“You little brat!” he roared in her face. “I’m gonna kill you and get this over with. You aren’t worth kidnapping!” He shoved her to the ground again.
Sophie landed hard on her back, the wind knocked out of her. Her blue eyes grew huge as the giant soldier raised his rifle and pointed it at her heaving chest. She saw him grin. His teeth were yellow and one of the front ones was missing.
“I’ll kill you and they’ll never know the difference.” He placed his finger on the trigger.
Giving a little cry, Sophie raised her hand, vainly trying to protect herself. She saw the rage in the man’s brown eyes. What had she done to make him hate her?
Just then, she saw another man, come running up behind the soldier.
“Ernesto! No!” the man growled, and jerked the rifle upward.
Sophie screamed as the gun discharged. The sound of the shot was instantly muted, swallowed up by the thick jungle around them. She saw the white man wrestle with her captor. Who was he? With two quick movements, he disarmed the soldier and knocked him off his feet, onto the muddy path.
“WHAT DO YOU THINK you’re doing?” he yelled at Ernesto. Mac Coulter breathed hard. He held the Peruvian soldier’s AK-47 in his left hand as he glared down at the man. “You don’t shoot children!” he snarled. Wiping his mouth, Mac turned to the little girl, who lay on the trail. His heart pounding in his chest, he crouched down and held out his hand to her.
“Sophie, I’m Mac. Mac Coulter. I need you to reach for my hand. Can you do that? You’re safe now. Come on….” He saw the blond girl’s huge blue eyes well with tears. She was a muddy mess, her thin gold hair covered with clay. The white cotton nightgown was stained a reddish-brown color. She seemed so little compared to him. Mac stilled his rage. He couldn’t blow his cover with Carlos Garcia. Not now. But he couldn’t let these soldiers, who would rather rape and kill any female, child or adult, get hold of Garcia’s latest victim.
“It’s okay,” he said soothingly, hearing Ernesto get to his feet behind him.
Sophie was watching the soldier with fear etched in her eyes. She was a beautiful child, Mac realized. He’d caught a glimpse of her yesterday in the villa, here at Garcia’s headquarters in the mountains near Agua Caliente. Mac had flown in a bunch of underworld leaders for a meeting at the drug lord’s estate near Machu Picchu, considered the national treasure of Peru. Too bad Garcia had built a huge villa, invisible from the air, only ten miles away from the beautiful Incan temple complex.
“I—I want my mommy!” Sophie wailed, pulling away from his proffered hand.
Mac’s heart contracted. He didn’t trust Ernesto. The soldier had syphilis and was crazy as hell from the disease eating away at what little brain cells he had left. Straightening to his full height, Mac turned and faced the heavily muscled soldier.
“Here,” he said, throwing the AK-47 back at him. “Get the hell out of here. Go back to the villa and tell the patrón I have the girl. I’ll bring her back myself. Now go!” He saw Ernesto’s chocolate-brown eyes narrow. The soldier held the rifle in his hands and stroked it.
“Don’t even go there,” Mac snarled, and he pulled the 9 mm Beretta out of the holster at his side. It was loaded and the safety was off. In the drug business no one ever went without a round in the chamber.
“Humph! Norteamericano trash!” Ernesto yelled. “I don’t know why Patrón Garcia keeps you on the payroll.”
Grinning savagely, Mac said, “Because I fly, shit-head. I fly any of his helos. Now get out of here and return to the villa. Call off the manhunt for the girl. I’ll bring her back myself.”
Lifting his lip, Ernesto barked, “This is not over, gringo.”
“It never is between you and me, compadre.”
After spitting vehemently, Ernesto turned and stomped back up the trail.
Relief flooded through Mac as he returned his attention to Sophie, who sobbed her heart out. His own heart wrenched. Sometimes being an ATF mole in this godforsaken green hell was too much for him to bear. It was enough that working undercover for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, Mac had to transport soldiers, drugs, plus Garcia and his spoiled wife, Paloma, around South America.
As he studied the muddy little child, he wanted to put a bullet into Garcia’s temple. The man was a sick bastard. But if Mac did that, he’d blow his cover—which had taken more than a year to develop—and could no longer feed information to the ATF. His main goal was to stay undercover long enough to identify all of Garcia’s drug ties and find out where the other drug lords lived. He would then give all that information to the ATF and the CIA so that an international sting operation could be coordinated to bring Garcia and his buddies down for good.
