by Leon, Judith
The nameless voice at Special Ops command center listened to Nova, put her on brief hold, and then came back. “You are to wait. Do not engage.”
“We can’t wait. They threatened to kill another hostage at noon.”
“If so, you are already too late, and the risk of going in with an inexperienced team puts all the hostages’ lives at risk. You are ordered to wait.”
“We have three experienced CIA operatives and three other good men.” She hoped that Ramone’s judgment was right about that, otherwise they might, in fact, trigger a killing disaster.
“But you are not a team, and none of you is trained in hostage rescue. It is too risky.”
“Do you understand?” said an entirely different voice, a voice carrying much more authority. “We are talking about the niece of the vice president of the United States. You are not to engage.”
“If we don’t go, and go right now, someone may die. Maybe not the niece, but there are other people there, too. They also count. We’ll secure all of the hostages and then wait for your team to pick everyone up.”
“If you disobey this direct order and someone dies, you will serve a good long time in prison.”
She chuckled. Threatening a stretch in prison might intimidate some people, but it wasn’t as if she hadn’t already been there and done that. She wasn’t seventeen any more; she could survive prison now with one arm tied behind her back. And what was the point of working for the Company if she didn’t save every life she could? “I don’t have time to argue. I take orders directly from Langley, and I haven’t heard from them.”
She snapped the phone shut.
Joe was grinning at her. “What was that?”
“We’re ordered to lay off. They consider us too inexperienced.”
He laughed and threw himself into the armchair.
She sat down at the small table. “I can’t think of any way Martinez can know that we are on to him. Total surprise is on our side.”
“If nothing else, the fact that they only have a single guard outside the shack and he wanders around all over the place sure indicates they’re not on alert.”
“I’ll take out the guard. Then all six of us go inside and we work it from there.”
Joe drew a long, deep breath. “I could take out the guard, Nova. As you point out, it’s just one guy.”
“You know what I’m going to say.”
“If you do it, I’ll look like a total pussy to Ramone and the thugs.”
“You know a lone woman will be less threatening. If something goes wrong, how can I, or even you, justify sending you to take him out when we could have used me?”
He shrugged, then flashed those beautiful white teeth. “You get all the fun.”
“Come on, Joe.”
“Okay, okay. But let me be the one to insist that you do it. Let it look like it’s my brilliant idea.”
She rolled her eyes up. “You guys and the macho image thing.”
“Don’t knock it. It’s critical to male survival.”
“Okay, you can explain the whole plan to the boys.”
“I love you, you know.”
“Please, Joe. Let’s not go there now.”
Ramone knocked once and bounded in, the three “boys” on his heels. “We’re ready. We’ve got sidearms and automatic rifles in my Land Rover. What’s the plan?”
Nova’s phone chimed again. Everyone sat, covering all the chairs and half the bed. She ignored the call.
Ramone frowned. “Aren’t you going to answer it?”
“I think it’s Langley. I don’t want to talk with them. I’m going to tell them I missed the call. I was busy.”
She turned to look the three boys over, orchid and bird thieves and who knew what else. They did look tough.
She gave the boys a big smile. She thought about their careers as orchid thieves. “Okay, men, this is your chance to do something good.”
Chapter 32
For some crazy reason Nova remembered that it was noon on Christmas Eve as she drove slowly toward the remote watering trough and shack on the Martinez ranch. This might qualify as the most bizarre Christmas Eve day ever. Pulsing, blazing heat from the sun beat down on her head like a hammer. She wore the tourist birding outfit with binoculars hung around her neck.
Her Glock lay tucked under the driver’s seat. She didn’t anticipate needing it to take out the guard, but who knew what waited for them inside the shack.
Her cell phone chimed. A text message from Joe said that his team was in position. There had been some worry that when they closed in on the trough from within the jungle they would find that the canopy hid something bigger than the shack, like a camp of armed men. Apparently, no such bad scenario had materialized. So now the guys were in place, ready to pounce the moment she cleared the way.
