The Shadow Cartel (The Dominic Grey Series Book 4)

by Layton Green

  Lana let him finish his rant, and his smirk softened a fraction. “Of course you don’t care about myths and legends, the reality of pesos and dollars is far too strong. But it’s not what you believe that matters. It’s what the villagers believe. Watch yourself, gringa. There are bad rumors about this place. It’s not even Peru. It’s somewhere else, lost in the sierra. Lost in time. And in this place the descendants of the Incas are alive, really alive, and they don’t like visitors.”

  DER HEILIGKEIT DES LUFT SANATORIUM

  The icy trees shone in the darkness, both pressing in and allowing glimpses into the forest. Glimpses into the danger Viktor knew lurked within.

  Glen was out there, Viktor could feel it. His hands were inside his coat, one grasping his knife and the other a handgun.

  The footpath wound down the hill, through virgin pine bowed with the weight of snow. Viktor had left the road twenty minutes earlier to tramp down the forest path, the silence broken only by the crunch of his footsteps.

  This was the third night in a row he had walked this same route, at the same time of night. Hoping to give his assailant a routine. Hoping to draw him out.

  As he rounded a corner that squeezed between two boulders, the perfect place for an ambush, Viktor’s nerve endings lit up like flares. He had to keep walking as if nothing was wrong, because if he spooked Glen, the plan would be ruined.

  And that was unacceptable.

  Eyes straining to see past the boulders, some of the tension eased out of his shoulders when he rounded the corner and saw the path straightening. Still, he kept his fingers wrapped around the trigger.

  He heard the squeak of a shoe scuffing on snow, and turned in time to see a huge body flying through the air off the top of one of the boulders. Viktor might have had time to pull a weapon, but he couldn’t take the risk. Instead he caught Glen in mid-flight.

  Though Viktor was larger, he was crushed by the heavy body plummeting off the boulder. The fall knocked the wind out of Viktor, and Glen sprang off him and drew a long syringe out of his coat. He grabbed Viktor’s throat with his other hand, and Viktor felt as if a python had seized him.

  Viktor fumbled for his knife, but knew he’d never reach it in time. With a crazed light in his eyes, Glen raised the syringe above his head and started to plunge it downward.

  A gunshot rang through the night, followed by a voice in Swiss-German calling for Glen to freeze.

  Glen didn’t freeze, but the gunshot distracted him, allowing Viktor to roll out from underneath him. The needle in the syringe stabbed through the tail of Viktor’s coat. More shouting followed, someone shot Glen in the arm, and then the woods were full of security guards sprinting to the scene.

  Viktor scrambled away from the madman, who was holding his bloody arm in silence in the middle of the path, his thin lips contorted in pain, his entire body dusted in white. Viktor had scanned the tops of the boulders earlier, and hadn’t seen him. He must have been hiding in the snow, Viktor realized with a chill.

  One of the guards ran to Viktor. “Are you injured?”

  “Just,” Viktor worked to catch his breath, “a little winded.”

  “You were right,” the guard said. “None of us believed you, but you were right. Are you sure you don’t need the clinic?”

  Viktor eased to his feet and brushed the snow off of his hair and clothing. “His accomplice?”

  The guard grinned. “We’ve already radioed it in. There’re only two night watchmen in the criminal ward, and we detained them both. We’ll have the bastard before midnight.”

  Viktor started walking towards the sanatorium. “When you find the one responsible, place him in a room by himself, and call me immediately. And don’t notify the police.”

  PERUVIAN ANDES

  How much farther?” Lana called out to the driver, a tour guide they had hired in Cuzco.

  “Not much, Señora.”

  The guide was the only one they could find who knew the way to Kukukatari, the village where, according to the Quechuan trader in Cuzco, there were rumors of a blue Indian woman appearing on the sierra. The guide also had a vehicle up to the task: a twenty-year-old beige Land Cruiser that took the bumps like an old pro. Twice Grey had to help lay boards on the road to free the vehicle from a mud pit.

  They hadn’t asked if their guide shared the trader’s superstitions, but he hadn’t balked at the journey, especially when Lana offered him five hundred dollars a day. By his expression, Grey thought he might have carried them to the village on his back for that much money.

  The journey had been a long one. Riding along while the driver listened to some type of Peruvian highland techno, an annoying mix of synthesized flute and pipes, they lurched through the chaos and poverty on the outskirts of Cuzco, then cruised through the lush meadows of the Sacred Valley, laden with cultivations of corn and grain. After Urabamba, the valley narrowed and the scenery became much more intense, an unending succession of jagged peaks with bowl-shaped impressions in between, a layer of mist covering everything like a Styrofoam lid. It was a towering, otherworldly place.

  If the spirits of Palo Mayombe haunted the forests, Grey thought, then the ghosts of fallen gods lived in the Andes.

  The Quechuan trader had laughed when Lana asked if they could go by car, and Grey could see why. After Ollantaytambo—the last stop in the Sacred Valley before Machu Picchu, and the last town accessible by road—they had taken a dirt road through the valley for a few miles, and then the road had turned into a track of mud and rubble, inaccessible except by the hardiest of off-road vehicles. That was two hours ago, and it seemed to grow worse by the minute.

