Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 97134 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97134 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Belatedly, I realized one of the guards was asking why one of us didn’t have a hood. The other one barked out, “Se suponía que solo había uno de ellos.” There was only supposed to be one of them.
The guard snipped off the zip ties on my wrist. I guessed they knew we were screwed even if we managed to run off. Being this deep in an unknown terrain could be just as dangerous as being kept by the cartel.
They made a cursory attempt to pat me down but didn’t go low enough to find the knife before someone beckoned to us from the entrance.
It was as I expected, a jungle compound full of men with guns and various armed vehicles that could handle the rough terrain. We were led through a metal gate set in stucco walls to the main building within a large courtyard. Some curious eyes peered at us, but several people kept their eyes averted instead.
Carter slowed down enough for me to catch up. “I feel like I’m on the set of a shitty movie,” he murmured. “I keep expecting Jack Black to jump out with a Zorro mask.”
My eyes scanned the area, trying to pick up as much data as I could. I counted men, took stock of what kind of weapons they had, and noted the position of the sun overhead. Carter continued babbling nervously, mentioning the time his cousin Kevin forced him to watch the entire Breaking Bad series and then tried to get him to stick around for Dexter too.
“Maybe I shouldn’t mention shows about serial killers,” he said with a huff of laughter. “Carter, read the room,” he added to himself.
“It’s going to be okay,” I said again. “Been there, done that. You get me?”
I hadn’t told him about the time Champ, Elvo, and I had been snatched by a Taliban group and held for three days in a frozen shack in the mountains near Kajran. It had been a harrowing experience, and I’d been scared out of my mind—though I was for sure not telling Carter that part—but we’d managed to escape with a combination of patience and some smooth-talking by Elvo.
Carter turned to me. “Really?”
I nodded, still squinting against the overbright sunlight. When we passed through the open double doors and into the main house, the air dropped several degrees, and my eyes had the reverse problem of trying to adjust to the new dimness.
Guards flanked us on both sides, gripping our arms to make sure we didn’t veer off into unauthorized parts of the house. Someone trailed behind us with our supplies, and Carter kept looking back over his shoulder to make sure they were taking appropriate care of the electronics.
We finally entered a dark upstairs room with curtains drawn over the windows and a few lamps covered in colorful cloth to dim the light. A huge bedstead stood in the center of the left side of the room, and clusters of small sofas and chairs filled the right side. Women in black congregated here and there, weeping into handkerchiefs.
Whoever was in that bed must have been in bad shape.
We were stopped at the entrance while the head guard approached the bed and spoke in rapid Spanish too low for me to follow. I finally heard a different voice call in English, “Bring him to me.”
After shoving us into the room and closer to the bed, the guards held me back a little and nudged Carter the rest of the way to the side of the giant bed. A beefy man who looked to be fifty or sixty lay in the center of the bed. He had a head of thick dark hair and a bushy black mustache.
Why did all South American drug lords look the same? Was there some kind of bro code the way middle school girls tended to dress like each other? Or did they all secretly wish they were Maduro himself?
One of the guards said, “Gianlu—” Someone nearby hissed, and the guard froze before starting again. “Gustavo. Señor Santiago. Este es el doctor. El cardiólogo.”
“You are the doctor?” the man on the bed—who we now knew was Gustavo Santiago, considering the giant bed looked like a bedroom throne—asked with a suspicious, squinty look. “Heart doctor?”
Carter nodded. “Yes. I’m a cardiologist. Dr., ah… Dr. Carter.” The tips of his ears turned pink the way they did when he told a lie. I’d learned his tell on one of the first nights in Gelada when we’d been bored enough to play poker. “Are you sick?”
As if suddenly recalling some ailment, Santiago clutched at his chest and winced. “Yes. The pain. I am dying. You must save me.”
Carter blinked, shocked by the sudden onset of symptoms, but I frowned. Nothing about our intel suggested Santiago was unhealthy, but maybe that explained why he hadn’t been known to be active in the area.