Brandt had to block all of that out.
Pushing off the rock, Brandt was airborne for a few moments, the wind rushing in his hair, the biting cold of the Andes blowing down his shirt. Then he hit the metal of the plane. There was little to hold onto besides the ragged wreckage of the wing struts. Further back, Cristoval was hanging on for dear life to a few bolts barely attached to the fuselage.
It looked like the man was going to lose his grip, but a strong arm came out of the back hatch and pulled Cristoval inside.
One down, one to go.
Actually the view out here was pretty incredible, but Brandt knew better than to think Lopez’s plan was just to ride down the slope. Not with those house-sized boulders angling straight for them.
Brandt had to get inside and get inside now.
He worked his way down the strut until he was only a few feet from the forward hatch. Davidson was nearly on the outside of the plane, his arm outstretched.
“I’ve got you, sir.”
That he did. Brandt took the younger man’s hand and let go from the metal. Inching his feet forward, he finally released his other hand and allowed Davidson to pull him into the plane.
They met in a bro hug, patting each other’s backs.
It was a moment to savor survival, but only for a moment. One of those boulders was about to catch up with them and Lopez was no longer whooping.
Never a good sign.
CHAPTER 15
Davidson realized what Lopez was trying to do. The slope on this part of the mountain went two ways. One way was straight down. The other veered off to the right and looked like it ended on a plateau.
They definitely wanted to go right. But trying to get their tube of a plane to go right seemed like it was slightly harder than Lopez had expected.
The man was standing up, bracing against the pilot’s seat, pulling a lever. It must have been attached to the rear rudder.
“Ki!” Davidson called out.
The three of them, Davidson, Brandt and Ki hit the cockpit door nearly at the same time. It was a bit crowded, but they all put their backs into it. Did they move it the slightest?
Davidson looked out ahead, they seemed to be moving slightly to the right. Would it be enough?
Then they were hit from behind. That boulder had finally caught up with them, but instead of crushing them, it helped them, crashing into their rear, shoving them further to the right.
They slid down a modest slope, hit their rear again, spun, then stopped on the snowy plateau.
Now facing the steep slope, they watched half a mountain roll past them.
“Just how I planned it!” Lopez announced. “I am a genius.”
Ki looked at the pilot like that was the furthest description from his mind.
Brandt patted Lopez on the back. “Nice save.”
Somehow Rebecca snaked into the cockpit, hugging her husband. “Is it over?”
The last of the rocks passed by and the ear shattering sound of the world ending finally died down.
The group walked out to find a very pale Peruvian commander. “Next time I will wait behind.”
Brandt smiled, shaking the man’s hand.
Davidson had a seat. It seemed like the appropriate response to the end of that particular ordeal.
* * *
Stark clamored out of the car. Cama wasn’t far behind. They raced up the steps to the mansion’s front door. It was unlocked. They made their way through the house, heading straight for the backyard and the pool.
His mother had kept them up to date on the happenings, not just here but back in Peru. The team seemed safe for the moment. The Andes had one less peak, but on a scale of one to ten of the team’s destructive streak it was a two.
Bunny was the focus now. They burst out of French doors to find the pool drained, a huge iris open. Stark ran over to the pool steps, but Cama jumped down from the side of the pool and stared down the opening.
“You don’t have to come,” Stark said. She was a lingerie model after all, drawn into this by bizarre happenstance.
“Are you kidding me?” Cama said. “Best fun I’ve had in a while. I’ve got to see this through.”
“There’s a jaguar down there,” Stark reminded her. As a matter of fact Stark wished he didn’t have to go down there, but alas this was Bunny, so he had to do what he had to do.
“I know,” Cama said rubbing her palms together.
Who was this chick?
Before he could ask, she jumped into the iris, landing on her booty, sliding down the slick surface.
Damn it, now Stark had to do the same. He had planned to climb carefully over the edge, then turn around, but apparently that wasn’t cool enough.
