Kidnap & Ransom Read online

  “I can’t commit any of my people to this,” Jake said. “If they go, it’s voluntarily.”

  “I’ll ask them,” Syd offered. She strolled outside, the silence behind her thick enough to cut with a knife. It was a relief to close the door. Times like this reminded her why she’d cut off contact with her own family.

  Syd strolled down the cement path in front of the rooms, her guard up. Dusk had fallen, and with it dozens of neon signs flared to life down the street. Theirs was still the only car in the parking lot.

  “Hey,” someone said in a low voice.

  She turned to find Maltz tucked into an alcove that once housed a vending machine, stray wires still dangled from the wall.

  “Where are the others?”

  “Fribush crashed out in the car and Jagerson and Kane went for a beer. Figured if anything went down they’d be close enough to hear it. How’s it going in there?”

  “Remind me never to host them for Thanksgiving,” Syd said.

  Maltz made a sound that she recognized as his version of a laugh. “Close call today,” she said. “How you holding up?”

  “I’ve had closer.”

  His eyes were cast in shadow. Still, Syd detected a shift in his voice. “Here’s the deal,” she said. “Riley Senior wants to go looking for his men. He thinks they’re in a prison camp crawling with Zetas up in the mountains. They’re looking for volunteers.”

  “You going?”

  Syd grinned. “How could I not?”

  “Then I’m in.”

  “You sure?” Syd asked. “Odds aren’t good.”

  “Gotta die sometime, right?” Maltz said.

  “Hopefully not tomorrow,” Syd said. “I got a hell of a 401K going now. You do, too.”

  “My dog will live well, then.”

  “You have a dog?” The thought was preposterous.

  “Sabine. She’s a French bulldog.”

  An image of Maltz strolling along behind a tiny white dog popped into Syd’s head and she cracked up.

  “Go ahead and laugh. She’s tough as they come.”

  “I’m sure.” Syd wiped a tear from her cheek. “It’s good to have you back, Maltz. We get out of this, I’m buying you one of those doggie purses to carry her around in.”

  “I’m man enough to handle that.”

  “I figured. Stay here, I’ll go check with Kane and Jagerson.”

  “They’ll come,” Maltz said.

  “I know.” Syd paused, wondering for a second if she’d completely lost her mind. She’d nearly gotten Maltz killed once before, and now she was dragging him into something that was really none of their business. If nothing else, that made her a lousy boss.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Maltz said, as if reading her mind. “I’d be going anyway. You don’t leave a man behind.”

  “These aren’t our men,” Syd reminded him.

  “Might as well be.”

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

  Fribush was snoring in the reclined passenger seat of their rental car. Opting to let him sleep, Syd walked down the block toward the bar. A beam of yellow light from the open door bisected the pavement. The jukebox inside sputtered out songs she recognized from her teens. Christ, she thought. It’s like entering a goddamn time machine.

  Kane and Jagerson sat on adjoining bar stools, the only patrons inside. In front of them two bottles of beer sweated beads of water. They fell silent as she approached. They were an odd pair. Kane was enormous, easily six-four, with a protruding brow, dark hair and big ears. Jagerson was smaller but wider, with close-cropped blond hair, freckles and green eyes. They couldn’t have looked more out of place if they’d tried. It was no wonder the locals cleared out when they entered.

  “Hiya, boss,” Kane said. “All set in there?”

  Syd ran down the situation for them, keeping her voice low. She knew from experience that whatever one decided, the other would follow.

  “When do we move out?” Kane asked.

  “Tomorrow at dawn,” Syd said. “Tonight we’ll need to resupply for the jungle.”

  “I’m on it,” Kane said, sliding off the stool. Jagerson dumped a handful of pesos on the counter and they followed her out into the night.

  The man’s head snapped back from the blow. Blood streamed down his cheek from a cut below his eye. Linus wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Are you sure this is necessary?” he said. “I heard that torture doesn’t work.”

  “This isn’t torture, sir. It’s the fine art of persuasion,” Ellis Brown said.

