Medianoche shook his head side to side.
Señorita Raven said, “Rodríguez was left on a train. Like he was trash. If I am KIA, is that what happens to me? I get left like I’m dog meat? Like I’m nothing? Hell, the Taliban don’t leave their dead behind. They’re scum, but when they die in war, they die with dignity.”
Medianoche regarded The Beast. His eyes said to stand down.
The Beast said, “A soldier is dead. We want revenge. That’s why we have so much tension. It is no one’s fault. War has casualties. Good men die. The situation was not ideal for retrieving the soldier’s remains. Not without risking a battle with the police. The train was crowded, but no one will admit they saw anything. We have to move on, stay focused. We still have a mission to accomplish. The enemy would love for us to turn on each other. We’re stronger. We’re better. We’re smarter. That’s all that matters at this moment.”
Medianoche nodded. Señorita Raven did the same.
The Beast said, “We have to remain bonded. Not as friends. As soldiers.”
The Beast’s servant, Draco, walked into the room. He was dressed in his black tuxedo and white gloves. He held a silver tray with a tea-kettle. He also carried a wood-veneered
mate
cup, a hollow gourd, and a metal straw, a silver
bombilla
that was used as both a filter and a straw. The Beast added several spoonfuls of herbs into the hollow gourd. Then he added a shot of top-shelf whiskey before adding hot water. A few moments passed. Tense moments.
The Beast said, “For Señor Rodríguez.”
The Beast took a small drink of his
mate,
then passed it to Medianoche. Medianoche put the
bombilla
to his lips, sipped the bitter
mate
, and passed the hollow gourd to Señorita Raven. She did the same, took the
bombilla
in her mouth, sipped the bitter herbal tea, passed the
mate
cup back to The Beast, then stared at Medianoche.
She had been on communications when he had battled Gideon.
He knew she had heard everything.
She had seen him freeze.
She had stalked him, she had lied, seduced him, and called him a rapist.
He stared at her, but that enraged liar refused to look him in his eye.
The Beast passed the
mate
around again.
Medianoche reeled in his urge to kill, reeled it in slowly.
The Beast asked Señorita Raven, “How did you get into the files?”
She cleared her throat. “Where there is Wi-Fi, there is a way, sir.”
The Beast nodded. “You’re a brilliant young woman.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Truly an asset to this organization.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Rain thickened. More thunder. Winds blew. There was snow in the mountains, would be skiing only a few hours away. But Medianoche was on fire, and Buenos Aires felt like hell.
Draco brought gear, dragged in four heavy duffel bags.
Medianoche grabbed one. Señorita Raven did the same.
The Beast grabbed the third duffel bag.
Medianoche clenched his teeth when Draco grabbed the fourth.
Draco was more than a servant. He was another man who had been discharged from the military. He had killed more than a few times. And now he was a substitute for a hero.
That fourth bag was meant for a fallen soldier.
Not for a goddamn gunsel. Not for a Log Cabin Republican.
But The Beast had issued his orders. Orders were to be followed, not questioned.
Medianoche said, “Gideon is mine. You can injure him, but the final blow is mine.”
Señorita Raven said, “Then you’d better have your
son
in your crosshairs first. A good soldier died defending you. He was my friend. The only real friend I had of the opposite sex.”
“Gideon is not my son.”
“Then you won’t have to cry when I’m done. His death will be slow and deliberate.”
“Gideon is mine. Get in the way, there might be a problem.”
“Then you’d better adjust your eye patch and watch out for friendly fire.”
The Beast said, “Enough.”
Medianoche let it go. For now.
Their vehicles had already been loaded; Medianoche had supervised that task.
Nine millimeters. Shotguns. M16s with grenade launchers attached.
Medianoche was ready to lead The Four Horsemen toward war.
Chapter 38
dystopia
This section of the
autopista
barely rose over the roofline of what Buenos Aires called the
villas.
Yards away, some section of the
villas
rose higher than the
autopista
.
Favela in Brazil.
Callampa
in Chile.
Pueblo jóven
in Peru.
Katchi abadi
in Pakistan. Shantytown in Kenya. Bidonville in Algeria. Township in South Africa.
