I’ve got NASA poking its nose into my operation. Fucking NASA! What do these assholes think they’re going to do about that? Attack Cape Canaveral on camels?”
Esparza’s face had turned bright red and the sweat was starting to run down his forehead when he finally fell silent. The question seemed rhetorical but his intense gaze suggested that an answer was required.
“I don’t know,” Rapp said honestly.
Halabi would have already had a network in place for the first shipment of anthrax. Why bring in more people now? It was a huge risk with no apparent payoff.
“That’s it?” Esparza said. “I don’t know? You told me you were the world’s great expert on these people.”
“I can’t read their minds, Carlos. When he gets back, hand him over to me. I’ll get you your answers.”
Esparza contemplated Rapp’s clean-shaven face for a moment and then slid a manila envelope across the table. “We have bigger problems than a bunch of towelheads spying on my operation.”
“What?” Rapp said, ignoring the envelope and instead stabbing a slice of pineapple with his fork.
“Damian Losa is trying to put the screws to me on this mall thing. He and my other partners already made enough off that deal to pay back their investment but now they want more.”
Rapp opened the envelope and thumbed through its contents. Pictures of Losa, his houses, his security. Bios on his bodyguards, information on his family and the school his kids went to. Even a copy of the itemized bill for armoring his Range Rover.
“Not an easy job,” Rapp said, speaking on automatic as his mind tried to make sense of Halabi’s latest move. “Losa’s got more security than the president.”
“I’m paying you a lot of money and you don’t do anything but eat my food and kill my men. Time to step up.”
“You want it to look like an accident? Or would you ra—”
“I want a fucking fireball! I want people scraping him and his family off the sidewalk with a toothpick. I want to send the message that anyone who screws with me is a walking dead man.”
“I don’t do families.”
“You work for me.”
“It’s unprofessional, Carlos. And I have a reputation to protect. If you want his wife and kids taken out, get one of your other people to do it. His oldest son’s nine and his wife wears three-inch heels. You must have someone who can shoot straight enough to hit targets that slow.”
Esparza opened his mouth to respond but Rapp cut him off. “I’ll need a team. Two men should do it. I have people in mind.”
“A team? That comes out of your pocket.”
Rapp smiled and dabbed his mouth with his napkin. “Not how it works, Carlos. Expenses are yours.”
“You’re not the only killer in the world.”
“Then bring in a second-stringer who’ll work on the cheap. But if they screw up—if Damian Losa survives—he’s going to come down on you like the wrath of God. You’ve got one chance at this and you can afford precisely a zero percent chance of failure. I—and only I—can provide that.”
Esparza’s temper flared again and again he managed to control it. The man was in an even tighter box than Rapp had imagined. Losa and the other cartels were breathing down his neck, his marijuana operation had hit serious headwinds, his cocaine cultivation initiative was years from providing any real benefit, and his foray into Middle Eastern heroin was bogging down. The cartel leader was stretched to the breaking point and he knew it.
Before anyone could speak again, the sound of a motor started to separate itself from the hum of the jungle. The guards all straightened and pulled their weapons off their shoulders.
Esparza walked to the edge of the terrace, watching a white panel van approach from the west. It went as far as it could on the worsening road, finally pulling beneath the trees at the edge of the compound. Attia jumped out of the driver’s side and went to the back, opening a set of double doors to let the passengers out.
Rapp took a position next to Esparza and examined them as they began filing up the road. Six in all, no fighters. Two were probably in their mid-fifties, another in his late teens. There was even a woman—hunched as she covered her mouth and tried to suppress a cough. These weren’t people trained to keep tabs on Esparza’s operation. They had been chosen for their ability to blend in—to move through America unchallenged. But to what end? Suicide bombers?