Sandbagged: A Theo Ramage Thriller (Book 2)

by Edward J. McFadden III

  Ramage stiffened, angst running down his spine and settling there like a bomb waiting to explode. He tried to hide his surprise, but she watched him like she had her eye pressed to a microscope lens. He blinked, trying to calm himself, not look like an idiot. He squeaked out, “You’re from Nicaragua?”

  “Si.”

  The deep warm pools of her eyes that only moments before had been warm and inviting had frozen over, but worry lines creased her face, and Ramage thought he saw sorrow there. “Who are you?” Ramage said.

  As if there was a cosmic timekeeper that kept everything in balance, Ramage’s question faded as Sandy approached with Karma’s refill. He watched in silence, not looking at Karma, his mind spinning up a million scenarios and clogging the pipes of his brain. Was this a coincidence? Normally he didn’t believe in those pesky things that helped people believe all kinds of crazy stuff. But what were the odds? Of all the joints in all the world…

  Sandy looked to Ramage, then Karma, who had her nose buried in her fresh drink. “Everything O.K. over here?”

  Ramage said, “I don’t know. Karma?”

  “I’m fine,” she said, and smiled at Sandy as he buzzed away to make drinks for a waitress that stood at the end of the bar, hands on hips.

  Ramage leaned closer to Karma, his fear and angst replaced with anger, suspicion and indignation. He pulled the .38 and rested it on his thigh so she could see it, but Sandy couldn’t. “Who the hell are you and why are you here?”

  “Mr. Valez says hi,” she said.

  Ramage reeled, he couldn’t control it.

  She smiled.

  Ramage felt himself falling, the alcohol clouding his mind and dulling his senses. He was running down the dirt path again, reliving the nightmare, his mind lost in a horrible dream. He shook his head, trying to clear the cobwebs. But the incident wasn’t a dream, as much as he wished it was, and he wasn’t dreaming now. His insides went cold, and pain ran to the tips of his fingers and toes.

  He looked away, the Coors sign sparkling, the bar’s dim lights pressing in on him. All of it came rushing back at once, and in his mind he was running again, trees transforming into buildings fleeting past on both sides, the ground beneath his feet one of those people conveyor belts used in airports, except it was running in reverse, pulling him back into blackness. He was getting nowhere, and no matter how hard he pumped his legs, or threw himself forward, screaming and crying like he had an icepick in his ear, the treadmill path drew him backward. He was in Nicaragua, the entire horrifying incident replaying in fast forward as he relived twenty-seven minutes in the blink of an eye.

  Ramage’s lungs burned as he jogged down the service road that ran along the eastern edge of the apartment complex. Dumpsters and piles of garbage lined the stained stone walls, and rats squeaked and chortled as they scurried around in the darkness. Pools of light from door lamps created shadows in the darkness, and he was keeping a careful eye for anyone who might be hiding. He held the Glock at his side, thin mafia style gloves covering his hands. His heart galloped as he tried to blend into the shadows the way he’d been taught.

  With the help of Joan’s partner, Agent James Langdon, sneaking into the country had proved easier than Ramage had anticipated, and he felt confident with the illegal gun in his hand. He had a car waiting on the outskirts of Managua and when he was done, he’d slip over the border and fly out of San Jose just to be safe.

  Joan’s partner had approached Ramage, his nightmares of Joan’s death filling his life, and together they’d hatched a crazy plan. Ramage had paid for all the arrangements, and Langdon had supplied all the necessary information. Joan had been killed by the Valez family, who’d really been trying to kill king-asshole, Senator Mcully, and Joan had been nothing more than collateral damage because she did her job. That didn’t make Ramage any less of a widower.

  A cat meowed and Ramage jumped. He’d learned to fire all kinds of guns in the military and later survival training. He’d shot plenty of paper targets. He rolled his shoulders, guilt and angst running through him. The thought of killing in cold blood made his knees literally go weak, but then a baby’s face burned through his mind, his unborn child, and rage built in him like a storm. Joan’s bloodied corpse, and the fury and anger flowed, as if summoned by magic, and he knew when the time came he wouldn’t stop shooting until he ran out of bullets.

