JET - Escape: (Volume 9)

by Russell Blake

  From now on she’d do things her way.

  She eased one of the tall double doors open and entered the church. A young priest walked toward her from the altar area, and she smiled disarmingly as he approached.

  “Welcome to God’s house, my child. Let me know if there’s anything I can–” he began.

  Fernanda’s lightning blow to his throat caught him completely by surprise, instantly crushing his larynx and choking him. He collapsed on the stone floor and flailed like a beached fish as Fernanda watched him wordlessly. After several minutes his complexion turned blue from cyanosis, and he lay still. She dragged him to the confessional booth and propped him up inside, drew the red velvet curtain, and then made for the rear of the church and the stairs that led to the bell tower.

  When she was beside the altar, she listened for any movement, but heard nothing. The priest, as she expected, had been alone, preparing the church for any stragglers in need of spiritual guidance. The sign out front promised a mass every evening at six, and at ten and six on Sundays, so she had all day before she had to worry about anyone getting suspicious about the good father’s absence.

  The stairs were off the vestry. She took them two at a time, anxious to get into position.

  The wharf was just beginning to stir when she reached the top of the tower. Two amorous pigeons flapped away, startled by her arrival, and she smiled bitterly. Enjoy it, my feathered friends, because you never know how long it’s going to last. Igor’s face popped into her mind and she blinked it away. She needed to stay focused, not daydream about lost love. She would mourn Igor in her own time – once he’d been avenged, and not before.

  Fernanda inched toward the gap and looked out at the shimmering blue of Maracaibo Lake, which fed into the Caribbean Sea north of the city. The morning sun gilded the surface as she scanned the cargo vessels. Seamen and dock laborers were just arriving to work, the activity muted at the early hour. Near the refinery, two men wrestled a thick fuel hose to a medium-sized cargo ship as the captain watched from the deck, but there was no sign of the woman or her family.

  Fernanda unzipped her bag, withdrew her sniper rifle, and set the suppressor and two magazines beside her before peering through the scope. She calculated the range and figured that the docks were no more than four hundred meters away – a manageable shot for a professional, especially with no real wind and high humidity.

  Fernanda adjusted the scope and then sat back and affixed the suppressor, twisting it onto the machined threads carefully. When she was done, she slipped a magazine into the rifle and loaded a cartridge, and then went back to scanning the boats, the stock resting on the thick lip of the bell tower, the barrel all but invisible – not that she had any concerns about detection. She was positive that the last thing in the world the woman would be expecting was to be picked off on her way to a boat in Nowhere, Venezuela. She probably assumed that she’d gotten away clean, which would have been the case had it not been for Fernanda’s involvement.

  Fernanda settled in for a wait, the gun comfortable in her hands. The men onboard the ships were clearly visible in the scope, the resolution so high it seemed as though she could reach out and touch them.

  Now it was a matter of patience, and she could outwait the best of them.

  As her quarry was going to discover as their last living realization.

  Chapter 29

  La Ensenada, Venezuela

  The taxi carrying Drago stopped at the waterfront, and he paid the driver the promised bonus. He took in the empty square as he climbed from the cab. The taxi rumbled away over the distressed pavement, and Drago moved to a small park across the street from the quay and sheltered himself from the morning sun beneath a grove of trees. Not much was moving on the docks, which didn’t surprise him, and should work in his favor. The town was small enough that there could only be one reason for Matt and the woman to have come there instead of continuing to Maracaibo, and that was to find a boat.

  They would be smart enough to figure out that any major harbor would likely be on alert – but a second-string port like La Ensenada would be at the bottom of most lists, which made it perfect. It’s what he would have done. And they were pros, so their instincts would be similar.

  Now he just needed to find them.

  He considered the layout of the wharf and asked himself how he would have done it. He was sure they’d already found a willing vessel, given their motivation. While it was possible they were already aboard, it was unlikely, in case there was an unexpected search by the authorities – a fairly common occurrence in ports near Colombia. No, they’d wait until the last possible second and then board just before the boat departed.

  He fished his binoculars from his bag and killed time by scanning the ships – as sorry a collection of rust buckets as he’d ever seen. A vendor pushed a cart across the parking lot toward the first jetty, ringing a chime to alert the workers, but other than that and a few scraggly seagulls marching along the concrete embankment, the area was deserted.

  After ten minutes, he grew bored and studied the surrounding buildings, the ache in his head reminding him of his sleep deficit. The town was a shithole, even by third world standards, with its noxious lake water and all the structures in disrepair. He tried to imagine what it must be like to live in a purgatory like La Ensenada and shook his head.

  Something flashed on the edge of his vision, and he turned the spyglasses toward it. He saw a multistory home, a few warehouses, a church… Whatever it was caught the sun again and glinted.

  In the bell tower.

  He cursed. He’d gotten it wrong. His quarry hadn’t assumed they were in the clear at all. They were conducting surveillance on the port, watching for watchers. Watching for him.

