Drago weighed his options. He could wait until his target had left, kill the remaining guards, hold the daughter and her child hostage and wait for the aristocrat to return – assuming he would, which was a safe bet since he wasn’t carrying luggage – or he could waylay the vehicle and take on the two guards in the rear seat on the fly.
He made his decision as the SUV backed away from the house and swung around to pull down the long drive. He’d try for the vehicle.
Drago got to his feet, shouldered his bag and the rifle, and moved from his position in a crouch, jogging along the road, putting more ground between himself and the house. For what he had in mind, the quieter subsonic pistol rounds would do: with any luck at all, nobody would hear the shots in the house, and assuming he could take out both guards before they could fire at him, nobody would be the wiser. Divide and conquer, he thought and squatted out of sight of the road among the vines as he screwed on the Heckler & Koch pistol’s suppressor.
He heard the crunch of gravel before he saw the SUV go by in a blur, and then he was moving to the edge of the vines. He fired twice at the rear tire and heard it pop. Brake lights went on, and the vehicle slowed before coasting to a stop. He edged closer as the back doors opened and the security men got out, followed by the old man. All three stood by the tire, inspecting its shredded bulk, and then one of the men swung the rear cargo door open to get the jack and spare tire.
Drago’s rounds punched into the man’s torso – three shots grouped within five inches of each other, he noted automatically with approval even as he swung the barrel at the second guard, who’d barely registered his partner crumpling next to the cargo hold when Drago blew his throat out with two well-placed slugs. Blood splattered the elderly man’s face and jacket as the guard collapsed, and then Drago ran toward him. He closed the twenty-five yards in seconds even as he trained the weapon on the man, who looked like he was debating going for the guard’s holstered pistol as Drago approached.
“Don’t even think about it,” Drago warned in Spanish. “Hands up. Do it or I’ll put a bullet in you. That’s your only warning.”
The man raised his hands. “You picked the wrong man,” he said quietly, his tone confident, his gaze unwavering. Drago had to admit he was an imposing figure even at the wrong end of a gun barrel.
“Maybe so. Get back in the car. Slowly. We’re going for a ride.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Then your lovely wife gets it in the back of the head to show I’m serious. It’s all the same to me,” Drago said, and he could tell by the look on the man’s face that he believed him.
“What do you want?”
“To talk. Nothing more.”
“Who are you?”
Drago motioned with his weapon for him to get back behind the wheel. “The angel of death. Now do as I say or I start shooting again, and once I do, I can be hard to stop.”
The man looked him up and down, and then complied. Drago kicked the cargo door closed and stepped over the dead bodyguard and then slipped into the rear seat, ignoring the look of raw terror on the woman’s face. He kept his gun pointed at the man, never taking his eyes off him even when he addressed her.
“Don’t scream or try anything, or you’re dead. Do you understand?”
She nodded. Drago could smell fear beneath the cloying expensive perfume she was wearing.
“Good,” he said and pulled the door closed behind him.
“Where to?” Sofia’s father asked.
“Back to the house. I need privacy, and it looks nice.”
“Absolutely not. Might as well shoot me right now. There’s no way I’ll endanger my daughter.”
Drago shrugged and thumbed back the hammer on his pistol and shifted it to the back of the woman’s head. He paused, considering, and then whispered to her, “If I kill you, my hunch is he’ll become even less cooperative, so instead I’m going to shoot you in the kidney. The agony will be excruciating, but it will take a while for you to die, and if your husband tells me what I need to know, you’ll have time to get to a hospital so he can save your life. Sorry about that,” Drago said and fired through the back of the seat.
The woman’s scream was tortured, but Drago didn’t flinch.
“You bastard,” Sofia’s father hissed through clenched teeth, trying to twist to get at him.
Drago held the pistol steady. “All right. The clock is ticking on your wife’s life. You want me to do a repeat performance on you so you can’t drive her to the hospital? Keep talking.”
