FStop

by Desiree Holt

  “God.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “How will I ever figure out which ones to concentrate on?”

  “Take it easy, kitten.” Mike came up behind her, eased her into a chair, rubbed her shoulders to ease the tension. “You know what you’re looking for. Let’s just take them one at a time. Meanwhile Troy can replay the disk from the video camera on the other laptop.”

  Faith called room service and ordered sandwiches and drinks, with a pot of hot tea for Kat, telling them there was an extra tip if they got it up to the suite right away. Then they began the process.

  Someone poured Kat a cup of tea as soon as the food arrived and she sipped at it absently, refusing anything to eat as she studied photo after photo, trying to find just the right one that would help her “see” what she needed to.

  “There!” She almost dropped her cup in her excitement as she pointed to one picture. “Right there. All of these. There’s five of them. See?”

  Mike leaned over her shoulder. “You mean that small piece of roof and the tiny bit of dirt clearing?”

  “Yes. I know it isn’t much but that’s the building I saw. I know that’s where they’re being held. Can you print these out?”

  “No problem,” Dan told her. He selected each frame, hit print and they began to spit out of the printer. He spread them out in front of her in a row. “What’s next?”

  Kat studied each one carefully. Finally she looked up. “Okay. I’m ready. Mike?”

  “Got it.” He closed the drapes in the room, left only one lamp on low and moved everyone away from the table.

  Kat breathed deeply, wiping everything else from her mind, stared at the photos, closed her eyes, then opened them again. The scene was so clear for a moment she thought she was actually at the place. She saw the entire adobe hut, the dirt clearing at the back and to the side, one tree with its branches overhanging the roof. The field of marijuana. A huge field.

  A large, heavyset man in sweat-stained khakis sat on a tree stump just outside the cabin cradling a large gun in his hands. Rifle, she thought. She wished she were more familiar with guns.

  The dog she’d seen before came into view, sniffing around the man with the gun.

  A black van pulled up and two men emerged, one of them lifting a huge tray from the interior. The door to the hut was opened and there they were!

  Kat gasped as she saw them, the Wrights and Mari, dirty, bedraggled but still keeping it together. They all moved back from the door as the tray was set down on the floor, one of the men gestured with a gun, then they backed out of the hut and shut the door. A large piece of wood was slammed into a hook to keep the door locked from the outside.

  The two men stopped while one of them spoke to the man on the stump, then they climbed into the van and drove away.

  The picture wobbled, fading in and out, and then it was gone.

  Kat had been drawing on the pad of paper in front of her. Now she blinked her eyes, asked Mike to turn the lights on and pointed to the pad.

  “Got something?” he asked.

  “I think so.” She struggled to keep the excitement from her voice. What if she was wrong? Carefully she described what she’d seen, detail by detail and showed them the rough sketch she’d made while “viewing” the location. “I saw them,” she said. “They’re alive. I really saw them.”

  “All right.” Dan sat down next to her and took her sketch, placing it with the photos she’d been studying. “We need to go over every photo carefully, see if we can find any approaches to the hut where we’re not exposed. You said only one guard?”

  Kat nodded. “Two others come to bring them food and water but I don’t know how often.”

  “Not at night, I’m sure. That’s when we’d have to go in, anyway.” He looked at the other men. “All right, pull up a chair, guys. Let’s get to work and figure out exactly how we’re going to do this. I need two of you to study all the still shots and give me an idea of the geography around the estancia. Troy, play that video disk again and give me all you can. And we need to make a list of the things we’ll have to take with us.”

  “Remember the dog,” Kat added. “You need to be on the lookout for it. If it’s a trained attack dog…” She let her words trail away.

  “So noted,” Dan said.

  Kat moved away from the table, carrying her tea with her, and dropped into one of the big chairs in a corner. Faith brought her a plate with a sandwich on it and put it on the little table next to her.

