“I should do like ISIS,” he said. “I should get a big black flag, and I should put you on camera, and I should make you pray to Allah, and then I should cut your head off.”
He hadn’t planned on saying that, but he liked the sound of it. He could see it, the grainy execution video. Why was it always a grainy video? Where do you even get cameras so bad these days?
“How sad I’m not Muslim,” he said.
The journalist nodded slowly. There was no visible sign of relief. She swallowed. She was afraid, he could see. He smiled at her, to show her that he meant well.
“I thought you were going to free me,” she said.
He nodded. That had been his plan. But it was too late. The lawyer in Bogotá had told him the Jesúses had already been put on the military’s hit list. What difference did it make now if he killed her or let her go?
“People will look for me,” she said.
“Family? You have a husband? Children?”
“No.”
“Ah.” He shook his head. “That means nobody cares.”
He could tell she was trying to decide what was the right way to respond. He wasn’t sure himself. He didn’t think he’d kill her. It still made more sense to let the whole thing defuse. Maybe even try to position himself as a hero, as a local businessman who negotiated with the cocaleros to rescue this stupid gringa. Maybe if she made him famous, it would protect him.
“The American government cares,” she said. “And they don’t pay for kidnapped people.”
“What do they do?”
“They send Navy SEALs—to kill.”
Jefferson laughed. She was trying to intimidate him.
“If they send a Navy SEAL, I’ll fuck him in the ass.”
“Okay,” she said.
“I’m going to think about you,” he said. And he left her there.
Later, as he ate an early dinner, he saw he had a message from Javier, asking to meet. Undoubtedly, Javier wanted to know why the journalist hadn’t been released. That was what he should do. But he allowed himself to wait, allowed a fantasy to flower in his mind.
In the fantasy, the Americans sent Navy SEALs in to get the journalist. They came to a house where they thought she was being held, but which was, in fact, a trap. A trap for killing gringos. In the fantasy, his men slaughter the SEALs. All except one. It’s the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden. Not the clown he’d seen taking credit on television, but the real one, the one the U.S. government doesn’t want you to know about. He’s a big man, very strong. He looks like Dwayne Johnson, the Rock, but white. And maybe that’s his name. Rock. Steve Rock. The true killer of Osama bin Laden. And Steve Rock has biceps the size of soccer balls. Steve Rock has a dick as thick as a Coke can. On his chest, Steve Rock has a tattoo of an American flag and on his back Steve Rock has a tattoo of Steve Rock killing Osama bin Laden. Steve Rock is large. Steve Rock is glistening. Steve Rock is like Ivan Drago in Rocky IV and Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando and Jean-Claude Van Damme in Black Eagle. Steve Rock’s hair is long and his eyes are blue and Steve Rock is crying. He is surrounded by the bodies of his fellow SEALs, all of them piled on the floor, their bodies riddled with bullets. And Steve Rock fires his machine gun into the air until he is out of bullets, and then Jefferson steps out of the shadows, and Steve Rock throws down his weapon and the two men square off, the younger, stronger man against the older, sicker one. But Jefferson is wise, and Jefferson is vicious, and Jefferson knocks Steve Rock down with one punch, Jefferson flings the blood of the fallen SEALs in Steve Rock’s eyes and kicks him through a window, Jefferson lures Steve Rock into a tight space where his size and strength are a disadvantage, and Jefferson conquers Steve Rock. He takes him to Venezuela and parades through the streets with Steve Rock in a cage behind him, and the people throw flowers at the feet of Jefferson and rancid meat into the face of Steve Rock. And Jefferson is declared the new Uribe, the new Chavez, the new Castro, the new Che Guevara.
Of course, Jefferson would still have to die. The gringos could never let him live. That’s how it would have to go. And it would be best. A man like himself didn’t deserve to die from a disease, stumbling downward on the path of life. He deserved to die while climbing to the heavens. He deserved to die while still fully alive. He deserved to be on T-shirts.
—
When the notification came through, Mason was at his terminal, going through emails. They were mostly dull, administrative tasks. Logistical hassles with a training op in Larandia, details on an ODA team’s forthcoming redeployment, a reminder about the planning committee for the embassy’s Halloween party. That last one he flagged as important. He was taking the girls and didn’t want it to be a shitshow like it’d been the year before. And then a new email came in with an innocuous subject line. “FWD: ISR shift Tibú to La Vigia.”
It was from the colonel who ran MILGROUP, who had just typed “FYI” above an exchange he’d had with one of the embassy’s DEA agents. Mason scanned it quickly. A few ISR assets were being transferred
