~ * * ~
“Garrett’s toast,” Montez murmured to me in amusement as we stood on the narrow beach stripping off our wetsuits. “He’d better be praying Hondo doesn’t make it back alive.”
My Spanish vocabulary had certainly expanded with Hondo around—none of it acceptable in mixed company however—and he was using every word at his disposal as he stood glaring at the 200-meter cliff looming over us.
Shrugging nonchalantly in answer, I tore into the still wrapped and waterproofed weapons we hadn’t touched realizing they would need to remain as protected as possible, our lives might well depend on them in the not too distant future, and indicated that Montez should do the same with the ammo.
However, as important as our weapons were, I was after something else and as Montez distributed the weapons and ammo I dug deeper.
“Holding out on us?” Montez noted mildly from behind me.
Once again, I merely shrugged, concentrating exclusively on my task, as I began assembling the pieces.
“What’s that?” Hondo asked abruptly as he joined us, having apparently run out of original expletives or else simply tired of cussing out the cliff that had completely ignored him remaining dark, silent, and daunting.
“Harpoon gun,” Valdez answered for me, eyes shining.
I was thankful that Garrett hadn’t entrusted Valdez with the shoulder gun…the look in his eyes reminiscent of the gleam that had been there when he’d been pounding the countryside with heavy artillery.
“Planning on spearing some whales while we’re here?” Montez asked offhandedly.
“Got a cliff to scale.”
I lifted the loaded shoulder gun and attached rope and moved towards the water as far as the small beach allowed, which was only about ten feet. I hoped I had enough of an angle for a shot.
Placing the coiled rope on the ground, I stepped away from it and, lifting the gun to my shoulder, attempted to scope out the mostly likely area. I couldn’t make out anything at the top of the cliff, it was too dark.
Pulling the trigger I sent the projectile, with rope attached, towards what I hoped was the top of the cliff.
“We should probably move in case I missed,” I suggested mildly “what goes up…”
They scattered. A few minutes later, with no sign of the projectile’s imminent return, we moved towards the rope dangling against the side of the cliff.
“Who goes first?” Montez asked.
“No one…yet,” I replied pulling on the rope cautiously. There was some movement and then it seemed to catch. “You may want to move away…just in case.”
“In case what?” Valdez questioned.
“Well, I’m about to put all my weight on this rope so…” I left the rest to their imaginations.
Glancing around, I noticed I was suddenly very unpopular and lonely. Even Valdez with his sketchy English understood what that meant and skedaddled.
Mentally crossing my fingers, I grabbed the rope as high as I could reach and picked my feet up off the ground.
Not for long…I could feel the rope give and I barely got out of the way before the clawed missile came screaming back down at me, landing on the ground almost exactly where I’d been standing.
“Now what?” Hondo asked mordantly.
“We try again.”
Valdez and Montez volunteered to recoil the rope while I reloaded the gun. After three more attempts, the hook finally seemed anchored enough to hold one of us.
“Back to my original question…who goes first?” Montez queried.
“Valdez weighs the least, but I’m the youngest and the lowest ranking…” I began impassively, even though I’d been promoted to PFC before we’d begun the mission I was still low man on the totem pole.
Valdez was a Lance Corporal, Hondo a Corporal, and Montez held the rank of Sergeant.
“I go,” Valdez agreed eagerly.
None of us argued. If anyone stood a chance of making it to the top, it was Valdez. He was at least thirty pounds lighter than Montez or Hondo and fifty pounds lighter than I was.
Furnishing him with a flashlight and an extra coil of rope along with his weapon, just in case, we assured him that his job was simply to reach the top and secure the rope for the rest of us.
Thankfully, Valdez made it up the side of the cliff without incident. I would have rather done it myself, hating the thought of being responsible for someone else’s possible injuries, but Garrett had made his wishes known and had insisted that Valdez be the one, although I had allowed the others to think it was strictly voluntary…also per Garrett’s orders.
I hated the deception, and I hated Garrett for putting me in that position.
Garrett was quickly becoming my least favorite person on the planet—probably because I was figuring out what made him tick and it wasn’t pretty—and I decided that if I made it through the mission alive I would never volunteer to work with him again.
I’d originally thought that Valdez had been his choice to lead the climb and secure the rope because Valdez weighed less and was the most agile of the group. Plus, he had that whole death defying adrenaline junkie attitude going on. However, a comment Garrett made during my shoulder gun training led me to realize that the only reason he had insisted on Valdez was because, by that point, the skills Valdez brought to the mission would have already been utilized.
