by Cindy Gerard
The small closet was as dark as a cave. He groped around for a light switch and when he didn’t find one, reached above him and caught a dangling string. When he gave it a tug, light from a dim bulb flooded the closet.
Valentina whipped off her sunglasses, her eyes huge and round. “What is it? What’s happening?”
“Company—and not the kind you want to invite for dinner.”
He glanced around the five-by-six-foot closet. A metal shelving unit screwed to the wall held an assortment of hand tools, cleaning supplies, cloths, and a couple rolls of tape—one electrical and one silver duct tape. Several brooms and mops were propped in the corner. A half-dozen hooks held industrial blue coveralls.
“Two men by the door. Both carrying. Searching the terminal for you. One talking to the pilot just as he was stepping out of the plane.”
Her face paled. “Oh, God. How—”
He cut her a sharp look. “Jesus, Val. How do you think?” She slowly shook her head, her face pale. “Marcus wouldn’t have done this.”
There was more plea than conviction in her statement this time. He would have hurt for her and the disillusion that clouded her eyes if he wasn’t so pissed.
“Well, he looks like a pretty solid bet in my book.”
She closed her eyes and he could see she was fighting tears. “I never should have made that call. I never should have doubted you, because you haven’t let me down yet.”
He let out a deep breath. “It’s okay. But we’re not out of this closet yet.”
“What are we going to do?” she asked, as he shrugged out of his backpack and dropped it on the floor.
“You’re going to stay put. Right here. I’m going to go run a little interference. Keep the door locked. Don’t open it unless you hear three sharp raps. Got it?”
She nodded. “Please be careful.”
“Careful’s my middle name,” he assured her and let himself back into the hall.
Luke resettled his baseball cap, shoved his hands in his pockets, and shuffled into the main terminal. Invisibility was his goal, and acting the part of a weary traveler among a group of weary travelers kept him from standing out in a crowd.
The one he’d dubbed “Jake” still held his position by the door. The pilot now waited on the tarmac at the bottom of the airstairs. The taller guy walked methodically through the terminal, clearly searching for Valentina.
Visibly stifling a yawn, Luke rolled his shoulders as though he’d been waiting forever and worked his way around the periphery of the large open area, waiting for the right distance spread before making his move on Jake. When “Elwood” reached the far side of the terminal, Luke ambled over to his partner.
“Your flight late, too?”
As he’d expected, Jake ignored him.
Oblivious to the cold shoulder, Luke kept on talking. “So . . . where you headed?”
“None of your fucking business,” Jake muttered.
Luke made a show of looking affronted. “No need to get pissy. Just wanted to pass some time,” he went on, just an affable guy too dumb to zip his lip. “I’ll just mind my own business and wait for that hot babe to come back.”
As he’d planned, the “hot babe” comment perked up the bad boy’s ears. “What hot babe?”
Luke sucked in his breath through his teeth, making a scorching sound. “She was sexy as hell, man. Swear to God . . . she looked like that big-time model. Valentina?” He grinned and settled in for a little man-to-man talk. “Long, black hair. Big, gorgeous tits. Man, I’d like to nail some of that, know what I mean?”
Jake was totally on board now. Luke could see in his eyes that he knew he’d hit the jackpot.
“Where’d you see her?”
Luke’s grin widened. “I think maybe there’s a special waiting area or something for people like her. You know, they don’t want to mingle with the riffraff. It’s down this hallway. I’ll show you where I saw her last.”
Without waiting for Jake to order him to stay put or signal Elwood, Luke set out for the hall.
“In there, man,” he said with a nod when they reached the maintenance closet.
“It’s a fucking closet.”
Luke waggled his brows. “Is it? Or is that what they want us to think?”
The seed was planted . . . and it was too much for Jake to resist. He shoved Luke out of the way and gripped the door knob.
In one lightning move, Luke cinched an arm around Jake’s neck, applied pressure to his throat, and cut off the blood flow.
The sleeper hold put Jake out in seconds. His body slumped heavily against Luke. He rapped the door three times, then shoved it open, hauled Jake inside, and kicked the door shut behind them.
