by Ward Larsen
“That’s Carlos,” Kristin whispered.
Jen said, “I’ve met him. He came to the room where they were holding me yesterday.”
“What did he want?”
“First he told me about the airplane crash, probably to frighten me. Then he said he needed information. He wanted something only my father and I would know, details to convince him I’m still alive.”
“And did you give it?”
“I did, but for my own reasons. My father is an aircraft accident investigator. If that airplane crashed, and my dad believed I was on it—I’m sure he’s in Colombia right now trying to find us.”
“Does he have a strange first name?”
“His name’s Frank, but everybody calls him Jammer.”
“That’s it,” said Kristin. “I heard Carlos talking to his father on the phone. There’s a big guy stirring up trouble in Bogotá.”
“Yep. That would be my dad.”
They both watched the big soldier—who Kristin confirmed was Pablo—explain something to Carlos with a lot of gesticulating.
“Carlos looks furious,” said Kristin.
“I think you put yourself in a bind by helping me.”
Carlos looked around the compound, and as his gaze swept past their position, both girls instinctively dropped their heads. When they looked up again they saw Carlos double down on his mistake—he ordered everyone back into the jungle for another search.
Jen whispered, “That man sitting on the ground—do you know who he is?”
“No, I’ve never seen him before. My father must have hired him to deliver the payment. Or maybe he’s with the Secret Service.”
“Do you really think there’s seven million dollars in that case?”
Kristin said, “According to Carlos, that was the deal.”
“So the ransom is paid. They’ll have to let you go.”
Kristin hesitated. “I’m not so sure. Carlos wasn’t happy when you showed up with me. I made him promise that you and I could leave together when the payment came, but today he changed his mind. He said only I would be released.”
“Why? Do you think he wants a second ransom for me? My dad doesn’t have that kind of money, he’s only a retired military officer.”
The two girls exchanged a long look in the dim light.
“He’s not going to let me go,” said Jen.
Kristin shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
“Is that why you came for me?”
Kristin nodded. “Yeah … I guess it was.”
“Thanks for that.”
A half smile from the vice president’s daughter before she turned serious. “This whole damned thing is my fault,” she said. “What happened to Thomas, the people on that airplane. You’re my last chance to do something right. I’ll get you out of here, Jen. I swear it.”
FORTY-THREE
McBain was running twenty meters ahead of him, which aggravated Davis to no end. The fact that the DEA man had a runner’s build and was ten years younger meant nothing—it was his daughter less than a mile ahead. He pushed his pace down the dirt road, lungs heaving like twin bellows, and was right on McBain’s heels when he drew to a stop.
He pulled out the phone while Davis doubled over with his hands on his knees.
“You’re getting old, Marine,” McBain taunted.
“I play rugby,” he said, sucking a load of air. “That’s where you don’t bother running past people. It’s a little more direct.”
After a brief conversation, McBain relayed the latest from Jorgensen. “The jeeps are still at the compound, one klick ahead. But we may have lost the element of surprise. The troops dispersed into the jungle a few minutes ago.”
“Dispersed? Like setting up a defensive perimeter?”
“Can’t say for sure,” McBain said. “They fanned out with their weapons and everybody is moving.”
“That sounds more like a search.”
“Could be. You think maybe the VP’s daughter took a runner? Or your daughter?”
Davis considered it. Yes, he thought, if Jen saw a chance to escape she just might try. “Let’s hope so. On the other hand, it’s possible our Caravan pilot sent a warning before we landed. Or maybe there was someone back at that clearing we didn’t spot.”
“In which case,” McBain reasoned, “they’ll know you and I are on the way.”
The two exchanged a look. Both knew the answer. No way to tell.
McBain said, “They’re trying to stretch the fuel burn on the drone, but it’s getting critical. If the operators can approve an alternate recovery airfield it will give us a few more minutes. Jorgensen hasn’t used his emergency authority card yet.”
