by Ward Larsen
Moments later Davis stepped outside. The night was deepening, a hard black punctuated by bright windows and passing headlights. He didn’t know what part of town he was in, but he saw the lights of the mountain, Monserrate, to his left. He turned the other way. Airports in any city were set away from mountains, and Bogotá was no exception.
His shoulder hurt and his head was spinning, twin blows from very different truncheons—one hardened steel and the other a scribbled note in his pocket. Leave the country now if you ever want to see her again.
Davis knew he couldn’t do it. He might end up searching a thousand square miles of jungle, or locked in another jail, but there was no decision to be made. He would find Jen or he would die trying. He was weighing the practical ramifications of this conclusion, grim as they were, when a voice called from an alcove, “Jammer Davis?”
He looked and saw a side entrance to the police station, a door that probably hadn’t been used in years. Overhead was stenciled: PROHIBIDA LA ENTRADA. Out of the shadow stepped a scruffy Nordic-looking man. He was tall and strongly built, with long blond hair that fell to his shoulders and a bushy mustache. A seriously lost Viking in a loose cotton shirt and worn Levi’s.
“Who are you?” Davis asked.
A thin smile, clear-blue eyes glinting under the stab of a streetlight. “I’m the guy who just busted you out of prison.”
* * *
The stretch limousine sat motionless on black tarmac, blending with the quiet airfield that shouldered the Maryland-Virginia border. The ramp was lit in a sulfuric yellow mist, and parked nearby, like an ever-watchful bird of prey, was a sleek eggshell-white business jet. In the back seat of the limo, separated from the driver by an opaque privacy screen, Frederick Strand, CEO of The Alamosa Group, sat next to the vice president’s chief of staff, Bill Evers. It was Evers, voice weary after a strenuous day of travel, who issued the final instructions to Vincent Kehoe.
“We still don’t know who we’re dealing with. If at all possible, we’d like you to find out, just in case this issue comes up again.”
“Your boss will have more firepower in a few months?” Kehoe suggested.
Strand shot his man a hard look. “You are being paid for neither humor nor speculation, Kehoe. Put a sock in it.”
“Yes, sir. Sorry.”
Evers picked up, “Never lose sight of the immediate objective. First and foremost, get the girl out safely.”
Kehoe promised he would, and two handshakes later he was stepping smartly across the tarmac, a large suitcase in hand. The two men in the limo watched him climb the boarding stairs and disappear into the big Gulfstream—in fact, the very same G-III that had whisked Jammer Davis to Colombia days earlier. The door shut immediately, and the twin turbofans purred to life.
“Will he be able do it?” Evers asked
“Get the girl home? I think so. It’s a lot of money, which in my experience equates to success. Also, I don’t think they’re fools. In a few months, Martin Stuyvesant will be the last man in the world anyone wants pissed at them.”
“And the other? Will Kehoe be able to identify who we’re dealing with?”
Strand hedged, “I’m not sure about that. It depends on how careful they are. But as long as we get the girl, the rest should prove moot. I think everyone will be happy at that point.”
Strand’s phone chimed and he looked at a message. He smiled. “Our Mr. Davis has turned into a complete bust. He can’t even stay out of jail.”
“Jail?”
“Apparently he beat four policemen senseless.”
“Four?” Evers looked away from Strand and shook his head. “The man’s a damned embarrassment. It’s no wonder he hasn’t gotten any results.”
“It was worth a try. When you attack problems like this, you have to do it from every conceivable angle. Fortunately, the angle in the briefcase Kehoe is carrying is generally the most effective. You did well, raising that much cash on short notice.”
“It cost us a great deal,” said Evers.
“An ambassadorship?”
“Worse—a department head.”
“Which one?” asked Strand.
“Treasury.”
Strand studied Evers for a moment, then remembered that the Secretary of Treasury had announced her intent to step down at the end of the current administration. He was naturally curious who her successor would be, information being the currency it was in his town. A Wall Street hedge fund manager? A Goldman Sachs partner? Strand knew better than to ask, relenting that the answer would have to wait until spring.
