Troubleshooters 04 Out of Control

by Suzanne Brockmann

  They would be hidden from anything flying overhead, but they could still be seen from the river.

  “Get over here and get down,” Jones ordered tersely.

  Molly looked at him, eyebrow raised.

  “Please,” he added. “Please come here so that I can please keep you safe. Please. Jesus H. Christ, next you’re going to tell me to smile.”

  She went to him, under the canopy.

  “Whoever they are, they’re going to fly overhead without seeing us,” Molly told him. “In three minutes—less—they’ll be gone. And then I’m not going to tell you to smile, I’m going to make you smile.”

  He stopped looking so grim. In fact, he even almost smiled as he kissed her. “Forget the reading aloud. Forget the torture. I think you really get off on being rescued.”

  She smiled into his eyes. “I must confess, the Han Solo, man of action, thing is impressive. Can I be Princess Leia?”

  But Jones wasn’t looking at her anymore. He was looking upstream. He swore softly.

  About three hundred yards away, in a small clearing by the edge of the river that the boat had passed just moments earlier, the helicopter came in for a landing.

  The mistake was the large Russian’s. He was clearly in charge of this abduction and in command of the men on board the helo. He was the boss, and as the boss, he should have made sure that the crates of cargo this Puma was carrying were secured to the bulkhead.

  That way they couldn’t slide around.

  Or be used as a weapon.

  As soon as the helo touched down, Ken heaved one of the heavy crates at the Russian, who, just like a cooperative head bowling pin, knocked over both Uzi One and Uzi Two and the lucky dude with the HK MP5.

  “Run!” Ken shouted at Savannah, who, bless her, took off through the open door like an Olympic sprinter.

  Except, god damn, she ran across the open area, along the river, instead of heading for cover.

  “Toward the jungle!” he shouted at her, as he grabbed for the Uzi that had—in a surprising show of good luck—skittered across the metal deck and almost directly into his hands.

  It wasn’t perfect luck, though. He would have preferred to have the HK, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  He grabbed the weapon and ran.

  Boom. Magnum .44 was firing at him, and Ken felt the giant bullet whizzing past his head, like a softball traveling at thirteen hundred feet per second.

  Uzi Two had regained his hold on his weapon, and he fired, too—the staccato, tearing sound of modern death.

  The shots were meant to frighten and to stop him—or to hit him in the legs—which meant they’d bought his story about the interior lock on the attaché case.

  The Russian and his gang couldn’t risk killing them. If they did, they might lose all that money.

  This was going to be a piece of cake. Ken caught up with Savannah, grabbed her and pulled her toward the jungle.

  He would hide Savannah—he could tuck her someplace dark where these clowns would never find her—and make them hunt for him.

  And Ken, he’d take them out one at a time until it was just him and the helo pilot. And then it would just be him. He’d never flown a Puma, but he was smart enough to be able to fly Savannah back to that little town he’d seen on the coast of this island. Four hours, five tops, and he’d get her to safety and be on his way home.

  But first he had to keep these bozos from following them so he could get Savannah stashed away. He glanced back and saw that Uzi One and Magnum .44 were jumping out of the Puma, ready to give chase.

  He opened fire, trying at least to drive them back to cover, at best to take them out. These assholes had been planning to push him and Savannah out of that helo at seven hundred feet. And as soon as they found the attaché case and discovered Ken’s bluff, they, too, would be trying to do more than shoot them in the kneecaps.

  Uzi and Magnum dove back into the bird, and Ken kept on firing, riddling the damn thing with bullets, even as he continued to run with Savannah for the jungle.

  And then, holy Christ, it shouldn’t have happened. Not even a one in a billion lucky shot should’ve done it.

  The Puma fireballed.

  One minute it was there, and the next . . . boom.

  Ken grabbed Savannah, trying to surround her with his body as the shock wave from the explosion sent them flying.

  He rolled as he landed, attempting to keep his weight off of her, cushioning her as best as he could, which sadly wasn’t very well.

  Ears ringing, he didn’t take the time to check to see which parts of him hurt like hell and why. He just grabbed the Uzi, dragged Savannah to her feet and pulled her the last few dozen yards to the cover of the jungle brush.

  Jesus, the Puma was gone. Black clouds of oily smoke mushroomed up into the sky, and all that remained of the helo—a metal skeleton—blazed.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Savannah.

  He didn’t wait for her to respond; she was probably in shock. He wasn’t a hospital corpsman like Jay Lopez, but he knew enough to get by. He ran his hands down her arms and legs, checking for broken bones.

  Her designer suit was ruined, her pantyhose shredded and her feet bruised and scraped, but nothing was broken, thank God. Amazingly, she was still clutching her handbag.

  “You’re bleeding,” she said, and he realized that her gaze was clear, her eyes focused. She wasn’t in shock. She was just badly shaken.

