Chapter 30
The first ring of the phone barely finishes before I answer, “Yeah?”
“Okay, so either I’m losing my fucking mind, or we have a serious problem.”
I pull the phone away from my ear for a second as he keeps rambling, staring at the screen for a second before putting it back to my ear. Mattis sounds like he’s halfway through a psychotic episode, barely holding on to the last thread of coherent speech.
In the background, I hear keyboard clacking and the sound of an energy drink being opened. A drink he very much does not need.
I lean back in my chair slowly. “Morning to you, too, Mattis.”
“No, listen… Listen, because I’ve been trying to call Hawk for the last twenty minutes, and he’s not answering, and I know he’s probably busy, but this is bad, Damon. Really bad.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose.
“You really need to cut back on the Red Bull, buddy.”
“That’s not the point.”
“It’s definitely part of the point.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
“Damon.” His voice sharpens, getting my attention.
I glance at my watch. “They’re probably in the middle of the summit,” I say. “Hawk won’t be able to answer until this afternoon.”
Mattis exhales a huff into the phone. “Yeah, I figured as much. Which is why I called you.”
“I’ve been digging,” he shares, talking even faster now, his words nearly tripping over each other. “And you know how everything wasn’t adding up at our last meeting with the ambassador?”
I sit forward a little. “Yeah.”
“It gets worse.”
I lift two fingers toward Gunnar as he passes the command center door. “What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Don’t know yet.” I motion toward the phone. “Shut the door.”
Gunnar closes it behind him, and I hit the speaker button on my phone.
“You’re on with Gunnar, too,” I tell Mattis.
“Perfect,” Mattis chirps. “Now I only have to explain this once.”
Gunnar drops into the chair across from me, brows pulling together. “Should I be concern?—”
“Yes,” Mattis interrupts.
Gunnar sighs. “That answer worries me more.”
I wave him off and lean back. “Start from the beginning, conspiracy boy.”
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist if the conspiracies keep turning out to be real.”
“Debatable.”
“No, listen. After the last meeting, I kept waiting for the ambassador or the DEA to send over the intel they promised us, right?”
“They’re government agencies,” Gunnar says dryly. “Slow incompetence is kind of their brand.”
“Yeah, except this wasn’t normal slow. It was deliberate slow.” I exchange a look with Gunnar, but Mattis continues before either of us can interrupt, “They stalled every request. Dodged every follow-up. What documents they did send looked scrubbed before they ever reached us.”
“That still sounds like government work,” I grumble.
Mattis ignores me. “And it wasn’t sitting right with me, because the numbers didn’t match. The seizures, the manifests, the financial trails—none of it aligned with what we were being told.”
He pauses.
“So, I started digging outside official channels.”
Gunnar groans quietly. “Jesus Christ.”
“What?” Mattis snaps. “That’s literally why you keep me around.”
“Fair point.”
I rub a hand over my beard. “What did you find?”
“The ambassador’s wife died ten years ago.”
“I know,” I reply. “Car accident.”
“That’s what they called it.”
Something in his tone sends a cold ripple down my spine.
“She was driving home from a charity gala in Bogotá. It was a brand-new, top-of-the-line armored SUV. Less than two months old.”
I can hear him typing rapidly again.
“According to the official report, the brakes failed while she was inside a parking garage. Her vehicle crashed through the barrier wall on the top level and dropped six stories.”
Gunnar’s expression darkens immediately. “That’s not impossible,” he says carefully.
“No,” Mattis agrees. “It’s not, but the maintenance logs make it highly improbable.”
“Go on.”
“The vehicle had a full inspection forty-eight hours before the crash. No issues. No defects. No hydraulic problems.”
Mattis pauses, but I can hear him typing on his keyboard.
“And the mechanic who signed off on the inspection disappeared two weeks later.”
Gunnar sits forward. “What do you mean, disappeared?”
“I mean, his apartment was cleared out overnight, his bank accounts were emptied, and his family claims they haven’t heard from him since.”
“Could’ve run.” I sigh, though the words sound weak even to me.
“Could’ve,” Mattis agrees. “Except his passport was still in his apartment.”
Gunnar’s jaw tightens. “Fuck.”
“Yeah.”
Mattis lowers his voice slightly, losing some of the frantic energy. “So, then I started looking into the ambassador himself.”
Gunnar rolls his eyes. “Of course you did.”
“Because it’s always the spouse,” Mattis comments.
I blink slowly. “What?”
“The husband. It’s always the husband. Or the wife. Don’t you watch Dateline? Dead spouses almost always play their part.”
“That is an insane sentence,” I mutter.
“And yet historically accurate,” he corrects.
Gunnar leans back in his chair, folding his arms. “I’m listening.”
“And?” I ask.
“And before his wife died, the ambassador was vehemently against opening the Cartagena port expansion.” We all know how important the port in Cartagena is.
Shipping lanes. Customs access. Political leverage.
It’s one of the biggest drug routes to the US.
We’re talking millions—maybe billions—in movement.
Mattis keeps talking. “He fought the proposal publicly for almost two years. Called it dangerous. Said it would increase cartel access through commercial channels. He blocked permits, delayed votes, buried approvals.”
“And after his wife died?” Gunnar asks quietly.
“He changed his stance almost overnight.”
Coldness crawls down my spine.
Mattis exhales shakily. “Not just changed. He became the face of the expansion.”
“What?” I stand slowly from my chair.
“He started lobbying for it publicly. Pushed emergency approvals through committees, fast-tracked contracts, and pressured opposition lawmakers.”
Gunnar swears under his breath.
I walk toward the windows, phone still on speaker behind me.
“Who benefited from the expansion?” I ask.
Mattis laughs once. “That’s where things get fun.”
“I hate when you say things like that.”
“There are six shell companies tied to the construction contracts. Five of them lead nowhere.”
“And the sixth?”
“The sixth has indirect financial ties to a holding corporation, which is connected to the Cartagena cartel.”
“You’re sure?” I ask quietly.
“As sure as I can be without illegally accessing international banking servers.”
“You say that like it’s a line you haven’t crossed before,” Gunnar mutters.
“No comment.”
I turn toward the desk slowly. Every instinct I have is screaming, because coincidences happen. But not like this.
“How deep does this go?” Gunnar asks.
“That’s the problem,” Mattis says. “I don’t know yet.”
I stare at the phone for a long moment before saying, “Tell me everything you haven’t said already.”
Mattis hesitates.
And that scares me more than anything else so far.
“There’s one more thing.”
“Mattis.”
“The ambassador met privately with DEA Deputy Director Vale four days before his wife died.”
Gunnar slowly drags his hand down his face. “You cannot be serious.”
“I wish I wasn’t.”
“Was the meeting documented?” I ask.
“No official record,” Mattis says. “I found it buried in hotel security logs.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah.”
“When does the next summit session end?” Gunnar asks
“Another hour.”
“Hawk needs this information immediately.”
Mattis lets out a humorless laugh. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for the last fifteen minutes.”
“You spent the first five sounding like a raccoon trapped in a vending machine.”
“Fair.”
Gunnar stands. “If the DEA is compromised?—”
“We don’t know that yet,” I cut in sharply.
But even as I say the words, I don’t fully believe them. My gut tells me Mattis has only unearthed the tip of the iceberg.