I looked around urgently—then I spotted it, lying innocuously on the floor.
By Munro’s feet.
He read my reaction, followed my gaze to it, and picked it up. Then, with a smug grin, he pocketed it.
“Come on,” he barked, then he set off toward the house.
I followed, hot on his heels.
We followed a narrow passage that led to an old stairwell, then we were outside again, and we sprinted in a slight crouch along a tree-lined path that led across a football-field-size landscaped quadrangle and back to the hacienda. Off to the right, I spotted several men from Munro’s unit who were locked in a manic firefight with Navarro’s guards, the latter firing away from behind a pickup truck while three of Munro’s guys had taken cover behind a stone water trough.
Munro didn’t even cast a look at them as he ran toward the house.
We were still more than a hundred yards from the house’s main entrance when I saw Tess run out of there. I could see blood on the side of her face, but she was moving smoothly and didn’t seem badly hurt. I didn’t need any more information to know that Navarro had taken Alex and that she’d been helpless to stop him. I gestured with my arm and shouted out, “Stay down,” and as I pushed myself to move even faster, the sound of an engine straining to its limit rose above the gunfire. It was coming from the other side of what looked like some derelict stables off to the left of the house, and through an arcaded walkway, I glimpsed a Jeep tearing off away from us.
Navarro. And Alex.
Munro turned to me and pointed at the other side of the main house.
“I saw a couple of quad bikes over by the cemetery.”
Without waiting for an acknowledgement from me, he banked away and was running full tilt toward the handful of broken grave markers that were visible at the left-hand end of the house. Every muscle in my body wanted to run directly toward the engine noise. If we lost sight of Navarro and Alex, I was worried we’d never find them again, but Munro had made the right move. We’d certainly never catch the Jeep on foot. I also couldn’t take the time to go to Tess, much as I wanted to. Agonizingly, it would have to wait. So I ignored the thudding pain in my back and the torment in my head and forced myself into a run.
I caught up to Munro at the far end of the cemetery. He had already started one bike and yelled out to me, “Come on.”
I hopped onto the second four-wheeler and churned its engine to life, then twisted hard on the gas handle and powered off after the Jeep, with Munro no more than ten yards behind me.
We drew level with a big dilapidated stone building at the opposite end of the quadrangle, and it was clear that Munro’s unit was gaining the upper hand in the firefight with Navarro’s hired guns. Two of them were slumped dead behind the truck, which was riddled with bullets and not going anywhere anytime soon.
I gunned the quad and sped toward what looked like some stables, Munro now riding level with me.
As we rounded the stable block, we could see the dust cloud thrown up by Navarro’s Jeep as it was swallowed up by the dense tree line that marked the edge of the main compound.
We aimed our bikes at the jungle and charged after the Jeep.
The road was cut through the thick foliage that barely let any light through. In virtual darkness, we wound our way through some undulating ridges, then a couple of minutes later, we hit a sun-blasted clearing and slid to a halt.
Three different roads wound away from us in three entirely different directions.
And we had no way of knowing which one of them Navarro had taken.
67
I killed my engine and gestured for Munro to do the same—maybe we could hear the Jeep and get a direction that way—but Munro kept his engine running. I was about to ask him what the hell he was doing when he removed an oversize PDA from his black BDU pants’ thigh pocket, flipped open the plastic cover, and looked intently at the screen. I thought back to how Munro had managed to find us, and Munro could obviously hear the wheels spinning inside my head.
He just pointed skyward and said, “Predator,” then swung his attention back at his screen.
I looked up to the sky, which was Fantasy Island blue. I couldn’t see any drone.
“Ours?” I asked.
Without taking his eyes off his screen, he said, “Well it ain’t federale, that’s for sure.”
“You’ve been tracking us? For how long? Why didn’t you pick us up before we left U.S. soil?”
He gave me a look that reeked of disdain. “We didn’t know if Navarro was there or not. We had to follow you to get to him. What’s your problem? You’re all in one piece, aren’t you?”
