He flashed the beam through the red lens briefly, and then the scene went dark again.
Slowly, he took a step back.
“Oh…shit.”
The men were not Nicaraguan.
They were Asian. Quite likely, he determined, Chinese.
“Shit,” he whispered again to himself.
Caprice stepped up next to him. He’d already turned off the light, so he flipped it back on for her to see.
“Ay dios mío.”Oh my God.
Court said, “You said you hadn’t seen any Chinese involved in this. Now you have.”
While she stood there in silence, he stowed the flashlight again, took her by the arm, and hurried back to the road. If he’d had time he would have rummaged through their equipment, looking for the pickup keys, as well as pocket litter or any other evidence of just who they were. He would have photographed their faces for ID checks when he returned to the States.
But he did none of that.
Instead, he pulled her along and began running through the jungle.
“I thought you said we would take their truck.”
“We’re going back to mine.”
She said, “But you only shot them so you could save time in getting a vehicle. That’s what you said.”
“Yeah, well, I changed my mind.”
“Why?”
Court pushed on through the thick foliage, ignoring the woman behind him. He wasn’t going to take the time to find their keys. He wanted to be as far away from those bodies as possible.
Whatever had happened tonight was bigger than Hanley had told him. He didn’t think Hanley was lying; it was likely the former DDO just did not get all the information from the current DDO.
China was here, likely working with Nicaraguan intelligence and a Central American drug gang, and clearly involved in a kinetic operation to kill CIA assets.
And Court was still certain his operation had been compromised somehow by the CIA.
—
Thirty minutes later he bounced his Toyota down a two-lane road leading back in the direction of Chinandega and the airfield nearby.
Caprice had been quiet, but now she said, “You didn’t have to shoot those men. You killed them in cold blood.”
Actually, Court felt his blood boiling at the moment, but he didn’t say that to the Nicaraguan police detective.
“It’s a half-hour drive to the airfield,” he said.
“So?”
“So maybe you don’t talk so fucking much right now.”
He could have argued with her, could have made the point that shooting those guys helped his mission, because as long as they were in the area with a vehicle, they could have been a threat to the two of them.
But he did not want to argue. The truth was, she was right. It had not been operationally necessary.
