The top of the list being the fact that I was good in the forest, and I knew it.
Standing on an exposed rooftop, my chances were mediocre at best. Working under the concealed protection of the forest floor, there was nobody better.
And it was time to act like it.
Steeled with that knowledge, I flexed my knees twice, building a tiny bit of momentum, before pushing myself outward in a free fall away from the building.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Caller identification told President Miguel Salazar who was on the other end of the line. He had been waiting for the call for over an hour, and even answered by picking up and asking for General Renzo Clega by name.
In the lead up to receiving the call, his mood had been optimistic. With just one swift, decisive move, they had managed to position themselves against two unwanted nuisances.
The Americans, who had the gall to call one afternoon and extend the notion of camaraderie before trying to sneak four agents into his country without so much as a warning.
And Edgar Belmonte, his opponent that had managed to cut the deficit between them by half with just a couple of quick campaign stunts.
Now, he was flipping the script on everybody. He was using the very same tactics that Belmonte was using to a higher and stronger degree, and the Americans were providing him with the perfect opportunity to do so.
It was the sort of feeling that had been a long time coming. One that he had seen precious few of in the preceding years.
And one that ebbed away bit by bit as he sat in his office, hearing nothing but silence on the opposite end of the line.
“General Clega?”
This time, there was an audible sigh. “Mr. President.”
Rising to his feet, Salazar felt his stomach drop. It didn’t take an advanced degree in psychology to parse out what was being communicated to him. “What happened?”
“We have had a problem.”
Reaching out, Salazar pressed a single button on his phone. The sole one on the console that glowed bright red, it didn’t make a sound in response.
Instead, the door opened an instant later, Isabel stepping through and closing it tight behind her.
Waving her his way, Salazar placed the phone receiver on the desk and switched the call to speaker.
“What sort of problem?” Salazar asked. “The plane did not land?”
“No,” Clega replied. “The plane is here and accounted for.”
“The passengers?”
On the opposite side of the desk, Isabel watched in silence, her face betraying nothing.
“All unloaded and transported to the warehouse.”
Feeling his agitation grow, Salazar paused. He did not have the time or the interest in going through this point by point, playing a guessing game.
It wasn’t that long until Belmonte took the stage again. At some point, the Americans would start to wonder why they couldn’t get a call to or from their men.
And it wasn’t like they could keep the signal jammed on the warehouse sitting at the busiest airport in the country indefinitely.
“What happened?” Salazar repeated.
This time, there would be no mistaking the words or the intent behind them.
“Everything went as planned,” Clega replied. “The people were offloaded and taken into the office above the warehouse. Using the pictures lifted from the flight manifest, we were able to find and neutralize the four American agents.”
Flicking his gaze up to Isabel, Salazar maintained his stance. Leaning forward over the phone, his palms were pressed into the desk.
The back of his linen shirt clung to his skin.
“One of them got a call out?”
Again, there was a pause. “No,” Clega eventually said. “It would appear there was a fifth agent involved.”
A crease appeared between Salazar’s eyes. He shifted his gaze up to Isabel, seeing the same look on her face.
“A fifth? I thought there were only four booked onboard.”
“There were,” Clega said. “And again, all found and accounted for, no doubt they were working for some agency.”
“No doubt, huh?” Salazar said, making no effort to hide his mounting bitterness. Just a day before, he had been informed there was no doubt that the four late additions were the agents.
Now, he was less than certain of the general’s ability.
“None. All as cookie cutter as it comes,” Clega said. “They even dressed the same.”
“So how do you know there was a fifth?” Salazar asked.
“Because just a few minutes ago, the two guards assigned to the fourth room didn’t report back. When we sent someone to look in on them, both were found dead, their bodies stripped.”
Salazar felt his eyes slide shut, a cocktail of emotions to match rising within.
“The body of the fourth agent was also inside the room,” Clega added, “meaning there must have been a fifth.”
For a moment, Salazar didn’t respond. He merely tried to fit the information into place in his mind. Attempted to superimpose it onto everything he knew, both from a local and international standpoint.
In return, he got a litany of red flags and dead ends, none ending well for anybody present.
“Of those left in the room-“ he began.
“The man is gone,” Clega said. “We found a vent kicked out on the side of the building, our guard on the roof also shot.”
Pressing his lips tight, Salazar glared up at Isabel. The operation was supposed to have been simple. It was supposed to have been almost impregnable, Clega so confident it could be done with a minimal team.
Now, it was proving to be anything but.
“The others in the room?”
“Right now, they are saying nothing,” Clega said, “and that is why I am calling you. I need permission to start becoming more persuasive in my approach.”
Bitterness again flared, rising like bile along the back of Salazar’s throat. The call had nothing to do with asking permission. It was nothing more than a not-so-subtle reminder that they were in this together.
Shit was going sideways, and they were tied at the hip through it, come what may.