“Hand me that roll of duct tape.” He eased the unconscious man to the floor.
Valentina looked horrified. “Is he dead?”
“Just asleep, if I did it right.”
“Did what?”
“Vulcan death grip,” he said, taking the tape from her. “My version, anyway.”
He did a quick body search and came up with a beauty of a SIG—oh, happy day—and a state-of-the-art sound suppressor, along with an extra ammo clip.
“The bastard’s loaded for bear.” He handed Valentina all three pieces, then bound Jake’s hands together in front of him. After he’d wrapped the tape around his upper body, pinning his arms to his sides, then down around his knees and ankles, was he satisfied he could leave Val alone with him.
“If he so much as moves an eyelid, nail him with this.” He pulled a hammer off a shelf and handed it to her.
Then he snagged a pair of workman’s coveralls from a hanger and shrugged into them. They were a little tight across the shoulders and a couple of inches too short, but this wasn’t a fashion show. “I’ll be right back.”
“Wait!” Her hand on his arm stopped him. “Where are you going?”
“To find his friend. We need four for a game of poker,” he said with a quick grin.
Dropping the SIG in the roomy front pocket of the coveralls, he grabbed a mop and breezed back out of the closet.
17
Like shooting carp in a barrel, Luke thought as he walked up behind Elwood. Using Elwood’s own jacket to conceal the handgun, Luke let him know the SIG was pointed dead center at his spine and ushered him, without protest, to the closet to join his friend.
“All right, then, boys,” Luke said amiably when he’d relieved Elwood of a sweet silver Beretta and trussed him up as tight as his buddy, who was now awake and glaring between Luke and Valentina, “first things first. You need to know that I hate tight spaces and it’s damned tight in here. Makes my trigger finger all itchy.
“Hers, too,” he added with a notch of his chin toward Valentina who, God love her, aimed the Beretta directly at Elwood’s heart in a steady, two-handed grip. “So the sooner we can get out of here, the easier it’s going to be on all of us, understood?”
Luke very deliberately held the SIG in front of him and with the precision of a man who clearly knew what he was doing, fixed the sound suppressor to the tip of the barrel.
“Nice toy,” he said, then turned the gun on Jake.
He was rewarded with a nice little sheen of perspiration on both men’s foreheads.
That’s right. Sweat, you slimy bastards. You’re swimming in a river of shit and I’m just the man to sink you deeper.
“Now, I’m going to ask a few questions,” he continued in his good-ol’-boy, I’m-just-the-friendly-type voice, letting the SIG, now aimed at Jake’s kneecap, do the enforcing for him. “Let’s start with an easy one. Who are you working for?”
Elwood was the first to respond. “Go fuck yourself.”
Luke got right in his face. “Hey, asshole. Didn’t the professors at bad-guy school teach you that when the guy with the gun asks the questions, you’d better, by God, answer?”
When both men remained silent, Luke jammed the tip of the suppressor directly against Jake’s kneecap. “If you ever
want to walk again, tell me something to make me happy. Now, one more time: Who are you working for?”
“We don’t know,” Jake gritted out between tightly clenched teeth. “We don’t know who pays us.”
Luke slammed the suppressor hard against Jake’s kneecap and clamped a hand over his mouth when he howled in pain.
“We don’t fucking know!” Elwood insisted when Valentina redirected her aim to his family jewels. “We get a phone call, we’re told what to do. Money’s wired into a special account—half up front, half when the job’s done.”
Luke considered him through narrowed eyes. “And what’s the extent of this job?”
“Get the woman,” Jake supplied, cutting his gaze toward Valentina and having the brains to look guilty.
“And take her where?”
“Just get her on the plane,” Elwood said. “After that, we don’t know and don’t care where she ends up.”
Luke had interrogated his share of lug-nuts over the years, and he’d gotten a feel for when they were lying or telling the truth. Unfortunately, he was pretty certain these guys weren’t lying. Just like he figured they were merely hired help, not upper echelon. Their allegiance was to a paycheck, not a cause. And without their guns, even that impetus was losing power.
