Passenger 19

FORTY-SIX

“How many are out there?” Jen asked.

Kristin peered through the opening. “I only see one now. I know him — Manuel. He’s only a kid, probably two years younger than me.”

“Does he have a gun?”

“Of course, they all do.”

“Then it doesn’t matter how old he is,” said Jen. “At least the gunfire stopped, if that’s what it was. Is the Secret Service guy still there?”

“I don’t know if he’s Secret Service, but yeah, he’s still tied down with a hood over his head. And his briefcase is still on the hood of the jeep.”

Jen maneuvered and tried to get a look. “If we stay here they’ll find us sooner or later. Right now most of them are in the jungle… I think this is our chance.”

“Chance for what?”

“The guy chained to the bumper — he came here for you, so he’s got to be on our side. If we can free him, the three of us could take the jeep and make a run for it before the others get back.”

Kristin thought about it. Finally she nodded. “Okay, but how do we get past Manuel?”

Jen drew a blank, facing the kind of problem never addressed in university — how to overcome an armed guard and release a captive. She looked around their crawlspace, desperate for inspiration. In the end, Jen asked herself a question she hadn’t asked in a very long time. What would Dad do?

She was surprised by what came to mind. When she explained her idea, it brought a look of disbelief from her new partner. But then Kristin relented. “It’s crazy — but yeah, it might work.”

As he stood guard duty next to the jeep, Manuel Rivas wished he were anywhere else. He was homesick and lonely, having not been back to his village in ten months. The tiny settlement on the steppes of the Andes had been his home for sixteen years, until that autumn day last year when the paras came to town.

He wasn’t surprised when he saw them — not really. They had taken his older brother four years earlier. Eduardo had made it back home, a victory in itself, and now spent his days learning how to repair farm equipment, an ambitious undertaking for a young man with one leg. The Colombian army had shot the other one off, and for his troubles Eduardo was imprisoned for a year before being repatriated to the village. No one seemed to mind. In the end a misguided young man was reunited with his family, a burdened penal system acquired a needed vacancy, and a village was blessed with a new one-legged mechanic. Such was the course of life here, and Eduardo, always a positive person, considered himself lucky to have made it home at all.

Manuel, on the other hand, had never been blessed with his brother’s optimism. Nor his luck. He always lost the football pools with his friends and invariably fell one card short in poker games with the other recruits. Still, like gamblers everywhere, Manuel clung unwaveringly to long odds. Which was why, when Carlos guaranteed a month’s leave to any man who found the girls, he thought he might have a chance. Then he’d been assigned guard duty. By Pablo’s order, he was left behind to watch their new prisoner, not even given an opportunity to search. Luckless as ever, he would not be going home. These were Manuel’s thoughts, alternately angry and defeatist in the face of his chronic misfortune, when he saw a vision only God could grant.

Carlos’ girl was running toward him with her arms outstretched. Her shirt was ripped open at the front, giving fluttering glimpses of skin from neck to navel. She was wearing a brassiere, but her breasts bounced heavily inside, the lovely white cups straining at the seams. She looked terrified, and her body language was that of a woman desperate for help. Manuel took his hip off the jeep’s fender and blinked his eyes. The vision was still there. It was a rush of sensory inputs like nothing he’d ever experienced — sex and hope and fear all rushing toward him on a dead run. It never occurred to him to raise his weapon. He had talked to the girl a dozen times — her Spanish was quite good — and she’d always treated him kindly and with a smile.

As she came closer she yelled breathlessly, “Manuel! Help me! The other girl tried to take me away — she’s hiding in the barracks!”

With all the self-discipline he could muster, Manuel turned and looked at the place he and his squad had called home for a week. It seemed quiet and still. Then it occurred to him that it was one of the few places they had not searched. In a matter of seconds his luck had changed. He’d found both girls, which meant he would be the one going home to see his family. Carlos was a bastard, but a bastard who kept his word.

Staring at the barracks, he heard the girl stop behind him — none of them knew her name — and as he began to turn, Manuel admonished himself not to stare at her chest. She might take exception to that, even if she was a depraved young American. And so, in turn, might Carlos.

I must do nothing to change my luck.

That was Manuel’s last thought before the brick struck him in the head.

Kehoe heard someone approach, then the hood was ripped off his head.

He blinked against the light, and when his eyes adjusted he saw the girl he’d come to rescue. She looked just like the pictures in his briefing: dark shoulder-length hair, wide-set brown eyes. What hadn’t been in the picture was the open shirt, which she was buttoning from the bottom up. Kehoe saw the guard on the ground, the brick lying next him, and of course he’d been listening. It was simple enough to put together what had transpired.

“Good work, Kristin.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” she said, thumbing closed the last button on her dusty blouse. “Who are you?”

“My name’s Kehoe. Your father sent me to bring you home.”

“My father is a spineless bastard who doesn’t have the decency to—”

“Stop right there!” he interrupted. “I don’t give a damn who or what your father is!” He was in no mood to play counselor to whatever righteously screwed-up domestic calamity he was cleaning up. “We are leaving right now! Find something in the jeep that will cut these.” He gestured to his plastic-cuffed wrists.

She scurried to the jeep and began searching.

Kehoe said, “Wire cutters, bolt cutters, anything to—” he spotted a knife in the downed soldier’s belt. “There! Use that!”

