The Devil's Elixir

by Raymond Khoury

  In three words, we were screwed. There was no way out of this. Tess and Alex would die—and not quickly—and even then it probably wouldn’t be the end. The monster would probably go after Kim, too. What goes around really was coming around. With interest.

  I closed my eyes briefly and, for some reason, I had this thought that I wanted a priest. It gave me a small measure of peace. Navarro must have seen my expression shift somehow, even though half of it was incapacitated by the tube. A quizzical expression animated his face. For a moment he must have wondered why I wasn’t pissing myself and begging for my life. He needn’t have worried; after seeing what he did to Wook and Torres, I was pretty sure I’d become a gibbering wreck given half the chance.

  What hurt most was I couldn’t even say good-bye to Tess.

  “Ready?” he asked, as if my saying no would change anything.

  He raised the end of the tube and began to pour the gloopy liquid into the other end. I could see it dripping down the inside of the tube. It would be inside me in seconds and, I imagined, in my bloodstream in minutes. There was absolutely nothing I could do, no fanciful ninja move that would whip my arms free and slaughter my tormentors in seconds, so I fought with myself to accept that. An odd thought sailed into my mind. For the first time in my life, I wished I’d let my hair down a bit more in college. Maybe tried hallucinogens once, so I had some idea of what was about to happen. Would have maybe helped dampen the fear I was feeling right now. And, apparently, I wasn’t going to get a do-over either.

  My eyes were locked on the sludge oozing its way down the tube when a deafening noise cracked the air, accompanied by a sodium-white flare.

  Flashbang.

  The whole place shook.

  Navarro dropped the bowl and spun his head away in total surprise—

  Then another explosion, almost on top of the first. I summoned every iota of strength left in my bruised body and threw my entire weight to my left. The chair topped and flew, just as something flew into the room as another stun grenade filled it with blinding light.

  The noise of the third flashbang was immediately replaced by the sound of machine gun fire from outside the building.

  From my limited point of view on my side and pressed down against the floor, I spotted frantic movement around the room. Navarro may have been nuts, but he’d already well demonstrated that he was also a pragmatist when it came to self-preservation, and by the time the air cleared, he and his henchmen had already left the room through another door at its other end.

  I craned my neck to try to get a better view, but I was facing the wall and couldn’t see anything. Then a familiar voice barked, “Get him up. The target’s heading back to the main house. Follow him.”

  A couple of soldiers in full black Special Ops gear were all over me, and I felt the straps loosening and the tube being slowly pulled from my throat. I retched and threw up the bit of goop that had made it into me. My head was pounding. After giving me a couple of seconds, they dragged me to my feet, and I turned round to find myself facing Munro.

  “You good to go?” he asked.

  My head felt like it had been tossed through a giant pinball machine.

  “How’d you find us?”

  He dismissed it with a grimace. “Long story.”

  “Alex, Tess—where are they?”

  “In the main house.”

  I snapped with surprise. “They’re not with you?”

  “They’re in the main house,” he repeated, stern and a bit slower, like I was having trouble understanding the language.

  I was furious. “Why didn’t you go for them first?”

  “You were about to fucking die here, amigo,” he fired back. “You sure you want to second-guess my choices?”

  I just glared at him in disbelief, then asked, “So where’s the damn house?”

  “Follow me,” he said, pointing.

  “I need a weapon.”

  Munro swung his MP4 submachine gun off to one side, pulled his Glock from its holster, and handed it to me.

  He moved to head out, then I remembered something.

  “Wait,” I hollered. I scoured the room looking for the stainless steel vial that Navarro had shown us, but I was still dazed and couldn’t see it. I had no choice but to mention it.

  “The drug. There’s a sample of it somewhere.”

  I looked around urgently—then I spotted it, lying innocuously on the floor.

  By Munro’s feet.

  He read my reaction, followed my gaze to it, and picked it up. Then, with a smug grin, he pocketed it.

