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was driving him nuts.
    And here he was, alone, bug-bitten, scratched and bleeding in a hundred places, and cut off from the two people he loved the most.
    Then he heard it—the
thwock-thwock-thwock
of a helicopter in the distance. Finally. It had to be them. He knew the protocol—if you’re safe, stay put. The GPS was incredibly accurate, so they’d find him.
    If no one else found him first.
    —
    “Damn, you look like shit,” Mantu said.
    “Nice to see you, too, Mantu,” Ray replied.
    Another man had arrived with Mantu—a stocky, squat Hispanic thirty-something in a Marlboro T-shirt. He was holding a machete and wearing a backpack. “This is Ramón.”
    The short man eyed Ray somberly. “
Hola,
Ray.”
    Ray nodded.
    “Where are Ellen and William?” Mantu asked, his eyes darkening. “They didn’t set their beacons.”
    “Gone,” Ray said. The word nearly caught in his throat. “Someone took them.” He told them what had happened at the carnival and about the men at his house.
    Mantu checked his watch. He handed Ray a canteen. “Drink up. We have to get to the van. It’s due southeast, next to a cattle farm. It’s a little conspicuous so we need to move fast.”
    “Let’s go,” Ray said. He didn’t need any convincing.
    Ramón led the way, hacking at stray branches with the machete. Ray followed. Mantu walked behind him, a heavy black pistol in his hand. He spoke softly. “I guess you realize you’re coming back with us. To Eleusis.”
    Ray didn’t say anything. What choice did he have?
    “It’s all over now. No more of this bullshit. You’ll be safe.”
    Ray stopped and turned to face Mantu. “Yeah, but we need to find Ellen and William. We’re doing that first, right?”
    “Of course,” Mantu answered. “When we tell Jeremy they’re missing he’ll get on it. They’ll be on top of it, Ray. Don’t you worry. We’ll find them. We take care of our people.”
    Ray didn’t respond. He’d heard something similar before, in Blackwater—that Micah and Mantu were keeping an eye on them. And Ellen and William had wound up locked in a concrete room in Crawford’s basement.
    —
    The van rattled down a dusty road. Ray sat in the backseat next to Mantu, staring out the tinted windows. Ramón drove. He was blasting what sounded like the same hellish
narcocorridos
from the carnival, only this song was about a kindhearted
jefe
who handed silver coins to the poor children of his village. Mantu banged his satellite phone against his knee. “Piece of shit,” he said. “This Brotherhood-issued technology is driving me nuts.”
    “How long until we get there?” Ray asked.
    “We’re stopping at a safe house for the night.” He pressed a green button on the phone and held it. Nothing happened. Banged it on his knee again. “It’s too risky to drive in the dark. Military roadblocks and gangsters all over the place. And we need you to get your new face on.”
    Ray sighed. He hated the whole process of putting on the prostheses—a fake nose and a patch of what looked like scarred skin on his cheek—though he had to admit they were pretty effective, especially with his hair dyed oily black. He’d grown adept at using the adhesive to get them precisely in place, then touching up the edges with some thick cover-up. It hurt like hell when he had to rip them off, but the two pieces of fake flesh completely transformed him into someone else—Ray-
not
-Ray. A former Hollywood special effects makeup guy had been recruited by Jeremy in the late nineties, Mantu had explained. It was good enough, Jeremy said, to fool almost all biometric camera systems.
    Mantu pressed the button and held the phone to his ear.
“Hola, amigos.”
He listened quietly, nodding. Looked at Ray, then nodded more.
“Sí, sí. Hasta luego. Bueno.”
Hung up the phone. “Good. The safe house is a go.” He reached into a bag and pulled out a mirror and a plastic container. “Here. Pretty yourself up.”
    —
    The safe house