Kidnap & Ransom

by Michelle Gagnon

  “Bulletproof. Thank God for small favors,” Syd said.

  Maltz gunned the engine, and the truck forged ahead.

  “Everyone okay back there?” Syd called out.

  “Be a lot better if the ride was smoother,” Brown grumbled.

  “Feel free to walk,” Syd said. “Your choice.”

  There was no response.

  Maltz turned right again. The exit gates were a few hundred yards away.

  “Almost there,” Syd said. Jake barely dared to breathe.

  Suddenly the whump of rotors was overhead. The same helicopter Jake had seen before swept past, spun and lowered down to face them, blocking the exit. The spotlight zeroed in on the cab, blinding them. Jake held up a hand to block the glare. Maltz slowed, then came to a stop.

  Kane pointed the rocket launcher forward and glanced questioningly at Syd. Her lips pursed.

  “Hold off, they’re not firing on us yet,” she said, laying a hand on it. She called into the back, “Brown, we’ve got company!”

  A pause, then Brown said, “What do you want to do?”

  “It’s a Bell 206 armed with missiles. Stand down for now.”

  Someone barked orders in Spanish through a bullhorn. Ropes unraveled from the chopper and dark figures slid down them. Within minutes they were surrounded by men in uniforms labeled PGR, brandishing automatic weapons.

  Jake felt a flare of rage. This was the helicopter that had killed Mark. These people were responsible for his death. He reached past Kane and turned the door handle.

  “Jake, wait—” Syd protested.

  He ignored her. Slinging his legs over and climbing out, he started to lift his sidearm. The bullhorn blared again. The voice sounded angry. Jake ignored it. He marched straight toward the helicopter, prepared to fire.

  “Jake, no!” a voice shouted.

  Jake froze, disoriented. This time the protest was coming from the helicopter. Another figure appeared in the door and slid down a rope, then came running toward him. He lowered his gun when he saw who it was.

  “Isabela?”

  Syd was half out the truck cab, prepared to cover Jake and most likely get mown down, when lo and behold the pharmacist appeared. Syd frowned. Isabela wore the same black uniform as the men surrounding them, a PGR patch on her sleeve. At an order from her, they lowered their weapons—some more reluctantly than others.

  “What the hell is going on?” Maltz asked, perplexed. “That the chick Riley showed up with?”

  Brown’s head poked through the canvas. “Still holding back here?”

  “Looks like it,” Syd said. “Hang on, I’ll be right back.”

  She climbed down and slowly approached Jake and Isabela, keeping her sidearm ready. “So,” she said. “Looks like you weren’t telling us everything after all.” Syd glanced at Jake, finding it overwhelmingly hard to resist saying “I told you so.”

  “My apologies.” Isabela’s meek demeanor had vanished. “I was working undercover in the pharmacy, trying to infiltrate Los Zetas distribution system. Mark nearly ruined months of work.”

  “You should have told us.” Jake sounded enraged. Syd’s grip on her H&K tightened.

  “I wasn’t sure I could trust you.”

  “PGR works for the Attorney General, right?” Syd said.

  “Yes. We handle anything narcotics-related.”

  “So that intel about the rival cartel raid?”

  “Our operatives within the Sinaloa cartel spent months convincing them to attack. When you showed up, we realized if anything went wrong we could blame the Americans. So we changed the timetable.” Isabela surveyed the wreckage around them. “It worked. We probably set both cartels back years.”

  Jake spat out, “You sent my brother on a suicide mission.” His fists were curled in tight balls, jaw clenched.

  “It was important. The man he was rescuing was one of our best agents.” She looked around. “Where is Mark? In the truck?”

  “He was killed by a rocket from your helicopter,” Jake said. “The fire nearly took out every prisoner here, too.”

  Isabela waved an arm, and the men surrounding the truck headed away from them in twos. “They’ll save as many as they can. We already have units opening pens on the north side.” She regarded him. “I’m sorry about Mark.”

  “He only went back because he thought he was saving your father. And a lot of those prisoners were executed.”

