“You’re out of time, Ildefanso. Come home. If you don’t, your friend will never return home to his sister.”
His jaw ground down harder. He didn’t have a choice. If his family knew where his mother was—correction, had been—he needed to move quickly. The fact that they didn’t know Livia had been moved told him two things. One, Cherry’d managed to get his mother out safely, and two, she wasn’t really that important to the equation. They thought she could be used as leverage, but it was leverage they no longer had. Or at least, half of it.
What could his father want after all these years? It wasn’t as if he’d worked for the man willingly when he was younger, so Hector couldn’t honestly believe he’d willingly work for him now. The only reason he could think of was that his father wanted revenge for his leaving the family. No one left the Colonel Cartel and lived. Not even blood relatives, bastard blood or not.
4
2013
Steel
He stopped justinside the doorway, removed his sunglasses, and allowed his eyes to adjust to the dimly lit bar. Already hot from the blistering temperatures and the humidity trapped within the city streets, his shirt stuck to his torso, and beads of sweat trailed down the side of his face in the confined space. The ceiling fans were moving so slowly, it was hardly worth the electricity to run them. They certainly weren’t moving any air, let alone cooling the space.
Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he surveyed the room. A bartender wiped down glassware and blatantly stared at him. A single television over the far end of the bar blared today’s football game. Several men sitting at the bar watched him in the mirror behind the bottles. A few tables had customers seated at them, all facing the door. This was not the type of place you put your back to if you wanted to live.
In the corner to his right, a blond man sat with his back to thecorner while he drank from his beer bottle. Three empties sat in front of him. He was the lone man in the bar who was focused solely on the television and not on the newcomer.
Ka-Bar. He came. Steel had known he would, yet his relief was off the charts. Suddenly, the success of this plan just increased to fifty percent.
He crossed over to the man and took a seat between him and the door. The blond did not acknowledge him. He simply took a long, final pull from his bottle, set it down on the table, and flashed two fingers at the bartender.
Ka-Bar slid a bill under his recently finished bottle, and the bartender scooped it up along with the empties. His eyes never met those of either man he served.
Only after the man was back behind the bar did the blond speak. “Nice place you got here. One out of five stars.”
“One whole star? Higher than I would rank it.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve seen some of the shitholes you hang around in, and they make this place look upscale.”
Taking an imaginary sip from his bottle, Steel aimed his head toward the television but focused his attention out of the corners of his eyes. “I only ‘hang out’ here, hermano, to pick up protection money for my father and meet with our middlemen.”
“Yeah, well, it’s got quite the clientele. I could pick up an easy fifty thousand for the guy in the straw cowboy hat alone.”
Steel did a quick survey of who his friend was talking about. This place was filled with some of the worst human beings Argentina had to offer. Most of the men here had some form of bounty on their heads, so it wasn’t surprising that Ka-Bar had recognized one of them.
He’d often met with his father’s runners here, and those men came from all walks of life. Meeting an American here would go unremarked upon, especially with his friend playing up a drug-runner identity.
“Thank you for coming,” Steel said.
“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t?”
“I knew you would come if you could. I just wasn’t sure you’d be able to get away.”
Ka-Bar said nothing and drank some more of his beer, his eyes focused on the game.
Both his expression and his tone were incredulous. “You went UA. Why are you doing this?”
“You needed me.” He returned Steel’s gaze. “We’ve been friends for a long time.” He went back to watching the television. “You would have done the same thing for me, no matter what it cost you.”
He was correct. Steel would drop everything to help the man.
The blond took his attention from the television and leaned on his forearms on the table. “You ready to do this tonight? It’s gonna be a rough trek with them.”
“Yes, we’re ready. As for it being rough on them, I don’t have any choice. Hector is making threats. I’ve run out of time for any other options.”
Ka-Bar nodded. “All right. Oh-two-hundred. I’ll be there with transport and supplies. It’ll be fourteen hours, roughly, to the village, and another two or three to get to the airstrip.”
“Understood.”
