The Triple Frontier

by Marc Cameron

  “You get to the plane,” Matt said. “I’m trying to let Mr. Richter here know we’re worth a hell of a lot more alive than dead.” He scoffed. “Well, most of us.”

  Alma glared. “Matt!”

  “What?” Matt said. “Mr. Richter is a smart man. He said he already knows—”

  Richter’s voice was measured, but deadly quiet. “I also said to keep quiet.”

  Dense as he was, even Matt understood the implication if he continued to speak.

  Richter’s plane turned out to be another Cessna Caravan, this one painted white and red and considerably newer than the one they’d arrived in. It only had seats for eight, not including the cockpit, so several of Richter’s men left the way they’d come, in cars parked somewhere beyond the trees. Only Richter, his tan female companion, and the bald muscle rode in the plane with the prisoners.

  It wasn’t until they were on board that Bo realized that the cargo door where they’d entered had been removed, the space secured only with a cargo net of nylon webbing. Richter and the bald man took seats in the back, next to the open hatch, while the woman sat up front in the right seat of the cockpit. The seat directly across from Richter remained vacant until the pilots began their takeoff roll.

  Richter motioned for Matt to join him with a flick of his ringed fingers.

  “Now we can talk,” he shouted over the wind and engine noise.

  Matt shrugged, then wallowed up out of his seat, bending at the waist to make his way down the aisle. Hands cuffed behind him, he had to brace his hips against the seats for support as he went.

  Bo caught a telltale glance between Richter and the woman up front about the time Matt reached the rear of the airplane. The woman turned and nodded to the pilot, who dipped the plane slightly to the left, causing Matt to lose his balance and stumble. The bald man helped him along, pushing him toward the webbing, which parted the moment Matt leaned against it. He was gone in an instant, disappearing into the darkness before he even had time to scream.

  The plane leveled off, heading northwest and the bald man secured the webbing over the hatch.

  Richter rose from his seat and came forward, stopping next to Bo. He nodded toward the hatch. “I call that a win for all of us,” he said. “That was originally going to be you, Mr. Quinn. Matt was certainly worth more money. I simply liked you more than I liked him.”

  Chapter 14

  Soledad used her pull as a reporter to rent a Piper Navajo—no small feat in the wee hours of the dark morning in a country where most adults ate dinner at nine p.m. and stayed up late. The plane was just large enough to carry everyone. If and when they located Bo, they would have to work out some other form of egress. First things first, Quinn thought, climbing into the low-wing airplane.

  Pete Quinn sat with his head leaning against the window, lost in his own thoughts. Jericho’s daughter, Mattie, was eight, but would forever be the five-year-old girl with dark pigtails and puffy-sleeved dresses in his mind, no matter old she was. To Pete his sons were men. He’d certainly raised them to be. But in his heart, they would surely always be boys.

  And now one of them was out there, hurt and needing help.

  Jericho sat up front, Viscacha’s hand-drawn map on his knee directing the pilot. He’d thought about bringing the big-eared man along with them, if only to keep him from warning Judge Medina. In the end, Quinn decided to leave the talkative man with Soledad’s friend where they’d had their supper. The last time he saw Viscacha, he was drinking beer and eating a milanesa, thankful to be alive after being locked in Pete’s trunk.

  The Piper Navajo made short work of the trip north, arriving as the sun was just starting to come up. The pilot stayed low, skimming the treetops over the yerba mate plantation first. The few outbuildings were quiet and there were no visible vehicles in the large gravel lot at the end of the road that cut through the trees.

  “Shall I land, Señor?” the pilot asked.

  Quinn pressed his face to the window, then turned toward the back of the airplane.

  “What do you think, Dad? No movement. Do we land or check the other location?”

  “We can always come back,” the elder Quinn said. “I say we check out the cattle operation.”

  Quinn gave him a thumbs up, and advised the pilot, who banked back to the right.

  The Medinas’ cattle ranch was an hour’s drive by car through winding jungle roads, but it was less than ten minutes by airplane. Quinn saw the glow of the fire outside the dark building when they were still a half mile out.

