The Shadow Cartel (The Dominic Grey Series Book 4) Read online

  BOOKS BY LAYTON GREEN

  THE DOMINIC GREY SERIES

  THE SUMMONER

  THE EGYPTIAN

  THE DIABOLIST

  THE SHADOW CARTEL

  * * *

  THE METAXY PROJECT

  HEMINGWAY’S GHOST: A NOVELLA

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2015 Layton Green

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477827819

  ISBN-10: 1477827811

  Cover design by Sammy Yuen

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953209

  To Dad, the father Dominic Grey wishes he could have

  Contents

  START READING

  PEOPLES TEMPLE AGRICULTURAL PROJECT, NORTHWEST GUYANA

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  PEOPLES TEMPLE AGRICULTURAL PROJECT, NORTHWEST GUYANA

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  MEXICO CITY

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  COLONIA DIGNIDAD, CHILE

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  SOUTH AMERICA

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  “I can believe anything, Corporal. Life has made me the most believing man in the world.”

  —Death in the Andes, Mario Vargas Llosa

  PEOPLES TEMPLE AGRICULTURAL PROJECT, NORTHWEST GUYANA

  NOVEMBER 18, 1978

  The man known as John Wolverton cocked his head at the sound, a faint thwap that echoed through the vines and trees. He reasoned the shot had come from a poacher’s rifle.

  Surely it hadn’t come from the Port Kaituma airstrip. From Congressman Ryan’s delegation, sent to investigate the conditions of Reverend Jones’s utopian cult that had set up shop in the middle of the Guyanese jungle. Reverend Jones was a sociopath, but he wasn’t suicidal, and the doctors agreed the two were mutually exclusive.

  All of the doctors, that was, except the forensic behavioral psychologist who speculated that in extreme cases, a sociopath who knew his joy ride was finished might use suicide as a tool. A final act of defiance against the societal forces that dared inhibit his desires.

  John Wolverton picked up his pace. This was not a fairy tale jungle, inviting and familiar. Instead it was dank, stale, mottled. Forbidding. A place where all things foreign were sucked inside, leeched of life, and left to decompose.

  Thwap thwap thwap thwap thwap.

  Gunfire, staccato and rapid.

  John Wolverton ran.

  The gunfire continued for minutes that seemed like days, then ended as abruptly as it had begun. The jungle was quiet once again, entropy alive and heaving.

  John Wolverton ran faster.

  He smelled it first, the acrid tang of gunpowder simmering in the air. Sight followed: bodies, including Congressman Ryan’s, spilled like fallen dominoes in the clearing around the two planes.

  Oh God.

  He was still seven miles from Jonestown, deep in the jungle, light years from help. Adrenaline whipped through him like a flailing live wire as he ran down the path beside the road, his thoughts ping-ponging inside his head. The Reverend had ordered him to walk to Port Kaituma that afternoon on one of his “character building” errands. Somehow, he must have found out who he really was. Had the Reverend sent him to bear witness to his madness?

  And Tashmeni, where was she? He prayed she was safe in the cottage with the baby, smart enough to stay out of sight. Even better if she had fled into the jungle.

  Or maybe she didn’t know. Maybe none of them did. The Reverend would realize there was no turning back—a United States congressman was dead—so now what would he do? Leave his people to their fate, flee to the capital and seek asylum with the Russians?

  John Wolverton concentrated on the path, pushing his pace to the limit. As he neared Jonestown, he kept waiting for the town’s loudspeaker to interrupt the silence of his run, for the Reverend’s narcotic voice to start pumping propaganda into the air. Yet he heard nothing except a series of screams, arcing out of the jungle like streaking missiles.

  The screaming had ceased by the time he crossed the perimeter of the settlement, the outskirts eerily quiet, a hot wind stirring up dust like the breath of an evil spirit.

  Where were the guards? The children playing in the road?

  He approached on silent feet from the north, stalking past the clinic and the dining hall, knowing something was terribly wrong, knowing the camp smelled of death. When he reached the center, the sight slammed into him with the power of a gale-force wind.

  Bodies draped the floor of the meeting pavilion and the ground outside, hundreds of them, men and women, children, babies. Lying senseless and haphazard like some photo of a concentration camp.

  He stumbled towards the cottages, almost tripping over Tashmeni’s body. The baby was close against her, tucked into her chest. He checked for a pulse on both, and then a half-formed heave escaped his throat from someplace primal, taking part of his soul as it released into the air. He collapsed on Tashmeni’s corpse, retching and weeping until he had nothing left to give.

  When he could stand, he forced himself to step across the sea of bodies into the open-air pavilion. Reverend Jones was lying on the ground, head slumped on a pillow, a bullet wound cratering his temple.

