Chapter 73 CHAPTER 74

Chapter 73 CHAPTER 74

Ernesto received Restrepo’s call at five o’clock Tuesday morning.
“Sir. We’ve got him located. A farm south of the reservoir road, in an old area. We tracked him through one of his old accounts that became active again last night. He’s not alone. At least four men with him, maybe six.”
“Confirmed?”
“Confirmed. Visual confirmation. Two of my men have been on the hill opposite for twelve hours with binoculars.”
“How long does he stay there?”
“If you ask me, he moves today. He’s nervous. He’s been changing locations every two days for the last week. We caught this one by sheer luck, sir.”
Ernesto sat on the edge of the bed.
Ana was sleeping beside him.
“We take him today.”
“Today?”
“Today, Restrepo. Move everyone. Same structure as Klaus’s farm. No police until it’s contained. I’m coming down. Two hours.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And Restrepo.”
“Yes, sir?”
“Alive, if possible.”
“If possible.”
He hung up.
Ana opened her eyes.
“You found him?”
“We found him.”
Ana sat up.
She didn’t ask whether he was going.
She already knew.
“Ernesto.”
“Yes?”
“Come back.”
“I’ll come back.”
“Come back whole.”
“Whole.”

The farm sat at the end of a dirt road in an aging area that had not seen proper maintenance in years.
A single-story house.
A rusted corrugated-metal roof.
A wide yard with three pickup trucks parked haphazardly.
And an old shed at the back filled with drums.
Fuel.
That was the first thing Restrepo’s men noticed from the hill.
Fuel drums.
Possibly for a quick escape.
Possibly for something worse.
Ernesto arrived at the operation’s staging point at seven thirty.
Nine men.
Restrepo and his people.
Two others from Vladimir’s old world whom Carla had quietly reactivated.
Body armor.
Radios.
An armored SUV positioned at the rear.
No sirens.
No official uniforms.
The police had been notified and were waiting three kilometers away with orders not to move until Ernesto gave the signal.
“One thing before we go up,” Ernesto said, standing before the nine men.
“Inside is a man who almost killed my cousin at a traffic light and who sent Julieta photographs from Manuel Carvajal’s basement months ago. That man is mine. Not yours. Not the police’s. Nobody’s. Mine.”
He paused.
“But I want him alive in a courtroom. Understood? If he surrenders, he surrenders. If he shoots, he shoots, and then things decide themselves. But we’re not looking for a fight, and we’re not saving the lives of his men just so we can use him for target practice. Is that clear?”
All nine nodded.
“One more thing. I saw fuel drums in the shed. That means this man has a bad Plan B. It means that if he feels cornered, he may burn the place down. Avoid stray rounds in that area. And nobody enters the shed until the house is secured.”
“Yes, sir.”

They moved in at eight ten.
Two flanks.
Restrepo and three men from the east.
Three more from the west.
Ernesto and two others up the front road once the other six were in position.
The first of Andrés’s men was smoking on the porch.
Just like at Klaus’s farm.
As though history had decided to repeat itself with different actors.
He went down silently, face in the dirt and an arm twisted behind his back before he could shout.
The shout came from inside anyway.
Another man looked out a window and saw the first silhouette pinned to the porch.
Then it started.
The firefight inside the house lasted less than four minutes.
Two of Andrés’s men went down in the hallway.
Another surrendered face-down in the kitchen.
A fourth burst through the back door firing blindly over his shoulder, and one of Restrepo’s men intercepted him in the yard before he reached a truck.
But Andrés was not in the house.
Andrés was in the shed.
The men on the hill spotted him.
Their voices crackled over the radio.
“The target is in the shed. Repeat. The target is in the shed.”
Ernesto, standing on the porch with a still-hot weapon in his hand, turned toward the back of the property.

After that, there was no time for much else.
Andrés, trapped inside the shed, did what desperate men do when they run out of clean moves.
He fired twice at the door.
Missed.
Heard the voices outside.
Heard the perimeter tightening.
And picked up a match.
It was not elegant.
It was not calculated.
It was a man who had spent two years running.
A man who had come within a traffic light of killing Vladimir Rossi and failed.
A man now surrounded by that same family inside a shed with five fuel drums.
And instead of walking out with his hands raised, he chose to burn everything.
With himself inside or not—it didn’t matter.
Twistedly convinced that the fire would open a path for escape through the smoke.
He lit the first drum.
But the barrels were old.
Poorly sealed.
And packed too close together.
The first one exploded before Andrés could move from where he stood.

