“You…you aren’t carrying anything we could get in trouble for, are you?” Jet asked after he’d told his story.
Oliveros laughed, displaying a flash of primitive dental work, gold-crowned teeth catching the morning light. “Oh, no. I wouldn’t give you a ride if I was playing mule. No, I refused after my last shipment – it was a close call, and I don’t ever want to repeat that.”
“What will happen now that you refused?” Matt asked.
“I plan to sell this load and see about moving, maybe to the coast. Wait for things to calm down. These gangs come and go, and if you have time, the best thing you can do is let them kill each other and then return once it’s safe. The group that I’m tangled up with is relatively new, less than a year. I give them six more months before their rivals wipe them out.”
Jet nodded quietly. She understood perfectly how Oliveros must feel – in danger, through no fault of his own, torn by powerful forces he couldn’t control, his family at risk, and difficult decisions that could cost them everything a daily occurrence.
It wasn’t an unusual story in the region, but one that was poorly understood in first world countries, she knew from personal experience. She’d experienced firsthand the culture shock of going from a society where death was a daily, unremarkable companion to a civilized area of Europe or North America where the annoyance of slow Internet or unpleasant rush-hour congestion was more real than being summarily executed by the side of the road. It was impossible to explain to someone from a modern society how precarious life was in much of the world, how random and pointless it could seem.
The poverty and desperation of a country like Venezuela, where basics like bandages and vitamins were impossible to obtain, was simply unimaginable to someone in a mall in Miami or London. But that didn’t make it any less dangerous, and she was keenly aware, cradling her daughter as they traversed a country that was half under the rule of rebel warlords who were little more than cocaine-producing gangsters, of how quickly everything could disintegrate into violence and death.
She was jarred from her thoughts by a slowdown just outside of La Dorada, a port town on the muddy brown Rio Magdalena. As they neared the bridge that spanned the wide river, they saw the flashing red and blue of police vehicles, where an impromptu roadblock had been created, one of many ineffective methods employed by the authorities to curb the rampant cocaine trafficking for which the region was famous.
They crawled forward for thirty minutes before arriving at the barrier. The officers ultimately waved the truck through without inspecting it – figuring, Oliveros said, that it would be searched at the border, so no point in duplicating effort.
“Most of the coca moves along the waterways and by plane, anyway,” Oliveros explained matter-of-factly. “Besides, any shipments larger than a few kilos are paid off well in advance, so the authorities know which vessels to avoid. It’s a system that’s been in place for decades. These things are just an annoyance: make-work projects so the politicians appear to be doing something to combat the cartels.”
“Do they arrange things for you when you’re running a shipment?” Jet asked.
“Oh, no. I pick the stuff up in Cúcuta. I don’t ask how it gets there. I don’t want to know.”
They stopped for lunch at a roadside shack that sold fixed-price plates of stew and beans for the equivalent of a dollar, and sat in the shade of a grove of trees as they consumed the questionable fare. Hannah was listless and Jet could tell she had a fever, but other than giving her aspirin, she couldn’t do much for her besides sympathize.
“When we get to Cúcuta, we’ll need to find a doctor,” Jet said to Matt. “I don’t want this spiraling out of control.”
Hannah smiled weakly. After a few swallows of water, she went back to dozing by Jet’s side as the adults finished their meal. Matt considered the toddler and nodded. “Agreed. Let’s hope the town’s big enough to have someone competent.”
Oliveros rose and dumped his empty plate into a plastic garbage bin, and when he returned, Jet asked him about doctors.
“Oh, there’s a very good clinic there. But you’ll probably have to wait until morning. We won’t arrive at this rate until well after dark.”
“What about the hospital?” Matt asked.
“It’s not as good. And it will have a lot of paperwork to fill out. It’s state operated.”
Jet and Matt exchanged a quick look at the mention of paperwork. They were on borrowed time, they knew, and any encounters with the Colombian authorities were best avoided.
The overladen truck chugged north, the river frothing alongside it, and Jet watched the landscape rush by with a sinking stomach. She had believed, before this nightmare, that they were finally on the way somewhere safe, to a new life in Panama, where they would be left alone to raise Hannah in peace. Instead they’d been ruthlessly attacked and hunted across two countries like animals. And perhaps worst of all, they still had no definitive idea who was after them, or why.
As much as Jet wanted to believe that they could have lost their pursuers for good, leaving a dead-end trail with Carl’s help, she didn’t buy it, and it was with a buzz of anxiety in her core that they continued toward the border, the Colombian jungle seeming to press in from all sides, the future as perilous as any she could imagine.
Chapter 4
Frontino, Colombia
Mosises paced angrily in the great room of his remote hilltop estate home, an unlit Cuban cigar clamped between his teeth as he eyed the gathering of men seated on the sofas and chairs assembled around a towering stone fireplace. It had been thirty-six hours since he’d gotten confirmation of his beloved son Jaime’s death at the monastery on the outskirts of Santuario, and after sending the Brazilian assassin Fernanda back to the scene in his helicopter two hours earlier, he’d called an emergency gathering of his most trusted subordinates.
