JET - Sanctuary (31 page)

Jet nodded. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

Gaspar smiled, a somewhat pained expression. “As I said, the pleasure is mine. Good luck with your ‘errand,’ young lady. Although I’m quite sure you won’t need any.”

Alejandro led her out of the guesthouse. “I’ll have Hector take you to a photographer at nine. I’d attend to it myself, but my hands are full at the moment.”

“I can only imagine. Any decision on your brother? Has he surfaced?”

Alejandro didn’t answer. “I want to add my own thanks to my father’s. Once you’re finished in Moscow, you can always call on me if you need something. I have a long memory, and the offer’s sincere.”

“Let’s hope I never have to.”

Alejandro’s phone rang. He checked the screen and held it to his ear. “Will you excuse me?”

“Of course.”

Jet returned to the house, where the two loves of her life were blissfully unaware of the arrangements she’d just put into motion, sleeping peacefully after thirty-six hours of hell on earth. Hannah shifted as Jet sat beside her, and Jet eyed her daughter, thumb in her mouth, eyes screwed shut, breathing easily, and wondered whether there would ever come a time when there wouldn’t be danger lurking just over the horizon, threatening their lives and happiness.

She closed her eyes as the first faint rays of a new dawn filtered through the curtains, exhaustion catching up with her, the manic adrenaline jitters finally calmed now that, at least for a few hours, they were safe.

Chapter 40

Valparaíso, Chile

One of the two young women, barely out of her teens, pulled the sheet over her naked body as the other smirked at Rodrigo and lit a cigarette. Rodrigo had taken a shower and fortified himself with another couple of lines of cocaine, and was feeling eerily sober considering he’d gotten no sleep for two nights and had drunk a half bottle of top-shelf Scotch in the last few hours. He studied his reflection in the dresser mirror with blurry red eyes – the four days’ dusting of beard looked good on him, he thought. Maybe he’d keep it for a while.

Now that he was the effective head of the Soto empire, he could say or do anything he wanted. He had absolutely no doubt that Antonio and Franco would make short work of Alejandro – for all his brother’s airs, he wasn’t the leader their father had been, and the men wouldn’t follow him into battle the same way. With the empire in disarray, a swift strike would sever that head, leaving Rodrigo at the helm.

As it should be. He was the smartest of the pair, as proved by his negotiating this deal with the Verdugos from a position of strength. He’d be able to enjoy all the financial benefits of the business with none of the risks. Franco and his group would do all the heavy lifting, and Rodrigo could live like royalty, spending half his year in Europe and the other half in South America, perhaps racing a sailing yacht in different events around the globe, or maybe living in Beverly Hills and producing films. His talents were squandered in Chile – he was a renaissance man, bigger than their provincial country, and he couldn’t wait to get clear of it.

His father had never understood him. It had gotten so that Rodrigo didn’t even try to reason with the old man, who was obsessed with the organization he’d built and had failed to see the path it would have to follow to prosper. Merging the two gangs was not only brilliant, but necessary. As things in the narco-trafficking business changed, the organization had to change with them – wisdom his father was blind to.

No matter. What was done was done.

He extracted a wad of bills from his pocket and disdainfully flipped several onto the dresser. He’d had his fun and the girls had served their purpose, and now he needed to get things straight with Franco. The smoking girl pulled the sheet back to give him a view of her perfectly sculpted thighs and flat stomach, the smile on her face as knowing as a judge’s. He felt a stirring but shook it off. It was time to get something to eat and then see Franco.

“
Ciao
, darlings. See you around, eh?” he said as he pulled on his jacket.

“You don’t like us anymore?” the smoker said, affecting a pout.

“It’s not that. Things to do. Maybe I’ll be back tomorrow.”

“You have other girls?”

He grinned. “Of course.”

“But not like us.”

He winked at her. “Nothing like you.”

The brothel was in a large colonial home near the La Matriz del Salvador church, its green shutters clashing with the garish pink exterior. Rodrigo looked through the window at the surrounding buildings and shook his head – it would be a miracle if there was a decent restaurant anywhere nearby. He went to the bathroom and blew his nose, ignoring the blood, and then sauntered to the bedroom door.

