Insertion, page 12
Reaching the tree, Max quickly sidestepped to the right around the massive trunk and knocked the phone out of Kyle’s hand with his free hand. Kyle raised both of his hands in the air as Max used his left forearm to brace against Kyle’s upper chest with the blade centimeters from his trachea.
“Who the fuck was that on the phone?” Max asked, glancing at the iPhone on the ground. Stomping on it twice, he cracked the screen into a million pieces.
“My girlfriend, I swear!” Kyle said, looking like he had seen a ghost. Shaking uncontrollably, he tried to say something before Max interrupted him.
“How do I know that wasn’t someone in the cartel and you’re the rat that’s feeding them information?”
“Bro, I swear that was her!” Kyle said, who finally stopped shaking. Max gave him a hard look up and down, and as much as he wanted to slit his throat for being a rat, his gut was telling him he wasn’t it.
“Listen, you little shit,” he said, stepping so close to him he could deliver a kiss. “Do you realize what you just did? These cartels have billions of dollars, you don’t think they have people constantly tracking unencrypted cell phone signals deep in their territory? You don’t think they won’t be able to track that phone to where we’re at right now?”
“Who do you think you are?” Kyle spat back. “You come here, random as fuck and expect us to listen to ever order you give?”
Max ensured the blade was pressing his skin now. Any closer and blood would be drawn. “I’m the one Jack trusts with his life to lead you through this shithole. I’m the one with years of experience, I’m the one who has established himself in this agency, and I’m the one who will be standing above your bed at night waiting to slit your throat if you come at me with some bullshit like that again.”
“You’re just going to kill me and think Jack won’t care?”
“I will slit your throat without hesitation. Now shut up and put your hands down,” Max said, placing the blade back in its home. Kyle dropped his arms. “Jack doesn’t need us worrying about anything else besides getting to where we need to be. He has more than enough on his plate right now. If we get separated, you follow fucking protocol like you were taught at the FARM and I’m sure your girlfriend will hug you when you make it back. If of course Jodi hasn’t given her enough hugs.”
That last remark left Kyle seething with anger, but he knew better than to pick a fight with someone who wouldn’t hesitate to kill him at a moment’s notice. Seeing Max put the blade away calmed him down just a bit.
“There’s no way they can trace that call in here, look at the thickness of these trees,” he said.
“You’re a true idiot you know that?” Max stepped back and took a deep breath. He waved at Kyle to follow him back to the cabin.
Stepping inside, they made their way to the living room. Kyle plopped down next to Courtney on the couch.
“So,” Pete said, “you said it’s roughly thirty miles, right?”
“Yep, give or take,” Max said.
“This hike is definitely going to be the longest I’ve hiked in a very long time,” Nate said, before walking to the refrigerator to grab a bottle of water. “But I can’t wait to see the look on Ben’s face when I tell him we had to hike thirty fucking miles and dodged rodents and insects the size of Kwame’s bicep to get him.” The team had a nice laugh and grabbed their gear from the living room.
When Kwame and Alex arrived at the house forty minutes later, the team scarfed down the food and sat for the next hour pounding coffee just to get one last poop out of their system. Closing the bathroom door and wafting his hand in the air, Max said, “Y’all are some savages. This is the one and only time I wish I was a woman.” They had let Courtney use the restroom first. She gave a cute smile and flutter of her eyes. Max chuckled and Alex threw a wadded-up paper towel her way. They spent the next ten minutes getting their gear together and organizing and distributing the ammo and supplies from the crates that Derrick provided.
“Okay, boys and girl, it’s just after one. We should reach the beach around this time early morning, possibly sooner,” Max said.
“Awesome, no breaks on this train,” Nate replied. “Next stop, mosquito central.”
Turning to his left, Kwame said, “What kind of a lame ass line was that?” making the rest of the team laugh. Placing his plate carrier on, Nate was about to send his rebuttal when a barrage of bullets came screaming into the kitchen.
