Hellfire: A Suspense Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 4)

by Dustin Stevens

  “Well, that’s something, I guess,” the woman said.

  Recognizing the weariness in the woman’s tone, already starting to feel a bit of the same himself, Rembert was for the first time glad his jaw was broken.

  At least that way, he had an excuse for not voicing any of the things he was feeling.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  The ride back to the safehouse was short. Moving slow, obeying all posted traffic signs, Ela somehow managed to stretch it out to a full five minutes.

  Twice she tried opening up a dialogue, each time cut off by my upraised palm.

  Getting the point, she didn’t attempt again, not even after she used the dual scanners to get us back into the apartment and away from anybody that might be lurking nearby.

  Not that I actually thought that was an issue.

  The moment the door was open, I went into the kitchen, leaving her by the front. Doing a quick scan of the place, I went for the first drawers I saw, pulling them open. Finding nothing but silverware and random utensils, I pushed them closed, going in order for the next.

  “Need something?” Ela asked. This time, there was a bit of annoyance present.

  Most likely, it stemmed from a combination of my earlier stifling the conversation and my now borderline frenetic movements.

  Not that I particularly cared either way. The red digits of the clock in my mind had been sitting in my frontal lobe since climbing through the ceiling tiles in the warehouse. Now, each second passing seemed to be accompanied by a siren, making sure it had my attention.

  “Paper, pen.”

  Staring at me a moment, Ela went to a small table tucked away in the corner. She drew out a tablet and a blue gel pen, putting both down on the table, before glaring up at me.

  Ignoring the look completely, I bent over the table. One hand I rested flush on the smooth wood. The other I used to flip open the tablet and go to work.

  “Okay, this here is the airport.”

  I began by drawing a single rectangle at the bottom of the page. Around it, I sketched a dotted line, outlining the various pieces of the grounds.

  “From what I could tell, this was the basic layout of the runway, and this was the route the bus used to pick us up and take us to the warehouse.”

  Another square in the back corner. “Which was here.”

  As I worked, Ela came up alongside me, peering down over my shoulder.

  “Now, around the outside here is a fence that’s about ten feet in height, with razor wire along the top of it.”

  I drew a curlicue along the dotted line, denoting the feature.

  “And all this out here was heavy woods, clear to the coast. Maybe as far as four miles or so in total.”

  When I finished, I ran everything back through my mind, making sure it all played out the way I remembered. Content that it was right, I glanced up to Ela.

  “You know anything about the grounds?” I asked. “Is there another entrance? A way of accessing the warehouse or even the terminal?”

  Narrowing her eyes, Ela stared down at the page. “We know someone that works in baggage there. He might be able to slip us inside, but there’s no way we could get a hundred people out like that.”

  I made a notation of the info in the bottom corner of the page. “I never intended to.”

  What I was thinking I didn’t bother sharing yet, the sketch as much to align my ideas as to provide her with a basic schematic.

  If I had a few more hours, and knew that the people inside would be safe, I could probably come up with something sleek and elegant. It would have a dozen moving parts, all synchronized beautifully, and result in a successful operation without injury or even a single casualty.

  Hell, if we had a few days with the same assurances, I wouldn’t need to do anything. I could just wait for the CIA to slip in another crew, and we’d be on our way.

  Neither was the case, which meant I was going to have to be creative. And maybe a little risky.

  The lives of Rembert and a great many others were resting on it.

  Not bothering to push it further, Ela checked her watch. “It’s been ten minutes. We should duck inside for Vance’s call.”

  Grunting in agreement, I took up the drawing I’d just made and followed her back into the bathroom. The steam from my earlier shower had dissipated, though the smell of cheap soap and shaving cream still hung in the air.

  Passing through the built-in shelves, we both took the same seats as earlier.

  “Tell me,” I said, “is Joon as big an ass as he seems?”

  Ela raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Truth? That was the first time I’ve even seen the man since training.”

  There was something in her tone that told me there was more she wanted to say. Deciding to wait her out, I merely sat and stared, knowing she would get there eventually.

  Which turned out to be less than a minute.

  “But yes, in my few encounters, he’s been a consummate prick.”

  One corner of my mouth twitched upward, the closest I could manage to a smile given the situation. Consummate prick was a phrase I hadn’t heard in ages, a favorite of Martin Diggs, one of the guys on my FAST team years ago.

  Never was it meant as a compliment in the slightest.

  “And Vance?”

  “Vance I know a little better. Seems like a pretty straight shooter, all things considered.”

  Generally, when people threw a qualifier like those final words on the end of something, it wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning, he’s in a tough spot. Venezuela isn’t real high in the South American pecking order yet, and he does still have to pretend to play the political game.”

  Nodding, I accepted the information in silence. Whether she knew it or not, Ela had just answered exactly what I was looking for.

