NO ONE TO TRUST

How to catch a girl guerrilla: use her son as bait.

Murder and mayhem were a part of growing up for Elena Kyler, beautiful daughter of an American mercenary and a left-wing Colombian freedom fighter. Trained by her father in the killing arts, Elena became a member of a rebel group herself, happily harassing drug kingpin Rico Chavez until she was betrayed and essentially sold to him. For fun, Chavez liked to fight his captured enemies to the death, and he almost does the same with Elena, along with raping her repeatedly. As the story begins, Ben Forbes, a DEA agent based in Colombia, knows that Elena has escaped from prison, and that Rico Chavez will undoubtedly have her killed—unless Ben can find her first. Enter Sean Galen, a mysterious agent with a cute, vaguely English accent who usually works for the good guys (he specializes in rescuing American execs who’ve been kidnapped by South American bad guys—a mixed bag of leftist rebels, druglords, and paramilitary types). Fed up with Chavez and Colombian crooks in general, Sean’s willing to join forces with the DEA just this once. But there’s an interesting wrinkle: Elena’s angelic five-year-old son was fathered by none other than Rico Chavez, whose macho ethic compels him to take the boy from his mother, by force if necessary. So Forbes and Galen spirit Elena and little Barry away to California. Chavez’s evil henchmen follow, however, and gun down good old Forbes. Nothing daunted, Galen and Elena decide to hide somewhere else—and begin a hot affair. But Chavez tries to lure Elena out of hiding by threatening to kill her good-for-nothing brother Luis. And then the little boy is kidnapped. . . . And so on.

Fast-moving plot, elementary prose: another zippy read from megaselling Johansen (Body of Lies, 2001, etc.).