• • •
BRYAN DIDN’T ALLOW Dani to come to dinner. Since Jane hadn’t eaten breakfast, and the crew ate only light lunches in the lab, she should have been hungry. She wasn’t. Thoughts of Dani, of Eric, of the day’s discoveries filled her mind. She forced herself to chew and swallow—what if Eric came tonight? She would need her strength.
Upstairs, she propped the chair under the doorknob and took a quick shower. Usually she slept in shorts with whatever tee came most easily to hand, but she needed to be ready to run, so she slipped into underwear, jeans, and the darkest tee she could find to blend well into the night. She opened the window and removed the screen from its snaps but left it loose in the frame, allowing her to leave the window itself open in case Eric came for her. Please, let him come tonight.
Nerves kept Jane awake for a few hours, but eventually exhaustion had its way and she slept. Her dreams were filled with dark figures, and she woke twice, sure Velasquez was coming for her. The third time, she woke to a gloved hand over her mouth and Eric’s bright blue eyes staring into hers. The minute she stopped her instinctive struggles, he let go and reached for the pad by the bed.
Where’s Dani?
They took her prisoner this morning. She’s with her brother, I think.
He nodded once, decisively, as if the information were of no consequence. He helped Jane up and watched while she donned the Crocs that were her only footwear since she’d been barefoot when abducted. At the window, he showed her a rope leading up to the roof, knotted at intervals. Oh, hell, this was going to be worse than gym class in high school. Sure enough, he jerked his thumb upward. With a deep breath, Jane reached out and grabbed the rope just above the first knot over her head. She hauled herself upward and felt Eric behind her. The minute he was out, he began speaking.
“Yeah. I’ve got Jane. Are you in?” He listened. “Change of plan. His sister is down there, too. Or Jane thinks so.”
Jane climbed up onto the clay-tile roof, thankful for the grip of the rubber shoes.
“Got ’em?” Eric asked. “Great. Marco, give us three minutes, then go.” He took Jane’s hand and helped her up and over the ridge of the roof, then collected the grappling hook and reset it on the opposite side of the roofline, attaching a much thicker, unknotted rope.
“Why didn’t we just go down from my window?”
“Because any minute, Marco’s going to create a big boom to draw the guards’ attention so they don’t see where we go. The magic of misdirection. They will head for two places: toward the bang and toward their most valuable asset—you. We will be on the opposite side of the building when they do. He can’t wait for us to go down because we need to draw the guards off before we go down.” He leaned over the edge of the roof, checking below them for guards, then tossed the rope down. “You’re going to have to climb on my back. You don’t have protective gloves or the strength to go down as fast as I can. Arms around my neck, legs around my waist.”
They were halfway down the side of the house when the night exploded. Light flared and the house shook. And then they were on the ground and running for the wall, skirting the pool and the dark cabanas, ignoring the shouts of guards. Leaving her at the foot of the wall, he free-climbed up and dropped her a rope.
“Wrap it around your waist and tie it before you start climbing,” he ordered. “I’ll pull you up at the same time.”
Once they’d landed on the other side, Eric took her hand and darted the few yards into the deeper shade of the thick woods. He dug in his pocket and handed her a small object. “Put this in your ear. You’ll be able to hear us; we’ll be able to hear you.”
Jane placed the device deep in her ear and immediately heard a vaguely familiar male voice.
“We got a problem. The kid wasn’t so eager to be rescued. I had to knock him out, so we’re off schedule by a couple of minutes.”
“Marco?” Hearing Eric next to her through her right ear while the earbud gave her his voice through her left was peculiar, and Jane shook her head slightly, trying to bring the two in line.
Another male voice answered. “On it. Trey, head to your right, and I’ll put a few little distractions between you and trouble.”
A minute later, shots rang out and then a tremendous crash reverberated through the air. More shouting followed, and over it Jane heard Bryan yell at his men to stop what they were doing and find her.
