Blue Knight

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  She filled her lungs and started to scream.

  “Stop her, Santez, she’ll wake someone,” came another growl.

  The man holding her wrist slapped her face. It stopped her screaming long enough for her to fill her lungs again. She knew if she stopped screaming her fate was fixed.

  Santez pulled out his handgun and put it under her chin and cocked it.

  Olivia shut up.

  He grinned, showing rotting teeth. “Yeah, you speak that sort of Spanish, don’t you?” He gave his gun to someone else. “Keep that pointed at her face where she can see it all the time.”

  He grabbed the front of her shirt and ripped it so the buttons all went flying with little music tinkles as they hit the walls and metal shelving. He yanked the shirt off her shoulders.

  There were murmurs of appreciation as her breasts were revealed. Even Santez smiled.

  “Strip her,” he told the others.

  She was lifted off her feet. Many hands mauled her body as her jeans and boots, sock and panties were snatched away from her. The hands continued to roam over her—all over her—long after the clothing was gone, probing and pinching, delving and inspecting every inch of her. Olivia closed her eyes and waited for it to be over. There was nothing else she could do.

  “Attention!”

  Olivia was almost dropped to the ground as the soldiers sprang to attention. She crouched, using her knees to hide as much of herself as possible, as Lieutenant Gomez stepped into the storage room. She watched him warily. His reputation for dealing with the female hostages was well known, but that was always when he had them alone.

  He looked down at her. “Bring Ms. Davenport to Captain Ibarra’s office immediately,” he said, speaking to the others. “If she suffers any more…indignities, it will not reflect well upon you.” He turned back to the door. “That is all.”

  “Fuck,” Santez muttered.

  “You’re on report, Santez,” Gomez’s voice floated back through the door.

  Santez’s face turned red and his mouth opened again. Then he closed it.

  After thirty seconds had passed the soldiers relaxed. Santez kicked Olivia in the leg and she knew it was he who had woken her with a kick in the thigh. “Get up,” he snarled in adequate English. “Move it. You just got a free pass, puta.”

  She had got more than that. When she had been struggling against the grip on his wrist she had seen the time. It was four in the morning. She had slept half the night away. Daniel should be just about at rendezvous by now. Olivia only had a few more hours to go.

  * * * * *

  The beach was empty, but even so, Daniel wasn’t fooled. He could feel the tension in his back and in his temples.

  He gave a series of whistles.

  After a few seconds that seemed to stretch for hours, the notes were returned.

  Daniel felt his guts turn almost watery with relief. The tension ran out of him like water out of a glass.

  Black figures rose out of the trees lining the bay. Dozens of them. Daniel walked onto the beach, letting the late moonlight pick him out. He held up both arms so they could see he wasn’t holding a gun in either of them.

  Two of the black figures jogged over to him, both of them removing their helmets and balaclavas and slinging their assault rifles. The rifle the taller one carried looked suspiciously like a SIG SG 550 but it was hard to tell in this light.

  The taller one lifted his closed fist and turned it in a circle and the rest of the troops all melted back into the trees.

  As they got closer Daniel realized that the taller one was Duardo. He was a Colonel. A Colonel. Damn if he didn’t outrank Daniel again. Now Cristián’s comment made sense.

  The slightly shorter man Daniel didn’t know personally, but he knew from pictures and by reputation. Mentally, he whistled. El Leopardo Rojo, and if rumors were right, the President pro tem of loyalist Vistaria. In person, Nicolás Escobedo’s features were just as hard, calculating and tough as they were on television and in the newspapers, but what the media missed was the hint of passion, the potential for drama. Escobedo had his human side. It was just held in tightly disciplined check. The stories about el leopardo’s discipline and endurance were legendary.

  Abruptly, the tension was back in Daniel’s gut.

  The two stopped in front of him. Daniel nodded at Duardo. “Good to see you made it.”

  “Shouldn’t that be a salute, Officer?”

  Daniel felt his jaw come unhinged. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Escobedo’s brow lift.

  Duardo just waited.