“Tell me about the pilot,” Luke demanded, not letting up on the pressure, even though he figured he knew what the answer would be.
Jake shook his head. “Nothing to tell. We were told there’d be a plane. Given a radio frequency to communicate on.”
Luke glared between them. There had to be more. Something he could use to reach the mastermind. “Seems to me that once you hand over the girl, you hand over your insurance that you did your job. How do you prove to the top dog that he owes you money?”
Jake looked at Elwood, gave him a nod.
“Snap a photo with our phone,” Elwood said.
Luke nodded. “And then you upload the photo and e-mail it to an IP address even NSA can’t track down.”
Jake and Elwood exchanged another look that told Luke he’d nailed it. Whoever was pulling the strings had a complex network in place to guarantee anonymity.
“Give me the e-mail address.”
“For all the good it’ll do you. You’ll never be able to trace the origin,” Elwood said belligerently, then spat out the address.
Betting man that he was, Luke would lay odds that between B.J. and Tink—Rafe and Johnny’s women respectively, who were now employed by BOI—they could nail down the location of the IP address no matter how many servers it bounced off before it finally landed at home base.
“And you know nothing about the pilot?” Luke asked again.
Again, Elwood shook his head. “We were just given contact information and told to meet him here to help facilitate delivery of the . . . package,” he finished with a sheepish look at Valentina.
Luke would have loved a chance to question the pilot, too, but time was running out. If he had any hope of getting Valentina out of Peru, he needed to get her out of this terminal and onto the cargo plane Nate had arranged to pick them up.
He checked his watch. Jesus. He’d lost track of time. They had less than five minutes to meet up with their ride.
“How will I know who to look for?” he’d asked Nate when he’d talked with him earlier.
“Oh, you’ll know,” Nate had assured him with a smile in his voice. “Just don’t make him wait or you’re toast.”
He handed Valentina the SIG and tore a couple of strips off the roll of duct tape. He didn’t like leaving loose ends, liked leaving these two knuckle-draggers to rejoin the general populace even less. But he wasn’t a cold-blooded killer and Val had handled about as much trauma as she could take.
“Have a nice life, fellas,” he said and slapped tape over their mouths. “And by the way, the name is Luke Colter,” he added, looking one, then the other, in the eye.
“You remember that: Luke Colter. You remember that I’m the man who let you live today. But remember this, too: If I ever see your ugly faces again, you won’t catch me in such a nice mood.”
Luke helped Valentina into a smaller pair of blue coveralls, then knelt to roll up the pant legs while she did the sleeves. Then he tugged the string to douse the light and, locking the door behind them, hustled her out of the closet. Pushing a large rolling trash can that held his backpack and the Brothers’ guns, they moved through the charter terminal like they didn’t have a care in the world.
He chanced a quick glance toward the G-550. The pilot was waiting on the tarmac at the foot of the airstairs now, an impatient scowl on his face.
“Keep moving,” he murmured as they pushed the trash can through the street-side terminal doors. Once they were outside, Luke headed then for the air cargo terminal at a sprint.
“Two minutes,” he said as he whipped open the terminal door and, still counting on the janitorial coveralls and the trash can as a diversion, they ducked inside.
The place was another beehive of activity. Outside on the apron, several cargo planes were lined up, and trucks were offloading and reloading the cargo holds.
“Which plane is here for us?” Valentina asked as she bent down to pick up a piece of litter and toss it in the can.
“Wish I knew.”
He searched the apron and spotted a couple of older Lear jets, but nothing gave him a clue. A Piper Cheyenne that had seen better days started rolling slowly toward the runway. There was another plane behind it, but he couldn’t make it out. Finally, the Piper moved on, revealing a twin-turboprop Beechcraft King Air parked directly behind it. PRIMETIME AIR CARGO was painted across the gleaming white fuselage in glittering red and blue letters.
“Sonofabitch,” he muttered around a slow grin.