As Mac reached out for Sophie, he wanted to chuck the whole thing. He hated the fact that Garcia regularly kidnapped people; that was a way of life and a source of earnings for many people down here, including drug lords. But when it came to harmless, innocent children like Sophie, Mac could barely hang on to his composure.
“Come on, Sophie. It’s all right. I won’t hurt you. My name is Mac. Can we be friends?” He crouched down because he knew his size would intimidate her. He wore a shoulder holster as well as a sidearm over his dark green flight suit. Mac knew he looked scary to the child. She sat there and scrubbed her eyes with her dirty hands, making messy red circles around them. With a very slow movement, Mac opened the Velcro fastening of the pocket on his right thigh and pulled out a white linen handkerchief.
“Hey, I’d say you need a little cleaning up here.” He handed her the handkerchief. She hesitantly took it and then scrubbed her mud-streaked face. Behind him, Mac could hear the shouts dying down. Sophie hadn’t gone far from the fortresslike villa hidden in the jungle.
“I want my mommy….”
“I know you do. We’re working on that, Sophie. In the meantime, you have to come back to the villa with me. Can I carry you? Look at your toe. It’s bleeding. I think you stubbed it while running.” Her left big toe was bruised, swollen and purple, and Mac thought she might have broken it.
“Oh…” she whimpered.
“It’s okay, Sophie,” Mac said in English to her. “Will you let me take my other handkerchief and wrap it around your foot? We’ll get you cleaned up back at the villa. I’ll make sure your toe gets taken care of. Can you move it, honey?” He kept his voice low and soft. Little by little, Sophie responded. She held up her leg and wriggled all her toes. Grinning, Mac said, “Hey, that’s terrific, Sophie. Looks like you just stubbed it. Let me lift you up and take you back to the villa? I’ll get Señora Renaldo to clean it up for you. Okay?”
Renaldo was the latest nanny hired by Garcia to tend his only child, six-year-old Tiki, a beautiful black-haired little girl. Mac knew that the reason Sophie had been kidnapped was because Tiki was lonely, and she had a norteamericano doll with white skin, blond hair and blue eyes. Tiki had said she wanted a real doll matching that description. Garcia had put out a call to find a child around Tiki’s age, and poor little Sophie had been targeted.
“Where’s my mommy?” Sophie asked, sniffing.
“She’s at home in Lima,” Mac explained. He slowly eased up on one knee and held out his hands toward her. At first she cringed away, but then changed her mind and moved into his arms. When she wrapped her own slim arms around Mac’s neck, he nearly cried. Sophie clung to him as if desperate for protection.
“It’s going to be okay, Sophie,” he told her as he lifted her gently and got to his feet. Sophie buried her head against his neck and sobbed once. Mac could feel her trembling with fear as he turned and began to walk back to the villa. Mac purposely kept to a snail’s pace in order to give Sophie time to settle down.
“My daddy smells like you,” she muffled against his neck. “He always smells of lime.”
Mac smiled, watching his footing. The many woody vines were a precarious trap for anyone following the animal trails around the villa. “Well, I was running pretty hard to find you
, so I don’t think I smell all that good right now.”
Out in this humid jungle, everyone sweated profusely, and he was no exception. On any given day, as he flew to and from the mountain retreat to cool, dry Cuzco, which sat at nearly thirteen thousand feet, the underarms of his flight suit were dark with sweat.
“Is…is Daddy looking for me? What happened? Where am I?”
Holding his large hand against the small of her back, Mac patted her soothingly. “Sophie, you’ve been taken from your home, but I know your mother and father are looking for you. I’m sure they will do everything to get you back home.” Soon, he hoped, but from what he’d heard from the housecleaning staff at the villa, Garcia had taken Sophie as a permanent playmate for Tiki. That meant that the American child would become a virtual prisoner to Garcia’s family, with no hope of escape. His heart broke.
His mind churned over ways he might get her home, but none of the plans he’d come up with would work. No, if he tried to get Sophie out of here, he’d blow his cover, and then all of his work would be for nothing. How could he reconcile one child’s life against bringing down a drug empire? Was it really worth it? Sophie was innocent. One more helpless victim in the global drug war.
