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  The latest task given to her elite squad was to deal with an Asian gang out of El Monte called the Triumph Dragons. The Vietnamese gang, though quite small, ran one of the busiest docks out at the Port of Los Angeles, down in Long Beach. Perrine had made a deal with them to let a large shipment through, but at the last second, the Dragons had reneged, causing the seizure by the US Coast Guard of an entire shipping container filled to the brim with premium Colombian heroin.

  Manuel had not been pleased. Yesterday afternoon, the cartel boss had forwarded to Vida a very simple instruction by encrypted text message.

  Slay the dragons, his text had said. Each and every one.

  She weaved through the dense El Monte neighborhood until she found the location she was looking for, a deserted parking lot behind a shuttered supermarket on Cogswell Road.

  The young man slouching in the passenger seat beside her loudly slurped at the last of his McDonald’s chocolate shake as they came to a stop.

  “You’re going to do this now, right, Jorge? Not having any second thoughts on me, right?” she said in Spanish.

  “Please,” Jorge said, looking at her, his brown eyes soft in his even softer face.

  Youthful appearance aside, Jorge was an up-and-comer in the cartel’s newest ally, Mara Salvatrucha, the brutal Hispanic gang otherwise known as MS-13.

  Jorge had dealt to the Dragons before, so his job had been to set up a dope deal. Five kilos of coke at the cut-rate price of $12K per. There weren’t any drugs, of course, and the only thing cut-rate was going to be the lives of the Vietnamese gangbangers, as soon as they showed up.

  Vida looked out on the El Monte neighborhood as they waited. Low stucco houses, palm trees, chain-link fences. California shabby, minus the chic. Above it all, dark clouds rolled against the fast-fading gold of the sky.

  More waiting, she thought, feeling like a bubble about to pop. It was driving her mad.

  Vida sat bolt upright as Jorge’s phone finally rattled in the silence.

  “Is it them?” she said hopefully.

  “It’s them,” Jorge said with a nod. “They just got off the expressway.”

  CHAPTER 21

  AT JORGE’S CONFIRMATION, THE inside of the truck was immediately filled with the meticulous, oiled click and snap of guns being loaded and readied.

  Music to my ears, Vida thought.

  Vida put a hand to her brow. Even with the AC jacked, she was sweating, amped up beyond belief. She had to slow things down and concentrate. She counted backward from ten as she carefully dried her hands and face with a McDonald’s napkin.

  Then she reached back and accepted her trusty MGP-84, which the cartel soldier behind her handed up.

  “Let’s go over it one more time,” Vida said to Jorge, who was nervously playing with the door latch.

  The young man sighed.

  “I roll up, make nice, make sure the gang’s all there,” he said quickly. “Then I whistle over to you like I want you to bring the stuff, right?”

  “Then duck, Jorge,” Vida said, showing him her Peruvian machine pistol as she draped a motherly arm over his shoulder.

  The rough men behind them in the SUV chuckled as they polished gun sights and tightened weapon straps over their burly forearms.

  “You don’t want to forget that last part, homey,” one of them said in a low voice as Jorge finally swung open the door.

  Jorge was sitting up on the abandoned supermarket’s concrete loading dock as a car pulled into the lot. The new black Audi A4 with tinted everything pulled up directly in front of Jorge, and three Asians immediately got out, leaving the driver behind the wheel.

  Vida scanned the men quickly with a pair of binoculars. The young, heavily tattooed Vietnamese thugs might have hidden handguns, she thought, but that was it. So far, so bad. For them, at least.

  Vida peered closer at the tallest of them. She quickly looked at some pictures on her phone, comparing. Well, what do you know? A stroke of good luck. The tall forty-something Asian with the handsome, angular face looked an awful lot like Giang Truong, the head Triumph Dragon honcho who, after the port fiasco, had personally told Manuel to go fuck himself. Manuel said if they took out Truong, their crew would split a bonus of $50K!

  All of her anxiety had been for nothing. Her and her superstitions. Everything was coming together just fine.