Here went nothing.
“Be careful,” his mother urged in his ear.
No wonder he wasn’t all that brave. His mom cultivated a scaredy cat mentality.
If Cama had done it, so could Stark. Gathering up his courage, he jumped. He didn’t land nearly as gracefully as Cama, apparently the woman did a lot of Zoomba or something to hone her reflexes.
“Ouch,” Stark gasped, straining his ankle, then he hit hard on his butt. Luckily gravity did the rest and he was sliding after Cama.
The passage wasn’t long, but it was wet. His butt was soaked.
After reaching a small concrete chamber, he found Cama wiping herself off, turning, looking around.
No jaguar.
So far.
* * *
Brandt stood discussing their options with his men when a metallic screech filled the air. The plane shook. Was it another avalanche? Brandt glanced out the window. Outside seemed fine, the impending catastrophe seemed to be restricted to the plane.
With a final, deafening scream, the last bolt that was holding the fuselage together must have broken. The entire metal tube split down the middle, falling to the side like a magician’s trick.
Suddenly they only had sky above them.
“I am calling this the lotus landing!” Lopez yelled, pumping his fist in the air.
Brandt just rolled his eyes and turned back to the commander, who seemed rather disturbed by the latest in a string of impossibilities.
“So we should take the south face down?” Brandt asked.
Lopez groaned. “I’m telling you. Just let Ki and I go down. I’ll find something to get us all off this mountain in a jiffy.”
Ki kind of blanched at the jiffy part.
“How about you take Davidson?” Brandt asked.
“Totally cool with me,” Lopez said, slapping Davidson on the back. “He knows how to roll.”
Davidson smiled. “You know it.”
Then the men were out of what was left of the plane. They didn’t have to go to any hatch. They could just step straight off.
Funny how there wasn’t a peep from Ki. Since the beginning of the mission the man had been trying hard to establish himself as the point man, taking each and every opportunity to remind everyone that he was first through the door. Hmmm, not this one though.
Maybe it was the Lotus Landing.
* * *
Bunny entered the English garden tentatively. It seemed all peaceful and polite. Hedges were trimmed into low fences. Roses dangled over the green shrubbery. She felt transported back to London…about a hundred years ago. All of the garden furniture was black wrought iron. There wasn’t a single modern element to the garden.
And here she was with a cultist and shaman.
It didn’t get much weirder than this.
Would they whip out a lion or wolf or something?
“What are we doing here?” Bunny asked squinting in the midday sun. Didn’t they realize she was fair-skinned?
Apparently they did, as Rojas opened an umbrella and urged Bunny to sit under it. “Tea, of course?”
“Of course.”
Right, of course.
She had to give it to them, they were possibly the politest kidnappers in the world. Except for the snakes, and the
jaguar, and the blade. Okay, maybe they weren’t so polite.
Bunny sat down and waited for one of the men to take a sip of the tea before she indulged. She knew she probably shouldn’t drink or eat anything, but she was parched. And seriously, they could have killed her a dozen times over. The tea was surprisingly tasty. A nice old school Earl Grey mix. With what? Orange blossoms?
“Delightful, is it not?”
If Bunny wasn’t still wet from that dousing back at the mansion, she might have imagined that Rojas was a gentleman. But she knew better.
“You realize that my team is going to miss me,” Bunny stated, taking another sip of the tea and taking one of the “biscuits.” She kind of wished they were frosted though.
“Your team is rather busy at the moment,” Rojas answered nibbling at his biscuit as well.
“How so?”
Rojas shrugged. “They are stranded on the side of a mountain in the Andes.”
Bunny chuckled. “Is that all? They’ll be on your tail within hours.”
“We shall see,” Rojas responded.
Yes, yes they would see. Bunny wasn’t a gambler, but she would bet her life savings that Brandt was going to kick that mountain’s ass. And when the team was ready to move, it was up to Bunny to provide as much information on the Brotherhood as possible. She knew that the team would keep up its end of the bargain. Now she had to keep up her end.
