“Let’s try to get some sleep. It’ll be light in an hour or two,” Jet said.
“How can you sleep after all this?” Alejandro asked, frank curiosity in his voice.
Jet considered the last few days – gun battles, the kidnapping, the plane crash, the showdown with Tara, the full-scale war at Dante’s factory – and smiled sweetly.
“It’s been a long week.”
Chapter 16
Santiago, Chile
Leonid ran from the bathroom to where his cell phone trilled and vibrated on the hotel room table. He snatched it up and held it to his ear.
“Yes?”
“Congratulations. Your problem is solved, which means you owe me half a million dollars.”
Leonid absorbed Antonio’s words. “Please explain.”
“Your woman was in a car with two of my enemies. They were being chased on a mountain road and met with an accident in the form of a ten-story drop. They went over, and the truck blew up.”
“Where?”
“About sixty kilometers north of us. A city called San Felipe. The crash took place in the mountains outside of town.”
“I want to see for myself.”
“I thought you might. I have arranged for one of my men to meet you up there and show you the wreck. Or if you want to forego the formality, I have photographs.”
“All due respect, photos don’t tell the whole story.”
“Just so. When would you like to meet my man?”
Leonid checked his watch. “How long will it take to get there?”
“No more than an hour.”
“Where do I meet him?”
“I’ll send someone to pick you up. I presume you’re staying at the hotel where we met, Mr. Ross?”
“That’s correct, but unnecessary. I can make my own way.”
“Ah, yes, but now I feel like I have five hundred thousand reasons to ensure that you don’t encounter any difficulties getting there – or returning.” Antonio’s message was clear: he wasn’t going to let Leonid out of his sight until the wire transfer was completed. It would be too easy for Leonid to verify the woman was dead, and then disappear, having acquired a half million dollars of value for nothing. “I will have a car there in twenty minutes, yes?”
“That’s very gracious of you. However, I have several men who are part of my team who will want to come.”
“The more the merrier. Just see that they’re on their best behavior. We don’t want any misunderstandings, do we?”
“Of course not. Twenty minutes.”
“Look for a white Chevrolet Suburban. The driver’s name is Carl.”
The phone went dead. Leonid called his men and told them to be in the lobby in fifteen minutes and to come armed. He didn’t trust the slick Chilean and wanted some insurance against a possible double cross. But based on the man’s description of the crash, it would be the easiest ten million Leonid had ever made.
But Filipov, the attorney who had contracted the hit, would want definitive proof before he paid, which meant that Leonid had to get it, one way or another. The man wouldn’t take a few snapshots and Leonid’s word for it – he’d want her skull. Which was as it should be, Leonid thought. The customer was always right.
Leonid did a quick calculation of time zones and decided not to call Filipov until he had the evidence he needed in hand. It wouldn’t do to get the attorney’s hopes up only to dash them. No, better to appear on his doorstep with proof in hand and wait for payment in his office. Not that Leonid didn’t trust him, but prudence dictated that he eliminate any temptation not to pay, and it would be impossible to argue with Leonid parked in the man’s office with a body bag or a test tube containing the last of the woman’s essence.
Carl was on time and showed no interest in talking, which was fine by Leonid. Half an hour outside town, they were blinded by police cruisers in the road. Spotlights roved over the Suburban as it drew to a stop. A uniformed officer took Carl’s ID and radioed it in, and Leonid eyed his men in the back seat, who appeared relaxed, but who he knew all had their fingers on their pistol triggers out of habit. Hopefully the cops wouldn’t search them or it would get ugly quickly – Leonid didn’t know what the penalty might be for carrying unregistered, concealed weapons in Chile, but he suspected it was substantial.
The policeman returned with Carl’s license and waved him through, averting one crisis. The big vehicle ate up the remaining stretch of road, and even with the unscheduled police stop, they made it to San Felipe on time.
Carl placed a call, murmured a few words, and then hung up, eyes never leaving the road. They drove down a quiet street and into a driveway that led to a farmhouse, ample acreage on either side ensuring privacy. The car stopped in front of the house, and Carl rolled down his window as a man emerged from inside – tall, a no-nonsense expression on his face, a pistol bulge obvious beneath his windbreaker. He exchanged a few words with Carl and then, after glancing at the men in the rear seat, turned his attention to Leonid.
“I’m Bastian, Mr. Ross. My boss says I’m to extend you every courtesy. Here are the shots I took of the accident,” Bastian said in accented English and held out his cell phone.
Leonid took the phone and skimmed through the photographs. “Pretty dark, but it looks grim. Did you go through the wreckage?”
“No, it’s too far down the gulch. Quite steep.”
“Then let’s go to the site. Oh, and see if you can find some rope. How many meters down do you think the wreck is?”
“Maybe…thirty meters? Nine or ten stories.”
Leonid nodded. “Then forty meters should do the trick.” Leonid’s tone was friendly, but it was obvious that it wasn’t a request. If Bastian was annoyed by the demand, he didn’t show it, but merely nodded and returned to the house. Five minutes went by, and he emerged with a bundle of cord in one hand and strode to the black SUV. Carl waited until he’d turned it around, and then followed him down the drive.
