Primary Valor

by Jack Mars

  Darwin wanted to keep her. He wouldn’t let them take her. He reached out and grasped her around her thin wrist.

  She tried to pull away, but he held her tight.

  “Bite him!” the man said. “Just bite him.”

  “21,” Darwin said. “Don’t you listen.”

  The girl bent over and put her mouth to Darwin’s hand. He felt the stinging pain as she dug her teeth into his flesh. He pulled her closer, but still she bit, tearing into him. He didn’t dare come out from behind the bodyguard. For a brief moment, he and the girl were in a tug of war, he pulling her small body closer and closer, while she ripped his hand apart with her teeth.

  She kicked at him with her bare feet. He was low, and she kicked at his legs, and at his sides.

  The pain in his hand became too much. He let go. The back of his hand was bleeding. He was going to have an imprint of her mouth in his flesh.

  “You bitch!” he shouted at her. “You little—”

  “My name is Charlotte,” she said.

  She turned and ran up the hall to the man.

  “Stand behind me,” Darwin heard the man say. Everything, every word, every sound, echoed in this wide hallway.

  The man still had the gun to Elaine’s head. “That’s all I want,” he shouted. “The girl is all I came for. I’m alive, you’re alive. Cool?”

  Darwin suddenly realized that the man wasn’t even talking to him. He was talking to the last gunman here.

  The guard gestured at the two corpses on the floor. “What about them?”

  “They’re not your problem, are they? Your problem is you.”

  “There are thirty men on these grounds. You’ll never get out of here alive.”

  “That’s not your problem either,” the man said.

  A long second passed, and then the bodyguard stood tall. He raised his hands and holstered his gun. Darwin was still crouched behind him. Darwin glanced back again. The two remaining girls were here, sweet girls, loyal girls, 11 and 17. They could be blonde twins. They were behind him, hugging each other and crying.

  Darwin looked down the hallway. The intruder, Elaine, and 21 were all gone.

  “I want that man dead,” Darwin said.

  The bodyguard shrugged. He was staring down at the two dead men.

  “Kill him yourself,” he said.

  * * *

  “You have the keys to one of these things?”

  The three of them, Luke, the girl, and the woman Elaine, moved quickly across the parking lot toward the line of SUVs.

  The girl was barefoot, but she seemed to be managing. Her nightdress was basically see-through. Luke was going to have to find her some clothes. And if they made it through this, probably some kind of rubber room to hang around inside of for a while.

  The house loomed behind them, and behind that, the flames of the burning outbuilding cast an orange glow against the dark sky. The explosions, and the fire, had bought him some time, but probably not much.

  “No,” the woman said. “I don’t drive them.”

  Luke was through messing around. He was finished. His patience was just… gone. He had left two captive girls behind. Who knew how many more were here on these grounds, and in the house?

  He might have ended it by killing Darwin King, but he couldn’t get a clear shot. The bodyguard did exactly what he was paid to do—put his own body in the way of harm. Luke had already lost track of how many he had killed since Henry Bowles, just to get here. Six men, anyway. Maybe eight. Two dogs. Buzz Mac was dead. And now Luke was walking away—make that running away—from the whole thing. It was a mess. This job had been FUBAR from the beginning, and it had never gotten any better.

  Luke’s gun was pressed against the woman’s head as they walked. He jabbed her again, to remind her it was there.

  He shrugged. “If you can’t get me into one of those cars, and get it started, I have no reason to keep you alive.”

  The woman sighed. She could have been exasperated by an incompetent maid.

  “There are no keys. It’s keyless entry. I know the code. There’s a microchip inside a plastic fob sitting in a slot where they used to put the ashtray. We just leave the fobs in the cars. The motor recognizes the presence of the chip. Once you’re inside the car, you can start it by pressing a button on the dashboard.”

  Luke nodded. “Good. Then that’s what we’ll do.”

