by Dana Marton
“Why didn’t he want me back?” Her heartbeat galloped wildly. Pedro had told her a hundred times how important her child was to him. This didn’t make any sense.
“Not what I expected either. But…” He shrugged. “Maybe he knows Cristobal’s men would push through if he opened that gate. He knows Cristobal would execute him the second he had him. You and the baby are lost to him either way. His only chance for survival is to defend the compound to the last man.” Jase carried her back to the camp and her platform, and laid her down.
A drizzle began to fall.
She rolled to her side to ease the pain in her lower back.
“Do you think Pedro knows the army is coming?” she asked.
“He might. But he might have something up his sleeve, too. He has many allies. Reinforcements could be on their way to him, just hours or minutes away.”
She took a second to process that, then another few seconds passed before she could voice the question looming in her mind. “Will Cristobal kill us now?”
“I don’t know,” he called back as the men led him away.
He grabbed a faded green tarp from the ground as he walked, and they didn’t take it away from him. He let them tie him up again, then lay down and covered himself against the slight drizzle. Only his legs and boots protruded. He shifted around a couple of times, probably trying to find a comfortable spot, but then stopped moving after a minute.
She couldn’t comprehend how anyone could sleep in this melee with the threat of death hanging over his head.
She did her best to breathe deeply and evenly, trying to relax. She rubbed her belly. Beyond Cristobal, stress was the biggest threat to her and her baby at the moment. She couldn’t do anything about Cristobal, but she could keep herself calm. She was still alive. Jase was still alive. A miracle could still happen.
She glanced over at him from time to time, finding his presence comforting. He’d walked next to her stretcher, as much as the narrow trail had allowed, all the way here. He’d kept her spirits up. He made sure the men took good care of her.
She was pretty sure he could have escaped a number of times, but he hadn’t. She couldn’t really understand why. She was nobody to him. He owed her nothing. His rescue complex couldn’t be this strong—not stronger than the instinct for self-preservation.
She didn’t want him to die because of her. He was a good man, better than any she’d known. His mission was important to the U.S. She hated the thought that she had messed that up for him. She wished there was something, anything, she could do to help, instead of being an ungainly ballast around his neck.
The drizzle picked up and turned into rain, the drops beating a monotone rhythm on the banana leaves above her, but it couldn’t drown out the sounds of gunfire from the nearby siege. The rain didn’t seem to bother the warring men.
She turned her head back to Jase. He hadn’t moved since he’d fallen asleep. Something about that prickled her instincts. She’d never seen him that still. He was always alert; he practically slept with one eye open.
Was he hurt? For all she knew, the beating he’d received could have broken his ribs. That he’d carried her didn’t mean he was okay. He had a tendency to ignore his injuries.
“Jase?” she called to him, but her voice was drowned out by a volley of gunfire and the rain.
She watched him, trying to determine if he was even breathing, but she was too far away to discern any movement. His pant legs were getting soaked. He’d lain down in an indentation in the ground between two palm trees, and now a puddle was forming under him. It amazed her that his wet clothes didn’t wake him, or the water that had to be seeping into his boots.
His boots—
She stared through the rain, wanting to be sure. And after a few seconds, she was. Those weren’t Jase’s boots. His were black, and these were a worn brown. And all of a sudden she realized that the man’s shape was off, too. Where were Jase’s wide shoulders?
A second passed before she put together what must have happened. Jase had somehow grabbed a man at one point when nobody was looking, neutralized him and stashed the body under his tarp to give the appearance that he was still here. Then he’d taken off.
When? Why didn’t he take her with him?
She looked around but couldn’t see him lurking in the bushes. He was gone. The thought hit her hard in the middle of her chest.
First Mochi, then him. So self-preservation did trump everything, after all.
She couldn’t blame them. She hoped, from the bottom of her heart, that both were safe somewhere far away from here. She would have run, too, if she was in any condition to do it.
As it was, she cradled her belly and listened to the battle, more scared than she’d ever been.
* * *
JASE STOLE FORWARD, probably faster than was strictly safe. He had to hurry. The army could be here any second, and once the reinforcements arrived, the attackers would storm the compound. Capturing the place shouldn’t take too long with an overwhelming force like that.
Right now, Cristobal had a hundred other things beyond Melanie to think about. But once he’d taken the compound, he would remember her and get rid of the nuisance he had no use for whatsoever.
Jase sneaked around Don Pedro’s camp in a wide circle. Cristobal’s men surrounded it from every side. He looked for a weak point where he could break through, but he couldn’t find any.
Fine. He’d make his own way.
He didn’t dare leave Melanie alone for long.
He selected a man who squatted a little farther back in the bushes than the others, and sneaked up to him from behind as the guy shot a volley of bullets into the compound.
Jase slapped his left hand over the man’s mouth from behind, yanked the guy’s head back and cut his throat. He dumped the body into the bushes and took the guy’s gun. He hadn’t been able to get his own weapon back. Cristobal had taken a liking to it and had been walking around with the rifle on his shoulder the last time Jase had seen him.
