“I wasn’t informed of the change.”
She heard irritation worm its way into Levi’s voice.
“I’ve just informed you.”
True enough. Besides, internal NSA politics were well above her pay grade.
“Understood.”
“What’s your situation?”
“I’ve made contact with Jack Gregory.”
“And?”
“I’ve asked him to give me two weeks before making a move to free Tupac.”
Janet noted the flash of concern on Levi’s face before he wiped it away.
“What did you tell him about our operation?”
“Only that Tupac had volunteered for this and doesn’t want to be rescued until he has completed his part of the mission.”
“Why two weeks?”
Janet didn’t like the answer she had for him, but Levi needed to know.
“It’s how long Riles told Tupac the NSA needed to get pictures of the orb and break the codes it contains.”
As she watched Levi’s face over the video link, she saw the realization of what that meant hit him.
“So Riles bet the farm that we could solve it in that amount of time.”
“And that Tupac could hold out that long.”
“Telling Jack what you did just added another big risk.”
“The only other way to stop Jack is to kill him. All things considered, I think my way is far less risky.”
Levi paused to consider her words. “Okay, but now that Jack knows that Tupac is cooperating with us, the information could be exposed to Conrad Altmann.”
“Jack may not do as I asked, but there’s no chance that Altmann could extract any information from him, even in the unlikely scenario that he managed to capture Jack.”
Janet switched subjects. “Any update on cracking the orb’s codes?”
“It’s taking longer than we anticipated, so Admiral Riles has assigned the task top priority on our newest supercomputer.”
“Tupac won’t complete his part of this unless I get him the answer. If he breaks under Altmann’s torture before that happens, the operation is blown.”
“I’m well aware of that.”
Once again, Janet changed topics.
“I haven’t been able to learn where Altmann’s people are holding Tupac. Based on Altmann’s helicopter’s fuel usage, it probably lies on an arc approximately two hundred and fifty kilometers from his La Paz estate.”
Without bothering to consult any reference material, Levi responded. “Altmann has a second compound on the outskirts of Cochabamba. The distance is right. I’ll send you the layout and any other information we have on it.”
Janet smiled. There was a reason Levi had the reputation for being one of the world’s best intelligence analysts. She was glad he’d been added to the list of people who Admiral Riles had read-in on this operation.
“I’ll watch for it.”
Janet found herself staring at the “Connection Terminated” dialogue box and closed the application. It looked like her planned stay at the Los Tajibos Hotel was going to be a lot shorter than she had thought. Knowing how efficiently Levi Elias normally operated, knowing how good he would feel about driving a stake through a significant part of the worldwide neo-Nazi movement, especially a part that was commanded by Klaus Barbie’s bastard son, Janet expected the promised electronic package within minutes, not hours.
As she pushed back from the laptop and rose to make herself a cup of coffee, her thoughts turned to Jack. Although they’d both been exhausted in Kazakhstan, she’d never seen him as played out as he’d looked yesterday. She was pretty sure that no amount of fatigue, by itself, could do that to Jack Gregory.
The look in his eyes had worried her. When she’d first met Jack in Germany, he’d displayed an inner fire that had both thrilled and concerned her. Ever since she’d known him, Jack had been religious in his self-discipline, only giving in to his violent nature within the context of doing the job he’d signed on for.
It seemed like she’d known Jack for years, but they’d only shared one mission, Jack having been brought in as a reluctant security consultant. A few weeks had launched them through Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Kazakhstan, and finally Crete. It was funny how shared mortal danger could pack so much living into such a condensed window.
Something about Jack Gregory attracted him to danger in ways that, at times, seemed almost supernatural. His CIA records revealed that he had always displayed a highly developed intuitive sense. Janet worried that he was now starting to lose himself to that pull. And if Jack Gregory went into an out-of-control death spiral, there was no telling what—or who—else might be pulled across the resulting black hole’s event horizon and swallowed up.