“Hey, Navarro has Alex, asshole.”
He shrugged and shoved the device into his pocket.
“This way.” He pointed to a road to the left that seemed to head off the plateau and dip down toward lower ground.
I charged my quad forward and blocked his way. I scowled at him and yelled, “Alex comes first, no matter what.”
He raised his hands in feigned surrender. “Absolutely.”
I’m sure my expression betrayed the fact that I didn’t fully believe him on that.
“No. Matter. What,” I repeated, firmly.
“You got it, buddy,” he protested.
I still wasn’t buying it, but I had no choice.
I hit the gas and stormed ahead. He followed close behind as I wondered how Alex was feeling right now and hating Navarro even more for it.
The road started to slope down and turned into a dirt trail that was so narrow we had to ride single file. There was barely enough room for a Jeep to make it through, but the cluster of birds that had just burst into the air maybe half a mile ahead seemed to confirm that Navarro wasn’t too far.
We followed the trail until the tree cover fell away and we emerged into the open again. I got a clearer view of the geography and realized the track we’d been following ran along the top of one side of a wide ravine. Up ahead, the trail switched back in front of a wall of solid rock that closed the ravine at the near end.
We maneuvered the quad bikes around the 180-degree bend and were rewarded with a view down the length of the valley, which was completely open at the other end, although the ravine narrowed before it got there. This was clearly Navarro’s target. The perfect place for an escape chopper to get him out of any unexpected jam—like maybe his ex-narco buddies finding out he was still alive. It was isolated and completely out of sight while the bird was on the ground, the ravine cushioned the rotor noise, and it had good cover from the air due to the surrounding jungle.
Hence the chopper with its rotors spinning up in a flat clearing down at the far end of the ravine, with the Jeep thundering toward it, out of reach.
Rage tore through me and I choked the handle as far as it would go. The quad’s engine roared in protest as I hurtled down the trail, pushing the four-wheeler as fast as I could, sliding around the bends at the edge of adhesion with my body slung out as far as it reached as a counterweight, my heart flailing against my throat—
I burst into the clearing and beelined for the chopper as, up ahead, Navarro and his two men were hustling out of the Jeep, with Alex in the madman’s grip. They all saw me. Navarro kept herding Alex to the chopper while the pistoleros turned around and whipped their guns out toward me.
I bent down and kept going.
Bullets whizzed by me, but within seconds I’d reeled them in, aiming straight at the gunmen, and I plowed straight through one of them, hitting him with a jarring thud. He bounced off the front of the bike and disappeared behind me, and I hit the brakes while spinning the handlebars as far as they would go. I leapt off the quad before it had even slid to a stop and, with my gun already out, just charged at the other gunman. He fired off a couple of rounds at me, then I saw him flinch sideways as Munro cut him down from his bike.
I rushed up to the chopper, with Navarro and Alex almost at its door, the rotor wash beating the air into us and kicking up an infe
rnal dust cloud.
“Stop,” I yelled.
Navarro turned and glared at me—
Then he pulled Alex right up against him, a four-year-old human shield—not a very effective one, given that Alex only reached his waist, leaving his entire torso exposed. I had a shot, clear and true—but Navarro had a blade pressed against Alex’s neck, and visions of what happened to Corliss’s daughter froze my trigger finger.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Everyone calm down here, all right,” Munro shouted as he sauntered up close to me, his gun arm also held straight out at Navarro, his other hand making a staying gesture. “Let’s all take a breath here, guys.”
“Put your guns down or the kid dies,” Navarro yelled back, edging backward, closer to the chopper’s cabin.
I felt my limbs go rigid with dread, but from the corner of my eye, I caught Munro’s impassive look and something was very wrong about it.
“No one’s going anywhere,” he told Navarro. “Just put the fucking knife down and get your ass over here or I’ll take the kid out myself.”
He lowered his aim.
