Coincidence - Alan May [18]
By the time of the fifth observation, both Stefano and Esteban had arrived in Buenaventura. On this occasion, Severo followed the convoy from Cali in the SUV, keeping well back and turning into the driveway when he reached the house. Polo then took over, pulling out on a moped from a side road about a mile from the house and tailing the three vehicles a good part of the way up the back road toward Medillin.
The tailing had been Severo’s idea. The whole operation was beginning to make him nervous. Why, he had asked, would the cartel be taking these God-forsaken, treacherous back roads? Wasn’t there a safer way to Medillin?
“That’s just the point,” Stefano had told him. “Sure the highway is safer, but where do you think all the police are? When the drug runners started the route seven years ago, the highway hadn’t even been built. They been taking the back roads since the beginning. You know as well as I do there’s hardly any traffic on these roads. No traffic and no cops.”
Juan outlined the details of the plan to them on the evening of the fifth observation.
It was simple, he said. Polo would drive the SUV down the driveway at a predetermined speed, swerve onto the road, and then sideswipe the van.
“Polo’s gonna get out of the SUV, wearing only his bathing suit,” he said. “Truck number three’ll stop behind the van. Truck number one will have to back up to the accident. All the guards will have their guns drawn. As soon as Polo sees the guns he’s gonna act scared—you got some practice acting like a coward, right, Polito?”
“Hey!”
“Relax! Just a joke, little hombre,” Juan said, leaning over and giving Polo’s head a hard rub with his knuckles. “So Polo here’s scared shitless—he’s gonna put his hands up and drop to his knees. Maybe he’s gonna cry, who knows?”
Juan snickered.
“The guards, they’re gonna see there’s no danger, there’s just this skinny little dipshit standing there half naked.
“Severo and Esteban, you gonna be hiding on the right side of the driveway, over by those big bushes with the rubbery leaves. I’m gonna be on the left side. We all gonna have semiautomatics.
“Stefano, you’ll be across the road, in the bushes behind the sign. You got your semiautomatic, too. Anything goes wrong, you’re ready to shoot.
“As soon as Polo goes down on his knees, Severo’s gonna take out the guards from truck number one, Esteban’s got the guards from the van, and I’ve got truck number three. We gotta move in so fast they got no time to react to what’s happening. Got it?”
Severo couldn’t help thinking Juan was awfully sure of himself. Oh, yeah, the guy liked to think of himself as the great mastermind, the grand schemer who anticipated the smallest detail. But what if something didn’t go according to his plan? What if something went horribly, disastrously wrong? There were so many things that could go wrong—and so many things that all had to happen exactly right. What were the odds? But he kept his misgivings to himself. He had no wish to incur Juan’s derision. Severo was the strongest of the six, a burly, barrel-chested man. Years as a heavy-equipment operator had built his muscles to peak capacity. He had met Stefano at a bar near his last construction site in Florida, a hangout for the Hispanic workers. Stefano was recruiting, and it didn’t take him long to convince Severo that he could make a lot more money turning his talents to the drug trade. Severo had been an associate ever since, helping out whenever a strong back was needed for a job.
Even Juan had to admit that Severo could be useful, but as for his