Wade bit back an angry curse. They’d just dodged a bullet, but if Fuentes got too frisky, they might still get compromised. He wanted to hiss at Hank to get the farmer under control, but even that seemed like it would be too loud. He shifted his muzzle back toward the receding lights, as the younger Brannigan lunged forward and all but tackled Fuentes, flattening him to the forest floor and whispering fiercely into his ear. Wade couldn’t hear what he was saying, but whatever it was, it got Fuentes to freeze.
He waited, his Galil pointed toward the lights bobbing through the jungle. They didn’t turn around, didn’t come back to investigate. They headed back toward the road, the sound of their passage receding as they went.
Wade finally got up, slowly and carefully. A moment later, Hank did the same, helping Fuentes up. Wade made sure they were following, then turned back into the jungle. They needed to make tracks.
***
Over the next hour, he started to think that he’d figured out how they’d drifted so close to the road. The terrain was increasingly brutal, and the tendency to drift downhill had forced them closer and closer to the bottom of the valley. But he thought they were back on track. It was still hard to be sure in the blackness of the jungle at night, but they were heading back uphill and generally south.
He just hoped that they could get to their destination before the sun came up.
The slope ahead had gotten steeper and steeper as they climbed. He wasn’t sure how far they were from the top, but he’d definitely slowed down. He stopped altogether when he heard a deep, grunting call off to his right, farther up the ridge.
Fuentes and Hank caught up to him while he stayed still and listened. “What the hell was that?”
“Jaguar.” Fuentes’ whisper was as nervous as ever. “That’s their territorial call.”
“Well, I’m not trying to challenge him.” Wade kept scanning the jungle around them. “You know where we are?”
“Roughly. The Galán farm should be just over this ridge.”
“And you’re sure that’s where Lara’s hiding?”
He glanced back to see Fuentes’s nod, though it was dark enough to only see the general shape of his head. Night vision goggles like the PVS-14 need some ambient light to work. “If he hasn’t been killed, then he has to be here. Galán is his brother-in-law. And if he’d been killed, Clemente would have gloated about it weeks ago.”
Wade had a few questions about that, but those could wait until they found Lara. He started back up the slope, his legs burning.
They reached the crest of the ridge without further incident, though he heard the jaguar a couple more times, raising his hackles each time. It sounded farther away, though, so that was a good sign.
The absolute last thing he wanted was to get in a fight with a jaguar in the dark. Give me human enemies any day of the week.
He would have slowed as he neared the crest, but the jungle was so thick and the night so dark that he was over it before he’d even realized that he’d reached it. He halted suddenly as the trees suddenly gave way to a terraced cornfield, leading down to a small stone house with a faint glow in the windows indicating that someone was probably still up with a light burning.
Hank and Fuentes joined him. A moment later, Burgess came down and knelt next to him, scanning the field below before turning back to cover the ridge behind them. “We’re still clear.”
“Well, Señor Fuentes, this is your game.” Wade waved him down toward the house, about twenty yards away. “We’ll cover you until you signal that it’s clear to come down.”
It was too dark to see what Fuentes thought of that. He didn’t say anything. He just started down through the cornfield, his shotgun held up at the ready.
I hope he’s not so jumpy that he shoots whoever opens the door. Or gets shot when they see he’s got a shotgun.
The farmer approached the house warily. Wade watched him over his Galil’s sights, shifting the rifle over so that he could use the eye not covered by his NVGs. The moon had risen, and the clouds were breaking up a little, so there was some illum now that they were out of the jungle. He’d at least be able to get a decent shot at the doorway, especially if there was light inside.
Fuentes knocked at the door. After a moment, he leaned toward it, as if he was speaking to someone inside, but Wade couldn’t hear from up at the top of the cornfield. However, the door opened all the way after a moment, and then Fuentes was waving them down.
The three Blackhearts descended toward the house in a loose wedge, their weapons still up and ready. Hank had started with his weapon down at first—he probably had assumed that Fuentes’s signal had meant they were really clear. Both Wade and Burgess knew better. They weren’t going to be “clear” until they were out of Colombia and back in the States.
Fuentes waited for them at the door, accompanied by a small, wiry man with black eyes and graying hair. The black-eyed man stepped inside, briefly revealing the ancient, rusty AK, its stock held together with duct tape, that he’d held behind his back.
“This is Galán.” Fuentes indicated the black-eyed man as they entered the tiny house. “And this is Rodrigo Lara.”
Lara was probably in his sixties, tall and spare of frame, clean shaven with a prominent Indio nose and dark eyes. He was still fully dressed, despite the fact
