The heat never lets up.
Mac rolls onto his right side, the sweat soaked mattress squishing like a sponge. Not that it’s much of a mattress. More of a thin pad. But he’s glad to have it as a barrier between the concrete platform he lays upon each night.
Day one thousand and something has passed. He lost track months ago. Or was it years?
Once a key figure in Nixon’s “War on Drugs”, Mac Reeves was now reduced to a six by eight cell and three meals a day. If you can call them meals.
His once chiseled physique now skin and bones.
But he still had the most important thing: hope.
—
The s-shaped lump on the ground stopped her in her tracks. Talla equis, she thought. She had seen enough fer-de-lances to know what to do. She brought the blade down with force, effectively separating the snake’s head from its body.
Esperanza Mejia has made this trip hundreds of times now. The list of beasts she has slain in the thousands. Jaguars, caimans, crocs. More snakes than she can count.
She knows every path through this part of the jungle. She’s crossed rivers, traversed mountains, and survived encounters with predators of both the animal and human kind.
But she has yet to find the prisión de penas.
The Prison of Sorrows.
—
Pain surged through his body.
Although it was Mac’s left hook that hit its mark, his frail state makes every move a grueling chore. Nevertheless, they make him fight nearly every day. Not for fitness or defense, but for fun. Their fun.
“Keep going, Guerrero!” a guard urges.
They mock him in English to make sure he understands.
Guerrero. Warrior. They use it to drive home the point that if he ever was a warrior, he’s theirs now. And now, he’s the furthest thing from a warrior.
The interrogations stopped long ago. When he had no more information to give.
He held strong at first, absorbing the electric shocks, waterboarding, and physical beatings. He had trained for that.
But every man has his breaking point, and Mac’s was time.
No one else on his team had survived, and if they did, they weren’t coming to save him.
—
YEARS AGO:
“Thank you all for being here to honor the life of James MacArthur Reeves,” began the preacher presiding over the pulpit in front of a small but respectful crowd of family and friends in Rowlett, Texas.
“Mac, as you all knew him, gave his life fighting to protect communities like ours from the drug epidemic. Acting on a directive from President Nixon himself, Mac is truly an American hero.”
After the service, burial, and way too many shallow but appreciated conversations, Wendy just wanted some time to herself. As she eased into the driver seat of her car, she heard her a male voice call her name.
She looked up.
“Oh, hey Steve.”
It was Mac’s mentor, Steve Henley. While he was only a few years older than Mac, he was the one who recruited Mac into the DEA and led the operation.
“Wendy, we need to talk.”
Steve followed Wendy’s brown Ford Pinto station wagon back to her house, a small split level on the outskirts of town. The lights were off as they entered the foyer.
“I’ll put on a pot of coffee,” she said as he flipped the light switch and helped himself to a cushion on the red plaid love seat in the family room. He drew a cigarette from the breast pocket of his shirt, placed it between his lips, and lit it.
As the coffee brewed, Wendy thought back to the first time she met Steve at Mac’s induction ceremony when he was sworn into the agency. Mac was elated to have a purpose serving his country and threw back a few too many beers at the bar afterward. Steve helped Wendy get him home and in bed, and the two sat on the porch talking late into the night.
If she was honest, Steve had always intrigued her. He was more put together than Mac. Mac was a bit of a loose cannon, but he was a good man. Her high school sweetheart, dammit. The DEA job scared her, but Steve assured her at the time that if anyone was made for the job it was Mac.
And now it had cost him his life.
It had cost her the love of her life.
She filled two mugs, gathered her composure, and joined Steve in the family room.
“Wendy, you know how much I admired Mac,” Steve began. “It pains me to tell you this but there’s more you need to know about Mac’s death. I’m sorry it has to be today, but you should hear it from me.”
Wendy took a sip of coffee. She was a strong-willed woman, but Steve noticed the tremble in her hands as she brought the cup back down to the saucer.
“To put it plainly, Wendy, Mac was a traitor,” Steve said, pausing to see the look of disbelief take over her face.