  “I know you’re not hungry but you have to eat. It won’t do anyone any good if you get sick.”

  Kat obediently picked up a sandwich half and began to nibble on it. “Can they really do this?” she asked. “Go in and get them out?”

  Faith smiled at her. “I was with them when they went into Peru to get Mark. They pulled him right out of the heart of a terrorist camp and took everyone down while they did it.”

  “But there may be more guards around the hut where the…hostages are being held.” She still had a hard time getting the word out. “I could be wrong, you know.”

  Faith pulled up a footstool and sat down in front of her, reaching out to touch her hand. “Trust your instincts. That’s what I do. And trust the guys. They know what they’re doing.”

  “This is the first time it’s been so personal for me.”

  “I know. Just be glad that Brent Fontaine showed up in the wrong place and the wrong time for him and we were able to get him out of the way. Your powers seem a lot stronger since then.”

  “They are.” She put the half-eaten piece of sandwich back on the plate. “Has Mark heard any more about him?”

  “Detective Wagner said they had someone from the Tampa Police Department meet the plane and take him into custody. When they began looking into his background, the names of several other women he’d stalked turned up, so the TPD thinks it can make a good case against him. And he won’t be in any position to bother you for a long time.”

  “I can’t believe how stupid I was getting mixed up with him.”

  Faith smiled. “We all do things we regret. But you were smart enough to walk away from him.”

  Kat dropped her eyes to her lap. “Mike and I had some…issues to work out.”

  “Well, it looks like you did. I can tell he cares for you a great deal.”

  “You think so? I’m not imagining it?”

  “Oh no. I’ve had enough opportunity to see the playboy in action. I know when he’s hit and hit hard. Whatever he feels for you is good and strong.”

  “Thanks.” Kat gave her a tentative smile. “I really appreciate you saying that.”

  “I’m only telling the truth.” Faith winked at her.

  They heard the ringing of a cell phone, everyone pulled theirs out and looked to see who was getting the call.

  “Me,” Mark told them and flipped open the phone. “Go ahead.” He listened for a few minutes, nodding his head. “Good. Good. Excellent work. Now I’ve got something else for you to do.” He chuckled. “You didn’t want to sleep anyway, did you?”

  “What’s up?” Dan asked.

  “Andy’s sending us more info on the three men involved. He’s found some additional stuff that looks pretty hinky. I also gave him the coordinates of Herrera’s estancia and asked for satellite imagery of the area.” One corner of his mouth turned up. “He’s getting pretty good at stealing it.”

  At that moment the soft ding of a bell announced the arrival of a new email. Andy had forwarded the latest email from the kidnappers.

  “Fifteen million?” Dan stared at the screen.

  “Shit.” Mike slammed his fist on the table. “The Feds screwed up somehow this morning and now the hostages are going to have to pay for it.”

  “Mike?” Kat put a tentative hand on his arm.

  He turned and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his warmth. “Don’t sweat it, kitten. We’ll get them.”

  “That’s not what I was going to say.” She pointed at the email.
“He’s calling someone Señor Rasgon. It’s the first time he’s addressed anyone by name.”

  “It’s got to be some nickname for the key person he’s dealing with. He must be very pissed off to do that. We just have to figure out whose nickname it is.” He shook his head. “Maybe Andy can run it through the Dragon.”

  “You don’t need Andy for this,” she corrected. “I can translate. But it could belong to any of the three we’ve keyed in on. You’ll have to figure out which one.” And she translated from the Spanish for them.

  Mike whistled. “Damn and double damn. Now we just have to find out which one it is.”

  “No small task,” Mark said.

  “Let’s get these people back and then I have an idea how we can figure it out. If we snatch the hostages from under Herrera’s nose, he’ll be all over Señor Rasgon like white on rice. Once the hostages are safe, we need to connect with the very hostile Agent Anthony Delaware and see if he’ll go along with our plan.”