  “Heads up,” he said. “Soledad, you should stick with the plane. If things go bad you and the pilot can go for help.”

  She nodded.

  Quinn saw the bodies as the pilot came around in a low pass. Two lay face down beside the house, on either side of the fire. Someone, it looked like a woman, knelt beside a third body some hundred feet from the house, at base of a windmill and water tank. It was difficult to tell, but none of the bodies looked the right size and shape to be Bo. It was some consolation, though a small one with so many dead just lying around.

  “You have the pistol ready?” Quinn asked, looking back at Jacques.

  “Affirmative,” Thibodaux said.

  Miyagi spoke while looking out the window, working out her strategy. She held the long gaucho knife by the sheath. “I will circle behind the plane and approach from the south.”

  “You’re with me, Dad,” Jericho said.

  “Oh,” Pete Quinn said. “You are right about that.”

  * * *

  Justino Medina was behind the wheel of his car, too stunned to weep. Angelica had abandoned him as soon as they arrived, flinging open her door and falling over Jelly’s dead body as if . . . There was no “as if” about it. It was so clear to him now, all of it. Justino knew she had never planned to spend the ransom money with him. He wondered if the ransom note would eventually lead back to him, leaving her with the money and him rotting in prison. It was all for Jelly, a man fifteen years younger than her. The poor bastard was dead now. Justino felt sorry for him. Lucky for Jelly, he was dead. Richter had certainly been the one to kill him. Or that little piece of shit La Pulga. The fire still burned in front of the Medinas’ little house—a place that held at least a few happy memories. Justino would be dead too had they arrived a few minutes earlier.

  He did not even move when the plane landed and shadowed men got out, running toward the house. If The German was coming back to clean up loose ends, that was just fine with Justino. At least he would not have to sit here and watch his wife wail over the body of her handsome young lover.

  Justino hunched forward, wiping away his tears with his shirtsleeve and peering through the windshield. It wasn’t Richter, but someone else, three men, one older, one lean and predatory, the other huge, all moving quickly toward the house. Angelica had yet to see them.

  Justino glanced to his right at her purse. In her haste to be with Jelly she’d left her pistol. Perhaps if he took it to her, she might forgive him for being so dull, and things would return to the way they had been with her serving sándwiches de miga for tea and pretending that she loved only him—before they became entangled with The German.

  The men from the airplane were almost to the house now, trotting.

  Justino reached into his wife’s open purse and snatched up the pistol. He had no plan other than to take it to her so she would see him for the devoted husband that he was.

  A small Asian woman materialized from the shadows as he got out of the car. Not a fighter at heart, he held up both hands to ward her off. He forgot that he was even holding the pistol. The cruel Asian woman reminded him by cutting off his hand.

  He stared down at the pulsing stump, astonished that he felt no pain. He did not see the men as they reached his wife.

  * * *

  Jericho came to a stop twenty feet from the weeping woman. He recognized her as Judge Medina from a photograph Soledad had found on the Misiones Court homepage. Quinn could see both
her hands, but a black pistol lay in the dead man’s fist, forgotten there by whoever had killed him.

  Quinn whistled to get the woman’s attention.

  “Hey!”

  She looked up momentarily, and then bent back over the dead man. His forehead had been shot away, but that didn’t keep her from cradling his face in her hands.

  “I’m looking for some friends of mine,” Quinn said.

  “They are gone,” the judge sobbed, without looking up this time.

  Pete Quinn shot a glance at Jericho. “Gone where?”

  “The German took them,” the woman said, breaking down. “He or that traitor La Pulga will kill them soon, just like he killed my Jelly.”

  “Where?” Jericho said. “Where has he taken them?”

  The judge began to mutter under her breath, swaying maniacally over the dead man. “It would have been so perfect,” she said.

  Pete Quinn lowered his voice. “One of them is my son, ma’am,” he said.

  Now she looked up.

  “Are you Grey?”

  Pete shook his head. “Quinn.”

  “Bo’s father?” She began to cackle. “The most worthless one of all? You and your son may go to hell!”