The jet carrying Sergeant Kehoe began to move, and two minutes later clawed into the sky in a rush of tormented air.
“Kehoe did have a point,” said Strand. “If Stuyvesant wins the election … he won’t need the likes of me anymore. He’ll have the entire United States military at his disposal.”
“Worried about your job?” Evers asked playfully.
The retired admiral chuckled. “Certainly not. Midterm congressional elections are always right around the corner. Four hundred and thirty-five House members, one-third of the Senate, all coming up for reelection. With a crowd like that? I always find work, Mr. Evers. Always.”
THIRTY-FIVE
“Where are we going?” Davis asked.
He was in the backseat of a Toyota SUV, and there were now two men, the Viking having been joined by their driver, a wiry dark-haired man with an ever-present grin. They’d told him their names were Jorgensen and McBain, and that they worked for the DEA, which was enough to get Davis into the Toyota—that and the fact that he was running seriously low on cash for cab fare.
McBain drove with abandon, blending perfectly in the demolition derby that was Bogotá traffic. The Toyota bottomed out on a pothole, and an audible crunch from the undercarriage widened McBain’s smile. The vehicle seemed solid, in a mechanical sense, but the floorboards were littered with food wrappers and newspapers. Davis doubted the exterior had ever been washed, save for two arcs of clear glass on the windshield that could be credited to the wipers. A company car if he had ever seen one.
Jorgensen said, “We have an apartment nearby. There are some things there you should see.”
An apartment, thought Davis. One that probably looks a lot like this truck. “So why is the DEA springing me out of jail?”
Jorgensen, who was in the front seat next to his partner, half-turned to face Davis. “We only follow orders, Jammer. By the way—is that your real name?”
“My birth certificate says Frank, but nobody uses it.”
McBain said, “The guy in charge of our region, back in D.C., he’s a retired Marine general. Apparently he got a sideways call from an old Air Force friend who said you needed help.”
And there was the answer. Jorgensen and McBain represented the long reach of Larry Green, or more precisely, the old generals’ network in action. That was what happened when you put a hundred or so high achievers together in the Pentagon for their last tours of duty before retirement. They formed cliques and had lunch, and when they all retired and moved on to corporate and government afterlives, they kept in touch and did favors for one another.
“Oh, and by the way,” said McBain, “Semper Fi.”
“They told you about that? That I did three years living in tents and eating MREs before trading desert camo for sky blue?”
“I won’t hold it against you.”
“Semper Fi, then. Where were you?”
“West coast, EOD, with two tours in the box. Got out ten years ago and ended up with the DEA.”
“Defusing bombs and drug enforcement. What’s next, parachute test pilot?”
Jorgensen whacked his partner’s shoulder. “See, I told you this guy would be good!”
McBain grinned. This was the opening for him to say something more about his service. You could always tell who’d seen serious action—the rear echelon types boasted about their tours, amplifying every dust-covered step. McBain said nothing.
&nb
sp; Jorgensen turned toward Davis, and said, “We heard about what you did to those cops. We deal with the police here every day. Some of them are great, but others will sell you out in a heartbeat. You never know who to trust. I’ve got to tell you—there’s been a couple of times the two of us wanted to do exactly what you did.”
Davis said at a near whisper, “I didn’t know they were cops. It was dumb because getting locked up didn’t advance my cause. Right now I’m only interested in one thing—finding my daughter.” With his gaze fixed out the window, he stared at nothing. The truck jarred over bumps, and new sites of pain were realized. It was nothing compared to the empty ache in his core.
The Toyota pulled up to an apartment block garage. It was a notably featureless address, the building square-edged and bland, settled on raw concrete footings and finished in chipped stucco. Aesthetics aside, the place looked solid, which was probably the point. McBain produced a remote control, jabbed a button, and the sturdy parking garage door opened.
Jorgensen pulled into the spot labeled 16, and said, “We already got a briefing on your daughter, Jammer. From our office upstairs we can access pretty much every DEA asset in Colombia—and trust me, that’s a lot. So don’t worry, we’re gonna get her back.”
Davis could have kissed the man.