  And he was exposed. Although…his appearance was different enough that it was possible they wouldn’t recognize him, especially under his stained baseball cap and sunglasses. The woman had only seen him in the dark, at the river, for a moment. Matt was a different story, but depending on which of them was up there working the morning shift…

  He dropped the binoculars back into his bag and stood. Now committed to making a move, he crossed the road at a measured pace, taking care to do so while walking away from the port so all a watcher would see was the back of his head. As Drago approached the sidewalk, he turned and skirted the buildings until he arrived at a street that led toward the church. He hadn’t felt the sensation of being in the crosshairs, so he was confident that he hadn’t been spotted. That, and he was still breathing, which he was sure he wouldn’t be if the woman or Matt had placed him.

  At the next intersection he took another small street, and within a minute had the church in sight, closing on it from the rear, out of the field of view of the bell tower. Once near the building, he felt in his bag for the pistol and slipped it into his waistband. It wasn’t easily concealable with the suppressor on, so he’d have to risk his shots being heard – a small enough concession for being able to exact his vengeance. Slipping away after shooting them would simply be more difficult. Then again, Drago had built a reputation for specializing in the impossible, and dodging some small-town cops would pose little challenge for him.

  Drago moved to the rear entry to the church, but the door was locked. He glanced around and, after confirming he was unobserved, broke the pane of glass in the door with his elbow and reached in to unlock the deadbolt. The door offered no resistance and he pushed into the vestry, which was in keeping with the rest of the town, Spartan and bleak.

  Once inside, his ears strained for sounds of life, but he didn’t hear anything. He made his way toward the bell tower stairs and, as he moved, pulled the MAC-10 from the bag and felt for a magazine. His fingers grazed one of the distinctive long shapes, and he retrieved it and slid it into the handle before locking the bolt back and ready, taking care to do so as quietly as possible.

  The stairway was narrow, the ancient wood planks worn smooth from generations of the faithful. Drago mounted the step
s with silent caution, aware that any slip at this point would warn his quarry. He winced with each creak of the old timbers, seemingly deafening to him, but in reality almost inaudible. When he neared the landing at the top, he quieted his heart rate, preparing for the kill as he fingered the machine-pistol trigger in anticipation.

  ~ ~ ~

  Fernanda shifted in place, her knees sore from the hard surface, and did another slow sweep of the docks. A second crew of dockworkers had arrived and moved to a ship behind the one being fueled, and she eyed each figure to ensure that none of them were the woman or Matt, disguised.

  Movement at the edge of the parking lot drew her attention, and she swung the rifle toward two figures striding toward the jetty. She peered through the scope at the back of the pair’s heads, and realized with a start that it wasn’t two people at all – it was three: two adults wearing caps and dark glasses, one of them carrying a child.

  Fernanda steadied the rifle as she drew a measured breath, and then a soft scrape from the stairway behind her startled her. She whirled toward it with the rifle as the doorway exploded with muzzle flashes.

  Pain shrieked through her chest, but she managed to squeeze off a shot, and then her vision starbursted and she was blinded by agony. She coughed once, a band of pressure suddenly squeezing her ribcage like a vise, and then she tumbled forward, dead before her head hit the cement with a dull thud.

  Drago’s lips twitched in victory as he closed the distance between himself and the woman. He toed the rifle away from her lifeless hand and kneeled beside her, taking care not to spoil his pants in the thick pool of blood, and turned her over so he could see her face.

  And froze.

  Even with part of her cheek blown off, he realized his error. This wasn’t the right woman. She looked similar to the other, but the cast of the eyes was different, less Asian, and her face was a little fuller, the jawline different.

  “Damn,” he muttered, trying to process what had just occurred. If this wasn’t her, then…it was another pro, no doubt hired by the cartel.

  Which meant the woman was still out there – and now alerted by the gunfire.

  His stare drifted to the bell tower aperture, and he snatched the binoculars from his bag and scanned the waterfront. Everyone on the docks was pointing at the church, which wasn’t unexpected. But what was were the two figures now running for the black-hulled cargo ship at the far jetty.

  “You,” he hissed under his breath. He lowered the glasses and reached for the rifle, and cursed again when he saw the ruined scope shattered by one of his rounds. The low-powered guns he had were barely adequate for close-in work, and there was no chance of hitting anyone at what looked to be at least three hundred meters and growing by the second, even if he emptied his weapons in their direction, hoping to get lucky.

  He raised the glasses again and watched as the pair mounted the ship’s gangplank, and then he scanned down the hull to the stern to see the name.

  The Milan. Flagged in Liberia.

  The tower seemed to sway, and he groped at a vertical beam for support. Fury coursed through him at his blunder. Not only had he shot the wrong person, but his quarry was within easy reach and he was impotent to stop them. The spell faded after a few moments, and he wiped his brow.

  Drago looked around the bell tower, regaining his bearings, and made for the stairs. There was nothing to be achieved by remaining any longer, other than having to shoot it out with the police. But if he was fast enough, he might be able to make it to the ship and finish them once and for all.

  All he’d need to do would be to evade any cops, bluff his way aboard the boat, and manage to execute two skilled operatives, who were probably armed and waiting for him to make a move – all the while praying that he didn’t have another little episode in the process.