“Everyone knows about Escobar, but most have never heard of Rodrigo Echeverria. That’s who Mac was assigned to take down. Long story short, they honeypotted him.”
“What does that mean?”
“They suspected Mac wasn’t who he said he was, so they seduced him with a young girl and after that they owned him. They played him.”
“He cheated on me?”
“Yes, ma’am. And he’s the reason the whole operation went to shit.”
“But that’s not true! That’s not at all what happened! Steve’s lying. HE was the problem. Wendy, don’t believe him!”
The explosion nine days prior had left Mac unconscious. His battered but still breathing body was found by a local guerilla group before authorities arrived on site. He was taken to a makeshift hospital in the jungle and left to die.
Stateside, he was declared dead. Now, from a coma, hovering somewhere between life and death, he watched and listened in horror to his own funeral and the resulting conversation between his wife and former mentor.
“Why are you telling me this, Steve? You could have just let it be. Let me grieve.”
“The news will likely go public in the days to come and I wanted you to hear the truth straight from me. As much as I always liked Mac, I’ve admired you even more, Wendy. You’re strong. You’re beautiful. You deserve more.”
He slid his arm around her back and pulled her in.
She sunk into his embrace.
Mac let out a guttural scream.
“¡Despierto!” one of the guerillas called as he rushed into the tent where Mac lay on a makeshift cot, now alert and taking in his surroundings.
He’s awake.
—
MEDELLIN, 3 MONTHS PRIOR:
Mac unfolded the note the girl had passed him.
La bendición. 11pm.
Now three months into his operation, Mac was finally gaining traction.
While other, more experienced agents were assigned to the big prize, Mac drew the assignment of infiltrating the lesser-known narco operation in town.
It took a month to acclimate to the sweltering heat and another month to make his first contact within Los Halcones de Valle cartel. It came in the form of the cousin of his hired translator’s niece’s boyfriend’s uncle.
Not exactly solid, but a start.
Mac was unquestionably American in both appearance and Texas drawl, but his cover story was convincing. John Deere was looking to expand its presence in the Colombian countryside and Mac was the agricultural equipment salesman sent down to make the deals.
One of his first priorities upon arriving in Medellín had been finding a translator. It didn’t take long to find Humberto, who, as luck would have it, grew up on a farm somewhere between Medellín and Bogota. The opportunity to earn money while helping improve the working conditions of local farmers excited him, and Humberto knew his abuela would be proud if she could see him now.
Berto helped Mac secure contracts with a pair of local coffee farmers and got him acquainted to the city.
One day, Berto invited Mac to his neice’s quinceañera. The fun carried late into the night and eventually the conversation turned to the recent presence of DEA agents in town. Suddenly, all eyes were fixed on Mac.
The tall Texan had always had a way with words, and with the assistance of Berto embellishing a few details, Mac was able to earn their trust. The next thing he knew, Mac was shooting empty cans off a fence post alongside Mateo, the uncle of Berto’s niece’s boyfriend. Mindful not to blow his cover, Mac was a bad shot, but a good sport to Mateo’s playful insults.
Connection made.
The first time Mateo took Mac to Echeverria’s estate came a week later. He was flying solo without Berto, but had learned enough conversational Spanish by then to get by. At least in terms of selling tractors. If things went sideways, he was in trouble.
Thankfully, the only thing that caught him off guard was the girl who brought him a lukewarm Aguila. She was stunning.
His next visit was a few days later, and while he was eager to continue making inroads on a long-term equipment lease, he was more intrigued by the girl. Except, this time, she was nowhere to be found.
On his third visit, she pushed into the bathroom behind him and locked the door.
“Can you help me?” she asked in near perfect English.
She explained that she was being held against her will, forced to do things she’s ashamed of. When she saw an American man, she saw her way out.
“How do you speak such perfect English?” was the first question he asked.
“I attended an American missionary school in my village. Echeverria’s men burned the whole village and captured the children. The boys were forced to work for him and, well, here I am.”
“Well, I can’t just take you out of here with me,” Mac said. “We’ll have to come up with a plan.”
