“What’s going on? Where’s my driver?” Manuel paused and turned to see if Jose had returned. “Salvador, what is going on?” he yelled.
As the driver of the white delivery truck revved the engine and honked, the cop standing beside Salvador calmly removed his gun from his holster and shot Salvador in the head.
Manuel felt his ears explode with adrenalin. He froze. “No!”
“Get in the truck, or your entire family is dead. We have them all!”
Manuel couldn’t move. He wanted to scream for Roger, but his voice wouldn’t work. He felt his throat dry up, and his body began to shake as if he had been dropped in the Arctic Ocean.
The cop grabbed and cuffed him while someone else put a bag over his head and shoved him facedown in the crew cab of the pickup. He knew he was dead and began praying.
“Do not resist!” snarled the cop.
Within two minutes they were all gone. The police vehicle was speeding away by the time the Mercedes was hooked up to the tow truck. The delivery van, which had successfully blocked any onlookers from the curb, brought up the rear. No one saw a thing, and even if they had, no one would talk. This was Mexico City.
Inside the terminal, Roger ordered a coffee at Starbucks and looked at his ticket. He had plenty of time. He sat down with his back to a wall and looked around. The airport was divided into two terminals, one for domestic flights and one for international. The high, modern curved ceilings; white, shiny floors; and expensive shops reminded Roger of a mall.
He had no illusions about life in Mexico.
During Roger’s first year in Mexico, the son of one of his boss’s neighbors was kidnapped. The family paid the ransom and still no child. Three days later, the kid was found stuffed in the trunk of an abandoned car. His heart had been pierced by a nail gun. After that, bodyguard hires skyrocketed.
Roger drank his coffee and read his Mexican cooking magazine. Some girls speaking English walked by, and he glanced up. He loved hearing that sound. He was going home. Roger watched people for a few minutes, and then something caught his eye. A man with a red baseball hat was leaning up against a pillar, staring at him.
Roger quickly looked away. Jesus, I’m paranoid. He pretended to read his magazine and glanced again. The man was talking on a cell phone.
I need to get outta this country, Roger thought.
Ready to check in at the gate, he grabbed his backpack and walked through small groups of people heading to destinations around the world. He ducked into the restroom. Roger could hardly wait to talk to his old friends and drink a pint or ten of Guinness. In the men’s room, he looked around for a stall. He never used urinals. They were too open, and his situational awareness made him hyperalert.
Roger saw a large African man with what looked like tribal tattoos along his cheeks and neck. Part of his ear was missing. A large earring of Santa Muerte hung from the other ear. It was so rare for Roger to see anyone taller than himself that he did a double take. The man was pretending to wash his hands, with no water running.
The massive man looked Roger right in the eye.
Roger swallowed hard. His internal alarms began to sound.
The moment shattered when the man with the red baseball hat walked up behind him.
Thank God for mirrors, Roger thought and kicked backward, catching the man with the baseball hat in the knee. He went down with a curse. Roger was more worried about the huge prison-tattooed beast.
Roger charged. The African produced a gun and grinned, revealing broken, yellow teeth. Roger just kept moving. He would rather die on the offensive. “If you bastards want a fight, you can have one!”
So this was it. His life would end in a bathroom in Mexico City.
CHAPTER 2
Waking Up from Bad Dreams into Nightmares
Cartagena, Colombia, December 1, 1993
The wind and rain hit the tin walls of the warehouse sideways with increasing intensity. The building shook for a moment as if it might blow off its foundation.
A broken man lay on a large table. His hands and feet were tied, and a plastic bag with holes stuck to his grimy face. An assortment of pliers and surgical instruments lay out of his reach.
“You have fifteen minutes before we drop him where the police will find him.”
A tall, thin Colombian with a cigarette in his mouth spoke quietly as he pulled off his bloody rubber gloves and shot them across the room like a rubber band. The Colombian seemed drained as if he had just had some type of sexual release.