  He went to the first car in the line. He turned and looked back at the house. There was movement in the shadows. Men were massing near the guardhouse. The tall metal gates were closed. It was going to be hot getting out of here, if it wasn’t hot already.

  “Mister…” Charlotte said.

  He turned. She was staring up at him with big blues eyes. She gestured behind her. Men had appeared, coming from the other direction. They were shadows themselves, moving around the far end of the house.

  “Get down!” he shouted.

  Charlotte and Elaine dropped to the ground.

  THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.

  They were shooting. That was a bad sign. Luke had hostages. He supposed they didn’t care anymore. He crouched down and unstrapped one of the MP5s from around his shoulder. He stepped on one of Elaine’s wrists.

  “Don’t even think about running.”

  He stepped to the edge of the car, turned the corner, and opened with the gun.

  DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH-DUH.

  It was LOUD.

  Charlotte and Elaine both screamed. The girl put fingers in her ears. He wasn’t trying to hit anything. He couldn’t see anyone.

  Luke reached down and pulled Elaine to her feet.

  “Now. Open the car. Let’s go.”

  Elaine bent to the task, her fingers shaking. On the driver’s door, there was a dimly lit numeric pad where the key slot normally would be. She began pressing buttons. “I don’t know if I can—”

  “There’s no time,” Luke said. “Get it right. If I’m going to die here, so are you.”

  A beep sounded, and the door unlocked. Luke pulled it open.

  “Get in,” he said to Elaine.

  “Am I driving?”

  Luke shook his head. “No. Slide all the way across.”

  He looked at the girl. “Charlotte, get in the back and sit right behind the front passenger seat. Okay?”

  The girl nodded and got in.

  THUNK. THUNK. THUNK. THUNK. THUNK.

  Bullets chewed into armor.

  Luke slid in behind the wheel.

  “Shouldn’t I drive?” Elaine said. “And you hold a gun to my head? Isn’t that how we’re supposed to do it?”

  “No,” Luke said. “You’re not a good enough driver.”

  “How do you know that?”

  Luke smiled. “I just know.”

  He took Bowles’s pistol out of his belt. He checked the chamber. Empty. He ejected the magazine and let it drop out to the floor on his left. He turned to the girl.

  “Charlotte, this is a gun. It’s ready to fire. It’s a little bit heavy, so use two hands.”

  The girl tentatively took the gun in her small hands.

  “Put your finger on the trigger, but don’t press it. Yep. Just like that. I want you to hold the gun to the back of Elaine’s head, okay? If she tries anything, just shoot her.”

  The girl nodded. “Okay.”

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  “You can’t do that,” Elaine said, apparently unaware that the gun was empty. “You can’t give a gun to a child.”

  Luke found the big starter button and pressed it. The engine roared to life and he put the car in gear. “I just did.”

  Suddenly he got a better idea. He put his foot on the brake. He reached in his vest pockets and came out with a pair of hard plastic zip ties. He looked at Elaine.

  “Turn and face the window.”

  For once, she did what he said without argument.

  “Hands behind your back.”

  She gave him her hands and he zip-tied her wrists together.

>   “Good. I like you better this way.”

  She turned and faced front again. Her arms were pinned behind her back and against the seat. “It’s very uncomfortable sitting this way.”

  Luke shrugged. “Life. It gets uncomfortable sometimes.”

  He let his foot slowly off the brake. The car rolled slowly out of the line. The headlights had come on automatically, so it was going to be clear to any interested parties which car they were in. He tapped the gas. The car felt heavy, a little sluggish. That was good. Armor was heavy.

  The gate was straight ahead. There were men in the shadows on either side of it. Somewhere behind the house, the fire was dying down. He had gotten a little luck so far, now he needed some more.

  He stomped on the gas.

  The car took off, pushing through the drag caused by the weight of the armor. It accelerated, as its big engine kicked in. Now they were tearing, moving fast, racing by under the dense canopy of trees above them. It was like being in a tunnel. The house was behind them.

  Here came the black steel gate. The guardhouse was to the right.

  Men were crouched.

