The Right Eye of God Read online

  THE RIGHT EYE OF GOD © 2013 by Thorn Bacon

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  While elements in this novel are based on historical events, some details have been altered for dramatic effect. Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication, with the exception of historical elements, either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satiric or historical intent, is coincidental. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of the copyright holders. All rights reserved.

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  Dark Horse Books

  10956 SE Main Street

  Milwaukie, OR 97222

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  Book design by Tina Alessi

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  Author’s Note

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  In Mexico, many people refer to the sun as the right eye of God: El sol es el ojo derecho de dios. This saying is particularly common among desert dwellers, on whom the sun bears down with a fearful gaze.

  Much of the setting of The Right Eye of God takes place in the fierce Chihuahuan Desert, where death is but a blink away if fugitives are unwary.

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  Dedication

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  To Ursula and Glen, as always

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  Preface

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  The war next door between Mexico’s murderous drug cartels and her courageous former president Felipe Calderón is, many Americans have come to believe, a bloody contest between good and evil.

  Because it is being played out along our border with our neighbor to the south with increasing viciousness and outrage, it has been characterized as a life-and-death struggle for political power and control and the expansion of the immensely lucrative drug trade, which generates wholesale revenues of $49 billion annually for its illicit operators.

  The US Justice Department recognizes the Mexican drug cartels as the greatest organized-crime threat to the United States. The drug cartels, also known as the “Ring of Gold,” mock the authorities by blatantly committing heinous crimes while flaunting their wealth. Cartel leader Ramiro Pozos Gonzalez stood defiantly by his gold-plated AK-47 when he was arrested in September of 2012. The cartels have expanded their enterprises to encompass human trafficking, which includes selling young children as sex slaves. So numerous are the unmarked mass gravesites in the desert that no one knows for sure how many bodies remain undiscovered. The death toll has reached the astonishing conservative figure of nearly 55,000. This number quadruples the combined total of deaths resulting from the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the Iraqi War, and the ongoing fight in Afghanistan.

  There was no secret about the threat to Calderón’s life. He was the first Mexican president who acted strongly to eliminate the narcos and to purge his country of their political influence and the power of their money to buy the cooperation of police, politicians, judges, courts, and highly placed government insiders.

  If the narcos were successful in killing the president in a public demonstration, it is believed by many in Mexico that his death would prove their power was greater than that of the federal government.

  In August of 2012, it was reported that in the early years of his administration, President Felipe Calderón was warned of an assassination plot by the cartels to take down an airplane on which he was scheduled to depart. He took the plane anyway. This is only one of many threats that the brave president received over the course of his six-year term.

  If the cartels were successful, Mexico would become a captive of ruthless criminals free to expand their multibillion-dollar empire, which is fueled by America’s unquenchable thirst for drugs.

  This story is based on verifiable facts, rumors, intriguing predictions, and the testimony of citizens who have talked to journalists about a clever and ruthless attempt to murder the then-president at a favorite public event on Día de los Muertos, the Mexican Day of the Dead.

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  Chapter I

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  Duelos—a shabby little village of screaming light and intense shadow—sat on a few parched acres of bleached Mexican desert. It was one of hundreds of lost, sorrowful, sunbaked communities of a few dozen souls that lay on the gradually ascending plateau of the Sierra Madre frontier. Surrounding it on all sides was the mesquite and sand country that ran in heat and shimmering waves of air to the brown-yellow hills that loomed dry and formidable in the distance.

  There was only one street, a narrow, foot-beaten path that was the natural extension of the untended dirt road crawling in from the west. Flanking Thomas Navarre as he drove his dusty Buick into the street were dreary, crumbling adobe houses. They were hovels, pockmarked, sand blown, grimy—parading in the harsh sunlight the impoverished neglect and apathy of their inhabitants. Here and there, hanging on crooked fences, on broken walls, on sagging clotheslines strung up between sparse wooden poles, were washings of patched coveralls, vestidos, shirts, blouses, and jeans, drab blues and whites and blazing reds and yellows flashing like bright flags flattened in supine defiance.