  “I don’t think he’ll have a choice if he wants to wrap this up. He can have all the credit. We just want to take down Señor Rasgon.” Dan stacked the photos together. “Let’s go over this one more time. We don’t have a lot of margin for error.”

  * * * * *

  As soon as the Gulfstream had left the airfield, the mechanic called Nando to report to him. He called back when they returned.

  “They filed a flight plan for Baja,” he said. “They weren’t gone long enough to go anyplace else.”

  “Nothing for this area of Mexico?” Nando pushed.

  “No, nothing at all. And I timed them carefully.”

  Nando was silent a moment. “Still,” he said at last, “they could have been one of the planes flying over here this afternoon. But if they were, they were too high up and flew too fast to see anything. Keep an eye on both aircraft and let me know if they take either one out again.”

  “Si, Nando. I promise.”

  But the mechanic had not counted on special orders from his boss, who at that moment came strolling across the tarmac from the terminal building.

  “Problem?” the man asked, looking at the mechanic’s worried face.

  “No, no. Just some family complications.”

  “Hope it’s nothing serious. I need you to take a run up to Los Angeles.”

  The mechanic struggled to keep the dismay from showing on his face. “Los Angeles? Now? It’s after six o’clock. I was just getting ready to leave.” Now he wished he told the man the call was about a family emergency.

  The manager shrugged. “I’ll pay you double for the overtime. Cisco is working on the Phelps plane and needs a part tonight. I can’t break him loose from the job to go get it because he’s in the middle of other maintenance work on the plane.”

  Francisco Antinor was the other mechanic who worked full-time at the airfield. Javier cursed silently at the job that would take him away from the airfield.

  “I can finish what he’s doing,” he told the manager, “if he wants to make the extra by going to L.A.”

  His boss looked at him strangely. “Is there some reason you don’t want do to this? Something you need to tell me?”

  Javier swallowed the sick feeling creeping up his throat. “No, no. No problem. Give me the information and I’ll leave right away.”

  He just prayed that neither of the Phoenix aircraft took off while he was gone.

  * * * * *

  “But we still don’t know which one of them to pinpoint,” Mark said, reading the email from Andy that he’d printed out. He was handing each sheet around as he finished with it.

  “Well, we know each of them is a strong possibility,” Dan pointed out. “They’re all in trouble.”

  “Andy dug out some offshore accounts that Pelley’s been siphoning money off to,” Mike told them, reading the sheet in his hand. “That must be how he’s covering his investment losses.”

  “He’s covered it well,” Dan commented. “He’s got a whole structure of phony companies set up that on the surface look legit. He’s probably counting on the fact that Eli Wright trusts him so much he doesn’t look any further than the financials Pelley gives him. I have a strong hunch he’s also laundering drug money through there too, for a cut of the profits. I think somewhere he invested in something Herrera had his fingers in and he got hooked.”

  “Ryan Post is in big trouble with his spas,” Mark told them, looking at what he’d printed out. “He’s borrowed money at a high rate of interest from some banks outside the federal banking system. If any of it came from Herrera, there’s your connection. Also, the DEA suspects him of using the Mexico facility to process drugs into the States, which Herrera could be leveraging him to do.”

  “Even Rand Prescott is not looking too good. He’s under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for inflating the value of the stock in a couple of his development companies, one of which he’s in partnership with Eli Wright. And there’s a lot of curiosity about where the original capital actually came from.”

  “So any of the three of them could be the one working with the cartel,” Faith mused, “or it could in fact be all of them, with one lead person directing the dance. Herrera was in a position to get his hooks into all of them and they all had both access to and an axe to grind with Eli Wright. He could have forced them to act in concert, hoping to throw us off as to the real contact. We’re still no further ahead with something we can actually prove.”

  “No.” Her husband shook his head. “Not true. Andy’s got the Dragon cranking away on Señor Rasgon. If anyone can find it, he can. Then we’ll have a starting point.”

  “Still no word from the Feds?” Rick asked.