  After winding slowly higher for another hour, the crisp air punctuated by the smell of animal dung, they approached a village surrounded by mountains so steep they looked like slides, almost violent in their proximity. A river gushed along the west edge of town.

  The guide announced their arrival at their destination, and Grey gripped his gun as they pulled into Kukukatari. He knew this was a fool’s mission, that he and Lana had pushed too far. He just didn’t know what to do about it. The stakes were too high now. If he had just listened to Nya and dropped the case after Miami . . . he didn’t want to think about the potential consequences of his decision.

  He hadn’t told Lana, but even if they were successful, Grey’s mission wasn’t going to end with a call to CIA headquarters. He had tried Nya again before they left Cuzco, and this time her phone had gone straight to voicemail.

  Which made no sense. She would have called him back.

  His contact at the embassy had tried again to reach her, and said the house looked abandoned. Grey had let the phone slide out of his grasp. The General had found his pressure point.

  Even if they managed to locate the General, Grey couldn’t risk an onslaught of random drone fire, or a sky full of parachuting Navy Seals, or the General deciding Nya was no longer needed.

  So he was going in after her. He just had to stay alive long enough to get there.

  And if his instincts were wrong, and Nya’s phone had been lost or stolen, or she had disappeared into the countryside without telling him?

  It was a risk he had to take.

  The town was a maze of stone walls and cobblestone streets, with sluice-like canals running down the sides of each road. Everyone short and squat and wary, faces disappearing into doorways, the whole village giving Grey the feeling that someone was watching them, perhaps the mountains themselves.

  Their guide pointed at a wall as they eased along the main road into the village, the smell of roasting corn wafting through the cracked windows of the SUV. “Not a trace of mortar,” he said. “And see those doorways made out of slabs that narrow at the top? The canals on the streets, the cobblestone houses? This town is Incan, not Spanish. It’s a living relic.”

  Groups of old women with thick black braids and leathery calves, wearing brightly colored shawls and even more colorful sacks tied to their backs, waddled down the street like a mu
ster of peacocks, eying the Land Cruiser as it passed. The guide parked in the center of the village, a small square with a single gnarled, leafless tree on display. It was near dusk, and long shadows were rolling down the mountains, smothering the village.

  “End of the line,” the guide said. He patted the Land Cruiser. “The other streets are too narrow for this beast.”

  The trader had given them the name of a woman who might put them up for the night. After their guide inquired at the general store, they were pointed down one of the streets and told to look for the last doorway on the left.

  There was something missing in the town, and Grey tried to put a finger on what it was. When he finally figured it out, he wished he hadn’t.

  He realized he had not seen a single cathedral. What city, town, or village in Latin America didn’t have a church commandeering the town square?

  He remembered the words the trader had uttered. But it’s not what you believe that matters. It’s what the villagers believe.

  Words that could have come from Viktor’s mouth, and a warning Grey had learned to heed.

  Grey noticed Lana doing the same thing he was, eying everyone and everything. He did not relish the thought of asking questions in this town, and decided to brief the guide in the morning and use him as a proxy. These people would never talk to Grey or Lana.

  The General was close, he could feel it. They had come to the end of the earth and he was there.

  As promised, they found the pensión at the end of a long street at the edge of the village, on the banks of the river. A middle-aged Quechuan woman in a black sombrero and knee-high, multicolored socks opened the door. She agreed to put them up and led them into an interior courtyard full of potted herbs, hanging laundry, and a few hardy fruit trees. An eight-foot stone wall surrounded the property.

  She led them up a rickety flight of steps to a banistered outdoor hallway lined with doors. “Three rooms?” she asked in Spanish.

  “Sí,” Lana said. Their guide had agreed to stay with them as needed.

  The Quechuan woman left them with keys and disappeared.

  “These buildings were used as communal living quarters for families,” the guide explained. “They shared the courtyard and divided the living space.”

  “And those?” Lana asked through tight lips, pointing at a line of skulls displayed in an open cabinet at the end of the hallway.

  The guide grinned. “Ancestor shrine. Common practice among the Quechua.”

  After they had dropped their bags and washed up, the guide went into town to look for a cantina. Grey and Lana sat on a stone bench in the courtyard, eating apples and trail mix bars they had brought from Cuzco. The string of serrated peaks looming above them reminded Grey of the ridged back of an alligator.

  “We’ll start in the morning,” Lana said. “We’ll talk to every last villager if we have to.”

  “The General didn’t let them see the blue lady at random,” Grey said. “There’s a good chance these people are in his thrall.”

  “Cash loosens lips. So does pain. Someone will talk, and we’ll move fast once they do.”

  “We should use the guide, brief him on the research angle.”

  “Good idea,” she said. “Remember, we just have to figure out where he’s holed up. Then it’s all over. One call and the commandoes take it from there.”

  He rose. “I’m going to find some water.”

  “Try to get some sleep. With any luck, this will end tomorrow.”

  When Grey knocked on the owner’s door and inquired about water, she gave him a plastic cup and pointed towards the river.

