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I stepped out of my boxer briefs, too, and accepted a towel from Danny. He had prepared a makeshift medical station too. Not that I didn’t appreciate the natural blood thinners that leeches injected you with. Always fun to get a blood detox.
I fanned out another tarp outside the tent I’d share with River and added a blanket on top. “Nobody step on this with muddy boots or feet.”
“If you promise not to stick your lily-white ass in our faces when you dig through your bag for dry clothes,” Danny retorted.
I did exactly that. I didn’t know about lily-white, though. My fine ass had no tan lines.
I grabbed new underwear and tees for River and me, to the groaned chuckles from Emerson, Coach, and Greer.
Before long, everyone was dressed and semi-dry, and we sat on tarps and blankets outside our tents while Danny played nurse and Emerson loaded up food for us. There was a whole grilled chicken for each two-man team, two bowls of steaming soup, and all the grilled bread we could eat. In the meantime, we debriefed one another—no new update from Crew, we’d witnessed more guard changes, and we were in agreement that the second sector was our best way in, unless Crew and Mercier had a better idea.
“So, sneak in and shoot our way out?” Cullen asked.
Crass as it sounded…yeah. We couldn’t kill the guards on our way in because they’d overthrow us once they’d sent all their forces to our location. We had to enter undetected to maintain the element of—
“We need the element of surprise on our side,” River said, dipping his bread in the soup. “We definitely have to go in without anyone suspecting a thing, and then…” He shrugged and shoveled more food into his mouth.
We were all on the same page. An explosive exit might sound easy, but it was also messy. Besides, we knew the Blancos kept children around—hell, from Crew’s updates, we were talking a whole community of people.
“Anyone else have anything to add from their shift?” Emerson asked.
No, it just annoyed me we couldn’t predict their guard changes.
“Only the confirmation that we didn’t see any modern tech,” Greer responded. “No thermal cams or surveillance this far out.”
“Not in our sector either,” Elliott said.
Same—River and I had paid attention to that too. Coach had geared us up good and proper, so we were equipped to detect everything from heat signatures to metal. As long as we moved under the cover of darkness tomorrow, we should be able to slip by their first line of defense, which, geographically, was the biggest hurdle.
We’d likely encounter a wall or some sort of reinforced barrier as we got closer to the Blanco estate, and it was the one thing I could imagine causing us another day’s delay. But before we knew what we were up against, it was useless to make elaborate plans. A wall could be scaled or climbed—everything depended on the security and Coach and Willow being able to locate the Blancos’ command center. A confined blackout would give us an advantage.
I broke off a chunk of chicken and dropped bits and pieces of it into my soup. Then I did it in River’s bowl too.
“So far, I’m not a huge fan of Colombia.” Cullen smacked something on his leg. “Does it ever stop raining?”
Elliott huffed a chuckle and jerked his chin to the east. “Skip over to the next valley. Every mountain has its own weather system.”
He wasn’t exaggerating too much either.
“I love this country,” Danny said bluntly. “We’ve had some really good times here.” The smile he and Emerson exchanged spoke of more than their training missions with Hillcroft recruits.
Coach smirked. “Have we reached the part of the night where we reminisce about our first gigs here?”
I let out a laugh and ran with it. “It was a warm summer’s eve in Barranquilla…”
“Ay-ay!” Danny lit up.
River groaned a chuckle.
I switched to Spanish, remembering the music, the fantastic food…and, of course, the coke problem they had with smugglers slinging their shit through the port. “La música increíble, la comida sabrosa, y la coca fluía por el puerto.”
Elliott grinned faintly and shook his head. “El reto es contar una historia que no tenga la palabra coca. O al final alguien va a terminar muerto.”
He earned some laughter from that, and he had a point; it would definitely be a challenge to come up with a story that didn’t revolve around coke and people ending up dead.
I sucked my teeth, mostly annoyed I’d never been able to sound like a native speaker the way he did. Elliott and Danny could move throughout Latin America without raising any suspicion whatsoever.
“I need a translator,” Cullen joked.
