wonder Montoya hadn’t worried about taking off the handcuffs. Wells was a prisoner here with or without them. He stared at the painting of Montoya until the man himself came back. “Ibuprofen or Vicodin?” Montoya rattled the pills like a game-show host offering a deal.
Wells dry-swallowed four Advil. “You were telling me why you called Duto.”
“I was telling you about 1993. My nickname.” Montoya didn’t wait for an answer. “Diecisiete
.
Means seventeen. I was leading a company, chasing a FARC platoon that had hit one of our patrols. The village was called Buenaventura. The peasants there, they sympathized with the scum. Wouldn’t tell us anything. I knew they were lying, but I decided not to hurt them.”
Wells held his head very still.
“A kilometer after we left, an ambush. Bombs, sniper, multiple fields of fire. Very professional. They knew we were coming. No question they set up while we were inside the village. It took three hours to run them off. I lost four men, five more wounded, eight minor injuries. Seventeen. I turned around, brought my company back to Buenaventura.”
Montoya poured himself a glass of water. Wells saw that he’d told this story before. That he enjoyed it, wanted Wells to ask questions, play a role. Wells didn’t speak. Finally, Montoya drank his water and went on.
“This was about ten p.m. We went into seventeen houses, told the fathers, you or your oldest son. Only one tried to give us his son. Of course, we didn’t take the boy. I lined those seventeen lying bastards up in the square, the middle of town. The plaza. I brought out the whole village. I told them, these soldiers are my family. My family dies, your families die. At midnight we lined them up, shot them all. Except the one coward. Him I beat to death myself. He cried for mercy all the way down.”
“You showed him.”
“Word got out and the human-rights
coños
made a fuss. They called me Diecisiete. My colonel made me resign. I was kind. I should have burned the whole village. They set us up, they knew it.”
“I hope you don’t stay up late waiting for your Peace Prize.”
“Afterwards, a friend of a friend came calling. From Medellín. He told me he wanted me to work for him, he needed men like me. I decided if the army wouldn’t have me, I might as well. This was before the Mexicans got in the way, all the money came to Colombia. You can’t imagine. This man had a room in his basement filled with pallets of bills. Waist-high, hundreds of millions of dollars waiting to be laundered.”
Again Montoya stopped, waiting for Wells to ask about the life. Give him a chance to brag about the hookers, the cars, the parties, Pablo Escobar
.
“Then the Mexicans took over. Meth got popular—they didn’t need us for that, they made it themselves in the desert. Plus we made a mistake and let them into our networks. Another mistake, we paid with product rather than cash. And, the truth, they were harder than we were. For us, the violence was part of business. The Mexicans liked killing. I saw the future. In 1999 I hooked up with the Sinaloas.”
“And stayed in touch with Vinny.”
“Every so often, he had a question for me. Mainly political. Which generals were the greediest, which ones we couldn’t buy. After September eleventh, he asked me to tell him if the Muslims paid the cartels to sneak anyone over the border. Though the cartels would never have agreed. They had way more money than those crazy Arabs, and they didn’t want war with the United States.”
“In return.”
“Three times the narcos came close, three times Vinny made sure I knew.”
An answer that explained why Wells was here. Montoya wasn’t just another agent whom Duto had run twenty years before. He was a contract killer whom Duto had kept as an off-the-books source. And Duto had blown three federal drug investigations to protect him.
Inside Langley, no one cared about the drug war. It was viewed as a nuisance at best, a
Wells dry-swallowed four Advil. “You were telling me why you called Duto.”
“I was telling you about 1993. My nickname.” Montoya didn’t wait for an answer. “Diecisiete
.
Means seventeen. I was leading a company, chasing a FARC platoon that had hit one of our patrols. The village was called Buenaventura. The peasants there, they sympathized with the scum. Wouldn’t tell us anything. I knew they were lying, but I decided not to hurt them.”
Wells held his head very still.
“A kilometer after we left, an ambush. Bombs, sniper, multiple fields of fire. Very professional. They knew we were coming. No question they set up while we were inside the village. It took three hours to run them off. I lost four men, five more wounded, eight minor injuries. Seventeen. I turned around, brought my company back to Buenaventura.”
Montoya poured himself a glass of water. Wells saw that he’d told this story before. That he enjoyed it, wanted Wells to ask questions, play a role. Wells didn’t speak. Finally, Montoya drank his water and went on.
“This was about ten p.m. We went into seventeen houses, told the fathers, you or your oldest son. Only one tried to give us his son. Of course, we didn’t take the boy. I lined those seventeen lying bastards up in the square, the middle of town. The plaza. I brought out the whole village. I told them, these soldiers are my family. My family dies, your families die. At midnight we lined them up, shot them all. Except the one coward. Him I beat to death myself. He cried for mercy all the way down.”
“You showed him.”
“Word got out and the human-rights
coños
made a fuss. They called me Diecisiete. My colonel made me resign. I was kind. I should have burned the whole village. They set us up, they knew it.”
“I hope you don’t stay up late waiting for your Peace Prize.”
“Afterwards, a friend of a friend came calling. From Medellín. He told me he wanted me to work for him, he needed men like me. I decided if the army wouldn’t have me, I might as well. This was before the Mexicans got in the way, all the money came to Colombia. You can’t imagine. This man had a room in his basement filled with pallets of bills. Waist-high, hundreds of millions of dollars waiting to be laundered.”
Again Montoya stopped, waiting for Wells to ask about the life. Give him a chance to brag about the hookers, the cars, the parties, Pablo Escobar
.
“Then the Mexicans took over. Meth got popular—they didn’t need us for that, they made it themselves in the desert. Plus we made a mistake and let them into our networks. Another mistake, we paid with product rather than cash. And, the truth, they were harder than we were. For us, the violence was part of business. The Mexicans liked killing. I saw the future. In 1999 I hooked up with the Sinaloas.”
“And stayed in touch with Vinny.”
“Every so often, he had a question for me. Mainly political. Which generals were the greediest, which ones we couldn’t buy. After September eleventh, he asked me to tell him if the Muslims paid the cartels to sneak anyone over the border. Though the cartels would never have agreed. They had way more money than those crazy Arabs, and they didn’t want war with the United States.”
“In return.”
“Three times the narcos came close, three times Vinny made sure I knew.”
An answer that explained why Wells was here. Montoya wasn’t just another agent whom Duto had run twenty years before. He was a contract killer whom Duto had kept as an off-the-books source. And Duto had blown three federal drug investigations to protect him.
Inside Langley, no one cared about the drug war. It was viewed as a nuisance at best, a
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