Cindy Gerard - [Bodyguards 06]

by Into the Dark

  Overkill turned him on.

  Uninvited interest turned him mean.

  And interference just plain pissed him off.

  The confrontation unfolding before him in the back of this low-rent cantina reeked of interference. Two Americans—a man and a woman—had just stumbled into a snake pit, the head viper a reptile Gabe knew well.

  Alejandro had his own proclivities with tempered steel. He’d already drawn his Skean Dhu “Black” knife. The four other men who crept like rats out of the cantina’s back door carried semiautos. So now it was six to two. With bang-bangs.

  Christ.

  Gabe could give a rip about the foolish American’s lives, but he’d be damned if he’d let some thrill-seeking tourists out to catch a rush on the wild and seedy side of the city get themselves wasted in his carefully staked-out territory. A tourist homicide would draw la policía and U.S. Embassy officials like flies—a complication he neither wanted nor welcomed. Not after the groundwork he’d laid to trap Alejandro here tonight.

  He searched the shadows and realized the Americans came equipped with their own firepower. And they obviously knew how to use it and defend themselves.

  So. Not turistas after all.

  That pissed him off even more.

  Because that meant there might be a helluva lot more to them than met the eye—and that they might actually be here looking for him.

  He considered walking away. Letting the pit vipers have their fun with their six-to-two odds and catching up with Alejandro later. But then a car pulled into the alley; its headlights cast an eerie glow on the deadly montage, and for an instant, flashed bright on the woman’s face before it backed up, reversed direction and shot away on a shrill squeal of tires.

  It was only a moment, but it was long enough for Gabe to see the woman’s face—and he recognized every emotion etched deep there.

  Recognized them because the relentless force behind them drove him, too. Revenge.

  Well, fuck.

  Now he had to help. Her specifically. And wouldn’t that just go a long way to blowing his carefully nurtured cover?

  He slipped the Butterfly out of its sheath and stepped out of the shadows.

  Eight sets of eyes snapped his way.

  “Throwing a party, Alejandro?” His gaze locked laser tight on the blood merchant’s face. “It’s not like you to forget to invite me. Should I be hurt?”

  Gabe held the Butterfly easily and prominently in view. The familiar grip of the skeletonized solid titanium billet handle warmed in his palm. Closed, the knife measured five and a half inches long. Open, close to ten. But it was the scant four inches of the razor-edge carbon steel blade glinting in the arc of light from the open cantina door that drew everyone’s attention. All told, the Butterfly weighed 4.3 ounces, worth a hundred times its weight in the right hands.

  It was in the right hands.

  And at least six of the partygoers knew it. The looks on their faces was priceless when they saw him and low mumbles of “muerto”—dead—fell flat in the dark. The four thugs who had just joined the head rat shifted slightly toward the cantina door. They didn’t look nearly as tough as they had before Gabe had crashed their little party.

  Alejandro’s low growl stopped them.

  “What are we celebrating?” Gabe flashed a smile that no one in the alley mistook for amiable.

  To their credit, the Americans held their ground, although they appeared to have serious doubts about him. As well they should.

  The woman held her flashlight steady, the muzzle of her semiautomatic aimed directly at asshole number one’s holy grail. He stood frozen like a deer in a searchlight.

  Gabe quickly sized up the American who aimed his Sig dead center on asshole number two’s forehead. Ex-military, he decided. Probably spec ops. He had the look. The intensity. The situational awareness.

  The woman…she was a puzzle.

  “The gringos are not your business, Jones,” Alejandro growled with the tenor of a man determined to finish his dirty work but also aware that his party favors were at risk of going up in flames.

  “Amigo,” Gabe said, his smile tight. With a quick glance and a notch of his chin, he signaled the American to get ready, knew he would read the sign. “I think we’ll have to agree to disagree on that point.”

  Alejandro swiveled and drew back his Skean Dhu. Gabe’s Butterfly was airborne before the knife ever left Alejandro’s hand. The strike was deadly and true. A slice straight through the throat.

