Silencer

by Andy McNab

Genres: War & Military; Mystery

Synopsis

1993: Under deep cover, Nick Stone and a specialist surveillance team have spent weeks in the jungles and city streets of Colombia. Their mission: to locate the boss of the world's most murderous drugs cartel — and terminate him with extreme prejudice.

Now they can strike. But to get close enough to fire the fatal shot, Nick must reveal his face. It's a risk he's willing to take - since only the man who is about to die will see him. Or so he thinks...

2012: Nick is in Moscow; semi-retired; semi-married to Anna; very much the devoted father of their newborn son. But when the boy falls dangerously ill and the doctor who saves him comes under threat, Nick finds himself back in the firing line. To stop his cover being terminally blown, he must follow a trail that begins in Triad-controlled Hong Kong and propels him back into the even more brutal world he thought he'd left behind.

The forces ranged against him have guns, helicopters, private armies and a terrified population in their vice-like grip. Nick Stone has two decades of operational skills that may no longer be deniable — and a fierce desire to protect a woman and a child who now mean more to him than life itself.

A Random House UK audio production.

Release date: January 26, 2021

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 544

Sample

1



Jaco, Costa Rica

29 November 1993

07.37 hrs

The Nazi eagle and swastika were still stamped under the Mauser bolt housing. Its sniper sight looked like a pointy fence post. Most novices aimed where a thin horizontal line crossed it, about two-thirds of the way up, but that was only there so you could check for canting – weapon tilting. The correct aim was right at the pinnacle.

I squinted into the very basic x4 magnification Second World War Zeiss optic. The target building in the valley below us was a blur. Torrential rain stung my face and battered the lens; the wipe I gave it with my thumb only made things worse.

‘One shot, one kill – still sure you can do it, hombre?’

I nodded a yes to the black-and-white western piss-take he’d been dishing out since we’d first met, but in fact, you know what, I wasn’t sure. I was soaked to the skin, covered with mud and leaf litter, and bitten to fuck by every insect in Central America that could fly, crawl, or sit and wait for you to put your arse down alongside it.

Worse still, I felt jumpy. This was my first job for the Secret Intelligence Service. It might have been same shit, different boss, but my whole future with them could hang on this one shot, and the dickhead I’d had to drag along with me was a millstone round my neck.

I eased my head away from the weapon. Dino was partially submerged in mud; the rest of him was covered with big lumps of rainforest. His eyes were pressed against what looked like a pair of binos on steroids. For the hundredth time since we’d got there he pressed a button on the casing and fired off a beam of invisible infrared light, in case the shack might have legged it further down the valley in the last few minutes.

‘Four hundred and forty-seven metres.’

‘I know, Dino. I know.’

The range was adjusted via a dial on top of the casing. I had it at 450.

Dino had shaved his head to a number-one for this job, and dyed what was left blond. To look at him, you’d think that the Mauser had belonged to his granddad. Maybe it had. ‘Need-to-know’ didn’t seem to be high on the DEA’s standard operational procedure: Agent Zavagno had already told me way more about his background than I needed to know.

His Mexican grandparents had swum the Rio Grande with their kids after watching too much Dallas and Dynasty. Dinner with JR and Joan Collins never materialized, but little Dino had begun to live the American Dream in the shack next door to them in some shit-kicking town just inside the border.

I was no linguist, but he sounded more Italian to me than Mexican, and there was definitely a touch of European in Dino’s DNA. Hundreds of Mussolini’s old mates had joined the flood of Nazis to Central and South America immediately after the Second World War – which probably went some way towards explaining his Boys from Brazil hairdo.

Dino might have been in his mid-twenties with a wing forward’s physique, but I felt like I’d had to drag him every centimetre of the twelve Ks from town. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be there; I was sure his passion and enthusiasm ticked all the boxes at the DEA’s Washington HR department. But he operated out of New Mexico, the land of tacos and dustbowls. He’d never spent time in the rainforest. He’d had no operational experience in the field, come to that, and didn’t know how to pace himself.

That wasn’t his only problem. He’d got it into his head that Brits liked a brew, and insisted on Lipton’s – the bags in the little yellow packets.

To make things worse, the one-horse town we’d hung out in was crawling with hippies, who’d gone there for the Summer of Love, and swathes of young surfer dudes, who’d come to catch a wave or two in recent years and also forgotten to leave. The girls looked tanned, fit and up for a party. Dino wore his cock on his dyed-blond head and had been reluctant to up sticks before he’d even received an invitation.