“Will that work?”
“I don’t know, we’ve never tried it before.” McBain looked up the road. “One thing’s for sure. This road is the only way in or out of the compound, so it’s going to be watched. We’ll have to move into the jungle and make our final approach the hard way. Harder than usual because the red team is already in the bush.”
“True,” said Davis, “but there’s still a chance they don’t know we’re out here. It would mean they’re in the bush looking for Jen or Kristin, maybe both. They’ll be expecting a couple of school-girls—not us.”
This drew a grin from McBain. “Good point.”
* * *
Kehoe decided he wasn’t getting paid nearly enough. He was sitting in wet dirt, secured with heavy plastic zip-ties to the bumper of a jeep. The sun was beating down on his black hood, and he was sweating profusely in the equatorial heat. To make his morning complete, he had initially settled right on top of an ant pile, and his right leg was inflamed with at least fifty bites from some kind of stinging Amazonian insect. In spite of his shifting and rubbing, the buggers kept coming to life in his shoes and socks to deliver dying bites. Not for the first time, Kehoe weighed if it might be time to get out of field work. A vanilla consulting gig would be boring, but when nests of stinging insects came into play all you did was call an exterminator to spray the office baseboards.
His musings were cut short: footsteps approaching in the dirt, then pausing at his side.
“We’ve held up our part of the bargain,” Kehoe said. “Can we finish this?”
“Patience,” said the voice he recognized as the leader of this sorry pack. “I’m sure you speak Spanish, so you know the girl is unavailable.”
Kehoe knew all too well. “Unavailable? That’s a hopeful word from your point of view.”
“And from your point of view I would hope she is found soon. Otherwise, my friend, there are few options.”
Only one, Kehoe thought. He’d already made that calculation, and was displeased to find a contingency for which he had no plan. What if the girl escapes? He took a positive tack. “I should help you look. Chances are she’s nearby, and she might respond to me. Call off your men and let me try. If I can collect her I’ll be on my way—everybody wins.”
The commander seemed to consider it. “Yes … but you’ve already been here longer than either of us expected. I don’t think I’m ready to give you that kind of freedom. I’m sure you’ve been briefed to find out all you can about me and my team.”
“Team? Is that what you call them?”
Kehoe heard a shuffle in the dirt and something hard slammed into his head. He saw stars for a moment, then the world slowly righted.
“Even wearing that hood you’ve heard enough to make our life difficult. If this problem is resolved soon, I will consider our business complete. You will be allowed to go, and we will take precautions to avoid reprisal. On the other hand, if these silly girls continue to—”
“Girls?” Kehoe interrupted. “I only paid for one.” The boots shuffled again in the dirt and he braced for another blow. Nothing came, and he sensed he’d scored a victory of some kind. Someone else was being held, another girl. Who it was and why she was here was not formally his concern. All the same, Kehoe was a decent man, not the type to sit by
idly and watch the strong prey on the weak. He was filing this all in his newly aching head when the morning calm was broken. He heard a distant whoosh followed by a pyrotechnic pop.
Birds fluttered from the trees, followed by shouts from all around. The voices were blended by the jungle, indistinct and directionless, reminding him of a crowd in a sparsely populated stadium. They all saw what Kehoe heard.
The commander ran off, barking orders as he went.
A second whoosh, perhaps on a slightly different angle, a second pop. This time Kehoe was sure he recognized the sound, at least in a general way. What he didn’t understand was who it could be. The girls would be neither trained nor equipped, and he’d been specifically briefed to expect no help. Which meant the sounds were not the arrival of some kind of U.S. cavalry. And it was definitely not how the Colombian Army would approach things.
Another whoosh. Another pop.
Almost as if they were under attack.
Who the hell is out there? Kehoe wondered.
