Soldier's Rescue Mission

by Cindy Dees

“The woman currently watching after the kids can probably be convinced to put me up for that long. She seems the friendly type.”

  “Need me to talk to her?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.” Elise passed the phone to the elderly woman, who took it, frowning in confusion. As the woman listened, her face cleared and even took on a reverent expression. The woman smiled and nodded at her, and Elise’s alarm grew. What was the padre saying to put that awed expression on the poor woman’s face?

  Grandma disconnected the call. “It is a great honor to help you. A great honor, indeed. May God bless you and your work, Sister.”

  What on earth did he say about her? Not that she was about to look this gift horse in the mouth. Abashed, she managed not to roll her eyes as the woman took her hand and kissed it.

  “You will stay here until everything is arranged,” Grandma ordered.

  Elise nodded. “But only if you let me help you with the cooking and cleaning.”

  Grandma protested, but Elise stood her ground. She wasn’t a freeloader and never had been. She’d pull her weight around here and that was that. As the afternoon progressed, it became clear that the older woman thought she was some sort of saint in the making. The woman kept mumbling prayers to her and kissing her hand at every opportunity. It was tough to stomach. Elise felt like the worst kind of fraud by the time dinner was served and a pack of six children came tumbling loudly into the house.

  Oh, God. They had the look of their father about them. There was no question in Elise’s mind which two were Mia and Emanuel. They had the same aristocratic features and dark-lashed, golden-hazel eyes as their father. She’d stared at Valdiron’s picture for so long, she even noticed the nuance of his ears in the children, the way his throat turned into small shoulders shaped like his. Oh, yes. They were Garzas, through and through.

  The eldest, six-year-old Mia, was shy and hung on to Grandma’s skirts when they were introduced. When bright-eyed Emanuel would have bounded over her to say hello, his older sister grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back. Cautious child, she was. Elise noted with a pang that the little girl’s eyes looked far too old for her years.

  She’d worked in enough emergency rooms to recognize a traumatized child and to know not to rush her. She merely smiled pleasantly at the little girl and included her in the chatter of the other children over supper, but made no special effort to approach Mia.

  After the meal, the children ran outside to play in the backyard, and Elise kept an eye on the children through the kitchen window as she washed and dried the dishes. Mia promised to grow into a great beauty—but then, Valdiron had always had a penchant for fashion models and had been a handsome man himself. The face of an angel, the soul of a demon.

  Elise watched carefully for any signs of violence or aggression in the children’s play, and beyond Emanuel snatching a truck out of two-year-old Guillermo’s hands, she saw nothing to indicate the children had inherited their father’s psychopathic tendencies. Emanuel reminded her of a rambunctious puppy. He ran and tumbled and tussled nonstop with the other children and collapsed, exhausted, when bedtime came. Whatever darkness had touched Mia’s life appeared not to have touched him at all.

  When Grandma had tucked in all the children and the house grew quiet once more, Elise poured hot water into a pair of white china cups she found on a shelf and made tea for herself and the older woman.

  Grandma fell into a chair heavily. “It is hard keeping up with so many bambinos. I am too old for it.”

  “You’re doing a wonderful job with them. They’re happy and healthy.” They were a lot luckier than many children in this war-torn region. “Tell me. Do you know what has put that haunted look in Mia’s eyes?”

  “Aah, you are as wise as that priest on the phone said you are.”

  Wise? He’d called her wise? Hah! Liar.

  “Mia was with her father when he died. From what little she’s told me, I gather he was shot many times. But he did not die right away. She has nightmares of trying to stop the bleeding.”

  Elise’s heart twisted. She realized with a start that, at some subconscious level, she’d wished for Garza’s offspring to suffer. But not like this. Not a little girl lost among strangers and trying so hard to be grown up and brave. To look out for her baby brother.

  And then it hit her. This was why Father Ambrose had sent her down here on this particular mission. He’d wanted her to see the human side of her quest for vengeance. This little girl’s suffering was the direct result of her efforts to bring Garza to justice.