  The call from Vance alone was a curious one, especially in the wake of everything Joon had just said. On some level, they must have sensed my frustration, might have even inferred from my file that I likely wasn’t leaving this alone.

  The question was whether or not his reaching out was meant to keep me in check, out of their way and on the sidelines, or if it was an actual olive branch seeking aid.

  As yet, it was still a touch too early to tell.

  Not that I had a great many options, the plan I was concocting depending entirely on the man’s help.

  Two minutes after we stepped into the office, the sound of ringing piped in through the speakers. Just barely loud enough to be heard, it pulled both our attention toward it, Ela scrambling to work the keyboard before her.

  After the second ring, she had it up and connected.

  “Special Director,” she said.

  “Ramirez, Tate.”

  Unlike the previous discussion, there was no video for this one. Nothing but a black screen before us.

  “I don’t have much time,” he said. “I’m in my office now, had to excuse myself for a second time to get away when I did.”

  Based on his lowered voice and quick cadence, if he was trying to do a sell job, he was off to a good start.

  “Vance,” I said, bypassing any greeting or even his opening line, “what did you have in mind?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me,” Vance said without pause. “Right now, Joon and the president are still wanting to push forward on the original plan.”

  Beside me, Ela’s brows pulled in tight. “The original plan? How?”

  “Farkus.”

  I had no idea what the original plan was or who Farkus was, but based on Ela’s reaction, neither was a good idea.

  “Original plan?” I asked. “Farkus?”

  For a moment there was no reply. Ela avoided my gaze, deferring to the Special Director. Vance remained silent, seemingly weighing how much to share.

  “We don’t have time for all that right now,” Vance eventually answered. “Agent Ramirez can brief you on it as soon as we’re done here.”

 
; Not overly fond of the response, I shoved aside any incredulity. If the man was acting out of turn, as he was at least trying to give the impression of, then he likely didn’t have the time to get into everything.

  “But it’s bad?” I asked.

  “It was bad to begin with,” Vance responded, “and that was before everything went to hell.”

  Picking up exactly what he was getting at, I didn’t push any further. Joon was attempting to salvage something that for all intents and purposes was over.

  In my history with multiple government positions, never did that end well.

  “Okay,” I said. “Who is Edgar Belmonte?”

  Again, a pause. “That’s part of the original plan. Agent Ramirez will fill you in.”

  This time, I couldn’t help but feel a tiny spark of animosity rise. If they were going to need help, they had to start extending the same my direction.

  “So where does that leave us right now?” I asked. This time, I didn’t attempt to hide the edge in my voice.

  For his part, Vance skipped right by it. “Exactly where we were when I called the first time. Right now, everybody else seems convinced those hostages are window dressing. They’re being held, but now that the agents are gone, nobody will be harmed.

  “I’m not so sure.”

  Having been inside the warehouse, having seen the way Gold Tooth took down their agent, I was positive they weren’t. Those people were nothing more than protection, ready to be cast aside at a moment’s notice.

  If they weren’t already.

  “So we need to help them,” Vance said. “And we need to be quick, and we need to be quiet. Is that doable?”

  It was too early to say definitively. The plan I was working on still needed some shaping. And a shitload of luck.

  “I guess we’ll find out.”

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Charles Vance had ascended to the post he was in by playing the game. Not the political one – for that he’d never had the appetite – but the internal one.

  The only one that truly mattered at the Agency unless somebody rose to the highest seat in the building.

  He had started out as an analyst, someone even lower than the aides that now lined the back of the conference room he was returning to. Assigned to New Zealand, he had endured eighteen months of the most mind-numbing work possible, the country quite possibly one of the least concerning on the planet.

  Why the Agency still felt a need to have a presence there was a question he didn’t feign to have any understanding of.

  From there, he had worked his way up bit by bit. His resume sported undergrad at Berkeley, graduate studies at the University of Virginia, and for more than a decade he had done things that other people of his background wouldn’t even consider.

  Had been paid on a level commensurate with it as well.

  Not until his thirties had things finally started to take shape. He had passed whatever internal vetting process the Agency put new recruits through, proving to them that he was in it for the haul.

  At which point they had started to reward him in kind, the most recent example being his ascension to the post of Special Director of South American Operations.

  In sum total, his career with the Agency had spanned twenty-five years. Long enough that if he wanted, he might even be able to walk off into retirement soon.

  Not once in all those years had he ever gone against the system. He had not so much as disagreed with a superior, had done his best to always follow orders, even when he questioned their legitimacy.

  Which was what made what he was doing now so curious.

  Taking his time, Vance walked down the middle of the hallway. He kept his gaze up, making eye contact with each person he passed, even going as far as nodding to those that did the same.

  In short, making sure that nobody noticed a thing out of the ordinary.

  Even if just beneath the surface, a tempest of thought and emotion was occurring.

  He didn’t regret sitting in on the first campaign event for Edgar Belmonte. Such decisions were made with the point of sniffing things out early, the burning of an American flag certainly rising to that level.