* * *
Apartment 16 was on the top floor, and it did look a lot like the truck. McBain said they’d been here for a month, but Davis would have guessed a year. There was takeout food on a dinette, half-eaten Chinese with the chopsticks still in place, and a cardboard box cradling two pieces of thin-crust pizza that had curled at the corners.
All the casual furniture—a couch, chairs, and an entertainment center—had been pushed to one side of the room to make way for a large table that bristled with computers, and two thick cables snaked out the main window, undoubtedly linking antennas on the roof.
“It looks like you guys keep busy,” Davis said.
“Honestly, things have been a little slow,” said Jorgensen. He explained that the DEA’s Colombian footprint today was smaller than during the galloping drug wars, when the likes of Pablo Escobar and rival cowboy narcos pushed the country to the brink of lawlessness. “A lot of the coca production has pushed down into Peru this season. We’d like to call it a victory, but the cartels are resilient. It’s a water balloon strategy—we clamp down on one spot and they move to another. Still, there’s plenty to do. Our most recent op involved a small group of farmers on the steppe who decided that a downturn in coffee bean prices meant it was time to convert to a new crop.”
“So how do you combat something like that? Go out and franchise a few Starbucks outlets?”
Both DEA men smiled. “I wish we could be that proactive,” said Jorgensen. “But I like your positive outlook.”
Davis said, “Whatever help you guys can offer is appreciated. I have to ask, though—is this an officially sanctioned event?”
“You mean will DEA Central be informed?” said Jorgensen.
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Let me put it like this. The best thing about our job is that we have a lot of autonomy—nobody in Washington is quite sure what we do down here. Not unless we tell them.”
“Sounds like heaven.”
“Pretty close, and we get a lot done. So tell us what you know about your daughter’s situation.”
Davis did, covering the abduction of the two girls and the subsequent crash.
“That’s pretty brazen, even for this part of the world,” said McBain. “Of course, the drug business has been slumping lately. It’s possible some of the new entrants are focusing more on kidnapping and extortion.”
“Even so,” Jorgensen argued, “crashing an airplane to cover your tracks? I’ve never seen anything like that.”
Davis said, “You’ve never seen the kind of hostage we’re talking about. This isn’t about my daughter at all—she’s just caught in the crossfire. The primary kidnapping target is very high value.”
“Bill Gates’ kid?” McBain jested.
“Way worse.”
The two affable agents exchanged a look, and their good humor dissipated. “Okay,” said McBain, caution in his voice, “maybe you should tell us what we’re getting into.”
“I’ve been giving that some thought—whether you guys need to know. You sealed the deal a little while ago. Semper Fi.” He paused, and then said, “But you should understand that just by knowing, you could be setting yourselves up for some difficult choices in the near future.”
Again the two exchanged a look, and this time Jorgensen said, “All right, warning duly noted.”
“The name of the other girl who was abducted is Kristin Stewart.”
The DEA men exchanged a blank look. “So who is Kristin Stewart?” Jorgensen asked.
“She’s Martin Stuyvesant’s illegitimate daughter.”
“Holy crap!” said McBain.
“Eloquently put, Marine. When they came to pull her off that airplane, Kristin seemed to realize what was happening. She told my daughter to claim that she was Kristin Stewart. The two look a lot alike, so apparently the thugs on detail didn’t know what to do and took them both. As it turned out, it saved Jen’s life. I’m sure the mastermind who cooked up this insanity has figured out who’s who by now. That’s what you’re getting into. I need to find out where these girls are being held. Then I’m going to go get them.”
“You? By yourself?”
“If necessary. Of course, a little help is always appreciated. Problem is, I don’t trust anybody north of the Mason-Dixon line right now. Somebody in D.C. has been watching every move I make.”
“Stuyvesant?” asked McBain.
“No way to tell. But I don’t think were talking about any kind of government-sanctioned surveillance. It all seems very shady and off the books, which makes sense in a way. And because this situation is a powder keg, politically speaking, nobody is going to authorize SEAL Team Six or an FBI task force to come down and rescue these girls. Bottom line—whatever help I was getting is gone. I’m on my own now.”
