by Jade Dean
“Our first priority is to get Ryan to safety before we think about going after anyone,” Abby said in response to his offer.
Overhearing the exchange as they re-entered the basement, Holt and Doran shared a look. “Count us in, too,” Doran said for both of them. All three men wished to be a part of the plan, whatever it might be. Revenge was definitely on her mind, but it was just a vague notion at the moment.
“What will Trevor say about this?” Ryan asked. Jackson had given him a shot of morphine and the pain was already fading.
“We won’t give him a choice,” Holt replied. “We’ll go on extended leave if we have to.”
Worried about how pale Ryan was, Abby gestured towards their stretcher. It was an ironing board, of all things, and it was barely adequate for the task. “Let’s get Ryan out of here before any more of Montoya’s men show up.”
The three agents eased Ryan onto the board then lifted it. They left through the concealed door rather than climbing the stairs and backtracking through the mansion. The grass was long enough to brush Abby’s knees as they rounded the manor and headed for the garage. They’d have to abandon their jeep, which was no great loss. They’d never be able to carry Ryan through several miles of jungle to reach it. He’d bleed to death long before they arrived.
Jones found the keys inside a dark gray van that was used for transporting cargo rather than people. They carefully slid the stretcher inside then climbed in. Jackson took the wheel and Holt sat in the passenger seat. Doran monitored Ryan’s heart rate, not that he could do much if it began to drop. They had only basic first aid kits rather than life saving equipment.
Abby stopped Dale when he pulled out of the driveway. “I hid my gear here,” she explained and climbed out to retrieve it.
Holt pulled a small device out of his pocket when she climbed back in and closed the door. Jackson shook his head, but he didn’t protest. He knew Matt well and it was inevitable that fireworks of some kind had to be set off.
“I left a little goodbye present for Montoya,” Matt said and grinned as he pressed the button. The van was rocked by several explosions that went off simultaneously.
Abby watched through the heavily tinted back window as the mansion collapsed. All ten of the female captives that Jackson had released were in a vehicle somewhere ahead of them. Everyone else who had been on the property had already been dead before the blast had gone off. There had been no call to destroy the house, but she was glad nevertheless. Montoya would have one less place to hide when they went after him next.
Josh saw Abby wince when they hit a particularly deep pothole. She put her free hand on her left side and it came away bloody. Her white shirt was stained red and he’d wrongly assumed it was from Ryan’s injuries. “How bad are you hurt?” he asked her.
“It’s just a scratch,” Abby replied. The wound stung, but she’d suffered worse.
“Let me see.”
The hulking agent shuffled over to her on his knees and gently lifted her shirt up. A shallow graze ran along her side and blood trickled into the waistband of her pants. Giving her an exasperated look for not tending to her injury, Josh reached for his backpack. Abby bore his treatment silently as he cleaned and dressed the gash. It was a pity she was already taken. Doran liked feisty women who could hold their own against the bad guys.
Jackson drove as carefully as he could along the ill-kept dirt road. Abby held Ryan’s hand in hers and his grip tightened each time the van rocked when it hit a pothole or a bump. His dressings were already stained red and he was losing more blood by the second. They had to get him to a hospital as soon as possible.
Dale had been to Rio before, of course. All four agents had been part of the operation to take down Diego Montoya after he’d become too large a target to ignore. Montoya had started out small, but had quickly expanded his drug empire throughout South America. He hadn’t become a threat until he’d branched out into North America several years ago. He’d quickly worked his way to the top of the list of bad guys that had to be shut down.
Diego had no real need of the petty operations that Ryan and the other bandito leaders had been in charge of. Keeping the citizens of Rio and the surrounding areas beneath his thumb was the goal. He made millions selling drugs, but what he really wanted was respect, even if he achieved it through fear and oppression.
