Arturo poked out his lips, briefly surveying Gage with narrowed eyes. “Still…that’s a huge number around here. You’re here to jump?”
“Uh, yeah, I think I’d like to jump…me and my, uh, friend. Especially if we can rent some rigs.”
“You are licensed?”
“Yes, but I don’t have it on me.” Gage licked his lips. “I’m in the USPA database.”
Arturo nodded. “No problem, but it may be a while. My door isn’t latching the way it should and, until my mechanic can get it working smoothly, I’m grounding her. I called a pilot friend north of Barcelona. He’s going to fly up and take our loads for the rest of the day.”
“I’m going to go pack,” the girlfriend said. She turned to Gage, giving him a firm handshake. “Pleasure to meet you, Greg.”
Arturo motioned to the hangar. “You want to come look around, check out our rigs?”
Gage turned, looking back the way he’d come. He could see Angelines walking from the distant restaurant. Her limp seemed about the same and she was carrying two paper sacks, one darkened, presumably, by the bottles of cold water.
Gage turned to Arturo. “I understand you were in the military?”
“Twenty-three years.”
“What branch, may I ask?”
“I was in the Spanish Army.”
“Were you a jumper?”
“I was, airborne initially. Then I attended HALO school.”
“Where?”
“We came to the U.S., actually. Fort Bragg.”
Gage nodded knowingly. “You were special operations.” It wasn’t a question.
“Indeed,” Arturo replied. “Grupo Valencia.”
Maintaining eye contact, Gage said, “I was in special ops, too, my friend…and I desperately need a favor.”
The affability slid from Arturo and, behind it, Gage saw the cold, calculating mask of a warrior. The two men stood there in a gulf of silence.
As Angelines approached, her face splotchy, her breathing a bit ragged, Arturo turned to her. Gage watched as the Spaniard’s eye moved down to the bandage on her leg. Despite the clotting powder, it had begun to weep wine-colored blood in its center.
Arturo turned back to Gage. “Tell me everything. No lies. And that guarantees you nothing.”
Gage took a bottle of water from Angelines, drinking half in one pull. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and started talking.
Forty-five minutes later, wearing yellow student jumpsuits and parachute rigs, Gage and Angelines followed Arturo and his girlfriend to the Cessna. Arturo placed the cardboard box inside before turning and walking back to the manifest table, telling the manifest manager what to do when his friend arrived with the backup aircraft.
“But I thought the Cessna was dead-lined,” the woman said, pointing to the trio boarding Arturo’s airplane.
“That was all just a cover story,” Arturo replied, putting a finger over his lips. “But keep that quiet, okay?”
“What’s the deal?”
“I’m going to put those two out over the beach near L’escala,” Arturo said in a low voice. “They’re on their honeymoon and he’s paying me a great deal of cash, but it’s an illegal jump, so keep that to yourself, okay?”
The manager shrugged. Moments later, the Cessna strained against its brakes as Arturo did his run-up. Seconds later, they were aloft.
* * *
Gage and Arturo chatted over the headset while Angelines and Marina, Arturo’s girlfriend, rewrapped Angelines’ leg in the rear. There was only one seat, the pilot’s, so Gage knelt in the jumpmaster’s position, normally where the seat next to the pilot would be.
“Here’s the way we’re going to play this,” Arturo said. “Right now we’re about three thousand feet AGL. In a few minutes we’re going to enter El Prat’s airspace and they’re going to call me. I’ve got my transponder on so they know who and where we are. If I don’t respond, it will send up red flags. So I will respond, and I’ll tell them we’re a jump plane and we’re landing at a private grass strip at La Rabassada to pick up a part for my door.”
“Will that concern them?”
Arturo shook his head. “Not a bit. They might vector me a little bit but they shouldn’t care about us that far from El Prat, especially to the west. They’ll probably bring me low and just keep an eye on us.”
“And once we land?”
Arturo looked at Gage and smiled. “You’re going to ‘steal’ my friend’s car. And if I get questioned about this, I will say that an American madman hijacked me at gunpoint.”
