So there it is, he thought. The colonel had already approved it. There was nothing for him to do.
He got up from his terminal and stretched. He felt vaguely dissatisfied, though it was a good thing that the mission was a go. While they had a lock on the journalist’s location, it made sense to move fast. Kidnappers could easily disappear with their captives for years within Colombia’s mountains and jungles.
He walked down to the colonel’s office and popped in his head. The colonel, a bald, muscular southerner, was a bit of a Sphinx. He had a southern drawl and liked to play dumb, but could surprise you sometimes with the depth of his knowledge or his ability to see around corners. Last Halloween, he’d put on a white T-shirt, grabbed a mop, and made a highly popular appearance at the embassy party as Mr. Clean.
“Sir,” Mason said, “this thing in La Vigia is going tonight?”
“Looks like,” the colonel said. “Fingers crossed.”
Fingers crossed. Right.
“You need me to stay late?”
“Nah.”
Right.
“I miss being in the field,” Mason said. “Wish I could be out there.”
“Don’t we all.”
Mason thought about saying more, perhaps voicing some of his concerns about the shift that seemed to be happening, in which the Colombian military was taking over more and more of what should have been police functions. But the colonel already knew all that. Better to just wish the guys on the ground well, and to pray the hostage didn’t get killed.
He went back to his terminal and finished up for the day, clearing out his in-box and shooting an email over to the Colombian police unit that had just had their ISR assets stripped. Then he left the embassy.
Tonight, a team of highly trained Colombian soldiers would be moving in and performing the most complex type of operation commandos are tasked with—hostage rescue. Even now, they would be preparing, going through the plan, analyzing a model of the target structure, gaming out all the possible curveballs the operation might throw at them. Soon, they’d be preparing their kit, gearing up, perhaps saying a few prayers, or listening to pump-up music, or whatever little rituals were specific to that team. They had a clear, unmistakably good mission, with an innocent captive and an evil captor. What a luxury. They didn’t have to worry about the things he did at his level. The allocation of resources, the politics behind which unit or branch of service got which mission, and whether or not helping the military shift its focus from killing guerrillas in the jungle to killing drug dealers in coca territory would turn out to be a mistake. Instead, they would have the simple, immediate experience of the battlefield.
It was lucky that the embassy didn’t need him. He’d just spend the night full of envy. Besides, he’d told his oldest daughter that either this week or the next he’d help her with her Halloween costume. They’d gotten a picture frame, and a poster of the Mona Lisa, and they were going to cut out the face so Inez could stick her head through and walk around as the iconic painting. So far, he’d been too overworked to be able to come home early and help her put it together. Today was as good a day as any to start.
—
Over the next couple of hours, Jefferson’s fantasy dissipated and the real world came intruding, sticking its ugly face in the door and whining about practicalities. The journalist’s capture had attracted national attention. The army was now hunting her, along with the police. Until they found her, nothing that he had built here was safe.
Still, it irked him to just let her go. How could someone be so valuable to so many people, and nothing but useless to him? And if he just let her go, would the unwanted attention cease? His name and face were known now. He couldn’t fade back into obscurity. But maybe he could use that to his advantage. He had, after all, rescued her.
So he went back to the journalist’s room, had his men open the door, and he told her how things would go.
“Journalists have a code,” he said, and she agreed, yes, of course they did. And he asked if that code included protecting sources, and she said yes, of course, that is the most basic part of the code, and then he asked if she’d like him to become a source.
“Yes,” she said. He could see the relief across her bruised face. The knowledge that she might survive.
“I think it’s important that you tell people how I rescued you,” Jefferson said.
“I need a doctor,” she said.
“I know what you may have heard about me, that I’m a narco. That I was in the autodefensas. Did they tell you that?”
“Yes.”
“Who? Who told you that?”
“I knew about you before I got here.”
That made him happy.
“I was in the autodefensas,” he said. “Proudly. Everything I have ever done, I have done for the poor people, the forgotten people.”
The gringa nodded.
“In La Vigia,” Jefferson said, “we have been victims of the guerrilla first, and then the narcos second, and the government third.” He laughed. “I prefer the narcos. They kill for money. The guerrilla kill for insanity.”
“And you?” the journalist said. “What do the Mil Jesúses kill for?”
So many things. “The Mil Jesúses is a prayer. Do you know it?”
“I saw it on the internet. Before I came here.”
“Give up Satan!” He pointed his finger to the sky, then realized that was not where Satan was generally said to hang out, and redirected his finger to point it at the gringa. “You cannot count on me because on the Day of the Holy Cross I said a thousand times . . . Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”
He closed his eyes as he said the name of God, as if in the grip of powerful emotion. When he
