The Wrong Hostage sk-2

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “I don’t have enough time to explain it to you,” Faroe said evenly. “Can you trust me on this or do you want to hear it from your mother?”

  Before Lane could answer, Grace leaned forward and said, “Tell Joe everything you can. Please. It’s our only way to help you.”

  Back at the cottage, the strain in Grace’s voice made Lane’s eyes tear. He swallowed hard. “Okay.”

  “Is it a big file?” Faroe asked.

  “No, but it’s encrypted.”

  “How?”

  “Do you know what PGP is?”

  “Pretty Good Privacy,” Faroe said.

  “Yeah. I taught him how to do it. He’s got the key. I don’t.”

  Shit. But all Faroe said was “So you can’t read it.”

  Lane closed his eyes and sweated cold. His mother’s voice had told him more than her words. “Please don’t be mad. It’s Dad’s file. He asked me to keep it for him, to make sure nothing happened to it.”

  “And now I’m asking you to break that confidence,” Faroe said.

  “I don’t know what’s right. If it’s Dad’s, if he needs it…”

  Faroe cursed silently but didn’t lean on Lane. Nor did he ask for Grace to take over. Lane was having a tough enough time surviving without being caught in a tug-of-war between his parents.

  “I respect what you’re saying,” Faroe said softly, “but until I know exactly what’s in the file, I can’t tell you what’s at stake. All I know is that file is the only leverage we have to get you out of All Saints.”

  “What about Dad? Isn’t he coming for me?”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Faroe listened to the silence for what seemed like an eternity.

  Finally Lane drew a shaky breath, then another one. The third time his breath didn’t break. “So it’s betray Dad or die? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m saying that your father never should have put that file on his son’s computer. He never should have signed his son into All Saints. He never should have touched Hector Rivas Osuna’s dirty business.”

  Lane’s eyes widened. He knew who Hector was.

  Everyone in northern Mexico knew who Hector was.

  “Are you saying D-Dad is a crook?” Lane asked, his voice barely a whisper.

  “I believe so,” Faroe said, “but I can’t prove it until I see that file. Is there enough charge on the satellite phone to send the file to your mother?”

  “No. I’ll decrypt it. Then…well, then…” I’ll know something I don’t want to know.

  But not knowing meant that he would die in less than twelve hours.

  “Lane?” Faroe asked.

  Lane grabbed what he did know and held on to it like a rope tossed to him across muddy floodwaters. “PGP is an old commercial program. It’s good enough but not great. I’ve got a couple sample keys and a hacker friend told me about a trapdoor in the program. I might be able to squeeze through it.”

  Faroe drew a deep breath. “Can you do that with what you have at the school?”

  “Sure. All I need is time.”

  “What about the guards?”

  “The Chicharrones Brigade already think I’m hiding under the sheet playing with myself. They laugh about it.”

  Faroe bit back raw words of frustration. “Go for it, son. How’s the charge on the phone?”

  There was a muffled sound before Lane said, “About a quarter.”

  “Shut it down. Save it for another call in four hours. Unless your situation changes radically-then you call right away. Want a quick word with your mom?”

  “Just-tell her I love her. If I hear her voice I’ll-”

  “Okay, I understand. She sends her love. So does your dad.”

  “Then why doesn’t he come get me?”

  He’s too busy saving his own ass.

  But all Faroe said was “Be careful.”

  Lane punched the end button, shut down the phone, and hid it under the pillow again.

  Voices drifted in through the window. The guards were laughing and talking about the bets that had been placed on how Hector would kill Lane.

  So far no one had put money on simple execution.

  50

  SAN DIEGO

  MONDAY, 1:23 A.M.

  ANOTHER BORDER PATROL HELICOPTER leaped from the tarmac of Brown Field and swung sharply off into the darkness over Spring Canyon. Searchlights probed the tangle of brush where coyotes, feral dogs, smugglers, bandits, and sweating illegals hid. A mile away, along the south edge of Spring Canyon, the lights of Tijuana’s Colonia Libertad washed in a glittering tide against the steel wall of the border. The night was alive with fear and hope.

