It wasn’t easy leaving Luisa behind in her condition but there was no fucking way I was going to let this go. My mind was on a single track and that track led to blood and bone.
It also wasn’t easy leaving Diego behind either but it had to be done. I didn’t trust anyone but him at this point. He understood too, vowing to watch over her as he had before, though I read it on his face that he wanted to join in on the massacre.
True to my word though, if we did manage to capture Esteban alive, I would take him back to Luisa and Diego and we could all fucking take turns doing whatever it was that our hearts desired.
I’d never seen such thirst for blood and violence in Luisa before.
I had to say it unnerved me in the best possible way. I saw in her what I saw in myself, something dark and frightening and unstoppable. The fact that she actually drove a pair of scissors through Esteban’s eye stirred up something deeper inside me than just my cock.
It was wrong of me to want to encourage that bloodlust but I couldn’t help it. They say a marriage only works if it’s an equal partnership and this would establish her as a real cartel queen. Not just having a say in the business and giving her opinions but actually getting her hands dirty. Bloody. That said narco royalty like nothing else did.
“Remember we want him alive,” I said to Evaristo, raising my voice to be heard above the churning rotors.
We were en route to Las Aguas, tiny village outside the town of Nueva Santa Rosa, the two of us in one chopper with some of the best backup men I had. There were another two choppers carrying in the derelicts of my new army, the ones who fought the hardest and craziest at the compound. Even I was a little afraid of them. Nothing was more dangerous than a meathead with a machete, but at least they got the job done.
“No promises,” Evaristo said. “If it’s a choice of killing him or letting him get away, you can guess which one I’ll be taking.”
We didn’t fly directly to the village. That would have been too risky. Instead the choppers landed in the next valley over and then we piled into SUV’s I had arranged earlier. They took us high into the mountains, climbing the steep road at night so we could remain unseen. The next morning, when the haze cleared, you could see we were settled on a ridge that looked down over the tiny village of stucco houses nestled along a narrow river.
The village couldn’t have more than a hundred people in it, with Evaristo putting his estimate at fifty. The only reason we had an inkling that Este was here was because one of the Guatemalan ops had a visual ID on Este in Santa Rosa. Some digging around later not only confirmed that it was him, but that he was headed over the mountains. Using the federales fancy tracking system, they were able to intercept a phone call made from someone called “Fez” who was asking about my own whereabouts. Voice recognition placed the caller as Esteban and triangulated the signal to somewhere in this valley.
Besides, I could feel him close by. I could barely sleep, not because I was on a sleeping bag on the cold ground, but because I could taste the blood already.
“He’s there,” Evaristo said that morning, handing me a cup of instant coffee. It wasn’t much better than gas station runoff, but it would have to do. I never understood why roughing it had to be “rough.” Even a French press and some good local beans would go a long way out here.
“You know for sure?”
He nodded. “Just got off the phone with the agency. The satellite images are being printed on the computer right now but I already got a look at them. There’s only one structure down there big enough, nice enough, for Esteban and his men. A barn and neighboring house.”
“Makes sense,” I said, my palms itching to go as I took another sip of the god awful brew. “They are animals after all.”
“I’m not sure ours are much different,” he noted, nodding at one criminal who was busy taking a piss onto a sleeping man’s head.
I rolled my eyes. When this was all said and done, I’d be a lot better off if I could just kill them all. They might have been good for getting this job done but they were far too stupid, not to mention uncouth, to be associated with the name Javier Bernal.
I leaned in closer to Evaristo. In the harsh light of dawn I was aware of how young this kid really was. “Let me ask you, how long do you think you’ll play the loyal federale for?”
He grinned at me sheepishly. “For as long as they think you’re still in prison. As good as those guards and the warden are, the cover-up only lasts for so long. Even with the prison director under your thumb, the truth will come out. And when it does, all fingers will point to me.”