Blackout

Chapter 16

Location: Imaia

Code Name: Blackout.

Time: 01:00 hrs International Time

“How many bags do you think are there?” asked Ghost, kneeling by the chest while I looked at it with my arms crossed, calculating there had to be at least a thousand kilos of cocaine in total. Judge stepped by my side, studying the same chest we had found three hours ago inside Gustavo Bellino’s house. Gustavo was the boy that Max had taken to the hospital a couple of weeks ago. He had come to me after being discharged by the doctors at the medical unit at sunset. The kid had been looking pale and scared out of his mind.

“I need your help,” that’s all he had said and truth to be told, I’d been waiting for him to come clean from the first day I’d seen him. A boy like him didn’t get himself shot in the neck and guarded by a thug by pure coincidence. I’d seen enough s**t in my line of work to know he had to be sinking in some deep s**t. I’d agreed, leaving Blue and Bell back in the camp to trammit the permission to start our new mission. I’d been working in the Marine Corps, as an active SEAL soldier and the leader of a black ops unit for too many years to know when s**t was about to hit the fan.  I hadn’t been surprised when the boy asked us to leave the camp with him. Gustavo had taken us to the back of his house and after making sure nobody was watching he started digging sand until a big hole revealed a mountain of future paperwork.

“Around five hundred bags,” I said and Judge nodded.

“I haven’t seen this amount of coke since three years ago, back in Colombia,” he looked at me, shaking his head with a grave look, “You know what this means.”

“Money laundering,” I grinded my molars, walking away from the chest and going back inside the house. What many people didn’t get right about drugs was the gargantuan amount of supply chains that the black market generated. Drug trafficking wasn’t an easy business. It was cash-intensive and generated international channels of commerce. Usually drug lords used vertically integrated companies to run their own operations but often enough they used small countries to wash their money. At times I’d seen them create small smuggling networks in little islands like Imaia. They would sell the product to local traffickers, keep the money in the area and launder millions in cash easily.

From all the different types of missions I’d finished, drug trafficking was the one brand of illegal hell that I hated the most. Finding the head of the snake was a job that could take months, even years if the drug lords were smart enough to cover their tracks. It was exciting to hunt them down and kill them like a bunch of cockroaches, I will give them that. The downside was that it generated a bunch of loose ends that kept me awake at night, analyzing all the possible clues I’d missed. I’ve lost one of my most loyal friends during a drug trafficking mission and to this day I’ve lived to make every single drug lord pay for his death. You could say this new mission was a personal matter to me.

I took a chair from the small dining table and sat on it, stretching my long legs over the floor and looking at Gustavo. The boy was a sack of nerves, shaking and pale. I watched him until he looked down, too much of a chicken s**t to stare a man in the eyes. The boy had been sapping my patience from day one and I was one wrong word away from kicking his skinny ass on the curve. Tower and Reptile were at his back, making sure the kid didn’t try anything funny. I let him marinate in his own fear for several minutes before breaking the ice.

“I will give you one chance to tell me the truth. If you don’t speak the truth I will pass you to the local authorities and let them f**k you in the ass, so they can steal all of those drugs and smoke it out of w***e’s t**s. Don’t blow this up, kid,” he nodded, his hands shaking when he started pointing at the back, where the chest had been buried.

“One...one month ago my uncle Ramiro passed away. I inherited this house and moved in to be close to my older sister…” I blinked, not believing the s**t I was hearing. The kid must have felt I was running out of patience because he cleared his throat and went straight to the point, “Three weeks ago two guys tore my door down and informed me this was a trafficking house. My uncle rented it to a man called Urbino, so he could hide his merchandise from time to time. I tried to contact Urbino and tell him the deal he had with my Uncle was off, but…”

“He shot you on the neck,” I said, already understanding what had happened and Gustavo nodded.

“After that I returned home but his men had been camping here already. They buried the chest at the back and threatened to kill me if I didn’t keep my mouth shut. I was too sick to try to fight them but I heard their contact had missed their meeting. They were supposed to send the shipment of cocaine somewhere but nobody came looking for it,” he started rubbing his hands, which looked clammy and sweat as f**k. So far I hadn’t read any body movements or visual cues that hinted the kid was lying. He was speaking the truth. I could tell the difference between liars and innocents after killing too many men that have crossed me and my soldiers. I waited a moment, thinking about his story before making my mind about our next move. Urbino and his men were only local traffickers and not my real concern, they could be dealt with later. I was more interested in finding their contact. The middleman between Imaia and the real drug lord behind the transaction.