His gun was now leveled at Alex.
68
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and swung my gun over at Munro. “What?”
He turned, his face cracking with that grin I couldn’t stand. “Sorry, buddy. He’s worth a hell of a lot more to me alive.”
He seemed to be getting a real kick out of my utter confusion. My mind bounced through a maze of permutations, and since we didn’t have a reward out on him—until a couple of days ago, he was assumed to be dead—and since this was Munro we were talking about, the sleaziest option leapt out almost instantly.
Navarro had run off with three hundred million dollars of cartel money.
“How much are they paying you?”
He smiled. “Five percent.”
Fifteen million dollars.
He kept silent as if to let it sink in, like he was really getting a kick out of this, then added, “What, you think I went through all this bullshit just so some cranky old man could get his revenge?”
And then it all went very fast.
I saw Munro grin at me, like he really didn’t need me around anymore, and his gun panned slowly away from Navarro, heading my way—
I glimpsed Navarro’s face broaden in a smug grimace and noticed his hand relax and move away from Alex’s neck—
And despite some disturbing visions of Corliss’s daughter falling to the ground with a fountain of blood coming out of her neck, I whipped my gun back at Navarro and took a shot—
I saw his right shoulder flinch back like it had been pounded by a sledgehammer—
And my eyes zeroed in on Alex’s terrified gaze and I shouted to him, “Run, Alex!” while launching myself at Munro.
My arm grabbed his MP4’s muzzle just as he pulled the trigger, and I just managed to push it off target as it erupted, my body weight bulldozing into Munro full-on.
We fell to the ground, kicking and punching as we rolled together across the scrub. Munro caught me with a vicious right hook to the jaw then threw a lightning-fast combination at my kidneys. It was enough to make me release the grip I had on his jacket. He pushed himself to his feet, and had already pulled back his right foot, ready to kick the toe of his boot into my head, when I rolled to my right, his boot slicing through the air where my head had just been.
I clambered to my feet and took a couple of labored breaths, and got a quick glimpse of Alex. He hadn’t run. He was kicking and punching as though he’d gone completely feral, but Navarro had a firm hold on him and was shoving him into the chopper. Then Munro got my attention back by sending a roundhouse at my chest. I stepped inside the arc of his boot and hammered my right elbow up into his chin, absorbing the force of his kick with my already battered back.
I took an uppercut to my own chin for my troubles, but he put too much force behind the punch and lost his footing for a moment.
Stepping forward, I stamped my left boot into Munro’s right knee. As he tipped forward I threw a piledriver into the back of his neck, which sent him sprawling to the ground.
I leapt onto him, straddling his torso, pummeling his head with punches from both sides, but the bastard wouldn’t stay down. He lashed out with his knee and caught me full in the back. Right where Navarro’s man had caught me with the metal pipe. I grunted loudly with agony. Munro clearly liked the sound of that, and channeled all his remaining energy into driving his knee into the same spot, again and again, seemingly oblivious to the punches I was landing on his face, even though his nose was split right open and blood was gushing down his face.
I felt a spasm rip through my lower back. For a second I thought I was going to black out from the pain. One more knee directly on that bruise and I would have to throw myself off him, and at this point that was going to give the fight to Munro, with no chance of a rematch.
He swung out his right leg as far as it would go, in preparation to land the killer blow to my back, but before he could drive his knee back in again, I grabbed his head with both hands, wrenched it up, and crashed it back against the ground.
I slammed Munro’s head against the soil, and again, battering him to submission—
Then I heard the chopper’s turbine grind up deafeningly before it lurched off the ground.
And in that instant, all I could think was, I’m not about to lose my son forever.
Not a chance.
And like in all of life’s most important decisions, my brain had already relayed its decision to my central nervous system before deigning to let me in on which way it had voted. By the time I realized what I was doing, I had scooped up my Glock and stuffed it in my pants, and I was sprinting at the rising bird and launching myself into the air and onto one of its runners.
