Chapter Three
KILLION DIDN’T KNOW what the hell was going on, but he hadn’t expected to find a known enforcer for El cartel de Mano de Dios in convulsive death-throes after trying to take out Dr. Audrey Lockhart. Any doubts as to her involvement vanished along with Hector Sanchez’s ability to breathe.
Did she work for the cartel? They’d assumed the murder was something to do with the now disbanded Gateway Project as a couple of known murderers had been poisoned in a similar fashion and it fit their MO. But could Mano de Dios have ordered Ted Burger’s assassination in retaliation for their leader being locked up in a US maximum-security prison? And were the cartel now cleaning house so no one else figured it out?
He rolled the idea over in his mind. It could fit. The vice president had been relentless in going after the illegal drug trade after his son had died of a cocaine overdose. It made a pragmatic kind of sense. Use a hired assassin unassociated with their group to get rid of the problem without anyone suspecting they were involved and bringing down the wrath of the American military on their organization—not to mention getting their faces on their own personal deck of cards.
He hefted the professor higher in his arms, careful of the jutting knife. She wasn’t very big. She wasn’t very heavy.
At the entrance of the park he glanced about to make sure there was no one around. It was full dark now. Streetlights were few and far between in this non-residential area. He strode up the hill, past Hector Sanchez’s idling sedan, and placed Lockhart awkwardly in the backseat of his rental. Her eyes were closed.
“Hey, wake up!”
She opened her eyes.
“Keep pressure on the wound,” he told her sternly.
He headed back to the parking lot, leaned inside the enforcer’s sedan, and turned off the ignition, pocketing the keys. He closed the door, making sure he didn’t touch anything with his bare skin. Langley wouldn’t appreciate having one of their operatives linked to a messy murder. Confident no one had seen him, he got back in his car and started the engine. Lockhart was lying in the darkness, panting to control the pain. The handle of the blade protruded just above her hipbone on her left side. At least it wasn’t in the gut or the chest, but knife wounds hurt like a bitch. Hector Sanchez had a sadistic reputation, and probably intended to play with Dr. Lockhart for as long as possible, to make her bleed and scream.
The world was a better place without Sanchez in it.
Killion put the car in drive and headed slowly down the hill and through town, past local bars, and the darkened police station. He dragged his orange T-shirt over his head and tossed it to her. “Use that to try and stem the bleeding.” He drove calmly, doing the speed limit in a part of the country that generally didn’t bother. He adjusted the rearview, saw that her eyes were now closed and she appeared to have passed out.
“Hey, Lockhart! Wake up,” he yelled.
Her eyes flicked open. “H-hospital.”
Their gazes met briefly. “You know I can’t do that.”
She didn’t have many choices—not in this town, not with a cartel knife sticking out of her side. It wouldn’t be long before Mano de Dios started looking for their pet killer, and when he turned up dead they’d scour the entire country for this woman. If they found her, they’d make her pray for a swift end.
“Why not?” she croaked.
Jesus. “You know why not.” Was she really gonna continue the charade?
Her features twisted as she pressed the T-shirt against her side. Her face looked clammy, her skin pale. “If you don’t take me to the hospital, I’ll bleed to death.”
“If I take you to the hospital you’ll be dead before sun up.”
“They’re not that bad.”
He frowned and concentrated on the road ahead of him. Did she mean the cartel? Or the doctors? His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. Was she so confident in her ability to handle the drug smugglers even after an attempted hit? Did she have dirt on them? Maybe she was fucking one of them—she was attractive enough, but Hector Sanchez didn’t freelance. If he’d tried to kill Audrey Lockhart it was at his lord and master’s bidding. Raoul Gómez—the brother of Manuel Gómez who was serving life in a California federal prison—was an evil sonofabitch and had no qualms about murdering women and children to maintain his iron grip on his organization. Killion wasn’t getting on that rat-bastard’s radar until he’d figured out who’d ordered the hit on the VP because that was his mission. And his mission was paramount, even if his methods were a little unorthodox, if not downright illegal. Nothing was going to sidetrack him from his purpose.
