“What the hell?” The pilot sputtered in confusion as he took in the sight of guns and men lying on the ground.
“Where were you going to fly these people?”
“Toluca, Mexico. Just don’t shoot!” The pilot stammered as he held up his hands. “We’re a charter company—we’re supposed to take four people to Toluca, Mexico, and then wait for further instructions.”
Donovan glanced at the pilot’s ID. He recognized the outfit, a legitimate operation based out of Toluca, just outside Mexico City. If they were supposed to take four passengers, there must be another car coming, and Donovan didn’t want to be standing here when they arrived. “Close the door from the inside and stay there until the next car arrives. If I were you, I’d tell them you didn’t see a thing.”
The pilot nodded in furious agreement.
Donovan looked at the woman, who was still on her knees with her back to him, her wrists tightly bound with a plastic tie-wrap. “I’m going to help you to your feet. We need to get out of here. Can I trust you to not try to escape?”
“Hurry!” she urged. “The others will be here soon.”
Donovan helped her to her feet, and as she stood there, she peered at him over her shoulder, a mix of relief and fear in her eyes. In the daylight he could see that she was older than he’d first thought. She was closer to thirty-five than twenty-five.
“Oh no,” she said.
Donovan spotted the black Suburban coming fast. The headlights flashed on and off, sending some sort of prearranged signal. In the Mercedes, the keys were dangling from the ignition. “Get in the car.” Without hesitation she dove into the rear seat. Donovan slammed the door behind her and then he slid behind the wheel. He knew the minute he pulled away from the Learjet the men in the Suburban would see their friends lying on the ramp. Donovan threw the Mercedes into gear, stepped on the gas, and the sedan lurched forward. He spun the car around one hundred eighty degrees, sending the woman crashing sideways into the door as he sped directly toward the black SUV. The front end of the Suburban dipped as the driver braked heavily. Donovan powered straight at them, swerving away at the last possible second, creating a moment’s hesitation for the Suburban’s driver as Donovan blew past them, accelerating through eighty miles per hour.
Donovan tried to picture the layout of the airport, to judge where there might be an access road that led from the ramp to the street. If he could make it into the city, he knew he could lose them. He glanced into the rearview mirror and was shocked at how fast the Suburban had turned around. He saw brief flashes from muzzle blasts, and the Mercedes’ rear window exploded into thousands of tiny fragments. He heard the sound of more bullets striking metal. In the mirror, Donovan couldn’t see the woman. She was smart enough to stay down—or she’d been hit. Donovan weaved in and out of airplanes sitting on the ramp, searching in vain for a way off the airfield. The SUV was closing on them. Donovan noticed a faint smoke trail left by the Mercedes, and the smell of burning oil was unmistakable. Suddenly, the prospect of outrunning the Suburban seemed remote.
Donovan swerved back and forth, trying to throw off their aim, but in doing so the gap closed even further. The black SUV was now only thirty feet behind them, more smoke poured from beneath the Mercedes. Donovan desperately looked for a way to outmaneuver them. If he couldn’t lose them, he and the woman would be easy targets when the Mercedes’ engine finally seized.
Up ahead was the cargo ramp. The sound of a bullet pinging off the roof of the car brought a surge of adrenaline. They wouldn’t last much longer out in the open. In the side mirror, all Donovan could see was the front grill of the Suburban, the powerful SUV towered high above them. Donovan winced and grit his teeth as another bullet thudded into the metal somewhere behind him. In an instant, Donovan calculated the distance to a Boeing 727 cargo jet parked to their left. The aging three-engine aircraft had seen better days, sitting faded and dirty on the oil-stained ramp, the name of some long-forgotten air cargo firm painted on the side. Donovan let off the gas pedal for a moment and allowed the Suburban to pull even with the Mercedes. The Suburban and the Mercedes were side by side, hurtling down the tarmac at seventy miles per hour. Donovan needed to time it just right. Only feet away, the gunman put three bullets into the hood of the Mercedes. Donovan gripped the steering wheel in both hands and swung the Mercedes hard to the left, smashing into the SUV with enough force to veer both vehicles to the left. The driver of the Suburban was momentarily caught off guard, and Donovan felt the SUV push back. Donovan held firm, and powered straight toward the forward fuselage of the 727. The accelerator floored, Donovan felt the SUV pull free as the driver of the Suburban tried in vain to stop. In a blur of aluminum, Donovan shrunk down in the seat as they flashed beneath the belly of the 727 only inches behind the nose gear. A brief shriek of metal on metal sent a shock wave through the Mercedes as they sped beneath the airliner. Glass cracked and spider webbed as the roof of the Mercedes barely scraped the aluminum belly of the Boeing. A second later the Mercedes shot out the other side of the 727.
