Greer watched me, waiting to see what my reaction would be. Was I receptive? Was I going to tell him to kick rocks again?
I laughed. “It’ll be a cold day in hell before I go to Venezuela on your order.”
“Even if it means seeing your family when the job’s done?”
I smiled. Or at least tried. Some bruise in my neck knocked the grin off my face.
“You’re pushing that reward awful hard,” I said. “But level with me a moment: you want me to do this job because it’s so vile or suicidal that nobody at the Agency wants it. You see a guy like me, experienced in foreign espionage, a little crazy, a lot dangerous, and you’re hoping I’m desperate enough to get out of here, even if it means marching into enemy territory with an American flag hanging out of my back pocket.”
Greer ran his hand through his hair, then stood up and leaned against the big steel door of my cell.
“Yes,” he said. “Also I’ve heard your Spanish is pretty good.”
It was. Learned some in school, ten times as much working ranches after school, and even more on the amateur rodeo circuit after I graduated.
“Most of the Spanish I know was taught to me by Mexicans,” I said. “I don’t know any Venezuelan slang.”
“Good enough for me,” Greer said.
“Yeah, well I ain’t doing the job. So, you can turn around and walk your wingtips outta the DB,” I said. Then I motioned at the cell door. “Close that when you go.”
For a minute, it looked like Greer was actually going to go. He quit leaning on the door, rested his hand on the handle, and took a step back—into the corridor outside.
But then he froze. Like he remembered something else he wanted to say.
“Mason, I want you to do something for me,” he said. “Something else.”
“No thanks,” I said. But that didn’t get him to shut up.
“Think of your little girl at home. She’s been in the US for, what? A year and change? How do you think she’s adjusting now? Her biological family is all gone. The man who saved her life—who killed for her—then took her in, left home a few months ago, and hasn’t come back.”
“She knows why,” I said.
“Does she? Have you told her you’re here, rotting in a cold, dark concrete box?” Greer said. “And for what? Pride?”
The word, pride, stung me. Because it was true. I was being proud. I was putting myself before my family.
“And think about it, Mason: while you’re here, refusing the deal I’m giving you, Kejal is back home growing up. She’s turning into a woman. If you serve out your entire sentence at Leavenworth, even if they don’t pin you with something else, you’re going to miss everything in Kejal’s life. Prom. Going off to college. Getting married. What do you think her father would say to you right now if he knew?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Not without hearing myself admit out loud that Greer had a point.
“I wonder what Libby will say when she finds out you could’ve come home early, but instead you chose this?” He waved a hand across the cell. “You think she’s going to wait for you?”
He stepped over the line with that. I didn’t even think about what I was going to do. I just leaped from the floor and speared into him. I wrapped my arm around his waist, and Greer fell backward. But when I tried to get position on him—trap him between my legs so I could pound his face into ground beef—I couldn’t lift my head.
Greer had my head trapped in the crook of his elbow. I should’ve been able to take him. He wasn’t bigger than me. Guess I was just too damn beat up to fight the way I should have.
He squeezed my neck so tight, I felt my eyeballs pressing out of their sockets. I choked and gasped as I flailed my arms, trying to get a piece of him.
“You can be mad,” Greer said between his teeth. “But you’re still stuck here while your family lives their lives without you. Why don’t you be a man and do something about it?”
Then, he relaxed his arm. My lungs stung with cold air, and I coughed. I rolled off him and looked up at the orange light glowing in the ceiling.
I realized he was right. I had to be a man. It was time to set my pride aside, for my family’s sake.
Chapter 7
COLONEL MILARES SAT on an old, green vinyl couch in the General’s office, his elbow on the armrest, his fist pressed to his jaw, barely staying upright. After last night’s emergency meeting with the Constituent Assembly, he hadn’t slept. A lot of work went into executing martial law.
Especially with the riot churning outside General Barrios’ office.
Milares looked to the right—through the window over downtown Caracas. The Venezuelan people had become used to attending protests in the last couple years. When a call for bodies went out, they’d mass on the street in minutes.
Usually, they were peaceful. But in the wake of the Constituent Assembly’s declaration of martial law, the protests turned into riots.
And, from the General’s spartan office on the eighth floor of a building privately held by a member of Los Chacales, Colonel Milares could see it all. The smoke. The signs. The flares and the fires.
Milares turned away from it. He didn’t have the stomach to watch his country devour itself. Not anymore.
At the center of the office, General Barrios stood behind a folding table with nothing but a phone on it. He leaned with his knuckles against the tabletop, listening, his face expressionless. The phone bleated with the voices of an unknown number of men—Los Chacales.
“They could argue about the best way to put on pants in the morning,” Milares muttered, hoping his old friend would crack a smile.
The General didn’t react.
Too much on his mind. And Milares couldn’t hold that against him. There was a time when he and the General shared a bond only earned by men who had seen combat together, but that bond deteriorated along with the rest of Venezuela.
The General cared about his country. He was a true patriot. He was concerned to his core—and had been for years. So, when a mysterious group of businessmen, Los Chacales, offered him a way to save his country, he took it. After deliberating with Colonel Milares, of course.
