by Cindy Dees
Startled, his gaze snapped to hers. Her fair skin was rapidly turning bright red.
She looked away hastily and made a production of digging in her suitcase for a change of clothes. “I don’t know about you,” she mumbled, “but I’m beat. Let’s get some sleep.”
Taylor awoke many hours later to the sound of water running for a shower and rolled over groggily. Ow! Damn, his leg throbbed like hell. The gray light of predawn gave way to sunrise outside his window, and he turned his wrist in the dim light to read his watch—6:47 a.m. He groaned mentally. He’d slept ten uninterrupted hours, but he still felt like death warmed over. He collapsed back to the mattress and wished fervently for sleep to reclaim him.
He cracked one eye open when Amanda emerged from the bathroom. She was wearing nothing but a large bath towel, and he jolted up onto an elbow. “Well, good morning!”
“Good morning, sleepyhead,” she teased back.
He groaned. “Are you always so…perky…at this time of day?”
She grinned. “A decent night’s sleep does wonders for me.”
“So, where are we off to today, boss?”
She murmured distractedly as she unfolded a map, “I’m not your boss. I’m your partner.”
He blinked. Decent of her to acknowledge that. For a while there, he’d wondered.
She traced a highway with one finger toward Mexico and said, “Marina will be playing two more nights in Toronto, then she’s on to Rio de Janeiro for a week. We should head there and see if we can pick up the trail of Four Eyes.”
He gestured at the map. “Are you suggesting we drive all the way to Rio?”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course not. We’ll have to fly at least part of the way if we plan to get there in four days. But the Russians chasing me will be watching the airports. I propose that we drive to Mexico and fly from there to Rio. I assume you don’t have a repertoire of false identifications yet, since you don’t work for the government?”
He nodded. “That’s a good assumption. I’ve got one passport, and it’s in my own name.”
“An easy enough problem to fix in Mexico,” she replied briskly. “If you’re ready to go, we need to get on the road. We’ve got a long drive, and we need to keep moving if we’re going to keep ahead of whoever’s trying to kill us.”
Nine
Max called Biryayev at home, letting the phone ring insistently until his boss answered it groggily. “Good afternoon, sir. Max Ebhardt here. We have directions from Moscow concerning the message you had me send this morning. You might want to come in and read it.”
Biryayev suddenly sounded much more alert. “Is that so? I’ll be right in.”
Ebhardt was waiting for him when he arrived and handed him the missive silently.
Biryayev read aloud, ’“To station intelligence chief. Eliminate anyone who attempts to interfere in our diamond-trading program. All necessary resources and personnel are approved.’” He smiled exultantly at Max. “How do the Americans say it? It’s show time!”
Ebhardt’s response was dry. “That would be how they say it, sir.” Max had never seen true blood lust before, but the look in Biryayev’s eyes at the moment must be what the description referred to. It wasn’t pleasant to look upon.
Laredo, Texas looked as tired as Amanda felt. The air was painful to breathe, too hot and dry for human lungs. Stunted bushes along the highway stood torpid and lifeless, covered by a heavy layer of gray dust. As the sun set, it bled slowly across the withered landscape, staining it brilliant red. Cowboy boots, jeans and sweat-stained cowboy hats were the garments of choice; missing only were the jingling spurs and six-shooters to complete the image of the Old West.
Taylor drove, following signs to the border. Harassed U.S. border guards, inundated with incoming customs claims, hardly glanced at them as they drove through the no-man’s-land between the American and Mexican reception areas. They approached the Mexican border and a uniformed man waved them to a stop. Taylor rolled down the window.
“May I see some identification,” the guard said in a bored monotone.
The guard opened the passport of one Alicia Snyder first. He glanced down at the picture, then at Amanda. A brunette wash in her hair and cheek pads matched her to the photograph. “Are you traveling on business or pleasure?”