“What do you want?”
“I need to know the whereabouts of the woman you arranged the jet for. The one that exploded.”
“What? How would I know that?” he demanded, but Drago could sense something in his tone. The man was good, he’d give him that, and most might have believed him. But not Drago.
“Where is she? If you don’t tell me, I’ll put a bullet in your wife’s other kidney. You can live with only one kidney. But with both ruined? It’s no kind of life at all.”
The woman’s face was white from shock. “Tell…him…”
Drago nodded. “Yes. Your wife is sensible. Tell me where she is and you’ll live.”
“I…I don’t know. I swear it. She disappeared two nights ago.”
“Where was she going?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did she have anyone with her?”
“Her husband and her daughter.”
“Her husband. What does he look like?”
“Tall. Handsome. Maybe…mid-forties. Caucasian. I think he’s American or Canadian.”
“Sounds about right. Where did they go?”
“I told you. I don’t know.”
Drago shook his head. “Your poor wife.” He turned to her. “Forgive him. He’s willing to allow you to suffer the tortures of the damned to protect them,” Drago said and moved behind her as he pressed the suppressor against the rear of the seat.
Sofia’s father froze. “No. Please. There’s something else. I…I really don’t know where she was going. But…I gave her the number of a friend who could arrange things. She might have contacted him. He might know.”
“A friend. I see. And who is this friend?” Drago asked, his voice reasonable.
“Alfredo Sintas.”
“A good name. Where can I find him?”
“He lives in San Rafael.” He gave Drago the address.
“Alone? Wife? Kids?”
“No. He’s a widower. His children are grown.”
“You have a cell phone?”
“Of course.”
“Call him. Tell him you’re going to be in town and you want to meet him at his house. In an hour.”
Sofia’s father dialed Alfredo’s number. When he answered, he kept the discussion short, the suppressor cold against the back of his head. Alfredo agreed he’d be home and waiting for his arrival. He hung up, and Drago nudged his skull with the suppressor. “Toss the phone back here.”
He did as instructed. “Now what?”
The soft point .45 slug blew a spray of the older man’s brains onto the windshield and starred it where it punched through the glass. Drago turned and put a bullet into the woman’s temple, ending her suffering, and then scooped up the telephone and got out of the SUV.
It would be midafternoon by the time anyone found the bodies, drawn by the buzzards circling the bloating corpses overhead. Drago slipped the phone into his pocket and ran down the drive, his stride easy, a rhythmic predator’s lope. The bag and rifle bounced against his back as he raced to his car to have a chat with Alfredo – hopefully soon enough to be able to catch a light lunch afterward.
Chapter 20
Jet was fussing with Hannah’s hair when she heard the motors from the dirt road, big vehicles climbing the steep hill. She shielded her eyes from the sun with her hand and squinted into the distance as Matt returned to her side with Alejandro and Rodrigo in tow. When she turned to face him, her face was tense.
&nb
sp; “What do you think miners would be driving?” she asked Alejandro.
“A work truck, or maybe a couple of vans.”
“Not newish SUVs, though…”
Alejandro peered into the distance. “No. Is that what’s approaching?”
“Yes. Four of them.” She stood and looked hard into Matt’s eyes. “Something tells me those aren’t miners.”
Alejandro watched as the vehicles approached. “But…that’s impossible.”
“Seems like there’s been a lot of that going on over the last twelve hours, hasn’t there?” She paused. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
“They’ll be on top of us before we can get over the hill,” Matt said. “We’ve got to go into the mine. Anywhere else and we’ll be sitting ducks.”
“You want to go in there?” Rodrigo asked. “No. Not me.”
“Then you can roll out the welcome mat,” Jet said. “He’s right. They’ll be here in under a minute. Come on, honey, let’s go,” she said to Hannah as she picked her up. “Time to explore the magic cave.” She glanced at Alejandro. “Good luck. I don’t like your odds.”