Gage nodded approvingly then asked, “And if they ask why you didn’t report it immediately?”
“I’ll tell them you threatened revenge if I ever talked. What choice did I have other than to keep my mouth shut? Don’t worry, my friend, I’ll play it off if necessary.”
As the sprawling metropolis of Barcelona slid into view, pinks and whites and tans, Gage checked the time. It was growing quite late in the afternoon. He gritted his teeth, hoping he could get to Acusador Redon before he left for the day.
Just then, the radio squawked and Barcelona’s Approach Control called Arturo’s aircraft. Arturo went with the same story he’d told Gage. There was a brief pause before Approach Control advised him to continue at 3,000 AGL and to call out his downwind, base, and final legs.
Arturo gave Gage a thumbs up. “If they thought you were aboard this aircraft, they’d have delayed me.”
Ignoring the searing pain from his kidney, Gage turned to Angelines, yelling over the prop and rushing wind. “We’re landing in five minutes. Be ready to haul ass.”
Angelines leaned back, covering her eyes with her hand. “Believe me,” she replied. “I’m ready to be done with all of this.”
Chapter Thirty-Two
Justina had watched in horror as the tattooed woman sewed Señora Moreno’s face back together. While the woman worked, speaking in a surprisingly clinical tone, she told Señora she was a registered nurse. Taking her time and occasionally snipping away minute pieces of ragged flesh from Señora’s narcotic-deadened face, the woman added what amounted to about thirty well-done, tight stitches from Señora’s ear to mouth. Finished, she coated both sides with antibiotic ointment before covering it with an adhesive bandage and securing it with a wrap that traveled over the top of Señora’s head.
“I’ve never sewn up that type of wound before.” The nurse glanced at the man for a moment, lowering her voice. “You’ll still need to have it looked at soon. While I trust my stitches will take, there may be other considerations when sewing a cheek back together.”
The man had been lounging in a chair opposite Justina during the medical procedure. He’d fiddled with his iPhone for a bit, afterward thumbing through a magazine. When the nurse finished, he beckoned her, whispering something in her ear. She nodded, walking into another room while the man stood before Justina and Señora Moreno. “Now that the unpleasantness has been repaired, it’s time to have a bit of frank discussion.”
With rapid footsteps, the tattooed woman rushed back into view with a large hypodermic needle in her hand. The man moved quickly, clamping Justina’s upper arms, pulling them behind her. The nurse wasted no time administering the shot in Justina’s shoulder. It stung, burning afterward as the fluid dissipated in her body.
“Relax,” the nurse smiled. “You’ve never felt so good when that hits your bloodstream.”
“Her, too,” he said, nudging Señora Moreno’s foot. “Full dosage, if not a little bit more.”
“The dosage chart is specific. We don’t want to kill her.”
“Not yet,” the man laughed, the sounds modulating. What had been sharp, exultant laughter from the man suddenly drew out like a recording run at a quarter-speed.
Justina’s vision was altered. Movements began to appear like streaked neon. The smallest of sounds became clinging cymbals and bellowing bass tones. As the woman walked away from Señora Moreno, Justina watched as the nurse’s tattoos stretched out,
melding with the background, becoming a canvas of inky blur. And my headache is gone, Justina blissfully realized, quickly scolding herself for her suddenly contented demeanor but soon after forgetting why exactly she needed to maintain focus.
What is happening?
“How long?” she heard him ask, bringing Justina back to the situation at hand.
“It’ll be best in ten or fifteen minutes, when it’s had time to marinate into all recesses of her brain.”
“How long until it dissipates?”
“At least an hour. Maybe an hour-and-a-half.”
There were three of them, each. Three bearded men to her left, three tattooed nurses to the right, spinning like a twisted kaleidoscope. They kissed again, their tongues doing the dance of the snakes.
Then they were gone, all six of them.
Justina blinked rapidly.
