The water was dark beneath King’s feet. The bright light from the helicopter above couldn’t penetrate it, but King felt confident that if Terry was still alive and somewhere near the middle of the river, he could find him.
“Sam,” King finally said, “that is a helicopter you hear, and just for the record, I never quit.”
“Xander!” He’d never heard such elation in Sam’s voice. “How much time is left?”
“Less than two minutes.” King was shouting over the wind and the rotors. “And if I don’t find Terry in the next fifteen seconds, this is over. If he’s even still alive.”
“You’ll find him. And he will be alive. We’ll be listening!”
King squinted into the darkness ahead of him. When he saw something in the water at the edge of the light, he just hoped it wasn’t his imagination.
“There’s your man!” Juice shouted through the bullhorn form the open door of the cabin.
It was real. Terry was on his back, his head bobbing in and out of the water. King hooked a ladder rung with his right arm, then dipped all the way over and snatched a handful of the bottom of Terry’s T-shirt along with the waistband of his boxers, and squeezed with everything he had.
“He’s got him, move to shore!” Juice said to the pilot through his bullhorn. Then to King, he said, “Hang on, King. We’ll have you on the ground in ten seconds, and I’m coming down with the bag!”
The helicopter swooped right, and the elastic in Terry’s boxers ripped, yet for the moment they stayed intact. King was going to try to readjust his grip, but he feared in doing so he’d lose Terry. So he just kept squeezing and hoped that Terry wasn’t wearing the cheap brand.
In less than ten seconds, King saw the water disappear, and the sandy bedrock flashed below him. He didn’t wait for the helicopter to stop; he let go of Terry, hoping the five- or six-foot drop would wake him up, then jumped down himself. King looked up, and Juice was already on his way down. But time had to be running out.
King rushed over to Terry, and much to King’s delight, Terry was already coughing up water. King rolled him over onto his side and began smacking him on the back. Juice plopped down beside them, slung the bag onto the ground with a thud, and unzipped the top. King looked over, and the red numbers were relentlessly counting down. It was at fifty-seven seconds.
“Come on, Terry! We still have time, I just need you to come around.”
Terry was still coughing and lurching up water. King moved over and grabbed the bottom of the bag.
“Pull it out!” King shouted to Juice.
Juice put his lunch-pail-sized hands around the bomb and pulled as King yanked the bag in the opposite direction. Then King reached back into his pocket and pulled out his knife as he hovered over the wires once more—this time with a whole lot more hope. The hope grew even greater when Terry finally stopped coughing.
However, when King looked back over to ask Terry which wire to cut, Terry was lying facedown on the bedrock. He had passed out.
“Juice! Wake him up! Do CPR or something!”
King readied his knife as Juice rushed around him over to Terry. King watched the timer tick down into the forties; then he watched Juice tilt Terry’s head back, open his airway, then give him mouth to mouth.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” King shouted to no one. His frustration had boiled over.
Juice moved from breathing support to chest compressions. The timer moved from the forties into the thirties. King grabbed Juice’s shoulder and shook him.
“You need to get your men out of here!” King shouted over the helicopter.
Juice looked over at him, his facial expression showing that he was appalled at the notion.
“Go on, Juice! Save them! I’m going to cut a wire. I have a one-in-four chance. But all of you have a 100 percent chance if you go now and fly straight up!”
“This is my mess!” The light from the helicopter revealed the bulging vein in Juice’s forehead. “If I hadn’t run those weapons, they wouldn’t have gotten these nukes here! You get the hell out of here, and I’ll cut the wire!”
King didn’t have any more time to argue. He grabbed his knife, opened the blade, and put it to the red wire. This was it. King once again made the loop in the red wire, then put the blade through the middle of it. He closed his eyes and—
“Xander!” King heard Sam shout in his ear.
King opened his eyes and stopped himself from cutting the red wire.
“If you can hear me, cut the blue wire! Xander! Cut the blue wire!”
