Hugo Marston 04 - The Reluctant Matador

by Mark Pryor

  “Dammit. Tell them to stall as best they can, make any excuse, weather-related, contaminated fuel, whatever.”

  “Will do.” Garcia relayed the instructions and hung up. “I told them we’re on the way. We should call local police and have them head that way.”

  Hugo was already moving toward the gaggle of police cars. “And risk them using lights and sirens to scare her into the air?”

  “We can tell them not to.” Garcia trotted beside him.

  “Will they listen?”

  “Probably. But the manager thinks he can delay her for thirty minutes.”

  “Good, because probably doesn’t cut it. We need to get there as fast as we can.”

  “We’ll take mine,” Garcia said, pointing, “the large one.” He called to Luna, who was talking to a group of his men. Garcia shouted instructions in Spanish, and Luna responded immediately, directing his men into three of the SUVs. Grace Silva tumbled into the back seat of Garcia’s car a heartbeat before the chief inspector gunned the engine.

  “Not leaving without me,” she said, panting and strapping herself in. “Where are we going?”

  Hugo turned in his seat and grinned at her. “Hold on tight, we’re headed to a small airport to try and stop Bhandari from getting away.”

  “She flies a plane?” Silva asked.

  “Gregor Freed was nice enough to teach her.”

  “Why didn’t they go together?”

  “Because she’s not interested in saving anyone but herself, and he made a very nice distraction for us.”

  “Clever puta,” Silva said. “Any idea where she’s going?”

  “None,” Hugo said. “Which is why we need to stop her.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  The airfield lay north of Barcelona, which meant cutting a path through the city’s morning traffic. The four police vehicles stuck close together, lights and sirens scaring the cars in front of them out of their way, the little convoy writhing and snapping like a snake as it swung through the lanes, occasionally onto the hard shoulder, then back onto the road proper.

  When they were clear of the airport, Garcia’s phone rang. He’d put in a call to the police department’s air unit, requesting help in case Bhandari took off. They’d finally called him back, and Hugo suffered through a rapid-fire Spanish conversation.

  “They will help, but not quickly enough. We have two planes and three helicopters. One of the helicopters is available and has a pilot, but he won’t get there before we do. And I’m not sure what he can do on his own, anyway.”

  “Follow her if she takes off.”

  “Of course, and as best he can, but she’ll be flying faster.”

  “How about the military?”

  “I asked about that. They won’t get involved unless there’s a known threat to the public or a violation of airspace. Like when she doesn’t follow her flight plan or tries to fly into another country.”

  “She’s probably going to do both of those things, Bartoli, so they need to scramble.”

  Garcia snorted. “I said the same thing, but they are a reactive force. I mean, they won’t stop a plane before it commits some act like that, only after.”

  “By which time she’ll be in Romania or Libya.”

  Garcia waved a hand in frustration. “I told them that, too. They didn’t listen.”

  “One helicopter? I guess we’ll have to do this ourselves, then.”

  Hugo held on tight as they rocketed along the highway, his eyes shifting between the sea of red tail lights ahead and the clock on the car’s dash. When the cars ahead parted and the road opened up, he felt flashes of hope, but inevitably the morning free-for-all closed around them again, causing both Hugo and Bartoli Garcia to mutter their curses as if they were prayers to a mischievous god of transportation.

  Garcia swerved into the middle lane and accelerated between two eighteen-wheelers, cursing at the one in the passing lane. He checked his mirror to make sure the other cars had followed, then grunted in satisfaction. “The storage unit, I meant to ask you. Did Bhandari also kill Delia Treviño?”

  “She or one of her people, yes. And before you ask me why, I can only guess for now. Drive a little quicker and you can ask her yourself.”

  “Doing what I can,” Garcia said. “In the meantime, take a guess.”

  “A guess? OK. I’d say Treviño was involved pretty heavily. Male pimps usually have an enforcer who’s a woman, someone to befriend and then basically bully the new girls into behaving. She certainly has the history for that role. Anyway, I’d guess that Treviño pissed her boss off, either threatened to go to the cops or wanted a larger slice of the pie.”

