Killing Dragons

Chapter 4

Four

Eighteen Years Earlier

Mosquito Coast

Mainland Honduras

When the cartel leader grabbed Eva by the waist, she resisted with all she had. She dropped her water bucket and clawed at his face. But he was stocky and strong as a bull.

She had been fetching water for her mother, who was planning to stretch one scrawny chicken into a soup that would feed not only their family of nine, but also the members of the cartel who had overtaken their two-room hut the night before. The cartel had arrived by helicopter, landing in the village’s makeshift soccer field, bringing with them their illegal contraband—and now, under cover of dark, it was her father’s job to help them load that contraband onto a submarine tied to a rickety dock on the shore.

But the fact that her father was helping them, and her mother was feeding them, would do nothing to help Eva now.

The cartel leader laughed as he pushed her to the ground under the tree. She slapped him and kicked at him, but he easily pinned her down with his legs and put a dirty hand over her mouth to quiet her screams. When he used his free hand to grope at her chest, his laugh chilled her to the core.

And then, suddenly, his head thudded to the side, and someone pulled him off of her. She looked up to find another man standing over her, holding a snub-nosed rifle. A soldier. From the north. She had the absurd thought that his rifle was too short when compared to those of the drug lords.

These guys don’t stand a chance.

But now, she did.

She rolled to her side, scrambled to her knees, and ran toward her house. All around her, a barrage of gunfire leapt from the darkness. She threw herself to the dirt, her hands on her ears, but she couldn’t muffle the sound that rose above the chaos: the sound of her mother wailing. It wasn’t until the shots ceased, an eternity later, that she learned the reason for that wail.

In front of her house, a body lay dead in the dirt yard.

Her brother. Héctor.

She ran to him, fell to her knees, cradled his head in her hands.

And then she wept.

There was nothing more she could do.