by Marc Cameron
Lourdes wiped her mouth with her forearm and sniffed.
“Why are you so happy?” She asked.
Marie bowed her head. She was still shaking. “What do you mean?”
“You have hope. I can smell it,” Lourdes sneered. “I thought we talked about that.”
“I don’t,” Marie lied.
Lourdes stood for a long moment, blinking under the stark bangs of her Cleopatra haircut. Without warning she let loose a bone-chilling scream and threw her glass against the kitchen wall.
“Holy shit!” Pete fell out of the chair at the sound of the scream and shattering glass. He scrambled to his feet trying to make sense of what was going on.
Frightened by the sudden noises, Simon let out a screech of his own.
“Enough fun for now,” Lourdes said. “Go back to sleep.” She shot a hateful look at Marie. “Clean up that mess,” she said.
Pete reached to pick up his phone from where it lay on the floor and shoved it in his pocket without a second look. He suspected nothing. Marie had to fight the urge to smile. For the first time in days, she felt a tiny bit in control.
CHAPTER 46
January 9
“Monagas is gone,” Aleksandra said early the next morning. Her lips were drawn in a tight white line as she set her tray down on the long folding table under the dining tent. “I just heard it from one of his mechanics. Gone!” The sun was just coming up, but the last riders had left the starting line five minutes before.
Thibodaux looked up from his plate of eggs and buttered toast. “Gone?”
“That can’t be good,” Bo said from across the table.
“No,” Thibodaux said. “It’s not.” He reached for the iPhone in his shirt pocket. “You get Jericho on the horn and I’ll check on Zamora.”
Thibodaux pulled up his hacked link to the ASO tracking system just in time to see the GPS blip identifying Zamora’s bike veer off the designated course and turn east for the Iquique airport. In an unavoidable turn of events, Jericho had come in ahead of him the day before and had to leave the starting line earlier. He was going slow, feigning engine trouble, but was still ahead a half mile.
Thibodaux stood, twirling his hand overhead for the others to abandon their breakfast and follow him.
Bo handed him the phone as they ran toward the support truck.
Jericho tapped the Bluetooth receiver on the side of his helmet. “Go for Quinn,” he said. Without a face shield, the wind whirred in his helmet, but the earpiece made it possible to hear well enough.
“Turn around, l’ami,” Thibodaux said. “Zamora’s heading to the airport.”
Quinn tapped the brakes, feeling the bike’s knobby tires squirm on the cool pavement. If Thibodaux said to turn around, there was no point in second-guessing him.
“Monagas?” he asked.
“He was MIA as of early this morning, beb,” Thibodaux said. “Looks like they’re making a move. We’re on our way to the airport now.”
Quinn pulled over long enough to disable the KTM’s GPS locator system so the officials—and anyone else who might be watching—wouldn’t be able to track him. Race officials would call the IriTrack to check his safety soon enough, but he would tell them he’d had engine trouble. He didn’t want to withdraw until later, in case Zamora happened to check in later in the day.
Back aboard the bike, he flipped a quick U-turn and opened up the throttle, no longer fretting about babying the engine through the race. He made it to the tiny civil aviation airpark near Iquique’s Diego Aracena Airport less than five minutes later.
The KTM’s wheels crunched up on the gravel apron next to a young mechanic in greasy blue overalls wiping his hands on an even greasier rag. A twin-engine Cessna banked northeast over the rolling dunes of the Atacama Desert.
“Have you quit the race too, señor?” the mechanic asked, eyeing Quinn with an empathetic frown.
“I’m afraid so, amigo,” Quinn said. He saw Zamora’s Yamaha—a fifty-thousand-dollar motorcycle—abandoned, lying on its side next to a neatly painted tin hangar along the edge of the taxiway. “Bad transmission,” he lied. He nodded toward the twin-engine Cessna that grew smaller and smaller as it flew into the morning light. “What happened to my friend?”
“It must be in the water.” The mechanic smiled. “He too had a bad transmission.”
“So he chartered one of your planes?” Quinn asked, still straddling the KTM.
