Page 53 of Running Scared
Although their little room was protected from much of the outside noise by the low hum of the computer servers and the machinery that kept them cool, they could all feel it—the awareness that people were going to move as one, a hive responding to its lead mind.
With a nod to Birdie, who nodded back, they exited the room and took two hallways to their left, blending in seamlessly with the majority of the soldiers in the compound to head for the group meal.
Dean’d had time over the past twenty hours to marvel at how well run Corazones de Sangre was—there were schedules, obviously, traditions, and probably even rank, although it wasn’t emblazoned on the simple uniforms.The cartel had been born in a time of political unrest and had established a power base and a way of caring for its citizens.
Violent?Absolutely.Civilized?No.But there had been a vacuum and chaos, and this had taken its place.As the last three days in the desert had proven, there weren’t that many options, and there were very few places to go.
Which left Dean wondering why the seeming merge with Bratva—particularly the two assholes who had botched the hit on Vlade.Whereas Gael Barrera was at least striving for some sort of stability for his people, no matter the detriment to everyone else, he was at least providing forhispeople.The Bratva branch seemed bent on a sort of gluttony of vices.Leaving the trafficked immigrants to rot had never been Barrera’s style until Bratva got involved.
Dean and Marcus were hoping Barrera was regretting letting them in on the action.
In fact, they were counting on it.
The sound of shuffling feet and the happy hum of soldiers—both male and female—on their way to chow time was easy to get lost inside.There appeared to be about 2000 people in the military part of the compound, and given that supply trucks came and went and the personnel on the place were probably in a low-grade state of flux, nobody even gave Dean and Marcus a second glance.They carried themselves like the others—unconscious mimicry was one of the first things they’d learned going undercover—with good posture but nottoogood, and a sort of loose-limbed readiness that came with training and a regimen of PT and a nutritious diet.
They hung back for a little so that by the time they were in the food line, being served from caterers tables in the back of the room, far from the dais filled with the higher-ups on the food chain, they could have a good view of who sat where.It was then they made the discovery that—as it so often did—fortune in this case favored the batshit insane.
Their guys—and it was easy to spot the two hit men Bailey had tagged for Vlade Karkov’s death, because they were both wearing expensive and overheated wool suits in the desert, as well as completely unsuitable hard-soled shoes—weren’t sitting on the dais.They were sitting at the first table off the raised platform, their backs toward the door, two guards behind them, hands on their sidearms.
Their lucky-coin guy was making helpless twitching movements with his fingers, as though searching for his lucky coin to fidget with, and Dean could admit it—the gesture was one of the most pathetic things he’d ever seen.
Both men were sweating and regarding their food, which Dean, Marcus, and Birdie had pronounced first rate—home-cooked carnitas with stone-ground corn tortillas and tomato salsa—with all the excitement they’d regard chopped scorpions as an appetizer.
There was no doubt in Dean and Marcus’s mind that those two men were reasonably certain they were sitting down to their last meal.
“We could leave them,” Marcus murmured in Russian.
Which was a reasonable suggestion.Whatever had gone down, killing Vlade—and leaving a witness—was obviously a big enough mistake that Barrera couldn’t leave these two Karkov assclowns alive.
But getting rid of them might mean they’d have to get rid of the witness, and that was why Birdie was currently planting C-4 all over the compound, because hopefully after the two Russian liabilities were no longer on the ledger, rebuilding the compound would keep this particular cartel busy until Bailey’s name—or at least hisexistence—had long been forgotten.
“Should we relieve the guards?”Dean asked.
Marcus gave the situation another look-see and said, “Most of the tables near them are sparsely occupied.Let’s get some food, sit down, listen to the nightly address, see if we can grab them during the first exodus.”
Dean made a sound, although he did take a step forward in line.
“Or we edge out before the end of the nightly address and miss the rush,” Marcus said.
“I’m thinking,” Dean said, and they continued their advance in the buffet line.
They weren’t the last to sit down with their plates, which worked well because nobody paid attention when they took advantage of the sparsely populated tables.They ate, studying the dais under their brows as they did so.
“Shit,” Dean murmured.“Two of his sons are with him.”
Gael Barrera was the center of the dais, surrounded by his colonels and staff.Thin, proud, earnest, and handsome, he looked more like a college professor than the leader of a criminal enterprise, and at his right hand were two boys—far too young to be soldiers, even in the face of the fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds Dean had seen on base.The boys were both excited to be there, dressed in the uniform, faces clean, hair combed back under their khaki caps.A mother had prepped them both to be there by their father this night.
“With any luck, they’ll never see us coming.”They ate happily, because the foodwassuperior, and then, as expected, they felt a shifting.People went to the bathroom and returned, people disposed of their trays, got one more water—it was sort of a human rite of settling in, and that’s when they made their move.
First they set their trays in their washing station because they may have been enemy combatants but they weren’t animals, and then they edged behind the guards looking over the two party boys and bumped their shoulders.
“We can take over,” Marcus said with one of his personable smiles.“There is custard for dessert.”There was too.Dean rather regretted not getting any.
The way the two guards lightened up was rather sad.Dean hoped they didn’t get in trouble.They disappeared, nodding in gratitude, and Dean and Marcus waited for them to get their custard in the dessert line and sit down before Dean bent down and prodded the lucky-coin hit man with the muzzle of his service revolver.
“Time to get up,” he said in Russian, and he watched as both men straightened in both fear and hope.
“Come with us,” Marcus added, also in Russian.Quietly, without so much as bobbing a head or walking out of step, the four of them started to make their way, Marcus and Dean in the rear with guns drawn, taking the two hit men toward the exit.
