Perilous Skies (Stony Man)

by Don Pendleton

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Salinas Grandes, Argentina

  The exchange of ransom for prisoner was scheduled for six o’clock in the morning. Phoenix Force was on-site before four, only to discover that Adan Neruda had beaten them to it. He’d come, deposited his prisoner and then hidden himself away somewhere.

  The salt deposits had been scraped and piled in neat rows, thousands of them, in a field two miles across and a full four miles long. The work had been completed and then the field left, to sit there untended until it was needed. There was no weather that would disturb the prepped salt. There was no reason any human would make the trip into the desert to steal it.

  The only dot on the vast desert floor, other than the rows of salt piles, was a tiny plywood shack that had served the supervisory staff when the salt-scraping operation was under way. Now it was empty and musty. Phoenix Force had arrived in a single vehicle, driving dark for the last several miles, and appropriated the shack for their own use. From his lookout on the roof, as soon as the sky began to lighten, Calvin James was able to make out the anomalous shape atop one of the salt piles in almost the dead center of the field.

  He quietly summoned McCarter and both observed the woman—and searched for her kidnapper.

  Atop the distant salt pile, in a small folding chair, was a woman. From almost half a mile away, James and McCarter couldn’t even tell if she was breathing. But she was tied up; she must still be alive.

  Adan Neruda clearly had something up his sleeve, which was expected. They had known that he would not attempt something as stupid as a simple transaction, prisoner for money. It didn’t happen that way. You have to have insurance, particularly when you’re dealing with people obsessed with payback.

  But that would be both sides in this little exchange. Men of corruption and crime, men who lived their lives leeching off the misery of others, with egos too large to shrug off an insult. Adan Neruda and this man Encina would both be driven to extreme measures to have their revenge on the other. It didn’t matter who was wrong and who was right, because neither was right.

  James said, “My instinct is to go out and get her.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a good instinct to me,” Gary Manning said as he joined them on the roof. “She’s gotta be booby-trapped or watched or guarded in some way we can’t see.”

  “We can’t leave her sitting there,” James pointed out.

  “We don’t want to inadvertently blow her to bits, either,” Manning said.

  “And she’s not our primary purpose for being here,” McCarter pointed out, disliking the words he was saying. “Our top priority is to get one of those aircraft.” After a moment he added, “Not that we’re going to let her die in the process.”

  * * *

  THEY HAD IMPROVISED to come up with light gray clothing covering their typical BDUs. It allowed them to blend in with the off-white coloration of the salt flats. They moved quickly and silently through the near-silent desert dawn, but McCarter knew that they were completely exposed. Anyone from above would see them. If Neruda was staged nearby, camouflaged himself and watching for Encina, he would see them.

  A slow breeze whistled over the tops of the little hills of salt, but the air tasted clean. There seemed to be little salt dust in the air. They hiked from hill to hill, taking what little cover the salt offered them.

  When they were still a good hundred yards away from the hill with the woman, McCarter called a halt. They examined her again through field glasses.

  Now they could see that the setup was not as simple as it had originally looked. There was a tripod placed alongside the prisoner. Atop it was a loudspeaker and what looked like a web cam, covering all four directions. A power supply and some sort of transmitter was tucked under the woman’s chair. More alarmingly, the woman was surrounded with several tiny shapes, which seemed to be scattered up and down the sides of the hill. They were cylinders, maybe an inch in diameter, maybe six inches long, each jammed into the rock salt.

  “Explosives,” Gary Manning reported. “Small, self-contained, black powder charges. For all practical purposes they are firecrackers. Get this—these things are Bluetooth-equipped. You blow them up remotely using your goddamned cell phone. It’s supposed to be a safer way to do your fireworks.”

  McCarter lowered his glasses and looked at Manning. “Are you telling me that this woman is surrounded by a bunch of M-80s?”

  Manning shrugged. “I don’t know how powerful they are, but I bet they’ll make a lot of pretty colors when they blow.”