  Isabela shrugged. “It was a calculated risk. We had other lives to worry about.”

  “Not ours, apparently,” Syd said. “Since you made sure we’d go in first.”

  Isabela appraised her. “Yes, but you were going in anyway. This created the distraction you needed, otherwise none of you might have survived. Did you free Calderon?”

  Syd eyed Jake, who looked ready to empty a clip in Isabela’s head. Which she’d be in favor of, if it wouldn’t get them all killed. She stepped in between them. “We got our guys,” Syd said. “I doubt yours made it, though.”

  “That is a shame. Garcia was a good man.” Despite her words, Isabela didn’t appear particularly dismayed by the loss. She looked past them. “You are sure Mark is dead?”

  Jake whirled around. A two-headed beast shrouded in soot and blood and dirt was approaching through a haze of smoke.

  Kane slid out of the cab and raced to help ease the second man to the ground. The other figure straightened, and Jake’s heart leaped. It was his brother.

  “Mark!” he yelled, running forward.

  Mark took a step, then faltered and dropped to the ground.

  Thirty-Five

  “What are these things?” Rodriguez asked, running a hand over the bumpy white wall they crept along. The building Stefan had entered was still fifty feet away. They’d opted to get as close as possible before risking the open plaza. That meant winding through a jagged maze that just cleared their shoulders. They stayed low, trying to move silently.

  “They look like skulls,” Kelly said. Rodriguez jerked his hand away. “Ritual sacrifice, remember?”

  “As if this place weren’t creepy enough,” Rodriguez muttered.

  Kelly waved a hand to silence him. They were almost at the end of the row. From here, they’d have to cross a wide plaza leading to the chamber Stefan had vanished into.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  Rodriguez nodded, and she set off at a trot. Her right leg screamed with every step. Long lines of pain shot up her hip and into her lower back. Kelly gritted her teeth and tried to ignore it. Painfully aware of the gravel crunching underfoot, she panned her Glock from side to side. The shadows were impenetrable. Had Stefan heard them? Was he waiting to pounce?

  It felt like an eternity before she reached the small opening Stefan had vanished into. It appeared to be one of the less excavated sections of the ruins. No concrete buttressed the floor, and the entry was a three-foot-tall slit in the mottled stone.

  “Ladies first,” Rodriguez murmured.

  Taking a deep breath, Kelly eased her way inside. Darkness swallowed her completely. She had a flashlight in her pack, but didn’t dare use it. The floor sloped down at a slight angle, as if they were descending into the bowels of the earth.

  “What is it with you and tunnels?” Rodriguez muttered in her ear.

  Kelly didn’t reply, although she’d been wondering the same thing.

  She felt her way along the rough wall, hoping the bumps under her fingers weren’t more human skulls. It was hard to gauge distance, but after what felt like fifty feet she detected a glimmer up ahead. Kelly slowed her steps, trying to creep soundlessly toward the light source.

  The tunnel they were in terminated abruptly at a larger chamber. Kelly stopped just shy of the entrance. A shadow suddenly darkened the doorway. She drew back and held her breath. After a moment, it disappeared.

  In a low voice Rodriguez said, “Let’s take him now.”

  Kelly nodded her assent. She crept forward, a foot at a time. More shadows flickered and danced
across the walls—the light must be from candles.

  Kelly peeked her head into the room, then frowned. She felt Rodriguez at her shoulder.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “He’s gone.”

  “What?” Rodriguez poked his head up alongside hers. The chamber was wider than Kelly had expected, a rough oval twenty feet in diameter. There were no other visible exits.

  “Where the hell did he go?”

  Kelly stepped into the room. It was empty save for a candle guttering in a glass jar. Faded murals lined the walls, pocked by small enclaves holding heaps of bones. A thin layer of dust hovered above the dirt floor. Kelly held a finger to her nose, fighting off a sneeze.

  “Man,” Rodriguez said. “This guy really is magic. How does he keep doing that?”

  “Not magic. There has to be another way out,” Kelly said with determination. Stefan was flesh and blood—their fight had proven that. She thought back to their encounter at the university years earlier. “Check for trapdoors.”

