Savages

124

Ben walks out onto the deck.

Says, “Maybe you were right.”

“Back when they first sent the threat,” Chon says. “We should have either bugged out right then or killed a bunch of people. That was a clean choice and we didn’t make it.”

“Too late now,” Ben says.

He breaks it down. They have Three Options:

1. Play Along—cooperate with the BC and hope O can stick it out for three years.

2. Find and Rescue—locate where they have O and go in and get her.

3. Pay the $20 mil.

The first option isn’t an option. O could never hack it that long, and besides, sooner or later Paqu will want to know where her baby girl is and then she’ll go milk carton. The police, FBI, the whole nine, and that will just get O killed.

The second option is unlikely. The BC could have O anywhere, literally anywhere in the world. If she’s in Mexico, which is the most likely, there’s no way they’re going to find her, much less go in on some sort of Israeli-type raid and pull her out. Not alive, anyway.

But they decide that they still have to try. One step at a time—try to locate her, but while they’re doing that—

The next option—pay the freaking money.

Yeah, gladly, but they don’t have that kind of cash, not liquid, anyway.

They have merchandise that they have to short-sell to the BC. Ben could sell the house, but who’s buying multimillion-dollar houses these days? And banks are borrowing money, not lending it, and besides, what do you use as collateral—dope? In truth, better security than a lot of other things these days, but nothing you could put down on the loan application.

(You want to thaw the frozen credit freeze? Chon has asked. Make those cocksuckers who took our money and now won’t lend it out again take their fists out of their pockets? Firing squads—you trot a few bank presidents out at halftime during Monday Night Football, machine-gun them on the fifty-yard line, and credit will flow like whiskey at an Irish wake.)

Ben has money—he has accounts in Switzerland, the Caymans, the Cooks. He has some investments that he can liquidate. The problem is, he has a lot of investments that he can’t. Green Is Green. The guy is basically a one-man international aid organization, and he’s put a lot of money where his mouth is. Darfur, Congo, Myanmar. So—

—liquidating everything he can liquidate, he can come up with

$15 million.

A shortfall of $5 million.

To free O.

“Do we know anyone with that kind of money?” Ben asks.

“The Baja Cartel has that kind of money.”

The Baja Cartel does have that kind of money.