by Tara Janzen
A rebel soldier let out a cry and fell the rest of the way down the stairs, creating momentary gridlock.
Rats.
If he’d been a damn rat with the run of the AC-130 coffee factory, he’d be opting for a riverside condo.
Follow the rats, yeah, that was classic combat strategy.
Sure it was.
Wherever they were coming in was where he and Honey were going out. He grabbed her again and took off running, pushing her ahead of him against the flow of all those running rats.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Campos’s phone rang and rang in Diego Garcia’s pocket, confiscated by the captain along with his .45 and his sheath knife. He’d palmed his Beretta Tomcat and his radio, so figured he was actually up by two, and before he’d lost his phone, he had made personal contact with Miguel Carranza.
Carranza had said he would consider his request.
Muy bien. Very well. But “consider” wasn’t quite going to cut it, not when Garcia had ordered his soldiers to blow up one of the coffee sheds, an ill-thought-out act of intimidation Jake was going to take as a “green light” for mayhem.
And not when the captain’s men were firing off rounds in his factory.
“Ms. York-Lytton will be worth far more to you alive,” Campos suggested, dialing the combination into the cipher locks on the briefcase.
“Just open la cartera, señor.”
Of course, if Carranza decided not to interfere, Campos would be saved from the bother of a return favor, which was no small thing. He wasn’t sure he had the strength anymore for a Cali cartel payback. The risk in such a proposition could get unbearably high.
Also on the bright side, such as it was, Garcia had brought the CIA documents with him. They were in a brown briefcase on the table. The captain had planned to immediately make the exchange with Honoria York-Lytton for the two million dollars.
Campos could have warned him that nobody’s plans were working out this morning, but kept silent. The truth would out soon enough—in about three seconds, to be exact. With the combinations dialed in, he popped open the briefcase and hoped for the best.
There was a long moment of silence as Garcia looked inside at the neat piles of cash tidily bricked into stacks and secured with paper bands.
“It is not enough,” the captain said.
That was strictly a point-of-view problem, and from Campos’s point of view, half a million dollars was more than enough for the documents Garcia had stolen out of the Cessna.
But Campos wasn’t getting paid for his personal opinions, not this morning.
“The woman,” he said coldly. “She’s stolen your money, Captain.”
Garcia leveled a suspicious glare in his direction. “And not you?”
He took a step back from the briefcase, his hands raised. “For myself, I might have taken something, but I have a situation, and I cannot afford to lose my North American friends under my current circumstances. No, Capitán, I was told there would be two million dollars in a black briefcase to be delivered to me by Honoria York-Lytton.” He gestured at the stacks of cash. “Perhaps this explains why she was so quick to leave once you arrived.”
Garcia’s gaze slid to the doors opening into the factory. He didn’t look convinced.
“Perhaps,” he said. “But the doors were barred from this side, señor.”
He was going to ignore that little piece of investigative reporting.
“Wherever she put the money is between here and San Salvador. I was assured, Capitán, that it was securely put on the plane with her in Panama City.”
“The money came directly from Washington.”
“Exactamente.”
Garcia thought for another few seconds, during which another burst of weapon fire sounded in the factory, and during which Campos worried that if he didn’t hurry the hell up, any decision was going to be moot. Garcia had sent four of his five-man squad after the woman, which meant the odds were five to one, and that was counting Rydell, not Ms. York-Lytton. For himself, the odds were two to one, more than workable, especially when the two didn’t know he was armed.
“Césense disparando!” Garcia finally ordered, talking into his radio. Cease fire.
Campos breathed a sigh of relief.
“We will take the woman alive,” Garcia said.
Yes, Campos thought. Alive was good.
Dead was good, Smith thought, looking down at the last asshole to take a shot at him and Honey. The basement was a damn maze, full of old machine parts and discarded furniture, and stacks and piles of crates and junk. In order to get a clear shot, he’d had to circle back, and in order to circle back, he’d had to stash Honey someplace safe. He’d chosen the tunnel.
They’d finally found it at the back of the boiler room by doing exactly what he’d hoped would work—following the rats. He’d hated leaving her there, but the guy was dead, and that was three down, and one more to go, the scared one, the one trying to get back to the stairs and get the hell out of the basement.
He wasn’t going to make it.
The bastard was too scared not to make a mistake, and when he did, Smith raised his submachine gun and squeezed the trigger.
Ohmigod.
Ohmigod.
Ohmigod.
Honey was holding herself so still in the tunnel she could hardly breathe. The faintest ray of light shone in from a long way away, but truly, it almost made things worse.
Because she could see them.
The rats.
Everywhere.
This was their home.
They weren’t frightened here, like they’d been in the factory. They weren’t running. They were milling about—milling about her feet, and milling about her legs, resting their front paws on her calves and sniffing her knees. They were touching her, crawling over her boots, and she was ankle-deep in water. They were big, and she was scared spitless, trembling from the top of her head to her toes, and trying to be so still.
