The man was gone, or at least would be soon. It was unfortunate, but it was a reality. For all his faults, Gold Tooth seemed to know how to shoot, putting both rounds into the left breastplate, shredding the man’s heart.
All that was left to do now was wait.
The faint squeak of rubber against tile told me that Gold Tooth was moving closer.
“Hey, asshole, you want to be next?”
The sound of his voice gave me his exact position.
Unarmed, I had only one chance at things. If he decided to pull up short and just open fire, there was nothing I could do. I was exposed, had no way of defending myself.
What I needed to do was pull him in close. To bank on the fact that he would be looking to make an example of me, a visual reminder to all of what happened when somebody dared oppose him.
Ignoring him, I continued to look down at the man on the floor. The fingers on my left hand curled into a tight ball around the wad of cotton.
Beneath it, the flow of blood seemed to slow, the man down to his final few gasps.
“Hey,” Gold Tooth repeated, “I said...”
He paused. The dense touch of steel pressed against the side of my skull, the end of the noise suppressor flush against my head, still warm from the shots a moment before.
“You want to be next?”
The man had made three mistakes. Actually, he had made many more than that, but in that moment, there were only three that really mattered.
The first was his arrogance. He had earned my ire the instant he’d walked into the door, making himself a target by his mere presence.
The second was calling me an asshole. Twice.
Far and away his worst mistake, though, was the third one, and that was pressing the gun tight against my head.
While the move might have looked good, may have made him feel like he was in control, what it really did was bring him within easy reach.
Snapping my right hand up in one quick movement, I snatched his wrist, driving it straight toward the ceiling. Rotating on my knee, I released the wad of cotton and drove my left palm into his exposed knee.
A bloody print was left on his denim jeans as the sound of a tendon snapping was heard, the man gasping in pain.
Pulling my hand straight back, I balled it into a fist and snapped it straight into the soft tissue of his groin.
An egregious foul in most any situation, but extremely effective for what I needed in the moment.
Above me, I could hear the man expel every bit of air from his lungs, his body becoming flaccid. Rising straight up, I slid my hand over his wrist, ripping the gun from his fingers.
Pulling him tight against me, I used his body as a human shield, poised to protect me from his counterpart.
There was no need. Three feet away, Cruz stood with his jaw open, shock painting his features.
Even as I put two rounds into his chest and a third in his head, not once did the Kalashnikov rise above his waist.
Nor did Gold Tooth put up any further defense as I pressed the smoking tip of the barrel to his temple and pulled the trigger.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Five minutes after leaving the conference room, Director Horace Joon was back. Leaning in just long enough to motion for Charles Vance to join him, he was gone again before saying so much as a word.
Not surprised in the least, Vance had positioned himself closer to the door. If a lifetime working for the Agency hadn’t driven home one key point, the last two days certainly had.
Government work, especially at a certain level, was all about mitigating risk.
Sometimes, that meant parachuting into another country to curb a potential candidacy based on anti-American rhetoric.
Others, that meant bringing along a patsy when reporting a potentially colossal error to the most powerful man in the world.
Jogging a few steps to keep pace, Vance caught Joon halfway down the hallway. There he fell in beside him, both men moving quick, the heels of their dress shoes clicking against the tile.
On either side, people drifted to the edge of the hall, letting the Director-led convoy go where it may.
Bypassing the elevator, they took the stairs up two floors, passing into the Director’s palatial suite. Neither so much as glanced at the aging secretary behind the front desk as they entered.
For her part, she did the same, the unexpected entrance just one more in the life of the Director’s appointed gatekeeper.
The inner sanctum of the Director’s office was every bit as austere as one might expect. Done in marble and polished oak, not a single thing was out of place. The scent of disinfectant was in the air.
Nary a personal touch was visible on the desk or shelves, nothing that wasn’t directly issued by the Agency itself.
“Follow me,” Joon muttered. Padding across the thick carpet underfoot, he moved past his desk, passing through a door on the rear wall. “Shut the door behind you.”
Doing as instructed, Vance moved just inside a much smaller space and closed the door. Equipped only with a small round table and a trio of chairs, a host of electronic equipment made up one entire wall.
In the darkened space, the various lights and switches seemed especially pronounced.
Settling down at the head of the table, Joon went to work on a keyboard before him. Glancing up at Vance, he said only, “This room is fully encrypted, the most secure line in the country not in the president’s direct possession. Have a seat.”
Nodding slightly, Vance again did as instructed.
Many times over the years he had heard of such a place. Long thought of as nothing more than a rumor, he assumed it was just another of the untold stories that floated out there about the Agency.
Exploding cigars. A second gunman on the grassy knoll. An ongoing blood feud with the Soviet Union.
Of those, this one seemed more innocuous, though no less impressive.
“Needless to say, you were never here,” Joon added. Without waiting for a response, he completed the sequence he was entering. A moment later, the sound of ringing could be heard.
