Play the Right Cards Read online

  Play the Right Card

  a Delta Force romance story

  M. L. Buchman

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  1

  The flash of white-gold drew Ramiro’s attention from the mote de queso.

  It was a soup he’d lifted from Colombia’s Caribbean Coast and was adapting to the Medellín palate—with his own modern style of course. The thick hard cheese had been transformed to tiny floating islands that would catch in every spoonful. The sweetness of yam now came from roasted and juiced corn, and the coconut milk base was reconstructed from goat milk and white chocolate.

  It was close. So close. It needed more roasted-corn milk—and, he tried not to sigh, less salt. Nowhere in Colombia was there a love for the salt and sweet together as there was in Medellín, but the balance was wrong. The only way to put less in was to start over and he’d already been nursing this soup along for two days. Any distraction was welcome.

  The flash of white-gold was a man’s pale blond hair. Not exactly common in the heart of the Santo Domingo district of Medellín. It belonged to a big guy. Tall and incredibly broad of shoulder. The man who followed him in was darker, but no smaller. They looked like two tanks rolling into his restaurant. Ramiro didn’t need to be brilliant to spot American drug-war military.

  “Buenos días, amigos. Welcome to my restaurant.” He worked hard on his English hoping for just this moment. American military liked to think they were adventurous, but they rarely were. It had taken three months for one to walk in here. If he could make a good impression, they’d tell their friends and then he’d be made. The barrio’s locals were fine, but money came from the Americans. Also if the Americans came, then the trendy Paisas from lower Medellín would start riding the tram or the escalator up into the barrio and they too had money.

  “Hey there.” The blond man offered one of those odd, meaningless American greetings as they looked around.

  The barrio of Santo Domingo had changed so much since the days when Pablo Escobar’s drug money had ruled here, that the neighborhood of his youth was almost unrecognizable. There were still alleys and streets that even he didn’t walk into, but no longer did everyone spend whole days cowering out of sight as gun battles raged along the Fronteras Invisibles that had divided the drug militias’ territories. With new parks, libraries, civic centers, and even massive outdoor escalators that climbed right up into the hills of the upper comunas, the neighborhoods had slowly quieted and were regaining cohesion, like a fine sauce.

  It wasn’t done yet, but gunfire was now less common than bombs had been the year when six thousand had died in this city alone. The lower city was far safer and the hill neighborhoods were following.

  Ramiro had done his best to make his restaurant fit the modern times. The walls were white, with paintings of local vistas—cheap ones from street artists but with a sharp, modernist eye. The tables were topped with black Formica and dark blue linoleum covered the old wood floors. The chairs he’d selected for comfort over style. This restaurant was his very breath, and his future.

  “Would you like some lunch, my friends?” Please let them be his friends. He moved out to escort them to seats. There were ten tables and only two were occupied, so where they sat didn’t matter; the secret was to get them sitting.

  “Sure. Duane says he’s ready to eat a horse. Me, I’m fine with just a small cow or two.” Their Spanish was very good, though strangely regionless. It didn’t matter, it made his life easier. He still had to concentrate to get English syntax organized in his head before he spoke.

  When he tried to hand over menus, the blond guy waved them away. “You’re the chef, you choose. We’re not picky eaters.”

  “I’m not,” ‘Duane’ grumbled out in a voice that sounded little used. “Chad’s got this thing against aji chombo sauce.”

  “Only because the last time you said ‘Try it, you’ll like it,’ it burned a hole in my tongue that came out through the bottom of my boots. I liked those boots.”

  “He likes wearing ballet slippers.”

  Ramiro knew it was bad form to laugh in a customer’s face—especially one he wanted to turn into a repeat customer—but he couldn’t help himself.

  “That’s ballet dancers. Those girls bring a whole new meaning to flexible. And I won’t mention Duane and his bunny slippers,” blond ‘Chad’s’ smile forgave Ramiro his laugh.

  Ramiro wasn’t sure what “bunny slippers” were. He wondered if they used their real names. Probably. Duane’s tan was dark enough, but Chad would never pass as undercover anything in Colombia. Time to get back to the food.

  “The reason you don’t like the aji chombo is because you eat the Venezuelan sauce.” Venezuela was just another confirmation of who they were as it was a border that was not very comfortable to cross right now. “You must try my aji picante Colombiano. It is hot, but it is not simply hot with peppers. It is hot with flavor. It is hot with the spirit of Colombia.”

  “Bring it on, brother.” Duane turned to his friend, “You got the cards?”

  “You were supposed to— Shit, bro.” He turned to Ramiro. “Do you have any playing cards?”

  Ramiro went to look, but all he found were a pack of My Little Pony cards his niece had left behind on her last visit from Bogota.

  “Sorry, all I could find, my friends.”

  Chad fanned the deck. Ramiro should have told them he couldn’t find anything. They’d take offense at these silly pink cards and walk away.

