His dark eyes were no longer sad. They had gone stone cold evil.
Beautiful white trash, he thought. Look how shyly she flirts. How innocent she tries to look. Soon she’ll be snorting with the rest of them. And taking back word of the delights available here to the others, just as her friend has done for her.
I may have her before she is too wasted to appreciate it. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll allow Jason to enjoy her first. These blondes are especially good, his favorites, and he deserves the perks of the job.
Now Carlos watched her as she laughed, her self-consciousness leaving her as she sipped the last few drops of her second drink. She was deeply involved in conversation, cozying up to one of those prancing, WASP, captain-of-industry types that he so despised. Despised even after they inevitably became his best customers. He observed the way the slight, pink flush was spreading its way up her throat now, coloring in her cheeks, adding starlight to her eyes as the alcohol did its work on her.
That was nothing. He would soon have another refreshment to serve her and the rest of his guests. And it truly was magical.
The plan is going precisely as Juan de Santiago promised it would, he thought.
“Give them a taste of the new powder,” de Santiago had urged. “Once they have tasted, they are yours from now on. Yours and ours, Carlos.”
And if the new powder worked as predicted, it would be gold.
A snort or two and hooked for life! How was such a thing possible?
Carlos didn’t care about the specifics. The scope of what de Santiago and the others were doing was much too big for him to comprehend. He only knew how it affected him. Basic supply and demand. This new product would take care of the demand and de Santiago swore he and the others would soon have the supply problem solved.
It’s finally my time, Carlos thought.
After the struggles of the last few years, the small-time marijuana business, the miniscule-margin cocaine distribution, he was finally ready to reap the bounty this new, powerful powder of de Santiago’s promised.
The noise level in the room confirmed that his party guests were ready, too. Carlos stepped through the double doors and signaled to Jason.
It was time to bring in the new refreshments.
Chapter 1
Juan de Santiago was the mode of man who insisted that his world rotate smoothly on a well-oiled axis, that his organization operate as a properly maintained machine. He knew how the tiniest overlooked detail could derail an operation. The smallest unobserved defect in a propeller could crack a bearing and seize up a perfectly good engine. A minor flaw in an otherwise perfect plan could doom the efforts of hundreds.
And Juan de Santiago was not a man who would tolerate imperfection.
Now, on this beautiful morning here in his beloved mountains, he could only watch helplessly as the awful result of some unknown minor flaw in an otherwise faultless plan played out below him.
“Bastard Americans!” he spat, his hot, angry words barely audible over the strident buzzing of the giant black insects that danced above the mountain field below him. “And that son of a dog, El Presidente Guitteriz!”
The smaller man standing beside him took a short, strategic step backward, out of his leader’s reach. He could feel the heat of the man’s fury, and he knew only too well how that rage could sometimes manifest itself.
Roaring flames raced through Juan de Santiago’s best coca fields. The crop, mere weeks from harvest, was now little more than a fog of thick, black smoke, being shoved up the mountain slopes and into the jungle by a gentle tropical breeze. That breeze would usually bring him the fragrance of the wild orchids that grew among the trees below the field.
Not today. There was only the foul odor of the imperialists’ destruction.
The fragrance was only one reason de Santiago loved to occasionally make the long, treacherous hike over the mountains from his base camp. This was his boyhood home and it rejuvenated him to come here.