She leaned across the car, practically lying in Taylor’s lap. He shifted uncomfortably and she glanced at him in amusement before she looked out the window at the border guard. She gushed in a syrupy Southern accent, “Most assuredly pleasure. We’re on vacation. I just can’t wait to visit one of your gorgeous beaches and soak up some sun.”
“I see,” came the impassive reply. Alicia Snyder’s passport was passed back to her.
The guard glanced at Taylor, then opened the remaining passport. He glanced at Taylor a second time and then back down, reading carefully. He closed Taylor’s passport, abruptly alert. “If you would pull over there and park your car, I’d like you to step inside for a moment.” The guard gestured to a low stucco building behind him.
Taylor glanced at her, alarmed. Her own stomach fell. “Do what he said,” she murmured.
As he maneuvered the car into a parking space, he mumbled, “I knew this was a bad idea, trying to make this trip under my own name.”
She shrugged. “Keep your wits about you and we’ll get out of this somehow. Follow my lead.” She walked beside him toward a squat, administrative-looking building, and the sinking feeling in her gut intensified. The guard ushered them into a large room with a row of chairs along one wall and desks scattered across the floor. He motioned for them to sit and disappeared off to their left down a corridor with Taylor’s passport in hand. In keeping with her assumed identity, Amanda preened a bit and smiled at a second border guard seated across the room. Taylor took his cue and shrugged, assuming the stance of a casual traveler being patient over an unavoidable delay.
The first guard returned with a man wearing a Mexican military uniform. The officer spoke. “I am Major Ortolo. If both of you would please come with me.”
As they headed out of the room the second guard watched them intently. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up in warning as the guy reached for his phone. She had a bad feeling about this. Major Ortolo led them into his office. He gestured them into seats and closed the door, leaving the first guard outside. He sat down at his desk with his back to one of the two windows and she noticed it was nearly full dark outside. He handed Taylor’s passport back to him.
“Please do not be alarmed. I am Major Manuel Ramirez di Ortolo. I have been instructed to look for you and detain you so your employer can deliver an urgent message to you. I beg your indulgence while I notify him of your arrival.” He made a brief phone call in rapid Spanish.
Amanda was going to kill Harry for scaring her like this. Why in world didn’t he just leave a voice mail for her? She’d have checked it in the next twenty-four hours or so. What could be so urgent that he’d go to these lengths to get in touch with them?
The officer announced, “He’ll be here in a few minutes. May I offer you some coffee?”
Taylor and Amanda both nodded. She sipped at a steaming cup of strong, bitter coffee. Crickets were starting to trill outside the window beside her elbow, and she listened to the small talk Taylor kept up with the officer. The niggling feeling at the back of her neck just wouldn’t go away.
She caught a tiny movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced up. She started, sloshing hot coffee onto the floor. Through the window behind the major’s head was a man’s face! In the fraction of a second that took to register, the glass exploded inward. The head and torso of a man pushed through the gap, preceded by the muzzle of a sawed-off shotgun. With a deafening blast, two shells entered Ortolo’s back, throwing the major onto his face, sprawled across his desk.
Shock slammed into her, vaulting her from her seat. She leaped toward the window, scooping up a shard of glass from the desktop as she passed it. Grabbing the wris
t holding the shotgun, she yanked inward, slicing at the man’s throat as he lurched forward into the room.
Thankfully, Taylor lunged at the non-uniformed man who burst through the door. The attacker raised a pistol overhead. “Watch out!” she shouted.
At the last second, Taylor saw the blow coming and dived, absorbing most of its impact with his fall. Nonetheless, he crashed into Ortolo’s desk. Amanda’s attacker fought back, and she crippled him with a blow to his face with her left elbow.
Taylor rolled off the desk and grabbed his attacker’s knees, pulling the guy’s feet out from under him. Good move. The assailant fell backward into a third man just rushing into the room. Both attackers tumbled to the floor in a swearing heap.