Rain, blood, and the scurry of rats were the only movements until a man stepped out of the shadows. A group of armed men in tactical gear lined the walls. They were soaked from being outside. Puddles began to form under their boots. Some of the men were Colombian police or soldiers; others just wore the uniform but were in fact members of a Colombian revolutionary group.
Evan emerged from the shadows like a vapor coming into focus. He tore off his black ski mask and grabbed the face of the captured cartel member.
The cartel member tried to focus. “You?” His breath hissed in and out in what sounded like gasps.
A sign had been attached to the man’s chest with duct tape. It said, “Another enemy of the people” and was signed “the People Persecuted by Pablo Escobar or Los Pepes.”
“Remember me?” Evan asked.
One eye dilated and widened; the other was swollen shut. “You, Snake…you’re supposed to be—”
“Dead?” Evan flicked a severed ear off the table as if he were an eighth grader punting a paper football.
The drug dealer gasped. He had given up on life. His skin had begun to turn gray and felt cool when Evan touched him. He stopped breathing every few breaths, and right when Evan thought he was dead, he would gasp and speak.
“You know what I am capable of,” said Evan. “Your family is in hiding with Pablo’s family at the hotel. They are protected by the Colombian military and living in fear of Los Pepes. You know if there is anyone who can get to them”—Evan paused to let his words sink in—“I can.”
“You betray m-m-me.” The man gasped.
“That’s my job.” Evan took off his thin gloves and put a dip of Skoal in his mouth. The humidity was oppressive. He shook his hand in the air to rid it of the drops of sweat. “Tell me where Pablo is.”
The drug dealer rallied for a moment and spoke. “I only know…neighborhood. Not house.”
“Better.”
“Second floor. Safe house. In city. He makes a phone call each day to his—” The man coughed and stopped breathing for a second. “His son.” He gasped. “Calls him noon.”
Evan knew that the drug dealer had figured out that the Colombian police as well as the Americans could pinpoint locations by listening to phone calls. Pablo had moved so frequently that he had grown tired.
Evan placed a map in front of the man’s face. “Where?”
“No kill my family?”
“Where?”
“Here.” The man touched his nose to the map, making a bloody smudge. Blood and froth drained from the corners of his mouth. He tried to cough. “They live?”
Evan turned to walk away and was surprised when the drug dealer called out, “Traitor. I hope you can live with yourself.”
Evan stopped and listened to the rain and his own pounding heart. This man had ordered his wife killed.
Evan turned around to face the broken man. “I stopped living with myself years ago,” he said, spitting on the floor.
“Andre, Andre Pena.”
Evan walked back to the dying man. “Who?”
“A-A-Andre Pena. Freelance hit man, an artist. Blew up a passenger plane to kill one man. Works for guerrilla groups, sometimes government; no cares, no loyalty. Works for Pablo. Get him. Not me. He killed your woman, not me.”
Evan put his mask back on. “I have to go.”
The cartel leader coughed and muttered his last words on earth: “My family…please, please.”
The next day, E
van’s birthday, December 2, 1993, Pablo Escobar died. The Colombian police tracked him down and killed him, courtesy of electronic surveillance provided by the United States. The collaboration with US operators, including Delta Force, CIA, and members of the US Army Intelligence Support Activity, paid off.
Rumors and accusations by opposing political parties later surfaced that perhaps the United States had aided a paramilitary group known as Los Pepes. This vigilante group was made up of rival drug gangs, right-wing guerrilla groups, and Colombian police moonlighting outside of the law to kill off or torture anyone who was associated with Pablo. Los Pepes was the only thing ever known to strike terror in Pablo and his family.
Mason Neck, Virginia, February 14, 2010, 0800 Hours
Evan Hernandez sat up in a cold sweat. The dreams had returned, and the guilt had found him once again. He cursed and started to get out of bed muttering, “I’m in a movie stuck on repeat.” He walked into the bathroom. He was depressed again, and it angered him. Today was Veronica’s birthday, and, once again, he was reliving the culmination of a thousand lies and bad choices.
