No problem.

A warrior of the Lord, he strangles the man with his hands.

Now Chuy has a different job.

Now he doesn't deliver groceries.

His five-man cell patrols three city blocks. They watch who comes and goes, report anyone suspicious to their superiors, keep things tight, clean, and orderly. They deliver protection money to the local Zeta boss, who hangs out with his underlings in the office of a local auto body shop.

Instead of boxes, Chuy carries a Glock. He gets a salary. It's not much, but enough to rent a small room where he moves in Flor. They buy a bed at a junkyard, find a little table at the dump, get a lamp from a secondhand store. And Chuy has a different status-as a warrior, he has respect that earns him a right to make a request.

"I want to take Flor off the streets," he tells Hugo. "Let her work as a waitress."

"She isn't your wife," Hugo answers.

"She's going to be the mother of my child," Chuy answers. Flor told him, shyly and not without fear, that she had missed two periods.

Part of him was scared, part of him was thrilled. He took her in his arms and held her gently. "It will be all right. I'll take care of you."

"You don't have to."

"I will," Chuy promised. "I'll take good care of you both."

Now Hugo argues, "That child could be anyone's, little brother."

"Flor is my woman, so it's my child," Chuy answers.

That simple.

"I'll have to ask," Hugo says.

"The Zeta boss?"

"Yes."

"Don't ask," Chuy says. "Tell him that the mother of a warrior's child can't be a whore."

- The Zeta boss's answer comes three nights later.

With four other Zetas, he walks into the restaurant after closing, when Flor is wiping down the tables and setting up for the morning.

"Everyone out," he orders, then looks at Flor. "You stay."

The others quickly walk out, their eyes on the floor. One of them, a former whore herself, runs to find Pedro.

"Are you Flor?" the boss asks.

Terrified, Flor nods.

"Take off that dress."

"I don't do that anymore."

"You're a whore," he says, "and you'll do what I tell you. You still owe us money."

"I'll pay you."

"Yes, you will. Right now."

He nods and the four men grab her, strip the dress from her, and pin her onto one of the tables.

- "Pedro! Pedro!"

Chuy sees the girl running toward him.

"What is it?"

"It's Flor! Come quick!"

He runs.

- Chuy lifts Flor's body off the table and cradles her corpse on his lap. She's still warm, her skin is still warm.

People say that you could hear Chuy's howl through the whole colonia.

They say they can never forget the sound.

- Chuy stands outside the yonke, the auto shop where the Zeta peces gordos-the big bosses-hang out.

He hears them laughing inside.

The clink of bottles and glasses.

Well trained, Chuy checks the clip on his erre. Then he kicks the door in and sprays the five of them before they can as much as move.

Crouching beside the wounded Zeta chaca, Chuy takes the man's hair in one hand, like Ochoa did with the man that night. He takes out his knife, like the one the Kaibile handed him that night, pulls the boss's head back so that his neck is taut, and presses the serrated blade against his throat.

He's lived this over and over again.

More than the times that the boys hurt him, raped him, made him their girl. More than those things, his nightmares are of that night, when they handed him the knife and told him what to do- -so now he knows and as if in a dream he saws the blade back and forth as the Zeta boss who raped and murdered Flor screams just as the man screamed that night and the blood spurts out in hot jets as Chuy saws through the arteries, and then the boss is quiet, just gurgling as Chuy saws through cartilage and bone like he did that night, and the bone and cartilage and skin pop as he severs the head.

He sets it down and starts in on the other four. Two are already dead. One tries to crawl away, but Chuy grabs his hair and pulls him back. The last man cries and slobbers and begs but Chuy tells him, "Shut up, bitch."

Chuy is sitting on the floor with the five decapitated bodies when Hugo bursts in. "Dios mo, Pedro, what did you do?!"

"My name is Jess," Chuy says numbly. Over Hugo's shoulder he sees Nazario, with several men behind him. "Kill me."

