Hard Edge

by Clare, Pamela

  Recon was important work. It saved lives. But it could be boring as fuck.

  He looked through the viewfinder, saw two guys with handguns tucked in the back of their jeans standing guard at the side door. Two more guys stood on the loading dock while a third sat on an overturned bucket, smoking a cigarette.

  Dylan snapped their photos. “It would be really great if one of those bastards in the abduction photos would step outside or if the hostages could just look out a window.”

  Jones laughed. “Dream on, brother.”

  Hours passed until Dylan needed to take a bathroom break. “Hey, can one of you take over? I need to hit the head.”

  Jones left the VPN, which was up and running, and took Dylan’s seat. “It’s going to rain. Look at those clouds coming over the mountains.”

  “En español. You should keep practicing.”

  Jones repeated those last words, struggling with the vocabulary. “Mira las nubes que vienen sobre los montañas.”

  “Las montañas. Jesus, man.” Dylan walked to the bathroom, shaking his head. “Mountains are feminine.”

  “Why are they feminine?” Jones called after him.

  “How should I know? Maybe they looked like big tits to some Spaniard.”

  It was raining when Dylan got back to the window.

  Jones didn’t budge, camera clicking. “Holy shit, man. That’s her—the nun.”

  “What?” Dylan took over, adjusted the focus, and stared. “¡Puñeta! You’re right.”

  There she was, unmistakable in her gray tunic and black veil.

  “This kind of shit never happens.” He clicked shot after shot, hoping to get a clear image of her face. “Turn your head, Sister. Just a little to the left.”

  As if she could hear him, she turned, looked to her left and then to her right, her hands held out as if to feel the rain, a smile on her pretty face.

  Click.

  “Yeah, that’s her for sure.”

  Segal leaned in, looked through the viewfinder himself. “It’s our lucky day, boys—and hers.”

  Dylan was still taking photos when a man stepped outside, grabbed the sister by her arm, and dragged her roughly back inside. Dylan snapped a few shots of his face, too, before the bastard disappeared.

  There’s a bullet in your future, asshole.

  Dylan popped out the camera’s memory card and handed it to Jones. “Let’s get this to Shields right away.”

  He looked down at the warehouse once more.

  Hang on, Sister. We’re coming.

  3

  Pitón shoved Gabriela so hard that she fell to the floor and struck her cheek. “You stupid bitch! Stay inside!”

  Topo was there to help her up. “If you hurt her, the Boss will have your balls. She just wanted to see the rain.”

  “Why does she need to see the rain? It’s just rain, güevón. If she goes outside, someone might see her and recognize her from the news.”

  That had been precisely the point—to let anyone who might have the warehouse under surveillance see that she was here. Delta Force usually handled hostage rescues, and there was no way they would charge in without knowing for certain that the hostages were here. Then again, the US wouldn’t risk getting caught on Venezuelan soil.

  There might not be a rescue.

  Gabriela straightened her tunic, doing her best to seem unfazed, her cheek throbbing. “Thank you, Topo.”

  “I’m sorry, Hermana.”

  She turned and faced Pitón. “I forgive you.”

  His face reddened, and he opened his mouth to speak.

  Gabriela cut him off. “You treat me like a prisoner, but I am no man’s captive. I can do God’s work, no matter where I am. There is no reason to behave like a guard dog. I would not try to escape and leave the hostages alone with you.”

  With that, she turned her back to him, determined to show him that he didn’t scare her. Her words seemed to have had their desired effect. When she glanced back, Pitón stood there, his eyes burning not with lust, but with loathing.

  She’d made an enemy of him. She’d dressed him down in front of the other men. He wasn’t the kind of man to put up with that. He would want to get even.

  But not today.

  She made her way downstairs and sank down on her blankets, the throb in her cheek now a headache.

  Dianne noticed first. “What happened?”

  Gabriela touched her fingers to her cheek. “I stepped outside to see the rain. One of the men didn’t like it. He dragged me inside and shoved me. I fell and hit my cheek on the floor.”