Audrey Lockhart could help him. In fact, she was probably the only one who could help him figure out the truth. He needed her alive.
She cried out as he rumbled over a pothole, but things were going to get a hell of a lot bumpier from here on out. He had few options. He could take her to the embassy in Bogota, but then this fracas became official. Considering cartels owned half the cops and politicians in South America, the diplomats might decide that releasing Lockhart into the custody of local authorities to face the justice system here was more expedient than protecting her rights as an American citizen. And no way could he reveal classified information about the importance of this mission even to other CIA agents, hell, not even to his boss. In theory, he was due to head back to HQ in a couple of weeks to receive his next assignment, which in all likelihood would be a temporary duty overseas—TDY. In reality, his current mission was going to take a while.
Aside from himself, the president, and a handful of Lincoln Frazer’s FBI BAU-4 team, no one knew Burger had been murdered. Official reports were the guy had suffered a heart attack and the nation had grieved for the elder statesman. Killion didn’t know how many bad guys knew about the assassination plot, but at least one person did and he’d bet his government pension she was bleeding out in his backseat.
He gritted his jaw as he realized something else. Lockhart could not be allowed to talk. Ever. If the world discovered Burger’s murder had been covered up, the man’s life and actions would be put under the microscope. Burger had been up to his eyeballs in dirty deals and international terror plots. The fact they’d deceived the public about his murder would be the least of their problems. World War III was likely if the truth got out.
Thoughts raced through his mind as he assessed options. Plan A had been making sure the assassin knew the vigilante organization—The Gateway Project—was now defunct. Frazer’s people had been monitoring Audrey’s communications to see who she contacted and where she went, hoping to backtrack to the mastermind behind Burger’s murder. Killion glanced at the woman in the backseat who was panting heavily while gripping the knife in her side.
Time for Plan B.
He drove a few more miles and then swung west. Over the last twenty years the drug situation in Colombia had changed. Nowadays it operated on the same principles as a terror network with small groups only knowing about their piece of the operation. That way, if they were arrested, they couldn’t sink the entire cartel. Farmers cultivated small plots of coca in dense forest regions, easier to hide from spotter planes and government officials. Marxist rebels still controlled large swathes of land that were no-go areas. Colombia might be opening up to the tourist trade, but so was Mexico, and anyone who didn’t think that was a dangerous place to visit outside the hotel resorts had their head up their ass.
He pulled down a quiet dirt road surrounded by plantations on both sides and parked up on the side of the road. There were no streetlights here. It was all dense vegetation and thick darkness. Locals barely had electricity. He climbed into the backseat and made room for himself by shifting Lockhart’s legs to the side. She cried out, but he didn’t have time to be gentle. He flicked on the overhead light. “I’m going to remove the knife and bandage the wound.”
“No! That could increase the bleeding.” Her voice was a hoarse whisper that was too pained-filled to be even remotely sexy.
“Lady, we don’t have a choice.” She’d already lost a lot of blood, but there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. “I need to get the knife out so I can get you away from this area before every member of Mano de Dios comes looking for us.”
“The cartel is after you?”
Time to cut the crap. “The clown you took out with your poison glove routine was Hector Sanchez—chief enforcer for Raoul Gómez, head of Mano de Dios.” Like she didn’t know. “And he was after you. Now that I rescued you, he’ll be after me, too.” Basic psychology. Reminding her she owed him for saving her life. “If you want to live you’re gonna have to do what I say.”
Her brows drew together. “I don’t understand.”
Jesus. “Sure you don’t.”
“You’re the tourist from earlier.”
Tourist? Like he didn’t have “Spook” tattooed across his forehead?
“You were with a family. Girlfriend.”
