by Joshua Hood
“Put you away . . . you got this all wrong, son.” Shaw smiled. “I’m not here to put you away.”
“Then why are we here?”
“I’m here to offer you a job.”
* * *
—
“Tell me where you are and I will send a plane,” Shaw said, reaching for a pen.
29
AUBURN, WASHINGTON
Hayes drove west to the airfield and parked in front of the hangar with the faded AIR POTOMAC sign hanging over the door.
Air Potomac was one of a handful of shell corporations owned by the CIA. The Agency had been setting up cutouts since Vietnam and had it down to a science. They preferred countries in the Caribbean. Islands like the Caymans, where you could get a company incorporated in three days if the paperwork was in order and you knew what gears to grease.
Once the shell companies were legal, the CIA could use them to ferry assets anywhere they needed to go.
The stewardess was waiting for him on the tarmac. “Good afternoon, sir,” she greeted him. “My name is Emily. Can I take your luggage?”
“No, I’m good,” Hayes said, walking up the stairs.
The pilot, a tanned, blond-haired man in a floral shirt, waited for him at the top. “Adam Hayes, holy shit, is that you?” the man asked.
“Dick Waters,” Hayes said, grinning. “I thought you were done with this shit after that little dustup in El Salvador.”
“That was the plan.” The pilot grimaced.
“What happened?”
“Came home early from a run and found the wife fucking the pool guy.”
“The pool boy? C’mon.”
“Hand to God, just like a country song. She took the house, the car, and the dog.”
“Damn, that’s . . . Well, that’s just wrong,” Hayes said, not sure how to respond.
“She was a bitch anyways, but hey, the boss says we’re getting the band back together.”
Hayes rolled his eyes. Fucking Levi.
“Speaking of, where is the old man?” Hayes asked.
“If you will follow me, sir,” Emily said.
He followed her through the curtains and found Levi comfortably ensconced in a leather chair. There was something in the man’s eyes that sent Hayes’s hand to the pistol on his waist, but the press of a muzzle against his lower back changed his mind.
“I’d advise against that,” Levi Shaw said. “Emily is more than just a pretty face.”
“We’re going to do this nice and slow, Mr. Hayes,” Emily said, nudging him forward. “I am reaching for your sidearm. Believe me when I tell you that I will shoot if you resist.”
“What the hell is this?” Hayes asked, raising his hands.
Emily moved to the side, the Sig 229 steady in her hand, and was reaching for his pistol when Hayes’s left hand snapped down on the slide and shoved it back a quarter of an inch, just enough so he could see the glint of brass in the chamber. Emily’s first reaction was to snap the trigger to the rear, and her eyes went wide when the Sig didn’t fire.
“Out of battery,” Hayes hissed, right hand closing over his left. In one smooth motion he twisted the Sig from her hand, racked the slide to get it back into action, and pressed the barrel under her chin, twisting his body so the pistol was out of her reach.
“Don’t kill me,” Emily whispered, the fear in her eyes blossoming in Technicolor.
“I’ve had a really shitty day, so it’s your call,” he said, looking at Shaw.
“Hey, I had to make sure you still had it.”
Hayes handed Emily back the pistol. “Sorry about that.”
“Asshole,” she said, glaring at Shaw as she shoved it back into her holster.
“Still a hit with the ladies, I see,” Hayes said and grunted, dropping himself into a seat.
“We are not here to talk about me. Word on the street is that you have run into a little trouble.”
“That’s the understatement of the year,” Hayes said, pulling his knife out of his pocket, thumbing the blade open, and scraping the dried blood off his forearm.
“You know, kid, you don’t always have to be such a hard-ass.” Shaw sighed.
“Well, I had a good teacher,” Hayes said, looking up from the blade. “Way I remember it, I was doing just fine before you showed up in Afghanistan. Took me back to the States and let Treadstone get their hooks in me.”
“You’re breaking my heart,” Shaw said, buckling his belt. “I don’t remember having to twist your arm. We’ve had our differences in the past, but, hey, I’m a live-and-let-live kind of guy. Hell, I don’t even remember who swung first.”
“I do,” Hayes said, remembering their last meeting.
* * *
—
“I want out.”
“Out? You had a bad op, we’ve all been there, but getting out . . . C’mon, Hayes.”
“That last mission was fucked . . .” Hayes began, but quickly changed his mind. He didn’t want to think about it, and reached into his pocket for the bottle of Oxy he’d picked up on the way to the meet.
“Is that the new bottle? I thought you kicked that stuff.”
“Don’t start.”
“Hey, it’s your life, you can leave if you want, this isn’t the Mafia, but—”
“But what, Levi? If I want to leave, what are you going to do to stop me?”
* * *
—
“This was a mistake,” Hayes said.
“It’s not too late, we haven’t started taxiing yet,” Shaw said, tapping the window with his finger. “There is still time to do what you do best.”
“And what’s that?”
“Run away,” Shaw snarled.
