The Cartel (A Sarah Roberts Thriller Book 15)

by Jonas Saul

  Her mental faculty cleared even as a mild yearning for another injection rose in her. A steady thrumming of pain developed in her ribcage.

  How much of that stuff did they give me?

  She understood from what Enzo was telling her that Darwin had aborted the operation. It all came clear. When she was taken from the hospital, Darwin had been there. He had tracked her as he said he would. Somehow he had discovered Aaron had escaped and they tried to stop the ambulance he was tracking, but Enzo’s men had already discovered they were being followed and switched her to another vehicle.

  How did Darwin and Aaron meet?

  Couldn’t that have happened sooner, dammit?

  “I can see you thinking, trying to decide what to tell me,” Enzo said. “Don’t worry, I will extract every little detail from you.”

  He pushed a button on his cell phone and sat back, watching her. The wait gave her time to think. If everyone was out there somewhere, looking for her, and Aaron and Casper had just been here—

  “Did you hold Aaron here? In this building or on this property?”

  “I understand,” he said. “Trying to deduce whether or not they can find me again. Maybe even attack me here.” He shook his head. “Not a chance. Too heavily guarded. The fence is electrified and the hole Casper made in it has been mended.”

  “Hole?”

  “The one your boyfriend escaped through.”

  She beamed at the thought of what Aaron did to get out. She was proud of him and happy he had Casper’s experience to rely on.

  The door opened and a well-built man in a Hugo Boss suit stepped up to the back of the couch.

  “Tell Eduardo to bring the truth serum. Also, more heroin. Once we learn where the cabin is from Sarah, I want her high as a kite until this is over.” The man stepped away. “Wait.” He stopped and turned back. “Then go to the hospital. Kill Aaron’s man, Benjamin. When you’re done, call me. I want confirmation Benjamin is dead.”

  The man checked his watch. “In less than one hour, sir, Benjamin will be dead.”

  Chapter 38

  Benjamin was just coming out of surgery. Aaron would have to wait, the doctor had said.

  Goulash and Bush grabbed magazines in the waiting room and flipped through them while Aaron paced. After twenty minutes, Aaron bought a coffee and continued pacing without thinking to offer one to either of Darwin’s men.

  The door opened and Benjamin’s doctor emerged, headed down another hallway. Aaron bounded after him.

  “Doc, any word?” he asked.

  The doctor looked over his shoulder. “Nothing yet. They’re transferring him to ICU. He’s heavily sedated.” The doctor picked up his speed trying to get away from Aaron.

  “When can I see him?” Aaron asked.

  This was taking too long. Benjamin wasn’t protected here and Aaron couldn’t stand guard while Sarah was in cartel hands. He needed Benjamin safe so he could devote all his energy to finding Sarah. They needed to get back to the cabin to strategize with Darwin.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” the doctor said.

  Aaron grabbed his arm and spun the doctor around.

  “Tomorrow!” he yelled.

  The doctor looked down at Aaron’s hand, then up and met his eyes.

  “Kindly remove your hand.”

  Aaron did.

  “Your friend took a bullet. We operated on him and sedated him. He will pull through this. But now he needs rest. Not visitors. You can see him tomorrow when the police are done with him.”

  “The police?”

  “Yes, it was a gunshot wound. They want to know how it happened. Actually, they will want to talk to you as well. Now, can I go? Can I help other patients, Mr. Stevens?”

  Aaron didn’t respond. The police. He couldn’t leave Benjamin here all night. No way.

  The doctor walked away and disappeared through a door and headed down another corridor. Aaron stared at the wall for a moment feeling helpless. He took a deep breath and turned back to the waiting room. Legally he had no grounds to take Benjamin out of the hospital. He wasn’t armed and couldn’t imagine doing it forcefully.

  Unless he convinced Bush and Goulash that was their only option. The cartel’s people had just been here when they removed Sarah. If they discovered Benjamin, alone in the hospital, he wouldn’t make it through the night.

  In the waiting room, Aaron sat between Bush and Goulash.

  “Guys.”

  Bush set his magazine down. Goulash just stopped reading, but remained holding his.

  “Where did you get your names?” Aaron asked. “I can’t imagine calling you Goulash. Bush isn’t so bad, but …”

  “Darwin decided our country of origin would be our names on this job,” Goulash said. “But I didn’t want to be called Hungary all the time and Bush here, he didn’t want to be called America. Also, we have two guys from Italy. So we fought about it and decided to go with something specific to our country.”

  Aaron nodded. “Makes sense.”

  Goulash was one of the biggest of the mercenaries. He was so wide, it was difficult for him to only take up the space one chair allotted. Sitting between Bush and Goulash, Aaron was squeezed in, having to keep his hands on his thighs.

