Standoff: A Vin Cooper Novel (31 page)

I retraced some of my steps, like the ones to Yaviza. Others I avoided, like those through the Darién Gap. Everything they say about that place is true and one visit is one too many.

The dockside at Turbo was still a good way to clear the sinuses even if the temperatures had come down a few degrees since I was last there. But the bar on the river was just as I remembered it – full of drunks. On the off chance that I might jag a lead, I flashed photos of Perez and Apostles around to anyone prepared to give me some eye contact. Hope over reason, you might say. Pretty soon folks started avoiding the gringo with the mug shots. It wasn’t good for the health to be identifying cartel bad guys to strangers in drug-smuggling territory.

The bus ride to Medellín was uneventful. I hired a car and drove to Bogotá and stayed at the Marriott. That night, I went to Dry 73, ordered a chocolate martini for old times’ sake and sat on it, watching the clientele come and go. There was nothing to see here, though I stayed in town several days hoping it would show up. Next stop: the Hacienda Mexico, Apostles’ spread next to Pablo Escobar’s country retreat on the road halfway back to Medellín.

The trip was uneventful. No one tried to run me off the road, shoot at me or peel my skin off. This was how most people got around, listening to music, enjoying the countryside. I could get used to it. I finished the bottle of water and threw it into the floorboards to join its pals there and listened on the radio to local Colombian folk music funked up with rap. To my ears, it was the aural equivalent of dunking cheese in hot chocolate. I could go for either on its own, but together they just seemed wrong.

The place where Matheson ran me off the road rolled along. The purple Kia was gone, as was the greenery that had kept it so conveniently hidden.

The next landmark along was the Piper Cub on top of the gate at Escobar’s place. Being mid-week, there were fewer tourists and buses.

The Hacienda Mexico was ten minutes’ drive further on down the road. Coming up on the familiar entrance, I could see it had a new ornament to complement the security cameras – a Colombian Army armored personnel carrier parked across the gate. I pulled to the verge and stopped thirty yards down range. Okay, not smart. This must have looked suspicious. The soldier with dark sunglasses sitting up behind the APC’s turreted machine gun turned his head in the direction of the car. I could see from his body language that its arrival made him nervous. He jabbered something into his headset. I got out of the vehicle, walked toward him and gave a friendly wave. He responded with a wave of his own, shouting,
“¡Alto! ¡Fuera!”

Technically, what he said was, “Stop! Go away!” But what he meant was, “You! Fuck off!” Who argues with a. 50 caliber Browning? I returned to the car and drove down the road a ways, pulling over again around the corner and out of the soldier’s sight. Was I thinking I was just gonna drive on in there? The Colombian Army had the place bottled up. Made sense. Three months after the event, the wounds inflicted on the US, Mexico and Colombia by Messrs Apostles and Perez were still raw.

So I dialed my supervisor.

The call went through. “Hola,” I said to Arlen, making it chirpy.

“Hey, how’s life on the road? What’s going on, bud?”

“Not a lot.”

“Excellent.”

“Arlen, I want you to do something for me.”

Silence.

“Arlen?”

“You know, historically, when you say ‘Hey, Arlen, I want you to do something for me’ that usually means trouble,” he said.

“Nope, no trouble.”

“So what is it you want that’s no trouble – an urgent delivery of suntan lotion FedExed to wherever you are, pronto?”

“I’m outside Apostles’ Hacienda in Colombia.”

“Vin …”

I could feel the exasperation.

“I wanna get inside the house.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Great reason.”

“Arlen …”

Silence.

“What are you doing, Vin?”

“Looking around.”

“Every intelligence service in the world is hunting those two.”

“In that case one more set of eyes won’t hurt.”

“You think they’re just going to move back home?”

“Crooks are creatures of habit – even super crooks. And these two have a serious arrogance problem. Who knows what they would or wouldn’t do?”

“I repeat – you think they’re just going to move back home?”

My turn for exasperation. “I’m doing this on my own time, Arlen. Get me inside. Please.”

“And it’s just to look around.”