It had taken us ten long, sweat-soaked, mosquito-bitten hours to locate Jesús Orjuela’s latest hideaway. It had then taken us three more to crawl undetected into our fire position on the high ground to its south. We’d been lying there ever since in a tropical downpour while the Wolf – as he liked to be called, these days – sat and drank coffee in the dry. The thing about wolves is that they’re bold in packs but super-cautious on their own. This one knew that concealment was his best weapon.

The hardwood bungalow I could see through the Mauser sight was a far cry from the Mayfair apartments, Swiss ski chalets and Malibu beach houses that comprised the rest of his property portfolio. It stood on tree-trunk stilts, with a wiggly tin roof that also stretched across a veranda. There was a shuttered window on each gable end and a badly fitting door at the front, between two more windows with shutters, but at least everyone inside was sheltered.

And anonymous.

The only giveaway was the chunky, all-American Ford F150 pick-up parked outside. It would have been up to its axles in mud, had it not boasted the kind of lifted suspension that any redneck would have been proud to show off at the local monster-truck fest.

A rusty barbed-wire fence encircled about half an acre of long grass that drifted to the edge of the canopy. A swollen stream the width of a road snaked along the valley a hundred metres or so beyond it; I could see several other shacks spread out on its bank, each with its own patch of mud for the pigs to have fun in. Half a dozen crocodiles lazed nearby, jaws propped open as if they were playing raindrop catch or waiting for some fresh pork to wander in. They looked as laid-back as the country they called home.

Big government had protected this place from the nightmare civil wars and American-backed insurgency that had contaminated most of Central America in the 1970s and 1980s. Costa Rica didn’t even have an army. All it cared about was developing tourism and protecting the rainforest. Hardwoods towered forty metres above us, man-made buttresses a couple of metres high supporting them like stabilizers on a Christmas-tree stand.

I felt a little sorry that some of the shit spreading from the south was about to stick to this garden paradise.

I focused once more on the view through the blurred optic. I had the door and windows covered. Wherever the Wolf emerged, I’d have him. One good shot and he’d be flat on the veranda floor, victim of an old-fashioned assassination by a rival drugs cartel based beyond the horizon.



10



I didn’t even hear the crack. I was too busy maintaining concentration while the firing pin struck the round and the expanding gases forced the bullet up the barrel and out towards the target. But the parakeets heard it. They screeched and catapulted from their perches high in the canopy as the weapon jumped up and back into my shoulder.

The aiming post fell back to the neat hole at the centre of the spider-webbed screen. The parakeets regrouped and flew in bomber formation, metres above the F150, as they escaped down the valley.

No one emerged from the cab.

I’d kept my right eye open throughout, followed through the shot, watched as the point of aim settled once more on the centre of the target.

Dino mumbled unintelligibly. I couldn’t work out if he was excited or terrified. Then he blurted, ‘Did you get him, Nick? Is he dead?’

He probably thought the shot had been loud enough to get the whole village pouring out of their shacks. But it was nothing compared to Mrs Orjuela shrieking at her children to stay inside the shack. She slipped over in the mud, dropped the umbrella, then struggled to her feet.

‘Nick, she’s running, man. You got him!’

She slithered and slid towards the shack.

‘Let’s go, man! We’ve gotta go!’

I kept my eye glued to the optic as she reached the steps.

One of the little girls ran out onto the veranda, looking confused. Her mother continued screaming at her to go back, took the three steps in one bound and shepherded the child into the safety of the house.

‘I don’t get it, man. What the fuck we doing?’

I stayed in the fire position and watched the shadowy blob behind the wheel as the windscreen wipers bumped over the spider-webbed glass.

Dino was behind me now, maybe thinking that if he got the hell out of there, so would I.

‘He’s still moving.’

I braced my elbows to maintain the fire position and used my right forefinger and thumb to push the bolt handle up and back to eject the round.

‘Grab it.’

Even empty cases left with us.

I pushed home the bolt to pick up another 7.92 round from the five-round mag. As the round found the chamber the driver’s door opened. With agonizing slowness, the Wolf slumped sideways. I pulled the bolt handle down to close the action and got treated to a running commentary on the fucking obvious.

‘He’s under the truck, Nick. He’s fucking crawled under the truck. What we going to do? Fuck …’

I watched the rain-stitched mud, hoping to see Orjuela try to crawl, walrus-like, towards the shack. But he wasn’t that stupid.