  Jorge wasn’t through with the hand slapping when it started. From one of the cruddy houses across the street came a loud bang. Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, there was a group of large men wearing blue Windbreakers, running across the street toward them. At the same time, two marked and two unmarked cop cars rolled out from behind the supermarket like they were some kind of circus trick.

  “Everyone on the ground!” a bullhorn cried as the first cop car raced toward them. “This is the Los Angeles Police Department! Turn off your engines and exit your vehicles! We have you completely surrounded!”

  CHAPTER 22

  “SHIT! SHIT! SHIT!” VIDA cried as she watched the cops advance and the world end.

  When she turned back toward the loading dock, she watched as the Triumph Dragons piled into the already-moving Audi. The sports car squealed past the SUV, almost hitting it as it headed east.

  They were running. Good idea, Vida thought. Jorge wasn’t completely in the car when she slammed the SUV into drive and the accelerator into the floor.

  She almost collided head-on with the first cop car as she roared out of the lot, heading west. In her rearview, she could see one of the unmarked cars fishtail and hammer after her, its blue light bubbling. It must have been some kind of souped-up copmobile, she thought, because after a minute, it really started gaining on them.

  I can’t have that, Vida thought, instantly taking a left in the middle of the house-lined block.

  The SUV lurched and almost tipped as it skidded sideways over a grassless lawn. Its big, screeching wheels caught a driveway, and then the front air bags went off in two loud, white puffs as the grille smashed through a chain-link fence into a backyard.

  Wood crunched as they blurred through a play set and another wooden fence. Then they swerved alongside another stucco shitbox, veered onto another driveway, and were bouncing over the curb onto the street opposite the first.

  Vida checked her mirrors. The following cop car was nowhere, at least for the moment. Wheels smoking, the big-block, four-hundred-horsepower engine howling, she hooked a right at the next corner, back toward the expressway.

  Less than half a minute later, they’d made it. They turned another corner, and the on-ramp to the westbound San Bernardino was right there. In a minute, they would be on it and gone.

  Instead of gunning it, though, Vida, biting her lip in concentration, pulled over on the shoulder under the expressway overpass beside the on-ramp and put the SUV into park.

  “What are you waiting for?” Jorge said, banging on the dashboard. “Are you out of your mind? The cops are coming! I don’t want to go to jail. We need to get the hell out of here. Let’s go!”

  Vida shook her head as she lifted her phone.

  “Calm down. I won’t tell you twice,” she said. “You let me handle the cops. We can still get this done.”

  CHAPTER 23

  EVERYONE IN THE SUV except Vida turned and looked back as the cop car that was following them screamed past on the perpendicular street behind them. Then they watched as it hit its brakes and swung around.

  “They saw us! How about now? Can we go now?” Jorge wanted to know.

  Vida shook her head.

  “Out, men,” she said calmly. “Lay down suppressing fire.”

  “Suppressing fire?!” Jorge yelled.

  Vida placed her machine pistol to the young man’s temple.

  “That means you, too, Jorge. Time to grow some hair on that chest. Get the fuck out of this truck!”

  In the falling dusk, in the middle of the busy city street, the cartel hit team poured out of the vehicle and immediately opened fire on the ap
proaching Crown Victoria. Against the iron-and-concrete tunnel of the overpass, the sudden rattling blast of the half-dozen fully automatic AR-15s and AK-47s going off at once was pants wetting. The oncoming cop car swung sideways and halted in the middle of the street, its perforated hood smoking, its windshield torn to shreds.

  Still the cartel soldiers fired, without letup. Their shooting stance was textbook, rifle stocks tucked high in the shoulder as they smoothly squeezed off round after round after round.

  Despite the war thundering around her, Vida’s eyes were wide open as she put the SUV into drive.

  Seconds later, the Triumph Dragons’ Audi A4 appeared in the cross street in front of her, from the east. It was headed directly toward the on-ramp on her left, like she’d predicted. She stomped the accelerator into the floor.

  She timed it perfectly. The Cadillac Escalade plowed directly into the side of the small, speeding Audi in a horrible crunch of metal. The Audi, spinning in a dog squeal of rubber, hit two other cars waiting at the light before it came to a stop.

