by Tom Wood
“Are you writing this down?”
She huffed. “I never write anything down, but I never forget an order. Although I feel compelled to say I’m not really in the weapons trade. I’m not an arms dealer.”
“You delivered last time.”
“I was paying off my debt,” she explained. “I’m trying to get out of the gun business.”
“Then I appreciate you making a special case just for me.”
“Why do I feel that it wouldn’t be in my best interest to say no to you?”
“Because you’re a smart businesswoman and I’m a valued customer.”
She forced a laugh.
He said, “Can you get me a rifle or not?”
“There’s not much I can’t source.”
“That’s the Georg I know.”
“You don’t know me, and that’s not my real name.”
He said, “Then feel free to tell me your real name.”
“I think I’ll keep that to myself.”
“In that case, Georg it is.”
She sighed. “I trust this will be a conventional arrangement.”
“You’ve paid your debt, if that’s what you mean. I’ll buy the rifle for a reasonable price.”
“Good,” she said. “Because what you ask for isn’t cheap or easy to procure.”
“If it was easy, I wouldn’t need to call you.”
“You flatter me.”
“Take it however you want.”
“Where will I need to send it?”
“Central America.”
She thought for a moment, picturing contacts, imagining phone calls, negotiations, haggling, arguing, agreements, arrangements, risks, and profit.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ll make some calls and see what I can source, but I expect it will take some time to get such a weapon to you.”
“That’s fine. I didn’t think you’d have one lying around. We can talk specifics when you get back to me. I’ll send details on how to make contact.”
“As you wish,” she said.
He said nothing more, and the line disconnected.
“Would a good-bye kill you?” she asked the dial tone.
• Chapter 27 •
Using Georg was a little problematic. She was an attachment to Victor’s recent past, the past he was stepping away from. That couldn’t be helped here. He could source firearms on his own, but not of the quality he needed to kill Maria Salvatierra from over a mile away. He knew how to track down small-time arms dealers like he knew how to track down document forgers. Small-time arms dealers had access to handguns and AKs. They didn’t have .50-caliber antimaterial sniper rifles in their inventory. So he had to go off script and use Georg, for want of an alternative.
While he waited for her to get back to him, he considered his other options.
Victor’s business was hard targets. He had assassinated warlords and crime kingpins, spies and killers. Clients didn’t hire him to kill civilians, because it didn’t require a man of Victor’s skills and prohibitive expense. He hadn’t been paid to kill a cartel boss before, but he had been tasked with assassinating similar people. Those targets were almost as well protected, but they had not been expecting attack. Maria Salvatierra expected violence at all times. The war had been raging for years. Her closest bodyguards were experienced and ready.
Therefore, he wanted to have multiple plans in development at the same time. With someone so well guarded and so expectant of attack, a simple ambush wasn’t going to work. He couldn’t shadow her movements and strike where and when she was vulnerable because she had no conventional movements. There would be no instances of vulnerability.
He would have to create them.
Three approaches would be sufficient, he deemed. A primary and two secondary options. It was a delicate balance of having as many workable approaches as possible without spreading his preparations too thin. He wanted to be able to put a plan into motion at a moment’s notice, when circumstances were just right, but he wanted to know that plan would work.
Aside from the ranch itself, there was only one other potential strike point, which was a superyacht named Sipak that Maria used on occasion. It was a three-hundred-foot behemoth, moored on the Pacific coast. A floating hotel, almost. Luxurious and decadent. The price tag was north of ninety million dollars, but the actual price of such yachts was never advertised. If you had to ask, you couldn’t afford it. But it was simple for Victor to find hard intel. Online brokers had detailed profiles for their wares, and at least three yachts of the same design were for sale. A few clicks of a mouse in an Internet café and Victor knew everything from its range (five thousand nautical miles) to what helicopter the forward deck was certified for (the Agusta GrandNew).
The most important details were the number of crew who served on the yacht and the number of guests the sixteen bedrooms could house: forty-five and thirty-one. Seventy-six people on board was a lot to consider, but the crew could be discounted as threats. They were waiters and stewards, sailors and maids. They wouldn’t be carrying weapons and they wouldn’t risk their lives by getting in his way. Of the thirty-one potential guests, one was his target. The thirty that remained would not all be bodyguards. Maria would have lieutenants and guests that, like the crew, would be noncombatants. There was no way to tell in advance what the split would be, but even in the best case he could expect significant opposition. Though even in the worst-case scenario there would be far fewer guns pointed his way than at the ranch.
The yacht couldn’t provide the same level of security, but Victor had no way of knowing when she might make use of it. If he could find out, then he could stow or else swim aboard, and kill Maria with nothing more than stealth. He couldn’t get close when she was at the ranch, and even if he could, he didn’t want to. Too many guards, too many things to go wrong, too little chance of escape.
Victor could remain hidden in the shack for days on end to wait for the right opportunity to make the kill, but with the yacht he had to know in advance when Maria would be on board. He had an idea of how he might find out, but it would require a lot of groundwork.