Not surprisingly, the road to the mountain pass was deserted, and they made reasonable time. As Leonid had hoped, no emergency vehicles were at the scene. Leonid stepped from the Suburban and walked to the edge, and Bastian joined him, flashlight in hand. The fire had long since gone out, and Leonid could barely make out the charred remains. Bastian played the beam over the burnt form, and Leonid turned to him.
“One of my men will go down and have a look.” He turned to the youngest of his team, a wiry man in his late twenties, and nodded. “Rudi, you know what to do,” he said in Russian, and looked meaningfully at the cliff edge. Leonid glanced at Bastian. “Can I see that rope?”
Bastian brought over the line. Leonid cinched it to the Suburban’s trailer hitch and gave it a good pull and then handed it to Rudi, who wrapped it around his waist and his forearm and moved to the drop-off. “Flashlight?” Leonid asked, and Bastian handed it to Rudi, who pocketed it before he lowered himself over the side.
“I hope he doesn’t disturb any snakes. There are plenty of rattlers in these hills,” Bastian said as they watched Rudi expertly rappel down the slope.
“That’s good to know,” Leonid said, terminating the discussion.
Three minutes went by, and Rudi called out from below. The terse words sent ice through Leonid’s veins. He responded in Russian and turned to Bastian.
“There are no bodies in the wreck.”
“What? I…maybe they were thrown clear? Or incinerated?” Bastian’s cool veneer of confidence suddenly showed cracks.
“I told my man to look around, but my bet is he doesn’t find anything. This was probably a ruse to get you to drop your pursuit. Bones don’t incinerate in a car fire.” Leonid spat to the side. “Which worked nicely, I’d say.”
Bastian shook his head. “Why would they do such a thing? They were well ahead of my men. There was no reason. No, I think there’s another explanation. They must have been thrown clear.”
“I told your boss, Antonio, that the woman is a skilled professional. I w
arned him not to engage under any circumstances. This is why.” Leonid paused. “You’re lucky to be alive.”
Bastian considered the scene at the hotel and said nothing as they waited for Rudi. Minutes stretched on, and then the rope went taut with a snap as he scaled the slope again. When he reached the road, he shook his head and gave a short report in Russian. “There’s nothing. I did a grid search for twenty meters in all directions. No sign of anything other than the car, which is burned to a crisp.”
Leonid relayed the information to Bastian, who glowered at the wreckage as his mind worked furiously before shaking his head again. “Impossible. There was an explosion. It must have vaporized them or blown them across the mountainside.”
“No, I’m afraid not. There would have been something left. A bone or two. A skull. There’s nothing, and my man walked the perimeter and searched among the pieces that blew off the car. So the target got away, while we’re left standing in the dark with our dicks in our hands.” Leonid was done with being polite. These incompetents had lost her, and God knew whether they’d ever pick up her trail again.
“Let’s say you’re right. Where would they have gone? The nearest town is over twenty kilometers away. No, it doesn’t make any sense…”
“Perhaps they had another car waiting to rendezvous with them. I don’t know. What I do know is that there are no bodies and no evidence of any kind that anyone got so much as a scratch in this crash, much less was killed. I’m afraid I’m right on this. You can verify it come morning, but I’d say she escaped.”
“Which means…the men she was with also escaped,” Bastian muttered, the gravity of the situation hitting home. The Sotos were still alive and out there somewhere. Antonio would go berserk, and when he was angry, he could be volatile. He fished his phone out and peered at it. No signal. He swore and eyed Leonid. “Come. We should return to the house. I need to make some calls.”
Leonid retrieved the rope and tossed it to Bastian, who took the bundle and stowed it. The return drive was at considerably higher speed than the ascent, and Leonid could tell that Bastian was agitated by the way he pushed his SUV around the curves ahead of them. When they pulled into the farmhouse drive, he was already out of his vehicle and on his phone, pacing, in a heated discussion. Leonid and his men got out of the Suburban, and Bastian faced them, cell phone still glued to his ear.
“We know where they are. We’re calling in reinforcements.” He finished the call and pocketed the cell.
“How do you know their location?” Leonid asked.
“That’s not important. But we will arrange for this to be the last hours of their life.”
“I want to go with you.”
Bastian nodded and looked Leonid and his men over. “Yes, I figured as much. And so you shall.”
“It will be light soon. Time’s wasting.”
“You’re correct, but I have my instructions. I have been told to wait until arrangements have been put into place to ensure that there can be no more mishaps. We will leave at dawn.”
“I don’t see why we’re delaying,” Leonid snapped.
“I understand your impatience, but there’s nothing I can do about it. Best to relax. Come inside – we have everything you could want. We’ll be on the road soon enough.”
Leonid could see there was nothing to be gained by arguing, so he accepted Bastian’s offer of hospitality and followed him into the house, keenly aware of precious minutes ticking by but unable to do anything about it.
~ ~ ~
Franco hung up on Bastian and called Colonel Campos, the number as familiar to him as his own. Campos answered on the fifth ring, his voice gravelly with sleep and a budding hangover. Franco apologized for rousing him and then got to business.
