Free The Power Of The Dog by Don Winslow

Güero cannot shut up about his miraculous survival of the federale ambush that killed his boss, Don Pedro. “Santo Jesús Malverde shielded me from the bullets,” Güero was saying. “I tell you, brothers, I walked through the rain. For hours afterward I didn’t know I was alive. I thought I was a ghost.” On and on and fucking on about how he emptied his pistola at the federales, then jumped from the car and ran—“between the bullets, brothers”—into the brush from where he made his escape. And how he worked his way back to the city, “thinking every moment was my last, brothers.”
     
    Adán lets his eyes move over the rest of the guests: Jaime Herrera, Rafael Caro, Chapo Montana, all Sinaloa gomeros, all wanted men now, all on the run. Lost and windblown ships that Tío has brought into safe harbor.
     
    Tío has called this meeting, and in the very act of calling it has established his superiority. He’s made them all sit down together over huge buckets of chilled shrimp, platters of thinly sliced carne and cases of the ice-cold beer that real Sinaloans prefer over wine.
     
    In the next room, young Sinaloan musicians are warming up to sing bandas—songs praising the exploits of famous traficantes, many of them sitting at the table. In a private room farther in the back are gathered a dozen high-priced call girls who have been called in from Haley Saxon’s exclusive brothel in San Diego.
     
    “The blood that has been spilled has dried,” Tío says. “Now is the time to put away all grudges, to wash the bitter taste of venganza from our mouths. These things are gone, like the water of yesterday’s river.”
     
    He takes a swallow of beer into his mouth, swills it around, then spits it on the floor.
     
    He pauses to see if anyone objects.
     
    No one does.
     
    He says, “Gone also is the life we led. Gone in poison and flame. Our old lives are like the fragile dreams we dream in the waking hours, floating away from us like a wisp of smoke in the wind. We might like to call the dream back, to go on sweetly sleeping, but that is not life, that is a dream.
     
    “The Americans wanted to scatter us Sinaloans. Burn us off our land and scatter us to the winds. But the fire that consumes also makes way for new growth. The wind that destroys also spreads the seeds to new ground. I say if they want us to scatter, so be it. Good. We will scatter like the seeds of the manzanita, which grow in any soil. Grow and spread. I say we spread out like the fingers of a single hand. I say if they will not let us have our Sinaloa, we take the whole country.
     
    “There are three critical territories from which to conduct la pista secreta: Sonora, bordering Texas and Arizona; the Gulf, just across from Texas, Louisiana and Florida; and Baja, next door to San Diego, Los Angeles and the West Coast. I ask Abrego to take the Gulf as his plaza, to have as his markets Houston, New Orleans, Tampa and Miami. I ask El Verde, Don Chalino, to take the Sonoran plaza, to base himself in Juárez, to have New Mexico, Arizona and the rest of Texas for his market.”
     
    Adán tries without success to read their reactions: the Gulf plaza is potentially rich, but fraught with difficulties as American law enforcement finishes with Mexico and concentrates on the eastern Caribbean. But Abrego should make millions—no, billions—if he can find a source for the product to sell.
     
    He glances at El Verde, whose campesino face is impenetrable. The Sonoran plaza should be lucrative. El Verde should be able to move tons of drugs into Phoenix, El Paso and Dallas, not to mention the route going north from those cities to Chicago, Minneapolis and especially Detroit.
     
    But everyone is waiting for the other shoe to fall, and Adán watches their eyes as they realize that Tío has saved the plum for himself.
     
    Baja.
     
    Tijuana provides access to the enormous markets of San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose. And to the