“So, what is this all about?” Bunny asked. She might as well get this over with.
“The Brotherhood wishes nothing more than to be rejoined with their creator,” Rojas explained. The shaman nodded sagely, like all shamans did.
Bunny grunted. “Please. This really is as rote as trying to bring on the apocalypse? You want to jump start Armageddon?” Rojas raised an eyebrow. “This isn’t my first rodeo,” Bunny explained. “You religious zealots all want the same thing. To prove you are right and kill everyone off that didn’t agree with you. Like I said, rote.”
She’d pissed Rojas off. On the exterior he still seemed unfazed, but she looked to his pupils, which were dilated, and to the flush to his cheek and the way he now gripped the teapot with an iron fist.
Bunny had met a lot of men like him. Hell, she’d dated a lot of men like him. The professor wasn’t used to being disagreed with. He was used to fawning students and museum patrons.
She was proud to say she was neither any more.
“You misunderstand,” Rojas said, his voice only a little angry. “We are not talking about a Biblical event. We are taking about calling out to our creator and calling him home.”
Bunny leaned back in her wrought iron chair. “Aliens, right? This is where you tell me little green men are going to call you home.”
Again with those flushed cheeks. This time his jaw clenched, bulging the muscles under his skin. “Joke if you wish.”
“Oh, I will. You realize how incredibly unscholarly this all sounds, right?”
The shaman slammed his hand down on the table, rattling the rose china.
Bunny spread her hands. “You want me to believe? Like I said, prove it to me.”
* * *
“Mom,” Stark said into his mic, but no response. They were too far underground.
Cama and he had gone up and down a number of tunnels, all of which were dead ends.
“Maybe we should turn back?” Stark suggested.
“Look at this,” Cama stated pointing out a small bit of fabric caught on the rough concrete wall.
Stark went over and unhooked it. “Bunny came this way.”
“Are you sure?”
Oh, Stark was sure. “I bought her this scarf. They died the wool an exact red to match her hair and the green specks bring out her eyes.”
“Okay…”
Yep, Stark was really letting his freak fly today. Probably for the best. Cama should learn all of his faults right off the bat. Maybe then she wouldn’t look at him like she did. He was no hero. He wasn’t boyfriend material. Whatever Cama wanted from him, it wouldn’t be worth the effort.
They headed down the tunnel that sloped up, following it until they reached a hatch. “They” opened it. Okay, fine, it was more Cama than he that provided the muscle. Stepping over the ledge, they entered DC’s storm drain system.
Bunny and her captors could have gone in any direction from here. Stark stood under a grate and tried his mother again. “Mom?”
“Here,” his mother answered. “Bunny isn’t far from you. Just a few blocks.”
“A warehouse? Seedy motel?”
“Well, um…” his mother stammered. “Actually it is a traditional English tea garden.”
“Say what?”
His mother cleared her throat. “Bunny is being served at a tea house.”
This was one weird kidnapping. First a jaguar and now tea?
What was Rojas playing at?
“I’ll climb up and get us a cab,” Cama stated.
At least, the lingerie model was taking this all well.
* * *
Brandt heard the vehicle that Lopez had obtained for them long before he saw it. How could you not? The gears ground and the engine roared.
Ki looked to Brandt. He could not reassure the point man at all.
Rebecca didn’t even bother guessing. His wife went back to reading in their open-aired “Lotus” plane, which still contained the former hostages and the Peruvian soldiers.
Finally Brandt couldn’t take it any longer and, along with the commander, headed away from the plane to hike downslope. They found a precipice and looked further down the mountain.
Lopez was pushing what looked like some kind of farm combine up the slope. Davidson rode on the roof, looking pretty comfortable sitting sloppy cross-legged, soaking in the sun’s rays.