Hayes felt the rush of adrenaline that always came before a fight hit his central nervous system like a shot of ether to a cold engine. There was a moment of clarity—a split second of crystal vision that revealed every detail of the situation.
He was aware of Emily standing near the front of the plane and knew he could be up and have the blade in Shaw’s throat before she even knew what happened.
No . . . he’s testing you, the voice said.
“I didn’t drive all the way out here to play your games, Levi,” Hayes said, “so unless you’re going to tell me why the CIA sent a team after me, I’ve got people to kill.”
“Ford’s dead,” Shaw said.
How could he know that already?
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Hayes said.
“He was working for the DEA.”
30
IN FLIGHT
Ford was freelancing for the DEA,” Shaw said, taking a manila folder with CONFIDENTIAL stamped across the cover and handing it over.
The folder was typical of a federal personnel file, and on the first page Hayes found a headshot of a clean-cut man with brown hair and gray eyes paper-clipped to the front cover. Special Agent Cole Boggs. According to the file, Boggs came over from the DEA after five years in the Marines. Spent three years working the border before being moved to the Dallas office. He was a good agent, but his personal life was a train wreck.
Two ex-wives, one child. The first marriage was in the Corps and didn’t last through the first deployment. The second one would have had a shot if he’d had a 9-to-5, but once Cole went into undercover work it didn’t have a chance in hell.
What about the kid?
“What does he have to do with Ford?” Hayes asked.
“Special Agent Cole Boggs worked deep-cover operations for the DEA’s Cartel Exploitation Team.”
“Never heard of it,” Hayes admitted.
“Me either. Not much info in the database, so I ended up calling in a favor, got in contact with Boggs’s handler. From what he was willing to share, CET is some secret-squirrel, black-bag caper the DEA’s been run
ning in South America.”
“You said ‘worked.’ Did Boggs get fired?” Hayes asked.
“Not exactly. According to Cole’s handler, the CET was comprised primarily of senior special agents, men who’d shown the ability to operate with a minimal amount of oversight.”
“Makes sense.” Hayes nodded. “Hard to keep in contact with a boss when you are undercover.”
“Exactly. Sometime in the last three years, Mr. Boggs developed an unhealthy fascination with Colonel Carlos Vega—the head of Venezuelan Intelligence.”
“What does SEBIN have to do with this?” Hayes asked.
“To understand the current situation in Venezuela,” Shaw said, leaning back in his chair, “we have to go back to 2017 and the assassination of President Mateo.”
Mateo.
It was a name Hayes hadn’t heard since leaving Treadstone. One he’d buried deep into the catacombs of his mind, sworn to forget, no matter what the cost.
But the mention of the former president of Venezuela caught him off guard. It bounced off the floor of his mind and exploded like a flashbang inside a concrete room.
Shit, not now. Not again, Hayes begged. He grabbed his skull, tried to keep the flood of images from breaking free, but the damage was done, and he was caught up in the rush of memories that sent him tumbling back to Venezuela. Back to the house with the white columns.
* * *
—
The lights were off when he picked the lock and disabled the alarm,the interior of the house a dull green from his night vision. Hayes stepped through the door, his feet silent over the tile. He climbed the stairs, found a second guard sleeping in a chair on the landing. Hayes guessed he was in his mid-teens, not yet old enough to shave and much too young for the AK-47 propped against the wall.
Kill them all—that was the order. He was just the instrument—a man conditioned to kill without hesitation.
Hayes pressed the MK VI suppressor into the notch below the man’s ear, held his thumb against the slide to keep the .22 from cycling, and pulled the trigger.
The shot was a muted cough barely noticeable over the sound of the television playing at the end of the hall. Hayes pulled the slide to the rear, and the expended brass cartwheeled into the air.
He caught it with his left hand and shoved the brass into his pocket.
He followed a murmur of voices down the hall. A quick glance around the corner revealed a woman sitting on a couch, her back to him. The voices were coming from the telenovela that had her rapt attention.
Hayes slipped up behind her, let her feel his presence.
She held up her empty glass without turning from the TV, and he waited patiently for the shot.
“Diego, what are you—”
The woman turned her head, and Hayes put a bullet through her eye.
One more.
He moved down the hall, drawn to the closed door by the sound of the voice inside. “I don’t care what you have to do, get me out of the country!” President Mateo shouted.
Mateo was sitting at his desk, his back to the door, phone at his ear.
Hayes extended the barrel toward the back of the man’s head, let it hover there for a moment until the man felt his presence and turned.
“You . . .”
The pistol jumped in his hand, the bullet smacking President Mateo in the face and blasting him back into his chair.
* * *
—
“Adam, Adam!” Shaw shouted.
Hayes’s transition from the horrors of the past to the calm of the present was marked by the full-auto rattle of his heart in his chest and the clammy feel of the sweat rolling over his skin. He blinked free of the flashback and found Shaw staring at him, the expression on his face a mix of concern and horror.
“The doctors told me it was impossible to kick the behavior meds,” he began. “It was part of the safeguard protocol in case any of you went rogue.”
