The Devil's Work

by Linda Ladd

  “Try not to get yourself killed.”

  Novak left Black standing guard beside Claire’s bed and made his way back to the parking lot. They didn’t have much time to lose. They had to get to Kellen and end this thing once and for all. Novak hungered for that payback.

  Chapter 26

  Desoto’s knowledge was invaluable. Desoto knew the layout of the compound grounds, and he knew the locals who had deeper loyalty to him than to Kellen. Best of all, he had worked with Ramos. As it turned out, Ramos answered to Arturo Ruiz, who had no love for Desoto and Novak because of a past nasty run-in. Still, Ramos would support Desoto after the fact, and there would be no recompense in the way of Novak’s team being hunted dead or alive. At least, that’s what Desoto told Novak. He hadn’t lied before—well, he had, but not on this job. It didn’t matter to Novak anyway, because he wanted Rosa alive and Max Kellen dead.

  They took the helo that Black had procured for them before he flew Claire home to Missouri. Doc and Lori stayed behind, much to Lori’s chagrin, but she had listened to reason. A four-man team showing up in Flores would alert Kellen right off. So it was just Novak and Desoto and the pilot. They traveled high above endless miles of jungle canopy that hid the ground and finally put down in a clearing that looked straight out of Jurassic Park. The son of an old cohort of Desoto’s was waiting in an ancient Chevy truck, probably 1959, if that new. It seemed to have been fire engine red originally but was now painted over with jungle camo and not particularly well. In fact, there were messy drip lines down the body that had dried that way and so would be etched there forever. The kid’s name was Pepe Rivera. He was maybe sixteen or seventeen, but he had been described as a savvy, street-smart player. He had always lived in the remote village, but Desoto had taught him a few things. That was a danger signal, right there.

  “Hola,” Desoto called out to the boy, and then they hugged and smiled and patted backs and lapsed into rapid-fire Spanish. Novak understood they were greeting each other warmly, and then they switched to Kekchi, a dialect with which he wasn’t familiar. He did know it was prevalent in many jungle villages where people were still full-blooded Maya. “Who’s at the compound, hijo?” was what Desoto was asking the boy, conversing in Spanish again.

  “Senor Kellen and four bodyguards. There was a woman with him but she is not often seen. Mama’s there with the little babies. The cook and housemaids are there, and the guys I take in to work the cannabis and poppy.”

  Mama’s watching the babies? What the hell? His mother was a part of this thing, and he was giving her up to Desoto? Novak already knew Guatemala was a major cultivator of the opium poppy, much of which was shipped illegally to the United States. If he recalled, the weed they grew was mainly for domestic consumption. Like he had figured, Kellen was running drugs on Juan Cortez as well as women and children.

  “We’re here to kill Max Kellen,” Desoto told the kid, never one to sugarcoat his intentions.

  “He is a bad man.” Pepe nodded. He didn’t appear too worried about the proposed assassination, either.

  “How does this kid fit into all this?’ Novak asked Desoto in English, fearing a double cross because he made a habit of being suspicious of everybody he met. So far that propensity had been favorable to his continued breathing. He didn’t know this kid or the men in the village. He didn’t know the language. He did know the boy’s mom was working for Kellen. For God’s sake, the two of them could be working both sides against the middle. How could anybody trust them? He sure as the devil didn’t.

  Desoto seemed to understand Novak pretty well. He said, “His mother works out there in the compound. She takes care of the babies, so I figured she’d be a good ally to help us get the girl you’re after, if she’s even there. She does it for those babies, but she hates Kellen as much as you do. She’d like to kill him herself, but she’s a devout Catholic.”

  “So are you.”

  “Not as devout as her.”

  “No kidding.”

  Novak searched Pepe’s young face. He looked innocent enough. Novak hadn’t seen that in anyone since he didn’t remember when. “Is there a baby out there named Rosa?”

  “Mama says they do not call them by their given names. She says they are called by the family name.”