FORTY-FOUR
The signal flares, commandeered from the Comanche’s emergency survival kit, were of the pen-gun variety—old, simple, and exquisitely reliable. McBain had circled west of the compound, keeping roughly one hundred yards from the perimeter, and was firing at random intervals. He loaded another flare in the handheld launcher, straightened his arm at a new angle and thumbed back the firing pin. The fourth flare sizzled high to the west, penetrating the canopy and blossoming a red phosphorous star in the sky.
McBain ran like hell in the other direction.
Their tactical problem had been a vexing one. From the highest ground, Davis and McBain initially had a good visual on the compound. Yet they had no idea where the girls were. They saw a handful of soldiers come and go from the surrounding forest, and noted a luckless soul, who could only be the courier, sitting secured to the bumper of one of the jeeps. The operation to retrieve Martin Stuyvesant’s daughter—certainly what they were witnessing—was not going smoothly.
Waiting things out was not an option because soon they would lose their biggest advantage—the Predator and its God’s-eye view of the battlefield. The situation was complex and fluid, and time was working against them. There was a chance one of the girls might still be in the compound, and at the moment the bulk of the opposing force was distracted and distant. After a brief conference with Jorgensen, Davis made the call. They would make a play for the courier, reasoning that he might know where the girls were. At the very least, he would increase their troop strength by half.
With their objective set, the first step was to level the odds. According to Jorgensen, the soldiers were still in the bush, in search mode, the bulk of the force clustered to the south. McBain’s job was to pull them west, deeper into the forest. He and Davis had actually blueprinted their plan using a stick in the dirt, like two kids playing sandlot football. Since the paras were searching for one or both girls, they reasoned that’s who would be held responsible for firing the flares. At least, if one discarded the questions of how they could acquire such pyrotechnics and learn to use them.
It wasn’t a perfect plan, McBain knew, but it was the best they had. So he ran deeper into the jungle.
Some distance away, Davis moved in the other direction.
* * *
He took the strategy of a fighter pilot heading into a close-quarters dogfight: stealth no longer matters, speed is life. Davis charged through brush like a bull elephant, the plastic MP5 held at arm’s length to blade through branches and vines. Having waited ten minutes for McBain to launch his barrage, he was now circling clockwise to approach the compound from the southeast. According to the drone’s imagery it was the best angle of attack, a place where thick jungle nearly abutted the largest building. Visibility was nearly nil, the foliage like liquid. Davis shoved one branch aside, and three took its place. He was moving fast, pushing and stumbling, when he ran into something solid. At first he thought it was a tree.
Only the tree had a face.
Not two feet in front of him was a soldier, a rifle hanging loosely from his shoulder—a cavalier way to carry a firearm in a low visibility environment. Davis was the first to react using his only weapon—the hard plastic stock of his knock-off MP5. The butt caught the soldier on the bridge of the nose, and his head snapped back like a waylaid bobblehead doll. When the head came back forward its mouth was open, prepping for a scream. Davis targeted his second blow there, the result an instant dental catastrophe. When his adversary fell to his knees, Davis dropped his faux submachine gun, reared up, and lunged to put a knee in the man’s temple. The guy dropped like his joints had disconnected and went completely still.
Davis went to ground with him.
He rolled away, completing two revolutions before pausing to listen. There was nothing at first, only the distant shouts of men responding to McBain’s barrage of signal flares. There had been eight flares in the survival kit, along with the handheld launcher. By Davis’ count, seven had been used. He lay stock still, listening and watching. Having come across one soldier, there was a good chance another was near. He guessed McBain was keeping the last flare in reserve—that’s what he would have done. The far-off shouts subsided, and for a full two minutes he heard nothing more than the wind rustling through trees and the buzz of insects.
Then, finally, a sound that didn’t belong.
It was very near, probably to his left, although it was hard to say in a jungle that muffled and reflected sound. He kept perfectly still and heard it again, a footfall on the soft, humus-laden forest floor. Then a clipped, baritone whisper, “Umberto! Dónde estás?”