“Eighteen years ago or yesterday—how long does this torment go on?” Evan considered his reflection in the mirror. He stood six feet one and 225 pounds. Friends teased that he looked like a retired professional wrestler. Evan had always looked rough, distant, and disconnected, even when he tried to smile. In his younger years, he could break a baseball bat with a shin kick and shatter a full bottle of Coke with his vise grip. No one cared about stupid tricks at his age.
Evan stared, feeling like critical mass was approaching. He thought of how many stories and clichés there were about gazing at one’s self in the mirror. He spoke aloud to himself and to Zeus, his Great Dane, “There’s mirror, mirror on the wall and there’s break a mirror and have seven years bad luck. And, of course, there’s that Greek dude—what’s his name—Narcissus, who fell in love with his own image.”
Evan shook his head and got into the shower. He was relieved when the steam frosted the mirror, hiding his reflection. “Vanity, self-centeredness, self-destruction, depression. What best describes the tornado in my head?”
Evan thought about the shrinks he had seen, the medications he had been on, and the pain in his lower back from not one but two helicopter crashes. “Zeus, let me tell you, the witch doctors with degrees have very medical-sounding terms and politically correct ways of describing what is going on. Of course, every few years they completely change the meanings; hell, they have changed them so much that now the crazy people are the normal ones and the normal ones are nuts.”
Evan kept talking to Zeus. He turned off the shower and walked past the mirror, refusing to look at it. “Zeus, you lazy dog, you’re not listening.” He dried off and got dressed.
“I am being profane—or maybe just thinking about profanity.” Evan waved a hand in the air as he pulled on his jeans and then his cowboy boots.
Zeus raised his head and watched him with curiosity.
Evan continued his monologue: “Food and outside—that’s all you can think of, huh? Guess that’s why you’re always happy, living permanently on the dole. I am done. Done living in self-pity, self-this, self-that, drugging myself into thinking it’s all OK. Screw it! We are going to sell this house, and we are packing up and moving.”
Zeus barked.
Evan laughed. “Wow, I’m talking to my dog. Oh, well, I guarantee I’m not the only one!” He walked through his cluttered living room and pushed a pile of clothes and books out of the way so he could open the door and let his oversized dog lumber out into the snow.
“Maybe I should write a book.” Evan frowned, looked into the gray sky, and muttered, “How long would it take me to end up on an enemy’s list and have a drone strike take me out?”
He closed the door. “No, they would probably just arrange for a nice accident and then say, ‘Evan Hernandez, ex- or fired or alleged former CIA employee, ran off the road today and hit a schoolteacher before killing a poor tree.’”
Evan continued his rant as he grabbed his coffee beans from the pantry. “He has a history of blah, blah, blah, and, oh, he was a marine—oooh, that really makes him a nut.”
Evan went into his kitchen and began his coffee-making ritual. He had about three minutes before Zeus would start barking to come in. He weighed his beans on a digital scale, ground them coarsely by hand, and scooped the grounds gently, like an EOD tech might move gunpowder. Evan bought green coffee beans online and roasted them himself.
He stared out the window at the light snow that had covered the ground while he slept. He wondered at how he had come to this place in life. He was not sure why he didn’t feel angry this morning or depressed or like going and chopping wood for hours. He had given his neighbors enough wood over the past few months to build their own additions. They weren’t sure if he was an out-of-work contractor or a lumberjack. Evan was always working on his house. He was replacing a section of roof, rebuilding his screened-in porch, and starting his second renovation on his workshop.
“Sometimes I get a little OCD,” he said with pride. The noise of the coffee maker and the smell of the best medication of all filled his nose and took him back to his early life or lives.
He was forty-eight and felt twenty some days and over sixty other days. He was born in South Florida to an overbearing Cuban father whose family had been very wealthy in pre-Castro Cuba. Evan’s father had narrowly escaped the revolution, fleeing to the States with nothing.
Evan had spent the first fourteen years of his life terrified that the Russians were going to attack at any moment. He grew up thinking it was normal to live in a foreign country for two to three years and then move back to the States, just to repeat the cycle. Once he hit fifteen, he began to think his dad was just crazy.