  Brightly colored cartoon ponies adorned them. The suits were made up of hearts, diamonds, rainbows, and more. A “three of butterflies” flew around the image of Fluttershy, a beige pony with hot pink hair. A “seven of balloons” floated above the wild-eyed party pony Pinkie Pie with her hot pink hair. He and Marie had played the game for endless hours. Those days had gone by far too fast. No little girl of his own to raise. No little boy to follow in his footsteps. Not yet anyway, but Marie made him wish.

  But these military men were not eight-year old Marie.

  It was a disaster before he’d even served the first plate. They’d never come back. He—

  Chad quickly chucked aside the eights, nines, and tens, then began shuffling the deck. Truco? Two American military men were going to play a vicious, cut-throat game like Truco with My Little Pony cards.

  They seemed to forget about his existence, so he slowly eased away and almost landed in Jesús Rivera’s lap, which would have been very bad. He’d known Jesús since they were kids, but his was the last major drug militia still working Santo Domingo. He’d become so hard over the years that Ramiro had barely recognized him when he returned from his apprenticeship and cooking school in Bogotá.

  Ramiro hurried back to the kitchen.

  2

  Estela had watched the Americans stroll past the front of her restaurant without thinking anything of it. But when news had spread—as quickly as everything in the barrio did—of a noisy two-person game of Truco in Ramiro’s Restaurante de Medellín, she had her suspicions. When Marla came in for an order of chicharrón with a side of beans and rice to take to her ailing father—who had made a profession of ailing ever since his daughter had married well enough to support him—and asked how it was possible for hair to be so close to white on a young and handsome man, it only confirmed what Estela already knew.

  The Americans wanted to eat at Ramiro’s? It was their loss. It wasn’t authentic Colombian food. It was barely food according to some of her customers. She didn’t need mor
e customers. Even Ramiro returning from the big city with his big city ideas and moving in next door hadn’t worried her.

  The Paisas of Medellín—the real locals—knew real food. She and Cara could barely keep up with the crowded tables. Those who had to wait were always offered a jugó of iced juice mixed with coconut milk. She knew the feeding and keeping of customers far better than Ramiro with his fancy molecules and espuma that he dropped in frothy little piles as if a person could be satisfied with air and bubbles.

  He knew nothing.

  Then why did the Americans eating there irk her so?

  She paused in the kitchen long enough to drink a lime and coconut jugó herself as the thin-sliced plantain patacones fried for the second time. Her restaurante was warm compared to Ramiro’s chilly moderno nonsense. The wood walls had been placed here by her grandfather. Her grandmother had fed the people of Santo Domingo at these same wooden tables. Even when Pablo Escobar and the other murderous drug scum had ruled the streets, people still had to eat.

  She had learned that lesson to her very soul on the day that a bomb killed her mother as she walked along the street with a basket of chicken and potatoes. The explosion had also killed the children of a police captain. It was the day that Estela’s schooling and childhood had ended. She and Nana had run the restaurant from the very next day, because the people they must eat, si? Now this place was hers. No, it was her. She and her restaurant were one and the same. It was something else she had learned from Nana.

  She didn’t need Ramiro. She didn’t care about his food that wasn’t food. And she certainly didn’t miss the few people who went to his restaurant when hers was crowded for hours every mealtime.

  “What’s on the menu today, Estela?” She knew the voice without turning.

  “Nothing for you, Jesús Rivera. Ever. I told you not to come in here.” She rattled the basket in the frying oil.

  “Why don’t you like me, Estela? I can show you a very good time. Take you away from all this sweaty work. All these people.” All these people was precisely why she was here. She loved serving traditional, hearty food to the Paisas of Medellín.

  She had told him a thousand times no. They had all grown up together here: her, Ramiro, Jesús, and so many others. Many were dead in the drug wars, some had left, very few had come back like Ramiro. She had thought him long gone and wished him well away. It was only after he left that she’d come to miss him. He had been a young man of dreams.

  Jesús had just become a runner for the local drug militia back then—still called Pablo’s Domingo Guerrilleros even after Escobar’s death. Jesús’ compañeros, though, had boasted loudly of killing the police captain’s children. All of her begging had brought no police to the barrio seeking justice. She had even gone to Jesús as a friend. At the age of fourteen, he had tried to set the price for helping her as having his way with her. When she had refused, he had slapped her face so hard that it had hurt for a week. She’d given him his first knife scar in payback. Jesús was now the Guerrilleros’ leader.

  He would be leaning on the small service counter that separated her kitchen from the crowd. Everyone would be watching, of course. The rapidly quieting restaurant all remembered how she and Jesús had run together as children. She wondered how much money had changed hands over the years betting on if, or when, Jesús would bed her.

  Not now. Not ever.

  She dipped the empty wire basket deep in the frying oil and tipped her head for several seconds as if considering how to respond to him. The restaurant was stone silent now in anticipation of her answer, but that couldn’t be helped.

  Yanking the basket from the oil, she tapped it once to clear the drips before whirling on him to hold it less than an inch from his smug face. His smugness disappeared fast enough.