“As long as I’m “doing my job,”‘ she said, using her fingers to form air quotes, “I have access to everyone and everywhere at this villa. I can feed you information to help take Echeverria down.”
They quickly worked out a plan and Mac slipped out of the bathroom. He joined Mateo by the pool, who greeted him with a questioning look.
“Stomach troubles,” he said, patting his belly. “Wouldn’t go in there for a while.”
At 11pm, Mac found her at La bendición sitting at a side table and drinking a café con leche. He ordered a tinto. Strong and black. No sweetener.
“This is it, Mac. I have it!”
In the weeks since the bathroom encounter, she proved resourceful in gathering schedules, meeting locations, names, and details to help him build a case.
He was afraid to ask how she was able to get the information. He didn’t want to know.
But he did learn her name: Esperanza.
He also learned that they let her run errands for them. Mac appreciated the irony that while they thought it proved their control over her, knowing that she would return every time, it really showed her control over them.
Here she was spilling their secrets to a DEA agent.
“Mac, this Friday, they have a meeting with a big power broker. He’s acting on behalf of a wealthy foreign buyer. I have the names, time, and location of the meeting.”
“Who is the broker?”
“A guy named Richard Stanton. Apparently, he’s…”
Mac cut her off.
“My boss.”
As a senior agent, Steve used the alias Richard Stanton. Mac had been in the room when the cover was revealed. Upon hearing it, Steve had quipped, “Does that make me Big Dick!?!”
More like Dirty Dick, Mac now thought.
Esperanza shared the rest of the details for the meeting and they parted ways.
Mac found a pay phone across the street and dialed a fellow agent he trusted, who was also operating in town.
“Tom, Steve’s dirty. He’s working with them.”
“You sure?”
“Sure as hell. He’s acting on behalf of a wealthy buyer in the States. They’re meeting at a landing strip near La Quiebra. Think we can get a crew together to catch him in the act?”
“I know he’s your mentor, Mac, but I never had a good feeling about that guy. Let’s do it.”
—
THAT FRIDAY:
The crew packed into a red Willys Jeep that Berto secured. Mac, Tom, and two local commandos that were in Tom’s employ stopped a mile short of the landing strip, pulled the Jeep into the brush, and walked the remainder by foot.
“That’s him, alright,” Mac said, peering through binoculars.
He snapped a series of images with his camera from their concealed spot behind a cluster of trees and thick vegetation.
The meeting was quick. Dirty Dick Steve looked jovial with Echeverria’s men. This wasn’t their first meeting.
They disappeared into a rusty shipping container. The Colombians reappeared less than 10 minutes later and departed, but there was no sign of Steve.
Mac waited another 30 minutes to see if Steve would come out or someone else would show up. When nothing happened, they moved on the container.
There was no lock so it opened with ease. As they stepped inside and their eyes adjusted to the change in light, Mac noticed a sliver of light on the opposite side. An exit door, slightly open.
He started toward it.
And then the explosion blew them all into the sky.
Two hundred yards away, a dark green Jeepster Commando left a cloud of dust in its wake.
—
PRESENT DAY:
She took a left where she usually went right.
The vegetation was thick and each step had to be slow and calculated so as to not fall. Vines covered the floor and branches had to be ducked under. She usually stuck to well worn paths, but not today.
As she pushed through the dense flora, her foot caught a vine and she tumbled down a slope. Brushing herself off as she got to her feet, she looked up and there it was.
She had finally found him!
The prison entrance was open and she walked right through, no guards to be found.
“Mac!” she called.
No response.
She followed the sound of a steady hum, as if it was leading her to him. She turned a corner and entered a sterile white room.
“Mac!”
He reached out his frail hand.
She was as beautiful as he remembered. A smile crossed his face for the first time in months.
Or years.
He was free.
“Esperanza!”
The monotonous hum continued with no sign of stopping.
A guard appeared from another room, unplugged the EKG monitor, and the room fell silent.
“El guerrero está muerto,” he called out.
The warrior is dead