“What is the name of their contact?”

“I didn’t hear his name,” he said, shaking his head, “I only know he was supposed to meet Urbino at Coral Key and he never showed up. He owns a ship named Foxtrot.”

At that last piece of information every one of my men tensed and looked back at me as if they had seen a ghost. Gustavo looked around nervously, until I could see the white of his eyes while he moved them from side to side. He couldn’t understand what he had just said. Judge appeared by the door, hands fisted and his eyes narrowed to slits.

“What did you just say?” Gustavo didn’t have a chance to answer. Judge was on him like a madman, shaking the boy by his shirt and throwing him to the wall. Gustavo screamed in pain when his head took a hit against the wooden wall. I stopped Judge, before he could end killing the kid out of grief. Locking his head on a firm grip I pushed Judge away, stepping in the middle between them and lifting both of my arms so they would need to pass me by if they tried to move. Judge started walking in circles with his teeth gnashed and his jaw clenched angrily. 

“Easy, easy now,” I stopped him with a hand on his right shoulder. Judge looked at me with his mouth set in a hard line. I knew this was hard for him. Hell, it was hard for all of us but we couldn’t jump into conclusions. Foxtrot had been the code name his brother always used during military missions, before he died on our last drug trafficking mission. We had never found the drug lord that had ordered his death but knowing Judge as well as I did I could tell he was already jumping the gun, ready to go and hunt this middleman that had a ship with the same name his brother used. This could all be a big coincidence or it might be the trigger we had been waiting to reopen Colin’s case. Whatever it was, I couldn't let Judge alone. He was too damn blind and illogical whenever something related to his brother came up. In his place I wouldn’t be any different. Judge was like a brother to me and if something ever happened to him I would destroy every single fucker who was responsible. I turned to Tower and pointed at the boy with my chin, “Take him to a safe house down the beach and put some soldiers to keep guard until we come back. Judge, we are hiding the cargo. Reptile, go back to the camp and pick the others. We met in an hour at the harbor. Don’t be f*****g late or you are staying.”

“Wouldn’t dream on it, Major,” said Reptile right away, a macabre smile in place when he and Judge exchanged a look that screamed for blood. This was personal for all of us. Colin had been a brother for everyone and his death had affected every single member of our unit. I walked to the door, watching Tower and the kid get on a Humvee and drive to the beach. Reptile drove on the opposite way, back to the camp. In an hour we would be gone and who knew when we would be able to come back. Hunting down traffickers was an extensive job and only trackers like us could enjoy the perilous work of searching the entire world for possible clues.

In silence I took off my dog tag necklace and so did Ghost and Judge. If things went south we were nameless. No country would ever get responsibility if our bodies appeared on a border with unregistered weapons and military hardware on us. It was a risk we had signed for when we decided to get on this line of work after being in the Marine Corps. Given the chance of taking any other position in the army I would have still picked being a special ops agent. It was dangerous, yes, that’s what made it f*****g amazing.

“You know the drill,” I said to my men and we all put our tags in our pockets, until we could place them in a sealed envelope with our goodbye letters to our families. To this day I haven’t made the time to write that f*****g letter. I always put my tag inside the envelope knowing that if I died the people who loved me will know it either way. For the first time I contemplated the thought of leaving some sort of note for Max. I didn’t have enough time to go see her before leaving and sending messages or giving her a phone call could always be tracked. Her safety could be compromised and she could be in danger. 

I knew that logically I wouldn’t be able to see her or contact her in any way until I came back...but I wanted to. f**k, I wanted to. Max was important to me but I also wanted her to understand the way things happened in my world. There would be times like this in which I wouldn’t be able to reach out to her and let her know I would be gone. Not because I didn’t want to, but because it could be dangerous for her knowing too much. With a frown I started walking to the car, flanked by my men. By the time we reached the harbor I didn’t know if I would be gone for two days or an entire month. For her I would come back one way or the other, that I knew without a doubt. I only hoped that she would still consider giving me a chance once I returned.