by Jack Slater
He reached blindly for a glass of water but succeeded only in toppling a whisky tumbler that he’d abandoned on his bedside table some hours before. It shattered against the marble tiles, and shards careened across the floor with all the delicacy of nails scratching on a chalkboard.
“Hell!” he groaned, his voice rusty with disuse.
It wasn’t just the result of a few hours in bed, but because there was no one in this place for him to talk to. The maids barely said a word beyond bowing their heads and scuttling out of sight the moment they had a chance. The guards were mostly unseen – though it wasn’t as if he had any desire to communicate with them anyway.
Finally accepting that he couldn’t simply linger in hungover squalor forever, Carreon rolled over, revealing a face like thunder, dotted with gentle lines indented into the skin courtesy of his bedsheets. His eyelashes came slowly unglued, revealing a world that was at first blurry and indistinct.
Water.
His body’s command wasn’t so much a desire as a necessity. The liquid might at least prevent his stomach, now gargling hot and spitting acid, from unloading itself in an attempt at finding respite.
The one-time narcotics magnate dragged himself upright, leaning gratefully against the wall as his vision slowly clarified. The worst of the night’s excesses still remained: a bottle of champagne now tipped upside down in a silver bucket, smashed glasses, clothes scattered across the floor. He’d even found high-grade cocaine in one of the cabinets downstairs, finely ground and complete with a metal straw. It was probably his own product, too, which made it all the more galling.
Water.
The command repeated itself, the sensation now urging irresistible haste. Carreon bolted out of bed, slowing his flight to the bathroom only enough to avoid the worst clusters of broken glass on the floor. A tiny shard cut him regardless, slicing into the side of his left heel, though not enough to draw more than a mild grunt of discomfort. He left a trail of single bloody footsteps all the way to the sink.
He buried his face in it, sluicing cold water against his face, into his mouth, and drinking greedily from the faucet until he had swallowed all that was physically possible. Only then did he pull the offending needle of glass from his flesh. He did not even particularly mind the pain it caused. It was, at least, a distraction from the vise crushing his skill and the magma threatening to erupt from his stomach.
He didn’t bother showering before leaving the bedroom, only stopping to don a silk shirt and a pair of Bermuda shorts. The previous night’s garments disappeared as he washed, and if he had broken the habit of a lifetime to concern himself with such menial matters, he would have known that all signs of the previous evening’s overindulgence would be gone by the time he returned. As if it had never happened.
The breakfast table was set up in a corner of the terraced courtyard, not far from the pool. It was sheltered from the worst excesses of the sunshine by a canvas umbrella and contained every item he could reasonably desire. The croissants weren’t half bad, he’d learned yesterday. The ham was well-aged, Iberian, and meticulously arranged on a platter with fresh-baked bread. Another contained a variety of fruits, all ripe and freshly cut.
He didn’t touch any of it. Not yet, anyway. His stomach wouldn’t wear it.
The OJ was good, though. Poured straight from a jug nestled in a bed of ice, with just enough bits in it to make it feel premium without getting stuck in his teeth. The way he liked it.
In fact, his drink-befuddled mind belatedly recognized, everything in this place was how he liked it. The wine, the food, the exact setting of the air conditioning, even the firmness of his mattress. It was as though someone had read his mind and attempted to re-create his idea of the perfect home.
Except this wasn’t home.
The realization that someone had gone to the trouble of studying him this closely might have been more troubling if he wasn’t so damned hung over. It still irked him, but in a more untethered way.
A thin glass of orange juice clutched in his meaty palm, Carreon walked into the sunshine for the first time and made his way to the edge of the pool. He closed his eyes and allowed the sun’s rays to wash over his body. For a few seconds at least, he allowed himself to forget where he was, and why.
But not for long.
Because this place was just as much a prison as the one they’d broken him out of. Far more comfortable, there was no denying that, but just as restrictive. He had everything his heart could possibly desire—except the one thing it actually did.
And worse, Fernando Carreon was not a stupid man. He understood the facts of life better than most in Mexico. It was how he had ascended to the top of such a prodigiously dangerous industry. It didn’t take a great leap of imagination to guess why he was being kept in this place.
For now, Grover needed him alive. How long that would last was anyone’s guess. Probably only until his newfound position was secure. And that would be the end for him.
Carreon finished his drink and returned the glass to the breakfast table. He briefly cast his eye over the fare on display, but again decided against sampling any of it. The energy from the sugar was beginning to course into his system with quite positive effects, but he suspected that anything more substantial was likely to provoke a more adverse reaction.
He popped an ice cube into his mouth and sucked on it as a hedge against his mouth going dry as he walked around the gleaming patio. He walked to the very end, where a wall made of glass rose from the stone flooring, up to about waist height. Below that was just sections of brown grass, ripped through by jetting escarpments of stone, steep enough that if one fell while attempting to traverse them, it would probably be the last thing they ever did. It might be possible to pick out a path down the mountainside given enough time, but it would not be easy.
