Hostage Zero

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.”

It had been a mistake to leave the windows up, Jonathan realized. Shooting through glass was inaccurate at best. What he lacked in accuracy would have to be made up for in volume, and just to make sure he was ready for the possibility, he caressed the M4’s selector switch with his left forefinger and verified that it was in the three-round burst mode. As long as he was alive and still had a trigger finger, there wasn’t a target on the planet that he couldn’t hit with six rounds.

Ten seconds later, they were past the sentries and closing in on the clearing that would be their base camp. Including the pickets, whom he could see in his rearview mirror following the Rover, Jonathan counted seven soldiers, all dressed in jungle camouflage, and all holding rifles. To the left of center, Boxers towered over the others, and next to Boxers stood an utterly unchanged Jose Calderon.

“Boy, you don’t really get how friggin’ huge he is till you seem him next to other people, do you?” Harvey said. “He looks like Frankenstein.”

Jonathan pointed to a random spot on the ground beyond the front bumper. “Just stop anywhere in here,” he said. “And Mr. Smith?” Jonathan was fanatical about not using real names on operations, even when outside the hearing of others.

“Yeah?”

“I’m gonna give you a literal life lesson right now. As in, a lesson that will lengthen your life. Big Guy doesn’t like it when people call him names like Frankenstein. He doesn’t like Lurch; he doesn’t like Paul Bunyan. Frankly, he’s not all that fond of Big Guy, but he puts up with it because it’s his code name. In general, he doesn’t tease well.”

“A bit of a sociopath, is he?”

Jonathan’s glare darkened. “That would be calling him a name, wouldn’t it? As the man whose ass he’s saved on more than one occasion, you’re beginning to piss me off.”

Harvey opened his mouth to say something, but Jonathan wasn’t interested. He pulled the door handle and stepped out into the jungle sauna. By the time he got his door closed again, Jammin’ Josie was already on his way over, his arms outstretched. Again with the abrazos. “Senor Jones, it’s been too many years.”

Jonathan held out his arm to stop the man. When he complied, the sign to halt became an offer for a handshake. “How are you, Josie?”

At first, Jose looked confused, but then he offered up a wide grin. “I forget that you don’t like to touch,” he said.

“I don’t mind touching,” Jonathan said. “I just don’t like having to check for my wallet afterward.”

Jose put a hand to his chest, feigning a wound. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

“Actually, it’s not at all how I greet old friends. How many people know that I’m here?”

The wound grew deeper. “I have told no one, Senor Jones.”

Sensing trouble, and no doubt welcoming the opportunity to settle it, Boxers moved closer. Behind him, Harvey stepped out of the Range Rover. Jose’s troops sensed it, too, and several unslung their rifles.

“Don’t be an idiot, Josie,” Jonathan said. “Where do you think I got the Range Rover?”

The smile dimmed, and then returned. “Oh, well, Felipe knows, of course.”

“Of course.” He scanned the faces of the men who continued to close in, ever so slowly, and reflexively calculated lanes of fire. They still had time. “Tell your men to stand down,” he commanded.

Jose said the right words in Spanish, and when the men hesitated, he repeated them more forcefully. His troops relaxed, but not entirely.

Boxers said, “You watching this, Boss?”

Jonathan opened his stance so he could keep a better eye on the crowd as he continued his chat with Josie. “Mr. Smith?” he called without looking.

Harvey said, “Sir?”

“Arm yourself, please.”

Concern fell across Josie’s face. “What are you doing, my friend?”

Jonathan dared a glance to satisfy himself that Harvey had picked up his weapon from the Rover’s seat.

Josie said, “You seem to be expecting violence from me. I am your friend.”

“Tell me how Felipe knows so much,” Jonathan said.

Jose shuffled his feet and forced a smile. “Felipe knows everything, yes?”

Boxers made himself taller still, and Josie seemed to shrink accordingly.

“Who else knows?” Jonathan pressed.

The little man held his hand as if taking an oath. “On the grave of my mother, I have told no one.”

Boxers growled, “Careful, Scorpion. Snakes aren’t born. They hatch.”