Unfortunately, Janet had once again entered Jack’s gravitational pull. And despite the anger she felt at her inability to fight the feeling, she found herself questioning her own decisions. Levi was right. Going to Jack’s house had been a stupid risk with little prospect of success. She had a bad feeling that despite what she’d asked of him, Jack was going to go for Tupac as soon as he found out where the man was being held. And with Jack’s connections and resources, it wouldn’t take him long.
Then why had she done it? Had it been just to see Jack again, to feel the heat of his inner flame? Well, she’d felt it. Now, how the hell was she going to get it out of her head?
Maybe she would have to kill him after all.
CHAPTER 43
Jack liked Cochabamba. When it came to picking an ideal location, the founders of the self-proclaimed City of Eternal Spring had chosen wisely. With the perfect combination of latitude and altitude, Cochabamba split the difference between twelve thousand feet above mean sea level of La Paz and the fifteen hundred feet of Santa Cruz. At an elevation of a little over eight thousand feet, Cochabamba maintained a year-round daily average high in the mid-seventies on the Fahrenheit scale. Apparently that and the views had inspired the architects of Bolivia’s fourth-largest city as well.
Having already been found by the NSA, Jack had spent Sunday relaxing in the same house, occupying his time with collecting information from his well-paid sources about Conrad Altmann’s extensive Bolivian holdings and any helicopter activity near those areas last Wednesday night. The two prime candidates were the Altmann mountainside estate at a half-dozen kilometers outside of Cochabamba and a larger compound overlooking La Paz. Cochabamba was closer, so it was his logical first stop.
He wasn’t concerned that the NSA would monitor his Internet activities. The information providers had used a standard method of embedding the encrypted information he had asked for within jpeg photographic files posted on a variety of public Facebook pages and porn sites. By using a custom decryption algorithm, Jack had extracted the embedded data from the images, and though the NSA could detect his access, nothing he did revealed his sources, masked as they were by the millions of hits those sites received daily.
He’d left the motorcycle and laptop in Santa Cruz. After purchasing a primer-gray, eight-year-old Toyota Camry, Jack had swapped plates and then paid a visit to Diego Vega, an old acquaintance with whom he’d done business during his last visit to Bolivia, the first time Jack’s services had been contracted by Senator Stefan Rosenstein. A Shining Path Maoist rebel fighter in his younger days, Diego’s rotund body had long been ill-suited for active combat, or even for short hikes. Although Diego had never liked Jack, he liked the money Jack paid him, and after all, business was business. Altogether, this morning’s business had cost Jack one hundred seventy-five thousand Bolivianos, roughly twenty-five thousand American dollars.
Now, with the late afternoon sun having just sunk below the Andes, Jack had settled into a hide location in the deep brush on the mountain ridge that overlooked Conrad Altmann’s Cochabamba estate. The Dragunov sniper rifle he had wasn’t his favorite, but in a situation like this, where extremely long shots would not be required, it would get the job done. Having stopped in th
e middle of Bolivian nowhere on his way from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba, he’d zeroed the scope to his satisfaction and loaded a half-dozen of the 10 round box magazines with 7N14 rounds.
But unless his luck was far worse than usual tonight, he wouldn’t be firing the weapon, just using the night-vision sight. Still, it never hurt to be ready to bite back if the dogs of war came sniffing around.
With the onset of twilight, the temperature began to fall, on its way toward the mid-fifties if the weather forecast was to be believed. For a man about to spend the night nestled into the trees and thick brush, looking through a night-vision scope, you couldn’t ask for much better. The waning full moon didn’t hurt either.
Five hundred meters of steep slope separated Jack from the southwestern corner of the Altmann compound. From where he lay, he could see the main house and the much smaller foreman’s quarters, surrounded on the east, south, and west sides by an eight-foot-high, concrete outer wall topped with triple-strand concertina razor wire, the type of fortifications you would expect to see around a custom wheels-and-rims shop in east Los Angeles.
