“Thank you for meeting us at this early hour. It was unnecessary.”
“My pleasure. How could I resist greeting you on one of your infrequent visits? It would be rude, no?”
“I’m touched that you would go out of your way for me.”
“As always.”
“And I’m sorry about the unpleasantness in Mendoza.”
Dante’s demeanor changed to a more somber mood. “Yes. I lost many good men yesterday. I’m still trying to ascertain what happened.”
“It wasn’t my doing, but I still feel responsible. Like I brought misfortune upon you when I touched down.”
“It’s nothing. I’d been meaning to make some changes there, anyway. Saved me the trouble, although admittedly, in a very messy manner.” Dante turned to Matt. “And this is the unlucky object of your attention?”
Matt didn’t say anything, preferring to let Tara expend her energy. “Yes. Do you have the vehicle I requested?”
“But of course. With a driver. Are you sure you don’t want some of my men to accompany you?”
“That’s very generous, but it won’t be necessary. I don’t want to cause a scene or arouse undue attention.” Tara hadn’t told him where they were taking Matt, nor would she. Even though Dante was an ally, he was also a scoundrel and she didn’t want to chance him getting curious as to why they’d gone to so much trouble to get one man to a bank. The same went for his men – and she’d leave Isaac and Carl in the vehicle so the driver couldn’t make a phone call and tip anyone off.
“Ah, well, your business is your business, and you know it well. However you like. The driver has instructions to take you wherever you need to go.”
“Excellent. Do you have a private location for me, as we discussed?” She’d asked Dante to line up a deserted warehouse somewhere Matt’s tortured screams wouldn’t be heard.
“Of course. Extremely remote. You could fire a cannon off inside and nobody would be the wiser.”
A cell phone chirped. One of the men murmured into his phone and approached Dante. They had a whispered discussion and Dante turned back to Tara. “I just received a report of a private plane departing Mendoza a half hour after you left. According to the flight plan, it’s headed here. My contact says it was a most irregular occurrence, and that the men that boarded looked…professional.”
“Really? Well, they’re too late, aren’t they?”
“Perhaps. But they also had bags they brought aboard while they waited for the final passenger, who showed up shortly afterward. A woman.”
Tara’s pulse quickened. “Interesting. Do you have a flight manifest?”
“The passengers are listed as the Garibaldi family. Sofia, Hector, and his bodyguards. Hector Garibaldi is a very powerful man with the federal government. But my contact knows him, and he tells me that none of the men on the plane were Garibaldis. So that was just for the paperwork.”
“Anything else?”
“Yes. It was a last-minute arrangement. A rush. People had to be pulled out of bed. Apparently it was imperative that the plane leave as soon as possible. It flew in from Córdoba just to make this pick-up.”
“Then it’s safe to say that it’s pursuing us?”
“That’s my assumption.”
“Can you do anything about it?”
“Yes. I’ll arrange for it to be dealt with in a manner that will send an unmistakable signal to Garibaldi to stay out of my affairs, and to avoid crossing me. Ever.”
Tara eyed Dante, who returned her gaze with a smile that never reached his eyes. She nodded. “Then I can cross that off my list of things to worry about.”
“My dear, you’re in my town now. Trust me when I say nothing will happen that I don’t want to happen.” Dante signaled to Tara to follow him into the terminal. “Come. Your chariot awaits.”
Isaac and Carl framed Matt as they made their way through the building to the front entrance, where a line of Land Rovers sat in a row. The first in the line rolled forward. Dante pulled the door open for Tara. “Maria, this is Eduardo. He knows the city like he knows his backyard. You’re in good hands.”
Eduardo nodded. “A pleasure.”
Carl swung the back passenger door open and leaned in to Matt. “You’ll sit between us. Make one wrong move and I’ll blow your kneecap off.”
Matt shook his head. “Little grumpy today, aren’t you? Not a morning person?”
“Laugh it up, tough guy. But try anything and you’ll find out just how fun I can be.”
“I believe you.”
Isaac climbed into the rear seat first and Matt followed him, sliding on the leather until he was scrunched next to him. Carl took up position on Matt’s other side and closed the door. Tara gave the driver an instruction and he put the car in gear. Dante waved a gloved hand lazily at her before retrieving his cell phone from his overcoat and placing a call as he watched them pull away.
“It’s a go.”
He punched the line off and moved to his vehicle, his driver waiting patiently to take him to his office for another long day running his criminal enterprise.
~ ~ ~
Lieutenant Hernandez of the Mendoza police department uploaded the security camera footage from the casino and watched the entire attack three times through. When he was done, he froze several frames and increased the resolution until he was able to get passable enhanced stills of the mystery man and woman who had appeared out of nowhere, joined in the brief battle, only to vanish like fog from the surface of a mountain lake at first light. He tapped out a set of instructions, printed the screenshots, then called his superior at home. The captain was an early riser, he knew, and wouldn’t want Hernandez to sit on anything due to the hour. When he answered, his voice was alert.
“Captain, we finally received the casino footage.”
“Took them long enough,” the captain complained.
“Indeed. You’ll want to view it for yourself, but we’ve been thrown a curve on this one.”