  “I’m all right,” he told her. It was only half a lie. His elbow was trashed. The good news was that it wasn’t broken. The bad news was that he’d scraped the shit out of it, and in this bacteria-loving climate, an infection could be a serious threat.

  He’d packed antibiotics, but they were in his knapsack—which he’d last seen beneath Uzi Two’s feet on the deck of the helo. Unlike Savannah, he hadn’t managed to keep his pack or his duffle bag with him.

  She peeked out of the brush at the flaming remains of the helo. “They’re all dead.”

  It wasn’t a question, but he answered it anyway. “Yeah.”

  “They were going to kill us, weren’t they?”

  “Yup. And when they don’t show up wherever it was they were going next, someone’s going to connect their disappearance to this smoke signal here, and send another helo to check it out. We need to find your money and be far from here when they show up. We need to hope they didn’t send a message to their home base reporting that you and I made a run for it. If they did, a second helo’s going to be out here that much sooner. They’ll definitely be looking for us, and they’ll be pissed.”

  Savannah nodded, her blue eyes clear and steady as she gazed at him. “You think they sent a message.”

  “Yes,” Ken said, “I do. The large guy—the Russian—was getting and receiving radio messages all throughout the flight.”

  “This is all my fault,” she said. “I should have known Uncle Alex would never have asked me for that much money. In cash. How could I have been so stupid? He’s dead, isn’t he? Alex?”

  “I think there’s a good chance that he is.” Ken went for the cold hard truth before thinking it through. Her eyes filled and he realized his mistake. They didn’t have time for her to dissolve into tears.

  But she managed not to cry. Instead, she pulled herself to her feet. “I nearly got you killed, too, but that’s going to change right now. We need to get moving, get somewhere safe—get you back on a plane for Hong Kong.”

  Out on the river, an engine—an outboard motor—started.

  And Ken yanked Savannah down on top of him. Who the hell was out there?

  And then he saw it. Holy Jesus, how could he have missed it? It was more like a raft than a real boat, with a wide, shallow hull and a faded fabric canopy shielding the bow. It moved out from the shadows at the edge of the river—that’s how he’d missed it. Whoever they were, they’d been trying to hide. And he hadn’t been looking for a boat. He hadn’t been thinking of much besides getting Savannah away from the men
on the helo.

  Senior Chief Wolchonok would’ve smacked him upside his head. Because in this part of the world, danger was everywhere. God damn, he better make sure she wasn’t sitting on a poisonous snake.

  No, she was sitting on him.

  “Stay down,” he told her, pushing her off his lap and making sure the Uzi was locked and loaded.

  Jones pulled out from the overhanging branches and vines, and pointed the boat down river. For something with the aerodynamics of a floating shoebox, this thing could move when coaxed.

  “What are you doing?” Molly called over the roar of the outboard motor.

  “It’s called getting the hell out of here,” he shouted back.

  “We can’t just leave! Those people need help!”

  She was serious. World War III had started just upriver. Machine guns had been fired, and a helicopter had gone up in a pyrotechnics display he’d never before witnessed the likes of.

  And now Molly wanted to do her Good Samaritan thing.

  “Here’s how it works,” he told her. “Group A fires their guns at Group B. Group B fires back, and Group A’s chopper explodes, killing everyone on board, everyone within twenty feet. At least.”

  “You don’t know that for sure,” she countered.

  “Yes,” he said. “I do. Meanwhile Group B’s still out there with their big, bad guns. And Group A’s chopper is going to be noticeably absent—wherever it is that it belongs. And someone else from Group A is going to come looking. When that happens, we are going to be far, far away from here.”

  “Dave,” Molly said. “Grady. Please. I can’t just run away without checking to make sure someone didn’t survive that. If they did, they surely need help.”

  And Jones knew that if he didn’t turn around now, she’d come back later. Without him. And then she probably would run into whoever had lost that chopper. And they would be furious and out for blood and revenge.

  He spun the boat around.

  “We’ll get as close as we can,” he told her. “But you’re not getting off this boat. Do you understand?”

  Molly made a sound that might’ve been agreement.

  But fortunately—or unfortunately for these poor bastards in the chopper—as they went past the inferno, it was more than obvious, even to Molly, that no one could have survived.

  “They were probably bad men. Killers and thieves,” Jones said, after he turned the boat around again and headed for home. After they’d gone some distance he’d cut the motor. “The world’s probably a better place with them gone.”

  “No one’s so bad that they can’t turn their life around,” Molly said quietly. “Everyone deserves a second chance. They won’t get theirs now.”

  Was that what she was doing with him? Giving him a second chance, thinking he had both the motivation and inclination to “turn his life around”? If that was what she thought, she was going to be bitterly disappointed.

