The Successor Read Online Free PDF Page B

out of the ditch, probably for a child in his family. But that was fine, barter was how it worked here. And Padilla always helped children in need, even if the parents had nothing to trade.
    The noise of the truck had barely faded away when another vehicle’s headlights swung around the curve. Padilla squinted into the glare, realizing that there were actually two vehicles coming at him, a second directly behind the first. As the lead vehicle skidded to a stop, he saw it was a jeep. An army jeep of the Revolutionary Armed Forces—the FAR.
    Two men in uniform hopped out and moved smartly toward Padilla.
    “What’s going on here?” the driver demanded in a tough voice.
    Padilla rose to his feet unsteadily, identifying the two men as
primer tenientes
—first lieutenants—by the shoulder bars with one red line in the middle of two blue ones sprinkled by three stars. Pretty senior to be out in the countryside at this time of night.
    “The cow got out of the pasture,” Cruz explained nervously, gesturing from the animal to the car in the ditch to Padilla. “Unfortunately this gentleman hit it.”
    “You all right?” the officer asked.
    “Yes,” Padilla said, watching another man move toward the scene from the second jeep. The man had a vaguely familiar stride. Deliberate, one boot directly in front of the other, each step carefully placed. “I’m fine. I just need to get my car out of the ditch. Do you men have a chain or something in the jeep you could hook up to my back fender and give me a pull?”
    “Maybe,” the man replied. “First tell me what you’re doing out here.”
    The man who had walked up from the second jeep came into view over the lieutenant’s shoulder. Padilla glanced away quickly and subtly covered his face with his arm. Not because he was afraid of being recognized, but because he didn’t want Cruz or the two lieutenants to spot his expression of familiarity. The man who had walked up from the second jeep was General Jorge Delgado, commander of the FAR’s western and central armies—40,000 troops in all—and a man Padilla had gotten to know recently. They’d met secretly three times in the past two months. Padilla wondered what the hell he was doing out here.
    “Lieutenant.”
    The young officer who had been asking the questions turned toward General Delgado and saluted. “Yes, sir.”
    “What’s going on?”
    The lieutenant explained the situation.
    Delgado pointed at the cow. “Shoot the animal, Lieutenant.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    The young officer strode to the side of the road, pulled an old Soviet-made pistol from his holster, and fired two bullets into the cow’s brain. It collapsed into the brush and lay still, barely visible.
    As the sound of the shots echoed away, Padilla noticed another shadow hurrying down the lane toward the scene. This time from the direction of the ranch Cruz ran.
    “So that was your cow?” Delgado asked Cruz.
    Delgado’s voice was so sharp, Padilla thought to himself, it seemed to slice through the air like a rapier. A gravelly, penetrating tone that made you forget about everything else you were thinking of and pay attention solely to him. That had been Padilla’s first impression of Delgado at their initial meeting, and it had stuck with him ever since. Haunted him, really. Gave him goose bumps because he realized that if the long-term plan succeeded, he would be hearing that voice a great deal more in the future.
    “Yes, sir,” Cruz answered respectfully. “A cow from the ranch I
run,
” he added carefully, aware that he had spoken too casually, implying that he actually owned the cow and therefore the ranch. No one owned anything here, and to even imply that you did could get you in deep trouble.
    Padilla gazed at Delgado in the glare of the headlights. Tall, broad-shouldered, and fit, the general was an intimidating presence. Charismatic because of his handsome appearance, the way he carried himself, and his voice. A man you naturally