He had worked with single-minded determination to make his childhood dream of being a soldier a reality, and now, at thirty-seven years, he was at what he considered the peak of his career. With the next promotion would come a desk job, something he looked upon with dread. He had operational control over Argentina’s most lethal commandos. At least for another few minutes. The humiliation was like an ember burning in the pit of his stomach.

A Mercedes ML500 SUV painted in a matte jungle camouflage was waiting for him and Jimenez. Inside was plush leather and burnished wood. It was his stepmother’s idea of roughing it.

“How is he?” Espinoza asked Jesús, his father’s longtime majordomo, who had driven down to the runway to pick up the young master.

“Calm.” Jesús said, and tapped the vehicle into gear.

Not a good sign.

The track up to the manor house was a dirt road but one so meticulously maintained that the ride was as smooth as the autobahn, and the heavy SUV kicked up just a trace of dust. Overhead a hawk spotted some prey on the ground, tucked its wings, and plummeted earthward.

Maxine Espinoza greeted Jorge at the top of the steps leading to the front door. His stepmother was from Paris, and had once been an employee of their embassy in the Cerrito section of Buenos Aires. His real mother had died three weeks after being violently tossed from a horse when Espinoza was eleven. His father had waited until he was out of military college before considering remarrying, though there had been a string of beautiful women over the years.

She was only a couple of years older than Jorge, and had the old man not met her first he would have dated her in a heartbeat. He didn’t begrudge his father a young wife. He had honored Jorge’s mother by waiting so long, and by the time Maxine came into their lives it was good to have a woman to blunt some of the General’s rough edges, which had grown sharper over the years.

She wore riding clothes that showed bearing two more sons for the General had done no permanent damage to her figure.

“You are not hurt?” she asked, her Spanish laced with a French accent. He suspected the French women made their second language sexy no matter what it was. Maxine could make Urdu sound like poetry.

“No, Maxie, I’m fine.”

Raul approached, and she noticed his bandages. She blanched. “Mon Dieu, what did those pigs do to you?”

“They blew up a helicopter I was in, señora.” Jimenez spoke to his shoes as if he wasn’t comfortable around such wealth or the attention of his commander’s wife.