Hostage Zero

He scowled. “What do you mean?” The way the color drained from his face, Gail figured he might have already figured it out.

“Mr. Navarro, there are some secrets that I just cannot keep. Not when the stakes are so high.”

“You mean you’d rat me out.”

“I don’t want to,” she said. She tried to keep a pleading tone in her voice. “But what choice would I have?”

“You could respect my openness and generosity and understand that I am in a very difficult position.”

Gail cocked her head. Surely he had to know better.

“I could kill you,” he said. “No one would ever find your body.”

She smiled. “All respect, I’d make you dead three times over before you got your finger on the trigger.”

“I could kill myself, then.”

Gail shook her head. “You’ve had years to kill yourself. The time has come for you to do the right thing.”

Navarro laughed. “Sure,” he said. “At this stage in my life I’m going to start-” His expression changed to one of concern, and he cocked his head. “Do you hear something?”

Gail cocked her head, too. At first, the answer was no, she didn’t hear a thing. Then she did-a very soft thrumming sound in the distance. In a city setting, it would have been inaudible, but out here, not only was it clear, but it was getting louder. “Helicopter?” she guessed.

Navarro shot to his feet, knocking over his chair. He snatched his shotgun from the counter with such speed that Gail found herself drawing down by instinct. “Don’t!” she yelled.

“What did you do?” Navarro yelled. “Who did you tell?”

But he wasn’t interested in an answer. He hurried out of the kitchen, through the living room, and up to the open front window.

“What is it?” Gail said, trailing after him.

“It’s a goddamn helicopter!” Navarro exclaimed.

“So? Maybe-”

“No maybe,” Navarro snapped. “What did you do?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Jonathan had no idea how Felipe had been able to scare up a late-model Range Rover, but as the roads got progressively nastier, he was thankful for the wide wheelbase and the four-wheel drive. Given the bargain-basement price for the vehicle, the smart money said that Felipe had either stolen it from someone himself, or he’d bought it from someone who had. The leather interior and the air-conditioning, though, didn’t exactly fit in with the nature of the cargo, or the mission that lay at the other end of their journey. Despite their best efforts to tie down their cargo, the weapons and equipment made a hell of a racket as they bounced along trails that only people in the third world would have the guts to call roads.

As they approached the rallying point-not a town or even a village, but rather the intersection of minutes and seconds of longitude and latitude-Jonathan told Harvey to stop the truck.

“Gladly,” he said. “The instant you want me to turn around, you just say the word and we’re out of here.”

Jonathan ignored him. Their time together had been defined by three hours of endless bitching, and he’d grown tired of it a long time ago. He was giving the guy a shot at a new life, for God’s sake, and all he could do was whine.

Jonathan lifted his portable radio from the center console and keyed the mike. “Big Guy, this is Scorpion. How do you copy?”

He’d expected a delay as the man on the other end of the radio scrambled to find the transmit button, so he was surprised when he heard Boxers’ voice respond right away. “It’s about time,” he said.

“We’re a half mile out,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t want to startle anyone.”

“I was hoping that was you,” Boxers said. “You make a hell of a racket. Come on in.”

“On our way.” Then to Harvey: “You heard the man. Tally-ho.”

Harvey eased pressure onto the accelerator, and they were on their way. Less than a minute later, Jonathan pointed ahead and to the right, where he spotted the first picket. “See the guy in the trees up there?”

Harvey nodded. “I got him. What do you want to do?”

Jonathan repositioned the M4 in his lap so that he could fire left-handed if he needed to. “Just keep going. If he brings a weapon to bear, I’ll take him out.”

“I thought these guys were our allies.”

“In an hour, maybe they’ll be allies. Right now, they’re just strangers with guns.”

“There’s another one on the left,” Harvey said. When he pointed, he kept his hand low so no one could misinterpret the gesture as aggressive.

Jonathan appreciated the smart thinking. “I see him.”

“How many directions can you shoot at one time?”

“When motivated?” Jonathan quipped. “You’d be surprised. Just keep going. Don’t speed up, don’t slow down. Nothing’s pointing at us, so I guess they got the word.”

“You have no idea how little comfort that gives me.”