“Who were those guys, Stricken? And don’t lie and say cultists. They looked way too official.”
“Well, yes and no.” He laid on the horn to warn some street urchins to get out of our way. Thankfully, they did, because I had no doubt Stricken would have run them down. “Those were Gatos Pretos. The Black Cats. They’re a death squad that sometimes works for the state, but in this case, they’re taking orders from the cultists who’ve infiltrated their leadership, and they’re going to use the Gatos to kill anyone who gets in their god’s way. Which god they’re working for, I’ve not nailed that down quite yet. But it’s kind of irrelevant since both of them would love to see all of us dead.”
I’d never heard of this death squad, but I had a nagging feeling that I knew their leader somehow. I’d not gotten that good of a look at him, but something was eating at the back of my mind. “Who is in charge of these Black Cats?”
“Don’t know. It’s not like they have a website. You’ll have to forgive me for not having unrestricted access to the entire US intelligence apparatus anymore.”
Whoever he was, that brief glimpse had set my teeth on edge. There was something familiar, but not . . . It was like my subconscious was trying to tell me something, but it hadn’t clicked just yet.
“Sorry about your men,” Sonya said.
Stricken waved one hand dismissively. “They were local hires. Temps. I didn’t learn most of their names. Them’s the breaks.”
“Nance was in that lead car with Franks, sir,” Curtis said.
“That the other American?” Franks asked.
“Yeah. We were on the task force together.”
“He died quick,” Franks said simply.
“Shit . . . ” Curtis stared off into space, then he punched the seat.
“He was a good man,” Stricken said, though I honestly couldn’t tell if Stricken actually meant that or he was just trying to placate his remaining volunteer. After being thrown out of the government, he was probably running low on willing helpers. “We’ll make sure his sacrifice wasn’t in vain.”
One second we were speeding through a favela, and the next it was like a switch had been flipped and we were in a different world. We went around one gentle turn, a patch of trees, and just like that, the road was paved and smooth and straight. The buildings were new, tall, and clean. There was no trash or graffiti anymore. It was a jarring jump between extreme poverty and respectable prosperity. It was almost as quick as falling through the portal from Alabama. I’d heard of bad side of the tracks, but Brazil took that concept to a whole new level.
Stricken was checking the mirrors as we got onto a wide, straight, two-lane road. He even wore his sunglasses at night. “I think we’ve shaken them. I don’t see a tail.”
Now that Stricken was deprived of his mercenary army, Franks must have recalculated his previous cooperation because he pulled his Glock and stuck it against the back of our host’s head.
Curtis reached for his handgun, but Franks’ other hand shot out and grabbed Curtis’ wrist. The poor guy winced as Franks twisted. He was so damned strong that he could have snapped every bone if he felt like it, but he refrained. His attention was on the jackass in the driver’s seat.
“I should’ve seen this horrible betrayal coming,” Stricken said. “Oh, wait. I did. Relax, Franks. I needed the private army on hand until you cooled off enough to be rational. You’ve been briefed on what the MCB knows about this situation, so you know it’s serious enough you can’t risk me being wrong. I’m the key to stopping this, and you obviously get that, otherwise the contents of my head would already be all over the windshield.”
Franks said, “You killed Strayhorn.”
I didn’t even know who that was, but the way Franks said it, Strayhorn had obviously been somebody important to him.
Stricken took a deep breath. “Indirectly. And I know you’ll make me pay for that eventually.” For being a former danger guy turned desk jockey, Stricken still had ice water in his veins, because I’ve had Franks point guns at me, and there’s never any doubt that he’s willing to pull the trigger. “But we both know what Dwayne Myers would tell you if he was here right now.”
“I can’t ask ’cause you killed him too.”
Stricken suddenly shouted. “Bullshit, Franks. You know what he’d say. You know damned good and well Myers would tell you the mission has to come first. I know about how your status has changed. You can’t just shrug off that many innocent lives being lost like it’s no big deal anymore. This is the era of the more sensitive, kinder and gentler Agent Franks. You have to do the right thing now.”
I had no idea what any of that meant either, but we were doing eighty and climbing. If Franks shot our driver, we were hosed.
Sonya was thinking the same thing. “Don’t do it, Franks. You’ll kill us all.”
“Maybe you should have him pull over, then shoot him,” I suggested as I buckled my seat belt.
“I’d be fine,” Franks said, and that was probably true.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Stricken said, and it was obvious from the way he said it that he wasn’t talking about a car accident. “If you’re gonna do it, fucking do it. None of you have a second to waste. I die, you can try to stop this without me, but by the time you figure out what you need to do, it’ll be too late, and all the bloodshed and carnage and suffering that result will be on your head. Yours alone, Franks. How’s that going to go over with the big man upstairs, throwing away all those innocent lives