  “Not even a whisper,” Mark said. “The couple of times I’ve called them they politely told me to mind my own business.”

  “Even though Kat’s sister is one of the hostages? I’d think they’d be all over her, holding her hand, waiting to see if she was contacted.”

  Dan shook his head. “They know Mari wasn’t the main target, just collateral damage. And Kat wouldn’t have the financial resources to pay any ransom. They’re either hogtied and don’t want anyone to know it, or they have something going and think we’ll mess it up.”

  “If they investigated Kat, wouldn’t they’d have discovered her remote viewing ability and asked her to help?”

  “Not necessarily,” Dan said. “Even though the government continues to do its own experiments with psychic abilities, not everyone is willing to use them. Plus, I’m willing to bet they still don’t have the vaguest idea of who they’re dealing with, that a major cartel is behind this. And they’re trying to figure out how to finesse this because the crime crosses international borders. They don’t want us seeing them chase their tails.”

  “We aren’t exactly their favorite people, anyway,” Rick reminded everyone.

  “All right.” Dan tapped keys on the laptop, brought up the satellite photos of the specified area that Andy had sent and leaned back in his chair. “Enough. It’s dark at seven after nine. We should be at the airport, locked and loaded and ready for takeoff in the chopper by nine o’clock. We want the cover of full darkness to do this.”

  “This is probably the best place for the drop.” Mark pointed to a spot on one of the photos. “Far enough away that unless they’ve got guards out in the marijuana fields we won’t run into trouble in the insertion.”

  “But they’ll hear the sound of the bird coming in,” Troy pointed out. “What do we do about that?”

  “Hopefully that far away it won’t draw too much attention to us. And Ed, you’ll pull away the minute the last of us drops and wait for us,” his finger hovered over the aerial shot, then landed on a spot, “here.”

  “We’ll all be linked through the comm gear but if we need communication between the helo and us, Mark, we’re going to depend on you and Faith.”

  Kat realized they were talking about the ability the Hallorans had to communicate telepathically with eac
h other. She hoped that between them, she and Faith had enough psychic abilities to help make this mission successful too.

  “Kat and I need to do a little shopping,” Faith told them. She looked at Kat. “Black jeans and shirts,” she told her. “Nothing light that can be seen anywhere.” She turned back to her husband. “I spotted a place to shop when Mark and I were out. We won’t be more than a half hour. Meanwhile, you guys can go over this one more time.”

  “All right,” Mark said, “but hurry.”

  As the women entered the elevator, two men in dark suits exited and headed down the hallway.

  “God,” Faith breathed. “I hope that’s not trouble coming.”

  * * * * *

  Rip was pacing his office, trying to keep himself as calm as possible. The news of the aborted ransom drop had everyone on edge and he knew they’d begin looking harder for a connection to the kidnappers. And trying to force a location from someone. His own personal FBI barnacle was cutting him no slack.

  He was tired, irritable, stressed out and wishing this whole disaster would finally come to an end. He desperately needed the cash he’d get from this but his bad feeling about the whole situation was getting worse by the minute. He knew the Feds had been checking his personal financial situation, just as they had the other two men, but thus far none of his secrets had emerged. Now, with the ransom catastrophe, they’d get out bigger shovels and dig deeper. Everything he’d worked so hard for could come crashing down around him.

  Making sure he had the disposable phone in his pocket, he managed to slide into the restroom and lock the door. First he called the other two men and the message from both of them was the same.

  “I’m trying to put this to bed as quickly as possible,” he told both of them. “Otherwise we’re all in big trouble. Just keep the Feds at bay and we’ll get through this.”

  Next, with a finger that shook slightly, he dialed the by now familiar number.

  “What?” Nando snapped.

  “Are you crazy asking for a bigger ransom?” Rip asked, pitching his voice low.

  “We need to teach the gringos a lesson. Don’t mess with us or there will be consequences.”