Forty yells, "This skinny one can fight!"

For a horrible moment Chuy thinks that Forty recognizes him, but the Zeta's attention goes to other fights. Most of them last a long time-these men don't have combat skills and their struggles are long, slow, and brutal.

Finally, it's done.

Half the men are left standing, some of them badly wounded with cuts, broken bones, and fractured skulls.

The Zetas march the ones who can walk back to the bus.

They shoot the others.

The bus drives the survivors farther into the countryside, to a camp that Chuy remembers.

The party goes on that night.

As Chuy and the others sit in a line in the dirt, he hears the women's screams coming from inside a corrugated steel building. Fifty-gallon barrels are set outside, and every few minutes a body-dead or still barely alive-is shoved into a barrel and lit on fire.

He hears the screams.

And the laughter.

Chuy will never forget the sound.

Never get the smell out of his nose.

Forty walks over to the eleven survivors and says, "Congratulations. Welcome to the Z Company."

Chuy is a Zeta again.

They don't send him to Nuevo Laredo or to Monterrey.

They send him to the Jurez Valley.

Valverde, Chihuahua It's the nightmare call.

Keller rolls over in bed to answer the phone and hear Taylor say, "One of our people has been killed."

Keller's heart drops in his chest.

It's Ernie Hidalgo all over again.

"Who?" he asks.

"You know him," Taylor tells Keller. "Richard Jimenez. A good man."

Yeah, he was, Keller thinks. "What happened?"

Jimenez and another agent were on the highway from Monterrey to Mexico City. No one knows what the two agents were even doing on that road by themselves, in a car marked with diplomatic license plates. All they know is that their car was run down, forced to pull over, and surrounded by fourteen armed Zetas demanding that they get out of the car.

The agents refused, and yelled that they were American agents.

"Me vale madre," the Zeta leader said.

I don't give a fuck.

The agents phoned the U.S. consulate in Monterrey, and then the American embassy in Mexico City. They were told a federal helicopter would be there in forty minutes.

They didn't get those minutes.

The Zetas emptied their clips through the car windows. By the time the chopper got there, Jimenez had bled to death, the other agent was in traumatic shock, badly wounded but expected to live. He'd been medevaced to a Laredo hospital.

"Get down to Monterrey," Taylor says. "Now."

"What is it?" Marisol asks.

"I have to go."

She's knows better than to ask where. "Is everything all right?"

"No."

Keller gets on the phone again while he's still dressing and gets Ordua on the special line. The FES commander picks up on the first ring. "I heard. I'm on my way. A plane is waiting for you in Jurez."

Marisol is out of bed now, balancing on her cane while she puts on her bathrobe. She looks at Keller questioningly.

"One of our guys got killed," he says.

"I'm so sorry," Marisol says.

She's too kind, Keller thinks, to note that Mexicans are killed every single day and that it's considered nothing special.

"Yeah," Keller says, "me too."

- Marisol sits at her desk and works her way through piles of paperwork.

The red tape required to manage even a small town is endless, and she wants to finish so that she can get over to the clinic for afternoon hours. She decides to eat lunch at her desk, and calls Erika to see if she wants to join her, but the girl is out in the countryside looking into the theft of someone's chickens.

Chicken theft, Marisol thinks.

She's glad for a bit of normalcy.

Maybe Erika can come for dinner.

- "What was the motive?" Keller asks Ordua as they stand at the scene of the attack. The car has been pushed off to the edge of the highway, its body riddled with bullet holes like a Hollywood movie prop. The blood inside is all too real. "Why would the Zetas kill an American?"

Then he sees the answer.

On the floor by the gas pedal, spotted with Jimenez's blood-a jack of spades.

The Zetas know that American intelligence has been working with the FES, and this was payback.

They couldn't get to me, Keller thinks, so they took the first agents they could find. But what were Jimenez and his partner doing on Highway 57, a dangerous road in the middle of the CDG-Zeta war?

Then again, the drug war is getting very real for Americans. A FAST team in Honduras had just been in a firefight with Zeta cocaine traffickers, and several American citizens had recently been killed in the Jurez area. But there hasn't been an American agent killed in Mexico since Ernie, and Keller knows that the response will be massive.

Maybe the Zetas don't care.

Maybe they think they're invincible.

Just a week ago, another mass grave site was discovered near San Fernando, with the story that the Zetas had once again hijacked a bus off Highway 101 and killed most of the passengers.

Stories of grisly torture and forced gladiator-style combat were making the rounds. Hard to know if they're true, but this much is a fact-the Zetas are establishing a reign of terror over whole parts of Mexico, and Americans have no immunity.

