Besides, like she said… it doesn’t really matter.
What’s done is done, and a change of heart means nothing right now.
CHAPTER 16
Greer
Frankie Orellana was not an easy man to pin down. It took the better part of today after we landed in San Salvador to arrange a meeting. We clearly couldn’t use the same CIA resource that Ladd had availed himself of when he came down to rescue me. There’s no way we can trust anybody under Gayla Newman at this point.
It’s sad really that I don’t have a single person who I’ve partnered or worked with over the years while with the Company that I could trust to help me out here, even if only for an information exchange. Maybe it’s just me, but I never developed a close camaraderie with anyone other than Ladd.
It’s not like I entered the CIA because it was a long-standing family tradition. My parents were about as far from clandestine government work as could be.
When I went to college, it was for international studies. I had thought I might work in an embassy as a translator since I was already fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. While in college, I took Russian more on a lark than anything. Turns out, I have the rare ability to pick up foreign languages quite quickly, so I also added Arabic to my course load.
I have no clue how it happened, but word reached the CIA, and I was approached and recruited while finishing my master’s. They were very interested in someone who was fluent in two languages and nearly fluent in two others. What I didn’t possess in terms of accent and regional dialects, they assured me they could get me up to speed via their immersion courses.
It was a lot to consider.
The CIA offered good money and additional education. I’d always been a bit of an adrenaline junkie, so the field work appealed to me as well. I was in good shape, and I knew how to fire guns because we always had them at home for protection. It was at least worth a closer look, so I traveled to Langley for an interview.
Funny, I can’t even remember the person who interviewed me or what we talked about, but she must’ve said something right because I accepted their offer.
And now here I am, trying to bring down an arms dealer with a personal vendetta against me who is being helped by a higher-up at the CIA. I’m paired with the only partner I ever felt a bond with, and actually had loved almost to distraction, in a Central American city with only each other to depend on.
Oh, and we’re not really speaking to each other, despite the fact we’ve had no-holds-barred sex twice, but that’s neither here nor there.
In order to track down Frankie Orellana, the Vecindario 18 member who originally fed information to Ladd, we had to rely on Bebe Grimshaw’s skills. She hacked through a complex maze of digital information, coupled with some magic witchery, and was able to come up with a cousin who was very close to Orellana.
We spoke to Bebe and Dozer from our hotel on a secure satellite link through a laptop, and I made what Ladd later told me was a mistake by asking the details of how they found this cousin. Bebe was more than happy to give the overly long and complicated discourse of how she dove deep into the Orellana family and their finances, finding this cousin who seemed to have more money than the others. He had fishy-smelling ties to a mid-level drug supplier in San Salvador, and at age twenty-two was dealing on the streets and making what would be considered big bucks for someone from a poor Salvadorian family. I mostly tuned out the technical part of Bebe’s information but homed in on the family ties.
This cousin was young and stupid, and when Ladd and I approached him with bulked-up evidence that Bebe gave us about his drug ties, combined with a threat to turn him in, he was all too happy to act as an intermediary between us and Frankie Orellana.
Ladd merely wanted him to pass on a message… an offer, so to speak. He was to tell his cousin that Ladd had fifty thousand dollars for a small piece of information that he wanted similar to the last time he met with Orellana. We didn’t have to mention Mejia’s name to the cousin, but Orellana would know what we wanted.
Of course, the cousin got a gleam in his eye at the mention of the money, and I could tell he was thinking how he might alleviate us of our monetary burden—which was safely secured back in our hotel. Ladd had growled at him in perfect Spanish, “Wipe that fucking look off your face, or I’ll dump your bullet-ridden body in the Rio Lempa.”