Amanda crouched beneath the windowsill. A second head poked cautiously through the opening. She stabbed upward, hard and fast, with the shard of glass. A bloodcurdling scream pierced the air, and the head jerked back out of sight. She checked on Taylor and was in time to see a foot lash out from the tangle of bodies beside him. It caught his temple with a sharp blow and laid him out flat. Damn! Before she could leap over the desk and engage his attackers, they disentangled themselves and got to their feet. Both armed. She couldn’t take them.
Time to cut losses. She vaulted through the jagged window opening, stopping long enough to glance back into the lighted tableau. Taylor was on his knees, hands clasped behind his neck. The black bore of a pistol was pointed at his head. Another man entered the room. Shock froze her in place. The bespectacled man. She turned and dived into the shadows.
She spotted one of her assailants and came up behind him as he crawled feebly for his life. A foot on his back and he collapsed, hands over his wrecked eye, moaning. She searched him frantically, looking for a weapon—any weapon—with which to rescue Taylor. The guy ignored her. Probably going into shock. Her pistol was safely hidden in the trunk of the rental car. This guy must have dropped his shotgun somewhere between here and the window, but she couldn’t see it in the dark. He was unarmed except for a knife. Not enough to take on two armed men with a hostage. Dammit! Sick helplessness washed over her. Short of throwing herself into the room in a suicide move, she could only stand by and watch whatever happened to Taylor. Fear and frustration so intense they made her nauseous washed over her.
What did the bespectacled man want with Taylor? She was the one who’d been working on the case. Why hadn’t he killed Taylor immediately? As he and his companion goose-stepped Taylor out of the room, she turned and ran, heading for the deepest shadows of the nearest side street.
Taylor shook his head to clear it as Four Eyes spoke to him. The accent was Slavic, but not Russian. “I would speak with you about our deal, agent of the American government. Come with us.”
As if he had any choice in the matter with a gun pointed at his head! American government agent, huh? Okay. He would go with that. It was as good a cover as any of his real source of employment. Since he’d never met this guy before, the deal he spoke of must be with Uncle Sam. What would the government want with this guy? He scowled at his captor. “Christ, man! We were waiting for you already. Did you have to be so violent about getting me?”
The guy frowned but did not reply. He and the other man hoisted Taylor to his feet. Whoa. The room spun wildly and his stomach threatened revolt. That blow to his temple must’ve clocked him worse than he’d thought. The men half supported, half dragged him to a waiting van.
While Four Eyes drove, the other guy faced Taylor, pointing an Uzi at him. The weapon’s safety was visibly disengaged. Taylor stared warily at the submachine gun, praying that one of the many bumps and potholes in the road would not jostle the dirty finger resting casually on the trigger.
“Where are you taking me?” Taylor asked the guard.
The guy jerked his head toward the driver. “He wants to talk with you.”
Taylor frowned. Why in the hell would Four Eyes want to talk to an American government agent? Why not just kill him and Amanda? Something was going on here. But as long as that Uzi was pointed at him, there wasn’t much he could do about it.
They drove for about an hour, and it all felt like unimproved surfaces. After a short interval of silent travel, as if they drove over grass, the van stopped. His mind racing with a speed born of fear, he reviewed his training on resisting interrogation and concentrated on breathing slowly.
Harry Trumpman walked warily through the open door of the border station and, at the sight of a border guard’s body sprawled in the hallway, sprinted for the major’s office. He burst through the broken doorway and surveyed the scene in dismay. Shit. He stepped to the desk, moving the major’s lifeless arm off of the phone to use it. But then he noticed the bloody windowsill. He glanced outside and made out an inert form on the grass. Dropping the receiver back in its cradle, he raced outside and rolled the injured man onto his back. Harry recoiled at the sight of the guy’s mangled eyeball. “Where are the American man and woman?” he demanded.
The man stared balefully at him out of his remaining eye. Harry tried the question again in Spanish, and the man’s eyelid flickered. Harry continued in the same language. “Talk and I’ll let you live.” His voice was hard. “Otherwise, I’ll tie your hands behind your back, slit your wrists and let you bleed to death. Slowly. It’s a painful way to die.”