“Wow,” said Jorgensen. “You are screwed.”
“Oh, it gets worse.” Davis pulled out the note Echevarria had given him and showed it to the DEA men. “Someone is threatening Jen if I don’t go home on the next flight.”
“But you’re not going,” said McBain.
“Would you?” He looked at each man in turn, and got two head shakes. “That’s what I thought. Help me find her, that’s all I ask. I’ll take it from there.”
Without hesitation, McBain said, “Let’s get to work.”
THIRTY-SIX
The jungle is a black place on a moonless night, darker still when one is entombed in a thick-walled room during blackout conditions. That was one of many new thoughts coursing through Kristin Stewart’s head as she lay in bed unable to sleep.
The blackout was taken seriously, evidenced earlier when she’d heard a soldier outside threatened with execution for lighting a cigarette. “The Americans can see that!” someone growled outside her door. Was it true? she wondered. Could spy planes and commandos be searching for her right now? Her father would not sit by idly—not when so much was at stake for him.
For a girl from the suburbs of Raleigh there were new sensations everywhere. If the jungle was dark, it was anything but silent. She’d tent-camped a few times in state parks back home, yet never had she witnessed nature in such primitive essence. For six nights she had lain awake to the call of birds, the keen of insects, frenzied cries from creatures under attack. She’d smelled the sweet scent of rain and the rich tang of decay, environmental cycles learned about in high school put vividly on display in her fern-carpeted surroundings. It seemed an impenetrable place, a living fortress of jade. But might that very imperviousness also serve in reverse? Could it not mask an assault should an elite Special Forces team arrive in the middle of the night to effect a rescue? Kristin was no expert in such things, which only made her im
aginings that much more frightful.
She rolled to the side and pulled up a blanket to cover her naked chest.
“What is wrong, my love?” said the man next to her.
A light flicked on, a mobile phone screen called to life—who used a flashlight anymore? Against utter blackness the tiny screen cast the room in an unearthly blue-white hue. The meager furnishings already seemed familiar, as did the two square windows covered with plastic and duct tape. She saw their rations of food on the table, still in plastic shopping bags, and the teasing claw-foot bathtub in the corner that begged for a water supply. Finally, with a tilt of her head, she saw Carlos Duran.
In the dim light his long hair and beard were unchanged, the same as when she’d met him one year ago—seated in front of her in the auditorium on that first day of fall semester, twirling a yellow pencil nimbly in his hand. Psychology 1102, she recalled with amusement. A course he perhaps should have taught. He was twenty-six years old, or so he’d said. For reasons she could not discern, she often now added that caveat when it came to Carlos. Or so he said. Kristin thought he looked older now, and even in the dim, ghostly light she distinguished worry lines feathering from his eyes and a harder set to his jaw. A jaw that moved as he repeated his question.
“Nothing,” she replied, “I’m fine.”
His hand, the one not occupied by the phone, cupped her bottom, then moved up to find a bare shoulder. “You are shaking.” He rubbed slow circles on her back.
“I’m frightened, Carlos. Everything has gone wrong.”
He gave a weary sigh. It was not the first time they’d had this conversation.
He said, “Please believe me—I’m sorry about Thomas. My men got excited. They thought he was armed.”
“I told you he wouldn’t be. They made him check his gun in his suitcase, just as we expected.”
The caressing stopped.
Carlos rose from the bed and walked to the bathroom. He was naked, and it occurred to Kristin that the body she’d come to know so well her sophomore year, the one that had educated her in the disciplines of pleasure, seemed strikingly different now. His face held deeper grooves, and there was weariness in his posture. Worst of all, on the few occasions when their eyes met she sensed a profound detachment. He was a photograph that had yellowed with age, and her feelings for him seemed correspondingly blurred and faded. Or was it only her perspective? She’d fallen in love with the passionate son of a revolutionary leader, a young man committed to reclaiming his country from a corrupt government, and steadfast in his support of the oppressed. Or so he said. The bathroom light clicked on, and soon she heard him using the toilet. Kristin rolled away to face the far wall.