She gave the Jeep gas to cover the remaining distance. The faces of Linda, the Obst boy, and Colette Stone kept popping into her head. One of them might already be dead. Or the Hill kid. Or maybe Nancy Benning.
Stop it! Concentrate.
She slowed and braked to a stop beside the water trough, twenty feet from the shack door. The guard, with his rifle cradled across his chest, walked toward her. She stepped out of the Jeep, smiled at him, and waved. She pointed to the trough and to the canteen in her hand. “Agua,” she said.
He wore just the faintest smile. She felt certain his attention, which should have been on his weapon and the potential need to use it, was directed to her breasts. She waited until his stroll brought him to within ten feet, then dropped the canteen, charged him and hammered home a karate chop to the vulnerable spot over the carotid artery on his neck. He went out like a slaughter-house cow, thudding to the ground.
She rolled him off his old AK-47 and kicked the weapon toward the jungle. From one of her pockets she pulled out a half-empty roll of duct tape and peeled off a strip already cut to the size to cover his mouth. The next two strips she peeled off were cut to size to secure his wrists and ankles.
Joe and the boys sped up in two Land Rovers. Cobra and Stars stuffed the guard under the shade of her Jeep.
As already discussed at the Blue Parrot, Joe would take the lead. “Remember,” she said. “This is my op. We don’t kill unless we have to.”
Joe tried the shack’s door. It opened. No lock. No nothing.
Quietly, the team moved in. A ten-foot by ten-foot metal trap door lay open in the center of the dirt floor. Seven cement steps led down to a cement passage. The six of them stared down for a moment, then Joe went first, followed quickly by Ramone, then Nova, then the boys.
An eight-foot-wide passage at the bottom led toward a lit room. The room’s far wall stood some thirty feet from the door. Nova sucked in a big breath of cool air and the smell of cool, damp cement. The temperature was probably the fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit, typical for underground caves—divine relief. Such a large underground space of solid construction indicated a business that was significant and permanent.
With handguns at the ready, they moved in a bunch with impressive quiet toward the door to the room. Nothing on their clothing rattled, no footsteps echoed. The “boys” were performing damn fine so far.
She could make out the stout legs and top half of a wooden table where someone had been playing cards. A male voice spoke loudly and stridently in Portuguese.
They burst into the room.
About fifteen feet away to her left, the bug guy, Dennis Chu, stood blindfolded against a wall. To her right, three men, one of them Carlito Gomez, stood watching as a fourth man harangued Chu with what were apparently intended to be last words, because the thug’s Colt .45 was aimed at Chu’s head.
They had agreed to take out any men they encountered without setting up an alarm since they had no idea how large or small the bunker might be or where the hostages might be located within it.
Joe, Ramone and Nova rushed across the fifteen feet separating them from the man with the Colt .45. Cobra, Barbed Wire and Stars rus
hed the other three men.
The executioner, completely stunned by the onrush of three green-clad strangers, hesitated one second too long. He didn’t shoot Chu and he didn’t even have time to yell or turn his gun on his attackers. Joe knocked him out with a gun blow to the temple. He went down with a loud thud, his gun clattering dully on the cement floor.
Ramone pulled out duct tape and peeled off a strip for the guy’s mouth. Joe taped the man’s wrists and ankles. Glad that the only sounds from the other side of the room were one smothered yelp and some soft scuffling, Nova hustled to Dennis Chu. “You’re okay,” she said softly.
She pulled off his blindfold and helped him sit. It didn’t take much effort. He more or less collapsed in a heap and she squatted beside him.
“Be absolutely quiet,” she said. “Where are the others?”
“In…” tears started rolling down his cheeks “…two more rooms.”
She stood and checked the action. All four of Martinez’s men were now secure and no alarm had been raised. Trained Special Ops could not have done it better.
