Free The Counterfeit Agent by Alex Berenson

this kid anyway—
    Wells pushed himself off the plaza’s stones and drew his right shoulder down and in, launching himself into a roll
at
the boy. The squats he forced himself to do every day paid off now. He knew the kid couldn’t adjust in time. He felt the knife swipe over him as the boy stabbed downward and found air. He rolled into the boy’s legs, a vicious chop block that would have earned him a fifteen-yard penalty if a ref had been watching. He weighed twice as much as the kid. The collision instantly reversed the boy’s direction, flipped him backward onto the stones. Wells heard the sharp crack of bone as the kid landed, followed by a low moan. Probably an elbow. Wrist fractures didn’t hurt very much, but broken elbows were nasty.
    Wells used his momentum to push himself up. The boy lay on his back, his right arm twisted. He was channeling the pain by tearing at his lip with a proud pair of buckteeth. His switchblade lay useless on his chest.
    Two street urchins, disarmed. American might at its finest. The third boy hadn’t moved. “Some friend you are.” Wells stepped toward him and he took off. Wells went back to the kid in the soccer shirt, the one who’d started the trouble, reached down, grabbed a skinny biceps, and picked him up. The boy was so light. Not even skin and bones. Skin and air.
    “Puta.”
    Wells pulled two twenty-dollar bills from his pocket, pressed the kid’s hand around them.
    “Cash for guns.” He didn’t know what a Saturday-night special went for in Guatemala City, but forty bucks seemed fair.
    “Chinga tu madre.”
    Wells flung the kid away. He stumbled a half-dozen steps, gained his balance, raised an invisible assault rifle.
“Rat-tat-tat—”
He backed away, turned, ran. The other boys on the plaza followed, all but the one with the broken elbow. He walked slowly, keeping his right arm steady and pressed against his side. Wells reached into his pocket for the rest of his money, six hundred dollars. The boy shirked away. Wells folded the cash into a tight roll and stuffed it into the boy’s left hand. “Yours. Get your arm fixed.” The boy didn’t say a word.
    —
    “John Wells!”
    The voice came from a minivan stopped beside the cathedral. A man stepped out, holding a pistol. Not a .22. A grown-up gun with a five-inch barrel. Probably a .45. Wells didn’t like pistols that big. They looked mean, but they were impossible to hide, slow to draw, and tough to aim because they kicked so hard. Even so, the guy was barely fifty feet away, close enough to put a hole in him.
    “Hope you guys enjoyed the show.”
    “Drop your gun.”
    “I paid forty bucks for this thing.”
    The guy raised his pistol. “Drop it.”
    Wells skittered the gun along the cobblestones.
    “Front seat,” the guy said. Wells took his place in the passenger seat. Two guys in back, plus the driver. No one searched him. They must have figured that if he hadn’t pulled on the kid, he was unarmed. Dumb, but Wells wasn’t complaining.
    —
    Montoya lived in the wealthy southern suburbs, past the airport. Guatemala was even poorer than the rest of Central America. But its ruling class lived well, behind electrified fences and armed guards. The minivan turned into a cul-de-sac and parked in front of a property that appeared relatively unprotected, just a spiked fence. Then the lights flicked on, revealing the real security system. Four Dobermans stood on their hind legs in their eagerness to get at the intruders. Wells loved most dogs, but Dobermans were twitchy and short-tempered. He hoped Montoya didn’t have kids.
    The house behind the fence was built in classic Spanish adobe style, white with a flat roof and red-brown ceramic tiles. A handsome man a little older than Wells waited at the front gate. Wells opened his door without being told and jogged to him. The guards hurried after him, shouting in Spanish.
    “Juan Pablo—” Wells sensed a guard behind him, too close. He half turned,