To Garrett that meant that Valdez was expendable. I wondered how long before all of us were.
1978
August
“Garrett didn’t say nothin’ ’bout us splittin’ up,” Hondo spat on the ground at Franklin’s feet. Franklin, wisely, ignored the gesture.
“Do you see Garrett here?” Franklin asked sarcastically. “I’m in charge and I say we’re getting nowhere fast. There’s too much ground to cover. You will each take a section of Choco and report back here once a month until one of you finds him. Santos will instruct you and give you your assignments.”
“Son of a…” Montez muttered as Franklin left the room.
As Santos outlined his plan to cover the whole department, I couldn’t help but think that our search was too much like the proverbial needle in the haystack. Vasquez could be anywhere in Colombia and there was no way to be sure he was even still in Choco, but for some reason Franklin was convinced he was. Just like Garrett, we realized that Franklin knew more than he was telling.
The whole situation stunk to high heaven, but we were under orders and there was nothing we could do about it.
“…leave your equipment here,” Santos was saying.
“What equipment,” Montez asked suspiciously.
“You will maintain radio silence at all times so you won’t need any communication equipment. If you find Vasquez, Franklin’s orders are to shoot first and ask questions later. He won’t be feeling very welcoming, and you’d be dead before you got within fifty feet of him. Then either make your way back here or get to a phone and call this number to leave your position, and we’ll send someone to pick you up.”
None of us said a word. Up to that point, our orders had been to locate him and radio it in; something had changed.
“Get a good night’s sleep and in the morning Gomez will make sure you each get to your assigned areas…”
“No,” Hondo broke in.
“What?”
“We leave now.”
“Wait a minute…”
“Knight, let him have the communication equipment,” Montez ordered.
“You can’t just…come back here…”
Hondo moved towards the door and Valdez followed him. I unloaded my electronic equipment as ordered and caught up with them as they made the front porch.
“We know what we have to do and we’ll check back in a month…as ordered,” I heard Montez inform him as he brought up the rear.
We were out the front gate five seconds later; no one attempted to stop us.
After hiking for a couple of miles, Hondo doubled back to asc
ertain that we hadn’t been followed and we hunkered down for a powwow.
“Garrett ordered us to bring him back alive and suddenly Franklin wants us to shoot to kill,” Montez noted calmly. “Any thoughts…?”
“I ain’t fond of Garrett, but Franklin’s a dirt-bag,” Hondo pronounced and spat on the ground…his normal MO when discussing Franklin.
“So, it’s settled,” Montez grinned, “We take Vasquez alive if possible. Well, I guess this is it, gentlemen. Hondo and I will head north from here and you two go south. I don’t like being incommunicado, but I guess we don’t have much choice so I say we all try to get back here as close to forty days as possible. That’ll give Hondo and Knight a little extra time since they have further to travel.”
“Franklin say a month,” Valdez pointed out.
“Franklin can eat sh…”
“If he doesn’t like it, he can come find us,” Montez calmly interrupted Hondo.
“You think Franklin’s hiding something,” I spoke for the first time.
“My gut’s telling me he is,” Montez shrugged “but I have no hard proof,” he admitted. “The whole setup here is suspicious. How is he able to maintain what amounts to an armed fortress in the middle of what I would consider hostile territory without repercussions?”
“Franklin’s dirty,” Hondo spat again in disgust.
I doubted Hondo even realized he was doing it.
“Maybe,” Montez replied noncommittally “or maybe he’s pretending to be dirty. I don’t know. Damn Garrett and his secrecy. All I can say is don’t turn your back on him or Santos because you might end up with a knife sticking out of it.”
Right before we parted, Hondo murmured in my ear “Stay invisible and you might make it out of this godforsaken country alive.”
I nodded and turned to join Valdez.
I knew why Hondo had singled me out. Montez and Valdez over the past few months had been all for blending into the towns in search of Vasquez, taking on the identity of a local, but Hondo had insisted we remain as ghosts, moving only at night and finding a place to hide and observe during the day.
Hondo was good at it, but I could tell that he held out very little hope that the other two would continue in that manner. He suspected that I would and had been uncharacteristically offering advice…good advice I planned to take.
