Operation Willow Quest (14 page)

“Fine I don’t care about the photos we took of
the compound but that envelope was addressed
to me
. Aren’t you the least
bit curious about what’s on that stick? Why they wanted to find us so bad?”

“I gave up wondering what I was risking my neck
for a long time ago. I just follow orders and that’s all I need to know.”

“Well
I
need to know. I just want to see what Terry died for. He was my friend. I
deserve that much at least.”

She saw him waver ever so slightly and held her
breath.

“We open the damn files, you take a quick look,
and then they’re going away. Deal?”

Willow
let out her breath
slowly and gave a jerky nod of her head. She ignored a ripple of guilt which
momentarily followed. There was no need to tell Del that she’d already transferred the files
back at Jorge’s. She knew she’d been right to protect the information by
emailing it to herself. The information on that stick in the envelope was far
more important than the photos of the compound. She could cut her losses with
those. As for Del
and his over-zealous streak of
honour
—what he didn’t
know, wouldn’t hurt him. “Deal.”

Chapter 10

From her position at the table where it was
crammed against the wall, Willow glanced over at
Del as he sat
on the end of the bed. There was barely enough room to walk between the table
and the bed.

“There’s a heap of photos and documents on this
thing. Here…” She turned the computer screen so he could see it. “These first
few documents are mainly surveillance notes on prominent cartels.”

Del
let out a long low
whistle as he stared at the screen before him. “No wonder Sinclair was
worried—he was sitting on enough evidence to blow apart half the crime families
in Colombia.”

“He mentions
Trèago’s
name here…” She pointed to a comment on the
screen. “…and lists the phone conversations.”

“Who was Sinclair doing
surveillance work for?” Del
asked suspiciously, as he skimmed the documents on the screen.

“No idea. He works for
a private security company. You’d have a better idea of what kind of work they
do I’d imagine,” she murmured, dryly.

“He was a mercenary?”

Willow
shrugged, “Possibly,
although nowadays I think he uses his…” she paused, “
used,
his investigation skills to provide surveillance and gather
intelligence on these drug families. It sounded as though it became more
personal than work-related in the end.” The contacts he’d made from his Drug
Enforcement days would have been something international big businessmen would
find helpful, knowing who they could bribe, who would be a handy contact to
have on side. “I have no idea what he was doing watching this cartel but once
he discovered a connection to
Trèago
, I guess that’s
when he thought I’d be interested,” she said.

“This one has a list of
names with dates next to some of them and it looks like amounts of money next to
others. It’s some sort of record, but a lot of it’s in Spanish.” She threw him
a wry smile. “Looks like you’re going to come in handy after all.”

“You know me—always
glad to be of service,” he answered dryly.

“So how come you can
speak Spanish anyway?” she asked, looking up from the papers in her lap.

“Comes in handy now and
again,” he said with a shrug.

“Like when you have to
go to Colombia
on a mission?”

He didn’t comment but
his closed expression gave her more than enough warning. She shrugged, then turned
her attention back to the computer. “Can’t blame a gal for trying.”

“You sure are trying,”
he muttered, “
very trying,
” he added
meaningfully. He moved from the bed and took a seat at the table to translate
the documents.

Turning the laptop
around for him to look at once more, she waited for him to provide some kind of
answer to the puzzle.

When he looked up after
giving the document a brief scan, he wore a frown.

“What does it say?”

“Trust me; it’s nothing
we need to be in the middle of.”

“Del!”

“It’s a list of
assassinations and pay offs. These names here…” he said, pointing at the first
page, “are army brigades in the Colombian army and the officers involved. These
here are police officers’,” he said, moving down the screen slowly. “The
amounts of money are their monthly wages they have been paid for supply of
information. This page…” he went on, scrolling down further, “is a list of
government prosecutors and investigators, along with the odd human rights
activist.” He looked at her across the table and paused. “It’s a hit list.”

“Who’s behind it…
Trèago
? or the Colombians?”

Del
shook his head. “My
guess would be both, although it’s not
Trèago’s
usual
style.”

Willow knew the bare
bones about Colombia’s political woes, namely that there were large numbers of
rebel groups fighting paramilitary forces to control the rights on taking
ridiculous taxes and large sums of protection money from farmers who supply the
coco leaves used to make primarily drugs, under cover of more legal products
the coco is used for. Kidnapping, bank robbery, and paid assassinations made up
the other forms of securing the funding needed to supply these groups with the
military power needed to ensure they remained a terrifying force that had, at
the moment, a strangle hold on the entire country.

With little government
funding, the Colombian army, and police force were fighting an up-hill battle
to keep law and order. With rebels and paramilitaries paying more in wages, Colombia was
slowly but surely becoming controlled by the drug export business and the
warring factions.

“This is what got
your…friend, Sinclair, in over his head,” he said gruffly, avoiding her gaze.

“Apparently,” she
agreed sadly.

“How well did you know
him?” Del
asked abruptly.

“Terry?” Willow asked and received
a nod in reply. “He and Michael were friends. I saw him a few times a year whenever
our paths crossed. Why?” she asked, puzzled by the question.

“No reason,” he said,
standing quickly and walking over to the small kitchenette the room supplied.

“If you’re trying to
figure out if we’d ever slept together,” she said quietly from her seat, “then
it’s none of your business. I don’t quiz you on your old flames…even if you
could
 
remember all their names,” she added caustically.

