NATURALLY the melee at the castle was the lead story on every Mexico City TV station that night. It also made the front page of the dailies the next morning. Not that I had either the linguistic ability or the time to read them. Paul hauled Mitch and me downtown at the crack of dawn so I could give my statement to at least a half dozen different investigative agencies.
Representatives from several more were lined up at the door when Mitch worked some kind of magic and won a reprieve. We caught a U.S. Border Patrol flight back to El Paso late Monday afternoon. He also arranged for the Cessna C550 Citation to land unannounced at a small private airport.
Although I was in no way, shape, or form up for another media barrage, I owed Junior Reporter a huge favor for broadcasting that interview with Rocky. As whipped as I was, I decided to repay it by granting him an exclusive.
He met us at the airport, so eager for the interview he tripped over the camera equipment twice when positioning for the interview. His crew eventually got him planted and his mike adjusted.
“Is it true . . . ?”
“Hang on a sec.” I stepped over the cables and straightened the collar of his pale yellow shirt. “That’s better. You were saying?”
“Is it true you were abducted by Rafael Mendoza, the Mexico City magnate who allegedly heads an international human smuggling organization?”
I could tell he expected my standard no comment. Or a referral to the Fort Bliss Public Affairs office. Even getting that much on camera would be a coup. So he almost dropped his mike when I answered forcefully.
“Nothing alleged about it. The guy traffics in young boys and girls.”
“You, uh, got proof of that?”
“Oh, yeah!”
Teresa Baby had spilled her guts. Was still spilling them when Mitch and I departed Mexico. Acting as Mendoza’s administrative assistant had given her access to all kinds of paper and electronic files.
The paper trail showed that Mendoza’s hirelings were equal opportunity kidnappers. They’d snatched children on both sides of the border as well as several young girls visiting with their families from Europe. Interpol was involved now, as were a host of different agencies from Mexico, the U.S., and Canada. Mendoza wouldn’t buy or terrorize his way out of this one.
His other operations were collapsing right and left, too. U.S. and Mexican SWAT teams had already conducted several lightning raids. Mitch got a call that they’d filled a warehouse with drugs and contraband that included guns, cigarettes, and pirated electronics.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t share all these delicious details with Cub Reporter until Paul Donati and company gave me the green light. I could, however, expound on the role Mitch, my team, and Snoopy played in my rescue.
And DeWayne himself. He blushed and stammered when I mentioned his interview with Rocky.
“I, uh, didn’t understand one word in three Dr. Balboa said.”
“That’s okay; I did.” More or less. “And I’m very pleased to report that the experimental Self-Nurturing Find and Identify Robot featured in your previous interview performed excellently in very rough field conditions.”
I’d tipped DeWayne that I was going to mention the SNFIR. Thus his crew was ready with a photo of Snoopy to flash up for their viewing audience.
“My team and I intend to conduct additional tests under more controlled conditions,” I announced to the world at large and Dr. J in particular. “But we’re hopeful the military might field a prototype within months, maybe a year tops.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant Spade.”
The camera switched to Junior Reporter, who struggled heroically to hide his glee while remaining solemn and Tom Brokaw-ish.
“This is DeWayne Wilson, for Channel Nine News.”
Mitch hid a grin as DeWayne and company packed up their gear. “You just made that kid’s week, if not his year.”
“I hope so. He certainly made mine when he got Rocky on camera. That’s one box I can check off,” I commented as we started for the Border Patrol Range Rover idling at the edge of the grassy strip.
“Box?”
“I made of list of favors I need to repay. DeWayne was on the list. Farmer Farnsworth was right behind him.”
“Who?”
“Snoopy’s inventor. His baby took all kinds of heat after that business with the heads. I aim to set it right.”
“Well, you made a good start with DeWayne.”
“You’re on the list, too,” I commented casually. “Right at the top, as a matter of fact.”
Casual got tossed out the window when he curled a knuckle and stroked it across my cheek. The look in his hazel eyes made my breath stop and my knees go rubbery.
