There was plenty more he wanted to add. Comments about young people, about political movements, even about females in general. After a year in his post, forced behavior was finally starting to become a habit.
He bit his tongue.
“Probably in the cheap seats,” Reiff said. “Might be tough to get much of a view of things.”
“Which is why we have a backup in position,” Rowe said. Her tone indicated no small amount of disdain, as if she didn’t like being challenged. “John Farkus is there as well. He will be looking on from seats with a high vantage point.”
“Basically,” Vance said, fast growing weary of the conversation, “she’s our ears and he’s our eyes.” Lifting his chin a few inches toward the tech in the corner, he said, “Speaking of which, how are we coming over there? This thing is set to go live in just a few minutes.”
If the disjointed feed they were receiving was all that came through, they would make do. It wasn’t like it was the first time he’d had to deal with such things.
These were third world countries, after all.
At the same time, if he could survive the ordeal without getting motion sickness, that would be a good thing as well.
Raising a single finger behind him, the tech said nothing. From his stool, all that was visible was his back, a thin trail of brown hair streaming down from the base of his skull.
If Vance had his way, removing the ponytail would have been a condition of hiring. Just like in the good old days, every male would wear their hair high and tight, as he did.
Ponytails would be the only accepted look for females.
Like a great many things, though, Vance had learned to loosen his grip on accepted norms over the years. Trying to classify someone by their haircut simply wasn’t acceptable any longer.
The eyebrow ring the young man wore was a different story entirely, something he was fast trying to reach a solution on.
The thought rested at the front of his mind as the tech whirled around. Lifting his feet from the floor, he used the swivel chair to turn back and face them.
A satisfied look was on his features.
“All clear, we are a go.”
Chapter Three
Normally the spot would be reserved for the home goal. It would have a metal structure stretched ten yards wide across it, a net draped over it. A series of lines would be scrawled on the grass, demarcating the end line and goalie box.
Bouncing around in front of it would be a long and wiry man with padded gloves, ready to keep any opposition at bay.
Tonight, the space was covered with an impromptu stage. Screwed together with 4x4’s and sheets of plywood, it stood five feet off the ground. Ten yards on either edge, a red carpet covered the top surface. A skirt of yellow, red, and blue – the Venezuelan flag colors – was wrapped around the outside of it.
Beefy men in dark suits were spaced every few feet around it, patrolling the empty piece of grass that separated the stage from the crowd outside.
In the center of the stage was a single podium, a pair of microphones extended straight up from it. On the corners sat banks of speakers more than three feet in height.
A single barren flagpole rested beside the podium.
Just a few steps from the staircase leading up to the stage stood Edgar Belmonte. Tucked into the corner of the stadium, the angle was poor for seeing the full expanse of the crowd on the field, though he had a clear view of the bleachers rising tall on every side.
Exactly as he and Ramon had discussed earlier, the sixteen minutes had been more than enough to fill in any remaining holes.
Not a single empty seat could be seen, the assemblage lit up by the powerful banks of lights lining the top of the stadium.
It was perfect.
“You sure about this?” Giselle Ruiz asked. Standing just a few inches from his shoulder, she had to practically yell to be heard.
On their previous campaign stops, they had approached events as if they were concerts. They had asked someone to serve as a master of ceremonies for the evening. That person had been in charge of keeping the crowd excited, whetting their appetite until Belmonte took the stage.
A few times, they had even used opening acts. Local officials or influential people from the party, anybody that could lend a kind word and a bit of credibility to the proceedings.
Tonight, such an approach had been abandoned.
There would be no sharing the stage. No asking the crowd’s excitement to ebb and crest over the course of many hours.
This evening was about Belmonte. Everything before had been a prelude, building name recognition.
“Absolutely,” Belmonte replied. Tucking his chin to his shoulder, he asked, “Do you have it?”
Ruiz kept her gaze out to the crowd, a collective buzz seeming to well up from the throng of people before them. Extending one arm his direction, she passed a simple plastic sack into his hand.
There was no outward reaction from Belmonte as he accepted it. There wasn’t even the need to open the top and inspect the contents.
He already knew exactly what was there. Two simple items, both procured the day before, carbon copies to the ones they had used for a practice run that very afternoon.
“Buena Suerte,” Ruiz said, just barely loud enough to be heard.
Belmonte didn’t bother to respond. They were well past the point of believing in luck. Instead, he pulled back the cuff of his dress shirt and checked his watch.
It was time.
Chapter Four
There was definitely an energy to the crowd. Even while watching from a conference room three thousand miles away, that much was obvious.
Not that Charles Vance really thought much of it. In his forty-five years, he’d been involved in some capacity with hundreds of political campaigns. Starting with his own father’s bid for sheriff in small-town Iowa thirty years prior, the list had grown to span multiple countries on multiple continents.