  Alejandro staggered, dropped to his knees, clutching his neck to the wheezing, bubbling gurgle of blood filling his lungs. He collapsed onto his back with a jerky spasm and gasped one final, tortured breath. And then there was no sound at all but the echo of the rat pack’s footsteps beating a path to anywhere but here.

  Gabe was aware of the woman’s eyes on him. She watched, her face expressionless as he walked up to the dead man, braced his boot on his shoulder, then leaned over to extract his Butterfly. It made a grating, sucking sound as he pulled it out of Alejandro’s throat. He wiped away the blood on Alejandro’s shirt and sheathed the knife.

  He glanced at the American who still held his Sig at the ready. Then he nodded and turned to leave.

  “Wait!”

  It was the woman. Her voice was tight in a bid to mask something that could have been panic, disbelief, revulsion or all three.

  Gabe stopped, expelled a weary breath.

  “That’s it? You killed him. And you’re just going to walk away?”

  He turned, impatient to be gone. “The party appears to be over.”

  “Who are you?” she asked as the man tried to step protectively in front of her. She wasn’t having any of it. She pushed her way out from behind him.

  Tough. She was much tougher than she looked. And everything about her suggested a brutal loss of innocence that had made her that way. “I’m someone who knows that piece of rat shit doesn’t deserve one ounce of your concern.”

  She still held the Glock in a two-handed grip, but she’d slipped her finger off the trigger. “You knew him?”

  SF guy notched his chin in Gabe’s direction. “Something tells me he knows a lot of bottom feeders.”

  Gabe glanced at the man, very aware that the Sig was still leveled dead center at his chest, trigger finger in place. He nodded, acknowledging the accurate assessment. “Occupational hazard.”

  “And that occupation would be?”

  Gabe met the man’s level stare—decided he’d be a formidable opponent. A capable ally. Neither of which he needed.

  “Look, I’d love to stay and swap business cards, but—”

  “We’re looking for Alvaro.” The blonde took a step forward when Gabe turned to go. “Do you know him?”

  Alvaro. The name stopped him cold. Gabe knew a lot of Alvaros, but the fact that they were looking for a man by that name suggested they’d found their way into this alley for much the same reason he had.

  Alvaro Rodriguez. Gabe clenched his jaw. In another life, another time, he would have called Alvaro friend.

  But Alvaro was dead. Alejandro was the lowlife who had killed him. Alejandro was the reason Gabe was here.

  He met the woman’s eyes, working to hide the rage that even killing Alvaro’s assassin had not assuaged. Apparently he failed to disguise it. She saw. She knew.

  “You do know him,” she concluded.

  “And if I did…” He let the line trail off, glanced at SF guy and reconfirmed his original assessment. Formidable. Competent. Deadly if the need arose.

  “I was supposed to meet him here.”

  Very slowly, Gabe returned his attention to the woman, never losing awareness of the position of the man’s Sig.

  “Alvaro won’t be coming.”

  He waited for the meaning of his statement to settle.

  “Because of him?” She notched her chin toward the dead man.

  Gabe said nothing. A nothing that rang of confirmation.

  “Who did he
work for?” she asked after a moment.

  “Alejandro?” He grunted in disgust. “Whoever had the most coin.”

  “And who do you work for?”

  He considered the man who had asked the question. Opted for evasion. “It’s not important.”

  “It is to me,” the woman said. “You knew Alvaro. Alvaro was my only lead in finding my friend.”

  Friend? Gabe waited with a deepening sense of doom.

  “Jenna McMillan.” She pinned him with a hard look from soft blue eyes. “Ring any bells?”

  It rang more than bells. It rang of coincidence—something he didn’t believe in. And it rang of complications of epic proportions.

  Jenna McMillan was the reason Alvaro was dead. And whatever options he’d entertained about walking away from these two had just narrowed to a field of zero.

  “Follow me,” he said grudgingly, then turned and walked away from the alley.

  Behind him, he heard them pick up their packs and hurry to keep up with him.

  Fuck.

  Dallas swore under his breath, wishing to hell he’d figured out a way to keep Amy in Florida.

  But no. Here they were. Another back alley. Another bar. Another goddamn stellar opportunity to get their throats slit.

  Are we having fun yet?

  Not yet.

