Drop Zone

by Traci Hunter Abramson

  “Just asking,” Seth said.

  “Ignore him.” Tristan fell into step beside Seth. “You know he gets grumpy when he’s hungry.”

  “Quinn’s always hungry.”

  “Not always,” Quinn said, the banter apparently taking the edge off his frustration . . . or at least distracting him from his never-ending hunger. He held his compass in front of him and veered slightly to the left. “Maybe we should try to find the river and follow it to the tourist area. It will take longer, but at least we’ll know where we’re going.”

  “Hey, quiet down, you two,” Brent called out, raising his hand to silence them.

  Everyone stopped. The silence was the first thing Seth noticed. No longer did he hear the chatter of birds in the trees or the movement of the various animals inhabiting the area. Then the rumble of a helicopter sounded in the distance.

  “You don’t think that’s our friends from last night, do you?”

  “I don’t think so.” Brent looked up, but the dense evergreen trees above them made it impossible to see the sky, except in tiny patches. “Jay, get up one of those trees and see what’s out there.”

  “How come I’m always the one who has to go up a tree?” Jay said, but he moved to the nearest one and started shimmying up the branches.

  No one answered his question. They simply waited until he’d made it high enough to report. “It looks like a recreational craft, probably a tourist helicopter.”

  “Where’s it headed?”

  “Looks like an overflight of the falls.” Jay hooked an arm around the tree trunk and kept his eyes on the sky.

  “I hate to do this to you, Jay, but stay up there until you can see where it lands. That’s where we’re heading,” Brent said.

  “Okay.”

  “Tristan and Quinn, go see if you can round up some food for us.”

  “I already took care of that,” Tristan announced. He opened up his pack and held up a pineapple.

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “We picked them this morning when we went to fill up our canteens.”

  “Them?”

  “I have one more, and Quinn has a couple in his pack,” Tristan said. “After what happened last night, I figured you wouldn’t want us to start a fire if we could help it.”

  “You were right about that.” Brent tossed the pineapple to Seth, who drew his knife and cut away the skin of the pineapple. He then sliced it into chunks and handed everyone a section, reserving one for Jay.

  “Hey, it looks like it’s landing.”

  “Can you figure out coordinates?”

  “A direction at least.” Jay waited another minute before beginning his descent. Once his feet were on the ground, he said, “I think we’re only about thirty or forty miles from where it landed.”

  Seth heard the hesitation in Jay’s voice. “But?”

  “The terrain isn’t going to be easy to cross. We’ll have a river in our path, and there’s a nasty-looking mountain a couple miles from here.”

  “At least we know what direction we’re heading,” Tristan said.

  Jay accepted the wedge of pineapple Seth handed him. “I don’t suppose any of you brought any climbing gear, did you?”

  “I’m afraid not. Just some rope.” Brent took a step in the direction Jay indicated. “We’ll figure out a way around, one way or another.”

  “As long as it doesn’t involve me climbing any more trees.”

  Chapter 19

  “The commander of SEAL Team Eight has been digging,” Terrance said, concern in his voice.

  “Let him dig,” Andrea said calmly.

  “What if he finds something that leads back to us?”

  “He won’t. I’ve made sure there’s nothing to find. Since we tricked Morenta into going after the Saint Squad for us, all clues will lead back to him.”

  “This is a dangerous game you’re playing.”

  “You know I tend to live on the edge.” Andrea gave him a sultry smile. “That’s what you love about me.”

  “Yeah, but I’m starting to look forward to this all being over.” Terrance raked his fingers through his hair. “It was bad enough when we had to deal with Rodrigo. I rather hoped Morenta would never learn our names.”

  “Rodrigo’s nothing more than Morenta’s watchdog, but you can bet anything that if one of them knows, the other one knows too. Neither of them has a clue what we’re really up to.” Andrea gave him a smug look. “Don’t worry. It won’t be much longer now.”

  * * *

  Paige jotted down notes from the various files she read on Morenta, everything from his business associates to his favorite foods. She had come prepared today with a purse full of office supplies, expecting to spend most of her time analyzing data. It didn’t take long for her to decide that getting inside the mind of a drug lord wasn’t a place she wanted to be.

  Her various colored sticky notes were arranged across the desk she now knew to be Tristan’s, each color representing a different aspect of her subject’s life, from his family and business dealings to his favorite foods and travel patterns.

  On his side of the room, Damian muttered to himself in Spanish as he worked through the mathematical equations to figure out the range of the helicopter two nights earlier. He had clipped the map to the front of a large whiteboard, along with a photo of what the real landing zone looked like.

  When Paige had too many sticky notes on her desk to organize them easily, she stood and started hanging them in the empty space on the wall beside her. A picture was beginning to take shape in her mind, but she had even more questions now than she did before she had started.

  “Have you found anything that ties Morenta to anywhere in Venezuela?” Damian asked.

  “No, nothing.” She watched Damian pick up a string, fix it to the point on the map where the helicopter’s transponder had stopped working, and tie a pen to the other end of the string. “What are you doing?”