“You come back soon, okay,
El Toro
? I need more of that crazy love you got,” the smoker said, her tone professionally flirtatious.

“We’ll see.”

He pulled the door closed behind him, ready to be rid of the whores, and then moved to the darkened stairway. A radio crooned a plaintive song downstairs, where a cleaning woman was scrubbing away the prior night’s debauchery from the lounge area. He was just about to take the first step when two iron hands gripped his arms from behind and a black cloth sack descended over his head. He screamed and struggled, and then a sharp stab of pain shrieked from his neck. His legs turned to jelly and he drifted away, his last thought that somebody had made a mistake.

~ ~ ~

Colonel Campos took a final swig of black coffee from a china cup and placed it on its saucer, finished with his meal and ready to face the new day. The paper had been filled with the story of Gaspar Soto’s daring prison break and subsequent crash, as it no doubt would be for many weeks. Those kinds of headlines rarely happened and were a dream come true for the news outlets, which sensationalized and distorted as well as any of their North American brethren.

The planted piece about an antiterrorism offensive in the mountains north of San Felipe was below the fold on the front page, where it would ensure visibility. As intended, it was long on speculation and short on detail, other than getting across that there were prisoners being held at a nearby military outpost.

He pushed back from the table and rose. His housekeeper stood by the kitchen entry, waiting to clear the table.

“Will you be home for dinner, sir?” she asked.

“Yes, I expect so.”

“Very good. Shall I make your favorite? I can pick up some fresh fish this afternoon.”

“That would be wonderful, Mari. Expect me by seven.”

He strode to the living room and collected his things – his briefcase, a stack of reports he’d brought home to study several days before, his overcoat. It would take the rest of the week for him to feel completely normal after the sleep deprivation of the last few days, but he could manage, and it had certainly been worth it. Franco would have to be extraordinarily generous this time, and Campos knew exactly what he was going to demand – an additional percentage of the take from the smuggling activity through the port. Franco would bitch and moan, but in the end he’d concede. At this point it was purely ceremonial; Franco was about to become far richer, and Campos saw no reason he shouldn’t share some of that wealth. After all, it had been his soldiers who’d done the dirty work, and without Campos’s help Franco would have still been losing men at the mouth of the mine.

Campos swung the heavy front door open and walked down the steps, but stopped near the bottom when he saw the four armed military policemen on the sidewalk, their expressions stern. He recognized the officer with them – a particularly hateful prick from Santiago whom Campos had always considered a meddler and a fool. Major Ariana, he remembered, as the man approached.

“Colonel Campos, you are under arrest.” Ariana turned to the nearest soldier. “Place him in restraints.”

“What is the meaning of this? This is preposterous,” Campos protested as the MPs wrenched his briefcase away from him and twisted his arms behind him as they cuffed him. “I’ll have you broken, Major,” Campos spat, his tone as menacing as an attack dog’s growl.

“I’d keep your mouth shut, Colonel. Just some advice. Save it for your trial.”

“You have no right–”

The major stepped nearer, his voice quiet. “I said shut up.”

“Under whose authority are you acting? I want to know. It will go very badly for you, Major, and I want to know who else to ruin for this outrage.”

“Not that it’s any of your concern, but my orders are signed by the commander-in-chief of the army. So you can start your ruining at the top.”

Campos seemed to deflate as he absorbed the information, and his complexion turned gray as he glared at Ariana and saw nothing but confidence. Something had gone very wrong if the charges had come from the commander-in-chief, and Campos smelled Soto all over it.

But it was only a matter of hours until Franco found out, and then the tables would be turned. If Alejandro had managed to get to the higher-ups, they’d soon be swayed by reality once they fully understood the new lay of the land.

Campos squared his shoulders as the detail led him to a van, his dignity intact even under the difficult conditions. Irritants like Arianas were ants in the scheme of things, and now that the elder Soto, with whom all the personal relationships and power rested, was out of the way, this was nothing more than a road bump by some fools who would be very sorry for their impudence by day’s end.