Los Chacales never told the General how many they were. Or who they were. Only that they had money, they had a plan, and they needed his help to save Venezuela from its corrupt government. They liked to conduct their business on the phone. At first, Milares thought that was reckless—any number of people could listen in—but it seemed that one of them had pull with the phone company. Perhaps they owned it. Or perhaps Los Chacales had sway with police or the intelligence service. The end result was the same: they didn’t seem to worry about phone taps.
Someone finished droning on about farm production and subsidies when the conversation from the phone changed.
“General Barrios,” a man’s deep, cigarette-addled voice said, “when will you have full control of the Constituent Assembly?”
The General looked at Milares wearily, then pushed a button on the phone, opening the line.
“I don’t know yet,” he said simply.
An eruption of voices spewed from the phone. A dozen men trying to talk over each other at once.
Then, the same deep, raspy voice from before won out.
“General, are you aware we have British and American investors waiting for an update on when our oil refineries will be in operation again?”
God. Always about the money with these people!
The General shook his head at Milares—he must’ve been thinking the same thing.
“Yes,” the General answered. “And I apologize that our revolution is not running as scheduled. Perhaps I’ll have a word with the rioters and see if they can wrap things up.”
Milares laughed. Nobody else did. That was the problem with these old business types. They had no perspective. Too busy sitting in comfortable offices, smoking cigars, having affairs with interns and secretaries. They didn’t know what it was like to crawl through the jung
le, to hear bullets rip through leaves, to see columns of smoke and fire belch from the earth as planes screamed overhead.
They didn’t appreciate the humor that came with dire situations. Often times, Milares found that exact humor enabled a man to hold onto his sanity while the world burned down around him.
“You may think this is something you can laugh at, but I don’t see the humor,” the phone said to General Barrios. “The CIA is getting nervous about the legitimacy of our operation. And I think that stems from your involvement, General.”
“Then why did you ask me to help you?” General Barrios fired back. His nostrils flared, and the burn scars near his ear seemed to spark with rage. “If the Americans are too impatient to wait for Venezuela, then perhaps the problem doesn’t lie with accepting my help, but in your choice to accept their help.”
The General had a point. And Colonel Milares didn’t blame him for resenting the Americans. They’d had a long history of meddling in Venezuela affairs—mostly to topple Bolivar and his revolutionaries from power. But how many times had Venezuela’s people and her military taken the brunt of that meddling?
Too many times.
“Gentlemen,” General Barrios said, “I assure you everything is in hand. Revolutions take time. They do not have schedules, and they cannot be fully controlled. From my perspective, it seems we’re moving exactly as we planned. But we must keep a steady hand if we’re to see this through. For the good of Venezuela.”
There were mutters of agreement through the phone.
But before the meeting went any further, it was interrupted. Marco Erazo strolled through the office door.
“Diputado?” Milares got up from the couch, suddenly feeling more awake. How did Erazo find them?
“I knew you couldn’t be trusted,” Erazo spit at the General. “You’ve been conspiring to overthrow a lawfully elected government—is this why you haven’t stationed enough troops in Caracas?”
Milares had to think quickly, but his mind was in shock—how in God’s name had Erazo known they would be here? “Senor Erazo, I don’t know what you thought you heard—”
“Quiet.” Something flashed in the old man’s hand. Sunlight glinting off a pistol. “The two of you should be executed where you stand.”
“You’ve got the means.” General Barrios nodded at the pistol.
Erazo’s mouth stretched into a smile. “That I do,” he said. “But not here. I am a representative of law and order, and I’ll see you both arrested and executed by the state for treason.”
Two pairs of men in dark suits rushed in behind Erazo. His bodyguards—Colonel Milares was sure of it. One pair took him by both arms, and the other took the General.
“Then where are the police?” Milares asked. But he knew. They had their hands full with the rioters outside.
Erazo’s wrinkled face flushed red, as he glared at Milares.
“You’ll see them soon enough,” he said. He jerked his head toward the door. The bodyguards pulled Colonel Milares forward. He didn’t resist. He walked along with them. He still had his dignity. As did the General, who came along behind.
In the hallway, they turned right. The office building they were in was almost completely empty. A few walls stood around the room where the General and Colonel Milares had been, but most of the interior was unfinished. Nothing but steel studs and wires on the inside, with a bank of elevators at the end of the hall, running through the heart of the floor like a concrete pillar.
The building mostly worked. Construction was abandoned when Venezuela’s economy cratered two years ago, and there weren’t many people with the money to rent out space.
Erazo pushed the call button for the elevator. The doors opened instantly, and he let his bodyguards escort the General and Milares inside first.
“How did you know we were here?” General Barrios asked as Erazo walked in and pushed the button for the ground floor.
“You are a very easy man to find,” Erazo said. “All the better for me. I don’t easily trust people. Especially those tasked with putting troops on every street corner in Caracas.” Erazo holstered his weapon and winked at the General. “And you should look over your shoulder more. Maybe you would’ve seen one of my men following you.”