My left hand hit the metal tube and slipped right off again, but my right hand held firm. With the chopper banking away and air rushing against me, I swung my right leg up over the runner and hooked it around.
My mind was leaping from I can ’t believe I fucking made it to What now? when a hail of bullets slammed into the helicopter. I spun around to see Munro, standing again, blood all over his face, MP4 in hand. He’d obviously decided that dead was better than not at all.
Another volley strafed the chopper, punching a streak of ominous holes through its fuselage and sending the engine into a high-pitched wail. I hoisted myself up around the runner, hooked my left leg over my right, pulled my Glock, and emptied the entire clip at the rapidly diminishing figure who was intent on bringing us down.
Somewhere before the clip ran out, Munro jerked backward, staggered, then toppled to the ground, saving whichever cartel he was working for the trouble of severing his limbs one by one with a machete.
Navarro and his pilot were now well aware they had a stowaway, but they didn’t seem too keen to credit me with saving their asses. And in that brief instant of calm, Alex peered through the window, and his face lit up with surprise when he saw me. Our eyes met, and I saw them flare up with an elation that recharged me to no end.
The pilot began to execute a series of side-to-side rolls in a concerted attempt to dislodge me—then after a handful of those, the engine gave a piercing squeal, cut out for a heart-stopping second, then coughed back to life.
I knew we weren’t going to be aloft for long.
I pulled myself up and peered into the cockpit, wondering why the pilot wasn’t attempting to land. Navarro had leaned right forward and was clearly shouting instructions at him, obviously telling him that landing was not an option. At least they’d stopped trying to shake me from the runner. Then Navarro spotted me, pulled his gun, swung it around to me, and fired through the chopper’s window.
I ducked away from his sight line, squeezing myself as far under the fuselage as I could, hoping Navarro wasn’t suicidal enough to try to fire at me through the chopper’s floor.
We sped across the jungle, low over the tree cover, gathering speed, the engine seemingly
having decided that we were all going to live. Less than a minute later, the ocean came into view. Even from my precarious vantage point, it was stunningly beautiful, the kind of shot I always assumed was airbrushed to perfection, only it was right there in real, living color. If it was the last thing I saw, it would certainly be miles better than looking at the business end of a force-feeding tube.
The ocean had heard me. As we sped toward it, the engine emitted a series of whining sputters, then cut out completely.
We were going down.
69
I squeezed out from my cover and caught sight of Alex again, and I was thankful to have another moment with him. And with death getting closer by the yard as we plummeted toward the sea, I could see the appeal of reincarnation—although I wasn’t ready to give up on this life just yet.
My thoughts were cut short as the water rose to meet us and we belly-flopped into the ocean. I hung on as, almost immediately, the big chopper started to sink. The mere fact that I could tell we were sinking also told me that I was still alive, and that meant Alex may be alive, too.
He had to be.
I kept my legs wrapped tightly around the runner as we went under, the chopper listing to its side from the momentum in its blades. After a few seconds, I glimpsed the ocean floor, white and sandy, through the swarm of air bubbles. It wasn’t deep. I let go of the runner with my legs, but held on with both hands as we hit the bottom.
The chopper landed in a billowing cloud of sand and an eerie groan from the runner that took most of the impact.
I pulled myself close to the window and looked in.
The pilot was already dead, his side of the cockpit having taken the full brunt of the collision between machine and ocean. Dark ribbons of blood spiraled upward from his head and chest before thinning out into crimson clouds.
I looked in the rear cabin, looking for Alex, and I saw him, his arms stretched out to beckon me, but he seemed trapped—then I understood why as Navarro’s face lurched into view from behind him. I flinched back, ready to pull away from any gunfire, only he didn’t seem to have his gun anymore. He was pinned in place by a piece of cabin frame that had bent in under the impact and seemed to have his right foot trapped against the frame of his seat, and he was holding firmly onto Alex while trying to wrest his leg loose.
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