“I don’t have a girlfriend.” He had hookups, contacts, assets, and coworkers, all helping him fight the seemingly endless Global War on Terror, whether they knew it or not.
He reached into the rear compartment, dragged his bag over and dumped it in the front passenger seat. A professional assassin could pull the knife and fillet him like a damn fish if she wanted to. But she must have understood the implications of the man she’d killed being Mano de Dios. She was fucked if she stayed around here. She was pretty much fucked if she went with him too, but she didn’t know that yet. Right now she needed him. He was her only hope. Just call him Obi-Wan Kenobi. He grabbed the emergency first aid kit out of his duffel and another shirt. The orange T-shirt was dark and heavy with blood. He tossed it to the floor.
He grabbed a package of QuikClot out of the medical kit and ripped it open, then pushed her hair back from her face. The fear and vulnerability in her eyes caught at him unexpectedly. A surge of sympathy shot through him. No one wanted to die.
“This is going to hurt.” Even as he said it he eased the blade out of her flesh and then poured powder onto her wound. “The good news is the knife didn’t sever any arteries.” If it had, she’d already be dead.
“I don’t think I want to know the bad news.” Sweat gleamed on her skin.
That the knife might have nicked an organ and you might already be bleeding out internally? Going into sepsis or shock? “Probably not,” he agreed.
He pressed the fabric of the clean T-shirt hard against her side and watched her eyes bug with pain. Then she squeezed them shut and finally went lax—all without uttering a sound.
Out cold. Good.
Fifteen years ago, during his first TDY, he’d spent time north of the Darien Gap in Panama, figuring out the Colombian cartels’ distribution networks. Small, unregistered airfields had played a major role in getting the farmers’ product to the factories where it was refined into crack cocaine. Those airfields were everywhere, but he’d used one around here, many years ago, with a bunch of DEA agents and Navy SEALs who’d been actively hunting narcos.
Monkeys howled in the trees around him, warning him that this wasn’t his territory. He changed into a black, long-sleeved T-shirt and BDU pants, slipping his SIG in a shoulder holster and extra clips in his pocket. There wasn’t a lot of space but he’d changed in worse places. He got back in the driver’s seat and rumbled down unpaved roads half washed away by the monsoon rains. He crossed a river, hoping to hell it wasn’t too deep for the rental. He gunned the engine and water streamed up the side of the windows. They made it across—just. Audrey cried out from the back seat. He gritted his teeth to silence any reassuring platitudes that wanted to spring loose from his lips. Everything was not all right, and the whole situation was her own damn fault.
Ten minutes later, he killed the lights and drove wearing a pair of night vision goggles. Another four miles and he cut the engine, coasted down a small hill, and then pulled over onto the side of the road before tugging on his leather gloves. The airfield was still there. A small turboprop plane sat just inside the open doors of a new looking hangar. Whoever ran the place wasn’t worried about thieves—probably because no one was crazy enough to steal from the cartel.
No visible activity in the hangar, but he didn’t kid himself the airfield was empty. He climbed into the back seat to check Audrey’s wound again. The bleeding had stopped. For now. He unbuttoned her jeans and dragged them low enough to bandage her up. It was impossible not to notice her body, but the fact she was covered in blood meant he was more concerned about keeping her alive than admiring the view.
Emotional detachment was his thing.
Mind fucking was his thing.
Ogling unconscious women was not his thing.
He grabbed gauze and a bandage from his kit, wrapped it carefully around her, lifting her hips and pulling the dressing as tight as possible before securing it into place. Finished, he sat back and took a breath, finding his focus.
Good intelligence officers thrived on ambiguity, on devotion to mission and on ideals greater than themselves. Good intelligence officers had to figure out what decision to make when all decisions contradicted their values and obligations—and when no decision was right. Intelligence officers often failed. Thankfully failure was a better teacher than success. Killion was a damn good intelligence officer because he’d failed a lot. He didn’t intend to fail tonight.