The mechanic shook his head. “No. He bought it. They are going to La Paz.” He peered at Quinn. “Do you too wish to buy an airplane to go to La Paz?”
Quinn scanned the tiny airport. Only three other aircraft sat at their tie-downs beyond the building, a Piper Cheyenne twin, a tiny Cessna 150, and a radial-engine plane that looked like some kind of older war bird.
“I’d like to charter one,” Quinn said. Thibodaux and the others came rolling up in the support truck, screeching to a stop beside him.
“Very well, amigo,” the mechanic said, eyeing the newcomers. “The 150 and the Navy trainer are available for charter. But the Cheyenne is for sale only.”
Quinn frowned. Both the 150 and the Navy AT6 were two-place aircraft. They would do no good. “For sale only?” he asked.
“Ah, I am afraid so, amigo. Too many people want to do things outside the law in such a plane. If I was to own it during such an action, I could get into grave trouble.” A broad smile crossed his face. “I make you a very good deal at one hundred thousand American dollars.”
Quinn tilted his head. “And she’s in good condition?”
“Of course, señor,” the mechanic said. “And I will fly her for you for an additional fifty thousand dollars.”
“That is a steep fee, my friend,” Bo Quinn said as he walked up beside his brother.
“It is,” the mechanic said. “But I am not the one with a bad transmission needing to go to La Paz.”
Five minutes later Enrique Santos had changed his greasy overalls for a pair of faded jeans, a white sweatshirt, and a ball cap with an Orvis fly-fishing logo on the front—and proclaimed himself a Piper Cheyenne pilot.
“You sure this is safe?” Thibodaux said, as they climbed up the fold-out air stairs at the rear of the aircraft. He ran a thumb around the tattered rubber door seal before ducking his head to walk between the single seats on each side of a narrow aisle.
“He’s flying us,” Quinn said. “He must think it’s safe enough.” There were two seats in front for a pilot and co-pilot, then four more with two facing aft and two more in a vis-à-vis configuration. A fifth seat with a removable cushion hiding the toilet was at the far aft of the plane behind a sliding curtain. It had space for two more seats, but Quinn guessed they had been removed in order to haul more cargo in the form of coca products. Quinn took the forward-facing seat on the right of the airplane so he could keep an eye on Enrique.
“We’re in a bit of a hurry, amigo,” he said. “I would like to catch up to my friend who left earlier if we could.”
Enrique picked up the mike from the console of instruments and looked over his shoulder. “I could attempt to call him on the radio.”
Quinn raised his hand. “That won’t be necessary.
The young pilot nodded. “I thought not, amigo. You have that look about you.”
“What look is that?” Bo asked, sitting across from his brother.
“The look of one who chases bad men.”
“And my friend in the Cessna?”
Enrique’s face grew dark. “Oh, señor, he has the look of a very bad man. That is why I gave you my sweetheart deal on this airplane.”
The Pratt & Whitney turbine engines hurled the Cheyenne off the runway and pulled her up at an angle steep enough that Bo, who sat almost knee to knee across from Quinn, was hanging above him by his shoulder harness. Aleksandra hung similarly over Thibodaux until the plane began to level out at fifteen thousand feet into a shallower climb.
One hand on the yoke, Enrique turned and held up a two-
foot length of toilet paper. “We are having a little trouble pressurizing,” he said. “I need someone to take this and hold it up to the door.” His face was relaxed, as if this sort of thing happened all the time.
“Do what now?” Thibodaux’s eyes went wide.
“We’re losing air around the door.” Enrique held out the toilet paper. “Hold this near the door. When you get to the leak it will suck out of your hand and seal the hole . . . hopefully.”
Despite having to use toilet paper to fix the door seal, Enrique proved to be a more than competent pilot. Roughly two hours later he set the Cheyenne down through heavy clouds at Laja Airport a few kilometers outside of El Alto, a suburb of La Paz.
Thibodaux applauded when the wheels touched down in a steady rain. “Damn good aviating, amigo.”