“What do you mean?”
Hernandez gave him a brief description of the gun battle, ending with the discovery of the man and woman.
“And you say they were both unarmed?”
“Yes. The man took a gun away from a sentry. And the woman took one from a security guard.”
“But then they both joined in the shooting…”
“Correct, sir. It makes no sense.”
“Have you run them through the databases to see if we get a match?”
“Not yet, sir. I was going to suggest that this changes what we should be looking for at the crime scene. For one thing, we should be trying to get fingerprints from any area they might have left them.”
“Good thinking. But obviously it will be hit or miss. That place probably has thousands of prints on any given area, so it’s going to be a mélange of smudges, at best. Still, worth a try.” The captain paused, thinking. “Put the photos into the system. Let’s see if that expensive feature-recognition hardware we got from the Americans is worth anything. Do we have a link with immigration for it?”
“Not that I know of, sir.”
“Damn. Well, send it off to Interpol, too. You never know what will pop up. They might not be local.”
“Will do. I just wanted to get your approval before I did so.”
“You have it. I’ll be there within a half hour. Let’s plan to look the footage over when I arrive.” The captain hesitated. “Have you been there all night?”
“I ducked out for a few hours and got some rest. I’m fine.”
The captain cleared his throat. “What a night, huh? I reviewed the call logs from home this morning. Seems like all hell broke loose at once. Another shootout at that warehouse, and the attack on the villa… Have you spoken with the army yet?”
“Yes, sir. They’re standing by if we need them on the road, patrolling.”
“I hate to get them involved, but I think we’d better. When news of all this hits, the citizenry’s going to be justifiably ner
vous. Seeing that the government’s out in force should go a long way to reassuring them.”
“That’ll be my next call.”
“You know that if these are related, we have a real problem on our hands, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir. Of course, it’s too early to say. But it is suspicious that so much violence has taken place in such a short period. There might be more to this than a failed robbery attempt.”
“That occurred to me. Get the photos out into distribution. I’ll see you when I get in.”
Lieutenant Hernandez entered the information on his terminal for Interpol and pressed send, watching as the large image uploaded, the green progress bar on the interface seeming to take forever. When he was done, he repeated the process in the domestic system and, for good measure, sent it to the Americans as well.
Finished, he sat back in his swivel chair and exhaled heavily, the long hours having taken their toll during one of the most violent twenty-four-hour periods in Mendoza’s history. He pushed back and rubbed his eyes, then stood and went in search of another cup of the strong black coffee that was fueling him for his second consecutive day at his station.
Chapter 24
Two men stepped out of the brown Volvo station wagon, each toting a golf bag, one loaded with two Russian-manufactured Igla-S infrared homing surface-to-air missiles and the other with the shoulder-mounted launcher. They had arrived ten minutes earlier after receiving Dante’s call and one of the pair was on the telephone with his contact at air traffic control, who was tracking the incoming aircraft as it made its final approach to the airport.
At that hour the inbound air traffic was lighter than usual, with planes landing every five minutes instead of the every sixty seconds the larger international Ministro Pistarini airport saw. Both missiles had been purchased on the black market in Brazil, where the Igla-S was deployed with the military, as it was in Venezuela – those nations preferring the less expensive Russian devices over the more costly, and accurate, American-made Stingers.
The area was deserted, the parking lot of a waterside disco that was a quarter mile from the airport now empty in the light of day, the sins of the prior night washed away by the early morning cloudburst that had hit just before sunrise, passing as quickly as it had arrived. They stopped near a large pile of construction debris that rose in a mound in the next lot and left the Volvo’s engine running for a speedy getaway.
“How much time do we have?” Efren, the driver, asked nervously as his partner, Ricardo, listened on the line.
“How long until it’s in range?” Ricardo spat into the phone as he set down his bag.
The air traffic controller responded immediately. “It’s nineteen miles out. Over the river.”
“How many planes ahead of it?”
“One. Commercial. Aerolíneas Argentinas. No way to confuse the two. Watch for that one to land, and then the next one on the same flight path will be your plane.”
“Fair enough. This call never happened. Payment will be via the usual method.”
“I don’t know what you’re planning, but I can’t have–”
Ricardo hung up, uninterested in the man’s nervous warnings – he’d served his purpose, and they had work to do. Efren glanced around the area, confirming they were alone, their only company a few squabbling seagulls near the water and a few uninterested fishermen too far away to be an issue. Ricardo raised a pair of binoculars and studied the sky, then pointed at the pale blue expanse, where white puffs of scattered clouds moved west, driven by the Atlantic wind.
“There. I see it. About nine o’clock.”
Efren nodded and pulled one of the missiles from the sack and slid it home, seating it into the launching tube. He hefted it, familiar with devices like it from his years in the military, and grinned. “Keep your eye on the prize. Our baby should be right behind it.”
“We’re going to have to wait until it’s pretty close. The western approach is a problem.”
“We’ll wait until it’s within a couple of miles. Piece of cake.”