  She’d been one of the foremost investigators of his activities and had been pivotal in exposing his criminal activities to the world press. She’d set the Colombian Truth Commission upon these children’s father, and they’d been the ones to gun him down. At the end of the day, she was responsible for the haunted look in that child’s eyes.

  A sob escaped her.

  Grandma was beside her immediately, taking her ice cold hands in warm, paper-dry ones. “Do not be sad, Sister. You will take them to a new life. A happy place where they can grow up safe and free. They will never know suffering or fear again. You will see to it.”

  And so she would. She owed it to Mia and Emanuel Garza. Heck, she owed them her life if it came to it.

  Damn Father Ambrose to hell and back. He’d known exactly what he was doing to her when he sent her down here. He couldn’t have thought up a more diabolical penance for her transgressions if he’d tried. He’d said all along that revenge only hurt the person seeking it. And oh, how right he was.

  While Grandma patted her hand, offering consolation she didn’t deserve, Elise broke down and cried for the second time in as many days. She cried for her own dead parents, for all the years she’d wasted in anger and hate, for all the pain she’d caused these innocent children. She cursed their father for putting them in harm’s way by bringing them into the world at all, but then she recanted the curse. She couldn’t fault even a monster for wanting to create something good and pure.

  And now their care and protection had fallen to her. No power on earth was going to harm those two children while she lived and breathed. That she vowed solemnly before God.

  No doubt Father Ambrose had known full well she’d do that, too, once she looked Mia and Emanuel in the eyes. He’d trapped her as neatly as a rabbit in a snare.

  Chapter 7

  He was going to kill Elise. Flat out. When he found her—and he would—he was going to wring her neck.

  Ted fumed as the bartender mumbled through a bunch of lame excuses about how the nun must have slipped out through the bathroom window and disappeared. The only saving grace was he knew exactly where she was headed. To Acuna. To get those kids. Reluctant admiration for her sheer cussedness passed through him. They were two lucky children to have her on their side.

  Now all he had to do was break away from Raoul and his top lieutenants for long enough to go find Elise and drag her happy self back here where he could keep an eye on her and protect her from her own naiveté. Assuming she didn’t get herself killed, or worse, before he could get to her.

  His attention snapped back sharply to Raoul, though, when the man commented a shade too casually, “You do not look like I expected.”

  Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap. This was what they’d all feared at H.O.T. Watch Ops. That Ted would bump into someone who’d actually met the real Drago Cantori and would identify him as an imposter. He counted fast. Nine men, all armed, all alert and with hands near their weapons. He couldn’t drop them all. But if he could take out Raoul and those two guys over by the door, he might just make it out of here alive—

  Even he knew when he was hopelessly outnumbered. He had to talk his way out of this pickle, if for no other reason than because Elise needed him. With desperate calm, he said to Raoul, “A man in my line of work has to be careful. I make a point of people thinking I look differently than I do.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial murmur. “I’ll let you in on a little
secret. I hire actors to impersonate me from time to time. It helps spread confusion about what I really look like.”

  Raoul nodded thoughtfully. “A clever idea.”

  “It’s expensive, but I’ve found it to be worth the cost over the years.” He took a sip of his coffee and added casually, “I even had my sister impersonate me once.”

  Raoul laughed. “Did she cost you money on that deal?”

  Ted snorted. “You wouldn’t ask that if you’d met her. She knows more about weapons than anyone I’ve ever met, and she’s a far sight meaner than me.”

  Raoul’s grin widened. “What’s she up to now?”

  “She’s in jail. She killed some Americans in a nightclub bombing and the Feds caught up with her.”

  The look in Raoul’s eyes was far too knowing. The bastard already knew exactly what had happened to Annika Cantori. That had been a test. Ted swore silently. Had he passed?

  Raoul spit on the floor. “Bah. American federales.”