  “Establishing our search area.” Damian took the cap off the pen and stretched the string out, using it to guide him as he drew a thick red circle on the map. He took a step back and stared. “We’re going to need more clues than what we’ve got so far. There’s way too much area to cover here.”

  “Am I reading this right? Does that take in all of Venezuela?”

  “Almost, along with parts of Colombia, Guyana, Brazil, and at least a dozen islands in the Caribbean,” Damian said, frustrated.

  Discouragement seeped into Paige’s voice. “That’s a lot of area to cover.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Wait. You said part of the search area is in Colombia, right?”

  “Yeah.” Damian pointed at the upper tip of the country.

  “That’s where Morenta’s from. Maybe they were dropped off there.”

  “It’s possible,” Damian admitted. He looked at the photograph of the landing zone and then back at the map. “You know, if we assume that the squad got off the helicopter voluntarily, we would be able to eliminate the islands. They might not know exactly where they were heading while en route, especially if they were going over their mission on the way, but they’d be able to tell if they were inserting onto an island.”

  “Are you sure? Some of those islands are pretty good sized.”

  “I know, but their flight plan was supposed to take them over land for a good hour. Even though they were supposed to insert only thirty miles from shore, in order to avoid detection, they were supposed to go inland and then circle back to the drop zone. None of those islands are large enough for them to be over land for that long, and someone would have noticed if they were over the ocean the whole time.”

  “That makes sense.”

  Damian set the string and pen on his desk. “I’m going to go tell Kel what I have so far. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Okay.” Paige turned back to the blue, orange, yellow, purple, and green sticky notes now decorating the wall.

  From all reports, Morenta was ruthless in e
very aspect of his life. He demanded complete loyalty from his family and employees, and disobedience was dealt with severely, often fatally. His motivations appeared to be money and power, and he equated respect with fear. Everything so far confirmed the information Paige had read in the last psych analysis on him.

  She thought of the mission reports she had reviewed from when the Saint Squad had previously crossed paths with the man. When Damian came back into the office, Kel was right behind him.

  Kel took one look at the sticky notes on the wall and asked, “What’s all this?”

  “The beginnings of a psych profile.” Paige leaned back against her desk. “Do you think Morenta could have set up some elaborate plan to lure the Saint Squad to him so he could get even with them? They did interfere in some of his smuggling routes a couple years back.”

  “I saw that too,” Damian said, “but I don’t know how he would gain access to the Saint Squad’s identities.”

  “It’s possible he did,” Kel said quickly. “He was working with an arms dealer at the time, a man named Akil Ramir. I was shot when we were making an extraction, and we think Ramir saw a newspaper article about my injury. It’s possible he shared the information with Morenta.”

  “We’re working with too many what ifs,” Damian said.

  “I agree. That’s why we need the psych profile, to figure out if Morenta is really capable of fixating on revenge.”

  Paige felt that uncomfortable burning sensation in her chest, the same one that always came when she knew a wrong analysis could be life altering. She looked at her notes again and tried to let her training and experience overcome her fears. “From what I’ve gathered so far, he runs his organization using fear as a main motivator. I suppose if he feels he’s being seen as weak, it’s feasible he could strike out for revenge.”

  “You don’t sound convinced,” Kel said.

  “That’s because I’m not,” Paige admitted. “Even if he managed to find out the identities of the squad, I have a hard time believing he could recruit multiple people to carry this off. If he didn’t have any problem with the pilot being murdered, why wouldn’t his people just shoot down the helicopter in the first place?”

  “Good point,” Kel conceded.

  “The other question is whether or not their disappearance has anything to do with what happened at the rappelling tower,” Damian said.

  “It’s possible, but I don’t see a connection,” Kel said. “NCIS still hasn’t found a viable suspect, much less a motive.”

  “We were talking about that,” Damian said. “Why try to kill someone that way when you can’t be sure who your victim will be?”

  “Maybe they were trying to disable the squad so they couldn’t go on this mission,” Paige suggested.

  “I don’t think so.” Kel shook his head. “If they couldn’t go, we would have sent another squad.”

  Paige considered this information. “What would Morenta or anyone gain if someone on the Saint Squad died or was seriously injured?”

  “I don’t know. When I was injured, the squad was in the middle of a mission, the same mission that shut down Morenta’s drug routes into the U.S. A new person was assigned, and they kept doing their jobs.”

  “Could the sabotage at the rappelling tower have taken out more than one person in the squad?” Paige asked.

  “Maybe two, but like Kel said, the squad would still be able to keep functioning. Worst case, Kel would assign a couple of people from another squad to stand in.”

  “For whatever reason, it looks like whoever detoured them on this mission needs them alive,” she concluded.

  “You think they’re trying to get information from them rather than go for revenge?” Damian asked.

  “They wouldn’t be very good candidates,” Kel said. “Navy SEALs are trained to be mentally tough. They wouldn’t be easy to break down.”

  “And why would they try to kill someone one week and then capture them a week later?” Damian asked.

