The Hunters (Presidential Agent 3)

“To what do I owe the honor?” Castillo said.

“I want to show you something.”

“And it wouldn’t wait until we were at San Jorge?”

“No. You have any checked luggage?”

Castillo shook his head.

Fernando’s car, a new twelve-cylinder black Mercedes-Benz S600, was in the short-term parking lot. Castillo remembered reading in a magazine that the sedan had a sticker price somewhere north of $140, 000.

“Is this what you wanted to show me?”

“No.”

“Nice wheels.”

“It’s Maria’s,” Fernando said.

“You must have been a really bad boy.”

“Fuck you, Gringo.”

“What exactly did you do wrong?”

“Well, for example, I went to Europe and South America without taking her along.”

“She didn’t like that?”

“No, she did not.”

“I can’t understand that.”

Fernando shook his head but didn’t reply.

He then drove them around the airport to Lemes Aviation, a large business-aviation operation.

“Don’t tell me you pranged the Lear?”

“No. But it’s in here for a hundred-hour maintenance a lot sooner than I thought it would be.”

“You’ll get a check, eventually, from the Secret Service. You know the deal: They chartered it.”

“I know the deal,” Fernando said.

He pulled the Mercedes into a parking slot at the Lemes building and they got out. But instead of going in the building, Fernando marched purposefully toward a hangar. Castillo followed him expecting to see the Lear, on which he was sure Fernando was going to show him something that had happened that was going to require expensive repair.

The Lear wasn’t in the hangar. There were four Beech craft turboprops and one jet, a Gulfstream III.

“What are we looking at?” Castillo asked.

Fernando pointed to the Gulfstream.

“Jesus, don’t tell me you bought that!”

“I didn’t. I think maybe you should,” Fernando said.

A smiling man wearing a leather aviator’s jacket and aviator’s sunglasses walked quickly up to them before Castillo had a chance to respond.