“What woman?”
“I’ve lost them,” John called out as he looked away from the console. “I don’t dare push the Scimitar any farther or we run the risk of losing the link.”
“Keep it on station,” Buck replied without taking his eyes from Lauren. “What woman?”
“We enhanced the photos.” Lauren eyed her briefcase. “Hell, it’s faster to show you what I’ve discovered.”
“A military jeep just pulled up,” William said.
“Hold that thought,” Buck said to Lauren, and then rushed to meet the soldier who was coming up the stairs of the Gulfstream.
Lauren snatched her computer from its case and quickly powered it up. She sat, silently urging her computer to cycle through its start-up protocols. She watched as Buck stowed the heavy satchel he’d gotten from the soldier and pushed the button that retracted the stairs into the fuselage of the Galileo.
“Michael, let’s go!” Buck called over his shoulder as the heavy door locked into place.
Lauren typed in her passwords and found the file that Montero had sent her. She could hear the sound of the Gulfstream’s first engine begin to spool up. She clicked the mouse and the first picture appeared on the screen. She looked up as both William and Buck leaned in over her shoulder. She didn’t say a word as she clicked through the sequence. When she pulled up the final image, the one showing the computer-enhanced tattoo, she saw Buck’s jaw harden and his eyes threatened to burn through the screen.
“Look familiar?” Lauren sat back and studied Buck’s face.
Buck nodded. “I saw it this morning—when I was helping Eva put on her bulletproof vest.”
“She’s one of them,” Lauren said as she heard Michael start the second engine.
“Son-of-a-bitch!” Buck shook his head in frustration. “She played us the entire time.”
“She took the Navy SEAL out of the equation, and now she has Donovan, and the money.”
“Michael!” Buck spun and called toward the cockpit. “Get us in the air—now!”
Lauren began typing, accessed the Galileo’s hard drive from memory, and quickly found Eva’s picture. She attached it to an e-mail, typed “urgent” in the subject line, and then pounded out a short message:
Ronnie, this is the woman with the angel tattoo. She goes by the name Eva Rios.
–Lauren
She finished by including the number of the Galileo’s satellite phone, hit “send,” then reached for her phone. Montero picked up almost immediately.
“I just sent you an e-mail with a picture,” Lauren said without introduction or pleasantries. “It’s her, Eva Rios.”
“I’m looking at the photo as we speak,” Montero said. “I’m on it.”
“As fast as you can. She has Donovan and Stephanie.”
“Oh no,” Montero whispered.
Lauren disconnected the call as the Gulfstream moved away from the hangar toward the runway. She sat down and strapped herself in tightly. Never, in her years aboard Eco-Watch’s Gulfstream, had she seen the pilots taxi as fast as they were this moment. Michael only slowed as he made a turn, and swung the big jet onto the runway and pushed up the throttles. The Galileo swayed gently from side to side as it hurdled forward and accelerated rapidly before lifting free from the concrete. Michael pointed the Galileo skyward and they were immediately swallowed by the low-hanging clouds.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Donovan was strapped into the front seat of the noisy Cessna. To his left sat the pilot, a young man with a grim expression and a serious demeanor who knew what he was doing in the cockpit. His practiced hands flew around and he quickly had the engine started and wasted no time in taxiing toward the runway.
There was no other traffic, and Donovan watched as the pilot smoothly added power to the three hundred-horsepower engine, and the lightly loaded Cessna surged forward. As they lifted off, Donovan saw the Galileo sitting outside the USGS hangar, and next to it sat another Gulfstream. The registration number told him it was from the US, but he had no idea who it might have brought down, or if it had anything to do with William or Eco-Watch. The last thing he saw before they left the airport behind them was the main rotor blades on the helicopter begin to turn.
