window. Felipe pulled the curtains closed, then opened the chest and transferred three armloads of clothing and blankets to the bed. That done, he lifted the candle off the sconce on the right and handed it to Jonathan.
“If you don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” Jonathan said.
The old man then took down the entire sconce. He unscrewed the flat platelike candle holder from the wrought-iron curlicue that supported it, then rehung the sconce and brought the disk to the chest. He peeled up a corner of the wooden bottom to reveal the male end of a bolt poking straight up. Felipe screwed the disk onto the bolt. When it seated, something clicked under the floor, and he was able to lift the entire bottom out of the chest, revealing a fixed ladder that reached straight down into a lightless shaft.
Jonathan grinned at Harvey. “Didn’t I tell you you’d love it?”
Felipe found three flashlights in the top drawer of his dresser and handed one to each of them. As Harvey reached for his, Felipe hung on to it for a second longer than necessary. “I trust you because Senor Jones trusts you,” he said. “Don’t disappoint me. For your own sake.”
Jonathan kept his expression light, but he’d never heard that level of threat from the old man before. “I vouch for him in every way,” he said.
In his own time, Felipe let go of the flashlight, then led the little parade down into the ground.
The first time Jonathan had seen Felipe’s underground storage tunnel, he’d been nearly speechless with admiration. He was so impressed, in fact, that he would later create a similar facility in his own home. His would be bigger, of course, and it would feature state-of-the-art temperature and humidity controls.
Felipe did the best he could with what he had. The underground chamber measured maybe twelve feet square, and it was filled with all manner of weaponry, most of it still in its original containers. Back in the day when they were fighting Pablo, Jonathan had spent tens of thousands of Uncle Sam’s dollars in this very basement, arming citizenry to rise up against the drug lords.
Without asking, the old man walked to one of the smaller crates and opened it. He pulled out a Colt Model 1911. 45 caliber pistol-long Jonathan’s preferred sidearm. He dropped the clip out of the grip and jacked the slide back to lock it open, then presented it to Jonathan for inspection. He smiled broadly. “I don’t forget, Senor Jones.”
Jonathan had to chuckle. “Indeed you don’t, my friend.” He released the slide lock and cycled it a couple of times. It seemed to be well lubricated and in good shape. He would tinker with it later, of course, but for now it seemed fine. He loaded it again, jacked a round into the chamber, then left it cocked as he stuffed it muzzle-first into the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back. It felt great to finally be armed again.
“You’ll shoot yourself in the ass keeping it cocked like that,” Harvey said.
Jonathan gave a tolerant smirk, then told Felipe, “My friend here was a Marine. He needs a dainty little pistol. Something with three safeties and a trigger lock.”
Harvey bristled. “Hey, fuck you, doughboy. I’m just trying to keep you from getting a bullet in your GI GI tract.”
Jonathan laughed. He actually had nothing but undying admiration for Marines, but man was it easy to spin them. And fun. “You a Beretta man?” That was the new standard-issue military sidearm-the one that replaced Jonathan’s beloved. 45. The 9-millimeter Beretta was widely accepted as having better range and accuracy than the. 45, and it was certainly more user friendly. The problem with it, Jonathan thought, was that the people you shot with the thing didn’t fall down nearly fast enough.
“I’m here as a medic,” Harvey said. “What’ve you got in the way of Band-Aids and iodine?”
Felipe looked confused.
“He’s kidding,” Jonathan said with another glare. “Josie will be getting that for us. Pull a Beretta sidearm for my friend, and another for the other Mr. Smith. How about long guns?”
“I have MP5s, one or two M4s and a lot of AKs.”
Jonathan grimaced at the mention of the AK-47. With tens of millions of the damn things in circulation, they were a perfectly acceptable assault weapon, but they weighed too much, and he’d be goddamned if he was going to look like a terrorist.
“I’ll buy you out of M4s, and I’ll take two MP5s. Let me have five hundred rounds for each of the rifles and a hundred apiece for the pistols.” Felipe shuffled as Jonathan spoke, fulfilling the orders on the fly. “What do you have in the way of night vision?”
The old man stopped short and looked embarrassed. “Nothing, I’m afraid.”
“Not a problem,” Jonathan said, even though it was concerning. The ability to operate effectively at night was a huge force multiplier, especially in a jungle environment. He hated having to trust Jammin’ Josie to be the sole supplier for something so important.
“While you’re doing this,” Jonathan went on, “I need to buy a car. What do you recommend?”
The smile returned to Felipe’s face. “I recommend that you let me sell you a car.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It wasn’t until she’d arrived in Colombia that Brandy Giddings realized her entire notion of what the country would look like had been shaped by the movie Romancing the Stone with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. She’d expected muddy streets teeming with chickens and goats. She’d expected scary people on every corner and motor vehicles that were thirty years out of date.
What she got instead with Santa Marta was a modern if slightly threadbare city on the seashore that housed the Hotel Santorini, which itself sported perfectly acceptable air-conditioning, and whose bartender knew his way around a good caipirinha. And why not? She was a heck of a lot closer to the birthplace of the national drink of Brazil here in Colombia than she was in DC, where she’d first tasted the concoction.
Brandy sat in the lounge near a window that gave her a panoramic view of the Caribbean, watching the street vendors hawking their wares to tourists whose pockets were the targets of roving street urchins. She found comfort in the two beefy soldiers guarding the front doors. Actually, maybe they were policemen; they all wore the same uniforms in this part of the world. Either way, their presence put a lot of brawn and bullets between her and any of the criminals out there.
For the thousandth time in just a few days, she had to pinch herself to believe that she was actually here doing this. After she’d gone home from her last meeting with Secretary Leger, her doorbell had rung, and when she’d answered it, there was a young man in a crisp white Navy uniform, absent the ubiquitous white-on-black name tag. His equally white hat sat at a studied angle over his brow.
“Ms. Giddings?” he’d said. He had that sunny-but-tough Academy look.
“I’m she,” she’d said, and instantly she’d regretted the Wellesley grammar.
He presented an eleven-by-seventeen-inch manila envelope. “I’ve been ordered to deliver this to you personally.”
She took it without thinking. “Ordered by whom?”
“You’re to read it carefully and speak to no one.”
She’d actually giggled at that. It sounded like something out of a movie. “Is this from-” She cut herself off, just in case. “Who sent it?”
The young officer grasped the visor of his cap with his thumb and forefinger, a gallant tip of his hat. God, he was gorgeous. “Have a good day, ma’am,” he said.
The envelope contained a second envelope, along with a U.S. passport with her picture but a new name, plus unsigned instructions for her to appear at Andrews Air Force Base in less than three hours, prepared for several days in a warm climate. She was to tell no one of the correspondence, and she was to make no unusual preparations before leaving.
The Andrews flight had taken her to Hurlburt Field in Florida, and then onto a commercial flight under her new name to Santa Marta. At a precise hour, she was to be sitting at this bar in this hotel, with but one mission: to hand the second envelope to a man who would come by and speak to her.
It was like being a freaking spy. It took everything she had just to keep her hands from shaking. Could it possibly get any cooler than this?