Time began to slow, or did it speed up? As Justina turned her twenty kilo head to Señora Moreno, whose head had tilted backward, eyes partially shut, lolling, Justina suddenly heard the moans and what must have been the rhythmic bumping of a headboard.
They’re in there doing it. While we sit here like two heroin addicts, slaves to the narcotics in our veins, that sicko is in there satisfying his sexual urges.
In one of the more peculiar situations of her life, Justina discovered that certain parts of her brain wanted to function normally while the remainder of her brain, and her body, were falling further and further under the drug’s spell. It reminded her of those miserable dreams where she wanted something that was clearly in reach: the clichéd expanding hallway, a tarry surface that trapped her feet, or (her least favorite) a prancing demon that tied her up and flayed her while a crowd cheered from the sidelines.
As she slid to the floor, she realized the arrogance of the bearded man. While he’d handcuffed her, he’d done nothing to prevent her escape. And as she slid across the floor like some terminal drunkard in her last moments of consciousness, Justina briefly forgot what it was she was hoping to do.
There was a smacking sound from the bedroom followed by the woman’s cackling laughter. Then another smack. She could hear their voices, inflamed, speaking Catalan. Justina didn’t know the language well, but had been propositioned enough to know the vulgar words when she heard them. Coming back up to her knees, first banging her head on the stucco wall, Justina, using her mouth, rooted into Señora’s purse like a gluttonous sow into a feeding trough. Aware of the slobber she couldn’t contain, she used her mouth to clamp Señora Moreno’s iPhone, holding it as best she could.
It was nearly hopeless. Her motor skills were quickly deteriorating. She tried to wake the iPhone with her nose, realizing that it had been turned off. In a movement that took a full minute, Justina rolled her body over, fumbling with her fingers until she eventually felt the trademark Apple oval slide switch at the top—the sleep button. Following two missed tries, she finally wedged her thumbnail under the rubberized phone protector, holding the switch on for what felt like ten seconds. She let the phone drop and tried to roll over.
Her body failed her. The motor skills she’d possessed thirty seconds ago were gone.
Do not accept that as fact. Just do it! Twist your body and roll!
If allowed an out-of-body experience, Justina would love to slap herself across the face. Twice. Half of the usable cells in her brain screamed for her body to move, but her muscles would no longer comply.
Her plan was simple: roll over, tap the phone with her nose, and redial Sven’s phone, or Señora’s lawyer, or whatever number that happened to pop up. It would take only two touches of her nose.
Can I even speak?
“Kkkkannn I eeefffennn thhhpppeeekkk?” she mumbled in English, drooling again as she tested her ability to articulate.
Get it together, Justina commanded herself, her Polish inner voice authoritarian and demanding. You can do this! Roll over. Tap the phone twice. Give whomever the critical information or just leave the damned phone on. Maybe the authorities can home in on the signal. This will be the difference between your living and your dying.
Justina heard the tattooed woman crying out in ecstasy, yelling for the man to do something harder. Her screams sounded like the overdone, ridiculous noises from the actresses in an adult video Justina had laughingly, and embarrassingly, viewed once with a curious friend back in Poland.
With a renewed burst of effort, Justina managed to twist herself, hearing her own involuntary grunts. The phone was mercifully face-up, the home screen shining brightly. Coiling herself like an inchworm, Justina brought her face down on the iPhone, stabbing the phone icon. There, the second number of the oversize digits (thank you Señora Moreno for setting your phone to the hard-of-viewing setting!) was Sven’s number, just below Redon’s office number.
Touch it, Justina. Touch it and tell your story, no matter if he answers or not. You can leave a message if you have to.
With a jerk of her head she successfully touched the number, her satisfied chirp foreign to her as the screen changed to a phone image, shaking back and forth as it rang. One ring, two rings, three rings.
The phone screen changed. It had been answered!
* * *
Moments earlier, the Cessna 182 had roared back into the sky. Arturo wagged the wings back and forth, a pilot’s goodbye but probably in this case intended to symbolize good luck. After waving back to him through the rolled-down window, Gage shifted gears on the old, compact Toyota pickup, bouncing away from the private airport when an alarm-style ringing startled them both from the cardboard box.
