Power and Empire

“Where is she?” Moco said to himself while he stood over the dead man. He knew better than to engage Gusano with an important question. All three rounds from the Worm’s TEC-9 had impacted him center-chest, killing him in seconds.

There was a wallet on the kitchen counter, next to some keys and a loaded Ruger LC9 pistol. Moco hoped against hope that this was another FBI agent — maybe the lady cop’s boyfriend or something. He cursed when he found an ID card from a nearby mortgage company that identified the dead man as Aaron Bennet.

Gusano just stood and stared at the man he’d killed, nodding smugly, as if he were proud of his handiwork.

Moco glanced around the living room. Every piece of art, all the furniture, the photos above the mantel, all had to do with hunting and fishing. The few photos of women were of Bennet with the Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders or family shots with his mother. No females lived in this house.

Moco scratched his head. “I don’t get it. This is the house. Twenty-three forty-eight Buttermilk Circle.”

Gusano gave a sideways look. “This is Buttermilk Place.”

Moco’s hand tightened around the butt of his pistol. His head began to shake.

“Are you shitting me? You knew we were at the wrong address?”

The Worm shrugged. “I was wondering why we came to Buttermilk Place.”

“We need to go,” Moco said through clenched teeth. “Did you touch anything?”

“No,” Gusano said. “You think I’m stupid?”

Moco didn’t answer. The boss was going to hack them up alive with a chainsaw. But there was nothing they could do about it now. Too many people had seen them to risk another hit right now. But Moco was sure of one thing. There was only one way he could rectify his mistake. He had to find the FBI lady and kill her.

32

Helen Reid, Hendley Associates’ chief pilot, battled white-knuckle downdrafts and a torrential downpour to bring the Gulfstream 550 in for a long landing, touching down farther along Runway 29 so she could scoot out of the way of an Aerolíneas Argentinas Airbus coming in behind her on final approach. A ground controller with excellent English got her off the runway quickly and guided her to the northeast corner of Buenos Aires’s Ministro Pistarini International Airport, where she parked at the General Aviation terminal.

Jack and the other Campus operators were relieved to be back on terra firma and were packed and ready to go by the time she set the parking brake. The ownership of the Hendley jet was a matter of open record, but Argentines considered their country an extremely worthwhile destination for tourist travel, so the operators would just declare the purpose of their trip was pleasure and claim it was a company getaway.

The team traveled with passports issued by the State Department with all the appropriate biometrics for their cover identities. It was one of the benefits of having friends in extremely high places. Argentina’s kidnapping rates had dropped some in recent years, but the son of the President of the United States made for an awfully tempting target.

Argentine Immigration and Customs required those arriving via private aircraft to carry all luggage inside the terminal for scanning and inspection while the aircraft remained locked behind a secure fence — which made bringing in the firearms problematic. Chavez solved the issue by having the pilots report a problem with an oil-pressure gauge. This necessitated a move to the nearby maintenance hangar, where Adara and Lisanne could pop in and retrieve the handguns and comms gear. The appropriate amount of exposed leg was still one of the most useful social-engineering mechanisms in the world. The women were much less likely to be challenged considering the Latin machismo of the country. Even so, they would tuck the pistols under their clothing just to be on the safe side.

Less than twenty minutes after they touched down, the team carried their bags out the front doors of the General Aviation terminal and sprinted through the late-afternoon downpour to locate the three rental cars that were supposed to be staged outside. The plan was for Adara and Lisanne to wait with the pilots and grab the guns once the Gulfstream was towed to the maintenance hangar while Ding, Midas, and Jack took the other two cars to check into their rooms at the Hotel Panamericano downtown.

Except there was only one rental car — a tiny orange Renault Clio hatchback.

Lisanne whipped out her cell phone like it was a weapon. With her black hair plastered to her cheeks, she stood in the driving rain and set about chastising the rental car company in a mixture of Spanish, Arabic, and English for making her look bad. No plan survived first contact. Shit happened. And luckily, this screwup didn’t cost the team anything but wet clothes and time. Jack couldn’t help but think her handling of the situation was pretty damned impressive.