Jose turned on him, craning his neck to look Boxers in the eye. “I don’t like you,” he said. “I been nothing but nice to you all day, you been nothing but lousy in return.” Then he faced Jonathan. “And then you come and treat me like I am traitor. I never betrayed you, Mr. Jones. Never once, not even during our fight with Pablo. I could have been a rich man if I had betrayed you, but I never do.”

“You would have been a dead man if you’d betrayed us,” Boxers said.

“Back then we all think we are dead men anyway,” Jose countered. “I could have been much safer telling people about you, but I never do that.”

Jonathan felt tension draining from his shoulders. Jammin’ Josie was exactly right. During the shoot-’em-up drug war, there had been a time when the only safe people were the ones on the wrong side of the law. A man like Josie could have retired on the reward for betraying the good guys.

“You’ve always been a good friend to me,” Jonathan said. “But it’s been a long time, and things are different now. Josie, right now is your one and only opportunity to tell me if your loyalty has been compromised. Tell me the details of what you’ve told others, and I promise that I’ll let you all walk away. I won’t come looking for you.”

Something changed in Josie’s eyes. A brief flash of panic, maybe. Boxers saw it, too, and he shifted his grip on his rifle, allowing his gloved finger to slip into the trigger guard of his M4.

“Oh, shit,” he said.

Harvey sensed the tension between Jonathan and his old friend, but there was nothing about their interaction that seemed critical. The order to arm himself surprised him, but even then he didn’t sense urgency. As ordered, he’d lifted out his MP5 machine gun, but he thought it was more a symbolic gesture than preparation for combat, so he didn’t even bother to extend the telescoping stock. He stood, watching and doing his best to listen, with the weapon dangling from his hand like an overgrown pistol.

Such was his posture when one of the mercenaries on his left shouldered his M16 and brought it to bear.

Boxers said, “Oh, shit,” and then the jungle exploded in automatic weapons fire.

Harvey dropped to the ground for cover, but by the time he rolled to a prone shooting position and brought his weapon up, it was over. None of the mercenaries remained standing. Most appeared to be dead, but the one closest to him writhed from his wounds, one of which pumped blood at a fatal rate.

Harvey whipped his head toward the spot where he’d last seen Jonathan and Boxers, and both of them had dropped to a knee. Barrels smoking, their weapons remained locked in on their targets. In less than five seconds, they’d cut down seven men. Harvey had never seen anything like it.

“Mr. Smith, are you all right?”

Harvey gaped. His ears felt like they’d been stuffed with cotton. “Yeah,” he said. “Holy shit.”

While Jonathan held his aim, Boxers rose to his feet, and with his weapon always at the ready, approached the bodies. “If you’ve got nothing better to do, how about giving me a hand?” the Big Guy said.

“M-me?” Harvey stammered.

“Y-yeah, y-you,” Boxers mocked. “Disarm these men.”

Harvey rose to his feet. “But they’re dead. Jesus.” Once he stood, he could see just how dead they were-every one a head shot.

“Disarmed and dead is better than just plain dead.”

“No, Big Guy, I need him here with me,” Jonathan said. He was kneeling over Jammin’ Josie, his bloody hands pressed against the other man’s belly. “Find the aid kit and bring it here.”

The trauma bag lay on the top of the equipment piled next to one of Josie’s Blazers.

Harvey knew it was bad the instant he saw pallor in Josie’s face. The location of the bullet wound in the upper left quadrant of the abdomen, combined with the flow of blood, said that his spleen had been hit.

“He needs a surgeon,” Harvey said.

Jonathan gave him a knowing look. Josie was not long for this world. “Do what you can.”

A new kind of fear gripped Harvey’s insides. He hadn’t seen a bullet wound in years; and the last time he did, a medevac chopper was always a radio call away. He had no magical powers. This man was going to die, and Harvey was going to have to tend him while it happened.

“What’s this all about?” Harvey asked. “What just happened?”

“You tend to the wounds, Doc,” Jonathan said. “And we’ll find out the rest together.”

Jonathan helped Harvey strip Josie of his shirt, exposing the wound that had been inflicted by one of Josie’s own-by accident, Jonathan assumed, but with mercenaries, you could never be sure. This man who’d betrayed him had a chest and belly much like Jonathan’s own-less developed, perhaps, but equally disfigured by scars from previous wounds. This new one was a perfectly round hole in the front, about the diameter of a number-two pencil, while the exit wound in his back was a ragged avulsion three times the size of the entry hole.