  Luke saw the flashes of their guns.

  Rounds hit the car, all over. DUM. DUM. DUM. DUM. The passenger side windows cracked and spiderwebbed. Charlotte shrieked now. Elaine groaned. The windshield smashed, but did not break. The armor was good. The armor was holding.

  A man fired from the darkness on Luke’s side, a rocket of some kind. It skimmed the roof and went over. Were they crazy?

  The gate loomed ahead, coming fast.

  Men were running, diving out of the way.

  “Hold on!” Luke shouted.

  The gate was RIGHT THERE. It looked solid as hell.

  Please please please please…

  BAM!

  The sound was huge, impossible, heavy metal CRUNCH at high speed. The impact jarred his shoulders, wrenched his entire body. His hands slipped and his head nearly hit the steering wheel. Everyone was screaming. Bullets ripped up the sides of the car.

  He sat up. Sparks were flying all over the outside of the car. There was a sound like SCREEEEEE…. They were through, but they were dragging part of the gate.

  “It’s steep here!” Elaine screamed. “The road is steep!”

  The road went straight down. It was like driving off a cliff. The car caught air. There was a long second where Luke’s butt and legs came off the seat. His stomach was in his mouth.

  “Aaaahhhhhh…”

  The car hit the road and bounced. He swerved, trying to regain control. He tapped the brake. The car skidded, fishtailing left… right… left… it was going to roll. The road was nearly vertical. If they went over at this speed…

  The car straightened out.

  Luke didn’t even slow down. Now they tore downhill at incredible speed. They were out.

  He looked at Elaine. Her head had hit the dashboard. Blood ran down the right side of her face.

  “Thanks for the tip,” he said.

  She shook her head. “The hill ends abruptly.”

  Luke slammed on the brakes. The car skidded the last thirty yards, and hit the spot where the hill ended and the level road began. The impact of it was nearly like a car crash itself. The car slid to a stop.

  Steam rose from the grille, mixing with the steamy night air here at sea level.

  “I think that’s the steepest hill I’ve ever driven on,” Luke said.

  “Congratulations,” Elaine said.

  Luke pressed the gas again and the car lurched forward. It was a good car, and it had done its job, but it wasn’t going to last much longer. A couple more hits and those passenger side windows were going to come down. The windshield was wrecked. He could barely see through it.

  It didn’t matter. There was nothing to see. There was only one road on the island, Luke knew, and it would take him straight to the airfield.

  After that? He was just going to have to get lucky again. There was a plane there, and maybe there was a pilot. If not, he was going to hold Elaine Sayles at gunpoint until they brought him one.

  It wasn’t a great plan, and the other team didn’t seem to care that much about Elaine’s safety, but…

  He didn’t know. He had come this far. All he could do was keep going, keep pushing, and try to catch one more break.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  10:29 p.m. Central Standard Time (11:29 p.m. Eastern Standard Time)

  The airfield

  La Sierra de San Simon (St. Simon’s Saw)

  Near Honduras

  The Caribbean Sea

  “Oh hell. What’s next?”

  The pilot’s name was Warren Cross. He had the plane parked at the end of the runway, engines already running. He could be in the sky in no time.

  He had been relaxing in the passenger cabin, thumbing through a copy of Conde Nast Traveler, when he heard the first explosion. A moment later, alarms started blaring.

  Cross had been working for Darwin King for the past eighteen months, and somehow he had always known it would come to this. Bombs going off, alarms shrieking, guns popping, people screaming over the radio in a mix of English and Spanish. It had only been a matter of time.

  Cross had mostly stopped going up to the house months ago. Why go up there and see things he didn’t want to see? Why witness events that might find him in a court of law one day? Instead, when he was on the island, he stayed down here at the airfield. There was an old building with bathrooms and showers. Troops came and went, and some of the guys brought him food down from the house. He slept on the plane.

