The Writers' Circle

It was early morning, and a stifling heat mist was blanketing the city skyscrapers. The sun, still five minutes from rising, was already sending shafts of brilliant orange light soaring across the heavens, turning the plunging half moon into a ball of flame, announcing another hot and sticky day ahead. 
 Nick tossed and turned the annoying clattering whirr of the air conditioning and the pain from the bullet still lodged in his forearm preventing a merciful sleep. He was in number thirty two, on the third floor of a run down Bogota pension, catering for basic bread line existence clients. The building simply constructed of un-rendered grey concrete blocks echoed down the corridors, the sounds of early morning human bickering. He had been renting the shabby room with its paint flaking walls and cracked floor tiles for nearly six weeks, as an emergency bolthole. Squinting at the glare of the naked light bulb hanging precariously from the ceiling rose, he rolled off the dirty mattress, examining the ugly wound. It had been a clean shot missing the bone, but he could feel the snub nosed bullet just below the skin pressing on a nerve, numbing his hand, and he knew it would have to come out. Jesus he was grateful it wasn't worse. Turning up at the city hospital with a bullet in him, without papers or passport would have caused too many problems. As far as the authorities were concerned, he didn't exist. The embarrassment to the US and British Governments of a SAS agent found wounded in Columbia's Capital City was just not an option open to him. Anyway in another hour, the morning paper, El Mundo would be hitting the streets announcing the news and then his problems would really start. 
For the umpteenth time, he mentally cross-examined himself again, acutely aware that this time, functioning on gut instinct had put his life in real danger. His orders had been to bring Alarcon in for questioning. But he'd had no choice, his cover had been blown. It was a case of kill or be killed. Not that Alarcon's demise would be cause for retribution within the Mafia circles. He had had plenty of enemies. But the fact that he was the son of one of Columbia's leading politicians with links to the drug Mafia would be cause for a reckoning. And he knew that out there some where, they would already be scouring the city with orders to put him in the cemetery. He had no choice but to stay put. Having caused one killing, he sure as hell didn't want to be the instrument of another, least of all his own by trying to go it alone.  No, he would have to sit tight and wait to be brought back in. 
 Pouring the Bettadine antiseptic over the blackening bulge in his arm, he sliced quickly through the taut purple swelling with the scalpel blade. An instant feeling of relief washed over him as infected pus and blood squirted from the gaping wound, ejecting the piece of lead nosily on to the cracked dirty Formica table in front of him. Wiping at the beads of sweat with the back of his hand that had gathered on his brow, he downed the concoction of anti biotic's and pain killer tablets with a can of ice tea. Walking on to the balcony, he stared at the skyline.  In the distance, he could just make out the high rise office blocks and elegant department stores that catered for Bogota's affluent. Below him, only a few blocks away from the modern society elite lived the city's forgotten people. The early morning sirens of Red Cross ambulances racing across the city with their nights cargo of dead and dying ragged bundles of human life, caught up in street gang warfare. Homeless immigrant's families, forgotten by the cities social welfare system aimlessly wandering the run down derelict back streets, looking for scraps of food.  Then there was the low life, the ethnic gangs openly peddling drugs on the street corners, using children for a handful of pesos, as mules to carry their deadly packages. Things had changed little since the removal of Noriega. Even the power of fear, specifically a fear of ones own death could not supersede the power of evil the Colombian-based drug Mafia's had, still dominating all aspects of the cocaine and heroin trade.
	He worked alone and had no friends, and most of the time would go to sleep with a 9mm Browning pistol under his pillow. Nick was living his life the way he wanted. He was neither dissatisfied nor aggrieved, simply accepting it as his duty. Nobody forced him to do what he did. But sometimes he wondered if what he was, doing made any difference. Two years of living a lie, working as an undercover agent for the DEA.  The isolation, and inner turmoil of always having to watch his back; the constant battle for survival had not deterred him.  Hiding in seedy hotel rooms wondering if the next bullet was for him, had given him every reason to be distrustful and cold.   Even though Cali drug lords continued to operate their drug empires from behind prison walls, too many friends he had cared for had been lost in the fight against the drug Mafia's to give up now.
Suddenly his thoughts of prison set of a nagging ache in his heart, thinking of his brother Eamon. It was some thing he had taken to do when questioning his own vulnerability and was feeling sorry for himself. Opening his wallet, he stared at the only reminder he had afforded himself of his other life? a dog eared family photo of himself, Eamon and his parents taken on holiday in the south of France. The background azure blue of the Mediterranean and the tall wavering date palms filling his subliminal consciousness with happier times.  Oh, how he wished he had not said those things to him. The words had been meant to hurt. They had been cruel and unnecessary. In stead of criticising, he should have realised the enormous burden his brother was carrying, and would carry for a long time. He was as much to blame for Eamon's situation. Having allowed himself to be used as a crutch, always defending and fighting his battles for him, had been as much an ego trip for him, as it had been a way out for Eamon. He had let him down badly and promised repeatedly to make amends when he saw him next.   He put the photo back in his wallet unable to look at his brothers accusing eyes any longer.