"We'd have to vet him, obviously," Grant replied. "However many hoops he has to jump through, Preston is amenable."
"I'd bet somebody said the same to Kiki Camarena," Blake responded.
Enrique "Kiki" Camarena was a DEA agent in Mexico who'd been kidnapped and tortured to death by members of the Guadalajara Cartel, launching a blood feud that destroyed that syndicate four years later, leaving the rival Gulf Cartel to pick up the remnants and inaugurate Mexico's ongoing drug war, costing some 150,000 lives on both sides at the last estimate, with no end in sight.
"Easy to die down there," Natalie told the room.
"Easy to die on any job we take," Grant countered. "If we get down there and don't think we can handle it, we'll call it off. Now, shall we put it to a vote?"
Despite their obvious misgivings, the decision was unanimous in favor of the plan, at least up to the point of traveling to Medellín and checking into it first-hand. None of the SFX team readily believed that Pablo Escobar was back among the living, but a cool two million dollars plus expenses made the tale worth checking out.
And stranger things had happened, after all.
The Third Reich's Nazis were a case in point. Aside from some ten thousand welcomed into the postwar United States as valued "friends" who labored on behalf of NASA and the CIA, others had scattered farther south, rebuilding lives in South America. No less than four skulls were "identified" as the remains of Adolf Hitler's second-in-command and private secretary, Martin Bormann, between 1945 and '68, while classified reports had him alive and well in Argentina, dreaming of a Fourth Reich that he would command himself. Auschwitz "Angel of Death" Josef Mengele was another monster who refused to stay buried, his death reported time and time again before war's end and 1992, when DNA testing finally confirmed that he'd drowned while swimming at a beach resort in Paraguay.
Hell, as recently as 2019 British journalists had published "overwhelming evidence" that Hitler himself faked suicide in 1945, escaping from Berlin and living to a ripe old age in Argentina.
And if their trip to Medellín turned out to be in vain, at least it would have been a profitable waste of time.
Assuming all of them returned alive.
When the other members of the SFX ensemble had gone home to pack for Medellín, the Mahoney brothers sat together, sipping Bushmills Black Bush Irish Whiskey neat. The Old Bushmills Distillery had been producing first-class liquor in County Antrim, Northern Ireland since 1608, and in Grant Mahoney's opinion it never failed to hit the spot.
"You buy this story?" Blake inquired, as he refilled his glass.
"I'm not buying anything," Grant said. "We're selling services, remember?"
"I get it. But this has a certain smell about it, don't you think?"
"The cartels always do. We've butted heads with them before."
"I'm all for that, don't get me wrong. Take down some bad hombres, light up a lab or two. But chasing ghosts, bro? Seriously?"
"Preston isn't claiming that Don Pablo's back," Grant said. "And you can bet that his director isn't either. But if anyone is trying to resuscitate the Medellín Cartel, it's worth a look—particularly if it puts us two mill in the black."
The Medellín Cartel, the brainchild of Escobar brothers Pablo and Ricardo, backed by half a dozen scumbag partners and a small army of ruthless soldiers, had dominated cocaine traffic entering the States from 1976 to '93, supported by high-ranking Colombian politicians and alleged lawmen. At one point, when world opinion forced Don Pablo to accept a prison term in lieu of extradition to America, the men in charge of Bogotá allowed their benefactor to construct his own luxurious prison—dubbed La Catedral, "The Cathedral"—where he'd enjoyed gourmet meals, played soccer with the troops who doubled as his guards, soaked in a hot tub or chilled out beneath a manmade waterfall, and watched his family's mini-palace through a telescope. When even that phony captivity began to wear on him, Pablo "escaped" and spent what were presumed to be his last years on the run, pursuing a scorched-earth police of narcoterrorism that included car-bombings, murdering half the judges on Colombia's Supreme Court, slaughtering scores of political opponents and media critics, while blasting commercial airliners out of the sky.
Even former covert allies welcomed his death—or some said suicide—in 1993, but had it all just been another game of smoke and mirrors?
If he had somehow faked his death and had returned now, even in his early seventies, the man who'd once supplied an estimated 85 percent of all cocaine snorted or mainlined in the USA still posed a threat. The bulk of his accumulated fortune—estimated at $30 million ten years before his final shootout—remained unaccounted for. By the time of his reputed death, it might have tripled or quadrupled that, hidden in helpful banks around the globe. No one had thought Pablo was joking back in 1983, when he'd offered to pay off Colombia's $10 billion national debt in exchange for blanket immunity, and that cash hadn't simply disappeared.
Since Escobar's reputed death, his most persistent rivals—based in Cali, 270 miles south of Medellín in the Valle del Cauca department—had been driven out of business, into prison cells or graves, via collaboration of the DEA and various Colombian officials finally disgusted by their homeland's evil reputation. That denouement brought Mexico's several cartels to the fore and ignited a free-for-all south of the border that might never end.
"How far do we trust this contact Preston's lined us up with?" Blake inquired.
"About as far as I can throw the U.S. embassy in Bogotá with one hand tied behind my back," Grant said. "Keeping the DEA at arm's length, we still have to watch out for the CIA, the National Police and damn near anybody else that you can think off. We've agreed to meet him, check him out, but we're not climbing into bed with anyone down there."
"And something else to think about," Blake said. Before Grant had a chance to ask, his brother forged ahead. "This 'ghost' or whatever he is sounds like he's stepping on a lot of toes, and that won't be restricted to Colombia. Offhand, I could name ten or twenty Mexican godfathers who would hate to see Don Pablo make a comeback. Ditto for the Santa Cruz Cartel out of Bolivia."
"No chance that we'll run short of targets then, I guess," Grant said.
"With that in mind…" Blake poured his shot glass full again and tossed it off, then rose to leave. "I'll see you bright and early, then. My go bag's ready, but I need some beauty sleep."
Grant smiled, toasted his younger sibling. Smiled and said, "So, how long did you plan on sleeping in?"
4
José María Córdova International Airport, Medellín
The SFX team was arriving piecemeal, each member prepared beforehand with multiple passports in various names and purported homelands, all with cover stories that should pass inspection unless special scrutiny by experts was applied.
José María Córdova, opened for service in 1985, is Colombia's second-largest airport after El Dorado International in Bogotá, moving more than eight million passengers yearly. Its opening replaced aging Medellín International, offering flights throughout the Western Hemisphere plus regular service to Spain. It stands in the city of Rionegro, twelve miles southeast of Medellín, ranking as the most important airport in the Antioquia Department and in western Colombia, acting as a major hub for Avianca Airlines and its low-cost competitor, Viva Colombia.