  Langdon was coming around the opposite side of the building, and if everything was clear, they’d enter the apartment building through its service entrance. Langdon could flash his FBI credentials and turn whatever poor slob that dared question him into a whimpering pile of goo.

  Eduardo Federio lived on the third floor with his wife, and Langdon and Ramage had made a pack. They were here for Eduardo, and there was no acceptable level of collateral damage. They’d had no problem agreeing to that. Langdon knew better than most that you couldn’t hold people accountable for full grown morons that also happened to be family.

  He emerged from the alley, the Hotel Luna on his right, and a line of houses to the left, stores, open fields, and patches of jungle interspersed between. He saw Langdon come out of his alley, and he turned and headed in Ramage’s direction.

  When the two men met, Langdon said, “You ready for this? You can wait out here if you want.”

  “No,” Ramage said. In that moment he had no idea how many times he’d come to regret that decision.

  An old man sat on a wood stool inside the hotel’s rear entrance smoking a thin cigar. He tapped it out in and ashtray when Langdon and Ramage entered.

  The FBI man flipped open his wallet and the old man’s eyes went wide.

  Ramage handed the man a ten note córdoba, and said, “Go get a cup of coffee.”

  The turtle-like man pushed himself off his stool and waddled out onto the sidewalk.

  There was an elevator with doors that looked like antiques, a white sign yellow with age proclaiming out of service. Langdon nodded toward the emergency sign and both men eased into the stairwell.

  Music and a baby crying echoed down the stairs, and suddenly the Glock in his hand felt very heavy. Langdon inched up the steps, gun at his side. They were dressed casually, but the child that came bounding down the stairs knew instantly they didn’t belong. Her eyes went wide, and she turned to run back the way she’d come.

  Langdon whispered, “Hey, little girl, look.” The FBI man produced a pack of gum from a pants pocket. She turned as she stopped jumping up steps, her eyes locking on the blue peppermint pack in Langdon’s palm. He whispered, “If your mom was anything like mine, she told you not to take candy from strangers, right?”

  The kid nodded slowly.

  Langdon held the package out. “That’s normally good advice, but you’ve gotten lucky today. Take the pack and go give your friend’s some.”

  The child looked back up the stairs the way she’d come.

  Langdon tossed her the gum, and the kid caught the pack and continued on her way.

  When Langdon reached the second-floor landing, he reeled Ramage in. “Why don’t you wait here?”

  Ramage shook his head no.

  Their mark was in room six. The man who had organized the hit on Senator Mc-dipshit that had sent his wife to an early grave. He told himself that over and over as he followed Langdon down the hall, the stained carpet and peeling walls squeezing in on him, his chest pounding with pain.

  They arrived at apartment six and Langdon put his ear to the old wood door. He shook his head no, indicating he couldn’t hear anything, then positioned himself before the door, and said, “Stand to the side. Don’t shoot unless you have to.”

  Ramage nodded, his stomach crawling up his throat, nerves dancing on a wire, mouth dry as cotton.

  Langdon kicked in the door and got low, swinging his Glock as he slipped into the room and pressed himself to the wall.

  Ramage followed, gun before him as he searched the dimly lit room.

  Two men sat on a couch with a coffee table before them.
They were counting money, and a large pile of pills and a stack of plastic bags sat on the table. Both men looked up, heads jerking back.

  “Don’t,” Langdon said as one of the guys reached for a gun on the couch beside him.

  A door opened to Ramage’s right, and a woman stepped into the room. She held something in her hand, and brought it up as she yelled, “Who the hell are y—”

  A gunshot rang out and a bullet zipped past Ramage’s head.

  He fired, four times in fast succession.

  The woman spun like a ballerina, the Glock’s 9MM shells ripping through her torso, blood spouting from the wounds, drenching her shirt in crimson. She fell to her knees, and to Ramage’s horror he saw a young girl standing behind the woman. The kid looked on with confused eyes, a blood stain blooming on her yellow nightgown. The child reached out, took a step, and fell onto the woman.

