"Good good good," she said. She had rammed the fingers of one hand into her thick hair, holding them there, thinking.

Kevern grabbed Mondragon's gun from its cradle in back of the driver's seat, then reached over into the front seat with a strained groan and wrestled the driver's pistol out of the holster at his waist.

"Which one you want?"

She took the driver's big Sig Sauer because the magazine capacity was thirteen.

"Okay, let's think," Kevern said, beginning to feel woozy again, worried that he had busted something inside. He was a little chilled, although sweating like a fool, which you couldn't tell because he was soaked from the rain.

"You okay?" She had checked the Sig and was looking at him now, frowning.

"Yeah . . . you know, s.h.i.t, it was a h.e.l.l of a wreck. I'm just rattled. Listen, let's just take it easy goin' in. If they're tending to business inside, somebody's going to be looking out. . . ."

"Let's go," she said. "They're going to check in with this guy sooner or later, and then we're screwed."

"Yeah, listen. I've got a sitio sitio stranded over there, okay? A block away." He pointed with his gun. "Just so you know . . ." stranded over there, okay? A block away." He pointed with his gun. "Just so you know . . ."

Then they opened the doors and stepped out into the rain.

Chapter 51.

Mondragon sat in silence for a few moments, his goggle eyes resting on the woman. Bern looked at Baida, whose eyes were fixed on Mondragon. Bern could hear him breathing. He knew Baida had been shot somewhere in the shoulder. He didn't know how bad it was, but the piece of sheet they had wrapped around the wound was completely soaked in blood.

Without speaking, Mondragon stood and walked out of the room, in the opposite direction from the bedroom. Bern could hear him opening drawers, hear things rattling. He was in the kitchen. When he returned, he was carrying a butcher knife and a small paring knife. He sat down in the chair again and put the knives on the floor between his shoes.

"You know, Ghazi, you were more a human being when you were a Mexican," Mondragon said. "When you got mixed up in that Middle East s.h.i.t, the real Ghazi died. Hezbollah. Muslim Brothers. That fundamentalist Great Satan s.h.i.t. That wasn't you anymore. So it didn't bother me to steal the d.a.m.n money from a radical Islamist. Stupid f.u.c.kers." Mondragon shook his head. "But the Latin American game, the Colombian game, the Mexican game, you forgot what that was like. You forgot that it's a different kind of chaos here.

"You came back with this big bada.s.s reputation. Mr. Terrorism. The demonic genius. Yeah. And right away I f.u.c.ked you out of four million dollars. Then Mr. Terrorism sends two little maggots from Bogota to London. Now here we are, and I'm about to f.u.c.k you again. Only this time, it's going to cost you everything."

Mondragon swiveled his eyeb.a.l.l.s at Carleta de Leon's body. Bern guessed that he was doing that only to taunt Baida, to ratchet up the antic.i.p.ation of what he was going to do to her.

Then Mondragon smiled and looked at Baida. It was the first time Bern had seen a smile on those lips, and it was shocking. Mondragon jerked his head toward Bern.

"This guy here," he said to Baida, "Judas. This isn't Judas. Judas really was killed in Tepito. This is his twin. No s.h.i.t. Identical Identical twin. Those dummies Khalil and Ahmad, somehow they learned that Judas was U.S. intelligence-I still don't know how that happened-but they killed Judas before you could find out that they had brought a spy into your operation, and then they blamed it on a drug deal gone bad. And then a few nights later, my boys killed them. All of them. Then we put the word out on the street that it was drugs again and that Judas hadn't been killed after all. Big, elaborate, complex operation, Ghazi. All dreamed up just to get you." twin. Those dummies Khalil and Ahmad, somehow they learned that Judas was U.S. intelligence-I still don't know how that happened-but they killed Judas before you could find out that they had brought a spy into your operation, and then they blamed it on a drug deal gone bad. And then a few nights later, my boys killed them. All of them. Then we put the word out on the street that it was drugs again and that Judas hadn't been killed after all. Big, elaborate, complex operation, Ghazi. All dreamed up just to get you."

Mondragon shook his head, the lips sneering again.