  Tim leaned in. “You’re probably going to have a black eye. The bastards. Er… Sorry, Sister.”

  “Do not be sorry.” Gabriela wished she had some ice. “God knows you are under great distress. Besides, I think you may be right. Some of them might be bastards.”

  She smiled at the shocked expressions on their faces. “Do you think I’ve never used profanity before?”

  “What made you decide to be a nun?” Dianne asked.

  Under Gordito’s glowering watch, Gabriela told them the story—how she’d known from an early age that she wanted something different for herself, how she’d always loved church, how her priest had arranged for her to meet a religious sister one Sunday after Mass.

  “Sister Benedicta invited me to visit her convent. I knew from the moment I stepped inside and felt the peacefulness that this was the life I was seeking.”

  Gabriela had told the story a hundred times and knew she was convincing. She’d spent months preparing for this assignment. But there was one element of truth in it.

  She’d been a restless teen and had, indeed, wanted more from life. She’d studied law enforcement, thinking she might be a detective or work for the FBI. But the Agency had recruited her after graduation, their interest piqued by her linguistic skills and her ties to Venezuela. She hadn’t looked back.

  “You’re so young.” Tim looked like he felt sorry for Gabriela. “Aren’t you going to wish one day that you had a husband or children?”

  How like a guy to think that all a woman needed to be happy was a guy.

  “The world is full of children who need food, shelter, and love. Those are my children, and I love them all. I know my own mind. For me, there is no love like the love of God.”

  Dianne smiled, looked over at Tim. “Is that hard for your male ego?”

  It was apparent the two had worked together for years and were good friends.

  Tim shook his head, stretched out on his blanket. “It’s just hard to understand. Sex is a basic human drive. I’m not sure how a person gives that up.”

  Gabriela loved sex. Not that she’d had many men. Her parents had been very strict when it came to boys. She’d had a serious boyfriend her last two years of college, but it hadn’t lasted beyond graduation. Mitch had wanted a traditional marriage. She’d wanted a career. Dating had become tricky after she’d joined the Agency.

  Even so, she was more old-fashioned than her friends. She wasn’t into casual sex or Tinder or online dating. Still, the idea of going without the possibility of sex for a year or more had been intimidating. To her surprise, she’d been so tired every night that she hadn’t even thought about it.

  Gabriela kept that to herself. “Do you want to hear what I miss most?”

  Dianne and Tim nodded almost in unison.

  “Blue jeans and rock music.” What she wouldn’t give for a classic rock station.

  “Shut up, over there!” Gordito shouted in Spanish. “You talk too much.”

  Head still aching, Gabriela sat on her blanket, folded her hands, and closed her eyes, as if she were in prayer. During these silent periods, she rarely prayed. Instead, she used the time to get focused, to think.

  Had anyone spotted her? Was the building under surveillance? Or had she gotten this black eye for no reason?

  * * *

  Dylan finished a quick-and-dirty workout of pushups, sit-ups, and squats and took a quick shower before s
itting down to a breakfast burrito of powdered eggs, black beans, salsa, and potatoes. “Hey, man, you make a good burrito.”

  “Don’t act so surprised.” Segal had been on duty all night, and it was his turn to make the morning meal. “Tel Aviv has some of the best Mexican food in the world.”

  Jones was on duty at the window. “Come on, man. Tel Aviv?”

  “Do you think all we Israelis eat is gefilte fish, latkes, and Chinese?” Segal sat down with his own plate. “Come taste for yourself.”

  Dylan took a sip of coffee. “Anything happening over there, brother?”

  “Nah, man. They’ve changed the guards a couple times, but I haven’t seen any of the hostages.”

  Last night, they’d broken out the thermal camera and done their best to peer through the windows. They hadn’t found the hostages, but they had learned a couple of things. Though there were guards on the roof, no one was positioned on the two upper floors, which remained completely dark. More importantly, there’d been a faint light coming from the small basement windows.

