Cocaine Read Online Free Page A

souls for dinero .’ He spat the last word. ‘Two of them held him down while the third one slit his throat from ear to ear like a chicken. This is not how a man should die.’
    ‘ No, sir.’
    ‘ Pepe was a bad man, Juan Andres. He stole from your country.’
    Juan Andres looked down at the floor and nodded gently, whilst Suares re-folded his arms, once-more the monosyllabic blank-faced intelligence chief, watching his most highly-educated young agent carefully. Juan Andres licked his lips and looked up at his jefe .
    ‘ We killed him then.’
    ‘ Very good.’
    ‘ And if I had been in the car with Pepe?’
    ‘ We only wanted Pepe. You are too valuable to us. You just happened to be with him.’
    ‘ Claro .’
    ‘ I’ve been watching you closely, Juan Andres and I want to take this opportunity to congratulate you.’
    Suares reached over for Juan Andres’s hand. Juan Andres blinked and gave it to him.
    ‘ Your honesty and fortitude through these difficult times have left me with only one course of action.’
    ‘ Sir?’
    ‘ I’m promoting you to sergeant.’
    ‘ Claro, jefe .’
    ‘ I’m giving you Pepe’s job.’
    ‘ Claro que si. ’

    The undergrowth was filled with twisting vines that snagged on boots and clothing and slowed his progress. He was running hard and he had been for twenty minutes. He could still hear them behind him, calling his name, telling him to come back, that they didn’t mind that he’d found them. He kept going. He’d learnt not to stop just because someone called his name. He’d learnt his lessons very well, especially the over-riding command that had stayed with him since his first few months in Barranquilla, sweating through the training process and acquiring a taste for yerbabuena , a local mint tea. The over-riding monosyllable: run. Run for your life. He was very good at running and he ran faster than the men chasing him.
    When he had found the hatch, approximately twenty-two minutes earlier, he had wavered. To radio in, or to climb down the steep steel ladder and to see for himself, for the first time, what all the fuss was about. In six years, four of them as sergeant, he had never once seen a factory. This was the first time, and his chemistry background helped to ignite his natural curiosity and fuel a semblance of bravery as he dropped quickly down the rungs to the earth floor below.
    There were two tunnels set at ninety degrees to each other. The muffled sound of heavy industrial processes filtered through to the junction in which he now stood, the sound of the printing of crystalline money, an international currency that required no sovereign’s head or promise to pay the bearer. He crouched in an alcove, which almost made him invisible, and he heard boots pounding the beaten earth and heading in his direction. He had an Uzi , a couple of grenades and a Russian pistol, an old Makarov PM . The Uzi would be very noisy and the only people he had killed in his life had been too distant for him to see their faces. This would not be like before.
    They were twenty yards away, maybe less. When they stopped, he heard the click of a cigarette lighter. He held the Makarov in one hand and the Uzi in the other. The boots started again and now the voices were distinct, not just one amorphous blur of sound. But it was more than that. The voices were familiar, especially the one doing most of the talking.
    By the time Suares had reached the junction, the Makarov was back in Juan Andres’s holster, the Uzi was slung nonchalantly over his back and he was casually smoking a cigarette, a cheap Honduran import which consisted mainly of wood-shavings.
    ‘I came to warn you’, said Juan Andres. ‘ Americanos .’
    Suares frowned.
    ‘I don’t think so.’
    ‘ Si, jefe, a group, in a black helicopter.’
    ‘You shouldn’t be here, Juan Andres.’
    ‘I know, sir.’
    ‘If you are lying to me I will have to take appropriate action.’
    ‘I will go first if you