Because, though he’d grown far too comfortable in his life these past years, he recalled the tour Valentin had given him when the villa was brand new. There was something about two guns, deftly placed underneath the bed, able to be reached with one arm from a sleeping position on either side.
“I placed them myself,” Valentin had proudly said on that rainy morning, lifting the heavy bed skirt to show the drop brackets.
The kneeling man had been talking all the while. He smacked Navarro across the face, bringing him back to the present, the challenge now cemented in Navarro’s mind. Though it wasn’t hard to do, Navarro made himself cry more, truly weeping.
“Ayeee,” the standing León said, aiming his Glock 19 at Navarro’s torso. “He has no self-respect. Crying like a little bitch.”
“Wait,” Navarro blubbered, putting his left hand out. “Please wait. I know you must kill me; I’m at peace with it. But, in return for your making it fast and painless, I will tell you where I have a store of cash nearby. You two can keep it for yourselves. It’s millions…millions in untraceable American dollars.”
The one with the shotgun narrowed his eyes and stared coldly at Navarro. “You will tell us whether your death is slow or not. I can see to that, pinche.”
Navarro lifted his chin. “You can’t be sure of that. I’ve a bad heart and I may die as soon as you begin torturing me. And then, mi amigo, all your efforts will have been in vain. Because, I can assure you, you will not find that money on your own.”
Again the two Leones exchanged glances. The one with the pistol said something unintelligible, continuing to hold his Glock on Navarro as the one with the shotgun stood to confer.
And that’s when Navarro gripped the weapon.
Seasoned by years of shooting, Navarro recognized the shotgun by touch alone. He and Valentin had practiced with this model years earlier, entranced by its compact size and close-range firepower. The shotgun was made by Serbu, its moniker the Super Shorty. Not much larger than a long revolver, it packed a deathly, close-range wallop with its 12-gauge shotgun shell. Navarro said a three-word prayer that Valentin had left the 2+1 shotgun cocked. He jerked it from its banded mooring, hoping the blast would take both men in the process.
But the man with the pistol had never fully let his guard down. He twitched at the sight of movement, falling away from his shotgun-toting partner. As Navarro unleashed a round whose spread would have definitely taken both men down, the man with the pistol fired, catching the elder mobster in the neck.
The very last thing Navarro saw, providing him with a brief moment of satisfaction, was the León with the shotgun flying backward, spun by the ripping lead shot, his silk shirt dotted by flowers of fatal blood.
Ernesto Navarro, longtime don of Los Soldados, slumped down onto the floor of his villa, dying in a matter of seconds.
Chapter Eighteen
Port Hercule, Monaco
The early evening lights of the tiny principality beckoned Xavier Zambrano as the captain piloted their yacht to its mooring. Xavier enjoyed a cold beer at the bow of the rented yacht, the water below him audible as its gentle swell kissed the bladed centerline. Xavier nodded his thanks at the galley attendant who told him his meal would be ready in fifteen minutes, after which time he would launch into the quartier of Monte Carlo for a night of gambling and debauchery. Glancing to the southwest, seeing the remnants of tangerine light disappearing in the sun’s westward race, Xavier was pleased with his decision to get away. The leisurely cruise from Barcelona had taken a full day, around 240 nautical miles according to the yacht’s Greek captain. Xavier had slept for more than half of it and now felt as refreshed as he had in weeks.
While not the finest yacht he’d ever rented, the 95-foot Farocean Marine provided him adequate comfort, especially since he was traveling alone. But it was the crew that set this cruise apart. The specialty charter company Xavier used exclusively catered their crew to the renter’s tastes; in this instance, they’d sent only the harmless old Greek captain and five beautiful, capable shipmates.
As he stood from the bow’s chaise lounge, the attendant returned, carrying Xavier’s mobile phone. “This was ringing, señor,” she said, allowing her hand to brush his as she handed the phone to him.
Realizing he was now in Monte Carlo’s cellular range, he appraised the number, cocking his eyebrow because his lieutenants knew not to disturb him during his one-week vacation. He’d even given Fausto the week off, sending him back to his hometown of Rubi to attend to his dying mother.
