Read Online Brotherhood and Others by Mark Sullivan - Free Book Online Page B

breath test,” Monarch said, drawing out the canister and plastic tube, twisting on a disposable mouthpiece. “If it’s negative, you’ll be on your way.”
    DeGrave eyed the device, turned visibly hostile, but then snatched it from Monarch’s hand. “It will be negative. How does it work?”
    â€œTeeth above and below the mouthpiece, sir,” Monarch said. “Inhale, exhale, and we’re done.”
    The phony Breathalyzer was suction activated. When DeGrave inhaled, chloroform filled his lungs. He collapsed into himself. Monarch took the tank from his fingers, turned it off, and stuck it in his pocket. He had not expected it to go this easily, but then again, maybe his luck had changed.
    There are protocols to renditions. Monarch followed them, grabbing DeGrave by the collar of his shirt so he could control his head should the man vomit, a common enough reaction to a charged dose of chloroform. He rested him against the door and went back to the cruiser, saying, “Target secure.”
    â€œTransport arriving ninety seconds, Rogue,” the woman replied.
    Monarch reached into the police car, flipped off the blinking lights, and looked around: He heard and saw nothing. He stripped off the uniform right there in the rain, ending up in a pair of runner’s tights and a heavy long underwear shirt before returning to DeGrave, who was still out cold.
    Monarch kept his feet moving. He was going to be soaked before the truck got here, but it couldn’t be helped. Shivering, waiting, once again he flashed on that image of the fourteen-year-old girl.
    *   *   *
    Her name was Antonia Valera. She was the only daughter of Nino Valera, a wealthy Argentine textile trader Julio said was connected to the Perón family. For that reason alone, Robin agreed to help kidnap the girl. His parents were murdered for swindling a second cousin of Evita Perón; and Robin had irrationally hated everything about the family and their friends ever since.
    Antonia attended a private Catholic secondary school. Every morning she arrived at 7:55 in a black Mercedes E500 with tinted windows, driven by a young man wearing a uniform with a cap and dark sunglasses. Every afternoon at 3:45, she got back in the car, and was driven to tennis, piano, or equestrian lessons. She had two friends who lived similarly inside secure compounds in one of the finest neighborhoods in Buenos Aires. They seemed to be her only other contacts outside her family.
    â€œShe’s guarded everywhere she goes,” Robin complained to Julio after they’d done enough scouting to figure out her routine.
    They sat on a bench outside a ramshackle wooden house on the outskirts of the Villa Miserie, the Village of Misery, one of the worst slums in Buenos Aires, a wretched place a world away from the posh existence of young Antonia Valera.
    But to Robin, the house was home. It served as a kind of barracks for the Brotherhood. Some nights as many as fifteen tattooed members slept there, along with half a dozen recruits, street kids who wanted into the gang.
    That morning, while others in La Fraternidad formed teams to either run a pickpocket operation in a popular tourist area or a short con elsewhere, Julio had asked Robin to stay behind to discuss the kidnapping.
    The gang leader was not quite as tall as Robin, but outweighed him significantly. Smart and cunning, Julio had an angle on everything, which made him highly unpredictable, and highly creative.
    â€œYou’re right, Robin, she is guarded,” Julio said at last. “And we don’t want to be involved in any kind of shooting if we can avoid it. So we’ve got to follow Rule number ten: Improvise.”
    Robin shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
    â€œWhen you improvise, you’ve got to let your brain think left, right, upside down,” Julio replied. “Sooner or later, it comes to you.”
    â€œHow to kidnap the