  It was a lot of waiting around, but it was better this way. He was happiest when Darwin sent him somewhere on an errand, which happened frequently. Sometimes he went to Tegucigalpa, sometimes to Kingston, sometimes to Grand Cayman or even Miami. That was the best part of the job—being gone from here.

  Suddenly, there was shooting right outside the plane. Cross didn’t like shooting. He’d seen too much of it doing corkscrew landings at Baghdad Airport during the war. He was thirty-six years old now, and away from that kind of action. He had hoped to stay away from it forever, but now here it was again.

  He went to one of the windows. Out there, in the dark by the gate, Honduran soldiers were firing at something that was coming. Something was tearing up the roadway, a car of some kind, a shadow, sparks shooting around it, headlights out. It was coming straight at the gate. The men scattered and…

  BOOM!

  The car plowed right through the fencing, dragging a chunk of it into the parking lot. Cross just stared. It was one of the black SUVs from the house.

  It came crunching and limping across the tarmac to the plane. A man in black jumped out of it, turned, and started firing back at the soldiers. The angry blat of automatic fire ripped open the night. It was close, and it was LOUD.

  Now three people ran across the short distance to the passenger door. Two of them were female. One was Elaine Sayles. One was an anonymous teenage girl, of the kind Darwin King liked to collect.

  No one had given Cross any orders. He was just here in the airplane. He flew the plane. That was it. He was innocent of any crimes. He hadn’t done anything.

  Someone started banging on the door. Against his better judgment, Cross opened it.

  The three people came bursting in. Elaine’s face was a bloody mess. Cross didn’t mind that. He thought of Elaine as evil incarnate. If people could be evil, Elaine was one of those people. She might even be more evil than Darwin King. Could that be possible, that someone was more evil than Darwin?

  God! Cross should have quit this job a long time ago. He should have quit after the first week. But the money was too good. And now it was too late to quit.

  The man in black pulled the door closed behind him. He had one machine gun in his hands, another draped across his chest. His face was painted black and dark green. His left shoulder was torn apart and bleeding, but he didn’t seem to notice. His eyes were hard and flat. Cross had seen the eyes before i
n war zones.

  Murderer’s eyes.

  The man pointed his gun at Cross’s head.

  Cross raised his hands. “It’s cool, man. I’m just the pilot. I didn’t do anything to anybody. This plane is gassed and ready. I will take you anywhere you want to go. Just don’t shoot me.”

  The gunman’s demeanor didn’t change at all. He gestured with his head. “Give your clothes to the girl. Then let’s get out of here.”

  Cross glanced at the teenager. She looked about twelve. She was wearing some kind of see-through whatever. Of course she was. She had no shoes on. Her eyes were wide and staring. This was why Cross didn’t go up to the house anymore.

  Cross was about eight inches taller than the girl, and he outweighed her by probably seventy or eighty pounds. He was wearing a blue short-sleeved shirt over a wife-beater T-shirt. He was wearing madras pants over boxer briefs.

  “Man, my clothes aren’t going to fit that girl.”

  The gunman shook his head. His eyes were wild now. “We have no time. I’m not going to argue with you. We’re on the run, in case you haven’t noticed, and she’s not dressed for running. We’ll roll up the pants, and put your belt as tight as it will go. Okay? Now do it, ten seconds or less, before I decide to fly the plane myself.”

  Cross sighed, pulled his shirt off, and tossed it to the girl.

  “Go!” the gunman shouted. “Let’s go!”

  * * *

  The cockpit door was open during takeoff.

  Luke hung back from the doorway, out of sight of the guns on the ground. For some reason, no one fired a shot. Luke took that as a good sign. This was Darwin King’s private airplane. He probably didn’t want to see it get hurt.

  He probably thought that once the girl escaped and was safely in the United States, he could have his plane back. He probably could. King had always gotten away with everything before now. Why wouldn’t he get away with this?

  Luke felt the rush of acceleration as the plane taxied down the runway. The nose went up, the wheels left the ground, and then they were away. The pilot climbed steeply into the black sky, then banked to the left, headed north.