The Lord of Opium Read Online Free PDF

lemonade. The jefe poured two glasses and used the jug to pin down another corner of the map. “Mm!” he said, taking a drink. “Not as good as pulque , but I promised Celia not to corrupt you.”
    No, you’re only telling me it’s okay to shoot down two hundred forty-five people, thought Matt.
    “What do you think would have happened if El Patrón had let that aircraft escape?” said Cienfuegos. “Next year another jet would have made a ‘mistake,’ and then another and another. Eventually it would have led to war. Many more people would have died.”
    Matt tried to think of a counterargument and failed. “What about Illegals? Are they still trying to cross the border?”
    The jefe grimaced. “Unfortunately, the border itself is a lethal force field, now that it is in lockdown. It gets them before we do. It’s a pity, because we need new workers. The life expectancy of an eejit isn’t long.”
    Matt looked for signs of compassion in the man and found none. Cienfuegos might have been talking about a shortage of Thanksgiving turkeys.
    “Show me the lockdown system, and I’ll try to open it,” said Matt.
    “Not so fast. I haven’t finished,” the jefe cautioned. “The governments of Marijuana, Hash, Tobacco, Meth, Snuff, LSD, and Ecstasy collapsed. They were wide open for invasion, and the most vicious of the drug lords took control. You have to really shine in that area to stand out from the others. He was an African called Glass Eye Dabengwa.”
    “Glass Eye,” murmured Matt. He recognized the name. One of El Patrón’s homework assignments had been to memorize drug contacts, and Africa was one of the major markets. Matt had to update his information constantly because accidents tended to happen, but Glass Eye had been durable. He’d weathered dozens of assassination attempts. Matt had seen him at Benito and Fani’s wedding, and a couple of times later at El Patrón’s parties.
    He was almost a hundred years old and maintained hishealth, as did all drug lords, by raising clones. The truly frightening feature of the man was his ability to stare at someone without blinking. His eyes didn’t seem to need moisture, or perhaps his tear ducts had dried up long before. The whites had turned as yellow as an old crocodile’s.
    The rest of the man was a dusty gray, except for his teeth. They were as strong and white as those of a man of twenty. And they really had come from a man of twenty, because you didn’t need a clone to transplant teeth. Glass Eye Dabengwa found himself a new donor every few years.
    Matt looked at the map with dismay. The combined territories of the defeated drug empires were as large as Opium. “What about the Land of Cocaine? Can we ally ourselves with that?”
    “Not anymore,” Cienfuegos said grimly. “When it became clear that Glass Eye planned to invade Cocaine, the United Nations launched a preemptive strike. They called it Operation Cold Turkey. They firebombed the coca plantations and in the process killed the eejits. Thousands of them. The land of Cocaine is now occupied by UN forces under the direction of Esperanza Mendoza.”
    “Esperanza?” Matt was shocked to his very core. She was María’s mother. She was the one who had saved him in Aztlán and who’d promised to help him. This was her idea of help? But he also knew she was a fanatic. She’d abandoned her own children to follow political beliefs and might well consider killing eejits a small price to pay for stopping the drug trade. That’s no different from El Patrón shooting down a jet plane to avoid a war, he thought.
    He heard doves calling in the palo verde trees and smelled dust raised by horses’ hooves in a corral. He heard men laughing as they played cards under the ramadas. It seemed so peacefuland normal, though of course it wasn’t normal. Opium thrived on the blood of Illegals. But if Esperanza had her way, might she not order everyone killed here, too?
    “It isn’t easy being good, is