The girl, a galley helper and the lowest ranking of the crew, lingered, eyeing him hungrily as she gnawed on her lower lip. “Señor, would you prefer your meal in the dining saloon or the afterdeck?”
Xavier was still staring at his phone before blinking his thoughts away. The girl, probably no more than twenty, was short and voluptuous. Her face wasn’t incredibly pretty but her body was built like a tempered five-kilo hammer. Pulling in a sharp breath through his nose, Xavier convinced himself to wait for the evening in Monte Carlo to play out. He still had four days of fun ahead and could bed this one all the way back to Barcelona if the mood struck him.
He moved close, touching her chin as he said, “I’ll dine on the afterdeck, my dear. And please see that my dove gray Dolce y Gabbana suit is steamed and ready, and along with it my white McQueen shirt and black Gucci points.”
“Of course.”
“Until later.” He sent her on her way.
Xavier watched her go, waiting for her to look back. When she did, he puckered his lips in a kissing motion, satisfied as she covered her smiling mouth with her hands, racing into the galley to brag to the other girls that he’d paid her significant heed.
He hurriedly swigged the rest of his beer, a damn good German pilsner called Licher, and touched the number that had just called him. When lieutenant number two, Vasco, the scarred sixty-year-old in charge of Contratos, answered, Xavier could tell he was out of breath.
“This better be good, Vasco,” Xavier warned, eyeing his nails and wondering if he should have them done before taking the launch over to Monte Carlo. Perhaps he could have the voluptuous one do it. No, because you’ll end up taking something from her, and that will ruin some of your motivation tonight in the casinos.
“Señor, you know I wouldn’t bother you if it weren’t important,” Vasco said, his voice juddering with barely restrained emotion.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Xavier snapped. “You sound like you just ran wind sprints.”
“Nothing is wrong, señor. Nothing! In fact, all is perfect!”
There was something different about this call. Vasco never yelled.
“Perfect, you say?”
“Claro!”
Xavier blinked, unwilling to believe, after all this time, that it might have finally happened. No…it can’t be.
He gripped the brass rail to steady himself. “Tell me, Vasco…tell me without any preamble.”
“El Voltor, señor…he is gone.” El Voltor is Catalan for “the buzzard”, the code name that had come to represent Navarro.
“Are you certain?”
“Oh…quite, señor. A small amount of collateral damage on our end, but El Voltor, as well as his adjutant, have been brutally dispatched.”
Xavier allowed the news to sink in. When he felt steady again, he padded across the teak deck, surprising the feverishly working women as he entered the galley and retrieved another beer, biting off the cap. He stepped back out into the chill early evening, viewing spangled Monte Carlo as his chest swelled from the shatteringly good news.
“Señor?” Vasco asked for the third time.
“I’m here…just basking in it.”
“It was the help from above that did it, señor.”
“Finally…”
“Should I dispatch payment to the yankee jingoist and the acusador?”
“Absolutely. In fact,” Xavier said, feeling magnanimous, “pay them an extra ten percent as a
bonus.”
“Garcia won’t like that.”
“Piss on Garcia.”
“Very good,” Vasco chuckled. “A few more items, señor. The one we’d lured in, the baby vulture in Berga, what about—”
“End that with prejudice,” Xavier said with a snort, the thought of Cesar Navarro’s agonizing death warming him. “And make sure he suffers.”
“I know our friend El Toro will enjoy hearing that,” Vasco said. “And, I realize I’m getting in the weeds here, but what of the other man, the gabacho who El Voltor sent in?”
Xavier laughed openly, arching his neck to the indigo sky. “Tell El Toro to do as he pleases with that one. Our Berga-Bull deserves a chance to have some fun after all this cat and mouse.”
“There is one thing…”
“Yeah?”
“He was paid in advance. Word is, it was a very large sum of money.”
“Who was?”
“El Voltor paid the American.”
“Then just get the money before you kill him.”
“You want El Toro to do that?”
