The Border: The final gripping thriller in the bestselling Cartel trilogy. Don Winslow

Ochoa into a highway flare. Then standing on some old Mayan stone courtyard watching a kid kick a very bizarre soccer ball around.

      “Maybe he just took off,” Orduña says.

      “Maybe.”

      “We should get in touch with your people. They’ve been calling about every fifteen minutes.” Orduña punches some numbers into a burn phone and then says, “Taylor? Guess who I have here.”

      Keller takes the phone and hears Tim Taylor, the DEA chief of the Southwest District, say, “Jesus Christ, we thought you were dead.”

      “Sorry to disappoint you.”

      They’re waiting for him at the Adobe Inn in Clint, Texas, on a remote highway a few miles east of El Paso.

      The room is your standard motel “efficiency,” a large living room with a kitchen area—microwave, coffee maker, small refrigerator—a sofa with a coffee table, a couple of chairs and a television set. A bad painting of a sunset behind a cactus. A door at the left, open now, leads into a bedroom and bathroom. It’s a good, nondescript place to hold their debrief.

      The television is on low, tuned to CNN.

      Tim Taylor sits on the sofa, looking at a laptop computer set on the coffee table. A satphone stands upright by the computer.

      John Downey, the military commander of the raid, stands by the microwave, waiting for something to heat. He’s out of cammies, Keller sees, showered and shaved, wearing a plum polo shirt over jeans and tennis shoes.

      Another man, a CIA guy Keller knows as Rollins, sits in one of the chairs and watches the television.

      Downey looks up when Keller comes in. “Where the fuck have you been, Art? We’ve done satellite runs, helicopter searches …”

      Keller was supposed to have brought Barrera out safely. That was the deal. Keller asks, “How are your people?”

      “Phwoom.” Downey makes a gesture with his hands, like a flushed covey of quail. Keller knows that within twelve hours the spec-ops will be scattered all over the country, if not the world, with cover stories about where they’ve been. “The only unaccounted for is Ruiz. I was hoping he came out with you.”

      “I saw him after the firefight,” Keller says. “He was walking out.”

      “So Ruiz is in the wind?” Rollins asks.

      “You don’t have to worry about him,” Keller says.

      “He’s your responsibility,” Rollins says.

      “Fuck Ruiz,” Taylor says. “What happened to Barrera?”

      Keller says, “You tell me.”

      “We haven’t had any word from him.”

      “Then I guess he didn’t make it,” Keller says.

      “You refused to get on the ex-fil chopper,” Rollins says.

      “The chopper had to take off,” Keller says, “and I still had to find Barrera.”

      “But you didn’t find him,” Rollins says.

      “Special ops aren’t room service,” Keller answers. “You can’t always get exactly what you order. Things happen.”

      Right from the jump.

      They’d helicoptered onto a firefight that was already in progress as the Zetas were butchering the Sinaloans. Then a surface-to-air rocket hit the lead chopper that Keller was in, killing one man and wounding another. So instead of going down the ropes, they made a hard landing onto a hot zone. Then they had to shuttle the team out on the surviving chopper.

      We were lucky to have gotten out at all, Keller thinks, never mind completing the main mission of executing the leading Zetas. If we didn’t manage to bring Barrera out with us, well …

      “The primary mission, as I understood it,” Keller says, “was to take out the Zetas’ command and control. If Barrera was a collateral casualty …”

      “All the better?” Rollins asks.

      They all know Keller’s hatred of Barrera.

      That the drug lord had tortured and murdered Keller’s partner.

      That he’d never forget, never mind forgive.

      “I won’t shed any crocodile tears for Adán Barrera,” Keller says. He knows the situation in Mexico better than any of the people in that room. Like it or not, the Sinaloa cartel is key to stability in Mexico. If the cartel falls apart because Barrera is gone, the tenuous peace could fall apart with it. Barrera knew that, too—this après moi, le déluge attitude allowed him to drive a tough bargain with both the Mexican and American governments to lay off him and attack his enemies.

      The microwave bings and Downey takes out the tray. “Stouffer’s lasagna. A classic.”

      “We don’t even know Barrera’s dead,” Keller says. “Have they found a body?”

      “No,” Taylor says.

      “D-2 is on the scene now,” Rollins says, referring to the Guatemalan paramilitary intelligence agency. “They haven’t found Barrera. Or either of the primary targets, for that matter.”

      “I can personally confirm that both targets were terminated,” Keller says. “Ochoa is basically charcoal, and Forty … well, you don’t want to know about Forty. I’m telling you, they’re both past tense.”

      “We’d better hope Barrera isn’t,” Rollins says. “If the Sinaloa cartel is unstable, Mexico is unstable.”

      “The law of unintended consequences,” Keller says.

      Rollins says, “We had a very specific agreement with the Mexican government to preserve Adán Barrera’s life. We guaranteed his safety. This isn’t Vietnam, Keller. It isn’t Phoenix. If we find out that you violated that agreement, we’ll—”

      Keller stands up. “You’ll do exactly shit. Because that was an unauthorized, illegal operation that ‘never happened.’ What are you going to do? Take me to trial? Put me on the witness stand? Let me testify under oath that we had a deal with the world’s biggest drug dealer? That I went on a US-sponsored raid to eliminate his rivals? Let me tell you something that those of us who do the actual work know—never draw your weapon unless you’re prepared to pull the trigger. Are you prepared to pull the trigger?”

      There’s no answer.

      “Yeah, that’s what I thought,” Keller says. “For the record, I wanted to kill Barrera, I wish I had killed him, but I didn’t.”

      He gets up and walks out.

      Taylor follows him. “Where are you going?”

      “None of your business, Tim.”

      “To Mexico?” Taylor asks.

      “I’m not with DEA anymore,” Keller says. “I don’t work for you. You can’t tell me where to go or not to go.”

      “They’ll kill you, Art,” Taylor says. “If the Zetas don’t, the Sinaloans will.”

      Probably, Keller thinks.

      But if I don’t go, they’ll kill me anyway.

      He drives into El Paso, to the apartment he keeps near EPIC. Strips out of his filthy, sweaty clothes and takes a long, hot shower. Then he goes into the bedroom and lies down, suddenly aware that he hasn’t slept for coming on two days and that he’s exhausted, depleted.

      But he’s too tired to sleep.

      He gets up, throws on a white button-down shirt over jeans and takes the little Sig 380 compact out of the gun safe in the