He eased out the door, having disabled the interior light—tradecraft 101. Plan B wasn’t going to be very popular with the CIA, but if he played his cards right the CIA would never know. He took his duffel bag with him, easing the car door silently shut because noise carried in this part of the world. The NVGs made it easy to make his way, but flattened the landscape so he had to be careful to not scuff his boots on the dirt. He kept to the edge of the field, hugging the darkness until he reached the hangar. A quick inventory revealed two small aircraft and a jeep inside. Light came from a small room at the back of the hangar—probably an office of some sort. It was eerily quiet. He raised his NVGs and tried the door of the plane—unlocked—keys in the ignition. He silently placed his bag in the passenger seat. The rear seats had been removed but the cargo space was empty, which meant they probably weren’t doing a drug run tonight. Good news. He took out his SIG P229 and crept noiselessly through the darkened building with its cavernous corrugated metal roof that would make even the slightest noise reverberate like a drum. A cockroach scuttled beneath his feet. He checked the second aircraft, reached inside, and quietly pocketed the keys.
The sound of a chair scraping against the floor had him freezing in place. After a minute of silence he crept closer to the office until he could peer through a crack between the door and the jamb. A man was bent over a computer, pecking away at a keyboard, muttering under his breath in Spanish. Silently Killion moved in and tapped him on the temple with the butt of his pistol. The man slumped forward and Killion grabbed duct tape off a shelf and bound his wrists together behind his back then taped his ankles to the chair legs. He wrapped tape around the man’s eyes and mouth, making sure he could still breathe.
He searched the rest of the building, but it was empty of people. A beat-up truck sat out back that probably belonged to the man in the office. Killion jogged to the SUV where Lockhart was still unconscious inside. He drove them closer, parking in the shadows beside the hangar.
He popped the fuel cap and put papers from the glove compartment into the pipe. He opened the rear door and dragged Lockhart across the seat.
“Ow.” She woke up protesting.
“Quiet,” he ordered. Although he hadn’t seen anyone else guarding the area he didn’t want to announce his presence until he had to. She swayed on her feet and he caught her against him. Soft and female. He turned her away from him, hitched up her pants and closed the zipper and button. The pants helped keep pressure on the bandages but doing them up probably hurt. He propped her against the hood while he checked to make sure there wasn’t any damning evidence left behind.
She raised a hand to her face and left a streak of blood on her cheek. “I’ve never had a nightmare this convincing before.”
“Keep the noise down, Dorothy. We’re not in Kansas anymore.”
“Am I dead? Because if I were going to be stuck in purgatory I’d rather be with someone hot and funny like Dean Winchester. No offense,” she whispered, proving she hadn’t totally lost her mind.
“I’m saving your ass, in case you didn’t notice,” he muttered quietly, watching the airfield for any signs of activity. “Think I could get a little gratitude?”
“It feels more like an abduction than a rescue,” she muttered.
He’d rather she didn’t think too much about being abducted in case she implemented her own Plan B. “Hey, some women think I’m hot.”
“No one is as hot as Jensen Ackles.”
He looped an arm over her shoulders, and she surprised him by grabbing his waist with firm, strong fingers. “What happened to Dean?”
“Jensen, Dean, whatever.” She grimaced and her fingers tightened on his shirt as she took a step.
“Fickle. My favorite kind of woman.” He was almost certain this conversation was the only reason she hadn’t collapsed in a heap. “I’m hotter than both of them.” He’d never had any complaints in the hotness department. It was “emotional availability” and sticking around that he sucked at.
“Men always think they’re hot. It’s like an inheritable trait attached to the Y-chromosome.” She switched to lecture mode, which was a definite weakness of his. “Even fat, ugly guys think they’re hot, whereas amazingly gorgeous women worry about not being perfect or having stomachs that aren’t taut as drums.”
He shrugged. “So I’m fat, ugly, and hot.”