“Thank you for flying Air Enrique,” the young pilot said as they rolled down the runway. Blue and white lights flashed in by the fog. The prop blast pushed rivulets of water along the windows. “It sounds as if we were the last plane in. The weather has everything grounded. Look, your friend was able to make it in. There is the Cessna he purchased.” Enrique pointed to the main operations building looming like a ghost through the fog as they made their way to parking. “I must advise you that if you wish to be legal, you will need to check in with Bolivian customs at the airport in El Alto. You are American so they will charge you a hundred and thirty-five dollars each for a Bolivian visa. That is entirely up to you, however. No one knows we are here. Where do you want me to park your plane?”
“Consider it our gift to you,” Quinn said. Both he and Enrique had known all along that he wasn’t going to hassle with the aircraft while Zamora got farther away.
“Thank you very much for your generosity,” Enrique said, grinning.
Thibodaux looked at him through narrow eyes. “How many times have you sold this same plane?”
Enrique’s grin grew even wider as he set the parking brake. “Oh, you would be surprised, señor. I could retire, but the work is good and I get to meet such interesting people.”
A thought suddenly occurred to Quinn. “I’m sure you know the pilot who flew my friend here in the Cessna.”
“He is my cousin,” Enrique said.
“Call and see if the men are still with him. But tell him not to mention us.”
Enrique nodded emphatically. “An excellent idea, amigo.” He pulled out his cell phone and dialed.
After a quick conversation of rapid-fire Spanish he ended the call and returned the phone to his pocket.
“The men you follow tried to get my cousin to fly them to Rurrenabaque on the other side of the Yungas Mountains. But the weather is too bad. He told them he would wait, but he says they are rude and very impatient.”
“Where are they now?” Aleksandra asked.
Enrique shrugged. “They took a cab down to the city.”
“Will they come back so he can fly them?” Aleksandra’s voice rose in pitch and timbre. “Surely they will come back.”
“Not according to my cousin, I’m afraid,” Enrique said. “He says they were in too much of a hurry to listen to reason. He pointed them to the Hotel Condeza, but I do not know if they would take his advice.”
Enrique paused at the door of the aircraft, his hand on the exit lever. “I must warn you,” he said. “The air is very thin here in La Paz. Go slowly, my friends—or you will learn the hard way. And lastly, be wary of unofficial taxis. Some are paid to drive you to certain places where you will be robbed.”
Both Bo and Aleksandra smiled at that, taking the pistols out of the duffel and shoving then under their jackets.
“That would prove to be quite a surprise to the robbers,” she said.
Oddly, Quinn felt the pressure drop when Enrique twisted the Cheyenne’s latch and cracked open the door, as if they’d opened the door in flight. He took a deep breath of what oxygen there was and made his way down the folding stairs to the wet tarmac.
Team Quinn grabbed their duffel bags and stood in the rain to wave good-bye to the young entrepreneur. Jericho had changed out of his riding gear in mid flight and into a pair of nylon 5.11 khakis and a white polo. Prepared for desert nights on the Dakar, he had only a nylon jacket that proved to be lacking against the chilly heights of El Alto at over thirteen thousand feet above sea level.
Enrique called them a cab, and it arrived within minutes. Cramming themselves into the battered Ford Expedition, they settled in for the looping ride on the Autopista from the high plains of El Alto down, down, down to the great gash in the Andes that cradled the city of Nuestra Señora de La Paz, the Hotel Condeza, and, if they were extremely lucky, Valentine Zamora.
CHAPTER 47
Simon had been crying nonstop for ten minutes. In many ways life had been easier when Marie had given up hope. Now that she harbored even the tiniest notion that she could get her message to Matt and he could use his genius brain to figure out a way to save them—all she wanted to do was scream right along with her baby.
Lourdes seemed bent on giving them just enough food to keep them alive until she could shoot them. A meager diet of nothing but cheese and bread was hard enough on Marie, but it put the baby’s stomach in knots. She tried her best to soothe him, rubbing his tummy, bouncing him on her knee, but day after day he got worse, throwing his head back and wailing.
