“You still have it?” he asked.
Already, I could feel a few stares move our direction.
Now was not the time to be pulling out the phone. Most likely, we were currently being held in this place because it was set up for containment. That meant there was no way we were getting a signal in or out.
Even trying would only incite the people around us. It would draw attention in a way that we weren’t yet ready to handle.
Which was why I merely shook my head at his question. “No. Couldn’t risk it.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The tone of the room was quite jovial. After the events of the last two nights, optimism was palpable in the air. Everybody had witnessed in real time the shift of the conversation in Venezuela.
For the first time in ages, there was a feeling that bordered on hopeful. People were starting to consider that there might be some alternative other than the status quo.
And most importantly to those present, that Edgar Belmonte – and themselves, by extension – might be the ones to make it happen.
Knowing that there was still work to be done for the night ahead, the feeling was somewhat measured. Every smile was kept in check. Every excited comment was held to a whisper.
But it was undeniable.
Which was what made the look on Hector Ramon’s face that much more recognizable the instant he walked in.
Standing in the back office, Belmonte saw him as soon as he entered through the front door. Walking fast, his jaw was set in a grimace. His hair and tie were disheveled from the wind.
He made no effort to fix either as he wound his way through a sea of volunteers toward the back.
Standing at his desk, Belmonte felt the smile on his face fade. Watching his Chief of Staff enter in such a manner, a pang of something sharp jabbed into his stomach. It continued to do so as his breath grew shorter and sweat formed on his brow.
In the middle of a phone call, Belmonte cut it short, offering only a perfunctory, “Let me call you back.”
Dropping the receiver without waiting for a reply, he was out of his private quarters by the time Ramon made it to the back of the office. The look on his face matched that of his employee.
“What happened?”
Giving a terse shake of the head, Ramon shot his gaze toward the conference room. Picking up on the signal, Belmonte followed him inside, closing the door behind them.
As he did so, the cacophony of movement and conversation outside fell away to nothing.
As did any pretense of cheer in the air.
“What happened?” Belmonte asked again.
“I just got a call from a friend of mine over at Bolivar,” Ramon reported. “It seems that about an hour ago, a flight going from Atlanta to Chile was grounded due to a reported mechanical problem.”
Belmonte felt his eyes narrow. That alone shouldn’t have been enough to warrant the reaction Ramon was having. “Was it legit?”
“I don’t know,” Ramon said. “Nobody does, because the plane still hasn’t made it to the gate. Right now, it’s just been taxied off to the side.”
The crease between Belmonte’s eyes deepened. “They’re keeping a full plane just sitting out on the tarmac?”
“No,” Ramon said. He looked like he might be ill. “They deplaned the passengers and whisked them away to a private warehouse on the back of the grounds half an hour ago.”
Small pinpricks of light began to ignite behind Belmonte’s eyelids. Even through the enormous confusion that he felt, his every faculty seemed to be telling him that something wasn’t right.
What was being described didn’t really happen, even in a place like Venezuela.
“So it was a private flight?”
“No,” Ramon said. “LATAM Airlines, more than a hundred people on board, most of them American citizens.”
With those final words, a bit of dawning settled over Belmonte. His chest tightened as he raised his hands, lacing them over the top of his head. Using the upright posture, he drew in deep breaths, pacing at the head of the table.
“Jesus,” he muttered.
Opposite him, Ramon nodded in agreement, remaining silent.
A hostage situation was bad enough. Even in a place like Caracas, it would be enough to attract a swarm of local media.
To have it be an international flight full of Americans, though, took things to an entirely different level.
“Any idea who’s behind it?” Belmonte asked.
“Speculation,” Ramon answered, “nothing certain. Whispers have said it’s Salazar, some call it a rogue military operation. Others...”
He let his voice trail off. For a moment, Belmonte stood waiting for him to finish, before piecing together what was being intimated at.
“They think we’re behind this.”
“Some do,” Ramon confirmed. “Especially given-“
“The events of the last couple of nights,” Belmonte said, finishing for him.
Not once had he seen this coming. So focused on putting together the events, on determining how to maximize effect, he’d never once considered that someone might just as fast turn it on him.
Especially someone with as much to lose as his opponent.
“Has to be Salazar, right?” he asked.
Ramon merely spread his hands, shrugging slightly. “One would think, but again, only speculation.”
Belmonte knew his Chief of Staff was merely being diplomatic. Always careful to avoid hyperbole or pursuing the salacious, he was making sure that no hasty conclusions were drawn.
Though at the moment, he wasn’t quite in the mood for such evenhanded tactics.
“If not him, then who?” Belmonte asked. “And please, for the love of God, speak freely. It’s just us in here.”
The statement came out a bit stronger than intended, but that didn’t mean it was wrong. The manner in which Ramon had entered made it clear that a brewing crisis could be at hand.