“And my stomach is taut as a drum.”
He grinned. She was funnier than he’d expected. Definitely sexier. He could use that and hated himself for thinking that way. But his job wasn’t all bullshit and bullets. Sometimes the sacrifices didn’t have to feel like sacrifices at all, and they beat the hell out of the days when it felt like his heart was being ripped out with pliers.
She hissed in a breath as they took a step.
“Hang on a moment.” He propped her against the side of the hangar and took a lighter from his pocket. Walked back to the SUV and lit the papers in the gas tank. He went back to where he’d left her, gripped her high around her waist to avoid her injury, holding his gun in his other hand. “Okay, let’s book it.”
He couldn’t afford to drop his guard. She could be playing him with her apparent cooperation, waiting for the best opportunity to betray him to those inside—which would be right about now. A CIA operative might be valuable enough to exchange for her life but he doubted it. No one crossed Mano de Dios and lived to tell the tale.
They shuffled awkwardly through the door. The place was quieter than a cemetery but that was about to change. Killion opened the rear door of the Cessna and pulled down the steps, bundling the professor quietly inside. He turned on the floodlights outside so he could see the runway, and then climbed in the pilot’s seat, running a quick pre-flight check. The gas tank on the plane was full—always a bonus.
A loud whoosh came from one side of the building as the rental car caught fire. Hopefully there’d be little left by the time someone got around to dousing the flames. They’d easily track it to the rental company and a useful alias he’d used for years was now burned. He started the engine, watching the propellers catch and speed up. Keeping an eye on the mirror he began taxiing forward. Orange flames glowed on one side of the hangar and licked at the timber frame. His SIG rested in his lap. Lockhart was trying not to make a sound as she writhed in pain on the floor behind him.
Headlights appeared along the road in the distance. Shit. Somebody new was arriving at the party. The plane gathered speed as they bumped across the dirt toward the makeshift runway. A jeep screeched around the corner and gave chase.
Killion accelerated faster, hoping he had enough speed and enough airstrip left to get this baby off the ground. There had to be. He eyed the distance to the trees, knew it’d be close, and knew they’d only get one chance.
“Come on.” He pulled back on the throttle and suddenly they were airborne, but with nowhere near the altitude they needed to clear the trees. He held his breath as the forest loomed closer. Shit. He was going to die from his own ineptitude and take Audrey Lockhart with him. He wrestled the controls and pulled back harder, banking to the right. Finally, the aircraft responded and they cleared the rainforest, scraping the leaves of the upper canopy with the wheels.
“Woohoo!” Adrenaline raced through him as he checked the airfield below. Tiny figures ran about frantically, trying to put out the fire, hopefully delaying them long enough for him to make his escape. He tossed the SUV and other plane keys out the window, the sharp breeze making his eyes water before he closed it again.
“We made it,” he said cheerfully to his companion. But Audrey Lockhart had passed out on the floor of the cargo space and only the steady rise and fall of her chest told him she wasn’t dead.
He pulled out his NVGs. Her being unconscious was a good thing. Now he could concentrate on navigating nearly a thousand miles over the Amazon rainforest at night and hopefully, when he got where he was going, he’d remember how to land one of these suckers. After that he had a decision to make. Assuming Audrey survived the journey, what the hell was he going to do with her?
* * *
VIBRATIONS FROM THE aircraft buzzed through her bones and made her teeth rattle. Audrey didn’t know what was going on except someone had stabbed her, and the blond tourist had come to her rescue. Tears pricked the corners of her eyes, not just from the searing pain that streaked through her whenever she moved, but from the shock of everything that had happened. She was grateful to still be alive. Another wave of agony crashed through her and a moan escaped.
“You okay back there?” asked her unlikely rescuer.
Stupid question. “Where did you learn to fly a plane?” Her voice was like a metal rasp in her throat. There were a million things she wanted to know, but she didn’t have the energy to figure out which was the most important. This whole episode seemed like some surreal nightmare.