  Gunfire filled the small room and Ramage dove to the floor as he sprayed his breakfast across the dirty carpet.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  The room spun like a kaleidoscope of shit and shrapnel in a blender. Bullets zinged and twanged, plunking into walls and furniture, splinters flying, cushion stuffing filling the air. The bark of a machine gun tore through the apartment, Langdon yelled for help, but Ramage couldn’t move. He was pinned to the floor in fear, his mind a red fog of rage, guilt, and uncertainty. He’d heard the saying, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, first dig two graves” and he ignored it. He was righteous. Doing things for the right reasons with the upper ground of morality covered.

  His gaze sifted to the corpses that lay beside him, the woman of bloody mound of meat, the child’s frail body still, eyes open and searching the heavens.

  Ramage cried, bullets whizzing, his heart in so much pain he thought it might burst. This wasn’t why he’d come. This wasn’t how things were supposed to go. This wasn’t what he wanted.

  Langdon kicked him, yelling, his face bloody, eyes frantic. He kicked Ramage a second time, hard, the sting of it ringing through him like a bell.

  Ramage shook his head, blinked, and brought up the Glock. He didn’t remember everything that happened in the minute that followed. Rage consumed him, a hatred, a longing. The young girl was forgotten. All that mattered were the men shooting at him.

  Langdon had taken out the two guys on the couch, but three more had emerged from a bedroom, weapons blazing. Bullets went through walls, and Ramage recalled the extensive discussions about collateral damage. About how they needed to be careful about when, where, and how they discharged their weapons.

  When it was over, Langdon and Ramage stood in the smoke-filled room. There was blood splattered everywhere, and corpses littered the floor.

  Ramage went to the little girl, pulled the hair off her face, and closed her dead eyes. He puked again, but this time nothing came out. He fell on his ass and let his head fall in his hands, dropping the Glock, the thump of metal hitting wood echoing through the room. He cried again. How hadn’t they seen this? He’d given up everything, and for what? The feeling that gnawed at his insides was more painful than Joan’s death, and he was crushed by the thought that the feeling would never go away, regardless of what he did.

  “Let’s go, partner,” Langdon said.

  Sirens wailed in the distance as the dust and smoke cleared.

  Langdon and Ramage did a fast check of the room before they slipped out the way they’d come. There were few people in the hallways, and those that were out and about retreated to their apartments when they saw Langdon and Ramage.

  A whistle blew in Ramage’s head, and the hallway faded, the conveyor belt floor returned, except this time it was pushing him forward into darkness, faster and faster.

  Ramage saw himself and Langdon get off the plane at LAX. Their arrest and depositions. The threats. The fear. The resolution.

  “You O.K.?” Karma said.

  Ramage blinked at her and said nothing.

  “Your mom didn’t mention you had blackouts,” Karma said.

  The mention of his mother cleared Ramage’s head like a restaurant when the Board of Health arrives. He couldn’t let this woman know she was getting to him, but he couldn’t help but ask the question that dominated his thoughts. “Did you? If you hurt her, I’ll fuc—”

  “What do you think I am?” she interrupted.

  “A killer, don’t act all noble,” he said, a little too loudly.

  Sandy wandered down the bar and went to refill Ramage’s glass, but he covered it with a hand, and said, “I’m good.”

  Sandy’s eyes flicked to Karma, but there was another question there. “This guy bothering you?” is what the expression said.

  Karma lifted her half full glass.

  Sandy nodded and left them.

  “Keep it down,” she said.

  “Why? You embarrassed about slinking into town to murder someone?”

  “What, you didn’t kill that little girl?” Karma said.

  The question struck him in places Ramage didn’t know existed, and he felt himself falling, losing himself in the anger, the fog of betrayal and self-loathing creeping over him, the hum of the conveyor belt jerking him into blackness. But then Anna’s face was there, calm, cool, and under control. He heard her words, “You’ve come too far. Don’t let her get to you.” With the memory of the incident forever planted in his frontal lobe, he didn’t know if he’d ever be free of it.