  Navarre braked and parked next to a weathered jeep in front of a church ruin. It was a squat adobe building running with spider-web cracks, bedizened with dirt and flaking patches of grimy, whitewashed mortar. Sticking up from the flat, peeling roofline was a sun-seared stump, the emblematic crossbar of which was missing. Beyond the church, at the end of the street, a few dying cottonwoods stood motionless near a weathered, crumbling, adobe-brick water well, baking in the yellow glare and heat glaze of the desert.

  He climbed out of the cool interior of the car, bracing himself against the anvil beat of the sun. He was a tall man, just over six feet with a dark complexion, a full head of black hair graying at the temples, a strong, sensitive, but somber face, and one distinguishing mark. It was a thin, two-inch horizontal scar located on his forehead just below his hairline. It lent his features a suggestive accent of mystery. As he straightened, the quiet struck him at once. At half past six in the early evening the village appeared Sabbath stricken. Nothing stirred. No sound, no movement, no shadow of presence came from the three dozen or so adobe shanties squatting flat on the ground on both sides of the street. He took in the closed doors, the sagging, broken windows covered with old rags for curtains, and he absorbed the strange hush. He wiped the shine of perspiration from his face with his pocket handkerchief and was irritated with his unease. Hot though it was with the afternoon sun beating down, there should be some lethargic movement on the air—the cry of an infant, creak of a chair, tinny sound of a water dipper striking the rim of a clay jar. But there was nothing. The village was on guard, suspended, holding its collective breath. But for what? Why deserted? Waiting? Frightened?

  Then, he saw him, the slender, efficient-looking priest, frocked in a dusty black soutane, unbuttoned from collar to knees and revealing beneath it a khaki shirt, trousers, and scuffed boots. He wore the black overgarment negligently as if it were a dust cover. He stared at Navarre for a moment, and then said, in English, “I’m Father Fabian Hebrano, and you’re Thomas Navarre, aren’t you? You asked for me at my church in Chihuahua, and Father Higinio told you where to find me?”

  Before Navarre could answer, the priest said conversationally, as if he were describing how hot the afternoon was, “In the house behind me is the man you came to see. Not a pretty sight. Buried for two, maybe three days. Excavated by a sandstorm yesterday. You must have driven through the tail end of it when you came in. If I hadn’t known him for twenty years, I’m not sure I would have recognized him. I think you’d better look at him.”

  The priest beckoned to Navarre, then stepped aside as Navarre entered
the door of the house where he had been standing.

  “There’s no funeraria here, of course,” Hebrano said. “Just the house of this carpenter. He builds cheap coffins for the dead. When a villager dies, he’s quickly buried. When my roundabout circuit brings me to Duelos, I perform the blessed routine. I didn’t expect to be saying the last rites on this trip for a man I admired. Strange combination of coincidence, eh? De la Garza was brought into the village this morning, I arrived last night, and you show up this afternoon.”

  Navarre reached into his hip pocket, removed his crumpled handkerchief, and blotted his face. “I knew something was wrong,” he said, “when he wasn’t at the church.”

  The room into which Navarre stepped was unfurnished except for a couple of sagging cane-bottom chairs and a sisal-string hammock hanging from a peg on the wall. In the center of the room were two sawhorses upon which planks were laid. On this crude platform, a sheet-covered, cheap wooden coffin rested in the dull red haze emanating from the drawn rag-window curtains, which were suffused with the glare of the outside light. With their coming, a swarthy little man withdrew from an open doorway leading into another room.

  Hebrano signaled Navarre with his eyes. He squeezed his arm with light emphasis. “Don’t say anything you don’t want to be overheard,” he warned softly in English. He placed a checkered bandanna over his nose and pulled the sheet away quickly, then stepped back, his face unreadable.