Which meant their best course of action would be to head it off rather than trying to manage it after the fact.
“There is the other side to consider,” Ramon said.
Not sure exactly what that meant, Belmonte motioned for him to continue.
“Which is to say, it is a plane headed south from America, carrying a full load of Americans.”
Again he fell short, leaving Belmonte to sort through things on his own.
“You think someone from up there forced the plane down?” Belmonte asked.
“Maybe,” Ramon said. “Possibly. I mean, Caracas is many hours in the air from Atlanta. It seems curious that a plane with a mechanical problem would make it this far before needing to stop.”
Again, Belmonte nodded. Not only was it a long way from origin, there were plenty of other airports throughout the Caribbean that would have been much friendlier locales than Venezuela.
“You think this had something to do with us?”
“I think it is certainly possible,” Ramon said. “My contact said this is the first time on record a plane from the U.S. has ever emergency landed here.”
“And just two days after we burned an American flag in the open,” Belmonte finished.
To that, Ramon didn’t respond. Both men understood the enormity of what was happening, both from an international crisis standpoint and from within their own campaign.
They were now just hours from heading out to the final leg on their own coming out party.
And they were potentially facing opposition from the United States, Salazar, or both.
“Can your friend get eyes on the passengers?” Belmonte asked. “We need to know what’s going on over there.”
Chapter Thirty
Panic comes in a predictable sequence. Much like the famed stages of grief, there are steps that most people work through. Different ways that the human mind computes what is happening and translates it into a usable medium.
Once the door to our room was slammed shut, the first step was confusion. A hushed
murmur went up from the crowd. People turned to each other, openly speculating as to what was happening.
From what little I could hear around me, the list they came up with was wide-ranging, spanning from plausible to the genuinely ridiculous.
About what one might expect.
Some gave the standard response that this was all a mistake. All we needed to do was flag them down and explain who we were and where we were headed. After that, they would feel compelled to put us right back on the plane and send us on our way.
At the extreme opposite end of the spectrum were those that were certain we were going to die. That we were going to be lined up in the hallway and executed just like they’d seen in ISIS videos online.
Such speculation often gives way to the second part of the process, which is when emotions start to polarize. Some become hysterical, bringing out tears and grief and such. Others became angry. They start looking for something or someone to lash out at.
Ten minutes after the door was closed, most of the people in the room were fully entrenched in that state. A few had slipped directly out of the progression and moved into catatonia, but by and large, they were expressing themselves to whoever would listen.
Of which, I had zero interest.
My focus was instead aimed at the room around me. Pushing myself away from the corner, I left Rembert in animated discussion with an older man with a thin ring of white hair and sloped shoulders beside him. Neither looked my way as I made a quick loop of the place, avoiding eye contact, taking in everything I could.
Much like the first pass through, no form of weapon presented itself. The doors and windows were secured tight. If pressed, the overhead ceiling tiles might present an option, but it would be a longshot at best.
A last resort in every sense of the word.
Nowhere was there a sign of food, water, or restroom facilities. As clear an indicator as any that this was either put together in a hurry or they had no intention of keeping us for long.
Of the people around me, I counted twenty-four in total. Six were minors and four looked to be north of seventy-five years old. That left just fourteen able-bodied adults, that number split between five males and nine females.
Of those, only a handful looked to be in top physical condition should a tussle break out.
Not good odds, all things considered.
Working back to my original spot, I had just made my way to the corner when the whine of power tools started again. As it did so, all conversation fell away. People recoiled in tight around me, a natural reaction to put as much space between them and the door as possible.
And in my own form of natural reaction, I worked my way through the crowd to the side, not wanting to have my movements constricted by the combined weight of people pressing in from every angle.
Just as they had put the screws into the door a few minutes prior, one at a time the guards removed them. With each wail of the tool, I could see people reacting, the sound cutting through the air.
Regardless what state those inside were in a few moments prior, all seemed to hold a collective breath.
In total, fourteen screws held the door and its assorted bindings in place. Once they were done and the wooden barricades stripped away, the hinges whined as the door swung open.
One last gasp was heard as I again rolled my shoulders forward, making myself as unimposing as possible. Flexing my knees, I lost a few inches of height, casting a sideways glance to the door.
Through it walked the same excitable guard that had given us the screaming session earlier. Moving with a bit of a swagger, he held a small caliber handgun in one hand.
Screwed onto the end of it was a noise suppressor, extending the barrel almost twice as long in length.
Beside him was a second guard, this one with an AK held loosely across his waist. Seeming to gain confidence from the man beside him, he tried to match the slow strut.
It was a poor attempt, at best.
In their wake, the door swung back into place. Slamming home, the sound sent a jolt through the crowd, many of them overexcited by the sudden sound.
“I hope you have all been enjoying yourself here in Shangri La,” the lead guard said. Gone was the Spanish he’d used before, replaced by heavily stilted English. “Nice digs, no?”