“We’re over,” came the voice she now realized was Trey Godwin, who’d driven them back to her house the first night Eric had stayed with her. “We’ll meet you at the rendezvous in twenty.”
“Ten-four,” said the other voice.
“We’re gone,” Eric said. “ETA fifteen.” He took her hand and led her deeper into the jungle. Occasionally, he glanced at his watch and made adjustments to their path, and after a while they came to a rocky, slow-moving stream. Not long after, they were joined by Dani, Trey, Alvaro, and a stranger with long dark hair she assumed must be Marco. Alvaro had his hands bound with climbing rope and duct tape over his mouth.
“I explained to him that if he kept shouting behind the tape I’d have to knock him out again,” Trey said. “It’s mostly worked, but he’s pretty fucking uncooperative.”
“He’ll do better,” said Dani. “He’s confused is all. They tortured him. You didn’t have to do the same.”
“That wasn’t torture; that was practicality. If we’d waited for you to convince him to join us, we’d all be dead.”
“Let’s go,” Eric broke in. “Trey, you lead. Dani, you’re behind him. Alvaro, follow your sister. I’ll take center with Janie behind me, and Marco, you cover our six. We’re going two miles upstream. Watch your footing, but keep up your speed. We can’t lead them in a straight line, so if we keep to the optimal course for evasion, we have seventeen miles to the extraction point, and we can’t afford broken ankles.”
Upstream was also uphill, and Jane almost fell three times in as many minutes, grabbing on to Eric’s shirt to hold herself upright. Mud, sand, and slime filled her shoes and soaked the legs of her jeans as she picked her way along through the sluggish water. They couldn’t be making good time—at this rate it would take days to get to the pickup spot.
• • •
ERIC WINCED WHEN Jane grabbed him for the third or fourth time. It would be a whole lot easier if he could simply carry her, but that plan had gone out the window the minute he’d gotten a look at Alvaro Peralta’s eyes. That flat, dead look meant the kid couldn’t be trusted at all. Yeah, he’d been a prisoner and Eric felt sorry for him, but his wiring was seriously screwed up. The sister stumbled along behind Trey, fury in every line of her body. He guessed he understood; it had to be hard to see your own sibling as a potential danger.
After a couple of hours, they crested a small rise and came to the pool that supplied the stream they’d been wading through. It, in turn, was supplied by two separate sources, one to the east and one to the west. The plan had called for taking the western route, the whole purpose of the upstream trip being to diffuse scent trails. Once they were tracked to the stream, the hunting force would split in two, one going up and one going down. The idea here was to divide them again between the east and west streams.
But, as usual, incomplete intel forced Eric to rethink. Either direction took them uphill. He’d expected that, given that water flowed with gravity, but they hadn’t had time to do a full survey, and he hadn’t seen aerial views or elevation maps. The western route was going to be tough. The water came down into the pool as a thin fall about thirty feet high.
“Hold up. No one break cover.” They all stopped.
“What do you think, Trey?”
“Rangers lead the way.”
“Yeah, fuck you, too,” said Marco from behind them.
“And look where you are, Marine.” Trey laughed.
“Cool it. Who’s got rope and hooks?�
�� He’d used all his getting Jane out of the compound. They all carried paracord, but that wouldn’t do for climbing the cliff face with amateurs.
“I’ve got rope,” Trey said. “I’ll find a tie-off at the top.”
“Go.”
Trey looped a long length of rope over one shoulder and across his body, handed his backpack to Marco, then dove into the pool and disappeared. Eric moved to the head of their little group and surveyed them. Dani was drooping visibly, Alvaro still looked sullen, and Jane kept flicking her eyes back and forth, as if expecting their pursuers to attack without warning from the darkness around them. He’d agree with her if he were fighting guerrillas, but in his experience cartel soldiers didn’t value stealth, only strength.
