“Condor Acampamento,” Braga said. “Camp Condor. It is named for Operation Condor. You remember it?”
Cardona mulled it over for a moment. He sipped his vodka and shook his head.
“It was before your time, perhaps. A covert operation undertaken by my country with the governments of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Bolivia and Uruguay. Encouraged by the CIA, of course—but then, what isn’t, in our corner of the world?”
“They have been helpful with our shipments in the past,” Cardona granted.
“Winning hearts and minds. With Operation Condor, they attempted to eradicate the Left from South America entirely, plus a host of other undesirables. Trade unions and rebellious students, troublesome reporters and environmentalists. The estimate of eighty thousand dead or disappeared, I think, is quite conservative.”
“You named your home-away-from-home after a genocide campaign?”
“Not genocide,” Braga corrected him. “Cleansing. My parents were among those who disgraced themselves and were eliminated. Thankfully I was adopted by a colonel and his barren wife, given advantages I never would have had with those who had spawned me.”
“Fascinating,” Cardona said.
“Do you think so? On the day I came of age and first had access to the fortune my adoptive father had looted from the thousands he had killed, I took his head with a machete, gave it to his bitch wife for their anniversary and watched her lose her mind. She lived another eighteen months, as a drooling vegetable in São Paulo’s cheapest rat hole for the mentally defective.”
“A cautionary tale, I’m sure. About these missionaries...”
“Meddlers from up north. They’re a minor irritation, but I will not suffer any interference with my operations.”
“That is reassuring. When the shipment comes tomorrow—”
Urgent knocking on the door distracted Braga. “Excuse me, por favor,” he said, then barked, “Enter!”
His second in command, Oswaldo Ramos, stepped into the office space of Braga’s bungalow. “Apologies.”
“Well, what is it?” Braga demanded.
“The scouts are back.”
“And the patrol?”
“Ambushed,” Ramos told him. “Wiped out.”
“What?! What are you saying?”
“Morto,” Ramos said. “Shot down to the last man.”
“What of the missionários?”
“Gone. Not among the dead.”
Braga could feel the heat of anger rising in his cheeks and made a conscious effort to repress it. Rising from behind his desk, he told Ramos, “I’ll see the scouts myself.”
“Of course. They’re just outside.”
And so they were, two worried-looking soldiers damp with sweat and intermittent rain. They stood before Braga with eyes downcast and told their story of discovering Luiz Aranha and his troops gunned down, their flyblown corpses decomposing swiftly in the jungle’s heat and stifling humidity. They had been wise enough to bring back the dead men’s rifles, which confused Braga. Whether his soldiers had been ambushed by police or bandits, he assumed the victors in that skirmish would have made off with their weapons.
“And no sign of the American missionaries?” he pressed.
“No, boss,” they said, not quite in unison.
“But Luiz and the others were returning from the mission.”
They exchanged a glance and nodded, one—on Braga’s left—saying, “We think so.”
“Then the missionaries must be found,” Braga said. Looking at the sky above the clearing where his compound stood, he frowned at the approach of night. “Tomorrow morning, each of you will lead a new patrol to seek them out. In fact, I will send three to search the forest. No one rests, no one returns, without os missionários. Você entende?”
Both men nodded, whereupon Braga sent them off to feed themselves and rest. Tomorrow, at first light, they would go hunting.
And God help them if they came back empty-handed.
Missão Misericórdia
RETURNING TO THE mission was a waste of time and energy, in Bolan’s view, but the two prisoners he’d rescued were adamant about discovering how many of their congregants had fallen during the attack. It was easier to join them on the trek back to their jungle church than to debate it. Bolan used the time to think about arranging their extraction.
Jack Grimaldi was available, but night would fall before he could prepare the helicopter he had on standby for unexpected rescue missions. That meant waiting until daybreak, and the Cronins had agreed with Bolan that spending all night at the mission would be tantamount to suicide. Another raiding party might arrive at any time, once Bolan’s eradication of the first one was discovered, and a single glance had told Bolan that their Mercy Mission had not been constructed with defense in mind.