  “Good, that’ll give us a way to get them back to their real parents.”

  Desoto shook his head. “No, mi amigo, he means the names of the people who are to adopt them. We’ll have to beat the names of the real parents out of them, of course.”

  Maybe Nick Black should’ve tagged along, considering what he had done to Bartow’s pretty face. Novak didn’t blame him, though. He would’ve done the same thing and not lost a second of sleep over it. “How many babies does your mama take care of, Pepe?”

  “Only three now, but sometimes there’s many more. Most of them are taken straight to the ship and then up to the United States.”

  The kid was well informed. That was good. “Girls or boys right now?”

  “Two boys and one girl.”

  “That makes it a bit easier.”

  “Nothing in this life is easy or fair,” Desoto reminded him. “You and I know that better than most.”

  Novak said nothing, but Desoto was right. Life had been good for Novak until he lost his family. After that horrific day, nothing much mattered to him. It had been a process of getting through one day while dreading the next. Somehow Claire Morgan had made a difference in his pathetic excuse of existence and brought him back to life a little bit. He couldn’t quite explain why or how his partner had done that. They hadn’t even known each other long. Maybe it was because Claire had suffered too, especially when she was young. Black had been the light that came on inside her misery, and she was better now that she was with him. And the baby was good for her, too. Her first child, a little boy that she never, ever mentioned, had died in her arms, killed by her first husband. Black had told him about her hellish childhood of being passed from one foster home to the next. They had both suffered things that should never have happened. That’s why he’d had to find her. That’s why he had to find Rosa. He had promised Alcina he’d get her baby back. Now that Claire was safe, he was ready to finish up.

  “We can ride into the compound with Pepe when he takes in the men to the work camp. Most of them are his cousins and friends. Every morning, he drives them into the compound so they can they package the drugs for shipment and tend the plants. Kellen has warehouses out there. He started with the drugs. The child abductions came later.”

  “Why haven’t the Nacionals busted him for drug running?”

  Desoto laughed. “Because the ones out here are paid off, that’s why. They help him get it to Santo Tomas.”

  “So, what you’re telling me is that once inside, we’re pretty much on our own.”

  “Si, and we are enough. Pepe’s cousins will take care of the bodyguards and back us up if we need them. You are ready to do this, no? You could end up dead.”

  “Not until I get Kellen, I won’t. I’ll make sure of it.” Novak was uncomfortable with the little kid running the operation. The name Pepe didn’t elicit any feelings of tough and capable leadership. “Okay, but how about we go in there on our own? Scale the walls or fences or whatever he’s put up. We’ve done it before well enough.”

  “I remember that venture did not turn out so well.”

  “We made it out alive, didn’t we? That’s good enough for me.”

  “I think going in with Pepe would be safe, at least through the first fence.”

  “Maybe. If I were your size and looked like a Maya. But I’m twice your size and I’ve got blond hair and blue eyes. You know, all that, plus my American accent.”

  “Si, all true. He will let us off in the field before the inner fence, and we will make our way to the patron’s house.”

  Novak considered the plan. It sounded too risky to h
im but not as much as scaling walls and trekking through jungle that already looked impassable even if they had machetes. Now that he thought about it, the fact that Pepe’s mother worked with the little kids was their ace in the hole. She could bring Rosa out to them at the perimeter, or maybe smuggle the baby out in the truck. He turned to the boy. “Is Max Kellen inside the patron’s house now?”

  “Yes, he is the patron. Nobody else stays there. There are three other houses, one for the men, one for the babies, and one for the servants.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Out in the back through the gardens. Paths connect them.”

  “He took a woman off the ship with him. Is she in there or with the servants? Is she his wife?

  “I do not know. I saw her once up on the top veranda, but then she went inside. He makes her stay in the big house. They say that nobody sees her out on the lawn.”

  “Is she his prisoner?”

  “Mama doesn’t know because she has to stay with the babies and does not go around to the big house. The maids might know the woman, but most of them live out there. Sometimes they go back to Flores to visit their families.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Twenty.”

