“Be that as it may,” Cutler broke in, clearly enunciating each word, “you will immediately determine Orteño’s condition. You will find a new armorer and, if need be, a replacement for Flix. Is that clear?”

Whitman rose. “Any clearer and I could see my reflection in it.”

2

Felix Orteño’s fear of hospitals dated back to the death of his mother. She had been admitted for an emergency appendectomy, and had been wheeled out by people from the chief medical examiner’s office. There ensued three years of trials, appeals, retrials until Orteño’s father at last prevailed against both the hospital and the surgeon, thus gaining his pound of flesh. It was not a bargain he relished, though Orteño figured his father must have felt at least the same measure of satisfaction he did. But maybe not: soon after, his father turned to drink. Drunken rages became the norm, and because Flix reminded him of his dead wife, and thus kept his misery burning like a bonfire in his gut, he did whatever he could to drive his son out of the house. Finally, Orteño packed up and took his sister Marilena with him to San Luis Potosí, where his grandmother, Mama Novia, had been born and raised until, at fifteen, she had come across the border, pregnant with their mother. Upon returning to the states eighteen months later, brother and sister discovered their father had shot himself in the head. The suicide drove the siblings even closer together.

The U.S. military was happy to take in the orphan, who enlisted when he was sixteen. He looked older and he altered his birth certificate to make his ruse complete. He took to training and war like a duck to water. For the first time, he felt alive, as if he were making a difference he could see and feel each day. All the money he received he gave to Marilena, who was pregnant. The father, who should have provided for them, was something of a deadbeat.

Orteño never felt more alive than when he was in-country, in the thick of it in Iraq and, later, Afghanistan, where he came into contact with one of Cutler’s people, who recommended him to his boss. If Flix liked being part of the military, he loved working for Universal Security Associates. Snafus were kept to a minimum and red tape was virtually nonexistent. Best of all, he never again had to deal with idiot officers impeding his way like so many clowns exiting a Volkswagen Beetle.

He had joined Red Rover five years ago, handpicked, as Sandofur had been, by Whitman. From the first, he fit right in. He was fearless rather than reckless, his skills were splendid, and, best of all, he lived to stick it to America’s enemies. Though he was Mexican by heritage, he bled red, white, and blue. Born and raised in the San Antonio area, he spoke like a Texan, but thought like a Mexican. Neither Whitman nor Sandofur had thought less of him for it.