They’d started flying south, but after ten minutes or so, the pilot had abruptly banked the Cessna to the west. Donovan had been watching—the pilot had been very casual about how he flew until the last few minutes. The ceiling kept dropping, as rain splattered and vaporized against the plastic windshield. Now the young man was sitting up straight, straining to keep them over the narrow ribbon of road directly beneath the airplane. It was their only defense against flying into the cloud-obscured hills.
The money was secured in the baggage compartment behind Eva. As they’d boarded, she’d whispered to him that she was afraid of heights. She sat rock-still, her arms wrapped defensively across her chest, her face a mask of anxiety.
Donovan hadn’t been offered a headset, so he had no idea who the pilot was talking with. The frequency he’d set in the radio could be anyone—air traffic control, another airplane, or the kidnappers themselves. Donovan had hundreds of hours in small single-engine airplanes like this one—though he’d never actually flown an amphibian. The pilot in him had soaked up everything that was going on around them. The floats beneath them had wheels that could be used on land or retract so they could land on water. If the airplane was headed anywhere other than Lake Atitlán, he’d be surprised. It was also the last place he wanted to go.
Now that they were airborne, he forced himself to try to relax. The lake was a good twenty minutes away. He knew it would all start in earnest once they landed, but at least he had a small breather, a time-out to try to mentally prepare for what was about to happen. He’d tried to keep Eva relaxed, but as they’d climbed into the Cessna, he’d seen the unmistakable signs of the nonstop fear she’d endured. She moved slowly and without emotion. He had no idea what was running through her mind—he turned and glanced back at her again and was met with the vacant eyes of someone who looked past the point of caring. It crossed his mind that perhaps she’d never been in an airplane before. If she’d grown up in a small village, that possibility wasn’t out of the question.
Donovan had faith that Buck and John had managed to follow them after the car swap, and that the Scimitar was poised overhead, still tracking them. The kidnappers had played their hand well, leading them through the city, and then ending up guiding them back to the airport. The other scenario, the one that Donovan understood was just as real, was that they’d lost him—that none of his friends had any idea he was in a small plane flying to what must finally be the rendezvous at Lake Atitlán. If that were the case, then he and Eva were in trouble. Donovan thought about the .40 caliber Sig tucked into the waistband of his pants and wondered if it would be enough.
The rain started hitting the windshield harder and the sudden onset of turbulence jolted Donovan’s attention outside the Cessna. The forward visibility had dropped to less than a mile, and they were gradually descending to maintain contact with the ground, now less than three hundred feet above the rain-slicked road. The pilot inched them closer to the lush green hillsides and began a series of well-choreographed turns that kept them centered directly over the highway. Donovan couldn’t do anything but watch as their wingtips seemed to reach out for the treetops as the pilot flew them through the valley.
Turbulence shook the small Cessna, and a rivulet of water leaked from above and dropped onto Donovan’s pant leg.
He raised his voice above the roar of the engine and the slipstream. “Can we still get there?”
The pilot simply nodded and turned his attention back to the delicate flying that now required his full concentration. Donovan looked back at Eva and saw that she looked pale and more than a little queasy. The visibility ahead was getting even worse. Donovan eyed the ragged bases of the clouds. Flying in this terrain without local knowledge would be nothing more than an accident waiting t
o happen. It was like walking through your own house in the dark, you could make it to the bathroom, but try it in a strange house, and you were going to run into something.
The small Cessna sliced through the hanging wisps of gray clouds, and Donovan felt the G-force from the steep bank push him down in the seat. As they sped westward, he looked down as the ground rushed past in a blur, then out front, where the rising terrain marked the narrow mountain pass they needed to navigate. The weather dead ahead looked worse than what they’d been flying through. Donovan remembered when he and Buck had flown out to the volcano in the helicopter. If they could get past the next ridge, they’d be at the eastern shore of Lake Atitlán. Donovan had no idea what would happen after that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Have you found them yet?” Lauren was out of her seat and next to John the moment the Galileo burst out of the tops of the clouds.
“Not yet,” John replied. “Now that we’re airborne, I can widen the search parameters.”
