The notorious gang was being increasingly outmaneuvered by Gustavo Marroqui’s superior organization and penetration into the highest echelons of the local government. Also advantageous was the indirect support he enjoyed from the United States and other countries whose politicians benefited from being associated with the battle against the most infamous gang in the world. There was nothing like photos of dead MS-13 members to divert people’s attention from Marroqui’s growing power in Latin America.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. It wasn’t an adage that had worked out so well for Rapp in the past. But there was always a first time.
He reached across the shirtless man next to him and rolled the window down a couple of inches. The stench of sweat—some his own—was getting overwhelming.
The flow of cool air was an improvement despite carrying a hint of sewage, diesel, and decay from the cinder-block buildings around them. Corrugated walls and roofs were illuminated in the headlights, some painted with graffiti, others with rust. The flash of colorful clothing drying on lines occasionally caught his eye, but most of this part of the city was dark. Electrical poles slung with wires were plentiful, but the lights on them were either burned out or intentionally broken. With its deteriorating position in Guatemala, MS-13 had adopted a strategy that was unusual for them—a low profile. The operations once carried out with purposeful impunity were now going underground. The arrogance of young men capable of incredible violence had been attenuated by the realization that someone else out there was capable of even more.
In a way, it felt familiar. The Taliban were the masters of intimidation, but when the US military was around, they tended to keep their mouths shut and crawl back in their holes. Unfortunately, that was where the familiarity ended. Rapp knew virtually nothing about the country or city he was in, didn’t speak the language, and had no support from either the Guatemalan government or US intelligence assets working in-country. And while MS-13 wasn’t the first strange bedfellow in his career, he wasn’t normally this reliant on them. For all intents and purposes, he was now an honorary member. The failure or success of this mission turned on how reliable his new allies proved to be.
The man to his left cracked opened a beer and Rapp watched him drain it in one long pull. By his count, that was the eighth since they’d picked him up thirty minutes ago. Not exactly confidence inspiring and one of the reasons that Scott Coleman was operating independently with a different MS-13 faction. It was the best thing they could come up with to spread the risk.
Rapp checked the screen on his phone but found nothing from the former SEAL. Slightly worrying, but not yet panic-inducing. Coleman was actually the one doing the heavy lifting in this particular operation, and it made sense that he’d be off-line.
Damian Losa had identified Marroqui’s current location as a heavily fortified and well-protected mountaintop in the southern part of the country. Ironically, it wasn’t much different than the one Nick Ward had set up in Uganda and was probably damn near as secure. No roads came within fifteen miles of it, the terrain was extremely rugged, and the entire thing was surrounded by a heavily guarded concrete wall. What it lacked, though, was Ward’s antiaircraft capability. At least that was the hope.
As popular as Rapp was in Uganda for dealing with their terrorism problem, Coleman was even more popular in Latvia for helping them deal with an incursion by the Russians. That made it relatively easy for him to get on the phone with their generals and quietly order up some military-grade weaponry. Add to the mix a few professional smugglers and they’d soon be in possession of an item that would send a clear warning to anyone else out there with a grudge against Claudia Gould.
The driver turned into a tarp-covered gap between two houses and slowed. The makeshift tunnel was steep—probably a ten percent grade—and went on for longer than Rapp would have thought possible. Eventually they came to a large graffiti-covered door that was rolled back by an armed guard. They passed through a number of similar doors before coming to a parking area covered with still more corrugated metal and containing maybe ten other cars. By then the vague thumping that Rapp noted when they’d entered the tunnel had turned into deafening Spanish rap music. To what he calculated to be the north, colored lights swirled through a gap in the wall.
Three of his new companions wandered off when they got out of the car, but the driver motioned for him to follow. They slipped through the gap and Rapp found himself in a similarly covered enclosure probably a hundred feet square. The people packed into it were roughly split between men similar to the ones he’d arrived with and young, attractive women. Likely selected for those very features from a local population not really in a position to argue.