I sprang up, keeping eyes on the truck, scanning for movement. So far there hadn’t been any sign of it from any of the other shacks along the river. They probably did enough hunting around there not to worry about a gunshot. ‘Dino!’

No answer.

‘Dino!’ I didn’t look round, just thumbed back the way we’d come. ‘Go to the RV. Remember the road junction? Go there and we’ll meet up. Go there now.’

He swam into my peripheral vision. ‘Why, Nick? What you doing?’

‘Making sure he’s dead. And that doesn’t need two of us. Go, fuck off.’

He was more than willing to take that order and I was more than happy to see the back of him.

I scrambled faster and faster down the hill, then slid on my arse across the wet grass, all the way to the valley floor. The rain was still hammering down. I could hear cocks crowing and, further along the valley, could see smoke belching from the stone chimneys and settling across wiggly tin rooftops like a pall. There was still no breeze to pick it up and take it away.

Less than fifty metres now to the F150 … I stooped as I ran towards it, weapon in the shoulder, always checking the gable end shutter, expecting it to open any minute, or the wife to storm back out onto the veranda and start shooting.

The Wolf was still under the vehicle. I could see no movement, but that meant nothing. I could hear the kids howling inside the shack, which was good. I preferred sobbing to shooting.

I dropped down next to the wheel arch. The Wolf was wedged by the driveshaft, his eyes glazed as he bled out into the mud. His retinas looked as dead as fish on a slab. I couldn’t see any chest movement, any twitching. But I’d long since stopped taking anything like that on trust.

I crawled in next to him and pressed my middle and forefinger into the fatty folds of his neck to feel for a carotid pulse. There wasn’t one. The round had entered high in his right shoulder and blown a king-size exit wound through his lower back.

I reversed out into the daylight and turned back towards the high ground, aiming for the cover of the canopy. As I started to move, something caught my eye at the gable end of the shack. The shutter was open. I swung up the weapon, using the crown of the optic as a battle sight.

The Wolf’s son stood there, framed by the window. He had clear olive skin, short dark hair and eyes like saucers. He stared at me, unblinking. He wasn’t scared. I could still hear his sisters wailing, but he looked like stone. His eyes bored into mine. They told me that while I might feature in his three a.m. nightmares, he would take his place in mine.

Then his mother appeared, her mud-covered arm reaching across the boy’s shoulders – not to move him away from the threat of my raised Mauser but to bind them together. Her gaze was as dark, unblinking and devoid of emotion as her son’s.

I lowered the weapon and broke into a run.



12



5 September 2011

05.19 hrs

I tried to get my head down this time, but knew it wasn’t going to happen.

I hauled myself up and made for the bathroom. I pulled back the immaculate shower screen, took off my kit and dropped it on the tiled floor, but left the plasters on the two cannula sites in my right arm. I stepped into the cubicle and lifted my hands to inspect the wounds on my wrists. My shirt sleeves had kept them so well covered I might have forgotten about them if they hadn’t been so incredibly sore. The plasticuff welts were lumpy and livid, and a good inch wide. The bruising on my right thigh had come on nicely and my ribs burned even when I reached out to turn on the tap.

I lathered myself with the mall’s flowery gel and rubbed their best shampoo into my hair. Towelling myself dry, I wandered back to my room, put on my nice new jeans and blue shirt, and went across the hall for the first Lipton’s of the day.

The back porch had a raised wooden deck big enough for a bench and table, with a nylon windbreak to protect them from the neighbours’ prying eyes. I sat sipping my brew as the first glimmers of dawn broke over the horizon. It had taken three teabags to bring it up to full monkey strength.

A light or two flickered in the windows of many of the houses nearby as their inhabitants ran around like lunatics trying to get to work on time or deliver the kids to school. The local bird population was starting to get vocal in the woods about fifty metres back from the house, competing with the distant rumble of the freeway. The shadowy remains of a swing and a slide stood out on the unkempt grass.

In my head, I started to run through the questions I wanted Dino to answer. I’d start with the basics. Was the target overlooked? What were the main access routes? Where were the garages, parking spaces and outbuildings? What were the dimensions and layouts of key rooms? Where was the power supply? Which doors were secured? Bolts or lever locks? Did they make a noise when they opened? Did I need to take in some oil to stop them creaking?