In that time, he’d seen virtually every possible permutation and compilation of things that a campaign could put together. He’d seen town hall meetings on street corners and heard stump speeches in empty airport hangars.
He’d even seen more than a few stadium events like the one he was now staring at.
And what every last one of them seemed to have in common was energy. Nobody that had ever run for office thought they were going to lose. In fact, many believed their election was a virtual lock.
So certain of it were many of them, they were able to impart that same level of expectancy to those gathered around.
Some would call such a thing optimism.
Vance preferred the term naivete.
Reclined in his high-backed chair, the emotion of the crowd was almost palpable. Broadcast through the camera hidden in the frame of John Farkus’s glasses, the masses were spread across the opposite wall.
Not that it really registered with Vance. Energy meant nothing. Energy merely meant that their decision to stay late and monitor the event was vindicated.
Anything less, and he would have been angry he was missing the Celtics game at home again.
“So what are expecting from this tonight?” Peter Reiff asked.
Vance cocked an eyebrow his way before looking over to Hannah Rowe, waiting for her to interject. A moment later, she did just that.
“Merely monitoring,” Rowe said. “Right now Salazar still holds the lead, but the gap is starting to narrow. If Belmonte’s going to make a move in time for the election, we expect it will have to happen soon.”
Like a spectator in a racket sport, Vance shifted his focus across the table to Reiff and Andrews.
Under his watch, the entirety of South America was split into thirds. Each of the three people before him was tasked with overseeing one of those subsections, all reporting directly to him, who in turn reported to the Director.
From there, it was just a quick call across the Potomac to the White House.
Much higher up the food chain th
an Vance would have ever imagined, though he’d be lying if he said he didn’t savor it every day of his life.
The division of the continent had nothing to do with size or even location, but rather importance level to the agency. Brazil might have been massive compared to the other nations present, but it would never rise to the level of Colombia as far as national interests were concerned.
At the moment, Venezuela was not at the top of the list, but it was rising fast.
Similarly situated to Vance in the pecking order, just a few rungs from the top, if one wanted to think of it in such a way.
“Does the Agency have a particular favorite at this time?” Reiff asked.
Having assigned Venezuela to Rowe long before, Vance was not surprised at the questions being fired her way. Had expected them, even.
“Not yet,” Rowe said, “given that right now, Belmonte is still kind of feeling his way forward. He hasn’t really taken a stance on any of the major issues yet, just trying to build a platform and get his name out there.”
“Trade? Military? Terrorism?” Andrews asked.
Rowe gave a quick turn of the head. Her ponytail twisted to either side behind her.
“So far he’s stumped for education and better food access. Neither one amounts to much for us-“
“But in Venezuela, they are paramount,” Vance finished for her.
Even with so little information about Belmonte, it would be hard to imagine him not being an infinitely preferable option to Salazar. As the sitting president, the man had been in office for five and a half years now.
No less than five of those had been spent in complete and utter disarray. The value of their currency had plummeted, crime and poverty rates had risen exponentially. Graduation and birth rates were both sliding to their lowest levels in two decades.
As it currently stood, people had been handed identification numbers, their ability to do something as simple as go to the market dictated by the last digit on the number they were given.
To say social revolt was on the horizon might be an overstatement, but not by much. The country was in need of a change. But as was the case in so many instances like it, the question was whether or not they would be able to recognize that for themselves.
And for the people seated in the room, the question was if such a change would align with their own interests.
On the far end of their huddle, Reiff turned toward the screen. The view from Farkus showed some movement in the stadium corner, the proceedings appearing ready to begin.
“What about Belmonte personally? Anything of note?”
“Nothing we’d be interested in,” Rowe said. “Locally born, locally educated, now a local businessman. Basic bootstraps case, a guy trying to get his homeland turned around.”
The choice of words was curious, enough to bring a smirk to Vance’s face.
Just like the stadium event he was now staring at, such rhetoric also seemed to always accompany campaign events.
And for some reason, no matter how many times the crowds heard the same tired lines, they always seemed to eat it up.
Chapter Five
The night air was warm and moist. Being so close to the equator, rare was the evening when that wasn’t the case, even in April. Despite it being now well after nine o’clock in the evening, the temperature still hovered close to eighty. The humidity was even higher than that.
Coupled with the intense heat of the spotlights aimed directly down at him, Edgar Belmonte’s body was filmed in sweat. He could feel the cotton of his undershirt clinging to his back.
Even sense droplets of sweat running the length of his hamstrings.
A bright veneer of moisture covered his forehead. Rivulets ran down over his brows, burning his eyes as he stood at the lectern.
The taste of salt was fresh on his lips.
Not once did he dare do so much as raise a hand to wipe it away. To do so would insinuate discomfort, something he refused to allow.
Little by little, he had spent the preceding months getting his name out there. He had started in small pockets, building trust, sitting and having direct conversations.
