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the
sicario
stopped just outside the left window, his pistol down and hidden between the wall and his left leg.
    Wife-beater looked at him once, a mixture of fear and resignation on his face, then knocked on the door. When someone answered from the other side, he stated he was making another run and wondered if the
jefe
wanted anything from the store.
    The
sicario
admired his courage. It was the perfect story but was predicated on an answer. If the man behind the door said yes, he would have accomplished the mission. If he said no, the door wouldn’t open, and he would be dead.
    The man said yes.
    The
sicario
had counted the locks earlier and seen three. The gang member glanced at him, holding his position in front of the peephole and waiting on permission to run. The
sicario
strained to hear the locks. When he heard the second one click open, he shot wife-beater in the temple, the man crumpling to the concrete without a sound. By the time the third lock had turned he was standing over the body. When the door cracked an inch, he kicked it hard, throwing the man back.
    The
sicario
stepped inside and drilled the guard twice in the face, causing him to slam against the wall and fling the wallet in his hand into the hallway. The
sicario
moved forward, training the Sig on every crevice. He saw doors to the right and left before the hallway spilled into an open den. He heard someone say something behind the door to the right. He kicked it open and found a man sitting on a toilet, his pants around his ankles. The man uttered something unintelligible, pure astonishment on his face, a newspaper in his hands. He tried to stand and the
sicario
put two rounds above his nose.
    He raced to the den and found it empty but identified the back door in the center of the wall. He went to the cubby used as a kitchen and found it empty as well. He shuffled back to the final door, readied his pistol, and kicked it open.
    On the floor was a Caucasian man, bound up like a calf at a rodeo. He held his hands out in front, shouting, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
    When the
sicario
holstered his weapon, the man’s demeanor changed, and tears formed in his eyes. He began to chant, “Thank God . . . thank God . . . thank you . . . they were going to take me to Mexico . . . thank you.”

10
    I rolled the dice and moved my backgammon piece, surprised that I was beating Knuckles, since he’d taught me how to play the game earlier that morning. I’d figured he was an old hand at backgammon and thus a better player, but then again, we
were
in the middle of a mission. Maybe he couldn’t multitask like a master such as myself.
    Or maybe he was still pissed at me. Hard to tell. He’d been plenty mad last night, and I wasn’t sure which piece of anger had lingered: the fact that I’d let Jennifer go home or the fact that he’d figured out where she and I stood with each other.
    The team had tracked Jake to a hotel called the President, a gaudy, giant monument of white marble that looked like it belonged more in Las Vegas than it did in Turkmenistan. Of course, it was owned by the president of the country. It was billed as a five-star resort used for dignitaries and diplomats, complete with indoor-outdoor pools, tennis courts, a spa, and a bar on the sixteenth floor, but, like everything else in this strange country, it gave a vibe that was a little off-kilter. Nothing overt. Just small things, like getting your hand shocked when you used the shower, or the maids rolling the dice about whether they’d show up to clean your room on a given day, or seeing the typed piece of paper in a document protector taped to the window telling the occupant not to open the window between certain hours. Strange all the way around.
    Because the hotel was located far outside the city center and because of our little altercation last night, we’d decided to jump TOC to its location, reestablishing our operations at the new hotel. We would have had to do it