“You don’t owe me any favors, Samantha. Having you home, relatively unhurt, is all I want or need.”
Great! He had to pick a moment when I was hot, sweaty, and covered with dust to turn my insides to mush. And he knew it, too!
Smiling, he gave my cheek another pass. “Let’s get you home. Then we’ll talk about who tops whose lists.”
He stuck two fingers in his mouth, let loose with a whistle that just about drilled through my eardrums, and signaled the driver of the Range Rover.
MY three-room apartment couldn’t compare to Mendoza’s high desert mansion in either spaciousness or tidiness. The usual clutter had acquired a layer of dust. Newspapers and an assortment of glamour mags lay scattered across the floor. The coffee mug I’d deposited on the counter before leaving for work almost a week ago now sported a greenish ring around the rim. And the light on my answering machine, I saw, showed a steady, unblinking red.
“Aren’t you going to check the messages?” Mitch asked as I brushed past the machine. “Or take that call?” he added as the phone began to ring as if on cue.
“Nope,” I said over the strident ring. “That’s either a reporter, begging for an interview, or one of my family members, praying I’m okay and hoping I’ll get around to collecting my share of the reward, like, soon.”
With the recorder full, the caller couldn’t leave a message. Two seconds later, my cell phone rang. I let it go to voice mail.
Sure enough, it was my uncle Alex, relieved to know I was all right and wanting to know when I could help him out with that in-ground pool. Halfway through his message I switched off the cell phone and took the house phone off the hook.
“There! My loving clan can wait until tomorrow for me to tell them I’ve already spent the reward.”
“You have?”
Surprised, Mitch looped his arms around my waist. Since we were still in the uniforms that had seen several days of hard wear, his loose embrace raised little puffs of dust.
“When did you have time to shop between getting kidnapped and kicking Mendoza in the balls?”
“You got him in the balls. I connected a few inches higher.”
I leaned back in his hold, feeling warm and safe. And stupidly happy when he gave me a lazy grin.
“Mendoza’s attorneys may try to make something of that,” he warned.
“Let ’em. I’ll sic Lawyer Nowatny on them.”
“Lawyer Nowatny?”
“Oh, I forgot. You were in Seattle when my brother, Don, sent me his personal ambulance chaser. Don assured me the guy can wring blood from a stone. In fact . . .”
I pursed my lips as a new thought struck me.
“Uh-oh.” Mitch hooked a brow. “I’ve seen that look before. What are you thinking, woman?”
“I’m thinking,” I said slowly, “I might promise Lawyer Nowatny a percentage of whatever he can recover in a civil suit filed on my behalf against Mendoza. The damages should at least equal my share of the reward money.”
“Which you’ve already spent.”
“Well, no cash has changed hands yet. I have to work the details out between DARPA and the FBI and . . .” I stopped and cocked my head. “You don’t know any local companies that sell or refurbish X-ray machines, do you?”
“You mean, like the devices tha
t screen for weapons or contraband at airports?”
“No, the ones that screen for broken bones. Friar Alfonz said theirs had been out of commission for months. I figure fixing or replacing it is the least I can do for him and the others who helped me. Maybe some medical supplies, too. Their cupboards were pretty bare. Oh, and a new bell. La Bonita is cracked, or so Brother Doctor informed me.”
Grinning, Mitch scooped me into his arms and headed for the bedroom. “What about Charlie? I heard through the grapevine that he’s keeping a real low profile these days. Since you’re in such a magnanimous mood, are you going to help him out of his jam, too?”
“I suppose,” I replied with noticeably diminished enthusiasm. “He’d better not show up to collect it with Brenda the Boob in tow, though.”
Laughing, Mitch bypassed the bed and made straight for the bathroom. It’s not easy stripping off two sets of uniforms, boots, associated accessories, and undergarments in my tiny excuse for a bath, but we managed.
We also managed to squeeze into my three or four cubic feet of shower. Together. Mitch did the honors first, shampooing my hair and lathering up a washcloth to make sure he didn’t miss an inch of me.
