Chapter 8
When Ana and Gates left the garage,
they were silent, but not as grim as they had been going
in.
“It’s a chance,” Gates said, finally
breaking the tense quiet.
“If there’s any chance, I’m happy,” Ana
said, steering the vehicle out into busy San Francisco
traffic.
“A whiff of a chance is better than
none,” Gates agreed, tapping keys on his small, high-powered
laptop. He was zooming in on the high resolution photos of a small
plane crossing the Mexican border at an altitude just below radar,
but at a significant airspeed. He quickly ran a vector program
comparing rate of speed, direction, and the size and capacity of
the plane. Utilizing another program, running simultaneously, he
initiated a search on the numbers Ana’s former colleagues at the
CIA had deciphered on the plane’s fuselage.
“What are you running
first?”
“Flight vector analysis, registration
elimination plan.” He grinned with fierce glee, seeing the numbers
start to drop into place like slots. “If there’s something to find,
I’ll dig it out.”
“I see you grinning,” she said, and he
heard the lift of hope in her voice. “What do you
have?”
“The whiff just became a breeze,” he
said, his fingers flying over the keys, adjusting the program to
run another analysis in conjunction with the first. “This plane’s
got history. I’ve got some legitimate landings, and some not so
legitimate ones.”
“Which ones are giving you that wicked
grin?”
“The legitimate ones.”
“Where?” she demanded, slipping through
traffic like an eel, edging past a semi truck with a whisker of
space. He didn’t even notice, trusting her implicitly.
“Central America. Punta Gorda.
Belmopan, and a wildlife reserve. Puerto Cortés and someplace with
no name just outside Tegucigalpa, which is the capital of Honduras.
Then there are landings in Argentina, and in Guadalajara and
Mexicali, and Villa de Álvarez in Mexico as well.”
“I thought Punta Gorda was in Florida,”
Ana said, frowning. “What country is that? Guatemala? I know the
Mexican ones. And I was in Argentina. Once.”
He made a buzzing sound. “That’s a miss
on Punta Gorda. Wanna go for another try, little missy? And by the
way, there is a Punta Gorda in Florida.”
“Ha-ha,” she said, pulling through the
gates at the hospital. “Nicaragua?”
“Schools these days,” he tsked.
“Neglecting geography.”
“I sucked at Central America. Now,
Europe, name your country, I’ll give you chapter and
verse.”
“We’ll try that sometime. For now
though, Punta Gorda’s in Belize.” He shifted to look at her. “The
others are Guatemala and Nicaragua. I looked them up.”
“Ah. Good, I don’t feel so dumb. It’s a
smaller haystack, I guess, but still a haystack.”
They headed into the hospital, going
straight to the elevator and up to the intensive care unit without
a pause. Once there, Gates sat down in the waiting room, shifting
slightly in the chair until he got the best wireless
connection.
“Most people can’t even get cell
service in the hospital,” Callahan said, rising and stretching
after hours sitting in the same chair.
“He’s not most people,” Ana said with a
smile.
“Well, duh,” Callahan said, rolling her
shoulders and slipping into her raincoat. “I’m going to take a
walk, get some fresh air.” She glanced toward the unit where her
partner lay. “I’ll be back, though.”
“Stop in the cafeteria,” Ana ordered.
“Get something to eat.”
Callahan looked at her, looked away.
When she looked back, the tough facade had cracked and Ana saw the
fear. “I can’t eat,” she said, and her voice shook.
“Try,” Ana insisted, knowing how much
harder despair hit you when you were low on fuel.
Callahan swallowed, not meeting her
gaze. She stood that way for a bit before saying, “It won’t go
down.”
With that, she hurried
away.
Ana felt her own grief rise up to choke
her at the words, and watched as Callahan got into the elevator and
disappeared. Behind her the clacking of keys hesitated, stopped,
resumed.
“What?” She said it without turning.
“What did you find?”
“Another tiny piece of the puzzle just
fell into place.”
“What?”
“The plane hasn’t clocked in anywhere
else in the last twenty-four hours.”
“Private airstrips, then, with no
towers,” she summed up.
A different beeping pinged in the
waiting room and now she did turn. “What now?”
“Sending an orde... texting a request
to have the yacht go down from Key West to the Gulf of Mexico. If
we can find him somewhere down there, we need to have a way to get
him out. Carrie too.”