As the elevator moved down, Milares thought about what lay ahead of him. A swift trial. Prison. Hopefully a quick execution. The palms of his hands went hot.
The elevator dinged. The doors opened on a large, empty lobby. There was a dry water fountain, some dead, potted palm trees and a circular desk for a receptionist, but no one sat at it.
Beyond, past the high glass windows, and the glass doors, rioters churned in the streets. Mostly young men and women—college kids—in jeans and t-shirts and soccer jerseys running through the streets like wild Indians with bricks and rocks and steel pipes for clubs.
Trash blew everywhere. Paper with political slogans printed across them. Glass. Bottles. Boxes. But beyond the mess were the lush, green Pico Naiguata mountains, blue skies, and warm sun. Caracas could have been a beautiful city. And maybe it would be, yet.
Between the doors and the street, two black SUVs had been parked at the curb.
“You intend to take us outside in that mess?” General Barrios said.
“You’ll live,” Erazo replied.
“It’s not myself I’m worried about,” he said. “You’re an old man. Sure, you put on a good show from behind a podium, but I bet those knees don’t run as well as they used to.”
Erazo clicked his teeth, and the guards pushed the General and Milares forward, toward the glass doors at the front of the lobby.
One of the General’s men pushed the door open. But he made a mistake in doing so. He let go of the General’s arm. That’s when General Barrios made his move.
Some officers went soft when they hit the rank of General. But Barrios never let himself go in that way. He had been hardened by years of secret wars. Of counterintelligence. Nights spent tracking Capitalist militias sent on raids from Colombia—of fighting men backed by American interests.
General Barrios’ free arm whipped through the air. His finger gouged into an eye of the second bodyguard—the one still holding him. The man howled. A thread of blood splattered across the glass doors.
One of the men holding Colonel Milares made a move to help restrain the General. He barely moved half a step when the Colonel, who had been through those same jungles on those same missions as the General when they were both young officers, snapped his foot into the back of the bodyguard’s knee, and stomped downward until a wet crunch reverberated through the empty lobby.
While the General took care of the bodyguard who had opened the door, Milares turned on the last man. He stepped around him, cupped the back of his head, and used his momentum to slam the other man’s skull into the lobby’s glass.
Then, he turned to Diputado Erazo, who was six paces behind them, fumbling for the pistol in his pocket.
Erazo’s arthritic fingers almost had a hold on the gun’s grip, when one of them slipped. The pistol clattered to the floor.
Milares jumped for it. He scooped it up and pointed it to the left—at Erazo.
“No one move!” Milares shouted. But, aside from Erazo, only General Barrios was left standing.
Barrios put up his hands, mockingly. “It wouldn’t make any sense for you to stab me in the back now, would it?”
There he was again. The Barrios who used to fight militia men in the jungle, side-by-side with Milares.
“No, sir.” Milares turned the pistol around and held it out for General Barrios, grip first.
The General took the weapon, then pointed it at Diputado Erazo.
“Do you have anyone else waiting for us?” the General asked.
“No.” Erazo’s face turned bright red. Hard to tell if the man was angry, or if he was too embarrassed by his bodyguards to breathe.
“No one in the cars out there? No one in the streets?”
Erazo shook his h
ead.
General Barrios looked like he was in disbelief. “You realize that if you’re lying to me, I’ll put a bullet between your eyes.”
“I realize,” Erazo said.
Colonel Milares couldn’t help but chuckle. “You thought you’d take us in with four bodyguards?”
“Don’t tease the old man,” the General said. “He was confused.”
Then, using the pistol, the General motioned for Erazo to step outside.
“The cars both probably have tracking systems built into them,” Colonel Milares said. “We won’t get very far with them.”
The General said nothing back. Only kept his eyes on Erazo, waiting for the old man to start moving toward the doors.
What was the General’s plan? To walk through the riot with Erazo at gunpoint? And Colonel Milares tagging behind with what? Harsh language?
He patted down one of the bodyguards at his feet—the man whose head he slammed into the glass. Milares felt the leather straps of a shoulder holster. His fingers followed it to a Glock 17. He pulled out the gun and made sure a round was chambered.
“You won’t need that weapon, Nestor,” the General said. “Not now.”
Milares looked outside. A group of men smashed a shop window, then darted in to loot the store. He thought about those people skinning him alive with shards of broken glass.
“As far as those men know, this crackdown by the military was as much our doing as it was Erazo’s,” Milares said. “They’ll kill us all.”
“They may,” General Barrios said.
“I think I should take that Glock with me. To keep us safe.”
The General shook his head at me.
“He doesn’t trust you with a gun,” Erazo said, laughing. “He’s afraid you’ll get jumpy and shoot someone. Then we’re all dead.”
Milares pretended like he didn’t hear Erazo.
“Sir, if we go out there, we’re dead,” Milares said. “We should stay inside anyway.”
“I wouldn’t plan on staying safe here.” Erazo barely held back another laugh. “I don’t see any military out there to put the riot down, and those people are right outside the door. How long before they come into this building?”
Jackal: Barrett Mason Book 3 Page 3