  “Okay guys,” he said. “What do we do here?”

  Goulash finally set his magazine down now. “What do you mean? We came to get Benjamin and head to the cabin. That’s what we do, isn’t it.”

  “Benjamin just came out of surgery and is in ICU. According to the doctor, we can’t get in to see him until the morning.”

  Bush and Goulash stood in unison.

  “Bullshit,” Bush said in a deep voice. “He’s with us. We take him out now. Hundreds of guys have had gunshot wounds, got patched up and then went on to fight. He’ll be fine.”

  “They are waiting for the police to talk to him.”

  “That isn’t going to happen,” Goulash said. “Where is he?”

  “Through that door,” Aaron pointed. A man in a black suit opened the door he was pointing at and walked through, closing it behind him. “Where that guy just went.”

  “We’ll be out of here in five minutes, Aaron.”

  “You guys armed?” Aaron asked.

  They both nodded.

  “You expecting trouble?” Bush asked.

  “I always expect trouble when I’m in Sarah’s world.”

  Bush and Goulash exchanged a glance, then nodded.

  “Good policy,” Goulash said. “Let’s go.”

  Aaron followed Darwin’s men to the door. Once in the next corridor, he asked a nurse where the ICU was, got directions, and the trio headed that way. His stomach filled with anxiety as he considered what they were about to do. He was in a Mexican hospital with two men who were killing machines. They were about to steal Benjamin before he had a chance to talk to the police about his gunshot wound. Aaron was a Toronto boy, born and bred and was only here doing this because he met Sarah. She was a woman with a colorful life. If her life was a palette of paint, she was using all the colors and today’s colors were grays and blacks.

  But he’d have it no other way. He had never yearned for something, wanted something, and actually ached for something as much as he wanted Sarah. They were all here for her and each one would take a bullet for her as she would for them.

  He clenched and unclenched his fingers, readying himself for what they were about to do, feeling the odd sensation of his missing finger.

  The ICU contained multiple rooms. People lay in their beds attached to machines, wires dangling everywhere. Room after room was full, but none of them contained Benjamin.

  At the end of the ICU corridor, the last room on the right, was empty except for one bed. The man in the suit they had seen enter the doors by the waiting room before them was standing over that bed, his back to the window. From the angle, Aaron couldn’t see the patient’s face.

  “That has to be Benjamin,” Aaron whispered. “Doc said he was in ICU. This is the last room.”<
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  A nurse walked by behind them. The man in the suit hadn’t moved.

  Bush slipped inside the room and waited for Goulash to get in position. Aaron entered and stood beside the door.

  The man standing over the bed jerked his shoulders.

  “Turn around,” Bush said. “Slowly.”

  Something triggered a response in Bush. He seemed disturbed by the man in the suit.

  Goulash moved in quickly and dropped a hand on the man’s shoulder.

  “My friend here said turn around—”

  The man in the suit twisted his upper body and touched Goulash’s stomach with something. He raised his hand and twisted it sideways while Goulash’s face distorted in shock.

  Even before Bush reacted, Aaron understood Goulash just got stabbed. The world came rushing in as Bush ran past Aaron and slammed into the man in the suit, body checking him into the wall by the head of the bed.

  Aaron took in Benjamin’s purple face. The man in the suit had been restricting his air flow. While he tried to take Benjamin’s life, he had stabbed Goulash. If they had entered this room seconds later, Benjamin, his friend for over a decade, would be dead.

  Bush and the man in the suit were on the floor, rolling left and right in a fight for a gun that Bush held. Goulash had fallen to the side and watched as blood bubbled out of his gaping abdomen.

  Aaron burst into action. He hopped closer, lifted his right foot and did an ax-kick on the back of the head of the man in the suit. The man dropped like a sack of weights, knocked out cold.

  While Bush grunted and eased out from under the other man’s bulk, Aaron checked on Benjamin. He was still breathing, but it was labored and fast. His nose was rimmed in red where the man in the suit had held it closed and the red marks of a hand remained over his mouth.

  “Come on,” Aaron said. “We’re getting him out of here.” He got behind the bed and tried to push but it was secured to the wall.

  Bush got to his feet and stood over Goulash.

  “Bush, I can’t move the bed.”

  The American stared down at his colleague, ignoring Aaron. Aaron followed his gaze. Goulash’s head lagged to the side, his eyes wide and sightless.

  “From a stab wound?” Aaron whispered.

  “Can you carry your friend?” Bush asked.

  Aaron looked at Benjamin sprawled on the hospital bed. He was tall, but quite thin. Maybe a hundred and sixty pounds.

  “Yeah, I can carry him.”

  “Then do it and follow me.”