Although Hondo was admittedly an odd character, and without doubt the most dangerous man I’d ever met, I respected him and had quietly learned as much as I could from him. It was beginning to dawn on me that Garrett hadn’t selected him for his knowledge of explosives as much as his ability to track, blend into his surroundings, and remain undetected.
Hondo was the best chance we had of finding Vasquez. Even so, I still suspected that our chances were slim to none.
As we separated, I felt deserted and alone, and more than a little afraid. I was eighteen years old and stuck in a foreign country expected not only to survive, but also to find and apprehend or kill a dangerous traitor as well.
There were only two choices…quit or continue.
I headed south.
1979
March
Rain…rain…and more rain…I hated rain.
Almost a year and still no sign of the one thing we were looking for…the one person responsible for our continuous presence in the rainiest area of Colombia…and I was beginning to think Garrett had sent us on a wild goose chase; that Leandro Vasquez was simply a figment of his imagination.
Franklin hadn’t wanted us there, but Garrett—not surprisingly—had ignored him and sent us in anyway.
I wished Franklin had been more persistent.
Although we periodically checked in for a sit-rep and replenishing of our supplies, I was way past tired of the C-Rations and LURPs Franklin furnished. That plus the fact that they took up way too much room in my pack and weighed me down forced me into finding my own food by fashioning a crude fishing line, foraging for wild fruit, and nabbing any small game available.
Thanks to Hondo—I’d watched him carefully the first couple of months before Franklin separated us—I had become extremely proficient at nailing a scurrying potential meal with my knife within a twenty foot radius and building small undetectable fires in order to avoid the whole raw meat thing.
He’d also taught me the art of invisibility—the man was a ghost…which he’d most likely picked up from his time in Vietnam—and I was definitely getting better at it.
Even though Montez outranked him, Hondo had been the undisputed leader those first few months, being the only one of us with wilderness survival skills, and we followed him unquestioningly.
I had observed him carefully, keeping my questions to myself realizing Hondo had no patience for that type of thing after my first query merely netted a “Ain’t your wet-nurse,” anxious to learn all I could from him even though I didn’t realize at the time we would be forced to split up.
After months of failed attempts to ferret Vasquez out and Franklin’s decision to have Santos assign each of us different areas of Choco to search—making sure we were incommunicado—I was worried how I would survive, but I was pleased I’d learned enough from Hondo to be able to subsist on my own.
Franklin still refused to comment on why he was so sure Vasquez hadn’t left Choco, but he continually made it clear to us that he was in charge and we were simply minions sent to do his bidding with unquestioning loyalty. We had no way of contacting Garrett, which forced us into the undesirable position of having to follow Franklin’s orders.
That didn’t set well with any of us—we trusted Franklin less than Garrett—but we didn’t have much choice.
As more months passed with no sign of our target, my frustrations mounted.
When Franklin split us up and confiscated our communications equipment, he effectively isolated us from each other. I knew he’d done that on purpose, but I still had no idea exactly why.
The last time I checked in, I discovered that Valdez was dead and we were down to three. The only thing I could get out of Santos, Franklin’s sidekick, was that there was a woman, a jealous husband, and a broken bottle involved. Personally, I didn’t believe it.
Although Valdez was indisputably the most irresponsible member of the team, there was no way that an enraged husband could have gained the upper hand…not against his training and certainly not with such a crude weapon. I kept my suspicions to myself, however, realizing I would get nowhere with Franklin or Santos, but I knew something was off.
After the first check in when we all deliberately returned at the same time, Franklin had Santos assign us different check in times, but after finding out about Valdez, I had hunkered down less than a klick away and waited for one of the others to show.
I managed to catch Montez before he made base, which was a residence belonging to one of Santos’ many Colombian relatives, and explained about Valdez. We both agreed something was fishy, but all we could do was watch our backs and attempt to stay in touch.
Montez had ‘gone native’ and then some with his wild, unkempt, shoulder length hair and full shaggy beard reaching to his chest.
Although my facial hair would never be as full as his was due to my Native American background, and I had my rather massive head of hair pulled back into a ponytail, admittedly, I had no room to talk as I looked fairly disreputable myself.
He’d also somehow managed to procure one of the gaudiest ponchos I had ever seen under which he concealed numerous weaponry. The final touch, a huge sombrero that he intentionally pulled down low over his face in order to obscure it, completed his transformation into a Colombian national…albeit a somewhat scruffy Colombian national.
