“Hello, gentlemen.” The thickset man’s English was accented, but he was noticeably more fluent than the waitress. “I’m afraid that your friend might have led you wrong. We don’t have Chuleta Valluna here. I can suggest something else, but we simply don’t have the ingredients for Chuleta Valluna.”
“Well, that’s disappointing.” Brannigan hadn’t been sure what the reaction would have been, but this wasn’t quite it. Kirk had told Flanagan that his friend would probably draw them into the back to talk when he heard their order, but this guy wasn’t doing that. “What would you recommend, then?”
“I’d suggest the Arroz con Pollo,” the man said. He was still watching them, but Brannigan noticed that his eyes were never quite still. It wasn’t a nervous tic, either. He was watching the front as well.
“We’ll have that, then.” The man nodded, said a quick word in Spanish to the waitress, and disappeared into the kitchen again.
Brannigan frowned. Flanagan’s expression was carefully neutral, but he’d clearly noticed the same thing. “Not what Kirk told me to expect.”
“How long has it been since he’s been down here?” Brannigan was still keeping an eye on the kitchen door.
“It’s been a few years.” Flanagan grimaced slightly. “Things may have changed.”
“Which means that this could go south in a hurry in the next few minutes.” But he wasn’t willing to completely abandon the rendezvous until they knew for sure.
The waitress came out a moment later, with two bowls and plates. The rice and chicken in the bowls was steaming, and smelled really good. She slid the plates in front of them with a smile.
A small slip of paper was on Brannigan’s plate, wedged under the bowl. He returned the waitress’s smile and pulled the paper out as she turned back toward the kitchen.
Finish your meal, and then meet me at the north side of Santa Matilde Park.
Flanagan had started in on his food, though he was watching Brannigan with a raised eyebrow. Brannigan tucked the paper into his shirt pocket and picked up his fork. “Looks like we’re in business.”
***
Three pickups came out of the night and screeched to a halt in front of the small, red-painted bungalow. Gunmen in green shirts, carrying AK-47s, G3s, and Galils, piled out of the beds and converged on the front door.
No one was awake inside, at least not at first. A single light burned above the door, but it did nothing to deter the men who kicked the door to splinters and rushed inside. They were in power. What was to deter them?
Diego Galvez stepped out of the lead truck’s cab rather more sedately than his barely-leashed killers. Dressed in the same green shirt, but with a black beret on his head, his wolfish, sharp-edged features only serving to accentuate the feverish burning of his dark eyes as he watched the house, lighting a cigarette while he waited.
The Green Shirts were not expert tacticians. They didn’t carefully clear each room—they smashed in doors and rushed toward the nearest figure that caught their eye. If they’d been up against trained soldiers—even some of the FARC’s best fighters—they’d have been cut to pieces in moments.
Galvez didn’t especially care. He had his special troops. They were assigned elsewhere for tonight. He’d needed knee-breakers for this, so he had picked these men carefully.
He could trust them to do two things—to be as violent as he needed them to be, and never to cross him. Every one of them had reason to fear Galvez.
To fear him more than any of the other leaders. Even Clemente.
Shouts and thuds reverberated through the open door. Galvez stood there, smoking, until matters had calmed down a little, then he started inside, flicking the still-burning cigarette into the garden out front. It was still too damp for the plants to burn—not that he would have cared.
He stepped through the door, looking around at the wreckage his men had left. They had not been gentle. The door itself hung on by one hinge, the jamb splintered and cracked where the latch and deadbolt had been smashed inward by a heavy boot. Plants were scattered amidst the potting soil and the fragments of their pots on the tiled floor.
More smashed furniture, including a shattered floor lamp, traced the trail his men had forced into the house. A mirror had been thrown on the floor, and Galvez’s polished black boots crunched in the fragments as he stepped into the living room.
Fabian Camacho and his family knelt on the floor in front of the smashed remains of their coffee table, their arms cruelly twisted behind their backs. Blood ran down the side of Camacho’s head—he’d been struck by a rifle butt. Galvez had seen that before. He’d received such a wound himself, long ago. The scar still ran through one eyebrow.
Camacho had had nothing to do with that. It had been a long time ago, and far from San Tabal. But Galvez looked down at the slightly paunchy financial tycoon, and his lip curled. It was just such men as Camacho who had paid the soldiers who had beaten him and left him for dead on the side of the road outside of Mocoa.
“Did they give you any trouble?” Galvez already knew the answer, as his eyes were drawn to Lorenzo’s split lip.
Lorenzo pointed to Camacho’s oldest, a boy of about fourteen. “That one tried to fight.”
Galvez looked at Camacho. “Kill him.”
Lorenzo didn’t hesitate. He shifted his rifle to one side and shot the boy in the back of the head, almost before the Green Shirt holding him could get out of the way. The bullet blasted out through his