“Phone!” Gage shouted, watching as Angelines tore the box open, reaching below the sheaf of bonds, into the stacks of money, and pulling the mobile phone out.
The caller ID read “Lydia Moreno.”
“Give it!” he yelled, snatching the phone away and pressing the green button.
“Hello! Justina! Señora Moreno! Señora Moreno! Justina?”
The connection went dead.
* * *
The bare heel smashed down on the iPhone, destroying it despite the rubberized protective case. Justina was too immobilized to even lift her head. She simply laid there, a line of saliva flowing from the side of her mouth, numbly eyeing the tanned foot, marked by sun-bleached hair running from the ankle onto the top of the arched foot. Shards of glass penetrated the heel and, with each minute movement, she watched the prism-effect of the glass, gouging the thick cutaneous tissue. Then she was lifted, face-to-face, with the bearded man. He smirked at her, like a parent secretly proud of their mischievous child.
“Naughty girl,” he admonished, his tongue slithering over his curled lip.
When she was dumped back into her chair, pain briefly spiking through her shoulders due to her cuffed wrists taking the brunt of her weight, she watched as the naked man, his excitement visibly abating, picked the glass from his heel, licking his own blood from his fingers afterward. The tattooed girl appeared, cinching a short robe around her waist, frowning at his foot as he relayed what had just happened.
The nurse listened before she turned and nodded approvingly at Justina. Though much of her body was currently useless, Justina’s eyes went wide at the sudden recollection.
Gennady!
The nurse was one of Gennady’s girlfriends.
Gennady was the manager of Eastern Bloc.
“Our little fun time is over,” the bearded man said, walking away. Seconds later he was back, wearing loose athletic pants and nothing else. “It’s time to get some answers.” He walked in front of Justina, looking down at her.
“I’m going to ask you some questions. Will you answer them, and answer them truthfully?”
This moment was, unfortunately, the worst few seconds of the entire drug-induced episode. Despite the bellowing of her inner good judgment, telling her, of course, to mislead him or outright lie, and despite some deep-seeded gut knowledge of what she needed to do, to her utter horror, she felt her chin dip, followed by a tightening i
n the rear of her neck.
It was a nodding movement. She was unwillingly cooperating.
The man touched her cheek affectionately, murmuring, “Bona noia.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Staring westward through the floor-to-ceiling glass of his office, Cortez Redon sipped the icy whiskey, allowing it to sear his throat. Earlier, his assistant, Mara, visibly puzzled by the events of the day, had come in to ask him if it was okay for her to leave. Having irritably dismissed her, he now chain smoked, strictly forbidden in government buildings, not that he cared. His loafers off, Redon rubbed his feet on the tight Berber-style carpet, and on one another, watching the blaze of tangerine sun as it slowly descended in the western sky, overheating the office since his blinds were pulled to the top.
Cortez Redon was scared.
Earlier, when he’d been down the street in the hotel room with that tall siren, his cell phone had buzzed just as he was disrobing.
“You’re being set up, you stupid little bastard,” was all Xavier Zambrano had said.
And for a moment, Redon’s heart had ceased to beat.
He’d immediately asked for clarification, but Xavier had already hung up.
Xavier Zambrano…
…not who you want such a phone call from.
Xavier Zambrano, head of Los Leones. Xavier Zambrano, a man who’d probably ordered at least a thousand kills in the past decade. Xavier Zambrano, the man who Redon feared more than any other man on earth.
Redon stared at the handsome blue bank book on the desk. Ruefully, he pondered his earlier excitement, when that older woman had told him of the Navarro fortune, followed by the beautiful young woman who’d seemingly desired him in bed. What a heady moment it had been.
You’re being set up…
Redon dragged on his cigarette, an ultra-mild German Auslese de Luxe, and pressed it into the notch of his ashtray. Lifting the bank book, he thumbed the pages, eyeing each of the entries, still intoxicated by what the old woman had told him earlier.
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