Lauren looked back at William who was still seated, staring out the window. Up front, Buck was in the cockpit with Michael and Craig. A glance toward them and she could tell that something unusual must be happening out the left side of the Gulfstream—the attention of all three of them were fixed in that direction. She crossed the aisle, bending down to see for herself.
The morning sun, now reduced to an orange ball, cast an eerie, subdued light across the horizon. In the distance, she could see the volcano throwing ash and debris high into the sky. The dangerous cloud rose and spread out high above them. Lauren headed to the cockpit. On her way, she felt the airplane stop climbing.
“I’ll have to level off at 10,000 feet,” she heard Michael say, as he flattened out their climb and adjusted both throttles. “I need to keep us beneath the ash cloud. If the engines suck up too much ash they’ll eventually fail.”
When Lauren touched Buck on the arm, he immediately stepped aside so she could move in for a closer look. What she saw out the windshield seemed to be right out of an artist’s conception of a prehistoric past. Low clouds stretched to the horizon, the peaks of at least five volcanoes thrusting their way up into the thin air, Atitlán spewing a boiling plume of volcanic steam and ash far into the sky.
The shrill ring of the satellite phone pealed in the cabin. Lauren raced to the science station and snatched it from its holder.
“This is Lauren.”
“Lauren, it’s Ronnie. I’ve got something. I went straight to Deputy Graham at the FBI with this photo, and he in turn sent it priority one to the National Security Agency for facial recognition. This Eva woman lit up the board. She’s been issued driver’s licenses under different names in Arizona, California, and Oregon. All the addresses she’s ever used are bogus. The only constant is she always uses the name Eva, either as a first or middle name. Other than that, she’s a ghost, a fabrication.”
“What else? Give me something I can use,” Lauren said.
“Listen to this, I have a friend at the NSA. He ran Eva’s image. Initially, they got hundreds of possible hits, but were able to quickly pinpoint which one was her. My friend saw my name attached to the case, and contacted me because some of the hits originated from the missing or exploited children domain. It’s not a hundred percent certain, but the girl flagged because of similar facial structure to a missing child years ago. She was fifteen at the time and kidnapped in Costa Rica. The name of the child is Daniela Angela Rocha.”
It only took Lauren a second to recognize the name. “Are you telling me this could be the girl who was kidnapped and missing the same time as Meredith?”
“Yeah, and her mother’s name was Angela Eva Rocha. Seems like the name Eva and angels are a serious theme within the family.”
“Who else knows about this?” Lauren asked.
“For now, just you and I,” Montero replied. “Though, when the FBI analysts sift through the data, they’ll find it sooner or later.”
“Okay. We need to capitalize on our head start.” Lauren’s thoughts raced through the possibilities and implications. “What about the missing girl, Marie? Have you been able to find her mother in California?”
“Yes, she’s in the Bay Area. I have a friend, a former FBI agent who’s now a private investigator, making contact with her this morning.”
“You need to be there,” Lauren said. “You need to ask this woman everything you can about Eva, and about Hector Vargas.”
“I’m glad you agree. We were just about to leave for the airport,” Montero replied.
“We, as in you and Abigail?” Lauren was caught off guard by the news and wasn’t sure how she felt.
“At this point, I’d rather Abigail be in the hands of a professional, rather than babysat by your mother,” Montero explained. “I promise, I’ll protect her with my life. Besides, she thinks it’s a great adventure.”
“She would,” Lauren sighed. “Let me talk to her.”
“Hi, Mommy,” Abigail said. “I’m going for an airplane ride to California. I’m going to see the ocean and maybe a whale.”
“Are you going to have fun and be a good girl?”
“Uh huh,” Abigail replied.
“I think I have something!” John called out. “It’s a small plane. It might be them.”
“Where?” Buck was instantly at John’s side.
“Mommy has to go now,” Lauren said. “I love you, sweetie, have fun. Can you hand the phone back to Ms. Montero?”