“Find a rock, take a seat. It’s going to take Trey at least half an hour to make that climb, even not going up the face itself, and this may be your last chance to rest for a while.” He grabbed a handful of protein bars out of his backpack and passed them around, along with a bladder of water. He untied Alvaro’s hands but sent Marco a visual command to keep an eye on the kid. Marco nodded and shifted slightly, putting himself between Alvaro and the rest of the group.
It had only been about twenty minutes when Marco’s head came up sharply. “Company.”
“Fuck.” He’d thought they’d have more time. “Okay, Marco, see what we’re up against. Everyone else, in the water. Stay to the edge, in the weeds, but start making your way around toward the waterfall. Move quietly. Jane, you take lead. Dani, you’re next.” He didn’t plan on taking his eyes off Alvaro. He was tempted to gag the kid again, but if they had to swim the taped mouth could be dangerous.
A few minutes passed, and he heard Marco in his ear.
“I can see four. I can take them out no problem, but there won’t be any way to hide it.”
Eric considered the group making their slow way around the edge of the water. “Do it. We need the time.” He saw Jane stumble slightly—she’d be rethinking getting involved with him now—but this was what he did. Would be prefer not to kill anyone? Absolutely. Every life had value. But the simple fact of the matter was that this was kill or be killed.
“Ahoy below,” came Trey’s voice. “Operation rope and scope under way. All’s quiet now that Marco’s cut off the tail, so time for you guys to head up.”
“Good. Marco, head east and leave a few obvious tracks, then double-back to us.”
“Will do.”
“They’re not going to let you get away,” said Alvaro. “You have no idea how pathetic you look compared to them.”
“Shut your mouth and move your feet, or I’ll show you pathetic,” Eric replied. For a moment, the kid didn’t budge, and Eric feared he’d have to knock him out again, but at last he turned around and trudged along behind his sister.
At the cliff face Eric sent Marco up with Dani clinging to his back like a monkey. Trey fast-roped back down, leaving Marco at the top, where his sniper skills would do the most good. Without being told, Jane clambered back onto Eric’s back, and he went up. At the top, Marco gave him a hand over, and he sent Jane and Dani into the jungle to hide while he crouched at the edge of the cliff and watched Trey getting Alvaro into position. The climb was a treacherous one even without an extra buck seventy-five of ill-distributed weight from a reluctant passenger.
Trey was halfway up when Marco cursed under his breath. “Double time,” he said. “Company’s coming.” He steadied his AR-15 on a rock, and his whole body went still. As often as Eric had seen snipers work, he never got over the way they seemed to stop breathing, to transform into stone or brick or earth.
“Dani, Jane, get further back behind the tree line and lie down. If they fire, they’ll be shooting up.” Eric leaned over the edge and saw Trey a good ten feet down but moving fast. Eight feet. Six. Four. A shot rang out, and stone chips flew inches from Trey’s shoulder. Marco returned a single shot.
“Got him. But there may be more. And they’ll know which direction we’ve taken.”
“No shit.” Eric helped Trey over the lip of the cliff. “Time for plan B.”
“What’s that?” asked Jane.
“Run like hell.”
Chapter 11
THEY RAN. AND ran. And ran. The sun rose and the jungle around them went from black to a series of deep, rich greens. Although direct light never reached her skin, the air heated and thickened with humidity, clogging Jane’s breathing. Her feet squelched in their own sweat inside the rubber shoes. But she refused to quit. They’d abandoned their line and now spread out, as they forced their way through the brush, though Eric still took the lead and Marco held up the rear.
It seemed hours before Eric called a halt. Dani had given up, and Trey was carrying her in a fireman’s hold across his shoulders. Both he and Eric appeared unstoppable, barely fazed by the conditions. Trey let Dani down, and Eric passed around more protein bars and the canteen.
“Scouting,” Marco said, and disappeared into the woods.
Eric sat next to Jane and tapped at the device on his wrist, which Jane could now see was far more than a simple watch.
