Along the way, Juan found that Boraita was fairly easy to get along with. He, like the other two men comprising the Colombian task force, was about five years younger than Juan and accordingly acted like he knew much more than Juan. His favorite topics to talk about included women, food, soccer, the gym, and alcohol.
The man did not seem nearly as ambitious as Agostino, but the guy was no slouch, either. The man’s family owned a carpeting business, and he mentioned that he might retire from the force early to take over for his aging father. From the way Boraita talked, he seemed to have a good grasp of business and math. While they waited at the safehouse, Boraita performed complex math problems in his head and asked Juan to check his calculations on his cell phone.
He’d been correct each time, but Boraita soon grew tired of it.
Boraita also liked to prove his strength, challenging Juan to an arm wrestling match on the truck’s center console. Juan put up a decent fight, but let Boraita win even though he knew numerous strategies he could have used to beat the man. He didn’t want to ruin Boraita’s reputation or self-esteem.
Since the mole within the joint ops center was still at large, Juan carefully analyzed Boraita as he talked. He hadn’t been able to detect any lies or nervous behavior. While the mole could be anyone in the joint ops center, it made the most sense that it was Sanchez, Boraita, or Agostino, and as such, Rockwell had instructed his team to be on full alert any time they were working with them.
If Boraita was the mole, Juan promised himself he would not allow the man to get the jump on him. Juan knew where Boraita’s gun was, and if Boraita tried to pull it on him, Juan would have his own gun clear first. Boraita was also much bigger than Juan, so it would be more difficult to do anything sneaky with Juan watching him so closely.
“So are the stories really true about you?” Boraita asked after a few hours of sitting in front of the house—a bland, small white one-story building with a manicured lawn.
“All of them,” Juan said, his eyes facing forward in case they might miss something.
“Sam said one time you and him were chasing an assassin through the streets of Amsterdam. Hell, bet that was a night. You care to elaborate on what happened? Sam was a bit fuzzy on the details once you got to the—”
Juan held up his hand. He had detected a car coming from behind them in the mirror. They both watched as it pulled up to the house. “You got the license number of the prosecutor’s car?” Juan asked.
“Yeah. Let me check. It’s . . . It’s the car. Just the prosecutor or his assistant checking up on the witness.”
“Might be,” Juan said. “But just because it’s the right car, it doesn’t mean the driver or the occupants are who they’re supposed to be.”
“Paul, I think you’re being paranoid.”
Juan looked at Boraita. “Better paranoid than dead. Look, if that’s really someone from the prosecutor’s office, who are those other two guys getting out of the car?”
Boraita squinted. “Paralegals?”
Juan had his door open and was already getting out of the car. “Call this in. I’m going around the back.”
“Are you kidding me?” Boraita asked. “This was supposed to be an easy eight hours.”
Juan stepped behind a tree growing up through the sidewalk. He raised his radio as he peeked around the trunk. “Inside team, can you hear me?” Juan asked, reaching toward his gun.
Silence.
“Guys, you’re about to have company in a few moments. Do you copy?”
Still silence.
The three men were wearing dark suits and moved quickly toward the front door. One of them pulled a metal canister from his belt while another took a bat and smashed in a window next to the door. The first man tossed the canister through the window.
Juan heard heavy footsteps approaching from behind and knew it was Boraita. “They’re not answering,” Juan said.
When he didn’t hear an answer, he turned. He felt rather than saw the compressed spray of liquid strike him between the eyes, and he collapsed to the ground. His eyes felt like they were boiling, and his nose, mouth, and throat burned. Knowing how to combat being sprayed by pepper spray, he blinked his eyes repeatedly to cause his eyes to tear up under his swelling eyelids. It didn’t help. He got to his hands and knees and then doubled over in a fit of uncontrollable coughing.
When he heard a door being breached from across the street, Juan looked up, but his vision was as black as it had been the night before when the lights had gone out at the club.
He was blind.
Juan got back to his hands and knees and played his hands over the ground to determine where he was. He felt the bark of the tree trunk and knew that the truck was parked just on the other side against the curb. Gingerly, he stood up and balanced himself against the side of the truck. His hands found the passenger door and he opened it.
This isn’t pepper spray. I’d be able to see at least something by now . . .
With an almost imperceptible whishing sound, a fist connected with his jaw. Juan’s head twisted with a violent jerk as he fell against the edge of the open truck door and then backward onto the sidewalk.
“Who are you?” Juan asked.
He heard nothing, but he knew someone was there. Watching him.
It was the presence he had felt on his trip back from lunch.
Juan tried to get back up while raising both arms to guard against the next attack. It came from behind. A sharp jab to the kidneys—first the left one, then the right one—and he crumpled to the ground.
He groaned in pain.
As he huddled on the sidewalk, Juan grabbed the radio at his belt. “Where are—”
The radio was knocked from his hands and smashed upon the concrete by the heel of a shoe.
“Who the hell are you?” Juan asked, rolling over and sliding his back against a truck tire.
Juan couldn’t even hear the other person breathing. It was as if no one was there.
A ghost.
