by Terry Poole
She stepped up to Kelly and hugged him hard. “Mon chere amie, this is a very dangerous game you play.”
“I know, G, but what choice do I have? You know as well as I do that the moment the firing starts and Danna thinks she won’t get her revenge against me, she will immediately kill Nathan. I have to do this. It’s the only chance I have of getting Nathan out alive.”
G moved back and gave Kelly a small tear-filled nod. “Be careful.”
“I’ll do my best. And, G?”
“Oui?”
“Take care of Brendan if this goes south.”
G pressed a finger to his lips. “You know I will, but you do not get to talk like this. You will bring Nathan and yourself home safely. Do you understand?”
Kelly smiled against her finger, giving her a short dip of his head in acknowledgment.
“Good.” She sucked in a breath and let it out noisily. “Now go because I am sorely tempted to stop you.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” Kelly said to her softly as he walked past her, pulled his machete free then began to hack his way to the main road instead of his assigned position.
It only took a few short minutes to reach the cleared edge alongside the roadway. Kelly dropped his pack and machete onto the ground. He was sorry to lose them but there was no alternative. He would go in armed, still wearing his tactical vest, because it would be expected of him. He left all his weapons where they were on his body but he couldn’t be hampered by the pack and machete. Well, all his weapons except for his precious Korsakov which he had hidden on the plane before parachuting down. Kelly was hoping to keep that baby for future use.
Pulling his hat and goggles off, he tucked them into a large pocket in his pants and used his sleeve to wipe some of the paint off his face in an attempt to make him a little more recognizable. Kelly waited until he heard G ask if everyone was in position. Several affirmatives answered her query, including his own.
“Target is now silent,” Moose said moments later.
He took several deep breaths, shaking his shoulders out, preparing himself. Like Granda said, adrenaline was useful but it had to be controlled, properly focused, or it became nothing more than a bad case of nerves. It was ‘now or never’ and ‘never’ simply was not an option.
Kelly strode out to the center of the road that led to the main gate of the Varga compound and began to walk. The heavily guarded entrance was the only way in other than through the electrified fencing, which circled the perimeter of the compound. There was little sound from the jungle around him. The rough gravel crunched beneath his heavy boots, the only accompaniment Kelly had as he resolutely accepted his unknown fate.
He could tell the moment they saw him by the sudden flurry of activity in front of him. Raising his arms high, fingers spread wide, to show he had no weapons in his hands, he continued walking to the gate. The earpiece crackled to life and he tried not to wince at the loud yell in his ear.
“Kelly! What the hell, man? What are you doing?” Frodo shouted into the device.
“Quiet, Frodo,” G snapped at him. “And hold your fire until I give the order.”
“Frodo, what’s going on?” Manny softly asked, sounding confused.
“I’m up in the nest and I can see Kelly through the scope. He’s on the main road with his hands up and he’s walking toward the front gate,” Frodo answered quietly.
“Are you serious?” Moose growled through several audible indrawn breaths. “The fuck, Kelly?”
“That’s enough, people,” Cookie barked. “He knows what he has to do. Maintain radio silence until we get the go-ahead to continue from G.”
The earpiece, thankfully, went silent. Kelly may have wanted the others to overhear what was happening, but he didn’t want them arguing and yelling just in case his future captors heard the sounds, unlikely as it might be.
The steel gate had a guardhouse to one side and the electrified wire fencing, which stood at least six feet high, ran from the gate in either direction. The team had planned for that, each person having heavy-duty wire cutters on them as part of their pack.
As Kelly neared the small structure, two men ran up to him with another one standing back at the gate, automatic gun raised in his direction. Kelly slowed to a stop in the center of the road and waited.
Let the fun begin.
The two men immediately began to search him, removing his weapons and dropping them to into a pile far enough to one side that Kelly couldn’t reach them. Not unless he wanted more holes through him than Swiss cheese. They left his cell phone and other personal items tucked in his pockets after a cursory examination.