  They were still a few miles from the village, and he reached for her, needing her desperately, hating her for making him want things he couldn’t have, for making him want to be someone he could no longer be. Hating her for making him realize that, after all this time, he still had a heart, and that he hadn’t forgotten how to dream.

  The boat finally disappeared around a bend in the river, but when Savannah shifted, about to stand up, Ken motioned for her to stay put.

  It didn’t make sense. They were out here in the middle of the jungle, in the middle of nowhere. Ken seemed convinced that in a very short time another helicopter filled with gun-wielding men would be out searching for them, with every intention of killing them and taking her briefcase of money.

  They should have been jumping up and down to get the boat’s attention, to ask for a ride back to a place where people didn’t shoot other people. To hell with the money. Let the men in the helicopter find it and keep it. It was as good as gone anyway; it didn’t seem possible that she and Ken would be able to locate it. Talk about a needle in a haystack. She wouldn’t even know where to start to look, wouldn’t know in which direction to walk.

  And the money seemed insignificant considering all the lives that had just been lost.

  She felt sick just thinking about it, about Alex. How could he be dead? He was so full of life. Unlike her father, Karl, his twin, who in many ways acted as if he’d been dead for years.

  Ken finally stopped scanning the river, searching for God knows what, and turned to her. “Give me your jacket.”

  She hesitated. She was soaked with perspiration both from fear and this oppressive heat. Quite frankly, she stank, and her jacket did, too.

  “Come on, come on,” Ken was impatient. He put his gun down and fished in his pocket for something. “We have to get moving.”

  “It’s . . . extremely ripe,” she apologized as she slipped her arms free.

  “Join the club.” He took it from her. And promptly, with the use of his pocket knife, tore it in half. Right up the back. He threw it back to her in two pieces. “Wrap your feet.”

  She stared at him.

  “We’re going to be heading through some pretty dense brush. I’d offer you my sandals, but they’d be like snowshoes on you.”

  Savannah sat down. She didn’t have a clue how to do this. Her feet were sore and scraped. She didn’t even want to touch them. But he was waiting for her, watching.

  First things first. She wriggled out of her pantyhose and he stopped watching. She tried slipping her foot into one of the sleeves and gasped at its contact with her poor scraped toes.

  He sat down then, too, muttering something—curses, probably—under his breath. He took off his sandals. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe you should try these on.” He held them out to her.

  She didn’t take them. “If you gave me your sandals, what would you wear?”

  “I’ll make you carry me piggyback.”

  He’d actually managed to make a joke, but Savannah was the one now who couldn’t laugh. She just grimly kept wrapping her right foot. “I got you into this mess. No way am I taking your sandals, too.”

  Ken crouched down in front of her, gently lifting her other foot. It was bruised, battered and bleeding from a cut on her heel. “I’m sorry about this.”

  She pulled her foot free, wrapped that one, too. “Yeah, well, like you said, I should’ve had sneakers on. And it’s better than being dead. Just think—every step I take, I’ll be reminded just how very alive I am.”

  Ken picked up one of his sandals. “Maybe I can somehow adjust these—”

  “Please,” she said. “Don’t. Let’s just get out of here.”

  He put his sandals back on. “Maybe what we should do is get you hidden someplace. Let me go after the money by myself. We’re going to want to head back this way—to stick relatively close to the river. Chances are it’ll lead us directly to that little town on the coast.”

  Panic made her heart pound. She’d as much as told him to ditch her while they were on the helicopter. But now, faced with the very real possibility, she was terrified by the idea. And even if he didn’t mean to ditch her, how on earth would he ever find her again if he left her here?

  “Okay,” she said as evenly as she could manage—which wasn’t very evenly at all. “If that’s what you want to do.”

  “On the other hand,” he said, “maybe it’s better to stick together until we know what’s up. I mean, if they send in four different helos to search for us, I’m going to want you near me.”

  Savannah took a deep breath. “Kenny, maybe you should just forget about the money, forget about me, and get out of here. They may not even know about you—I’m the one they’ll be looking for.”

  He laughed, but it wasn’t because he thought she was funny. It was with contempt. “Jesus. You must really think I’m an asshole. That I’d just walk away from you? Leave you out in the middle of the freaking jungle?”

  “You don’t even like me.” She tried to make him understand. “And you almost died. Those people did d
ie because of me today, and you very well could have been one of them.”

  Savannah caught herself trying to tuck her silk blouse neatly back into her skirt, then realized how ridiculous that was, considering she was sweaty and smeared with jungle mud. Her footwear was designer, but she was pretty sure Donna Karan hadn’t meant for her jacket to be worn quite that way.

  Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.

  She clung to her handbag as she turned away, afraid if she so much as looked at Kenny, the floodgates would open. She’d been holding so much in for so long, if she started to cry, she might never stop. “I will not put you in danger again. And if being with me means that you’re in danger—”