Hugo pulls his gun, ready to oblige. The fallout from one of theirs killing five of the Zeta overlords will be horrific. If they can at least turn over a corpse...He points the gun at Chuy's head.

"Stop!" Nazario yells, knocking Hugo's hand down.

"The calf and the yearling will be safe with the lion," Nazario quotes from scripture, "and a little child shall lead them all."

He lifts Chuy up.

"It's time," Nazario says.

- Chuy leads five La Familia warriors into the Sol y Sombre disco where a lot of the Zetas party.

The music throbs, the lights strobe.

Chuy fires a burst from his AR into the ceiling.

As the revelers dive to the floor, two of Chuy's men open a black plastic bag and dump out its contents.

Five human heads roll across the black-and-white-tiled floor.

Chuy reads from a cardboard sheet, "The Family doesn't kill for money! It doesn't kill women, it doesn't kill innocent people! Only those who deserve to die, die! This was divine justice!"

He tosses the sheet down and walks out.

The revolution-the rebellion of La Familia Michoacana to throw the Zetas out of their homeland-starts that night. Nazario writes press releases and takes out advertisements in the major newspapers to the effect that La Familia is not a public menace but just the opposite, a patriotic organization doing what the government cannot or will not do-"cleanse" Michoacn of kidnappers, extortionists, rapists, meth dealers, and foreign oppressors such as the Zetas.

Chuy doesn't care about any of that.

All he knows now is killing, and it's all he wants to know.

- Eddie sees the story about the Sol y Sombre nightclub on the news.

"Nice," he says to the flunkie playing Madden with him. "Beheadings? Like...beheadings? I thought that was Muslim shit. Al Qaeda."

A few days later Eddie hears that the beheadings might have been carried out by the same guy who attacked his nightclub.

"Jesus the Kid."

The boy changed jerseys, I guess, Eddie thinks.

A midseason trade.

And some of the narcos are saying that the kid is really a kid, eleven, twelve years old.

Junior varsity.

Suddenly, Eddie feels old.

Then he gets the word- -okay, the order- -to go make nice.

-The word comes down from AB, El Seor, through Diego.

Eddie gets it-the Zetas have fought them to a bloody stalemate in Tamaulipas-tit-for-tat trench warfare that promises nothing but more of the same. So if these La Familia whackadoodles can draw some troops away from Tamaulipas, okay, good.

It doesn't stop Eddie from arguing. "They're religious nuts. You know this Nazario's aporto? 'El Ms Loco'-the Craziest."

"As long as he's killing Zetas," Diego says.

"He's doing that," Eddie says. "He's also our biggest competitor in the North American meth market."

"Plenty of helio-heads to go around," Diego answers.

Well, that's a big chunk of truth, Eddie thinks. The Mexicans have finally found a drug that white trash likes and can afford. And one thing you ain't never gonna run out of is white trash.

That stuff makes itself.

They get made in the backseats of junk cars, and then they live in them.

So a week later Eddie Ruiz looks across a table at Chuy up in Morelia, Michoacn.

And he really is a kid.

An actual kid.

"I should be really pissed at you," Eddie says. "That stunt in Acapulco-very bad shit."

Feels like he should put him in "time out."

Chuy doesn't respond. Eddie looks into his eyes and sees nothing there-it's like staring at a snake. This kid, he has to remember, this freaking junior varsity water boy, cut the heads off five men and rolled them across a disco floor like he was duckpin bowling.

Guilty feet ain't got no rhythm, Eddie thinks.

But Diego said to work with these born-again Bible-thumpers, so- "Hey, 'Texas forever,' right?" Eddie says. "We pochos have to stick together. Now let's you and me go bag ourselves some Zeta assholes."

"I kill for the Lord."

"Okay, then," Eddie says.

In the next ninety days, over four hundred narcos will be killed in Uruapan, Apatzingn, Morelia, and Lzaro Crdenas.

The new tag team of Crazy Eddie and Jesus the Kid account for more than a few of them.

5.