Breaking Loose

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Suzi had a plan, and it was called “get the hell out of Dodge.”

She had the Sphinx. Dax was somewhere close by. Conroy Farrel was-well, she didn’t know what Conroy Farrel was, except that it was awful. All she and Dax needed was to rendevous and find some transportation out of this place.

Conroy Farrel needed something else. She didn’t know what, but he was writhing on the floor, almost convulsive. She’d seen the dart he’d pulled out of his neck, and she didn’t understand, except to think that Dylan knew who he was and hadn’t wanted him dead.

She was smart enough to figure out that Conroy Farrel was SDF’s Paraguayan mission.

None of which mattered if she couldn’t get away from here.

Someone was shooting the house, breaking windows, rocking it with blast after blast. Shards of rock and shingles were raining down all around, turning the place into a war zone.

Conroy Farrel still had her fanny pack with her phone and her gun, but she didn’t dare get close enough to him to take her pack back. She did grab the carbine he’d dropped and moved toward the door to the deck, hoping to locate Dax.

Looking out over the deck to the river, there were men running everywhere, a lot of them shooting toward the house, some of them shooting toward the river, but she didn’t see Dax. Dammit. Racing back to the dining room table, she felt a percussive thump-thump-thump shaking the house from below. Then it stopped.

Just one more damn thing.

Moving quickly, she put the Sphinx inside the gray pack, then slipped the straps onto her shoulders. She wasn’t going to lose the statue. If she got out of here, she wanted to get out with her mission completed.

Chances were, though, that she wasn’t going to get out of here. She checked the magazine on the carbine and headed back to the door that was still open onto the deck. Using as much cover as she could, she sidled up to the wall, raised the weapon and settled her cheek onto the stock, and then she found a target and squeezed the trigger.

Everyone in the compound was moving. It was not like shooting fish in a barrel. She missed more than she hit. Her adrenaline was pumping. Her small motor skills were shaky as hell. Half the time she had to hold her shot because she’d lose her focus for a second. Then she’d remind herself to breathe and aim again.

Tunnel vision-that’s what happened to her. She was concentrating so hard on what was out in front of her, that she never saw what was coming up behind her.

Dax had two goals-get to Suzi, and get to Erich Warner’s body, or rather, Erich Warner’s jacket. Screw the Sphinx. He didn’t need it for anything now that Warner was dead.

But Suzi had it, and he bet his girl had it locked down.

Another blast off the.50-cal rocked the house, shattering glass. The next round hit one of the stone walls. Goddamn, somebody needed to take Shoko out. She was on a rampage.

A few shots had come from the house, but they’d stopped a minute or so ago. There were shots still coming from up on the ridge, precision shots, one Vargas boy going down after another, and he’d sure like to know who was helping him out.

He made it to the house by fast-crawling along the edge of the compound, using the trees for concealment, until he could make his break for the deck. When he got there, he swung himself up, subgun ready to blast anybody who came out of the door.

But nobody did, and he ducked inside. At one time, about two minutes ago, the place had been beautiful. Shoko had turned it into a garbage heap. He didn’t see Suzi anywhere. There was a carbine on the floor by the door, though, and when he reached for it, he saw something else lying on the floor-a long, faceted piece of rock crystal.

He knew what it was, and when he picked it up, he got a bad feeling. He had to find Suzi, and he was well aware of the fact that Warner’s jacket was moving away from him and up the river, still wrapped around Warner’s dead body, with Shoko at the wheel.

Still, if his girl was here, he had to find her.

It took him too damn long to check every room, and by the time he finished, he realized he was in danger of being overrun by the few Paraguayans that hadn’t either run away into the jungle or been killed, and he didn’t know where Conroy Farrel had gotten off to-the guy was nowhere.

The last door he checked opened onto a dark stairwell with a deeply dank smell coming up from out of it. He didn’t hesitate. He followed the stairs down at a quick gait, feeling the air getting cooler and wetter.

“Suzi!” he called out, hoping to get an answer, and getting none.

In combat, phone calls were called communications, and though he doubted if Conroy Farrel had let her keep her phone, it was a chance.

His carbine still at the ready, he slipped his phone out of his pocket and called her number-and heard a ring. He speeded up his gait. Nobody answered the phone, but it kept ringing until he got about halfway down the stairs. Then he lost service, dammit.

At the bottom of the stairs, he came out into an underground boathouse, a cave lit by the fading sunlight coming in through its mouth, and a few lit lamps. The cave floor had been extended with a wide dock, and there was a go-fast boat tied up to it. The gate at the cave’s opening had been blown off its hinges. The place still smelled of burned metal and pulverized rock, and all he could think was Shoko and the.50. The girl had blasted her way in here, and she’d done it for one reason only-the Sphinx. His gut was telling him she’d gotten Suzi, too, if for no reason other than he didn’t think his girl would have given up the statue without a fight.

But it wouldn’t have been much of a fight.

Oh, hell no.

Moving quickly, he headed toward the mouth of the cave, and at the edge of the dock came to a sudden halt. There was something, a low, grumbling growl that made the hackles rise on the back of his neck. He’d trapped something in the corner of the cave, something wild, some animal.

He took a step back from the dark form he could see huddled up against the wall, and he exchanged his phone for a flashlight he took off his tac vest. He pushed the button on the light and stopped cold.

It wasn’t an animal. He didn’t know what or who it was, but his first guess would be Conroy Farrel-and he took another step back. The growling deepened, the creature’s wild eyes locked onto his. It was a man, purely human, but a feral human, twisted up in agony, sweat running off of it, his muscles tight, his teeth bared.

Dax had an instinct to try to help, but it was instantly overridden by his need to find Suzi, to save her.

Backing off, without taking his eyes off the guy, he made it back to the boat. He cast off and fired up the engines, and using the throttle, he reversed out of the cave. When he hit open water, he swung the prow of the boat upriver and poured on the speed.