Hawke

Over the years, Manso had gotten very good at finding ever newer and more interesting ways of keeping el comandante amused. There was, of course, no shortage of girls willing to do anything for money or el jefe.

The most recent event Manso had staged at Finca Telaraсa was a tree-climbing contest. About ten local beauty queens had participated. They had stripped and raced for the trees. The wi

Manso supplied the female pipeline and he kept it full. This talent had helped his career in the Air Force enormously. Not to mention the size of his personal fortune. Manso had also done many favors for his leader. Favors Castro would entrust to no one else.

“He has become an inconvenience, Manso” was all that needed to be said. The man, or his entire family, would disappear. Always with a knife, never a gun. Guns, Manso had discovered very early in life, were no fun at all. He had grown up in the cane fields of Oriente province. He had learned that a razor-sharp machete made him the equal of bigger, stronger, and even wiser men.

When he was still a boy, he had formed a small band known as the Macheteros. The machete wielders. Once, barely twelve, he and his two brothers had kidnapped a staff member of the Soviet consulate. The Russian bastard had insulted his mother in the street. They’d placed him in a cotton sack and taken him at midnight out into the cane fields. Swigging rum up in the cab of the stolen pickup, the three brothers laughed at the man bouncing around in the back of the truck’s bed as they careened through the tall cane.

His two brothers held the man’s arms. Manso suddenly stepped forward and whipped off the sack covering the man’s head. When the man saw a glint of moonlight on Manso’s upraised blade, he started begging. He was still pleading when Manso casually lopped off his head, spraying the three boys with blood. It was Manso’s first taste of blood and he found that he liked it.

He’d had the head delivered in a piсata to the Soviet embassy. This spectacular crime, and the ensuing manhunt for Manso and his two brothers, had caused them to flee their homeland. They headed straight for their uncle’s village in the mountains of Colombia. Their mother, a Colombian, had a brother who was a coca farmer in a thriving little hamlet called Medellin.

In the long chain of lucky events that would mark his life, the murder of the Russian brought Manso to the attention of Fidel Castro himself. Normally, this would have resulted in his capture, torture, and execution. The Soviets wanted Manso’s head, that was certain. They’d even sent investigators and detectives all the way from Moscow in search of the murderous de Herreras brothers.

By the time the Russian investigators reached Cuba, Manso and his young brothers were in Colombia, at the forefront of a burgeoning new industry. They were using high-powered speedboats, committing acts of sea piracy, and ru

9

El doctor, it didn’t take Manso long to discover, was not a doctor at all.

He was a murderous psychopath. A squat little man who’d gotten his start stealing headstones from the local cemeteries, sandblasting them, and then reselling them. El doctor was the honorary sobriquet given to the young drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in honor of the first man he murdered, a man who happened to be a doctor.

Murder was not an unusual way to earn a nickname in Colombia. But this particular murder would mark the begi

Manso had found his role model.

Shortly after fleeing Cuba and arriving at their uncle’s farm in the tiny mountain village of Medellin, the three de Herreras brothers began learning the thriving new coca business literally from the ground up. They planted and tended the shrubs, native to the Andes, with the pretty yellow flowers. Among other alkaloids, the leaves of Erythroxylum coca yielded a miracle powder called cocaine.

They worked in their uncle’s fields at first, and then graduated to the corrugated tin labs where the miracle money dust was refined and processed.

It wasn’t long until the brothers’ ingenuity, intelligence, and ruthlessness brought them to the attention of el doctor himself. Six weeks after arriving, they had officially been taken under the wing of Pablo Escobar and his Medellin cartel. Pablo was the vicious but wily thug whose murderous assassinations of judges, journalists, and presidential candidates would one day almost topple the Colombian government. Eventually, he blew an Avianca jetliner out of the sky and rocketed to the top of the world’s most-wanted list.

Pablo Escobar was the first billionaire Manso had ever met. He was also a legend to his people. The Colombian Robin Hood took millions in drug money from the stupid norteamericanos and used a small portion of it to build villages and soccer fields for the poor campesinos of Medellin. To the terrorized and oppressed poor people of Colombia, Manso saw, Escobar was a national hero.

Neither a revolutionary nor an idealist, Pablo was merely an outlaw. But in a country where the laws are hated, a charismatic and benevolent desperado can find himself a figure of adulation. Even worship.

Manso kept a keen eye on every move Pablo made. He was mesmerized, like all the rest, by Escobar’s penchant for casually extreme violence. He watched the ruthless Escobar with endless fascination as he went about the daily business of creating and embellishing his own mythic stature.

Manso immediately understood what worlds were opened once a man decided to make his own laws, his own rules. The young Cuban machetero in the thrall of el doctor now had a philosophy to live by. It was simple. You accepted either Manso’s plata or Manso’s plomo. You took his silver. Or you took his lead. It made not the least bit of difference to him which one you chose.

Under Pablo’s tutelage, the three de Herreras brothers became ever more lethal and sophisticated assassins. Before you killed a man, for instance, you first made him scream and beg. Or, even better, before you killed him, you first killed those he loved most.

Before you raped, you assembled an audience. Fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers were forced to watch. It was work his two brothers took to with enthusiasm. Manso had far grander ideas.

A very bright and keen observer of things, he saw that the norteamericanos’ seemingly insatiable demand for the Colombian product was rapidly overcoming supply. He sensed that this was only the begi

The demand was there. How to supply it became increasingly problematic. Pablo even built a fleet of remote-controlled submarines, each capable of carrying two thousand kilos of cocaine from the shores of Colombia to the waters off Puerto Rico. It wasn’t enough. Manso had an idea.

It was obvious to him that Pablo would need ever increasing numbers of pilots to ferry the huge loads of his product north. So, he’d learn how to fly. But Pablo’s pilotos were a close-knit group and shu

He finally persuaded one of the younger pilots to teach him to fly by abducting the man’s sister. The man took his case to Pablo, who applauded Manso’s audacity. The next day, Manso was airborne.