  Grace and Faroe stared out the windshield, waiting for Steele’s plane to land. The airfield in front of them was pools of darkness and strips of light. Thin fingers of mist curled around the pedestal lights at the edges of the hardstands.

  A group of people came out of the night and raced across the asphalt runway, disappearing into the darkness on the other side.

  “What was that?” Grace asked, startled.

  “Illegals,” Faroe said. “Ghosts in the night. They disappear and then reappear a thousand yards or a thousand miles away. By dinnertime those runners could be in Chicago or New York or Atlanta.”

  “You really enjoy the shadows, don’t you?” Grace asked.

  “It’s the only place I’ve ever felt completely alive.”

  She made a sound that could have been a laugh. “Completely alive, huh? In other circumstances I’d be insulted, or at least disappointed.”

  “In other circumstances, I’d tell you that we met and loved in that shadow world. Best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “And the worst,” she whispered.

  “That too. Have you figured out which hurts most?”

  She made that sound again, half laugh, half sigh, all sadness. “No.”

  “Neither have I.”

  Off to the east, above Otay Mesa, a pair of powerful lights appeared in the darkness-an aircraft on a straight-in final approach.

  “Steele,” Faroe said.

  An oversize buslike vehicle that had been parked on an isolated tie-down area started up its diesel engine. Running lights and interior lights snapped on.

  At almost the same moment, another vehicle drove through the perimeter gate and headed for the bus. As it passed under a light on the front of a small hangar, Faroe got a good look. It had the unmistakable profile of an armored messenger truck. He punched his speed dial and within a few seconds was speaking with a St. Kilda communicator.

  “Is someone supposed to be meeting Steele?” he demanded.

  Grace could hear the distant, disembodied voice on the other end of the phone line. He sounded amused.

  “Okay,” Faroe said, snapping the phone shut.

  “And?” Grace asked.

  “Looks like Steele has been rounding up the usual suspects and then some.”

  Faroe started the Mercedes and joined the odd caravan that was assembling on the hardstand.

  Ambassador James Steele came down the ramp in the arms of a mammoth linebacker of a man named Harley. Steele rode with his arm around the bodyguard’s neck. He was dressed in a newly pressed suit, a clean white shirt, and a perfectly knotted tie.

  Faroe and Grace met Steele at the bottom of the ramp. Three men got out of the idling diesel bus, which doubled as traveling quarters and a rolling command post. Faroe didn’t know any of the three, but they all moved like former Navy SEALs or special ops of some stripe.

  One of the men pulled a gleaming, tricked-out wheelchair from the motor home’s baggage compartment. A few swift motions positioned the chair and activated its electronics. In the glare of the jet’s landing lights, Steele looked down at the unconventional wheelchair for a long moment, examining its tubular frame and cutaway alloy wheels.

  “Have I mentioned that I’m not into racing?” Steele said acidly to Harley.

  Harley deposited the Ambassador on
the seat, arranged his legs, and made some adjustments to the seat and controls. “I’ve been jonesing to get you into this one for months. Now stop pouting and pay attention. This is the joystick.”

  “Oh my God,” Steele said through his teeth.

  “Forward is forward, back is back, and side to side are self-explanatory,” the big bodyguard-nurse explained.

  “I’m still not racing anyone,” Steele retorted.

  But as he fiddled with the joystick, he didn’t quite conceal his pleasure at how responsive the machine was. Not as good as legs, but better than whatever else was in second place.

  “If I can only teach this contraption to talk politely to me,” Steele said to Harley, “I can fire you.”

  “Not until you teach it to wipe your ass, too.”

  Steele laughed, then looked at Faroe and Grace. “You look like you could use some sleep, Your Honor. I have legal meds if you need them.”

  “So far, so good,” she said.

  “Don’t be shy,” Steele said. “They’re part of every special ops survival kit, and those people are trained within an inch of their lives. You aren’t. You don’t want to be staggering tired when you need to be alert.”

  “She’ll think about it,” Faroe said before Grace could answer.