“And go where?” Carreon murmured. He knew as well as anyone how vast these mountains were. After all, so many of his operations were hidden within them. He was probably thirty miles from the nearest settlement, and even then it was likely to be nothing more substantial than a shack or two occupied by a few peasant shepherd families.
Movement naturally attracted his attention. He glanced toward its source, half expecting to see a bird of prey hovering on a thermal, but instead found himself staring at a person, probably two hundred yards down the mountainside, standing on an outcropping of rock.
“Where the hell did you come from?”
Covering his brow with one hand to block the sun from his eyes, Carreon squinted at the shape. It was a man, he decided. Impossible to say how old or tall at this distance, though there was one distinguishing feature.
He was armed. A man has a distinctive shape when he carries a rifle, and this one was no different. His right hand rested higher than the left, which cradled the weapon’s barrel. His right foot was out at a slight angle, and most of his weight seemed to be resting on the other.
The guard stood there a few seconds longer, seeming to return the attention. The moment lasted long enough for the kingpin’s heart to start hammering in his chest, reminding him how long it had been since he’d dared to breathe.
And then he disappeared, like a wraith vanishing into the night. Except whoever this guy was, he did it in broad daylight. One moment he was there, and the next he simply wasn’t, as though he had simply melted into the rock.
Message received, Carreon thought grimly.
He closed his eyes for a second in order to wrestle back control over his nerves. It had been a long time since he was truly relaxed. Since before the Marines arrested him and incarcerated him in Altiplano. And definitely before armed men attacked the prison and brought him here.
Whoever was in control of his life now, it certainly wasn’t him. That was plain. Attempting to escape from this place was a fool’s errand. The villa was situated halfway up the mountain, on a small plateau carved directly out of the rock face. If he turned to his right, he could see the road that led to the bottom of the valley
peeking out from behind the building.
Taking that way out was patently out of the question. It would be wired and guarded and watched, and as far as his vague recollections of the journey up the mountain allowed – damn, he wished he knew then what he knew now – it would take a man hours on foot to make it to the bottom. Far enough for his captors to allow him to tire himself out before they ever bothered to come pick him up.
Or you could go straight down the mountainside, trusting that you would find a safe route and not just fall to your death.
Except now Carreon knew that his captors were watching that, too.
And so it wasn’t fear that Fernando Carreon felt in that moment.
It was abject hopelessness.
He was trapped in his very own Catch-22. If he stayed in this place, then at some point his captors would reach the moment at which he was no longer useful – and then he would die.
Or he could try and escape.
And sure, there was a tiny chance he’d make it out alive. But in reality no greater than that of winning the lottery. And he wouldn’t stake his life on winning a scratch card, so how could he justify an attempt at escape?
Carreon swore and punched the air by his side, hard enough to jar his shoulder. He winced at the resulting jolt of pain and turned abruptly away from the terrace’s edge, no longer wishing to view the endless expanse of freedom that he was unable to access.
He strode back into the villa and stopped dead as he passed by a bedroom doorway that had previously been closed. One of the maids had her cleaning cart pulled just inside the door and was making up the bed.
He stood and watched her for a few seconds, his mind turning faster than it had in some time. Perhaps it was as a result of the adrenaline caused by the glimpse of his watcher. Or maybe it was just his finely-tuned intelligence reasserting itself after several months of enforced inactivity.
Either way, it was immediately plain to him that something was afoot. He had been in this place for almost two full days, and this was the first sign of anything out of the ordinary. There was no reason for this woman to be preparing a second bedroom if he was to be the only guest.
Or captive.
The woman finished with the sheets and leaned over the bed to plump up the pillows. Either she was short-sighted, or simply not paying attention to her surroundings, since she did not notice that she was being observed. It wasn’t until she was finished with her tasks, her cleaning supplies returned to her cart, and she was halfway out the door before she stopped dead, eyes widening at the unexpected blockage in her way.
“What are you doing?” Carreon hissed.
The maid turned, startled, before bowing her head apprehensively. “Just following my instructions, jefe. I don’t know anything more than that. Now please – I must go.”
“You go when I say you can,” he replied firmly, barring her exit with his forearm. “And I’m not done asking. So let’s try that again. What were you doing here?”
“I think not,” came a second voice from behind both of them, this time causing Carreon to flinch.
He spun in search of its source, breath scrabbling for purchase in his throat. “Who the hell are you?”
“Let the woman go,” the voice said.
It belonged to a man dressed in a charcoal gray polo shirt tucked into a pair of khaki pants. As far as Carreon could tell, he wasn’t armed, but judging by his physique, he didn’t really need to be. There was little about his dress or appearance that would immediately occasion alarm if you passed him walking down a sidewalk.
Except that he was wearing a balaclava.
“Not till I get some damn answers,” Carreon said hoarsely, anger for a moment beating back his fear. His arm had somehow come dislodged from the doorframe as he turned, and he shakily replaced it. “Who the hell are you people? And what do you want from me?”
“Let the woman go, and then we can talk. Like men.”
