Fox and his team of three got off the short-haul charter from Barranquilla in total silence. Dressed just like the locals—wrinkled windbreakers, battered sneakers, sunglasses covering half their faces—they looked for all the world like an old-school intel crew smuggling themselves up from Peru.
The dossier in Fox's hand came from Thomas's "last repentance" informant—Samir. Before the flight, Samir left them a name and an address.
"Castillo Negro," a private medical center buried in the Colombian highlands, the kind of place that never took local patients. The doctor's name: Moran Sabetta.
"I like that name," Brit John muttered, peering at the mountains from behind his shades, leaning against a taxi. "Sounds like the sort of chap who'd fit a dictator with a spare kidney."
"He was D's personal physician," Fox replied, voice flat. "Most importantly—he never changed his identity."
Vulture, baseball cap low over his eyes and a hotdog in his fist, yawned, "That's textbook—arrogance disguised as confidence. All those so-called neutral doctors are the same."
The taxi stopped at the hospital's mountain road entrance. None of them were armed. Today, they wouldn't need to be.
Castillo Negro looked more like a cluster of neoclassical ranch villas than a medical compound. White stone walls, long avenues of trees—pastoral, not clinical. Two suited guards at the front gate gave them a once-over, stopped them with a single question: "Do you have an appointment?"
"Of course," Fox smiled, pulling out a sheet stamped with an old hospital's insignia. "We're here for our friend's check-up."
They didn't force their way in—just used fake IDs and an online booking for a "consultation." Two minutes later, Dr. Sabetta stood before them: crisp white coat, silver hair neatly combed, gold-rimmed glasses perched on a cool, calculating nose. His eyes—just like D's a year ago—were sharp, cold, always judging who deserved to live.
"I know who you are," Sabetta said, closing the door and turning to Fox. "If you've found me, something's happened to him."
"Nothing's happened yet," Fox replied, locking the door behind him, voice as cold as a blade just before the cut. "We're just about to."
John slipped on his gloves, smiling like a dentist prepping for a root canal. "We just need you to tell us where he is—so you don't die on your own operating table."
Sabetta's eyes didn't waver, but his lips trembled. He knew—they weren't bluffing.
Vulture pulled the blinds, then shoved the doctor into a transfer chair without a word. Fox punched him, then started counting. "Thirty seconds. Tell us where D is."
Sabetta stayed silent.
"Twenty."
"He has a new estate outside Medellín," Sabetta finally said, voice cracking. "It's not in any registry—he used a dead diplomat's name. He only comes once a month, stays three days, gets treatment—he's got heart trouble, needs artificial renin injections now."
"Address." Fox cut him off.
"San Sebastián de El Aguilar, at the foot of the mountain," Sabetta murmured. "Old distillery, now a villa—surrounded by woods, only one road in. He hired old intelligence men for security—Spaniards, Venezuelans, all ex-military. Well-armed."
John peeled off his gloves and clapped the doctor on the shoulder. "Not bad, doc. Stay smart."
Fox turned to leave, then spun back and stood in front of Sabetta. "Heard you have a twelve-year-old daughter. You know the rules, right?"
Sabetta nodded quickly. "Understood. I won't call the police, sir."
"Good. Now, about those bruises…"
"I slipped and fell. Lost my balance."
With the answer he wanted, Fox left the office. They waited a quarter-hour outside, making sure there were no calls to the police, before leaving.
"Didn't expect the doc to fold that fast," Brit tossed his pack in the back seat. "Brought all these toys for nothing."
Fox grinned. "Anyone who didn't know better would think you're ex-CIA."
"Don't kid yourself. I worked with those bastards plenty of times," John shrugged.
Dusk fell quick over the foot of San Sebastián de El Aguilar. Clouds pressed down the slopes, rolling like tides through the ravines.
Their car was parked outside an abandoned coffee plantation—a battered pickup disguised as a utility company vehicle. Fake company logos peeling off, the truck bed crammed with a folded telescope, shortwave scanner, and two half-assembled FN FALs.
The villa perched halfway up a broad stone terrace, hidden by thick pines. Surveillance cameras poked out from every angle, their field of view almost seamless. The fence was electrified, "Private Property, No Trespassing" in Spanish stenciled on it, and a smaller warning beneath: "Trespassers will be neutralized."
They'd been watching that house for over three hours.
"That's no villa," John muttered, prone on the grassy slope with his binoculars. "That's a private frontline outpost. Cameras, IR, guards at every door, patrol dogs, two-man rotation—nobody fortifies a country house like that."
"He only shows up once a month," Vulture said, tracing patrol paths on the map. "Maybe tonight's the night."
Fox crouched behind a bush, unmoving, eyes locked on the top-floor west-facing window.
"He's here," Fox said suddenly.
"You sure?" John leaned over.
"That face—I'd know it anywhere."
Light spilled from the picture window, cutting a triangle into the half-drawn curtains. Through the long lens, they saw a man in a grey bathrobe sitting on a sofa, hair slicked back, a glass of deep red wine and a French novel on the table.
The face—slightly gaunt, but still sharp with arrogant confidence—D himself.
Fox's knuckles whitened on the scope, veins standing out, as if he could crush that face through the glass.
"Want to rush in now?" Vulture's voice was low, forced calm over tension.
"He's got seven guards," John murmured, scanning the eavesdropper. "Two dogs, three SCARs, an M110 sniper, at least one shorty shotgun. We got three people, two rifles, a day to watch."
"We can't go in hot," Vulture decided instantly. "Two stories, brick and concrete, bulletproof glass. Unless we flatten the whole mountain, no chance."
Fox didn't answer, just packed up the scope and leaned back against the tree, closing his eyes for a few seconds.
"No gunfight," he said finally. "Not now—not while two of ours are still rotting in a cell."
"So?" John squinted. "What's the play?"
Fox opened his eyes, voice ice-cold and controlled. "We observe—movements, access, guard routines. We trip the alarms, mess up their rhythm. When he lets his guard down, we hit."
"In other words, wait till he goes to take a piss and jump him in the hallway," John smirked.
"You could say that," Fox replied—a dry smile, no warmth at all.
They stashed the scopes, climbed back in the truck, and started reviewing tonight's security footage. At dawn, the drone would map the property from the rear slope, pinpointing breach points—the rainwater pipe, the generator house, a hole under the fence chewed out by squirrels.
"He's there," Fox said from behind the wheel, pulling up D's old mugshot on his phone and staring at it. "A year ago you sent me to hell. Now I'm coming to send you to meet the Devil."