“That’s a promise.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Jesus.” Resigned sigh. “Give me an hour.”

I drove back up the road, the soldier in the APC tracking the car as I drove past. So I had an hour to kill. What the hell, I turned into the Hacienda Nápoles and joined a recently arrived busload of tourists. Together, we all ogled at lifesize dinosaur models and bullet-riddled burned-out cars and what remained of Escobar’s zoo. There were some of those hippos and also a few zebras, and I heard a guide say that the grandfather of the herd had been stolen by Escobar from the Medellín zoo. The story went that the zookeepers arrived one morning to find their one and only prized zebra replaced by a donkey painted with black and white stripes. Fun guy that Escobar.

More recent additions to the deceased drug lord’s seven-thousand-acre ranch was a Jurassic-themed water park and a maximum security prison where the only thing that escaped was irony.

My cell rang.

It was Arlen. “Where are you now?”

“Looking at zebras.”

“Really?”

“Or donkeys painted black and white. You can’t be sure around here.”

“Right. Meanwhile, if you want to get into Apostles’ place, I’ve cleared it. Get down there now. They’re expecting you. You’ve got a twenty-minute window and you’ll be accompanied.”

“I’ll take what I can get.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Let me know if anything interesting turns up.”

“Will do,” I promised. “Anyone in particular I should check in with?”

“Lieutenant Jimanez. J-I-M –”

“Jimanez. Got it, thanks.”

“What are you driving?” he asked. “I’ll tell them to look out for you.”

I gave him the details.

“Vin – don’t do anything …”

“Stupid?”

“Put an adjective in front of it.”

“Fucking stupid?”

“That’s it. Like I said, let me know if anything turns up,” he said.

“Will do.”

The call ended.

*

This time I pulled up behind the APC rather than down the road and the soldier behind the machine gun didn’t appear to be so nervous. He said something into the mike and the APC rolled back a dozen yards, exposing the gate, which was open. He waved me through. I drove up the cinder driveway, through the dense overhanging islands of jungle. My memory stitched Apostles into the scenery, riding around on horseback dressed up as Villa though, looking back on it, I now believed that what I’d seen back then was a body double.

Finally the view opened out on to the expansive grounds and the double tennis courts, the lush green lawn now slightly overgrown. Also ahead was the magnificent grand old ranch house in the Mexican style.

Along with a couple of golf carts, several light utility army vehicles were parked outside the main entrance, a couple of men in Colombian Army-issue camos standing around talking. I stopped behind the vehicles. A man came out the front door of the house and walked up to my car.

“Special Agent Cooper?” he asked.

I showed my OSI ID and read J
IMANEZ
on the tape above his breast pocket. He was of medium height and dark with narrow almond-shaped eyes. In lightly accented English, he said, officiously, “I have orders to show you around.” I got out of the car. “What would you like to see? What are you hoping to find?”

“Just come to have a look.” I shrugged. “Maybe there’s nothing to find.”

“If you don’t mind, I must accompany you,” he said, gesturing at the front entrance.

I nodded and went inside, past the staircase. I absently picked a flintlock pistol up off a side table, looked at it and put it down. A suit of medieval armor now guarded the doorway into the lounge room. “I met with Perez in a study,” I told the lieutenant.

He knew the layout of the place better than me and led the way. “I didn’t realize that you had been here before,” he said.

“Yeah,” I replied, trying to concentrate on what was different and what was the same because things had moved.

“And Juan de Apostles was also here?”

I nodded. The hallway off the lounge room was familiar.

“Down here?” I said to the lieutenant. ‘There’s a study.’

Jimanez turned and led the way. He went through a doorway. The desk. Yeah, I remembered this room.
You are a killer who does not kill.
That’s what Perez had told me. He was sitting behind that desk when he said it. The letter opener he’d had that I’d fleetingly considered using on his throat was now standing innocently in a red cut-glass container with a handful of pens. I picked up the letter opener. The blade was dull, the tip of the blade a sharp point. It would’ve done the job like it was made for it. Perhaps I’d have gone through with it if Daniela hadn’t come through the door. I wondered how she was getting on. Daniela hadn’t looked so great when I’d last seen her.

