Vanishing Point - Marc Cerasini [4]
His Anglo features had helped him with the Rojas family. They'd more willingly bought his cover story — that he was a pissed off software engineer who'd gotten sick of his American company passing him over for promotion. But he was on the run now, and his shock of light blond hair would stick out in this homogenous crowd like a sabana in a Mexican prison. At least his deep tan disguised his fair skin and helped him blend with the environment.
Sun glare blazed off a shop window. Guiterrez's eyebrow twitched uncontrollably. The simmering heat, his lack of sleep, the drugs, days of constant movement and ceaseless vigilance were finally taking their toll on the overweight agent. Even worse, the amphetamines no longer kept Guiterrez alert or focused — only twitchy and paranoid.
But at least he'd gotten out of Colombia, with the device intact. Now that he'd reached Managua, the odyssey was nearly over. Guiterrez was almost home. Five days ago he'd stolen a pleasure boat in the Colombian seaport town of Barranquilla and sailed up the Atlantic to the shores of Panama. He scuttled the engine and sunk the boat in a lagoon, then hiked to Panama City where he hot wired a car. Guiterrez drove north, across the Costa Rican border, all the way to Nicaragua.
The car died outside the town of Upala, so he ditched it and paid off some farm workers to stow away in a vegetable truck. Guiterrez bailed at Galpa, a tiny Nicaraguan fishing community transformed into a housing development for middle-class government workers. There the agent mingled with the workers' morning rush hour to board a rusty commuter ferry, which crossed Lake Managua.
Once in the capital, Guiterrez lingered near the harbor until lunchtime, waiting for the streets to be filled with traffic so his movements would be less noticeable. When lunch hour rolled around and the sidewalks were jammed, he hailed a cab and asked the driver to take him to Bolivar Street.
The car deposited him a block from the CIA safe house. Over the heads of the crowd, Guiterrez could see the steel-girded skeleton of a building, a large white sign halfway up that read Constructores De Fuqua in black block letters. Guiterrez's grip tightened on the briefcase — a movement that sent pain signals up his arm and caused his shoulder muscles to ache. The agent shrugged off the discomfort, increased his pace. Just a few more minutes and his sleepless nights and days of running would be over.
Guiterrez limped down Bolivar until he was just across the street from the construction site. Near the corner, the door to a small bistro opened, blocking his path. Two women emerged, laughing and talking. Guiterrez paused as the giggling young women stepped around him. One flashed Guiterrez a smile, but the agent didn't notice. His eyes were locked on the glass door, at its reflection of the crowded street and the sidewalk directly behind him.
In the instant before the door closed, Guiterrez spied a familiar face — Francesco Rojas, the youngest member of the crime family he'd betrayed. Rojas was the cartel's enforcer and murderer, and he never missed his target. The assassin was standing behind him, not twenty feet away, his eyes black pools focused on Guiterrez's back.
Instinctively, the agent's free hand reached for the weapon he no longer possessed — he'd been forced to ditch the handgun he carried at the border crossing at Costa Rica or risk arrest. Now his futile gesture, made out of fear, surprise and exhaustion, had been spotted by Rojas. The cartel enforcer reached into his jacket and drew an Uzi. In one smooth motion, Rojas dropped to one knee and opened fire.
As a stream of bullets shattered the restaurant's door and windows, showering the sidewalk with sparkling shards, Guiterrez leaped between two parked cars. The two women were caught directly in the Uzi's deadly spray. Grotesquely, they seemed to dance under the impact of the high velocity shells, their colorful skirts billowing as they tumbled to the pavement. A waiter dropped