One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [54]
The man on the phone had given us directions to his house, telling us which roads to use to get out of Guatemala City. Once in the hills to the east of the city, we were supposed to simply stop and ask the first person we saw for the house of El Machete.
There wasn’t any way I was going to make it that easy.
We had landed at the Santa Elena airport in the north of Guatemala after connecting through Cancún. I didn’t want to land in Guatemala City, since I was pretty sure that Machete would have that covered, so we had purchased two sets of tickets. It would be a seven-hour trip down south, but at least we would make it through whatever initial net he had established without getting caught right off the bat. We picked up our Jeep CJ-5 we had rented over the Internet and wasted no time heading to Guatemala City on Highway 5.
I had never been to Guatemala before, and after talking to Jennifer, I learned she hadn’t either. The sum total of her knowledge was wild-ass stories told by her uncle. None were of any help. My knowledge was limited to the fact that Guatemala had the distinction of being one of two countries—Iran being the other one—that the CIA had managed to overthrow in the 1950s. I wouldn’t even have known that, except the story was a damn clown-fest and pretty funny to read about, with CIA agents mistakenly attacking British ships and revolutionaries attempting to ride into battle in beat-up station wagons. Funny except the fallout was a thirty-six-year civil war that left thousands of innocent people dead. I suppose it kept Guatemala out of Commie hands, so it was worth it. As long as you weren’t Guatemalan.
JAKE WAS IN THE PROCESS of building his net inside the tourist hotels when his phone rang with the special tone reserved for his boss.
“Have you heard anything from our friends downtown?”
Jake told him no, but that he hadn’t been checking in with them. He’d been too busy with the hotels.
“I’m wondering if they slipped through customs.”
Jake swore under his breath. Miguel was as ruthless as anyone he had ever seen, but sometimes he had the patience of a four-year-old. “It’s only been about twenty hours. Give it some time. They’ll be here.”
“I don’t trust the people we’ve paid. I want our own people on every flight coming in. Make that happen.”
“Sir, doing that now risks missing them both ways. I haven’t finished with the hotels. We need to stick with the plan.”
“Jake, hear what I’m saying. Do as I ask. Now.”
Jake acknowledged the task, then hung up, cursing. Why come up with a plan if you’re going to change it because you’re impatient? Give the plan a chance to work. Jesus, why did I come down here?
Pulling out now meant a risk he didn’t want to take, as it would split the detection efforts before either one was complete. Nothing he could do about it. When Miguel made up his mind, it was done. In other assignments Jake would try to convince his boss of the correct path to take, but Miguel was different. Jake had seen Miguel do things to other humans that would have shocked Stephen King. He wouldn’t admit it to anyone, but Miguel had the ability to scare him. Jake would do as he was told. He would just have to make sure he covered both the hotels and the airport as well as he could.
He looked at his list of hotels and called both team leaders, telling one to continue with the mission of the hotels and giving the other the redirection to the airport. The second team leader acknowledged the task and began calling his men.
Two of the members of the second team were pulling into the parking lot of a midrange hotel just outside