“Not that I was aware of. But who knows? Since the breakup of the AUC, many factions have been jostling for power and for control of the narcotics industry. It looks like Silva’s decided to bring the fight directly to his nearest competitor.”

“Just because they’re Calle’s enemies, it doesn’t make them our friends.” No, it was probable that every man down there would lift guns against us. Some of them—Guarapo for one—appeared to be competent fighters. A tall, fair-haired man looked like an anomaly, but when I started to look further he wasn’t the only Caucasian. Mercenaries, I realized, had been drafted in by Silva to help him wipe out the opposition.

I’d come here to find Jorge Gutierrez, the man playing go-between with Luke Rickard and his employer, and to force that name from him. But if Silva’s army managed to kill everyone, then that route would be closed to me. No information had come in to say that Gutierrez was at the Calle house, but he could have been missed for all we knew. The prospects of having to intercede in this war between opposing military factions was beginning to look like a real probability.

The Junglas were probably wondering how the hell they were going to explain their reason for being here, but that was for them to worry about. Still, I offered them a way out. “The plan’s changed. Stay here. I’m going in alone.”

“We can cover you,” Nunez offered.

“You can do that from here. If I’m killed, get away. No one needs to know that you were ever helping me.”

Before they could argue, I slipped around the side of the boulders and negotiated the slope at a jog. Below me to my left was an outbuilding. A pile of logs was stacked beneath a lean-to and I headed for them. At the woodpile I crouched, using the timber as cover while I spied along the side of the building. I’d just gained that position when I heard gunfire very close by and a window on the side of Calle’s house shattered. A dark-haired man dressed in fatigues, heavily armed, followed the volley through the window a moment later.

Despite myself, I blinked in surprise.

To say I was confused was an understatement. The way I’d seen it, Luke Rickard had been working under the guidance of someone associated with Gutierrez—my bet going on Cesar Calle—and yet here he was, in all his glory, leading the attack on behalf of Calle’s enemy. The dark hair and the tint of his skin didn’t fool me. The man had walked directly toward me, cold-bloodedly shooting his own wife, and I’d burned that image into my memory. He could have had green hair and a clown’s painted face and I’d still have recognized him.

What the hell was he doing?