“Exactly,” Caldwell said. “It doesn’t matter if you do it with your palm up or down, just be sure it’s one of those. Then the twist and slash.”
“Thank you,” Aguilar said.
“Of course, the other guy’s going to be trying to do the same thing to you, if he also has a knife. If he has a gun, your best chance is to get the hell out of there. Always go one better than the other guy. If he has a stick, you can use a knife. If he has a knife, use a gun. If he has a gun, get a bazooka or a motherfucking tank. There’s no way, if you’re in a knife-against-knife fight, that you’re not going to get cut up, and it’s going to hurt like a bitch.”
“I’ve been lucky so far.”
“Luck doesn’t last. And fancy technique is for suckers. If you’re in a combat situation, where it’s your life or the other guy’s, you want to hit first and hit hard. Try to drop him before he has a chance to do you any damage. If you can do that, you might survive.”
Aguilar nodded. “Got it.”
Caldwell showed him the stabbing motions several more times, with no knife in his hand. Palm down, then quarter-twist right. Palm up, then quarter-twist left. “Keep practicing that until it’s second nature, and you’ll be good.”
“Thank you for the lesson,” Aguilar said.
“No problem. We’re brothers of the blade—we have to watch out for each other.”
“Brothers of the blade,” Aguilar echoed, laughing. “I like that.”
“I like it, too, buddy.” Caldwell clapped him on the back. “I like it, too.”
23
CALDWELL STAYED FOR two more days of jet-skiing on the lakes, racing motorcycles, alcohol-fueled parties and hookers from Colombia and Brazil. Aguilar enjoyed his company. He was glad that he’d killed Montoya—honor demanded it of him, if nothing else—but he missed the kind of camaraderie they’d shared. Since his rainy-day confession, Snake-eyes had been spending more time with him, almost as if the sharing of that secret had bonded them, in a way.
But Caldwell was more gregarious, more demonstratively friendly, and more unusual. Snake-eyes was one more poor Colombian kid who’d chosen crime over the straight life. Caldwell was exotic—a North American, a military veteran who had smuggled heroin from Vietnam until he found that distributing Escobar’s cocaine had a much better profit margin.
Even his damaged ear helped bring them together, as if they were kindred spirits, in a way. Caldwell’s ear and Aguilar’s spots.
When he left, Aguilar missed him more than he’d expected.
But he didn’t have much time to worry about it.
During Caldwell’s visit, a newspaper editor in Medellín had run what he promised would only be the first in a series of incendiary editorials, calling out the kingpins of the Medellín Cartel by name—Escobar, the Ochoa brothers, Carlos Lehder, and Gacha—and demanding that they be arrested or killed. The journalist’s name was Juan Sebastian Osorio Benítez, and he had a large following, not just in that city but around the country.
The editorial was on the front page of the Diario del Medellín, under a blazing headline: COLOMBIA WILL NEVER KNOW PEACE WHILE KILLERS WALK FREE!
Its concluding paragraph was a call to action. “Every Colombian citizen must take the continued existence of these men and their criminal conspiracy as an attack on our nation, as surely as if some foreign power rained down bombs upon us. These gangsters own police, judges, and elected officials; therefore, it is up to us, to every honest, patriotic Colombian, to root them out. They must be imprisoned or killed, before we can ever call ourselves a free people. And I will not stop saying so, out loud, where I know they can hear. Join me, fellow Colombians. Stand up for yourselves, and demand that the authorities stand up, as well.”
Escobar wanted him silenced.
When he saw the newspaper, he paced for twenty minutes, crumpling it in his fist and hitting his other palm, his thigh, furniture, whatever he could with it, as if Osorio himself could feel the blows.
“This bastard can’t be allowed to write another word,” Escobar ranted. “He’ll stir up the public against us, and they’ll stir up the courts and the politicians.”
He assigned Aguilar, Poison, and Snake-eyes to eliminate Osorio. It shouldn’t be difficult, they reasoned. He wasn’t an elected official or a police commander, so he wouldn’t have protection from the military or law enforcement.
