6. August 20, 2024
Steel
At six forty-five a.m., his teammates gathered at the table. They’d arrived back in the States around two o’clock, and now here they all were, back at the office, some of them not even having slept yet.
Waters set the starfish in the center of the table and immediately engaged the security protocols, turning the room to a muted red glow, like the inside of a submarine on red alert.
Everyone was on edge and looking at Steel for answers. Even the dog knew he was at the heart of this emergency meeting because she’d burrowed under the table to lie across his feet as if to comfort him.
“What the hell is going on, Steel?” God grumbled from his chair at the foot of the table.
God? Janus? What the fuck was he supposed to call the man? They knew him under two names for two different organizations, and still no one from Tribe knew quite how to balance that.
“I have… well, had… a crash pad. Went there immediately after we got home. Needed to decompress. When I got there, I had a visitor. My uncle. He’s threatening my family if I don’t go back home and join my father and brothers in the cartel.
When I didn’t bite, he offered to release Ka-Bar as an extra carrot.
Apparently, my family has him in their custody, or at the very least, knows his location. ”
Silence met him. Yeah, this wasn’t going to go down well.
TB spoke first. “That’s an awful lot to unpack. Mind filling in all the blank spaces?”
Steel resisted the urge to apologize for the information about to come out of his mouth.
“My parents are Livia Martínez, the daughter of an Argentinian supreme court judge, and Hector Colonel. My parents met when they were in their teens, and she was his mistress for many years.”
“Fuckin’ Frankenstein,” Midas whispered, using one of Kubrick’s favorite swear phrases, his fingers immediately tapping away on his keyboard.
God connected the dots. “As in the Colonel Cartel?”
“Yes. Over the years, my father has assimilated all the smaller cartels in the country under his own, much like a hostile corporate takeover, and he was particularly ruthless about it.
He runs the cartel with the help of his two legitimate sons, Guillermo and Ignacio, as well as an assortment of other male family members and, of course, the leaders of the organizations he swallowed up.
“When my mother found out she was pregnant with me, she fled illegally to the States and tried to lose herself in the worst part of Chicago. It took less than six months for my father to find her and bring her back home.
“From the moment I was born, I was brought up in the ways of the cartel. I was homeschooled, with every lesson being somehow tied to their operations. My friends were the sons of my family members and other high-ranking cartel members. When I married, it would be to a cartel member’s daughter to solidify ties. Everything was for the business.
“Despite having a child with my mother, Hector was already married—to one of the daughters of his first takeover bids, so my presence created tension within the immediate family, to say the least. And on top of that, I was not like my half brothers, which left me open to a great deal of abuse. In an effort to make me more like them in temperament, he forced me to work for him, using my mother’s life as leverage.
I was running drugs officially by the time I was twelve.
Killed my first man at thirteen—execution style—to prove my loyalty to the cartel.
My only saving grace is that the men I killed over those years were men who deserved it. ”
“You did what you had to in order to survive and to protect your mother,” Waters reminded him.
Up on the screen, a picture of Hector Colonel, Maico Colonel, and six other men, including Steel’s half brothers, Guillermo and Ignacio, appeared. There was also a picture of Steel’s mother. His hand, resting on the table, clenched into a fist.
“By the time I turned eighteen, I had earned a reputation as the cartel’s most dangerous enforcer.
I desperately wanted to get myself and my mother out of Argentina, but I was trapped.
Then I met Agent Salazar, a DEA agent who was sniffing around our operations in Buenos Aires.
I convinced him I was willing to give up everything I had on my father’s operation in exchange for citizenship for my mother and me.
“His bosses didn’t believe me at first, but I gave them information on an upcoming drug deal—a big one—as a sign of good faith. When it all proved true, he helped us escape back to the States in return for everything else I could give.
“In the meantime, they hid us by enlisting me in the Navy. We would be on base. Harder to get to. Given my strong sense of discipline and my battle-tested control, I thrived in the Navy and was pushed toward the SEALs. It gave me an outlet for the ugliness that dwelled inside me, but I was using it for good. It also provided my mother with a safe place to live. Protected. At least for a while.”