At least people would be inclined to keep their distance.
He’d found a ‘senorita’ and was using her as a cover—as well as other things which were not my business—and, giving me a phone number, instructed me to call and leave a message for Poncho with his ‘friend’ if I were to find myself in troub
le.
I was to identify myself as Jorge and mention the meeting place casually in conversation and he and Hondo would be there. Apparently, they were managing to stay in contact somehow.
I had no way for him to communicate with me as I chose to remain hidden from public view, but I gave him a general idea of where I would be and what my search grid entailed and I knew Hondo would be able to track me down if they needed my help.
Although the meet with Montez reassured me somewhat, there were other frustrations not as easily dealt with that disturbed me greatly.
From the first, it was glaringly obvious that there were political struggles going on within Colombia. Choco…although admittedly the least populated of the departments…was one of the most important because of its strategic location, bordering the Pacific Ocean where we’d made landfall the previous April, as well as the Caribbean Sea and Panama. Ironically, it was also the poorest.
That particular part of Colombia was mostly rural and agricultural and, for decades, the people there had been independent, growing what they could to eke out a living—including coca leaves—that they used themselves.
However, I’d watched over the past year as two opposing groups fought over territorial rights to control the area in order to force the locals into growing more and more coca leaves and marijuana, taking what they wanted from them with very little if any reimbursement.
Whole pickup loads of armed men made the rounds as they used intimidation to ensure the cooperation of the poor farmers, threatening them and their families, and I could do nothing about it.
Although most of the cocaine paste used up to that point filtered into Colombia from Bolivia and Peru, the Colombian drug traffickers had been building labs throughout Colombia to refine the Cocaine. Each of the groups were apparently interested in making the Choco area their own special supply of coca leaves thereby relieving them of the necessity of having to ship the paste in from other countries.
The maddening part was I knew where the labs in that part of Colombia were, even the new ones under construction—after almost a year of methodically searching the area I would have been hard put not to know—and there was no doubt in my mind that most of the cocaine was making its way into my own country, but I couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
According to Franklin, drugs were not our mission or our business.
As if that wasn’t exasperating enough, even though I’d fought it, I’d become a stalker of sorts. Sure, I was supposed to be stalking Vasquez, but not a Nun, of all things. My self-disgust knew no bounds, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.
Within the past week, I’d discovered a monastery, semi-hidden on the edge of the rainforest not too far from an obscure and, as far as I could tell unnamed, village. The huge old building housed a small group of Nuns whose main mission in life was to ease not only the spiritual, but physical suffering of the local inhabitants as well as others who found their way to the monastery.
I’d climbed a strategically placed tree so I could see over the walls, thinking that was exactly where I’d go to hide if I were someone like Vasquez greatly in need of indiscriminate help, the very definition of the word catholic, and I’d watched for days without seeing any sign of him. Regrettably, I had seen something else which, to my extreme mortification, interested me greatly.
Inside the enclosure there were a few small buildings scattered around the courtyard area. Interspersed among the buildings was a water well, a cow that spent most of its days under a lean-to type of structure in an obvious attempt to avoid the rain, and some chickens in a tiny coup.
Also inside the courtyard was a fenced in, beautifully kept vegetable garden, but what interested me most was the gardener.
Somehow she seemed…familiar, but I couldn’t figure out what it was at first. I knew I’d never seen her before, but there was…something…
All of the Nuns had been to the village at one time or another, rendering aid and caring for the sick, swathed from head to toe in the usual garb, but inside the courtyard one young woman frequently appeared in jeans and a cotton blouse her thick sandy brown hair pulled back into a ponytail as she tended the garden…and she was beautiful.
Even though I realized my attraction to her was most likely the result of my year long enforced isolation, I couldn’t seem to stop watching her. Every morning and evening at exactly the same time I’d be up in the tree awaiting her arrival and it wasn’t long before I could spot her in the village, even at a great distance and wrapped from head to toe in the required costume, simply by the way she moved.
I dreaded finishing my recon in the area because I knew I would have no excuse to stay, and I didn’t want to leave her. Calling myself all kinds of a fool didn’t seem to help. As I watched her interact with the children in the village, I desperately wanted to…I didn’t even know or want to admit what I wanted from her…she was a Nun for crying out loud.
I admitted to myself that I was lonely…something I never thought I would be…and I tried to convince myself all I wanted to do was talk to her…to any decent human being…but I knew that I was kidding myself, that what I wanted from her was something I’d never wanted from any woman before.