  “And so will you,” Steele said to Faroe.

  It wasn’t a suggestion.

  “Before I debrief you,” Steele continued, “there’s someone you must meet.”

  They watched as Steele turned the chair smartly and rolled across the asphalt to where the idling armored car was parked. As the Ambassador approached, the side door of the truck swung open and a slight, white-haired Mexican in a business suit stepped down. The Mexican moved with a flat-footed limp and a stiffness in his upper body that spoke of old injuries.

  When the two men met on the hardstand and shook hands, the Mexican bowed stiffly at the waist, a courtly gesture that was old-fashioned and completely natural. They spoke together in the shadows between the hard glare of headlights and landing lights. The smell of cigarette smoke drifted over.

  “Who is it?” Grace asked quietly.

  “If it’s who I hope it is, Lane’s chances just went up. I’ll gladly sit in a smoke-filled room to pick that man’s brain.”

  Steele and the other man crossed the asphalt to stand in the shadows near Grace and Faroe.

  “Allow me to introduce Dimas Quintana Blanco,” Steele said, “one of the foremost journalistic chroniclers of Tijuana’s narcotraficantes. Senor Quintana has agreed to advise us in an informal way on our problem.”

  Faroe offered his hand. “A genuine honor, senor.”

  “It is mutual,” Quintana said with a small smile. “I won’t ask your name, because I know you by too many as it is.”

  Faroe’s smile flashed in the shadowed night.

  Quintana took Grace’s hands in his own and bowed. “Judge Silva, I am profoundly sorry to hear of your troubles.”

  “I didn’t expect to be discussing them with a journalist,” Grace said bluntly.

  “Don’t worry,” Faroe said. “The Rivas Gang already has offered Senor Quintana silver or lead. He chose lead. Ten years ago, ROG assassinated his business partner. Three years ago, they tried for him.”

  Grace’s stomach clenched. It was one thing to hear vague rumors of Mexican journalists, cops, and judges being shot because they refused to go along with ROG.

  It was quite another to look at the dark eyes of the man whose life had been scarred by lead.

  “In Tijuana, any honest journalist has a target painted on his back,” Quintana said calmly, dropping his cigarette to the ground and crushing the ember with his heel. “Fortunately, ROG’s gunmen are cowards as well as bad shots. We survive-very carefully, yes, but we survive. Whatever information I have, I will give to you with greatest pleasure.”

  51

  ALL SAINTS SCHOOL

  MONDAY, 1:32 A.M.

  STROKE AFTER STROKE OF lightning raked across the sky, turning night into a blinding network of white against black. Thunder was immediate, continuous explosions that rocked the night. Rain came down like the end of the world.

  “Yes!” Lane laughed out loud as guards raced for cover. “Bring it! Send those cabrons running to cover.”

  Since the nearest permitted shelter was fifty feet away in another cottage, he wouldn’t have to worry about his guards peering in his windows and wondering what he was doing under the sheet or in the closed, locked bathroom.

  For a few seconds more Lane enjoyed the storm washing across his face, its taste wild and sweet.

  Like freedom.

  Then he closed the windows, pulled the curtains, and took his computer into the bathroom, where there was both privacy and an electrical outlet. The last thing he wanted was to run out of juice just when he hacked into the file.

  If I hack it.

  No. When. I’ve hacked harder security.

  But he’d been younger then. He hadn’t believed in death. That, and the guards, broke his concentration.

  Pretty Good Privacy was turning out to be pretty good indeed. The first sample key he’d played around with hadn’t gotten him very far. As in headfirst into a stone wall, locked up, reboot, and try again. And again.

  And again.

  The cigarette smoke and jokes and catcalls from the open windows hadn’t helped. But now all he had was the heady freedom of the storm and the computer itself, something he was comfortable with.

  Something he was good at.

  Something that didn’t constantly taunt him that he was scheduled to die at twelve-thirty this afternoon.

  52

  BROWN FIELD

  MONDAY, 2:10 A.M.