Spreading his lips into a wide grin, a gold tooth glinted from the top row.
“I mean, this is sure nicer than my house. How about you, Cruz?”
The man named Cruz seemed to be surprised at being drawn into the conversation. He looked at Gold Tooth before nodding. “Yes, much nicer.”
“And do you know what all these people have done in response to our hospitality?” Gold Tooth said.
“What’s that?”
The smile slowly slid from Gold Tooth’s face. A glower replaced it as he passed his gaze over the room.
Basic scare tactic. Use faux friendliness to thinly veil overt hostility.
“They have lied to us. They have made up a story about some damn mechanical problem just so they could touch down on our soil.”
Gold Tooth paused there. He folded one arm across his stomach, using it to prop up his opposite elbow. That hand he brought to his cheek, tapping the side of the gun barrel against it.
“And you know what that is?” he asked.
“Disrespectful,” Cruz replied.
Nodding, Gold Tooth said, “You damn right it is. And you know what we do in Venezuela with people that are disrespectful?”
Starting in the opposite corner, he again panned the length of the audience before him. Looking out through the long hair hanging over my brow, I could see the intense pleasure he was getting from the show of fear before him.
Could feel my own animosity for the man rising with each moment.
“Oh, I know,” Cruz said, playing his part in the two-man show to perfection.
A smirk lifted one corner of Gold Tooth’s mouth. “Yeah, I know you do, but I think it’s about time they all learned.”
Three-quarters of the way through his survey of the room, his head stopped. The smile returned, his tooth peeking out at us again.
For a moment, he just stood like that, staring at a man in jeans and a blue polo shirt, before snapping the gun out straight before him.
And, without reason or warning, firing two direct shots into his chest.
Chapter Thirty-One
The noise suppressor screwed onto the end of the gun was more for the benefit of the outside world. It was to make sure that anybody that hadn’t seen the odd sequence of an oversized bus load up a plane full of passengers and take them to an abandoned warehouse didn’t suddenly hear gunshots and come looking.
For those of us in the room, the sound was just as imposing as it otherwise would have been. In an enclosed space with tile floors and barricaded windows and doors, the twin pops sounded like cannon fire.
And they elicited the exact response that would be expected.
A shrill scream went up the moment the bullets struck home. Emitted by no less than half of the people in the room, a sea of movement seemed to sweep everybody back.
In their stead stood the man in the jeans and polo, his body uneven and swaying, held upright only by the fact that there were too many people bracing him up by proximity when he was first hit.
Staggering in place like a real-life marionette, twin blossoms of red steadily crawled down the front of his shirt. Blood spatter dotted the white tile in front of him.
Already, his face was ashen. Saliva dripped over his chin.
He didn’t have long, if any time at all.
“Did you think we would not notice?!” Gold Tooth bellowed. The gun he continued to hold at arm’s length before him. “Did you think we were so stupid you could just come in here and do as you please?”
Around me, people away back to either side. They continued to rush back, leaving the man alone in the center of the room.
For his part, he made no effort to respond, or to even move. His ev
ery effort seemed to be on merely staying upright, locked in a battle with gravity.
Until, slowly, the nerve endings in his body began to fade, taking with them what little muscle function remained. Seeming to melt directly to the floor, he went flat to his back, landing with a slap.
On cue, the crowd yelped again as blood smeared in wide streaks beneath him.
There was no way of knowing who the man was. Five minutes prior was the first time I’d ever seen him before in my life. I hadn’t noticed him as he boarded the plane, or even as we were on the bus to the warehouse.
Which was precisely the point.
The man was unremarkable in every way, except for the fact that he was a man. A middle-aged, able-bodied, man.
And in that moment, reality and clarity both collided in my mind.
They didn’t give a damn about any of us. They were going to keep us in a state of perpetual fear. They were going to extract whatever they could from us. And in the meantime, they were going to pick us off one by one, starting with the most capable looking in the bunch.
Which meant for all my attempts at making myself small, for my every effort to hide behind a beard and shaggy hair, it was only a matter of time before my number was called.
And once that realization settled in, a second arrived soon thereafter.
I’d be damned if I was just going to let this Gold-Toothed bastard walk in and mow me down.
Pushing off the side of my foot, I slid forward. Moving in the opposite direction of everybody around me, I went to a knee, coasting over the smooth tile.
The polished floor gave no resistance save the smear of blood that striped the front of my jeans as I came to a stop beside the man.
Grabbing at the hem of his shirt, I wadded it into a ball, pressing it tight it against the closest of the two wounds. Gripping it in my left hand, blood soaked through the thin cotton, coating my fingers.
“How do you like this, Cruzie?” I heard behind me. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a hero.”
The mocking tone made my pulse rise, acrimony spiking within. Pretending to ignore it, I focused on the pale blue eyes before me. On the lips parted slightly, fighting to pull in air.
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