Cut and Run Read Online Free PDF Page B

founded upon and it retained much of its historic charm. Over the rooftops, I could make out the ornate twin spires of the cathedral in the nearby Plaza de Boliva. Beyond the spires the Andes were swathed in menacing clouds the same gunmetal blue as the SIG Sauer P226 I held in my hand.
    I was in an anonymous-looking government car along with Bryce and Jack Schilling, one of the guys from my team. Montoya and my other two colleagues, Pete Hillman and Robert Muir, were set up a little distance away down the road, keeping obs on the side entrance to the house we were all watching. We had a view of the front façade of the historic house. I believed that our target would exit by the front, and it was my and Jack’s responsibility to take him out. In the other car was our support team who would only engage the enemy if we were cornered, or if we failed. Six of us to take out one man. It might sound like overkill, but I hoped it would be enough.
    Jesus Henao Abadia was a key player in the Colombian drug cartels. The US Treasury, Justice and State Departments had applied economic sanctions against the drug cartels under Executive Order 12978 in an effort at curtailing what they termed Specially Designated Narcotics Traffickers. Abadia was an SDNT, but he was more than that. He was a butcher. He was suspected of having personally executed rivals and government officials by way of hacking them to steaming chunks with a machete.
    Not that I feared we weren’t up to killing one man with a big knife. It was the protection team which travelled with Abadia that gave me cause for concern. Abadia went nowhere alone. Not even here, to the home of his long-time mistress, Jimena Antonia Grajales.
    Victor’s intel said that Abadia was there with the woman and only two of his protectors who would be on the ground floor of the two-storey house. Abadia was due to return to his fortress-like home near to Prado in the Colombian department – like a county or state – of Tolima this morning. This would be our best opportunity for taking out the butcher without facing down a veritable private army of retainers.
    I felt uncomfortable about taking out Abadia where there was the potential for innocents to be caught in the cross-fire. It was bad enough that Jimena was here, let alone the occasional civilian who wandered along the street past the house. But I had my orders and that was that. Collateral damage was apparently acceptable if it meant stemming the flood of cocaine to the western world.
    We were wearing covert earpieces, and over the scrambled channel I heard Victor announce that Abadia’s white Lincoln town car had been spotted heading our way. Victor had other DAS agents – the Colombian equivalent of secret police – in the field, watching all points of ingress.
    ‘Two in the vehicle: driver and escort,’ Victor announced in an accent redolent of his heritage. ‘They should be with you in thirty seconds.’
    Six to five, the odds were growing in Abadia’s favour. If Jimena was a player, that meant the odds were one-on-one, but I didn’t consider that too long. I didn’t make war on women.
    ‘OK, we’re rolling,’ Bryce said into the mike taped to his throat.
    From behind our left shoulders came the white town car. We hunched down in our seats, Jack Schilling reaching for the Heckler and Koch MP5A3 sub-machine gun located under his seat. It was a variant of the usual MP5, with collapsible stock and chambered for nine mm rounds. It was favoured for close quarter battle and hostage rescue scenarios because the nine mm ammo was less likely to go through walls and hit the hostages. It also fitted nicely beneath the seat of a car and could be brought quickly into play where the longer MP5 would require more manoeuvrability. Armed with my sidearm, I’d be the man designated to hit Abadia, while it was Jack’s responsibility to lay down enough rounds to keep his protectors’ heads down. Bryce brought out his service pistol, a