The smaller weapon in his hand right now would have to do.
But he couldn’t use it yet. He needed stealth a little longer.
He moved on to the next man. Broke his neck. Then he took out the next guy, then the next, a dozen of them altogether. The carnage didn’t bother him. He was focused on the mission he was trying to accomplish.
Search and destroy. This was what he did. He was good at it.
He moved in a crouch toward the spot where he’d cut the hole in the fence before. The jungle reached all the way to the edge of the camp there, the easiest spot to break through, if he could get that far undetected.
God and luck and all the jungle spirits must have been with him because, against all odds, he did.
He crawled forward in the cover of the undergrowth as far as he dared, spotted Roberto peeking from behind the cover of the old shed on the other side of the fence and took him out with a single shot between the eyes. Then he neutralized two more of the Don’s men.
He waited.
Nobody else seemed to be within sight of the path he planned to take. He pushed forward and through the hole in the fence, then ran to the cover of the old shed, stepping over the bodies of the men he’d killed.
The hacienda loomed two hundred yards from him.
Judging by the gunfire, there were about fifty people left inside the compound. They would all shoot him on sight if they spotted him. Alejandro would have gotten back to camp days ago and told them all that Jase was a traitor.
Cristobal had about a hundred men surrounding the place. Then there was the advancing army with at least two hundred soldiers.
When you were faced with overwhelming odds, the best thing to do was to focus on the basics. What were the things that were nonnegotiable, the priorities he had to achieve?
He had to take the compound and get Melanie inside somehow. She wasn’t going to make it to the mission. She needed to be evacuated ASAP. For that, he needed one of Don Pedro’s satellite p
hones so he could call in an evacuation team.
Beyond that, he needed to complete his mission. He needed names and dates on the planned insertion of terrorists onto U.S. soil. He needed Don Pedro’s Mexican connection, the man on the border who would be smuggling the weapons and the terrorists through.
The easiest way to get the intel he needed would be to interrogate someone who had that information. But he couldn’t just grab any guy. Not all of the Don’s men would know about that business. In fact, most of them wouldn’t. And he didn’t have time to figure out who did. So he had to go for the obvious solution. The Don had the information, for sure.
Which meant that while he overtook the compound, he had to keep an eye out for the Don and grab him, and secure the man for extraction and interrogation when the evac team got here.
He rubbed his hand over his face and shook his head. Not that he didn’t like a challenge…
He needed to buy some time. He rolled the half-formed ideas around in his head until they made sense.
He moved through the camp, always staying in cover, until he reached the back of the barracks. He slipped inside the empty building. Everybody had gone off to fight, it seemed, even the injured. He grabbed a piece of paper, a pen and some twine, then sat down to write, keeping the rifle in his left hand aimed at the door, should someone come in.
Señor Cristobal, we don’t want this fight. Give us one hour of ceasefire to handle the men who are faithful to Don Pedro, then we will hand the camp and him over to you. There are twenty-three of us who would pledge our service to you.
He wrote in Spanish, making sure to misspell a couple of words as an uneducated bandit might, then signed Roberto’s name.
Roberto had been close enough to the Don to conduct business on the man’s behalf from time to time. He’d definitely be known to the Don’s captains, and Cristobal had been one of those before he’d decided to take over the whole operation.
Jase slipped from the barracks the same way he’d sneaked in: unseen. He tied the note to a rock, then moved closer to the fence, waited for gunfire. He didn’t have to wait long. He identified the shooter’s location and threw the rock hard enough and far enough to hit the man. Of all the sports he’d played in high school and college, baseball had been his favorite. He’d been a pretty decent pitcher.
He heard a grunt as the stone hit its target, then he ducked to keep out of the way of the responding hail of bullets.
Then he waited, assessing the compound, noting the location of gunfire, guessing how many men manned the various posts around the perimeter. And he planned.
The battle went on for another twenty minutes before the attacking force fell silent little by little. Which meant his message had reached Cristobal at last.
He looked at his watch. He had one hour to take over the compound before Cristobal would attack again. Fighting one enemy at a time would be a lot easier.
He sneaked through the camp like a ghost, spotted several men, but avoided detection. Some seemed uneasy at the sudden end to the fighting and called for a small attack team to be sent out to see what was going on. Others were celebrating, assuming that Cristobal was ready to slink away defeated.
Jase headed to the packaging building. As sturdy as the hacienda itself, it had no windows and was guarded at all times. Except now. They needed every man for the fight.
He opened the padlock on the front door easily. He had made sure to find out the combination weeks ago, had searched the building once he’d managed to get the guard drunk in the middle of the night, in fact, but found nothing there beyond the drug stuff, nothing terrorist related.
Now he rushed in, having no time to waste, kicked over the nearest table and set it on fire. Then he went back to the entrance, made sure nobody saw him as he closed the door and used the doorknob to step up to the roof. He flattened himself and waited.