  Bush turned to the man in the suit, grabbed his hands and hauled the man up and over his shoulder fireman style. A moment later, Bush produced a small caliber weapon in his free hand.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “What are you waiting for?”

  Aaron unhooked Benjamin’s IV and heart monitors. Once Benjamin was free of them, a small buzzer sounded on the machine by the bed. He checked the wound to remind himself where it was, walked to the end of the bed and brought Benjamin along with him.

  Not thirty seconds later, he stood behind Bush with his friend draped over his shoulder.

  “Go,” he said.

  Bush led the way out the side exit as two nurses came running down the corridor in response to the buzzer in Benjamin’s room.

  Understaffed much?

  In the corridor, they drew stares. Bush led them to the elevators where he pushed the button with the tip of his gun and turned to watch the people behind them.

  Aaron watched for security but none had materialized.

  As the elevator doors opened, he saw a nurse behind her station watching them while talking into a phone.

  “She’s calling downstairs,” he said. “They’ll be waiting for us.”

  “Let them,” Bush said as he entered the elevator.

  Aaron followed him and pushed the main floor button. The elevator descended fast as Benjamin’s weight grew heavier by the second. He began to wonder if he would make it to the parking lot.

  The elevator slowed. Bush got into the center, crowding Aaron to the side. They waited. The elevator stopped. The doors opened maddeningly slow.

  No one stood in front of the elevator.

  Bush stepped out. Aaron followed.

  Two guards lingered to the right. They spoke into their radios, then nodded at Bush.

  “No one will stop you,” one of the guards said. “You’re free to leave the hospital.”

  Confused, Aaron wasn’t about to ask for clarity. He followed Bush outside, ordering his legs to hold the weight of his friend. They made it to the car and stopped. Bush set his unconscious man on the pavement.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “What?” Aaron asked as he laid Benjamin down on the trunk. He rolled his shoulders to loosen them. “What’s up?”

  “Goulash has the keys.”

  “Oh shit, you serious?”

  “Afraid so.”

  “Dammit.”

  Aaron glanced around the parking lot. Then dropped to the man in the suit and rummaged through his pockets. He came out with a set of car keys.

  “Let’s use his car,” he said as he pushed the button on the key fob.

  Seven cars over, a newer model BMW’s lights blinked. He pushed it again.

  “Let’s go,” Aaron said.

  He hauled Benjamin back over his shoulder and made it to the BMW without trouble. He laid Benjamin down in the backseat and squeezed his legs in to fit, then closed the door.

  “The trunk,” Bush said.

  Aaron popped the trunk as the man in the suit was coming to. He moaned, flailed his arms a little and tried to speak. Bush hefted him off his shoulder, twisted and dropped the man into the trunk, banging his head on the way in.

  “Ouch,” the man said. “That fucking hurt.”

  “You have no idea the pain you’re in for,” Bush said before he slammed the trunk. Then he slapped Aaron’s arm. “Good work. Let’s go.”

  On the way out of the parking lot, the two guards stood watching their progress.

  One of them nodded as if they knew each other.

  “Paid off,” Bush said from the passenger seat.

  “Paid off?”

  “The guy in the trunk was hired to kill your friend. He’s a hitman.” Bush flipped through the stations on the radio while he talked. “The cartel paid big bucks to have him gain access to Benjamin. The doctor knows. The nurses know. And those two guards know.” He stopped on a station playing Led Zeppelin. “That’s why they gave us a free pass. They think we’re cartel men.”

  “I want to go back and shoot them for that.”

  “Don’t worry, you’ll get your chance.”

  Bush moved his head to the beat of Whole Lotta Love as it blasted from the car speakers.

  Chapter 39

  It took an hour until the man named Eduardo returned with a small briefcase. She remembered him from earlier. He had given her relief, comfort. The pain had disappeared. But she didn’t want more drugs. Just something for the pain.

  Enzo got up, took his empty glass to a cabinet and filled it while Eduardo sat beside Sarah and set up his equipment.

  “Tell me about your sister,” Enzo said a moment later.

  She had been paying attention to what Eduardo was doing and gapped. Somehow Enzo had walked back over to stand on the other side of her.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Interesting answer.” He moved to the sofa and sat in the corner where he twirled his glass in a circle. “What happened to Vivian?” He met her eyes. “Come on, Sarah. You can talk about family, can’t you?”

  Eduardo wrapped her arm above her elbow and prepared a needle. She flexed her arms and legs to test the bindings but nothing gave way. Even the restraint around her chest held solidly. She grunted and let a wheezing sound out through her nose.

  The war was on the inside. Rationally, she wanted nothing to do with drugs. But irrationally, the euphoric feeling, what she experienced earlier, waited on the other side of that needle.

&nbs
p; “I’ll know everything as soon as what’s in that needle starts to work on you.”