The tunnel was made out of bricks, much of it crumbling, which gave the rats a foothold on the walls. She didn’t dare look, but she thought there was one directly behind her, looking over her shoulder. She could almost feel its breath in her ear...almost see it reaching out with a long, slender leg, claws extending, its snakelike tail whipping back and forth as it readied itself...readied itself—
To pounce.
Fear, pure and stark, flashed through Honey’s entire body in one paralyzing instant—and then she was running.
Running for her life, hell-bent, going the only way there was—out, toward the light, toward the end of the tunnel, her feet pounding, until they completely slipped out from under her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Now, where in the world had she gotten off to? Smith wondered, stepping into the tunnel. She should be right here, right by the entrance. By God, when he put somebody someplace he expected them to stay the hell put, even if he’d stuck them right smack-dab in the middle of their worst phobic nightmare.
In his own defense, he hadn’t had a choice, but that didn’t solve the damn problem, did it?
Behind him, he heard the sound of voices approaching. He looked both ways, out into the boiler room, and down the long brick passage. There was only one way she could have gone, and he took it, heading for the light.
Honey knew what the term “maytagged” meant. It was an old river runner’s way of saying “getting the stuffing whomped out of you.” Her brother, the great adventurer, Haydon, had gotten may-tagged in Westwater on the Colorado River, a classic clock-cleaning. Honey had never been maytagged—until today.
There wasn’t any room for thought in the experience. It was purely visceral, every chaotic, agonizing, panic-inducing split second of it. Being churned up and down in a river current that wouldn’t let go of her limp, disoriented body was not how she’d envisioned her end.
But there she was, too tired to thrash, not knowing which way was up, and going around one more time.
Then it spi
t her out.
She gasped in a lungful of air and realized a hand had ahold of the back of her T-shirt and was hauling her through the water. She looked and was surprised to see a large, dark-haired man, a stranger.
On shore, a woman was saying something, but Honey couldn’t hear the words, only the voice. She tried to listen, but it took every ounce of concentration she could muster to keep her head above the water, to keep the river from washing into her mouth with every breath. Finally, she felt the river bottom, but she couldn’t get her legs under her.
“Is she alive?”
“Yes, patrona.”
The dark-haired man dragged her up on the bank and dropped to his knees. Honey couldn’t even get to her knees. She lay there, exhausted, trying to keep her face out of the mud.
“That was a fight, Ari,” the woman said. “The river almost won.”
The man said something under his breath, and the woman gave a short laugh.
“You’re an ox. I didn’t doubt you for a moment.”
Honey heard the woman draw closer, and when she knelt down, Honey could see her face.
“Honoria?” she said, bringing her hand to Honey’s face and smoothing a tangled skein of hair off her cheek. She had a gentle touch.
Long dark braid, pale gray eyes, exquisitely elegant face, the woman was all slender legs, squared shoulders, and supreme confidence. It radiated out of every cell in her body. Honey had never felt anything like it.
“Honey,” she said, and barely recognized her own voice, it was so harsh and raspy.
God, she hurt. She felt sick and beaten, and she could hardly breathe. She was going to have bruises on top of bruises. There were boulders in the river, and she’d been smashed up against them at least three times.
One of the woman’s eyebrows arched in a graceful curve. “Honey? How sweet.” And then she laughed again. “Where is Rydell, Honey?”
“Behind me. In the...the factory. There are men, soldiers, shooting, chasing us.”
The woman’s smile faded, and she looked up toward the man. “We need to move to cover.”
“Yes, patrona.”
The woman caught Honey’s gaze again and smoothed her hand across Honey’s brow.
“Your ankle is broken,” the woman said calmly, her voice so soothing. “So don’t try to get up and run off anywhere.”
And with that, she rose to her feet and walked away, leaving Honey in the mud.
The first thing Smith saw when he got to the end of the tunnel was Honey lying on the bank, not moving. Then he saw the red laser dot painting the back of her head—and it made his blood run cold.
She was in somebody’s sights.
“Hello, Rydell. It’s been a long time,” a woman said, her voice coming from out of the trees farther up the shore.
Not long enough. Sonuvabitch.
The red dot leveled at Honey’s skull did not waver. The hand holding the laser-sighted gun was inhumanly steady. Red Dog was that steady. Kid Chaos was that steady. And so was Irena Polchenko.
Even after six years, he didn’t doubt the voice.
“You’re not here for this woman, Irena,” he said. This was not going to happen, not Honey’s death, not today.
“No. You’re right, Rydell. I came all this way for you. After Peru, I didn’t think I could afford not to come after you.”
Fuck. He’d been right.
He lifted his hands to either side of his head, palms out in surrender. “To finish the job?”
“To correct a mistake. How did Abdurrashid miss?”
“He didn’t miss. He never took the shot.”
“I heard the shot, Rydell.”
He was looking into the grove of trees, trying to locate her. “You heard Tirandaz shoot Abdurrashid. He’s the one who took the Stingers that day. It was a classic double-cross. Who went down in your Piper in the Hindu Kush?”
“Some fool who thought he’d gotten a good price for a plane by besting a woman in negotiating a deal.”