He didn’t have to wait long. Soon smoke wafted through the rafters. He covered his mouth with his shirt. Another minute or two passed before someone noticed the smoke, then men were running to investigate, about a half dozen.
They noted the open padlock and pushed inside, saw the fire, rushed to beat it out. Jase couldn’t see any others coming, so he jumped from the roof, slammed the door shut and clicked the padlock closed, trapping the bastards inside. Then he took off running, keeping in cover as much as possible.
The stables would have to be next, he decided, noting the three men who were taking a break in the shade by the front door. They didn’t see him, or the fire, from where they were sitting. He sneaked inside from behind and pulled into the darkest corner, which smelled like hay and dung.
The mules didn’t pay much attention to him. He’d taken care of them enough times for them to recognize him. They did smell the smoke, though, and were beginning to move around restlessly.
He checked his weapon, made sure he had enough bullets left in the magazine in case he needed the gun as a backup. On the first run, though, he preferred to try to take care of the men a little more quietly.
“What the hell is this?” he called out, making the question sound belligerent.
One of the men turned around, but couldn’t see him in the deep shadows. “What?”
“Come and see.”
The guy hesitated, but pushed to his feet. Jase waited until he was close enough, then grabbed him and silenced him with a quick stab of his knife between the man’s ribs. Then he stole quietly forward to the other two, who were smoking and swearing about how damned tired they were, speculating about why they were suddenly getting a break.
He reached out and knocked their heads together, which stunned them for a second. He snapped the neck of one, then the other, and quickly pulled the bodies inside the building before anyone could have noticed.
He silently ticked off the head count. He’d made progress, but still had a long way to go.
He didn’t enjoy killing. He did it as a last resort, when all his other options were exhausted. Taking a life wasn’t something he did lightly. But when he had to do it, he could do it. He was a soldier. He’d been trained for this.
He needed to keep Melanie alive and capture the Don. Those were the only two things he was focused on now. He fixed them in his mind. Everything else was just details, steps to get through to achieve his objective.
He glanced at his watch. Fifteen minutes had passed since the guns had gone silent. Which meant he had forty-five minutes before the siege would start up again, everyone a lot more alert and shooting every which way.
He kept in cover as he stole toward the barracks. This time plenty of men were inside, taking advantage of the lull in the battle to eat and rest. He looked in through one of the windows, but couldn’t see Consuela or any of the other women serving food. The women had probably left for the safety of the Jesuit mission when the shooting had started.
Cristobal would let them go. He might even hire them back when he took over the place. He had no quarrel with them.
Jase counted the men—almost a dozen, too many to just walk in and start an open confrontation. They all had their rifles by their sides. Chances were, a bullet would hit him before he could take all of them out. He couldn’t lock them inside, either. The barracks had front and back doors, and windows. Not a place that could be easily secured.
After a few seconds of coming up with and discarding various plans, he moved back, deciding to save this problem for later.
He moved on to the dog enclosures, hoping he could make quick progress there. But he couldn’t see anyone around. Some of the dogs barked a greeting; others had their tails tucked under them. They were used to guns going off, but not sustained gunfire, not battle like this. He patted a few that came over for reassurance, then kept going.
His best bet was to find men who were on their own or in groups of twos or threes and take them out a couple at a time. He moved toward the fence. There’d be men there, spread out, guarding the perimeter.
He began working on them, eliminating one af
ter the other, almost on autopilot, working like a machine, moving forward, dealing with each threat as he came to it. He couldn’t think of the number of lives he took. Not now. He would think about it, and deal with it, later.
When he finished with those who guarded the fence, he searched through camp and found and took out two more men. There were still that dozen in the barracks, and nearly as many up at the hacienda with the Don.
And as he went through his options once again, an idea occurred to him, a solution that would take care of half of his problems.
He sneaked over to the fuel storage shed where kerosene sat in metal barrels for the Don’s generators, and filled up four cans. He carried the cans out. Tricky, since with two cans in each hand he had to carry his rifle on his shoulder, out of easy reach if he was spotted and attacked.
But his luck held.
He placed the full cans at the outside corners of the barracks, took off his shirt and ripped it into strips of various lengths. He tucked one end of a strip into each can, then lit the fabric with his lighter, creating supersized Molotov cocktails with some extra-long fuses. He needed that to time the explosions.
And he did calculate right. This wasn’t his first rodeo. The makeshift bombs went off one right after the other, just seconds after he pulled back and took cover.
The explosion opened up the building, the roof disappearing, the walls shredded. The few men who lived were injured badly enough so they would be no threat to Jase, or anyone else, in the near future.
He glanced at his watch. Thirty minutes had passed. He had thirty more to finish what he’d started.
He watched from his hiding place as men rushed from the hacienda, drawn by the explosion. They didn’t approach the burning barracks to save their injured comrades. Instead, they looked around in panic, guns aimed every which way as they tried to spot Cristobal’s invading forces. Then they spotted the burning packaging building in the back and stared at it, bewildered.
“Where are the bastards?” one shouted.