“Very much,” the man replied politely, though he still seemed wary.
Keeping her eyes on the father, she put one hand on the cup as though keeping the boy from flailing it around. While continuing with the small talk, she slowly managed to unscrew the lid.
When the customs officer finished reviewing their documents, Vanessa reached out to retrieve hers, deliberately spilling the contents of the boy’s cup all over her shirt and jacket. From the scent, she guessed it was apple juice.
“Oh no.” Vanessa said the words quietly enough that it didn’t draw too much attention to her. “I’m sorry. The cup spilled.”
“You’re drenched. I am so sorry.” The mother turned to face Vanessa. “I don’t know how that happened.”
“It was just an accident.” Vanessa continued forward a few feet so they could get out of everyone’s way.
“What can I do to help?” the mother said.
“I think if I can just get my other jacket out of my bag, I’ll be fine.”
The husband stepped forward to help too, taking his son from Vanessa so she could shed her scarf and sweater. Ignoring the wetness that had seeped into the plain white T-shirt she had worn beneath her sweater, she pulled out a black jacket and slipped it on. She then dug out another scarf and used it to tie back her hair.
Wrapping the soiled clothes in a wad, she stuffed them into her suitcase, zipped it closed, and stood up. “Thanks for your help.”
“Thank you for yours. I’m really sorry about your clothes.”
“It’s fine. Really.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the police and the custodian woman searching the crowd. She deliberately kept walking with the young family, positioning herself so the man was between her and the people she was trying to avoid.
Her mind was spinning with possibilities of how anyone would know she was here and why they would be looking for her. Only Warren and Paige knew she was coming to Maracaibo, and only Warren had access to her full travel plans. Knowing she could trust her long-time agency associate, where could the information have leaked?
Had she been too quick to trust her new assistant? Surely no one could have managed to plant someone that close to her, especially not coming through a medical office, but doubt niggled in the back of her mind.
It was almost as if someone was expecting her to come, but how could that be? She hadn’t even known she would be here until first thing this morning. Had it not been for the message that Seth was still missing, she would have turned around and gone back home to Virginia.
She continued toward baggage claim despite having all of her own luggage with her. Never comfortable with spending idle time in airports, she had packed everything she needed in her carry-on and in the large shoulder bag she had used as her personal item.
With her free hand, she pulled her cell phone out of the back pocket of her jeans. She noticed she had a voice message, but she ignored that, instead switching to the camera function. As she turned the corner away from customs, she reversed the camera and used it as a mirror so she could see the custodian over her shoulder. Vanessa snapped several photos, pretending to try to get reception in the crowded airport.
Once out of sight, Vanessa said her good-byes to the young family and headed for the airport exit.
She noticed a man with fair skin and light-brown hair heading for the same exit, and she slowed down. From the brand of his jeans, she guessed he was likely American, and at the moment, Vanessa preferred not to be near anyone from her own country.
To her dismay, he also slowed down. She was too close to the door to change direction now without being obvious. They reached the doorway at the same time, and the man bumped into Vanessa in the same way she might if she was trying to pickpocket someone or plant a tracking device.
She made a mental note to check her clothes for anything that didn’t belong. Then the man spoke to her in a low voice. “Vanessa Johnson? I’m your contact. Welcome to Maracaibo.”
She reminded herself not to react and call this man’s bluff. She didn’t have a contact here in Venezuela, and even if Warren had sent someone to meet her, no one would have ever used her real name in a foreign country.
“Where’s my usual contact?” Vanessa asked quietly.
“I don’t know. I just got a call telling me to pick you up.” He continued forward, keeping pace with Vanessa. “I have a car parked right outside.”
Vanessa wasn’t about to get in a car with this man, but she certainly couldn’t afford to draw the attention of the local authorities.
“Where?”
“Over there. Down at the end.” He motioned to a plain hatchback parked behind a string of taxis.
Vanessa played along, already going over possible outcomes in her mind. When they reached the car, the man made it abundantly clear that he had never been to any of her training classes. He pulled his keys out of his pocket and turned his back to her when he unlocked the passenger side.
Vanessa took advantage of the opportunity, turning in a quick circle and connecting her elbow with the back of the man’s head. He dropped forward, one arm catching on the open car door as he fell halfway into the passenger seat. Vanessa leaned over him, feigning concern in case anyone was watching.
Setting her suitcase to the side, she slipped her arm around the now unconscious man and managed to sit him up in the passenger seat. She then picked up the keys he had dropped and slipped them into her pocket. No reason to make it easy for him to follow her.
She retrieved her phone and used the camera to take a photo of the man. After closing him in the car, she put her hand back on her suitcase and rolled it forward to the nearest taxi, glancing back long enough to make a mental note of the license plate number and the make and model of the vehicle.
When she reached the taxi, she debated only a moment about whether she should go to the hotel she was registered in. Assuming someone could track her there, she opted for her backup plan.
Always cautious, she asked the taxi driver for his suggestion on where to stay. He gave her a couple of choices, and after a brief discussion on the location of the ones he’d suggested, she opted for the hotel nearest the city center.
