“We are finished here,” Amir says. “Show us where to go.”

Pelayo extends an arm, Casper backs out, and the two men slowly walk out into the wide hallway. Casper takes the lead, and Pelayo walks beside the two men. He says, “Outside there will be a van, with a change of clothing, and it will take you to your friends at the airport. From there, vaya con dios.”

The two men say nothing as they approach a wide ramp leading outside to the even hotter, muggier air. The younger of the men says something, and as Amir replies, Pelayo steps back. The two men are now walking across a heavy green plastic tarp. Pelayo takes a 10mm Glock out of an open cardboard box to his right marked GOYA and shoots both men in the back of the head.

A minute later, after walking away from the two dead men and back into the basement, Pelayo and Casper enter a wide construction-scale elevator. As it grumbles its way up, Casper—with both bags of cash slung over his shoulders—takes the Glock from Pelayo’s right hand and gives him a moist cloth, which he uses to wipe the gun oil and powder residue off his hands.

“Ungrateful, weren’t they?” he says to Casper. “I wished them well on their journey, with God at their side, and they didn’t even say thank you.”

Casper says, “Too greedy, too eager to leave.”

“Lessons learned, eh?”

“Well, perhaps they suspected there was no one waiting for them at the airport.”

Pelayo emits a loud sigh. “Suspicious lot, weren’t they?”

The elevator door opens up to another hallway cluttered with construction equipment, and Pelayo walks to the corridor’s end. Casper opens one door, closes it behind them as they enter a very short hallway, and then opens another. From there, it’s like going from a slum to a rich man’s estate in less than two meters.

Pelayo feels the tingle of appreciation and gratitude as he enters the top-floor suite, with its curtained floor-to-ceiling windows, balconies overlooking the rest of the complex and the nearby Gulf of Mexico, luxurious furniture and big-screen televisions, as well as cool, air-conditioned air, so unlike the hot and humid basement. Two of his men are sitting at a low table, heads bowed, cleaning two American-made M4 automatic rifles. The table is covered with a work cloth. Good boys.

He looks around, sees two of his other boys sitting on a leather couch, reading magazines. They are magazines about guns and cars, which is fine. No porn lying around, no adult DVDs, no young women lounging about with thong bikinis, laughing and touching too much. Those are distractions he will not allow.

It is through very hard and dangerous work, pure focus and discipline, that Pelayo has gotten here, and he will never, ever forget those lessons, including never, ever sampling the merchandise, whether its smuggled cocaine, opium, marijuana, Fresca soda, or frightened teenage girls from Eastern Europe filled with lying promises about a new life in the New World.