  Navarre gagged. The sweet, cloying smell of death rose in a wave. Hastily, he wiped his eyes with his handkerchief, then covered his nose and mouth. He started to shout, My God! Look at his throat, but remembered Hebrano’s admonition and clamped his mouth shut.

  The body lay in an inch of lime, and more of it was sprinkled over the face and torso like talcum powder. There was a dent in the skull: a depression from a heavy blow. Clearly visible under the thin film of white caustic powder were deep, jagged rips in the skin and underlying tissue. His jugular had been severed, and the blood that pumped out had drenched the dead man’s torn shirt and pants. His wounds gave his face a ghostly pallor. Circular cigarette burns spotted the face with scorch marks, made before his throat was slashed.

  The man had suffered for hours as he was subjected to glowing tips placed against his skin until it blistered and withered and the blood flowed. It must have been a troublesome routine for whoever had done it, lighting one cigarette after another, smelling the skin crisp and curl, watching the man buck and leap and spasm.

  The desert sand soaked up the blood that drained after they had finished with him and dumped him into his shallow trench. And then the unplanned had happened: the intermittent scouring, hot desert wind blowing fiercely down from the Sierra Madres during this late October season had swept away his grave cover.

  What had they wanted from this man? What had he told them? In the process, had Navarre’s own name been revealed? Navarre felt sick and guilty and angry.

  He felt prickly sweat pop out of the pores in his face and he shut his throat against his revolted stomach. For a moment longer, he stared down at the mutilated body. Rigor mortis had passed. But even with the grit whitening the black hair, even with the faded brown eyes and the face puffy from the death edema and the sun blisters on his skin from when the storm blew away his sandy blanket, there was no doubt about his identity. He was Raldon de la Garza, a man who had made a mistake.

  Navarre had seen enough. He turned and walked out into the blazing sunlight. He took in several deep breaths to clear his head, and then turned as Hebrano motioned him toward the church.

  Navarre nodded and walked across the narrow street to the Buick, where he rolled down the windows to allow outside air to penetrate the stuffy interior. When he turned toward the church, he saw the priest disappear inside and he followed. The priest had removed the flimsy black soutane and was washing his hands in a battered tin basin. He dried them on a stained towel hanging from a wall peg in the vestry, along with a damp, worn canvas water bag, and invited Navarre to sit. The room was a small, bare cubicle located off the nave containing three hard wooden chairs, a scarred table, a rectangular, upright cabinet for clothes, and a disabled wooden sink over which hung an antique iron hand pump. In one corner there was a smoke-stained adobe chimney with a small open hole in which a rusted iron grate once used for cooking rested. The thick old walls of the church shielded the two men from the outside heat; it was almost cool in the room.

  The priest placed a bottle of wine on the table and two clay cups. He cocked an eyebrow at Navarre, who turned his head in negation. He asked for water, and, obligingly, Father Hebrano picked up an empty clay cup, held it under the spout of the iron pump, and clanked the iron handle up and down vigorously. Navarre was surprised when a stream of clear water gushed out, overflowing his cup. He thanked the priest, drank deeply, and commented, “How cold and sweet it is.”

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  Chapter II

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  When Navarre put aside his empty cup, he asked, “When did you see Raldon last? Did he leave a message for me?”

  “I heard from him four days ago,” Hebrano replied. “He called to say he might be late for a meeting he’d arranged with you at the church. And for you to wait. He said if he was more than a day late, then you should contact Lazlo Peñas. He described you, the scar on your forehead, the fact that you look and speak like a Mexican.”

  “You have no idea what he was doing out here?”

  “None. I certainly never expected to find him here . . . dead. I would have been in Chihuahua myself when you arrived, except that I was called down here, to look into some things. Duelos is one of the villages on my annual circuit. I’m a part-time priest for Duelos and sixty other villages like it scattered over seven hundred miles in the Sierras and the foothills.”