Were there any covered approach routes? Major obstacles? Was the surrounding ground ploughed, rocky, boggy? What about security fences, proximity lights? He’d already told me about the dogs, but were there any other animals? Horses, maybe? Geese? Those little bastards could wake the dead. The list went on – and that was even before I moved on to manpower and weapons.

In a perfect world, I’d take time to find out the target’s routine. But this world was far from perfect. I was running out of time and, although I still had no idea what the fuck Katya was up to, I guessed she was as well.



13



The kitchen door swung open and I heard footsteps making their way towards me. When Dino appeared around the edge of the screen and saw me, he froze like a deer in a set of oncoming headlights.

The titanium tubing and the hydraulics that made up his new knee glinted below a midnight-blue towelling bathrobe. He swayed slightly, as if he wanted to back away but I’d nailed his real foot and the false one to the deck. The crimson scar tissue and brutal toothmarks around his remaining calf showed that dogs weren’t always Man’s Best Friend.

Even in this light I could see that his expression had nothing to do with being startled by my unexpected presence – and everything to do with what I’d caught him holding. He’d been dropping blue-white crystals from a clear plastic zip-up into a glass pipe shaped like a test-tube, with an air-vented table-tennis ball on its end. Judging by the dark-brown stains and scorch-marks that covered it, Dino was already way past the experimental stage. He stared at me for another second or two, began to shake his head slowly from side to side, then turned back into the house.

The crystals explained the weight loss and fuck-all in the fridge, the loss of appetite, bad skin and ‘meth-mouth’ teeth. The attempt to self-medicate the trauma away was often a symptom of his condition, but it never worked.

I gave him five to sort himself out, then got up and went inside.

I followed the sound of sobbing to the La-Z-Boy. He leaned forward, his head almost touching his man-made knee. His pipe, bag and disposable lighter were squashed between his hand and his face.

I sat down on the sofa. ‘It’s OK, mate. No one has to know.’

‘No – not OK, Nick. Not OK.’

I could just about make out the words trying to fight their way past his hand and the jumble of meth gear.

‘I can’t keep it together any more. I’m wasted, man.’ His head rocked back and forth between sobs. ‘A wasted fuck …’

The best thing was to let him get it all out.

‘Mate, I’m sure you’re not the first DEA guy to suffer like this. Your people must have programmes that can help.’

His face remained buried among the paraphernalia. ‘It’s too late, Nick. I fucked up. It’s all gone – kids, wife. I’m just a wasted fuck.’

At last, with a superhuman effort, he managed to collect himself. He laid his gear carefully on the table and wiped his face with the heels of both hands. ‘It isn’t the meth, Nick. That just gets me through the day. It’s the pain I can’t handle. The failure. Seeing those assholes, right up close, every time I close my eyes, you know?’

I didn’t, but I nodded anyway.

‘Since I got back from Mexico … my head got fucked up big-time. I couldn’t sleep – still can’t. I keep going over everything that happened – all the things that fucker and his bitch of a mother did to me. Over and over. It’s like my fucking head can’t turn the page, man.

‘I know she’d be insane to come for me here, but that don’t stop the attacks, man. That don’t stop the paranoia. That don’t stop me locking myself in this fucking house, sometimes for weeks, thinking – knowing – they’re out there, on the fucking drive, waiting for me. I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve called for back-up. Then I have to deal with the fucking pity, you hear what I’m saying?’

His face twisted as he did everything he could to fight back the confusion and the shame. Every breath he took rasped like sandpaper.

‘The truth is, that bitch doesn’t need to take me back, Nick. She’s already inside my head …’

He knew as well as I did that, no matter how untouchable she was down there, they wouldn’t come up here and fuck about on DC’s doorstep. If they did, there wouldn’t just be a two-man DEA welcoming committee, there’d be a Combat Aviation Brigade complete with Blackhawks and Apaches coming their way to ‘assist’ the Mexican government to rid themselves of Public Enemy Number One.

‘Mate, you know you’ve got PTSD, don’t you? The meth – it’s just a part of it. Didn’t the Agency fix you up with counselling or whatever when you got back?’

He glared at me. ‘They offered it, but I didn’t need that shit.’

I moved in closer and gripped him by the arm. ‘You do, mate, you do.’



14



I’d seen it far too many times. PTSD was the silent killer. It could invade every fibre of your being. It wasn’t just the flashbacks and the anger. Guys like Dino couldn’t even communicate with loved ones, let alone accept their love and help. They pushed them away. The self-medication only increased the pain as they spiralled out of control.