  Neither did he regret reporting it up the line, the director and the president both getting involved because that was their job and that was how the hierarchy of things worked.

  What he was fast coming to regret, though, was how naïve he had been. Much the way that Tate had reacted, his own response to hearing Joon was one of shock.

  A lifetime in this role had shown him that politics were never far from thought, but never would he have believed they would supersede the lives of more than a hundred Americans.

  There were a great many things that this job had imprinted on him. Some were things he wasn’t proud of, actions he would have to carry to his grave.

  This would not be one of them.

  If given his choice, this would not have been the point where he drew a line in the sand. Not with so little working intel, and with his only assets being a pair of non-combative agents and a former DEA agent that he still didn’t know much about.

  But that was all he had.

  His first impression of Hawk Tate was very similar to many men with military backgrounds that had passed through at one point or another. They were often quite committed, adhering to a code of honor that many others could only guess at.

  Having picked up on some of that in their brief interaction, that alone wasn’t what had made him inclined to trust him, though.

  It was more the fact that his agent had passed along the number to the safehouse.

  Rarely, if ever, were such actions taken. If done under the circumstances, the man must have read the situation as catastrophic. He must have also read Tate as an ally.

  And that together would have to be enough for Vance right now.

  Pushing his way back into the conference room, the conversation with Tate and the plan he had outlined sat at the front of his mind. The logistics of pulling off what the man had in mind was going to be difficult.

  Doing it on a truncated timetable, even more so.

  Moving in a constant swirl through his mind, Vance only barely registered that the lights in the room had again been dimmed. Not until he heard the automated pulse of a ringtone did he draw his attention back to the room, noticing that Rowe and Andrews were both staring at him, as was Joon at the head of the table.

  “Everything alright?” Joon asked.

  “Yes, sir,” Vance replied. “My apologies, sir.”

  Grunting, Joon gave a nod. “Glad your back. Just in time.”

  Before Vance had a chance to respond, he was cut off by the line being answered. On screen, the visual of a man he knew to be John Farkus appeared, nothing but a plain white background behind him.

  Meaning he had abandoned his post at the Belmonte campaign event and had worked his way back to the other safehouse in Caracas.

  Which also meant that Joon was barreling straight ahead with the improvised plan.

  “Good evening, John,” Joon opened.

  “Good evening,” Farkus said, giving a slight smile.

  The director didn’t respond to the gesture. “Thank you for meeting with us. I know it was a difficult request.”

  Farkus brushed the comment aside with his hand. “No worries, Director. It was a large crowd, easy to slip in and out of.”

  Hearing that, knowing the reason behind the call in the first place, Vance felt his core contract tight.

  Such a statement would only play right into the misguided plan that was being put together on the fly.

  “Excellent,” Joon replied. “That’s actually why we’re calling you now.”

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Ela chose to remain seated at the desk. I opted to stand, nervous energy starting to roil through me, making it almost impossible to sit in one position.

  Especially in the tiny metal chairs that were provided.

  As much as I wanted to get out into the main of
the apartment, someplace where I could begin moving about, I didn’t press her on it. I suspected the decision was because there was sensitive information that we were about to discuss, meaning we needed to stay somewhere with soundproofing.

  Even if I wasn’t pleased with it, I understood it.

  I just hoped it went quick.

  “What was the original plan?” I asked. “And who are Farkus and Belmonte?”

  Without glancing my way, Ela continued to work on the keyboard in front of her. With a few keystrokes, she managed to shove aside the calling program we had used a moment before to talk with Vance. In its place, she brought up a series of windows, the first one showing a picture of a man with dark hair. Latino, he appeared to be in his late-forties.

  “This is John Farkus,” she began. “The other agent on the ground here in Venezuela.”

  Giving the man a quick look, I deduced that like the agent that had been shot in the warehouse, his appearance was the definition of average. “Looks like a professor.”

  “Close,” she said. “He is a history teacher at a local high school.”

  “How long has he been here?” I asked.

  “Eighteen years,” Ela said. “Completely integrated into the community. Dual citizenship, votes every election, the works.”

  There was no file associated with the image. No background data for me to read, not even a summary of his hometown or education.

  All I had was Ela’s report.

  Damn CIA.

  “So he’s the brains, you’re the muscle?” I asked. The question might have seemed a bit indelicate, though it wasn’t intended as such.

  I’d just been around these sorts of pairings enough times to know how they generally worked.

  “Actually, we’re both the brains, so to speak. My cover is as a graduate student here.”

  Nodding, I considered the information for a moment. “Which is why they sent in a team. You guys did the scouting, and somebody was about to be eliminated.”

  To that, Ela neither confirmed nor denied, simply staring my way. Matching her gaze, I continued to let the information work itself into place in my mind.

  “Edgar Belmonte,” I said, eventually coming around to the second piece Vance instructed her to tell me about.