But apparently the rest of the hostages were in two separate rooms. The only other exit from this room was another cement corridor that ended in a T after about six feet. This room held four bunk beds, sleeping spaces for eight, and also a propane stove and refrigerator, so there might easily be at least four more men to take out. The sound of a generator permeated the background, persistent but not too annoying.
She held up two fingers and signaled that they were to split and that Joe would go with Cobra. Stars would guard their backs. Ramone and Barbed Wire should stay with her.
Once again in a bunch and with Joe leading, they headed into the next corridor.
Chapter 33
With Cobra at his back, Joe hurried silently down the fifteen or so feet toward another big room. He could already make out that it served for storage: boxes and crates had been stacked in neat rows, ceiling to floor, along the wall he could see. A sizable arsenal.
Stooped, his Glock at the ready, Joe rushed into the room.
To his right, three bound captives sat on a cement floor, their backs to the wall. A single guard had been sitting in a chair and apparently getting ready to clean his gun because he held it in his hands. He turned it on Joe and fired.
Following Ramone, with Barbed Wire at her back, her heart racing and her senses taking in sounds, smells and sights, Nova heard a gunshot just before she and her teammates burst into a room packed with crates and boxes. She scanned left and saw only more boxes. She scanned right and saw three bound women—and a guard with raised gun.
The guard aimed at her, fired and, in that strange world of slowed-down time that she had experienced more than once, she saw something else. Something amazing. Ramone, seeing the gun aimed at her, launched himself into the path of the bullet.
She saw Ramone’s action with total clarity, saw the bullet strike him and his body shake at the impact, saw him reach for his chest and then glide in a flowing, gentle movement to the cement floor.
Seeming to have all the time in the world, she pulled the trigger on the Glock twice, aimed directly at the guard’s heart.
Joe ignored the slight sting where the guard’s bullet grazed his shoulder and plowed into the son-of-a-bitch’s midsection. They crashed onto the floor. He sensed Cobra coming up beside them, and before either Joe or the guard could strike a blow, Cobra bent over and cold-cocked the guard with his fist. “You don’t get all the fun,” Cobra said, grinning as Joe pushed himself off the guard and to his feet.
Cobra pulled out his own handy roll of duct tape and secured the guard’s wrists.
One look told Joe that he had found the two Bennings and the Obst boy. To Cobra he said, “Protect the hostages.”
He ran back into the corridor, Stars behind him. Two shots, Joe thought, anguished. The one at me, and another. Let Nova be okay.
The guard who had fired at her and hit Ramone fell forward and hit the cement floor with a sickening thud.
For a moment Nova’s mind went blank, a strange, confused moment. It was as if she had stripped some kind of gears in her head and her mind could not decide what to do: check the hostages or go to Ramone.
The paralysis passed as Barbed Wire knelt beside Ramone. Nova turned to check the hostages. She had found Linda, Nancy and Colette. They sat on the floor, bound and with eyes still wide in terror, but apparently unhurt.
She should go to find Joe immediately. He might need help. But something deep and primitive gripped her and moved her to Ramone. He had taken that bullet for her. She knelt, praying that she would see him smile and hear him say, “It’s not too bad.”
His eyes were closed and blood seeped from the corner of his mouth.
“Goddamn it,” Barbed Wire said. His next two words were in Portuguese. “Shit. Fuck.”
Joe burst into the second big storage room to find Nova and Barbed Wire kneeling beside Ramone. Jesus, Joseph and Mary. Ramone looked to be dead or dying.
A guard, lying facedown on the cement, also looked to be dead. Against the wall sat the rest of their hostages. He started untying them.
Colette Stone was the first to rediscover her voice. “Who are you?” she said in a choked, dry whisper.
“We’re here to free you.”
“There are others. I think in another room here.”
“We’ve got them. You’re all safe.”
She bowed her head. “Thank God.”
Joe stood and looked at Nova. She had taken Ramone’s head into her lap.
Wait a minute, he thought, suddenly puzzled. Something didn’t add up. The bug guy. Then three people in the first room. Three people here. That added up to seven. But there should be nine. Two were missing.
