The man who would be king finished his drink, prepared to make an early night of it and sleep alone for once. He had no wife, no regular lover, no living relatives who might have recognized him after his expensive transformation. At present, it was safest for him to remain a solitary man, immune to physical distractions and emotional entanglements.
There would be time enough to build a family, if he were so inclined, when he was well and truly recognized as king of all that he surveyed.
Until then, nothing else mattered.
And if he failed, at last…well, nothing mattered then, either, except to write his name in history, with blood-red letters ten feet tall.
6
Asomadera Park, Medellín
"You think he'll show?" asked Blake Mahoney.
"Fingers crossed," his brother Grant replied. "We're pretty much dead in the water without him."
"I have to say that Chandler left me feeling hinky."
"I'd agree, but he needs information from us. No percentage in it for him, dicking us around."
"Unless somebody farther up the ladder has a score to settle we don't know about."
"We've never had a beef with DEA before," Grant said. "If they were gunning for us, why not make a move at home, instead of flying us down here?"
"Deniability, for one thing," Blake suggested. "Some of them are just damned devious, besides."
"We'll take it slow and easy, bro. And don't forget we're covered."
For triangular converging fire, in fact, with Hardy, Karpin and Dartnell on station, watching out for any traps, ready to make their move if anything smelled rotten.
Anything beyond the usual in Medellín, that was.
The team had stocked up on equipment from a local dealer they'd done business with before, no reason to distrust him other than the fact that he existed in Colombia. The brothers carried Glocks with sound suppressors, while their teammates had more firepower available at need. Grant hoped it wouldn't come to that so quickly, but it always helped to be prepared.
Asomadera Park was one of Medellín's natural treasures, lovingly maintained, some eighty-three green acres wedged between the suburbs of Las Palmas, San Diego and El Salvador. Its crowning glory, Cerro la Asomadera, looms sixteen hundred feet above sea level, ranked with Pan de Azúcar Hill, El Salvador Hill, El Volador Hill, El Picacho Hill, Las Tres Cruces Hill, Nutibara Hill and Santo Domingo Hill as one of Medellín's "guardian" or "tutelary" hills offering panoramic views of Antioquia's capital city.
After nightfall, it was also a primary "cruising" site for members of the gay community, on par with Central Park in New York City or San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. No lonely men had neared the two Mahoney brothers at their hilltop table yet, nor had they glimpsed the contact Preston Chandler had arranged from stateside.
And Camilo Román, by Grant's watch, was running late. Not much, so far, but seven minutes in the heart of Medellín could be a lifetime and then some.
Grant made a quick radio check with the SFX team's other members, strategically posted around Asomadera Hill. Dartnell and Hardy had no action to report, but Natalie announced a solitary stroller moving toward the hilltop, acting vaguely nervous.
"Physical description?" Grant inquired.
"He looks enough like Román's photograph to pass," she answered back. "Which isn't saying much. He could be any third or fourth guy on the street in Medellín."
"You have him covered, Number Two?"
Grant's query that time went to Hardy, waiting with his sniper's rifle to unload on any threat that came their way.
"I've got him now," the Brit came back. "It could be him, but I'd agree it's hard to say."
Especially with someone running wild and claiming to be Pablo Escobar, Grant thought. And said to all his watchers, "Fair enough. Just cover him and see what happens next."
Blake shifted on his concrete bench and eased a hand inside his lightweight windbreaker, ready with his pistol if the wrong guy showed his face or Camilo Román had some trick up his sleeve.
"I've got him," Blake announced.
Grant turned, followed his younger sibling's gaze, and saw a man approaching. He stood five foot six or seven, seeming smaller from the way his shoulders slumped. Unruly hair—combed better in the photo they'd received from Preston Chandler back in San Diego—crowned an oval face, dark halfmoons visible beneath the twitchy eyes.
"From here, I can't tell if he's high or just about to blow a gasket," Blake observed.
"Could be the jumpy sort," Grant said, "with Chandler squeezing him to give up Pablo two-point-oh."
"Or maybe setting us up," Blake suggested. "Worried about getting caught up in the crossfire."
"If it breaks that way, we'll make sure that he does."
"Damn straight."
The man approaching them now wore a denim jacket, jeans to match, and running shoes that had seen better days. His hands were thrust into the jacket's pockets, out of sight, until Grant signaled him to stop and made a show of spreading out his own hands, empty for inspection. Román—there could be no doubt as to his I.D. now—complied, turning the pockets inside-out to show he'd left no weapons stashed in either one of them.
"Give us a spin," Blake said, and made spun his left hand in a circle, while his right still gripped the hidden Glock.
Again, Camilo Román followed orders, hoisting up his jacket's hem as he revolved, showing that nothing had been clipped onto his belt or tucked beneath it.
"Okay," Grant said. "Have a seat. Let's talk."
Before he sat down on the cold, hard bench, Román surveyed the hilltop park surrounding him and the two gringos he had been assigned to meet.
"Expecting company?" the slightly older, somewhat taller of them asked.
"Hoping for none," Román replied.
"No sweat," the other said. He looked enough like his companion that they might have been related somehow. "We've had people tracking you. You're clean, unless you want to tell us something off the top. Maybe a homer stitched into your clothes? A drone somewhere up high?"
"Nothing," said the Colombian. "I have no wish to be here, much less broadcast the event."
"But here you are," the first gringo to speak replied. Román fixed him in mind as Number One and did not bother asking for a name.
"My manipulador—how you say it, 'handler'—gave me no choice in the matter."
"And his name would be…?" asked Number Two.
"You know his name."
"So, humor me."
"He introduced himself to me as Preston Chandler. Whether that's his name in fact, I cannot say."
"That would have happened when the DEA arrested you for smuggling coke into the States," said Number One.
"Sí." Román saw no point in evading what they must have known already.
"And you cut a deal to save yourself," said Number Two.
"Just as you say."