“Yeah, they don’t have their
passports—no plane ride without a passport.”
“Well, no public planes. I don’t want
to alert anyone, though, by flying one of the jets down. Especially
since we have no idea where we’re going.”
“So use an Agency plane,” she said,
knowing he had a reason not to, but not sure what it might be.
Several agencies had offered the use of personnel, equipment,
pretty much anything they might ask.
“Too conspicuous. Besides—” He looked
up at her now, a frown of frustration on his face. Something wasn’t
adding up for him and he wasn’t happy about it. He’d worn that look
a lot when they first met.
That thought almost made her
smile.
“Besides what?”
“You’re beautiful,” he said sincerely,
the frown never leaving his face.
She could feel the blush. More than a
year of knowing him, months of marriage, and still he made her
blush.
“Thank you. Now, spill.”
“Even if it is some family thing,” he
began, shifting in the seat. She could tell he wanted to pace, so
she sat down and took the electronics from him, freeing him up to
stand. As she had mentally predicted, he began to pace, talking it
out. “Like I said, even if it’s a family thing behind the
abduction, that isn’t all it is. There’s something else going on
here and I can’t put my finger on it.”
“Fact or hunch?”
“Both.”
“Lay it out,” she
encouraged.
“The pickup was brilliantly planned and
executed, right down to the phony film crew and the innocent
bystanders supposedly watching an action flick being made. The
dupes driving the cars thought it was all part of the camera work.
The camera team thought they were really making a
film.”
“And?”
“That’s layers within layers within
layers. If someone in Dav’s family is working this, it’s not anyone
I know or have met. I’ve checked them all out, all of them.” He said that with emphasis, making her
smile. He’d even checked the ones he liked, admired or both. His
next words confirmed that thought. “His cousin Sophia? She has the
brains and the guts, knows the film people, but she genuinely loves
Dav. His cousins from his mother’s side?”
“The ones who came over for New
Year’s?”
“Yeah,” he agreed, still pacing.
“They’re too young.”
“Smart enough I think, but I agree. And
they’re impulsive.”
“His brother’s supposed to be dead,”
Gates growled. “We checked, damn it.”
Ana’s attention sharpened on that note.
“Supposed to be?”
“Yeah. Supposed to be. Reported dead. I
checked it out, Dav checked it out. I had them do DNA—they had a
body.”
“If you didn’t see it dead, it may not
be dead.” She stated the obvious just to get it out there in the
open. “Payoff, then. DNA can be gathered from the living too, you
know. What country?”
“Somalia, but I had it checked. With
all associated bribes paid. They said dead.”
“Huh. So likely that he really is
dead.” She wanted to pace with him, but it would only agitate them
both. Instead she asked, “But, on the chance that he’s not, let’s
play it out. This brother, he smart enough to pull this
off?”
He looked at her, half smiled, but with
no humor. “He’s Dav’s brother.”
“Got it. He’s smart enough.” She took
the next steps in her mind. “Smart enough, obviously coldhearted
enough if Dav turned against him. Is he bankrolled enough to pull
it?”
“Ah, now that’s what bothers me. He had
a hefty cash flow as a mercenary. His funds flipped quickly out of
sight when he died, which was pretty predictable. We didn’t think
much of it.” He kept pacing, a little faster now. “That happens.
Partners, brothers-in-arms.”
“So are you looking at him, seriously,
or someone else who maybe knew him or wants Dav dead and is trying
to lead us that way to divert us?”
“Ah, there’s the rub, as the Bard would
say. It could be any of the above.”
“Okay,” Ana said, on familiar ground
now. Running scenarios was her thing and this tangle meant that
they were at least onto something tangible, something that
could be unraveled. “Let’s look at the dead
brother. Does he have a name?”
“Real name is Nikolas Gianikopolis,
older half brother, cut out of the will by the old man, who pitted
them against one another for the right to run the family business.
The family biz was half legit, half shady, and Dav didn’t want it.”
Ana winced at that; she really didn’t want to know about the shady
stuff. What you didn’t know, you couldn’t be called on to testify
about.
Oblivious to her thoughts, Gates
continued. “When the business went to Dav, he brought Niko into the
company in a high-level position. He felt Niko had been cheated of
what should have been his, at least in part. I think he would have
given Niko the business if Niko had proved that he could handle it.
