Tracie ground her teeth in frustration, but there was no good comeback for Carranco’s taunt. Everything she said was true.
The terrorist sliced through the tape binding Tracie’s wrists to the bamboo chair and then stepped back. “Get up,” she said brusquely.
Tracie rubbed her wrists together in a mostly unsuccessful attempt to get the blood flowing again. “About time,” she said. “What happens now? Are we going for drinks? Is it Happy Hour already?”
“You talk too much, do you know that?”
“That’s hurtful, Maria. And I thought we were really starting to bond.”
“Shut up and get out of that chair. Now.”
The lightning bolts of pain continued blasting through her head, originating at the ragged gash the Mossberg had put in her skull and radiating outward. Her vision was intermittently blurry and she was as thirsty as she thought she had ever been.
And she didn’t know what this crazy, homicidal terrorist had planned now, but she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to like it much.
She pushed up with her legs, wobbled a moment, and then dropped heavily down into the chair. It rocked on its rear legs and Tracie nearly pitched backward onto the floor.
Carranco braced the back of the chair with her gun hand and shoved it forward. The front legs dropped down with a thud.
“I SAID GET UP!” She was getting angrier and angrier, about to blow her stack, which was exactly what Tracie wanted.
Tracie felt her gorge rising and swallowed heavily. “I’m going to throw up,” she said.
“I do not care,” Carranco answered. “For what it’s worth, your pain will be over soon. Now get up.” The last three words were shouted.
Tracie closed her eyes and concentrated on not puking. She said a quick prayer that what she was about to try next would not get her killed.
Then she pushed with her legs again and began rising. As she did, she hooked her right ankle around the right front leg of the chair and began falling heavily onto her side, jerking her ankle hard to topple the chair behind her.
She landed hard and her head felt as though it was going to explode, like it might just fly apart and scatter her brains all over Carranco’s lonely cabin. It’d serve her right, Tracie thought. Good luck cleaning up that mess.
A split-second later the bamboo chair crashed to the floor behind her, exactly as she had hoped it would.
Carranco was screaming in fury now, her words partially garbled, half in English and half in Spanish. “Get up! Get up right now,” she shouted, “or you will die where you are!” and Tracie hoped she had gotten the unstable woman angry and distracted enough for what she was about to try.
She pushed herself onto her hands and knees and turned around, facing the toppled chair. Then she braced herself on the chair frame and rose unsteadily to her feet.
She stepped on the chair leg to anchor it and wrapped her fist around a long, splintered piece of bamboo. Then she pulled hard as she rose to a standing position. The sliver of bamboo released from the warped, splintered chair with a crack that was lost in the sound of Maria Carranco’s angry rant.
Tracie wobbled on her feet as she extended to her full height, the action only partly meant as a distraction. She really did feel weak and disoriented. She stumbled to the side and as she did she palmed the thick splinter—it was at least six inches long and as sharp as any kitchen knife she had ever used—behind her forearm.
She dropped to one knee, shielding the right side of her body from Carranco. As she rose again, she hitched up her jeans, sliding the splinter down the waistband at her hip. She felt it slice her skin as she shoved it under the denim, opening a gash down her right side, the pain bright and sharp and strong enough to make her momentarily forget the lightning bolts piercing her skull.
Her actions were desperate, hurried, and as she turned to face Maria Carranco, she prayed the bamboo shard would remain anchored against her side and not simply slide down her leg where it would become inaccessible. Her blouse tumbled down over her waist, covering the half-inch or so of bamboo that poked up over the top of her jeans.
She hoped.
Carranco was still ranting at her, worked up to the point Tracie could understand little she was saying, even in English. Tracie sighed deeply, swaying on her feet, and spread her hands. “What do you want me to do?” she said quietly.
The words seemed to snap the terrorist more or less out of her rage, and she stood in front of Tracie, breathing hard. Her face had turned bright crimson during her tirade and her eyes glittered with the unfocused fanaticism of the true believer.