Arriving on the scene, they found no bodies. Bolan did not share the surprise of Abner Cronin and his wife, knowing that it was typical of aborigines to claim their dead and spirit them away. Bloodstains were visible where some had fallen, swarming now with ants and flies, but the Cronins would likely never know how many had been slain, how many wounded. Every jungle on the planet had its secrets.
The hike back from the killing ground to Mercy Mission had been tense at first. In answer to the Cronins’ questions, Bolan had introduced himself as Matthew Cooper and left his ties to Washington deliberately vague. If they’d had assumed he was CIA or DEA, so be it. He had informed them that his business in Brazil involved Joaquim Braga and that their rescue was a mere coincidence.
Abner had disagreed on that point, claiming the Lord had moved and motivated Bolan, whether Bolan was aware of it or not. Mercy, for her part, could not seem to get her mind around the killings she’d witnessed, and she’d looked askance at Bolan while they marched, as if he might decide to shoot her and her husband on a whim.
Arriving at the mission had distracted her from that fear, for the moment, as she searched in vain for bodies and examined the damage caused by the attackers. Abner trailed her, Bolan hanging back and watching from a distance as they viewed the ruin of their dream. He knew the pang of loss but also hoped they realized they were lucky to be alive.
They chose to view the incident as “a miracle.”
When they’d gathered whichever belongings fit into their backpacks, they returned to Bolan, waiting for instructions. “I can’t get you out tonight,” he said, “but I’ll arrange an airlift for the morning. In the meantime, we need to get away from here and find someplace safe to put up for the night that’s close to the LZ.”
“LZ?” Mercy echoed.
“Landing zone,” her husband translated. “And there’s no place to land a plane out here. The nearest airport would be in Cáceres.”
“I was thinking of a helicopter,” Bolan said. “Two sites selected. We can get an early start and try the nearest of them first. If that falls through, we’ll still have time to reach the second.”
“And tonight?” Mercy asked.
“No fire, I’m afraid,” Bolan said, “but I do have MREs with flameless heaters.”
“We’d best be going then,” Abner observed, “before it’s dark.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Bolan agreed, and took the lead into the jungle as day edged toward night.
Condor Acampamento
HUGO CARDONA HAD auditioned for the Medellín Cartel when he was just fourteen years old. The task was simple and had not required much talent on his part, only the kind of nerve that makes a soldier great. He’d been handed a pistol—he still remembered it, a .45-caliber Colt M1911—and told to execute a random stranger on the street. He had exceeded expectations, walking up behind a couple on vacation from West Germany and killing them both, firing all seven rounds at point-blank range.
Over the next nine years, before the National Polic
e had cornered Pablo Escobar and executed him, Cardona had eliminated sixty-seven people, rising through the ranks as he displayed intelligence to match his ruthless courage. When the cartel crumbled, he’d made his way to Bogotá with nineteen million dollars looted from its treasury and started fresh, selecting partners he could trust—at least, as long as they were terrified of him—and prospered hugely as a narco-trafficker. His product line had been expanded from cocaine alone to include heroin, marijuana and methamphetamine, supplying customers in the United States, Canada and Europe.
In the process, Cardona had discovered Brazil. It was the world’s second-largest consumer of cocaine—after America—a major cannabis producer, a way station for airborne drug shipments between Colombia and Peru, with Rio de Janeiro being a primary transshipment point for drugs en route to Europe. Furthermore financial institutions in Rio and São Paulo laundered millions of dollars in narco profits per month.
All of which combined to place Cardona in the Mato Grosso jungle at this moment, watching Joaquim Braga try to recoup from the ambush that had cost him thirteen men.