Del
swivelled
his head around to stare at her with a slight gleam in his eye. “Do I detect a
note of jealousy, Sheldon?” he asked.

“In your dreams,” she
threw back with slightly more
vigour
than intended.

His grin grew wider as
he leaned back against the sink and crossed his arms over his chest. “You’re
jealous,” he stated proudly.

“I am not,” she said,
standing up and gathering the dirty coffee cups together quickly. “You are so
full of yourself, Delaware,”
she snapped.

He shrugged. “Hey, I
can’t help it if women find me irresistible.”

“Oh please,” she
muttered beneath her breath with a snort. “So what we’ve found out so far…” Willow said, trying to
bring the conversation back to a more clinical level, “is that someone has
compiled a list of people they want assassinated and they kept records of
political, police and army personnel who take bribes or payments for services
rendered. You know if I didn’t know better, I’d say this smelled suspiciously
like a coup could be brewing in Colombia.”
She frowned. “But why would any of the drug cartels or the paramilitary bring
Trèago
in on this? I mean they’ve pretty well got the
country on its knees now—what could he possibly bring them that they couldn’t
achieve themselves?”

“Weapons,” Del said with a snort of
contempt, “maybe some kind of Intel. God knows he’d hand over his own
grandmother if the price was right.”

Willow
’s mind whirled with
the revelation.
Of course! Who better to
get involved in a possible coup?
Trèago
had
inside knowledge of US military forces and administration; he knew how to
prepare a solid military base—a crucial element in a coup. And he appeared to
be drawing together some of the most powerful drug cartels in Colombia, a feat
in itself considering most weren’t above cutting another’s throat—both
businesswise and literally—at the drop of a hat.

But how close
are they
to being ready to make a move?
 
Willow wondered. “We
could get to the bottom of this; it would only take a bit of digging—”

“Not a snowball’s
chance in hell, lady,” Del
stated firmly.

“But it’s—”

“No. I don’t care if
it’s the story of the century—this information is going where it should have
gone in the first place—straight to the authorities,” he said, pulling the
stick from her computer and slipping it into his pocket. “If I hadn’t let you
talk me into letting you keep it in the first place, none of this would be
happening now,” he muttered.

“I didn’t know all that
stuff was on there,” Willow
protested weakly, as she eyed the computer screen.

Following the path her
gaze travelled, he added, “And don’t even think about saving what’s on
there—close it now.”

“Now you’re just being
nasty,” she protested.

“It’s in Spanish so you
can’t even read it,” he argued. Leaning over, he deftly shut all the documents
and made sure they didn’t save to a file. “And just for good measure, I’m
keeping the computer with me until we’re out of this mess.”

She muttered beneath
her breath irritably as he walked away with the laptop, but hid a smile. She
was glad she’d thought to send the files on the stick to her email account
earlier. Terry had wanted her to have them in the first place, so evidence, or
not—they were hers.

* * * *

The shower was hot and clouds of steam followed
her out of the bathroom when she emerged.

“Better?” Del asked from where he lay, stretched out
on the queen-sized bed watching television, but he turned his head in her
direction when she appeared.

Feeling unusually nervous, she crossed to her
pack—stained with mud and still smelling of wet sheep and hay, bringing back
memories of their trip in the back of the sheep truck. “Much better,” she
answered, tugging at the hem of the shirt she wore. She’d had to borrow one of
his shirts, as her pajamas had been left back in Bogotá with Jorge’s family and
everything else she’d brought with her had been sent to the laundry to be cleaned.

The small table and two seats were covered in
luggage and she wrestled Del’s
pack off the nearest chair after politely declining his offer of moving over on
the bed to make room for her.

“Want a drink?” he asked, getting off the bed
and moving to the small bar over the fridge.

“Yes, please,” she said, glad for a legitimate
distraction.

“What do you want?” he asked, one arm resting
along the cabinet door as he leaned down to peer at the contents. “Rum, scotch,
bourbon, wine…” he said, rattling off the list as he peered inside.

“Whatever you don’t want.”

Del
lifted his head. “You
don’t have a preference?” he asked doubtfully.

“As long as it’s wet, I don’t really care—I’ll
drink anything.”

He shook his head but his smile held a touch of
reluctant admiration. “You don’t by any chance have a problem you want to tell
me about, do you?” he asked.

“I have quite a few problems—none of which I
plan on discussing with you though,” she shot back.

“I can’t say I’ve known many women to drink
straight sprits before,” he said, taking two of the small bottles from the
cupboard and getting ice from the freezer.

“Maybe you’re hanging out with the wrong kind
of women,” she said skeptically, then regretted it when she
realised
they were probably starting something she’d been trying to avoid.

“I’m beginning to think so.” His answer was a
low murmur not quite beneath his breath.

“Actually it’s an occupational hazard,” she
said, borrowing one of his
favourite
sayings, “you
tend to pick up a lot more tip-offs around bars…loose tongues and all that.”
She took her drink from him.

“Maybe you need a different occupation,” he
stated with a small frown.

She guessed he was miffed at the thought of her
sitting at a bar all day, talking to drunks. “Maybe you need to lose that
chauvinistic streak,” she returned swiftly.

“Hey, I’m all for equal opportunity,” he said,
putting up his hands in
defence
. “I just don’t see
what’s so fantastic about lurking around bars and writing about bad stuff all
the time. What happened to ‘feel good stories,’ like
Benji
the family dog, who walks three hundred miles to find his family?”