Jaime’s passing created a power vacuum that the older Mosises would have to step into if his cartel was to survive. A veteran of decades of iron-fisted rule, he knew that any sign of weakness or lack of leadership would be interpreted by those searching for vulnerability as evidence that there was nobody at the helm – which spelled opportunity for the ambitious. But he was too old to operate the cartel on a day-to-day basis for more than a short time, and would need to appoint a new acting head if he were to stave off a disastrous internal civil war.
“I want to understand exactly what went wrong. My son’s death will not go unavenged. We will find those responsible if we must scorch the earth to do so,” Mosises snarled at the men. “What do we know so far?”
“The police have conducted a thorough search of the entire monastery. His killers are nowhere to be found,” Renaldo, Mosises’ top capo, said.
“How is that possible?” Mosises snapped.
“It’s a mystery we’re trying to get to the bottom of, but there are no obvious answers.”
“Of course there are. They slipped past the police somehow. We simply need to understand how they did it, so we can pick up their scent.” Mosises paused, chewing at the stub of cigar in his mouth with impatience. “I have enlisted the help of the woman I told you about. She has personal business with Jaime’s murderers.” He withdrew the cigar and stared at the mangled butt, then tossed it into the fireplace with disgust. “She’s a hired assassin and highly competent, but she was also there when Jaime was killed. So while I’m confident in her abilities, I don’t want to depend on them. Every asset we have – every cop, soldier, customs official in our pay – I want them all on the lookout for these people. A man with a broken hand, a woman, and a child. We should be able to find them. This is our country – how far could they get?”
Renaldo nodded. “Time is not working in our favor. It’s been…too long for my liking. I’ll put the word out, but as you know, our reach diminishes as we get further from Medellín, and with over a day having gone by with no leads…”
Mosises’ eyes blazed. “They are not to escape! There is no price
too high for their heads. I want this Brazilian, Fernanda, given anything she wants, but I also want an eye kept on her. Trust no one. There is too much we don’t understand about this situation, and what we don’t know could get us killed.” His tone softened. “I have already spoken to a few of my best contacts and informed them that there is a handsome reward for the first to bring me information about these people. Make sure that message circulates to everyone in the field.”
The men rose, the meeting over, and Mosises motioned to two handsome, impeccably groomed men near the back of the room, decked out in obviously expensive clothes and arrogant expressions. They joined him as the rest trooped out, and he moved to the bar in the corner of the room and poured three glasses a quarter full of amber rum.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” said Felix, the younger of the pair.
“You and Ramón are my choices to run the cartel once Jaime’s killers have been punished. Do not fail me,” Mosises said. Ramón and Felix were his nephews, and they were smart, ruthless, and dependable – and most importantly, entirely loyal.
“We won’t,” Felix assured him. “How would you like us to proceed?”
“Give Fernanda all the room she wants, but assume she has her own agenda. And I want you to make it clear to our allies that there is nothing more important than ending this quickly. I will not tolerate any more slip-ups.”
“Where should we begin?” Ramon asked.
“Ramón, go to the monastery. Use whatever means you like to extract the information we require. Felix, I want you in Bogotá come morning, working every contact you have. Between the military, the police, the intelligence service… These people will be trying to escape. They’ll be tired, in a strange country, looking for a way out. I want all the seaports watched. There are only so many ways for them to get out of Colombia. I want those sealed off.”
Ramón nodded. His black hair was slick with pomade, and his otherwise handsome face was marred by a cruel mouth and eyes slightly too close together for comfortable symmetry.
“I shall do as you ask.” Ramón took a moment, thinking. “What if they’ve gone to ground? If they head south, toward Ecuador, there are hundreds of places they could disappear.”
“A white man, woman, and child?” Felix snapped, his tone derisive. “You don’t think they would be noticed by someone?” He looked at Mosises. “We should get their descriptions broadcast to every cop in Colombia. And plant news stories in the media. The more people looking for them, the better our odds.”
“I already considered that, but rejected it. If someone outside of our sphere of influence captured them, it would decrease our ability to exact a swift vengeance. We want to find them, not have to deal with them in the system,” Mosises said dismissively.
“If the police are lucky enough to stumble across them, then it would be just a matter of price for us to take them,” Felix pressed.
Mosises regarded him seriously. “Maybe you’re right. Put the word out however you think best, but don’t come and tell me that we can’t get to them because the courts have them. That will not be an acceptable outcome. Am I clear?”
Felix and Ramón exchanged a look. Mosises was distraught at losing Jaime, and neither of them wanted to incur his wrath. Felix shifted from foot to foot nervously. “Perhaps we should keep it within our group for now. You have a valid concern – depending upon which jurisdiction they were arrested in, it could be difficult, and if one of our rivals heard about our troubles, it could bring unwanted attention our way…”
“This Fernanda is our best bet at this point. It’s personal with her now as well. I trust she’ll find them or die trying,” Mosises said.
Ramón rose with determination. “I’ll be back at the monastery in an hour. The plane is full and the pilot’s waiting for my arrival.”
“I want regular reports.”
“You shall have them.”
