Barinas, Venezuela
The rocky precipice that Logan was hunched behind rose eight hundred feet above the area below. The base of the rock was twelve hundred yards from the small village that lay to the north. Logan eyeballed the largest of the residential units in the village, at the far northern tip of the small enclave, through the scope of his rifle.
It was four in the afternoon and the dazzling sun in the azure sky was behind Logan and off to the west, casting a clear glow onto the buildings below without causing any glare. The light and the conditions were perfect.
Logan pulled the rifle left and right as he moved his sight around the grounds of the sprawling building complex, noting and memorising everything about the layout. There was nobody home. The building was derelict. It had been for months. Since the demise of the local businessman who had owned it, much of the village had become empty, the closest and easiest line of work gone. But while nobody lived there anymore, Logan knew the once-grand home wouldn’t be empty for much longer.
Logan took his gaze away from the scope and looked up at the sky, the fierce sun making his face sting. He held the rifle up to his chest, caressing the warm metal, preparing himself. To anyone watching, it would seem as if he were in prayer. But Logan wasn’t religious, never had been.
When Logan was a child, moving from foster home to foster home, he’d always been fascinated by the sky. His upbringing had been rough – no real family, no siblings, no one who’d sincerely cared for him or for whom he’d cared. Whenever he had felt small or lonely or lost, he would look up at the sky, gazing at the vast nothingness in the day, counting and mapping the bright stars at night, all the time wondering what life was up there.
When he was twelve years old, he’d used his meagre savings to buy a battered old telescope, trying to bring himself closer to the galaxy that lay around him and the distant stars, planets and galaxies beyond. His foster brothers and sisters had taunted him over it. In fact, he’d been outright bullied. In the end, a grotesque boy by the name of Darren, who was three years older than Logan and at least twice his size, had smashed the telescope to pieces with the heel of his boot, for no reason other than that he took great satisfaction from hurting others.
Through his teen years, Logan had kept his fondness for the sky and for dreaming about what was out there. But as he’d grown up, Logan had never found any answers to what life lay beyond the misery of his existence on earth. He no longer wondered what kind of life was out there, up in the sky. Yet the ritual he’d developed remained – a homage to the person he used to be. Now it had become easy to find the life that lay at the end of his lens.
And it was just as easy to take that life away.
He looked at his watch again and then got himself back into position. Just a few moments later, an open-topped Jeep came careening around a corner – a small dust cloud billowing out behind it – and entered the building complex through the broken and open main gates. Its movement was entirely silent to Logan from his distant perch.
A few seconds later, it came to a halt and he spotted the target exiting the vehicle, his small, slight frame and his flowing black hair unmistakable. He had on a pair of aviator sunglasses that covered most of his face but Logan was certain it was his man.
The target walked a few yards from the vehicle to a rickety old bench. A few moments later, as Logan scanned the area, he caught sight of a trail bike weaving its way through the quiet, dusty streets of the village. It pulled into the gates of the large property and the driver parked, stepped off and strode over to the target, who was now on his feet.
Logan glanced down at his watch again. Bang on time. But as he looked back into his scope, he saw the driver remove the helmet and his feeling of quiet satisfaction was quickly shattered when he saw long, wavy, glistening hair – it was a woman. She walked right up to the target and the two exchanged a warm embrace – not lovers, but the contact between the two suggested they were more than business acquaintances, Logan thought.
He quickly lowered the rifle and picked up the telephoto lens that he’d laid at his side. He zoomed in as far as the lens would allow and began to snap away as the target and woman began a slow saunter around the grounds.
Logan’s instruction had been simple, but the unexpected turn had flummoxed him. He had known the time and location of the target’s meeting, but the intel had suggested the rendezvous was with a representative from Colombia’s largest drug cartel.
The cartels in Venezuela manufactured little cocaine of their own but transported vast quantities of Colombian drugs across their country en route to the US and Europe. Disrupting the Venezuelan cartels, which was the JIA’s aim and Logan’s job, would not only damage the Colombian cartels’ supply chain but also provide a great deal of useful intelligence about the operations of the drug barons and their extensive armies.
But this woman wasn’t part of that, surely? She certainly didn’t look like any cartel rep Logan had ever seen. He’d been neck deep in intelligence on the key movers and shakers for weeks and had never come across her face before.
Satisfied with the clarity of the pictures, Logan dropped the camera and picked up the rifle again, then peered down the scope and followed the man and woman as they meandered for a while, deep in conversation. They sat on the bench and after a few moments, the target reached into his jacket and pulled out a large envelope, which he handed to the woman. She took it and placed it on her lap without opening it.
‘Shit,’ Logan said.
He reached down and pulled the mobile phone from his pocket and dialled the number for his boss, Mackie.
‘Is it done?’ Mackie said without any pleasantries.
‘We may have a problem,’ Logan said.
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘The meeting. It’s with a woman.’
‘So? What are you waiting for, Logan? Do it.’
‘But I’m not sure she’s from the college,’ Logan said, using the basic code to refer to the Colombian cartel they had thought the meeting was with.
‘There isn’t time. Finish the job, then leave.’
‘She’s not from the college, Mackie. I need to find out what’s happening here first. I’m not sure what we’re dealing with.’
‘Logan, have you gone deaf?’
‘No, I just think–’
‘I’m not asking you to think!’ Mackie bellowed.
‘There’s been an exchange. I think she might be–’
‘Do it, Logan. Do it now. That’s an order.’
Mackie ended the call and Logan lay there, listening to the beeps on his phone, thinking through what to do next.
He wasn’t really sure why he was so hesitant. It wasn’t the morality of the order that troubled him. His inquisitive mind told him there was more to this meeting than the intel had suggested. In fact, it looked like the intel had been plain wrong.
Mackie had made himself clear, though.
Logan laid the phone down by his side and looked through the scope of his rifle once again. The woman got to her feet and the target followed suit. It looked like the meeting was over.
Logan took a deep inhale of warm, dusty air and held it in. He could feel his heart slowly pumping in his chest. Could almost feel the blood winding through his still body. The air around him was calm. Everything seemed to fall deathly silent as Logan entered a state of heightened concentration.
As he let out a long, slow and silent exhale, he squeezed the trigger, only barely aware of the thunderous crack that came from the rifle and the huge recoil of the powerful weapon that made his whole body shudder. With his eyes still on the scope, working on autopilot, he quickly locked and loaded another cartridge into the chamber. In the few seconds it had taken him to reload, the woman had turned and was running back toward her bike, her mouth wide open in what Logan guessed was a scream.
He followed her movement for just a second, pulling the line of the rifle’s sight to the left of her body to account for the moving target.
He pulled the trigger again.