The timer ticked down to nineteen seconds.
“Are you kidding me?” King shouted.
“No, cut the blue wire! I’ve been trying to reach the man who successfully shut down the first nuke. They finally tracked him down, and he just called me. He said to cut the blue wire. Now just shut up and do what I’m telling you!”
The timer was under fifteen seconds when he looped the blue wire and moved the blade of his knife over to it.
“You’re sure?”
“Just do it!”
King gritted his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, and tensed every muscle in his body as he braced for what he was sure would be a blast that would turn him into a million pieces. He let out a shout as he sliced the blade, and he was still shouting when he looked down and saw the time stop on twelve seconds. He continued his shout as he rose to his feet and raised his arms high in the air. He’d never felt anything like it.
Juice joined him, and before King knew it, he was wrapped in a bear hug, the life being squeezed out of him.
“Did you do it?” King heard Sam panicking in his ear. “Did you cut it?”
King pushed away from Juice and gave him a high five for the ages.
“Sam, you did it! You never quit on me and you did it. It was the blue wire! We shut it down!”
King heard Sam and Omari whooping it up through his earpiece. King gave another strong pump of his fist; then he remembered that Terry never woke up. King dove down to the ground and rolled Terry onto his stomach. King wrapped his arms around him at the midsection and clasped his hands. King had watched Juice unsuccessfully perform CPR, so King’s mind went to the violent push of the Heimlich maneuver. King jerked his arms back a couple of times, but nothing changed. He looked up at Juice, and Juice motioned for King to give it all he had. King rallied the last of his strength, and he jerked his arms inward so hard that he felt Terry’s rib break beneath King’s wrist.
Terry vomited up a bucket’s worth of water after that last tug, and King felt him take in a massive breath. King raised up off him, then collapsed onto his back. He was exhausted, but he was also overwhelmed with emotion after making it through that crazy ride. And he took a minute, right there on the bedrock of the New Madrid Seismic Zone, and thanked God for giving him the strength not to quit on the millions of people who could have been killed if Marcus Christian and Raúl Ortega’s plan had worked.
“Sam?” King said. His voice was weak yet loud enough to rise above the rotors spinning above him.
“Yes, mate?”
“Find out where Raúl Ortega is right now.”
“Right now? Why?”
“Because I’m coming for that son of a bitch.”
44
Mexico City, Mexico,
Two weeks later
Alexander King picked up his glass and took a sip. He was drinking Bodega Los Cedros Pinot Noir. The waiter had told him it was an award-winning Mexican wine. King found it enjoyable. He was also enjoying the sunset that was dropping behind the steeple at Mexico City Metropolitan Cathedral in downtown Mexico City. His table on the open-air balcony of the El Mayor restaurant also overlooked the archeological excavation of the Templo Mayor. He didn’t know what that meant, but he was sure the mounds of dirt meant something to someone.
The warm breeze lingered around him, carrying away the smoke he blew after a puff of his Davidoff Aniversario Perfecto cigar. The notes of sweet wood, white pepper spice, a
nd leather blended well with the dark fruit flavors of the wine. It was a spectacular evening to enjoy some of the finer things in life. It was hard to beat a great drink, a smooth cigar, and the satisfaction of getting to kill one of the largest drug dealers on the planet. Especially after that drug dealer killed fifty-seven Americans and injured thousands more when he helped plant a briefcase nuke over a fault line in New Madrid, Missouri. Not to mention the people who were at Ronald Reagan Airport when Marcus obliterated it.
Two months ago when King had been sent to do recon on Raúl Ortega, one of the things King noted over the few days he’d spent following Ortega was that his favorite place to meet was the very patio King was sitting on now. So when the meeting had been set up to talk about becoming a major distributor for Ortega’s growing human trafficking business, King wasn’t surprised Ortega had chosen that spot. In fact, he had counted on it.
