Don Winslow - The Power of the Dog

The Power of the Dog

By: Don Winslow

2005

In memory of Sue Rubinsky,

who always wanted to learn the truth

Synopsis:

Art Keller, through tenacity, skilled experience, and what he once thought of as luck, positions himself as a strategic piece in the DEAs war on drugs. His career really begins in a boxing ring, where he is pummeled a great deal, forced to use every skill he has, engage his tactical mind in order to survive, and looses the three round bout. But from the blood, pain and street-wise cunning, it appears that he has won the real match, only to find that hes still one step behind in the greater game.

The rest of his long, hard won career seems to be a repeat of that sparing match. In a high powered story of political forces, and brutal mentalities, Art Keller attempts to do his job, while not becoming a victim of his obsessions. Following Keller and the other characters of this novel, Don Winslow positions us as witnesses to tremendous crimes, and horrific destruction, while listening to members of both sides of this war declare victory and prosperity from the engagements that leave towns destroyed and families murdered.

While the Power of the Dog is a fictional novel, the tremendous effort in historic and cultural research by the author is very evident.

Deliver my soul from the sword,
my love from the power of the dog.

Psalms 22:20

Prologue

El Sauzal

State of Baja California

Mexico , 1997

The baby is dead in his mothers arms.

Art Keller can tell from the way the bodies lieher on top, the baby beneath herthat she tried to shield her child. She must have known, Art thinks, that her own soft body could not have stopped bulletsnot from automatic rifles, not from that rangebut the move must have been instinctive. A mother puts her own body between her child and harm. So she turned, twisted as the bullets hit her, then fell on top of her son.

Did she really think that she could save the child? Maybe she didnt, Art thinks. Maybe she just didnt want the baby to see death blaze out from the barrel of the gun. Maybe she wanted her childs last sensation in this world to be that of her bosom. Enfolded in love.

Art is a Catholic. At forty-seven years of age, hes seen a lot of madonnas. But nothing like this one.

Cuernos de chivo, he hears someone say.

Quietly, almost whispered, as if they were in church.

Cuernos de chivo.

Horns of the goat: AK-47s.

Art already knows thathundreds of 7.62-mm shell casings lie on the patios concrete floor, along with some .12-gauge shotgun shells and some 5.56s, probably, Art thinks, from AR-15s. But most of the casings are from the cuernos de chivo, the favored weapon of the Mexican narcotraficantes.

Nineteen bodies.

Nineteen more casualties in the War on Drugs, Art thinks.

Hes used to looking at the bodies from his fourteen-year war with Adn Barrerahes looked at many. But not nineteen. Not women, children, babies. Not this.

Ten men, three women, six children.

Lined up against the patio wall and shot.

Blasted is more the word, Art thinks. Blasted to pieces in an incontinent rush of bullets. The amount of blood is unreal. A pool the size of a large car, an inch thick with black, dried blood. Blood splattered on the walls, blood splattered on the manicured lawn, where it glistens black-red on the tips of the grass. The blades of which look to him like tiny, bloody swords.

They must have put up a fight as they realized what was about to happen. Pulled from their beds in the middle of the night, dragged out to the patio, lined up against the wallsomeone had finally offered a struggle, because furniture is tipped over. Heavy wrought-iron patio furniture. Glass shattered on the concrete.

Art looks down and sees... Christ, its a dollits brown glass eyes staring up at himlying in the blood. A doll, and a small cuddly animal, and a beautifully rendered pinto horse in plastic, all lying in blood by the execution wall.

Children, Art thinks, pulled out of sleep, grab their toys and hold on to them. Even as, especially as, the guns roar.

An irrational image comes to him: a stuffed elephant. A childhood toy he always slept with. It had one button eye. It was stained with vomit, with urine, with all the various childhood effluvia, and it smelled of all of them. His mother had sneaked it away in his sleep and replaced it with a new elephant with two eyes and a pristine aroma, and when Art woke up he thanked her for the new elephant and then found and retrieved the old one from the trash.

Arthur Keller hears his own heart break.

He switches his gaze to the adult victims.

Some are in pajamasexpensive silk pajamas and negligeessome in T-shirts. Two of them, a man and a woman, are nakedas if they had been grabbed from a postcoital sleeping embrace. What once had been love, Art thinks, is now naked obscenity.

One body lies alone along the opposite wall. An old man, the head of the family. Probably shot last, Art thinks. Forced to watch his family killed, and then dispatched himself. Mercifully? Art wonders. Was it some sort of sick mercy? But then he sees the old mans hands. His fingernails have been ripped out, then the fingers chopped off. His mouth is still open in a frozen scream and Art can see the fingers sticking to his tongue.

Meaning that they thought someone in his family was a dedo, a fingeran informer.

Because I led them to believe that.

God forgive me.

He searches through the bodies until he finds the one hes looking for.

When he does, his stomach lurches and he has to fight back the vomit in his throat because the young mans face has been peeled like a banana; the strips of flesh hang obscenely from his neck. Art hopes that they did this after they shot him, but he knows better.

The bottom half of his skull has been blown off.

They shot him in the mouth.

Traitors get shot in the back of the head, informers in the mouth.

They thought it was him.

Which was exactly what you wanted them to think, Art tells himself. Face itit worked just the way you planned.

But I never envisioned this, he thinks. I never thought theyd do this.

There must have been servants, Art says. Workers.

The police have already checked the workers quarters.

Gone, one of the cops says.

Disappeared. Vanished.

He forces himself to look at the bodies again.

Its my fault, Art thinks.

I brought this on these people.

Im sorry, Art thinks. I am so, so sorry. Bending over the mother and child, Art makes the sign of the cross and whispers, In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.

El poder del perro, he hears one of the Mexican cops murmur.

The power of the dog.

Chapter One

The Men from Sinaloa

Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and wild,

The seat of desolation, void of light,

Save what the glimmering of these livid flames

Casts pale and dreadful?

John Milton, ParadiseLost

Badiraguato District

State of Sinaloa

Mexico , 1975

The poppies burn.

Red blossoms, red flames.

Only in hell, Art Keller thinks, do flowers bloom fire.

Art sits on a ridge above the burning valley. Looking down is like peering into a steaming soup bowlhe cant see clearly through the smoke, but what he can make out is a scene from hell.

Hieronymus Bosch does the War on Drugs.