Hate conquers all.

It even conquers hate.

The Cleansing

People don't usually go off decapitating each other or committing mass murder just because they hate people in another group. These things happen because soul-dead political leaders are in a struggle for power and use ethnic violence as a tool in that struggle.

-David Brooks "In the Land of Mass Graves"

The New York Times June 19, 2014

1.

Jihad

The U.S. government has in recent years fought what it termed wars against AIDS, drug abuse, poverty, illiteracy and terrorism. Each of these wars has budgets, legislation, offices, officials, letterhead-everything necessary in a bureaucracy to tell you something is real.

-Bruce Jackson Keynote address "Media and War" symposium, University of Buffalo November 1718, 2003 Nuevo Laredo April 2012 The bodies of fourteen Zetas, skinned, lie in the backs of garbage trucks.

The symbolism, Keller thinks, is deft.

Keller looks at the flayed corpses-Adn Barrera's announcement that he's back in Nuevo Laredo-and thinks that he should be feeling more than he is. Years ago he'd looked at nineteen bodies and his heart had broken, but now he feels nothing. Years ago the machine-gunning of nineteen men, women, and children was the worst atrocity he ever thought he'd see. Now he knows better.

A narcomensaje has been left with the bodies: WE HAVE BEGUN TO CLEAR NUEVO LAREDO OF ZETAS BECAUSE WE WANT A FREE CITY AND SO YOU CAN LIVE IN PEACE. WE ARE NARCOTICS TRAFFICKERS AND WE DON'T MESS WITH HONEST WORKING OR BUSINESS PEOPLE. I'M GOING TO TEACH THESE SCUM HOW TO WORK SINALOA STYLE-WITHOUT KIDNAPPING, WITHOUT EXTORTION. AS FOR YOU, OCHOA AND FORTY-YOU DON'T SCARE ME. DON'T FORGET THAT I'M YOUR TRUE FATHER-SINCERELY, ADN BARRERA.

Keller finds the paternal language interesting.

Adn is a father again-a year ago, Eva Barrera flew up to Los Angeles and gave birth to twin sons. There was nothing that DEA or the Justice Department could do about Eva's presence in the United States. An American citizen not wanted for any crimes, she was free to come and go as she pleased. So Eva had her children in the best facility that money could buy, rested for a few days, and then flew back to Mexico, where she "disappeared" into the hills of Sinaloa or Durango, or even into Guatemala or Argentina, depending on which rumor you preferred.

The talk is that the birth of the twins reinvigorated Adn, is perhaps even the cause of his all-out invasion of Tamaulipas. Because he needs a plaza for each son-Nuevo Laredo for one, Jurez for the other, and Tijuana to keep Nacho Esparza happy. In any case, the man who could not produce an heir now has two, named for his late uncle and brother.

Speaking of garbage, Keller thinks.

This isn't Barrera's first venture into "bodies as public relations."

A few months earlier, masked gunmen blocked traffic on a major intersection in the Boca del Ro section of Veracruz and dumped thirty-five naked and dismembered corpses, twelve of them women, with the narcomensaje NO MORE EXTORTION, NO MORE KILLINGS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE! ZETAS IN VERACRUZ AND THE POLITICIANS HELPING THEM-THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU. PEOPLE OF VERACRUZ, DO NOT ALLOW YOURSELVES TO BE EXTORTED; DO NOT PAY FOR PROTECTION. THIS IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO ALL THE ZETA-FUCKS THAT CONTINUE TO OPERATE IN VERACUZ. THIS PLAZA HAS A NEW PROPRIETOR. SINCERELY, ADN BARRERA.

While most of the major papers and television stations shied away from coverage, Esta Vida did not, posting graphic photos of the naked bodies dumped into the street like so much, well, garbage. The Zetas were almost as infuriated by the coverage as they were by the event, and threatened horrific retaliation when they found "Wild Child."

The next day, it was discovered that the thirty-five dead probably had no connection whatsoever with the Zetas. A masked vigilante group held a press conference, apologized for the mistake, but declared that it was still at war against the Zetas.

Over the next three weeks, the vigilante group killed seventy-five more Zetas in Veracruz and Acapulco, both cities vacated by the demise of the Tapia organization and then the "disappearance" of Crazy Eddie Ruiz. The susurro has it that the Sinaloans are moving into Veracruz as a port of entry for the precursor chemicals they need for their expansion into methamphetamine; rumor further has it that Adn Barrera himself has been spotted in the city.

