“The road out of Cortada de Maturín. It’s very, very quiet. Not much more than a track until it gets to the Autopista, but that’s the main route into the city. It’s busy as soon as you hit it.”

“We’ll pick him up outside the village, then. We’ll need a vehicle.”

“I’ve already got one,” he said. “I picked one up in town yesterday.”

“And weapons?”

“That’s sorted, too. I visited the cache yesterday.”

Beatrix remembered the file. A Group Fifteen quartermaster had established a small arms cache in a lock-up garage on the west of the city.

“What do you have?”

“Pistols,” he said. “There’s more in the cache if we need it. It’s well equipped. SMGs, grenades, tons of ammo. I didn’t think we’d need to go big.”

“No,” she agreed. “We do it quiet. You have a pistol for me?”

“A Glock 26,” he said. “That okay?”

“There wasn’t anything else?”

“You don’t like it?”

“Not a big fan of polymer frames.”

“There’s plenty of choice. I could go back and—”

“Forget it. It’ll do.”

“It’s in the car.”

She nodded. “What’s the inside of the cache like?”

“It’s a garage. If you’re asking because you want to take him there, I’d say it’d be fine for that. You can drive the car inside and close the door. If he’s down in the back, no one would see him.”

Beatrix nodded her approval. “That’s what we’ll do, then. We pick him up, take him to the garage, and have a chat with him.”

“A chat?”

“Use your imagination, Major. There are some questions I need him to answer. He might not like all of them.”

“I’m sure you can be very persuasive,” Milton said.

Beatrix ignored that. “Then we take him to the coast and get him out of the country.”

“And then?”

“And then you go home, with my gratitude and the pride that you can take from a job well done.”

Milton stood. He reached down for the beer and took a long draught of it. “If it’s all right with you, I’m going to go for a run. Clear my head. You want to get dinner afterwards?”

“No,” Beatrix said. “We need to be up early.” She pointed at the bottle. “So make that the last one. I do not want you nursing a hangover tomorrow morning.”

Milton grinned at her. “No, ma’am.”

7

Beatrix was awake with the dawn. She showered and dressed in a pair of dark jeans and a black T-shirt with sleeves that were cut off just below the shoulders. She chose a pair of boots and a light jacket that would hide a pistol if she carried it in her waistband.