  “Yeah? That seems a little…unlikely,” Rodriguez said. “This is an archaeological excavation. Professionals have been all over this site. If there were a secret entrance, they’d probably have found it by now.”

  “Maybe not. Stefan could have stumbled across something in his research.”

  “All right.” Rodriguez sounded dubious, but he moved across the floor, scuffing up small clouds of dust with his shoes. Kelly moved along the opposite wall, scanning the floor for any discrepancies.

  They met at the far side of the room. “Nothing,” Rodriguez said, mystified. He thought for a moment. “I saw something on the Discovery Channel last month, about a temple in Pacal. There were four stone plugs in the floor and a hidden stairway underneath that led eighty feet down. No plugs here, though.”

  “There are these.” Kelly went to the nearest inset in the wall. It was shallow, no more than a foot deep. Inside lay a stacked skeleton with a head on top.

  “That’s odd.” Rodriguez pointed to the skull. “A dog?”

  “A wolf,” Kelly said, recognition dawning. The first time she’d encountered Stefan, he’d been enthralled by a wolf myth. Finding a wolf skeleton here had to be more than coincidence.

  “Is there anything beneath it?” Kelly reached her hand in, sifting through the bones.

  “I bet you just messed up decades worth of research,” Rodriguez said. She drew her hand back out. “Anything?”

  Kelly shook her head, frustrated. Her eyes shifted to the candle. It waved back and forth, sending a stream of oily smoke back toward the tunnel. She frowned.

  “What is it?”

  “The candle should be flickering the other way, from the wind coming in the doorway.”

  “Huh.” Rodriguez ran his hands along the mural opposite the door. Stopping, he licked his palm, then held it up. “It’s coming from here,” he said.

  Kelly came to stand at his shoulder. The mural they faced portrayed an exotic beast with an elaborate tail and glowering eyes. She bent to examine it. The eyes weren’t painted on: they were small holes, drilled straight through the chamber’s rock wall.

  “Well, he didn’t fit through those,” Rodriguez said.

  “You remember anything else from that special?” Kelly asked.

  “God, I was half asleep…” Rodriguez ran a hand over his face. “They were talking about how the Aztecs might have used sound, some sort of harmonic thing.”

  “Like music?” Kelly said.

  “Yeah, the rocks were tuned to a specific frequency. Or something like that.”

  “I didn’t hear Stefan making any sounds.”

  “Some of them were beyond human perception, like dog whistles.” Danny shrugged at her skeptical look. “Hey, you asked. I wasn’t the one who made it up.”

  “How the hell did he get out of here?” Kelly said, frustrated.

  “I have an idea.” Rodriguez slung the backpack off his shoulder. “But it’ll probably get us both arrested again.”

  “What is it?”

  Rodriguez unzipped the pack and dug through it. After a second, he withdrew a beige brick and held it up for her to see. “I snagged this from Uncle Pablo.”

  “Is that C4?” Kelly asked.

  “Yup. Your call, Chief. Is this guy worth making us enemies of the Mexican state, and archaeologists everywhere?”

  Jake raced to his brother’s side. Mark lay on the ground, completely still. Jake rolled him over and checked for a pulse: it was there, but barely. Streams of blood ran down his cheeks. More flowed from cuts along his arms and legs. Pieces of wood and shrapnel jutted out from the tattered remains of his Kevlar vest. Jake tugged at the Velcro sides, trying to get it off, but Syd stopped him.

  “We don’t know if any shrapnel penetrated,” she said. “The vest might be the only thing keeping him from bleeding out.”

  Jake swiped a hand across his forehead. Isabela was a few feet away, deep in discussion with one of her men. “Hey!” He stood abruptly and shoved the guy aside, getting in her face. “You got a doctor here?”

  “Field medic,” she said. “He’s looking over our man first.”

  The guy Mark had been carrying lay a few feet away. One of the army soldiers was tightening a tourniquet around his leg. “Well, he just dropped into second place.”

  Isabela’s eyes narrowed. “Garcia was imprisoned here for months. He’s been shot.”