The third option would be to use explosives. Victor didn’t like bombs, but he didn’t like firearms either. Both were nothing more than tools to him. Of the two, using a gun would be his preference. Bombs were loud, they were messy and indiscriminate, and required all manner of factors to be just right for incorporating into a successful assassination. For a gun, it took little more than a clear line of sight.
He had used explosives successfully before on several occasions. He had fulfilled one contract by hiding a bomb inside the cistern of a toilet in order to kill a gangster, but none since. He could see an opportunity with his current contract. If he worked on the assumption that the central point of interest for the group gathered outside of the ranch house was Maria Salvatierra, then she was some twenty meters from where vehicles were parked on the driveway. That was close enough for a car bomb to kill her, as well as everyone nearby.
Victor preferred to avoid killing anyone he was not paid to, but his job could be seen as a series of compromises, none of which were related to morality. When working for intelligence agencies his terms of employment were to ensure a lack of collateral damage. They wanted him to kill only those people they decreed. Other life was somehow more sacred.
It was an unnecessary stipulation. He always sought to avoid civilian death and unnecessary suffering, but only because he was a perfectionist. He wanted to do his job well.
It had been rare in recent times for him to have the freedom from oversight, time frames, and methodology. Here he had all three. Heloise wanted Maria dead, however it could be achieved. Victor was sure Heloise would have no problem with him wiping out her sister’s most important lieutenants alongside her. There might even be a bonus for him as a result.
In his safe-house o
ffice, he printed out the aerial photographs of the ranch. He pieced some together, drawing and marking them with different colored pens. He measured and calculated, working out explosive velocities and blast radiuses, debris patterns and secondary damage. He studied literature on successful car bombs and those that had failed. He did the sums for different explosives, accounting for the carrier vehicle and the fuel within.
Yes, he concluded. It was possible to transform a yellow Lamborghini Aventador into a bomb and wipe out everyone who happened to be outside the front of the ranch house when that bomb exploded.
For that to work, however, he first had to track down the car.
• Chapter 28 •
What Alamaeda found funny about the drug trade was that the single most important commodity outside of the drugs was humble old plastic. Shrink wrap, to be precise. Not for the product, but for the cash. Vacuum-packing could halve the amount of room a bundle of bank notes took up. Halve the volume, double the amount. Cartels owned whole warehouses whose sole purpose was to pack cash into as small a space as possible. And when hundreds of millions of dollars in hard currency were moved, then the percentages really mattered. If you could reduce the volume of cash by 51 percent instead of 50, then that was worth millions per annum. The fewer the individual shipments, the fewer the chances of that cash being intercepted en route. The fewer the shipments, the greater the profits. Every percent mattered. The manufacturers of vacuum-packing machines had preorders for newer, better models the instant they were advertised. When thinner plastic wrap was developed, initial production could not keep up with demand.
The corpse found blocking a viaduct was bound in shrink wrap, head to toe, but the cheap kind. Whoever had done this hadn’t wanted to waste the good stuff.
“Ugh,” Wickliffe said. “That’s just nasty.”
She kept her distance while Alamaeda sprayed some perfume onto the index finger of her left hand, which she then held under her nose. She still grimaced when she squatted down to take a closer look. “Huge amount of facial swelling. Almost certainly fractures to the orbital bones, nose, and jaw. And he’s missing a whole lot of teeth.”
“Tongue?”
“Nuh uh.”
Wickliffe shrugged. “A rat.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“I was hoping for something a little juicier.”
Alamaeda gestured. “If he were any juicer, he’d pop.”
“You know what I mean.”
She did. With Heloise’s efforts to get a gaming license, cartel violence had halved, especially in the city, where it was visible. That meant Alamaeda and Wickliffe paid extra attention when Guatemalan police found a dead trafficker. Mr. Shrink Wrap was a known entity, one of Heloise’s top lieutenants.
Guatemala was home to several DTOs—drug-trafficking organizations—which meant it was called home by many DEA agents, all working together but all tasked with different regions, different cartels. Alamaeda and Wickliffe had the blessing and curse that was assisting in the dismantling of the Salvatierra cartel. Blessing because it was potentially the largest prize, but curse since it had split into two warring factions.
Alamaeda had been in Guatemala long enough to remember when Manny Salvatierra had been sole patron. The eldest son of a traditional contraband family, in his early days he had smuggled cigarettes and alcohol around the country, avoiding police efforts to stop his operation, thanks to the ever-ready loyalty of locals who would tip him off or even hide him, knowing they would be rewarded for their efforts. His had been a slow journey into the narcotics-trafficking business, but he had risen at a steady, relentless rate until the cartel he headed was the most powerful in Guatemala. His two daughters had been his most trusted and valued lieutenants, both eager to learn the business and eager to please their devoted father.
The Salvatierra sisters, like their father before them, never came close to the business unless they wanted to do so. It was the ports on the Pacific and Caribbean coasts where the bulk of the product was moved in and out of country. The majority of DEA agents in Guatemala were focused there. Their job was to assist in stopping the drugs moving north to Mexico and the US. Alamaeda wasn’t here for drugs, but money. Her job was to intercept the money moving back down south.
