Read Online Hard Man to Kill (Dark Horse Guardian Series Book 4) by Ava Armstrong - Free Book Online Page B

aircraft, worth a small fraction of the cargo’s street value, were often abandoned and there was an entire cemetery of them, a sort of aviation boneyard.  Street children picked over the parts and sold them to anyone who would buy them. On the ground you could travel for days without seeing another soul, but when the forest gave way to pasture and bony cattle it meant a town was coming up. El Chulupa was a five-hour bumpy drive from Soto Cano. It reeked of fear. 
    Paco warned him, “There are eyes and ears everywhere.  Be careful who you talk with.  The phones are tapped, so people speak in codes.  Terror is palpable when people know they can be killed and there are no consequences.”
    El Chulupa was quiet, for now.  After the beheadings, the government declared a temporary state of emergency in the region, enabling the corrupt army to impose a curfew, chase suspects and feign support of the ineffectual police force. Dozens of vehicles and hundreds of weapons, including assault rifles and grenades, had been impounded. About two dozen Zeta suspects had been rounded up, the usual suspects. The strutting narcos, usually brandishing weapons across their chests, were temporarily in hiding, or locked up being well fed.  Through Paco, Ben learned that large-scale human rights violations, war crimes and genocide went unpunished.  In Guatemala impunity was the rule, justice an exception.
    Welcome to Latin America.
    The problem was, the cartels employed most of the residents of the country in one way or another, so no one could really be trusted.  A fortune by local standards, the cartels paid a finder’s fee as a recruitment tool.  But like the mafia, once you got into the gangs, you never got out.  The army patrolled with teenagers dressed in khaki and on foot, but the narco-terrorists knew it was a powerless force.  Many of the Zetas were former members of Mexican and Guatemalan special-forces, which didn’t make Ben feel any better about the mission.
    Ben and Elvis slept with one eye open the first night.  Once, Ben closed his eyes and pictured Lara lounging on the sofa at home watching television.  Although thousands of miles apart, they were almost in the same time zone.  Her shirt served as his pillow on the bare mattress in the corner of the room.  The sounds in the night were those of babies crying, occasional gun shots, and a few street scuffles outside in the alley.
    Elvis slept in the opposite corner of the room with a loaded weapon at the ready.  Ben’s stomach was empty and he sucked down bottles of water as if he couldn’t get enough.  Thankfully, the temperature dropped to the 70’s at night.  But the humidity was non-stop.
    The next day they ate at the local cantina and mixed with the residents, telling them they were just passing through.  Ben handed out a pack of cigarettes to a few of the locals.  Well disguised as Latin Americans, both men seemed to pass the sniff test.  Little did those in the cantina know, the coming night would bring another bout of unrest to their dreadful little settlement.  Ben and Elvis strolled through town past their target’s dwelling absorbing every detail from behind sunglasses as they sauntered by.  A ramshackle two-story building painted bright yellow, it housed one of the top Islamic State masterminds.
    A woman having the appearance of a housekeeper exited the building.  Stout, dark, and wearing an apron, she was all business as she stepped into the street and headed toward the market place around the corner.  Once she was out of earshot, Ben and Elvis stopped in front of the building to argue.  While they pretended to be fighting with one another, Ben saw a figure hovering in the doorway of the bright yellow building.  Elvis shoved his hand into Ben’s chest pushing him back a few steps, shouting in Spanish.  As they did so, out of the corner of Ben’s eye, he observed a figure emerging in broad daylight. It was their target, Mohammed Al