Cardona’s bond with Braga was a relatively new relationship. Thus far it had been profitable, but his first major delivery to Braga—one thousand kilos of cocaine aboard a Sikorsky UH-60M BLACK HAWK helicopter—was scheduled to occur tomorrow afternoon. Cardona hoped that Braga’s current trouble would not interfere with business, but that remained to be seen.
“I will find them in the morning,” Braga told Cardona, as they sat down to eat. “They cannot elude my soldiers in the jungle.”
“Even with help?” Cardona asked before taking his first mouthful of feijoada, a delicious stew of beef, pork and beans.
Braga was starting with moqueca—slow-cooked fish, tomato, onion and garlic, topped with cilantro. He paused with the spoon halfway to his lips and said, “I’ll find the men responsible, as well. Before the merchandise arrives, you’ll see their heads strung up to decorate the camp.”
“It should be most instructive,” Cardona said. “I look forward to it.”
“And when that is done, perhaps you’d like to join in hunting Mundurukus? There aren’t many left, but they make good sport.”
“Perhaps,” Cardona said. He had no qualms about hunting a forest tribe for pleasure—it might be a nice diversion—but he always dealt with business first. “How many men will you send out tomorrow?”
“I suppose three teams of twenty,” Braga said. “Still leaving seventy with us. You’ll be secure, Hugo. I promise you.”
“Of course.”
Cardona, who had flown into the jungle camp with six men of his own, was less concerned about himself than his incoming merchandise. The massacre of Braga’s men was troublesome, but long experience had taught him that such things were bound to happen in the course of doing business. Soldiers were a cheap commodity and easily replaced.
Trust in a colleague, on the other hand, was rare and fragile. Whether his relationship with Braga flourished or was snatched up by the roots would now depend on how Joaquim made up for his recent loss.
* * *
“WHAT DO YOU think of him?” Mercy asked, barely whispering to Abner as they ate their evening meal. The man who called himself Matt Cooper was out of earshot, speaking to someone by satellite phone to arrange their extraction, but Mercy was taking no chances.
“I’m not sure yet,” her husband answered. “He’s a man of violence obviously, but I don’t believe he means to harm us.”
Mercy had already reached the same conclusion—why would Cooper have helped them otherwise?—but there was still something about him that unnerved her. So much killing, with no indication whatsoever that it had disturbed him.
On the other hand, he’d fed them well. And the MREs were surprisingly good: lemon pepper tuna and garlic mashed potatoes for Mercy, chili and macaroni with Santa Fe rice for Abner. Each MRE included a flameless heater—a thin, flexible pad about the size of a playing card that contained salt, iron dust and magnesium dust. Adding water brought the mixture to a boil, and its insertion into the MRE pouch produced a hot meal in ten minutes, without a trace of telltale smoke or flame.
“Who do you think he’s calling?” Mercy asked.
“Somebody from the government, I’d bet,” Abner replied. “Could be the embassy or one of the consulates. Any of them could connect him to the CIA. There’s also the Marine Corps detachment in São Paulo.”
“What do you think about him finding us that way, by accident?”
“You know I don’t believe in accidents,” Abner said. “Everything that happens is God’s will, whether we understand His aims or not.”
“Of course, but—”
“We’ve been rescued by the Lord,” he interrupted her, “in order to continue with our mission.”
“What? After all that’s happened here today?”
“We knew there would be dangers, Mercy. We discussed this time and time again, before we left Miami.”
“Yes, I know, but—”
“We rely on faith,” he interrupted her. “Did the apostles shrink away from peril as they spread the word? Surely our risk is no greater than theirs.”
Mercy thought about the twelve apostles, frowning. According to tradition, only one of them—Saint John—had lived a full life and expired from natural causes. Ten had been martyred, most by crucifixion, and everyone knew what had happened to Judas.
“I understand,” she said. “But is it wise to stay on when we know men are trying to kill us?”
“Mercy, wisdom is—”
“I know, I know.”
“You seem discouraged.”
