Duffy shook hands with the proprietor, whose smile seemed a little strained, then left the restaurant and got in the car. He handed the car-parker a five-peso note instead of the usual two. It was, after all, Christmas Eve.
And he was driving a year-old Mercedes-Benz 320 SUV, which suggested that he was affluent and could afford a five-peso tip. He wasn’t; the car belonged to the government. But the valet, of course, had no way of knowing this.
To get in the southbound lane of the Panamericana Expressway, it was necessary to pass through a tunnel under the toll road itself. As Duffy came out the far side of the tunnel and prepared to turn left onto the access ramp, an old battered white Ford F-150 pickup truck pulled in front of him, causing Liam Duffy to say certain words, ones Mónica quickly pointed out to him should not be used in the presence of children.
Duffy followed the Ford up the access ramp, where the sonofabitch driving the pickup suddenly slammed on its brakes.
Duffy stopped just before ramming him.
And then, as the hair on his neck curled, he looked over his left shoulder.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, not on fucking Christmas Eve!
He jammed the gearshift into low, spun the steering wheel to the right, and floored the accelerator. He rammed the right rear of the Ford. The pickup’s tires screamed as Duffy pushed it out of the way. The SUV—which was why Duffy had chosen it—had full-time four-wheel drive.
Mónica screamed.
Duffy then heard bullets impacting the Mercedes. By the time he reached the top of the access road, he had both offered a prayer for the safety of his family and drawn from under his shirt his semiautomatic pistol, an Argentine-manufactured version of the Model 1911A1 .45 ACP Colt.
He held down the horn with the hand holding the pistol as he drove through the traffic on the toll road.
Mónica was screaming again.
“The kids?” he shouted.
She stopped screaming and tried and failed to get into the backseat.
“Mónica, for Christ’s sake!”
“They’re all right,” she reported a moment later. “For God’s sake, slow down!”
Yeah, and let the bastards catch up with us!
He didn’t slow down, but did stop weaving through traffic.
Five kilometers down the toll road, he saw a Policía Federal police car parked in a Shell gasoline station.
He pulled off the highway and skidded to a stop by the car. The policemen inside looked at him more in annoyance than curiosity.
Duffy pushed the button on his door panel that rolled down his window.
“Comandante Duffy, Gendarmería Nacional!” he shouted at the Policía Federal policemen. “We have just been ambushed. Shot at. Look for a battered white Ford 150.”
They took him at his word.
The driver, a young officer, jumped out of the car, drew his pistol, and looked up the highway. The passenger, a sergeant, walked to the SUV.
By then Duffy had the microphone of his radio in his hand.
“All gendarmería hearing this. Comandante Duffy has just been ambushed at kilometer forty-six on the Panamericana. I want the nearest cars at the Shell station, kilometer thirty-eight, southbound. En route, stop all old white Ford 150 pickups and inspect right rear of vehicle for collision damage.”
It will do absolutely no fucking good, Duffy thought. The bastards are long gone.
But nobody’s hurt, and cars are on the way.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, thank you for answering my prayer.
Duffy got out of the car, put the pistol back in the holster in the small of his back under his shirt, then opened the rear door of the Mercedes.
He picked up the seven-year-old José and said, “Why don’t we go in there and get a Coke, and then we’ll go see Abuela?”
His wife, holding the baby, looked at him.
“Well, we’ll have something to talk about when we get to your mother’s, won’t we?” Liam asked.
“Goddamn you, Liam!” Mónica said.
II
[ONE]
7200 West Boulevard Drive
Alexandria, Virginia
1145 25 December 2005
A yellow Chrysler minivan with the legend Captain Al’s Taxi Service To All D.C. Airports painted on its back windows drove through the snow of the long, curving driveway up to the big house and stopped before the closed four doors of the basement garage.
The sole passenger—a trim woman who appeared to be in her sixties but was in fact a decade older, her jet-black hair, drawn tight in a bun, showing traces of gray—slid the door open before the driver could get out of the van to do it for her.
There was a path up a slope from the driveway to the front of the house, but there were no footprints in the snow to suggest that anyone had used it recently.
The driver took a small leather suitcase from the rear of the van, thought about it a moment—What the hell, it’s Christmas Day—and then said, “I’ll walk you to the door, ma’am.”
“That’s very kind of you.”
She followed him up the path. When he had put the suitcase at the foot of the door, she handed him a folded bill.
“Thank you,” she said. “And Merry Christmas.”
He looked at the money. It was a hundred-dollar note.
The fare was thirty-three fifty.
“Ma’am, I can’t change this.”
“Merry Christmas,” she said again, and pushed the doorbell button.
“Thank you very much, and a Merry Christmas to you, too.”
He got back in the van, waited to make sure that someone would answer her ring, and then drove away.
The door was opened by a large, muscular young man in a single-breasted suit.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“Merry Christmas. Colonel Castillo, please.”
“There’s no one here by that name, ma’am.”
“Yes, there is,” she said politely but firmly. “Tell him his grandmother is here.”
The muscular young man considered that for a moment, then appeared to be talking to his suit lapel. It wasn’t the first time she had seen someone do that.
“Roger that,” he said again. “She says she’s Don Juan’s grandmother.”
Not ninety seconds later, a large, fair-skinned, blue-eyed man of thirty-six suddenly appeared at the front door. Lieutenant Colonel Carlos G. Castillo, Special Forces, U.S. Army, was wearing brown corduroy slacks and a battered sweatshirt with USMA printed on it. He held what could have been a glass of tomato juice in one hand, and a large, nearly black, eight-inch-long cigar in the other.
At his side was a very large silver-and-black shaggy dog about one and a half times the size of a very large boxer. At first sight, the dog—a one-hundred-forty-pound Bouvier des Flandres named Max—often frightened people, even dog lovers such as the muscular young man in the business suit who had answered the door, and who took some pride in thinking he was unflappable.
He flapped now in shock as the old lady, who, instead of recoiling in horror as Max rushed at her, dropped to her knees, cooed, “Hello, baby! Are you happy to see your old Abuela?” and wrapped her arms around Max’s massive neck.
Max whined happily as his shaggy stub of a tail spun like a helicopter rotor.
The old lady looked up at the man in the West Point sweatshirt.
“And what about you, Carlos? Are you happy to see your old Abuela?”
“Happy yes,” he said. “Shock will come later. What the he—What are you doing here?”
“Well, Fernando, Maria, and the children spent Christmas Eve with me at the house. Today I was faced with the choice of spending Christmas with Maria’s family or getting on the plane and spending it with you.”