  The Army of Freedom man turned away and called for coffee. When steaming mugs of black liquid were set before them, Ted lifted his in a silent toast. Crud. His hand was shaking. He lowered the drink quickly.

  His companion relaxed and commenced joking about do-gooder nuns who ran around the jungle. Although the subject made him much more tense than he dared let on, at least it appeared that he’d successfully navigated the minefield of Raoul’s questions about his Drago Cantori identity. But it had been a damned close call. The way Enrique had explained it, Raoul was the big kahuna in this Army of Freedom outfit. If he wasn’t a hundred percent sure what the real Drago Cantori looked like, odds were no one else in the organization was, either.

  Now that he’d passed this particular gauntlet, his fake identity should hold up going forward. Ted let out a careful breath.

  Raoul was speaking again. “…tell me. What are the odds you can obtain more…powerful…weapons than just small arms?”

  Ted took another sip of coffee before answering. This was exactly why he’d been sent out on this mission. To find out what the real Drago Cantori had been up to before he’d been killed in the Cayman Islands. Ted considered his companion. If he appeared too eager to talk to Raoul, the man would become even more suspicious than he already was. Respond too cautiously, and Raoul would find himself another arms dealer.

  Finally, Ted replied, “Depends on how much more powerful we’re talking. What did you have in mind?”

  “Something impressive.”

  Ted leaned back in his chair and smile expansively. “I can do impressive. Do you prefer a particular flavor of impressive?”

  Raoul frowned, hesitating. Wow. He must be contemplating something serious if it gave even him pause to say it aloud.

  Ted helped the guy out, prompting, “Tell me this. What is your target? Soldiers? Civilians? A building? A city? Are you after maximum damage or maximum casualties?”

  The insurgent seemed to relax as Ted talked calmly of weapons of mass destruction as if they were a realistic possibility.

  “An airplane. Maximum casualties.”

  Ted nodded slowly, fighting like crazy to hide his shock. Maximum casualties meant an airliner full of civilians. Since when were Colombian freedom fighters in the business of blowing up passenger jets? That was the traditional purview of straight terrorists.

  The hot, strong coffee suddenly tasted bitter in his mouth. He answered evenly, “It takes a missile to shoot down an airplane. They’re expensive and relatively difficult to obtain. Frankly, a daisy chain of small explosions in a populated place would kill as many or more people as knocking a jet out of the sky. And it would cause a hell of a lot more immediate chaos. Not to mention the explosives for something like that are cheap and easy to get. Keep in mind that using a surface-to-air missile properly takes training. It also takes tight internal discipline for an organization to pull off something like shooting down an airplane.”

  Raoul grimaced, which spoke volumes about what he thought of his own organization’s internal discipline. Duly noted.

  Ted leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Don’t get me wrong. I can get you a missile, no problem. I’m just suggesting a cheaper and easier alternative, too.” Grinning, he added, “Let it never be said I’m not an ethical guy.”

  The rebel leader laughed heartily at the irony, breaking the tension of the moment as Ted had intended for it to do.

  Raoul answered without hesitation, “I want the missile. Several of them, in fact. Can you deliver?”

  Several? This guy was planning something on the scale of 9/11 then? Stunned, his thoughts slid to the next logical question. Who was the target? Would the man go after a single airport, or maybe many airports scattered across a nation or several nations? Would it be a simultaneous attack for maximum shock value, or several individual attacks spread out over time so as not to look related to one another?

  Ted hid his dismay carefully. This was exactly why he was here. To answer those sorts of questions. His thoughts churned on. If Raoul aimed his attack at airports in places like Caracas and Bogota, the people of Colombia who supported the Army of Freedom would turn on them in fury. The rebels would lose all support. Unless—his thoughts derailed sharply—unless the target was not in Colombia.

  Was this guy looking to become a player on the international stage? But surely Raoul knew the international response would be fierce and fast. Was the rebel counting on that to rally support from within Colombia? Maybe use the inevitable retaliation from the attacked country to topple the Colombian regime? Unite the various insurgent groups against a common external foe?