I won’t say I melted into a puddle of mush. I came close, though. Especially when he wedged around and spread his palms against the tile so I could soap down his back, hips, and tight, trim butt.
It was his thighs that got me, though. Strong and corded and fuzzed with light gold hair. I stroked the soapy washrag down the outside of one and felt the weirdest sensation. As though this was exactly where I was supposed to be. Right here, in this tiny shower. With this man.
“Mitch?”
“Mmmm?”
“I’m pretty sure I love you.”
He thought about that while I slid the washrag up, then down his other leg. I was beginning to wonder whether I should have dropped the dreaded L word when he squeezed around. Smiling, he leaned into the spray beating down on us.
“Let me know when you’re a hundred percent. Like me.”
“Whoa! Hang on there, big guy.” I planted my fists on his chest and dodged his kiss. “When did you hit a hundred percent?”
“I don’t know.”
“Think! A girl likes to know these things. Was it last week, when Mendoza took me? Last month? Last year?”
“Hell, Samantha, I don’t know. Might have been the first time you manhandled that EEEK contraption into my Range Rover.” He raised his hands and smoothed back my streaming hair. “Just take my word for it, sweetheart. I’m there.”
ONE of El Paso’s rare gully washers was rattling the windows when Mitch and I rolled out of bed a little past six a.m. the next morning.
His choice, not mine. I would have snuggled for another hour or two and tried again to pinpoint exactly when he’d reached that magic one hundred mark. But his district commander wanted a report ASAP on the events down in Mexico, and conscientious trooper that he is, Mitch, made me coffee, dressed, delivered several kisses, and hit the door.
I lolled in bed, sipping my coffee, and toyed with the idea of flipping on the TV. After last night, though—and one extremely satisfactory session early this morning—I didn’t want to spoil my mood with nonstop Mendoza stories.
Or with calls from importuning relatives. I left the recorder full, the house phone off the hook, and my cell phone on silent through another shower, solitary this time, followed by a final cup of coffee.
Tough, gung-ho military officers consider umbrellas a total wimp-out. I would never pop one open except under extraordinary circumstances. Covering the ten yards from my front door to my car without drowning qualified in my book.
My Sebring sat in all its dents under the carport. Someone—Noel I guessed—had arranged to have the taillights fixed during my absence. I called a silent blessing down on him as I pulled away from the carport’s protective shield.
The rain pounded the streets in big, fat splats. Not a happy circumstance in a city that averages less than ten inches a year. Traffic didn’t crawl. It petrified. Stuck in a river of red taillights, I drummed my nails on the wheel to the rhythm of the windshield wipers as I inched forward. Frustration as much as an on-the-spot decision to reward my troops had me pulling into the same donut shop I’d vanished from almost a week ago.
The owner of the shop spotted me through the window to the bakery part of the shop. “It’s you! The lieutenant!”
Hard to deny it with subdued rank on my collar tabs. I nodded, and he flew through the swinging door, dusting his floury hands on his white apron.
“Josie! Bring a box! Give the lieutenant whatever she wants, our compliments.”
“Thanks, but I can’t accept gratuities.”
“Gratuities, shamooities.”
Having thus disposed of at least seven volumes of Department of Defense regulations, he beamed while Josie filled the box with my team’s favorites and flatly refused to accept payment.
“Really, I can’t accept . . .”
Inspiration struck when I spotted a tin coffee can on the counter with a taped sign indicating this establishment supported the Summer Special Olympics. I stuffed a twenty in the can to appease my conscience and whatever DOD gods might be looking over my shoulder.
I say that in jest. Now. But I can state with utter truthfulness that my heart just about popped out of my chest when I learned not twenty minutes later that I had, in fact, a very powerful DOD god coming down on me.
I got the word when I dashed through the side door, clutching a soggy donut box and my wimpy umbrella. The first person I met was Dennis. His orangey hair stood on end and his eyes were huge, almost eclipsing his nerdo black frames.