Instantly, all seven members dropped to the deck as the smell of burnt wood and gunpowder filled the room. Max and Courtney were sitting down but propped against the wall on either side of the open back door. Courtney slammed it shut with her right arm, but the sound was masked by the ricocheting of rounds around them. Looking to his right, Max witnessed the team diving for cover and trying to find the best angles for returning fire. Alex, who was lying on his stomach, was the first to shout over the gun fire.
“How the hell did they find us?” he screamed, trying to crawl to a better position over by Nate, who was already on his knees getting ready to return fire from the bottom right corner of his window.
“Nate, standby!” Max shouted as he pulled out a borescope from his backpack. This was a small handheld device controlled with one hand and had a long skinny moveable neck with a camera and light affixed to the end of it. It was typically used to look inside of barrels or small holes in the walls, but in this instance, Max nodded to Courtney and as soon as he was ready, she reached over and just barely cracked the door open. Unfolding the screen from the device, he extended the neck outside through the door frame but saw no movement in the back. Satisfied, he pulled the device back into the house and shoved into his backpack.
Courtney was now on her knees, rifle at the ready and already one step ahead of what was on Max’s mind. As the gunfire ceased, Courtney asked Nate, “Do you see anything?”
“Negative,” Nate said as he did a quick sweep of the tree line. Alex and Kyle were sitting by the front door waiting for it to be kicked open and exterminate anything coming through. Kwame had the left corner of the window on lockdown alongside Nate with the right. Pete had crawled his way next to Courtney during all the gunfire, the lower part of his shirt covered in blood.
“Bro, you’re bleeding!” Max exclaimed, staring at Pete’s gut.
Looking down at himself, he said, “Dammit, I guess I’m not Superman after all.” Resting her gun against the wall, Courtney went to work as the team’s EMT. Reaching into her backpack, she quickly pulled out a pair of sheers, cutting his shirt off, watching him wince.
“You’ll be alright,” she said, “just keep talking to me. Where does it hurt?” she asked.
“Well—” mumbled Pete, struggling to sit back up and lean on Courtney’s chest.
“How’s he looking?” Max asked, as the gunfire erupted again, Kwame and Nate returning fire this time. “It looks like he’s going to pass out from blood loss. Stay with me, Pete!”
“Jesus, okay, we need to make moves. Do you think you can handle this while I step outside?”
“Yes, do what you have to,” she said, pulling some quick clot out of the EMT kit.
“Okay, Pete,” Courtney said, grabbing his head and trying to keep him conscious enough to tell him what was going to happen. His eyes were glassy and his pulse was fading fast.
“Kyle, get your ass over here now!” Max shouted. Quickly scrambling as chunks of wood were exploding all around him, he slid into Max nearly knocking him over.
“Kyle, you and I are going to head out back and push into the tree line to try to flank them from the left.”
Seeing a puddle of blood on the floor and Courtney doing her best to save Pete, Kyle asked, “What happened to him?”
“He was shot. We’ll worry about him in a minute,” Max replied. Taking one last look at him and shaking his head, he barked one last order.
“Kwame, Nate, lay down some cover. Got it?” Max said. Alex still had his rifle glued to the front door in case the gunmen decided to be stupid and charge through it.
“Yep.” They were more than ready to mow down anything that moved in front of them.
“Now!” Max exclaimed. Kyle lined up behind Max and, reaching above him to pull the door forward, both operators swiftly moved outside with their guns at the ready, scanning for targets. As the team gave cover fire, the pair made it to the tree line, fifteen yards away before they saw men returning fire back into the house. Luckily, Max only saw two of them. Not to say there couldn’t be more, but he was glad it was just the two.
Kyle pushed forward another ten yards or into the rainforest to try and get a better shot while Max kept his rifle glued in the direction of the culprits shooting into the house. They were both kneeling, half-exposed behind opposite trees. Apparently, cover and concealment weren’t taught to these guys.
Twenty seconds went by, and the gunfire ceased again as the two individuals stopped again to reload. How much ammo did they have? Max thought. More importantly, where did they come from? How they found them, he was sure he had that answer already.