With one cheek on the ground, Davis felt ever-so-slight tremors. The soldier he’d flattened was two steps away, probably unconscious. Possibly dead. Was the rifle still looped around his chest? Most likely, but Davis had no way of reaching it without creating a severe noise signature.
Another tremor, slow and cautious. Like a carnivorous dinosaur sensing a meal.
Davis realized he had a decent line of sight from where he lay. The ferns and waxen-leaved plants, all battling for scant sunlight, reached upward and out. At dead ground level he saw a wilderness of stems and roots, but between them he could make out fragmented details thirty feet away. It was like being at ground level in a parking lot and looking under the chassis of cars—better visibility beneath the clutter.
Davis turned his head slowly and spotted it right away. Moving branches twenty feet ahead. A worn combat boot stepping into view.
A black boot.
With a crescent scar on the heel.
FORTY-FIVE
He was as motionless as the earth itself, only his eyes moving to track the boot. A size twelve combat model, Davis guessed, standard issue footwear for every army. He watched it turn a quiet half circle. A soldier being cautious, looking and listening, wondering where his comrade had gone. Davis felt his chest rise and fall rhythmically on the damp forest floor. Silent intakes of moss-scented air. Controlled exhalations, warm and moist. He shifted ever so slightly, grounding to a position from which he could spring if necessary. His right instep found purchase, and the weight on his left elbow shifted to a hand.
There were no more whispers. The man had become wary—if they met it would be on level terms, neither surprised. A radio crackled to life, breaking the silence, and the second boot shuffled into view. A rustle of fabric as the man frantically tried to quiet the speaker. It was a mistake. And for Davis, information. A radio meant this was a commander at some level, probably a noncommissioned officer, or whatever the right-wing paramilitary equivalent was. It implied he was experienced, and by extension, that he knew how to fight at close quarters. More relevant for Davis—this was the man who’d tried to kill him.
He wanted nothing more than to launch at that moment. The problem was distance. The boot was twenty feet away and not getting closer. At that distance, any experienced soldier would sense his rush and bring a weapon to bear—the man wouldn’t be here unar
med. A rifle, a handgun. He would pull the trigger before Davis covered half the ground. Of course, in the heat of the moment, there was a good chance he’d miss with the first shot. Most did. But there was also a chance he’d have a gun capable of full automatic fire, and that Davis would be laced in seconds with more holes than an old shoe. So he forced himself to be patient. Jen was close, and she needed him to not do anything stupid.
The boots did a sudden one-eighty, and the scene quickly changed—now Davis saw one boot and a knee on the ground. The man had spotted or heard something, and he’d gone for concealment. Might it be Jen? Kristin Stewart?
His hand was forced.
Davis began inching forward, looking for every brittle twig and frond, trying not to disturb anything. He advanced ten inches, then twenty. The black boot and knee remained motionless. Davis edged closer, delicately, the only option when stalking a better-armed adversary. He was fifteen feet away when he heard a distant noise. A rustle of brush. Then everything went to hell.
The soldier jumped up and opened fire, a single blast that shredded foliage and scattered birds. Davis leapt to his feet and rushed forward, like a defensive lineman blitzing a quarterback. He saw the owner of the scarred boots for the first time, a massive bald-headed man with the stony eyes of a drill sergeant. A long-barreled rifle was close to his chest, and when he saw Davis coming he levered the bolt while shifting aim, going for center of mass. The center of his mass.
Davis flew the last five feet in a Superman pose, hands straining for the gun barrel. He swatted it at the moment of explosion, the gun’s report obliterating the sound of their collision. Davis tried to wrap up his tackle while keeping a hand on the gun barrel. Someone’s hand tripped the bolt, bringing a mechanical click but nothing else. The drill sergeant struck first, a stunning fist to the side of Davis’ head. The Colombian immediately twisted behind him, a move that suggested he was a wrestler, and before Davis could react, a monstrous forearm was crushing his throat.