A fool was right. If there was one thing Smith had learned over the years, it was never to under-estimate a woman based on gender alone—with a few exceptions.
His gaze fell on Honey, and a couple more emotions than he was used to having flooded into his system. There were limits on how much physical abuse a Park Avenue princess could take without breaking.
He’d broken her today, her ankle for sure, from the odd angle of her foot, maybe a few other things.
He took a breath and forced his gaze back into the trees.
“If you came for me, it’s me you should take.” And he knew it meant “take out.”
“I could take you both.”
“I know perfectly well what this is about, Irena, and I’ve taken precautions.” He was a pretty good liar, even on an off day. When the stakes were high, he tended to be a great liar.
“Precautions?” There was the barest hint of doubt in her voice.
He liked it.
“Joint Ops Central in Lima is an intelligence nightmare. I’m impressed with how fast you’ve been able to work, but I’m not surprised you found out it was me on the surveillance op. I took out some insurance, just in case.”
“What kind of insurance?”
He could hear someone splashing down the tunnel, maybe more than one person. They weren’t talking, whoever they were, but he didn’t dare turn around and look.
“The kind where as long as I’m alive, your secret goes nowhere, and the minute I die, five guys at the DEA in Washington, D.C., get a time-delayed e-mail explaining what they need to look for in order to bring you down. As long as I keep coding in the delay, the e-mail stays put in a draft file. The minute the timer goes off on the draft file, the e-mail is automatically sent. And, Irena?”
“Yes.”
“The computer housing the e-mail is not my personal computer. It’s not at my house, or in my office.”
“I suppose you are now including the woman in your insurance policy.”
“Absofuckinglutely.”
From behind him, he heard Campos’s voice. “Do you have a clear shot?”
“No,” he said very quietly. “She’s in the trees, and I doubt if she’s alone.”
“I saw your handiwork in the basement. Good job,” Campos said. “I added one more to the pile, and I have Garcia right here with me, along with the CIA’s documents in a brown briefcase, and a certain amount of money in the black one.”
Certain amount? Smith could guess what that meant.
“How much?”
“Five hundred thousand.”
“I have cash, Irena,” he called out louder. “And a promise to keep my word. You’ll know if I break it, but I won’t. Your secret is no part of what we do, and neither is the woman. Let her go. Take the money.”
Smith knew he was a perfect target, and he knew every breath he took could be his last. If she called his bluff, he’d never know it.
“If I die here, and she kills Honey, would you please track her to the ends of the earth and put a bullet in her brain?” he said softly to Campos.
The momentary silence told him the guy was considering his answer carefully. Smith liked that, no matter which way he replied.
“For the killing of an inocente? Yes. It’s enough that we die, when our time comes.”
“Sentimental fools,” Garcia said harshly. “You will both die for this day’s work.”
“Hand me the briefcase,” Smith said, reaching his hand back.
“No!” Garcia shouted. “The money is mine. The deal is mine. My men will come and—”
A huge explosion rocked the earth, and then another. The tunnel shuddered, but held, as a fireball rolled up into the sky from the direction of the river road and was quickly followed by another.
Truck versus LAW, Rydell thought. LAW wins every time.
“The money, Rydell,” Irena yelled—and he took the case from Campos and slung it out along the edge of the river. It sailed thirty feet before landing near the trees—
and in that time, Diego Garcia died. It happened in an instant. The captain lunged after the briefcase, and the red dot moved from Honey’s head to Garcia’s chest, pop pop, and it was over, and the red dot was back and holding steady on Honey.
Geezus, Smith thought. He needed to be spending more time on the firing range.
Behind him, Campos let out a short breath. “Did you see that?”
“Hell, yeah.”
A large, dark-haired man came out of the trees to retrieve the briefcase, and then Irena spoke again. “Tell Alejandro Campos the hit is a gift from Miguel Carranza. The money I’m taking from you, Rydell. What is the combination on the locks?”
From behind him in the tunnel, Campos recited the numbers.
“Seven, eight, zero, four, four, two across the top,” Smith said loud enough for his voice to carry. “And the same backward across the bottom.”
He was answered with silence, until finally, she confirmed.
“All is as it should be.”
The red dot never wavered from Honey.
Then, to his surprise, Irena stepped out from behind the trees and gave him a short nod.
“Dos vidanya. Until next time,” she said, and melted back into the copse. Two seconds later, the red dot disappeared from the back of Honey’s head.
It took him less than that to swing himself around the crumbling edge of the tunnel, and less than thirty seconds to get down the bank to the shore. He’d understood what had happened to her the minute he’d seen her so wet and muddy on the shore. The bank under the passageway had been eroded away, especially after last night’s rain, and the floor at the end of the tunnel had collapsed. Anyone caught unexpectedly by the fact would have fallen into the churning eddy of the river below.
Goddamn. The thought frightened him almost as much as the way she looked.
“Honey,” he said, gently touching her face and looking her over from head to toe. There wasn’t any blood, and no head wounds, and when she moved her hand to take hold of his, he felt a sense of relief.
“My ankle,” she said, her voice a little raw.