The Salvador Seven.

November of 1992.

I stepped off the plane with a single carryon backpack to my name and stretched all the way out of the airport. It was late evening, a typical arrival for an international flight, and the airport was bustling. It was the first time I had been on US soil in six months, and for some reason the thought of coming home made me smile. I smiled at everyone I passed, whistling my way toward the door with every intention of walking until I decided what to do with my leave.

But the government had other plans.

A security guard broke away from his post as I neared the door, a serious, but nervous look on his young face. I let him get very close before I turned on my heel. He stopped dead four feet from me and said, "Mr. Westen?"

He sounded like someone had just threatened to kill his family.

"Yes?"

"I have a call for you at the front desk, s-s-sir." He glanced around, reassuring himself that no one was listening, and then whispered, with a wink, "It's your wife, sir."

I groaned, and my smile dropped.

It was Card. His voice came through grainy because of whatever cloaking software he was using. "Michael, nice to hear from you."

"What do you want?"

"You sound grouchy."

"I was ten feet from the door. I'm on leave."

"Change of plans," he did not sound sorry, or pretend to be. "I've booked you a flight to El Salvador. It boards in thirty minutes. You'll have a friend at the airport when you arrive. Report in with any new information."

He hung up.

I held the phone to my ear for several seconds, trying not to sulk. I was so close to having a few days to myself. But then again, what did I ever do on my own up catch up on missed sleep and wonder what the next mission would be? I wasn't going to visit my family. Sam was on a mission and unreachable.

I brought myself and my backpack back to the international flights and checked in, just making the deadline for boarding and scooting into my seat in first class. Card must have felt bad, after all. I spent five hours in relative luxury, forcing myself to nap in anticipation of a busy week.

Larry was waiting for me at the airport in El Salvador.

He looked just as grouchy as I felt.

"Hey, kid, welcome to farm country."

"What am I doing here?" I asked.

"Come on, we can talk in the car. I got us a junker, fits right in."

His 'junker' was a 1976 Chevrolet CT, not so much painted as it was just covered in rust. He hopped into the driver seat, grinning, and reached over to shove my door open. He was like a little kid in a candy shop, turning dials, cranking his window down to stick his arm out.

"Nice truck," I commented.

"You know what these are selling for in the States? Prohibitive amounts, kid, even at my paygrade. But then again, what would I do with a truck? I used to have one of these a hundred years ago, bought it brand new. Got stolen while I was deployed."

I watched his face while he drove, watched him show this weirdly human part of himself. He sounded like a normal guy reminiscing about his life. I suddenly wondered, again, if he had a mom or a dad back home, or brothers and sisters. I wondered if there were people who loved him who knew nothing about him – or if they knew everything about him and loved him anyway. I wondered what he did with his time off, who he was when he wasn't with me. Was I seeing the best side of him? The worst? Or was this his only side?

We were on the road for a while, passing through dense forests and vast, open farmlands, often switching from concrete to gravel to dirt, and back again, as we moved between populated areas. Larry slowed after almost an hour, turning off on a windy dirt road right before we made it to the capital, San Salvador. We cut west hard, to a sprawling, rural neighborhood with an old train track cutting through its center. He pulled the truck up the back of a decrepit house and cut the engine.

It was a neighborhood made of whatever materials were available at the time – wood, stone, plaster, metal sheeting – made colorful by the graffiti on the fronts of houses. Clothes lines ran across the tin roofs and power lines crisscrossed and knotted overhead. It was November, but in the tropics the grasses were still green, the breeze still warm. People wandered here and there doing chores and socializing, and children and dogs ran wild together back and forth over the tracks.

"Home sweet home," Larry said, leading me through a narrow alley to the front of one of the houses – a squat beige home with plaster walls and gang graffiti across the door.

It was hot inside, with nothing modern hooked up except a landline phone. It had three rooms, a joint kitchen and living room, a bathroom in the corner, and a bedroom with no door. It also had a table with two chairs and a couch that looked older than Larry.

He sat at the table, testing the landline and nodding to himself.

"Why am I here?" I wondered again.

Larry sighed, "We are here, in lovely, sunny El Salvador, because the United States is dealing with an imminent threat."

I listened intently, the hairs on the back of my neck standing up.

"You heard of the Salvador Seven?"

"No."

"Seven brothers, in the drug and weapon business, started small twenty years ago but now they have connections all over Central and South America, and some in southern Mexico. Apparently, they just made a new connection to the port of Miami through Cuba, and we got intel they're going to send a bulk shipment of laced drugs to the US – enough to kill hundreds, maybe thousands of people, in a short period of time."

I had to ask, "What are we doing about it?"

"Nothing. Our job is to find out who's funding the attack." He stood, stretched, and patted my shoulder hard enough to sway me in my chair, "Get comfortable kid. Gonna be a slow burn."

I glanced around our pitiful new home, my only comfort knowing that my mother could not possibly have the number to that landline.