The members of his gang had always handled pills and marijuana on a small scale — for the tourist trade — but in the early sixties, with the rise of "flower children" in America, Luis had recognized the drug trade's great potential. He had put his troops to work for men who farmed cannabis, had studied them and learned the ropes, until he was prepared to take over the business for himself. It had not been an easy move. There had been bloody work involved, but by the time a certain Dr. Leary had begun to preach the doctrine of "Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out," Rivera had been ready to provide the children of Aquarius with all the marijuana they could handle. In the circles where he traveled, he had been respected and admired for his achievements. He was seventeen years old.

The marijuana trade was still important to Rivera, but his fortune had been tripled by the traffic in cocaine and heroin. The latter poison he refined himself, from poppy fields in the Sierra Madre, but the coke required a loose alliance with suppliers in Bogota. It was a risky enterprise with Colombians involved — people who were quick to launch a shooting war for no apparent reason — but again Rivera had survived. He was a multimillionaire who purchased politicians and policemen as another man might purchase cigarettes, and now it galled him that he had to do this butcher job himself. If it had not been so important...

But it was. The economic loss that he had suffered was sufficient to demand revenge against his enemy, but it was not his prime consideration. He had suffered a loss of face, and while the Oriental concept was an unfamiliar one, no Hispanic male grew up without a sense of pride, machismo, which demanded retribution for an insult.