I realized that nothing like that was ever going to happen—she could never know I was there—but that didn’t stop the physical ache inside of me.
After a few days of spying on her it dawned on me…she reminded me of Mrs. Ramirez. Of course, I’d never had any fantasies about Mrs. Ramirez, she’d been more like a mother to me than anything else, but the way she interacted with the people in the small village, especially the children, was so reminiscent of how kind and loving Mrs. Ramirez had been that I felt an unaccustomed lump in my throat as I watched the woman.
My life had been so empty, devoid of any type of close relationship for the two years since I’d lost Tony and his wife, that it had left me wide open to the pain and yearning I was experiencing. I tried to stifle my churning emotions, making plans to leave the area as soon as my recon was completed, but with no success. I wasn’t sure I would be able to leave.
Eventually I began dozing in the tree—I had to sleep somewhere—in between her visits to the garden during the day, since my nights were taken up with recon.
On the third day of tree-sleeping, having overslept and cursing the lost hours of darkness, I was about to shimmy down the trunk when out of the corner of my eye I detected movement inside the enclosure.
Pulling out my night vision glasses, I focused on the spot where I’d noticed the activity. I was just barely in time to see a figure disappearing into one of the small stone enclosures, possibly a storage building of some sort, a woven basket hung over one arm, the contents of which were covered with a small cloth, possibly a napkin, reminiscent of young girl setting out for a picnic.
A glance at my watch informed me that it was 0130…strange time for a picnic.
Keeping my glasses trained on the building, I was rewarded as fifteen minutes later the same figure exited the building, glancing around furtively before heading to the main structure, still carrying the basket, which had obviously been emptied, the cloth crumpled on the bottom.
The young woman had a secret and the same gut feeling that had drawn me to that place was telling me that Vasquez had found a bleeding heart and was capitalizing on it; either that or he was holding them hostage.
The girl’s demeanor seemed to suggest the former, but I wasn’t ready to rule out the latter until I could assess the situation.
I needed to get inside that building.
The rain had thankfully let up—it usually poured all afternoon and evening and on into the night until 0 dark thirty, but seemed to slow down after that—which was probably why she’d picked that time to take her ‘guest’ his food. I had no doubt that was exactly what she’d been doing, but I’d been gone by then all of the other nights and therefore failed to catch it.
My excessive weariness was the sole reason I’d seen it…I’d had tr
ouble sleeping, thinking about the woman entirely too much during the day, hoping she would put in an extra appearance and not willing to miss it, and I’d simply overslept.
That certainly wouldn’t be going into my report…if I ever returned home to make one.
After surveying the area, I slid down the tree in which I’d been perched and swiftly shimmied up the one closest to the eight foot stone wall, crawling out onto a thick branch and lowering myself to the top of the fence. From there it was a simple thing to drop noiselessly to the ground.
The animals ignored me—obviously used to humans, not that I smelled remotely like one—as I moved silently and swiftly to the door of the building the woman had just exited.
Drawing my Colt and my flashlight, I pushed the door open swiftly and silently, eyeing the contents of the room…empty. The only things visible were old wooden crates filled with various pieces of junk.
Flitting the beam over the bulkheads and deck, I noticed bits of dried mud on the floorboards. Because of the constant rain and the lack of any type of walkway, it would be extremely difficult to hide a trail and the girl didn’t strike me as someone who would be accustomed to that type of thing, and so she had made a huge blunder.
I followed the mud to a couple of wooden crates in a hidden corner of the room and attempted to remove the obstacles assuming a door of some sort was beneath them, but as I lifted crates—having holstered my Colt as well as my flashlight—the hinged floor beneath moved with them.
Quickly I replaced the crates, which appeared to be empty, effectively closing the trapdoor attached to them.
I wasn’t sure how long it would have taken me to figure it out if I hadn’t had the mud to follow, but I was fairly certain I would have made a lot of noise doing it and alerted whoever was residing beneath the building well before I could have gotten the drop on him.
Drawing my weapon once more, I cautiously opened the hinged trap door. Peering carefully into the dark hold below I couldn’t make out anything but, feeling around the opening, I discovered a vertical ladder attached to the side.
Opting to use the cover of darkness rather than producing my flashlight, I stepped onto the ladder and as I disappeared into the hole, grabbed the conveniently placed handle on the bottom side of the trap door with the same hand that held my Colt, and pulled it shut after me.
