by Cindy Gerard
“You are not my keeper,” she whispered vehemently, her voice shaking. “You are not responsible for me . I’m responsible.” She tapped a fist to her chest, eyes wide, her stance defensive. “I have always been responsible. Me. Just me. That’s the way I want it. That’s the way it’s going to stay. So you don’t have to worry about losing me, Mendoza, because I’m not yours to lose.”
He stood in the darkened night and watched her whirl around and jerk open the motel room door.
“Nice work,” he muttered, disgusted with himself. She was exhausted, fueled by adrenaline, about to put her life on the line—again—and he’d added to the mix by pressuring her about the one thing she feared more than death. The only thing he’d accomplished by bringing her out there to reason with her was make her more determined to finish the job she’d started.
He stared at the closed motel room door. Accepted that he’d lost that battle. When this was over—and by God, they would all get out of it alive—he was going to get her alone somewhere, lock her up if he had to, and convince her that she had nothing to fear from him. Nothing but love. Nothing but total commitment.
Yeah, he thought, slogging back toward the room, like that wouldn’t scare her.
28
The party wound down and the last guest left by two a.m. “Go on to bed,” Emilio told his wife when she came looking for him in his office. “I’ll join you soon.”
At two thirty, however, he was still sipping scotch, staring moodily into space. The senator’s phone call had disturbed him. She and her hired thugs had failed to contain the Tompkins situation back in D.C. The woman was still at large. And Emilio knew that the longer a problem was left to breed and grow, the greater the chance of a security breach.
His BlackBerry vibrated in his pocket.
Only one person who had this number would dare to call him at this hour. His head of security.
“Dígame,” he said, then listened with a growing sense of anger.
Outrage boiled in his gut as Hector reported his findings on Raphael Mendoza.
So, Emilio thought after disconnecting. Raphael Mendoza was not who he pretended to be. Face recognition software—the finest money could buy—had been used to find a match. Yes, there had been information about the Vegas financial wizard on the web. But there had also been information about a young Sergeant Raphael Mendoza, formerly of the United States Army, and an older Mendoza photographed grieving at the graveside of a fallen comrade, one Bryan Tompkins, son of Robert and Ann Tompkins, brother of Stephanie.
He flipped his BlackBerry over and over in his hand, thinking. He had known in his gut that Mendoza was lying. Stephanie Tompkins and Raphael Mendoza were more than passing acquaintances. And the timing of Mendoza’s visit to Colombia, of his puta’s unexplained appearance in Emilio’s office at the very time Emilio stood to receive an obscene amount of money from Azeem once the submarine left port at Santa Marta—he checked his watch—in a little over three hours, was coincidental at best.
Emilio believed in exactly two things—money and power. He did not believe in coincidence.
He leaned forward suddenly, opened up his laptop, scrolled through the documents until he reached the URA file.
He felt his face go pale when he checked the view details. The file had last been opened this afternoon, just prior to the time he had found Brittany Jameson waiting for him in his office.
“Where are they?” Emilio demanded in rapid-fire Spanish twenty minutes later after pounding on Cesar Munoz’s door and waking up the household. Four of his trusted men had accompanied him to ensure that Mendoza and the woman would talk long before they died.
“They all left.” Aliria clutched her night robe to her breasts. “Cesar didn’t tell me where. The three of them, they left together.”
“When?” he bellowed.
“I’m not sure. One… maybe two hours ago?”
Furious, Emilio stomped out of the house, checked the garage. The Humvee was gone.
“Take me to the airport,” he commanded as the five of them piled into his Lexus SUV.“Call ahead and have my plane made ready.”
He had a very bad feeling about this.
“They’ll need a destination to file a flight plan,” his driver said as he dialed.
“Santa Marta,” Emilio said darkly. He knew he would find Raphael Mendoza in Santa Marta. But first he had to protect his investment.
For the next hour the lot of them poured over the blueprints B.J. had printed in Cesar’s office. Then they piled in the vans and made two drive-bys of the facility with NVG binoculars to get the lay of the land and a feel for security. Another two hours back at the motel hammering out contingencies, and they decided on the final assault plan.
The warehouse was constructed of concrete and steel. A dozen surveillance cameras were mounted under the eaves of the steel-reinforced roof. They’d counted twenty exterior security guards all toting AK-47s, the terrorist weapon of choice.
“Ideas on how the hell we’re going to get inside? The damn building is reinforced like a missile silo,” Doc said, frowning.
“It’d take a freight train to breach those concrete walls,” Lang put in in his usual understated tone.
“Maybe we’ll just have to find one,” Savage said.
Four hours after checking into the motel, B.J. looked up at Nate when he gave her her assignment. “Seriously?”
“Like Reed always says.” Nate glanced at Reed.
The cowboy smiled. “Go big or go home.”
“Big being the operative word,” she said, then set her mind to the task.
