“Everything is under control, General.” Galvez sipped the aguardiente and savored it for a moment before swallowing. “In six months, no one will be able to touch us.”
***
Brannigan was waiting by the airstrip at Palonegro Airport, on the high tableland above Bucaramanga, as the charter plane taxied off the runway and toward the hangars and the civil air terminal. A plain, white, unmarked Learjet, it wouldn’t stand out to anyone, not even the Colombian Army security posted around the airport.
Of course, the short, stocky man next to him helped with that, too.
Alejandro Pacheco was not a young man. His hair was solid silver, turning white. There was still a hard gleam in his eye, though, the gleam of a man who’d seen a lot of death, and dealt out his share, too. He was a veteran of the Search Bloc, the special operations unit formed from the Colombian Army and police to hunt down Pablo Escobar, years ago. Many of the Search Bloc were dead, and few of them of old age. That Pacheco was still around spoke volumes about him.
He also had contacts. It seemed he had not been idle in the years since the wars with the Medellin and Cali cartels. Cruz had introduced him to Brannigan, and he was going to be their primary supplier going into the mountains. He’d provided the two trucks that they’d driven to the airport. Neither was anything special—ancient, creaky diesels with covered beds. But they ran well, and they’d had no trouble with the mountain roads from Pacheco’s farm.
The Learjet slowed and came to a stop, the engines winding down before the door opened, the stairs lowering toward the tarmac. Wade stepped out, scanning their surroundings carefully before his eyes lit on Brannigan and his companion.
Wade was too far away for Brannigan to read his expression very well, but he knew the other man enough to see the thought process well enough, anyway. Okay, no armored vehicles or men with guns. The Colonel looks relaxed. Two trucks, no other security presence. We should be okay.
He saw Wade turn inside and say something, then the big man started down the steps, his duffel over one shoulder. Bianco and Burgess followed, with Jenkins, Hank, Curtis, Gomez, and Javakhishvili coming after. They crossed quickly to where Brannigan waited.
“Welcome to Colombia, gents.” Brannigan jerked a thumb toward the trucks behind them. “It’s not a long drive to our staging point, which is Señor Pacheco’s farm, about ten miles outside of town. We’ll go over what Joe and I found out and get kitted up once we get there.”
“I take it that this is still just as sketchy as we thought?” Wade asked.
Brannigan just waved toward the trucks again. “Like I said, we’ll talk once we get there. The trucks are too noisy to carry on much of a conversation, anyway. Load up.”
***
“So, where’s Joe?” Curtis asked as he dropped down out of the back of the truck. He looked around at the farm, the modest, stuccoed house with cracking paint around the slightly ill-fitting window frames, the fields with a few cows and a fair bit of corn just reaching knee height, and the rough stables built of wire, sticks, and corrugated sheet metal. “I can’t imagine that you introduced him to a Colombian beauty hot enough to pry him away from Rachel.”
“He’s already up in the mountains, with Cruz.” Brannigan was already leading the way toward the house. Pacheco had disappeared inside. “We need more information, so they’re running some early reconnaissance. Once they get back, hopefully we’ll have enough pieces of the puzzle to know where we need to dig deeper.”
“So, this is still sketchy as hell.” Wade’s assessment wasn’t a question.
“Always was. So was Azerbaijan.” Brannigan led the way inside, and Pacheco waved them toward the back. “The implicit blackmail was the first red flag, and there haven’t been many signals since that led me to think otherwise.”
“I think it might be getting time to send a message.” Wade’s growl made it obvious what kind of “message” he had in mind. “I’m getting a little tired of this catspaw bullshit.”
“You and me both, brother.” The Blackhearts followed Pacheco into a relatively large living room in the back, with windows looking out on a garden that was already a riot of color, the mountains and the jungle looming beyond.
The living room was a little crowded at the moment. Nearly a dozen plastic storm cases lined the walls, and the furniture had been pushed toward the middle of the room to make space. Most of the Blackhearts eyed the cases with a glint of interest as Pacheco waved them to seats on the well-worn chairs and sofa.
“Coffee? Or maybe something a little stronger?” Pacheco’s English was pretty good, and most of the Blackhearts probably couldn’t have distinguished his accent from any other Spanish speaker, though Gomez cocked his head slightly, as if trying to place it. Half Texican, half Mescalero Apache, he was a fluent Spanish speaker, and was fairly familiar with a lot of Central and South American dialects. More so than most Southwesterners might be. For all his silence and capacity for horrific violence, Gomez was a thinker, and he liked to learn.
“Coffee’s fine.” Brannigan wasn’t worried about any of the Blackhearts getting drunk—well, maybe Curtis and Jenkins—but the last thing they needed right then was alcohol to cloud the planning process. And he’d heard good things about Colombian coffee for most of his life.
As Pacheco called to his wife to get some coffee brewing, Brannigan laid out what he and Flanagan had learned