“You have met with evil, Agent Cooper.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, taking in the rest of the room.

“My country breeds such men.”

“Something in the water, maybe?”

I glanced back down the hallway and headed in that direction. The lieutenant caught up. “Yes, and the soil. They are the curse of Colombia,” he said.

“Why?”

“Because of the plentiful water and the rich soil, everything grows here. Every fruit you can think of. It all grows wild. No one will ever go hungry in Colombia. The same is true of coca. It grows wild. And this leaf brings out the worst in people.”

I couldn’t argue with that. We walked out of the house, down the back stairs and onto the lawn, the air thick with insects, heat and tropical dampness.

“Fifteen years ago, there was Escobar and others. He killed thousands, all because of the coca leaf. My father was a policeman and his corrupt partner shot him dead. The coca leaf made everyone crazy. No one wanted those days ever to return to Colombia. And yet now we have men like Apostles. Yes, there is something in the water.”

I looked out over the river. No hippos there today.

“Have you seen anything of interest?” Jimanez asked.

“A few things have been moved around. The suit of armor near the front entrance – I don’t remember that being there, or the flintlock gun.”

The lieutenant shrugged. “We have touched nothing.”

“How long has the army been occupying the ranch?”

“Some days,” he said with a shrug, giving away nothing I could build on. 

“Head back inside?” I asked him and the Lieutenant led the way.

A couple of the lieutenant’s men were sitting on a couch and a chair in the lounge room. One was flicking through a magazine on American country homes, the other speaking quietly on a cell phone. Jimanez snapped at them and they both jumped up and left in a hurry.

I stood in the room and took it all in: suits of armor, crossed pikes, leather couches, rugs, crossbows, the mounted heads of various animals on the wall. Something significant was missing. “Where’s the horse?” I asked Jimanez.

“Horse?”

“There was a horse, Pancho Villa’s horse, Seven Leagues –
Siete Leguas.
It was standing right there.”

The lieutenant looked at me like I had a screw loose. “When?”

Now that I’d pulled my head out of my ass, I noticed that signed and framed photographic portrait of the general was also no longer on the wall either. In fact, quite a bit was missing: one of the stuffed heads, the lion; a crossbow … Perhaps there was more. Where had it gone? “The surveillance cameras here are all switched on?”

“Of course.”

I pulled my cell and went outside.

“Arlen …” I said when I heard him pick up.

“You’re excited about something,” he said. “That’s concerning.”

“There are items missing from Apostles’ hacienda.”

“So?”

“Isn’t it supposed to be locked down?”

“It’s Colombia. What can I tell you?”

“Arlen, the items that are missing are specific. There’s Pancho Villa’s horse, a portrait –”

“Villa’s horse?”

“It was stuffed.”

“That’s an understatement – would have been almost a hundred years old.”

“Funny. Look, I think someone has come with a list and cherry-picked the things Apostles cherished the most.”

“That could have happened well before Laughlin.”

“There must have been some kind of inventory taken when the army moved in here.”

“I can find out. Where you staying?” asked Arlen.

“Puerto Triunfo, a town down the road. There’ll be a motel. Hey, also – there are surveillance cameras all over Apostles’ place. Maybe they got something.”

“I’ll look into it, call you back.”

I thanked Lieutenant Jimanez for his time and trouble, climbed into the rental and drove to town.

Eventually, I found a place that called itself a motel, but then so does the facility that lures cockroaches to their deaths. When it came time to sleep, I bunked down in the rental. And that turned out to be a good decision because if I’d stayed in a room, I might not have seen a familiar green Renault drive down the main street and stop outside the motel.

