Page 3 of Rogue
Chapter Two
Noah
“You know what this meeting is about?” I risk a sidelong glance at the impassive face of Ricardo Mendez, first lieutenant of La Frontera drug cartel and the most trusted confidant of its C.E.O. and leader, Victor Sanchez, who’s known on the streets as El Gato. I’d received the summons to the palatial Acapulco home of the drug kingpin yesterday, and he’d arranged for one of his private Learjets to fly me from Miami to Mexico this morning. I’d been surprised to see Mendez waiting in the car outside the airport when I’d stepped out into the arid heat. Usually El Gato sends one of his henchmen to drive me to wherever we’re meeting to discuss an arms deal, and the fact that he had Mendez drive me means this is not going to be a typical business meeting.
I feel a bead of sweat trickle down my spine. When you work for a drug cartel, you have to be comfortable with the possibility of dying on any given day. I just want to live long enough to avenge the deaths of my wife and daughter.
Ricardo’s never been one for small talk, which is usually fine by me, but if I’m about to walk into some sort of shit storm, I’d like to know about it, and he’s the best one to tell me. Besides, we have little else to talk about on the thirty-minute drive to the compound of my boss, the world’s most powerful drug trafficker, who is responsible for as much as half of the illegal narcotics imported into the U.S. from Mexico each year.
“El Gato will tell you the details,” he says, never taking his eyes off the road.
I give up and stare out the window, watching the Sierra Madre del Sur mountains disappear in the distance. When we arrive at Sanchez’s compound—and it is a compound, albeit one surrounded by lush palm trees and set into the side of a cliff overlooking the ocean and the Golden Zone—we’re waved through the electronic gates by armed security guards. I’m patted down, which is standard practice, even for a trusted contractor like me, and then ushered out onto the terrace where El Gato is sitting, enjoying a cigar.
“Noah.” He smiles, but the smile doesn’t quite reach his black eyes. “Sit.”
I take the seat he indicates and wait patiently for him to explain why I’m here. He takes a puff of his cigar and slowly blows out smoke. “Liam Prescott, the Navy SEAL you procured the shipment of weapons from. Have you spoken to him?”
“Not since the initial deposit of funds into his bank account. He contacted me to confirm he’d gotten the AK-47s you asked for, fresh off the battlefield.” They’d be marked with the Arabic letter that signified they were part of the Iraqi Army arsenal and untraceable to the United States. “He said he’d moved them out of the Middle East pending delivery. But his team was called back before he could get them to me.” As a former Navy SEAL myself, I know that although Customs and Border Patrol officials screen the soldiers, their luggage, gear, and the cargo, the rules are bent a little for special forces. With classified hardware, shorter deployments, and unpredictable schedules, it’s typically just a cursory search for special team forces.
“Where are they?”
I shake my head. “He didn’t say. He’s supposed to contact me with a drop point by the end of the month. Maybe earlier, depending on when his mission concludes.”
“He’s dead.” Sanchez is watching me closely, and I wonder what he’s thinking. It crosses my mind that he might think I’m somehow double-crossing him. Luckily, I don’t have anything to hide. I’m genuinely shocked by the news that the brash and cocky but likeable blond Navy SEAL I’d met with six months ago to broker the arms deal is dead.
“What? How?”Fuck!This was supposed to be my last job for El Gato, the deal that was going to get me what I’ve been waiting three long years for—revenge on rival drug cartel leader Francisco Dominguez, who killed my wife and daughter. I was part of the SEAL team assigned to curtail the flow of drugs from Mexico to the U.S. by overthrowing the predominant drug cartel, which ultimately meant eliminating its powerful drug lord. After Dominguez found out I was the Navy SEAL sharpshooter tasked with taking him out, he kidnapped my family, tried to blackmail me into working for him, and when I refused, he killed them.