“Max, I’m in position,” Kyle said. “I have one, ready when you are.”
“Roger, I’m golden also, engaging in three, two, one.” Two volleys of three short bursts were heard and both individuals slumped to the ground instantly.
“Standby in the cabin,” Max said.
“Holding,” Alex said through the earpiece.
The pair moved up to the targets, each operator delivering one shot to the head of each.
“Alright, guys I want everyone ready to move in two minutes. Courtney, do what you have to and get Pete ready to move,” Max shouted. Kneeling to take a better look, he noticed a tattoo behind the left ear of both dead bodies. Searching the pockets, he stopped. “Fuck,” he said.
“What?” Kyle asked, scanning into the trees weapon at the ready.
Max stood up and twirled Kyle around so he was face-to-face with him yet again. “When we get back, I want your resignation letter on Jack’s desk as soon as we land.”
Clearly irritated at what he was hearing, Kyle replied, “That’s not fair, I fucked up, sure, but you don’t even know they’re here because of me. How do you know they didn’t follow Alex and Kwame leaving the restaurant?”
Grabbing Kyle’s hand, he thrust a small tracking device, no larger than the size of a flip phone, with five LED lights on the front of the screen. “This is a cell phone tracking device. It’s good within a hundred yards, so all they had to do was get a tip from one of the towers they were monitoring that you were on the phone. It doesn’t take long to trace a call and when they were close enough, they used this device to hone in.”
“Bullshit,” Kyle said, nervous as hell.
“Walk with me.” Max snatched the device back out of Kyle’s hands and listened to the beeping. He didn’t need to follow the device because he already knew where the signal was going to be the strongest at. His frustration with Kyle was past its tipping point. Reaching the smashed phone and kneeling, Max held the device up as it blinked and sounded so loud that he thought it was going to explode. Just then Courtney came over the earpiece.
“Max.”
“You guys ready to move?” he asked, glaring at Kyle and thrusting the device back in his hand.
“He’s gone,” she said. “What do you want us to do with him?” Her voice lingered on the comms line. No one spoke a word. Frozen in his tracks, Kyle didn’t know what to say. Max looked him square in the face with his finger pointing at his chest and spoke.
“His blood is on your hands now.”
CHAPTER 25
When safe houses were compromised, it was imperative that a cleaning crew come through and get rid of any evidence placing the agency at the scene. After saying a quick prayer over Pete’s body and using a bedsheet to cover it up, Max sent out an emergency text to Jack.
Pete dead. Moving.
“Let’s get going,” Max said, turning off the phone. The deeper they moved into the rainforest, the more humid the weather became. Moving through treacherous terrain, especially in the backyard of one of the most powerful narco-traffickers in the world, wasn’t regular protocol, but it meant they were that much harder being detected. No one in their right mind would have guessed that a team would be walking through the Amazon with a GPS, hopes, and dreams that they didn’t get lost.
Max knew all too well that air support and ground support was gone until they linked up with Antonio.
The last image implanted in Ben’s mind on the veranda was “Saint Bertrand forgives, but I don’t.” He admitted to himself, he was scared.
Shortly after, Ben waited downstairs next to a handful of bodyguards as Alejandro spent time freshening up before he met them. When he did, he said something in Spanish after which a handful of the guards jogged outside to get some vehicles.
The doors and top were off the bright yellow eighties-style Wrangler as they bounced all along a dirt trail that wasn’t too far from the mansion. Taking them about thirty or so minutes, they came to a clearing that Ben recognized. There were three burnt remnants of tents and a guard tower broken in half—and here he was thinking he would never be back to this place.
“We’re here,” Alejandro said, motioning for Ben to step out of the car. The entourage of three other black jeeps pulled up right behind them. Ben did as he was told.
The dirt was soggy with water from the rain the night before, but he could tell by the periodic dry patches that the sun was doing its job. Looking at Alejandro’s outfit—light grey slacks, brown sandals, and sunglasses—he really did push Pablo Escobar vibes. Ben understood. He wouldn’t have worn a shirt either if he was in Alejandro’s position, ten minutes into the car ride and he was already drenched in sweat.