King of course set the meeting under a different identity. The CIA built a foolproof backstory, all the way down to the fake pornography film company he’d owned for decades and his stake in more than a few strip clubs. One of the ways they sealed the meeting was a confidential informant embedded in the trafficking business who vouched for King—aka Benjamin Wylde. King was told to be at El Mayor and that some of Ortega’s men would be meeting him first, to make sure he wasn’t wearing a wire and didn’t have a weapon.
While it wasn’t necessarily unusual for a man like Ortega to do such business in public, King felt it was his most vulnerable weakness. And he’d thought that ever since the days he’d spent watching him. But Ortega was the sort of man who had never really been challenged. Plus, he thought Mexico City was his City. And while in some ways that might have been the case, it wouldn’t be for long.
King was wearing a white fedora with a tan silk ribbon. It complimented his white linen shirt and tan linen pants. To look the part he went with some gaudy buckskin leather Italian loafers, complete with gold buckles and a name-brand logo. They weren’t his style, but he felt as though Benjamin Wylde would like them.
When three men approached his table, King new it was showtime. He was happy to stand when they asked him to. They patted him down and checked his passport. Satisfied, they allowed him to take a seat. King picked up the tacky oversize gold sunglasses he’d rested on the table and slid them on. His hope was that he looked as sleazy as he felt. The gold pinky ring he was wearing felt like the icing on the scumbag cake.
“Senior Ortega will be with you in a moment,” one of his men said.
King nodded, sat back, crossed his legs, and took a puff. He was trying to slow time as much as he could, because he was really going to enjoy what happened next. Though he knew it was sick to revel in the death of another human being, at that point in King’s life, it was all relative. If someone knew they could save hundreds or maybe thousands of people by killing one man, and they had the experience and desensitization to it that King had, they would enjoy it too. Of that he was certain.
“Mr. Wylde?” King heard someone with a Mexican accent say.
King pulled his hat low, rose to his feet, and for the second time, he was face-to-face with the fit, tanned gangster with slicked-back black hair, Raúl Ortega.
“Mr. Ortega,” King said, reaching out his hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise. Have a seat.”
King did as Ortega asked. Ortega took a seat as well. The three other men who had escorted him in took a step back. There were six of them now. Seven counting Ortega.
“I appreciate you coming all this way to meet me, Mr. Wylde. I hope you understand that before I do any sort of new business, I always like to meet my partners face-to-face.”
“Of course. And it’s no problem. This is a beautiful city.”
“That it is,” Ortega said. “So I am to assume that by coming here, you are okay with my terms?”
“Straight to business,” King said. “I like it. And yes, it all looks great to me.”
“That is good to hear. We will make a lot of money—”
“Except for just one tiny little detail,” King interrupted.
King could tell Ortega didn’t appreciate being interrupted. Ortega sat forward and steepled his fingers as he rested his elbows on the table.
“All right, Mr. Wylde. What detail might that be? I’m sure it can be fixed.”
King shook his head and removed his hat. “No, you know, Raúl, I’m not sure it can be.”
Then King removed his sunglasses and looked Ortega dead in the eyes.
Ortega nodded his head and sat back in his chair. “I thought there was something familiar about you, Xander King.” Then a huge smile grew across his face. “I guess that tiny detail you’re speaking of is that I didn’t get out of the trafficking business after all.”
King nodded. “Yeah. That’s the one.”
Ortega laughed. “So, what? You think you are going to come here and kill me”—Ortega spun in his chair and gestured to his guards—“and all of my men . . . what, by yourself?”
The black man that was seated at the table behind King, the dark-haired woman at the table to his left, and the white man dressed as a waiter who was delivering glasses of water all stood and turned toward Ortega at the same time. All of them raised their suppressed pistols and began firing on Ortega’s men until every last one of them was lying on the ground.