For the first time, Tracie realized the full extent of Maria Carranco’s obsession with avenging what she believed to be the American treachery at the Bay of Pigs so long ago. Capturing or killing Carranco would be the only way to bring her murderous rampage to an end; failure to do so would mean the violent deaths of many more innocent Americans before she was finally stopped.
The young woman stood in front of Tracie, gun in her right hand aimed more or less at Tracie’s midsection. Her combat knife she had returned to its scabbard. For a moment Tracie thought she was going to simply shoot her where she stood.
Then she smiled, her eyes cold and hard. “What do I want you to do? I want you to come outside with me. It is time for you to dig your own grave.”
41
Tracie blinked in surprise. “You kept me alive so you could make me dig my own grave?”
“You have a problem with that? Would rather be dead already?”
She shrugged. “For such a motivated woman, you’re kind of lazy, aren’t you?”
“Laziness has nothing to do with it. I want to watch your eyes as the pit you dig gets deeper and deeper. I want to see your fear as you realize every shovelful of dirt you throw out of the hole might be your last, that I might shoot you at any moment and cover your cooling remains with waterlogged soil.” Her voice turned icy. “I want you to suffer, Miss CIA Agent.”
“Tracie.”
“Excuse me?”
“My real name is Tracie, not Holly. We’re getting so close, and I know so much about you, that it only seems fair you should at least know my name. Besides,” she added, letting her voice trail off, waiting for the inevitable.
Finally it came. “Besides, what?” Carranco asked.
“Besides, it’s only right you know the name of the person who’s going to kill you.”
Maria Carranco laughed in delight, the sound high-pitched and jarringly innocent, like a ten-year-old who’s just discovered she got a horse for her birthday. “You are very funny, I must give you that,” she said. But then her voice turned cold again. “Let us see if you can keep your good humor when you are knee deep in your own grave.”
She stepped back and gestured at the door with Tracie’s gun. “Get moving,” she said.
“What am I supposed to dig with, my hands?”
“Shut up and walk. I have tools behind the cabin.”
Tracie moved unsteadily past the terrorist and walked out the door into the still-bright South Florida sunshine. It was late afternoon but the temperature and humidity seemed every bit as brutal now as it had been at noon.
She briefly considered making a run for the cover of the jungle but realized to do so would only result in certain death. Injured and unsteady, she would be easy prey for the petite, nimble terrorist to catch.
Besides, even if she somehow managed to escape, doing so without accomplishing her mission would be unacceptable.
She climbed down the cement block steps and waited at the bottom to be joined by her fanatical host. It only took a second, and then Carranco said, “Move around behind the cabin and grab a shovel.”
Tracie walked to the rear and discovered a series of gardening tools lined up in a neat row against the back wall of the shack. She selected a long-handled spade and turned to face Carranco, mentally comparing the length of the handle with her distance from her enemy.
Escape wouldn’t come t
hat easily, however. Carranco had stopped walking at the rear corner of the cabin and remained well out of reach.
Cold fingers of terror clawed at Tracie’s insides and she forced herself to ignore them. Panicking would do nothing to help her save herself. The blazing sun ratcheted up the pain in her skull, and her vision blurred and cleared, blurred and cleared.
She made a show of shrugging as if she hadn’t a care in the world. “Where to, boss?”
Carranco grinned evilly. The act contained not an ounce of humor and was terrifying. “Where would you like to spend the rest of eternity?”
“Rural Virginia,” Tracie said without hesitation, refusing to give this crazy bitch the satisfaction of seeing her fear. But it was building.
“Try again.”
She sighed, the breath coming out just a little bit shaky. Then she nodded at the edge of the clearing, along the side of the tiny shack. “Out there, I guess.”
“Then get to work.”
