On a whim, Carrera reached up and took from around his neck a golden crucifix on a chain. "Give this to your masters," he said, handing it to Guzman.
Belalcázar, Santander, Terra Nova
Even in an organization as egalitarian and non-traditional as the unofficially named "Huánuco Processors, Shippers, and Vendors Free State" there were some members who were a little more equal than others. Jorge Joven was one among them. Indeed, his only true peer in the organization was Pedro Estevez. It was Estevez whom Belisario Endara had dealt with in preparing a team to get rid of Parilla and Carrera. All three sat now, along with Guzman, in a secure room, heavily and not too tastefully decorated, in the basement of Joven's palatial, isolated mansion, in the hills overlooking the city.
"Son of a bitch," cursed Estevez. "Offer him money . . . a decent offer you said it was, right, Guzman?"
"Si, patron," the lawyer confirmed. "A huge amount, twelve million FSD monthly."
"And he won't take that? He's a mad dog, then, and mad dogs need shooting."
Endara sighed, conscious that he'd been doing a lot of that lately. "A mad dog he may be, Pedro, but he is more of a rabid mad dog. Very dangerous, too dangerous to fuck with lightly, as I have tried to explain to my uncle."
"That was my impression, Padron," Guzman confirmed to Estevez. "If his assistant hadn't talked him out of it, I'd be in prison now."
"Oh, no," Endara said. "I assure you, you would never have made it to prison." Endara's look grew contemplative. "You know, it's odd that he let you go. It's really not his style at all."
"So I gathered," the lawyer agreed. "Indeed, I am so sure I was within inches of doom that I've paid to have a special mass said for his tall black."
"Was that Jimenez or McNamara?" Endara asked.
"I don't know. He called the man 'sergeant major.' "
"Ah. That would be Sergeant Major General McNamara. Tough old man who manages to keep a very young and very beautiful wife very happy. He's one of the four or five people who actually have any personal control over Carrera."
"Well no one is going to need to control the son of a bitch once he's dead," Estevez said.
"I was rather hoping you would talk my uncle out of this," Endara said, shaking his head, "since he won't listen to me on the subject."
Estevez nodded, seriously, even judicially. "And so I would have if this man had not insulted me and mine," Escobedo's head tilted toward Joven, "by refusing our very generous offer."
At the word, "generous," Guzman remembered something. He bent over and reached into his briefcase and withdrew from it a golden crucifix on a chain. This he handed to Escobedo with the words, "Carrera said to give this to you."
"What?" Escobedo raged. "Is he trying to tell me to make my peace with God?"
"No . . . no," said Endara, who knew a great deal about Carrera. "I think Carrera meant something rather different."
Once Estevez and Joven had heard just what Endara thought Carrera had meant by sending a crucifix, both their anger and their intentions expanded radically.
Federated States Embassy, Ciudad Balboa
Ambassador Tom Wallis came around from behind his desk to shake Carrera's and Fernandez's hands, then McNamara's. He then gestured to introduce them to another man, this one with a plainly cultured tan, heavily muscled, blue eyed, blond, tall, and gringo. Sunglasses hung suavely from the gringo's pocket; and—to blend in with the locals—he wore a guayabera which successfully failed to hide a Bertinelli high-fashion holster.
"This is Mr. Keith, gentlemen," Wallis said.
"Gavin Keith," the gringo added.
Carrera disliked Keith instinctively. He thought of a piece of advice once given by a Federated States Marine Corps acquaintance on how to find a "Sea Lion," the FS Navy's underwater recon and demolitions commandos: "Go to the nearest high water mark and follow it until you come to the bodybuilder, laying in a lawn chair, catching rays, wearing sunglasses, and stylin' with an PM-6 submachine gun."
"You used to be a Sea Lion, didn't you?" Carrera asked, suppressing a smile.
"Team Six out of Big River," Keith answered. "How'd you know?"
"Just a lucky guess," Carrera answered.
If Keith suspected that he was somehow the butt of a private joke, his self image couldn't permit further inquiry.
Wallis also suspected that some sort of criticism had been passed. He decided to change the subject. "Mr. Keith's organization has some information that might be useful to you. In fact, it might be critical."
"What's that?" Carrera asked. "And what organization?" Who knows; maybe the muscles haven't cut off the blood supply to the brain in this case.
"I'm with DITF," Keith answered, "the Drug Interdiction Task Force. We've got people inside the Belalcázar organization. We think you're going to get hit, soon and hard."
Carrera raised an eyebrow. "Do you mean me, personally, or do you mean my family and friends? Or Balboa, generally?"
"All of the above," Keith answered. "We've got no details, not yet, anyway. We're working on it. There is one thing, though . . ."
"Yes?"
"They've got shoulder fired surface to air missiles available. If I were you I wouldn't take any aircraft anywhere anytime soon."
Fernandez frowned, nodded, and then admitted, "I've got nothing, no sources whatsoever, among the narcotraffickers, Patricio. Only when we grab one . . . and this report of light SAMs sounds . . . plausible, certainly.
"Is it just the Santander people or is Atzlan involved, too?" Fernandez asked.
"Atzlan is . . . interested," Keith said, "but, so far as we can tell, not involved. They're on the other side of the supply chain. What you're doing here doesn't affect them that much, if at all."
And it doesn't hurt, thought Fernandez, that I had my wet work people, especially Khalid, exterminate one group of the bastards some time ago. Hmmm. Maybe it's time to put Khalid back to work again; he's my best. But in Santander this time.
Hmmm. Wet work? Have to work on Patricio myself to get him to agree, these days.
Police Headquarters, Ciudad Balboa, Balboa
The afternoon sun cast long shadows from the trees lining the main thoroughfare on both sides. Striped by those shadows, a dirty white van, old and badly used, pulled into a parking space next to the former headquarters for the Transitway Area Police. The building itself, less than forty feet from where the van parked, was a one story, light brown painted, stucco structure. A group of policemen and women, numbering perhaps twenty-five, stood on the grass fronting the building. Another police officer, this one wearing sergeant's stripes, read aloud from his clipboard the duty instructions for the night shift.
A young police officer, Emilio Alvarez, half ran from a side door of the police station to his car parked a few hundred meters away, opposite the Balboa Knights of Pius V hall. As he passed, Alvarez took little notice of the t-shirted passenger exiting the van. Like all new members of the police force inducted of late, Alvarez was a member of the Reserves, in his case of the 10th Infantry Tercio. He hastily tucked a fatigue shirt in as he rushed to be on time for his weekend drill.
Amidst a cacophony of fruitlessly honking horns and mostly good-natured cursing, Alvarez crossed the street, weaving his way through crawling "rush hour" traffic. On reaching his automobile, he bent slightly to unlock the door. Opening the door, he looked up to see two men, one of whom he thought he had just seen getting out of a white van, cross the street at a very fast walk. The men broke into a fast run.