years ago. “I love the game, Deb, just as much as you do. Sometimes I even miss it. It might shock you to know that I think you have the potential to be a very effective President.”
Gerry came and sat on the corner of her desk and leaned over. “I can help you, Deb, or I can break you. And so help me God, if you do anything to hurt Jack Junior in any way, shape, or form, I will break you so badly you will wish you had never been born.”
“Is that a threat from you or President Ryan?”
Gerry stood. “He doesn’t know I’m here. But you sure as hell do. If you can find any dirt on President Ryan, go for it. All’s fair in politics. But you don’t touch a man’s family, especially his kids.”
The pathos in Gerry’s voice struck a chord in her childless heart. The man had lost his entire family, and she knew he considered the Ryans as his own now.
Dixon lifted her phone receiver. “I’ll call Kyle immediately and get her to stand down.”
“You do that.”
Gerry’s face suddenly took a pleasant turn, affecting the down-home smile of a country politician.
“And good luck on your campaign, Senator. I’ll be watching.”
CIELO SANTO, PERU
Jack stood beneath the covered awning in front of La Vicuña Roja, his pack slung over his shoulders, listening to the rain pounding the sheet metal and watching the rivers of mud and human misery wash past. Sands’s cursing had ended when he hauled the drunk by the elbow out of the front door and pointed him down the street. The man thanked Sands in Spanish and wobbled away toward home on uneasy legs.
“The mayor of our fair city,” Sands muttered as he headed back inside. “Poor bastard.”
Jack decided to check out the town a little bit more, not bothering to dash between awnings to avoid the rain. He didn’t give a shit if he got wet. He was already battling a blinding depression from Liliana’s death, but Sands’s warnings to stay off the mountain had infuriated him.
The rest of the street was a series of small shops, crowded tenements, and improvised housing. An endless stream of bedraggled miners and their women shuffled through the muddy street. Drunks and addicts clustered in knots in the alleyways, either standing in the rain or lying beneath plastic sheeting hung from ropes strung between buildings. The stench of human waste and burnt wood and old cooking grease dogged his steps. Whatever beauty or charm this place ever had was swallowed up by the hopeless desperation of grinding poverty. His already bad mood worsened. He decided to turn around.
As he approached the front of Sands’s bar again, an unmarked bus rumbled to a stop at the gas station. The door clunked open and a bearded Hispanic male descended. He glanced up and down the street. He and Jack locked eyes for a moment, then the man turned away, heading for a fuel pump.
Suddenly, a teenage Quechua boy leaped out of the bus door and sprinted toward Jack, his young face a mask of terror.
The man at the pump shouted “¡Alto!” at the boy as he pulled a pistol from beneath his raincoat.
Jack started to bolt toward the terrified kid, but a strong hand grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around—
“Stay the hell out of this,” Sands growled.
“But that kid—”
A gunshot cracked behind them.
Jack whipped around just in time to see the teenager skid to a halt in the mud, his trembling hands held high. The man who fired the pistol in the air grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and hauled him back toward the bus.
“This is bullshit—” Jack said, shaking Sands off.
But Sands grabbed him again with both hands and pulled him close.
“Getting yourself shot ain’t gonna help that kid or nobody else on that bus or your friend there hanging around your neck! You fuckin’ feel me?”
Jack wanted to throw a punch at Sands to put him on his ass and go after the kid, but Clark’s voice in the back of his head told him to stand down.
Another man with a short-barreled carbine stood in front of the bus now as the other man with the pistol dragged the kid up the stairs.
Sands released his grip. Jack’s eyes raged at the former Ranger.
“You want to tell me what that’s all about?”
“Go get something to eat and bed down for the night, then head back home tomorrow. There’s nothing here for