This was now his chance to launch forward. To take his candidacy to the next level. To let people know they could put their trust in a man that would sit on their couch and listen one day, then go out and advocate to the masses on their behalf the next.
The first twenty minutes of his speech had gone exactly as planned. The crowd had responded where and how it was supposed to.
When he made a joke to open things, a chorus of chuckles had met his ears. When he spoke of the extreme degradation plaguing their citizens, people had reacted in kind as well.
Now it was time to ramp things up. To start slowly building the energy. To bring everyone to the precipice.
Only then could he pull off what he and Ruiz and Ramon had put together, effectively shoving them over the edge.
And propelling his campaign in a way that had never been seen before.
“So far this evening, we have talked about a number of things,” Belmonte said. “We have discussed the hardships we are all facing. The reality of having to wait until a certain day of the week to get bread or milk. Of what it’s like to wake up and not know when or how we’re going to feed our families.”
Beyond the glare of the bright lights, there was precious little Belmonte could see. Even at that, a few nodding heads were visible.
“We have touched on our education system. How we are failing our children, not putting them in a position to compete in a world that is fast changing around them.”
A murmur of agreement came to him through the darkness. With each word, he could feel his own anticipation rising. More sweat came to his features. His heart rate increased.
“And we even went as far as to mention the rampant crime and poverty that have gripped our society. The one thing we haven’t gotten to yet? How this has happened.”
The sack Giselle Ruiz had handed him was balled on the ground by his feet. Casting a quick glance down at it, Belmonte felt a well of emotion settle in his stomach.
Flicking his gaze over to the barren flagpole beside him, he saw the pair of gleaming hooks affixed to it, waiting to be used.
And again felt another pang stir within.
“I grew up in this country,” Belmonte said. He raised a hand, pointing to the west side of the stadium. “No more than a few miles from where we now stand. When I was a child, we never locked our doors at night. We were never afraid to walk wherever we wanted to.
“We never wanted for a single thing. If we were hungry, we went to the store and got food. Or we stopped at a neighbor’s and asked for it. There was plenty to go around. Nobody was in competition. Everybody was happy to help.”
Lowering his hand back to the podium, he said, “Now, I don’t know about you, but I refuse to believe that all this change has happened here on its own. I cannot fathom that the wonderful, hospitable, beautiful people that I called my friends and neighbors just became this way on their own.
“They were influenced. Little by little, in ways that we didn’t even realize until finally, we found ourselves in this position.
“And who was it that did the influencing?”
A host of random words and phrases floated in. Lobbed from every direction, they were tinged with anger, bitterness, some even a touch of sadness.
Not one was the correct answer. Not that he really expected it to be.
That was what made their plan so beautiful. The only way to truly get everybody behind him was to give them all something they could unite against.
And in order to do that, it had to be something that nobody could disagree with.
Bending at the waist, Belmonte let his question hang. Taking up the sack, he lifted it to the podium. The faint sound of a solid object hitting against wood could be heard as he set it down, the top half of the bag resting in a distorted heap.
Reaching inside, Belmonte grabbed at the hem running along
one side of the item. Keeping the rest wadded into a tight ball, he pulled it free.
Taking just one step, he used the metal clasps and affixed the item to the flagpole before stepping back, allowing gravity to do its job.
By the time he was back to the podium, the square of material had managed to unfurl.
Revealing the stars and stripes of the American flag.
His hope had been that the sight of it would be enough to elicit an immediate reaction. That just seeing it would bring out a cascade of boos. That people would already be in agreement with him.
The fact that such wasn’t the case was alright, though, the crowd seeming more confused than hostile just yet.
Not that that would be a problem. He had already managed to lead the horse to water. Now forcing it to drink would be fairly easy by comparison.
“This,” Belmonte said. Curling his wrist back toward his shoulder, he extended a single finger and jabbed it at the flag. “This is what I believe has caused our downfall. Western culture – specifically, American culture – with their greed and their bullying and their antagonism.
“The Venezuela today isn’t the one we grew up with. It’s the one they want it to be. The one that’s oppressed, that is in need. That can’t fend for itself and needs their help.”
Each word brought a bit more agreement. Assorted other sounds floated in from the crowd, letting it be known they were following him.
Just as he knew they would.
Belmonte slid a hand into the sack before him. His fingers touched on the only other item inside, the source of the heavy sound he’d heard a moment before.
“And it is my solemn vow that if elected your next president, I will bring an end to such influence. I will make sure that Venezuela’s interests are always at the forefront. That our people are the only ones that matter when making decisions.
“And I promise that things like this will not plague us any longer.”
The sound of the crowd grew to a deafening crescendo as Belmonte pulled the metal lighter from the bag. Running his thumb down the gnarled flint on the back, he sparked it to life, taking a step toward the flagpole.
Hellfire: A Suspense Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 4) Page 2