Behind them, Donovan heard the sound of screeching tires, followed by the sound of crashing metal. The Suburban was a foot and a half taller than the Mercedes—everything above hood level was obliterated as the SUV slammed into the Boeing. The 727 bucked and groaned at the impact, lurching to the side as the remains of the Suburban’s chassis careened into the undercarriage, came to a sudden violent stop, and began to burn. The Boeing’s right main landing gear snapped sideways from the impact, collapsing the right wing down onto the Suburban.
Donovan accelerated the Mercedes. The 727, its wing tank ruptured, was pouring raw jet fuel onto the ramp near the burning Suburban. Moments later, both exploded into a massive fireball. The shock wave from the blast ripped past them, and Donovan felt his ears pop. The heat blew in through the hole where the rear window used to be and seared the hair on the back of his neck—then it was over. Behind him an orange cloud billowed up from the destroyed plane, the tail and wings jutted out from the black smoke as burning jet fuel gutted the 727.
“Are you okay?” Donovan called out, as he slowed and cruised through an open gate onto the small road that ran along the outside of the perimeter fence.
His passenger peered out the rear window at the carnage and then found Donovan’s eyes in the mirror. “Did you drive under that plane? How did you…?”
“I’ve spent some time around the 727. I know a few things,” Donovan replied, as he slowed dramatically and tried to understand where he was on the perimeter road. They needed to hide. A bullet-riddled car speeding from a crime scene would draw immediate attention.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, as she struggled to prop herself up in the seat.
“I should drive you straight to the American Embassy and turn you over to them,” Donovan replied with his eyes fixed on hers in the mirror.
“No, not the embassy,” she shook her head vehemently. “Or the police—they are corrupt. They are involved in this.”
He spotted a place next to an old abandoned hangar. In the tall weeds next to the building were two derelict cars. Donovan stopped and then backed the Mercedes in between them and shut off the engine. In between the tick tick sounds coming from the overheated motor, he could hear the wails of fire trucks.
Donovan forced open his door and got out of the car. The paint on the roof of the Mercedes was gone from grazing the belly of the 727. The rear door was partially wedged closed from the impact, but Donovan opened it and slid in beside her. It was a move she wasn’t expecting—he held his gun low and close to her rib cage. He knew with her hands tied and her legs pressed against his, she was far less likely to try to beat the crap out of him again. “I want you to tell me everything. If you don’t—I’m going to give you back to them.”
She nodded and lowered her head. A moment later she put her chin up, shook her hair free from her face, and took a deep breath, steeling herself for a confession. “My name is Eva Rios. I live in the highl
ands on the western shore of Lake Atitlán. I saw the men who kidnapped the American woman. I know them—they are the ones trying to kill me.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The constant hum from the jet’s engines made a perfect backdrop as Lauren read. The flight from Dulles International to Tri-Cities Regional Airport in Tennessee was only an hour. Montero was sitting across the aisle working on her laptop.
Montero handed Lauren the FBI file on Meredith Barnes’ kidnapping and subsequent murder. The file represented the death of a woman that would have been Robert Huntington’s wife—Meredith Barnes was the single lightning strike that had altered him forever. Had she not been killed, Lauren probably would not have met Donovan, let alone married him and had Abigail.