~ ~ ~

Antonio could barely sit still as he listened to the report on the speakerphone in his father’s office. Franco’s face had aged ten years through the morning as bulletins had arrived from the field – his strongholds in Santiago had gone dark an hour and a half ago, and he suddenly couldn’t get anyone that mattered in the police department or with the government to accept his calls.

The voice of one of Franco’s lieutenants sounded panicked. “Two of the ships that we’re loading weapons on in Valparaíso have been seized by the military and the cargo searched.”

“Get Campos involved. That’s his backyard.”

“I tried. He’s not picking up. And my contact on the dock says he doesn’t recognize any of the officers directing the raid, so they aren’t his men.”

“What do you mean he’s not picking up? I’ll ask him myself. We have a meeting at my club in half an hour.”

“I tried calling Arturo in Santiago earlier to check through his channels, but he also didn’t answer,” the lieutenant said. Arturo was one of their most influential fixers in the capital.

“Stay where you are. This will be resolved within the hour,” Franco snapped and stabbed the call off.

“Any word from Bastian?” Antonio asked, a tremor in his voice.

“No.”

“What about that buffoon Rodrigo? Perhaps he can get some useful information from his network?”

“I expected him to call by now, but he’s probably sleeping it off somewhere. You know what he’s like. Worse than useless. Hard to believe he shares the old man’s genetic material.” Franco shook his head. “And the other one? Alejandro? If they’re mounting a counterattack, it’s got to be him pulling the strings now that Gaspar’s toast.”

“I’ve had my men looking everywhere. Some have yet to check back in, but all reported a substantial increase in the number of Soto enforcers on the streets. They couldn’t get near his usual haunts. Too dangerous.”

Franco looked at Antonio disgustedly and then eyed his wristwatch. “You can stay here and use my office as your base until I return. I need to sort out this idiocy at the wharf with Campos. There’s no way he knows about it,” he said, rising. He smoothed his oxford shirt and Hermès tie and angled to the coat rack where his blue blazer was hanging. “I want you to talk to the men you can get in touch with and have them plan to move on Alejandro’s likely headquarters. He’s no fool, but he’s got to be running this from somewhere.” Antonio began to speak, but Franco cut him off. “Saying you don’t know for sure where he is isn’t good enough, Antonio. You’ve had eighteen hours. Start producing results and not excuses. Do I make myself clear?”

Antonio nodded glumly at his father’s words. The rebuke was all the more painful since Antonio had assured him that he’d have Alejandro neutralized by morning – which had come and gone.

“Now, if you need to reach me, I’ll be at the club for brunch and then at the boat. I’ve got one of the engines being overhauled, and it’s taking twice as long as it should.”

“Don’t you think–”

“What I think is that I need people around me who can do their jobs, because if I have to do it for them, I don’t need them taking a cut,” Franco interrupted, not about to be scolded by his impudent offspring. “Now if you don’t have any objections, I’m off.”

Franco was seething as he made his way to the elevator, accompanied by two somber bodyguards in dark suits. His mood wasn’t improved by the realization that his son didn’t have the grit to lead the organization when he retired. Antonio was fine dealing with the day-to-day, but in this, the first real time of crisis where Franco had needed to rely on him, he’d failed. There was no other word for his lack of performance with Alejandro. If he hadn’t been Franco’s son, Antonio would have already been floating in the harbor.

The underground parking lot was quiet, cars just beginning to arrive as the nearby offices came to life. Their footsteps reverberated off the polished concrete slab as they walked to his platinum Mercedes sedan, its chrome rims glinting in the fluorescent light. He normally maintained a low profile, but there were some things that warranted splurging for: his yacht, his car, his villa and vacation homes, his platinum A. Lange & Sohne perpetual calendar watch. The things that confirmed to him that the sacrifices he’d made had all been worth it.

The bodyguards stood on either side of Franco as he opened the car door, their eyes roving over the few surrounding cars, shielding him with their bodies. A uniformed security guard at the entrance waved at them, and one of the men nodded, preoccupied by monitoring the area for threats.