  He kept a tight grip on Amy’s arm as they followed the big man with the bad knife. They entered the building through a thick and scarred wooden door into yet another smoke-filled cantina.

  He assessed the dimly lit room with escape and evasion in mind. Dallas didn’t trust the man Alejandro had called Jones any further than he could toss a Humvee. What he did trust—fully and completely now—was Amy’s story. He was now firmly convinced that whatever was going on with Amy, her grandfather and Jenna McMillan was as big and as bad as it got. Which meant that this search and rescue mission now had a full-blown protection detail component.

  Someone wanted Amy dead. They wanted her dead real bad—and that just wasn’t going to happen on his watch.

  “Remember the drill,” Dallas whispered, leaning in close to Amy’s ear.

  “Groin and ride the recoil,” she whispered back.

  He squeezed her arm. “Good girl. Watch for the flash of metal. I have no idea what we’re getting into here.”

  “He saved our lives,” she reminded him.

  “For his own purposes,” Dallas pointed out as they moved deeper into the bar. “Just watch your six.”

  It was another typical, low-rent cantina. Thick and smoke-stained adobe walls. The back door, which they’d come through, was directly opposite the front entrance. Two open windows faced the street side—more options if they had to dodge and run.

  A slow, sad Spanish guitar played from an ancient juke box in the background. The air lay heavy with an assortment of tobacco and weed. Behind the bar, a pock-faced senior with oily gray hair and tired, blank eyes set up shots for shadowy men of questionable character and heritage. Men who dressed like the locals…but the similarities ended there.

  They all made Dallas wary as hell. Hard men with brittle eyes and dark scowls. Except for a poster boy blond—a cowboy type all grinning swagger and interested eyes—who was sizing up Amy like she was a sizzling steak and he wanted to be her platter.

  With the exception of the cowboy, Dallas recognized the types who sat with their black bags close beside them on the floor. The go bags were filled, most likely, with assault weapons and a grenade or two. Spooks. Paramilitary. Private contractors. The bar was crawling with them. Sitting in silence, tossing back shots of Wild Turkey and blowing smoke rings in the clogged air. Operatives so long and deep undercover the lines between good and evil had blurred, bled and washed away like blood in a rain-soaked street.

  And suddenly Jones started to make sense.

  The Butterfly. Dallas fumbled around in his memory banks for a piece of information that danced just out of reach, flitted around out there, spun and stalled, eluding him.

  He let it go. It would come to him. Eventually.

  “Friends of yours?” Dallas asked conversationally as Jones led them to a table at the back of the room.

  “Acquaintances,” Jones said with a nod to the bartender. Then he sat down with his back to the corner, facing the room. “Make no mistake,” he said looking directly at Dallas, “You’re only here because I recognize you as Spec Ops.”

  “Was. Past tense. Marines. Force Recon,” Dallas confirmed and dropped his pack on the floor beside a chair.

  And Jones, Dallas suspected, was with Uncle—or had been. Water sought its own level just as Jones had sought his own kind. He wasn’t a stranger in this bar. Dallas had caught the subtle nods. The quick dismissive glances when they’d recognized one of their own.

  Dallas didn’t exactly breathe easier knowing Jones was either CIA or a close black ops cousin, but he figured it was better than a stick in the eye.

  And that’s when it came to him: Jones, Gabriel Jones.

  Shit. It should have clicked when the Butterfly made its deadly appearance.

  Jesus Christ. Gabriel Jones. AKA: Archangel. AKA: Slice and Dice.

  No wonder the thugs in the alley looked like they were confronting a ghost. They were consorting with a goddamn dead man.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dallas had heard stories about the Archangel—some of them from Ethan and Manny. Special ops and CIA often worked joint task forces. And a spookier lot Dallas had never encountered. Until they loosened up after an op with their drink of choice—generally Wild Turkey—and the stories started flying.

  The Archangel was a legend even among the legend makers. And until this moment Dallas had often wondered if the Archangel was a myth. A good yarn on a drunk night. A tall tale about a loose cannon, a rogue operative who played by his own rules and damn the consequences.

  A man who had supposedly died in a drug raid gone sour in Cartagena, Colombia, a year or so ago.

