Covert Warriors (Presidential Agent 7)

The two brown Policía Federal Suburbans drove rapidly up the road through the grapefruit orchard to the big house. Two policemen got out of the lead vehicle, carrying Kalashnikov rifles at the ready. They looked around suspiciously and, seeing nothing more threatening or suspicious than el jefe’s gringo friend, the gringo’s girlfriend, and several other gringos on the veranda, signaled that it was safe for el jefe to get out of the second Suburban.

Juan Carlos Pena, commander of the Policía Federal for Oaxaca State, did so, and walked quickly to the veranda.

“What the hell are you still doing here, Carlos?” he demanded.

“Good morning, Juan Carlos,” Castillo replied. “Can I offer you a cup of coffee?”

“I don’t want a fucking cup of coffee. I want to know what the fuck the emergency is you called me about. And why the fuck you’re still here.”

Castillo shrugged. “You might as well have some coffee. You’re going to be here for a while.”

He gestured toward the orchard.

There was a line of a dozen men walking out of the orchard toward the house. They were wearing black coveralls, their faces were covered with balaclava masks, and they were all armed with Kalashnikovs.

“What the fuck?” Juan Carlos exclaimed, and turned back to Castillo. He now saw that another half dozen men, similarly clothed and armed, had come onto the veranda from inside the house.

“Your American Express is outgunned, Juan Carlos,” Castillo said. “I think you’d better tell them to lay down their weapons. I don’t want to kill them, but that’s your other option.”

Pena thought: “Your American Express is outgunned”?

He wouldn’t dare try killing my bodyguards!

He said: “What the fuck is going on here?”

“The weapons, please, Juan Carlos,” Castillo said. “And then we can have our little chat.”

“You’re not actually threatening me? You know who I am.”

“You’re the man who’s going to tell your men to put their weapons down, because otherwise they’ll be dead.”

“You’re out of your fucking mind if you think I’m going to let you get away with this,” Pena said, and then switched to Spanish and ordered his bodyguards to lay down their weapons.

Castillo then issued an order in Russian to the men in the balaclava masks.

Pena looked at him with wide eyes.

“That was Russian, Juan Carlos,” Castillo said. “What I did was tell them to restrain your men. That means they will put your men in plastic handcuffs, take them to the back of the house, sit them on the ground in a circle, and then handcuff them together. I have no intention of hurting them—as a matter of fact, I’m hoping we can become pals—but for the moment, that’s what’s going to happen.”

A maid appeared from inside the house, pushing a wheeled cart holding a coffee service toward a table where Svetlana sat in one of the upholstered wicker chairs.

“Ah, and here’s our coffee,” Castillo said.

Pena watched in furious fascination as his visibly terrified bodyguards were efficiently cuffed and led around the side of th

e house.

“You will not be harmed,” Pena called out to them in Spanish.

His bodyguards appeared anything but convinced.

Four of the black-clad men then gathered the Policía Federal weapons, took them to one of the Suburbans, unloaded and disassembled them, and then put roughly half of the parts in the second Suburban. Then they emptied the magazines of their cartridges, left the magazines in the first Suburban, and put the cartridges in the second.

Castillo issued a second, somewhat shorter order in Russian.

Pena looked at him.

“What I told them to do now was go in the kitchen and get lemonade and give it to anyone who is thirsty,” Castillo said. “And I suspect most of them will be. When the Russians were in Hungary, I learned from the Államvédelmi Hatóság—the Hungarian secret police; probably the best interrogators in the world, better even than the Mossad—that terror causes unusual thirst. And your American Express certainly looked terrified just now, wouldn’t you agree?”