  Who was the target? As if it took a rocket scientist to deduce that answer. Who better to cast as the invading villain than the United States? South Americans already resented the perceived high-handedness with which America had dealt with them in the past. The Colombian government had spent years shouting about how American oil companies were trying to rip off the Colombian people for the country’s petroleum reserves. Hating America would be an easy sell to many Colombians, particularly to those mired in poverty and frustration.

  He could see it now. This guy would shoot down a bunch of American airplanes, the U.S. would figure out who did it, they’d come down to Colombia to take out the Army of Freedom, and the Colombian people would see it as an attack of a larger bully upon a small, poor, local group of freedom fighters. It was a decent plan, actually. Worse, it stood a chance of working.

  Ted set down his coffee cup. “Surface-to-air missiles are definitely obtainable. They are expensive, though, and must be moved discreetly. I have the resources to do that. The question is, do you?”

  “I have a few men with the training to use such a weapon.”

  Good grief. Raoul had a unit of former military men working for him? Mercenaries, maybe? But very few mercenaries would participate in the kind of mass attack this man was planning. No money was worth the manhunt to follow. Raoul’s special team had to be zealots, then. Men like Valdiron Garza and his cadre, who’d believed that the ends justified any means, including the most extreme violence.

  The beginnings of a headache throbbed behind Ted’s eyes. God, he was tired of these games. Of men like this. Would they never stop coming? It seemed as though for every one he killed, two more came to take the dead one’s place. “Tell me something, Raoul. What do you believe in?”

  “Pardon?”

  Ted made eye contact with the would-be terrorist. “What do you believe in so strongly that you’re willing to use such a weapon? I can’t just hand these things out to anybody who wants one, you understand. You need to have a cause.”

  “You presume to judge the worthiness of my cause?” Raoul half stood, his voice rising in insult.

  Ted answered blandly, “Not at all. I presume to test how serious you are about going through with such a deal. These types of weapons are tracked carefully, and I will have to lie low for some time after I do this deal. I need to be absolutely certain you won’t back out of the
deal and leave me holding an expensive—and very hot—cache of weapons I haven’t gotten paid for.”

  Raoul sank back into his chair. “Aah. I see your thinking. You worry only about profit, while I worry about the creeping spread of American influence on this continent.”

  Bingo. His guess about the target had been correct. He tuned out the usual anti-American spiel that Raoul devolved into. At the end of it, he shrugged and said only, “I am a merchant, not a philosopher.”

  “I think we understand one another, Drago.”

  “I’ll make a few calls.”

  Ted excused himself and stepped outside. He dialed a phone number that hooked into his operational headquarters and murmured quietly, “You get all that?”

  “Roger, sir. Commander Hathaway says to make the deal. We can come up with a few deactivated missiles to deliver.”

  “Will do. Oh, and can you tell me how far I am from a village called Acuna?”

  “One moment.” The phone went silent. “It’s about eighty kilometers northwest of your position. A bus runs from your current location through there every morning.”

  That would explain how Elise just disappeared out from under everyone’s noses. Clever girl.

  “Anything we should be aware of in Acuna, sir?”

  “Nope. Just asking. Thanks.”

  He disconnected the call. First the nun. Then the missiles.

  Getting away from Raoul was a piece of cake. Ted rolled underneath his Jeep, fetched the magnetic key box he’d secreted earlier on the underside of the chassis, and used the spare key to start the engine. When a low-level flunky tried to detain him, he told the guy he was leaving to arrange Raoul’s arms deal for him. The guy shrugged and let him go.

  Finding Acuna wasn’t all that hard, either. It wasn’t as if there were a million roads out here. He took the only one that led northwest out of the village, confident that it would eventually run into Acuna. He’d been driving about an hour when he came to a small settlement. A quick word with a local confirmed that this road would, indeed take him to his destination. It was apparently about thirty klicks on down the road. However, the man seemed alarmed when he heard the name Acuna. That gave Ted pause.