The Devil's bounty

Forty-six

Back in the apartment, Lock weighed the options. A hostile extraction, where you take someone who is either unwilling to leave or being prevented from doing so, is hard to pull off and it sure as hell required more than two bodies. But that was all they had — three, if they counted Rafaela — and Lock was a firm believer in working with the tools at your disposal rather than cursing your ill-fortune. Under normal circumstances, a task of this nature would require ten times the resources if it was to be carefully and safely executed. The surveillance and intelligence team would be one component, the extraction team another. There would be a quartermaster, a transport coordinator and all manner of other personnel.

Complicating matters even further, they had two targets. One would, Lock hoped, go willingly, although that couldn’t be guaranteed when you were dealing with someone already traumatized by an abduction and who might have begun to identify with her captors. Mendez, on the other hand, would go kicking and screaming.

As they gathered together their gear, Rafaela on her way to them, Lock looked at his partner. ‘We’re going to have to forget Mendez. We take the girl, get her out of there, and deal with him later.’

He could tell that Ty didn’t like the idea of giving up on the fugitive they had come to collect. ‘We can’t take ’em both?’ Ty asked.

Lock tucked a spare clip into his jacket. ‘We could try, but it halves our chances and right now they’re pretty slim as it goes.’

‘So he gets off again?’

‘Maybe we can come back for him,’ said Lock.

‘That ain’t gonna happen. You and me both know it.’

‘If he’s implicated in kidnapping the girl the State Department will have to get off their fat ass and put pressure on the Mexicans to get him back.’

‘Or he floats on down to Venezuela or catches a slow boat to Cuba,’ said Ty.

Lock zipped up a bag. ‘What do you want me to tell you here, Ty? It sucks, but taking them both is too risky.’

‘What about Melissa and what she wanted?’

There was a long silence. Lock flushed and his jaw tightened. He advanced on Ty, fists clenched. ‘Melissa’s dead. Carrie’s dead. When they’re gone, they’re gone. The girl’s alive. We can get her home. There’s no debate.’

They froze as the apartment door opened and Rafaela walked in. ‘Am I interrupting something?’

‘No, we’re good,’ said Ty, breaking eye contact with Lock. ‘Just talking things over.’

‘Now what?’ Rafaela asked.

Lock looked at Ty.

‘We go get the girl,’ Ty said.

Lock gave Rafaela a grim smile. ‘You’re the cop in charge of finding her. Should be straightforward, right?’

She smiled back, all three knowing that for Rafaela to knock at the door and demand they hand over the girl was about as likely as building a snowman in Palm Springs in June. Of course, they might hand her over, and that would be it, until a bomb turned up under Rafaela’s car or someone arrived at her apartment to kill her. But, Lock thought, there might be a way for them to extract the girl while everyone saved face. In him and Ty, Rafaela might not have two accomplices so much as two scapegoats.

‘Sure,’ Rafaela said. ‘Piece of cake.’