“I got that.”
“He also wants us to meet him tonight at the embassy.”
“I got that too.” She asked, “Why not?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“We might still need him for something.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
“Unless you’ve already burned the bridge.” She added, “You should call him back. Or I can.”
“He’s recording everything, and I’ve said enough.”
“Maybe he can help us get to this area where Mercer is.”
“We can make our own travel arrangements.”
“Two questions, Brodie. Do you trust the hooker who gave you this information? And do you trust Brendan Worley?”
“I’ve gotten fucked more times by Intel guys than by hookers.”
Taylor had no reply to that, and said, “We should get moving.”
“Right.”
Luis had finished his business and was lingering behind the car, and Brodie indicated to Luis he could return. Luis climbed into the back seat, and Taylor started the car and pulled back onto the road. Brodie directed her to the turnoff, which she took north through the winding hillside roads toward the mountains.
Brodie asked Luis, “Did the colectivo guy get your ID?”
“Sí. My driver license.”
Which would be found on the guy’s dead body. Luis should have retrieved it, but Luis was not thinking about that. Brodie told him, “Go first thing tomorrow to the embassy with your family and with your passports, and ask the consulate for Mr. Worley, who will expedite your visas and put you into an embassy car to the airport. You will fly to Washington, DC, and call a number that I will give you and ask for Colonel Dombroski, who will take care of you and your family.”
Luis stayed silent for a while, then said, “Gracias.”
Taylor added, “This is thanks for all you’ve done for us.”
And, thought Brodie,to keep you out of a SEBIN interrogation cell where they’ll torture you for info about what happened at the Hen House.When you leave corpses behind, you leave a blood trail that even idiots can follow. In that respect, Worley was right—he and Taylor should also get out of Venezuela. But… well, they’d come this far, and they had picked up Mercer’s scent. Bloodhounds stick to the scent.
They rode in silence for a few minutes; then Taylor took a ramp onto the highway that would take them west back to the city. On the highway they got a few looks from passing drivers, but there weren’t any police or National Guard units in sight.
Brodie looked out the window at the black mountains on one side and the darkened city on the other. They had arrived here with a very flimsy lead, but as often happens with a criminal investigation, one lead leads to another. That’s why they’re called leads. There is a truth out there, a reality that exists and that can be revealed if you persist, and if you show some smarts and some balls. A little luck helps too, and Brodie believed that themore you broke the rules, the more luck you had. Now and then, though, if you broke too many rules, your luck ran out. Had almost happened in the Hen House. And if he and Taylor went looking for Kyle Mercer in the jungle, they would definitely be testing Brodie’s theory that good luck was a product of breaking bad rules.
But that’s where Kyle Mercer was—the jungle. That’s where a guy like Captain Mercer would end up: at the frontier of nowhere, deep in the heart of a darkness that matched the darkness of his heart and his soul. Brodie and Taylor needed to drag Kyle Mercer into the light, and before a jury of his peers to answer to the law for his crimes. But first, they had to meet him in the dark.
CHAPTER 32
The highway was nearly deserted, and as much fun as Brodie’d had with the AK-47, he decided this would be a good place to ditch it. He wiped it clean with his handkerchief, then pulled the magazine out, extracted the three remaining cartridges, and tossed them out the window, followed by the duct-taped mags. Taylor glanced at him as he quickly broke down the AK-47 into its component parts and threw each part out the window. He asked Luis for his Beretta and similarly disposed of it. “We’re clean,” he said. “But I worry that a kid will find a piece, then find the other pieces, put them all together, and go join a colectivo.”
Neither Luis nor Taylor thought that was funny. Brodie preferred working with people who shared his dark, post-battle humor, but his team had shown good balls tonight, so he gave them a pass.
Luis said, “This exit, señora.”
Taylor took the exit for Altamira. “We need to dump this car within walking distance of the hotel.”
“Right,” Brodie agreed. “It could be hot.”