  Pepe did not look like he was twenty. He looked a lot like a miniature Desoto. He was a small kid with quick, nervous movements and a facial tic at the left corner of his mouth. It was twitching right now. Working for Ramos and Kellen had taken its toll on his nervous system, no doubt, especially since he was also working with an ex-assassin and an American bent on killing his boss. “Do they abuse these village girls out there?”

  “Sometimes. Not the ones who work there. Some girls offer them love because they will get to have nice things, you know, pretty dresses and necklaces and ruby rings.”

  “Love being a contradictive term,” Desoto noted. Sarcasm dripped from his words.

  “Will the guys in the truck get scared and cop us out?”

  Desoto was confident. “No, they are afraid of me, so they will say nothing to anyone. They will not look at us or speak to us.”

  “I don’t like this one bit.”

  “Dios mio, Novak, we will get you a straw field hat and native blanket. Pepe drives these men in well before dawn, so it’s dark. You can sit on the floor to disguise your height. This will work. Do not worry.”

  “What if it doesn’t?”

  “Then I will cut all their throats, and all will be well.”

  Novak stared at the little guy. Of course he would, and it wasn’t like Novak wouldn’t take them out, too, if he had to. These were bad people running that place, top to bottom. These were human traffickers, baby peddlers, women killers, and drug dealers. These guys were the scum of the earth and didn’t deserve to breathe. If he and Desoto killed Kellen and every single one of his men, the world would be a better place. He preferred just to kill Kellen and let the cops handle the rest, if there were any cops up to going against the patron. Just so nobody tried to stop Novak from doing what he came to do.

  They went in that same night. It was a different truck. This one was a beat-up Ford that looked a bit newer but also as if it had been dropped off a mountaintop, white rusted now to a rough brownish red. Novak and Desoto donned ponchos and hats and became identical to the other twelve men crowded in the bed of that truck. The guys in back parted and let them sit down under the cab’s cracked rear window. The other guys sat around them; others stood up and blocked their identity. Maybe this thing could work after all. If not, they both were holding guns and razor-edged machetes under the serapes.

  When they reached the first checkpoint, Novak kept his finger on the trigger. The sleepy guard manning the gate barely glanced at the truck and just motioned them through and went back to drowsing. It was routine, something that happened every morning and every evening. He was not expecting violence or attack because no one in the villages would dare. Wrong. As they bounced and jounced into potholes along the overgrown and narrow dirt path, Novak began to feel better.

  Dense jungle bumped up against the truck on both sides, and the strong smell of dusty tropical foliage filled the air. The palms and vines would overrun the roadbed constantly, and keeping it passable had to be a never-ending task. When Pepe slowed the truck, the workers parted like a wave and let Novak and Desoto jump off the back. The truck rolled off, and they melted into the dense jungle, where the poisonous spiders, deadly snakes, and stalking leopards lived. But they were inside the compound and still on their feet.

  It was pitch black out there, but they switched on flashlights and kept the beams low to the ground. They moved stealthily, hacking their way through, stepping over roots and vines, and keeping four or five yards between them. It was the first time Novak had heard Desoto approach anything making noise. Most of the time, Desoto could walk through the woods without causing a twig to snap under his tread. How could he do that? Novak could move quietly considering his bulk but not like that. It was the kind of stealth perfected from years of sneaking up and knifing victims to death. This had been Desoto’s life until he met his wife and became a practical saint and cathedral devotee. He’d probably be kneeling at Mass with her right now if he hadn’t owed Novak this big favor.

  They made it over the second perimeter fence without a problem and kept going. The thick jungle growth ended at an expanse of beautiful lawn. They hunkered down behind the fronds of palm tree saplings. They were on the far edge of the side lawn. Up a good distance from them was a house built in what Novak called the Caribbean style. Kellen’s lair had it all: wide, airy verandas, flower beds, koi ponds, and even an oval swimming pool, which was quite a luxury, indeed. It was Kellen’s new residence, no doubt, since Novak had helped to destroy his operations in North America. This one wasn’t going to last long, either. Kellen didn’t have Claire as a bargaining chip to make Novak toe the line, so he was going down hard.