Chapter 34
Ramone’s pulse beat so faintly that Nova had at first thought he was dead. She had lifted his head into her lap, searching his face, a bit of hope surging through her. Some part of her realized that Joe had come into the room, that she didn’t need to leave, that the situation must now be stable.
She took Ramone’s hand in hers. “Hang on,” she said, putting all the conviction and urgency she possessed into the words. “The Special Ops team will be here soon. They’ll take care of you.”
Her voice must have reached him. He opened his eyes, blinked, recognized her.
“You shouldn’t have done it, Ramone.”
“Had to.” He tightened his grip.
Little vignettes of the good times with Ramone flashed through her memory. How he had taken a hard young woman recently out of prison and made her laugh at jokes for the first time in five years. His earnest attempts to give her passion in their lovemaking and his tender patience with her when she said she wasn’t capable of enjoying it. Ramone had introduced her to nature photography, a love that in the years to follow would sometimes be the only thing to give her joy. And now he had taken a death blow meant for her.
She pressed against the wound in his chest. It seemed to have no effect at stopping the blood. “You’re tough. You hang on!”
“Loved you. Really did. Should never have left.”
“Don’t talk.”
“So, so sorry.”
In the background she could hear the now-freed captives hugging and laughing. The other Americans, obviously freed by Joe and Cobra, had come to join them, and in the cold, sterile concrete bunker, these people felt like party time.
God, life was ironic beyond anything a human being could ever dream up or even comprehend. Ramone was dying; the red pool rapidly collecting around his body terrified her. The captives were deliriously happy. A man who was single-handedly responsible for recruiting her to this bizarre life was dying in her arms, and he had finally told her he was sorry for treating her in a way that had scarred her for years.
The sound of running feet drew her attention to the door. A team of five black-clad men rushed in, handguns drawn. They halted, scanned the scene and visibly relaxed. Joe approached the team leader.
“Glad you’re here.” He nodded toward Ramone. “One of ours needs help stat.”
Two of the men came to her side, clearly preparing to carry Ramone out of the bunker. The collecting pool of blood continued to widen.
Nova shook her head. “Check him before you move him.”
One of the men complied, opening up Ramone’s shirt. She wanted to look away but couldn’t do it. She had to know.
“We need to stabilize him.” He called to another teammate. “Get some plasma!”
Ramone’s grip, which had held firm, relaxed.
“Don’t go,” she said.
Ramone took in one more shallow breath, and then nothing.
Hot tears rolled from her eyes and down her cheeks.
“You can’t do nothin’ for him now,” Cobra said, pushing the Special Ops guys aside.
She laid Ramone’s head down onto the concrete, rose and stepped away. She turned her back on the scene, sensing that Cobra and Stars were lifting Ramone. She brushed at tears. Sucking in a deep breath, she finally mastered them.
When she turned back, Cobra, Stars and Barbed Wire disappeared into the corridor, carrying their boss and friend. Joe stepped up to her. “We have a big problem.”
“Which is?”
“The Hill boy isn’t here. And Colette Stone tells me she’s pretty sure they killed the guide, Kimball Kiff. He got loose and ran out and they never brought him back.”
“Suleema Johnson’s grandson isn’t here?”
“Right.”
Nova strode to Ronnie Obst. The kid was rubbing his eyes, clearly fighting tears running down his cheeks and dripping off his chin.
“The bastards killed my father! My father is dead.”
She put a hand on his shoulder. “We want to help your friend. What do you think has happened to Alex?”
Colette Stone came up to Ronnie and put her arm around his shoulders. The woman who had looked so fresh and bright in the smiling photos Nova had studied looked haggard and ten years older. Smeared patches of dirt covered her white culottes and top. But her azure-blue eyes looked at Nova with frank clarity. “Alex was never kept with us. From the time they took us off the airplane, they immediately took Alex away in a separate car.”