I was halfway down when the ladder creaked under my right foot, and I heard the scrape of a match as a flame flared below me. I froze.
“Did you forget something, Senora?” a slightly accented voice asked curiously, as I heard the hissing of a kerosene lantern.
Quickly descending the last half of the ladder, I moved towards the light drawing my flashlight and pointing the Colt as well as my own beam into the eyes of the man reclining on a makeshift bed, a brightly covered blanket thrown over him.
“Did you forget something?” I asked pleasantly, recognizing Vasquez from the pictures Garrett had shown us before we left the states. “Like whose side you’re on?”
Vasquez did not answer immediately as he studied me, apparently unconcerned with the weapon in my hand.
“You are military,” he noted idly examining my worn camos “Marine…yes.”
“Yes,” I acknowledged, unmoving.
“I must ask myself, what is a U.S. Marine doing in the middle of a country rife with political unrest and the beginnings of a drug war and the answer, my friend, would seem to be self-evident,” he paused. “Who sent you to find me?”
“The U.S. Government.”
“That does not tell me much.”
“The CIA,” I replied between clenched teeth.
Vasquez’s reaction was not what I expected and his unruffled exterior took me aback. I decided he was trying to throw me off in order to gain the upper hand, and I tightened my grip on my pistol.
“Hmm…yes…that I managed to surmise on my own, but who in the CIA?”
“Why does it matter?”
“It matters, I can assure you…senor…I must know.”
“Garrett,” I replied shortly.
“Ah…” he grinned, “in that case I would like to surrender to you.”
“I don’t think you have much of a choice,” my lips twisted sardonically.
“I am not sure how to tell you this without risking a bullet in my brain as well as hurting your feelings, but I have a submachine gun under my blanket, which you are now welcome to confiscate,” he offered almost apologetically.
“A sub…” I broke off, unsure what to do next, cursing my stupidity in not realizing that was why his right hand had remained covered up.
“I assure you my finger no longer touches the trigger, so please to relax yours while I uncover myself, and you may take possession of it.”
I nodded, unsure what else to do, as Vasquez slowly uncovered his concealed weapon.
“You see that I could have killed you, yet I did not,” he laughed. “I will set this on the floor…see…two fingers only,” he demonstrated as he grasped the end of the handle “and then you will relax and no one is hurt.”
“Why didn’t you shoot me?”
“Because you are one of the good guys,” he grinned again, “even though you do not wear a white hat.”
“But you aren’t,” I pointed out “and you know I have to take you back to be tried as a traitor.”
“I want you to take me back, but to Garrett, not Franklin.”
“Why not Franklin?”
“Because unlike you and me…Franklin is a very bad man.”
“How do you know?”
“If I may ask…what were Garrett’s orders for my recovery?”
“He wanted you alive…he said you were no good to him dead.”
“And Franklin…what did he want?”
“He contended that Garrett was out of touch with the realities here and that we were to shoot first and ask questions afterwards.”
“And yet you did not shoot me on sight.”
“Garrett’s orders supersede Franklin’s…all of us agreed.”
“There are more of you?”
“Yep,” I answered noncommittally.
Once again I wondered if he had purposely allowed me to get the upper hand simply so he could extract information from me.
“Does Garrett know about Franklin being dirty?”
“I could only communicate with Garrett through Franklin, so…” he shrugged.
I was silent as I digested the possibilities.
He sighed heavily “I can see that still you do not trust me.”
“Nope.”
“I do not blame you…but I hope to gain your trust eventually. For now, I will settle for you lowering your weapon so we may talk. You are upsetting the Senora and I am certain she has no wish for you to injure one she has worked so diligently to save.”
I spun around towards the ladder and then moved back until I was up against the wall and could see both directions, keeping my weapon centered on Vasquez.
“Leandro, who is he?” the Senora asked in Spanish.
“He is a Marine…one of the white hats you talk about…everything will be fine now,” he reassured her in English.
“Then why is he pointing a gun at you?”
“Because I have not had time to explain,” he replied reasonably. “Come…sit in your accustomed chair by the bed. I fear he will suffer whiplash attempting to watch both of us and, although I am the more dangerous adversary, I am sure he would prefer to watch you.”
I could feel the redness creeping up my neck wondering whether he was just guessing or if he somehow knew.