“You mean in case any of your science experiments ever got out of the lab?” Hayes asked.
“They said kicking it cold turkey would break a man’s mind.”
“I don’t know about all that, but I can tell you I don’t recommend it.”
“So just how fucked-up are you?” Shaw asked.
“Well, you made me,” Hayes said and shrugged.
“Like I was saying, smartass, it would appear that Colonel Vega has friends in high places and Boggs’s handler received a notification from a joint DoD–CIA task force to leave Vega alone.”
“CIA has a lot of balls trying to pull rank on the DEA in their own sandbox. What were they basing the warning on?”
“Counterterror operations have priority with both the White House and the State Department. So JSOC and the CIA told the DEA to get fucked,” Shaw answered. “They claim that they have positive intel of a terror cell in the area, and since it’s no secret that Hezbollah was operating in South America, selling drugs to fund their war on the west, everyone just lets them be.”
“Is this where you get to the point and tell me what any of this has to do with Ford?”
“Boggs contracted Ford to set up a team to grab Vega. Didn’t work out for him.”
The pictures.
“The email Ford sent had these attached,” Hayes said, pulling the printouts of the images from his back pocket and handing them over. “The last photo, the two men in the hangar.”
“Vega,” Shaw said, pointing to the man in uniform.
“And the other guy?”
“Never seen him before,” Shaw said.
“Levi, look again,” Hayes said, pointing at the photo. “You’ve never seen this guy before. You’re sure?”
“Yes, Adam,” Shaw replied, “I’m sure.”
“Well, shit, I was hoping you could ID him.”
“Sorry to disappoint.”
“What about this Boggs character, can you at least put me in contact with him?” Hayes asked.
“His handler says Boggs became eccentric after the CIA warning.”
“Eccentric?” Hayes said, throwing his arms in the air. “Jesus, Levi, I don’t want to date him, I just want to talk to him. Can you put me in contact with him or not?”
“He has gone dark, and since this is a time-sensitive operation, I think your time would be better spent—”
“Wait, time-sensitive,” Hayes broke in. “Do you have somewhere you need to be?”
“No, it’s just that . . .”
“Spit it out, Levi.”
“Well, Treadstone has funding till the end of the month,” Shaw answered.
“What happens then?”
“They are closing it down.”
Hayes glanced at the Submariner on his wrist, the date window telling him it was the thirtieth, and then threw his head back in laughter. “Levi . . . you’re kidding, right?”
“No, Adam, I am not kidding.”
“If we’re going to do this, we do it my way,” Hayes said.
“Well, what do you need?”
“I need a team, a briefcase of cash, and guns. Lots of guns.”
31
CÚCUTA, COLOMBIA
It was raining in Cúcuta and Cole Boggs sat in bed, watching the white flash of lightning illuminate the half-empty bottle of Wild Turkey that sat on a shelf across the room. Just the sight of the bottle and the hope that its amber contents would calm his mind were enough to send his legs swinging to the floor.
He padded across the room, the tile warm on his bare feet, and grabbed the bottle by the neck. Boggs eased back into bed, trying not to disturb the sleeping figure beside him, but the squeak of the bedsprings betrayed his plans.
“Can’t you sleep?” she mumbled through half-open lids.
“Go back to sleep, girl,” Boggs answered in Spanish, switching the bottle to his left hand
so he could rub her back with his right.
The woman purred and settled her head into the pillow, leaving Boggs to nurse the bottle in silence.
A breeze billowed through the curtains on either side of the French doors and waltzed into the room, laden with the wet-dirt smell of rain that reminded him of growing up in Iberia Parish, Louisiana. The thought of home made him want a cigarette. He set the bottle down on the nightstand, exchanging the whiskey for a soft pack of Camels. Boggs shook a cigarette into the corner of his mouth and fired it with the blue lighter and blew the smoke toward the ceiling.
We a looong way from there, aren’t we, boy?
A second bolt of lightning followed the first and Boggs found himself counting in his head, the way his mama had taught him when he was a boy. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi . . . Before Boggs got to four, he heard the distant growl of thunder that told him the storm was three and a half miles out.
Never should have asked for those pictures, he cursed himself.
Boggs had been with the DEA for ten years, and before that he’d done two tours in Iraq with the Marines. He’d seen his share of dead bodies, but there was something about seeing his friend lying half in, half out of the tub, the gaping exit wound at the back of his head and the contents of his skull splattered over the backsplash, that he couldn’t shake.
Fucking Vega. Killed him like a dog.
Turning Ford onto Vega and that piece of shit Jefferson Gray had been a mistake. He knew that now, but at the time it made sense. The DEA had been working in Colombia since Pablo Escobar and had done a hell of a job throttling the Medellín cartel.
At first, they went after the fields and the processing plants where the processors would dry the coca leaves, chopping them up with a string trimmer before using gasoline and battery acid to extract the freebase. It was a losing battle; for every plant they shut down, three more would pop up.