Truly, Dav didn’t want it. He’d begun to build his fortune here and
didn’t want his father’s shadowy legacy, his
leavings.”
“But neither he nor the father left it
to Niko,” Ana said, filling in the blanks immediately.
“Quick rundown,” Gates offered. “Niko
picked up where his father left off on the shady side of the
business dealings. Dav had shut them down, Niko opened them back
up. All the while he pretended to be learning the
ropes.”
“Dav caught on.”
Gates smiled. “Give the lady a prize.
Dav did, indeed. Altercation ensues, threats made, curses and fists
fly.” His smile turned feral. “Niko departs in acute pain and
disgrace. Six weeks later, the father dies and the empire is
Dav’s.”
“Good reason to hate your younger,
smarter, more successful brother. Especially if he beats you up
too,” she said whimsically, reading between the lines that Dav
hadn’t lost that fight. “A tale as old as Esau.”
Gates looked blank.
“Bible story,” Ana said, shaking her
head. Amazing how few people knew the old stuff
anymore.
“One I missed, obviously.”
“Stolen inheritance, and all
that.”
“Got it. Good analogy then,” he
complimented, pacing up, then pacing back. “So, moving on to
scenario two, Niko really is dead and someone who knew him is out
to either gaslight Dav—”
At Ana’s puzzled look, he rolled his
eyes. “Tit for tat then, on Esau. You know, the movie, Gaslight ? Where the husband tries to make the wife
think she’s crazy?”
The light dawned. “Right,” Ana said.
“Got it. So yes, either that or someone who knew Niko learned
enough from him to get to Dav and we’ll be getting a ransom
request.”
“More than thirty-six hours now,
closing in on forty-eight. No requests.”
Gates’s expression turned grim. “I
know.” He paced a bit more, then continued. “Third option—it’s
revenge for Niko’s death.”
“Then why not just kill Dav outright?
That scene at the restaurant was tailor made for a killing. And why
kill the gallery clerk?” Ana demanded, playing devil’s advocate.
“She’s a loose end I don’t like. Something’s there too, and we need
to tug that lead.”
“Not us. That one’s for Baxter,” Gates
insisted.
She nodded, knowing how thin their
resources were spread. Not everyone could drop all their tasks to
hunt for Dav. “If anyone can, even with all he’s got going on and
no help, then Baxter can do it.”
“True. So then we have Door Number
Four. There’s something a whole lot bigger going on
here.”
Ana thought for a minute, trying to get
a broader, bigger view. Obviously Gates had already taken that
step. “Rival?”
“Exactly. But who?” Gates questioned,
his frustration obvious. “Nobody legit would do this and the black
market dealers are just as happy that Dav keeps it on the up and
up. Hell, he’d own them, and their businesses, if he wanted to run
on the dark side.”
Ana gave him a fond smile. Much as she
agreed, he made it sound like some kind of competitive sport.
“True. So, no one obvious on either side. Hidden rival. Lot of
women and men out there with money who’d love to see Dav go
down.”
“Yeah, but with this kind of push? This
took not only guts, but long-term planning and an almost uncanny
amount of luck. Anyone willing to leave three dead, and at least
ten wounded just to get Dav, that someone wants him really
badly.”
Ana added that to the mix of thoughts
and ideas running circles in her brain. Queller and Thompson had
taken the latest watch, despite their injuries. Gates had had to
threaten the others to get them to go home and rest. A young woman
walked by, her uniform looking crisp and new. Her name tag read
Inez. The name sparked another
thought.
“The clerk,” Ana said, remembering
where she’d heard the name. “She fits in somehow. I wish she
weren’t dead.”
“Yeah, that’s probably why she is,”
Gates replied. “Wait, clerk. Carrie’s former clerk. The one who was
there forever. What happened to him, the one who ran the gallery
when we met? Whatshisname.” Gates snapped his fingers as if that
would help him remember. “Cal, yeah, that’s it. You remember the
last name?”
“Crap, no. We need to find out. Find
out why she was there and he wasn’t. Interview all the clerks, make
sure we find out who’s new, who’s not and who knew
Inez.”
“Another one for Bax,” Gates said.
“Along with finding Cal. He’s important, I know it.”
He was probably right. He usually
was.
Cal’s last name was right on the tip of
her tongue, just almost there, when the elevator dinged and a group
of harried-looking people all but leapt off the elevator with two
of Dav’s staff in tow.
