Kidnap & Ransom Read online

  The van had come to rest in a dusty field fifty feet from the highway. Not good—anyone driving by could see it, especially now that day was breaking. A hundred yards away stood a shabby adobe building that appeared abandoned. Another stretch of field and trees, then the city reared up again. He had no idea where they were. Hell, he didn’t even know what time it was.

  “Which way?” Sock pressed.

  “Back toward the city,” Mark said with more conviction than he felt. “We’ll be able to contact Tyr and get medical supplies for Kaplan.”

  “I vote we head east,” Sock argued. “Zetas own that town, we head back there they’ll grab us again.”

  “We won’t have to lay low for long,” Mark said. “Once we make contact, they can have us out in under three hours. There might be another unit here already.”

  “Yeah? You sure the first door we knock on won’t be opened by el Jefe?” Sock turned to the others. “Outside, we got a shot. We can hunker down at a farm somewhere, get Tyr to send in a chopper. The city, we gotta deal with cops and other assholes who’re gonna wonder why our buddy has a hole in him.”

  Decker and Flores looked uncertain. Mark considered for a minute. Sock was right—they might have a better shot surviving in the rural areas surrounding the city. Urban warfare was a bitch; he’d be the first to admit that. But if he ceded his authority now, he knew from experience there was no getting it back. And he didn’t like the thought of Sock as their de facto leader. Something about him was off, Mark could smell it. He wasn’t about to follow someone he didn’t trust with his life.

  “We head west, back to the city,” he said firmly. “Move out.”

  Sock appeared ready to argue, but Flores and Decker were already moving, Kaplan cradled between them. Sock eyed Mark for a second as if sizing him up for a fight. Mark watched his hand, saw the index finger move toward the trigger of the LMT by his side. After a beat, it relaxed back down.

  “You’re the boss,” Sock said. “But if we get pinched again, I’m saying I told you so.”

  “We get pinched again, we won’t live long enough to talk about it.” Mark reached for the LMT. Another pause, then Sock handed it over. Mark slung it over his shoulder and they headed across the field.

  “All due respect, sir, I’m not buying it.” Linus Smiley listened to the voice on the other end of the receiver, mouth tightening. “If Cesar Calderon was such a friend to the Mexican people, I don’t understand why you’re refusing to assist in his release.”

  Linus had spent the morning being rerouted to different people in the hierarchy of the Mexican government, each of whom eagerly pawned him off on someone else. He had no idea at this point if he’d managed to ascend the ladder to someone who could actually accomplish something, or if he was still dealing with a low-level bureaucrat annoyed by the interruption of his breakfast. “I understand that initially we refused outside assistance. But clearly that situation has changed. Now we have three dead employees, and another five who are presumed hostages. At what point do you folks actually get off your asses and do something about it?”

  There was a long pause. Finally the man on the other end said in heavily accented English, “Mr. Smiley, in the past year more than two hundred of our citizens were kidnapped in Mexico City, and another eight hundred nationwide. And those were only the ones reported, the real number is likely two or three times that. We have had five hundred homicides, more than a hundred in Mexico City alone. Are you implying that the loss of Americans is more important?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Linus said. “We’re not talking about some guy running a taco stand, Mr.—” he glanced at his sheet of handwritten notes “—Ortiz. Cesar Calderon is a major player on the global scene. If anything happens to him—”

  “I don’t believe I can assist you, Mr. Smiley,” Ortiz interrupted. “Allow me to transfer you to someone who can.”

  Linus fumed as mariachi Muzak once again poured from the receiver. He slammed it down. Jesus, he hated Mexico. Bunch of incompetent bastards whose third world status was more than deserved. Russia and the former Soviet bloc nations had problems, but at least money talked over there. Pay off the right person, you could get nearly anything done. Had Calderon been snatched in Kiev, Linus would have had him home in less than a week.

  He pressed the intercom button. “Get the team on the line.”

  Linus paced while he waited for the connection to come through. He’d sent sixteen men down there, led by Ellis Brown. Cesar had personally lured Brown from his career as a Navy SEAL into K&R work, and Brown was his go-to guy for snatch-and-grab operations. He would have led the first team, had even called to volunteer, but Smiley wanted him to finish up another operation in Colombia. A mistake, maybe. One he was now able to rectify.

  “Brown here.”

  “Secured line?”

  “Yessir.” Brown’s tone implied that the question itself was offensive.

  “Progress?”

  “Still no sign of the whale,” Brown said.

  “Whale” was the code name for Calderon. “What about the rest of them?”

  “We think we found a safe house where they were kept, but there’s no movement. Probably gone already.” There was a pause. “One of our contacts said we’re not the only ones looking for them. You send in another unit?”

  “You’re the only ones down there.” Linus’s brow furrowed.

  “That’s what I thought, sir.”

  “Americans?”

  “Definitely. Asking a lot of questions about the minnows.”

  The minnows were the missing unit. That was odd. Linus slumped back into his chair. What the hell was going on down there?

  It was already beyond strange that someone had snatched a hostage of Calderon’s caliber without providing proof of life, or contacting either Tyr or his family with a ransom demand. What could they be after? Had they simply killed him as a warning to K&R companies working in the region? If so, his body should have turned up by now. When a local police chief crossed Los Zetas, his head was found in a cooler outside his precinct. Los Zetas weren’t shy about sending messages. And why seize the rest of the unit alive, then not attempt to ransom them out, too? Fucking Mexico, Linus thought. He’d never understand it.

  “New orders, sir?”

  “No, stay the course. The whale is your primary objective, minnows are a bonus.”

  “What about the other team?”

  “You run across them, find out what the hell they’re doing down there.”