  Daniel cleared his throat. “Jesus…” He pulled himself to attention and snapped off a salute. “Reporting in. Sir.”

  Duardo returned the salute.

  “Your hand is bleeding,” Escobedo observed.

  “Actually, it’s my arm,” Daniel said, turning his left arm around to show the other man. “A bullet winged me as I was scaling the hotel fence.”

  “Then they know you’ve escaped?”

  “They know they’ve lost one, but not who they’ve lost. They didn’t see my face—”

  The punch came without warning, taking him under the chin and lifting him off his feet. He landed flat on his back in the sand. The wind was driven out of him. He lay stunned for barely a second before Duardo landed on top of him.

  All Daniel could see in the moonlight was the classic profile of Duardo’s nose and the black of his eyes. Duardo grabbed a fistful of Daniel’s shirt and hauled his head up out of the sand as his right fist drew back.

  “Ten years, you mother-fucking son of a whore,” Duardo ground out, “and you waltz in here like you own the joint.” Duardo was speaking English like he was born to it. Idiomatic. Flawless. And he was pissed.

  “What the fuck?” Daniel breathed.

  “Christ on a pony,” Escobedo breathed.

  Daniel blinked. Escobedo didn’t even seem shocked at this airing of family history. More like…resigned. Perhaps even a touch amused.

  Duardo’s fist descended, but he’d telegraphed way too much. Daniel flipped him onto his back and kneed him in the lower abdomen, making him wheeze. He brought his double fists together hard against his sternum, making it creak and Duardo groan.

  They had fought like this all the time when they had been kids. This would have been enough to make Duardo quit, back then. Daniel even found himself relaxing.

  Duardo reared out of the sand with a growl. His shoulder buried deep into Daniel’s gut—so deep, Daniel thought he might make contact with his spine.

  Daniel was pushed back and would have landed on his back again, except he didn’t want to hit his head. He flipped himself over, then remembered he had the gun tucked into his trousers. He threw his hands out to break his fall and the impact travelled up his arms and all the way through his back.

  He hung there with his face a few inches from the sand, wondering if he was going to be sick.

  Duardo’s boot landed on Daniel’s back. “Thought you’d won, huh?” He pushed and rolled Daniel onto his back.

  “You’ve got a bit tougher and smarter since I saw you last.” As Daniel rolled he grabbed Duardo’s boot and yanked hard.

  It tripped Duardo and he went down on his ass in a tangle of legs and elbows. “Fuck, that hurt.” He sat up. “A bit tougher?” He sounded offended.

  Escobedo crouched down between them. He was holding the SIG. “You two about done with the squabbling?”

  Duardo nodded. “I think I’ve made my point.”

  “Christ, didn’t you ever fight with your brother, sir?” Daniel asked carefully.

  “José? God no.” Escobedo snorted. “He was the anointed one, the shining child. Besides, he was nearly ten years older than me. I was the embarrassing bastard love child who had to be hidden away. I got packed off to Ireland to boarding school as soon as it was decent. I might as well have been an only child. José, too.” He held out a hand to Daniel. “If you could
keep the fighting between you and Duardo to a minimum, I’d appreciate it. I’d hate to have to explain to Minnie that Duardo got killed by family fire.”

  “Who’s Minnie?” Daniel asked as Escobedo helped him up.

  “My cousin,” Escobedo said. He nodded toward Duardo. “And Duardo’s wife.”

  Daniel felt his head whip around to look at Duardo, before he was aware of his own shock. “You dirty, dirty dog,” he breathed, aware that he was grinning stupidly.

  Duardo merely lifted a brow. He took the SIG from Escobedo. “You’ve changed,” he said, his voice low. “That news would have turned you cynical and sour, once upon a time.”

  Daniel sobered, staring at him. He was right. It would have.

  Olivia. He heard her voice in his mind. Her eyes as she whispered those words that still thrummed where they’d landed in his gut. “Daniel, I love you.”

  Escobedo held up a hand. “Listen,” he said in Spanish. Back to business. His head was down, moving from left to right as he tried to locate a noise only he could hear.