At a conservative estimate, almost four hundred tons of cocaine passed through Guatemala every year. Just transitioning the product to the Mexican cartels made it a billion-dollar industry. Cartels with closer relations with the South American producers could bypass Guatemala altogether, or else use it only as a stopping-off point on the long route north, but the other cartels needed Guatemala, needed the Salvatierra cartel, to be their middleman.
For a brief, violent time, the Mexican cartels sought to establish a permanent presence in Guatemala, in both the physical and psychological senses, but they were ultimately unsuccessful. This only made the Salvatierra cartel more powerful. The Mexicans had tried and failed to bypass them, and so the price of doing business rose as a result. The rules changed too. When once the Salvatierras supplied only to a single Mexican cartel, from then on they could sell to whomever they chose without consequences.
The Salvatierras controlled huge swathes of the country, including two wide corridors that ran from El Salvador and Honduras all the way to Mexico, ensuring their continued dominance of the main trafficking routes. Alamaeda wasn’t interested in the smaller fish in Guatemala’s pond. Those with closer links or out-and-out proxies for the Mexican cartels were someone else’s problem. The remaining Guatemalan cartels were minnows. The Salvatierras were the whale.
Yet there had never been any charges against Manny or his two daughters. They were untouchable. Everyone knew they were crooks, had always been crooks, would always be crooks, yet they could walk through a storm without getting wet. They were too big and powerful to be faced head-on, and the other cartels were forced to fight among themselves for the smaller slices of the pie. That violence kept the authorities busy. The Salvatierras had never needed to fight, had never needed to attract attention. Until the war.
With an even split in territory and manpower, the war was at a stalemate, and while the sisters fought each other they allowed the smaller traffickers to steal business, and—more dangerously—they created openings for the Mexican cartels to once again encroach into Guatemala. The sisters needed a resolution, but that was achievable only when one of them was dead. If they managed to kill each another, that would be the best possible outcome. Alamaeda wasn’t betting on that happening anytime soon. It was wishful thinking, at least. Her biggest fear was a miraculous reconciliation. Fractured, the Salvatierra cartel showed vulnerability for the first time. It was weak, finally, but only until one sister killed the other.
Alamaeda said, “This guy took one hell of a beating.”
“Didn’t your guy tell you he was a trusted trafficker?”
Alamaeda exhaled. “What do you want me to say? Not every piece of intelligence is solid gold.”
“That’s an understatement and a half. I’m seeing larvae, but with the cold water he could have been down here for a couple of weeks, easy. Given the shrink wrap, it makes it hard to say without a proper examination.”
“He’s old news, whatever happened. No point digging deeper. Whoever did this to him has probably forgotten what he did to deserve it. Come on, let’s make a move.”
Back in their vehicle, Wickliffe spent a couple of minutes cleaning her sunglasses, so Alamaeda seized the opportunity to check her voice mail.
“What?” Wickliffe asked when she had put her cell away again.
Alamaeda played dumb. “What do you mean, ‘What’?”
“You’re smiling.”
“Is that so rare?”
“It’s a different kind of smile and I know exactly what it means.” She frowned in a mock-judgmental way. “Who is he?”
“Early days, so I don’t know much about
him yet,” Alamaeda answered. “But looks like I have a date tonight.”
“In the Guat? How’d you find the one dateable man in town?”
Everyone who lived in Guatemala City called it Guat, or the Guat.
“We met on a bus, if you can believe it.”
“Was he the driver or the kid that stashes the luggage on top?”
Alamaeda rolled her eyes. “Actually, he’s a commodities trader or something. He’s Canadian.” She made an attempt at an accent. “Although he doesn’t really talk like that.”
“A Canadian?” Wickliffe huffed. “I don’t like him already.”
Alamaeda said, “Then let your cynical mind be eased, because I’ve already run a background check on him.”
“Already? That means you like him or there’s something not quite right about him.”
“Maybe both.”
Wickliffe’s brow furrowed. “You thought it might be a honey trap?”
“It did cross my mind.”
“Too good to be true?”
She shrugged in way of an answer.
“And now your fears are abated?”
Alamaeda said, “Suspicions quieted.”
“So, he’s passed the computer’s test but not your own?”
“It’s hard for me to trust.”
“You say it like it’s a bad thing. It means you’re no pushover. Be glad of that. I wish I had been a little less eager to trust when I was your age.”
“You’re all of five years my senior.”
“At my age, that might as well be ninety.”
Alamaeda said, “When the mind gives up, the body follows.”
“Hey, I’m the older, wiser one of this little duo. Don’t think you can usurp me with some meme-level philosophy. I practically invented that shit.”
“I can believe that,” Alamaeda said as she put the car in gear.
Wickliffe said, “Did you tell him what you’re doing in Guatemala?”
Alamaeda shook her head. “What good would that do?”