  Navarre nodded and glanced at an old black Colt with a long barrel and smooth walnut handle. It rested on the table next to the wine bottle, a formidable presence. It smelled strongly of burnt powder and oil.

  “You’re curious about the pistol?” Hebrano said.

  “Well, it’s not exactly the sort of thing you expect a priest to carry in his satchel with the holy water and the communion wafers.”

  “I always carry it with me when I go into the desert and mountain villages.”

  “Is there something besides the men who tortured Raldon you’re afraid of?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Navarre looked at Hebrano sharply, seeking an answer in the strong, swarthy face of the priest.

  Intelligent brown eyes, amused by Navarre’s scrutiny, were set in sharp features. Straight nose, firm mouth, stubborn chin, high cheekbones spoke of an ancestral lineage more Spanish than Indian. His grizzled hair, strong, work-scarred hands, the straight posture of his muscular shoulders, and a total body expression of discipline and competency added ten years to the age Navarre had guessed him to be when he first saw him step out of the carpenter’s house.

  Hebrano said, “Raldon spoke fondly of you, often. He told me of your friendship when you were both students at the University of Mexico.”

  “Yes, we were as close as brothers then. That was a long time ago.”

  Navarre hesitated for a moment, and then said softly, “He was always reckless as a student. He took his degree in medicine, but never practiced a day. His main interest was diseases of remote historical origins and politics. As a social insider from a wealthy family, he played the dilettante and was privy to financial and political secrets that might have a bearing on national security. He shared information that gave me good headlines for my newspaper. Eventually, he became a reliable informant, an agente encubierto for the federal police.”

  Abruptly, Navarre pushed his chair away from the table and stood over Hebrano, helplessness, frustration, and anger hot in his eyes. “He knew the danger of exposing himself! He was not a fool! But what would take him out here to this miserable, fly-blown patch of dirt?”

  Dropping his shoulders, he turned away from the table and stepp
ed over to the one small, frameless, west-facing window in the vestry. Long ago it had been chiseled out of the thick adobe as an afterthought. In the heat-shimmering distance was the hazy outline of the Sierra Madre foothills. Leaning into the open space with the fading glare of sunlight from outside striking his face, exaggerating the lines and shadows, he looked old and defeated. “Damn him for dying stupidly,” he said. “He had to know he was being watched.” He sighed gustily. “I knew I should never have come back. I knew it. Damn, how I love this land and hate it. Even the ground sighs when you step on it.”

  With an irritated gesture of dismissing his black mood, Navarre returned to his chair at the table. He wiped his face with his damp handkerchief and pulled his sweat-sticky shirt away from his chest. He smiled crookedly at the priest. “I’d forgotten how hot it gets in the desert afternoons. You said Raldon’s body was exposed by the wind. Where was he found?”

  “In a dry riverbed by a dirt farmer early this morning. He hauled the body in his cart to Lupo’s house, where you saw it. Why did you say Raldon had to know he was being watched? And by whom?”

  Navarre dabbed at his face again with his handkerchief. He hesitated, as if troubled by the question. “By some assassins for the Ring of Gold,” he said finally. Patiently he told Hebrano that Raldon de la Garza was responsible for arranging the escape from Mexico of the mistress of a high-ranking drug boss.

  “Maria Montrero,” Navarre said, “told Drug Enforcement Administration people that the assassination of Mexico’s new president, Felipe Calderón, could happen any day. His war on drugs has so infuriated cocaine and marijuana smugglers that they’ve put a high price on his head. They want him dead and they kill anyone who opposes them.

  “They are the new heroes in Mexico. Romantic songs are written about them. They dress like cowboys and drive flashy pickups. They’ve slaughtered more than ten thousand people in the last year. Some estimate the number of murders much higher, fifty thousand or so. Juarez, on the border, has become a war zone. Those who betray the gangs are decapitated and their bloody heads displayed in public. A lot of people believe that if they kill Calderón, his death will prove their power is greater than the government’s.”