Chapter 6 – Chapter 6
Chapter Six
It seemed like only yesterday we were here in the Delgado's southern Colombia compound, snatching Emilio Delgado. That had gone smoothly, with the only feathers being ruffled being those back at Langley. But that was more than a year ago, and this was now. And this time it hadn't gone smoothly at all.
No, not at all.
I stood there, in the spotlights up in the trees on a moonless night next to the swimming pool in the Delgado compound, listening for the last few shots of what had been a prolonged gun battle to gain entrance to the compound. And I was staring down at the body of Antoine Johnson floating face down in Delgado's pool. He was naked, but as far as I could tell there were no bullet holes in his brown little swimmer's body.
He'd gotten his wish, gone out where he'd loved best, in a swimming pool. But whether this was his choice or Delgado's choice, I didn't know. I'd probably never know. But, just for the hell of it, I'd assume it was Delgado. And not just Delgado. Some of my own folks had a hand in it too. Sam Winterberry, head of the candy store unit, of course, and then there was Ted Talbot, chief of South American Division. But then, there was me too. If it hadn't been for me, Antoine wouldn't be here. Well, that wasn't true. He might have been here anyway. If I hadn't recruited him, Winterberry may have found someone else to do it. But the truth is that I did do it. And not just to him.
The sound on my handheld was crackling, and I lifted it to my ear.
"Speak!"
"Silas? That you, Silas? What the hell are you doing in the Delgado compound? Get out of there and like now!"
"We weren't after him, Ted," I answered, having recognized Ted Talbot's voice. He no doubt was in his Langley office with his feet up on the desk. "Johnson gave us the extraction call; we were doing what we told him we'd do when he couldn't take it in here anymore. But we were too late. Johnson is dead."
"Johnson? We sent in a candy store agent? Who in the hell approved that? I sure didn't. What in Hades are you doing out of Bogotá at all. You had strict orders."
"How did you even know we were in the Delgado compound, Ted?" I said. I was gripping the handheld so hard, I was afraid it would crumble. A lot of things were beginning to crumble. "Why are you calling me and not chief of station Bogotá calling me?" I continued. And just for good measure I added, "The plan two years ago was to close down the Delgados completely, Ted. Why this sudden interest in why I'm working on doing just that? COS Bogotá seems to think it's a good idea. I didn't get the memo on the change on that, Ted."
"Get your ass back to Bogotá and report to the COS, Silas," Ted growled down the line. "And you'd better be out of that compound when Estaban Delgado returns. Oh, and bring Johnson's body out too. Don't want that left there."
"How did you know Estaban wasn't here?" I screamed back into the phone. But it was already dead. Just the way he referred to Antoine's body—like he was no more than a nuisance—just about sent me over the edge.
It's true. This operation hadn't been cleared up to Langley, but the COS Bogotá had given me his blessing under the table. He couldn't understand any more than I did why we weren't taking Estaban Delgado out. We'd grabbed his brother Emilio, who, unfortunately for the question askers in Langley, had died in Mexico before he could be handed over to the Americans. But the Mexicans did deliver a lot of good intelligence they'd wrung out of him on huge-scale movements of drugs from South America into North America.
So, why weren't we taking down Estaban, his brother, and successor as Delgado drug cartel kingpin? Why the pussyfooting around Estaban?
And this operation hadn't been about Estaban anyway. It had been about extracting one of our own from his compound. We'd sent Antoine Johnson in there as candy—as a sex object for Estaban to play with while Antoine was picking up all of the intelligence on the Delgado operation that he could. And Johnson had signaled, as arranged, that he had to get out. And that's all I was doing. We had owed Johnson that. I owed him so much more.
We even waited until we saw Estaban and some of his goons drive out for a night on the town in Florencia in an Escalade. All I wanted was to do what was right, what was agreed, for Johnson.
And there he was, floating face down in the Delgados' swimming pool.
After Ted had cut me off on the handheld, I had a pretty good idea where everything stood. I knew what the choices were, and none of them was good.
I turned to the young man beside me.
"You got the gist of that, Ward," I asked. My voice was choking up. The one man I wanted in my bed, and the one man I did not have the nerve to try to seduce. I could try, but it would destroy me if he turned me down. There was no evidence that he liked men at all. I just couldn't take it if he turned me down. I'd only continued working this shitty job for the past year to be near him. And now I had to send him away.
"Yes," he answered grimly. "I think I get it. What do we do now?"
"We don't do anything now, Ward. Nobody, including COS Bogotá knows you were on this raid. You need to return to Mexico City, and I mean right now. You need to turn around and go out into the clearing and take one of the jeeps and drive in the opposite direction of Bogotá and get your ass out of this operation altogether. This operation is poison now. I'm poison."
"But, I don't—"
"Not another word, Ward. Get out of here. Get out of my life. I'm screwed. And standing here and looking down at the floating body of a young man who I started on the road to this swimming pool death, I could do almost anything from this point. I don't want to take anyone down with me."
Ward gave me a look, the first look he'd ever given me that showed that there might, at one time, have been something going for us. But that was then and this was now.
I had made my choice.
I turned away and when I turned back, Ward was gone.
And then I gathered my men about me and we started the bumpy-road journey back to the capital and to the office of chief of station Bogotá.