  “And my brother saved him. Now call over that medic.”

  Her jaw tightened, but after a second she barked an order. The medic trotted over to Mark’s side. Jake took a knee beside him, watching the shallow rise and fall of his brother’s chest.

  The medic checked Mark’s vitals, then probed a few of the larger pieces of shrapnel with his hands. He looked up and met Jake’s eyes. It didn’t take a translator to tell what he was thinking.

  Jake yelled for Isabela. She approached warily.

  “Where’s the nearest hospital?” he asked.

  “Fifty miles away.” She eyed Mark. “But the one in Mexico City is better equipped for this sort of trauma. That is where we are sending Garcia.”

  “Take Mark, too.”

  “We are in the middle of an operation—”

  “Our team can help with the cleanup,” Jake said forcefully. “Now do the right thing by Mark. You owe him.”

  Isabela said something to the medic. He rattled off a reply. A shadow crossed her face. “Mario says he probably would not survive the journey,” she said. “It would be a wasted trip.”

  “You don’t know my brother,” Jake said. “Now load him on the chopper.”

  She cocked her head to the side. “I really am sorry, but I do not have the authority to do that. My first responsibility is to my men. I can make sure that Mark is loaded on the next trip, but we have other casualties.”

  “Please,” Jake said. “You can save him.”

  Isabela hesitated, then called over two of her men. They approached the stretcher. “Your people will stay as long as we need them,” she said sharply. “And they will follow my orders.”

  “You got this?” Jake turned to Syd.

  “Sure, partner. I got this.” She squeezed his shoulder. “He’s going to be okay.”

  Jake didn’t answer. He wrapped his arms around Syd and drew her to his chest. Then he trotted after the stretcher.

  “The buses will be arriving shortly,” Isabela said. “You will help me load the former prisoners on, make sure none of the Zetas try to join them.”

  “Got it,” Syd said, but her eyes were focused on the chopper as it lifted off the ground and ascended into the night sky.

  Flores turned into the parking lot, bringing the Hilux to a stop in front of Room 12. He drew a deep breath. After everything that had happened in the past few days, this tranquil motel with adobe walls shedding white paint seemed surreal. It was going to take a while for normal to seem normal again.

  “I got to piss like a racehorse,” Decker announced, throwing open the d
oor and stepping out.

  Beside him, Calderon stretched his arms up, face splitting in a grin. “Strange, isn’t it? I can’t wait for a shower, amigo.”

  “I bet.” Flores got out and went around to the back of the truck. He grabbed a wool blanket and spread it over the truck bed.

  It took a second to realize that Calderon had followed. His eyes narrowed as he took in the boxes. “What are these?”

  Flores shrugged. “Don’t know. But some of it looks like ordnance, probably better to keep it covered.” As he tucked the blanket around a box in the far corner, he discreetly swept the Tyr folder beneath it.

  “Perhaps we should—”

  “Cesar!”

  A small man whom Flores recognized as Calderon’s subordinate burst out the door of Room 14. “Thank God you’re all right!”

  Calderon extended his arms. “Linus, my friend. Good to see you.”

  “Yes, well…” Linus’s nose wrinkled. Rather than a hug, he awkwardly patted Calderon’s outstretched arms.

  Calderon laughed. “I smell that bad?”

  “No, of course not. Well…let’s get you inside. You can shower in my room. I have a change of clothes, too. They might be a little…”

  Flores leaned against the bumper, listening to their voices recede. The door to Linus’s room shut behind them. After a moment, Decker came to join him.

  “Here.” Decker tossed him an energy bar. Flores tore open the package with his teeth and devoured it. “I got more where that came from,” Decker said. “Or we can head down the road, it’s early but maybe that taco place will open up if we ask nicely.”

  “We’d have to take Calderon,” Flores said.

  “Yeah, and Smiley. Why? What’s eating you?”

  “There a computer here I can use?”

  “Sure. Wireless is spotty, though.” The door to Room 12 remained ajar. Decker led him inside and directed him to a Toughbook perched on a table in the corner. “Help yourself.”