People were depending on me. And I now knew for sure that nobody else gave a damn about trying to help them.
Once the basic cleansing rituals were complete, I dug into the cabinet beneath the sink, grabbing up a can of shave cream and a razor that looked like it had last been used in the late-nineties. The blade was dull and ripped and pulled more than it actually cut, but after five full minutes, I was able to have most of the growth scraped away from my face.
The last thing I did was dig through the drawer a final time, grabbing up a tube of hair gel and a brush.
Ten minutes after exiting the hidden room, I stepped back into the main of the apartment. Towel still wrapped around me, my skin had air dried, my hair twisted into something resembling the latest style.
Standing in the kitchen was Ela, a stack of clothes on the table beside her. In one quick movement, she looked the length of me, her eyes widening slightly.
“The men at the warehouse have already seen me,” I said, “whether they realize it or not. I can’t go back over there looking the way I did.”
Nodding slightly in acceptance of the explanation, Ela said, “You’re going back over there?”
Animosity still pulsed through me. Right now there were a hundred people, folks that had done nothing wrong, that had done nothing at all besides trying to take a dream vacation.
Men like Grey Rembert, that just wanted to go catch some fish while he was still able to do so.
Through no fault of their own, they had been pulled into a power struggle, and nobody seemed to give a damn about what happened to them.
I didn’t know how much I could help them.
But I damned sure knew I was going to try.
“Somebody has to.”
For a moment, Ela looked at my exposed torso. She saw the cluster of scars I had collected, from the furrowed skin of a gunshot trench on my arm to the pink filet of seared flesh on my stomach.
“These are some of John’s clothes,” she said. “You’re quite a bit taller than him, but the shorts should work.”
I hadn’t put on a pair of shorts in years. They weren’t a very practical clothing item, especially in a place like Montana.
I guess at the very least they might help me blend a bit better.
“Do you have any water? PowerBars or something I can eat on the fly?”
Flicking a gaze to the kitchen, Ela nodded. “Where are you headed?”
“I’ll figure it out.”
Again, her only response was a nod. “If you need anything, you have my number.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
It was impossible not to be angry as I strode away from the safehouse.
Not that I had called Ela. The agent in the warehouse had used what I presumed to be his dying breath to get me that phone number. She had taken the time and employed the electronic wizardry of tracking me down. Had even provided me with a place to clean up, change, and replenish my body.
My animosity existed in the fact that despite all that, it was impossible not to feel like I had just wasted a couple of hours. Time that Rembert and the others did not have. Precious moments that I could have been using to help.
Sitting bitter on my tongue was the fact that for all the time I’d spent that afternoon, all I had gained was a healthy distaste for the CIA director and a few precious bits of information.
Namely, that a warehouse full of hostages wasn’t the highest-ranking thing on his to-do list.
Which, in turn, amped my hostility even higher.
And round and round it went.
Striding away from the place, I let the anger seethe, burning just beneath the surface for five blocks. In that time, I put on blinders, moving straight ahead. With teeth gritted, I clenched my fists into tight balls, allowing my adrenaline to spike.
Not once did I even look at my surroundings, unaware of where I was or who was around me.
And at the end of those five blocks, I pulled up abruptly. I took one deep breath and used it to lift my face toward the sky. For as long as I could, I held it, feeling the sun on my skin, before slowly pushing it out.
And did the best I could to shove aside the vitriol I felt with it.
Simple science dictated that nobody functioned at their best when they were angry. Synapses didn’t fire as they should, thinking became cloudier than necessary.
And it wasn’t like I was anywhere near a state of just being angry.
Expelling every bit of air I could, I stood on the corner. For the first time, I took in my surroundings. Saw the Caracas neighborhood for what it was. Forced myself to focus on the problem at hand.
Right now, I was in a foreign country, a place that was only above being the third world in the strictest of definitions. Historical relations between them and the country that had employed me for a long time were considered tense at best.
I also was the only person on the ground there that could help a plane full of hostages, people that were being held by armed guards trying very hard not to be identified.
Adrenaline continued to seep into my system as I stood and thought. I allowed my vision to glaze over. Already, enough time had been wasted. No longer could I simply keep moving just for the sake of it.
My next steps had to be with purpose.
Receding deep into thought, I didn’t see the Jeep come speeding up the street toward me. I didn’t notice the whining of the engine as it accelerated my way. Barely even heard the moan of tires as it began to slow.
Not until the front end pulled up abruptly just inches from my exposed knees did I snap myself to attention. My right hand instinctively went for the small of my back, my left rising to block, as the Jeep idled along the curb.
A plume of dark smoke engulfed me, bringing with it the acrid scent of charred rubber.
“Get in,” Ela spat.
Keeping my right hand on the grip of the gun, I scanned each of her hands. Both were empty.
“Joon send you?”