  The two of them stood in the far corner of the room observing the proceedings.

  “What if he’s telling the truth? He might not know where they’re keeping Cesar.”

  “If he doesn’t know, he can lead us to someone who does,” Brown said. “It’s all about climbing the food chain.”

  The man moaned. Linus had arrived ten minutes into the interrogation. His flight to Mexico City had been delayed twice en route. He was climbing out of his skin with frustration by the time the taxi dropped him off a few blocks away. Brown had secured an abandoned building on the outskirts of the district. Apparently the unit moved their base daily so as not to attract attention.

  In spite of himself, Linus was secretly thrilled to be here. He was one of the few Tyr employees without any military- or covert-operations experience. His years at the Agency had been spent compiling reports. He’d managed to claw his way up the ladder via sheer force of will, by being better at his job than everyone else. Linus knew that some viewed him as a glorified pencil pusher, which irked him to no small degree. Part of the reason he got on a plane was to prove he was as capable of this sort of thing as Cesar.

  Unfortunately that meant bearing witness to displays such as this.

  The man assigned by Brown to administer punishment drew back his fist again, fingers wrapped around a set of brass knuckles. As he swung in with an uppercut, Linus winced in anticipation. The prisoner took the blow on his chin. It knocked loose one of his teeth, sending it skittering across the floor.

  “Where are they keeping Cesar Calderon?” he growled again in Spanish.

  “No sé,” the man replied, wheezing from the effort.

  Brown motioned the interrogator over and whispered something in his ear. The man nodded, then strolled back and bent over to look directly in the prisoner’s eyes. “Who do you work for?”

  Something akin to relief passed over the man’s bloodied features. “Fuentes,” he said. “Vicente Fuentes.”

  “Fuentes?” Linus frowned. “Isn’t he with the Sinaloa Cartel?”

  Brown hesitated a moment before replying, “Yessir.”

  “I thought the Zetas ran the Gulf Cartel.”

  Brown didn’t answer. Emboldened, Linus walked forward. “Ask him if he’s part of Los Zetas.”

  The prisoner’s attention shifted to him. At the word “Zetas,” his eyes widened and he jabbered excitedly in Spanish.

  “What’s he saying?”

  “He claims he’s not one of them, sir,” the interrogator translated.

  “So why the hell did they attack your unit?”

  The prisoner was still chattering away. A cuff from the interrogator shut him up. “He says there’s a turf war, they assumed we were Zetas. They have orders to shoot any they see on sight.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Linus said slowly, enunciating each word as he turned back to Brown. “We’re interrogating someone who probably has no connection whatsoever to Cesar’s kidnapping.”

  “We’re not a hundred percent certain the Zetas have him, sir. That was just the buzz we heard.” Brown looked uncomfortable.

  “Good Lord.” Linus removed his glasses and took a cloth out of his jacket pocket to polish them. “Cut him loose.”

  “All due respect, we can’t do that, sir.”

  “Why not?”

  “Whatever cartel he’s with will come down hard on us.”

  The prisoner’s gaze shifted back and forth be
tween them. He said something, then repeated it more forcefully.

  “Now what?” Linus grumbled.

  “He’s saying there’s a Zetas prison camp in the jungle near Veracruz.”

  “Fine. He’ll take us there.” Linus waved a hand to quell Brown’s next words. “Sounds to me like the only lead we have. Your search of the city hasn’t produced any results, so they’re probably being held somewhere else.”

  “We haven’t completed that search, sir,” Brown argued.

  “Do you think you ever will? It’s been days, and you haven’t found any sign of Cesar or the rest of the team.”

  Brown appeared enraged at this usurping of his authority. “It’s hard to say, sir,” he finally replied. “They might keep moving them.”

  “Or maybe they were never here to begin with. Time to explore other options.” Linus strolled to the door feeling rather pleased with himself. Maybe now the board would appreciate what he brought to the table. Cesar might return as the public face of Tyr, but clearly he wasn’t enough of a big-picture visionary to move them forward into the future. That required a whole different skill set, one Linus had mastered.