***
Every shovel full of loose, moist turf she lifted out of the hole felt heavier and more cumbersome than the last. Tracie realized she should have given more thought to the location she had selected. Not because she had any intention of making it her final resting place—at least not without one hell of a fight—but because had she pointed at the other side of the clearing, she would be working in the shade right now.
As it was, the sinking sun continued to blast her with its damnable rays, the humidity every bit as high as it had been all day, and she could feel herself becoming more and more dehydrated. The speed at which she was losing fluids was shocking. Spending most of her career working in the typically cooler temperatures of the Soviet states had done nothing to prepare her for this.
She knew that her mounting dehydration was aggravating the pounding in her injured head, but she refused to give in. Maria Carranco was clearly waiting for her to ask for water and she was determined not to give the sadistic bitch the satisfaction of doing so.
Which was foolish.
Self-destructive, even.
If there had ever been a time she needed to conserve her strength absolutely as much as possible, this was it. She was only going to get one chance to take this fanatical killer down; if she failed she would end up at the bottom of the shallow pit she was digging. So electing not to ask for water was the most counterproductive thing she could do, short of telling the terrorist to shoot her in the head.
She didn’t care.
She would win this battle of wills.
“Let me ask you a question,” she croaked.
“Shut up and dig.”
“I can do two things at once,” she said, although given her rapidly weakening state she wondered how much longer that would be true.
“What is it?” Carranco said, exasperated.
“Why bury me at all? Why not just shoot me and leave me in the clearing? With all the predators in this swamp, my body would be long gone by morning. Or, if it wasn’t, all that would be left would be a pile of bones, picked as clean as a Thanksgiving turkey.”
The effort of asking the question left her out of breath and dizzy. But it was critical she distract the terrorist, try to get her off-balance, and what better way to do that than by feeding into her obvious need to feel superior?
Carranco was silent for a moment and Tracie kept digging, tossing shovelful after shovelful of sandy wet terrain into a rising pile next to the hole. She thought the young woman was going to ignore her question, but then she surprised Tracie by answering.
“Three reasons,” she said. “First, I was raised a Catholic. I still go to Holy Mass every week.”
A number of retorts sprang to mind, but none of them would do anything to improve her situation if she voiced them, so Tracie bit them back and said, “So?”
“So, a person who has died should not be left lying on the ground like a piece of trash. A person who has died deserves a proper burial, even someone like you. And while I cannot provide you with a funeral mass—” she spread her arms wide to indicate the vast Big Cypress Preserve and said, “No priests out here!” then continued—“the least I can do is bury your corpse.”
“So murdering me in cold blood is okay, but leaving the carcass above ground is a deal breaker? That’s where you draw the line?”
Carranco ignored her comment and continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Second, and perhaps more importantly, once you are gone, I fully intend to continue using my little retreat to get away and plan my incursions. Leaving such a delicious meal for crocodiles and alligators and leopards—yes, there are some out here—would not be a wise thing for me to do. It is important not to draw the predators’ attention to this area any more than it already is drawn.”
Tracie was surprised by the thoughtfulness of the answer. Maria Carranco might be a vengeance-addicted psycho—no “might be” about it, she thought—but she certainly wasn’t dumb.
She tossed another shovelful of sandy dirt onto the pile and noticed that she was sweating much less than she had been when she started digging. The temperature and humidity had not noticeably diminished, so that could mean only one thing: she was becoming dangerously dehydrated. A faraway buzzing had started in her ears, coming and going like the circling of a swarm of mosquitoes. For a while she thought it was the mosquitoes until she realized the noise was coming from inside her head.
Breathing heavily, she said, “You said there were three reasons. That’s only two. What’s the third?”
Carranco laughed, the sound like the pop of a firecracker. Or a gunshot. “The third reason I am making you dig your own grave? Because it is fun.”
Tracie shook her head in disgust and regretted it immediately as the pain in her skull spiked. She continued to dig, carving out a hole maybe six feet long by three feet wide that continued to grow steadily deeper.
