The Second Saladin Read online

  THE CRITICS HAIL

  STEPHEN HUNTER’S PREVIOUS BESTSELLERS

  BLACK LIGHT

  “BLACK LIGHT’S ACTION SCENES PLAY LIKE A MOVIE, THE PLOT IS INTRIGUING AND THE WRITING IS TOP-NOTCH. NOBODY WRITES ACTION BETTER THAN STEPHEN HUNTER.”

  —Phillip Margolin

  “FILLED WITH DETAIL, CLEVER PLOTTING, SUSPENSE AND A HUNT TO THE DEATH THAT LEAVES THE READER DRY-MOUTHED WITH TENSION. Hunter knows his guns, and he writes about them with a precision that holds the attention of even a fervent anti-gun supporter.”

  —The Orlando Sentinel

  “CALL THIS ONE A MAN’S THRILLER.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “ONE OF THE MOST SKILLED HANDS IN THE THRILLER BUSINESS. The plot is fast-paced, well-constructed and builds to a pulse-pounding night ambush … it should seal his reputation as an author who not only can write bestselling thrillers, but write them exceedingly well.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “HUNTER IS ONCE AGAIN AT THE TOP OF THE GENRE’S FORM … THE BEST STRAIGHT-UP THRILLER WRITER AT WORK TODAY.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “ANOTHER OUTSTANDING, PAGE-TURNING, PULSE-POUNDING READ … the suspense in Black Light is a killer … Hunter has created powerful criminal characters.”

  —Houston Chronicle

  “A GREAT READ … the plot is as stealthy as a true sniper.”

  —Richard Marcinko

  “GREAT WRITING, FASCINATING CHARACTERS, AND HAIR-TRIGGER SUSPENSE … WILL KEEP YOU UP ALL NIGHT UNTIL YOU’RE THROUGH WITH IT.”

  —Nelson DeMille

  “[HUNTER has] done for the rifle what Tom Clancy did for the nuclear submarine.”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  DIRTY WHITE BOYS

  “AN EXHILARATING CRIME NOVEL … THERE IS NO PLACE TO RUN FOR COVER FROM THIS AUTHOR’S PROSE … thrilling, in the manner of the ancient storytellers, with battles fierce enough for a war and characters crazy enough to fight them to the death.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “A STORY THAT GRABS YOU ALMOST BY THE THROAT … AND NEVER SLACKENS ITS HOLD.”

  —The Denver Post

  “EDGE-OF-THE-SEAT EXCITING AND PALPABLY TOUCHING … you take away from this book a marvelous sense of human texture. The heroes have crippling weaknesses. The villains have true redeeming virtues.”

  —The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

  “AN ADVENTURE BOTH VICIOUS AND POIGNANT.”

  —Winston-Salem Journal

  “SPEND A DAY WITH DIRTY WHITE BOYS AND YOU’LL BE COMPARING ALL OTHER THRILLER WRITERS TO STEPHEN HUNTER.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  Also by Stephen Hunter

  FICTION

  Time to Hunt

  Black Light

  Dirty White Boys

  Point of Impact

  The Day Before Midnight

  Tapestry of Spies

  The Master Sniper

  Hot Springs

  Pale Horse Coming

  NONFICTION

  Violent Screen: A Critic’s 13 Years

  on the Front Lines of Movie Mayhem

  table of contents

  Cover

  Other Books by this Author

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For Lucy

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The author would like to thank a great many friends for their assistance in the preparation of this manuscript. A. Michael Hill and Joseph Fanzone, Jr., were especially generous with time and good ideas. The others were Charles R. Hazard, Jack Dawson, Wayne J. Henkel, Richard C. Hageman, Timothy Hunter, Virginia Hunter, Tom and Bonnie Hasler, Allen H. Peacock, Nick Yengich, Lenne P. Miller, and David Petzal. My editor, Maria Guarnaschelli, provided, as usual, extraordinary counsel; so did my agent, Victoria Gould Pryor. My wife, Lucy, to whom the book is dedicated, did all the crap work which enabled me to write every night; for that alone she deserves a medal; for putting up with me she deserves a good deal more. And thanks also to the three Bread Loaf friends—Anne Eastman, Page Edwards, and Steve Corey—who nursed me through my reading.

  Finally, special thanks to Margaret Kahn, “Khanim,” author of Children of the Jinn and one of few Americans to meet the Kurds on their own terms, for reading and commenting on the manuscript.

  We the suicide fighters,

  heroes of the nation,

  lions of black times

  We shall sacrifice our

  lives and our property

  for the sake

  of liberated Kurdistan.

  We shall wreak vengeance

  upon the many guilty hands

  which sought

  to destroy the Kurds

  And that shall serve

  as a lesson for the

  generations to follow.

  —HYMN OF THE KURDISH FIGHTERS

  Are there really any cowboys left

  in the good old U.S.A.?