  Kel leaned back against Quinn’s desk. “Maybe the two things aren’t related after all.”

  “Or maybe it isn’t someone on the Saint Squad who’s the target,” Paige suggested.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Could someone be using the Saint Squad to draw someone else out into the open?”

  “Like who?”

  “I don’t know.” Paige shrugged. “Someone who would come to a funeral for a squad member or to the hospital if someone was injured.”

  “And someone who would go after them if they got caught behind enemy lines.” A sense of urgency filled Kel’s voice. “Do you have a way to get in touch with Vanessa?”

  “Vanessa?” Paige asked. “Why would someone use the Saint Squad to get to her?”

  “Because she was deep undercover when I met her, and she’s been out of the game since then. The only way to find her without having direct access in the CIA would be to get to her through her husband.”

  “Or her husband’s friends,” Paige said, her understanding growing. She pulled out the secure cell phone Vanessa had given her so they could communicate and called the number. “It went straight to voice mail.”

  “She won’t turn on her phone until she’s ready to call you,” Kel told her. “Leave a message. Tell her she’s the target.”

  Paige left the message, the color draining from her face. As soon as she hung up, she asked, “What happens if I can’t reach her in time?”

  “Pray that you can.”

  Chapter 20

  Vanessa felt eyes following her the moment she stepped into the airport terminal in Maracaibo. Her training prevented her from reacting to the knowledge that she was being watched, but her mind raced. How could anyone know she was here? Why would anyone even care?

  Vanessa had changed planes and identities several times on her way to Aruba, the most recent switch occurring in Panama City. Even though she had adopted her old alias Lina Ramir for this most recent flight, it was doubtful anyone would be able to track her down that quickly. She had purchased her ticket at the airport counter, and the flight had been less than an hour long.

  She pulled her carry-on behind her, debating whether she should keep walking through the terminal or duck into the restroom, knowing she would be trapped.

  She kept walking, her eyes casually scanning the area. It took her several sweeps of the terminal to identify the problem. The woman dressed as a custodian caught her eye. For a brief moment, Vanessa saw her watching her beneath lowered lashes as she went about changing the liner of a trash can. The action itself was innocent enough, but Vanessa sensed an awareness in the woman that piqued her suspicion.

  Not seeing a lot of options, Vanessa headed for customs. She studied the other passengers, choosing to stay close to a family of five, the three children all under the age of four.

  Anticipating that they might need some help to get through the checkpoint, Vanessa dug her passport out of her bag and got into the line, which was still six people deep. As she did so, she shifted her body so she could check out the custodian.

  Her heartbeat quickened when she saw that the woman was no longer visible, even though the trash bag she had just emptied was still tied up and sitting on the floor beside the can.

  The line moved, and Vanessa indulged in another quick sweep of her surroundings. Again, she didn’t see the woman anywhere.

  Vanessa reminded herself to stay calm. She was in a public place with plenty of people around. All she had to do was be smart and not let herself get cornered.

  The woman in front of her juggled the baby on her hip so she could dig for her passport. Unable to easily retrieve her documents, she shifted the diaper bag to her husband, who was forced to let go of their two-year-old’s hand. Almost as though he’d been waiting for the opportunity, the little boy tried to dart away as soon as his hand was free.

  Vanessa spoke in Spanish when she scooped him up. “Hold on there. Your mama won’t want you running off.”

  The l
ittle boy gave her a mischievous grin and pointed at the window, despite a sippy cup in one hand. “Plane.”

  “Yes, that’s a plane.”

  The woman turned to see her son in a stranger’s arms. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay.” Vanessa didn’t release him. Instead, she motioned toward the customs agent. “You have your hands full. If you want, I’ll hold him until we get through customs.”

  The woman clearly debated for a second, but when her infant started squirming, she gratefully accepted the offer. “Thank you. I appreciate the help.”

  The woman’s husband looked understandably protective of his young family, and instead of letting Vanessa fall into line behind him, he and his oldest son shifted behind Vanessa so she was flanked by the two parents.

  Vanessa handed her passport over to the customs officer and took advantage of being concealed so she could look around for the custodian again.

  Her heart sank when she noticed the woman standing beside two policemen. Her training could help her keep from getting cornered by another civilian, but taking on two armed police officers wasn’t likely to end well. Even if she could escape them, she would undoubtedly end up in the public eye.

  From where she stood among the throngs of people in the customs lines, she could stay hidden by the crowds. Once she passed through, she would be easy to spot.

  She had to change her appearance somehow, at least long enough to slip past the custodian and police.

  The toddler in her arms pointed at the planes again, and once more, she noticed the cup in his hand. She jiggled him on her hip slightly and heard liquid sloshing against the lid.

  Taking another quick survey of her surroundings, she saw the boy’s mother still had her attention on the baby, but the father was watching her closely.

  Rather than try to distract him to put her plan in play, she took the opposite approach. “Are you from here?” she asked the father.

  “No. We live in Mexico. We’re here to visit my wife’s parents.”

  “I’m sure they must be excited to see their grandchildren.”