  Amid the automatic gunfire and screaming citizens, Vida exited from the now-smoking Escalade with the machine pistol. The Triumph Dragons in the crumpled Audi were moaning as she walked over the broken glass. She emptied a clip into the wreckage, then reloaded and gave each man another short burst in the head just to be sure.

  She dropped the machine pistol and took out her phone. People who had been waiting at the light abandoned their vehicles. Between the pauses in the gunfire behind her, she could hear sirens approaching in the distance. Then the phone was finally answered.

  “Where are you?” Vida said. “We are in El Monte, just before the Peck Road on-ramp. We need you here now.”

  “Thirty seconds,” a voice told her.

  Moments later, she could hear them coming. The dozen-strong motorcycle pack that had passed her earlier suddenly poured off the expressway, their big Ninja and Hayabusa bikes raging and growling like starving grizzlies.

  They were the insurance plan, Jorge’s buddies, MS-13 members, their backup in case things went to shit. And, boy, had things gone to shit.

  Her soldiers, still under the overpass, dropped their guns and rushed forward and hopped onto the backs of the now-halted bikes. Vida counted heads and waited until Jorge and everyone else was accounted for before she hopped onto the back of one of the Jap bikes herself.

  Then they all were accelerating, leaving the wreckage and dead Triumph Dragons and sirens behind as they roared out onto the expressway.

  That’s the way it’s done, Vida thought as they zipped down the shoulder, the hundred-mile-an-hour wind ripping at her short hair. Stick and move. Get in, do damage, get out. Manuel wouldn’t have done it any other way.

  Vida allowed herself a tiny smile as she snuggled tighter into the driver. He opened it up, and LA warped into long streaks of white lines and yellow light.

  CHAPTER 24

  SIX HOURS LATER, COMING on two a.m., Vida Gomez was behind the front wheel of a new stolen SUV, a Toyota Land Cruiser that was parked in West Hollywood about three blocks south of the iconic HOLLYWOOD sign.

  No rest for the weary, she thought, listening to music thump from a brightly lit glass house up the scrubby hill from where they were parked.

  Keeping her eyes glued on the raucous Hollywood party, Vida took a sip from the stainless steel travel cup at her elbow. Instead of coffee, the cup contained tejate, a traditional energy drink from her native Oaxaca. Made from corn, cacao beans, mamey seeds, and rosita flowers, it was far more potent than anything from Starbucks.

  With the unflagging pace she was clocking, she needed the energy. There’d been barely enough time for a shower and a hastily eaten dinner at the safe house in La Brea. Now they were back at it, back out again on the street.

  They had one more job tonight, one more hit, which was even more audacious than the last one, if that was possible. The house just up the winding road belonged to none other than celebrity rap music performer and producer Alan “King Killa” Leonard.

  Some rap music record producers only fronted like they were gangbangers, but King Killa was actually the real deal. In addition to being a celebrity, he was the leader of a Bloods contingent that ran most of the cocaine trade in the Greater Los Angeles area. It was said that his influence even ran into the LAPD’s infamous CRASH gang unit, where he had several officers on the payroll.

  Like most of the gang leaders in the city, King Killa had recently been approached by Manuel’s cartel to become his gang’s new drug supplier. The gang leader had immediately and vehemently refused. Killa had even roughed up Manuel’s representative and had gone so far as to put a gun in his mouth.

  Bad move. That was why they were there. Decisions had consequences. Manuel’s order was explicit. Grammy awards or no Grammy awards, tonight, King Killa was to be executed.

  At the safe house, Vida had reached out to Manuel via encrypted cell phone to make sure that he felt this second scheduled hit was prudent, after the unscheduled firefight with law enforcement in El Monte that was all over the news.

  Manuel had texted back immediately.

  Prudent? It is now more necessary than ever!!!! You are in Hollywood, Vida, are you not? The bigger the splash, the better!!! The biggest mistake when you are winning is to stop! Forward, my beautiful Vida. Forever forward.