  —LACY J. DALTON

  1

  Reynoldo Ramirez, moderately prosperous by the standards of his time and place, imagined himself beyond surprise. He observed the world through calm brown eyes set wide apart in a calm brown face—an Aztec face, an Indian face, a peasant’s face, a gangster’s face, for he was all of them—and nothing of his considerable bulk suggested a capacity for astonishment; or foolishness, for that matter; or mercy. He felt he’d seen most things by now: he’d killed men in fights with knives or fists; he’d been shot twice, stabbed four times; he’d had three wives and eleven children, seven of whom still lived; he’d spent six years in three prisons; and he looked forward at forty-four to a tranquil future, as befitted the owner of El Palacio, a bar and brothel on the Calle de Buenos Aires in the northern Mexican city of Nogales, on the Arizona border.

  Yet, by the Virgin and Her glory, Reynoldo Ramirez was astounded.

  A feeling that the simple rhythms of the world had been profoundly upset crept through him as he sat with his closest associate, the ever-smiling Oscar Meza, at their usual Number 1 table well back from the bar at El Palacio. Yet he allowed no sign of concern to disturb the surface of his face as he regar
ded the man who now stood before him.

  The man was American. Or again, was he? He stood in blue jeans, impatiently, his face sealed off behind sunglasses. He looked immensely muscular. He was tan and hawk-nosed. And he had something quite foreign to the usual pawing, grabbing, yakking, farting gringo: he had dignity, which Ramirez prized most in this world, having worked so assiduously to fashion his own.

  “Why not just walk up the street and go through the gate?” asked Oscar Meza in English. It was Oscar’s job to handle this sort of negotiation. “A simple matter. It’s done ten thousand times a day. Then you are there, eh? In wonderful America. Why trouble us with illegal proposals?” Oscar turned to smile at Ramirez.

  “Why not just answer my question?” said the American—or the maybe-American.

  The maybe-American was tall too, and his hair was blondish, light from the bright sun; and though Ramirez could not see them, he gauged the eyes, from the skin coloring, to be blue.

  Yellow hair and blue eyes: what could be more American?

  “It’s a dangerous trip,” said Oscar, “this trip you propose. It would cost much money.”

  “I have money.”

  “You are a rich man? Why, I wonder, would a rich man—”

  “Just talk the business.”

  Stung, Oscar recoiled. He had merely been sociable. Oscar always tried to be sociable.

  “All right then. Three hundred U.S., cash. No credit cards—” Oscar turned, pleased with his joke, and smiled at Reynoldo. “Two hundred now. Then one hundred tomorrow morning when you are in Los Estados safe and sound.”

  “A boy said it would be one hundred.”

  “Boys lie,” said Oscar Meza. “It’s a rule. When I was a boy I lied. All the time, about everything.” He laughed again. “Forget what this boy said.”

  No flicker crossed the maybe-American’s face.

  “I think you are not happy,” said Oscar Meza. “We want you to be happy. Sit down. Look, have a drink, get a woman—there are some pretty ones here and not too expensive, although you say you are a rich man. Think it over. You must learn to relax. We want you to be happy. We can work something out.”

  Behind his glasses the man remained impassive.

  “I want a guarantee.”

  “Life is too short for guarantees,” Oscar said. “Maybe we ought to make it four hundred, five hundred, a thousand? All this talking is making me weary. I cannot guarantee what I cannot control and I cannot control fate.”

  “A guarantee,” said the man.

  “I said, no guarantees. Don’t you hear so good, mister?”

  Ramirez at last spoke.

  “Once every twenty nights out, they get you, mister. That’s a law. You may go thirty-eight nights clean, then they get you twice. Or they may get you twice, then you go thirty-eight. But one out of twenty. I can’t control it. God himself, the Holy Father, He cannot control it. It’s the law.”

  Oscar said, “You listen good, mister. It’s the true law.”

  “Send this stupid man away,” the man said to Ramirez. “He makes me want to hurt him.”

  “I’ll hurt you, mister,” Oscar said. “I’ll cut you up damn quick.”

  “No,” Ramirez said. “Go away, Oscar. Get me another Carta Blanca.”

  Oscar scurried off.

  “He’s a stupid man,” said Ramirez. “But useful in certain things. Now. Say your case.”

  “You go a special way. There’s a special way you can go. High, in the mountains. The direction from here is west. A road to a mine which is old and no longer used gets you there. Is this not right?”

  The maybe-American spoke an almost-English. It was passable but fractured. Even Ramirez could pick out the occasional discordant phrase.

  Ramirez looked at him coldly.

  “You go this route,” the man continued. “Once, maybe twice a year, depending. Depending on what? Depending on the moon, which must be down. And depending on the drugs, which you take across to the Huerra family in Mexico City for delivery to certain American groups. You are paid five thousand American dollars each trip. And the last time the Huerras gave you some extra because it went so nice. And I hear it said you don’t give one dollar to the priests of your church, because you are a greedy man.”

