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He just smiles.
When I’m ready he lets me tell him the whole story. It’s not too far in when the tears start to flow and he brings me brandy to supplement the hot chocolate.
I read to him from my mother’s journal.
Journal
Mano
I learned to peek. To make gentle explorations into the drones, and into all the people they sent me to meet. I did it quietly. Passively. When I met a contact or a guard, or one of the drones, I made soft ways into them. Found openings to their minds. And I left them open.
That’s what I did with the cartel boss, Mano de Guerrera. I was supposed to represent a group of white-collar investors, come to see his processing operation and to negotiate a better deal.
As soon as I met him, I could tell he was a man who tortured and killed people for his own amusement. Seeing that, I kept him talking. He loved to brag. Especially to a woman. So, after everything he told me, I opened my eyes to show him I was impressed, and then immediately narrowed then, so I looked skeptical. Dismissive.
That made him want to tell me more. While he gave me more and more tales of how powerful and rich and ruthless and ingenious he was, I quietly found as many ways inside his psyche as I could. And I left as many of his ‘openings’ as wide as possible.
He showed me over his surgically clean methamphetamine labs and his vast cocaine processing plant. Then he took me up a long series of steps and ladders, up to a high metal cabin that was his office. His top captains and warriors were waiting.
He didn’t know. I saw it immediately. They were plotting to take his factory and take him out.
This was the point where the DEA were supposed to come and take everyone unawares. They would sweep in to safely extract me, and arrest all the heads of the cartel in a single move.
But I was there. And my so-called handlers weren’t. And Mano’s plotters were about to execute him.
I looked him in the eye as I gave a small tug in his mind. His eyes widened, but he didn’t give anything away to the others. I smiled, like he could trust me, and made a tiny tilt of my head to the rear door. And I tightened my lips. I hoped he would understand, that meant it was urgent.
Guerrera made something up about some cash or a box or something, I don’t remember what. It was in Spanish, and he led me out to a room in the back of the office. I told him what was going to happen, that his captains were plotting to kill him.
Mano was enraged. First, he didn’t believe me. He grabbed my hair. It didn’t take ‘talent’ to know that he meant to torture me for information. But he knew that, if it was true, he had seconds to act. Or less. Turned out it was a lot less. And he could see in my eyes that it was true.
He pulled out an arsenal of guns. Some from his clothing, bigger weapons from a closet. He kicked open the door and blasted away at the men on the other side.
The men in the other side of the office were ready for him. The doors and walls were steel, and they blasted right back at him.
He rolled in a grenade and pulled the door shut.
I think that had the effect that he wanted; I didn’t see any of his captains again. But it also toppled the steel box we were in. And, at the same time as the firing started where we were, fighting broke out in the labs below.
Chapter Sixteen
Saul understands.
Journal
ESCAPE
The drones should have told me they were going to raid the compound while I was meeting with the kingpin. It could all have ended up differently.
Ratko and his gang traffic anything and everything. Drugs, weapons, aircraft, people, animals, explosives, chemicals. They probably have a trade in diseases. I know they run a cyber ring of extortion and data pollution.
The drones have stopped pretending there’s any legitimacy or legal aim in the missions they send me on. Now they simply throw me at the most dangerous people they can locate, tell me to mine them for their secrets. And if I come out alive, all the better.
They arranged for Ratko’s frontman, a Wall St. banker, to drive me out to the desert compound. At the chain-link fence, a huge thug, armed with pistols, knives and an automatic rifle, introduced himself as ‘Stephano.’
Out in the burning sun, Stephano frisked me and patted me down a lot more than he needed to. He was brutal about it, and he grinned and leered as he did it. Then he told me he was there to guard me.
It turned out I was lucky to get Stephano.