"The point is, Ghazi, I have been circling you for a long time, getting closer. If you p.i.s.sed on a bush, I'd p.i.s.s on top of that. If you left your scent on a tree, I would rub mine over it. Your life has been getting shorter and shorter all the time because I had grabbed your future in both my hands, and I was tearing pieces off of it as fast as I could. When I couldn't take a lot, I'd take a little, whatever I could get."

For the first time since Mondragon had come through the door, something began to stir in Baida's eyes. Bern was fascinated by the animation that he saw awakening there. It was fear, yes, but it was something more than fear, too. Baida wanted to say something; Bern could see that. Baida even began to make noises, wordless sounds uttered from behind his gag. An outpouring of inflections and modulations issued from him, a desperate effort to communicate.

Mondragon was oblivious. He turned around in his chair and leaned close to Baida, his goggle eyes and fleshy lips looking more eerie than ever as he jutted his head forward in a menacing posture.

"You see this, Ghazi?" Mondragon asked, his words coming slowly now, his voice strained by a scarcely contained rage. "You wanted to do the worst that you could do to me, to obliterate my face, the heart and center of my self, my visible soul. Killing me would have been merciful. But you wanted me to die not once, but every day. And so I have."

Mondragon paused, and Baida ceased his furious effort to convey an urgent plea or explanation. Now Bern could hear them both breathing, as if the breath that left one of them was sucked in by the other, the hatred pa.s.sing back and forth between them.

"But your desecraton has given birth to a paradox, Ghazi. By taking away my face, you have created another one in its place. Look well at this," Mondragon said, leaning in even closer and slowly turning his head slightly this way and that so Baida could see into his flesh. "This is the face of your own death."

G.o.d loved Lex Kevern. His luck held out.

As soon as he and Susana entered the corridor that opened off the street, they huddled together to catch their breath and settle their nerves. But they didn't take long. With Kevern going first, they eased forward to the lighter end of the corridor to check the courtyard. Luckily, it took Kevern only a few seconds to locate the guy who had been sent down to ground level to keep an eye on the courtyard entrances.

Smoking a cigarette, he was leaning against the wall under the arch of the corridor that led out to the street around the corner from the plaza. He was hardly visible, just an elbow, and now and then a puff of smoke.

Kevern stepped back and leaned toward Susana, his lips close to her ear for a few moments. Then they both returned the way they had come, and at the corridor's entrance, they turned in opposite directions, walking out into the rain again.

Susana made her way around the block to the entrance on the opposite side of the courtyard from the guard smoking in the doorway. The moment she entered, she began searching for a prop, something to give her a reason to be going out into the courtyard. She found it halfway down the corridor. Two wash buckets sat in the empty hallway, a mop leaning against the wall between them.

She hid the Sig Sauer under her dress, wedging it beneath the waistband. The rest of it she would do out in the open. Picking up the two buckets, she walked to the entrance of the corridor and eased up to look across the courtyard. The guard was still there.

On the other side of the building, Kevern eased up to the corridor entrance and looked around the corner. The guard was still leaning on the wall at the far end; nothing had gotten his attention yet. Kevern jabbed Mondragon's pistol into the small of his back, pushed off his shoes, dug the pocketknife out of his pants, and opened it.

On the other side of the courtyard, Susana stepped out into the portico and walked over to one of the cascading gutters, which was spewing a stream of rainwater out onto the flagstones. Setting down the buckets, she kicked off her shoes and began gathering the hem of her skirt, pulling it up high, exposing as much of her legs as she could as she tucked it into the waist of her dress. Then she picked up one of the buckets and placed it under the gutter, her back to the guard. Pretending to adjust the bucket, she bent over, giving him a chance to have a good long look at her b.u.t.t through her rain-soaked panties.

When Kevern looked around the corner the second time, he could see that the guard's body language had changed. He was standing up straight now, his attention fully engaged by something across the way. Kevern eased around the corner, grateful for the roaring rain, which drowned out the little sounds that could spell disaster.

He had to slash the short blade across the guard's throat twice to do the job and then he held him while he lost consciousness. As Kevern eased him down on the floor, he looked across at Susana, who had just gone back under the portico and was turning around. Kevern waved her toward the plaza side of the courtyard.