Rafe hadn’t said a word to her since their little “chat” outside. She’d overreacted, she knew that. But damn it, she thought as they started gearing up, she couldn’t deal with it. Not with his worried looks. Not with his caring. It was too much. He was too much. Too much to handle. Too much to count on.
So she’d slept with him and yeah, it had been amazing. Now he thought he cared about her. She apparently didn’t suffer from the same delusion because she knew what happened when this was over. If they got through this alive, he’d go back to Argentina. She’d go back to DIA, and that would be the end of that.
Just like she’d told him. She took care of herself. Always had. Always would. That rush of longing and sinking sense of loss she felt every time she thought about the possibility of never seeing him again? Well, she’d deal with it. Because that was what she did.
“Commo check,” Nate said.
She glanced around the motel room while a series of “Check. Checks” rolled out as they confirmed their radios worked. They were all in black T-shirts and pants and face black. Black baseball caps sat on their heads and they were loaded down with enough guns and ammo to start a war. Tactical-level body armor sat on the floor by the door.
Since Nate had had the foresight to pick up an extra set of clothes, she was dressed exactly as they were. She’d tucked her hair up under a cap, strapped a k-bar to her thigh, tucked a Glock in her waistband, and pocketed two extra magazines for her M-4 rifle.
“Everyone solid on their assignments?” Nate asked with a hard look around the room.
He was met by grim nods. “All right. I’ve got T-minus one hour, forty-five minutes and counting. Let’s do this.”
They parked the vans in a narrow dead-end alley between two abandoned warehouses approximately one hundred yards away from the target facility, which was located at the far end of the major shipping wharfs. The facility was old, one story, as large as a football field, and at first glance appeared vacant. The fairly new twelve-foot-high chain-link fence topped with coils of barbed wire, however, suggested otherwise. It was a lot of security for an abandoned building.
The streets were deserted; the six a.m. sub launch was one hour and twenty-three minutes away. The sun would make an appearance in one hour and ten minutes. They wanted to be long gone before either happened.
Rafe rolled out of the back of the first van, fixing his NVGs on to
p of his head. He cut a glance at B.J., who was definitely in her Xena mode. Five feet six inches of tightly coiled concentration, high-octane determination, and single-minded focus. She actually did look like a female version of Rambo in her face black and ball cap, the M-4 clutched self-assuredly in her small hands, her bullet-resistant vest zipped up tight at her chin.
She glanced over at him. He gave her a nod. A silent vote of confidence. A signal that he’d never doubted that she had his back. Just like he had hers.
Across the road in the railroad yard dozens of boxcars lined the labyrinth of crisscrossing tracks. Closer to the opposite end of the wharfs, a steam locomotive chugged and clanked as rails were reset and cargo was loaded. Another sat on the tracks nearby, the roar of the steam engine a loud and constant disruption in the dark. Commerce in Colombia was no different than in the U.S. It never slept. And this morning, the noise was going to work to their advantage by camouflaging the racket they were going to make. One more chugging locomotive in this active rail yard would never be noticed.
“Okay, boys and girl,” Nate whispered, “you know where to go.”
Doc and Savage shouldered the heavy scuba gear they’d picked up back in Barranquilla. Reed and Lang carried the limpet mines and C-4. Nate and Gabe’s backpacks were full of frag grenades, and Rafe and B.J. handled extra ammo. He looked for signs that she might buckle under the weight but she squared her shoulders and sucked it up.
And Rafe fell a little deeper in love. Okay, yeah, and deeper in lust.
Single file, moving in a running crouch, they scuttled across the empty street and straight for a specific locomotive engine that sat at the far end of yet another dozen sets of rails. These tracks led to the closed bay of the warehouse.
Rafe was certain that the facility had never had a delivery like the one they were going to get tonight.
Like bees swarming a clover field, they buzzed around the dormant engine, made sure no one was on board.
“Go,” Nate said, and Savage climbed up into the cab. Once aboard, he reached for the scuba gear and explosives. Next came the extra grenades and extra ammo.
Then Savage held out a hand for B.J.
“Wait.” Rafe stopped her from climbing aboard by pulling her into his arms. He kissed her hard and quick. “Give ’em hell, Chase.”
He gave her a boost and Savage tugged her the rest of the way up and inside the cab with him.
Seconds slogged by like hours as Rafe, Doc, Gabe, Reed, Lang, and Nate guarded the perimeters around the engine, waiting for Savage to fire her up.
Their entire plan hinged on this hulking two-hundred-ton monster, so when the engine hiccupped and then clattered to life the lot of them expelled a silent breath of relief.
“Piece of cake,” Savage said when he climbed down five minutes later. He’d found a heavy-duty pair of wire cutters in the engine’s toolbox and tossed them to Gabe. “We’ve got twenty minutes until the boiler’s hot enough to build up any speed.”
“Then that gives us twenty minutes to level the playing field,” Gabe said, and they all headed for the chainlink fence.