  Someone was down there.

  While Segal took a quick shower, Dylan finished his breakfast, did the dishes, and then relieved Jones so he could grab a bite.

  “I’m impressed,” Jones called over to him. “These burritos are good, even with the powdered eggs. Don’t tell Segal I said that.”

  Dylan chuckled. “And give him an even bigger head? No way.”

  “I heard that!” Segal yelled from the bathroom.

  Then it was time for their check-in with Shields and Tower.

  “We’ve run all the photos through face recognition and analyzed the footage from last night.” The image of Shields on their laptop’s monitor had frozen, but Dylan and the others could still hear her voice. “That’s definitely Sister María Catalina and the man who abducted her—a well-known sicario known as Python—Pitón.”

  So, that’s what the hijoeputa called himself.

  Time to cut the head off that snake.

  Shields went on. “There’s an almost one hundred percent probability that the other hostages are there, too.”

  “Could the nun be colluding with Sánchez or the cartel?” Segal had gone on about that yesterday evening. “The guards didn’t try to stop her when she walked outside.”

  Dylan found himself jumping once again to Sister María’s defense. “You saw that son of a bitch drag her back inside, right? That’s them trying to stop her.”

  “He did more than drag her inside.” The frozen image of Shields vanished from the screen, replaced by a photo of the warehouse door. “We magnified the images you sent. Not only did Pitón drag her back inside, but he also knocked her to the floor.”

  Dylan leaned close to the screen, Jones and Segal doing the same. In the grainy shadows of the open doorway, he could just make out that bastard shoving Sister María. In the next image, she was flat on the concrete.

  But Segal couldn’t let it go. “Why didn’t the other guards try to stop her?”

  “Venezuela is a predominantly Catholic nation,” Shields said. “These men might be uncomfortable treating a nun as a captive.”

  Dylan could understand that. “Yeah, man, nobody wants to mess with a nun.”

  Tower’s voice came over the speakers. “There’s more to it than that, but, yes, that’s essentially it. She’s been in communication with the Reverend Mother at the convent in Peru. Her captors allowed her to write a letter. Sánchez’s men have made her their go-between. She’s taking care of the hostages, and they’ve given her a little more freedom of movement. In this case, she crossed the line.”

  Dylan met Segal’s gaze. “Satisfied?”

  Segal waved off Dylan’s question. “Sure.”

  Shields appeared again. “So far, I’ve counted fifteen different men. I’ll keep analyzing the photos as you send them and see if that changes.”

  With a full Cobra team of six, they could take fifteen guys with no problem.

  “In the meantime, we need everything you can get us about the layout of the warehouse,” Tower said. “I need to know every way in and out of the building.”

  “Want us to knock on the door and ask for a tour?” Jones joked.

  “That wouldn’t be my first choice.” Tower didn’t even grin.

  Dylan had to bite back his own smile. “On it, boss. We’ll set up our black-market stand today, let them get used to seeing us in the neighborhood, try to scope the place out, maybe get a game of fútbol going.”

  Tower acknowledged that with a single nod of the head. “The images you captured last night show a low level of light coming from the basement, probably from a battery-operated lantern of some kind. It’s likely the hostages are there. We don’t want to risk killing them with stray rounds, and we don’t want these fuckers killing them when we start breaking down doors. Remember Sar-e Pol.”

  Sar-e Pol was a textbook example of a hostage rescue gone to hell. US special forces had moved in on an ISIS position where three Americans and one German were being held hostage. They hadn’t known that a guard was positioned near the hostages with instructions to blow them all sky high in case of a rescue attempt. The moment US operators moved in, the guard had clacked off an S-vest, killing himself, two operators, and all of the hostages.

  Of course, this wasn’t Afghanistan, and these fuckers sure as hell weren’t ISIS.

  Tower glanced at his watch. “Unless something comes up, our next check-in is at seventeen-hundred hours. Thanks.”

  The screen went dark. The meeting was over.

