There were a lot more Green Shirts here. Flanagan counted easily twice the numbers that had been at the Fuentes farm in the first few minutes. And instead of lounging around in a central location, they were spread out across the farm.
Several of the Green Shirts were posted up on hastily-erected guard towers, overlooking the laborers who were planting coca plants in place of whatever crops had previously been grown here. Several of them were armed with PKMs or M60s. The rest carried the same polyglot mix of M16s, AKs, and Galils that he’d seen at Fuentes’s place.
The farmhouse itself was similarly surrounded by technicals and guards. But something else drew his gaze after a moment.
A spike had been driven into a tree just in front of the farmhouse. A man hung from the spike by his shackled wrists, his head bowed to his chest, dressed in only shorts and a white t-shirt. At least, it had been a white t-shirt. It was drenched in blood. The man wasn’t moving.
Bright lights shone from a hastily erected shelter off to one side of the farmhouse. More laborers worked in there, unloading chemicals from a truck parked just outside. The coca crop wasn’t remotely ready for harvest yet, but it appeared that they were preparing the processing facility already. More armed Green Shirts watched the unloading, hands on their weapons.
The coca farms were going to be tougher nuts to crack. But Flanagan didn’t think that they’d be the first targets. Or even actionable targets at all. If they could break the Green Shirts, this might go away in the aftermath.
But there was a lot of work to be done before that could happen.
He watched as one of the laborers—little more than a kid—dropped one of the bags of chemicals as he tried to carry it from the back of the truck. The bag looked like it weighed more than half what he did. But the nearest Green Shirt guard stepped in and hit the kid in the kidney with his rifle butt as he bent over the fallen sack. When he didn’t get the reaction he wanted, he hit the kid again. The boy crumpled, and the Green Shirt started kicking him.
Flanagan was aimed in, gritting his teeth, his finger hovering near the trigger, but he forced himself to lower his weapon. Engaging now meant compromise, and they couldn’t afford that. As much as he wanted to save the kid, he wouldn’t do any of the enslaved citizens of San Tabal and its environs any good if he got them all killed.
He’d seen enough. Together, he and Cruz faded back into the jungle.
Chapter 10
Galvez didn’t usually carry a cell phone with him. He had a radio if any of his Green Shirts—he already thought of them as his Green Shirts; they answered to him before Clemente, anyway—needed to contact him. But he had this particular phone for certain special purposes. He only powered it up once every few days.
This time, there was a text message waiting once the old phone finished booting up and found the weak cell signal in San Tabal. Several of the local cell companies had cut off their service to the area after the Green Shirts’ revolution.
He’d find a way to make them pay for that. Once the revolution was established and impregnable.
The message was short and succinct. There’s a problem. Contact me ASAP.
Galvez’s English was better than he liked most people to believe. It seemed somehow to clash with his image as a revolucionario to speak the language of the hated Estados Unidos. He played up that image deliberately, even as he held those who thought it important in contempt. Power and the ultimate triumph of the revolution were his goals. The little ideological purity tests that most revolutionaries got wrapped up in only infuriated him.
There was only one phone number programmed into the little Nokia. It took a couple seconds before it was ringing.
“You need to take some extra security steps.” The American didn’t bother with pleasantries. He never had. Galvez didn’t especially care, though he still bristled slightly at this gringo’s arrogance. “I’ve received indicators that my instructions might not have been followed to the letter.”
“How so?” Galvez kept his own voice flat, even as his mind raced. Had Clemente’s suspicions been right? The arrangement had been that the American would send a small, deniable team that would play its part in the plan and ask no questions. The American’s cousin would then receive a greater cut of the cocaine profits, while the American himself would be able to play up his reputation as being tough on terrorism, at least behind closed doors. Galvez and Ballesteros would still rule San Tabal with an iron fist, all the while pretending to be more reasonable than Clemente.
But if the Americans were digging…
“The team might have left early. They were given a strict timeline, but one of the coordinator’s assets went south only a few days ago. It’s possible that they’re sniffing around instead of just doing what they’re told.” The annoyance in the American’s voice was obvious. Killers were supposed to do what he told them to, not think for themselves.
“And how do I know that you didn’t send them ahead, and are warning me only to put my mind at ease, to assure me that you have not decided to go back on our arrangement?” Galvez was thinking hard. If the gringo had double-crossed them, he might have to take drastic steps, more quickly than he’d anticipated. “How do I know that this call is not simply intended to make me think that your subordinates disobeyed you when we find evidence of American special forces moving on San Tabal?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. We have an arrangement.”
“Which might be inconvenient for you in the future. But I warn you, American, that the revolution is
