobbing.

"Bitch," Esteban says. "You're nothing but a little bitch after all."

"Bitch," Gabe chimes in. "Fag."

"You think about it," Esteban says. "You think about what's going to happen to you, perrita."

He unties the rope and Chuy falls to the floor.

"Forty wants to do it himself," Esteban says.

- Chuy lies fetal on the floor.

His blood sticks to the wooden planks.

Gabe sits with his back propped against the wall. "I'm sorry, dude."

Chuy don't answer.

"You don't know," Gabe says. "You don't know what they make you do. At the ranch. One after the other. One after the other. Like a machine, dude. Then we burn them. Put them in drums and burn them."

Chuy don't want to listen, don't want to feel sorry for Gabe. Fuck him, they aren't about to beat him to death. He closes his eyes and doesn't open them again until Gabe finally shuts up.

He looks over at Gabe's eyes.

His blue eyes.

Staring back at him, unseeing.

Chuy wriggles across the floor like a snake. Grabs the Coke bottle and smashes it against the wall. It wakes Gabe up but Chuy is already on top of him and slashes the jagged glass across his throat.

Gabe tries to keep his blood in, but it spurts out his carotid artery.

Tries to yell, but his throat is cut.

Naked, his wrists still bound together in front of him, Chuy jumps out the window.

Morelia, Michoacn A whore finds Chuy two weeks later, sleeping in a Dumpster in the alley off the street she works.

Flor is young and Guatemalan. She came up from the Peten when the Kaibiles came in and forced her family off their land. They rode a train into Mexico, hoping to make it to the U.S., but somewhere in Quintana Roo, police stopped the train and forced them off.

The men took her father and brothers away-she doesn't know where.

They took her, too, to the city of Morelia, and told her that she'd have good work as a waitress, that she would make money that she could send to her family. She did work in the restaurant, washing dishes and the floor, but they told her that she owed the money she made as rent for the room above the restaurant she shared with twelve other girls.

She learned the truth from these girls.

Learned that the men-the "Zetas"-would put her on the street to have sex with men who paid them.

At first she didn't believe them, but then she learned to believe.

One at a time, men taught her to believe.

In the front seats of cars, they taught her to believe. In cheap dirty rooms, they taught her to believe. Bent over trash cans in an alley, they taught her to believe.

Now Flor stands under the pools of streetlamp lights in clothes that shame her, and she calls to the men in cars in words that shame her, bidding them to do things that shame her, for money that shames her.

She doesn't send money to her family. The men told her that they would help her find them, but never did.

The money her shame makes goes for rent, goes for food, for clothes, for makeup, it goes to the doctors for medicine, it goes to pay for the train that she rode. The money goes to the "interest" on her debt that grows every day, no matter how much shame she makes at night.

The money used to go for drugs.

She started shooting heroin that washed away her shame like a moist and soothing cloud full of rain, that brought dreams of her beautiful home in the Peten, her parents, her brothers. Her heroin dreams were green and soft and beautiful like her home.