  Normally optimistic, he admitted to himself that his odds of achieving that were somewhere between slim and none, which left him with two choices: either continue to the boat and embark on what would almost certainly be a suicide mission, or lie in wait for it wherever it was headed.

  Framed that way, there was no choice. He’d need to get out of La Ensenada while he still could, before a manhunt was launched and the town was closed off as the police searched for the church shooter. If he stayed, he was guaranteed to be caught and, even with his pull, would likely die in a Venezuelan prison – his client would disown him, and he’d be left to rot.

  That was unacceptable.

  He’d be waiting wherever the boat was headed.

  And when it arrived, he’d finish the job.

  With extreme prejudice.

  Chapter 30

  Jet and Matt ducked when they heard the chatter of gunfire from the church and immediately sprinted for the Milan, zigzagging to create more difficult targets. When they reached the gangplank, a rough-looking seaman with a knit cap pulled low over his brow was staring at the church, the pair of dockworkers manning the fuel line oblivious to their arrival, standing nearby with open mouths. The deckhand barely seemed to register them until Jet spoke.

  “We’re Captain Adrian’s passengers.”

  The seaman looked confused, as though he hadn’t understood her. Jet tried again. “Where’s Captain Adrian?”

  “Oh, he’s up on deck. By the superstructure.”

  “Can we board?”

  The crewman was looking over her shoulder at the bell tower, his attention again drawn by the shooting. “Huh? Oh, yeah, you’re passengers. He told me you’d be coming.”

  Jet led Matt, who was carrying Hannah, up the gangplank. Once on deck they approached Captain Adrian, who was staring at the church. His eyes darted to them for a moment and then back to the skyline.

  “Did that shooting have anything to do with you?” he demanded.

  “It’s possible. We need to get under way. Now.”

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t work that way. We’re fueling. It will take another hour to fill the tanks.”

  “Tell them to disconnect the hose. We’re leaving,” Jet said, steel in her tone. “Don’t make me escalate this. You aren’t my enemy, but I’m not going to sit at the dock and wait for whoever was shooting to come for us. Do you understand?”

  Adrian’s eyes narrowed. “Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? This is my ship, and I want you off of it, now. Go figure out your problems on your own. I didn’t sign up for this.”

  She pulled her shirt up so he could see the butt of her pistol. “Captain Adrian, tell your men to untie the boat and disconnect the fuel line, or you’ll do it at gunpoint. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will to save my daughter’s life. Do you understand?” Jet’s green eyes locked on his. He held her glare and nodded slowly.

  “You’re making a huge mistake,” he warned.

  “Maybe, but I’m not sticking around to see who’s shooting. And neither are you.”

  Adrian grunted and then called out to his men. “Remove the fuel line and make ready. We’re getting under way. I’ll be in the bridge.”

  The seamen and dockworkers on the jetty looked confused. Adrian turned back to Jet and Matt. “You know that hijacking a boat is about as serious an offense as there is, right? Carries the death penalty in a lot of places. I think Venezuela’s one of them.”

  “Every second we’re at this dock might be a death sentence. Start the engines and we’ll discuss it on the way out to the ocean,” Matt said.

  Adrian regarded him and shook his head. “You’ll never get away with this.”

  Jet shrugged. “We will if you keep your mouth shut. I’ll double the fee. Ten thousand. Cash. The only ones who’ll know you took some convincing will be us.”

  She could see greed flash across his face. If they were putting out to sea anyway, all he had to do was forget their little tiff and he’d make out like a bandit.

  “What are you running from?” he asked quietly.

  “I crossed the wrong people. They hold a grudge. But there are limits to how far they’ll go t
o get us,” she said, only half believing her words. “And I don’t think they saw us come aboard.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Do you see any gunshot wounds?”

  “Then what was the shooting about?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t want to wait around to find out.”

  Adrian scowled as he considered the offer. “No more threats, is that clear? And keep your gun out of sight. There are no weapons allowed on a cargo ship like this. You could get us all thrown in a Cuban jail if you’re not careful.”

  “You’ll never see it again.”

  “Ten thousand. Before we get under way.”

  “Let’s go up to the bridge. You can count it once we’re away from the dock.”

  Adrian nodded and held a small radio to his lips. “Get the engines started.”

  The radio crackled. “Yes, sir. Powering up.”

  Adrian dropped the radio back into his pocket and gave Jet and Matt a hard stare before turning and marching to the superstructure, his footsteps thudding angrily on the steel deck. Jet and Matt trailed him, and as they neared the watertight door, Matt leaned into her, his voice quiet.

  “You think he bought it?”

  “I think he wants ten thousand dollars of untraceable money. That makes it easier for him to convince himself.”

  “What if we’re wrong and he radios for help? We can still be intercepted.”

  “We’ll stay with him at all times. In shifts. Won’t let him pass any messages to his crewmen without us seeing them, no whispered discussions. We can do this, Matt. It won’t be easy, but it’s our best shot.”