  She lunged for the gun in Jelly’s fist, earning her a center mass double tap from Thibodaux’s pistol. She pitched forward across her lover’s body.

  Miyagi called out from the house. “We are clear!” She trotted up to him a moment later.

  Quinn scooped up the Beretta look-alike, press-checked to see there was a round in the chamber, put it on safe and then stuffed it in his waistband. He clenched his teeth at the cows in long morning shadows.

  “Let’s get back to the plane and see if Soledad knows who The German is,” he said.

  “I have someone who can help,” Miyagi said, hooking a thumb over her shoulder toward the house. “If he hasn’t bled to death or died from his own stupidity.”

  “Who is it?” Thibodaux asked as they walked toward the house.

  “I believe it’s the judge’s husband,” Miyagi said. She nodded toward a slumped figure with a piece of cloth wrapped around the stump of his wrist. “He was crying when I found him.”

  “Well,” Thibodaux whispered. “You sure as hell know how to console a guy.”

  * * *

  A broken man, Justino Medina proved to be a wealth of knowledge, providing an address to a warehouse on the outskirts of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay where Fernando Richter, a.k.a. The German, had his office and did most of his business. Richter, Medina explained, was a remnant of a society of would-be Aryans who’d immigrated to Paraguay after World War II. The man genuinely believed himself and his blond consort, Violeta, to be the smartest two people in Paraguay, and certainly in the Triple Frontier. He ran guns and drugs and human cargo, and he had police from all three countries in his pocket.

  * * *

  “It was my wife’s crazy idea,” Justino said, sniffing. “I love her completely, so I went along.” He began to sob in earnest. “And then I find out about Jelly . . . I have nothing more to hide.”

  He gave a full confession regarding his part in the kidnapping, naming everyone involved. He even let Soledad record the conversation on her phone.

  Thibodaux shot a look at Miyagi.

  “This poor bastard’s eatin’ the spaghetti.”

  She raised a brow. “Indeed.”

  Chapter 15

  Bo figured he had maybe an hour to live, less than that if The Flea kept it up.

  After dropping Matt King out of his airplane somewhere over the remote jungles of Brazil, Richter had taken them into Paraguay, landing on a small strip along the meandering Monday River. Two black SUVs, which judging from their radios and grill lights did double duty as police vehicles, pulled alongside the plane when it came to a stop. Bo and the others were stuffed inside the back of one of the SUVs, still handcuffed, and the motorcade headed to the northeast toward the sprawling warrens of Ciudad del Este.

  The Flea sat in the front passenger seat, turning every so often to leer back at the prisoners, paying special attention to Alma.

  “Your friend is jaguar bait by now,” he said. “We could have dropped him into the Paraná or the Iguazú, then he would be fish bait.” The little man laughed. “But there is too great a danger that some passing tour boat or barge might have found his decomposing body before the fish ate him up. The jaguars will make a fast meal of him.”

  Alma shivered and turned to look out the window, which only served to urge him on.

  “I wonder if he was alive when he reached the trees.” La Pulga shrugged. “He seemed a man of delicate constitution. I think it more likely he had a heart attack as soon as the wind hit his face.”

  Alma threw her head back and screamed, “Would you just be quiet?”

  “Interesting,” he said. “If you were so fond of him, then why do you take up with your guide?”

  Bo leaned forward. “Hey, Flea! Want me to look around for a phonebook back here so you can see over the dashboard?”

  La Pulga darkened. “You are so amusing,” he said. “Yes, I am short. You are probably not aware of this, but Richter is famous for several things, chiefly, removing the feet and hands of people who owe him money. There are a wide variety of instruments and tools at his warehouse that I am anxious to try.” He turned to study Bo up and down before a wide smile spread across his face. “I think that you and I will be the same height very soon. In fact, I may even be a little taller than you when we are finished.”

