The Colombian Rogue
The Colombian Lie Series (Book 2)
Matt Herrmann
THE COLOMBIAN ROGUE
THE COLOMBIAN LIE SERIES (BOOK 2)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Matt Herrmann
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review.
MattHerrmannBooks.com
Cover art by Andrew Dobell
Editing by Shavonne Clarke
Contents
SUNDAY
1. Meeting
MONDAY
2. Another Meeting
3. Private Convo
4. Calls
5. Shoot
6. Figure
7. Bounce
8. Roof
9. Descent
TUESDAY
10. Switched Identities?
11. Watch
12. Red Cross
13. Cache
WEDNESDAY
14. Morning After
15. Scenic
16. Another Chance
17. Carmelita’s Dive
18. Fight Club
19. Bazaar of Nightmares
20. Kingsnake
THURSDAY
21. Rain
22. The Talk
23. The Account
24. Relief
25. Guys
26. Intrusion
27. Disturbance
FRIDAY
28. Rest for the Wicked
29. Busy
30. Info
31. Blood Trail
32. Siege
33. Recovery
SATURDAY
34. Friend
35. Cards
36. The Stand
37. Foe
38. Trail
39. Unfinished Business
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SUNDAY
1
Meeting
They met in the back of a well-lit restaurant in Mocoa, Colombia. Men in suits sat around the rectangular table as whiskey and wine were poured. Small candles lit the men’s faces as they waited for their server to leave so they could resume their conversation.
Gathered were Tomás “Strong-Arm” Sientas from Colombia, “Drunk” Tito Banderas also from Colombia, and old Hugo Mosteros of Ecuador. Cisco’s restaurant had a reputation for some of the best food in the country, and Hugo had suggested they meet there.
Tomás looked at Hugo. Bodyguards stood between the two men at the table. “Someone said they saw Ricky Serrao in Ecuador. Any truth to that?”
“Bloody Ricky?”
“Yeah. Who else you think I’m talking about?”
“You know, if memory serves, didn’t he used to be called Crazy Ricky?”
“What of it?” Tomás raised his glass for another refill. “You see him or not?”
“I wouldn’t raise your voice with me, Tomás.” Hugo cut into his steak. The bodyguards to each side of him tensed their hands over the guns held under the table.
“I wasn’t raising my voice,” Tomás said, suddenly realizing he was raising his voice.
“Look. I haven’t seen the man. Bloody or crazy. I’ve got a man who had an unconfirmed sighting of him way down in Argentina, but it might not have been him. Man had a beard. Ricky never had a beard. So it might be him. Might not be.”
“You didn’t think to confirm if it was really him?” Tomás said, his voice rising again.
“There you go, raising your damn voice again.” Hugo’s guards started to lift their hands, and Hugo dismissed them with a placating gesture. “What was I supposed to do? Pay a guy to tug on his beard? See if it was real? Authorities are still looking for him, and I don’t need that heat. You saw the mess he caused in Colombia. Got careless with his side hobby—”
“I heard Ricky didn’t cut those women,” Tito interrupted. “Police never caught the sicko doing that.”
Hugo glared at Tito, then resumed. “Anyway, the Cartagena authorities raided Ricky’s residence, seizing who knows how much in cash and drugs. God, I miss the days when it was easier to pay off the authorities. You know the cops had a warrant, and what did Ricky’s men do? They started an all-out war with the authorities—gave them probable cause. I mean, Christ. Ricky’s a dumb one. I ain’t going to get my hands dirty with him.”
“So you’d turn him over if you knew he was in Ecuador?” Tito asked.
“The man is not welcome in my country. But I’m not going to go out of my way to get involved with him.” Hugo pushed away the plate with the remnants of his steak on it, and a waitress came to take it. “I’m no longer hungry,” he said as the waitress lifted it.
“So you would not like to see our dessert menu, señor?”
“Eh, bring me one.” He turned to address the two cartel men again. “Look, I thought we were meeting to discuss what’s been happening to my lieutenants.”
The other two men put their forks down as if they, too, were now suddenly done eating.
“I mean it’s not just coincidence, am I right? All healthy men. And yet they just drop dead. Ain’t natural. Coroner says they died from snake venom that isn’t snake venom. Some kind of artificially created poison or something. And these dead men . . . they don’t go out into the jungles—they have goons to do that for them.” He looked apologetically at his bodyguards. “You’re not goons,” he clarified. “It doesn’t make sense. Have you had anything like that in Colombia?”
Tomás and Tito exchanged glances.
“Well, talk, one of you,” Hugo said.
“We’ve had the same thing happening to our men,” Tito said.