Bodies from both sides piled up, almost literally, in Durango. Eleven here, eight there, then sixty-eight in a mass grave-eventually the number rose to over three hundred.

Zetas invading Nayarit stumbled into an ambush in which Barrera sicarios gunned down twenty-seven of them on the highway. Almost, Keller thinks, as if the Sinaloans had been forewarned, as if they'd been handed American satellite images of the Zeta trucks moving in.

The U.S. intelligence apparatus in Mexico has expanded dramatically since the Jimenez murder. There are now over sixty DEA agents, forty ICE, twenty U.S. marshals, and dozens of FBI, Immigration and Customs, Secret Service, and TSA personnel, as well as seventy people from the State Department Narcotics Affairs Section in-country as a response to the murder of Richard Jimenez.

A lot of their "ISR"-intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance-resources are routed via Keller to the FES.

Ordua's unit has been killing Zetas, too-eighteen during a three-day battle in Valle Hermoso, Tamaulipas, with convoys of up to fifty vehicles full of armed Zetas bringing in reinforcements.

An FES patrol hit a Zeta training base on Falcon Lake, bordering Texas, and killed twelve. Another pitched battle was fought in Zacatecas, where more than 250 Zetas fought the FES in a five-hour running gunfight. The FES killed fifteen Zetas and arrested seventeen more. In another action, FES troopers dropped down fast-lines from helicopters and raided another Zeta camp, capturing nineteen more.

And the FES, with the aid of U.S. intelligence, has been pounding the Zeta leadership, arresting gunmen, plaza bosses, and financial officers. Over eighty Zetas alone have been arrested in connection with the first San Fernando bus massacre. Six Zetas, including a character with the aporto "Tweety-Bird," have been arrested in connection with the murder of Agent Jimenez, although if Keller had his way, none of the six would have made it into a cell.

A weeklong FES campaign against the Zetas in Veracruz resulted in twenty-one more arrests and the seizure of a payroll list for eighteen Veracruz police officers on the take-depending on rank, they received between $145 and $700 a month.

Two former navy admirals took over the police departments in Veracruz and Boca del Ro.

Based on an "anonymous tip"-a euphemism for American intelligence-the FES captured the Zeta plaza boss for Veracruz, who confirmed that Ochoa had personally ordered Erika Valles's killing.

"Why didn't they kill Cisneros?" Keller asked.

"Z-1 said he wanted to do her last," the plaza boss answered. "Let the big-mouth chocha watch her friend die first. But they fucked it up."

"Where is Z-1 now?"

The man didn't know. It turned out under enhanced interrogation techniques that he really didn't know. Didn't know where Forty was, either.

Maybe Monterrey.

Once the jewel of the PAN economic revival, the symbol of modern corporate Mexico with shiny skyscrapers, boulevards of exclusive stores, and trendy restaurants patronized by regios-the young up-and-coming-Monterrey has become a nightmare.

With police basically paralyzed, crime has gotten out of control.

Downtown stores and restaurants are regularly robbed. There's open fighting in the streets-a man was chased down, shot, and then hanged from a bridge in front of a horrified crowd.

At a trendy restaurant that made the mistake of serving Sinaloan cuisine, about a hundred regios were enjoying beers and aguachile about midnight when seven Zeta gunmen came in, made everyone lie on the floor, collected wallets and cell phones, then separated the men from the women and systematically took the women into the restrooms and raped them.

The women were afraid to press charges because their assailants kept their identification cards for purposes of retaliation.

It got worse.

A Zeta cell in the city tried to extort a casino known for laundering narco money through its accounts. The casino owners refused to pay. Keller has seen the videotapes of two pickup trucks pulling up to a Pemex station and filling plastic barrels full of gasoline. Other security cameras caught the trucks pulling up to the Casino Royale on a Saturday afternoon at about two o'clock in the afternoon. Seven gunmen get out of the trucks. They walk into the casino lobby and start to shoot. They come out, and the other Zetas roll the barrels into the casino and set them on fire.

The emergency exits were padlocked and chained.

Fifty-three people died of flame, smoke, and toxins.

Five of the attackers arrested later in the week said that they didn't mean to kill anyone, that they were just trying to scare the owners into paying the 130,000 pesos a week.