  “A business dispute,” Garcia said drily.

  “Or maybe an attempted takeover, who knows?” Hugo said. “Either way, a bad idea. And Leo’s jump makes more sense now, too. If he didn’t do it himself, he knew Bhandari would. He simply had no way out.”

  Garcia suddenly slammed on the brakes to avoid rear-ending the car in front, which eventually responded to the lights and sirens and edged out of his way. “These damn people,” he said. “They should take the train, or bus.”

  Hugo smiled and decided to distract himself by calling Claudia.

  “Hey, handsome,” she said. “I texted you a while back, ignoring me?”

  “Not intentionally, sorry.”

  “Busy right now?” she asked.

  “Stuck in traffic, as it happens.”

  “I hear sirens, is there an accident?”

  “Those are ours. We’re trying to get to a small airport, but apparently sirens here are an invitation to drive slowly in front of us.” Beside Hugo, Garcia chuckled. “Anyway, I’m calling to let you know we found Amy, she was in a shipping container. She’s alive.”

  “Oh, thank God, Hugo. Will she be OK?”

  “Yes, poor baby is in bad shape, but physically she’ll be fine. I called Bart straight away, he’s beside himself with relief.”

  “So you were right about the trafficking thing.”

  “Well, we also found Gregor Freed in the container. He’s not talking, but yeah, I think it’s pretty clear now what they were up to.”

  “Do you think there were other girls?”

  “I do. I just hope we can get one of them to talk, maybe track down other victims and get them back.” Hugo sighed, tried to block out the image of other girls stuffed into those containers. “Where are you?”

  “Distracting Tom.”

  “From what?”

  “Pretty much everything, but mostly coming to find you.”

  “If we make it to the airport in time, he’s gonna be mad about missing the catch.”

  “Is that where Bhandari is?”

  “Yes.” The car surged forward as the traffic in front of them parted. “I should go. I’ll call once we find her.” He stated it as an absolute, as if there was no doubt this would happen, but the trip was taking too long and Bhandari would get suspicious if there were too many delays at the airfield.

  “Please do,” she said. “In the meantime, I’ll forget to tell Tom where you’re going, and why.”

  “I’d appreciate that.” When he’d hung up, Hugo looked automatically at the clock. “How much farther?”

  “Twenty kilometers, maybe a little more. The roads should be emptier as we head north; I think we’ll be there in less than fifteen minutes.” Garcia’s phone rang, and he pushed the speaker button. Hugo listened, understanding enough to know it was the airport manager but not getting the gist of the message. He did hear the stress in the man’s voice, though. When he hung up, Garcia glanced across at Hugo. “Sounds like we need to make that ten minutes, not fifteen.”

  “What happened?”

  “He sold her the line about possibly contaminated fuel, which had her waiting at the hanger. But then another plane took off, one that she’d seen fueling up.”

  “Dammit, how did that happen?”

  “Yeah, not smart, but he’s not a law-enforcement officer an
d he feels bad.”

  “She’s ready to go?”

  “Pretty much. He’s going to send out two planes ahead of her and ask one to stall, but the other planes are small and she could always go around.”

  Hugo looked out of the window. “Ten minutes it is, then. How do you want to do this?”

  “Without hesitating.” He smiled grimly. “Shock and awe, as you might say.”

  “As best we can, anyway,” Hugo agreed.

  “Bueno. I’ll tell the men behind us that we’ll be going in hot, straight to the runway.”

  Garcia radioed the other cars, giving them information and instructions. When he put down the handset, he said, “I told them we’d try and get in front of the plane, along with Miguel’s car. The other two will flank her, keep her in a nice straight line.”

  “Good. I saw a sign for our exit, one kilometer.”

  “Already? Bueno.” Garcia guided his vehicle to the right lane, the traffic in front of them gliding left to give him and the three SUVs behind a clear run off the highway. “It’s not even five kilometers from here.”

  “Time to kill the bells and whistles, then.”

  “The what?” Garcia asked.

  “I’m sorry, lights and sirens.”

  “Ah yes.” He reached to the panel on the car’s ceiling and snuffed out the siren, then the lights.

