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I’ll go behind the scenes if I need to. I’m not above torturing a person to get the answers. I’ve killed for my job as a Navy SEAL, and I’ll kill again if ordered. Does it matter if I threaten to kill someone without an order? I don’t see a difference at this point.
There’s a local drug trafficker named Santiago Gomez in Mitú who has long been rumored to have connections to Esteban. It’s time we visit him. Warren hasn’t approved this plan, but I think he knows I’m doing it, with or without his okay.
Gabriella is my fiancée—not another extraction of a stranger. I won’t sit by any longer. I love my team, but they can all go to hell if they think I’m going to sit on this. They don’t understand my duress or my pain. None of them have a woman they would move heaven and earth for. But I do. And right now, she needs me.
* * *
March 25th, 1988
We have a lead. When Warren realized I was going rogue, he followed. They all did. We’re a team, and we stick together. Santiago wasn’t hard to find, nor was it hard to get the jump on him. We dragged his sleazy ass into a rat-infested abandon mill as he kicked and screamed for mercy.
I didn’t bother asking my brothers if they wanted to get their hands dirty. I did it all on my own. Santiago didn’t make it fifteen minutes before he was spilling his secrets like a sinner in confession. He claims Esteban has a villa near Ciénega, high in the hills, and not far from Minca where the Doctor Without Borders Clinic is located.
Finally, having the information we needed, I pulled my pistol and killed Santiago. We couldn’t afford to have him tipping off Esteban. In all honesty, it was a mercy killing. Esteban would have done far worse to him for snitching.
We leave tonight for Ciénega. I’ll have Gabriella back in my arms soon.
* * *
March 30th, 1988
She’s alive. Gabriella is tucked against me, deep in sleep, as I write this entry. But it’s not without a cost. Esteban kept her locked away inside a palace in the mountainside, in a room that was fit for a queen but a prison, nonetheless. From his front balcony, Esteban could watch over the surrounding acreage below where several of his drug crops were in production while keeping a close eye on Gabriella at the same time.
What he put Gabriella through…I will spend the rest of my life making her feel loved and cherished to make up for what he did to her.
The mission was to take out Esteban, but he wasn’t at the villa when we arrived. He was at one of his farms outside of Ciénega handling business, and we weren’t supposed to be in the area per orders. With the condition Gabriella was in, Warren called in the chopper to fly us out. Esteban is still at large.
I don’t care if he comes after me. I’ll put a bullet between his cold, black eyes. Wouldn’t even phase me, and I’d sleep sounder knowing he was dead.
I’ll make it my mission in life to take him down. Whether it’s by my hands or someone else’s, I’ll make it happen.
* * *
Ciénega.I jump to my feet, racing back to the room. I don’t even think twice before entering the space.
Gauge is sitting on the bed in his boxer briefs and nothing else. He holds his phone out in front of him, chatting to Opal on WhatsApp. He rolls his eyes as soon as he sees me. “What the fuck, Atlas.”
“Tell Opal you have to go,” I say holding up mypadre’sjournal. “We’ve got something. Get Brass and Ziggy.”
I stride across the hall to Chase and Punk’s room, rapidly banging on the door.
The door swings open. “What’s going on? Do we need to move?” Chase asks with alarm. Punk stumbles around in the background, trying to put his boots on quickly.
“I may have a lead. Look up Ciénega. See if we can get aerial footage and topography maps from thirty years ago and current ones. Focus on mountain ranges in the territory.”
Brass, Gauge, and Ziggy join us, all eyes on me. Punk asks, “Is it his location?”
“Don’t know about now,” I admit. “But it was thirty years ago.”
Chase flips open his laptop. “What am I looking for exactly?”
“A large villa against a mountainside with farm acreage below.”
He shakes his head as he searches on his computer. “Current information isn’t hard to find, nor is topography maps from thirty years ago, but aerial footage from then is going to be hard to come by.”
“The landscape could be massively different since then,” Gauge points out.
“Not to mention the population has grown exponentially as well,” Chase adds as he works. “I’m sure there are locals who lived in the area at the time, but then that’s a whole other search we’re adding on.”