Good. The idiots.
The men jerked his arms down and roughly secured his wrists together with a zip tie, but in front of him, not behind. Kelly maintained a neutral expression even though he was laughing his ass off on the inside.
Seriously? Arms in front?
What morons secured a potentially dangerous captive with their hands in front? And Kelly was a very dangerous captive even without weapons.
A low snort and a quickly silenced giggle came through his earpiece. It was nice to know his situation was amusing to the rest of the team. One of the men nodded to the guard still back at the gatehouse who lifted a radio and spoke into it for a moment. After receiving a reply, the guard stepped up to the gate and dragged it back.
The other two each grasped Kelly’s arms and pulled him through the open gate. The main villa lay before him with a large circular driveway leading to the main doors. Off to one side was the vehicle garage. All just like the satellite images had shown with no unexpected surprises.
As Kelly was forced in the house’s direction, he glanced surreptitiously around him, noting the number of men on the second-floor wraparound balcony. There should have been far more men. They might have been armed but they were far too overconfident and arrogant. Kelly noted how some of the men leaned indolently against the building’s walls, others on the iron railings of the balcony. Some chatted with each other while others looked at their phones. He took stock of the pitiful handful of men spread out on the grounds. None of them were alert to the danger he represented.
Fools. Where the hell did Danna find these yahoos? Obviously, good henchmen are hard to find nowadays.
What happened to all the sharp-eyed mercenaries, the well-trained killers that used to be employed by Varga? Did they all abandon Danna when Varga died in prison like rats leaving a sinking ship?
Dropping his chin to his chest to hide the motion, Kelly began quietly clicking his teeth together thanking Granda once more for making them all learn Morse code. He stopped and waited. Soft clicking came from his earpiece in reply.
Gotcha.
His message had been received and understood. The men supposedly guarding the compound were not the highly trained people Kelly had thought to find. Instead, they were thugs and lowlifes with little to no discipline or training.
“Towers clear.” Kelly heard softly through the earpiece. There was no uproar so no one had noticed that the men in the two lookout towers had been removed from the equation.
Kelly was led past massive open arches and pillars, his muscles tensing until he felt like he would explode. The hair on the top of his head lifted, fluttered and settled as if an invisible hand had just ruffled his hair. Kelly heaved in a huge breath. No matter what happened, Granda was with him. That did more to calm and center him than all the meditation in the world.
Squaring his shoulders, Kelly lifted his chin as the large front doors were opened and he was pushed inside. He was surprised to see the entry foyer empty. Where were the guards? Besides patrolling the grounds outside, there should have been more here, inside the house. Regardless, Kelly quickly matched his surroundings with the floor plans he had been given to memorize, noting windows, doors, and hallways.
His escorts led him up the grand staircase in the center of the foyer and then to the right although Kelly had expected them to take him to one of the basement cells. A sudden bad feeling
settled in the pit of his stomach. He suspected that he knew exactly where the men were taking him, and he wasn’t looking forward to it.
But instead of taking him to the study where the shoot-out had occurred, where the child had died, they stopped at a different door. One of the men knocked softly, waiting for a quiet response before opening it. Kelly couldn’t restrain his horrified gasp as the door swung wide and the room’s contents were revealed.
It was a child’s bedroom. A woman dressed all in black with black lace over her head, knelt in prayer at the foot of the child’s bed. On the bed lay a clear box, more like a coffin, with the body of a child perfectly preserved within it.
Swallowing hard, Kelly’s stomach tried to rebel on him as he recognized the child in the coffin. The hum of a compressor at the foot of the bed explained how the child was being maintained like a macabre mockery of Snow White.
Samuel Varga. Oh. My. God.
He averted his head only to realize that the room itself had been made into a shrine. Framed pictures of Samuel covered the walls and above Samuel’s head was a huge painting of the Holy Family looking benevolently down upon the child where he lay in repose.