  “All right, we need to move in now before the sun comes up,” Desoto said. “We have maybe two hours to get this done and out of here. You go get the baby, and I’ll go kill Kellen.”

  “No, I’ll kill Kellen. You get the baby.”

  “As you wish. Good luck, my friend.”

  As small and deadly and nonchalant as ever, Desoto moved away, a mere shadow on the lawn as he angled back behind the big house. Novak followed him, bigger, stronger, slower, but just as lethal. He kept to the dark shadows of trees surrounding the house. The house had multiple verandas as his did at Bonne Terre. Bonne Terre was old and run down, though, and this place was pristine down to swept sidewalks and manicured grass.

  All around the clearing, the jungle was alive with the shrill chatter of monkeys and buzzing and croaking and occasional screams as animals enjoyed killing something smaller and weaker. The loud din helped him move around undetected. Crossing a flagstone patio, he climbed steps to the lower veranda and tried the first French door. The handle went down easily. Kellen must feel protected out here to leave his doors unlocked, but he wasn’t safe. He was living his last hour on earth but didn’t know it yet.

  Novak inched open the door and eased inside, where he stood in the dark and let his eyes adjust to the interior. It looked like a dining room, a large and airy one that had a big fan rotating slowly over the glass-topped white wicker table. The house was cool inside, and he could hear more fans whirring and air-conditioner vents blowing somewhere in the far reaches of the place, maybe upstairs. The breeze felt good on his damp skin. His black clothes clung to his sweat-soaked body. He headed to the hallway. There he found an open stairway leading to the second floor. The whole place smelled like oranges and floor wax. Nobody moved, and no lights were on. Whoever was in the house was asleep.

  This was a cakewalk so far. Good, but easy goes, it never lasted long. If there were guards on duty around this house, they were piss-poor and pathetic. Everybody out here must feel like no one could get past those two perimeter f
ences. He took the steps slowly, stopping on each tread and listening. Silence, no sounds anywhere. He kept going. All the upstairs doors were closed. There were six of them around a balcony set off from the steps with white banisters. He tried the doors and found four empty bedrooms and one bathroom. That left one door at the back of the house. He eased that one open and then pressed himself quickly back against the wall. Someone inside was humming. It was a woman’s voice, and it did not stop. She hadn’t heard him. He took a quick peek around the door frame and then moved inside and shut the door behind him.

  He was in some kind of sitting area that adjoined several other rooms, probably a master bedroom and bath. Only one door stood open. Dim light glowed inside. Novak made his way across the room until his boot hit a loose floorboard. It squeaked, and he froze there because the humming abruptly stopped. That had to be the woman Kellen had dragged off the boat. Knowing Kellen, she was a mistress or some poor unfortunate captive who had tickled his fancy. Novak had no desire to kill her; she had it bad enough being in the same house as a monster. He had no proof she was involved, one way or another. So he stood unmoving, gun up against his shoulder, and waited. He was there to kill one person and that was all. The humming resumed. Novak relaxed.

  A few seconds later, he peered through the crack of the door. He could see the woman but not clearly. Several French doors stood open onto the upper veranda. The room was a nursery. The woman was holding a baby. She was feeding the child a bottle, so maybe she was a nanny. He stepped back and checked out the next room, looking for Kellen. It was a big bedroom. The bed was unmade, the coverlet disturbed, but no one was in there. The palatial white bathroom was deserted. He had struck out. Kellen must sleep elsewhere.

  So he moved back to the nursery and got inside the room, and the woman remained unaware that he was anywhere near. Her back was turned, and she was smiling down at the child. He hesitated, not sure how to proceed without her getting hurt. He had to know if that child was Rosa Castillo, and his gut told him it was.