  John Wolverton’s eyes swept the pavilion. He saw the vat of juice that, judging by the cups strewn next to the bodies, was a poisonous concoction that the members of The Peoples Temple had willingly consumed. He shivered at the terrifying power of the dead cult leader.

  His eyes caught something else: a cassette recorder on the table next to the Reverend’s body.

  He leaned down, eyes widening.

  It was still recording.

  Mind numbed by grief, hands jittery from shock, he carried the tape recorder outside, sat next to Tashmeni’s corpse, and entwined his fingers in her hand.

  Then he pressed “Rewind.”

  NEW YORK CITY

  PRESENT DAY

  Dominic Grey carved the streets of the Bronx
on his Kawasaki, racing towards a block of abandoned warehouses. Fear had scooped out a rough-hewn pit in his stomach.

  Not fear for himself, but for Charlie, one of the teenage students in Grey’s jujitsu class at the Washington Heights homeless shelter. Though Grey strove not to have favorites, Charlie possessed the combination of talent, heart, and drive that could one day lead to a black belt in authentic Japanese jujitsu.

  A day that was a very long time away.

  He knew he’d found the place when he saw tricked-out cars and crotch rockets sprawled in front of a warehouse, the gritty urban isolation, the energy crackling in the air. He knew it all too well.

  As he jumped off his bike and raced inside, the murmur of the crowd increased to a roar. He let the two hulking doormen frisk him because he didn’t have time for a scene. Though Grey was much smaller, six foot one and lean as a distance runner, the doormen caught his hard stare and hurried through their job. Then Grey was wading through the crowd, the crater in his stomach deepening with every moment.

  Past the betting pit, through the makeshift stands filled with leering faces, towards the blood-spattered ring that brought it all crashing back: Grey himself a scrawny sixteen-year-old in Tokyo, pushed by his father into the ring for the first time, already a black belt but not prepared for this, feeling his skin crawl as a grown man twice his age and size strutted across the ring like a peacock, fists waving yen all around, the smell of sweat and blood and curdled humanity.

  He saw Charlie approaching the ring, a tall and wiry black girl who could pass for a young man in dim lighting, dreadlocked hair tied in a bun. The same age Grey had once been, the same gut-turning fear bulging out behind the compressed mouth and eyes.

  She was by herself in her too-clean gi, a child with the eyes of a war veteran, a little girl who had learned the game of life on the cracked and unforgiving asphalt of Washington Heights. When she saw Grey, her jaw slackened and her eyes slid away.

  He took her gently by the elbow. “Let’s go, Charlie.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “You never miss class.”

  “Who narc’d?”

  “Someone who cares about you,” he said.

  “I want to fight.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “I need the money.”

  “I’ll give you the money.”

  The energy of the crowd sputtered, jeers and catcalls replaced the excited shouts. Grey saw her opponent enter the ring, a muscled Latino with wrists thicker than Charlie’s arms. Judging by his smashed face and the way he loosened his muscles, Grey pegged him for a lifelong boxer with a few years of mixed martial arts training.

  It would be a bloodbath.

  He had another flash of remembrance, to the darkness he had summoned to win that first fight. To the door it had opened, the thrill of violence and domination he’d been fighting ever since.

  “You told them you had a black belt, didn’t you?”

  “I can take him,” she muttered.

  “Look at your opponent, Charlie. Look at these people. Is this what you want from life?”

  “Life don’t want nuthin’ from me. Never did.”

  “I do. I want you as my student. And as your teacher, I’m giving you a choice. You can do this, or you can stay with me. Not both.”

  “You wouldn’t—”

  “I am.”

  She balled her fists and stepped away, facing the now-hostile crowd. Grey couldn’t see her eyes, and it was one of the longest moments he had ever endured, a bubble of compressed time filled with a lifetime of self-doubt and insecurities, asking him how he could hope to teach others, children, after the life he had led.

  Oh, he could teach them how to fight. How to kill. But could he teach them how to live?

  He had never wanted so much for someone to make a simple choice. Every week fresh students slipped away from class like a school of troubled minnows, and every time he lost a little more hope.

  As if moving underwater, she turned away from the table. A flash of white teeth appeared. “Can I drive the bike?”

  A rush of emotion filled him, and he led her away by the arm. “No.”

  “How I’m gonna get some of this honor you always talking about?”

  Grey forced himself to keep a straight face. “By not fighting.”

  “Say what? You watch the new Karate Kid this morning or sumthin’?”

  “We’ll talk later.”

  The boos increased in volume, and Grey walked faster. Halfway to the door an enormous man in a double-breasted suit and a shaved head stepped in front of them. His accent was Russian. “He can’t leave.”

  Grey moved Charlie behind him. “It’s a she, not a he. An underage she.”

  The man grinned through crooked teeth. “Bets are placed.”

  “So un-place them.”