“Now, you finally see what you have done,” the woman softly stated.
She rose slowly to her feet, then placing a hand on the clear container, lifted the lace to reveal her face. It was Señora Danna Varga, the drug lord’s wife and Samuel’s mother.
Danna lovingly stroked the top of the clear coffin. “No. Do not be afraid, my precious,” she crooned to the dead child within. “This man will not hurt you again. See? I have brought him here just so you can watch him be punished as he deserves.”
Kelly’s jaw fell open. The woman was clearly quite insane.
She turned her gaze to Kelly, hatred blazing in her dark eyes. “Yes, my precious one. He will be punished. He will suffer as I have suffered, losing his doctor as I have lost you.”
The window on the far side of the room abruptly shattered as the man on Kelly’s right grunted and fell away. Almost immediately the one on the left also dropped. Danna screamed and flung herself over Samuel’s coffin, attempting to protect it with her body.
Kelly wasted no time. Easily snapping the ties that bound his wrists, he spun and grabbed one of the dropped weapons and ran out of the room. He gave his escorts a quick glance, noting that both men were dead with neat holes in their foreheads.
“Good call, G. Thanks, Frodo. Take your targets down and let’s strike up the band. I’m heading for the back door.”
No one replied as he raced for the stairs located at the rear of the building and he didn’t expect them to. According to the plans Cookie had obtained, the kitchen was near the base of these stairs and the basement cell was close to the kitchen. Kelly heard the first explosion then the second as the fuel supply tanks and garage were taken out.
The party had begun, and it was time to dance. He staggered as another, much stronger explosion, rocked the walls around him. That would be the front of the house, he mused.
Kelly skidded to a halt at the top of the stairs, moments before a bullet sped past his head close enough for him to feel the disturbed air across his forehead. A blow to his bad shoulder quickly followed, temporarily numbing his arm and sending a fireball of pain through him. The gun fell from his suddenly numb fingers as he spun from the impact and crashed through the door behind him into what appeared at a glance, to be another bedroom.
He mentally cursed his careless lack of judgment. Too caught up and desperate to get to Nathan, his lapse may have cost them both of their lives.
Having the instinct to grab his attacker’s shirt with his good hand as he went down, Kelly immediately followed through, bringing his feet up as he fell hard on his back. He caught the man in the hips with both boots and kicked up, sending the startled man sailing over his head, deeper into the room. Rolling to his feet, it was hard not to instinctively grip his aching arm. He had to acknowledge the pain, and then compartmentalize it, locking it away in a box in his mind. Kelly knew he would pay for it later but he couldn’t afford to give into the ache as he prepared to defend himself.
His attacker had smashed into a solidly built wooden dresser against the wall and from the angle of his head, he wouldn’t be getting up again. Pure dumb luck. Kelly snatched up his weapon using his other hand and spun around. This time instead of charging out the door, he hesitated and carefully looked out, checking both sides of the hallway, before warily and slowly sliding step-by-step down the hall. One stupid mistake was enough, thank you very much. It was for this very reason Kelly had put G in charge of the team, he couldn’t trust his emotions, his need to get to Nathan, not to overwhelm his training and experience.
Pandemonium reigned over the estate as weapons were fired and voices were heard yelling or screaming in agony. Kelly took the stairs two at a time to the main level, pausing just before the bottom. Cautiously peering around the corner, and seeing no one, he carefully shuffled down the short hallway that led directly to a now deserted kitchen.
No one was in sight, which didn’t surprise Kelly much. Bang a stick at the front of a hive and the wasps abandoned the hive to attack the intruder at the door. Especially with this bunch of poorly trained chuckleheads. Everyone was either in hiding, fighting out front or neutralized.
A closed door separated the kitchen from the rest of the house and past the kitchen a hallway branched off in three directions. Kelly needed to take the one on the right. Without wasting momentum, he kicked the door hard near the handle, the weakest point. His boot connected with the door solidly and it crashed open. The noise swallowed in the racket around him.