  Ramage said, “I did. But…”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  He spilled it, all of it, from the moment Joan had been killed until the moment he was arrested. He left out his current situation, which she picked up on immediately.

  Karma’s face softened, and when she spoke the anger was gone. “They just let you go free? I know the guys you killed were bad guys, but still.”

  He said nothing.

  She sighed.

  “Where’s this leave us?” Ramage asked. He was doing his best to get angry, trying to hate this woman, but he was having problems. He liked her, and the occasional stirring wasn’t helping.

  She said nothing as she took the final pull off her drink.

  “My mother,” he said. “You talked to her?”

  Karma nodded. “Wonderful woman. Said she had a single son she wanted to hook me up with, then I get to Prairie Home and find out you’re not single at all.”

  “I swear, if you ever go near her again, I’ll kill you.”

  Karma chuckled. “Really? You think you could?”

  The snubby still rested on Ramage’s leg, his hand shaking. All he had to do was lift the pistol and put a bullet between Karma’s eyes.

  She smiled at him, her eyes flicking down to the gun. She said, “We can see who’s quicker on the draw if you want.”

  “How do you know so much about me?”

  “The Valez family is rich, but I got most of my information from a guy named Splice.” She tossed folded sheets of paper onto the bar.

  Problem solved. Anger and hate, like a mid-summer heatwave, spread through Ramage like he was on fire, nerves pulsing, hands shaking.

  “So that brings us, I’m afraid, to the end of our story,” she said.

  Ramage was doing everything he could to contain his anger, and he said nothing.

  “Anna seems like a nice lady. I didn’t talk to her, but…”

  Ramage lifted the .38 and leaned toward Karma.

  She stuck the tip of a pistol in his side and lifted her eyebrows in a ‘your move’ gesture.

  Ramage boiled. He hadn’t seen her pull the gun, and they were in a restaurant, with people around, and the last thing he wanted was the deaths of more innocents on his hands. He pocketed the gun and eased away from the woman. She smelled like the beach, and he liked it.

  Karma pushed off her stool, and said, “See you around, Skeeter.”

  She tossed a twenty on the bar and headed for the exit, leaving Ramage shaking with anger, nerves pulsing with worry. The salsa music got louder, the laughter of
the patrons more intense, the overhead lights fading. His past was coming back at him, sandbagging him with everything he’d tried to push from is memory. But maybe that was O.K. He was tired of hiding from himself.

  Karma was a contract killer. She seemed normal, but that couldn’t be. People who put bullets in people for money didn’t think rationally. The good news was she’d been to Florida, to Texas, and she hadn’t harmed his family. The fact that she hadn’t setup camp outside Anna’s place and waited for him to come back showed a level of respect, a professionalism that was admirable until he remembered what her job was. Should he chase after her?

  Ramage looked to the door. Three minutes had dripped by. She was gone.

  Now he didn’t know what to do. He had to handle things with Karma, whatever the hell that meant. Vitam impendere vero. He couldn’t bring the circus back to Prairie Home, could he? Thing was, Karma was different than Rolly and his merry band of miscreants. Ramage didn’t think torturing a woman was beyond Rolly, but there were lines, and Karma appeared to see them, but despite that she was much more dangerous. Rolly was a jackass and anyone who had passed Humanity 101 could see that.

  Karma was a different beast.

  He needed to be the one protecting Anna now, or she might end up a pawn in a game he didn’t want to play. In Prairie Home he could at least prepare for the fight, know Anna wasn’t on the frontline.

  Ramage called Sandy over and ordered a shot of tequila. He was feeling a little lightheaded and drunk, and having another drink was just about the stupidest thing he could do short of taping a bullseye to his forehead. With the liquor still burning his throat Ramage resolved to be more careful. Big Blue could be boobytrapped. She could take a shot at him at any time. The methods were endless, the result always the same; Ramage dead.

  He wouldn’t—couldn’t, let that happen.