Seeing my stance, Ela showed me both her palms before lowering her right hand to the middle console. From it, she snatched up a cell phone and held it my direction.
“Vance.”
Again, I checked her over. Not once had I gotten a whiff of aggression from her at the safehouse, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been given an explicit order the moment I’d stepped away.
It wasn’t like it was unheard of for the CIA to extract what they could and then cast something aside once its usefulness was complete.
Maintaining my grip on the gun, I nudged forward, accepting the phone with my left hand. Pressing it my cheek, I receded a few steps.
“Yeah?”
“Tate?” It was the same voice I’d heard onscreen a little while earlier.
“Vance?”
“Yes, and I don’t have much time. We need to talk.”
My gaze never left Ela, who sat alternating glances between me and the road ahead.
“We’re talking now.”
“No, I mean we need to talk about how we’re going to get those hostages out of there.”
This time, I did the same as Ela, checking our surroundings. To either side there were scads of people, many of them glancing our way.
And possibly listening to every word that was being uttered.
“Call us back in ten minutes.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
The list of things President Miguel Salazar should have been attending to was lengthy. While he had managed to streamline his schedule into aligning his meetings and public sightings on particular days, that didn’t mean there wasn’t plenty else to keep him busy.
What started each day as a trip through the global news and a few sips of Cafecito often ended with dinner at his desk. Sometimes it included lugging things home with him in the evening.
By his count, the number of post-midnight phone calls he received from Isabel sometimes numbered in the double digits. Per week.
He was not a man that could afford to push an entire day’s agenda asi
de. Whatever he didn’t get to would just pile up, seemingly with interest. And it would no doubt still be waiting for him the next morning.
Along with the rest of an already packed slate of things to get through.
The morning visit from Isabel the day before alerting him to what was going on had already begun to shift his week. The call with the United States President Mitchell Underall had added to that.
The meeting with General Renzo Clega the night before had ensured that the next couple of days would be sprints.
But all of that paled in comparison to what his day had now become.
In the wake of his conversation with Underall, he had expected a move to be made. The Americans were rarely ones to ask permission or give a preemptive warning about their intentions, meaning even the perfunctory exercise of having the phone call had been a giant warning sign.
Even at that, never would he have expected the move to be so sudden, or so brazen.
Any chance of conducting usual business was shattered the moment he received word that a plane was being rerouted for an emergency landing.
The first call from Clega telling him there had been a problem pushed it far past anything he could have imagined.
In the time since, he had moved Isabel permanently into the chair on the opposite side of the desk. Rising from his own seat, he had pushed it in tight, using the extra space to begin pacing.
Eight steps in one direction, turn, then eight steps back the opposite way.
For hours he had kept up a steady rhythm. When the heels of his leather shoes started to rub blisters, he cast them aside, going barefoot over the cool tile.
The second call from Clega came in a full two hours after the first. Arriving on his direct line, the ring sounded like a foghorn within the office. It snapped Isabel’s head toward the sound as Salazar leaped for it, tossing the receiver onto the desk and flipping the call onto the speaker.
“Salazar.”
“Mr. President,” Clega replied.
Already, Salazar could hear a hint of trepidation in the man’s voice. “You didn’t find him?”
“No,” Clega said. “As best we can tell, he found a path into the woods beyond the property and made his way out through the forest.”
His eyes sliding shut, Salazar pressed his lips tight, his entire upper body clenching. “Out? To where?”
“We don’t know,” Clega said. “The trail went north to the coast, disappearing along the shore.”
Lifting his gaze to Isabel, Salazar let her see the anger he felt.
“Mr. President, there were tracks.”
Keeping his focus locked on his cousin, Salazar asked, “Tracks? As in footprints?”
“No,” the general replied. “As in tire treads. It looks like somebody picked him up.”
A string of expletives floated through Salazar’s mind. As did the urge to lift the phone from his desk and hurl it at the Plexiglas covering the window behind him.
This was the sort of thing he was assured the night before would not happen. This entire thing was supposed to have been simple, a chance to reclaim his commanding lead over Belmonte, stamping out the threat for good, ensuring them another six years in office.
From there, he could simply walk away. There would be nothing left to prove, a decade-plus more than ample time to leave his mark on Venezuela forever.
“So you think this man had help?”
“We do,” Clega confirmed. “We’re looking into any cameras that might have caught a glimpse of them, but you know how remote some parts of the shore are up there.”
Salazar nodded. He was aware, just as he was sure that whoever had made it out was as well.
“How are you coming with finding a name?” Salazar asked.
“Nothing yet,” Clega said. “And we have tried everything short of executing more hostages. Threat, intimidation, even some physical violence.
“Whoever it is, nobody knew the man. The most we got was a physical description, a few people claiming he had a scruffy beard and shaggy hair.”
“Sound familiar?” Salazar asked.
“No,” Clega replied, “but there were more than a hundred people, and I didn’t see them all personally. The only two guards that did...”
