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43
Diego peered through his night-vision scope. He’d made his way to the roof of that same apartment building, even though he was wary of being ambushed. After racking his brain for how that CIA man had found him, Diego figured that the guy had seen him in the Georgetown area, then gone back to traffic-cams to zoom in on the maintenance van’s license plates, somehow tracked him down that way.
The van was gone now, and Diego should have been gone too, he told himself fiercely as he adjusted his scope to focus in on the three men who’d just emerged from Benson’s gray Crown Victoria. Yes, he should be long gone, far away from this setup which was likely to leave Diego either dead or on the run with the full power of the CIA, FBI, DHS, and maybe even the damn mafia chasing him.
Diego grinned at the last thought, wondering what the American public would say if they knew the CIA’s history with almost every mafia that had a U.S. presence—Italian, Irish, Cuban, Mexican, Russian, you fucking name it. Back when the Zetas were being trained in CIA-sponsored camps in Guatemala, a grizzled old former U.S. Army Green Beret trainer had mentioned with a shrug that since the 1960s the CIA had used Deltas and Green Berets for assassinations outside the U.S. and mafia hitmen for taking out American citizens within U.S. borders.
“But Lee Harvey Oswald was not a mafia hitman,” Diego had pointed out. “As I recall, he killed a very prominent American citizen within U.S. borders. Some say he was put up to it by the CIA.”
The Green Beret had snorted. “Yeah, but Oswald didn’t fire a single shot. He was the patsy. The trigger-guy was a Miami-based mafia hitman paid by the CIA. Then they got Jack Ruby to put down Oswald. Ruby was connected with the Chicago Family. Don’t they teach you guys basic American history in Mexican Special Forces? Hell, the whole thing was textbook CIA.”
And so is this, Diego thought as he watched Benson, Kaiser, and a third man who would be the former Delta guy Jack Wagner survey the empty street with professional precision before entering the Senator’s empty townhome.Si, textbook CIA, which meant plots within conspiracies, twists around turns, double-crosses followed by back-stabbings neatly tied up in an explosion and pinned on a patsy who coincidentally gets found dead in a ditch with two gunshot wounds at the back of his head which the FBI rules a suicide, case closed, move on, nothing to see here, go back to your smartphoneshombresandchicas, there’s a new video of two monkeys slapping each other while pooping.
Again Diego wondered what the hell he was doing here. No way that CIA guy was letting Mercy and Cari go after they’d seen his face. And Diego himself would be very disposable—if not a dangerous loose end—if he took out the damn CIA Director on behalf of anotherputaspook.
A spook named Rhett Rodgers.
Diego had spent the day scouring the Internet for every photograph that had anything to do with the CIA and Langley. He’d scanned every face in every image tagged as CIA or Central Intelligence or anything close to those keywords, looking for the face of that dark-eyed cool-headedputamotherfucker who’d proved himself good enough that Diego would be dead right now if that fucker had wanted it so.
But although Martin Kaiser’s photograph was all over the place, along with a few mentions of a deputy director named Bill Morris, there were no photographs matching the man who now had Diego’scojonesin a vise.
So he’d called Ernesto down near the Colombian border, in the headquarters of the fledgling Zeta Nation. Asked him to get in touch with a contact in Mexican Intelligence, see if he could pull basic personnel files for the top 20 or so CIA men stationed at Langley, photographs included. Ernesto had grumbled about the cost, but Deigo had shut him down with cold urgency.
The files and photos came through several hours later. Rhett Rodgers was towards the bottom end of the top 20, but still very high up in an organization of several thousand official employees. Diego had studied the file, noting with interest that Rhett Rodgers was sixty but had been officially employed by the CIA for just seven years. It seemed highly improbable that Rodgers had risen so high at Langley in less than a decade.
Which meant the guy had beenunofficialCIA before that.
A deep cover operative. Undercover asset.
A fucking ghost.
Diego had closed the file and sank back into his single bed in the squalid one-room apartment just a few blocks from Mercy’s now-closed store. It was mid-afternoon by then, and Diego had pretty much decided not to take the risk, not to take the bait, not to trick himself into believing there was any chance for Mercy and Cari.
But when Rhett Rodgers checked out as a legit CIA player, Diego started to reconsider. It wasn’t clear why Rodgers wanted Kaiser and Benson dead, but part of the reason had to be that Rhett Rodgers had a shot at being named the next CIA Director.
AndMadre de Dios, Diego had thought feverishly that afternoon, having the new CIA Director owe you a favor was worth something, was it not? Especially a man clearly cut from the same cold-hearted cloth as Diego.
Diego’s heart had pumped hot blood at that moment, almost like it was objecting, trying to remind him that having Rhett Rodgers’s file did not change anything, that it was just an excuse for Diego justifying doing what he was going to do anyway, what he wanted to do no matter what the risk, what he fuckingneededto do because it was his only chance, his only hope, his only way out of this pit of lonely darkness he’d dug for himself over the years, each new act of violence renewing his commitment to hell, digging his destiny, sealing his fate.
Because now something had changed.
Diego had glimpsed a flicker of light in his dark corner of the universe.
Like perhaps he could fight for a fresh fate.
Claw his way to a different destiny.
“Despierta tonto,” he’d shouted, smacking his open palms against the sides of his head, shaking his shaggy mane as that vision of Mercy and Cari seared his brain like he was melting down. “They are already dead, you idiot. You cannot save them. And why do you want to save them anyway? Why them, after so many others have died by your hand, on your orders? Because you think you can save yourself? Hah, you sad fool. A few months north of the border and you are getting soft like the locals, falling under the spell of this country that whispers seductive promises of freedom and happiness, salvation and second-chances, hopes and dreams.” He’d tugged at his beard, spat on the yellowed linoleum floor in disgust, tried to get those images out of his roiling brain before they merged with those long-repressed images of his own lost woman and girl, forcing out emotions that had been buried so deep they’d been compressed into dense packets of rock-hard physicality.
But the floodgates had opened that afternoon, and Diego found himself sitting on the edge of his sweat-soiled single bed, head buried in his greasy palms, sobs racking his scarred body, tears seeping between fingers that had gouged out eyeballs and throttled throats, committed acts of depraved violence that could never be undone, never be forgotten, never be forgiven.
But what about the future, came the whisper from Diego’s unravelling mind. A man cannot change the decisions of his past, but each day he makes fresh choices, does he not?
So what will you choose today, Diego Vargas?
And then Diego had pulled his hands away from his face and stood from his bed and walked to the window and gazed out, his tear-red eyes focusing on that distant strip-mall with the sign that saidMercy.
“You cannot turn your back on them,” he told himself. “It might be pointless but you have to try. Make this choice and perhaps fate will turn in your direction. Perhaps destiny will look your way.”