She stood up, and Gates whipped around.
Before Ana could speak, her text alert signaled and she pulled out
her phone. Gates read over her shoulder.
Shit. They’d finally gotten a ransom
demand, along with proof of life, and he couldn’t focus on it. He
had to focus on what was in front of him.
These could only be Declan’s parents.
Declan had the look of his mother, with her dark red hair and
bright eyes, but his father’s breadth of shoulder and
height.
“Are you Ana? And Gates?” Like homing
pigeons, they focused in on Ana and Gates and headed toward them,
hands outstretched.
“Oh, please tell us we’re in time.
We’ve been driving all night.”
“Did you hear that?” When Dav spoke,
Carrie paused in her painstaking search for a way to open the wall
in their cell. They’d spent the rest of the day searching for the
door, but now, in the late-afternoon warmth, his hand closed on her
arm in a firm, insistent grip. She stopped and
listened.
“I don’t hear anything.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “And that’s
not good. The birds stopped making noise; so did whatever makes
that other sound, the screeching.”
“Monkeys, I think.”
“Something’s disturbing them, scaring
them.”
“Maybe it’s the men, coming back.”
Carrie didn’t want it to be their captors. As hungry as she was,
and as tired as she was of crackers and Nutella—the supplies they
were down to—she didn’t want the time with Dav to end. Their
captors’ return meant death, most likely. She wanted to be free, to
be with him in the light and air.
Fear clenched her belly and her heart.
She wasn’t ready to face whatever came next.
They stood, motionless and listening,
as they heard the crunch of gravel, the hum of an engine. Doors
slammed and after a few more silent moments, they heard
voices.
“Ramierez, check the perimeter.” It was
the smooth voice of the leader of their capture team. They were
indeed back. “Carlos, go check on our guests.”
Footsteps approached and the accented
voice said, “Wakey, wakey.” He thrust the barrel of an automatic
weapon through the grate and rattled it noisily between the bars.
“Happy to see us, eh?”
There was a shout and the man, Carlos,
looked up.
“Perimeter secure?” The demand in the
question was sharp, imperative. “Ramierez? White?
Report!”
Carlos was crouching above the grate
now, low and watchful.
“Sir, perimeter is compr—” A scream and
a distant thud punctuated the sentence.
“Positions!” The leader screamed the
order, and the man above them flattened to the ground, his weapon
poised to fire. Dav pushed Carrie behind him and shifted along the
wall, away from where they’d been, keeping them out of the line of
the man’s weapon.
Yells and orders were a cacophony after
the last two days of silence. “Carlos! Get to cover!”
The man on the grate shifted, started
to move, and there was a soft, wet-sounding pop-pop-pop. Carlos
spun sideways, keening in pain, but crouched and fired toward the
jungle.
The automatic weapon spat shell casings
and the biting taste of carbon snapped in the air. Brass jangled
through the bars and onto the dirt. Carrie and Dav both covered
their ears as Carlos fired again.
He’d paused in his firing, so Carrie
uncovered her ears, just in time to hear another sound, deeper this
time, like a wet towel slapped on pavement. Splat, splat, splat.
Carlos grunted in pain, dropped to his knees, air whistling out of
his nose and chest. With a gurgling sigh, he fell forward, over the
grate. There were indistinct shouts and the sound of gunfire, all
muffled by the body of their captor. The waning daylight now
penetrating the cell through his limbs, showed them his dying,
staring eyes. Blood dripped onto the stone floor in a steady
stream. It was mesmerizing, the stream-drip-drip-stream pattern as
Carlos’s heart beat its last. The flow of blood slowed and finally
stopped, along with the noise from beyond the grate.
Frozen along the wall, Dav held Carrie
behind him, shielded by his body, protected by the stone at their
back. They both jumped when Carlos’s weapon slipped between the
bars with a rattle and clang, and hung tantalizingly within reach.
Blood dripped from the barrel to the ground, a secondary stream
darkening the floor below.
It seemed like hours they waited,
pressed together, held up by the stone. After the first barrage of
gunfire, silence had returned. Beyond, in the clearing, the birds
eventually resumed calling, the screeching monkeys shrieked their
insults back and forth once more. Everything returned to normal,
except that now, the people who had locked them in, but brought
them food, were all wounded or dead.
And there was no way to know if the
shooters were friend or foe.