“She’s all smiles,” Montero said as she came back on the line.
“Okay. Keep me posted. I have to go, and please, be safe.”
“I promise.”
Lauren slid the phone back into its cradle and joined William as they crowded close to the Scimitar console.
“It’s them! I can just make out the floats.” John pointed first to the infrared screen, then at a map of Guatemala. “They’ve turned west—toward the volcano.”
“I knew it!” Buck rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Relay the information to Janie. Find out how long until she arrives at the lake.”
“I just talked with her. She can’t fly direct to the lake due to the poor visibility. She’s going to try to work her way around and try to approach from the south.”
“Does she know about the latest USGS information regarding the volcano?” Buck asked.
“Yes, sir, she does.”
“Tell her to keep us updated,” Buck said. “Now, how long until Eva and Donovan arrive at the lake?”
John did the calculations. “The Cessna will be at the eastern edge of the lake in four minutes.”
Buck leaned over and shouted toward the cockpit. “Michael! We have them! They’re headed for the lake at the base of Atitlán. How fast can you get us there?”
“Ten minutes,” Michael called out over his shoulder.
Lauren felt the Gulfstream surge beneath her feet as Michael pushed up the throttles. They were now thundering through the morning sky toward the distant lake.
Buck clenched his jaw and his eyes darted around the interior of the Galileo. “Lauren, I’m going to need your help.”
She nodded. Though she had no idea what he was going to do, she held on dearly to the slender thread of confidence he’d shown.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Donovan could finally pick out the glimmer of the lake. They’d barely made it through the mountain pass. The clouds had lifted enough for their pilot to make a brief radio call. Donovan couldn’t figure out why, despite the improved weather conditions, the sky had grown darker. He wondered if there were thunderstorms building—that the billowing moisture had obscured the sun.
They were still flying over the narrow road that ran from Guatemala City to the lake. If Donovan remembered correctly, this route would take them directly over the small village of Panajachel, which sat on the north shore of Lake Atitlán. Once over the water, they could land anywhere along the rugged shore, or perhaps the transfer might take place out on the water i
n a boat, far from any prying eyes. Whatever the case, he was on his own. He wondered at what point they might think to frisk him for a weapon. Would he have a window to kill the kidnappers before they could harm Stephanie?
Donovan watched the pilot, trying to get a feel for where he was looking, hoping for a clue as to where they were going to land and how soon. Between the hills to the south, Donovan could now clearly see the lake. The wind was out of the north—the calm, unruffled water gave way to a light chop several hundred yards from the shore. The pilot, too, was looking at the water, and with one hand, reduced the power and started a wide descending turn toward the lake.
Donovan knew the closer they came with the money, the more anxious the kidnappers would become. The proximity of the three million dollars was the most dangerous part of the equation. Donovan looked at the pilot as they descended closer to the water. They sailed over the rock-strewn shoreline and banked again. They were now parallel to the shore only a hundred feet above the calm water. The pilot reached out and pulled the lever that lowered the flaps. As he did so, his cotton jacket opened just enough to reveal a gun. Donovan spotted the varnished wooden handle of a pistol tucked up under the pilot’s left arm and felt the muscles in his legs tense. If he was putting down flaps, they were about to land.
Donovan scanned the lake. There weren’t any boats for at least a mile in any direction. Structures haphazardly dotted the hillsides, ranging from shacks to larger buildings that might be houses, or even small hotels. Donovan spotted a few wooden docks that stretched out into the lake. He also saw some places without docks, where boats were simply pulled ashore.
Up ahead, just off the nose of the plane, Donovan caught a flash of light. When it winked again, the pilot reacted. He pulled back on the throttle and lowered the remaining flaps. They eased down the last fifty feet, and with a rumble that filled the small cabin, the floats kissed the water and they were down. Donovan took a measured breath as they turned and drifted toward the wooden dock where the signal originated.
Aftershock: A Donovan Nash Novel (A Donovan Nash Thriller) Page 20