Following the signs to the closest hospital, Jackson kept to the local speed limit to avoid drawing attention to their van. He stopped a few blocks away from the hospital so he and his team mates could disembark. Abby took the wheel while the others slipped the ironing board out from beneath their ex-team leader. Her cover story wouldn’t hold up if she was accompanied by three men who clearly weren’t average civilians.
Ryan phased in and out of consciousness during the journey. He woke when the van came to a halt and saw Jackson saluting him from the doorway. He tried to return the gesture, but his hand refused to co-operate and lay limply by his side. He managed to twitch his fingers and that was all.
The next time he opened his eyes he saw the bright lights of a hospital hallway. He caught a glimpse of Abby’s worried face before a door closed between them. Nurses bustled around him, following the orders of a doctor. He was shifted onto another bed then a mask came over his face. He sank into unconsciousness wondering if any of these people were Montoya’s. If they were, there was a good chance he might not wake up again.
₪₪₪
Chapter Fifteen
Abby paced the floor of the waiting room anxiously. She’d concocted a story about being mistaken for a wealthy couple that had been waylaid by bandits. She told the nurse that Ryan had been tortured in an attempt to make her pay for his release. The story wouldn’t have been believable in the US, but they were in South America where anything was possible. The nurse had bought her story and it did explain how he’d received the nasty knife wounds.
She’d used false names when filling out the medical forms. Neither of them was carrying identification that would refute her story. The cops would turn up sooner or later and this time they might not be on the up and up. Abby was glad she was on the other side of the city from where she’d stayed during her pervious trip to Rio. She should be able to avoid the cop she’d dealt with when she’d been kidnapped by Ryan three months ago. It would be extremely difficult to explain why she was back in Brazil and how she’d managed to land herself in trouble again.
It had been two hours since Ryan had been taken into surgery. A doctor had emerged an hour ago to advise that his patient was recovering well. He’d been given a blood transfusion after being stitched up. She was almost at the point of barging into his room to check on him when a nurse appeared in the doorway and signaled to her.
“Your husband is awake, Mrs. Brown,” she said in excellent English.
“Can I see him?” Abby asked with a tremble in her voice. She’d been playing the part of a traumatized wife quite well, if she did say so herself.
“Of course,” the nurse said with a smile. “Come this way.” She was in her early twenties and had long dark hair and sultry eyes. Abby bet the nurse was popular with all of the male patients.
They walked down a hallway and entered a room with four beds. The two on the right were occupied by Brazilians. One on the left held her fair faired ‘husband’. The closest bed to the door was empty.
Abby hurried over and kissed Ryan on the cheek. “We’re married and our names are Barry and Katie Brown,” she whispered.
Still feeling fuzzy from the anesthetic, Ryan winked to indicate that he’d heard and understood her.
“How are you feeling?” Abby asked at a normal volume.
“Better,” he replied as the nurse checked on the other patients. “What’s our story?” he whispered.
“We were kidnapped by bandits who thought we were wealthy. They tortured you to try to get me to pay them five million dollars. I finally convinced them that we were just tourists and they let us go,” she replied in a low voice.
“When can you get me out of here?”
“Not before morning.” She wanted him to be stable before they tried to move him. He’d lost a lot of blood and it would take time to recover. One night wouldn’t be nearly long enough, but it would be dangerous to move him sooner than that.
Ryan frowned and shook his head. “It isn’t safe for me here. Any of the staff could be in Montoya’s pocket.”
Heaving a small sigh, Abby knew he was right. Montoya would be looking for them and word would quickly spread that an American tourist had been brought in with stab wounds. “I’ll contact the team and work out a plan,” she said reluctantly.
“Thank you for coming for me, Katie,” he smiled as he used her false name. “You saved my life.” And in doing so, she’d had to shed more blood. She seemed to be holding up ok so far, but she hadn’t had much time to process the lives that she’d taken.
“Any time, Barry,” she replied with a small grin and bent to kiss him on the mouth.