  Vida brought up the message on her phone again and frowned. She’d been afraid he would say something like that. They had gotten lucky once tonight. In her opinion, they were pushing it.

  But what did her opinion matter? Nothing. She was smart enough to know not to question or even to comment on an order, however odious, if it came from Manuel himself.

  CHAPTER 25

  THE MUSIC SUDDENLY SUBSIDED ten minutes later, and the first of the cars triple-parked in front of the ostentatious glass house started down the hill.

  They waited another half hour, until the traffic jam of limos and Jags and Mercs and vintage Porsches and other obnoxious automobiles rolled down, away from the house, before they stepped out of the Cruiser and into the darkness.

  It was only a four-person job this time. The driver, Vida, her most trusted soldier, Estefan, and a pudgy soldier named Eduardo, who was an expert with the materials.

  It took about half an hour to infiltrate. They would have done it much more quickly, but they encountered a thick chain-link fence at the rear of the property’s perimeter that they had to bolt-cut through as slowly and quietly as they could. Past the hole in the fence was the basement door, which Vida scrub-picked herself in less than a minute.

  Then they were actually inside King Killa’s famous Hollywood house, which had been featured on MTV’s Cribs. Vida had watched the episode several times in order to memorize the interior layout.

  They found the utility room next to the one for the swimming pool pump. The HVAC unit was forced air, its blower humming busily as it circulated cool air throughout the house.

  Eduardo knelt beside it and then gave an A-OK sign.

  At the signal, Vida and her men quickly put on the Airhawk breathing suits they’d brought. Then Eduardo shut off the HVAC unit and unclasped the silver hard-pack case containing the material.

  They had used canisters at the mobster’s house in Malibu, but they now used the deadly material in a very fine powder form. Eduardo removed the air filter from the unit and then dusted the filter liberally with the poison. Then he carefully slid the filter back into the unit and turned the blower on high.

  Vida checked her watch as the fan hummed. They sat in the dark, waiting. After ten minutes, Eduardo repeated the process, powdering the filter a second time. Exactly twenty minutes after that, Vida nodded, and they headed up the basement stairs.

  Inside the first bedroom they entered on the top floor was quite a surprise.

  The surprise wasn’t that the room’s occupant was dead. They’d used enough poison to easily kill a hundred people, so of course she was dead. The surprise was that the woman lying in her o
wn blood and snot in a fetal position on the carpet was Alexa Gia, the famous singer.

  Was she seeing King Killa? Vida wondered. She didn’t know. She only knew that the beautiful woman known as the Latina Madonna had recorded eleven number-one dance music hits in the eighties and nineties. Vida had actually danced to one of the singer’s pop hits at her own quinceañera. Go figure.

  Manuel wanted a big splash? Vida thought. He was about to get one. The death of the singer would be huge. About as high profile as it got.

  Vida made sure to get a close-up of the singer’s face with the video camera before they left. Of course, she was filming everything, as per the plan. Why Manuel wanted the grisly footage, she was unsure. She knew better than to inquire.

  Well, if anything, the substance had worked even more potently than it had the last time, Vida thought as she toed King Killa’s cheek, resting on the floor of his bathroom down the hall. The six-foot-six, three-hundred-thirty-pound man had made it only halfway to the toilet before he’d bled out of all his orifices like a butchered hog.

  “OK, that’s it. All the other rooms are empty,” Eduardo said, tapping her on the shoulder. “Time to go.”

  “Wait, one thing. Just a moment,” Vida said, spying something.

  She carefully stepped around the blood pooled around the fallen rap impresario and knelt and removed his sparkling signature twenty-one-carat diamond earring.

  Though it wasn’t part of the plan, she would make sure to ship it out to Manuel first thing tomorrow morning via FedEx.

  Manuel will like that, she thought with a small smile. The only thing he appreciated more than subtle gestures was unexpected gifts.

  CHAPTER 26

  THE NEXT MORNING—EARLY, of course—we were at Aaron Cody’s farm, getting the milking going, when the old farmer pulled me and the rest of the Bennett boys aside.