John Gilstrap - Hostage Zero

Victor looked offended. “Coca leaves. Very good for you. Like Coca-Cola.”

So that was it. They’re making cocaine up here. Evan had watched a documentary once about the development of soft drinks, and he remembered that early on, Coca-Cola had cocaine in it. They’d removed it years ago, but apparently, a hundred years later, Victor still hadn’t gotten the word.

Evan dropped the leaves onto the ground and brushed his hands together. “No, thank-” A flash of light behind his eyes and an explosion of pain cut off his words as Victor knocked him on the back of the head with his bat. The boy yelled and bent over as he grabbed the wound. A second, harder blow to his right hip dropped him to his knees. From there, he curled into a protective ball, terrified of where the next hit might land.

“Stand up,” Victor commanded.

Sensing another blow, Evan raised a protective hand blindly, not daring to look where it might be coming from.

“On your feet now, chico, or I will truly hit you. Those were only light taps.” He poked him with the end of the bat, eliciting a yelp. “Stand now, or get hit again.”

Stunned by the suddenness of the attack and aching from the points of impact that were already starting to swell, Evan scrabbled to get his feet beneath him. He stood, his hand still pressed to his head.

“When I say to do something, you do it,” Victor said evenly. His tone made him sound like the voice of reason. “Now pick up those leaves I gave you.”

Luckily, they’d fallen in a clump on the dirt path where they’d been walking. Unluckily, they’d fallen in mud. As Evan picked them up, he noticed how filthy his hands were. He might as well never have washed. Perhaps that’s why no one else did.

He displayed the three leaves for Victor, spreading them in his fingers as you might show a hand of cards.

“Put them in your mouth,” Victor instructed, and he watched as the boy complied. “Chew them a little to get them soft, then settle them here.” He pointed to the dip-spot in his own mouth.

Evan chewed as instructed, in spite of the terrible, bitter taste. In seconds, he could feel his tongue going numb-not as thoroughly as with Novocain at the dentist’s, but that same sort of feeling.

“Be sure not to swallow them,” Victor said. “It should be okay to move them to your cheek now.”

Again, Evan followed directions and this time Victor watched expectantly. “How do you feel?”

“My mouth feels numb,” he said. “I don’t like it.”

“But how does your head feel? And your hip?”

Holy crap, the pain was nearly gone. He didn’t say anything, but apparently his expression spoke for him.

“See?” Victor said, smiling. “I told you the coca was good for you. Come.”

The walk continued. After a minute or so, they started to pass other people at work. It was as he’d suspected. The workers were all boys, and he was among the oldest. Most didn’t even notice him passing, but those who did registered a curious glance quickly and then went right back to stripping the leaves off the branches. Off to the left, Evan saw one kid squatted with his butt close to the ground taking a dump right in the middle of everything. Curiously, the smell of his shit was lost in the general atmosphere of rot and decay.

Victor bellowed, “Charlie! Where are you, boy?” Evan wouldn’t note it until later, but he shouted in English. After he didn’t get an immediate answer, Victor poked another boy with his bat. “Jesus,” he said, and the boy jumped. Victor asked him something in Spanish, and the boy pointed behind them.

“You stay here,” he said to Evan, and then he retraced their steps back a dozen yards. “Charlie!” he yelled, clearly finding the face he was looking for. “Come out here.”

A boy of about twelve emerged from the bushes, and Evan’s heart fell. It was the one he’d just seen taking the shit. He was nearly as dark-skinned as the others, but his hair was brown, not black, making Evan wonder if maybe genetics had less to do with his skin color than sun exposure. He was skinnier than the others, too. A rope kept his tattered shorts in place. He was beyond filthy, and his eyes had a dull look about them. Evan instantly disliked him.

“Look what I brought for you, Charlie,” Victor said as he brought the boy closer to Evan. “Another English speaker.” They were very close now. “Charlie, shake hands with Evan.”

The other boy dutifully raised his hand in greeting, but Evan hesitated. The kid had filthy hands, and there was no toilet paper out here. Figure it out.

He offered a fist for a knuckle-knock, and Charlie took him up on it.

Victor said, “Charlie, I want you to take charge of Evan.”

Charlie didn’t like the idea at all. He said something to Victor in Spanish, and Victor responded in a harsh tone. After a pause, Victor unleashed some more words, and Charlie caved.

Victor explained, “For the first few days, you work the same bag. Today you will learn, Evan. Tomorrow, you are half responsible for Charlie’s double production. You don’t want to fail. Show him, Charlie.” Victor made a spinning motion with his forefinger, and Charlie turned to display crosshatched scars on his lower back. He showed them just for a few seconds, and then he turned back.

“Tell our new friend how you earned those,” Victor encouraged.

Charlie cleared his throat and spoke to Evan’s feet. “From the whip,” he said. “Because I didn’t work fast enough.”

“ Exactamente,” Victor said, smiling. “There are many scars here. I like giving scars.” As if reading Evan’s mind, he bent low till he was face to face with him. “And no matter how badly I make your back bleed, the pictures will always look just fine.”

Jonathan and his team gathered around the computer screen, examining the satellite imagery that Venice had gotten them via an encrypted sat link. “Mother Hen, those are some great pictures,” Jonathan said into the radio. “I don’t suppose you see any blond-headed kids on your screen, do you?” Back in the War Room, Venice would have these images displayed on the ninety-six-inch high-definition screen.

“I’m looking,” she said. “I haven’t had access to the sat link for much longer than you have.”

The imagery they were looking at now was just a few minutes old, and it showed a cocaine factory of a scale that Jonathan had never seen before. This one stretched for dozens of acres across difficult terrain, and showed a level of organization that Pablo Escobar could only have dreamed about. No longer burdened with the need to hide their activities from the government, they could incorporate efficiencies that were normally reserved for legitimate manufacturing. There appeared to be a central headquarters area, the details of which were difficult to discern because of the thick jungle canopy, but with penetrating imagery technology, they could clearly make out fourteen covered structures of various sizes, thirteen of which were built in a rough rectangle around a central structure that was four times larger than the next largest building.

Southeast of the city-why not call it what it looked like? — stretched the acres of coca bushes and the teeming population of workers, several dozen in total. While the detail was amazing, this commercial version of the highly classified technology available to the armed forces allowed only a bird’s-eye view, directly from above. State-of-the-art versions allowed digital enhancement to convert such images to ground-level views, making facial recognition possible from two hundred miles in space.

“Zoom in to about thirty feet,” Jonathan instructed as he squinted at the screen. “Let me see one of the workers.”

“Which one?”