  “What the hell is the point?” Hawkins demanded. “If those are fireworks, they are not exactly going to kill her. They are placed too far apart.”

  “They blow up a cloud of particulate salt,” Encizo said. “You’ll notice the air is barely moving here. At seven o’clock in the morning, the winds will move even slower. The sun will begin to seek the surface, and the desert will radiate, and the air will grow warmer, and that will slow the cool breeze coming down from the mountains. If Neruda blows them all, maybe in series, he just might be able to choke her to death. On salt.”

  “Christ. That’s gotta be a miserable way to go,” McCarter said.

  “We can get up there, and get her out, even if those things are blowing all around us,” Hawkins said.

  “Heads up,” said Rafael Encizo over the headset. To his chagrin, Encizo had been ordered to remain at the work shack, serving as watchman. “Something coming from the south.”

  McCarter scrambled up the closest salt pile and peered south, finding a spot of haze miles away. After a moment he focused on the shapes of several vehicles crossing the desert floor.

  “Son of a bitch. Here they come,” he complained. “Everybody’s goddamned early today.”

  * * *

  THE THREE VEHICLES came to a halt at the far end of the salt field. From there the occupants went on foot—as instructed by Adan Neruda.

  But Neruda had not required Encina to come alone. He had not demanded that Encina come unarmed.

  So Encina had brought ten men, all of them armed to the teeth. They spread out along the front of the salt field and began to move through the hills of salt, searching for any sign of Adan Neruda.

  All they found, at the center of the field, was the hill where the prisoner had been staged.

  “Hold up,” Encina said as his men coalesced around the hill. He looked up at it, at the woman tied virtually motionless in the folding chair, her drab, full skirt hanging down, possibly hiding something under the chair. And what were all those small black cardboard rolls stuck into the salt rock? The closest that Encina would come was to climb up on the hill facing the woman.

  “Can you hear me? Lily?”

  The woman raised her head and her eyes rolled back, and even from this distance Encina could see the whites of her eyes. She was heavily sedated. Clear plastic tape covered her mouth, layer after layer of it. But when the hair fell away from her eyes, Encina recognized her features. It was his sister.

  He didn’t know his sister and frankly had never liked her much. And he didn’t especially care about a sister now. What he cared about was addressing the insult that his sister’s kidnapping represented.

  So here he was, and where the hell was Adan Neruda?

  “I’m here.” It was Neruda. The voice came from the woman in the chair, but it was clearly the voice of Adan Neruda. There was some sort of the speaker placed beside her chair.

  “Where are you?” Encina demanded.

  “Nearby.”

  “I’m taking my sister.”

  “Don’t take one step closer,” Neruda said. “I will kill her. I will make sure that she suffers first, but I will kill her.”

  “You’re a fucking coward. Show yourself.”

  “Where’s the money, Encina?”

  “I’ve got it. But we make the exchange on my terms.”

  “That is absolutely out of the question. We make the exchange under my terms, Encina. You will give me your mo
ney. And you will do it in the manner in which I specify. Or your sister will asphyxiate with salt in her lungs. She will die in the most excruciating agony. The best part is, that it will all be on the news in under an hour.”

  “What?” Encina snapped. He looked around, searching for cameras. He didn’t see anything. “You’re lying.”

  “I am not lying. In fact, you are being recorded right now. The video is scheduled to post to a news feed website in thirty minutes from now. If I don’t cancel the app, the video of everything that happens here and now goes viral. You will be on CNN and MSNBC before lunchtime. They will be watching you kill your own sister—in Rio and Buenos Aires and in Mexico City and Tokyo. And Beijing and New York City and Moscow. You will be world famous, Encina. You will be the coward who allowed his sister to choke to death on salt. But if you do as you are told and give me my money, and when I’m on my way safely, I’ll shut the system down and you will be able to release your sister. The video will never be sent anywhere.”

  * * *

  DAVID MCCARTER had to hand it to Adan Neruda. The man knew how to push buttons. A little over-the-top perhaps, but certainly passionate.