He went quiet, rubbing his temples with his thumbs.

‘Dino, I know this shit is real. It’s fucked up some of my mates big-time. But you can pull yourself out of it. I’ve seen it happen.’

I’d also seen strong men destroyed because they didn’t understand that PTSD has nothing to do with machismo: it’s a normal reaction to an abnormal event. Some people suffer; others don’t.

He was still looking down at the floor, apparently mesmerized by the shiny little puddles of tears gathering around his feet. I was no expert, but the white mugs on parade, the lack of dust, the spotless sink, the absence of hairy soap in the shower was his way of trying to impose some order on his nightmare of a life.

‘Dino, mate …’ I waited for him to raise his glazed, watery eyes to mine. ‘The flashbacks are only your brain trying to process the shit that happened to you. The nightmares, the paranoia: they just mean your brain’s filing system is a little fucked up, that’s all. You’re not pitiful. You’re not bad. You’re not a wasted fuck. You’re not useless. There’s just a little bit of wiring that needs sorting between your left and right hemispheres, so you can put that stuff in its proper place and get your life back. It can be sorted. You hear what I’m saying?’

I hoped he did. The three or four lads I’d served with who hadn’t got help when they should have had ended up killing themselves. Dino had been humiliated, badly injured, then shuffled sideways when he’d got back to work. His solo gigs for the new DEA intakes weren’t going to save him; his Kitson theory wasn’t either. All the ingredients were there for a very sad final chapter to the Dino Zavagno story.

‘Nick, I’m so sorry for letting you see this. It’s pathetic.’

‘It’s part of the life we lead, mate. But there’s a way back. Think of your wife. And James and Jacob …’

He fought back another flood of tears. ‘It ever happen to you?’

I gave him a gentle smile. ‘I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve always been too thick to understand what the fuck is going on around me. I don’t notice much, so I have nothing to process. If I did, I’d probably be in worse shape than you. Thankfully, I’ve got fuck-all wiring to repair.’

‘You got kids, Nick?’

I’d always batted any personal questions to one side: where I came from, you didn’t wear your heart on your sleeve. But for some reason I heard myself explaining the situation with Anna and our boy.

‘Poor little fucker hasn’t a clue who or what I am, and his mother seems to want to keep it that way.’

He was looking more confused than he probably did when he was hoovering up that shit on the table.

I rapped a set of knuckles on my head and got a dull, empty sound. ‘See? There’s nothing inside. This is me for life, mate, doing this shit.’

He sat back and laughed, and at last I saw a brief flash of the old Dino. ‘Man, I might not be all there but I reckon I got a better handle on my shit than you have on yours. You’re just as fucked up.’

I suddenly felt uncomfortable with the spotlight turned on me. Maybe that was because he’d veered pretty close to the truth. On the doorstep he’d told me I hadn’t changed. That wasn’t right in a whole lot of ways, but it was Anna’s mantra, and I couldn’t deny that both of them had a point.

We sat for a while longer, until car doors began closing and engines started up, ready for another day of normality.

‘Nick, mind if I …?’ His gaze drifted back to the table. ‘I’ve got to … You know what I’m saying?’

‘Mate, knock yourself out. Whatever gets you through the day. But you will go and get some help, yeah? You need this shit like a hole in the head.’

He leaned over and picked up his paraphernalia. ‘Sure.’

We sat there in silence as he finished loading the crystals, held a lighter beneath the cup and inhaled. A stream of white smoke seeped from his mouth and nostrils and his whole body relaxed.

I realized where the slight smell of disinfectant had come from.



15



Energized by the hit, Dino was in full-on answering mode. That suited me just fine. I wanted as much out of him as he could give me before he slid back down and the paranoia and confusion took over again.

It sounded like the journey from the Costa Rica shack to the luxury estancia north-east of Narcopulco had been an eventful one for Liseth and her children.

‘She even had the fat fuck’s body driven north from CR for burial, man. Then kept digging him up and taking him with her every time she moved from one fucking pot of opulence to another.’

‘I didn’t have her down as sentimental.’

Dino snorted. ‘She didn’t keep him as some kind of beacon of hope, man, that’s for sure. The bitch has a different agenda. She don’t think like normal people. She wanted the kids to be reminded twenty-four/seven that their old man lost an empire, and none of them must ever be as weak as he was.’ Dino went quiet for a moment as he placed the pipe gently back on the table. ‘She buried him at the casa … in a one-fucking-third scale replica of the Lincoln Memorial – can you believe it, one-third? How the fuck is Peregrino going to miss that shit when he opens his curtains every morning?

