Chapter Three

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Jaxon

There are a million reasons why I shouldn’t be doing this, and one massive one that means that no matter how dangerous, no matter how limited the intel, no matter how wrong this could go and how much it could send me tumbling down another black hole, I just can’t say no.

Almost five years have slipped by and all I have to do is close my eyes and she’s right there again tormenting me. The girl I should never have let get away in the first place, the girl that was too proud to admit she was hooked.

The last thing I want to do is get to Mexico and replace the image I’ve got in my head of Ruby on top of me riding the wave of a multiple orgasm with one of her dumped heartlessly somewhere in the dry Mexican dirt, but if I don’t go and later realize I had a chance at saving her, the rest of my life won’t even be worth living.

If she’s dead already, no matter how much it’ll kill me to see it, at least I’ll know I’ll have done everything I can to try and avoid it. If she’s alive, and as much as I don’t want to think about the possibility she might not be, we might just have a chance to pick up where we left off. Of course, with Ruby that could either mean an open handed slap right across my cheek, the kind of kiss that makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, or a knee right to my balls, and maybe even all three. Describing our short term relationship as passionately volatile really undersells it.

“First time going to Mexico?”

The voice belongs to the woman in the seat next to me who has spent most of this journey looking like she’s been waiting for the right moment to ask me something. Now that we’ve started our descent I guess she figures she’s running out of time.

“Yes”, I lie. She’s pretty enough that five years ago she might have stirred my interest enough to bother, but everything changed so much after Ruby anyway that there really isn’t anything further from my mind right now.

“Vacation?” she adds, keen to keep the conversation going.

I nod politely, keen not to engage.

“It’s a beautiful country”, she continues, unaffected by my silence. “You’ll love it. The people are so friendly.” I guess she must be talking about the ones that don’t kidnap journalists. “And the beaches, oh my God, they are to die for. How long have you got?”

Her teeth are so white they look like they’ve been treated with fluorescent paint. I can see cracks at the edges of her eyes that poor aircraft lighting and badly applied makeup do nothing to hide. She’s older than she’s trying to make herself look, about a million degrees of perfection away from the girl I’ve come here to rescue.

“A week”, I lie, hoping to be back home by this time tomorrow.

She nods. “You don’t say much do you?” she says. “I like that in a man. If you need someone to show you around, help you with the language-.” She leans over, across the arm separating our business class seats from one another. “I’m in Mexico all the time, it’s like my second home.”

“Thank you”, I say meekly, trying to make it clear by my body language that I’m in no way interested in what she’s offering me. “I’m actually meeting someone there.”

“Oh”, she says, with a hint of disappointment, before an announcement by the pilot about our estimated arrival time cuts into her train of thought. When he’s done, she’s thankfully already missed her chance to continue and we spend what little is left of the flight without another word to each other, despite the heated glances she keeps sending in my direction.

Passing through customs is a breeze. I’m a dumb tourist visiting Mexico for the first time in my life, my guidebook practically bursting through the side pocket of my backpack, nothing in my briskly packed bag but beach clothes and worn out sandals. I don’t even need to explain where I’m going or how long I plan to stay before I’m waved through the gates and the lazy guard’s calling the next arrival to the desk.

I don’t have a bag to collect from the carousel, so I make my way quickly through the terminal building, get outside and hail a cab.

It takes just over thirty minutes to carve through the traffic and get to the address I provide the driver, and he spends most of that time advising me on how to avoid getting robbed, before overcharging me for the journey.

I’ve been on missions all over central and south america and it’s given me the opportunity to pick up enough of the language to let him know I’m not easily fooled, but I don’t want to draw attention to myself, hand over what he’s asking for and get on with what I came here to do.

I’ve been out of active service for two years, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t maintained a network of contacts. If the Mexican authorities allowed me to enter their country with enough weaponry to take out an army, I wouldn’t have to waste time buying guns, but the quicker I get this over with, the faster I can get to Ruby.

The information that was passed to Ruby’s father was provided by a journalist friend of hers who managed to track their convoy of vehicles on the night of her kidnapping to a destination just outside of the city. According to his intel, there were at least six men involved, possibly another six more as back up, all belonging to a mercenary group and possibly working for either government or terrorist factions.

Somehow Ruby’s got herself into some seriously deep shit, which, understandably, he was reluctant to go into. According to Ruby’s father, he’s now gone into hiding, which means that if Ruby’s not at the location he’s suggesting, or she’s since been moved from there to somewhere else, I’m looking for a needle in a haystack.

I’ve found missing people before, but missing people who’ve been taken hostage usually have a window of about seventy two hours at the very most before they turn up dead if they turn up at all, and right now we’re over half way there.

“I’ve got a team if you need it”, Diego tells me. I’ve never seen him before but I know all about him. He’s ex-police, anti-government, extremely well connected, highly professional, and has experience of working with special ops teams before.

He’s brought a decent selection of weaponry, some classics and some stuff I haven’t even seen before.

“It’s low key”, I tell him, which roughly translates as it’s personal, and I work better alone, and after what happened in Iran, I can’t be putting anyone else’s lives at risk.

Diego crosses and recrosses his legs. The ash on his cigarette needs tapping but he lets it fall to the ground instead. He’s got a scar across his neck that didn’t come from shaving and a glazed look in his eye that people tend to get when they witness too many atrocities.

He nods and takes another drag on his cigarette.

“All unmarked”, he says. “But you already know that.”

I take the MK23 with sound suppressor, the HK45CT, a Glock 22, a HK MP7 sub, a Strider SMF knife and an Ontario MK 3 for back-up. I could take six guys out with my bare hands, but I want to make sure I’m fully loaded just in case intel is bad and six turns out to be sixty. Along with the weaponry I take lightweight clothes, a bullet proof vest, grapple hooks, infrared heat sensor goggles, first aid field kit and some good old-fashioned solid desert boots. If this were a planned extraction I’d get full battle dress uniform, but as a lone mercenary soldier I’d prefer to fade into the background as soon as I need to.

“Anything else?” Diego asks, a pile of ash now gathered up by his feet. With his sandals and shorts he looks even less like he belongs in this world than I do right now. “Grenades, smoke, pyrotechnics?”

I shake my head. “I won’t have time for a show”, I say.

“In and out”, Diego comments. “Next time you should stay a little longer and enjoy the tequila.”

“Next time I come to Mexico”, I say, “I’ll make sure it really is for a vacation.”

I pay Diego, change into the clothes I’ve just bought from him, wrap the guns and knives in a dirty towel and bury them in my rucksack beneath the beach clothes I brought with me, and head back out to the street. My stopwatch tells me that two hours and thirty seven minutes have passed since landing, which means nearly forty hours have passed since Ruby was kidnapped.

The building I believe she’s being held in is approximately forty five minutes from the outskirts of the city. The sky is already dark, I can feel the buzz of another rescue mission running through my veins and I know the time has come to get back to work. I can’t deny it, it finally feels like I’m alive again.

I flag a cab down, get into the backseat this time as a soldier and not a tourist, and tell him to take me to a hotel as close to the building as he can.

This time the driver doesn’t warn me about robberies, about how dangerous the city is for a guy like me, about how I have to be constantly on guard. He takes one look at me through the rear view mirror and then keeps quiet for the rest of the journey.

As we drive I try and focus my mind on Ruby. What state am I going to find her in? Will she even be alive? How much will she have changed and what the hell am I going to say to her? I think about the last moment we saw each other, almost five years ago, and then I think about the first time we got together, the countdown from ten to zero, the ride home and the incredible sex that lasted well into the next day.

Whatever happens tonight, one thing’s for sure. Nobody has ever come even remotely close.