  “Come on,” he barked, then he set off toward the house.

  I followed, hot on his heels.

  We followed a narrow passage that led to an old stairwell, then we were outside again, and we sprinted in a slight crouch along a tree-lined path that led across a football-field-size landscaped quadrangle and back to the hacienda. Off to the right, I spotted several men from Munro’s unit who were locked in a manic firefight with Navarro’s guards, the latter firing away from behind a pickup truck while three of Munro’s guys had taken cover behind a stone water trough.

  Munro didn’t even cast a look at them as he ran toward the house.

  We were still more than a hundred yards from the house’s main entrance when I saw Tess run out of there. I could see blood on the side of her face, but she was moving smoothly and didn’t seem badly hurt. I didn’t need any more information to know that Navarro had taken Alex and that she’d been helpless to stop him. I gestured with my arm and shouted out, “Stay down,” and as I pushed myself to move even faster, the sound of an engine straining to its limit rose above the gunfire. It was coming from the other side of what looked like some derelict stables off to the left of the house, and through an arcaded walkway, I glimpsed a Jeep tearing off away from us.

  Navarro. And Alex.

  Munro turned to me and pointed at the other side of the main house.

  “I saw a couple of quad bikes over by the cemetery.”

  Without waiting for an acknowledgement from me, he banked away and was running full tilt toward the handful of broken grave markers that were visible at the left-hand end of the house. Every muscle in my body wanted to run directly toward the engine noise. If we lost sight of Navarro and Alex, I was worried we’d never find them again, but Munro had made the right move. We’d certainly never catch the Jeep on foot. I also couldn’t take the time to go to Tess, much as I wanted to. Agonizingly, it would have to wait. So I ignored the thudding pain in my back and the torment in my head and forced myself into a run.

  I caught up to Munro at the far end of the cemetery. He had already started one bike and yelled out to me, “Come on.”

  I hopped onto the second four-wheeler and churned its engine to life, then twisted hard on the gas handle and powered off after the Jeep, with Munro no more than ten yards behind me.

  We drew level with a big dilapidated stone building at the opposite end of the quadrangle, and it was clear that Munro’s unit was gaining the upper hand in the firefight with Navarro’s hired guns. Two of them were slumped dead behind the truck, which was riddled with bullets and not going anywhere anytime soon.

  I gunned the quad and sped toward what looked like some stables, Munro now riding level with me.

  As we rounded the stable block, we could see the dust cloud thrown up by Navarro’s Jeep as it was swallowed up by the dense tree line that marked the edge of the main compound.

  We aimed our bikes at the jungle and charged after the Jeep.

  The road was cut through the thick foliage that barely let any light through. In virtual darkness, we wound our way through some undulating ridges, then a couple of minutes later, we hit a sun-blasted clearing and slid to a halt.

  Three different roads wound away from us in three entirely different directions.

  And we had no way of knowing which one of them Navarro had taken.

  67

  I killed my engine and gestured for Munro to do the
same—maybe we could hear the Jeep and get a direction that way—but Munro kept his engine running. I was about to ask him what the hell he was doing when he removed an oversize PDA from his black BDU pants’ thigh pocket, flipped open the plastic cover, and looked intently at the screen. I thought back to how Munro had managed to find us, and Munro could obviously hear the wheels spinning inside my head.

  He just pointed skyward and said, “Predator,” then swung his attention back at his screen.

  I looked up to the sky, which was Fantasy Island blue. I couldn’t see any drone.

  “Ours?” I asked.

  Without taking his eyes off his screen, he said, “Well it ain’t federale, that’s for sure.”

  “You’ve been tracking us? For how long? Why didn’t you pick us up before we left U.S. soil?”

  He gave me a look that reeked of disdain. “We didn’t know if Navarro was there or not. We had to follow you to get to him. What’s your problem? You’re all in one piece, aren’t you?”

  “Hey, Navarro has Alex, asshole.”

