Oath of Loyalty (Mitch Rapp #21)(36)
“A year,” she admitted. “Maybe more.”
“Maybe never,” he said, pulling out his phone. “Whatever the risks are, there are rewards, too. If we can take out someone like Marroqui—particularly if we do it fast—it’s going to send a clear message to anyone else out there who might have heard rumors that you’re alive.”
They all watched nervously as he searched for the stored number and then sent a brief text.
“Don’t look so worried,” he said, putting the phone on the table. “It’s been a long time. I doubt he’ll even ans—”
His phone started ringing. The number on-screen was the one he’d just texted.
“I stand corrected,” Rapp said and then picked up. “Thanks for getting in touch.”
“I have to admit that I’m surprised to hear from you,” Damian Losa said with an accent that straddled British and Ricardo Montalbán. “I heard you’d found a place in Nicholas Ward’s organization and that Irene Kennedy is likely to follow.”
“You’re well informed.”
“I keep up with the gossip. Now, what is it that I can do for you, Mitch?”
“I’d like a location on Gustavo Marroqui.”
There was a brief pause over the line. “I read that a group of Guatemalans attacked a family in South Africa a few days ago. The owner of the house executed all of them and then disappeared with his wife and young daughter. Might you know something about that?”
“I might.”
“I’m not aware of you ever having had dealings with Gustavo.”
“I haven’t.”
“Then how did we get here, Mitch?”
“Does it matter?”
“I’ve survived this long because I don’t make decisions without all the information available. If you think I’m going to get involved in something I don’t understand, you’ve misjudged me.”
Inconvenient, but not exactly unexpected.
“What I’m about to tell you doesn’t go any further than us.”
“You have my word.”
“He wasn’t after me. He was after the woman I live with.”
Rapp heard the tapping of a few keys on the other end of the line. “One Claudia Dufort.”
“Her real last name is Gould.”
This time the pause over the line was longer. It finally ended in laughter. “Claudia Gould? You have strange taste in women, Mitch.”
“Will you help?”
“At the risk of sounding mercenary, what’s in it for me?”
“I’ll owe you one,” Rapp said, finding it difficult not to choke on the words.
It didn’t take long for Losa to make a decision. “Give me twenty-four hours and I’ll have my assistant text you the coordinates you’re looking for.”
Rapp disconnected the call. “He says we’ll have a location by this time tomorrow.”
“That easy?” Coleman said.
Rapp shook his head. “I think that one’s probably going to come back to bite me. But for now, yeah. That easy. Can I assume you’re up for a quick trip to Guatemala?”
The former SEAL smiled. “Anything for a good pi?a colada.”
CHAPTER 16
GUATEMALA CITY
GUATEMALA
IF anything could be said about Claudia, it was that she had friends in low places.
Rapp was sitting in the rotting backseat of an SUV that sounded like it was going to rattle itself apart. The driver was navigating a mix of asphalt and dirt that snaked through a slum on the outskirts of Guatemala City. In addition to the men in front, two more were crammed in on either side of him. All were a good twenty years younger than he, and all were covered in tattoos identifying them as members of Mara Salvatrucha. Better known as MS-13.
The notorious gang was being increasingly outmaneuvered by Gustavo Marroqui’s superior organization and penetration into the highest echelons of the local government. Also advantageous was the indirect support he enjoyed from the United States and other countries whose politicians benefited from being associated with the battle against the most infamous gang in the world. There was nothing like photos of dead MS-13 members to divert people’s attention from Marroqui’s growing power in Latin America.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. It wasn’t an adage that had worked out so well for Rapp in the past. But there was always a first time.
He reached across the shirtless man next to him and rolled the window down a couple of inches. The stench of sweat—some his own—was getting overwhelming.
The flow of cool air was an improvement despite carrying a hint of sewage, diesel, and decay from the cinder-block buildings around them. Corrugated walls and roofs were illuminated in the headlights, some painted with graffiti, others with rust. The flash of colorful clothing drying on lines occasionally caught his eye, but most of this part of the city was dark. Electrical poles slung with wires were plentiful, but the lights on them were either burned out or intentionally broken. With its deteriorating position in Guatemala, MS-13 had adopted a strategy that was unusual for them—a low profile. The operations once carried out with purposeful impunity were now going underground. The arrogance of young men capable of incredible violence had been attenuated by the realization that someone else out there was capable of even more.