“How far off course are we?” Trey asked.
“We’re doing okay, but we can’t stay on a direct trajectory or they’ll figure out exactly where we’re headed.”
“Where are we headed?”
Both Eric and Trey looked at her as if they’d forgotten she was even there.
“An airfield about twenty klicks from here. Small, used primarily—ironically—by cartel flyers. Nash has a friend who can get his hands on a little cargo plane. Once we get close, I’ll give him an ETA and he’ll pick us up.”
“How long do you think it will take us to get there? And what’s going to happen to the lab?”
“Nash identified the lab as a terrorist enclave to Homeland Security. We figured that wasn’t far off, given what they were trying to develop. So we’ll leave that in their hands and they’ll work it with the Mexican government, or, if they can’t get assistance from the Mexicans, they’ll probably send in a black-ops team to shred the place. Marco knocked as much of the communications system as he could identify offline when he was firing on the compound to give us space for our escape, and sent a couple Stingers into the lab itself as well.”
Okay, so she could breathe a little easier on that score. It wasn’t perfect. She’d have preferred to have burned the place to the ground on their way out and stirred the ashes with the bones of Bryan Axlerod’s dismembered skeleton, but at least Nash was working on containing the problem.
“As to how long it will take, that’s what Trey and I were talking about. The airfield isn’t far as the crow flies, but we can’t afford to put a neon arrow on our path so they can hang out there and wait for us. If we head east first for a couple of klicks, then northeast, we should be able to cut straight west and hit the airstrip. We’re not moving as fast as I’d like, though.”
“Um, Eric . . .”
“I know, Janie. You guys are doing your best, and I appreciate it. But there’s no way we make the pickup today at this rate.”
Oh, great. Another night in the jungle. Exactly what she needed to complete the current nightmare.
“Five minutes, everyone,” Eric said. “We need to get moving again.”
Dani groaned. “I should have joined a gym instead of spending my money on mocha lattes and margaritas. That’s the top of my to-do list when I get home.”
“The top of my to-do list is a hot bath and a massage,” Jane said.
“Well, yeah. After that.”
“Why are they even wasting manpower chasing us?” Jane asked. “Why aren’t they dismantling the lab, saving what they can, and getting out while the getting’s good?”
Eric shook his head. “Because Velasquez heads up the Hijos cartel, which means the law on both sides of the border would love to bring him down. He operates with r
elative impunity because he never performs any of the acts himself. On the local level, people are either bribed or bullied so that on the national level—where prosecutors would be willing to take him on—nothing can be proven. But this operation was too big and too personal. He got involved. He showed himself to you. He needs to eliminate the threat you pose if he wants to get back to business as usual.
“Failing to deliver on the supersoldier project isn’t fatal, but allowing a woman to destroy his lab might be. He needs to prove he can still lead the cartel, and the best way to do that is to bring you in and make an example of you. The second best is to kill you outright and display your body as proof of what happens to those who cross him.”
Oh, wow. So there would be no talking them out of the pursuit. She didn’t bother replying, and Eric touched her hand. “We’re not going to let them get you.”
Jane nodded.
Once again, Eric led them through the dense underbrush. Jane watched his body move gracefully but forcefully forward and tried to step where he did before the grass and brush could spring back up and grab at her legs. Marco had not returned, but through her earbud she could hear him giving Eric updates.
Fear and monotony combined in the thick, humid air, weighing down her eyelids and her feet until every step became a chore, every breath a struggle. She inhaled tiny insects and choked them out. Her legs cramped, and she wished she could ask Eric to pick her up and carry her, but she refused to give in. He needed his hands free to defend them.
“Company,” said Marco’s voice in her ear. Eric held up a hand and they all stopped.
“Where?”
“Nine o’clock, thirty meters out.”
“Incoming?”
“Hold. They’ve stopped. Arguing about something.”
Mind Games Page 17