When they got to Medellín and staked out the Diario offices, they discovered their error.
Because he wouldn’t be protected by law enforcement or the military, Osorio had organized his own defensive force. When he exited the offices, he was surrounded by a phalanx of armed men approximately the size of refrigerator-freezers. They escorted him into an armored SUV, which drove him home with another one in front of it and one behind, and motorcyclists flanking it. His home was similarly defended; in addition to the human guards, it had motion-sensitive lights, alarms, and a tall fence, and a team of Dobermans prowled the grounds day and night.
Osorio wasn’t taking any chances.
A couple of days and the judicious distribution of stacks of money turned up an answer to one question—the men were mercenaries, hired from the United States, South Africa, Israel, and elsewhere. They knew their work and they’d done it before.
“Shit,” Poison said when they gathered to discuss their findings. They had rented a small, furnished apartment two blocks from the newspaper office. There, they ate take-out food from local restaurants, and watched the newspaper building, keeping track of Osorio’s comings and goings. They were sitting at a little wooden dining table, which they had pulled close to the window. It was covered with empty bottles and food wrappings. “He’s got himself an army. He’s as well protected as Don Pablo.”
“Don’t let him hear you say that,” Snake-eyes replied. “He’ll fire us and hire himself some outside mercenaries.”
“Those guys are just in it for the money,” Aguilar said. “They wouldn’t lay down their lives for him, like we would for El Patrón.”
“You want to test that?” Poison asked. “Or approach them and try to buy them off?”
“If we could get to them,” Snake-eyes suggested, “maybe we could. Offer them triple what he’s paying them. He’s just a newspaper guy, he can’t be rich.”
“No, probably not. But the owner of the Diario is an oligarch,” Poison said. “He’s not in Don Pablo’s league, but he’s a millionaire several times over. He’s probably paying their salaries, not Osorio.”
“Why would he do that?” Aguilar asked.
“Because big headlines sell newspapers. By taking on the cartels, Osorio has made himself the story—even TV journalists and other newspapers are reporting on his editorial. It’s great advertising for the Diario, so it’s worth it to the paper’s owner to keep his money-maker alive.”
“Well, if we can’t get to him and we can’t buy off his security,” Snake-eyes asked, “what are we going to do?”
“You want to go back to Don Pablo and tell him you give up?”
“Hell no,” Snake-eyes said. “It’d be safer to let those mercenaries kill me. At least they’d do it fast.”
“Then we have no choice,” Aguilar said. “We have to figure out how to get to him. And we should do it before he runs the next part of his series, or Pablo’s going to be pissed.” He sat there for a moment, looking at his comrades and shaking his head.
“What?” Poison asked.
“I was just thinking how strange it is to be sitting in a room trying to figure out the best way to kill someone.”
“Not strange to me,” Poison said. “When was the first time you killed a man?”
“I was fifteen,” Snake-eyes said.
“For me, it was the night we got Costa.”
Both of the others stared at him. “You’re a newborn!” Poison said. “A murder-baby!”
“I guess. I never thought of myself as a killer. I guess I’m rethinking everything now. I’m a different person than I was—o
r than I thought I was—and that takes some getting used to.”
“I was eleven the first time,” Poison said.
“Eleven? You were a real murder-baby.”
Poison shrugged. “My family was dirt-poor, but someone from our church gave me a brand-new bike. There was a bigger kid in the neighborhood, kind of a bully. He saw me riding it, the second day I had it, and he knocked me down and took it. I went home and got my father’s gun from his drawer, and walked the streets until I found him. Then I shot him four times. I missed the first two times, but he was so scared he froze, with piss running down his leg, so I moved in close and put four rounds into his fat, ugly face.”
“What happened?”
“I got my bike back.” Poison grinned. “I wasn’t stupid enough to do it in front of witnesses. At least, if anybody saw, they were smart enough to keep their mouths shut. Nobody was ever arrested.”