The guy was sullen. “They’re gone.”
“Where to?”
Silence.
Harry yanked off the man’s belt and secured the poor bastard’s hands behind his back. He pulled out his Swiss army knife and held it against the man’s wrist. “Where are they?” he snarled.
“A farm, fifty, maybe sixty kilometers from here.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know.”
Harry glared menacingly at his captive. “Where is this farm?” he repeated.
“I don’t know where it is,” the man spit out.
The Swiss army knife made a small vertical cut in the man’s right wrist. Harry was careful to avoid any major veins or arteries. The guy began to whimper. The knife made a second vertical cut alongside the first. The man cried out sharply as blood began to run over his fingers. The knife made a third cut. The man babbled hysterically, swearing by assorted saints and on his mother’s grave that he didn’t know where this farm was. Harry shook his head in disgust. What a mess.
He retraced his steps quickly to the major’s office and reached across the dead man once more for the telephone. “Foxtrot requesting phone patch to Alpha.”
“One moment, please,” the switchboard operator murmured.
A pause and a click. Two rings and a quiet, male voice came across the line. “Yes?”
“Foxtrot here. We’ve got a problem. Phoenix and Falcon have been snatched and are allegedly being taken to an unknown location, perhaps a farm, fifty to sixty kilometers from this location. I was not able to deliver the message.”
A pregnant pause at the other end of the line. “Call in the local authorities and search for them. Turn every stone, Foxtrot. These two are important. Find them. Call me back in one hour.”
“Right away.” Very few crises in Devereaux’s affairs rated that urgent tone of voice.
Harry pushed the disconnect button on the major’s phone and dialed the local policia.
Amanda watched the van pull away and raced in the direction of the retreating taillights. The vehicle with Taylor in it headed away from the downtown area of Nuevo Laredo. She stopped, huffing hard as it disappeared from sight. She took off at a steady run in the same direction, searching for a likely conveyance as she went. About two minutes later, she found what she was searching for. An ancient truck was parked in front of a darkened house, its windows rolled down.
A minute under the dashboard, and the crusty old engine sputtered to life. She drove to the next major intersection and stopped. The truck’s glove compartment yielded a fortuitous flashlight, and she used it to examine the road. There was one set of fresh tire tracks in the dust. Thank God
. She memorized the pattern, then climbed back into the truck, driving another mile or so before stopping again to verify the prints still ran before her.
Stay calm. Keep thinking clearly. Taylor’s life depends on it. Though her mind believed the words, for some reason her gut ignored the logic entirely and twisted into apprehensive knots. Time and again she forced down the panic bubbling toward the surface of her mind by repeating the litany over and over. Stay calm. Keep thinking….
The police were on their way. Harry Trumpman stared at the phone, undecided. Arriving at a decision, he picked up the phone quickly before he could change his mind. Thumbing to a coded portion of his address book, he dialed a number he’d only used once before.
After several rings, an adolescent girl’s voice answered cheerily. “Hello.”
“Good evening. Is your dad at home?” Harry asked.
“He sure is. Just a minute.” There was a pause and the sound of laughter in the background.
A man’s voice spoke. Harry’s CIA contact. “Hello.”
“This is Harry Trumpman. I’m sorry to bother you at home, but I’ve got a bit of a problem. My operatives have apparently been kidnapped in Mexico. I was unable to deliver your message.”
“Have you gotten a ransom demand yet?”
“No,” Harry bit out.
The CIA man sounded unconcerned. “You probably will soon. Kidnapping and extortion are practically a national pastime down there.”
Harry replied, “These kidnappers executed a well-organized, violent attack. I’m convinced local thugs did not do it.”
A long pause followed, and Trumpman could almost hear the man’s mind assessing damage and considering alternatives. Finally, the contact spoke. “A kidnapping effectively keeps your people under wraps for a couple of days. That’s probably all our guy needs to do his business and get out of the area. This will work.”