Later that day, while Keller, Ordua, and FES are combing the countryside for the attackers, the Zetas make their position absolutely clear. Heriberto Ochoa releases a communique in the press that directly challenges the governments of both Mexico and the United States: "Not the army, not the marines, not the security and antidrug agencies of the United States can resist us. Mexico lives and will continue to live under the regime of the Zetas."

- Chuy's estaca moved in like morning fog.

They came up Carretera 2 from the east, got out of the vehicle before they hit the army roadblock at Prxedis, and then hiked the countryside, using the riverbank as cover, until they came to the outskirts of Valverde.

Now they wait.

Chuy takes a nap.

Wakes up when an elbow digs into his side and he sees the woman come out of the building, walking with a cane.

The woman police they told him about is nowhere to be seen.

Neither is the North American DEA agent.

Forty told Chuy that he'd get the man out of the way, and he did.

- Marisol stands at the kitchen counter and chops onions for the stew she's making. Erika is coming over and she's already late. Where is that girl? Marisol wonders.

She puts some butter and olive oil in the pan, smashes a clove of garlic into it and turns on the heat to brown the chicken before she puts it in the pot. It's one of Arturo's favorite dishes and she wishes he were here to enjoy it. But he's out doing whatever it is that he does, so he'll just have to miss out.

Marisol hears something outside.

A car engine. Must be Erika.

Peeking out the window, she sees headlights pass by. For some reason it spooks her. She dismisses it as silly but nevertheless looks to see that the Beretta is on the chopping block, within reach.

The way we live now, she thinks.

And where is Erika? Where is that girl?

She calls her on her mobile but just gets voice mail.

- Keller turns onto Carretera 2.

After a futile hunt, he'd flown back to Jurez. There'll be an emergency meeting at EPIC tomorrow, Taylor's flying in from D.C., and Keller figures he can get an evening in with Marisol before going up. All DEA and ICE personnel in Mexico have already been called back or put under heavy security in the consulates, but Keller decides he's exempt from that.

He's been under a death threat since the day he came here, so what's the difference? He's been in Mexico-just on this last incarnation-longer than the U.S. was in World War II. When you ask people, "What's America's longest war?" they usually answer "Vietnam" or amend that to "Afghanistan," but it's neither.

America's longest war is the war on drugs.

Forty years and counting, Keller thinks. I was here when it was declared and I'm still here. And drugs are more plentiful, more potent, and less expensive than ever.

But it's not about the drugs anymore, anyway, is it?

He calls Marisol to tell her that he'll be there for dinner. The line is busy. He's asked her to get call waiting but she's so stubborn about "being rude."

He dials Erika.

No answer. Voice mail.

- Magda likes her new car-a powder-blue Volkswagen Jetta perfect for navigating the traffic of the greater Mexico City metropolitan area and easy to park, as it is now at the Centro Las Americas shopping mall in the suburb of Ecatepec.

As much as she enjoyed Europe, and as successful as her trip was, she's glad to be home. And it's somehow symbolic of the "new Mexico" that her gynecologist's office is in a sparkling new shopping mall with the Nordstrom, the Macy's, the Bed Bath & Beyond.

Everything is commerce now, she thinks, even babies.

She wonders how Adn will react to the news she just got.

Or should she even tell him?

A lot of women have children on their own these days, and certainly she has the economic wherewithal to raise a child by herself. The fact that she's a multimillionaire still surprises her, but certainly she doesn't need a man to provide formula, diapers, and all the other paraphernalia that comes with a baby. She can hire platoons of nannies, if she wants, and she doesn't have to worry about some company granting her maternity leave.

After her diplomatic mission to Europe, she's going to be even richer.

The Italians, the 'Ndrangheta, loved her-more important, they respected her-and she's confident that they'll give her new customers not only in Italy but in France, Spain, and Germany as well.

So which good news shall I give Adn first, she asks herself as she slips behind the wheel: that he's going to make billions of dollars in new money in Europe, or that he's finally going to be a daddy?

And how will he react?

Will he divorce his young queen to marry me?

Do you want him to?

She's become used to her freedom and independence; she's not sure she wants to saddle herself with a husband. At the same time, the son of Adn Barrera-if it does turn out to be a boy-will inherit vast wealth and power. And if it's a girl? Fuck them all-she'll inherit a nice piece of change and influence herself.

Her mother is a buchona.

Magda pulls out of the mall parking lot and has only gone a couple of blocks when she sees the flashers behind her.

"Damn it," she says.

Ever since the arrest that put her into Puente Grande, she's had a fear of the police. It's irrational, she has no reason for fear, because Mexico City is Nacho Esparza's plaza, and she's protected.