  * * *

  Gabriela met Pitón’s gaze without wavering. “What do you want Ms. Connelly to do—bleed through her clothes? Do you want to send her home in blood-stained trousers? What about when my time comes? Is this what you’d want for your mother or sister?”

  Dianne had brought this up last night, and Gabriela had seen an opportunity to get outside once again. She’d had intensive HUMINT training—human intelligence—and couldn’t imagine Pitón or any of these men wanting to ask on the streets about feminine hygiene products. If she could persuade them to let her do it…

  Pitón shifted uncomfortably, clearly not at ease with this topic. “I don’t know about such things. Tell her to use toilet paper.”

  “You told me we didn’t have much toilet paper. She could go through most of a roll in a single day. After a week—”

  “Topo!” Pitón gestured for Topo to join them. “We need some … things for the women prisoners. I need you to go and find …”

  Was it so hard to say?

  “Tampons or pads,” Gabriela finished for him.

  Topo stared at Pitón in horror. “You want me to ask on the street about … those things? ¡Mierda!”

  “I’m not going to do it.” Pitón reached in his pocket, drew out US dollars. “You go—and don’t spend too much.”

  Topo stepped back, shook his head. “I can’t—”

  “Mary, Mother of God, give me patience!” Gabriela saw her chance. Maybe this time, someone on the street would recognize her. “If you two brave men are so afraid of pads and tampons, then take me with you, and I’ll do it.”

  They stared at her, mouths open.

  Pitón caught her chin between his fingers, turned her face to look at her bruised cheek. “What about your face?”

  “You created that problem, not I.”

  Pitón stepped back, his expression shifting from anger to resignation. “Topo, take her with you. If she tries to run, shoot her. If she says anything she shouldn’t, shoot her. If she gets away from you, I’ll shoot you. Do you understand, güevón?”

  Topo nodded, looking less than happy about the arrangement. “Don’t run, Hermana. I don’t want to shoot you.”

  “I won’t run, Topo.”

  Topo reached inside his shirt and drew out the key that hung on a chain around his neck. He unlocked the main doors, and they walked out into the street, the sun warm on Gabriela’s face, the air humid but fresh.

  T
opo pointed with a jerk of his head. “Those men are selling things.”

  Almost directly across the street, two men were doing a brisk business in black-market goods, their wares stacked behind them.

  As she’d done last time, Gabriela turned her head to the left and to the right then looked upward, hoping to give anyone surveilling the place a good look at her face. “Let’s go and see what they have.”

  Gabriela crossed the street and waited her turn, watching the men work. One, a tall, good-looking black man, kept track of the money, a pistol visible in the waistband of his jeans, while his partner, a man with a Cuban accent, negotiated with customers, his face turned away from her.

  The first thing Gabriela noticed was how comparatively little these men were charging, not turning anyone away, but making sure that everyone was able to afford what they needed, whether they paid in bolivars, Colombian pesos, or US dollars. The mother who needed diapers and condoms, the grandmother who was desperate for corn flour, the boy sent for rice—no one left empty-handed.

  Then the Cuban turned to her, met her gaze—and Gabriela’s heart seemed to stop.

  God, he was good-looking, his features a mix of European, Latin, and African, his lips full, his eyes a light shade of gray.

  It took her a moment to realize he was speaking to her.

  His gaze focused on her bruised cheek. “Is there something you need, Hermana?”

  Somehow, she found the words. “Tampones o toallas sanitarias, por favor.” Tampons or pads, please.

  “Sí, we have those, but not here.” He turned to the man behind him, who hurried away. “I’ve sent my friend upstairs to get them.”

  “Gracias.” Gabriela glanced back to find Topo standing a good five feet behind her, probably embarrassed.

  “Is there anything else you need, Hermana?” the Cuban asked.

  She’d just opened her mouth to answer, when the man leaned closer and whispered for her ears alone.

  “We’re here to free you and the other hostages, Sister,” he said in perfect American English. “Don’t be afraid.”

  Holy shit!