  Hugo turned in his seat and saw that the cars behind had done the same thing. He could hear the car’s engine now, an angry roar that took them down the exit ramp and onto a narrower road, one that had probably been the main path into and out of Barcelona before the highway had been built. The traffic was lighter here, especially going north, and Hugo felt the tension rising in himself, but also coming off Garcia, who gripped the wheel with both hands and stared at the road ahead. It was as if the quelling of the siren signaled the start of the action, the way a gun started a sprint or a whistle kicked off a big game. Silence like this meant they were heading into enemy territory, hoping to see their prey before they were seen. Hoping, at this point, just to be there in time.

  A road sign told them they were close, three kilometers from the airport, and Garcia barely slowed to make the hard right turn onto the small road that would get them there. Hugo pulled out his phone and tapped on the map function. He zoomed in to where they were, trailing his finger on the screen to bring up the airfield. He studied it for a moment.

  “OK, this should be pretty straightforward,” Hugo said. “The main gate will be open, right?”

  “The manager said it is, yes.”

  “Good. This road dead-ends into the airfield. When we go through the gate, the main office building will be to our left, that’s where your manager is. Also on the left is the fueling station.”

  “The runway?”

  “That’ll be straight ahead of us. This scale put it at about a thousand meters long. On the right are three hangars, and looks like maybe a repair shop or something. Planes access the runway via a paved section, it connects with the center of the runway so they have to taxi north or south, turn around, and then accelerate to take off.”

  It was Garcia’s turn to glance at the clock. “We’re about two minutes away, time for one last check-in with the manager.” He hit the redial button on his phone, and the manager’s voice came on the line almost immediately. “¿Dónde está?” Garcia asked, and Hugo understood that much. Where is she?

  He missed the reply, though, garbled out by the man who seemed at panic’s edge. Garcia’s voice was calm in reply, almost soothing. But when he hung up, Hugo could see the tension in his body. “She’s done waiting. He was watching her out of the window; she’s moving to the access ramp to the runway. There’s one plane ahead of her trying to go slow, but at some point it’ll need to accelerate, either to stop her passing it on the tarmac or to make sure it takes off safely.”

  “Remind me to hand those guys medals when this is over.”

  “If we catch her.”

  “Whether we catch her or not, they’ve gone above and beyond to help us.”

  “That’s true,” Garcia said. “If she’s on the runway when we get there, are we going to shoot at it?”

  “At the plane?” Hugo shook his head. “I don’t think so, not if we can help it. We don’t need a hundred gallons of airplane fuel exploding all over us.”

  “The airfield!” Garcia exclaimed. The trees on either side of them fell away, and the road opened up to reveal the chain-link fencing of the small airfield. Garcia touched the brakes as they flew through the main gate, giving Hugo a second to scan the office buildings to his left and the hangars to his right before turning his attention to the runway, directly ahead of them.

  “There she is,” Hugo said, pointing. A small plane was at the junction where the approach met the runway, at its midpoint. To its right, and Hugo’s, a Cessna sat at the head of the runway, and Hugo could hear the rev of its engines. But Bhandari’s Piper edged forward, like a car in traffic, and Hugo guessed she’d been waiting for the Cessna to take off for several minutes and was running out of patience.

  The Cessna revved louder, as if recognizing the police presence, welcoming it. But Bhandari had seen them, too. Her plane shifted forward, making the runway proper and turning right toward the Cessna. Bhandari steered the plane down the middle of the tarmac as if she knew the Cessna would just sit and wait.

  “How much room does she need to take off?” Garcia asked.

  “I’d guess most of it, it’s not very long,” Hugo said, “but—”

  He cut himself off as Bhandari answered for him. They were a hundred yards from the runway, and Hugo watched as her plane turned, swiveling in place to point south into the wind. She’d seen them, known they would cut her off if she used the whole runway, and she must have known she didn’t need to.

  Her twin engines growled and snapped in anger, and the little plane lurched forward, picking up speed as Garcia and the three SUVs behind hurtled toward the runway, trying to get ahead of her. It was a crazy game of chicken, Hugo thought, and Bhandari had nothing to gain by losing.

