“We’ll take whatever you can give us, sir.” Santelli meant that. He might not know what Abernathy’s real angle was, but he’d demonstrated that he was a formidable ally.
“I’ll be in touch.” The enigmatic old man hung up. Santelli reached for the satellite phone. Brannigan needed to hear this, and quickly.
Chapter 13
Galvez scowled at the valley below as he thought, standing next to the ancient Jeep that had taken him up to the top of the ridge overlooking San Tabal. They still hadn’t found the missing patrol, and he seriously doubted that they would. It had been almost a day before anyone had noticed they hadn’t returned. Clemente had flown into a fury, and it had been all that he and Ballesteros could do to avoid being shot.
It was clear that Clemente suspected something. His paranoia was getting worse by the day. Galvez was seriously considering scrapping the plan and simply killing the man himself. But that would signal weakness, not only to the Colombians, but to the Venezuelans, who might not support them anymore. The Cartel de los Soles had other sources of drugs, and despite their connections with the Chavistas and the Venezuelan socialists in general, they were hardly ideologically pure. They wouldn’t care about the potential for revolution if they couldn’t make a profit off the flood of cocaine that Clemente had promised.
And if their American ally didn’t get some minor victory to point to, then they could count on that support evaporating, as well. Never mind the drug money in the background.
He was going to have to decide. And while Ballesteros was a part of the conspiracy, Galvez was not interested in the fat rancher’s input. He would decide this himself.
Finding the patrol was next to impossible, so finding who had killed them was also next to impossible. They’d been somewhere to the west of the city—that was about the extent of their information. They hadn’t reported in for almost twelve hours before anyone had noticed anything amiss. It had been assumed that they were having fun at the local farmers’ expense—and that had not been an unreasonable assumption.
Galvez had encouraged that, himself. It was necessary, so that the farmers understood who was now in charge. He wasn’t so much regretting it, now, as he was furious at the patrol that had gone astray and disappeared.
It was possible that they’d defected. He doubted it, though. So far, most of the farmers they’d “interviewed” on the west side had been remarkably stupid when asked if they’d seen the missing Green Shirts.
If the American is betraying us, then his operatives will need local support. So, who could be giving that support?
“Give me your map.” He held out a hand to the Green Shirt subcommander standing next to him. The man gaped at him stupidly for a moment, and then fumbled at his shirt pockets before his hands fell to his sides and he looked around, as if searching for someone else to blame for the fact that he didn’t have a map.
Galvez fumed, and his hand twitched toward the Jericho in his waistband. The subcommander saw it, and blanched.
Galvez forced himself to reconsider. The man probably couldn’t have read the map in the first place. So he turned away, furious, and scanned the valley below once again, trying to remember more of the surrounding area. Who might be providing them support? Not the government—we would have heard already. So, it must be someone local. Who could it be?
His scowl deepened. He couldn’t remember enough detail. He needed to get back to San Tabal—and do it without Clemente suspecting what was happening.
It raised, once again, the question of what to do. It was apparent that the Americans were probably already on the ground, and that that part of the plan was going awry. Their ally’s phone call had warned them of it, but now the threat was far more immediate. Did he dare try to go forward with the original plan?
Maybe he could. An idea started to form. But he needed to buy time. He turned to the subcommander. “I want as many of our men as possible to move into the hills. A full sweep to the west. Find that patrol, or else find what happened to them, and punish whoever did it.” Without waiting for a reply, he turned and headed back toward his Jeep. “I will send more detailed instructions later.”
Perhaps if he removed some of their support, he could slow the Americans down until he could put Clemente in their sights.
***
Javakhishvili had finished prepping his gear—including the unfortunately limited medical gear that Pacheco had been able to provide—and had taken his turn on watch to allow Bianco to go down and get his own gear ready. He sighed as he scanned the jungle around them.
While he understood some of the reasoning, Javakhishvili wasn’t as stirred up about this plan as Brannigan and some of the others were. As far as he was concerned, if killing Clemente hadn’t done the job, they could have followed up to knock off whoever replaced him afterward.
Javakhishvili had to allow that he never had considered himself any kind of strategic genius. He was a simple man, and he liked simple solutions. If they could break the Green Shirts by killing their leadership one at a time, he was fine with that. He wasn’t sure if all this skullduggery and wondering about their client was justified. Maybe it really was a simple matter of trying for a solution on the cheap, and that was it.