“Did it bother you?” Aguilar asked. “Killing somebody?”
“Not even a little. I slept like a baby. From that day on, I knew if anybody ever fucked with me, I could take care of it. And I did. I started stealing bikes myself, then motorbikes, cars, whatever I could. Then I was recruited to be a lookout for Don Pablo. When I found out somebody would pay me for what I was happy to do anyway, it was the best day of my life. I never regretted a minute of it.”
Aguilar found himself torn. He had willingly become a murderer—he’d known, even from the beginning, that the tasks he was accepting from Escobar would lead to that. But at the same time, he had once dedicated his life—however briefly—to protecting the public by fighting against people like Poison. He had always thought he had a moral code, but if he did, he’d broken it pretty easily, step by step.
“It still bothers me,” he admitted. “A little, I guess. Not like I thought it would.”
“Well, you’re pretty good at it,” Snake-eyes said.
“Thanks,” Aguilar said. A little thrill of pride rushed through him. “It’s the job, right?”
Poison glanced at his watch. “It’s four-ten. He should be coming along any time now.”
Osorio was a creature of habit; he arrived at the office at eight o’clock every morning, and left at ten after four every afternoon. He ate breakfast at the same restaurant, surrounded by his goon squad. He had lunch delivered to him in his newspaper office, and he had dinner at one of several restaurants he favored. He had no wife, no family, seemingly no interests other than his work. Once he was at home after dinner, he didn’t leave until the next morning.
Sure enough, in a couple of minutes, the usual procession rolled into view. The armored Suburban in front, with gunmen inside it. Then the second, with Osorio and a couple of guards in it, and motorcycles keeping pace. Finally, the third Suburban.
From the apartment, they couldn’t even be sure that Osorio was in the middle car, although they had seen him enter it and exit it on numerous other occasions and trusted that his routine was unchanging. He sat in the center of the rear seat, with a guard on either side of him. The windows were tinted. The angle from this window was all wrong; Osorio was invisible from here. They’d discussed trying to shoot from the apartment, but their bullets wouldn’t penetrate the SUV’s roof.
As the vehicles rolled past, Snake-eyes said, “One guy could shoot the driver of the first car from here, and the others could be waiting downstairs, on either side of the street. When the first car stopped, they’d open fire on the second one.”
“Except the bulletproof glass would protect the driver,” Poison said. “And those mercenaries would make hamburger out of the two guys on the street.”
“Yeah,” Snake-eyes agreed. “It was just an idea. I didn’t say it was a good one.”
“What about an RPG?” Poison asked.
“Do you know how to shoot one with enough accuracy to hit your target from up here?” Snake-eyes countered.
“I guess that would take some practice. Which we don’t have time for.”
But Aguilar, watching the vehicle roll up the next block, had a different idea. “Look,” he said, pointing.
The next corner had a stop sign. The Suburbans came to a halt, then the first one started into the intersection. Once it had entered, it crawled through, and the second and third passed the sign without stopping. Horns blared, but nobody who looked inside the vehicles would dare make a fuss.
“Yeah, they’re assholes,” Snake-eyes said. “So?”
“So look—Osorio’s car was stopped right next to that storm drain.”
It was hard to make out from here, but a wedge of shadow indicated an opening in the curb. Aguilar had spotted it moments before the first SUV reached it, and noticed the second one brake to a full stop beside it. If there had been more traffic on the cross street, it could have been sitting there for thirty seconds or more.
“Okay,” Poison said. “But even if someone could fit in there, he couldn’t shoot through that armor.”
“I’m not thinking about a gun,” Aguilar said. “I’m thinking about a bomb.”
A grin spread across Poison’s face as he considered the idea. “That could work. A powerful enough bomb that close to the underside of the car would disable it, for sure. Maybe even destroy it.”
“And we could be near enough to gun down anybody who wasn’t killed by the blast,” Aguilar said. “Maybe in that café across the street.”
“What do you know about making bombs?” Snake-eyes asked.