  “We’re not going to make it,” Garcia said.

  “Cut left—go at the runway in a diagonal. You won’t have to slow down.”

  Forty yards from the intersection with the runway, Garcia angled to the left, and the car bumped from the tarmac onto the grass, its tail sliding out before the wheels gripped the dry earth and propelled them forward. Hugo looked out of his window and saw the tiny figure of Nisha Bhandari in the cockpit, alone at the controls. They were closing in on her, and she on them, and Hugo had the sensation that the spinning propellers were sucking the car into them, intent on its destruction.

  The car took one more bounce as it left the grass for the runway, a hundred yards or less from the end of it, and behind him, Grace Silva swore as her head hit the roof of the car. Garcia jinked to the right, trying to stay ahead of the plane, but it was almost on them, bearing down on Hugo’s side, the spinning blades of the nearest propeller ripping the air just feet away and the nose of the plane like a cannonball headed straight for him. Hugo gripped the handle by his head and willed the plane to slow, to change direction, even to crash off the runway, but it was there, its engines screaming with fury, and he opened his mouth to shout at Garcia—tell him to slow, to stop, that it was too late.

  And in a flash the plane was gone.

  The wheels lifted from the tarmac and disappeared above them, the plane’s shadow flickering over the windshield as it fought to gain height. The police cars screeched to a halt in a line across the runway, all eyes on the little white plane. Hugo opened his door and stepped out onto the tarmac, and several other policemen, including Garcia and Silva, did the same. Hugo’s eyes flicked back and forth between the plane and the tree line in front of it.

  “She’s not high enough,” he said to Garcia. “She’s not going to make it.”

  Garcia hesitated, then picked up his radio handset and rattled off a command, and Hugo heard the word amb
ulancia. For the next few seconds, time seemed suspended. The Piper’s engines howled with the effort of taking the plane higher, and its climb was in slow motion, the trees looming over it, surrounding it. For a moment, Hugo thought he’d been wrong because the nose of the plane crested the first line of trees like a drowning man surfacing, and the plane seemed to shudder with relief. But the climb had been too steep and the plane was laden with fuel and, no doubt, Bhandari’s escape provisions. It seemed to pause in the air for a fraction of a second, like it wanted to float on the morning breeze, and then the nose dipped and the rest of the plane followed, a graceless flop into a forest of pine trees, and the airfield echoed with the eerie cracking and snapping of wood as the plane crashed through the branches below it.

  The sound of the plane hitting the ground reached them as a muffled whump, and Hugo braced himself for an explosion. When it didn’t come, he turned to Garcia. “Come on, we have to find a way in there.”

  A wire fence ran between the end of the runway and the trees, with no gate or way through from where they were. Luna snapped out instructions to the occupants of one of the SUVs, and Hugo presumed it was to have them wait at the airfield, lock it down, and ensure no witnesses to either the escape or the crash left. The other two cars took off for the airfield entrance with a squeal of tires. They turned right out of the gate onto a grass verge, and followed it along the boundary of the fence. The vehicles bounced and jumped, but the track was wide enough to take them to the tree line where the runway ended. The officers leapt from the cars, Hugo, Silva, and Garcia leading the way.

  “There!” Silva spotted a path into the trees, not much more than an animal track, and they took it single file. A low boom reached them, and moments later a plume of dark smoke appeared over their heads, tinging the air with the acrid smell of burning rubber and plastic.

  “She hit the first line of trees,” Hugo shouted over his shoulder. “She can’t be far.” But the trees grew thick and tall here, and the brush between them made the going slow. They shuffled and swore and ducked their way along the trail, and after five minutes, one of the men behind Hugo spotted the chimney of smoke to their right. They all turned and walked side by side through the trees, stopping as one when the white of the plane appeared. Luna drew his pistol, and several of his men did the same. It was a precaution, of course, but Hugo wasn’t concerned about being unarmed or being in danger—he was sure Bhandari was no longer a threat, and he trusted Luna’s men would make sure of that if he was wrong.