“How many men dead?” Hugo asked.
“Seven.”
“Seven? Holy shit. Something is going on.”
“They all reported hearing a hissing sound in the days leading up to their . . . uh, deaths,” Tomás said.
Hugo put his hand to his forehead. “Mine too.” The waitress tapped him on the shoulder. “Oh, yes. The coffee cheesecake,” he said, handing her his menu.
Tito straightened his shirt collar. “They all had two tiny puncture wounds in the side of the neck. Below the ear.”
“Christ, that’s what my guys had, too,” Hugo said. “The fuck we dealing with? Vampires?”
Tito steepled his fingertips over the table and laughed nervously. “There’s no such thing as vampires.”
“Then how do you explain this?” Hugo said.
“Well . . . there’s got to be an explanation. Maybe it’s some scare tactic of the Americans.”
“The Americans? Why would they suddenly care about the Colombian or Ecuadorian drug trade? Don’t they got enough to worry about with presidential scandals and elections?”
“Cocaine exports are the highest they’ve ever been,” Tito said behind his finger-steeple.
“Yeah but I would have heard something if they were targeting us. Besides, they know they can’t end the drug trade. The age of big-name cartels is over. We’re smarter these days. And there’s so many players like Bloody Ricky and that
uh . . . what’s he called? That smuggler saint guy.”
“Juan Santiago?” Tito asked.
“Yeah. Well, that’s just two of the big players. If they get themselves caught or killed, someone else will just step forward and the drugs will still get to where they need to go.”
“Like cutting the head off Medusa,” Tomás said. “Another will grow back to take its place.”
Hugo waved his hands. “Enough talk of monsters.”
“You scared?” Tito asked.
“Any of us could be next—of course I’m a little scared. Someone’s trying to take us out of the game, and we don’t even know their name.”
The waitress came back with a plate of cheesecake sprinkled with cocoa and coffee grinds. Hugo wasted no time digging his spoon into the wedge, swallowing and licking his lips.
“If someone is out to get us, what if they poisoned your cheesecake?” Tomás asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous. It wouldn’t fit the MO.”
A soft hissing sound began to drift up from under the table. The men all looked at each other.
“This some kind of fuckin’ joke?” Hugo asked.
Tito lowered his steepled hands to the table. The guards began to raise their weapons.
“Everyone, take it easy,” Tomás said. “Maybe we’re all just imagining it.”
The hissing grew even louder until people in the well-lit area of the dining room lifted their heads and looked for the source of the sound.
“That’s ridiculous,” Hugo said.
Tito scooted back and lifted the white tablecloth draped over the edge of the table. He bent to look under the table. “Shit, there’s a bomb under here—”
The explosion blasted out the windows in the dining room, caused pots and pans to clatter and fall in the kitchen. Screaming erupted from the front of the restaurant as fiery chunks and flaps of wood and suit coats fluttered in the draft of the night wind entering the restaurant.
MONDAY
2
Another Meeting
“Damn.” CG rewound the footage of the explosion on the monitor. “I think I see an arm flying. Yeah. Right there.”
“Where did this come from?” Cali asked.
“Amateur footage from a cell phone,” Rockwell said. “Expensive restaurant in Mocoa, a small Colombian city close to the Ecuadorian border.”
“Any civilians hurt?” Cali asked.
“Unfortunately, yes. An older gentleman caught a splinter in the neck. Mostly a bunch of burst eardrums, but some of the guests got scraped up pretty bad from the flying shards of wood and glass. Smoke inhalation, too.”
“Anyone taking credit for it yet?” Sam asked.
“No,” Rockwell said. The commanding officer leaned back against the table he was standing next to. His eyes looked reddish, as if he hadn’t gotten much sleep. The short-billed camo hat on his head blocked out much of the harsh fluorescent light raining down from above in the command room of the US-Colombia Joint Ops Center. The clock on the wall said almost 6:00 a.m.
“Are there any other videos or shots taken of this place before or after the blast?” the man who called himself Juan Santiago said. “I’m not sure if you can do that or not.”
CG looked up over the computer monitor as if his pride had been damaged by the statement. “Of course I can. If people took pictures and posted them to social media, I can definitely find them. Give me a few minutes.”
“Minutes?” Juan said. “I thought you were faster than that.” He laughed to show he was joking.
“Very funny, Paul,” CG said, his slender, monkey-like fingers tapping and gliding over the keyboard.