Montero possessed the entire file. There were dozens of photographs taken of the scene of the abduction. Pictures of the dead driver, their bullet-riddled town car, as well as dozens of empty shell casings. There were pictures of Robert Huntington, his eye bruised and nearly swollen shut from the beating he’d taken. Lauren knew what he had looked like back then, of course, but she’d not seen these—right after Meredith’s abduction, the pain and loss plainly evident on his battered face.
Lauren examined each one. She could feel the urgency emanating from Robert. She knew his impatience well. The stark helplessness in his eyes back then was palpable. She went to the next group of photographs. They were of Meredith. Lauren only gave a cursory glance at the first several pictures, well aware of what Meredith looked like, how beautiful she was. The next one made Lauren’s stomach churn. She averted her eyes, unprepared. She gathered herself, and began once again. Meredith’s naked body was crumpled faceup in a dirt field. Her long red hair partially covered her face, but the single bullet wound was clearly visible. Lauren skipped the next few pictures; they were close-ups of her and her injuries. She instead jumped to the autopsy report, which listed the cause of death as a single gunshot to the head.
It took Lauren another half hour to sift through the entire file. Meredith had arranged an historic ecological summit meeting in San José, Costa Rica. Meredith, with her passion for the earth and environment, had achieved the global recognition to assemble the summit. Leaders from almost every western hemisphere government were in attendance. Her dream was to sponsor an accord that would lead to meaningful laws that would severely limit logging in the world’s rain forests and the overharvesting of severely depleted populations of fish and reckless oil drilling in Alaska, Canada, Central and South America. She’d convinced the World Bank to provide billions in zero-interest financing to support such actions in the third-world countries, the end result to help build alternative industries that would provide jobs and economic growth for the next thirty years. Her plan was brilliant, but quickly fell apart upon her death.
She became an instant martyr, but there was no one to fill the vacuum she’d left behind. Instead, her public latched on to the nearest object to vent their feeling of loss—Robert Huntington. Lauren slumped as she read the report stating that, without a doubt, Robert Huntington was the prime suspect in a scheme to murder Meredith Barnes.
Lauren paused, as she knew he’d been the target of speculation the instant Meredith’s death was made public. While a shocked and mournful world held candlelight vigils, photos were released of Robert on a remote beach with a slender young blonde. Even though the photos were faked, it was all the evidence an angry public needed for the murder of Meredith to become a conspiracy by Robert Huntington and Big Oil to silence her voice. From there it became the fabric of public belief. Lauren scrolled through the pages until she found the reference to a lone person of interest, a petty criminal named Antonio Romero, a man who had been drunk when apprehended, who later died in custody. The last page in the file was a memo from the FBI, stating that the murder of Meredith Barnes had been closed upon the death of Robert Huntington.
Scrolling backward, Lauren found the interrogation and the affidavit that Romero had died from natural causes. She glanced down at the page numbers—there was an eleven-page gap. The entire interrogation report was missing. She noted the name of the FBI agent in charge: Special Agent Gordon Butterfield.
“Why is the interrogation missing from Meredith’s file?”
“That’s always been a big question mark. It’s assumed that someone inside the Costa Rican police destroyed the report when Romero died. There’s speculation that the interrogation methods were too severe and the transcript subsequently destroyed. The cause of death was listed as natural causes by a local medical examiner and the body promptly cremated at the request of the family. One of the highest profile kidnappings since the Lindbergh baby, and the FBI walked away with very little solid information. I heard that heads rolled afterwards.”
“Was Butterfield implicated?” Lauren asked.
“His career took a hit, but he dodged the worst of it,” Montero replied. “You’ve been going over that for a while—any insights?”
“It’s not easy reading. I didn’t expect the photographs,” Lauren answered. “You’re right though, there’s a great deal of leeway in how this report was prepared and what it really says. The investigation was botched by either the FBI, or the Costa Rican authorities, or even by this unnamed group. It looks to me that someone took the path of least resistance and placed the blame on Robert Huntington, an easy task once he was already declared dead.”
“When I discovered he was still alive, and then spent some time with him, I could easily see why he did what he did,” Montero said. “Based on everything I know, I’d have done the same thing.”
