The Eye of the Storm

Friday 5:12 PM

The charter yacht leaves behind three figures—two cartel meatheads, fidgeting like they’re trying to see through the dense trees and the 25 year old kid standing between them, calm. Too calm. A little cocky— or maybe that’s just my instinct as a father talking.

To me, he’s the heir apparent to Rafael Santos’s Casa Grandote Cartel—Rafael’s only son—thanks to a nearly deadly confrontation between Rafael and my team shortly after this kid who just showed up on my island refuge was born.

But to my daughter Mira, he’s “Fernando” (the “magnificent” is unstated but implied) and apparently he’s “So great and amazing.” I’m not sure she gets the gravity of who this kid is—or why, upon retiring from the CIA after 30 years (which followed my time as the leader of Seal Team 6 in the Navy) I chose this little island of solitude for our home—largely to keep us safe from this kid’s daddy. I can’t even believe I acquiesced to letting him come. I must be out of my mind. The things fathers do for our daughters!