While Harvey pulled HemCon packets out of his med kit and ripped them open, Jonathan said, “Tell me what you did, Josie.”

“Am I shot bad?”

“Yes,” he said. “You’re shot bad.” No matter what, Jonathan owed him the truth.

“Fatal?”

“Probably.”

“Jesus,” Harvey snapped. “Where did you learn bedside manner?”

Jonathan ignored him. “I need to know the details, Josie. You don’t want to die with betrayal on your soul.”

Harvey said, “This is going to hurt.” He’d donned a pair of latex gloves and prepared to insert the HemCon pads into the wounds. Similar in appearance to standard gauze dressings, HemCon pads were soaked in a coagulating agent that was damned effective at stanching the flow of blood from traumatic injuries long enough to get the patient to a hospital.

“Wait a second,” Jonathan said.

Harvey shook his head. “No.”

No easy way existed to jam fabric into the ballistic pathway of a bullet. Josie howled like a tortured animal as Harvey stuffed first the entry wound and then the exit. The very thought of it churned Jonathan’s stomach.

Josie lay soaked in sweat and heaving for breath when it was all done. He’d nearly bitten through his lower lip. “ Dios mio,” he moaned.

Jonathan stroked his hair. “It’s over now. That should slow the bleeding.”

“Then maybe I can live?”

Harvey shot a glare.

“Maybe,” Jonathan said. “But Josie, you have to tell me what you did. After you do that, we can give you a shot for the pain.”

Josie locked eyes with Jonathan. They shimmered with fear and shame. “A man came to me,” he said. “He knew of our work together in the past. He had pictures of you. All three of you.”

Jonathan’s heart skipped. No one knew they were coming. “Who was this man?”

“I don’t know him.”

“You know his name,” Jonathan said, his heart heavy with disappointment. “I know it, too, but I need you to say it. Please don’t lie to me. Not now.”

Tears tracked from the corners of the little man’s eyes. “I don’t know how he found me,” he said. “He approached me on the street, showed me a picture of my family, and told me that if I saw any of you-he showed me your pictures-I was to call him and tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

“That I saw you, I suppose.”

Boxers had rejoined them. He stood at his full height, allowing his shadow to keep the sun out of Jose’s eyes.

“He threatened my family,” Jose said.

Jonathan understood now. “What did he want?”

The last of the resistance went away. Jonathan saw real remorse. Genuine regret. “He knew that I was raising an attack force. He guessed that it was for you.” He tried a friendly smile. “I’m not the liar I used to be. He wanted me to kill you.”

Jonathan gave a wry chuckle. “With the people I hired to help me?”

Josie closed his eyes against another wave of agony. “It would have pained me,” he said after it passed. “He had pictures of my family. He was going to kill them.”

“What makes you think we won’t?” Boxers asked.

Jonathan didn’t like the question, didn’t like the tone, and didn’t like the implication. But he showed none of it.

Jose smiled. “You are here to rescue a child,” he said. “People who rescue children don’t kill them.”

Bingo, Jonathan thought. In fact, a Silver Star citation posted on the wall at Unit headquarters at Fort Bragg gave testimony to the lengths Boxers would go to protect children.

Jonathan cranked his head to look up at Boxers’ silhouette. “Get on the horn with Mother Hen and have her scan the screens. Make sure we’re still alone.”

Boxers backed off a few feet and keyed his microphone. Jonathan tuned him out. “I need to know everything, Josie. Every detail. Start with his name.”

The little man squinted against the sun. “I knew who he was as soon as I saw him. They call him El Matador. He is very feared by the people here in the mountains, and he is allowed by the policia to do whatever he wants. He kills people, Mr. Jones. His last name is Ponder. First name Michael, I think. No, it’s a different name that sounds like Michael. I don’t know.”

Jonathan didn’t know what to say. This mission had barely begun, yet the battle plan had already been shredded.

“I did it to save my family,” Josie repeated. Another wave of pain rolled through his gut. And he tensed against it. “It was never my plan to betray you, Mr. Jones. You must know that.”