“Do whatever you have to. Just find his ass.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The fall had managed to tear a strip of skin away from my right forearm. And another from my left elbow. A single jagged branch had even jabbed into my beard, wrenching free a clump of hair from my jawline almost the size of a dime.
All three had managed to draw blood, leaving behind raw flesh. Serving as open invitations for the millions of mosquitos flying around, they all itched uncontrollably.
And stung every time fresh sweat ran into them.
Despite the annoying discomfort, fortunately all three were nothing more than cosmetic damage. They would make it even harder for me to try and flag down a ride on a highway, but the odds of that happening were pretty low anyway.
The more important matter was that no structural damage had befallen me. After the initial jolt of hitting the canopy, I had managed to slide my way down a thick arm of the tree. The rough bark had been the cause of the two abrasions on my arms, but otherwise, it hadn’t been as bad as feared.
Just seconds after leaping from the building, I landed on the soft floor of the forest, most of the sound and light from the outside world blotted from view.
Standing by the thick base of the tree that had broken my fall, my first order of business had been to clear the sat phone from its hiding spot. Knowing better than to stay so close just yet, I had held it in my left hand, the gun in my right.
Sweeping the area, I saw nothing of opposition, the air humid and heavy beneath the treetops.
Still acutely aware of how much time I was spending, I took just another moment to gain my bearings before setting a course toward the north.
What I remembered of the area was that Bolivar International was located in the northwest corner of the city. Gi
ven my current appearance, that put moving south or east out of the question.
No way a guy looking like I did could slip by unnoticed.
I had no idea what lay to the west, only that it was a long way before finding much worth mentioning.
That left me with the north. On approach, we had been within plain sight of the ocean. Getting there would make it easy for me to call out, would provide a solid place for me to direct any reinforcements I might be able to drum up.
And not the least of which, it had to be a hell of a lot cooler than where I currently was.
Taking off at an easy lope, I worked my way through the trees, going as fast as I dared. Having survived the earlier fall, I was no hurry to stumble over an exposed root or an errant boulder, knowing my fate and that of a hundred others all rested on my getting out.
With no watch and no map, I ran until sweat was streaming off me. The front of my shirt was saturated, and heavy rivulets followed the veins in my forearms.
Having not had any liquid replenishment since the Atlanta airport, I slowed to a walk, my breathing even. So close to sea level, it was much easier than being at the elevation of Yellowstone, my body responding well.
Though that still didn’t mean I should overdo it. Not yet, not without knowing what lay ahead.
Content that I had gone more than a couple miles from the warehouse, I paused. I put my back against the base of a Brazil nut tree and powered the sat phone to life.
Unlike what I had said to Rembert, any wilderness guide worth hiring was intimately familiar with a satellite phone. Modern cell phone coverage only accounted for five percent of the thirty-four hundred square miles of Yellowstone, meaning a sat phone was second only to a sidearm when out in the backcountry.
The model was the newest thing out on the market, the sort of device that looked like it could make calls while simultaneously brewing espresso and rerouting incoming jets. Not even wanting to feign a guess at what it must have cost, I worked my way through a few different touchscreens, eventually getting where I needed to be.
A picture of a keypad staring back at me.
The list of numbers I knew by heart could be counted on one hand. It wasn’t that I had become like most Americans, simply entering someone’s digits into my phone without thinking about it. It was more to the effect that there were only a couple of people in the world that I talked to with even the whiff of semi-regularity.
Since the murder of my wife and daughter, there just hadn’t been much point.
Of those, most were wiped away almost immediately. Calling Kaylan wouldn’t do me a bit of good. Nor would hitting up my favorite pizza shop back home in West Yellowstone.
If all else failed, I could call my friend Mia Diaz, Special Agent in Charge for my old DEA office outside of San Diego. It would be long and circuitous, would require the sort of synergy that our government wasn’t exactly known for, but there was no doubt that she would eventually figure out a way to get to me.
Never a more capable individual had I known.
The problem therein, again, was time. I didn’t have it, and Rembert and the others damned sure didn’t.
Fishing down into my left pocket, I pulled out the crumpled piece of paper the man in the warehouse had given me. Only seven digits in total, there was no country code, and no area code attached.
Which either meant he was giving me the number of a wife or loved one, somebody back at home he wanted me to contact, or he had someone local lined up to provide assistance.
One of the benefits of having been in Venezuela before was that I knew the phone system operated much like America’s. Seven numbers, clumped into splits of three and four.
I also knew that for calls within Caracas proper, there was no need for any additional codes.
Taking a deep breath, I used my phone to punch in the digits. Expecting nothing, not completely certain the last scribbled gasps of a dying man were even legit, I hit send and held the device to my ear.
To my surprise, it was answered after only a single ring.
“The mockingbird is flying south.”
Jerking the phone away from my ear, I looked down at it, confusion on my face.
The voice was female. It sounded young, otherwise neutral of any inflection.
“Say again?”
