Lib Novel Page 3
ONE
Summer 2010
Zahrat Al Jibal
Morocco
1132 hours
Team: Omega
Status: Destabilization
Sunlight stung the whites of Adrían’s eyes as the bag someone had tossed over his head, while he was busy “working” in the middle of a Mexican desert, was removed. Rope fibers cut into his wrists and ankles, and the effects of whatever he’d been drugged with had completely burned off.
The last thing he remembered was shoveling dirt onto Pedro Almeida’s contorted, ashen face, but these were no longer the clear blue skies he’d encountered in the Chihuahuan Desert. As far as he knew, no buildings looked like this in Rio. This structure, this house, looked like something he would see on the other side of the world, far away from South America or the Yucatan Peninsula.
“Finally, you’re awake.” Shoes with what sounded like thick, solid heels echoed next to his head. Seconds later, slim legs covered by dark pants opened in front of him. “Wakey, wakey, my little Gano.”
This woman had to have the reddest hair he’d ever seen, which contrasted sharply against her brown skin, dark eyebrows, and the black Aviator sunglasses sitting on the bridge of her nose. She spoke with an American accent and, oddly enough, looked completely at home surrounded by men wearing camouflage gear and toting high-powered rifles.
“Where am I?” he asked, in Portuguese.
The woman raised a hand.
One of the men walked up, slipped a yellow folder between her fingers, and she went from crouching to sitting on the beige stone next to his head, thumbing through the folder after a deft lick of her fingertip.
“Adrían Delgano, age twenty-four, born in Rio to a teen mother. Height: one hundred and eighty-eight centimeters. Favorite food: brigadeiros. Nice. I’ve had those. Blood type is,” she dragged her finger, “O-negative? Nice again. Universal donor. And I see here that you finished school, which is a bonus. Then what happened, Adrían? You went from working at a warehouse for a multinational shipping company to becoming one of the most prominent members of the Chamasagrado Cartel.”
“Where am I?” he repeated.
“Come on, Gano. I know you speak English. Maybe even better than I do. Sua mamãe damn near broke her back to pay that expensive tuition at that fancy school before she died.”
He tugged on the ropes.
She didn’t flinch.
“Now, when we found you, Adrían Delgano,” she said, closing the folder, “it was with a shovel in your hand, digging a shallow grave to bury a man named Pedro Almeida, who also went by the name Senhor Cobra.”
Pedro had given himself the name and then turned out to be just that—a snake.
A snitch.
Snitching on Chamas was one thing, but to attempt to snitch on him directly was a guaranteed way to expedite one’s journey into the afterlife.
“You’re looking at serious time in a Mexican prison, and let me tell you…no matter how tough you think you are, there’s still some shit you can’t prepare yourself for. You know, like watching your mother get r?—”
“What the fuck do you want?” he hissed, in English. “You kidnapped me from the desert to do what? Sing me a lullaby? Tell me a bedtime story?”
She raised the sunglasses and leaned close to his face, her irises greener than the Amazon rainforest. “We brought you here to break you. That is, unless you cooperate. If not, maybe we’ll return you to Mexico, say you’re a narc, and let a Mexican cartel deal with you.”
Although he’d already figured out it would be useless, he continued to tug on the ropes. Listening to this witch was worse than them putting a bullet in his head.
“We want to make you an offer,” she said. “There’s a program that you, on paper, appear to be an excellent candidate for…except for the whole ‘Lone Ranger’ thing you have going on.”
“You and your program can go fuck yourselves.”
She rolled onto all fours and her shirt shifted, exposing round breasts in lacy red cups with droplets of sweat in the cavern between them. “Take a little trip down memory lane with me, Adrían. Back to…let’s say…age six. You remember age six, don’t you? Your mother was still alive. She worked hard to get you into that ritzy little private Catholic school and took you with her to church two times a week. One of your favorite things to do on the weekends? Look up at the Christ the Redeemer statue. Do you remember that, Adrían? Do you remember what your mother was like before she was murdered?”