where the church is.”
At the door leading from first class into the Boeing 737’s exit, the flight attendant on this leg out of Baghdad pressed her business card into Joe’s hand. She said, “I don’t fly out again for four days.” He flipped the card over and checked the back. Sure enough, there was her phone number.
He smiled and used his forefinger to touch the tip of her chin. “I don’t know my schedule right now. But thanks for great service.”
He pocketed her card and strode down the gangway.
There had to be sixty or seventy people waiting for arrivals, but drawn by the unerring pull of maternal love, the first face that registered was his mother’s. Rosalinda Cardone. She stood next to his brother, Manuelito, and seemed to glow from within, her smile identical to the one for which Joe was legendary among CIA colleagues of both sexes: brilliant white teeth, sensual lips.
He dropped his overnighter as she embraced him, plump arms hugging his waist, her head pressed hard against him. Standing on tiptoes, her head came to his midchest.
He closed his eyes and let a warm sensation spread up his neck to his face. He was flushing with happiness. And something else. Some powerful feeling. This is absolutely the only place in the world where I am safe.
His mother pulled back enough to look up at him. His eyes were dark brown with some gold flecks, like his father’s. Hers were deep pools of velvet black from her Spanish heritage. “Your muscles are firm enough, but you are too skinny, Joseph,” she said.
He laughed and kissed her on the forehead. “You are my home.”
“Been too damn long,” Manuelito said, grabbing Joe into a bone-crushing hug.
“And how’s Dad?” Joe asked.
His mother took his hand. “He’s fine, he just didn’t want to wrestle the wheelchair through the airport. He’s waiting for us at the ranch.” His bullock of a father had finally been broken by a car accident that had robbed him of the use of his legs.
Joe checked out Manuelito, head to toe. Levis. Red shirt. Black, well-worn cowboy boots. He’d let his hair grow long and wore it pulled back in a ponytail, Antonio Banderas style. It looked good. When they were young they were often mistaken for each other. Same dark brown wavy hair, light brown skin, brown eyes, and quarterback physique.
Joe at thirty still had rock-hard abs. He patted his twenty-eight-year-old brother’s midsection, softer-looking than the last time they’d been together. “Well, Manuelito, looks like you’re ready for marriage, all right.”
“You bet. Time for the really good life.” His brother picked up Joe’s overnighter.
“I can get it,” Joe said.
The ride Joe had been imagining took place in the cab of a beat-up Chevy truck, Manuelito driving, Joe riding shotgun and their mother in the middle. Life could sometimes be so damn good.
Chapter 5
P araguay. A landlocked country in the heart of the South American continent.
In area, slightly smaller than California.
A country that in the east had grassy plains and wooded hills; in the west, low dry forest and thorny scrub in the vast, sparsely inhabited emptiness of the Gran Chaco; and that in the extreme east, possessed a magnificent strip of tropical rain forest where Paraguay shared a border with Brazil and Argentina.
In Paraguay, Tomas Morinigo Escurra—born in Manaus on the Rio Negro in northern Brazil—found refuge at the age of fifteen, after he killed his first man.
According to the CIA World Factbook on Paraguay:
Population—95% Mestizo.
Languages—Spanish and Guarani.
Capital—Asuncion.
Religion—97% Roman Catholic.
Government—constitutional republic.
Economy—poor economic performance attributed to political uncertainty, corruption, lack of structural reform, internal and external debt and deficient infrastructure.
International Disputes—an unruly region at the convergence of the Argentina-Brazil-Paraguay borders that is a locus of money laundering, smuggling, arms and drug trafficking, and fund-raising for extremist organizations; a major illicit producer of cannabis; a base for transshipment of Andean (Colombian) cocaine headed for Brazil, other Southern markets, Europe, and the U.S.; and a center for corruption and terrorist money-laundering activity, especially in the tri-border area.
In the years that followed his arrival from Manaus, Tomas Escurra hacked out success and imposing wealth in his adopted country, working as a hired hand, then a small rancher, and finally he married a rich man’s daughter and became a legitimate cotton grower. Later, he moved into more lucrative endeavors, ones more challenging and exciting—his specialty: drug smuggling. In his younger years he had also gained fame as a champion practitioner of capoeira, the distinctive martial art of Brazil, a combination of music, dance and fighting. But that time of young glory now lay thirty years in the past.
Six days before he would celebrate the birth of Christ by throwing one hell of a huge party for local honchos from hundreds of miles in every direction, Escurra was hosting a dogfight at ten o’clock in the evening for his soldiers. He’d built this fighting pit on the grounds of his massive Rancho Magnifico, half a million acres hacked out of the jungle on the Brazilian side of the tri-border area.
He sat in his place of honor surrounded by shouting, swearing, cheering, unwashed men watching a German mastiff and a German shepherd tearing each other to death. And days hence, on Christmas Eve, while the local VIPs wined, dined and danced at his home, his less savory business partners would enjoy an even more exciting blood sport. Naturally, he had cocks and dogs lined up, but a pair of human fighters would be selected too, the final choice made only the day before the event.
The smell of beer and marijuana was enough to get high without even taking a hit. He’d put his money on the mastiff. The German shepherd lay whining and writhing on the ground in a messy pool of its own blood mixed with arena dirt. Escurra leaned forward. Finish it! he thought, his pulse pounding warmly at his throat, his passion with the mastiff. Escurra would win his bet. He usually did.
This rough fighting complex was comprised of wooden pens for dogs, cocks and even men—for special, highly secret events, such as those on Christmas Eve—plus a viewing stand. The viewing stand was part of an arena his men could enlarge for the bigger contests or make smaller for the cockfights.
The fight was over; the dogs were being hauled away. Escurra checked his watch. He’d not heard from Felipe, not one word about the Manaus operation. The operation had been planned down to the finest detail, but experience had long ago taught him that it was impossible to control everything, hence his anxiety.
Rodrigo, the man seated beside him, was Felipe’s brother and Escurra’s cattle manager. Rodrigo said, “He will call, jefe. Felipe is smart. Don’t worry.”
Rodrigo knew everything about raising prize beef, as well as the ins and outs of Escurra’s many illegitimate projects. “Felipe’s smart, Rodrigo, but it’s a different kind of cargo we’re dealing