I watched Juliana get out of the car and head to reception with a small rucksack, her ponytail bouncing as she walked. Was she checking in, having just arrived, or had she been staying here a while already? And what was she doing in Puerto Triunfo – staying somewhere strategic prior to visiting the Hacienda Nápoles, or hanging around for the same reason I was, hoping to pick up Apostles’ scent? Reclining in the seat, I settled in for the long haul but around twenty minutes later Juliana came out, still carrying the rucksack, changed into fitted jeans and a singlet, her dark hair no longer in a ponytail but held by a bright-orange headband. I got out of the car and followed her from a distance.

She stopped at a shop and bought a Zero. I followed her down a couple of streets as she window shopped.

My cell vibrated. I checked the screen. Arlen.

“Hey,” I said.

“Okay, you might be onto something, though what I’m not sure. You’re right about an inventory. They did one. Nothing is supposed to have been removed from the property. That’s one of the reasons the army’s there – to stop looters. I’ve just received a copy of that inventory, dated 17 July. After your escape from Apostles’ camp and before Laughlin. The inventory’s long – reads like a props list for an episode for 
Game of Thrones
. Medieval fighting axes?”

“He’s a romantic. What about the horse?”

“It’s on the list.”

A tingling sensation ran up the back of my neck.

“Well it’s not there now,” I said.

“And you’re sure it hasn’t been moved to another room?”

“Not according to Jimanez. I think it has been heisted,” I said.

“Risky thing to steal from a cartel boss while he’s still alive and on the loose.”

“You’d think. What if the cartel boss stole from himself?”

“What, he just wandered back after hitting Laughlin and removed a few of his favorite things?”

“Why not? And it could have happened before Laughlin.”

“Whatever, it’s still brazen.”

“This is a guy who whacked a US military facility.”

“Good point.”

“What about the surveillance cameras?”

“I’ve put in a request on that front. No idea when they’ll get back to me, though.”

Mañana
, most probably.

“It’s a long shot, Vin,” Arlen added.

“Got nothing to lose,” I said.

“And not a lot to gain either. What matters is not what he took, but where he took it to.”

Yeah. Confirming that he’d come back and run off with some of his stuff didn’t necessarily take us anywhere. I looked up and saw Juliana coming my way, carrying a poorly wrapped crossbow in a bag. “Arlen, gotta go.” I hung up on him and stepped out onto the sidewalk in front of her.

“
Tú
!”
she blurted. You!

“I thought you were gonna stop following me,” I said.

She tried to push past me, but I blocked her path again. “What you got there?” I nodded at the badly wrapped crossbow in her hand. “That a crossbow?”

A bunch of storm clouds rolled across her face. “I should have killed you.”

“You’ve never killed anyone in your life. Take it from me, you don’t want to start.”

She turned away and strode across the road. I went after her. “Juliana, I’ve got some explaining to do. Let me buy you a drink.”

“No, I don’t care what you have to say. I don’t do friendly chitter-chatter with my father’s people,” she snapped.

“I’m not your father’s people and never was.”

She stopped on the other side of the road and stared into my face. “You lie.”

“All the time when I’m working undercover.”

She scoffed. “Undercover. You?”

Was it so hard to believe? “C’mon. Vodka, lime and soda, right? What have you got to lose?”

She examined my face, weighing the pros and cons. The pros had it. “I give you five minutes, no more.”

I found us a bar facing the river. We could have anything we liked as long as it was
aguardiente.
With my cover blown, I figured I could tell Juliana pretty much everything now without compromising any secrecy acts. So I debriefed her on Horizon Airport, the gun battle with Kirk Matheson and my subsequent escape across the border into Mexico. I took the spin off my reasons for sending Matheson home after she batted him into the weeds with her Renault. The events in Bogotá she already knew about, but I recapped them anyway. Then I told her about the house in Juárez and the camp in the Mexican desert that I subsequently escaped from. There were some details omitted, a few of the more challenging details such as the ones that concerned Bambi.

When I was finished, half an hour and two-thirds of the bottle of
aguardiente
later, she asked, “Why have you come back? Why are you here?”

“Unfinished business,” I said.

“You want to kill Juan de Apostles – I can see it in your eyes.”

