“I’m afraid not,” Sam said. “We’re in the town of Santa Maria de los Montañas, maybe twenty miles west of the Estancia Guerrero.” He told her about the truckload of armed men arriving, the demands, and the murder.

“Oh, Sam,” she said. “I can hardly believe this. You said they gave the town a deadline. What is it?”

“They said they’d be back in five days to get the signed agreements and presumably to move the townspeople to barracks on the Estancia. But it doesn’t seem to matter much to these guys how the town gets vacated. They drilled the mayor in front of two hundred witnesses.”

“Five days,” Amy Costa said. “It’s the worst possible timing. Commander Rueda is the only one we can count on to react the way we want and he’s suspended for the next thirty days.”

“I’m sure that isn’t a coincidence.”

“Sarah Allersby makes her own coincidences,” said Amy.

“Can you get us any help?”

“I’ll try. But the high-ranking officers all know what happened when Rueda agreed to go after Sarah Allersby. It will take time to get somebody else to stick his neck out.”

Sam said, “Do you know of any way we can get some weapons to defend the town?”

Amy said, “Weapons? I’m sorry, but involvement in unauthorized firearms transactions would get the embassy expelled from the country. And it would require going all the way up the chain of command to get permission at the highest levels. Some of my superiors don’t see Sarah Allersby as our business. They think the locals should take care of her.”

“Let’s just hope the townspeople are still alive when that happens.”

Chapter 29

THE ESTANCIA GUERRERO

Sarah Allersby was waiting in the old countinghouse, a relic from the days of the Guerreros. She sat at the biggest of the old desks, directly under a ceiling fan operated by a belt attached to a long shaft along the ceiling and turned from outside the building, originally by hand but now by electric motor. She sat back, closed her eyes, and took a couple of deep breaths to relax. Russell had telephoned her a half hour ago, so she guessed they were almost here by now. Soon she heard the sound of the truck gearing down on the highway, then making the turn onto the drive. It still amazed her how quiet the Estancia could be. There was noise whenever there was a flurry of work—harvest, planting, or shipping—but for weeks on end there was almost no sound out here. She stood, stepped up to a window that faced the forest, and looked at her reflection in the glass.