  Neruda had set this up rather nicely. He was beating Encina at his own game. Encina had ruined his reputation in the social circles of La Paz, but Neruda was going to make Encina into one of the great scumbags worldwide.

  But David McCarter also knew the Adan Neruda was a murderous egoist. He had no intention of allowing the innocent woman in the folding chair to escape alive. Neruda had long ago decided that she would die. And he would relish it, watching her on his videotape, knowing how eagerly the news agencies around the world would pick it up, and blur it just enough to show the world over and over again.

  McCarter was playing a dangerous game himself, letting this happen. Letting that woman sit in the middle of this conflict. But it wasn’t as if he had much choice. He hadn’t had time to go in and take her before Encina arrived. And now that Encina was here, going to save the woman would be a suicide run. There were ten men standing around that pile of salt, heavily armed and mad as hell.

  By now the man named Encina was practically stuttering with rage, but holding it together just well enough to address the faceless voice of Adan Neruda.

  “I get your drift, Neruda. I will follow your instructions. Tell me where to put the damn money, and then turn off the damn video.”

  “Okay,” Neruda said. “Let me see it.”

  Encina nodded to one of the men behind him, and the man approached, opening a suitcase to reveal banded bricks of U.S. dollars, U.S. bearer bonds and stacks of Argentinean currency.

  The contents of the suitcase were displayed to the drugged woman on the next hill of salt. It made Encina feel even stupider. The voice of Neruda said, “Good. I assume that’s five million worth, total?”

  “It’s there. Count it,” Encina said.

  “I will,” Neruda responded. “Now have your man remove his jacket, shirt, shoes and belt.”

  “Stop playing games!” Encina snarled.

  “This is a game that you started, Encina,” Neruda snapped. “You played the first hand. Now it is my turn. And we’re playing the game the way I say. Have the man take his clothes off.”

  “If I don’t?”

  The answer was a bang. Encina and all of his men were startled; several of them grabbed their weapons and looked for the source.

  Nearby, but hidden by hills of salt, McCarter and the others in Phoenix Force were just as startled, but quickly realized what the sound had been.

  One of the small explosives wedged in the salt near the feet of Encina’s bound sister burst. There was a shower of turquoise-shaded sparks, and then a cloud of salt dust enveloped the woman. She began to struggle and moan, and they could hear the distress in her breathing. She needed to cough to get the salt out of her lungs, but with tape over her mouth she couldn’t. The cloud of salt dissipated slowly from around her. It diluted as it drifted away over the desert.

  The woman heaved, but she seemed to be able to breathe again.

  “That,” Adan Neruda said out of the loudspeaker, “is going to make riveting video on the news in London. In fact the video is already on the server. Every second of our conversation and every word that you say is being recorded and stored on a server in Houston, Texas. From there it will be distributed around the world. It will be posted on YouTube. In 1080 P. The programming is already in place to make sure that this happens, Encina. Get this straight—I don’t have to do anything to make it happen. It will happen automatically. The only thing I can do now is stop it. You have to convince me that that is what I should do. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, I get it, asshole,” Encina said.

  “You’d better start acting like it. Or the death of this woman is going to be on your hands. And the people will know that the man responsible for killing this woman is her own brother, Encina Purana, a citizen of Argentina, who happens to run one of the biggest consumer electronics fencing operations in South America. This is all going on the video, right now, Encina.”

  Encina was trembling with rage and helplessness. He had to restrain himself from screaming at the faceless voice that seemed to reside in the helpless body of his sister. Adan Neruda truly seemed to have him by the balls.

  “Okay! All right! We’ll do what you say. Let’s get this exchange done and over with. Then you can go your way and enjoy the rest of your life with my five million dollars. And I can go my way and we never have to talk to each other again.”

  “That’s all I ever wanted,” Neruda said. “To never see you again. Remember, you are the one who started this. This is your fault. You were the coward who attacked a bunch of people at a party in a sky-rise with his toy airplanes.”

  * * *

  MCCARTER KNEW NERUDA was baiting Encina mercilessly—aching for Encina to lose control.