“He’s not bright enough. Use Angelines, instead.”
“The warden?”
“Yes. I’ve got to go.” Xavier thumbed the phone off.
Surveying the sea, Xavier suddenly realized he’d finally, after all the years of trying, reached the summit. Then, relinquishing his self-control as a point of celebration, he strode back into the galley, taking the voluptuous galley helper by the hand and hurriedly escorting her to his stateroom, ejecting the stewardess who was busy steaming his suit. While she, too, was quite comely, he had his mind set on the tight little package who stared at him as if he were the last man on earth.
When they were alone, he destroyed her clothes, ripping them from her body before he took her without preamble.
His boiler had redlined and the excess pressure had to be relieved somehow.
Fifteen minutes later, ignoring the miffed expressions of the rest of the female crew, Xavier, smelling of fresh, wanton sex, dined famously on prawns and seasoned Argentinian steak. He skipped the wine and downed four more of the German beers between his ravenous ingestions of the heavily seasoned food.
That evening, while getting stinking drunk on complimentary Jean-Marc XO over ice, he lost nearly fifty thousand euro at Monte Carlo Casino, eventually passing out alone in the Winston Churchill Diamond Suite at the exclusive Hotel de Paris.
The next morning, despite his gambling losses, saddled with a splitting headache and a room bill of more than 15,000 euro, Xavier couldn’t stop smiling. He imbibed a loaded Bloody Mary on the penthouse’s sprawling terrace, afterward enjoying a hot oil massage from two lovely Swedes.
And, though he knew he’d be best suited to rush back to Spain and claim all that was his, Xavier decided to remain in Monte Carlo for the weekend—he felt he’d earned it.
* * *
When the following morning and early afternoon came and went with no word from anyone about his release, Gage decided to go ahead and make satellite phone calls to Colonel Hunter, then to the Catalonian acusador, Redon. Pushing the fear from his mind, Gage wouldn’t allow himself to consider the possibility that Navarro had been located after their satellite phone call. Because if Navarro had followed Gage’s instructions, it was highly unlikely that they could have closed in on him that quickly.
But this useless charade had to end, and end soon.
As Gage walked through the main bay, headed back to his cell to get the satellite phone from its hiding place, he heard a commotion coming from the top terrace. Glancing up, he witnessed a clustered mob in one of the straight areas of the uppermost hexagon. They were shouting and chanting, facing inward to one of the cells. Everyone on the floor of the bay stared up at the scene except for the three guards. They were each at their posts, studiously ignoring the commotion.
Gage stopped before a prisoner he’d spoken to a few times—he was Gage’s “neighbor” from two cells down. A Frenchman of approximately Gage’s age, he was tall and lean, with tan skin and a tight mat of black hair. With a spare, dour face and dark eye sockets, the Frenchman looked like a tough customer who was terminally bored. Today he stared upward, but without emotion.
“What’s going on up there?” Gage asked in Spanish.
The Frenchman placed an unlit cigarette between his lips as he said, “A betrayal.”
The mob was almost directly above Gage’s cell. As Gage considered the location, he realized the horde was gathered close to Cesar’s cell. “What kind of betrayal?”
“Do you know who Cesar Navarro is?”
Gage’s head snapped around. “Yes. What’s going on?”
The Frenchman glanced around before whispering, “It’s Los Leones…they’ve turned on him.”
Oh, no…
At that very moment Gage knew that Ernesto Navarro was dead.
He thought back to the men who’d been here before him, with the mission of protecting Cesar—the men who were all dead. Los Leones had probably tried to locate Navarro through each of them, but somehow they weren’t able to close the deal. But yesterday in the yard, as soon as Gage saw those signals being passed, he was certain they were trying to track down the source of the communication.
And all Navarro’s precautions, they’d done it. Somehow, someway, they’d tracked the signal. Gage knew that tracing a satellite phone was no small task. It would take serious coordination, government help—and a great deal of money.
These are no rank amateurs, Gage. You’re dealing with an advanced organization.
“Why’ve they turned on him?” Gage muttered, looking up at the pulsating mob.
