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behind us was clear. He indicated me through a couple of turns and we came out on to another boulevard, this time Henderson. I took a sharp right and we headed back towards Kennedy on the Dale Mabry Highway. At Kennedy once more, he indicated that I continue driving west out of town. I glanced across at him. His eyes were on the mirror.
    ‘There’s no one following.’ I was pretty sure of that considering I’d been checking for cops all morning. ‘I came alone, like I said I would.’
    ‘It’s not anyone with you that’s troubling me, Hunter.’ But that was all he’d say. He again fell silent, watching behind us for a tail that I was certain wasn’t there. We reached a turnpike and he gestured me through it and north on to Veterans Expressway. We were almost at Greater Northdale before Bryce finally put the gun away.
    ‘Where am I going, Bryce?’
    ‘Knowing Joe Hunter, you’ll have a safe house somewhere. Take us there.’
    ‘Tell me what’s going on.’
    ‘Only when I’m sure that it’s safe.’
    He didn’t speak again until we were on US 98, heading north-west for the Gulf Coast. When he did so, it seemed like there was a touch of regret behind his words.
    ‘I always trusted you, Hunter. You were always a good man.’
    ‘So why the gun, Bryce? Why all the precautions?’
    ‘It’s the nature of the job, Hunter. You know that.’
    ‘I’m not in the job any more.’ I looked across at him again. ‘Last I heard, neither are you. You retired, I was told.’
    ‘People like us never retire.’
    I couldn’t argue with that.
    I was no special agent like Bryce Lang, I was just one of the grunts sent in when the agents had done their work. Assassin isn’t a term I favour, but I suppose that all depends on which end of the gun you’re looking down. When you’ve killed for a living, it’s something that you can’t leave behind – however hard you try. I’ve tried to hide from my past, but it was a pointless exercise because the violence always seemed to find me. I’m not seen as an assassin now; these days people call me a vigilante.
    I don’t care for that term either.
    However my ethos is simple: there’s no room in this world for people prepared to make the lives of others miserable. As a soldier my enemies were sadistic, brutal and immoral people and I had no qualms about putting them down. Stripped bare, all they were was bullies and the only way I know to stop a bully is to stand up to them. If that makes me a vigilante then so be it.
    ‘Someone from your past has come back to haunt you,’ I offered.
    ‘Someone from our past, Hunter.’
    I looked across at him and we locked gazes. ‘Colombia?’
    Had to be Colombia. It was the only time we’d worked together.
    Now I was the one checking my mirrors for a tail.

Chapter 7

    Bogota, Colombia, had two faces. One was made up of modern high-rise towers, as affluent a district as boasted by any other major city in the civilised world. The second was that area that sprawled on the western edge of the city, where people lived in squalor to rival the worst ghettos anywhere. There people existed. No other term was applicable to their lives. There was no money, little food, poor sanitation and homes made from wood and sheet metal and anything else that could be scavenged. It was a city that summed up for me the very reason for battling against the corrupt people of the earth. I couldn’t stand by and watch children starve to death, knowing that little more than a few miles away evil people were growing fat on their misery. The thought sullied my conscience.
    I was there along with another three members of my team, plus Bryce Lang, our CIA link, and an agent from Colombia’s Narcotics Task Force called Victor Montoya who was our local Departmento Administrativo de Seguridad contact. We were in the Barrio La Candelaria district of the city, surrounded by old world buildings painted in vibrant colours. This was the area that the city was originally