Alejandro eyed the dust cloud from the road, and then his brother. “Rodrigo. There’s no way we can outrun them.”
He shook his head. “I’m not going in there.”
Jet tried one more time. “In the mine we have an advantage – they can only send in so many men, and you can choose where you make your stand. They obviously know you’re here. Out here the advantage is theirs. The mine’s the smart choice.”
Alejandro nodded agreement. “I say we go in. Now.”
Matt was already moving toward the dark opening, and Jet was backing away from the brothers with Hannah – she’d spoken her mind, and now it was time to move.
Rodrigo glared at his brother. “Alejandro, I can’t tell you how sick I am of you making decisions and telling me what to do. You want to go into the mine, you go. I’d rather take my chances out here. I think you and the girl are wrong.” He pronounced the girl like an insult.
The engines grew louder, and Jet spun with Hannah and ran for the mine. The trucks would be there within thirty seconds, tops. If the brothers wanted to bicker and stay outside, waiting to get killed, it wasn’t her problem. Hers was getting out of this alive and keeping her daughter and Matt safe.
The entry was larger than she’d thought from afar, at least five meters high and seven wide, but she could see that it narrowed as the daylight died in its bowels. Matt motioned to her to hurry, and she met him inside. The air smelled stagnant, like moist rock and dust.
“Come on. We need to get well out of range. If they send men in, we don’t want to be where they can see us,” he said. His voice echoed off the tunnel walls.
She heard a noise behind her. Alejandro was at the mine entry.
“He’s an idiot. He’s making a run for it up the mountain. I couldn’t stop him.”
“It’s too late to do anything now – he made his choice. You need to get deeper before they arrive. Once they do…” She didn’t have to finish the thought.
Alejandro studied her determined expression and looked at Hannah. “If they send men in, you’ll be in danger, too. All of you.”
“This isn’t my fight.”
“I know that. But they won’t make that distinction. You’re here with me…I wouldn’t rely on the Verdugos for mercy.”
She closed her eyes for a moment and then nodded and put Hannah down. “Doug, take Hannah. He’s right. Get going. I don’t want you getting hit by any ricochets.”
Matt stepped forward. “Are you serious?”
“There’s no other way. They’ll hunt us like rats unless we can hold them off.”
“There are usually other ways out besides the main entrance,” Alejandro said. “I know a little about mines from friends in the business. There will be ventilation shafts. We might be able to get out through one.”
“Might,” Matt echoed.
Alejandro faced him. “Do you have a better option?”
The roar of the first SUV arriving quieted them. Jet whispered to Matt, “Please. Do as I ask. Keep her safe. I’ll come find you. But hurry up and move. It’s going to get ugly here any minute.”
“I hope you know what you’re doing,” Matt growled through clenched teeth and scooped Hannah up with his good hand. “Come on, darling. We’re going cave exploring.”
Hannah looked at Jet with frightened eyes, and Jet touched her cheek. “Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”
Hannah spoke in a tiny voice. “Prometh?”
Jet nodded solemnly. “Of course I do. I love you, honey.”
“Me too,” Hannah said, breaking Jet’s heart. And then Matt moved deeper into the mine, his shoes crunching on the ore underfoot, following the rusting remains of a rail system into the mountain.
Jet freed her Glock and slid away from Alejandro.
“When they come, you take the ones on the left, I’ll take the ones on the right. But make every shot count. Use the rocks as cover.” She pointed at a pile of stones next to a metal cart that looked like it predated the automobile. “I’ll be over there.” She edged to an indentation in the mine wall where several iron boxes were corroding, still filled with ore from the mine’s depths.
“Won’t the shooting trigger a cave-in?” Alejandro whispered.
“No plan’s perfect. What’s the alternative?”
He glared at the mine opening and nodded. “If I make it out of this alive, you can consider the boat trip on me.”
“That’s a generous offer. Let’s keep you breathing, then, shall we?”