Ortega jumped up from his seat and glanced over at the exit from the patio. A large, muscular man stepped through the door. It was King’s favorite Dwayne Johnson lookalike. King sat calmly in his chair. The CIA had set up everything with the restaurant, ensuring that no civilians would be around when King and his crew had their fun and that Omari, Sam, Kyle, and Juice would all be in just the right spots.
“It might be a little redundant at this point, Ortega, but to answer your question, no, I don’t expect to come in here alone and kill you and all your men. But now that your men are dead, I think it’s my turn to get in on the action.”
King stood and slid back his chair.
“I have a gun at the back of my pants,” Ortega said. “I’ll use it if I have to.”
“You don’t have a gun, Ortega. I’ve watched you for a few days, and you were never without your men. This made you complacent. You thought you were untouchable.” King took a step forward. “And frankly, you were, until you lied to my face. Oh, and that small thing with the bomb, and the killing of my fellow countrymen.”
“Your countrymen killed my brother!” Ortega shouted. He looked desperate. “You’re telling me that if people in my country murdered your family, you wouldn’t come for revenge? I know you would!”
“Yes, if my family weren’t murderous thugs who bought and sold humans, you are right, I would come for revenge. But your brother was just like you. A sociopath with no regard for right or wrong and, worse, no regard for human life.”
King watched as Ortega balled up his fists. “You’re a big man when you’re here with your team holding guns on me. Typical of you Americans.”
King looked at each of his team members and nodded for them to put their guns away. They each laid them down on the tables that were near them.
King held his arms out wide, then pressed on. “I asked one thing of you. Stay in your lane, traffic your drugs, make your money, but leave people alone. Leave teenage girls alone. But you just can’t help yourself, can you? And that’s what your brother was trying to do in my country when he was shot and killed. He was trying to take innocent children back here to you so you could sell them to the highest bidder. Thank God they killed your scumbag brother, and when I’m done with you, hundreds of parents around the world will be thanking God that you’re dead too.”
Ortega charged forward. King was ready. He had the back of his wooden chair in his hand, and he whipped it forward. When Ortega threw up his hands to block, King kicked the side of his knee and bent it inward. King held back for a moment, and as Ortega tried to stand, King hit him in the side of the head with a right
cross, knocking him unconscious. King reached down, picked him up, and slammed his back down on the table. He then started slapping him in the face.
“Wake up! Wake up, you son of a bitch!”
Ortega came to and tried to push King back with his hands. King swatted his arms down and lifted him up by his black button-down shirt, then whirled him around to the rail and slammed his back against it. He then squeezed Ortega’s neck as he pushed his upper body out over the railing. Ortega frantically looked down, then back up at King.
“You think this changes anything?” Ortega shouted through his hindered windpipe. “Do you?”
“You should ask Marcus Christian the same thing. He’s rotting in a cell right now, where he’ll be for the rest of his life. But you? I’m going to give you the easy way out. Why? Because I want you to watch your brother burn in hell, and I want you to be right there beside him. Fifty-seven people died because of that bomb! Thousands more will never be the same!”
King was shouting at the top of his lungs. His hand was cramping, he was squeezing Ortega’s neck so hard.
“Xander!” Sam shouted from behind him. “We promised Director Lucas we’d bring him in alive!”
King looked back over his shoulder, then back to Ortega. “Maybe you and I aren’t so different after all, Ortega.”
“Xander!” Sam shouted one last time.
“’Cause I’m not afraid to break my promise either. Especially if it makes the world a better place.”
King gave Ortega one final shove, and down over the rail he fell. A split second later, King heard his bones breaking as he landed headfirst on the concrete below.
King turned to Sam with his arms out to his sides. “Whoops?”
“Great,” Sam said. “Once again I get to be responsible for cleaning up one of your messes.”
King took a deep breath to calm his rushing adrenaline, then straightened out his shirt. “It’s called job security, Sam. And . . . you’re welcome.”
45
Power Move (Alexander King Book 4) Page 18