A paved driveway entered through an electronic gate on the south side of the compound. Once inside the gate, a three-car garage jutted out of the southeast side of the main house, and a helipad and a small foreman’s house occupied the southwestern portion of the compound.
The north side of the Altmann house formed a U-shape that enclosed a large pool area, complete with hot tub. The open end of the U dropped away in a hundred-foot cliff that provided rear security and a beautiful view across the valley to the mountains northwest of the city.
Jack could see a total of six guards outside, two at the gatehouse manning the double-wide electric gate that allowed cars in and out of the compound. The other four were split between two towers positioned at the southeast and southwest corners of the outer walls. He had read that an eighteenth-century Spanish landowner’s mansion had once occupied this spot, but Jack couldn’t quite envision it. Taking in the guard towers, high walls, and razor wire, the Altmann compound had more of a high-end, white-collar prison look about it.
As the night progressed, Jack nibbled on some surplus military rations, mixed a packet of freeze-dried instant coffee into his canteen, and watched the Altmann compound’s night routine. The guard shift change arrived in a van on a rough six-hour interval, the actual replacement happening at 9:00 P.M., then again at 3:24 A.M., with some agitation displayed by the crew awaiting replacement. The morning shift change took place at 9:00 A.M. and had only been on duty for thirty minutes when Jack heard the inbound helicopter.
As it flew in from the northwest, Jack recognized it as the same Chinese H425 model that he’d seen before. Letting the scope reticle follow the chopper all the way down to the helipad, Jack watched as a well-dressed man walked out to meet it. Conrad Altmann stepped off the aircraft, wearing a dark sports jacket, tan shirt, and khaki slacks. The man from the compound walked through the rotor wash beneath the spinning blades, extending his hand and wearing a welcoming smile.
Altmann accepted the greeting as he continued walking toward the main house. As Jack tracked the neo-Nazi crime lord away from the aircraft, new movement drew his attention back to the helicopter. Shifting the scope to the person rounding the front of the helicopter from the pilot’s side, duffle bag in hand, he felt his pulse jump up a notch. There, centered in the reticle, her dyed blond hair secured in a tight bun with the icepick-sharp hair needle she favored, was the beautiful face of the NSA’s Janet Alexandra Price.
CHAPTER 44
Conrad Altmann hadn’t been pleased when Janet Mueller arrived at his La Paz estate, asking to accompany him on this morning’s flight to Cochabamba. He’d been less pleased when he’d learned that she knew that he had Tupac Inti imprisoned there. But her insistence that Jack Gregory would learn where Tupac was being held and come for him made sense. So did her desire to be waiting when The Ripper showed up, so he’d agreed to let her and her duffel bag hitch a ride on his helicopter.
As Altmann walked toward the main house, with Renaldo Rodriguez at his side, he let Janet catch up as best she could. Chatting with his estate foreman, Altmann spared Janet a glance. To see her strolling along behind them as casually as if she were enjoying a walk through the park shouldn’t have surprised him, but it did. If Dolf hadn’t been able to rattle the Golden Dawn’s assassin then he had no right to expect that a bit of impoliteness would do the trick. What awaited her in the dungeon below the house just might.
By the time Renaldo opened the door to the descending stairwell, Janet Price had set her duffel bag down and caught up, having done so with no apparent effort. Once more Altmann found his eyes drawn to her. Ah, to have young legs again. Even better, to have young legs wrapped around him. It was a thought that put a real smile on his face. After all, he was a man of power, and she was clearly an ambitious and capable young woman. Assuming she didn’t force him to have her killed, such a liaison would make sense.
The steel-bound wood door at the bottom of the stairwell sent an echoing groan through the dark tunnels as Renaldo pushed it open and flicked on the light switch just inside on the right. Other than their own noises, Altmann heard no sounds, not even the squeaking of rats or the periodic drip of water from the damp ceiling. The silence didn’t worry him. Except for when he tickled Tupac Inti’s flesh with electrical current, the Quechua shaman made no sound.