Ryan felt her pressing something two objects into his hand and closed his fingers over them. They spent a few more minutes talking then the nurse advised her that visiting hours were over and that she had to leave. He waited for the nurse to escort Abby out before inserting the earpiece into his ear and hiding the radio beneath his sheet. He could now call for help if he was in trouble. Not that anyone would be able to get to him in time to assist him if he really needed it. Knowing his men, they’d be somewhere close by and hopefully they’d be able to extract him quickly.
Abby left the radio with Ryan so he could be in the loop when she and the three men he’d once been in charge of came up with a plan. A pair of cops stepped out of the elevator next to hers just as she stepped inside. Keeping her gaze averted, she pretended not to see them and pushed the button for the ground floor. Ryan’s nurse pointed at her, but the door slid shut before the cops could turn around and see her.
She kept her eye out for them as she left the hospital and headed for the van. Jackson had moved it half a block up the street while she’d been waiting for Ryan to recover. The agent was waiting for her inside the vehicle when she reached it.
“How is Ryan?” Dale asked.
“He’s recovering,” Abby said. “He also thinks it’s too dangerous for him to stay in overnight. We need to get him out of there before Montoya finds out that he’s here.”
“I saw a pair of cops enter a few minutes ago. Did they question you?”
“I slipped out just as they arrived,” she said, watching the hospital entrance through the side mirror. There was no sign of them yet. They were probably questioning Ryan right now and she wished she hadn’t left him. Ryan would warn them if he came under threat, but she’d never be able to reach him in time to save him.
“We should wait for a couple of hours before we bust Ryan free,” Dale decided. It would be late enough for most of the patients to be asleep and the staff would hopefully be more complacent by then. “Josh and I can pose as orderlies and get him out.”
“Don’t take Doran,” Abby said and shook her head. “He’s too memorable. Take Holt.” Joshua’s height and muscular body would be remembered. Matt’s shorter, leaner physique wouldn’t stand out as much.
“Good point,” Dale conceded. He was so used to working with the other men that he sometimes forgot that they had a hard time blending in.
“I’ll park the van near the back of the hospital and I’ll be ready to move in on your signal,” Abby said.
Nodding, Jackson spoke into his radio. “Doran, monitor the front entrance for anyone who looks like they work for Montoya. Holt, you and I will be extracting Ryan. We’ll head inside in two hours.”
Both men acknowledged their orders and Dale exited the van. It was hard for Abby to leave the fate of her boyfriend in the hands of agents that she barely knew. Only the fact that Ryan trusted them enabled her to drive away. As she did, she saw the two cops that had been sent to question them leaving. She circled the block a few times to make sure no one was watching her then parked in a dark alley near the back entrance to the hospital.
Jackson and the others had changed into civilian clothing hours ago then stashed their equipment in the back of the van. They’d anticipated that they’d have to extract their ex-team leader at some stage in the near future. Now it was just a waiting game. Luckily, they were all well used to the boredom of inactivity. They would all stay sharp and keep watch for enemies. If anyone suspicious approached the hospital, they’d move in to subdue, question and most likely eliminate them.
₪₪₪
Chapter Sixteen
Ryan turned his head to hide the earpiece and pretended to be asleep when the two police officers entered the room. The nurse rushed ahead to check on him. Monitoring his vital signs and thinking he was asleep, she shushed one of the cops before he could voice his question. Ryan watched from the corner of his eye as she motioned for them to be quiet.
“I am afraid you will have to come back tomorrow,” she said in a hushed whisper.
They weren’t happy about being turned away, but there was little they could do about it. “We’ll be back to question him first thing in the morning,” one said. With a final look at the slumbering American, they left.
Ryan continued to pretend to be asleep and listened to Dale’s plan through the earpiece. He was concerned about having to wait for two hours to be extracted, but he saw the sense of it. He was in no pain, thanks to the steady dose of morphine that was being fed into his vein through the drip. Despite the very real threat of danger, it was difficult to remain alert and he dozed off several times. Just as he’d feared, the blood loss had weakened him far too much. Even a transfusion wasn’t enough to replenish his strength.