Off in the direction of what Juan judged to be the house, a window slid up, and a grunt followed as a man’s body thumped against the ground outside a single-story window.
“Help! Help!” Juan heard a man yelling. It could only be the witness he was supposed to be protecting.
Another whooshing sound came at Juan, and he threw himself over onto his side, springing back up and turning just as he heard a shoe or boot strike the side of the truck, no doubt leaving a dent. Juan lunged at the place his attacker had to have come from and connected with the compact, muscular frame of his assailant.
He tried to punch and throw his attacker down, but his blindness made it difficult. Another fist bounced off his head, and Juan managed to bring his knee up into his attacker’s abdomen. The other man gasped and broke away. Juan had felt a defined core and abdominal muscles as he’d struggled to throw the man backward.
“Help! Oh God . . .” Juan heard from what he estimated was the front of the safehouse. He had been turned around so many times that the sound of the man’s voice was his only indication of where the world was around him.
Juan crouched, focusing on detecting the next sound. Feet were running down the sidewalk. The witness . . . Then he heard the impact as another man jumped to the ground through the window. Surrendering to blind instinct, Juan drew and raised his pistol, firing three times in the general direction of the pursuers. He did not expect to hit the target—only to draw fire for just a bit longer so the witness could try to escape.
There came a cry of surprise, and Juan scrambled around the truck as bullets started to ricochet off the sidewalk and embed themselves into the truck’s paneling.
Where the hell is Boraita? Juan asked himself. He hadn’t been the one attacking him.
Bullets kept slamming into the car, Juan feeling each savage shot as he pressed his back against the side. Footsteps crossed the street, heading for him.
Juan fired again around the car, aiming intentionally low so his shot
s would skip across the pavement and not fly wildly through the neighborhood.
When he was sure he was done for, the shrill whine of a police siren swung around the curve in the subdivision and came to Juan’s rescue.
12
Red Cross
The bright light hurt Juan’s eyes.
“Can you see that?” a male voice asked.
“Yeah,” Juan said. “Didn’t you hear me say ‘Ouch?’”
“I just thought you were being a sissy. Looks like your vision is returning to both eyes. You’re going to have to take it easy. I’d recommend keeping them covered with a patch or a sleeper’s mask until they heal back up.”
“How long will that take?” Juan asked.
“I’d say they should be fine by morning, but hey, what do I care if you don’t listen and permanently damage your eyesight?”
Juan blinked and stared at the medic standing there in the hospital room. The man looked like he had the last time Juan had seen him, when he’d been shot by live rounds during a training exercise at the joint ops center.
The man’s name was Ignacious, but he went by Iggy. He was lean and wiry and had a tattoo of a tiger head under his shirt and a small gold cross hanging from a slender chain around his neck.
“Okay, okay,” Juan said. “I’ll take it easy. You got one of those sleeper masks?”
“No, but I got two patches.”
“I don’t want to go walking around with eye patches on my face,” Juan said.
“It’s okay, then. You can just damage your eyes.”
“Can’t I just keep my eyes closed? Or hold my hands over my eyes?”
A blurry figure in front of him placed something in his palm. It felt like straps of some sort—the patches.
“Fine. Put em on, will ya?” Juan asked.
Iggy chuckled as he set the patches in front of Juan’s eyes, crisscrossing the black straps so that they formed an X above his forehead and behind his head. “You don’t look that much like a pirate,” Iggy said. “Well, maybe a little bit.” He laughed.
“I don’t think it’s that funny,” Juan said.
“I do. At least you didn’t get shot this time.”
“No but my kidneys still hurt,” Juan said, rubbing his lower back.
“Doc checked you out. Said they’re just bruised. Try to take it easy, okay? Go to bed early tonight. No late-night TV or midnight strolls.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Juan said. “I’m not an idiot.”
“The word ‘idiot’ is relative,” Iggy said.
“Is someone else in the room, or why’d you clean up your vocabulary? Last time you checked me out, you cussed like a sailor,” Juan said.
“Huh? Oh, nothing,” Iggy said. “I’m just trying to watch what I say these days.”
“Get in trouble with the Board of Medicine?” Juan asked.
“Eh. Something like that.”
“It’s a girl, isn’t it? You’re trying to impress a girl.”
“Shut up, you fucking secret agent guy,” Iggy said, and slapped Juan hard across the shoulder with a laugh.
Juan was about to get up off the examination table when he heard the medic turn back around. Iggy pressed a tiny bottle into his hands. “Here’s some eye solution in case your eyes are still irritated later.”
A knock sounded at the door.
“There’s . . . someone here to see you,” Iggy said as he pulled off his latex gloves. He folded one inside the other and tossed the bundle like a baseball into the steel bin next to the door.
Light footsteps entered the room. Juan’s heart fluttered like a leaf on the wind, and he had to remind himself to take a breath.
He felt warm fingers slide over his right cheek, and then his eyepatch was lifted. “Peekaboo.”
It was Cali. She started to laugh.
“Hey, stop laughing,” Juan said.
“Will he live?” Cali asked Iggy, who was jotting something down on a clipboard.