Lourdes kept the laptop computer with her in the back room, where, thankfully, she stayed most of the time. Marie had grown attuned to the faint beep of an incoming video call and could barely contain herself when she heard it. Lourdes’s lumbering footfalls as she stomped down the hall confirmed that the call was her daily moment with Matthew.
The evil woman never allowed the calls to last more than a few seconds, so Marie knew she’d have to be quick if she wanted to get the message across. Often, Matt’s face was heavily pixilated and his voice little more than a string of disembodied garble. She prayed the connection would be clear enough this time.
Lourdes stomped to the edge of the mattress and handed her the open laptop. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared. “Say hello and then good-bye,” she said.
Marie took the computer and set it in her lap. “He needs to see his son,” she said, trying to ignore Lourdes.
Matt’s gaunt but smiling face greeted her on the screen.
“Are you all right?” The tension in his face seemed to increase when he saw her, and Marie realized she must look a sight. She pushed her bangs out of her eyes and forced a smile. “I’m fine,” she said, pulling Simon onto her lap. Thankfully, he quit crying when he saw his daddy. “We’re both fine. I’m worried about Miss Kitty though.”
Matt cocked his head to the side. “You’re worried about who?”
“Miss Kitty,” Marie sniffed. “I left her in the kitchen and we don’t have anyone to go check on her.”
“Marie, I—”
“That is enough.” Lourdes snatched back the computer and closed the screen. Tucking it under her arm, she shook her head in disgust. “You have but seconds to talk to your husband and all you can think of is your silly cat? He will be lucky to be rid of you.”
Marie let her head loll back against the wall and closed her eyes. Oh, Matt, she thought. I hope you understood.
CHAPTER 48
Zamora sat at a tippy wooden table in a coffeehouse off Prado Avenue in downtown La Paz, a cell phone pressed to his ear.
“Don’t do anything rash until we speak in person,” he said, pressing a thumb and forefinger to his eyes. Surely, someone was digging out his eyes from the inside. “I am on my way there now.”
“We feel the need to explore another option,” Yazid Nazif said at the other end of the line. “We are after maximum effect, after all.”
Zamora pounded his fist on the table, first shouting, then lowering his voice when others in the café looked in his direction. “And that is what you will get! You must stay with the plan!”
“I ask you again, my friend,” Nazif said a little too s
weetly for Zamora’s taste. “Is the device ours or is it not?”
“Of course it’s yours,” he hissed. “We will speak of this when we get to the location. Tell Borregos to wait in Rio Branco for my call.”
Zamora ended the call and rested his head on the table. “Idiots,” he whispered to himself. He should have known better than to trust the Yemenis to follow through.
The quick exit from Chile and the bumpy flight over the storm clouds had left him dizzy and bilious. He had no idea where he was, leaving those particulars to Monagas. The altitude made his temples feel like he’d been hit with a hammer, and his stomach churned. All he wanted was to leave this stinking, airless cesspool and get to his bomb. So far, the weather refused to cooperate.
No flights were leaving the city. They were so high in the sagging clouds that rain hardly seemed to fall, but only rattle around in the mist. It was enough to make someone crazy.
He clicked the touch pad on the laptop computer in front of him, trying to connect to Pollard for the third time. For all he knew, Rustam Daudov and his men were already at the river camp. He almost cried when Pollard’s face appeared on the screen.
“Where have you been?” Zamora snapped. He used a telephone earpiece with a small microphone so the handful of other patrons, mostly tourists, couldn’t hear the conversation. Pollard stared back at him with sullen eyes, saying nothing.
“Never mind,” Zamora said. “Is everything all right there?”
“Valentine, you are insane,” Pollard scoffed. “Of course everything isn’t all right. You have my family at gunpoint.”
“A fact you should keep in mind,” Zamora said. “I mean—is the device intact and still in your care?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“There is a certain Chechen who wants what is mine. I believe he is on the way to you,” Zamora said. “If he gets there before I do, he will kill you without question.”