  He shrugged and shoved the device into his pocket.

  “This way.” He pointed to a road to the left that seemed to head off the plateau and dip down toward lower ground.

  I charged my quad forward and blocked his way. I scowled at him and yelled, “Alex comes first, no matter what.”

  He raised his hands in feigned surrender. “Absolutely.”

  I’m sure my expression betrayed the fact that I didn’t fully believe him on that.

  “No. Matter. What,” I repeated, firmly.

  “You got it, buddy,” he protested.

  I still wasn’t buying it, but I had no choice.

  I hit the gas and stormed ahead. He followed close behind as I wondered how Alex was feeling right now and hating Navarro even more for it.

  The road started to slope down and turned into a dirt trail that was so narrow we had to ride single file. There was barely enough room for a Jeep to make it through, but the cluster of birds that had just burst into the air maybe half a mile ahead seemed to confirm that Navarro wasn’t too far.

  We followed the trail until the tree cover fell away and we emerged into the open again. I got a clearer view of the geography and realized the track we’d been following ran along the top of one side of a wide ravine. Up ahead, the trail switched back in front of a wall of solid rock that closed the ravine at the near end.

  We maneuvered the quad bikes around the 180-degree bend and were rewarded with a view down the length of the valley, which was completely open at the other end, although the ravine narrowed before it got there. This was clearly Navarro’s target. The perfect place for an escape chopper to get him out of any unexpected jam—like maybe his ex-narco buddies finding out he was still alive. It was isolated and completely out of sight while the bird was on the ground, the ravine cushioned the rotor noise, and it had good cover from the air due to the surrounding jungle.

  Hence the chopper with its rotors spinning up in a flat clearing down at the far end of the ravine, with the Jeep thundering toward it, out of reach.

  Rage tore through me and I choked the handle as far as it would go. The quad’s engine roared in protest as I hurtled down the trail, pushing the four-wheeler as fast as I could, sliding around the bends at the edge of adhesion with my body slung out as far as it reached as a counterweight, my heart flailing against my throat—

  I burst into the clearing and beelined for the chopper as, up ahead, Navarro and his two men were hustling out of the Jeep, with Alex in the madman’s grip. They all saw me. Navarro kept herding Alex to the chopper while the pistoleros turned around and whipped their guns out toward me.

  I bent down and kept going.

  Bullets whizzed by me, but within seconds I’d reeled them in, aiming straight at the gunmen, and I plowed straight through one of them, hitting him with a jarring thud. He bounced off the front of the bike and disappeared behind me, and I hit the brakes while spinning the handlebars as far as they would go. I leapt off the quad before it had even slid to a stop and, with my gun already out, just charged at the other gunman. He fired off a couple of rounds at me, then I saw him flinch sideways as Munro cut him down from his bike.

  I rushed up to the chopper, with Navarro and Alex almost at its door, the rotor wash beating the air into us and kicking up an infernal dust cloud.

  “Stop,” I yelled.

  Navarro turned and glared at me—

  Then he pulled Alex right up against him, a four-year-old human shield—not a very effective one, given that Alex only reached his waist, leaving his entire torso exposed. I had a shot, clear and true—but Navarro had a blade pressed against Alex’s neck, and visions of what happened to Corliss’s daughter froze my trigger finger.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Everyone calm down here, all right,” Munro shouted as he sauntered up close to me, his gun arm also held straight out at Navarro, his other hand making a staying gesture. “Let’s all take a breath here, guys.”

  “Put your guns down or the kid dies,” Navarro yelled back, edging backward, closer to the chopper’s cabin.

  I felt my limbs go rigid with dread, but from the corner of my eye, I caught Munro’s impassive look and something was very wrong about it.

  “No one’s going anywhere,” he told Navarro. “Just put the fucking knife down and get your ass over here or I’ll take the kid out myself.”

  He lowered his aim.

  His gun was now leveled at Alex.

  68

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and swung my gun over at Munro. “What?”