  “You don’t know how it works.”

  “I know exactly how it works.”

  He pointed at Grey. “Then you fight, instead of the monkey.”

  Every muscle in Grey’s body tightened. “Get out of my way.”

  “The money’s swung. Someone has to fight.”

  “Find someone else.”

  He thrust a finger towards Grey’s chest. “I have.”

  Grey snatched the digit out of the air before it reached him, then switched his grip to manipulate the two joints. Moving only his hand, he increased the pressure until the Russian bellowed and sank to his knees. Grey made him stand again, nodded for Charlie to follow, and walked towards the door, leading the man like a circus pet.

  Grey looked down at the Russian, corkscrewed with pain and scrambling to keep up. “Now who’s the monkey?”

  Every time the Russian tried to escape the grip, Grey reversed the pressure with a flick of his wrist, walking calmly towards the exit while the man jerked and twitched like a marionette. The crowd silenced to watch the spectacle. When Grey reached the exit he made a motion with his forearm like casting a fishing line, and the Russian somersaulted into the two doormen. Grey led Charlie outside as the men scrambled on the floor.

  No one followed.

  Charlie shouted into the wind as they sped away. “Where’d you find this bike, the nursing home?”

  “The word is vintage,” Grey said.

  “I thought you said not to fight.”

  “I said you should never fight to gain honor.”

  “But you don’t let no one lay their hands on you.”

  “That’s right,” he said.

  “I seen that Russian dude before, he tore up some Brazilian with mad skills. I thought he was some kinda badass Mongol warrior, but yo, yo, he just a gangbanger compared to you. You an artist.”

  Grey dropped her off at the shelter just before curfew. He tried not to think about the abomination of a homeless child, about the perspective on life forming in Charlie’s young mind.

  An abomination and a perspective he knew firsthand.

  He entered his brick studio loft in Hudson Heights, tossed his keys and saw a message on his cell that he must have missed while riding. The number was unlisted. He put the phone on speaker while he reached for a beer.

  He hoped it was Professor Viktor Radek—his employer—requesting Grey’s presence on an investigation in some far-flung locale. Viktor was an expert on religions and cults, and Grey helped him conduct investigations around the world for both private individuals and police agencies. Grey loved his students, but he went stir-crazy if too much time passed between assignments.

  The message began, but instead of Viktor’s Slavic baritone he heard a rich English accent, a sultry female voice possessed of impeccable diction and brimming with intelligence.

  Not English, he corrected. African.

  Zimbabwean.

  A voice he hadn’t heard for more than a year. A voice he had never expected to hear again.

  Nya’s voice.

  Grey . . . I know it’s been some time, but I need to talk to you. I’m in Miami, hey? Can you please
give me a ring?

  The message ended, the echo of her voice faded, and Grey stood with his hand poised in midair, clutching his beer.

  He couldn’t seem to find enough air.

  NORTH MIAMI

  DEA agent Federico “Fred” Hernandez cruised through downtown Miami, weaving among the glass behemoths and concrete eyesores. He took in the ramshackle eateries from the forgotten corners of Latin America, the homeless shuffling in the heat, the maddening carelessness of the drivers. Steam rose on the asphalt from a morning shower, residual moisture dripping from every building, street sign, and overhead wire.

  Fred draped a hairy, muscled forearm on the console. He could feel sweat trickling down his thighs under his jeans, but he refused to wear the shorts or, God forbid, linen pants the local agents wore. “Miami sucks,” he said.

  Rookie agent Anthony Miller, Fred’s driver, nodded in agreement. “You think this is bad, wait till you see where we’re going.”

  Fred knew Anthony was nervous about working with him. Fred did nothing to dispel the sentiment. “Drug deal hit in the ghetto? Can’t wait.”

  “Don’t forget the crackhead witness and the bag of human bones,” Anthony said.

  “This city is a Lord of the Flies waiting to happen.”

  Anthony laughed in that hollow way that meant he didn’t get the reference. Fred cranked the air conditioning to the limit. “How’d you stand growing up here?”

  “I’m from Fort Lauderdale,” Anthony said.

  “Yeah, right up the coast.”

  “Fort Lauderdale’s in South Florida. Miami’s in Latin America.”

  They turned north on Biscayne Boulevard, paralleling the ocean. The seventies eyesores faded into the background, and they passed the coconut palms and flame trees sprinkling the verdant sprawl of Bayfront Park. The egret-white sands of Miami Beach waited just across the causeway.

  White sands, white sailboats, white high-rises, white boutique shops, the white Adrienne Arsht Center, even a gleaming white Publix grocery store. Fred had to shield his eyes from all the bling. The entire north end of downtown looked dressed for a South Beach nightclub.

  “You may not like Miami,” Anthony said, “but you gotta admit she’s hot shit.”