Though she would have liked to check her clothes and purse for tracking devices, she didn’t want to give the cab driver any cause to take special notice of her. Instead, she pulled out her cell phone to look at the photos once more. When she did, she again noticed she had a message.
She plugged her earbuds into the phone so she would be the only one to hear the message and hit play. When she heard Paige’s frantic voice telling her she was a target, all doubt of her assistant’s loyalty was erased. She glanced behind her to make sure she wasn’t being followed.
Vanessa fought the urge to call Paige right then to get an update. She knew all too well that panicking now was the worst thing she could do. Undoubtedly, whoever was targeting her had planned to pick her up at the airport. Now that she was clear, she could use her training to go underground and stay there until she knew where the danger was coming from.
After checking in under Lina’s name at the hotel, she made her way to her room, approving of the cab driver’s taste. The room was large and airy, a king-sized bed taking up the far side of the room.
She immediately crossed to the bed and pulled the covers down, sitting on it long enough to make it look like it had been slept in. She then used the bathroom and turned on the shower briefly. Wadding up a bath towel, she draped it over the side of the tub.
Satisfied that the bathroom now looked well used, she opened her purse and took out what looked to be a pen but was really a webcam. She positioned it so the camera was aimed at the door.
After roaming the room for another minute and repositioning various items to make it look like someone was staying there, she opened the closet door and found a drawstring bag used for laundry service.
Vanessa put her suitcase on the luggage stand inside the closet, turned the laundry bag inside out to hide the hotel
logo, and then proceeded to change her clothes and pack the rest of her things into the drawstring bag.
She tucked her soiled clothes and everything she had been wearing in the airport into the dresser drawers, stringing them out so it looked like there was more in the drawers than there really was.
Retrieving her phone from her pocket, she downloaded and encrypted the two photos she had taken earlier, one of the female custodian and the other of the man who had claimed to be her contact.
She forwarded both photos to Warren with a single-word message: Compromised. Though she wished she could trust Warren to help her figure out what she should do next, she knew he would have to work within the framework of CIA operational policy. Vanessa didn’t feel she had that luxury at the moment.
She had hesitated to take Paige so fully into her confidence yesterday, but faced with her husband’s disappearance, she had felt she needed to keep all her resources available to her. Trusting Paige allowed her to do that.
She knew Paige wouldn’t have the ability to decrypt the photos, but she forwarded them to her as well, along with a different message: Make the call.
She did a thorough search of her purse to make sure no tracking devices had been planted on it. Satisfied she was signal free, she slid her purse onto her shoulder, picked up the laundry bag filled with her things, and walked out the door, making sure to put out the Do Not Disturb sign.
Leaving through a side exit, she strolled down the sidewalk and headed for the nearby shopping district.
Chapter 21
“Hello?” A man’s voice with a measure of audible concern came through the line.
“Hi, um, Vanessa told me to call you if I couldn’t get ahold of her. She isn’t answering my calls.”
“Who is this?” he demanded.
“My name is Paige. I’m Vanessa’s assistant.”
“Okay, Paige. Here’s what I need you to do. First you’re going to go to the drugstore and get a passport photo taken, and then you’re going to buy a pay-as-you-go cell phone.”
“All right,” Paige said, not sure why in the world she would need a new passport photo. She already had a passport. “Then what?”
“Then you’re going to bring them both to me at this address.” He rattled off an address in Virginia Beach. “Also, how old are you?”
“Twenty-four. Why?”
“Meet me at that address in thirty minutes.”
“Okay, I’ll see you then.” Paige hung up and headed for the door, wondering if maybe she was about to get more excitement in her life than she had intended.
* * *
“How can you go shopping at a time like this?” Damian asked Paige. He had been impressed so far that she seemed like such a logical, down-to-earth person. Yet now, in the middle of a crisis, she wanted to go to the store.
“I won’t be gone long. I promise.”
“It’s not a matter of how long you’ll be gone. What if Vanessa tries to call in and you’re in the middle of the grocery store?”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Then I’ll look like every other person who gets a phone call they feel they can’t ignore.”
“You know what I mean. You can hardly talk about classified information in the middle of the checkout line.”
“I’ve always thought that was quite rude, you know. Talking to someone else when you should be interacting with the cashier.”
“Paige.” Damian let out her name in an exasperated breath.
“I’ll be right back. Trust me.”
“Whatever. If you feel you have to go when we should be figuring out a way to save our bosses’ lives, then go right ahead.”
Paige put her hand on his arm and waited for him to look at her. “Trust me,” she repeated.
Damian was a little surprised to find that amidst the stress they were currently under, Paige had found some sense of calm.
He didn’t think she understood how frustrating she was being right now. He wanted her to stay here, to help him figure out how to reach Vanessa and find his team. Part of his conscious mind also recognized that he didn’t want to let her out of his sight, afraid for some irrational reason that she too might disappear and cause what little security he had left in his new life to unravel.