~ ~ ~
Jet leaned back in her leather seat and gazed out the window at the Buenos Aires skyline in the distance as the little jet did a slow turn over the river and slowed in preparation for landing. Paco shifted next to her, his eyes closed, trying to snatch a few more moments of rest before they were on the ground and he had to perform. Cool air drifted from the overhead vents recessed into highly polished walnut panels. Jet wondered absently what a plane like the one she was on cost to operate annually. She did a quick mental calculation and decided it had to be at least a half million dollars a year, possibly as high as a million. Even with her newfound riches, she couldn’t imagine burning money like that.
Out further from the coast, cargo ships steamed south toward the port, carrying the population’s necessities as the city went about its business, largely blind to the extent it depended on the sea traffic. She watched as a large ship, probably one of the ferries that departed from near the airport, plowed through the morning waves on its way to Uruguay, and remembered Alan’s near miss aboard one, which now seemed an eternity away. An image of his face flitted through her memory and she closed her eyes, sad for his passing but glad for the life she’d built with Matt. You could never go back, she knew from harsh experience, and you had to enjoy the time you had, because there were no guarantees.
She shook off the maudlin mood and directed her thoughts to more productive matters, namely freeing Matt and neutralizing Tara so she could never jeopardize either of them again. Paco had arranged for a vehicle when they touched down, and with any sort of luck, they would be able to get into position at the bank before it opened and thwart whatever Tara had in mind. Jet didn’t want to occupy her limited mental bandwidth, made more so by fatigue, with concerns about what they would do once Matt was free again. Maintaining her focus on the task at hand was what her operations discipline had taught her was the best approach and she wasn’t about to give in to emotionally driven tangents – especially when Matt’s life hung in the balance.
Manuel’s voice boomed over the public address system, disrupting her reverie.
“We’ll be on the ground in five minutes. Make sure you’re strapped in, although I expect a smooth landing.”
Paco opened his eyes at the announcement and checked his seat belt, then glanced at Jet as she did the same.
“Almost show time,” he said.
“I know. Let’s hope they’re careless.”
“We have the element of surprise.”
“In my experience, that can turn on a dime. We can’t be complacent.”
Paco nodded.
“A philosophy to live by.”
~ ~ ~
Ricardo lowered his spyglasses and pointed at the blip in the sky. “That’s it. You see it?”
“Of course. What would you guess the distance is?”
“No more than three miles.”
“So fifteen more seconds and we’re game on.”
“I’d say fire when ready.”
Efren peered at the plane and shouldered the drab green launch tube, aiming the forty-two-pound device at the distant dot in the heavens. He counted in his head. When he reached ten, he closed his left eye and gently squeezed the trigger.
The missile shot from the tube and streaked skyward, leaving a white smoke trail as it quickly accelerated to eight hundred miles per hour.
~ ~ ~
Paco cried out in alarm when he saw the flash from the ground and the smoke as the projectile tore through space, locked onto their engine heat signature. His yell startled Jet, but she didn’t understand what he was trying to warn her about, his words nonsensical to her ears. All she knew was that the color had drained from his face as he craned his neck to look out the window.
One moment Jet was taking a final gulp of water from her plastic bottle and the next the plane jolted violently as the missile exploded near the right engine, blowing most of the turbine to pieces as shrapnel tore thro
ugh the jet motor and the fuselage. The plane yawed at a sickening angle and a hole in the rear of the plane appeared. Two of Paco’s men died almost instantly as shards of metal cut through them.
Then the little jet was spinning as Manuel and his copilot struggled to keep it aloft, the plane in near freefall as it veered toward the surface of the river three thousand feet below. The remaining engine’s warning alarm clamored from the cockpit as they dropped, the craft’s aerodynamics inexorably altered by the loss of most of the tail section and the sudden absence of power.
Jet barely had a chance to brace herself as the surface raced up to meet them. The nose collided with the river and crumpled with an explosive force that tore one of the seats behind her out of the floor. The hapless young man strapped into it hurtled through the tiny cabin and nearly decapitated Paco before he slammed into the cockpit wall.
And then their forward momentum died and the cabin was nearly filled with icy water. Jet unclasped her seat belt and crawled toward the rear of the plane, where the tail section had torn free on impact, creating a massive emergency exit. Water reached her neck as she sensed Paco behind her, and then the plane was sinking into the depths, pulled lower by the current and gravity as she took a final gasp of air and propelled herself through the gap, ignoring the last of Paco’s men beside her, his head lolling at an unnatural angle, his neck snapped on impact.
~ ~ ~
Efren and Ricardo watched the detonation as the explosive charge blew the jet’s engine off. They could see the fireball even with the naked eye, and when the plane, belching a long trail of black smoke, flamed out into the river, they high-fived each other. They gathered up the remaining missile and ran for the car. Their instructions were to ditch the automobile once they’d dropped the weapon back at Dante’s building, so even if it had been spotted, they weren’t worried. By the time the police had a coherent description of the vehicle, it would be getting stripped in the nearby slums as desperate residents fought amongst themselves for the privilege of dismantling it.
Ricardo slid behind the wheel and gunned the engine as he called Dante on his cell. When he answered, Ricardo said only two words before disconnecting:
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