“Nothing,” Aguilar said. “But I know somebody who might know somebody.”
“Can you trust him?”
Aguilar shook his head. “It’s a her. And yes, absolutely.”
24
JULIANA REMEMBERED AGUILAR, and when enough pesos had crossed her palm, it turned out that she did indeed know somebody who was good with explosives. His name was Oscar, and like Juliana, he did not care to divulge more than that.
They didn’t give their names, either, or say who they worked for. Juliana had brought them together, and that was sufficient for purposes of trust. Oscar met them in the gravel parking lot of a mountain park. Plenty of other people were around, some outfitted for serious hiking and others just enjoying the cool spring day. Juliana had told them to look for a black van with no windows, and Snake-eyes brought their Land Cruiser up next to it.
The man inside was unshaven, heavy, slope-shouldered, with a massive brow that shaded small eyes. He looked them over from inside the van and, seemingly satisfied, opened his door and got out. He didn’t smile.
When they emerged from the Land Cruiser, Oscar indicated one of the hiking trails. “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.
“Thanks for meeting with us,” Aguilar said.
“No problem.”
“What we need—”
Oscar cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Not until we’re on the trail.”
Aguilar understood. He didn’t want anybody eavesdropping or using listening devices. For all he knew, their SUV could be bugged. And for all they knew, his van could be.
“Right.”
They hiked up into the trees. A soft breeze ruffled leaves and pine needles and scented the air. Birds called and flitted about. Finally, Oscar stopped. “Okay, what are you looking to accomplish?”
“We want something we can place in a storm drain,” Poison said. “Strong enough to blow up an armored Suburban stopped beside it.”
“Is the undercarriage armored, too?”
“We don’t know.”
“Then we have to assume it is. How much collateral damage is acceptable?”
“Collateral damage?” Snake-eyes asked.
“A charge that’s going to take out the armored vehicle is going to take out a lot more than that. Whatever building is on the same side of the street as the storm drain will take some serious damage. It’s not a hospital or a veterans’ home or anything like that, is it?”
“Just some stores on that side,” Aguilar said. “And a travel agency, I think. There’s a café acros
s the street.”
“Okay. How long do you want to have it sitting in the storm drain? Minutes? Hours?”
“Minutes, I think,” Poison said. “We know what the car’s schedule is, so we can place it shortly before.”
“How will you make sure it doesn’t fall down into the sewer?”
Poison and Aguilar locked eyes. “We hadn’t thought about that, I guess,” Aguilar said. “Any ideas?”
Oscar considered for a moment. “Get a box. Fairly flat, maybe fifteen centimeters high, but big enough that it won’t easily fall in. Make sure it’s beat-up, so it looks like you’re trying to stuff garbage down the drain, but also make sure it’s reinforced enough to support the device. Then coat the bottom of it with something like rubber cement, so when you set it in place it won’t slide around as traffic goes past. If you place it right before the Suburban arrives, people probably won’t go after it. If anybody does and it goes off?” He shrugged. “They shouldn’t have tried to pick up somebody else’s trash.”
“Can you make the device?” Poison asked. “So it can be triggered remotely?”
“Would you be here talking to me if I couldn’t?”
“No, I guess not.”
“I can make it. Can you afford it?”
“How much?”
Oscar named a price. Poison pretended to think it over. “That’s acceptable,” he said. “If this works, our boss will be very happy. He might even have more work for you, down the line.”
“It’ll work,” Oscar promised. “If you do exactly what I say, I can guarantee the results.”
* * *
The device’s manufacture took four days, during which time Osorio published the second in his series of anti-Cartel editorials. NEVER GIVE UP ON COLOMBIA! the headline blared. The first paragraph said, “Not since Simón Bolívar expelled the Spaniards has the rule of the Colombian people been so threatened. For now, we have the vote and the power to choose our destiny. But with the extravagant wealth of the drug cartels growing daily—and with it their power over Colombian elected officials, law enforcement, and the military, the rights of the people and the power to choose are endangered species.”
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