There’s a revelation for you, Mercy thought. Instead, she said, “We’ve just been kidnapped, Abner. I’m convinced we would be dead by now, if not for Mr. Cooper.”
“Praise be to God! He rescued us so that we can continue with our work.”
“Or to suggest we may have been mistaken in the first place.”
“After all our prayers and preparation? Don’t you think He would have sent a sign dissuading us, if that was His intent?”
Mercy wasn’t convinced that God always responded to requests for guidance. Truth be told, sometimes she wasn’t even certain that He listened, but she couldn’t voice that kind of doubt to Abner. It was not her role in life to shake his faith. Scripture admonished women to be “discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”
All right, so some of that might sound old-fashioned, even medieval, but who was she to question God’s instructions? It boiled down to the matter of Abner’s calling. If he had truly been summoned by God to serve the Amazon natives, it would be treacherous for her to undermine Abner’s confidence.
But what if he was mistaken?
She knew that some ministers thought they’d been called by the Lord, when in fact they had not. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos—all the great biblical prophets had experienced dramatic callings, whereas Abner...well, sometimes she thought he had decided they should launch a foreign ministry, without firm guidance from their Savior.
No. She stopped herself. That can’t be right. She knew Abner too well, loved him too much, to doubt him now. But she was frightened of remaining in the jungle. Call it weakness in herself, a lapse of faith, whatever. Mercy Cronin knew only one thing with any certainty.
She wanted out.
Condor Acampamento
OSWALDO RAMOS CHOSE a soldier from the ranks to lead one of the three patrols the next morning, along with the two scouts already appointed by Braga to each lead a team. O chefe wanted twenty men in each search party, sweeping different sectors of the forest. One would march back to the site where their comrades had been slaughtered and proceed from there to the mission run by the missing Americans. Two others would travel in different direc
tions, east and west of the mission, searching for signs of the fugitives and whoever had delayed the missionaries’ punishment for meddling on o chefe’s turf.
The preachers had done nothing wrong, per se. Not yet. But Ramos understood his master’s reason for eliminating them. They were potential witnesses to various illegal operations, in their own right, and their tampering with native minds had the potential to encourage opposition to the Braga syndicate among the forest tribes. When the couple was dead—and, better yet, displayed as an example to potential future interlopers—order would be restored.
Except now it seemed some outside force had intervened to help them, killing thirteen of the syndicate’s enlisted soldiers. Ramos had already racked his brain in vain attempts to work out who might be responsible for the attack. So far he had ruled out the army’s Jungle Infantry Brigade, the Federal Police and the Mato Grosso Civil Police.
Each of those agencies was ruthless enough to kill Braga’s men, and while they might have left the corpses scattered in the jungle, none would have abandoned automatic weapons. Furthermore Ramos had personally bribed some of the highest-ranking law enforcement officers in Mato Grosso to protect o chefe’s operations, and there’d been no trouble from them previously.
Well, no trouble without ample warning.
No, this was something—someone—else.
He wished that a single individual had survived from the original patrol, to offer a description of the enemy. If they were has-been rebels turned to banditry, the argument about collecting weapons from the dead would still apply.
But if they’d been foreigners...
Who might conspire against o chefe from the outside world? Competitors, perhaps—which could include Russian traffickers, seeking to hold the European market; cartels from Santa Cruz supported by Serb mercenaries; or one of the Mexican cartels that envied Braga’s growing share of the American drug trade. None of those would bother to collect the guns from rivals they shot down, since their own arsenals were vast, sources essentially unlimited.
Ramos did not enjoy the prospect of a war against one of their major rivals, particularly since the battleground would now encompass half the planet. Even if they only fought within Brazil and the United States, he could expect a rise in violence to prompt more energetic crackdowns by authorities. A war was always bad for business, but the industry was fraught with mayhem. Look at Mexico, where estimates of drug-related homicides over the past few years were in the tens of thousands.
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