The voice was mocking, but Carreon understood that he was lacking in other options. This man was plainly younger than him, far stronger, and if he had been watching, then so were others. Any defiance would be in vain, and while he could not abide being mocked, he was wise enough not to risk open confrontation when the odds were stacked so greatly against him.
Without turning, he growled, “Go.”
The maid did as she was told, her white-knuckled hands clutching the handle of her cart as she pushed it past him and around the nearest corner. A squeaky wheel provided a backing track for her departure.
And then it was just the two of them.
“Why don’t you take that mask off?” Carreon said. “And we can talk. Like men.”
The man leaned against a nearby wall with studied insouciance. He paused for a few seconds before he opened his mouth. And when he did, he didn’t bother addressing Carreon’s suggestion. “Don’t talk to the staff again. Life could get much less comfortable for you.”
“You need me,” Carreon grunted, jutting out his chin.
The guard shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe not. You’re an option. As long as the costs of retaining you do not exceed the value of keeping you, then yes, we need you. But I suggest you don’t do anything to raise those costs. If I were you, I wouldn’t want to find out.”
The sound of the engine carried a long way in the mountains, though it periodically faded away entirely as it made its way up the steeply winding road, blocked by one outcropping of rock or another. For several minutes, as he lay on a lounge by the pool, condensation forming on a chilled bottle of beer that sat on a table beside him, Carreon thought that it might be coming from a light aircraft in the skies overhead.
Many of them plied their trade in these mountains, ferrying drugs from one remote airstrip to another. It took him several long minutes to recognize it for what it was: a car engine. And if that was the source, then he instantly understood that it had to be close.
Another change.
He almost didn’t bother getting up, assuming they were simply ferrying in supplies. At the rate he was getting through the alcohol in this place, it wasn’t unexpected.
But in the end, he did, his curiosity piqued. The sound of the engine built until it was sufficiently loud to confirm that the source could only be a motor vehicle of some sort – and that it was close.
Carreon followed it across the terrace to a small section of wall that overlooked the courtyard at the entrance to the villa where the road up the mountain ended. He waited there in the night’s semi-darkness. It took another minute or so for the car to reach the villa’s open gate.
It was traveling without lights, he noted immediately, as the tires navigated the gravel driveway with a low, grating crunch. Just one vehicle. But that illuminated little. It was unlikely to be a delivery vehicle, or a changing of the guard, for surely both would require greater strength in numbers.
Then – what?
The driver’s door opened, and a dark silhouette exited. It was undoubtedly male. The shape walked to the back of the car and lingered for a couple of seconds before popping the trunk.
Carreon started to lose interest. He was almost turning away when a low, terrified moan echoed from down below as the silhouette leaned forward and disappeared behind the back of the vehicle.
He froze.
Deciding that it probably was not a good idea to be caught watching this – whatever this was – Fernando Carreon backed away. His heel brushed against a loose stone, which skittered behind him against the terrace. Down below, boots scraped on gravel, and without looking down to confirm whether that signified anything untoward, Carreon fled back to his lounge chair.
It took a few minutes after that, his heart still racing, before things became even fractionally clearer. The trunk thunked shut. Another low moan quivered on the night’s still, humid air. A man’s boots scraped on gravel dragging something, or someone, behind him. Then quiet thuds echoed from within the building. Footsteps that grew closer, and closer, until…
A guard em
erged through the doors.
Like the others, he was dressed in khakis and a charcoal polo shirt. The balaclava, Carreon now understood, came standard. He wondered whether the uniformity of their outfits was intentional, to deprive him of anything familiar to hold on to, but the voice of this one at least sounded like the man who’d spoken to him earlier. The girl cowered behind him, not bound, but her hair drooping down the front and sides of her face.
“Brought you some company.”
He pushed the woman forward, and though the momentum imputed was gentle enough, she toppled forward and landed heavily on the floor, breaking her fall only at the very last moment. The guard glanced down but appeared to lose interest once he determined that she wasn’t badly hurt and returned to the villa.
The girl stayed where she was for several long seconds, and the sound of her quiet weeping started to grate on Carreon’s nerves. And so he spoke with a little more abruptness than he’d intended. “Who the hell are you?”
She looked up. Even in the darkness, her puffy eyes and the well-worn streaks of salt down her cheeks were well apparent. But even so, Fernando Carreon instantly recognized one thing. Whoever she was, his visitor was indecently attractive.
22
“You’re sure?”
Kelly shrugged. “I saw what I saw.”
Trapp let out a short burst of laughter. “You heard her, Nick. You wanna bet she’s wrong?”
Pope shook his head and let out a long, slow breath. “Not really. But damn, who the hell is this guy? The balls on him, you know what I mean?”
He fell silent, and all four of their little group considered what he’d just said. Kelly had gotten lucky. After she and Trapp had bugged the Conway residence, they’d departed in the same truck in which they’d arrived. But shortly after, she’d returned on foot, white wireless headphones in her ears and her hair pulled back into a taut ponytail to allow her to blend in with the street’s many yoga moms. She was only supposed to be checking the recording devices inside the house were transmitting correctly.