Before they even started up the stairs, they discussed what they might find. When they had played out the most probable variables, Kevern handed Susana the silenced pistol he had taken from the guard. She had the most experience with sound-suppressed weapons, and accuracy was going to be critical.

They were surprised to find that Quito and the other guard weren't directly outside the apartment door. There was a small open-air courtyard with plants and a few pieces of patio furniture outside the door. It was maybe fifty feet across the courtyard to the short hallway where Quito and the guard were biding their time. The landing where the stairwell surfaced on the second floor was another fifty feet away from them.

Another brief whispered discussion. Then Kevern backtracked, going all the way around to the other side of the courtyard to an identical stairwell. He removed his shoes and started up the stairs, hurrying as best he could, headed for the second floor, where he would circle around and be within a few feet of Quito and the other guard.

But then it all began to catch up with him. The nausea hit him again like a slug to the stomach. He didn't even have time to bend over before he started vomiting, repeated waves that shot burning liquid out of his mouth and knocked his legs out from under him. And then he saw the granular black vomitus, and he knew that he wasn't going to get to the top of the stairs . . . ever. He felt as if he were sinking into warm liquid that was rapidly turning cold. He looked across the courtyard, but he couldn't see her . . . and he couldn't call her. The stairs began to fold back on him, rippling like a ribbon in the wind. He couldn't believe it. Well, s.h.i.t . . .

Susana waited, counting out the seconds. At two minutes, she crept up the stairs until her head was even with the floor; then she eased up until her eyes cleared the landing. Looking through the wrought-iron railing, which helped conceal her, she looked for Kevern's feet. Nothing. He should have been there by now, just an arm's reach away.

Carefully, she turned and looked around the landing, her eyes sweeping slowly at floor level. Kevern was nowhere in sight, and suddenly she had a bad feeling. She remembered his sweating, his nausea, his bent posture.

Jesus. Her first impulse was to go back and find him, but then she checked herself. There was more risk to the operation in doing that, a chance that she would blow the slim margin she had now. Kevern had miraculously salvaged what had become a hopeless situation, but he had taken it as far as he could. Now she had to take it as far as she could.

Turning slowly back to the men, she raised the pistol, its barrel extended by the addition of the silencer, and rested it on the floor, angling it up toward the two men. She would take the other guard. Quito was the more important one. She would need Quito.

She eased back on the step where she was sitting, held the pistol in both hands at arm's length, and steadied the barrel on the floor.

She concentrated or modulating her breathing.

She mellowed out.

She pulled the trigger.

Chapter 52.

Having someone's head explode all over you while you are talking to them provides a jolt of astonishment that even a seasoned killer can't instantly overcome. The few beats of disorientation can give the shooter the edge she needs, even if she has to spring up a couple of steps.

Susana was within twenty feet of Quito, and already dropped down in a shooter's crouch before he could even pull his pistol. He raised his hands shoulder-high. Her accuracy had already been proven.

She waggled the long muzzle of the pistol at him.

Quito could not believe what he was seeing, but he knew the drill. He was careful. This woman knew all the tricks of handing over a weapon, and he didn't want to die. Buying time, no matter what that time might hold, was every man's first thought when faced with the prospect of instant death.

He carefully put his pistol on the floor and shoved it out of his reach without Susana even having to tell him.

"What's the story inside?" she asked.

He didn't bother about being clever. He had instantly calculated what it had taken for Susana to be crouching there, and he had a great deal of respect for a woman who could overcome those kinds of odds after he had just left her in the backseat of Mondragon's Mercedes with her hands and feet tied. By his calculations, there was no one left but him and Mondragon. His other people were too far off, and not nearly as experienced at close work as the men who had already been killed.

"Baida and Bern have their hands tied," he said.

"Where are they?"

"As you go in the door, there's the body of the dead woman on the floor in front of you. Behind her, across the room, Bern is tied in an armchair on the left. Baida is tied in another chair on the right."

"And Vicente?"

"I don't know." Quito swallowed. "But he's not armed."

"What's happening in there?"

Quito swallowed again. "I don't know, but it's not good."

