They usually went out at night, Art recalls. Sometimes they’d be gone for days, then reappear back at the base in the small hours of the morning, cranked up on Dexedrine. Then they’d disappear into their hooches and sleep for days at a time, then go out and do it again.

Art had gone out with them only a few times, when his sources had produced info about a large group of cadres concentrated in the area. Then he’d accompany the Special Forces guys to set up a night ambush.

He hadn’t liked it much. Most of the time he was scared shitless, but he did his job, he pulled the trigger, he took his buddies’ backs, he got out alive with all his limbs attached and his mind intact. He saw a lot of shit he wishes he could forget.

I just have to live with the fact, Art thinks, that I wrote men’s names down on paper and, in the act of doing so, signed their death warrants. After that, it’s a matter of finding a way to live decently in an indecent world.

But that fucking war.

That goddamn motherfucking war.

Like a lot of people, he watched the last helicopters taking off fromSaigon rooftops on television. Like a lot of vets, he went out and got good and stinking drunk that night, and when the offer came to move over to the new DEA, he jumped at it.

He talked it over with Althie first.

“Maybe this is a war worth fighting,” he told his wife. “Maybe this is a war we can actually win.”

And now, Art thinks as he sits and waits for Don Pedro to show up, we might be close to doing it.

His legs ache from sitting still but he doesn’t move. His stint inVietnam taught him that. The Mexicans spaced in the brush around him are likewise disciplined-twenty special agents from the DFS, armed with Uzis, dressed in camouflage.

Tio Barrera is wearing a suit.

Even up here in the high brush, the governor’s special assistant is wearing his trademark black suit, white button-down shirt, skinny black tie. He looks comfortable and serene, the image of Latino male dignity.