“Here and there.”
Who was this guy? Why had he helped her? Her mind jumped around the idea of some Special Forces soldier on vacation—Jason Bourne does South America. Maybe the guy had been on holiday and heard her scream back at the research station and run to her rescue? Frankly, he could be anything from a serial killer to an Indiana Jones wannabe. Until she could take a breath without being cut in half with pain, she was at his mercy. And if he was correct about her attacker being a member of the local cartel then they had to find a hospital out of the region.
She was powerless. She had to trust him. “Do you have any water?”
He fiddled with something in the front seat and took a long swallow from a plastic bottle, then recapped the lid and tossed it back toward her. It rolled across the floor. She reached out and grabbed it as the bottle moved closer. Shaking as she twisted off the cap, she couldn’t believe how weak she was. She took a swig of the lukewarm water and carefully replaced the cap. “Thank you,” she whispered.
“You’re welcome.” His eyes held a glint as he turned toward her. “Try to get some sleep. I’ll wake you when we land.”
She nodded and her eyes drifted shut. The craziness and confusion of the last few hours slowly slipped away. The last thing she heard before she fell asleep was the sound of whistling coming from the pilot’s seat. At least one of them was having fun.
* * *
“YOU’RE TELLING ME a woman barely five-foot-two inches tall took out your best hit man with her bare hands?” And Mano de Dios were supposed to instill terror in the local population?
“Hector stabbed her before she killed him. She bled like a stuck pig—she might already be dead. Her accomplice took her. You never told me she was working with someone.” The tone was accusing.
“Audrey isn’t working with anyone.” Audrey was clueless.
“Then who was the man who stole my aircraft and flew her away? You owe me a new plane, amigo.”
He didn’t owe Gómez a damned thing.
But what were the chances this was a coincidence? Someone warning her about The Gateway Project one night and then snatching her out of Hector’s grasp the next?
Not likely.
Mano de Dios had been too slow to get rid of the problem. Now, presumably someone from the CIA—or whoever was secretly investigating Burger’s death—had intervened and spirited Audrey away.
Why hadn’t they let Hector finish the job? He’d have thought getting rid of Audrey would have worked to their advantage. In fact, why warn her at all? The answer was blinding in its simplicity. They didn’t want the assassin—they wanted whoever hired her. Thankfully Audrey didn’t have a damned clue.
Would they torture her? Lock her up? The idea was enticing. Would her obvious ineptitude persuade them she was a patsy, or would they just work harder to break her? He wished he could afford to wait; to let her suffer, but there was too much riding on this.
“Once Lockhart is confirmed dead you’ll get your money, Raoul, but I want proof. Not hearsay. And if you kill whoever took her I’ll double the reward.”
Raoul’s tone turned sly. “They won’t get out of the country. Everyone is looking for them now.”
So the Colombian had orchestrated some sort of plan. Hopefully it was more effective than his last one.
“Thank you, my friend. This won’t affect the shipments?”
Raoul’s tone grew menacing. “The shipments go on as planned. No delay.”
“Good.”
They said goodbye and he dialed another number.
“I need to see you in my office.” He could no longer afford to trust the Colombians to get the job done.
A few minutes later there was a knock on his door and a woman entered. Attractive, mid-thirties, blonde. Tracey Williams, Head of Security. Tracey Williams wasn’t her real name.
“We have a problem,” he said before she mistook this summons for pleasure rather than urgent business. “The Colombians screwed up. They say they can fix the problem, but I’d like you to go down there and check it out for me.”
Her red painted lips parted in surprise. “She got away?”
“She had help.”
Her brows rose.
“I need you to give it your immediate attention,” he said when she still didn’t move.
Her expression tightened, but she nodded. “I’ll be on the next flight out.”
Some of the tension eased from his chest. Unlike the Colombians she’d never let him down.