I’d been devastated. Hell, I’d been more than devastated; I’d been out of my mind with grief. The word on the team was I’d gone off the rails. I don’t deny it. It got to the point I couldn’t even leave my house, because every child I saw reminded me of Maggie. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her sweet face, and Sarah’s. And if the grief ever let up, the guilt was right there, ready to take over. I knew they’d died because of me. But after a while, something grew bigger than the grief and the guilt, something that finally gave me a reason to keep going—retribution.
I asked my commanding officer to send me back to Mexico, but he refused. It was too dangerous. So I quit the SEALs and offered my services to El Gato, the only cartel capable of touching Dominguez. I’ve spent the last three years gaining El Gato’s trust and building his power by procuring arms for his organization. With the hardware from Prescott, we were finally going to be in a position to launch a full-out attack on Dominguez, and El Gato promised me I could take out the drug lord myself. But if Prescott’s dead, there will be no gun shipment, and without the guns, there will be no attack on the Nuevo Leon cartel, which means no chance for me to finally avenge the deaths of Sarah and Maggie.
El Gato drums his fingers on the scarred table, bringing me back to the present, and the dead Navy SEAL. “He was killed during a raid in Pakistan.”
Sanchez takes another puff of the cigar, pauses for a long minute, and then exhales slowly before continuing. “Half a million American dollars is a lot to pay for nothing in return.”
I wait. Known for being as intelligent as he is ruthless, Sanchez has an extensive web of contacts and resources, and I have a feeling there’s more that he’s not saying. He fixes his intense gaze on me. “I intend to get the guns I’ve paid for. Prescott has a sister. Her name is McKenzie. I think she knows where the guns are.”
“How?”
“I’ve been watching her and her activities since I found out about his death, just to see if anything popped up. Last week she was in Costa Rica.”
“So? She’s a traveler.” I shrug. It wouldn’t surprise me. Liam Prescott had struck me as a daring, adventurous guy, the kind who liked to go new places, expand his horizons, and push his limits. He was a Navy SEAL, for fuck’s sake. In another life—before everything I loved was taken from me—we probably would have been friends. His sister is probably no different.
Sanchez frowns. “Actually, no. Quite the opposite. By all accounts, she’s a homebody, a littleratonawho, until last week, had never left the southeastern United States. Not the type who would travel to Costa Rica on a whim, much less jump off a waterfall.”
“She jumped off a waterfall? Why the hell would she do that?”
“Indeed.” The short but powerful Hispanic man steeples his fingers. “Apparently, her brother left behind some sort of list of places and experiences. She thinks it’s a… What’s the word…” He taps a blunt finger on the glass table.
“A bucket list?”
“Exactly. A bucket list.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You don’t?”
“You were special forces once. When you went on a mission, did you consider the possibility that you would die?”
“Every damn time.”
Sanchez smiles. “Exactly. In this way, the U.S. special forces and the drug cartels are the same. We live on borrowed time. Prescott smuggled the guns out of Iraq and left them somewhere while he returned to the Middle East. He knew he might get killed. It makes sense he would have left some sort of clue for someone—an insurance policy of sorts—in case he didn’t come back alive. I think that list is the clue, a map to where the guns are hidden.”
I have to admit it makes sense. “Do you think she knows?”
Sanchez shrugs. “I don’t know. That’s why I asked you to come.” His beady eyes bore into me, reminding me that this is someone who once beheaded a man who cheated him out of a kilo of cocaine and displayed his dismembered body on social media. He’s out half a million dollars on this deal, with the possibility of his name being linked to the shipment that could be God knows where now. “We have an agreement. You brokered a deal, and I expect you to see it through. You get me the guns, I back you up when you take out El Jefe. You fail me…” He shrugs, and the gesture speaks volumes. If I don’t find the guns, El Jefe will be the last of my worries.
“She’s going to Las Vegas next weekend. I want you to be there.” He pushes a manila folder across the table to me. “There’s everything my sources have gathered on her. Find the girl, figure out what she knows, and get the list.” He grinds the cigar into the ashtray, and the metaphor isn’t lost on me. “I want those guns.”