“Please to take a chair…what shall we call you?”
“Private First Class Jack Knight,” I answered automatically in a staccato voice.
“That is a mouthful, and rather formal under the circumstances so I believe we shall just call you Jack,” he stated decisively.
I grimaced.
“Senor Jack…?” he suggested hopefully. “And perhaps you
could lower your weapon…there are women present…well, one woman.”
“Tell your story…then we’ll see.”
“Perhaps I should just show him…eh…Senora Stanton,” he suggested grinning wickedly as the Senora moved to sit in the chair strategically placed by the foot of the bed.
I frowned and moved closer, gun aligned with his forehead as he removed the blanket from the rest of his body.
If I hadn’t been so well trained I would have gasped at the sight. His whole left leg was gone.
“Not so pretty,” he admitted with a fatalistic shrug. “Senora Stanton did not like having to do it…but she had no choice.”
“You did that?” I asked attempting to keep the horror out of my voice.
“He’d been shot multiple times and by the time he made it here, it was too late to save his leg,” she replied defensively. “There was nothing else I could do.”
“Who shot you?” I demanded of Vasquez.
“The bullet was courtesy of the Mendoza brothers; they did not take kindly to my…defection. They of course were hoping to take me alive and therefore aimed at my legs. Thankfully, they only managed to hit one of them.”
“What happened?”
“Two years ago, when the Mendoza brothers first began gaining power, Garrett sent me in undercover. I joined their ranks and managed to work my way up to a trusted position. I was closing in on the…er…target…when Franklin broke into the scene a little over a year ago. My handler had been killed and Franklin took over. Suddenly things began to go wrong, badly wrong, and I began to suspect Franklin was dirty, but had no way of proving it.”
I noticed his pronounced accent was lessening and suddenly began to realize what being undercover in a foreign country actually meant. I’d only had to eavesdrop on conversations and stay out of sight, but he’d had to interact daily without standing out.
“So what happened a year ago?”
“My information was becoming useless to Garrett, the Mendoza brothers were always one step ahead of him, and I knew my cover had been blown. The only thing in my favour was the fact that neither Franklin nor the brothers knew that I knew so I made one last gamble and broke into their office safe to steal this.”
He pulled a type of ledger out from under his mattress and attempted to hand it to me.
“What is it?” I asked ignoring the book, refusing to lower my weapon.
“I believe it to be copies of ship manifests.”
“What was being shipped?”
“I have not been able to decipher it, as that is not my area of expertise. I do know it is important, the brothers were not happy when they discovered it missing, and I believe it is what Garrett is after.”
“Which is…?”
“If he has not told you, I cannot and if you know Garrett as you claim, you will understand why.”
Flipping off my flashlight and stowing it, I reached toward Vasquez and grasped the book in my left hand.
Glancing around the room, I noticed a couple of wooden crates similar to the ones topside and I made my way over to them asking idly “So how did you find your way here?”
“The Mendoza brothers have…interests…in the area…”
“Yeah, I noticed,” I interrupted shortly as I made myself comfortable on the crates tucking my colt into my waistband for easy access in case Vasquez tried anything. “Coca leaves with a dash of marijuana thrown into the mix for good measure.”
“I’ve spent quite a bit of time here and became acquainted with Senora Stanton,” he explained smiling tenderly at her. “I knew she was an American and a nurse and could be trusted.”
“You’re American?” I glanced at her sharply.
“Si…yes...” she corrected herself. “There is no doctor anywhere close so…”
“How long have you been here?” I asked as I took out my flashlight and turned the beam as well as my eyes towards the ledger.
“Two years give or take a few months,” she supplied softly.
“I owe the Senora my life,” Vasquez offered simply.
I felt jealousy tearing through me at the way he looked at her, but stifled it immediately realizing I had more important things to worry about. Flipping through the book in what I hoped appeared to be a casual manner while keeping part of my attention trained on Vasquez I was silent as I attempted to concentrate on memorizing each page while not appearing to do so. If it was as important as Vasquez seemed to think, I knew there was a very real possibility that it might not ever make it to Garrett, and having it in my head would give us an edge no one else knew about.
“So our goal is to get you and your prized possession to Garrett in one piece…” at Senora Stanton’s snort of disgust I realized what I had said and muttered “sorry…poor choice of words.”
Vasquez however laughed delightedly.
“I think I like you,” he pronounced good-naturedly. “So what is the plan?”