Boxers’ shadow returned. “We’re alone,” he reported.

“Good to know,” Jonathan said. To Josie: “Did you even look for the boy we’re trying to find?”

Jose’s eyes cleared. “ Si. I found him.”

Jonathan shot a look to Boxers, and the Big Guy retreated to one of the ancient Chevy Blazers that Josie had brought for transportation. He returned with a plastic laminated map that was covered with grease-pencil markings. Jonathan unfolded the map and held it so Josie could see it. “Show me.”

Josie took a moment to study it and orient himself. “We are right here,” he said, leaving a bloody dot on the map. He pointed to another spot. “This is where the boy is. You cannot drive to it, and you cannot fly to it. You have to walk.”

“How do you know this is the place?”

“The boy you are looking for has very blond hair, yes?”

“Yes.”

Josie pointed to yet another spot on the map. “Everybody knows that Ponder has a permanent camp here. It’s a-how do you say it? — stage area.”

“Staging area,” Jonathan corrected. “For what?”

“For food and supplies for his factories. They gather the materials there, and then move them out into the mountains to the factories.”

“How many factories are there?”

Jose shrugged. “I don’t know. No one knows. Many. But one of the men who works there is easily bought. He told me that a blond-haired boy was brought to this staging area two days ago. He was-how do you say it? — asleep, but not normal sleep.”

“Unconscious,” Jonathan helped.

“Yes, exactly. When he woke up, they put him in a truck and drove him into the woods.”

“To one of the many factories.”

“ Exactamente. This one here.” He pointed back to the spot where he said Evan was.

“How do you know it’s this one?”

“Because of the white hair. Word of such things travels quickly among the Indian villages. This one here”-the spot he pointed to this time had no marking at all-“has been treated particularly badly by Ponder’s men. Many rapes and murders. No men left in the village at all. No boys, even, beyond ocho anos. They have all been killed or put to work in the factories. Slave labor. So when a boy who looks like the boy you seek comes through, he is noticed. He was there yesterday. Only one factory is close by. That is where you will find the blond boy.” Jose gave a weak smile, clearly proud of himself.

Then it disappeared. “When Ponder discovers that you’re still alive, he will kill my wife and children.”

Jonathan sighed. “I’m sorry.”

Harvey offered, “Lie to him. Call and say that you killed us. That would buy time.”

“I wish it would,” Josie said. He closed his eyes. “I was supposed to deliver your heads to him,” he said.

Ten minutes later, they were ready to go. While Jonathan and Boxers managed the business of loading two vehicles, Harvey made final preparations with Josie. As gently as possible, he dragged the man to a shady spot and propped him against two rucksacks whose owners no longer needed them.

“Are you comfortable?” Harvey asked.

Josie looked terrified. As promised, Harvey had given him an injection for the pain, but it hadn’t touched the man’s fear of dying. “Please take me with you,” Josie begged. “Don’t make me die out here.”

Harvey avoided eye contact. “Boss says no.”

“Please. You can talk him into it. You look like a nice young man.”

“Yeah, well, looks can be deceiving.”

“Please.”

Harvey’s stomach churned. “I can’t,” he said. He stood.

“Then kill me,” Josie said. “Give me another shot. Give me five shots. Make me go to sleep and-”

Jonathan stepped into Harvey’s space. “We’re not assassins, Josie,” he said. “He won’t drug you to death, and before you ask, I won’t shoot you to death. It’s not what we do.” He put a hand on Harvey’s shoulder. “Go ahead and mount up. We’ll be in the Range Rover.”

Jose tried to sit up more, but his body wouldn’t cooperate. “Mr. Jones. All those years.”

“They’re all in the past. I’m sorry. I wish you hadn’t done what you did.”

“But my family.”

“They’ll be killed, I suppose.”

“You could help them.”

Jonathan paused. He didn’t want to rise to that bait. The man was dying, for God’s sake. He was desperate for some thread of hope. Behind him, one of the Blazers rumbled to life.

“Good-bye, Josie.”

Jose took a huge breath and seemed to focus all his energy. “I don’t want to die here!” he shouted.

Jonathan turned his back on his old colleague and walked away.