“The mockingbird is flying south.”
This time, I pushed past any surprise, focusing on the words said.
Nobody answered the phone in such a way. Everywhere I had ever been, people used some form of a greeting. If the person calling was especially well known, they might start with a joke or a nickname, but never something like that.
Unless they were speaking in code.
Feeling my eyes slide shut, I raised my face toward the trees above, sweat streaming down either cheek. I had been completely blind before. Borderline foolish, even.
Not on the plane. That part I had nailed. I knew it would have taken someone with serious juice to force it down in Venezuela of all places.
My mistake had come in the warehouse. I had thought Gold Tooth and Cruz were there to start picking off any able-looking person that might offer opposition.
That didn’t entirely make sense, though. The man they had shot was youngish and somewhat fit, but he wouldn’t have looked especially imposing. Even given the posture I was using, the man was much smaller than me.
And a far cry from the heft of Rembert.
Gold Tooth hadn’t been sweeping the group, looking for any opposition. He’d been looking for a specific person.
The bland clothes. The vanilla haircut. Even the fair complexion of the man that had been shot. It all pointed to one incontrovertible conclusion.
“Your agent is dead.” Hearing nothing from the other end, I added quickly, “I didn’t do it.”
Several moments of silence passed.
“The mockin-“ she began anew.
“Yeah, yeah,” I snapped, cutting her off. “Listen Mockingbird, this is Hawk, and I’m telling you, your agent is dead. The plane and all its passengers were hijacked.
“The men that did it shot your agent, who just managed to write down this phone number and slip it to me before he died.”
Whether he was dead or not, I didn’t know. My mood, and the urgency of the situation, both shoved aside a great deal of my caring.
Now was not the time to be playing semantic games with these people.
Damn CIA and all their bullshit.
“My name is Jeremiah Hawkens Tate. Formerly of the U.S. Navy, formerly of the DEA. I am currently headed toward the coast, and I will leave this phone on so you can track it.
“If you can help me, get your ass there now.”
Chapter Forty
The meeting to update President Underall was a no-win proposition. Charles Vance had known sitting in the Oval Office the day before that this was going to be one of those situations. The sort of thing where an elected politician smiles and offers them coffee to their face, but instantly hangs them out to dry at the first sign of trouble.
He also had a feeling Director Joon knew that fact even better than he did.
While the closed video conference was by no means a victory, it wasn’t an unfettered disaster either.
At least they were given the directive to fix it, rather than being told the whole thing was off.
Perhaps that had more to do with the fact that initial contact had already been made with the Venezuelan president, but Vance was willing to take it as a win either way.
Striding back toward the war room alongside Joon, he wanted nothing more than to turn and ask his assessment of it. He was curious to see if his initial reaction was the same as his boss. If it matched previous encounters with the president.
Knowing better, he held his tongue. The call had been made in an encrypted safe room, meaning it was the highest of confidential. The set of Joon’s jaw signaled he was not exactly in the mood for conversation.
Instead, the two men moved forward, making it
almost back before spotting one of the young, nameless aides standing outside the door. At the sight of them, the young woman threw a hand in the air.
To match it, she jumped a few inches off the ground, yelling, “Director! Director Joon!”
Making no effort to acknowledge, or even increase his pace, Joon let the glower on his face grow a bit more pronounced. He kept his head down and went straight ahead before pulling up just short of the girl.
“What?”
If the aide picked up on the demeanor, she did nothing to show it.
“Director Joon, we’ve got Agent Ramirez on the line from Venezuela.”
Casting a quick glance to Vance, the director pushed inside. Doing the same, Vance followed in order, barely catching the door long enough for the aide to slide in behind him.
Once they were all in, she disappeared again to the side, her part in the proceedings effectively over.
Around the conference table, each of the people seemed to be leaning forward, their attention focused on the telephone console in the middle of the table.
On the far wall video screen was the naval service record and photo of a man Vance had never seen before.
Ignoring all of it, and whatever prior conversation might have been had, Joon said, “Agent Ramirez? This is Director Horace Joon.”
Every person inside the room fell silent. On the line, Ramirez did as well for a moment before saying, “Director. This is Agent Manuela Ramirez.”
“Agent, good to hear from you,” Joon said. “Please tell me you’ve heard from our boys?”
“No,” Ramirez replied.
“No?”
“No,” Ramirez repeated. “In fact, there’s no word getting in or out from anybody on that plane.”
As if the conversation with Underall had somehow joined them together, Joon glanced to Vance. The look on his face seemed to match exactly with what Vance was thinking.
“Not that it would matter, apparently,” Ramirez continued, pulling both their attention back to the phone. “If a call I just received is any indicator, they’re dead anyway.”
Feeling his brow come together, Vance took a step closer to the table. Once the front of his legs pressed against the edge of it, he leaned forward and said, “Agent, this is Special Director Charles Vance. Can you repeat? All of our agents our dead?”
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