He eventually fell into a deeper sleep and snapped awake some time later when he heard stealthy movement somewhere close by. Opening his eyes, he saw a new nurse fiddling with his drip. Turning around, she saw him watching her and started. “Everything is fine,” she said with an uneasy smile that was about as real as Tatiana’s tits. “Go back to sleep.”
Checking the clock on the wall, he saw that nearly two hours had passed. His men should be on their way to rescue him by now. He waited for the nurse to walk away before he pulled the needle out of his arm. He didn’t know what she’d just injected into the IV, but he doubted it would be anything healthy. He’d spied the small bottle of clear fluid that she’d slipped into her pocket. When he didn’t go into cardiac arrest in the next few minutes, she’d know that she’d failed to kill him. Another check of the clock told him that he’d be gone before that happened.
Right on the two hour deadline, Dale entered the hospital and surreptitiously stole a pair of scrubs. Holt entered shortly after him and he also nabbed some scrubs. With their tanned skin and dark hair and eyes, they’d be able to pose as just another pair of workers on the late shift. Matt’s eyes were actually light blue, but the contact lenses turned them brown. Dale had no need of a disguise with his naturally dark eyes.
They took the stairs up to the third floor rather than using the elevator. They ducked into an empty room as a nurse left Ryan’s room. She paused halfway down the hallway to make a phone call.
Ryan’s close call had given him a spike of adrenalin and he was alert when Dale and Matt entered. The other two patients were asleep, but Matt pulled the curtains around their beds just in case.
Jackson saw the needle dripping its contents onto the ground and raised a brow. Ryan wouldn’t have removed it unless he suspected that it contained a poisonous cocktail. It had only been removed recently and he hiked his thumb over his shoulder towards the door. “I take it that nurse was one of Montoya’s?”
“That would be my guess,” Ryan confirmed.
“I’ll take care of her,” Holt said and hurried from the room. The nurse finished her conversation and slid her phone into her pocket as he approached her silently from behind. Checking the hallway in both directions, it was empty, so he clapped a hand over her mo
uth to muffle her screams. Matt could have killed her, but opted to disable her instead. The fewer bodies they left in their wake the better.
The nurse struggled futilely as he dragged her into a maintenance closet. She began thrashing in earnest when he pulled her in close and slipped his arm around her neck in a chokehold. It only took a couple of minutes to render her unconscious then to ease her to the ground and tie and gag her.
He returned to Ryan’s room and nodded at his current and former colleagues. “We should get out of here before she wakes up.”
Ryan was relieved to hear that the nurse hadn’t become another statistic in his personal vendetta against Montoya. She’d tried to end his life, but that didn’t mean she had to suffer the same fate. For all he knew, she might have been blackmailed into attempted murder. Hopefully, they’d now have enough time to escape without any more of Diego’s people trying to kill him.
His former team members wheeled the bed towards the door. Dale pulled Ryan’s curtain shut as well. At a cursory glance, it was difficult to tell that the space was now empty. They quickly pushed the bed out of the room and down the hallway. It was late enough that the hospital was quiet. Jackson headed for a service elevator rather than the main one and they waited for it to arrive in tense silence. It was empty when it arrived and they piled inside, ready to reach for their guns if any bad guys showed up.
They made it out to the back alley to find the dark gray van waiting for them. Doran ran from the shadows to help lift Ryan into the back. Abby jumped out of the van and pushed the now empty hospital bed back inside the building they’d just broken Ryan free from.
Abby climbed into the back of the van and sat beside Ryan as Jackson took the wheel again. He knew the city better than she did and she didn’t have any qualms about letting him drive. They all kept a watch for cops and for Montoya’s people as they headed towards the airstrip. Holt contacted their pilot and advised him of their impending arrival so he would have the jet ready by the time they arrived.
