Hunters, Matt Rogers [pdf ebook reader .txt] 📗

to get into Garcia’s inner circle.

Their role in this plan was all the justice Slater could dish out to Cártel de Texis under the circumstances.

Now, as he drove the black Chrysler SUV with its tinted windows into the heart of New York, Slater ruptured the silence that had lasted two whole hours.

‘Do either of you speak English?’

The man directly behind him said, ‘Me little bit. Him no.’

Slater had seen him back in New Jersey, before he’d ducked into the rear seats. He was heavily tattooed, bald, built solidly. He had the eyes of a remorseless killer. On the runway, the sicarios had been informed by Garcia that in New York they would be either killed in action or imprisoned for life. If they weren’t, their families would pay the price. A brutal trade-off, but Slater wouldn’t have survived a day in this world if he didn’t have a capacity for ruthlessness.

Slater said, ‘Did Garcia explain to you what you must do?’

‘Shoot don’t kill,’ the guy said in broken English. ‘Then get killed. Or … arrest.’

‘Does your buddy understand?’

‘Sí.’

Slater had nothing else to say to the pair. He despised everything about them. He tried to keep it that way, for the sake of his own conscience.

The man said, ‘I could kill you now. Shoot through back of neck. Then go back … kill boss. Then my family safe.’

Slater kept composed. ‘No you couldn’t.’

A long silence.

The air was thick.

At any point he expected to be snapped out of existence. Salvadoran sicarios were the definition of wild cards. Anything could feasibly happen. It was a risk of the job…

But finally the man said, ‘You are right. I will die for family.’

Slater thought, How noble. Bet you don’t think of the families you’ve murdered.

He didn’t vocalise it. He needed them compliant, not standoffish.

He used the maps application on his phone to navigate into position. First he crawled around the adjacent blocks, cruising, keeping an eye out for any sentries potentially stationed around the black site. But there was nothing. Only the stray club-goers staggering home and the homeless curled up on doorsteps.

He parked two hundred feet from the block in the Flatiron District that housed the building that was his target.

He’d never been in. Never heard of its existence. When he and King worked for the government, they were kept at arm’s length from the inner workings of the secret world. But Violetta knew every inch of the skyscraper. She’d worked there for a long time. She’d laid out precisely where “Bay 2” was, the exit Alonzo had mentioned in his digital cry for help.

From the kerbside, Slater gazed up at the colossal structure. Anywhere else, it would have stood out like a beacon.

In Manhattan, it was invisible.

Grey walls, dark windows, no distinguishable external features. No logo of any sort.

An urban black site, in the heart of the busiest city in America.

Hiding in plain sight was easier these days.

Slater checked the time.

0520. Tuesday morning.

Forty minutes until they moved Alonzo.

Or not, he thought, and it rattled him. There was no way to know for sure. But if Alonzo was convinced they’d follow the predetermined routine, then that’s how it was likely to go. There was predictability in routine, but there was also reassurance. Maybe they’d never had a convoy intercepted doing it this way. And there would be a convoy. Maybe four or five SUVs packed with government operatives, which at six in the morning in Manhattan meant nothing. Peak hour began well before then.

Cars were already streaming past as dawn broke overhead.

Slater checked the time again.

0555.

The thirty-five minutes had passed like seconds. A result of his constant work toward mastery of his mind. When he emptied it of thought, nothing remained. No fear, no anticipation. Sure, there was the dull pit in his stomach, but that was only a physical sensation.

Nerves weren’t fear. Nerves were natural.

Fear was what impaired your decision-making.

Slater didn’t hesitate.

He twisted in his seat and found the sicarios fidgeting, unable to control themselves. If their survival mattered to the operation, he’d do everything in his power to steady their hands, calm their spirits.

But it didn’t, so instead he asked, ‘You ready?’

Their eyes were hazy, their pupils swollen, and Slater realised while he was centring himself they’d consumed the product their cartel spread across the globe. Chemical enhancement was important. Garcia had probably told them to do it. It’d make them throw themselves into danger without a second thought.

Slater recalled what Bodhi had done to the disciples of Mother Libertas, back in Wyoming.

Now the Salvadoran thugs nodded.

Slater said, ‘Remember what happens if you accidentally kill any bystanders.’

The one who spoke English said, ‘Our families die.’

Slater said, ‘Yes.’

Not what he wanted, but Garcia had hammered the point home, and Slater wasn’t one to get in the way of tradition.

0556.

Slater slipped out of the Chrysler the moment there was a lull in traffic. Nothing further needed to be said. The sicarios had their instructions. They’d been over the game plan multiple times at the airfield in New Jersey, hunched over maps beside the looming CessnaJet.

Now his stomach knotted, but he welcomed the familiar sensation.

The day he didn’t feel nerves was the day he knew he should stop.

The HK45CT pistol — which stood for “compact tactical” — was already in a concealed holster at his waist, under his jacket. It was all he needed. He wasn’t here to get into a firefight in the streets of Manhattan, where civilians would be mown down by the dozen.

He understood the odds.

The only way to succeed was with total aggression and zero hesitation.

So that’s what he’d do.

He hoped that back in El Salvador, King was in position to help him.

Otherwise he was dead.

79

Santa Ana was two hours behind New York, so dawn hadn’t yet broken.

Just before four a.m. the jungle was motionless.

King moved through the trees, and beautiful pain held him in its grasp.

The gravity of his arm injury returned as he ghosted through the woods toward Fabio Torres’ mansion, but he was grateful for it. The