  Ramirez stared at him. He had known such a moment would one day come. A stranger, with information enough to kill him or own him forever. It could only mean the Huerras were done with him and had sold him out, or that the police had finally—

  “The last run was January sixteenth,” the man said. “And the next one will be tonight, moon or no moon, and that’s the true law.”

  Ramirez fought his own breathing.

  “Who sent you?”

  “Nobody sent me.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I have friends.”

  “Important men?”

  “Very important. Very knowledgeable in certain areas.”

  “You should have come to me and explained. You are a special man. I can see this now.”

  The man said nothing.

  “You better watch yourself, though. Somebody might put a bullet in your head.”

  “Sure, okay; somebody might. And then somebody might come looking for him and put a bullet in his head too.”

  Ramirez struggled to take stock. The man had not had anything to drink, he was not talking wildly, he was not a crazy man. He had much coolness, much presence. He was a man Ramirez could respect. You wouldn’t fool him too easily. He wouldn’t make mistakes. He would make others make the mistakes.

  “All right,” Ramirez said. “But it will cost you more. The distance is a factor, the increased risk, the danger to my way of doing business. This is no easy thing—it’s not running illegals into Los Estados. You want to go the guaranteed way, you got to pay for it. Or go someplace else, to some man who’ll cut your throat in the desert.”

  “Nobody cuts my throat. How much?”

  “A thousand. Half now, half later.”

  “You are a thief as well as anything else.”

  “I am a man of business. Come on, damn you, pay up or go someplace else. I’m done with talking.”

  “As God wills it.” He handed over the money, counting out the bills.

  “Out back, at eleven. Beyond the sewer there’s a small shop called La Argentina. Wait behind it in the yard with the trucks. A van will come. You’ll be in Arizona tomorrow. Pay the man in America, or he’ll give you to the Border Patrol.”

  The man nodded.

  “If nothing goes wrong,” he said.

  “Nothing will go wrong. I’ll drive the damned truck myself.”

  The man nodded again, and then turned and left.

  Oscar returned.

  “A gringo pig,” he said. “I’d like to cut him up.”

  Ramirez would have liked to have seen Oscar try to cut the man up. But he said nothing. He wiped his brow with a handkerchief scented with persimmon, took a sip from the new glass of Carta Blanca Oscar had brought him, and looked about.

  “Did you notice?” he said to Oscar. “Even the whores left him alone.”

  But now at least he thought he knew why, and he guessed that tonight the man would have with him enough cocaine for all the noses in America.

  The tall man crouched in the yard behind the small shop called La Argentina. The odor of human waste from the open sewer in a gully next to El Palacio was disagreeable and thick. He could hear the music the Mexicans like, all guitars and vibration. He could see poor Mexican men gathering in the pools of light along the cobbled street that curved up the hill behind him. The few minutes passed and a drunk and a whore wandered into the yard and came to rest not far from him. Their conversation, in English and Pidgin Spanish, was all of money. The act of sex that followed lasted but seconds.

  The man listened to it dispassionately, the two rutting against the side of the shop, in the dim light of half a moon. There was a swift cry and they were done and then another argument. Finally a
deal was struck. Contemptuously, the woman strode away.

  “Whore!” the man called, as though he’d just learned it. Then he too left the yard.

  A truck pulled into the yard; its lights flashed twice.

  “Hey! Where are you?” called the fat Mexican.

  The man waited, watching.

  “Damn you. Tall one. Gringo. Where are you, damn you?”

  At last he stepped out.

  “Here.”

  “Jesus Mary, you made me jump. Make some noise next time.”

  “Get on with it.”

  “In back. There are others. Poor men, looking for work with Tio Sam.”

  “Others?”

  “Just don’t bother them. They know nothing of you and care nothing.”

  The man shook his head.

  “Two hours now,” Ramirez said. “Longer, because of the special route. Bad roads, much climbing. But it will go fine. Just don’t make no trouble.”

  The tall man spat. He climbed into the back of the truck.

  “No policemen,” he warned.

  The truck crawled up the dark and twisting roads through west Nogales. The shacks began to separate, giving way to wider spaces and the vehicle moved out of the edge of the city, into rough scrub country. Then it began to climb slowly and after a while the road became a track, jagged and brutal.

  Ramirez had watched this progress many times; it did not interest him by now. He was thinking of the man in the back. Yes, the man had had a bundle with him, a pack of some sort. It could carry twenty pounds of cocaine. Twenty pounds? Close to a million dollars’ worth. Ramirez reached inside his jacket and touched the butt of a Colt Python 357 magnum in blue steel, his favorite pistol.

  Jesus Mary, it would be so simple.

  The tall man comes out high in the mountains, dazed, probably trembling with the chill. He blinks, shivering. Perhaps he turns. Ramirez lifts the pistol, already cocked, and fires once into the center of the body. Then he’d go into the business himself: no more errand boy for the Huerras. He had the contacts too; he knew the people in Tucson.