Realizing she was going to do what she wanted despite what he said, he waved a hand in surrender. “Go do what you need to do, but don’t be long, okay?”
“I won’t be. I’ll see you in a little while.”
Damian watched her go and forced himself to turn his attention back to the map on the wall. He looked at the target area, trying not to think that his team might be lying dead in some ravine somewhere or being tortured for information.
He shook those thoughts out of his mind. Positive thinking.
If stranding the Saint Squad truly was a decoy to draw Vanessa out into the open, then it was time he figured out where his team could be.
He knew much of the search area well. Besides spending the first thirteen years of his life in Venezuela, he had been back to visit at least once a year until he had joined the navy. During his year working in international banking, he had traveled there often.
Grabbing a notepad and pen, he redefined his search parameters and started making a list. He was going to find them. And he wasn’t going to stop until he did.
* * *
Andrea stormed into the room and threw her purse down on the couch. “She got away.”
“How?”
“I don’t know what you were thinking, sending some random government type as a backup plan, but I found him passed out in his car, and Vanessa Johnson was nowhere in sight.”
“How did she get past you?” Terrance asked.
“We were in a crowded airport with hundreds of people around,” she said, stating the obvious.
“Did you see her?”
“Yeah, I saw her,” Andrea confirmed.
“Then she probably saw you.”
“Don’t take that smug tone with me. What are we going to do now?”
“Find her,” Terrance said. “We know which hotel she was registered in.”
“She wasn’t there.”
“Then I suggest you start looking for her. She didn’t have transportation. Start with the rental car companies and taxi services. We know she didn’t walk away from the airport. You, Luis, or Pablo would have seen her.”
“This plan of yours had better work,” Andrea said irritably. “The money Morenta paid me for setting up the Saint Squad is almost gone.”
“It’s going to work,” he said confidently. “Of course, that’s assuming Morenta doesn’t find out what you’re up to. If he does, you won’t have to worry about the Americans anymore. You’ll be too dead to worry about anything.”
“Trust me. Only the three of us know what’s really going on,” Andrea assured him. “Morenta is pleased with the new trade routes we’ve set up, and he’s happy knowing he’s sent a message to the Americans by killing those SEALs. He’ll never know I accessed his files and found Ramir’s money.”
“I thought Rodrigo was suspicious,” he said, referring to Morenta’s righthand man.
“If he didn’t trust me, he would have told Morenta by now,” Andrea said, although her confidence wavered.
“Are you sure you can trust this silent partner of yours?”
“Absolutely. We just have to find Vanessa Johnson and do our part. When we’re done, we won’t have to deal with Rodrigo or Morenta anymore, and we’ll never have money problems again.”
* * *
Vanessa carried several shopping bags through one of the shopping districts in Maracaibo, her new purse hanging from her shoulder. Even though she hadn’t seen any visible sign of a tracking device on her other one, she didn’t want to take the chance that the man at the airport had put some kind of marking spray on it.
She knew her purse would be one of the best ways to track her since she would obviously change her clothes at some point in the next day. A purse, however, was something most
women rarely went without. Her old purse was now tucked safely beneath the table of the restaurant where she had stopped and indulged in her favorite drink from the region, a frozen papaya concoction.
After making a few additional clothing purchases, she had transferred the clothes she’d brought with her into the shopping bags and hid the laundry bag in the bottom of one. She now made her way down the street, away from the hotel she had checked into and toward several tall buildings she believed were also hotels. When she passed the first one, she did a quick threat analysis and decided it didn’t have enough exits if she ended up on an upper floor. The second one she approached belonged to a well-known American chain, and the one across the street looked a bit sketchy, with several twenty-something-year-old men loitering near the doorway.
She kept going, finally finding one she felt comfortable with. Not sure who might have access to her various aliases, Vanessa approached the desk, pulled a wad of Bolivars out of her pocket, and paid for two nights in cash.
As soon as she was checked in, she headed for the little café off the lobby rather than going to her room. She selected a table that had a clear view of the door and set her bags down in the chair beside her. She took her time looking over the menu, though she already knew she wanted arepas con queso.
When the cheese-filled corncakes arrived, she ate slowly, lingering over her meal. After more than an hour, she paid her bill and headed for the elevators.
Her room was basic, with two double beds on one side and a television perched on a wide dresser. Vanessa bolted her door closed and retrieved a sensor alarm from her purse. She attached it so that any movement of the door would set it off. Then she crossed to the window.
Though she knew many of the rooms at this hotel had a view of Lake Maracaibo, she considered herself fortunate that hers overlooked the street below. From the sixth floor, she was close enough to see the street clearly but high enough to have a decent view of the surrounding businesses.
Resigned to having to wait until Warren or Paige could decrypt and identify the photos she’d sent, she pulled the chair out from under the desk and set it by the window. She retrieved her tablet out of her purse and pulled up the app that would allow her to watch the video feed from the hidden camera she’d planted in her first hotel room.
Drop Zone Page 13