  “The answer, Jesús, is that there is nothing on the menu here for you. Not me, not a bowl of mondongo soup, not a glass of juice. If you come in my restaurant again, you will wear a seared print of this basket on your face until the end of your days.”

  He held her gaze and she wondered how crazy a risk she’d just taken.

  They held each other’s glare until a single drip of hot oil fell from the basket onto the back of his hand where it rested on the counter.

  His yelp of surprise and jerk backwards elicited a laugh from the gathered diners. Jesús gave her a look darker than the ancient iron of her grill and stalked out the door. A hubbub of speculations among the diners washed across the tables. Some thought it was the next step in an on-going courtship. Others felt that it was proof that it was all decided for now and ever. Only one or two eyed her with caution.

  Yes, if they were smart, they would stay away for a while. There was no doubt in her mind, the worst was yet to come.

  As she returned to her cooking, she considered her options, but they were few and far between. She was alone now. Oh, she had many friends in the community, but most of those were smart enough to still fear Jesús Rivera and the remains of the Domingo Guerrilleros. Her grandmother had died of old age, her father during an accident in the oil fields, and her mother by that bomb.

  Who could help her?

  The scene with her and Jesús complete, at least for now, conversation slowly shifted back to speculating about the two men eating at Ramiro’s. They fit none of the standard tourist stereotypes except for being American and where they chose to eat. That implied they were US military.

  There was no question, at least not in the hilltop barrios of Medellín, that it had been America’s Delta Force who finally took down Escobar. The trademark sharpshooting was proof enough, even without what those on the street had seen. The Colombian police had tried—at least the ones not too afraid of retribution had tried—but the shot to the head as Pablo had raced across uneven roof tiles was too neat, too perfect. And the small American team who had been haunting Medellín for months had disappeared that night.

  The two Americans. They weren’t merely US military. Delta Force was back in Santo Domingo. If there was anyone to stop Jesús, they were the men to do it.

  How to get their attention?

  She was pretty enough to get any man’s attention—Jesús had only been one of the many who followed her about in their youth and since. But there was a far more reliable way to get any man’s attention, especially the kind of attention she wanted.

  3

  “Hey, Ramiro. You still got that girlie deck of cards?”

  Ramiro looked up in delight. He hadn’t expected the Americans to come back the very next day. And for dinner, which was even better than lunch. His ploy had worked. He had cooked for them like he’d never cooked before—though he wished he hadn’t given in to the temptation to serve his salty soup. It was the only dish they had neither remarked on nor finished.

  “Dickhead forgot them again,” Chad hooked a thumb over his shoulder, but no one was there. Duane must be outside, maybe with more of their friends.

  “Sure, here you go, mi amigo.” He tossed the pack over the counter.

  “Thanks. I’ll get them back to you.”

  Ramiro could only gawk in surprise as Chad strode back out the door. Ramiro hurried past the few diners lingering over dessert and looked out just in time to see Chad turn into Estela’s restaurant.

  “No! Imposible!” He couldn’t breathe against the pressure in his chest. How had that woman bewitched his Americans? The same way she’d bewitched him and every other person in all Santo Domingo since she’d learned to walk. He’d become a cook to impress her. And when that hadn’t worked, he’d left and studied to become a chef. He had taken over the building next door to hers so that he could show her just who could cook now. Not that she seemed to be succumbing to his grand plan.

  But to steal his Americans was beyond unfair.

  Cara, her waitress, stepped out the front door to set some folding chairs and a card table on the sidewalk in front of Estela’s restaurant. With the hot sun setting, it would be as cool and inviting here as the inside of her res
taurant had always been. The Garcia family stepped out of the restaurant and sat at the table—all seven of them crowded together. That would be a nice ticket, even at Estela’s low prices. He glanced in through the small window. The place teemed with people. His Americans were in a corner near the kitchen, completely out of reach, wielding his niece’s My Little Pony cards as if they were weapons of war. Their game of Truco now had numerous spectators.

  Estela came out balancing great platters of empanadas and salsas for the Garcias. Only as she finished serving them did she turn and see him.

  “Ramiro,” she offered him one of those amazing, friendly smiles that made him forgive her everything.

  Except this time.

  He steeled his inner resolve, but could only manage one word.

  “How?” he waved a hand toward the window.

  Her lovely brow furrowed for only a moment. “Oh. The Delta Force men.”

  “They’re not—” But Estela had always been the smartest chica in school, until the day she had to leave to work here. If she said that’s what they were, they must be. “Si. Them.”

  “I offered them each one of my obleas for dessert when they left your restaurant yesterday, then invited them to come back the next time they were hungry.”

  “That’s not fair, Estela.” Nobody made an oblea as good as Estela. Each wafer was bigger around than the tips of his spread fingers and thinner than a whisper. She built them in layers of jam, then wafer, then salty white cheese, another wafer, thickened cream, and so on until they were an inch thick. Sweet, salty, thick, crunchy—it was every possible flavor and texture in each delicate bite.

  She gave him an unreadable look.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” And he stalked back to his own restaurant. If it was war she wanted, he’d bring it and bring it hard.