  Richter’s SUV peeled off as soon as they reached his two-story warehouse in the outskirts of Ciudad del Este. He and the brown woman went into the front of the building with the bald goon, leaving La Pulga and Tigre to see to the prisoners along with two other men that Bo did not recognize, both with jaguar tattoos on their forearms and each carrying a short-barreled SMG on a single point sling around his neck. Tigre and The Flea tromped up the metal stairs in front of prisoners, while the two jaguar boys brought up the rear.

  Tigre took a key from the pocket of his jeans and opened a large padlock on the metal door at the top of the stairs. Bo’s heart sank when he walked in the room and saw clear plastic sheeting fastened to the floor with black gaffer’s tape. There were metal rings affixed to the far wall and a couple of five gallon buckets to use as makeshift toilets. Kidnapping and human trafficking was nothing new to Fernando Richter.

  Just as La Pulga had promised, a variety of bone saws, machetes, tinsnips, and hoof nippers hung on a peg board beyond the plastic sheeting.

  Tigre and the Jaguar boys secured everyone’s cuffs to the individual metal rings on the far side of the room while La Pulga went to a desk beside the pegboard. He’d obviously been here before and knew his way around.

  He shuffled through the desk a moment, then came back with a narrow metal cylinder the size of a long flashlight. A thick copper wire protruded from the sides of the tube three quarters of the way up, coiling around the last six inches of the device. La Pulga’s thumb rested over a red button in the center of a rubber handle.

  “The inventor of this little machine called it The Cat,” he said. “A strange turn of events. Don’t you think? The Flea, wielding The Cat.” He chuckled at his joke and ran the copper coil along Alma’s thigh, pushing the button.

  She screamed, throwing herself backward at the sudden shock.

  Bo lunged, flailing with his free hand and narrowly missing a handful of La Pulga’s sweater.

  Instead of retreating, The Flea turned The Cat on Bo, driving the coil into his chest. Pinned against the wall with nowhere to go, Bo jumped and twitched like a piece of frying fish. He slumped against his cuffs when La Pulga released the button, exhausted, stifling a whimper. His tooth was on fire again, and to make matters worse, he was sure he’d just cracked a couple more.

  Eva and Alma both screamed.

  Steven stood, holding up his free hand. “Just stop it! My father will pay double, but we all have to leave here alive.”


  “That is funny,” La Pulga said. “Your father has already agreed to Richter’s terms. Eva’s family may be a bit more problematic, but nothing he cannot handle.” He turned to Alma, giving her a quick jolt with the coil. “I will get back to you in a moment, my darling. First things first, though. Mr. Quinn and I have a little appointment.”

  Bo raised his head and gave a weary chuckle. “I thought Richter liked me . . .”

  “He liked you better than Matt,” La Pulga said, nodding for Tigre to unhook Bo from the ring. “Not enough to keep you alive.”

  * * *

  Soledad borrowed a minivan to drive Jericho and the others across the Tancredo Neves Bridge into Brazil, and then the Friendship Bridge from Brazil into Paraguay. Legally, the Americans should have had a visa to enter each country, but Soledad explained that no one would stop them unless they did something stupid to draw attention to themselves.

  “Like launching a raid on a known drug lord and smuggler?” Thibodaux said.

  “Exactly that sort of thing,” Soledad said.

  They reached Richter’s warehouse outside Ciudad del Este an hour and a half after leaving the Medinas’ cattle ranch. They watched as a slender woman in high leather boots stepped outside to retrieve something from one of three black Suburbans parked alongside the concrete building.

  “Yuck,” Thibodaux said. “She looks like she’s spent too long in the roaster.”

  “That must be Violeta,” Pete Quinn said. “Richter’s girlfriend that Justino told us about. Dark skin, bleached blond hair.”

  Soledad gave a low whistle. “She has the body of a twenty-year-old.”

  Thibodaux harrumphed. “She better give it back,” he said, “’cause she’s wrinklin’ it.”

  Violeta took a moment to scan the area outside the warehouse, missed the minivan completely, and then disappeared back inside.

  “How do you plan to do this?” Soledad asked from behind the wheel.

  “Richter’s not expecting us,” Jericho said. “I think I’ll walk up and knock on the front door.”