Mac knew the protocol for South American KNRs. The Press would be kept out of it. Everything would be handled behind the scene. As Mac walked along the trail, moving up the steep incline toward the green-painted stucco villa, his hatred for Garcia mounted. And that kept him going, kept him focused on his mission.
As he entered the villa, Mac heard Garcia screaming. He halted just inside the foyer of the main house, which the heavily armed soldiers at the door allowed him to enter. After scraping his muddy boots on the woven rug, an Incan design of red, yellow and orange, Mac waited. He knew this villa like the back of his hand and had sent off a carefully sketched diagram of it to his Washington contacts many months ago.
The screaming continued, and Mac could tell it came from Tiki’s playroom. Garcia was shrieking at the nanny, Señora Renaldo.
“You stupid bitch! You let her escape! Who do you think you are? You were supposed to watch Sophie! She’s Tiki’s playmate! And what do you do? You let her out of your sight!” Then he slapped her.
Mac placed his free hand over Sophie’s ear to keep the girl from hearing Paulino Renaldo’s shriek of outrage. Damn, he’d like to get Sophie away from this, but at this point there was no place to go.
“I’m tired of you! Antonio, take her out and get rid of her. Permanently. I’m gonna get someone in here who knows what she’s doing!”
Mac heard the nanny put up a fight. After all, she was trained in the martial arts. He knew that Antonio, one of many guards in charge of protecting the child, would handcuff the older woman outside and taken under heavy security to a remote location where he’d put a bullet in her head. Then they’d dump her body in the nearby Urubamba River, and her lifeless form would be swallowed up by the restless, angry water, never to be seen again by her family in Lima.
As Paulino’s angered curses echoed off the walls, Mac moved into the spacious living room. He then crept quickly into the kitchen, which distanced them from the woman’s piteous screams.
Within minutes, the villa became quiet again. Mac continued to hold Sophie safely in his arms near the kitchen counter. The kitchen staff, their eyes wide with fear, had backed off and left Mac with the girl.
“Where is my golden-haired child?”
Cringing inwardly, Mac heard Garcia’s voice. His stomach clenched. He hated himself, because now he would have to hand Sophie over to the bastard. This child was playing hell on every emotion he had. Under any other circumstances, Mac would have gotten her back to her worried, grieving parents. Swallowing bile, he moved out of the kitchen, meeting Carlos Garcia in the living room. His boss was casually dressed in a white peasant shirt, jeans and sneakers. It was Garcia’s black eyes, narrowed and glittering, that made Mac halt with Sophie in his arms.
“Is she all right, Coulter? You found her, yes?”
Mac wanted to pull away as Garcia reached out with his strong, athletic hand to touch the little girl’s back. The moment he did, the little girl cried out and clung even more securely to Mac.
“She’s okay, Patrón. Ernesto found her. I told him I’d carry her back to the villa. Look, she’s stubbed her toe pretty badly. Can I take her over to the dispensary so Dr. Macedo can treat her? In this jungle, infection can set in and become deadly. I think she tripped over a vine on the trail.”
“Oh, of course, of course,” Garcia patted Sophie’s small shoulder. “She’s wet, too. That damn nanny! I’m tired of her whining and excuses. Now I must look for another one.”
“I’d get someone with a military background this time,” Mac said. “You’ve had trouble with nannies since I started working here.” Señora Renaldo was the second one to be dispensed in such a way. All it took was for the spoiled Tiki to complain to her daddy about her mean nanny, and the woman disappeared—for good.
“Perhaps you are right.” Garcia lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. He motioned for Coulter to walk toward the door. “Sí, take her to the doctor. I will accompany you. Therese is with Tiki, now. Poor little nena, baby. She is crying because she misses her Sophie here.”
Gritting his teeth, Mac nodded his head. He shifted Sophie to his left side so that Garcia couldn’t keep reaching out to pet her as if she was were a dog. “I’m sure Tiki is upset.”
Tiki was spoiled as hell, like Garcia’s twenty-four-year-old drug addict wife, Paloma. The woman was either high on heroin or drinking tequila until she passed out in a stupor. Paloma had a body that wouldn’t quit, which was why Garcia had decided to marry her. How Tiki ever got born was something Mac didn’t understand, because the woman was clearly an addict bent on dying from an overdose.
