"What does that mean, Pablo?"
Forcing the name between his bloodied lips left Vélez with a foul taste in his mouth.
Instead of answering, his captor looked beyond his prisoners and raised his right hand, snapped his fingers some other watchers who had been observing the proceedings from behind Vélez and his lieutenant, staying silent, out of sight.
On cue, two men Vélez had never seen before stepped into sight, one to his right, the other passing by Araújo on the left. Although the men were strangers, Vélez recognized the type. They were sicarios—hired killers—both in their mid-twenties, dressed in track suits and expensive running shoes. Each carried a red plastic gasoline container in one hand, the usual five-gallon size.
"Treason shall be expunged," their leader said. "Eradicated. Only ashes of betrayal will remain."
He nodded, and the silent hitmen both removed the twist caps from their fuel containers, tossing them aside. As one, they stepped forward, raising the plastic jerrycans, prepared to dump their contents on the seated prisoners.
"Wait!" Vélez cried, hating the tremor in his voice. "Don't do this, Pablo!"
"You pretend I have a choice, Rogelio," his judge and would-be executioner replied. "How often have you done this very thing, or worse, while you pretended to safeguard my interests?"
"I swear to Jesus Christ above that I have not betrayed you, jefe!"
"Save your breath for Him," the man in charge replied. "Assuming He will deign to speak with you." Then, speaking to his men, "Proceed!"
Vélez was gagging on the fumes of high-test gasoline before the man assigned to him began pouring the fuel over his head. Eyes shut against the reeking deluge, Vélez gasped as it awakened fresh pain from his facial gashes—nothing, he knew all too well, compared with what would follow soon.
Beside him, Vélez heard Araújo vomiting, spewing some of the alcohol he had consumed within the hour, give or take, at the Agujero de la Gloria, when he believed this night would end with sweaty sex on satin sheets. Fighting an urge to follow suit, Vélez cried out instead.
"Please reconsider, Pablo! It is not too late!"
"For you, it is. The choice was yours." Then, to his men, "¡Encederlos!"
Vélez could only close his eyes and lips against the coming holocaust. He heard cheap lighters thumbed to life before one clattered at his feet, the other near Araújo's. Still, there was no blocking out the flames, their searing heat, as flames erupted from his hair, his flesh and clothing.
For a split-second, Vélez recalled advice he had received from some old cartel warrior years before. "If you are ever trapped by fire and can't escape," his mentor in those bygone days cautioned, "face toward the flames and breathe as deeply as you can, to sear your lungs and hasten death."
But now, blazing from scalp down to his seven hundred-dollar handmade shoes, all that Rogelio Velez could do was scream.
2
Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve, Central African Republic
Reg Hardy scanned the tree line thought his Steyer AUG's Swarovski 1.5× telescopic sight, watching for movement in the shadows there.
The Austrian assault rifle ranked high on Hardy's list of favorites. A bullpup design with its magazine slotted behind the pistol grip and trigger, it chambered 5.56×45mm NATO rounds and fed them with selective-fire capability ranging from single shots to three-round bursts or fully automatic fire. Translucent magazines allowed a shooter to determine his remaining ammo with a glance. The weapon weighed a trifle under eight pounds, measured 31.1 inches from its muzzles flash suppressor to the butt plate of its shoulder stock, and qualified for service with thirty-five armies and seventeen major law enforcement agencies worldwide.
Today, accompanied by four veterans of FACA—the Central African Armed Forces—Hardy was prepared to intercept a group of poachers who had plagued the government and its endangered wildlife far too long.
The unit did not plan on taking any prisoners. The Dzanga-Sangha Reserve, established in 1990, sprawls over 1,544 square miles of rainforest in the southwestern CAR. Ecologically rich, it harbors more than fifty species of mammals, many under threat of imminent extinction, plus an estimated 2,500 Baka natives dwelling as their forebears had during the Stone Age. Wildlife tourism at the reserve boosts the CAR's weak economy, but it still ranks among the world's poorest nations, where employed citizens earn an average $400 per year.
The reserve also supports a thriving black market for poachers, particularly stalking western lowland gorillas, shot and dismembered for ghoulish "souvenirs," and forest elephants slaughtered for ivory.
Today, Reg Hardy had the pachyderms in mind.
Forest elephants are the smallest of Earth's three surviving species, noted for oval-shaped ears and straighter, downward-pointing tusks than those of their larger relatives in Africa and Asia. Living in family groups of twenty-odd individuals, they contribute greatly to the Dark Continent's rain forests, foraging on leaves, fruit, and tree bark, nicknamed "mega-gardeners of the forest," replenishing natural flora with seeds and pits passed through the elephants' digestive tracts.
That is, if they survived.
Poachers cared about nothing but money. International bans on ivory sales had the same effect as Prohibition had on alcohol, or global drug laws on trafficking in controlled chemicals. On one recent occasion, poachers had massacred an entire herd of twenty-six forest elephants, carting off the tusks, leaving their carcasses to rot.
Reg Hardy's hand-picked team sought to accord those butchers the precise respect which they accorded to their prey.
Forget about negotiation and "tough love." Across the so-called "Third World" justice was a stone-cold bitch.
Hardy focused and froze. Softly advised his men, "Movement at ten o'clock."
Emerging from the shadows, half a dozen men in camouflaged fatigues, all armed with rifles, edged into the open. Ranged around Hardy, his men sighted along the barrels of their Russian AKM assault weapons.
"Ready," he said, then squeezed the Steyr's trigger, reaching out across one hundred yards to drop the central figure in the poachers' skirmish line.
Short bursts of auto fire from his companions did the rest. Surprised, a couple of the poachers got off random shots but did no damage to the ambush team. Within a span of ninety seconds all of them were down and out for good. Hardy felt nothing in the aftermath of sudden mayhem other than the satisfaction of a job well done.
No questions would be asked in Bangui, the CAR's capital city. No one among the thirty-one appointees to the CAR's Council of Ministers cared what went on in the hinterlands, as long as they could plausibly preserve deniability. Hardy's contract was strictly off the books, permitting any ministers who'd taken payoffs from a poaching network or illicit buyers to retain the cash with no fear of demands for a refund. This time next week, they'd likely have another source of bribes lined up and Hardy adjust his sights for those offenders.
Hardy led his companions over open ground to form a ring around their fallen enemies. One of the poachers was still moaning, moving fitfully. An AKM round ended that.