“How did you get into the Navy if you were considered a criminal?”
“I was a criminal in Argentina, not the US. Even if I had been, it turned out the government had other plans for me, and the Navy was the best cover.”
“Jesus Christ. The DEA sold you out,” Midas revealed. On the telescreen, layers of documents appeared, documenting what happened. “They sold you back to your own family.”
“In a manner. While my evidence had helped them hit the cartel, it wasn’t a killing blow.
It only slowed them down for a bit. Somehow, they rebounded.
It was suspected that they had outside help, but nothing could be found on exactly how or who.
When the cartel began to gain strength again, Agent Salazar delivered my new orders.
In a joint operation with the US Navy, I was asked to return to my family and rejoin the cartel.
While there, I would carry out all orders from my jefe and report any and all information I was privy to—production, shipments, executions, restructuring, everything—but my primary mission was to find out who was helping the cartel and how they were funding their rebirth. ”
“Your family just accepted you back?” TB asked incredulously.
“No. They were naturally suspicious. My half brothers made sure I paid the penalty for leaving, and I was not trusted with much of anything of real importance for the first two years.”
“But you were there for seven years, weren’t you?” Midas asked, still skimming through documents on his computer.
“Yes. Slowly, my father started to bring me back into the day-to-day operations, but he was still reluctant to trust me one hundred percent. He’s not a stupid man. He found a way to leverage my loyalty.”
“Your mother,” Midas guessed.
He put his visual focus on his hand, and with great effort, he unlocked the fingers he’d clenched into a fist, forcing them to lie flat and splayed on the table.
One controlled inhale, followed by a controlled exhale, and he continued.
“Partly. She was ill. She had early-onset dementia, most likely brought on by the violent bouts of abuse she suffered at his hands. There’s no way to know for sure.
But he did threaten to retrieve her from the US, even kill her, if I didn’t do as he wished. ”
“Why didn’t WITSEC just move her again?” Waters asked.
“They did. Several times. But my father always found her.”
“Someone was feeding him information.”
“They, along with the DEA, sanctioned my return, but in order for the long game to achieve results, they couldn’t help me in any way, or maybe it was that they wouldn’t.
Either way, I had to fight my way back on my own.
It was why I was given an immunity clause as part of my agreement to go back.
If things went bad, there would be no extraction.
I was completely on my own. The only way I could expect help would be if I was somehow swept up in a raid—there would be no reprisals for any actions I was forced to take, as they would be considered ‘for the greater good’ in bringing down the cartel.
“So, from the age of twenty-two to twenty-nine, I worked my way back into being the most trusted and feared enforcer for my father’s empire.
Returning to that life cost me far more than I ever imagined it would.
I’d already done reprehensible things before fleeing.
Things that weighed heavily on my conscience.
Going back to that life, doing those same types of things?
Well… if I have a soul, let’s just say it’s pretty much doomed to an eternity in hell. ”
“Not to appear insensitive to your eternal damnation,” TB interrupted, “but how does any of this connect to Ka-Bar?”
“While with the SEALs, I became friends with him. We watched each other’s backs. When my new mission was assigned to me, I obviously wasn’t allowed to tell anyone what it was.”
“But you did,” Waters surmised. “You told Ka-Bar.”
“Yes. Something—” He hesitated. He couldn’t tell them the truth.
It was far too outlandish to believe, so he gave them the best answer he could that their brains would accept.
“I had a feeling I might need help somewhere along the line. I knew Ka-Bar wouldn’t say a word, so I told him the basics of what I would be doing. ”
“How did they explain your absence to your unit?” Nemo asked.
“Transfers,” Midas mumbled, his eyes still glued to the screen in front of him.
Steel nodded. “It happened all the time. We’d get moved from different units within our teams, or even from team to team.
Apparently, there’s a special subset of special operations members who are even more elite and on projects similar to the one I was assigned.
It’s easy to hide us as teams within teams. So while I was always listed as Team 5… ”
“You were really something else. Incredible,” Waters mused.