More critical than Monterrey, the Zetas are taking ground-literally taking ground-in Guatemala, especially in the north, in the Peten district bordering Mexico. Last year, the Zetas slaughtered twenty-seven campesinos in the province, terrifying countless others off their smallholdings, and now Ochoa is consolidating power there. If he controls Guatemala, he takes Barrera's main cocaine route into Mexico.

And the weakened CDG is (barely) hanging on against the Zetas in Matamoros, Reynosa is once again under contention between the Zetas and the CDG, and the border towns are a howling wilderness.

Despite the FES and Sinaloa pressure, the Zetas control-rule, really-large swaths of Mexico. They dominate numerous state and municipal police forces, have effectively silenced the mainstream media, and have established a virtual reign of terror.

And now Barrera has taken the war right into the Zeta stronghold of Nuevo Laredo.

Again.

This poor city, Keller thinks as he walks away from the garbage truck display-that's all you can call it, truly, a "display."

First Sinaloa fights the Gulf and the Zetas for it.

Then the Gulf and the Zetas fight each other.

Now Sinaloa fights the Zetas.

Well, Sinaloa and us.

Me.

Me and my new best friend Adn Barrera.

Barrera has shifted his focus to Nuevo Laredo, so Keller has, too, taking up residence in a nondescript "long-stay" hotel across the bridge in Laredo. He moves between Laredo and Mexico City, with only occasional stops in Valverde to see Marisol.

There's "light" as in the opposite of "dark," Keller thinks as he gets back in his car for the trip back across the bridge, and "light" as in the opposite of "heavy," and his relationship with Marisol now has aspects of dark weight.

The weight of guilt, for one-Marisol's guilt for having let Erika take the dangerous job. Keller's guilty for not having been there to protect her, for failing to have rescued her.

Add to that a sense of immutable loss.

"Let's be honest," Marisol said one night during one of her starkly darker moods. "We had this little faux family going here, didn't we? Faux marriage, faux child? Then reality hit, didn't it?"

"Let's get married for real, then," Keller suggested.

She stared at him incredulously. "Do you seriously think that's going to help?"

"It could."

"How?'

He didn't have an answer for that.

The rest of their mutual ennui, he supposes, is simply cumulative. He had read that the Puritans used to execute heretics by placing stones on their chests until their rib cages were crushed or they suffocated. And that's a little what he feels like-and he supposes that Marisol does as well-the sheer cumulative weight of death after death, sorrow after sorrow, crushing them, taking the air out of their lives.

But they don't split up. They're both too stubborn and honorable, he thinks, to go back on the unspoken vow, the silent understanding that they would see this through together, wherever it led.

So they stay together.

Well, sort of.

He spends more and more time in the Mexico City bunker, in Laredo, on raids with FES, or on whatever front of the Mexican drug war is especially hot at the moment. Marisol is kind enough to feign sadness when he leaves, but they're both (guiltily) relieved for the breaks from the weight that they enforce on each other.

The painful truth is that they can't look at each other without seeing Erika.

Despite his urgings, his imprecations, his angry arguments, Marisol has stayed in Valverde, and stayed in office. She forced herself to make a brilliant, defiant speech at Erika's funeral, made herself go through a press conference in which she again openly defied both the government and the cartels while managing to imply that there was small, if any, difference between the two. She once again made herself a target, almost as if she could not tolerate living after so many have died.

"Survivor guilt," Keller said to her one night.

"Just as you did not appreciate my amateur psychoanalysis," Marisol answered, "I don't appreciate yours."

"I don't care if you appreciate it-"

"Thank you."

"-I care only that you don't carry out this death wish."

"I don't have a death wish," Marisol said.

"Prove it. Move to the States with me."

"I'm a Mexican."

"Then come to Mexico City."

"No."

He'd already sold his soul to the devil, so a bonus payment that bought security for Marisol didn't matter. Keller put out word to Adn, who sent word back to the army in the valley that La Medica Hermosa was now a friend, the lady of an important ally, to be protected at all costs.

"Do you think I'm stupid?" Marisol asked a few days later. "Did you think I wouldn't notice soldiers patrolling outside the house? The office? The clinic? They've never been there before. Nor have they ever followed my car except to harass me."

"Are they harassing you now?" asked Keller, concerned that his demand hadn't been met.

"In fact they're elaborately polite," Marisol said. "What did you do?"