Barong-barong
in the Philippines.
Jhuggi
in India. Ghettos in the United States. And the
villas
of Buenos Aires.
They were all the same.
Slums.
Synonyms for poverty. Synonyms for neglect.
The slums were a place that the storm did no favors. And neither did the government.
We’d been here for fifteen seconds. And tonight, that felt like fifteen hours.
A sloppy, cold rain was coming down in solid sheets of despair. That meant it was flooding down below. And what was floating in the rivers created by the downpour, the stench wafted up here, twenty yards off the ground. The slums didn’t have a sewage system. And when it rained, human feces flooded the walkways and the rugged roads, created streets of liquid shit that cat-sized rodents surfed into the crowded, box-sized homes of the slum dwellers.
Sierra and her muscle-bound brother were standing in the downpour. They shared a big black umbrella. This was as close as they could get to the package. This spot on the
autopista
was where the signal was the strongest. They had been here the past thirty minutes. Had located the signal, then parked until we arrived. We had pulled up in two more cars, so now we had three cars parked back to back.
Arizona and Scamz stayed inside their automobile, windshield wipers working overtime.
They had the package. If trouble pulled up, they needed to be ready to escape.
Konstantin and Shotgun stood in the rain next to me, headlights from impatient and erratic lane-changing drivers passing us at more than one hundred kilometers per hour.
We were dressed in blacks and grays, Konstantin forgoing his traditional white shoes for black military boots, boots with no-slip bottoms, made for chasing, made for running, the latter more important. The same type of boots Shotgun and I had on now.
Two duffel bags were at my feet. It was the equipment I would need.
My team had night vision monoculars. While Shotgun and Konstantin looked down at the slums, I glanced back toward the lead car. Arizona looked at me through the window.
Memories remained.
I turned away, stayed focused on what I did best.
I turned to Konstantin. “I think you should get back in the car with Arizona and Scamz.”
“Just in case The Four Horsemen arrive while we are all exposed.”
“Yeah. Just in case they have to pull away under fire. I want to make sure they have some firepower with them.”
“How is Scamz behind the wheel?”
“I have no idea. I know Sierra is a horrible driver. No idea about Scamz.”
Konstantin frowned, then he nodded and headed toward Arizona’s car.
He got in the backseat and closed the door.
I felt better. Not a lot better. But it took that concern off my mind.
My concern wasn’t Arizona or Scamz or the package.
My concern was Konstantin. He had cancer, and I didn’t want this weather making him ill.
He didn’t need to be here, but he was. That Russian was a tough sonofabitch.
I put my monocular back up to my eye and spied down on seventy thousand people in less than two miles. The area was unofficial, not on any map for tourists. From there I could see it looked like some residences had three generations of a family inside one-room dwellings that were stacked on top of each other, walls and homes made of tin, warped wood, some with no windows and no heating, nothing built to code. Pirated electricity lines ran from telephone wires, jerry-rigged and dangerous. The barbed wire along the freeway that was meant to keep the immigrants fenced in was used to hang laundry on. Miles of cheap clothing were getting a frigid bath, laundry that had been left out in the rain, as if the heavens had become the best washing machine in the world. DIRECTV dishes hung from a lot of the dilapidated dwellings. Those had to be stolen dishes. No one down there had that kind of disposable income.
I thought I saw some men with guns, but they were street scavengers moving around. Dead dogs. Dead cats. Rusted cars. Mountains of trash. The area was a dumping ground. Even in the cold rain, the smells were strong enough to numb the senses.
The adjacent train yards had old, rusted eighteen-wheeler containers stacked five high in some places, creating a wall around the slums to keep the poor from claiming more land and spreading poverty a mile closer to a different class of people. They were walled in like they were subhuman, primitive, inferior. This section of Argentina was their shame, where the military had tried social cleansing back in the late seventies. It had doubled in size since my last visit.
Shotgun said, “They living like they in a concentration camp.”
“More like Hoovervilles. The way people lived during the Great Depression.”
Shotgun nodded. “You sure what we’re looking for is down there?”
“Looks that way. Unless it’s a setup, looks like it’s down there.”
“You looking for it right now?”