  Then Daniel heard it. “Choppers. Over water.”

  Escobedo and Duardo picked up their gear and started running for the tree line. Daniel ran with them, puzzling over the obvious question. Who was it in the helicopters? The insurrectos had Sikorskies, but these were coming from the wrong direction.

  By the time they reached the tree line, the sound had leapt to the unmistakable. Helicopters, more than one and definitely heading in this direction.

  “Report!” Duardo demanded.

  “Three targets, sir. Coming in on a north by north-east bearing. We can go to missile lock at this range, sir.”

  “Negative.” Duardo looked at Escobedo. “It’s not likely to be the insurrectos. Not from that direction. They don’t have that sort of imagination and the engine sound is wrong.” He turned back. “Someone get a night scope on them, on the double!”

  “Sir!”

  There was a sound of scrambling in the dark.

  The helicopters rounded the head of the bay and hovered over the water.

  “Sir, you’re going to want to see this, sir!”

  A non-com came forward with the night glasses and held them out to Duardo. He took them and pushed forward to the edge of the tree line. On his belly, he leaned on his elbows and looked through the glasses.

  Then he rolled onto his side and looked at Escobedo. “They’re right. I don’t believe it. Three Night Hawks turned side on, nice and pretty, showing their colors. It’s the United States out there, Nick.”

  “What?”

  “They’re tiptoeing in nice and gentle so we don’t fire off their noses. They know we don’t know they’re coming.”

  Escobedo leaned on his rifle. “How on earth did they get here?”

  Duardo said something, but Daniel didn’t hear it. There was a roaring in his ears. Weight in his chest. Sickness in his belly.

  He staggered to one side, dizzy with it.

  Olivia. Somehow, she had done this. Only she had known this was the bay where he was meeting Duardo and the army. It had to be her. But how? How?

  Daniel’s shins came up sharply against a fallen tree. He staggered again. Fell against it and hung on to it, his head hanging, breathing hard.

  A hand squeezed his shoulder. “Breathe slower or you’re going to pass out.” It was Escobedo. The man settled himself on the fallen trunk next to him.

  Daniel nodded.

  “You know something about why the Americans are here, don’t you?”

  Again, Daniel nodded. He wasn’t sure he could speak yet.

  “Whatever it is, it’s enough to send you into flat panic.” He let silence settle for a second or two. “I sent Duardo on to greet the Americans, along with the rest of the troops. They’ll understand a military greeting more than if they got me.” Daniel heard amusement in his voice. “Rank and orders need no translation. So for a few minutes it’s just you and me here.” Again, the small contemplative silence.

  Daniel drew in a breath. “There’s a woman at the White Sands, sir. I think she’s done something incredibly brave and incredibly dangerous. I’m not sure how she pulled it off, but she’s the reason the Americans are here.”

  “And now you’re worried about what will happen to her as a result.” There was no condescension in Escobedo’s voice and no judgment. Remarkably, he seemed to understand.

  “Yes, sir. We have to get back there as soon as possible.”

  “Thanks to the Black Hawks, that’s going to be sooner than we thought a few minutes ago.” Escobedo glanced toward the beach. “It looks like they’ve got a mixed bunch of black ops types. I’d say the support they’ve sent us is unofficial and off the record. Can you tell me who the lady is who pulled off this miracle?”

  Daniel pushed himself off the tree and sat back on his heels. “Olivia. Olivia Davenport.”

  “Davenport?” Escobedo said sharply. Then he laughed. “Well, that explains a lot.”

  “Not to me,” Daniel said.

  “My wife Calli is the Chief of Staff and it’s not an honorary title. She spends her life with the phone glued to her ear. I sometimes regret that she is the best person for the job, but….” Escobedo shrugged. “She talks to the United States Chief of Staff all the time. Nice enough fellow. Name of Callan Davenport. Colonel, retired, U.S. Army Rangers. He was in Vietnam.”

  My cantankerous family. Let’s talk about them later.

  Daniel leaned back over the tree and this time he was sick. The retching left him weak and almost without a voice.