  “All this is happening because you had your feelings hurt twenty years ago, Encina. And you held a grudge like a five-year-old who was kicked on the playground.”

  “All right,” Encina said, loudly but calmly. He was exercising monumental self-control. He turned toward the man with the suitcase, ignoring the ongoing diatribe from a loudspeaker.

  He said calmly, “Take off your jacket and your shirt and your shoes and belt. Dispose of any weapons that you have.”

  The loudspeaker fell quiet. Encina’s man disrobed down to his slacks, then lifted the suitcase and gingerly stepped down the pile of rock salt, then stood on the scraped desert floor.

  “All right,” said Neruda. “Now you will walk forward, for approximately one kilometer to the north edge of the salt field. You will stop there. You will wait. The car will meet you there, driven by an associate of mine. You will give him the suitcase, and then you’ll walk back this way.”

  “What about me?” Encina demanded. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “You’re supposed to wait where you are. Don’t move. None of your men will move. When your man has made the trip and has returned—by that time I should have been able to make a quick assessment of the contents of the case. If it checks out, I will cancel the application that is controlling the video feed.”

  “My sister?”

  “The system will be turned off at the same time I cancel the app. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  “I don’t know that you do,” Neruda stressed. “Keep in mind, anytime I wish, I can end this. I can turn off my broadcast hardware, and I can turn around and leave this place. But if I do, the app continues to function. The explosives blow up. Your sister chokes. Maybe she dies and maybe she lives, but whatever happens to her, it will all be on video, and it all goes global. Understand that it is up to you to turn that process off.”

  “I understand.” Encina’s voice shook.

  David McCarter, tucked behind a salt hill close by, was getting more concerned. Adan Neruda was pushing his adversary too hard. The man was close to his breaking point.

/>   The shirtless, shoeless man with the suitcase trudged through the rows of salt hills, never noticing the Phoenix Force commandos as they maneuvered to keep themselves out of his line of sight.

  It took him several minutes to finally to get to the edge of the salt field.

  He stood there and looked at the endless empty desert.

  And then he saw the car.

  * * *

  RAFAEL ENCIZO PULLED his Land Rover to a stop in front of the man with the luggage. He stepped out, looked the man up and down and sneered.

  “Feet hurt?” he asked in Spanish.

  “Fuck you,” the shirtless and shoeless man shot back. “Take your suitcase.”

  “Thanks,” Encizo said, grabbing the luggage off the desert floor then shoving it forcefully into the abdomen of Encina’s lackey. The impact toppled him onto his back on the desert floor. Before he could get his wits, Encizo knocked his head into the salt crust of the ground with enough force to knock him out. Encizo flipped the man over, hogtied him with plastic handcuffs, then filled the man’s mouth with salt and left him facedown on the ground. He shut the suitcase in the rear of the Land Rover.

  Encizo saw dust rising in the desert to the north. Another car was coming fast.

  “Mr. Neruda’s pickup car has arrived,” Encizo reported. “Now he’s stopping. And now he’s turning around and leaving.”

  * * *

  “UNDERSTOOD,” MCCARTER answered in a low voice. “Okay, Phoenix,” he said to the others. “Priority one is to get that woman off the hill and safe. Priority two is to raise hell, and put Encina in fear for his life—but we can’t wipe them out. Not until he calls in aircraft backup. Understood?”

  “T.J.,” McCarter said. “Go!”

  * * *

  “YOU FUCK!” NERUDA shouted from the loudspeaker. “What kind of a game is this, Encina?”

  T. J. Hawkins was scrabbling, in a gas mask and goggles, over the salt pile directly behind the prisoner, staying hidden as long as possible from Encina and his men. He hurried down, then crept up the far side of the prisoner’s hill and managed to get himself to a point within a few feet of the back of the chair. The woman’s breathing was labored, as if she couldn’t get enough air through her nose. Hawkins had a feeling that another toxic cloud of salt dust would kill this woman. He had to get her out of here now.