Rafe couldn’t help himself. He grabbed Savage’s arm, stopped him. “She going to be able to handle it?”
Savage shot him a look. “She can handle you, can’t she?”
Fuck. He hadn’t known that he’d been so obvious.
“Yeah,” he admitted as he joined the rest of the guys at the fence. “She sure as hell can.”
From her lofty perch in the locomotive, B.J. watched the guys as one by one they squeezed through the hole Gabe had cut in the fence. Per the plan, they split up, four advancing to the left, three to the right. Through the green glow of her NVGs they looked like eerie little alien spiders scrambling in the night. Rafe was in the group with Doc and Jones. She recognized the way he moved. She watched them until they ducked out of sight behind a stockpile of wooden pallets.
The plan was for them to take out the surveillance cameras first. The security guards would be next. Seven against twenty. She didn’t like the odds and the fact was there could actually be more guards they hadn’t spotted on their drive-by recon. For certain there were more inside the huge warehouse, which they were counting on her to breach all by her little ole lonesome. Well, her and Betsy here, which was the name Savage had given the locomotive engine.
“Temperamental as a contrary woman,” Savage had said in that soft southern drawl of his as he’d flipped switches and spun dials and coaxed the engine to life as if he did it every day.
“My granddaddy was an engineer,” he had told her as he’d made adjustments and checked gauges. “Nothing made me prouder than riding those rails with him.”
“I take it he taught you everything he knew?” B.J. had asked, feeling overwhelmed by the complexity and the size of the enormous machine.
“Almost.” Savage had winked at her then. “No need to worry. I’ll walk you through everything you need to know.”
And then he had.
“Driving a steam locomotive is a rush! Feels like riding a dragon,” he’d informed her as he caressed the controls. “The steam chuffs, smoke swirls, the engine shudders, and you feel like you’re guiding some living, breathing beast that you control with sheer muscle. There’s no power anything on this baby. An eight- or ten-hour shift on the footplate will test a big man—but you only need eight to ten seconds, so you’ll be fine,” he’d told her.
She hoped he knew what he was talking about.
“That big lever running horizontally across the cab from left to right is the throttle. You’re going to use it to open a valve that controls how much steam is piped into the cylinders. Now, see that bar at the bottom right, the one that’s about a yard long?”
Yeah, she’d seen it.
“That’s the Johnson bar. When I contact you, you’re going to lever that sucker forward … but not all the way, got it?”
She had it. Once she engaged the Johnson bar, the engine was going to charge forward. The locked chainlink gate would be no match for the steam engine locomotive. Neither would the steel-reinforced door of the warehouse that was rolled down and locked tight. B.J. and Betsy didn’t care.
“Now, this is key,” Savage had added. “You’ve got three hundred yards before you ram through the closed bay door. This sucker isn’t going to stop on a dime. So as soon as you get yourself some forward momentum, count on inertia to do the rest. Halfway to the building, power down. You don’t need speed. You need muscle and this beautiful old lady will glide right on through in damn magnificent fashion. And we’ll be there waiting for you. Me and Rafe and the boys.”
She checked the water glass now as he’d instructed her, was relieved to see the level was rising, which meant the steam was also rising. Then she glanced out the window into the dark. She couldn’t see them anymore. But she knew what they were doing.
Leveling the playing field.
She touched her fingertips to her lips. Still felt Rafe’s kiss. Damn that man. That controlling, amazing, make-her-knees-weak man.
“Don’t get yourself killed, damn you,” she whispered into the dark.
He wouldn’t. He’d be fine. They’d all be fine. She had to believe that. Just like she had to keep her head in the game because Casey Jones was not at the wheel. She was.
Jesus. She was going to drive a fricking train.
29
“I might have known you’d be the one to end up bleeding,” Doc sputtered in a low whisper when he, Rafe, and Savage caught their breath by the big steel door of the warehouse where the railroad tracks disappeared inside.
They were all breathing hard, adrenaline pumping, and in Rafe’s case, blood as well as Doc covered the wound with QuikClot to slow the bleeding.
“Just wrap some gauze around it,” Rafe grumbled, embarrassed that one of the guards had gotten a lick in before Rafe had been able to take him out. “It’s only a scratch.”
“To match that bad itch you’ve got for a certain DIA agent,” Doc conclude
d as he cut a length of gauze off a roll with his trauma shears, then quickly bound it around Rafe’s forearm.
“Now?” Rafe groused, wiping the sweat from his forehead by rubbing it on his shoulder. “You’re going to give me shit now?”
Doc taped the bandage in place, then shot Rafe a candy-eating grin. “It just wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t.”
“Heads up,” Savage said, and all three of them squared off, guns ready.
“Hold fire.” It was Nate. “Sit rep.”
“Except for Lover Boy taking a blade in the arm,” Doc reported, “we’re good. Nine guards. All out of commission.”