Susana stood and, being careful not to slip on the blood and brains on the floor, moved to the doorway that opened out into the patio outside Baida's apartment. It was still raining, but not driving like before. It had slackened a little.

She stepped on the other side of Quito to get away from the guard's body.

"We're going to walk across the patio to- Are there any windows on this side?"

"No."

"Okay, then we're going to walk across the patio to the front door. Are the lock and latch broken from your guys going in?"

Quito nodded.

"Then we can just push it open?"

Quito nodded.

"Okay. Then we're going to stop just outside the door. No talking. You in front of me. When I tap you on the shoulder with this"-she waggled the silenced pistol again-"I want you to hit that door and charge into the room. I want you to charge Mondragon and take him to the floor. If you don't do that the second we clear the door, I'll kill you."

Quito nodded. "And then what?"

"Get your hands into the air so I don't have to think about them. Let's go."

Quito stepped over the body of the guard, and Susana followed him out into the rain. They crossed the patio in the drizzle. By now, Susana had been soaked through and through several times, but she didn't even know it. She was concentrating on the precise movements she would make as she entered the room.

At the front door, Quito paused as instructed. Susana looked over his shoulders at the door latch. It was splintered apart, as he had said, and she could tell the door was slightly ajar. Good.

She tapped Quito on the shoulder.

His arms went up, and he burst though the door, slamming it back against the wall as Susana followed him in, as close behind him as she could get.

After what seemed an eternity of muted and pitiful squealing, Baida had finally pa.s.sed out, and for the last quarter hour Bern had alternately watched and turned away from Mondragon cutting away at Baida's face. About half of it was gone. And Mondragon hadn't spared the lips.

At the moment Quito burst in, Mondragon was beginning a new flay line under the left side of Baida's jaw. He spun around just in time to catch the full impact of Quito's body, which took both of them off their feet and sent them crashing into the dining table behind Baida's armchair.

Susana s.n.a.t.c.hed the butcher knife off the floor and swung around and swiped the blade through the plastic ties around Bern's feet and hands. She thrust the Sig Sauer into his hands, then swung around again as she leveled her pistol at Quito and Mondragon, who were scrambling to their feet near the overturned table.

Bern quickly ripped off his gag and blurted, "Guns on the table!"

Susana knew instantly what the calculating Quito had done, and she yelled at him: "Don't do it! No! No!"

But Quito stepped out from behind Mondragon, swinging up the pistol that Baida had given Bern.

Again, Bern heard the same smacking sound that he had heard when Quito's men shot Carleta de Leon, and Quito slammed back against the dining room wall with only half his head.

Susana then turned her pistol on Mondragon, who froze.

It was only then that Bern looked again at Baida. He was aghast to see blood spurting out of the side of Baida's throat. Quito had burst in at exactly the wrong moment, and Mondragon's knife hand had flinched . . . or had he had the presence of mind to be deliberate about it?

Bern lunged over to Baida and slapped his hand over the wound and held it there, reminding himself not to choke him to death trying to stanch the hemorrhage. By now, both pieces of the sheet that had been wrapped around Baida's shoulder and leg were thoroughly saturated and were seeping blood. And, of course, his face was gored with blood from Mondragon's hacking lacerations.

Bern couldn't believe it. He was frantic, glancing around the room, not even knowing what he was looking for, just some answer . . . some answer.

"Jude," Susana snapped, unaware of what she was calling him in the adrenaline rush of the moment, "has he talked?"

"No!"

"Nothing? You don't know anything?"

"No!" Bern released the pressure and the blood swelled through his fingers like a fresh spring. Baida seemed to be in shock, or in a coma. s.h.i.t, thought Bern. He couldn't tell which, didn't know how to tell. Ghazi hadn't had the benefit of the anesthetizing drugs that Mondragon had mentioned having had during his ordeal. His right eye was closed, but the lidless one was motionless and gazed outward to infinity. If it saw anything at all, it saw an apocalyptic vision; Bern was sure of it.

Again, irrationally, Bern eased up on his hand and was surprised to see that the flow of blood was subsiding.

"Oh!" he said. "G.o.d." Hopeful, he lifted his hand some more. The blood still came, but it was seeping, and even that was subsiding. "s.h.i.t! Good, good!"