“I need your help, my friend.”
“Of course, whatever you need,” Campos said, his voice cautious.
“The Soto boys are at a mine north of San Felipe.”
“Yes?”
“I need the army to stop the miners from going to work this morning and, if possible, to cordon off the area so nobody can enter or exit it.”
“That could be problematic if the local police want to know why we’re in the region. That’s not our customary turf…”
“I understand. I’ll deal with the police – they’ve had no problem taking my money so far. Look, I’ll only need you there for a few hours. This will be over by breakfast. I’ll send my men in, and they’ll do the dirty work, so your hands will be clean. You just need to ensure they aren’t disturbed.”
“I’ll need to think up a pretense. If my superiors ask why I shipped several truckloads of men there, I need an answer.”
“Tell them you were following up on a tip about weapons smugglers. God knows the Sotos are guilty of that, and more. Whatever you need to do, do it, but I want that road closed down by dawn.”
Campos drew a heavy breath and grunted. “I’ll get dressed.” He didn’t need to say that Franco now owed him big. This went far beyond looking the other way when certain containers entered the port, or rousting unfriendly union workers who were agitating for higher wages from one of the Verdugos’ shipping or loading companies. He was being asked to get his hands dirty, albeit from a distance, and Franco was under no illusions that the price wouldn’t ultimately be high. Then again, so were the stakes. He needed the Sotos dead and would do whatever it took.
Franco returned to the bedroom, removed his black silk bathrobe and smoothed his pajamas. His wife hadn’t awoken, and he looked at her sleeping form with a combination of loathing and resignation. She’d once been a great beauty, courted by rich men, and had chosen him for her husband, to her family’s continued chagrin – beneath her station, as she’d taken to reminding him. But now…years and alcohol had taken their toll, and when he looked at her, it was like a cruel joke that all the mistresses and trysts could never right.
Franco sighed. He was an honorable man, and she’d borne him a son, which had been all he’d really wanted out of the union. It was for that son that he was risking it all to make the bold move against his hated rival – a move that could be either suicide or brilliance. Tomorrow would tell, and Franco, a man who knew no religion other than his own desires, uttered an unfamiliar prayer to a strange God, pleading with him to support his enterprise and bless it with success as he crawled back into bed, his head pounding from a tension headache that all the whiskey in the world couldn’t wash away.
Chapter 17
Mendoza, Argentina
The first rays of dawn marbled the sky with tangerine and pink as the Gulfstream made its final approach over the vineyards surrounding El Plumerillo International Airport. The plane rocked, its tires smoked on the tarmac, and then it stabilized, the updrafts of buffeting wind diminishing at ground level. The sleek aircraft slowed as it neared the end of the runway and made the turn that led to the small terminal. Drago eyed the airport as they rolled to a stop and was relieved to see only one sleepy customs inspector standing near the building.
He checked his phone and saw a message from the agent, sent twenty minutes earlier. Drago read it with interest and then returned the phone to his jacket pocket as the pilot lowered the fuselage stairs, the din of the engines whining at idle an auditory assault from the rear of the plane.
When he stepped into the morning light, the air felt crisp and clean, as though the nearby Andean peaks had imbued it with an electric vitality. The customs inspector approached and stamped his passport perfunctorily, uninterested in his bag. Drago nodded his appreciation, glad that his agent had been true to his word in eliminating that hurdle.
He made his way to the parking lot, where the text message had promised a Chevrolet sedan would be waiting, the key under the driver’s side floor mat and the door open. Drago found the car and, after orienting himself with the handheld GPS that had been left in the glove box per his request, he pulled out of the dirt lot, his first errand of the morning to check out the two addresses the agent had sourced for the
aristocrat who’d arranged the jet that had been blown out of the sky. It was a starting point, even if it was unclear to Drago how it was connected to his concerns, other than a report that a woman had been working with the target in Mendoza and that she’d been on the plane.
A woman. He’d only had the contract for six hours, and there was already a new player in the mix – a mystery woman. Nobody knew anything about her, which caused butterflies to flutter in his stomach.
The connection wasn’t much – wasn’t anything, really, by his standards – but hopefully it would be enough. He’d need to sweat the aristocrat and see what he knew. Beyond that, the trail had gone cold in Buenos Aires three days earlier, which was a lifetime. The target could be in Malaysia by now, but a job was a job, and he hadn’t expected it to be easy given the half-million fee. After all, no contract was ever easy if it required Drago’s special skills.
According to the file, the target was a highly experienced covert operative who’d taken that which didn’t belong to him – diamonds, exact quantity and value unknown. Part of what made the assignment troublesome was that he wasn’t expected to just locate the man and put his lights out, but also to interrogate him and find any diamonds he still had left. Upon reflection, the contract price was fair – finding the target would take some doing, possibly weeks of his time, assuming he was successful at all.
Drago was under no illusions that he’d been brought into this for a simple button job. For all his agent’s assurances, everything in the report had pointed to a black ops mission gone horribly wrong, which meant U.S. government involvement. Reading between the lines, the target had pissed off his employer, who’d ordered him taken out.
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