Page 84 of Code 6

“You don’t sound at all like my brother,” he said, meaning the dead negotiator.

Javier pulled his pistol from his belt and pressed the business end of the barrel to the kid’s temple. “You told me everything that was said, right?”

“Yes! Everything!”

“You didn’t leave anything out?”

“No!” he said, his voice quaking. “Manuel let the hostage talk first, and then he got on the line. He said two million, no police. I told you every word I heard.”

“And what about Olga?”

“What about her?”

“You didn’t join in the fun with the other slobs?”

“No! I got sick on rum.”

Javier pressed the barrel of the pistol harder against his head. “So youwould have, if you could have.”

“No. I swear! I know Olga is yours. I would never disrespect you like that.”

The teen closed his eyes tightly, bracing for execution Buenaventurastyle. Javier considered squeezing the trigger, and he definitely would have, had he thought the boy was lying about not defiling Olga, his prize possession. Mercy would have been in order had he called Javier and ratted out his fellow kidnappers at the Hostage Hotelbeforethey’d all ended up dead on the floor. But he’d done right by calling soon enough for Javier to reach out to his contacts at the port.Anyoneseeking to escape Buenaventura would head to the port, and it had taken all of ten minutes for a call to come in with the first sighting of the six-foot-plus American with the mop of blond hair on his head and the gorgeous brunette at his side.

“Please, don’t kill me,” the teen said, sniveling.

Javier had heard many such pleas. But the smell in the air, the stench of the port, was triggering memories of his own. It had happened at aplace like this one, alongside a chain-link fence topped with razor wire, where towering cranes worked around the clock to unload mountains of metal containers from Chinese freighters loaded with electronics and other goods. Javier and his older brother, two of the FARC’s newest foot soldiers, had gone there to collect payment for a shipment of California-bound cocaine. The delivery wasn’t up to the buyer’s standards, an infraction for which the sentence was death. His brother got a bullet to the forehead that had literally blown off the top of his skull. For some reason, the buyer had decided to let Javier live.

Javier put the pistol away. “Congratulations. You, too, are now a survivor of Buenaventura.”

The kid could breathe again, but he seemed unable to move, frozen by a trauma-filled night.

“Go!” shouted Javier.

The teen snapped into action, hopped out of the Jeep, and was off like a sprinter out of the blocks.

Javier dialed his cell and called the boss—el jefe del jefe—for an update.

“I’m on them,” he said into his phone. “They boarded a freighter about half an hour ago. MVAli Bey. Panamanian flag.”

The reply was all business. “That should make your work easy. How did the call go?”

“She wants to know what code we want.”

“The kid can tell you. If you make him.”

“Just to be clear. The hit is off?”

“No. It’s postponed. Until I get the code I paid for.”

“Consider it done.”

Javier hung up, checked his ammunition, and climbed out of the Jeep. He didn’t know the details of the code or the transaction, but he was all too familiar with the consequences of delivering less than promised.

He took a long look down the dimly lit street. The kid was stillrunning, guard dogs barking from the other side of the long chain-link fence as he flew past them. Javier had no regrets about letting him go. But it would be his last show of mercy.

He tucked his pistol away and started walking toward the berth for the MVAli Bey.

Chapter 39