  He turned, his face cracking with that grin I couldn’t stand. “Sorry, buddy. He’s worth a hell of a lot more to me alive.”

  He seemed to be getting a real kick out of my utter confusion. My mind bounced through a maze of permutations, and since we didn’t have a reward out on him—until a couple of days ago, he was assumed to be dead—and since this was Munro we were talking about, the sleaziest option leapt out almost instantly.

  Navarro had run off with three hundred million dollars of cartel money.

  “How much are they paying you?”

  He smiled. “Five percent.”

  Fifteen million dollars.

  He kept silent as if to let it sink in, like he was really getting a kick out of this, then added, “What, you think I went through all this bullshit just so some cranky old man could get his revenge?”

  And then it all went very fast.

  I saw Munro grin at me, like he really didn’t need me around anymore, and his gun panned slowly away from Navarro, heading my way—

  I glimpsed Navarro’s face broaden in a smug grimace and noticed his hand relax and move away from Alex’s neck—

  And despite some disturbing visions of Corliss’s daughter falling to the ground with a fountain of blood coming out of her neck, I whipped my gun back at Navarro and took a shot—

  I saw his right shoulder flinch back like it had been pounded by a sledgehammer—

  And my eyes zeroed in on Alex’s terrified gaze and I shouted to him, “Run, Alex!” while launching myself at Munro.

  My arm grabbed his MP4’s muzzle just as he pulled the trigger, and I just managed to push it off target as it erupted, my body weight bulldozing into Munro full-on.

  We fell to the ground, kicking and punching as we rolled together across the scrub. Munro caught me with a vicious right hook to the jaw then threw a lightning-fast combination at my kidneys. It was enough to make me release the grip I had on his jacket. He pushed himself to his feet, and had already pulled back his right foot, ready to kick the toe of his boot into my head, when I rolled to my right, his boot slicing through the air where my head had just been.

  I clambered to my feet and took a couple of labored breaths, and got a quick glimpse of Alex. He hadn’t run. He was kicking and punching as though he’d gone completely feral, but Navarro had a firm hold on him and was shoving him into the chopper. Then Munro got my attention back by
sending a roundhouse at my chest. I stepped inside the arc of his boot and hammered my right elbow up into his chin, absorbing the force of his kick with my already battered back.

  I took an uppercut to my own chin for my troubles, but he put too much force behind the punch and lost his footing for a moment.

  Stepping forward, I stamped my left boot into Munro’s right knee. As he tipped forward I threw a piledriver into the back of his neck, which sent him sprawling to the ground.

  I leapt onto him, straddling his torso, pummeling his head with punches from both sides, but the bastard wouldn’t stay down. He lashed out with his knee and caught me full in the back. Right where Navarro’s man had caught me with the metal pipe. I grunted loudly with agony. Munro clearly liked the sound of that, and channeled all his remaining energy into driving his knee into the same spot, again and again, seemingly oblivious to the punches I was landing on his face, even though his nose was split right open and blood was gushing down his face.

  I felt a spasm rip through my lower back. For a second I thought I was going to black out from the pain. One more knee directly on that bruise and I would have to throw myself off him, and at this point that was going to give the fight to Munro, with no chance of a rematch.

  He swung out his right leg as far as it would go, in preparation to land the killer blow to my back, but before he could drive his knee back in again, I grabbed his head with both hands, wrenched it up, and crashed it back against the ground.

  I slammed Munro’s head against the soil, and again, battering him to submission—

  Then I heard the chopper’s turbine grind up deafeningly before it lurched off the ground.

  And in that instant, all I could think was, I’m not about to lose my son forever.

  Not a chance.

  And like in all of life’s most important decisions, my brain had already relayed its decision to my central nervous system before deigning to let me in on which way it had voted. By the time I realized what I was doing, I had scooped up my Glock and stuffed it in my pants, and I was sprinting at the rising bird and launching myself into the air and onto one of its runners.