  “If they find out who she really is….” he whispered.

  “I think she knows that, too,” Escobedo said gently. “She’s obviously spent five weeks playing it very close to the chest, trying to avoid having it come out.”

  “The risks she took for me!” Daniel wiped his sweaty brow with the back of his hand.

  Escobedo nodded. “That’s what you do when you love someone.”

  Daniel jerked like he’d been hooked through the mouth like a fish.

  “You haven’t taken insane risks for her?”

  He opened his mouth to say, “No, you’ve misunderstood. I don’t love Olivia.” Then he closed it.

  He opened his mouth again to point out that he hadn’t taken any insane risks, but shut it again, because he had taken risks. Only the risks he had been taking had nothing to do with endangering life and limb. They had to do with risking heart and soul and sanity—all that touchy-feely shit that terrified him, that actually was the key to happiness.

  His insane risks had involved rolling up the portcullis and putting down the drawbridge and letting in a woman with sea-foam hair and big blue eyes and a mind like a razor who had carved her way into his heart.

  It had hurt like crazy and he’d do it all over again in a heartbeat if it meant keeping her.

  There was a tromp of feet through vegetation, heralding the return of the soldiers and their new allies. The Black Hawks were still powered down, doing their slow “whomp, whomp”.

  Escobedo stood up. “You’d better call me Nick,” he said. “We’re practically family, you know.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Olivia woke the instant the door opened. She uncurled herself enough to check who was coming in.

  Ibarra stepped into the room, looking neat, fresh, ironed and polished. All except his eyes. His eyes were still dead. There were bruises under them, that came from long-term sleep deprivation or mental unease.

  “Good morning,” he said in Spanish. The door was closed gently behind him.

  She kept her face blank and curled her arms around herself more tightly. Last night, when Ibarra could not be found in his office, they had marched her back into the meat cutting room and locked the door on her. She had still been quite naked, as she was now. Every soldier’s head had turned as she was marched past. Olivia had kept her gaze straight ahead and unblinking, but her anger had grown in small i
ncrements with each grin, each suggestion and each lewd comment.

  When the door of the meat cutting room had been locked on her she had been almost relieved. She had picked the corner most likely to be the warmest and curled up in it. She had astonished herself by drifting off to sleep.

  Now she stared at Ibarra, still curled in her tight ball.

  He picked at a well-polished fingernail. “While I was having breakfast, Lieutenant Gomez brought news to me of a breakout last night. One of you actually scaled the fence and got away.”

  Olivia found herself focusing on the word breakfast. Her stomach rumbled hard and in the empty, hollow room it sounded loudly.

  Ibarra lifted his head and smiled, showing yellow teeth. “Yes, I suspected you knew more Spanish than you have led us to believe so far. The guard you hit with the telephone last night insisted your diction was a bit too good for someone who had barely managed a simple greeting in the past.”

  Olivia didn’t respond. She wasn’t going to give Ibarra anything. Let him work for it.

  She focused on his watch, which flashed in the light from the window behind her as he worked on his nails. If he would just keep his wrist still for a moment, she might be able to read the time.

  “You don’t have to answer right now,” Ibarra said. “We’ll get plenty of answers from you sooner or later, and don’t worry about the escapee. We shot him, of course.”

  Olivia tried to hide her reaction, but something gave her away, for Ibarra surged out of the chair, grabbed her hair and hauled her to her knees. “I knew you would know about Nemesis!” he hissed, his nose an inch from her face. Sour spiced coffee smells washed over her, making her gag and try to turn her face away, but the grip on her hair was too tight.

  “Who?”

  “Nemesis!” he screamed.

  She shook her head.

  “Who was it that escaped last night?” he demanded.

  “If they’re dead, what does it matter?” she said dully.

  “If they’re dead, it doesn’t matter if you give me their name,” Ibarra said, letting go of her hair. He walked back to the chair and sat down.

  She sank back onto her heels, staring at him, her heart thundering. “He’s still alive. You didn’t kill him at all. You’re bluffing.”