Chapter 5
Medellín, Colombia
Drago stood on the street corner, watching the entrance of the restaurant where one of his top informers worked – La Parrilla Brasiliana. He had arrived back home to Medellín the night before, and had already visited a half-dozen watering holes where the unsavory gathered to commiserate or deal. Aside from the usual scuttlebutt, he’d picked up nothing of note. But he was patient, although keenly aware that the clock was ticking.
He’d traveled to Panama after interrogating the Chilean crime boss and found the skipper of the fishing boat that had been ordered to bring Matt from the huge cargo vessel that had later been found adrift off Nicaragua. Once Drago had exerted his powerful form of persuasion, he’d learned that his quarry hadn’t been on the ship as expected – a Brazilian who was pursuing Matt had taken his place.
That made no sense to Drago, although his alarms were triggered at the mention of the Brazilian. Was it possible his client had hired another contractor to pursue the same target? That was a massive professional no-no, but Drago was an adult, and he knew the group he was working for well enough to understand that it was capable of anything.
Before the skipper died, he revealed that he’d overheard the Brazilian telling one of the Panamanians that their target was in Colombia, and that the key to finding him was to lure his girlfriend to the boat and capture her. That hadn’t gone as planned, which confirmed Drago’s experience with the mystery woman who’d shot him at the river in Chile. Whoever she was, she’d shown herself to be beyond lethal. He still had the stitches to prove it.
Drago’s sources in Panama hadn’t been able to come up with any further information beyond a photo of the woman being circulated by the police – which might or might not prove worth the paper it was printed on if she ever surfaced there. Highly unlikely, in Drago’s professional opinion.
But at least now he had a face. Admittedly one that probably little resembled her now, given the woman’s apparent knowledge of tradecraft, but it was a starting point. He’d spent the prior evening putting out feelers, showing the photo around and gauging the responses he got like a connoisseur evaluating a rare wine. That everyone would lie to him was a given, and it was often in what went unsaid that value lay. A telltale flicker, a blink, a sidelong glance, a twitch – these were the clues around which the game revolved.
His temples pulsed with a headache that had been coming and going since Panama, occasionally accompanied by dizzy spells. He’d researched blows to the head and concluded that it was an expected byproduct of the trauma he’d endured in Chile, and had shrugged them off. He’d endured far worse and still carried out his assignments. This was an annoying wrinkle to the disaster that had so far been this contract, but it wouldn’t stop him. Nothing on earth would, at this point.
Drago crossed the darkened street and pushed through the wooden doors into the foyer of the restaurant, whose walls were painted in Day-Glo colors and adorned by concert and album release posters of long-forgotten new-wave bands from the eighties. The restaurant specialized in grilled meat, Brazilian style, on skewers brought tableside from a wood-fired grill by fawning servers. The food was good, not great, but the attached lounge was one of Drago’s staples for information gathering, primarily because the restaurant owner could be found tending bar from twilight to closing time.
Drago ignored the hostess, a breathtaking beauty who was holding a menu with a blank look on her gorgeous face. He pushed through a beaded curtain adjacent to a DJ booth, replete with thousands of vinyl records and a lighting rig that flashed and strobed to rival the trendiest discos in town. Depeche Mode blared from JBL speakers loud enough to make most of the diners wince, and Drago wondered to himself for the thousandth time how the place stayed in business.
The owner, Isaac, a forty-something geek with five days of salt-and-pepper grizzle on his lean face, his sparse beard compensating for the thinning sprigs of hair atop his egg-shaped head, looked up from his position at the bar. Isaac was a fixture in the restaurant, which prospered in spite of him rather than due to his throwback musical styl
ings and lackluster menu. Framed flyers behind him announced raves from decades earlier, featuring Isaac in his incarnation as DJ Ice – a period when the young man had transitioned from being a nerdy shut-in wannabe who wore black at all times and for whom the forgettable music of androgynous Brits was a kind of gospel, into a semipopular Medellín club DJ who had enjoyed a decade-long run in the nineties.
Drago knew Isaac had taken his savings, mostly accumulated from his inheritance when his parents died, and opened the restaurant as a kind of shrine to his glory years, a place where the music of Flock of Seagulls and The Cure was always blaring and the good old days had never faded. At least that was his vision. The result had proved to be less than popular as diners objected to the din, especially so when complaints were universally met by an indignant Isaac inviting them to find the door if they didn’t enjoy his theme. He seemed uniquely blind to the effect his attitude had on business, and was now the lord of a kind of musical purgatory, forced to augment his income by dealing psychedelics and ecstasy, and acting as a repository for rumors and trends in the Colombian underworld.
“Hola, Isaac. How goes it?” Drago asked as he walked across the empty black and white tiled barroom floor to where Isaac stood, stork-like, his eyes slightly bugging out of his ferret face, looking for all the world like a guilty child molester – which wasn’t far from the truth, Drago suspected.
“Ah, you know. Fighting the battles. Doing what I must to survive.” Isaac lowered a headset he’d been using to queue up the next set of songs remotely and smiled humorlessly at Drago. “What can I get you?”
JET - Escape: (Volume 9) Page 3