  All in all, things were turning out better than expected.

  Thirteen

  Flores awoke in the dark. Someone was whispering nearby, and his senses immediately went on high alert. He was lying on a mat of moldering leaves, with a ratty towel functioning as a blanket. He waited for his eyes to adjust: Calderon was squatting at the opposite end of their pen. Who was he talking to?

  Flores crept forward, straining to overhear. He hadn’t paid much attention yesterday to the prisoners on either side of them, and no one had gone out of their way to initiate contact. Calderon had explained that people came and went so frequently, there was generally little effort at communication. Plus rumor had it there were Zetas spies everywhere, prisoners who exchanged information for special treatment. Best to keep to yourself, he’d advised.

  Yet Calderon was hunched by the far wall of their pen, and Flores could discern a figure on the other side.

  Their whispers suddenly ceased. Calderon’s head whipped around, the whites of his eyes visible. “Hola compadre,” he whispered.

  “Hola.” Flores moved closer. On the other side of the wires hunched a small figure with a thick beard. Although his lips weren’t moving, steady chatter emanated from him. Confused, Flores looked down: a small transistor radio was clenched in the man’s hands.

  “Every night relatives send messages to loved ones who have been kidnapped,” Calderon explained, keeping his voice low. “You never know who will be on, or when, so we take turns with the radio.”

  “Oh,” Flores said. Funny this hadn’t been mentioned before. A radio could potentially provide a huge advantage.

  “This is Ramon Tejada.” Calderon gestured to the man in the next pen. “His wife was on the other night so he’s listening, hoping she’ll return.”

  “Where did the radio come from?”

  Calderon shrugged. “One of the guards traded for it awhile back. They figure it’s harmless. Even if we could reconfigure it to signal out, it would only transmit in this region. And no locals would be willing or able to help.”

  Flores was no radio tech, but that sounded right. Still, there was some comfort in discovering that they weren’t completely cut off from the outside world.

  They sat and listened in silence as a teary-voiced woman told her daughter Ana Martinez how much she loved and missed her, how hard they were working to raise the money to get her back home.

  “Is she here?” Flores asked after a minute.

  “Who knows?” Tejada’s voice was weak, quavering. “There are probably a half dozen Ana Martinez’s in here.” He punctuated his words with a hacking cough. Flores moved back a few inches.

  The voices of one forlorn relative after another trickled out of the tinny speakers into the night, name after name: Carlos, Maria, Adriana, Ernesto. Tears that could fill a well of sadness. Flores caught himself listening for Maryanne’s voice, which was ridiculous. Even if she knew he was missing, which she probably didn’t, there was no way she’d be aware of this call-in show. Still, it was hard to quell the hope in his heart.

  There was a moment of silence, then a radio announcer with an obnoxiously cheery voice announced “Radio Aro-Am.” There was a click, then silence: Ramon had shut it off.

  “Lo siento, señor,” Calderon said. “Posiblemente mañana.”

  Ramon only grunted, which sparked another coughing fit. Flores followed Calderon to the other side of the pen, where their sleeping pallets were squeezed under a low-hanging tarp that served as their shelter.

  “That cough.” Calderon shook his head. “He’s had it for weeks now. Not good.”

  Flores was more concerned about the prospect of catching it. Illness would render an escape nearly impossible. And he was guessing the Zetas weren’t big on handing out antibiotics.

  “We should get some sleep, amigo,” Calderon said, lying down. “Tomorrow is another day.”

  “You don’t seem worried, sir.”

  “Why would I be worried?” Calderon sounded puzzled.

  “Well, they haven’t taken any proof of life from you, even though you’ve been here for weeks. And then our team got snatched. Tyr probably sent in another unit, but they have no way of finding us…” Flores’s voice trailed off.

  There was a long moment of silence before Calderon spoke. “I’ve been doing this a long time, Enrique. There’s no fixed playbook for negotiations.”