The headlights from the lead SUV shone into the mine, but didn’t reach their position due to a slight bend in the tunnel. Alejandro had his Desert Eagle out, and Jet noted that his hand was steady. Good. They heard the SUV’s doors slamming, and then a second and third set as the other vehicles arrived.
Three flashlight beams played along the walls as men entered the mine. Jet stabbed her finger toward the lights, and Alejandro nodded, understanding. They needed to take out the men with the lights. Without the flashlights the attackers would be blind, backlit by the sun streaming through the opening, making the mine threshold a killing field for anyone trying to cross it.
They didn’t have long to wait. The bouncing beams approached with the thud of boots on rock, and Jet saw the first intruder: a man carrying an assault rifle, the flashlight secured below the barrel, a worst-case scenario for them because the weapon’s greater range would overpower Jet and Alejandro in a shooting battle. That underscored all the more why they’d need to optimize their element of surprise. They wouldn’t get more than one chance.
Jet shook her head when Alejandro glanced at her, and she motioned with her hand to not shoot yet. Her message was clear: let them get close enough so they could take out all the flashlight-toting gunmen with their first salvo.
Another man appeared, also with his flashlight affixed to his rifle, the third right behind him. Fools, Jet thought, allowing them to get closer…closer…closer.
Her Glock’s bark sounded like artillery fire in the tunnel. Two of the men dropped, and Alejandro’s Desert Eagle roared three times, cutting the third down. None of the riflemen had been able to fire a shot, but that quickly changed as their colleagues opened up, firing blindly into the mine. Jet flattened herself against the ground and tried to create as small a target as possible as slugs winged and whistled off the rock walls. Another gunman edged toward her, this one without the benefit of a light, and she took his head off with a single shot.
More random fire, a flurry of rounds, but because of the bend, none hit them. They waited for the inevitable, and another unlucky man crept forward. One explosive cough of the Desert Eagle and he went down. His companion, following him in, emptied his entire rifle magazine into the darkness and was feeling for a spare when Jet’s Glock took him out.
The tunnel went quiet as the attackers debated the wisdom of walking into a killing ma
chine. Jet knew she’d been lucky that the men were inexperienced at this sort of an assault. If they had any brains, they’d fall back, maybe try to burn their quarry out using smoke. She offered a prayer to the universe to keep them from thinking of that. So far they’d shown themselves rank amateurs, and it had cost them six of their own in barely a minute.
But she couldn’t rely on them not coming up the learning curve quickly. Her ears were ringing from gunfire, the high-pitched ever-present keening of tinnitus more than familiar. She didn’t see any shadows that announced more shooters entering the mine, so she inched over to Alejandro’s position and murmured in his ear.
“Cover me. I’m going to get us some rifles. If I’m right, two of the lead gunmen are out of sight of the mine opening. Follow me up, and if anything shows its head, shoot it.”
Alejandro nodded and rose from his position behind the rocks. The dead attackers were no more than ten meters away. Jet and Alejandro edged forward together, weapons clutched in two-handed combat grips. Alejandro hung back after the first five meters and took up position, his weapon at the ready, as Jet continued on. She couldn’t detect any sign of life from where she was, but she also understood that she was nearly deaf, and that if one of the cowboys at the mouth of the mine decided to squeeze off another thirty rounds, one could easily hit her while she was recovering weapons.
Jet found four spares in the first shooter’s vest. She gritted her teeth as she pulled his rifle from the man’s dead hands, noting that it was the familiar standby of guerillas and criminals everywhere, the trusty old AK-47 – this one probably Chinese-manufactured, judging by the newness of the finish. She switched the flashlight off and pocketed the magazines, and then, after waiting a few beats so she could detect any movement from the mouth of the mine, repeated the process at the next corpse. She was just finishing when gunfire exploded from the opening, and she hugged the ground as lead flew past her position and several rounds thudded into the dead man immediately in front of her.
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