Ernesto heard the first blast from the yard.
Then the second.
Then a fireball blew the zinc roof apart into five pieces and hurled black smoke into the sky.
Restrepo shouted something Ernesto didn’t hear, grabbed him by the arm, and dragged him behind the armored SUV.
The men dove for cover wherever they could.
The heat reached all the way to the porch.
When the second drum finished exploding, the shed had become a single mass of orange flame.
“Fire department! Call the fire department!”
“They’re already on their way, sir!”
“And an ambulance! Two ambulances!”
“Fifteen minutes out!”
“Fifteen minutes is useless! Call another one!”
Ernesto remained behind the vehicle.
Heat rolled across the yard and struck his face.
Smoke stung his eyes.
Around him, Restrepo’s men waited for orders.
But the orders no longer belonged to them.
The fire was in command now.

Andrés came out three minutes later.
Not through the front door.
Through the side.
Crawling.
Burning.
His clothes were fused to his body, blackened and mingled with skin.
His face was unrecognizable.
The sound he made was not a scream.
It was something else.
The noise a man makes when his body keeps functioning one minute longer than it should.
He collapsed ten meters from the shed, still smoking.
Restrepo and two men reached him first.
They threw a damp tarp over him.
Smothered what remained of the flames.
“Don’t move. Don’t move. The ambulance is coming.”
They knew he was incapable of moving anyway.
Ernesto approached.
He did not kneel.
He stopped three meters away and looked down at him.
Andrés Guzmán’s eyes were open.
He saw him.
Recognized him.
His mouth moved.
No words came out.
“Andrés.”
The burned man did not answer.
“Andrés, listen carefully. Maybe you live. Maybe you don’t. And I need to tell you this in case you don’t.”
Andrés closed his eyes for a second.
Opened them again.
Ernesto did not blink.
“Vladimir woke up. Three weeks ago. He’s alive. He’s walking. He’s going to recover completely.”
A pause.
“And Julieta came back. She had his son. A boy. Healthy.”
His voice remained calm.
“I’m telling you this so that if you die, you die knowing you accomplished nothing. Not a little. Nothing.”
Andrés’s eyes watered.
At that point no one could tell whether it was tears or smoke.
Ernesto straightened.
He signaled to Restrepo.
The ambulance was already coming up the road, sirens ahead, firefighters behind.
“Take him.”
“I want him alive if he can be. I want him sitting in a courtroom, Restrepo. If he’s going to die, let him die in front of a judge, not here in the dirt.”
“Yes, sir.”
They loaded him into the ambulance.
“Eighty percent burns,” the paramedic whispered to Restrepo before closing the doors. “I don’t give him much chance, but he might hold on. Sometimes these people last longer than you’d think.”

Ernesto remained standing in the yard.
Behind him, the shed still burned while firefighters worked the hoses.
Ahead stood the house, with two bodies inside and two living prisoners handcuffed in the kitchen waiting to speak to a prosecutor.
On every side: dust, smoke, heat.
He pulled out his phone.
Called Ana.
“Ana.”
“Ernesto.”
“We got him. Alive, for now. He’s badly burned.”
“You?”
“Whole.”
“Your men?”
“Two injured. Nothing serious. The rest are fine.”
“And Andrés?”
“Andrés set himself on fire. We didn’t do anything to him. You won’t have to carry that on your conscience because of me.”
“That doesn’t matter to me anymore, Ernesto.”
“It matters to me. Because I don’t want my son growing up thinking his father burned a man alive. Even if the man deserved it.”
“Come home, Ernesto.”
“I’m coming. One more thing.”
“Yes?”
“Go to the mansion. Tell Vladimir yourself. And Julieta too.”
“Why?”
“I don’t want them hearing it from me over the phone. Tell them face-to-face.”
“I will.”
He hung up.
Ernesto stood for a moment staring at the smoke.
Then he climbed into the armored SUV, told the driver to move, and left the yard without looking back, leaving the firefighters to finish putting out a fire that was no longer his.