“It was a horrible time for him,” Lauren replied. “William told me some things that broke my heart. How lost Robert was, the serious death threats, pills and alcohol. He hid in his Monterey house he’d shared with Meredith and nearly unraveled completely. If William hadn’t stepped in and orchestrated what he did, I don’t know if Robert would have survived.”
“Hearing you speak about William the way you do, makes it all the more impossible to believe that he could have a hand in any of the manipulations the FBI is pursuing.”
Lauren was about to reply when the chartered jet began to slow and make a descending turn. She peered out the window, and in the distance, spotted the Tri-Cities Airport tucked into the picturesque hills of Eastern Tennessee.
“That was a quick trip,” Montero remarked as she collected her work and put everything into her briefcase. “I reserved us a rental car. Once we land, there should be an e-mail from Deputy Director Graham as to Butterfield’s exact whereabouts.”
“What if Butterfield doesn’t want to talk?”
“Oh, he’ll talk.” Montero smiled knowingly as the jet’s landing gear was lowered and the seat belt sign came on.
Lauren had no doubt that Montero could be a formidable interrogator, though neither one of them possessed any official capacity. Butterfield was a retired FBI agent, and Lauren doubted that Montero would scare him all that much. The wheels touched down and they taxied to the executive terminal. Montero’s e-mail was waiting and she quickly typed their destination into her phone’s GPS. As they deplaned, Lauren issued instructions to the crew to remain on standby. She assured them she’d call when they were on their way back to the airport.
Once in the car, Montero sped toward Deer Creek Country Club.
“What do we do if he’s somewhere out on the course?” Lauren asked.
“We go find him,” Montero said. “He’s pushing seventy, how hard can he be to catch?”
“I’m not sure catch is the right word,” Lauren said.
“Here we are.” Montero braked and turned into the tree-lined lane that led to the parking lot. She double-checked her Glock and turned toward Lauren. “Ready?”
They hurried through the doors into the air-conditioned building and made their way down a hallway filled with framed pictures of famous golfers. Lauren heard people talking, and Montero continued toward the rear of the building and ultimately found the pro shop.
“Excuse me?” Montero said to a young man behind a counter. “I’m looking for Gordon Butterfield.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied politely as he glanced at a large clock on the wall. “Go out those doors, down the stairs. He’s not scheduled to tee off for another fifteen minutes so he’ll be on the putting green. You can’t miss the orange slacks.”
Lauren fell in behind Montero and easily spotted Butterfield. From Montero, Lauren knew that Butterfield was in his late sixties and severely overweight. He wasn’t an inch over five-foot seven, wearing a beat-up floppy hat and dark glasses. He was all upper body, a white shirt stretched over an enormous stomach and large rounded shoulders. He was leaning over a putt, and Lauren wondered briefly how he could even see the ball, let alone stroke the tiny putter that looked like a toothpick compared to his massive arms. She walked closer and watched as the golf ball traveled across ten feet of green, curved toward the cup, and dropped into the hole. He turned around as if sensing their arrival, then returned to practicing.
“You both have FBI written all over you.” His gruff voice came out as almost a bellow. He slapped another ball into position and took aim. “What do you want?”
“For starters, how about your undivided attention?” Montero said.
Lauren hadn’t expected this to be easy. From everything she’d read, and from what Montero had explained, Butterfield could be a difficult man.
“Are you the good cop or the bad cop?” Butterfield asked without looking up.
“Actually,” Montero said, stepping closer, “we’re both bad, and unless you want your ass kicked by a girl here in front of all of your golf buddies, I suggest you listen to us.”
Butterfield looked up and removed his glasses, sizing them both up. He fixed on Montero then slipped his glasses back on his face. “I know who you are. The dark hair is a bit deceptive, but you’re Special Agent Veronica Montero, the FBI’s poster girl for freedom and patriotism. To what do I owe the pleasure of such an esteemed visitor?”
Aftershock: A Donovan Nash Novel (A Donovan Nash Thriller) Page 12