Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20)(10)
“To the Sinaloa cartel,” Sandburg said, “Abriella has become larger than life. They don’t care what her real history is or how many innocent people she slaughtered, right? They don’t care that she was a psychopath. This image is everywhere: on T-shirts, on posters, on the sides of buildings in Sinaloa. It’s even printed on shipments of heroin and fentanyl that have been seized as far north as Maine.”
“Where did the photo come from?” Nate asked.
Sandburg shrugged. “It was on Pedro Infante’s phone.” Infante had been a member of the Wolf Pack and he’d also died that day. “The Bureau digitized it for a press release and the cartel took it and ran with it. No one in the agency thought ahead that it might become a symbol. How do you anticipate these things?”
Nate waited for more.
“Now, listen,” Sandburg said as he reached around the computer and clicked on another file. The RV reverberated with a fast, tinny Spanish-language song filled with accordions and tuba squawks.
On the monitor a chubby young man with thin facial hair, a black cowboy hat, and a heavy gold rapper chain carrying an AK-47 pendant gestured wildly at the camera. The lyric-heavy song wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but it was certainly not to Nate’s taste.
While the performer sang, special-effect machine gun rounds stitched across the screen, as well as red gouts of blood. Crime scene photographs flashed by of mutilated roadside corpses and hooded bodies hung from a bridge. Nate couldn’t understand the lyrics, but he noted that the singer wore an Abriella T-shirt under his leather vest and the same image took over the screen at the end of the music video.
“It’s called ‘The Bloody Ballad of Abriella,’?” Sandburg said. “Are you familiar with narcocorridos?”
“Yes.”
Sandburg continued on as if Nate hadn’t answered in the affirmative. “Narcocorridos are folk songs about notorious criminals,” he said. “They’re officially banned on Mexican radio and television, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t wildly popular. Drug lords hire songwriters to sing about them, and plenty of gangsters on this side of the border listen to them. The songs get more violent and graphic all the time, just like the cartels get more violent. This one, ‘The Bloody Ballad of Abriella,’ is the most popular narcocorrido in Mexico, SoCal, and Arizona right now.”
“Okay,” Nate said, waiting for more.
“Do you understand Spanish?” Sandburg asked.
“Some. Not much.”
“I know just enough to be dangerous myself, but I asked a buddy of mine in the Bureau to translate a couple of lines I think you’ll find interesting.”
As Sandburg dug out a piece of paper from his shirt pocket, Nate braced himself.
Sandburg read:
She ventured north into the white gringo mountains and the snow
Avenging her people with a goat’s horn and fire
She was a deadly angel, our Abriella
Until she was tricked and tracked down by a gringo like a dog
Who tore off her beautiful limbs and fed them to his hawks
This is the bloody ballad of our lovely and dangerous Abriella.
“They refer to machine guns as ‘goats’ horns,’?” Sandburg said. “Don’t ask me why. Anyway, you’re famous, and not in a good way. I think we both know what happens to guys who get this kind of famous within a cartel. They don’t last very long. There are known homicides down there where the songwriters of narcocorridos themselves get whacked by rival drug lords. But when you’re the actual villain in one of them—watch out.”
“Where did they get that version of what happened?” Nate asked through gritted teeth. “We both know it wasn’t like that.”
Sandburg shrugged. “They probably went with the narrative that cast Abriella in the best light and the villain with his hawks in the worst. Who knows? But it’s too late to put that genie back in the bottle.”
Nate took a long breath and held it.
Sandburg said, “I guess this is what can happen when a guy thinks he’s somebody special and he can take justice into his own hands.”
Nate said, “Now I get it. I know why you’re here. It’s not to warn me. It’s so you can look me in the eye and tell me I’m a target. Joe said you were a true believer. You’re so FBI you shit special agent turds. You think armed feds like yourself should run the world.”
Sandburg grinned and confirmed everything Nate had just said by doing so. “They may send another hit team like the Wolf Pack,” Sandburg said. “Or they may just send one guy. Or maybe the cartel will just put the word out that there’s a big reward for the pistolero who brings them your head. It might be like one of those old Western movies where the cocky kid comes to town to knock off the old gunslinger. Who knows?”
He leaned forward on the table and glared at Nate. “All I know is that you had better keep your head on a swivel. You won’t know who they send or when they’ll show up. But you can count on the fact that they’ll want revenge on the man who tricked their Abriella and fed her to his hawks, even if that never happened. They’re violent and depraved—but they’re also smart. They want to send a message that anyone who fucks with their people gets wiped out. It’s good for morale and it’s good for business. Fentanyl distribution is a multibillion-dollar industry. They don’t want anybody messing that up.