Altmann expected to see a hint of shock in Janet’s eyes at the sight of the bedraggled, filthy, and starving Tupac Inti, with the electric scratch and burn marks on his chest, stomach, and thighs, but he was disappointed. Instead she laughed, as if the sight were one of the funniest things she’d ever seen.
“Oh my God,” she croaked. “You can’t be serious.”
“You find this funny?”
“Well, yeah. You told me not to kill this man until you’re done with him, and now I see you’re about to kill him yourself. Don’t worry. So long as he’s dead when I return to Greece, I get paid regardless of how it happened.”
Altmann gritted his teeth. This bitch had a real talent for pissing him off. Gianakos had probably sent her to Bolivia just to get her out of the country. He found himself tempted to have his men chain her down beside Tupac. But Dolf wasn’t here, and he doubted that the three men who accompanied him could pull that off. Altmann made a mental note to make sure Janet Mueller didn’t make it out of Bolivia alive. In the meantime, he still wanted to see if he could get some use out of her.
“I’ve been doing this long enough to get pretty good at it. Some would say very good.”
“So what has he told you?”
Altmann stifled an urge to slap her.
“Sometimes these things take time. You think you can do better?”
She smiled. “I guarantee it.”
“You willing to bet your life on it?”
“I do that every time I get out of bed.”
Altmann stared at her. Then he stepped back, motioning her toward Tupac with a wave of his arm. “Okay. He’s all yours.”
When Janet didn’t move, he frowned. “You have a problem with it?”
“If I do this, I do it my way, one hundred percent.”
Altmann shrugged. “So long as I get my answers and he’s still mobile and able to talk when you’re done.”
“Fine. And when Gregory comes for Tupac, you’ll have a twofer. I’ll need a list of questions you want answered.”
Nodding his agreement, Altmann watched Janet shift her attention to Renaldo, issuing instructions in a tone that indicated that Altmann had just fired Dolf and made her his new number two. It actually sent chills up his spine.
“I want this cell scrubbed and disinfected. I don’t work standing in piss and shit. Get Inti properly cleaned up, and put some clothes on him. This Abu Ghraib bullshit doesn’t work for me. Give him some good food and water, and make sure he gets a good night’s sleep. For what I’m about to do to him, he’s going to need his strength. In the meantim
e, if you’ll show me to my room, I’ll put together a list of items I’ll be needing.”
Renaldo glanced at Altmann and, seeing no objection, echoed her instructions to his two men. Then he turned and led Janet Mueller out of the dungeon. Altmann watched her depart, the sharp shadows cast by the bare incandescent bulbs serving to accentuate her lithe form.
As Altmann followed her, a worm of doubt wriggled its way from his subconscious mind into his conscious thoughts. Maybe he’d been wrong about this woman being dirty. If so, Dolf might have good reason to worry about his position in Altmann’s organization.
At the stairwell, Altmann turned and looked back toward Inti’s cell. One way or another, the next few days would tell.
CHAPTER 45
Tupac Inti felt the cold water splash him as one of his two guards used a spray nozzle to hose the filth from his body while the other man squeegeed and mopped the floor. After finishing their cleanup, one kept a tranquilizer gun trained on him as the other removed the shaman’s wall chains. Then they closed and locked his cell and departed. It should have felt good to stand erect, but the last few days had taken such a toll on his body that Tupac barely managed it.
The clank and grind of the stairwell door opening interrupted his efforts at stretching out some of his cramped muscles. The man who pushed the tray through the chuck hole in the bottom of the cell door barked at him and tossed a set of dark gray sweat clothes and boxers at him.
“Put these on.”
Tupac complied, surprised that they were large enough to fit him. He guessed that they must have belonged to the big Albino man who’d commanded the team that had captured him. Apparently shoes or sandals weren’t a part of the bargain.
Dead Wrong Page 12