  “Yeah, but by now—”

  “I’m too valuable for them to risk losing,” Calderon interrupted.

  He sounded so sure of himself that Flores hated to burst his bubble. “But, sir. The rest of us—I mean, the way it went down. It seems like someone told them to expect us.”

  “You’re implying that someone at Tyr doesn’t want me released,” Calderon said.

  “It had occurred to me, sir.”

  “It’s not outside the realm of possibility.” Calderon seemed to weigh his words before continuing. “The same thought had occurred to me. But if someone at Tyr conspired to get me out of the way, then why am I still alive?”

  It was a good question, one Flores didn’t have the answer to. “It just seems like something else is going on here, sir.”

  “Something else is always going on.” Calderon shifted onto his side, facing away from Flores. “It’s late, go to sleep. Dreams are the only respite from this place.”

  Flores lay still for a long time, looking up at the stars through a gap in the plastic tarp. He thought again of Maryanne, wondered if she could feel the baby kicking yet. As he drifted off, the radio clicked back on next door, the steady murmur of despair lulling him to sleep.

  “I can’t believe you’re doing this.” Kelly lay on the bed, facing away from Jake. It wasn’t cold in their motel room, but she clutched the sheets to her anyway.

  “Kel, I’ve got to. There’s no other way.”

  He reached out and rubbed her shoulder. She didn’t respond to his touch.

  “So I’ll stay, too,” she said.

  He hesitated before answering. “You can’t.”

  “We’ve been through this before—”

  “This time is different,” he said. “We’re going into the jungle. It’s going to be a lot of trekking across rough terrain.”

  “I can manage,” Kelly protested.

  “Not in the shape you’re in, and we both know it.”

  “This is because Syd doesn’t think I can handle it.”

  “No, it’s because even if you were healthy, I wouldn’t want you along. It’s just too dangerous. Hell, I don’t even want to go,” Jake said wearily. “And if something happened to you, I’d never be able to forgive myself.”

  Kelly threw off the covers and sat up. Her left foot landed on the carpet. She avoided looking at where the stump of her right leg ended at the edge of the bed.

  Jake wrapped his arms around her f
rom behind. She let him, but remained rigid. He buried his face in her hair anyway. “When you were in that hospital bed last summer, all I could think was that I wasn’t there to protect you.”

  “I don’t need protecting.”

  “Bullshit. Sometimes we all need it.”

  “Well, you won’t be there to protect me if you go,” Kelly said. “What if something happens to you?”

  “If you tell me not to go, I’ll stay.”

  Kelly debated. When it came down to it, she really didn’t want Jake to go. This was the craziest thing she’d ever heard of, the group of them heading off into the jungle, trying to chase down an army of well-trained mercenaries. He’d been right to call it a suicide mission.

  By the same token, Kelly knew that if she stopped him, and something happened to Mark, Jake would never forgive her. Not even if it meant he survived. Every time he looked at her, he’d be seeing his dead brother. And although she felt guilty admitting it, Jake’s departure left her free to pursue her own case.

  “Go with your brother,” she said.

  “Kelly…”

  “But don’t get yourself killed,” she said fiercely.

  “I won’t. I promise.”

  He pulled her back down on top of him. Kelly buried her face in his chest, felt the steady rhythm of his heartbeat against her ear. She tilted her head to kiss his neck. Jake’s breath quickened as she nuzzled his ear, then nibbled his lower lip.

  “I don’t know if we have time,” he said, glancing toward the clock.

  Kelly didn’t answer. She moved forward, breasts inches from his lips. Lifted her hips and drew him into her. His lips parted and he let out a small gasp. “Oh, God…”

  Kelly started slowly. It had been so long, and it felt so good that for the moment she forgot about her leg, forgot about him leaving, forgot about the way she sometimes caught Syd looking at him. For now, he was all hers.

  He arched his pelvis up, matching her movement. Put his hands on her hips to guide her, driving her faster. Kelly let her head fall back. As they got close she leaned forward again, her body lined up with his, lips inches from his mouth.