  “Apparently, reports of the Archangel’s death have been highly exaggerated,” Dallas said quietly.

  Jones cut him a look, but silence was as much as he got by way of explanation. Didn’t matter. Dallas figured he had a pretty good idea what was going on. More than one black ops agent had “died” in the line of duty only to resurface months or years later.

  What Dallas didn’t know was what the hell it meant that Gabriel Jones just “happened” to intercept Alejandro at the same place, same time, that Dallas and Amy were in that alley.

  Before he could think it through, the pretty boy blond swaggered over. They’d barely gotten settled at a heavy wooden table, the top riddled with scars dug by any number and type of deadly knives, when he spun a chair around backwards, straddled it, and sat his grinning self down facing Amy.

  “You, sweet lady, are a sight for sore eyes.” He propped his chin on the hands he’d crossed over the chair back and grinned at Amy like a love-struck puppy. “Begs the question, what’s a nice girl like you doing in a dive like this?”

  “Back off, buckaroo.” Dallas glared at the cocky cowboy with the sappy come-on, Hollywood looks and the growing possibility of a relatively short life span. “The lady’s with me.”

  “Chill, man. I’m not moving in. Just admiring the view. Can’t blame a guy for that, right? No harm. No foul.” He extended a hand. “Name’s Reed. Johnny Duane Reed, and it’s been a damn long time since I’ve seen the sweet face of an American woman, that’s all. It’s a pleasure. A pure pleasure.”

  Dallas ignored Reed’s good ole boy drawl and his extended hand. He glanced at Jones, who recognized the warning and notched his chin toward a man sitting in shadows across the room.

  “Call your pup to heel, Lang. As usual, he’s trying to piss in someone else’s territory.”

  “God damn it, Reed. Get your sorry ass over here and leave the nice people alone.”

  Dallas glanced at the man with the deep voice. He couldn’t see Lang’s face in the diluted light, but there was no mistaking t
he authority in his bearing. Like Jones, Lang’s shoulders were broad, his posture misleadingly relaxed. Just like Johnny Duane Reed’s aw shucks grins didn’t camouflage the operative’s true calling, Lang’s quiet command would never be mistaken for a request.

  None these men would ever be mistaken for turistas, either. They weren’t here for the scenery. They were here skirting around the dark fringes of international law. They were shadow warriors, men that no politically correct American wanted to acknowledge were on Uncle’s payroll, but whose dangerous and shady activities allowed everyone from fat cats to the middle class to sleep safe in their beds at night.

  So, no. Reed’s just fell off the back of a bronc act didn’t fool Dallas.

  He was an agent. An adrenaline junky. Licensed to kill. Trained to react.

  “Duty calls.” Reed’s grin never faded as he stood, sliced both Jones and Dallas a quick glance then nodded at Amy. “Ma’am. It’s truly been a pleasure. You take care of yourself now, you hear?”

  “I’ll do that.”

  Dallas didn’t much appreciate the smile in Amy’s voice as he watched Reed walk away. He joined Lang in a lazy sprawl at the other table, his good nature never fading.

  “Interesting character,” Amy said after a moment.

  “Character being the operative word,” Jones grumbled, and thanked the bartender when he delivered a bottle of Wild Turkey and three shot glasses.

  Amy covered her glass with her hand. “I’m good. Thanks.”

  Jones glanced at Dallas. Dallas turned his glass upside down. Waited.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Jones took his time pouring a shot before lifting it and tossing it back in one deep swallow.

  Then he settled his attention on Amy. “How do you know Jenna McMillan?”

  Amy glanced at Dallas. He nodded. “Go ahead. Tell him.”

  Dallas listened in silence as Amy nutshelled it for Jones. She told him in short and concise statements about her mother’s mental condition, her certainty that it was a result of her former SS grandfather conducting mind-control experiments on her. She told him about her first meeting with Jenna last year that had led her to Manila in pursuit of her grandfather. Told him, Dallas was interested to note, only that she’d been unsuccessful finding Edward Walker there and it wasn’t until recently that she’d been able to pick up on her search—thanks to Jenna locating him here, in Argentina.