“It was a close call,” Iggy said, and burst out laughing himself.
“Will you guys stop laughing?” Juan asked. “I could have lost my eyes.”
Cali put a hand behind his shoulder and guided him out the door and into the hallway. The world was dark beneath the patches, and Juan walked with his hands out in front of him as if to ward off people or objects that might crash into him.
“Put your hands down, you child,” Cali said.
“This isn’t funny.”
“No, it’s hilarious. Turn here.”
They stepped through a doorway, and Juan thought he heard fingers on gunstocks as they passed. A guarded room, he thought.
“Cali. Paul—” Rockwell started to say, then, “The hell happened to you?”
“Pepper spray, sir,” Cali said before Juan could answer.
“Trying to mug an old lady or something?” Rockwell asked.
“Hey, I almost lost my eyes, you jerks,” Juan said. “Now what are we looking at?”
“You,” Rockwell said.
“I mean, whose room are we in?” Juan asked. “I’m guessing the witness’s, since there’s armed guards out front.”
“My, what keen ears you have,” Rockwell said. Then, “Cali, shut the door, will you?”
The door clicked shut behind him.
“Well, go on. Take a seat,” Rockwell said.
Juan was about to say he couldn’t, but instead he put his hands out behind him to find his way to a chair. Someone snickered, and then Juan’s hand and back connected with a metal pole. A squishy IV bag slapped the side of his head. “I don’t think either of you would think this was funny if you were in my position.”
His fingers inadvertently flipped a switch, and an alarm started to sound. Juan felt Cali promptly place her hands on his back and ease him against the wall into a chair as the door opened, and a nurse came in.
“Oh, my. You poor thing. Are you okay?”
Juan placed a palm to his forehead. “I’ll be fine.”
He didn’t see Cali mouth the words, He’s a little grumpy.
The nurse punched some keys on a keyboard, and then the alarm was silenced. “Not sure how that happened,” she said. “I’ll be right outside if you folks need anything.”
Juan cleared his throat. “If we’re all done with the playacting, I’d really like to know what happened earlier today. Seeing as I’m blind at the moment.”
“The witness was set upon today by a three-man team that drove the car registered to the prosecutor’s office. One of the prosecutor’s assistants was found sleeping in his office. Drugged. And there was apparently a fourth man who snuck up behind the police car and incapacitated both you and Boraita.
“The three hitmen entered the house, but the witness saw them coming, climbed out a window, and ran. He was shot while fleeing down the sidewalk on the opposite side of the street from you. They would have finished him off, too, if not for you shooting back at them for just long enough to draw their attention as additional units arrived. Somehow you even managed to wing one of the shooters while you were blind. Now how the hell do you explain that?”
“Lucky shot, I guess,” Juan said.
“Lucky shot my ass. For one thing, that was risky firing while blinded, but ballistics correspond to your story. There was some blood on the sidewalk that didn’t belong to the witness. At about twenty, thirty yards . . . Hell of a shot.”
“We’re all good shots,” Juan said.
“Anyways, we’re now standing in the witness’s hospital room. He’s sleeping, but he’ll make it unless another assassin comes to finish the job.”
“What about the two police officers inside the house? What were they doing?” Juan asked. “They weren’t responding to my radio calls.”
“We don’t know exactly. The three hitmen tossed a smoke bomb into the house, but lab techs say the guards were already out cold.”
“So, the witness was in on this?” Juan asked. “He somehow knocks out the two guards and then runs away?”
“How was Boraita knocked out? He’s okay, right?” Juan asked.
Rockwell hesitated. “He was slumped over the wheel. Pulse was weak when the EMTs got to him, but he’s okay. Maybe it was a needle, but he doesn’t remember seeing anyone before passing out. He’s in a room on the next floor up. Conscious, but the docs want to keep an eye on him for twenty-four hours. You know the drill.”
“Was there a drug in his or the guards’ systems?” Juan asked.
“Toxicology ran some quick tests. They don’t see any foreign compounds in any of their blood.”
“Why weren’t you knocked out, too, then?” Cali asked. “Whoever took out Boraita hit you with modified pepper spray instead. Why?”
“That’s a good question,” Rockwell said. “Why try to fight you instead of just knocking you out? Seems to me it was personal. The uh . . . sprayer wanted to beat you up. You know anyone who might want to beat you up, Paul?”
Juan caught the man’s drift, but he didn’t think it was Paul. For one, his attacker hadn’t moved like Paul. Juan could remember the sound a person’s feet made after meeting them only once. The figure who had attacked him moved almost silently, like someone trained in such movement. But what did that mean—a ninja was stalking him? Paul was too heavy to move that quietly. Hell, Juan doubted even he himself could have moved that quietly.
“Not that I can think of. Maybe someone from my past,” Juan said, meaning Paul’s past. “Someone I put behind bars? Or someone hired by such a person?”
Rockwell nodded with understanding. “I can check your files since you still can’t remember your previous missions. You don’t think it was Ricky Serrao, do you?”
The Colombian Rogue Page 7