“How does he expect all of us…” the commander couldn’t even form the question.
Well, there certainly wasn’t any seating available.
Davidson must have noticed them, as he gave a big grin and an even bigger wave. Lopez joined in, an ear-to-ear grin as well. Those two. Maybe he really should have sent Ki with Lopez.
“What the …” Ki groaned as he approached from behind them.
Brandt could offer no solace. The combine was what the combine was.
He hiked back up to the plane. Rebecca looked up from her book.
“Don’t ask.”
His wife just went back to her article.
It took a few more minutes, actually nearly fifteen, for the combine to crest the hill.
“He’s really outdone himself,” Rebecca stated, packing her tablet back into her pack.
“Awesome, isn’t?” Lopez asked, still smiling like the cat that ate the canary. “It’s a potato harvester. Who would have thought Peru was one of the world’s leading potato growers?”
Yes, you learned something every day when you were with Lopez.
Oh well.
Time to load everyone up.
“It’s only thirty two miles to the next farm!” Lopez exalted.
Yes, only thirty-two miles while hanging onto a potato combine, downhill.
No sweat.
* * *
“Proof?” Bunny reiterated. “Have any?”
Rojas frowned again and the shaman spun in his chair, turning away from her.
“The problem with proof…” Rojas stated. “Is that we don’t have it, at the least not in our possession. Which is why Cristoval wants the missing pendant so badly. All the proof you want is in the cave where the symbols on the pendants lead.”
“How convenient.” These religious fanatics could really convince themselves of just about anything, they really could.
“No, not convenient at all,” Rojas retorted. “Which is why we want your help.”
“By kidnapping me?”
“Oh, please, you really haven’t even been legally detained yet.”
Bunny sat up. “So I can just walk out of here?”
“Of course you can’t, but we mean you no harm.�
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“You have a truly funny way of showing it,” Bunny replied.
Rojas leaned forward, doubling his smoldering factor to high. The guy really could control his sultriness with a fine-tuned dial.
“I hoped that you would find this all fascinating and want to help.”
“Perhaps you should have asked before you brought out the snakes,” Bunny stated. “You know, just for the record.”
“Forgive us, we are used to people not believing what we say after we open our mouths,” Rojas said.
“Imagine that,” Bunny said.
“Will you help us?” Rojas asked, his dark eyes pleading. The shaman across the table didn’t seem nearly that desperate.
“Only if you let me call my team. Let them know where I am. And I’ve got to have the option of leaving when I want.”
“You drive a hard bargain, doctor,” Rojas commented.
“Take it, or leave it.”
It looked like Rojas was actually going to take it, until the first bullet flew over their heads.
CHAPTER 16
Stark sat on the ground. That’s where the shot knocked him back to.
Cama held out her hand. “Let me.” She pointed down the hedgerow. “Just go that way and look armed.”
Stark nodded, still trying to get his hearing back. Guess that was what the safety was for. He probably should have left it on until he needed to shoot, rather than have that stray shot go off.
What could he say? He was nervous.
In an English tea garden.
Yah, Lopez was never going to let him live this one down. And the fact the lingerie model now had the gun and was by far the safer choice.
“Stark?” Bunny asked as she rose from her chair.
He angled his arms down like he was carrying a gun. “We are here to rescue you.”
“Really?” Rojas asked pointing up to the surrounding buildings. There were snipers on each of the roofs.
Crap.
Stark really missed Alpha Tango right about now.
“Funny, but I think I can get a shot off,” Cama said, pointing the gun right at Rojas.
Bunny held up her hands. “Guys, this is all unnecessary. I’m going with Rojas voluntarily.”
“What do you mean?” Stark asked, taking another step forward, he dropped the feigning act of holding a gun. He’d rather not have one of those snipers get a little trigger-happy.
The 3rd Cycle of the Betrayed Series Collection: Extremely Controversial Historical Thrillers (Betrayed Series Boxed set) Page 38