The hallway to the right had an open door revealing more stairs leading down. According to intel, the basement was entirely made of concrete and had cells for prisoners as well as a wine cellar and cold room.
Something twitched the hair on the nape of Kelly’s neck. He suddenly dropped into a partially twisted crouch with his gun raised and ready, aimed back down the hall in the direction he had just come from.
“Don’t shoot me, Kelly. I’m coming around the corner,” Moose’s voice came over the earpiece.
“Ditto,” echoed Cookie.
Kelly remained ready until seconds later both men turned the corner and made their way toward him.
“Hey, guys, nice to see you both in one piece,” Kelly said, rising to his feet, glancing behind the two men to check if they were followed.
“The others are on their way,” Cookie added.
Moose scowled at Kelly. “That was a really fuckin’ stupid thing you did.”
“Yeah it was but it worked. I kept her occupied and away from Nathan.”
“I get why you did it. It was still stupid,” Moose muttered as they began their descent down the stairs.
Kelly led with Cookie in the middle and Moose bringing up the rear, keeping their backs covered from a rear attack. As he stepped down onto the basement floor, he froze at the sight of the last cell’s door. It was wide open. Had Nathan escaped during all the pandemonium? Then he heard Danna’s voice and his heart stopped beating.
“Kelly, stop,” Cookie whispered as he grabbed Kelly’s arm and tugged on him.
Kelly wasn’t even aware that he had moved for the open door, but the throb in his shoulder brought him up short, allowing Cookie the opportunity to step in front of him barring his path. This time Kelly couldn’t hide the wince as he rubbed his shoulder, trying to ease the sharp ache.
Cookie saw it and gave Kelly a sympathetic look. “I’m sorry for hurting you but you have to let me go first. She’s talking to someone, probably Nathan, but if it is Nathan and he is still alive she won’t hesitate to kill him the moment she sees you. She doesn’t know me and my presence will confuse her. Plus, I have a lot more experience with hostage negotiations than you do.”
Kelly glanced past Cookie at the open door to Nathan’s cell, his instincts at war with his mind. He brought his gaze back to Cookie, to the doorway, th
en back to Cookie once more before shoving himself roughly back against the wall. He nodded his permission, knowing the wisdom of Cookie’s words even though every cell of his body was screaming at him to push the man aside and go in with guns blazing.
“All right, go. But I’ll be right behind you.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“I am here, mes amies. I have your six.” G’s voice abruptly came through their earpieces and their focus was drawn to the top of the stairs.
G leaned against the doorframe, confident and utterly bad ass. Her hat pulled low, a gun in each hand, attention fixed down the hall, covering the only access to the basement.
Cookie shook his head at Moose. “Damn.”
“Yup.”
“Go,” she snapped into the communications device without looking at them. “Frodo and Manny are clearing the road. Manny will meet us outside and Frodo will join up on the way.”
Without a further word, the men arranged themselves with Moose bringing up the rear once more and then as a group, they moved forward one step at a time.
Kelly thought he would lose the contents of his stomach when he peered past Cookie’s shoulder and saw Danna standing in the center of the cell with her gun pointed directly at Nathan.
Chapter Six
Nathan stared out the tiny window of his cell. He knew it wasn’t safe to balance on the thin wooden stool but he needed to see something other than the four gray walls enclosing him. He felt like he was suffocating. Unfortunately, the view wasn’t much better out the window, a short stretch of manicured lawn, a tall wire fence then jungle, jungle, and more jungle. Nathan sighed then slowly and as carefully as he could, stepped off the stool, keeping one hand on the concrete wall to steady himself.
Dropping heavily down on the cot with his elbows on his knees, he bent his head as he studied his clasped hands. It had been early Monday morning when he’d been taken and he was pretty sure it was late Tuesday afternoon now. At least, he thought it might be. It was hard to tell when the long hours that passed all blurred together.