“Nope. Still looking for snipers. Anyone patrolling with a gun.”
“I didn’t see anyone with guns either.”
“The rain has most people inside. Few people out.”
“God is on our side.”
“There is no god down there. At least not one that works for the people.”
Thirty seconds had gone by. My heart thumped inside my chest.
There was a shack with a hand-painted sign that said it was the community center. That area was busy. Saw men sitting in windows playing cards. Saw young girls with babies on their hips. Saw kids drinking a colorful soda made of sugar, drinks that filled empty bellies and rotted teeth. A young boy peered out of the front entry of a habitat made of tin and cardboard.
The package was down there somewhere.
Shotgun said, “No other way in?”
“No time to look for an alternative.”
I took out the sensor, looked at the LED. It was green. A steady green.
The package that Arizona wanted was definitely within striking distance.
I didn’t want to be here. I wanted to be back in Puerto Rico. Wanted to be with Hawks.
I wanted a lot of things.
A minute had passed. It was time for the rest of the team to take their part of the package and get out of here before it was too late.
I told Shotgun, “Stay with the package. Keep moving. Stick to the
autopista
. Drive fast.”
“You’re going down there all by yourself?”
“It’s a job for one. Or a job for a million.”
“Or a job for a fool.”
I said, “Stay with the team. Keep the package moving.”
Shotgun sprinted back to the cars.
Konstantin, Arizona, and Scamz were in the first car. Sierra and her brother were in the second car.
The cars pulled away, but I wasn’t left alone.
I thought Shotgun would get inside the third car and drive off with them. But he didn’t.
Shotgun ran back, his coat soaked and heavy with the weapons he carried underneath, that hardheaded mountain wiping rain away from his face, a face that held an intense expression.
He said, “I’m not letting you go down there by yourself.”
He didn’t understand and I didn’t want to say what was bothering me. Catherine. Midnight. I was the offspring of two people I despised. Two people who should have died long before I was born. And now I was working for a man I despised as well, working for a woman I used to love and wanted to hate. He would never understand how tortured I felt, would never be able to comprehend my numbness. A numbness that came and went on waves of anger.
I waited for a break in traffic, then we grabbed our gear and bolted toward the center of the
autopista
. Passing cars slung water at us while I opened my duffel bag. I took out a hook and other equipment, and I put on my assassin’s gloves. Shotgun did the same, then he secured the hook to the metal railing as rain came down cold and steady. With the hook attached to the railing, I climbed over and began my descent. I had to hurry and lower myself down into the slums, and hoped to enter this spot unseen. I came out on top of an unsteady structure. Shotgun lowered the duffel bags. Then he came down, his weight so severe I thought the cord would snap.
We walked to the edge of the structure, used more rope and lowered the bags down, then we dropped down into what looked like mud but smelled like disease. Dozens of rats and ten times as many cockroaches scattered when we touched the murky ground.
We opened the bag, put on two gun holsters each, and checked the duffel bags for the other supplies. That was when I looked at the front of the shack to see where I’d landed.
AQUÍ SE CONSTRUYE CENTRO DE SALUD FUNDACIÓN MÚSICA ESPERANZA, BSAS
Shotgun looked at words that made no sense to him, asked, “What kind of place is that?”
“Health Center. They are building a health center.”
Graffiti marked every piece of concrete, was on every flat surface, as far as I could see.
We heard movement. Shotgun moved his coat and pulled out one of his double-barreled weapons. I held my nine in my right hand, used my left hand to steady my weapon, took fast steps, and moved in search of a target. We heard the noise again, fanned out, and checked the back side of the building. There were four people. They had almost been gunned down. It was three boys and one girl. All dressed in dirty clothing, all had filthy faces. They were underneath the
autopista
, the section that separated two sides of the
villas
. The girl was in jeans and tennis shoes, brown hair pulled in a ponytail, ragged coat on, down on her haunches giving head to a boy who was smoking his drug of choice from a glass pipe. Another boy was standing to the side, pissing on the ground, so high on
paco
he had no idea what planet he was on. The third boy saw us and came toward us, gun in his hand. A gun that had been manufactured in the U.S. and had probably made its way through Mexico and Central America before landing here.