bodyguard, I’m to kill quickly and efficiently, along with another cartel member, a trafficker who goes by the name of El Viejon.
I swap Castellano’s picture for another from the file. The scars on what I’ve determined is the bodyguard’s face tell me he isn’t a man who goes down easy, and that an element of surprise has to be swift and precise, but what makes this particular job a bit more gratifying than the others is El Viejon. Seems the old man likes young girls. Real young.
I toss aside the first picture and lift his from the stack. With deep set eyes, a cleft chin, graying hair, and a thick mustache, he looks like he could be anyone’s papá, but it just so happens the guy has a thing not only for sex, but torture.
I’ve watched the three of them for four days straight now, each of them coming and going, in and out of a small manufactured-looking home set in the woods, off the highway in Hankamer, about an hour from Houston. Nothing special at first glance, but the exterior is wired with cameras, alarms, and enough explosives and weaponry to take out an army. Anyone not connected to them would have one hell of a time breaching those defenses, but thanks to a mutual connection, Castellano thinks I’m an interested buyer. A man willing to pay a significant amount of cash for a young immigrant slave.
A ping on my cell phone draws my attention to a text from a guy called Adrien, the slimy middle man who arranged my meeting with Castellano.
2006 Ford Mustang. Cherry red. Low mileage. $40K or $500/mo. Let me know if you’re interested.
The text is code. The girl was born in 2006. Only fifteen years old. A virgin. Forty thousand dollars to buy or five hundred for an hour with her.
I’m interested, I promptly text back.
Good. Meet off highway 10. Exit 814. Valero gas station. One hour.
To keep from being noticed, I’ve shacked up in a rundown motel, about ten miles from the safe house. But it’s up the street, in the abandoned lot of a boarded-up liquor store where I’ve made one final sweep of the files, and pulled the trigger, so to speak, setting the game in play. I gather up all of the papers and exit the vehicle. Alongside the dilapidated building sits a rusted trash can, into which I toss all but the picture of El Viejon. Flipping my Zippo, I light the corner of his photo, staring down at those sunken, lifeless eyes as his face ignites into flames. Once fully engulfed, I toss it onto the others, and the flame explodes into a full-on fire that flickers out the top of the can.
I was trained not to have any emotional attachments to the kill. To eliminate by command and nothing else.
Even so, I look forward to watching a bullet sail into this man’s skull.
Adrien is an annoying little prick who likes to talk. As he sits in the passenger seat, prattling on about how bored he’s gotten with Houston nightlife and would love to visit New York someday, blah, blah, blah, I have to fight the urge to cram a gag down his throat and throw him in the trunk.
Thankfully, we’ve reached the safe house.
The vehicle’s headlights bounce along the long, gravelly driveway that’s shrouded by a line of trees at either side of it.
Chipped paint and ratted out screens tell of little maintenance to the house’s exterior, giving the impression that it sits unoccupied, if not for the garbage piled up on the porch, the sight of which has me wishing I’d brought a hazmat suit.
“Look, these guys? They’re fucking hardcore. Hardcore. Let me do the talking, okay? You got the cash?”
At my slow nod, Adrien rubs his hands together, clearly nervous. “Okay, and not that you’d be so stupid, but no weapons, right?”
I shake my head in response. In truth, at the bottom of the cash bag, in a zippered compartment beneath, is a gun with a silencer. Being stupid, as he called it, is walking into a cartel’s safe house completely defenseless.
Aside from the initial introduction at the gas station, I haven’t spoken a word. Couldn’t, even if I wanted to, with him rambling on and on about himself.
Traffickers are strange people.
Perhaps his victims find his noise endearing initially, but all I can think about is how high pitched that voice would get if I were cutting him open right now.