His voice fell away, not needing to state the obvious.
The only men that could positively ID anybody were both now dead.
Shoving back from the desk, Salazar resumed his pacing. He shoved his hands into his pockets, trying to think of the best way to handle the situation.
Things were spiraling badly. That much was certain.
The only question now was how to best stem the damage that would be done moving forward.
“Tell me, how long would it take to load every person there up and make them disappear?”
Chapter Fifty
Grey Rembert’s jaw throbbed. Each breath he pulled in sent a spasm the length of his neck, electric surges pulsating down his body.
There was no doubt that it was broken. He had felt it the moment the butt of the guard’s rifle connected with his face, sending a plume of bloody spittle across the floor. A fair bit of it had also ended up on the front of his shirt, the cotton fabric just drying, dark blotches stretched in a haphazard pattern.
Though, to be fair, at least it wasn’t the blade end of the weapon.
The sound of the bone snapping still settled in his mind, playing on loop one time after another as he sat in the corner. With his vision glazed, he looked over every few moments to the young woman beside him.
Curled into a ball, her legs were tucked up tight to her chest. Somewhere in her mid-twenties, Rembert would guess her to be somewhere around five-ten, though at the moment her entire body was tucked no larger than his golden retriever at home.
With her eyes pressed shut tight, she could be heard murmuring softly. Dried salt was present around her eyes from crying herself to sleep.
The red handprint of the man with the mustache was just starting to fade from her face.
Rembert had known the moment they entered what the man was after. There was no way they wouldn’t be angry about what Hawk had done. Bringing along a man with a machete might have been a bit over the top, but that didn’t mean the thought process behind it was incorrect.
The man wanted answers. He had a room full of people that he was going to extort them from.
A to B. As simple as that.
When the first round of questioning had yielded no results, the man had turned to his friend. Seeming uncertain exactly what to do, the young man had thrashed about some, had even made some believe he might act, but to everyone’s relief, the blade did not touch flesh.
The same could not be said for the assorted fists, clubs, and in Rembert’s case, the butts of rifles that followed.
From where he was seated, Rembert could see nearly half of the room lying in various states, all on the receiving end of some attack. Many wore the same telltale features as he and the young girl, some combination of tears or blood drying on their person.
“It was a good thing you did.”
The voice was low and female. Coming from the right, Rembert rolled his head in that direction, his gaze landing on a woman that looked to be a decade or more older than him.
With short gray hair, she wore a matching cardigan over a plain t-shirt. Pearl earrings were visible on either side.
“Helping the girl,” the woman said, nodding with her chin toward the sleeping young woman. “I noticed when we got off the bus he had his eye on her.”
Rembert rolled his gaze in the opposite direction to again look at the girl. Less than half his age, she reminded him of his granddaughter, which was the reason he had done what he did to begin with.
It wasn’t a hero thing for him any more than he imagined whatever Hawk was now doing was to him.
He’d just like to believe that if somebody had put their hands in his granddaughter, someone nearby would have done the same. Broken jaw or not.
Not t
rusting himself to speak, or even wanting to risk moving his jaw, Rembert looked back to the woman, giving only a nod. For a moment, she seemed to be waiting for a response before her gaze drifted down to his misshapen face and she nodded.
Just as Rembert trusted she might. Every person in the room had seen what had happened. Even if not, they had certainly heard the snap of his mandible.
Turning her focus out to the room, the woman leaned over a couple of inches. “The man that killed those guards and escaped, he’s a friend of yours, right?”
Warmth crept to Rembert’s face. He’d been so certain that someone would give him up to the guards after seeing the way he had hoisted Hawk into the rafters.
To their credit, nobody had, though that didn’t mean it came without consequence.
Flicking a look her direction, Rembert nodded.
“Yeah, I saw you guys talking earlier,” she whispered. She paused a moment, seeming to debate her next question, before asking, “You think he’s got a shot?”
If not for everything else that had happened since Hawk’s departure, that one thing would have dominated Rembert’s thoughts. As it stood, he didn’t know the answer, though seeing the way he’d handled the guards did at least provide some modicum of hope.
However small it might be.
The reality was, they were in a country that was known to be on the brink of civil war. The man had already killed two guards and if he did manage to get out of the building, would be alone and on foot, trying to match up with some form of armed opposition.
Making a fist, Rembert extended his thumb and pinkie, making the universal signal for a phone. Raising it only as far as he dared, he mimed it next to his cheek for a moment before dropping it back into place.
It took the woman a moment to place the reference, her brows coming together for an instant before receding.
“He has a phone.”
Again, Rembert nodded.
How good it might do them, if Hawk knew anybody worth reaching out to in such a situation, he had no way of knowing.
All that was certain was if anybody in that room had any hope of seeing the next day – let alone ever making it home – it rested on whatever Hawk was doing at that very moment.
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