A moment after that, President Mitchell Underall appeared onscreen.
“Gentlemen,” he said, nodding in greeting.
“Mr. President,” Joon said.
“Mr. President,” Vance mumbled.
“Please tell me you’re calling already to tell me this has been resolved.”
Even knowing that he was there for nothing more than window dressing, Vance could do nothing about the warmth that crept to the surface. He could feel it passing over his features, threatening to force him to start sweating at any moment.
“Not yet, sir,” Joon said. “Rather, we’re calling to give you a status update.”
“Which is?” Underall snapped.
“Which is, as if this time, the plane is on the ground in Caracas.”
“And?”
“And,” Joon said, flicking a quick glance to Vance, “no word yet from our agents.”
The background on the screen before them showed that the president was seated at his desk. Leaning back, he rubbed a hand over his face. A series of muttered words were heard, all too low to decipher.
“And how long have they been on the ground?”
“Just over an hour, sir.”
“At which point...?” Underall asked.
Every bit of this had been gone over in painstaking detail the day before. True to form, though, everything needed to be spelled out explicitly.
One could never be too careful these days, especially in the age of nonstop media coverage.
“At which point they were to have rendezvoused with Agent Ramirez on the ground,” Joon said. “As of five minutes ago, she hasn’t heard from them either.”
A host of emotions seemed to flood over the president’s face. None of them seemed especially positive.
“Do we have eyes on the airport?” he asked.
“No, sir,” Joon said. “We have a very limited presence in coun
try, which is why we needed to send in help. Two agents, both merely observe and report.”
Again, all of this had been gone over repeatedly.
Not that Vance wasn’t reasonably certain it would all be repeated twice more before the situation was resolved.
“What is the status now?” Underall asked.
“The status now is, we’re reporting to you before taking further action,” Joon replied.
The scowl on Underall’s face deepened. Whatever collegiality he had extended the day before evaporated, his eyes flashing.
“You CIA guys are a real piece of work, you know that? This was supposed to have been a foolproof operation.”
Knowing better than to say a thing, both Vance and Joon sat in silence, waiting.
It wouldn’t be the first time they had to weather a temper tantrum from an elected official fearful of tomorrow’s headlines.
“Get somebody over to Bolivar right now and figure out what’s going on,” Underall spat, “before we go making an even bigger mess.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
If the two shots that Gold Tooth put into the man on the floor was a shock, what I did to him and Cruz was a full-on electrocution. Unsure what they had just seen – even less what to make of it – I turned to see every last person retreating toward the corners.
Some seemed to defy even basic human anatomy, contorting themselves into spaces much too small for their frames.
Not that their actions registered very high on my priority list. Fresh blood spatter was still on my cheek. The smell of gunpowder filled my nostrils.
Adrenaline pulsated at a level that threatened to spill from every available orifice.
Nobody said a single thing, everybody staring in abject horror.
“Grey, get over there and put some pressure on that man’s wounds.”
Using the barrel of the gun, I gestured to the man lying on the floor, still clinging to life by the thinnest of threads.
“Grey!” I snapped, the sound of my voice causing some to wince, others to wake from their trance. “This man doesn’t have long, and neither do we.”
From the corner, it took a moment for Rembert to pull himself into motion. Slowly, he extended his hands, nudging people to the side.
All of them did as told, nobody putting up the slightest hesitance.
Emerging at the front of the group, he gave me a look that showed he didn’t quite know what to make of what just happened. With his jaw clamped, he dropped to both knees, pressing his bulk down on the man’s chest.
Looking back to Gold Tooth, my mind swam. What I’d said to Rembert was the truth. We didn’t have long before somebody came looking for him and Cruz. I couldn’t expect anybody inside the room to lie for me, and I didn’t foresee them taking too kindly to losing two of their own.
Which meant I needed to get moving. I needed to get away from the warehouse and get somewhere that I could use the sat phone to bring in help.
It also meant I needed to do whatever I could to buy a bit of a head start in the meantime.
Tucking the gun into the waistband of my pants, I bent over Gold Tooth. A quick pat of his pockets produced a folding knife and a spare magazine of ammunition for the weapon I’d confiscated.
Nabbing both, I rolled his body onto its side, grasping the back hem of his jeans and digging my opposite hand into his armpit. Given the charge roiling through my system, his body seemed to weigh nothing at all as I lifted him from the floor.
Carrying him the same way Cruz had carried the AK a few minutes before, I hefted him across the floor, depositing him quietly at the foot of the door.
Turning and going straight back, I avoided the uneven blood trail across the floor his open head wound had left behind. Taking just a moment to check Cruz’s pockets, I found nothing of value, instead hefting him from the floor and taking him over to join his partner.
As quietly as possible, I deposited him atop Gold Tooth, hopeful that their combined weight would at least provide some modicum of defense to keeping someone from marching directly in.
All I needed was a couple of minutes.