I shook my head. “No, the United States government wants him dead or alive, along with his pal the Tears of Chihuahua. Which usually means the preference is to bring the fugitive home in a pine box. But killing him and Perez with a bullet is too quick and easy. I want ’em to go the hard way – have them stand trial, get convicted and spend the next thirty years on death row never knowing whether the next meal will be their last.”

Juliana signaled the barman to bring another bottle. Our terms were improving. She filled the glasses with the last of the first bottle and held her glass to me to toast. “I apologize then,” she said, her smile sultry and her brown eyes wandering a little with the booze.

I clinked my glass with hers. “What for?”

“I didn’t say goodbye to you in Bogotá. I left when you took a shower.”

“Forget about it. Tell me about the crossbow. It belonged to your father, am I right?”

“You know this already?”

“An educated guess. The ranch was full of that stuff and some of it is missing.”

Juliana lifted it off the floor, out of the bag and tore the paper away. “My father is a collector of old weapons. This is a
ballista,
a French crossbow. It looks old, but it is just a copy.” She handed it to me.

It was heavy, solid and obviously made by a craftsman. Half a dozen bolts were taped to the intricately carved wooden stock. The mechanism for pulling back the thick gut string was still in the bag.

“When I visited him,” she continued, “he would tell me stories. I think these were used in the Hundred Years War against England, maybe around 1400?” She was unsure. “My father had this one made from original plans. It has a range of over three hundred yards. He had it made because he wanted to see how well it would work.”

“What was it doing in that shop?”

“I think it was given as payment to the man who owns the shop.”

“For what?”

She looked at me matter-of-fact. “The man also has a truck. He moved some of my father’s possessions to his new ranch.”

That electric tingle in the back of my neck returned, only this time it ran up the back of my neck, down my spine and into my nuts.
I always know where he is. He tells me. I am his daughter.
“And you know where that ranch is?”

“Yes, of course.”

*

We left Juliana’s Renault outside the motel and took the rental. I drove around for a while until I was sure we weren’t being tailed.

“When I left you, I got a job at a bar in the Zona G and also did some modeling work,” Juliana said, explaining her movements. “On the days I had no work, I would take a book, drive to the Hacienda Mexico, and just park there and wait. A stakeout, yes?”

“Did you eat donuts?”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

“He has many houses, but I was sure he would come back to the ranch. Did you know that the ranch was his favorite place in the world?”

I shook my head.

“This was his true home.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Are we clear?”

I checked the rear-view mirror again. There’d been no traffic in it for a while. “We’re good,” I told her. “Has he been in contact with you?”

“No. I have heard nothing.”

I’ll admit to being disappointed when I heard that, but there was something about Juliana’s certainty that convinced me to just go with it.

“There’s a road coming up on your left,” she said. “Turn there.”

It was a minor road, unsealed. We drove for a minute or two in silence until I prompted her. “So you were saying something about the ranch.”

“After what happened at the American base, it was all over the news, of course. Where is the last place people would think my father would dare to go? It would be the ranch. But I knew he would come back, even for a visit. So I waited. Some nights I slept in the car. Then, early in the morning maybe four days after the fight in your country, a truck came to the ranch when it was still dark. They had the security code. The gate opened and they went in.”

“What about the army?”

“What army?”

“Forget about it,” I said. “Then what?”

“Around an hour later they came out, closed the gate and drove away. I followed, headlights off. And where I’m taking you now is where the truck went.”

“So you don’t know for sure that your father is there?”

“Yes, of course he is there.”

“But you haven’t
seen
him.”

“He is there.”

Hmm … A joint Colombian Special Forces/CIA go team wouldn’t descend on this ranch without hard intelligence. The word of a resentful dependent wouldn’t cut it.

“Did you talk about your father with the guy in the shop, the truck owner?”

“No, of course I didn’t. Why would I send him a warning like that? Do you think I am stupid?”

“Just checking. So what was your plan?”

“What plan do you mean?”

“You still want to kill him, right?”

“Of course.”

“How were you going achieve that?” I asked her.

“I was going to steal a boat.”