“Techno Diva! Where the hell have you been?”
The near panic in his voice made me blink. “Mexico. Remember?”
“You got home yesterday afternoon,” he accused.
And yesterday was a duty day, I remembered belatedly. So I didn’t call in and let the team know I was taking the rest of the day off? What was the big deal?
“I was a little tired.” I injected just a touch of sarcasm into my drawl. “Being kidnapped, rolling a Hummer, whacking my head against its window, and taking down a syndicate kind of does that to me.”
“Never mind the syndicate. What’s wrong with your phones? We’ve been trying to reach you since you got home. So has Dr. J.”
Eeeeuw.
“I’ll call him as soon as I get squared away,” I promised Dennis.
“You don’t need to call him. He’s here.”
“Here?” I echoed faintly. “In El Paso?”
“In your office.”
Double eeeeuw.
“He got in late last night. Like I said, we’ve been trying to reach you.”
I seriously contemplated running back out into the rain, but that would only delay the inevitable. I wasn’t facing Dr. J with a box of donuts, though. He’d read the gratuity guilt all over my face.
“Here.” I shoved the donuts at Dennis. “Get rid of these.”
It said much for the state of O’Reilly’s mind that he upended the box and crammed it in a trash can. Ordinarily he would have concealed the goodies until the coast was clear.
I had my breathing more or less under control by the time I approached my office. Wish I could say the same for my nerves. I had to swipe my sweaty palm against my leg twice before offering it to my boss.
“Dr. J! So good to see you, sir.”
He set aside a cup containing a pale liquid that had to be one of Pen’s herbal concoctions. She was sipping one with him, as were Rocky and Sergeant Cassidy. Judging by the carefully neutral expressions on all three male faces, it wasn’t their first cup.
Dr. J rose and took the hand I held out. “I was very relieved to hear you’d come through that horrible ordeal in Mexico with no serious injuries, Samantha.”
“Thanks.”
He assumed a stern expression. Not an easy trick for a guy in a blue and yellow polka-dot bow tie. “I would
have preferred, however, to hear it from you personally.”
“Yes, sir. The thing is . . .”
Ooops! Full stop. I couldn’t exactly explain the thing was Mitch’s thigh. Or that it was connected to other parts that had kept me humming and happy right up until the moment I walked in the door.
But I could tell him about Snoopy.
“I don’t know if the team had a chance to tell you about the field performance of the Self-Nurturing Find and Identify Robot, sir. They programmed it to track me down in the middle of the desert. The little sucker can sniff out anything.”
Dr. J’s stern expression gave way to a gleam of genuine interest. “Drs. England and Balboa have been filling me in on its capabilities. I see great potential there, Samantha. Great potential.”
Rain still hammered down outside, but inside my office was suddenly all smiles and sunshine. This is what FST-3 was all about! This is why we put up with each other’s idiosyncrasies. Why we endured all those long days out at our test site. We’d finally hit on something that might, just might, significantly improve the capability of our combat troops.
“I’m so glad you see Snoopy’s possibilities, Dr. J. If you’d like, we can clear the hallway and give you a demonstration.”
“Clear the hall?”
“We still have a few waterlogged computers stacked in the corridor,” Sergeant Cassidy explained. “They’re left over from the fire.
“Not to worry,” I added hurriedly as my boss gulped and tugged on his bowtie. “They’re going to computer heaven as so as I finish the paperwork.”
“Yes, well . . .”
“I’ll have it done this week. I promise. Barring any further visits from ex-husbands, electrical fires, or kidnappings, that is.”
My feeble attempt at a joke hit like the proverbial brick. Sergeant Cassidy gazed at the ceiling, Rocky smoothed a palm down his shirt front, Dennis grimaced, and even Pen had to work to summon a smile.
“Actually,” Dr J. said again, “obtaining a demonstration of, er, Snoopy’s capabilities is only one of the reasons I flew out to El Paso. I wanted to assure myself that you are all right . . .”
Catch Her If You Can Page 17