Spy Hard

“Go to the other village.” He pointed east.

The small collection of huts they’d left the previous morning was a day’s trek for the adults, would be only slightly more for the kid. The boy should be safe there. Cristobal’s men weren’t heading that way. Jase and the others would have met them if they had been.

He stepped back into the smoldering hut and grabbed some fruit that had been spilled to the ground, took a piece of cloth to wrap the food, then added his canteen to the bundle. “Here.”

The boy wouldn’t move an inch.

He shoved the kid gently in the right direction.

The boy stepped two feet away, then stopped and stared at him expectantly.

“¡Vamos!”

Might as well have been talking to a wild fig tree.

He turned his back on the boy and moved toward the jungle, hoping the kid would understand that the both of them needed to get going.

But instead of heading for relative safety, the kid followed him.

“You can’t come with me,” he said in Spanish, having no idea if the kid spoke that language or some isolated native tongue. A day’s trek in the jungle to the nearest village would be perilous for the boy, but a day’s trek in the jungle with a team of seasoned killers would be even worse.

The kid knew the jungle. With some luck, he had a chance to reach the village. But if he went to Don Pedro’s place on the river, his life wouldn’t be worth a damn thereafter.

“Run for it.” Jase put on a scary face and stomped his foot.

But instead of taking off, the boy began crying again, which made him feel like a heartless bastard. Which he was, by the way, so he didn’t fully understand why his conscience would choose this moment to have a fit.

“Go,” he said again, his tone suspiciously close to pleading.

But Alejandro reappeared from the jungle, followed by the other four, and the boy’s options disappeared.

The team spread through the village, looking for evidence of Cristobal’s men and picking out whatever they wanted to take. No sense in waste.

Alejandro came for the kid.

Jase stepped between them in a stance that would allow him action no matter which way he needed to move.

“I saw him first.” The man put his hands on his hip.

His protest drew the others’ attention. Lucas strolled closer. As team leader, he was responsible for settling trouble.

Jase being the latest addition to the group, he ranked lowest, firmly on the bottom of the pecking order. He didn’t have enough influence to take what he wanted, and to show weakness by admitting that he wanted to save the boy would make the others suspicious. It would conflict too much with the killer image he’d been taking care to cultivate.

“I looked into his dead mother’s eyes. Her spirit said it’ll curse me if I don’t take care of the kid.” He nodded toward the charred hut with a grave face.

Lucas moved on. Jungle superstition was its own thing. Nobody went against it.

Alejandro kept the scowl on his face. “Don Pedro would pay me a hundred dollars for him.”

Unlikely. Maybe twenty, if Don Pedro needed someone to help out around the dog-fighting rings he ran in the larger towns downriver, or another runner, or a jungle spy—all jobs with a very low life expectancy.

Jase pulled his second-best knife, the one with the serrated double edge that Alejandro had coveted from the beginning, and held it out on his palm.

The man accepted it with a shrug as if being generous, as if the knife wasn’t worth ten times more than what he could have gotten for the boy.

“Hey, Jase found himself a little brother,” he called out to the rest, and joined in their laughter as he loped off, not wanting to miss any of the scavenging.

The men thought of the forest-dwelling natives as little more than animals, so calling one Jase’s brother was an insult. Like calling him stupid, which he was. He risked a multimillion-dollar mission almost a year in the making for a scrawny kid.

He shook his head, then squatted in front of the boy and pointed at himself. “Jase.” Then lifted his eyebrows and pointed at the latest complication in his life. Now he would have the responsibility to protect the kid at the compound, and find a way to get him out of this godforsaken corner of the jungle to safety, the sooner the better.

“Mochi.” The boy wiped his tears with the back of his dirty little hand.

Jase rubbed the bridge of his nose then looked at the men picking through the village. Rough and tough killers, every one of them. On some level, he wasn’t much better. He’d certainly seen and caused plenty of violence over the years. What on earth was he going to do with a kid? It’d be a miracle if his cover wasn’t blown and they both survived the day.

THE LAST LEG of the trek back to camp had exhausted the men. They sat around the beaten-up table in the kitchen at the back of the barracks half asleep, taking their last puffs of smoke, their last swigs of the homemade tequila that was being passed around. Night had settled on the jungle around them, thick and dark, exhaustion pulling them toward their bunks in the barracks.

“I need to talk to Alejandro,” Lucas said, and nodded toward Jase. “See if he’s up at the house.”

That got his attention and woke him up. A seal of approval. He’d never been sent up to the house before, not once since he’d joined Don Pedro’s empire of crime two months ago. But now it seemed he’d proven himself with the weeklong trek through the jungle and his assistance with the collection of debts.

Plus, he’d discovered the burned village—important intelligence. He’d fully gained Lucas’s trust at last, which brought him one step closer to Don Pedro himself, one step closer to crucial information on his operations and business associates.

He glanced at Mochi, who slept on a rug by the woodstove. The women who were responsible for feeding the men had taken care of him. He’d made it through the day, but how long his good luck would continue remained a question. The sooner Jase found a way to get him to another village the better.

He finished his yerba maté and stood to lumber off into the darkness, up to the house where Don Pedro kept his most nefarious secrets.

Sharp voices, men arguing in the barracks, wafted through the night air. A dog barked in the distance. The compound that housed Don Pedro’s army of criminals teemed with life, yet Jase felt alone in the middle of it all.

Trust no one. Don’t let your guard down for a single second. Those were the top two keys to his survival at the moment. Don’t get involved on a personal level would have been a good third, but he’d shot that to hell when he’d taken on Mochi this morning.

The downstairs windows of Don Pedro’s jungle hacienda were dark. The only light came from upstairs, from Don Pedro’s private living quarters—strictly off-limits to all but his closest confidants. Even Lucas wasn’t allowed up there. Since Cristobal’s attack on his life at his old jungle headquarters, the Don had become paranoid.

Jase slowed as he passed the building he’d observed so many times from afar. He knew every door, every window, every man who was allowed in. He had a plan. And now that he could freely move around the compound, he would be able to implement his plans, slowly, carefully, over the upcoming days.

He glanced up at the balcony and caught a dark shape that didn’t quite blend into the rest of the shadows. His hand inched toward his weapon as he moved closer.

A single shot.

One shot could take out the Don right now. The man was responsible for over 10 percent of the drugs and illegal weapons that reached the U.S. Credible intelligence indicated that he was also providing weapons for terrorist cells and was possibly involved in a plan to smuggle terrorists across the U.S. border.

Except, even if he died right now, tonight, someone else would take his place by next week. Someone like Cristobal.

So Jase’s orders didn’t include assassination. He was to come away with a chart of Don Pedro’s organization. They needed to know how he was linked to the other major crime lords in the area, what local cops and higher-up politicians were on his payroll, and who his connections were to those terrorist cells he was rumored to be negotiating with.

Jase’s team—the Special Designation Defense Unit—had gained important documents last year. The notebook they’d acquired held crucial information, but not enough. Colonel Wilson wanted more before he launched a serious offensive. As big as Don Pedro was, he was just the first loose thread. Jase had to tug gently, and if he did it right he might just unravel the whole tapestry of corruption and violence.

He had a bug hidden in the lining of his left boot, meant for the Don’s office.