“Who knows?” the Frenchman said with palpable disgust. “Los Leones are hyenas.”
“Have they killed him?”
“Oh, no,” he said, poking out his lip. “He’s not dead yet. In my seven months here I’ve come to know that this is a common practice of theirs.” Hitched his head to where the nearest guard stood. “The pigeons have been paid off. This Leones’ extracción could go for days.”
“Extraction?”
“That’s what they call it.”
“Why?”
“They’re extracting not only his life, but his dignity.”
Gage squeezed his eyes shut for a moment as he said, “Are they beating him, or raping him?”
“You know the answer,” the Frenchman whispered, shaking his head in disgust as he ambled toward the yard.
Gage stood there and watched the scene for several minutes, allowing his blood to come up. There was no inner war, no deliberation. He already knew how to respond. He focused on the men behind that top terrace’s wire mesh. To a man they all wore the mark of Los Leones. They all laughed. They all chanted. Some high-fived, some rubbed their crotches. And while a man, a human being, suffered in that cell, those sons of bitches out on the terrace acted as if they were watching El Clásico. So, rather than deliberate, Gage made up his mind but let it burn. After three minutes and forty-two seconds, despite his still-healing back wounds, he balled his fists and stalked across the floor. Not at all nervous, Gage took the first level of steel stairs at a steady jog, as if he was headed to his own cell, ascending with his head down.
As he reached the landing from the first flight of stairs, Gage saw Salvador, standing against the fencing with his fellow Semental, the one on the crutches. Both men stood with an upturned ear, listening to the commotion above them. As Gage turned to the second stairwell, he heard Salvador’s urgent protests and running feet. Five steps up, a thin León wearing an eye-patch had been looking upward. Seeing Gage coming, he dropped down one step and put his forearm on Gage’s throat to stop him. Gage clamped the man’s arm with his left hand, twisting harshly, making the smaller man turn to relieve the pressure. But Gage didn’t stop, he wrenched the man’s arm upward until he felt the deep and satisfying pop as the punk’s shoulder dislocated, yanking the humerus away from the scapula. Still holding the man’s left wrist, Gage
thrust the man’s neck forward with his right arm, hammering him onto the stairs so hard he wondered if he might have killed him. Satisfied the stair guard was out of commission, Gage climbed the stairs.
At the top, on the second terrace, the mob of Leones, which must have consisted of two hundred men, all faced inward, chanting and yelling. The smell of the electrified, inflamed humanity was sickening, angering Gage further by the second. As he spun from the stairs onto the terrace, a young León turned, eyes going wide as Gage’s forehead rushed to his nose. The head-butt was perfect, crushing the gang member’s proboscis in a spray of stark blood. The man went down in a heap, holding his nose and squirming about as if he’d just been doused in acid.
Due to the noise and the remainder of the gang staring inward, Gage was able to push his way forward. In ten more seconds he was at Cesar’s cell, shoving his way inside, repulsed to see one man violating Cesar while another pleasured himself on the far side of the cell. Aware that he wasn’t a León, someone grabbed Gage around the neck, taking a vicious elbow to the face for his efforts. Gage turned, fielding punches from another León while the one he’d elbowed crumbled below him. Grasping the puncher by the sides of his head, Gage pressed inward with his thumbs on the man’s eyes, satisfied with the agonized scream in response. That man, too, went down in a pile on top of the unconscious gang member.
As the two downed men temporarily clogged the doorway, Gage thrust a front heel kick to the masturbating prisoner, who was eyeing Gage with temporary shock. When Gage’s heel mashed into the man’s swollen member and testicles, the man’s shriek was so loud in the enclosed space that Gage felt it might have damaged his eardrums.
The rapist, in his own sick world, was still rutting on Cesar. Due to the noise, he had no idea what was happening behind him.
Knowing his own death was near, and resolved to go out in blinding flames, Gage grasped the rapist by the neck, digging his fingernails in as he yanked the surprised man off Cesar’s back. As the rapist rolled to the floor, Gage began to kick the man, aiming for his head.
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