The buzzing sound inside her head was getting louder and she knew she was almost out of time. It was becoming hard to concentrate. She badly needed rest and water. Her vision continued to blur and clear, although the blurry periods were beginning to outnumber the clear periods by a significant margin.
Still she dug, wondering how deep the little pit would have to get before Carranco would shoot her while she worked and then lift the shovel off her corpse and fill in the hole.
She had tried to maintain a continuous awareness of the terrorist’s location, waiting for the right time to strike. And given the extent of her injuries and her deteriorating physical condition, she thought she had done a pretty good job of it.
But Carranco had not come close to giving Tracie an opening. She was smiling like a kid in a candy store, obviously enjoying Tracie’s misery, but she’d been far too wary to wander close enough to allow Tracie the chance to strike at her with the spade.
The loose, sandy turf was easy to shovel, a situation for which Tracie was grateful. But that was a curse as well as a blessing, because the job went quickly. Too quickly for Tracie’s taste. The pit was now at least two feet deep and she guessed she had no more than another foot to go before the psycho with the gun and the bombs and the poison decided to finish her off once and for all.
She drove the spade into the ground and leaned on it tiredly. “Water,” she finally rasped. She was surprised at the sound of her voice. It was weak and gravelly and sounded like someone else’s.
Someone who should be on her way to the hospital.
“Keep digging.”
“I need water or you won’t have to shoot me. I’ll just drop where I stand.”
“Fine with me,” Carranco said. “One more bullet I can use on someone else.”
Tracie shook her head. Her vision swam, the ground tilting crazily, like camcorder video taken on some bizarre amusement park ride.
“Just one sip,” she said, “Please.” And then she stepped out of the hole, catching her toe on the lip of the pit and stumbling forward. Her feet felt incredibly heavy, and she almost caught herself but then sprawled face-first onto the ground.
“Get up!” Carranco screamed. “Get up! Get back in that hole and finish digging!” Her temper was on a hair trigger and her anger had returned in a heartbeat, and even though Tracie could not see her face, she knew it was red and tight and furious.
She pushed herself up to her hands and knees, her sweat-and-blood-soaked hair hanging in her face in ropy strings. Lifted her right foot and placed it beneath her body. Pushed up and sprawled forward again, smashing her face into the ground again, this time at Carranco’s feet.
The terrorist was swearing and threatening, once again half in English and half in Spanish. She brandished her gun angrily and then reached back and kicked her in the ribs.
Tracie dropped. Then she groaned and forced herself to her hands and knees once again. Put her right foot underneath her exhausted body and pushed.
This time she didn’t fall forward. This time she shot to her feet, unsteady but determined, yanking the razor-sharp bamboo shard from the waistband of her jeans, waiting for the gunshot that would rip into her and end her life.
But the shot never came. Carranco was too angry or too distracted or had been lulled into a false sense of security by Tracie’s apparent helplessness.
Before Tracie had even stretched to her full height, her arm was already coming forward, the six-inch-long shard of bamboo protruding like a dagger from her hand.
She aimed for the eyes and missed, but felt and saw the improvised blade dig deep into Carranco’s cheek. It struck bone and veered left, digging a furrow under her eyes, breaking bones in her nose and then reappearing out the other side as blood flew, splattering across Tracie’s face and nearly blinding her.
Carranco screamed and staggered backward, her hands clutching at her ruined face in an instinctive attempt to protect herself. Tracie’s Beretta dropped to the ground and bounced, tumbling into the shallow hole with a wet, muffled thud.
Tracie ignored the gun and pressed her advantage with a rabbit punch to Carranco’s bloody face, dropping the terrorist.
But the moment Carranco hit the ground, she was moving, rolling away from the attack and toward the gun, somehow retaining the presence of mind to track the weapon with her eyes despite her shock and the gouts of blood spurting from her cheeks and what used to be her nose.
Tracie Tanner Thrillers Box Set Page 71