At least none that they knew about.
His suite was large, befitting Sheldon Grant's rising-star status in Silicon Valley, fitted with a king-sized bed and all attendant frills. The en suite bathroom's shower was contained inside a floor-to-ceiling booth constructed out of tinted glass and steel. Beside it stood a waist-high sink surmounted by a large round mirror and a shelf loaded with toiletries by housekeeping. A toilet and bidet, both jet-black like the sink and shower's frame completed the ensemble.
Grant checked his Hublot Classic Fusion watch and saw it was too early for the other members of his team to be checked into the hotel. He phoned down for room service—cuchuco soup to start, chicken tamales, crepes for dessert—with black coffee to wash it down. Within an hour and a half, at most, his cell phone would announce the other SFX members' arrival, bypassing the Click Clack's office switchboard.
Once they had convened, it would be time to reach out for Camilo Román, said to be a local asset of the DEA. If they could track him down, a face-to-face would be arranged.
But first, before they took that risk, another call would be required, this one to contacts Grant was reasonably certain he could trust—the emphasis on "reasonably," since there were no solid constants in Colombia.
Those contacts would, or should, come through with hardware to facilitate their next series of moves. And failing that…well, it could see their trip to Medellín cut short, awash in blood.
His food arrived. Mahoney dug in with a will and finished it in something close to record time, still managing to savor every bite. That was a skill he'd learned in basic training, followed on through Delta Force, and it had always served him well. He'd never suffered from a case of indigestion in his life, no matter what he ate, how quickly he consumed it, or the circumstances under which he was compelled to dine.
Call that dumb luck or talent. Either way, he didn't feel inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth just now.
The meal would carry him to midnight and beyond, the strong black coffee keeping him awake until his night's work was completed and he found some time to rest, if that were even possible. The less time spent in Medellín, the better he would like it, but if Preston Chandler's story had even the least basis in fact—not resurrection of a dead man, surely, but some plot to make it seem that way—the trip would be extended.
And the task would shift from information gathering to rooting out the problem, causing it to go away.
Too much to hope for?
Optimism rarely entered into Grant Mahoney's feelings, but self-confidence assured him that if a solution could be found, he and his team of crack professionals stood a fair chance of coming out the other side alive.
And failing that, they would unleash such hell on Medellín that the return of Pablo Escobar, in flesh or fantasy, would be the least of problems faced by local law enforcement or the DEA.
5
Bello, Antioquia
Bello lies twelve miles north of downtown Medellín. Its name translates to English as "The Beautiful One," and while that may be true of its topography, it's safe to say that most inhabitants would disagree.
A recent "quality of life" survey found 39 percent of Bello's population trapped in the "low" socioeconomic strata, 36 percent "medium-low," and 20 percent ranked "low-high," whatever that means. Only 0.1 percent rated "medium-high," their homes described euphemistically as "rustic houses located on the sidewalks." In real-life terms, that left some eighteen hundred of the city's 372,000 inhabitants wealthy enough to lord it over the rest and run things their own way.
Bello sprawls over fifty-fife square miles, but even that is deceiving, less than eight square miles rated as urban. It occupies a tilted plain in the Aburrá Valley of the Andes Mountains, the bulk of its production agricultural, including livestock, coffee—and, of course, cocaine.
Gilberto Garavito only cared about the last part. More specifically, he cared about who grew the coca leaves, processed them into paste, and then refined them into powder that that would turn tremendous profits for his jefe and himself upon delivery to the United States. In that pursuit, he had allied himself with a demented genius, falling into line with a bizarre plan to revive a martyred icon, still loved and admired in Antioquia by throngs that rivaled those who'd feared and hated him in life.
Sometimes, Gilberto saw himself as the midwife at the rebirth of Pablo Emilio Escobar Gaviria, founding father of the former Medellín Cartel and Colombia's late "King of Cocaine."
Except that now, "late" was a relative description, swiftly fading like a morning mountain mist.
This evening, as dusk fell over Antioquia, Gilberto and a dozen of el jefe's soldiers stood outside a warehouse in the Bello suburb of La Gabriela, fronting on the Medellín River. Inside, a roughly equal number of selected targets were at work packaging kilos of pure cocaína for shipment into Panama, from there to the Bahamas, and beyond that island chain to Florida.
Gilberto and his master had decided that the shipment would be theirs, increasing the substantial fortune of their new revived cartel. But first, its present owners must be laid to rest.
"All ready?" Garavito scanned the faces of his twelve sicarios, each man in turn nodding agreement that he was prepared to strike and take no prisoners.
Nine of the soldiers carried automatic rifles, mostly Russian AK-47s, although two of them preferred M4 carbines, a shorter, lighter version of the standard U.S. military issue M16A2 assault rifle. The other three held Benelli M4 Super 90 combat shotguns, semiautomatic weapons loaded with eight twelve-gauge buckshot rounds a piece. Aside from shoulder weapons, each carried at least one sidearm, holstered for convenience on their hips or tucked away in armpit rigs.
Gilberto, as their leader in the absence of their resurrected master, had opted for a Belgian-made FN P90 submachine gun, futuristic in its compact bullpup design with an integrated reflex sight and fully ambidextrous controls. The SMG weighed 5.7 pounds and measured less than twenty inches overall. Its unique top-mounted magazine held fifty of manufacturer FN Herstal's small-caliber, high-velocity 5.7×28mm ammunition, firing at a full-auto rate of nine hundred rounds per minute, with a muzzle velocity of 2,350 feet per second and an effective range of 220 yards. His backup weapon was a vintage Bren Ten semiautomatic pistol chambered for 10mm Auto rounds developed in the 1980s and still widely praised as one of that era's best pistols, with a muzzle velocity of 1,600 feet per second.
Most of the individuals they would confront inside the warehouse were grunt labor, clad in skimpy underwear to keep them from secreting any drugs about their persons, but Gilberto knew that half a dozen guards, at least, stood ready to defend the plant. With all that had occurred of late, that number might be larger now.
"Remember," he advised his soldiers. "Cause no damage to the llello. It is worth more than your life or mine. As for the guards and workers, all must die."
More nods around the ring of hard-faced men who stood before him. Satisfied, Gilberto led them toward the backdoor of the warehouse, seemingly unguarded, though he'd seen the CCTV cameras mounted above the loading dock.
The door was locked, of course. One of his shotgunners stepped forward, quickly aimed, and fired four breaching rounds into the door's deadbolt and hinges, then stepped back, reloading as the others rushed inside, Gilberto Garavito bringing up the rear.