No sooner had he realized that he’d found their ride than a tall, broad-shouldered man in a silver-gray flight suit came sauntering toward them. He had a diamond stud in his left ear and an unlit cigarette tucked behind the other.
“As I live and breathe.” A huge grin split the man’s tanned face. “If it’s not the one and only Doc Holliday.”
“In the flesh, man.” Happy as hell to see his old friend, Luke extended his hand and returned a hearty handshake. “Sonofabitch. Mike Brown.” He clapped Brown on the back. “You’re a sight for sore eyes, brother. Figured you’d be in prison by now—or dead.”
Brown laughed. “Probably should be. Still might end up that way if we don’t make tracks. Catchin’ up has to wait; Nate’ll kill me himself if I don’t get your sorry ass and this lovely lady out of here in one piece.”
“Valentina, meet Mike ‘Primetime’ Brown. Best naval aviator to ever fly the unfriendly skies.”
“Ma’am,” Brown said, his voice dropping to sex-and-seduction mode. “You ready to blow this place, darlin’?”
“Save the sweet talk, Brown,” Luke said on a laugh, then grinned at Valentina. “Be warned. The man’s got a black belt in womanizing.
“And she’s too smart to fall for the crap you dish up,” he added, turning back to his friend.
“Pity,” Brown said with a wink that had Valentina grinning.
Luke slung an arm over Valentina’s shoulders, just because . . . well, just because he could and he wanted Brown to know it.
“You’re lucky I don’t hold a grudge, Holliday,” Brown said amiably as they headed toward the door leading to the tarmac, “or I’d be leaving your sorry ass right here.”
“Don’t hold it against me that you’re a lousy poker player,” Luke reminded him.
“Last time he conned me into sitting down at the table with him,” Primetime told Valentina, “he fleeced me for better than three hundred bucks.”
“You still harping on that hand? That was ten years ago. And if you could bluff your way out of a paper bag, you might have a chance of hanging on to your money. Speaking of bluffs—you want to tell me how you plan to get us past those security guards?”
Three uniformed men stood between them an
d the plane, shooting the breeze.
“Security?” Brown’s blue eyes twinkled as he whipped out a money clip jammed with large bills. “What security?”
As it turned out, it was more difficult to maneuver the wind currents at eleven thousand feet than it was maneuvering through airport security. Payola spoke louder than security regs this far south of the equator, in Luke’s experience. Apparently what was hauled out of the country wasn’t nearly as much of an issue as what was hauled in. No one made so much as a peep of protest as Luke and Valentina boarded the plane with Brown.
“The main problems flying into or out of Cuzco are the high altitude and the mountains. Wind coming over the peaks can cause ‘mountain waves,’ which means heavy-duty turbulence,” Brown said as he secured the hatch and headed for the cockpit. “At 10,860 feet it’s almost three thousand feet higher than Aspen. But like Aspen, it’s at the end of a valley, so you’ve gotta land in one direction and take off in the other.”
“Happy as hell for this little flight briefing, but can we just get out of here?” Luke glanced over his shoulder at Valentina, who was strapping herself into a seat in the cargo bay.
“We’re going to have a hefty tailwind for takeoff,” Brown went on as he continued his flight check. “Not good. Max tailwind for takeoff on most aircraft is ten knots. We’re dealing with a helluva lot more right now. Not to mention that at this altitude, the temperature is very critical. Don’t mind telling you, I’d really rather wait until tomorrow morning.”
“Not an option,” Luke said.
“So Nate said.” Grim faced, Brown radioed the tower, asking for clearance for takeoff.
“Thought you gave those things up,” Luke said.
Brown reached up and stroked a finger along the cigarette tucked behind his ear. “Did. This one’s strictly for emergencies. Never know when an old habit might save your ass.”
“And the bling?” Luke asked. Brown was the last man he’d ever figured to wear an earring.
When Brown just grunted, Luke grinned and gave him a little grief. “Well, it looks real pretty.”
“Fuck you, Colter. Speaking of pretty, how’d a mud-ugly evolutionary throwback like you score with a woman like her?”