“I like your idea, Mac. Perhaps I should be looking for a nanny with a military background. Perhaps that is where I made my mistake.”
Mac knew that Garcia had already lured three or four South American women trained in child care to his compound and put them through a life-and-death test to see if they passed muster. Of course, not many lived to tell about it. The few that did survive suddenly found themselves in Garcia’s employment with no way to escape. In essence, the surviving nanny with martial arts and weapons skills was as much a prisoner of Garcia as was Sophie. Only they didn’t know that was going to happen. Once in the employ of a drug lord, one never left unless in a body bag.
“Hmm,” Carlos murmured as he walked through the open door and out into the parking area, “perhaps I need to expand my search, for a different kind of nanny.” He turned and waited for Mac to catch up. Together they headed for a single-story dark green stucco building against the north wall of the complex.
“So far, you’ve chosen all Spanish women. I know England is renowned for its trained nannies.” Mac was making small talk. He knew next to nothing about child care.
The sky above was still gray, with low-hanging humid clouds, but at this time of morning it was always like that. Around noon the clouds lifted, burning off in the powerful equatorial sunlight. The sky would turn a hazy blue—just right for flying. Mac would give anything to be flying right now, just to escape being around this bastard.
“I know!” Carlos snapped his fingers and turned toward him. “I hate the English! They’re so arrogant. They think they are a superior species compared to the rest of the world. But what do you think about a Canadian nanny? Perhaps a woman with a military background? Canadians aren’t pretentious. I don’t want a supercilious snob looking after my little Tiki.”
Shrugging, Mac let the guard stationed at the dispensary open the door for them. Carlos walked through first. “Sounds okay to me.” Mac felt sorry for whomever Garcia would find. His field operatives would put out feelers, lure the poor women down here.
Carlos hailed Dr. Pablo Macedo as they walked into one of the examination rooms. Mac gently set Sophie down on the gurney. As he smoothed her stra
ight, dirty hair back from her face, he smiled down at her.
“Sophie, the doctor will help your toe. He’s a good man and he won’t hurt you.” Mac kept his hand cupped around her small shoulder.
Sophie gave a quick glance at Garcia, who stood near the door, smoking his cigarette. A feral look blazed in her huge blue eyes. All Mac could do was pat her back and try to give her some form of solace. He knew children had a strong sixth sense. They were like primal animals and reacted instinctively to danger. There was no question that Garcia was a danger to Sophie.
“She seems taken with you, Mac,” Garcia said, studying him intently through the haze of cigarette smoke. “I’ll tell you what. I am going to take you off the flight roster. I want you to temporarily be Tiki and Sophie’s bodyguard for me. I know, I know, you’re not a nanny, but I want this little one to know she has a friend at the villa until she can make friends with Tiki. Yes?”
Mac stood there, thunderstruck. One part of him thought it was a great idea because he could protect Sophie and try to help her adjust to her imprisonment. The other part—dealing with spoiled Tiki and drunken Paloma—didn’t sit well with him. Still, little Sophie looked so forlorn. He might not be able to rescue her from this ugly situation, but he could provide her some badly needed care and comfort.
“Well…I…”
“Look how she adores you, compadre.” Carlos grinned and flipped his manicured hand toward Sophie. “Right now what I need is for her to befriend my beloved Tiki. I’ll get a babysitter within twenty-four hours. You’re too valuable a pilot to remain on the ground for long.”
“I’m not real good with kids, Patrón. All I know how to do is fly.” That was a lie, but Mac could never let the drug lord know the full scope of his skills. Not yet.
“I understand that. And I do not expect you to be a bodyguard for too long.”
“And if Tiki goes crying to you, are you going to take me out in the bush like you did the nannies?” Mac grinned, but he wasn’t kidding.
Carlos’s eyes lit up with amusement. “No, no, do not worry about that. You are my best pilot! I don’t get rid of people who do their job right. And if Tiki cries, we will deal with those situations as they arise? I’m sure my contacts in Canada will find qualified nannies in a week or two. This is only temporary, I assure you.”
Enemy Mine Page 5
