The Magdalena Curse by F.G. Cottam Read Free Book Online

holstered to his belt and a machine pistol over his shoulder. My boy saw the hilt of a fighting knife protruding from the top of one of his boots. These goons are equipped for a war. Whatever we’re dealing with here, it’s nothing the American or Bolivian governments know anything about. It’s covert, criminal and we have compelling reason to believe it has cost the lives of
four blameless people. We need to go in. We need to find out who these criminals are and what they are doing. And we need to neutralise them.’
    ‘Hallelujah,’ Peterson said.
    Hunter nodded. He was not there to argue. But he was beginning to think that cocaine and processing chemicals were the last thing they might find under the black canvas once past the firepower and the dogs.
    ‘Where do you stand on drugs, Captain?’ This question came from Rodriguez. Dawn was breaking. The light was improving. Rodriguez was a finely featured man with brush-cut hair and a trimmed moustache, and his expression was a compelling mix of hardness and delicacy. Hunter would not have wanted this man for his enemy. Even less his interrogator.
    ‘I don’t take them, if that’s what you mean.’
    ‘It isn’t. You know perfectly well it isn’t.’
    ‘I’ve no very strong opinion on the matter. I’ve been spared their corrosive damage in my own life. I’ve heard the lectures, seen the films. Essentially, I’m a soldier. I follow orders. I hope the people I am obliged to kill are more bad than good. But the justification for the fight is made much higher up the chain of command than me.’
    Rodriguez swirled the dregs of his coffee. He emptied the grounds out on to the foliage under their feet. ‘I’ve seen the films too. It’s an epidemic in the States. There are CEOs with five gram a day habits.’
    ‘You mean in Hollywood?’
    ‘I mean in Detroit as much as in Hollywood, Captain. I mean in Boston and Chicago too, in the banking and the industrial worlds. I mean on trading floors and in office suites and hairdressing salons and at country clubs and in the more exclusive sorts of bars.’
    ‘So it’s a crusade?’
    Rodriguez grimaced. ‘You see, Captain, I’m conflicted on this. I believe in freedom of choice. If a General Motors executive pulling in half a million dollars a year wants to spend some of his hard-earned on nose candy, I’ve got no real argument with that. It’s his decision. But the suppliers at source, the cartels, are another matter entirely. They’re what the world has now instead of Al Capone. They’re bad people and bad news for every region they infest. They undermine national economies and defy elected governments. Them, I’m happy to go after.’
    The silence from Peterson during this exchange had seemed uncharacteristic. Hunter turned to the big Canadian. He looked subdued, sad even. He seemed a man far removed now from his habitual chuckle.
    ‘Care to share your philosophy on this?’ Hunter said.
    Rodriguez rose to his feet and walked away from them.
    ‘I don’t have a philosophical standpoint,’ Peterson said. ‘You used the word crusade. The Major said epidemic. My brother had a stroke at seventeen, provoked by an overdose of the shit we’re talking about. You know what a stroke is?’
    ‘An insult to the brain,’ Hunter said. That was the literal definition.
    ‘Yeah, well. My brother was called Jimmy. The insult to Jimmy’s brain was massive, fatal. I’d kill every pusher I could find, given the time and the ammunition.’
    ‘I’m not even sure we’re dealing here with cartel activity,’ Hunter said.
    Peterson grinned at him. ‘We’re dealing with bad people, Captain. I’m fucking sure of that. And so are you, I can see your instinct written all over your face.’ He gestured with his head in the direction of the guarded settlement a mile to the south of them. ‘It’s all very simple. It doesn’t require philosophical debate. We mop ’em up, we lighten the load of badness in the