He could still see his father working the grill, wearing an old silk Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned all the way, white dress shorts, expensive brown shoes, and black socks. Sometimes he would chew on an unlit cigar for hours and just grumble to himself.
“Son, you have no idea how lucky you have it in this country,” he had told Evan. “These people, these Americans, they are sheep. Someday communism will come here. You laugh at me, but a smiley-face communism will take this country down from the inside. You watch!”
Evan was never clear on what his dad did until he was about twenty. He had told Evan that he worked for the State Department helping other countries as an engineer. On his dad’s retirement day, he finally got the truth.
Evan smiled thinking about his old man—his love of boats, his obsessive memorization of useless dates and facts, and his scrapbooking. Evan’s father loved to clip and save newspaper articles.
“Proof,” he often said, “that America is incrementally being steered toward communism. Someday you will read these old articles, and you will say, ‘See, he was not so crazy.’ They are like frogs in a pot of water. The heat is turning up slowly, but they don’t move. They are so comfortable. By the time they are boiling, it is too late!”
Evan had been great at entertaining his siblings by imitating his father. “What a paranoid, old nut!” he had said on many occasions. He hated his dad’s cigars, aftershave, and the brown shoes with socks and shorts. “What’s with the socks, Dad?”
Evan was the youngest. He had two sisters and one older brother. In hindsight, Evan now had completely different thoughts about his dad: Smartest, fairest man I ever met and freaking right about most everything!
Evan’s mother was a whole different case. She was quiet and calculating and only spoke when she had something worth saying. She was mellow and sweet and watched everything. His mother had been born in Russia, and she too had been smuggled away from an oppressive country. To her, life was grand, rules could not be bent, and there was a mathematical rationale behind all she did. His mother had been a chemistry teacher.
Evan checked his coffee machine and critically checked the brew. “Guess I was destined to be a nut,” he said, sighing.
His high school teacher mother and CIA agent father had provided Evan with the genetic mix of intellect, discipline, and rigidity—plus a tinge of paranoia—to make him a stellar student. He recalled the frequent moves, the readaptation, and reacclimation to stateside life and sometimes wondered if he was being programmed to be a spy. A friend of his father had given him an empty shell casing when he was a boy and said, “Collected this at the site where Che Guevara was shot.”
Surrounded by spies and people who always used aliases, did his dad have some master plan in his head? He recalled his father saying one evening, while sharing a bottle of illegal Cuban rum, “You have to be able to blend in, Son, no matter where you go. Imagine fleeing your home country!”
By the time Evan had left home at age seventeen to join the marine corps, he was head and shoulders more worldly and knowledgeable than his peers. He had grown up in Europe, South America, and Japan before he left home. Evan had a knack for languages. He loved people, and he loved figuring out how they ticked. Speaking four languages seemed natural to him. “The more people I can talk to, the more fun I can have.”
The coffee was done, and the dog began barking right on time. Evan poured his coffee and waited. Proper coffee had to cool before the flavor could be tasted. He reminisced about his military time: twelve years in the marines as a grunt and then as a warrant officer flying helicopters.
Evan let the dog in and looked at his photos on the wall. “Damn, I was young and stupid in those days,” he muttered to Zeus. The last twenty years of his life flashed before him as a wisp of smells, tastes, and the heartache of a million mistakes.
He had left the marine corps after his first marriage began to fail. He didn’t want his ex-wife, who was sleeping with half the guys in Cherry Point, to get his retirement. “What a fitting place for her!” he said, laughing. Her nickname had been Cherry.
“Twelve years in the marine corps and eighteen years with the CIA—and what to show?” Evan had spiraled out of control when he had a forced resignation two years ago. No retirement, thanks to the assholes and political hacks. Then followed bankruptcies, DUIs, OxyContin addiction related to old injuries, and finally booze. Alcoholism had always been there, like an invisible friend, lurking in the shadows.
Silver Lead and Dead (Evan Hernandez series Book 1) Page 2