Without saying a word Ben followed the drug lord to the first charred sight, then the second and stopped at the third. Turning to Ben and placing his sunglasses on top of his head, he said, “Did you know this was my favorite spot out of all of the areas?”
“I did not,” Ben said. “Why is that?”
“Because this is the first place where my uncle started his operation. These tents were where the product was packaged and loaded before it was transported to the aircraft, submarine or whatever he had lined up, and you guys ruined it.”
Ben could tell he was on edge, so he opted to remain silent while Alejandro contemplated what to do next. Kneeling over and grabbing a plot of charred dirt, he stood back up and dropped it at Ben’s feet. “No worries,” he said. “We will rebuild, and next time we’ll be more prepared.”
“Where do I fit in to all of this?” Ben asked, trying to develop some sort of rapport with this criminal.
“You will see in a second.” Alejandro signaled for Pablo to come toward him. Alejandro pulled Pablo in close and whispered something into his ear creating a grinch-like grin creeping across his face. Walking back over to the group of ten men, Ben witnessed him yank the rifle out of one of the men’s hands as he yelled at the rest of them in Spanish. In an instant the remaining nine men stripped the individual of whatever remaining weapons he had, dragged him over, and threw him at his boss’s feet.
Pablo stepped in front of the man and gave him a swift kick in the face as blood shot out from his nose.
“You asked where do you fit in all of this? Do you know what this man did?” he said, pulling out a cigar and lighting it.
Shaking his head, he said, “No, Alejandro, I don’t.”
Alejandro took a long puff before he continued, “Of course you don’t.”
Without saying a word, Ben let him continue, wondering what the hell was going to happen now. He watched as the man, who was in his mid-thirties, whispered something in Spanish. Looking back at the men laughing and making a mockery of him, Ben was confused. He could only wonder what was running through his head and only kept thinking that he needed to get out of here before it was his turn on his knees in front of the boss.
“This man is an informant… or as we like to say…la rata. He came into my house, gained my trust and I let him lead part of my crew…¡Mas puto!” he said, punching him in the face. His body lurched backward as he fell, but one of the men behind pushed him forward, causing him to brace his fall. Blood spewed from his nose and mouth which quickly became embedded with tears.
Taking one long drag from his fat cigar, Alejandro pulled it out of his mouth, spat on the man, knelt and shoved the cigar into his right ear to extinguish it. The screaming was unlike anything Ben previously heard. He was now withering in a ball of pain, clutching his head as the rest of the men continued to laugh and spit on him. Turning to Ben, Alejandro pulled out a nickel-plated Colt .45 with a small picture of a saint embedded on the slide. Racking a round into the chamber, he cleared his throat.
“You asked what I want you to do? Like I said earlier, I know everything that happens. I have ears from the favelas to the skies and I know that a team is headed this way trying to rescue you, it’s just inevitable. So, you will be one of my closest bodyguards,” Alejandro said.
“And why would I do that?” Ben asked.
Waving to one of the guards, he jogged to Alejandro with a laptop in his hands. Thanking him, he told Ben and Pablo to follow him as they walked back to the hood of the yellow jeep so he could have something to set the laptop on. The rest of the men were preoccupied making fun of the man who was now lying on the ground. Flipping up the screen and typing something on the keyboard, he brought up three different live feeds, each having a small camera attached to the shirt of someone whom Ben guessed worked for Alejandro.
Clicking on the first feed, which minimized the other two, brought up the footage of someone sitting behind a steering wheel and some passenger sitting next to him. Ben couldn’t tell exactly what color shirt the person with the camera had on, but he could only imagine it mirrored what his partner had: an all-white pest control long-sleeved shirt and white pants.
Pablo handed Alejandro a phone and in a couple of seconds had the people in the video on the other line. “Okay, go,” he said. “Tell me if you recognize this house, Ben.”