Juan Santiago was used to people calling him Paul Ramírez, although he was born with neither name. He had been traded between the orphanage and foster homes during his early years after his twin brother Paul had been adopted. Paul had said they’d always have each other’s back, but he had lied. And then a few months ago, Paul had tricked Juan into taking his place as an American elite covert operative on Commander Heston Rockwell’s Anti-Drug Task Force Abroad.
Juan hadn’t seen his brother in over twenty years, and it was uncanny how similar the two of them looked. They were twins, sure, but people’s features change as they age. Paul had counted on this in fooling even his own elite team, and so far it had. The American team consisted of operatives Sam Merin and Cali Echevarría, as well as computer and technologies expert Carlo Guerro, who went by the name CG.
“Okay, got some,” CG said. Some images started to appear on the wall-projected screen. “The ones without smoke obviously came before the explosion.”
Juan stepped up to the wall to better inspect the images people had posted to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Most of the pictures showed smiling family members or friends. While he’d never actually been there himself, Mocoa was famous for this restaurant—it was about the only thing the small town had going for it. So when you ate at Cisco’s restaurant in Mocoa, you wanted to let everyone else know.
Suddenly, Juan’s eyes locked onto an image of an older man, the one who would die. The photo itself was badly framed—the man wasn’t even centered—but that wasn’t what made it stand out to Juan.
“This man here, in the background. Can you blow it up?” Juan asked.
CG tapped at the computer, and the rest of the images disappeared. The image grew in size until they could all better see the man in question. He was angled away from the camera and was wearing the uniform of one of the waiters: black pants, black vest over a white shirt, black cummerbund with the pleats facing upward, black bowtie. The man’s hair was also faded short on the sides and styled on top. Even from the side angle of the shot, Juan could see the high, tanned cheekbones.
“That looks like you,” Cali said.
Juan blinked, hoping that perhaps he had imagined the similarities. He hadn’t.
He was looking at his brother Paul.
3
Private Convo
“Well, are you going to say something?” Juan asked.
Rockwell held his chin in his hands. He looked around to confirm it was just the two of them in the storeroom at the back of the command room. Besides a stack of chairs, a couple rectangular fold-out tables, and some old shelving, they were alone in the tight space.
“Goddamnit, Paul,” he said under his breath.
“Sure looks like he’s turned,” Juan said. “He got a civilian killed.”
“I know. He must have had a good reason.”
“There is. He’s gone bad.”
“Coming from a smuggler, that’s rich. That’s real rich.”
“I’m not too surprised. Paul double-crossed me—hung me out to dry at Ricky’s place. And what happened to Mika because of him . . .”
“Forget Ricky Serrao for now; he’s out of the picture. We need to talk about Paul.”
“I’m listening.”
“Whatever he’s gotten himself into, we’ve got to get him out. I need you to find him.”
“And then what? Bring him back to the team? Hey guys, look who I found—me!” Juan looked Rockwell in the eyes. “What’s my play? How can I bring the team in on this? You should have just brought me into this.”
“You’ve been tracking Paul for months now with no trace of him,” Rockwell reminded him.
“What can I say? He’s good. But the team? There will be too many questions.”
“They would have found out sooner or later. So here’s what we do: we keep things simple. There’s a guy impersonating you, and he’s . . .”
“He’s what? Killing bad guys? Shouldn’t we just let him keep doing what he’s doing?”
“You don’t understand. I can’t leave Paul out in the wind.”
“Why not? Because he’s your star agent?”
“You don’t know Paul,” Rockwell said, his voice rising.
“You’re right. He’s my brother, and I don’t know him. But maybe neither do you.”
There was a knock at the door, an
d CG peeked his head in. “I think I might have something if you both want to step back into the command room.”
Rockwell gave a Juan a look that said, To be continued, and then they both followed CG.
“What’ve you got?” Rockwell asked, folding his arms over his chest in the consummate image of authority.
“As we guessed, the men at the back table were some pretty unsavory characters. Three of the men were top businessmen connected to wealthy families. Two of them were Colombian, and the third was Ecuadorian. All three families run legitimate businesses but are suspected of being linked to the cocaine trade. So, I got to thinking that maybe key people in drug trafficking are being targeted. I did some checking, and these three aren’t the first drug-related deaths in the past couple weeks.”
CG typed and brought some more images to the screen. “Here’s seven I found in Colombia. And here’s five from Ecuador.”
“They die in bomb blasts?” Sam asked.
“No.” CG flipped through the photos on the screen. “One was a car accident that might not have been a car accident. Another two were killed by guns in drive-bys. The men who seemed to have died from natural causes didn’t have any prior health conditions. There is one thing some of them have in common, though. Seems like some of them were hearing hissing sounds on the days leading up to their deaths. Weird, huh?”
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