  He took his gun, unlatched the heavy courtyard door, and peered down the street. The rest of the wooden doors and iron-grilled windows were shut as tight as a puzzle box.

  There were no streetlights, no ambient light. Just a panoply of stars in a night that had settled like a bottle of spilled ink. The exotic celestial patterns of the Southern Hemisphere made him think of Nya, and his heart pumped faster. He tried her yet again, and got the same dead signal.

  He hopped the wooden railing and stepped down to the bank of the river. The smell of pine drifted on the breeze, and the roar of water drowned out the insect chatter.

  As he knelt to fill his cup, he noticed a flicker of movement across the river. He jumped back and felt a prick on his neck as he reached for his gun. Looking up, he saw a young indigenous woman lowering a blowgun. She was painted blue and looked from a distance like the same woman who had fired a slingshot at him in Miami.

  By the time Grey raised his gun, she had melted behind a tree. He groped at his neck and felt the feathered end of a dart. The barbed tip stung as he pulled it out.

  He didn’t bother chasing her, knowing she would evade him in the unfamiliar, darkened terrain. He also didn’t bother pondering the impossibility of her appearance. Instead he sprinted back to the street and through the door to the villa, bursting into the courtyard and calling out for Lana.

  The courtyard was filled with men wearing bandanas pulled above their mouths like bandits, pointing automatic weapons at him. Lana was slumped on the bench, unconscious. The owner of the villa was watching from the balcony with folded arms and an impassive face.

  Grey lowered his weapon. Part of him wasn’t even unhappy with the outcome. He had little faith that they would find the General on their own, and if this was the only way he could get to Nya, then so be it.

  The drug from the dart was already making him fuzzy. He stayed awake long enough to watch the men drag him and Lana to a clearing at the edge of town, where a group of pack animals had been tethered. Grey stumbled to his knees as his brain shut down.

  He wondered if he would ever wake up.

  DER HEILIGKEIT DES LUFT SANATORIUM

  Viktor stalked into the interrogation room to confront the true object of the night’s maneuver: the guard who had let Glen out of his cell. Interrogating Glen further was a lost cause, but his accomplice was another story.

  The night watchman, a sullen German with uneven teeth and too much gel in his hair, sat in handcuffs behind a metal desk. Two of the sanatorium’s private guards, armed with rifles, watched from a corner of the room.

  Viktor sat and folded his hands on the table. “I assume you know who I am?” he said in Swiss-German.

  No response.

  “His name’s Andreas,” one of the guards called out. “He’s only been here a few days.”

  “Andreas,” Viktor said, “what was in the syringe? Poison? Scopolamine?”

  CCTV had caught a black SUV waiting at the bottom of the mountain. When security had approached the car, the two men inside had claimed ignorance. Their records and the car’s plates were clean, and security had no basis to hold them.

  “Was the order to kidnap or kill me?” Viktor pressed. “Who were the men in the black car?” Viktor stood and leaned over the desk, looming over the smaller man. “Whether or not you’re charged as an accomplice for attempted murder, or for a lesser charge, depends on what you tell me before the authorities arrive.”

  Andreas stared at the desk.

  “Who paid you to let Glen out?” Viktor said. “Where can I find them? Do you know who the General is?”

  Andreas paled ever so slightly at the question, but refused to say a word.

  Viktor placed his cell phone on the table. “Once the authorities are involved, there will be no going back. You’d much rather talk to me than to the police.”

  Andreas whispered a response under downcast eyes, so low Viktor had to lean in to hear him. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  A few hours later, Viktor gave up. Andreas wasn’t talking, and they couldn’t hold him any longer without calling the authorities. Private security laws allowed only so much leeway.

  While they had him confined, Viktor used his Interpol resources to look into Andreas’s background. Then things got interesting. Andreas Bohm was a Swiss citizen with a spotty work history and no criminal record—but this man
wasn’t Andreas Bohm, if such a person even existed.

  From the cell photo Viktor had snapped, Interpol’s database had identified the face as belonging to an Austrian national named Klaus Hitzig, a member of a fascist pseudo-church connected to the drug community. An organization whose leaders, Viktor had no doubt, had ties to the General.

  Klaus was also a freelance mercenary who had spent years working hotspots in Central and South America. Under the guise of a tourist named Heinrich Zieler, Klaus had recently boarded a plane from Cuzco to Zurich.

  Cuzco.

  Whether because the General considered Viktor a high-priority target, or was simply too careful to trust the communication network, Viktor knew the General had sent one of his own men to release Glen.

  Which got Viktor nowhere.

  In a rare loss of control, he slammed his fists on the desk before leaving the interrogation room. Despite repeated attempts to reach him, it had been almost forty-eight hours since he had spoken to Grey. He even tried calling Nya, but couldn’t reach her either.

  Just like in the woods, Viktor’s instincts told him that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

  He spent the rest of the day on the phone or on the computer, trying to reach Grey and looking into every angle he could think of.

  Despite his efforts, his attempts were futile. Peru was a huge country, and the General could be anywhere in the Andes.

  As the sun descended, he put his head in his hands, nauseous at his inability to help his friend, knowing it was quite possible he would never again see Dominic Grey alive.