Kristin looked where he was pointing and saw the knife. She knelt down and pulled it from its sheath, revealing a toothy, eight-inch-long Rambo special. The moment she pulled it clear, Manuel began to stir.

“What do I do?” she asked, clearly horrified at the thought of hitting the soldier again.

“Slit his throat,” said Kehoe.

She looked at him incredulously.

Kehoe rolled his eyes. “Just give me the knife.” She did, and Kehoe worked the blade between the bumper and the plastic band. It snapped on his first pull. The soldier was moving, but barely. Kehoe quickly confiscated his AK-47, made sure it was loaded, and then searched the man for other weapons. There were none.

“Transportation is next.” He slid into the driver’s seat and saw the key in the ignition. Not all military vehicles had keys, but Kehoe knew this one did — from under the cloth hood he’d heard the rattle of the chain, and click of an ignition cylinder when they’d left the airfield. You could learn a lot by listening.

“Get in here!” he ordered. “Do you know how to get to the airfield?”

“The only road leads straight there. But we can’t leave without Jen!”

“Who?”

“My friend, Jen Davis. She’s—”

Kehoe heard shouts in the distance, near the road. The road that was their only way out. Kristin waved toward one of the buildings, no doubt to signal her friend to join them. A gunshot rang out and a bullet pinged off the jeep, and Kehoe thought, Consulting, that’s really where I need to be.

“Get in now!” he shouted.

She ignored him, and he saw the second girl running toward them.

Kehoe turned the key and the diesel engine rattled obediently to life. The briefcase was still on the hood, and after a very short internal debate, he snatched it and threw it on the seat next to him. By the time he had the jeep in gear both girls had vaulted into the back seat. He decided introductions could wait. They had advanced no more than twenty feet when Kehoe’s foot slammed on the brake, the jeep skidding to a stop in a squall of dirt and gravel. Two men with raised semiautomatics were blocking the way out, positioned perfectly where the road funneled to the forest. A third soldier approached from the side, armed with a Steyr machine pistol and looking very sure of himself. Kehoe pondered the AK between the two front seats. Then he considered the two young girls behind him.

“Don’t do it!” said the man to his left.

Kehoe stood down, his hands going open palmed on the steering wheel. The voice was familiar, and he got his first good look at the man in charge. He was short and thick, dusty fatigues over sun-etched skin. A thick beard and lively, intelligent eyes. A street-smart ranch hand.

“Carlos!” Kristin said. “I’m so glad you came back to—”

“Be quiet!” he snapped.

Now Kehoe had a name to go with the face.

Carlos looked at the girls, then at him. “You have all made a serious mistake.”

Kehoe watched the two men a hundred feet ahead edge nearer. They were closer together than they should have been, he thought, limiting their lines of fire. Unfortunately, there were times when sheer numbers and firepower compensated for a lack of training. Carlos reached into the jeep, pulled out the AK and tossed it into the dirt. He seized a handful of Kristin’s long hair and wrenched her out of her seat.

Kehoe sat still. His tactical situation was not good, but he knew the value of control. Waiting for a decent opening, he watched the man named Carlos push Kristin to her knees, and then whisper something into her ear. She shuddered visibly as he nodded to his men, and then gestured toward the second girl. When Carlos pointed the Steyr directly at his chest, Kehoe realized the chance he was waiting for might never come.

Nothing to lose, he inched his right hand between the seats. The prospect could not have been more slim, but it was all he had left. Kehoe was all concentration, preparing to instigate what might be the final conscious act of his life, when the most implausible thing happened. A massive form came flying out of the brush.

In a blur a man crashed into the soldiers in front, clothes-lining one with an arm and tackling the other to the dirt. Three seconds and two haymakers later it was done. Both soldiers lay sprawled on the ground, motionless.

Carlos, as stunned as anyone, whipped the barrel of his gun toward the new threat. That was Kehoe’s cue. In one fluid motion, he rotated in his seat and flung his weapon.

The world went on pause.

Two soldiers lay unconscious.

One man stood over them.

Kehoe’s attention was fixed entirely on Carlos. He watched as the bearded Colombian seemed to hesitate, the Steyr curiously silent. Then he spun a lazy half turn, aimless and wobbling, and everyone saw the reason — the massive combat knife was embedded to its hilt in his back. When Carlos eventually fell it was a slow thing, like a felled tree clinging to its roots. The look of surprise in his unblinking eyes was absolute as he lay motionless on the ground amid a fast-spreading pool of red.

Kehoe was the first to recover. “Who the hell is that?” he exclaimed, staring at the hulk who’d burst out of the jungle.

It was the second girl who answered. “Dad!”

Jen jumped out of the jeep and ran.

It was just one word, but it made Davis’ heart leap like nothing he’d ever heard.

“Dad!”

He saw Jen running toward him. Full of joy. Full of life. God, so full of life!

Standing frozen, Davis realized that in nineteen years he had never before worried about his daughter. Not really. Not like the mind-numbing fear that had consumed him since last Sunday. After five days of dread and anxiety, five days of never giving up… it was here. This was the vision that had filled his dreams.

He opened his arms as wide as the sky.

Jammer Davis, who had stood tall and strong against four hardened soldiers in the last five minutes, was knocked flat on his ass by his hundred-and-twenty-pound daughter.

Jen was in his arms.

He would never, ever let her go.