Payback

87

Dean led Lia to a spot about three hundred yards from the camp where a pair of fallen tree trunks gave them cover and a vantage point to watch for guards.

“We’re at the trunks I told you about,” he told Rockman.

“Good. Helicopters are sixteen minutes away,” said Rockman. “One group is going to take out Servico. The other will meet you at LZ One.”

“You’re taking Servico?” said Lia.

“Yes. He’s wanted by the British as well as the Peruvians, and we want to talk to him about the bomb.”

“All right. Tell the landing team we’ll locate him for them,” said Lia, sliding off the tree.

“Hey, hold on,” said Dean, grabbing her. “We just got out of there.”

“We?”

“Lia, Charlie? Just relax a second,” said Telach. “There are two helicopters of paramilitaries on their way. You’ll hear them shortly.”

“So will the guerrillas,” said Lia. “Servico will get away.”

Dean recognized the defiant look in her eye, the look he called Lia DeFrancesca takes on the world.

“There’s only six of them. They’re mostly kids. They’re not very well trained,” Lia said. “Do you really think we need to wait for help?”

“All right, let’s do it,” said Dean, taking the lead.

By the time Lia caught up to Dean, he was crouched a few yards from the point where she’d come into the jungle. Two men were talking in front of the shower hut. One was Servico; the other was the man who’d been guarding her.

“On the left,” said Lia.

Servico started walking in the direction of the huts. The other man went down the road to the right, probably to join the hunt.

“Rockman, where are all the guerrillas?” she asked.

“They sent one to the road, probably to go to the others four miles away where they’re searching for the military stragglers. We have two on the north side, one just walking to the south. One in the village near the cottages.”

“That leaves one more.”

“Has to be still inside Cabin Two. Is that our guy?”

“Servico’s the one walking toward the cabin,” said Lia.

“OK, got it. Helicopters are now ten minutes off.”

“Wait till they’re five,” Dean said. “We’ll take him before they hear the rotors.”

“Charlie, it’d be much easier for you guys if you just waited—”

“Servico isn’t going to surrender,” Lia told the runner. “He made a real point of that before. If you want him alive, we have to grab him before he knows he’s in trouble.”

“Charlie? Lia? Are you sure about this?” said Telach.

“We’re sure,” said Lia.

“Charlie?”

“Yeah, we can do it.”

“Eight minutes,” said Rockman.

Lia looked at Dean. He scanned the village slowly, as if he were a robotic surveillance camera, taking it all in, analyzing every inch.

“I didn’t need to be rescued,” she whispered, checking her pistol to make sure it was ready, even though she’d done that just a few minutes before.

“Didn’t say you did.”

Right, she thought to herself.

Dean glanced at his watch, then held up a finger: one minute.

“Right or left?” Lia asked.

“I’ll take the right.”

“Call him out in Spanish,” she suggested.

“Yeah, good.”

“Rockman, where are the guerrillas?”

“Two to the north are about eight hundred yards away, searching at the edge of a ravine. Your target is in the cabin, with another man. The one on the road is out of the picture. We’re missing one to the east, at least fifty yards from you, most likely more. Woods are too thick.”

“Let’s go,” said Dean.

Lia ran on the left side of the door. Dean took the right. Pistol ready, he cupped his left hand over his mouth and called to the guerrilla leader in Spanish.

“Comrade Paolo,” he said. “¡Vamos! Come on! Hurry!”

Someone answered with a grumble. Dean saw the door open; as a man stepped out he leapt onto his back, smashing his neck and then the back of his head with his pistol. The figure collapsed and Dean fell with him, rolling in the ground as the guerrilla’s AK-47 clattered behind him.

The rebel clawed at the ground, trying to pull himself away. Dean caught him and gave him another smash, this one so hard it felt like he had knocked the man’s skull off. Yet the guerrilla still struggled, and it wasn’t until Dean hit him on the other side of the head that the man finally collapsed.

Dean grabbed the guerrilla’s shoulder, planning to haul him up over his back into the nearby jungle. As he did, he caught a glimpse of the man’s face and realized it wasn’t Servico.

Lia leapt through the doorway as Dean took the guerrilla who had come out. There was a desk and a chair to the left, a rifle hanging on a hook in the corner.

And a man just starting for it.

Servico.

“Don’t move!” she told him. “I’ll shoot you.”

“Shoot me then,” he said, and he twisted around to seize the gun and fire.

Lia fired two shots through his right knee. Servico managed to get his hand onto the gun stock but fell, crippled by the pain of the bullets that smashed his patella and the adjacent bones.

She ran to him quickly, grabbing him by the shirt and pulling him across the floor. She started to lift him up to carry him over her back, but he struggled ferociously, grabbing her hair. A kick to his wounded knee drained the fight from him; another quick blow to his neck paralyzed him.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” Dean yelled from the doorway. He had the other guerrilla’s AK-47 in his hands.

Lia took hold of Servico’s shirt and pulled him to the doorway, rolling him over to check for a hidden weapon. As she looked around for something to truss him with, she noticed two grenade launchers sitting on a flat box near the door.

The heavy beat of the approaching helicopters filled the air.

“Helicopters are sixty seconds away,” said Rockman. “We’re sending everybody into the village.”

“We’ll be waiting,” said Dean.