  “SO,” STEELE SAID, SUMMARIZING the debriefing, “in less than forty-eight hours you’ve managed to get on the wrong side of both the lords of the Tijuana underground and the United States government. Even for you, Joseph, that’s impressive. Now what?”

  Senor Quintana hid a smile behind his neatly trimmed mustache and goatee.

  “We need some muscle on standby,” Faroe said.

  “Three ops are already aboard, not including Harley,” Steele said, pointing around the interior of the motor coach. “Wood is the armorer, ex-SEAL with good sources of supply, fluent in Spanish. Jarrett and Murchison are communications cross-trained, also fluent in Spanish, and Murchison is a medic. Dwayne is working on a helicopter and pilot.”

  “Problems?” Faroe asked.

  “Only that you wanted an Aerospatiale.”

  Wood smiled in approval. “Fast helo, that.”

  Faroe looked at the two men and one woman-Murchison. They had the relaxed yet ready posture of people accustomed to being sent to strange places at strange times to do jobs that may or may not be legal. And to do them quietly.

  “Okay,” Faroe said to the ops. “You three take the chopper down to All Saints at first light. No matter what I tell you, or what sat photos and web site stuff you have, nothing beats seeing it yourself.”

  All three nodded.

  “Pleasure to work with someone who understands that,” Wood said.

  “I learned it the hard way,” Faroe said dryly.

  “At least you learned,” Murchison said. “That’s why I went private. Some bosses never learn.”

  Grace looked at the other woman and told herself Murchison wasn’t flirting with Faroe-which was true. Then Grace told herself she didn’t care-which wasn’t true.

  Maybe I need some of those wake-up pills after all. I keep forgetting why I think I want to keep Faroe at arm’s length.

  Don’t I?

  Faroe turned back to Steele, answering the question his boss hadn’t quite asked. “I want an Aerospatiale for more than speed. The American Coast Guard uses them for search and rescue. The Mexican navy might not be so quick to fire on us if they think it will be the opening shots of World War III.”

  “Then you’ve decided that force is the best option?” Steele asked.

  Grace wen
t very still. She’d learned enough about St. Kilda to know that force was an unhappy last resort in kidnap situations.

  “I hope not,” Faroe said, “but I’d be a fool not to be prepared.”

  “Outline your other options,” Steele asked.

  Faroe looked at Grace. “Judge, I need you to be alert. Harley will show you a place for a quick nap.”

  She stared at Faroe for a long time. Then she shook her head. “If I have to, I’ll use Steele’s meds.”

  “The more I tell you, the more vulnerable you become when this is over.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m used to it. I need you strong. Trust me.”

  “The last time I did that, you told me to get the hell out of your life.”

  “If things go wrong now, wake-up meds won’t save your job,” Faroe said bluntly. “Ignorance will.”

  “Ignorance?” Grace laughed. “I’m complicit in a bombing in Ensenada. I saw a man murdered in Hector Rivas’s Cash-and-Carry Bank and House of Horrors. I lied repeatedly and with great pleasure to agents of the United States government. Right now, just what part of ignorance do you think applies to me?”

  “Okay. Point taken. But this is going to get ugly,” Faroe said. “I don’t want it to get ugly all over you.”

  “Too late.” She toed off her flat shoes. The recessed lighting inside the vehicle showed dark spots against her golden brown skin. “I still have that murdered man’s blood on my feet.”

  Instantly Harley got up, went to the sink, returned with a wet cloth, and knelt in front of Grace.

  “Thank you, but it won’t change anything,” she said to Harley. Then she looked at Faroe. “Will it.”

  Faroe opened his mouth, closed it, and ran his thumb over her cheekbone. “I’m sorry.”

  She turned her head, brushed her lips over his thumb. “Why? You didn’t do it.”

  Steele watched them, eyes narrowed, face expressionless.

  Grace turned to him. “You made the trip for nothing, Ambassador. Joe and I aren’t going to bloody each other.” Yet. But tomorrow? Well, tomorrow is another day, isn’t it? “It’s also too late to separate us. You need Joe. You need me. If we break your rules by being together, well, we’ll just have to be your exception, won’t we?”