‘You ever seen the real one? Nice piece of stonework, just up the road. The only thing missing is a statue of the Wolf looking thoughtful. He’s lying in a crypt.’

‘With my Mauser rounds still in him, you reckon?’

Dino threw his head back and laughed a bit too heartily – it wasn’t that funny.

‘Yeah, man, weak is definitely something her son is not – not on her watch. Even the name of the casa – Casa fucking Esperanza – has a different meaning for her.’

‘Not “hope”?’

He rolled his eyes. ‘That’s just the crap Jesus for Fucking Peace feeds the people. The version Liseth prefers means “desire” and “expectation”.’

I needed to drag him back to specifics. ‘And the Casa of Desire is about eighteen Ks north-east of Acapulco?’

‘Correct. Near a shit-kickers’ town, El Veintiuno. Or, at least, that’s the nearest point where mere mortals dare to breathe the same fucking oxygen. The ranch is another ten Ks from anything and anyone, man, surrounded by mountains and scrubland.’

‘Roads?’

Dino shook his head. ‘The only way for wheels, in and out, is private and patrolled. No vehicle can make it over that terrain cross-country, man. Rocks, boulders, gulches – impenetrable. They got a fucking helicopter up there – escape tunnel, all kinds of shit. Just like the old days.’

I had another question lined up but Dino was off on one. ‘That bitch has bigger plans for the boy than she ever dreamed of for his pop.’

His face glowed with the wonder of the thing. I was beginning to get the impression that a part of him admired ‘that bitch’. Part of me did too.

‘The Wolf always had grab bags, man, even in that shack. She headed north with close on thirty-two million – pocket change for her, but she knew the big sharks in the pool up north wanted it, and they were going to take it the first chance they got.

‘The bitch was smart enough to know she needed a new Big Swinging Dick to protect her and her family – but it wasn’t easy. She told me and the dogs that whoever she attached herself to had to be smart enough to stay at the top of the greasy pole – with her help, of course.’

‘She found someone?’

‘Sure she did. Husband number two was a big-time gang leader in Acapulco. And it was just peachy to start with. The kids were safe, the PRI were still in power, and everyone was making money. But then the cracks started to show. She came round to thinking that he also suffered from limited horizons.’

He adjusted himself in his chair and closely examined the pipe, debating another hit.

‘She formed a plan early on to get rid of him and have Jesús Junior take over, but had to wait until the boy was older – ready to rule the roost. Her game plan was royally fucked for a year or two when the PRI lost their grip and the gangs went to war. But Liseth knew there would be a power vacuum at some point. They kept killing each other, she kept waiting – and then she saw her opportunity.’

‘To kill off number two?’

‘You got it.’ This time he pointed at me instead of heading for the pipe. ‘He didn’t find his way into the firing line as quickly as she’d have liked. Rumour has it, she instructed Peregrino to give her husband both barrels, point blank in the fucking face. Rumour? I fucking know it for fact, man. She told us. We were her pets, but we were also her sounding board.’

‘We?’

‘The German Shepherds – three of the fuckers – and me. They were pampered, even shampooed and blow-dried every other day, man. Unlike me. But she also had their claws ripped out so they didn’t make any noise on her marble floors.

‘We were the only living things to hear her deepest thoughts. She’d tell us how weak her husbands were, how proud she was of her fucking son, you name it. She didn’t ask for our opinions, of course. Just our devotion. I figured it was best to act as confused as the dogs were – and to leave her with the impression all I wanted to know was when I’d be fed.

‘Anyway, she told us that sweet little Jesús left him with half a head, tied to a chair in the middle of a fucking roundabout on the Costera, to put commuters off their breakfast tacos.’



16



‘The bitch saw the future.’

The way Dino was studying the pipe you’d have thought he was valuing it for Antiques Roadshow. ‘She knew the gangs would eventually choose sides and amalgamate into full-blown cartels … and she also knew that would keep escalating the war. The bigger the cartels got, the more power they’d want. She’d seen all that shit in Colombia.

‘That was when she set her little boy on the path towards becoming a paramilitary leader. She knew there was more chance of surviving the war and winning the peace if they had no allegianc. . .