The man tried to hide his annoyance now, and his security men were already taking him by the arm to force an ending to this conversation. Maragos said, “Yes?”
“Charlie…when you were in the Legion together. Or after, maybe. Did he ever mention me? Did he ever say anything to you about his da?”
Now the man appeared uncomfortable. After a time, he said, “Not that I recall. No…nothing I remember about you.” He added, “I didn’t see him much when he worked for me, but when we served together, that’s been three years. Plus, we were in Africa most of the time. Mali and such. We were around one another, but in the Legion, there’s not a lot of time for chat about family. I’m sorry.”
Campbell Coyle saw no sense of deception on the man’s face, and this gave him all the information that he’d come for today. “Very well. I should call your office, then?”
Maragos pulled out a business card and handed it over.
“Do, yeah. I’ve a trip to the Continent planned, but Lucy will fit you in. We’ll chat about your boy. About my good friend. Again…so sorry, yeah? But I simply must run.”
“I thank you for your time.”
The men shook hands again. Coyle caught a quick glimpse of Maragosflashing angry eyes at his closest bodyguard; his annoyance that they’d allowed him to drag on this conversation was obvious, and as Campbell put his cap back on and shuffled off through the wet and gray day, the Northern Irishman knew without a doubt that he’d never get that meeting in Maragos’s office that he’d just been promised.
No matter,he told himself. The meeting would still happen; it would just happen at a time and place of Coyle’s choosing.
Eleven
The Toyota pickup turned off the broken two-lane road and began negotiating a washed-out dirt path that led up a gentle rise, scrubby jungle just visible in the moonlight on both sides, and the man in the passenger seat wiped a forearm across his face, trying to keep a measure of the sweat out of his eyes.
He succeeded, but then he caught a thick plume of hot dust in his face as it blew in from his open window.
The dust turned to mud on his forehead and cheek as he wiped again.
“This blows,” he muttered, and then he glanced down to his watch, the tritium dial giving him the time.
Ninety degrees, high humidity, at 1:22 in the morning.
In December.
He had been all over the developing world, but this was his first visit to Nicaragua, and so far, he couldn’t say he’d found much to recommend it.
In the driver’s seat next to him, a younger man turned his way. In a thick Hispanic accent, he spoke in English. “This…blows?”
Court Gentry switched to Spanish. “Just an expression, amigo. All good.”
The driver looked back out the windshield in time to negotiate a boulder jutting into the road. These were lowlands, vegetation all around, butthe massive San Cristóbal Volcano was just a few klicks to the northeast, and volcanic rock lay all around.
Court wore a loose-fitting blue denim shirt and black jeans, his cross-training shoes were black, and he carried a Glock pistol on his hip, with three extra magazines in his pants pocket.
Behind him in the truck was an M4 rifle with an optic and a three-power magnifier, a backpack with extra rifle mags and medical gear, along with binoculars, a thermal imager, water, and a few other tools of his trade.
This was a light load-out for Court, but this was what had been left in the Cessna for him at the airstrip in Costa Rica, and the airstrip had been empty and dark; there was no one to bitch to about getting himself some more kit before this mission.
He looked over to the driver now. He’d read Juan Carlos’s file on the flight down today. He’d been a local agent of the CIA for over ten years. An ex-soldier, he ran a team of three other men who helped Managua station down here from time to time.
Juan Carlos was a shooter; he had been deemed reliable by the local CIA station, along with his men, and Court hoped like hell the Agency was right about them, because they were his lifeline on this hastily thrown-together op.
Juan Carlos had a big G3 rifle in the backseat, next to a vest full of magazines and a cheap knapsack and a radio. His buddies were already at the location he and Court now raced to, and Juan Carlos had been in contact with them nearly constantly since he picked Court up from the dirt airstrip to the north of Chinandega a half hour earlier.
Court sighed again, and this time he spoke only to himself.
“What the fuck are we doing?”
He’d been rushed here, given little intel, and he was expected to execute an operation nonetheless.
Once he met up with Caprice, he’d determine if she had performed the duties necessary for her to be safely extracted, and then he would get the asset back to the dirt airstrip sixteen miles to the west, where he’d left his Cessna 210 single-engine aircraft at the end of a darkened and abandoned runway.