Twisting Cruz’s body so it sat flush against the frame of the door, the sleeve of his t-shirt rode up over his shoulder. Beneath it flashed the dark black smudge of a tattoo, the shape of it just catching my attention as I rose to head in the opposite direction.
Feeling a bit of dread seep into my stomach, the feeling mixing with the adrenaline into a volatile cocktail, I pulled myself back. Squatting beside his body, I extended my index finger, shoving the cloth a few inches higher.
Son of a bitch.
Jerking my attention down, I moved Cruz’s leg to the side. Beneath it, Gold Tooth’s arm was tucked up tight against his body. Using the same finger, I pushed the sleeve of the shirt he was wearing back a few inches to reveal the same thing.
The matching tattoos featured a shield in the center, a crown sitting atop it. Crossed behind it were what looked like a missile and a rifle with a bayonet.
Enveloping everything was a furled banner.
Otherwise known as the seal of the Venezuelan Army.
Dropping Cruz’s leg back into place, I repositioned the bodies, my mind swimming to compute what I’d just put together.
The way we had been forced down for a mechanical problem could be discounted as a rare happenstance. Unlikely, but possible.
For us to have landed in Venezuela was even more unlikely, but not completely unheard of.
For there to have been armed men waiting for us on the tarmac meant that we were all unwitting accomplices in something much larger than we could have fathomed.
Something that apparently involved the Venezuelan military, even if their attempt at civilian attire was trying to hide it.
Turning back to the room, I was intensely aware of every last person staring at me. The looks on their faces ranged the full spectrum, not that I was particularly in the mood to try and decipher them.
Nor did I want to endure the litany of questions and comments that would arrive as soon as their minds started firing anew.
At the moment, my most pressing concern was getting out of the room.
“Listen up,” I said, my voice only as loud I dared make it, “I don’t know a damned thing more about this than any of you do. I don’t work for the government, or the military, or anybody else that might be affiliated.
“What I do know is, there’s no way these guys are ever going to let us out of here alive. Not if they can help it. Which means we have to make them.”
In the movies, this would be the part where the hero made a big speech. He would rally morale, give a stirring rendition of what the coming hours held in store for everybody.
After that would come a montage, all the people arming themselves with whatever was around, preparing for an impending fight.
I had no time or interest in any of that.
“Hawk.”
The voice belonged to Rembert. Across the room, he kept his focus on the man beneath him. There he stayed for several moments before jerking his attention my way, strain painted across his features.
“I think this guy’s trying to tell you something.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The man could not speak. He was too far gone for that, having to retain whatever tiny bit of oxygen reserve he had left to keep his heart and brain working.
Sliding to a stop beside him, I could see there was no way I was going to get any useful information from him through direct communication.
His eyes were nothing more than slits.
“Pen and paper,” I said, spewing the words over a shoulder. When I could sense nobody move, I looked out again, waving a hand. “Pen and paper, somebody, now.”
Despite the low volume, urgency dripped from every word. Sweat lined my beard and brow.
Every second now was precious.
I had no idea who it was that finally came forth. I didn’t bother to turn and look. The moment a pad was thrust into my o
utstretched hand, I jerked it forward, pulling an ink pen from the spiral wire binding at the top.
Making a quick swirl in the corner, I made sure ink was ready before pushing it into the man’s hand. Holding the paper up flush against it, I stared at the page, waiting.
Little by little, he managed to construct the wobbliest collection of lines I’d ever seen. Looking like something from a poor attempt at a Halloween decoration, he scrawled seven distinct figures before dropping his hand back to his side.
As it did so, the last of his strength seemed to give, the pen falling from his grasp and rolling across the floor.
With Rembert still pressing down on his chest, he looked up at me, his features listless.
“What is it?” Rembert asked.
Running my gaze over what was written, it took a moment for me to decipher it. To string together each of the distinct images and what they meant.
“It’s a telephone number,” I whispered.
“For who?” Rembert asked.
“I don’t know, but I have to get out of here,” I said. “I’ll try this number, and if it doesn’t work, I’ll think of something else.”
His visage drawn tight, Rembert’s eyes traced my face. His mouth was pulled into a tight line, droplets of sweat standing out against his skin.
“You’ve still got it, don’t you?” he asked.
To that, I gave only a slight nod of the head.
“In thirty seconds, I’m going to step on your back and go up through the ceiling,” I said. “As soon as I’m through, pull the tile back into place.”
This time, he gave only a nod.
“I can’t take the AK with me. It’s too big, makes too much noise,” I said, gesturing over to Cruz. “I will take the firing pin with me, though.”
In no way could I leave an automatic weapon lying around, begging for somebody to do something foolish.
“Do not touch it, do not let anybody else try to either. It will only end badly for everyone.”
Again, he bobbed his head.
My plan was to somehow get to the roof. From there, I could clear the fence on the edge of the grounds, work my way through the woods until I could call out for help.
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