I say back, “I like standing in the shade.”

“Ah, yes,” he says, “underneath the palm fronds and branches. Wanting to cover yourself from any snipers, eh?”

“Where are Tom and Denise?”

He points to the Yukon. “Right in here, of course.”

“Show them to me. Now.”

He shrugs. “As you wish.”

He steps back and the near rear passenger window slides down, and I see my Tom and the top of my little girl’s head, and the tears just burst out and I desperately try to keep my cool.

“All right, let’s get this over with,” I say. “I brought you this old man. Give me my family.”

Pelayo is back in front of the Yukon. “But a few words to the old man, if I may.”

Pelayo starts speaking in Spanish to his father, but the old bastard, demanding as always, yells back, “English! Speak to me in English. At least this poor woman should know why I am here, and why you have done so much harm to her and her poor family.”

Seeing the arrogant old man standing in front of him stirs up lots of memories that Pelayo thought had been buried deep and long ago, and he recalls the lecturing, the beatings, and most of all, the disappointing looks on his father’s face as Pelayo grew older and learned it wasn’t love or family that meant anything in this world, only money and power.

He yells, “You’re here because of what you’ve done to me, how you’ve belittled me, and because you were about to betray me.”

The old man shoots back, “Then I’m proud to be here, to face a creature that pretends to be my son. Betray you? I was merely going to tell the world of how you were always a twisted, evil child, and that your despised life has caused death and misery to thousands.”

“You have no right!”

The Army captain, looking ridiculous in a skimpy suit perfect for a woman half her age and weight, is standing close to his father, as if she is trying to reassure him as he yells back at Pelayo.

“A father always has the right to tell the truth about his son, especially when he has a heart and soul as dark as a rotten gourd, forgotten in the field at harvesttime.”

“It is because of you, old man, that I am like this!”

He grins back. “You have been an adult for many, many years, my son. Are you so weak that you continue to blame me, your mother, and the Church for how you turned out? Like your despised cousin, you have the face and body of a human, but the soul of a monster.”

Enough is enough, Pelayo thinks, and he yells out, “It is finished!”

There.

He reaches under his coat to grab his Glock .40-caliber pistol, and then like a jack-in-the-box, Paco leaps up next to him, submachine gun in hand, and as Pelayo brings the pistol up to shoot the old bastard, there’s movement and—