  “Any limits?” Brown asked.

  Linus pondered for a moment. “None,” he finally said. “They’ve got no business interfering. Do what you have to.”

  He hung up the phone and glanced at the clock. It was an hour earlier in Mexico City, just before 10:00 a.m. Linus wasn’t accomplishing anything by phone. The board meeting was less than a week away. By then, he’d have to have Calderon back, dead or alive, and news on the missing unit. He buzzed the intercom again. “Book me a flight to Mexico City.”

  Kelly tensed on the edge of the backseat as Syd and Kane approached the bodega. Syd’s contact claimed the owner was Zeta-friendly. Apparently he and his wife stowed hostages in the apartment above the store. He was responsible for making sure they didn’t escape, she kept them fed.

  Nothing about this was sitting well with Kelly. They only had the word of one of Syd’s shadowy connections to go on, and God only knew what his motivation was for ratting out the bodega. “What if they’ve got nothing to do with Los Zetas?” Kelly had asked back at the motel.

  “Then we go on our merry way,” Syd claimed.

  Kelly very much doubted that was true. The bodega door closed behind them. Almost subconsciously she began to count, trying to keep herself from imagining what was going on inside.

  What the hell am I doing here? Kelly wondered. She’d been so gung ho to feel useful again, she hadn’t thought through what kind of moral compromises working with Syd would present. Already she f
elt dirty, and they hadn’t even done anything yet. She was no Pollyanna; she knew there was a seamy side to Jake’s new line of work. She just hadn’t realized how seamy.

  Kelly had hoped that coming down here would restore her sense of purpose, and that after they found Mark she’d have a chance to look into the allegation that Stefan Gundarsson was still alive. But the reality of that suddenly seemed absurd. Jake would flip if she told him she intended to track down a fugitive alone. And the truth was, she didn’t even know where to start looking. She hadn’t been able to get in touch with the P.I. who provided the earlier lead. She didn’t speak Spanish, and based on what everyone was telling her, the Mexican authorities wouldn’t be helpful. On top of which she didn’t have the authority or clearance to be doing any of this. She’d wanted to dig up enough concrete evidence to convince her boss to reopen the case and put her in charge of it. But that possibility seemed increasingly remote.

  Out of the corner of her eye she examined Jake. His face was inscrutable. For a second, it seemed as if he were a total stranger, and she was seeing him for the first time. She flashed back on the day they’d met, in the command-center trailer during her campus case. He seemed colder now, harder. It had been a long three years for both of them. Had he really changed so much since then? Or was her mind messing with her again?

  Kelly shifted in her seat. Her leg was sore. The pressurization on the plane had caused it to swell and the socket of her prosthetic felt unusually tight. The lack of sleep wasn’t helping, either. The Xanax had worn off and she could sense the panic lurking, waiting for an opportunity to rush in. It felt like there was a spotlight on their cars, as if everyone passing by had pegged them as intruders. Kelly knew she was being paranoid, but she couldn’t help herself. Half of her was afraid that at any moment someone might open fire, drilling their cars with automatic weapon fire. The other half was worried that the people inside the store were involved in the kidnapping of Mark’s team. And she could imagine what Syd would do to them if that turned out to be the case.

  Syd emerged from the store with Kane at her heels. She pulled on a baseball cap, their signal to meet her at a prearranged location a block away.

  “Must have gone well,” Jake commented from the front seat.

  “How do you know?” Kelly asked.

  “No shots fired,” Maltz said from beside her. They were in the same seating arrangement as before, with Jagerson driving. She had yet to hear him say a word, and was starting to wonder if he even spoke English.

  Kelly gazed out the window at the passing storefronts. They were in the northeast quadrant of Iztapalapa. To her eyes it was indistinguishable from the rest of Mexico City: row after row of run-down buildings, streets riddled with potholes, choking smog and horns and blaring music. Her only other trip to Mexico had been a vacation in Puerto Vallarta years before. This is a far cry from that, she thought wryly.

  Jagerson eased the car over to the curb.

  Syd approached Jake’s window. She leaned over as she spoke. Kelly’s eyes narrowed at the peek of bra revealed by that maneuver.

  “Shopkeeper is dirty all right. He didn’t have them there, but he probably has others.”

  “How do you know they weren’t there?” Kelly interrupted.

  Syd barely glanced at her. “Because he heard a rumor that the guys we’re after were in a van crash on the Mexico-Puebla highway early this morning. They were being moved out of the city. He thinks the hostages got away.”

  “He’s sure?” Jake asked.

  “Sure enough,” Syd said. “I made a call, we should have a copy of the accident report within the hour.”

  “Are they all okay?”

  “Apparently.”

  “How’d you get him to tell you all that?” Kelly asked. “How do we know he’s not lying?”

  Syd grinned at her. “I asked nicely.” She turned back to Jake. “I’ve got the general location of the crash. I say we head out there, see what we can find. It’s only a few clicks east.”

  “What about the other people?” Kelly asked.

  “What other people?”

  “You said he was keeping other hostages above the store.”

  “Yeah?” Syd gazed at her levelly.

  Kelly turned to Jake. “There has to be someone you can call.”

  He paused a beat before saying, “Kelly, no one’s supposed to—”

  “Someone must be looking for them. Maybe one of the other K&R companies.”

  “Not if they’re local,” Syd snorted. “Hell, you don’t even have to have money to get kidnapped down here. Some of the gangs offer a layaway plan.”

  Kelly stared Jake down. Finally he said, “I’ll have Demetri drop the AFI an anonymous tip.” Syd started to protest, but he cut her off. “Meanwhile, we go check out that crash site.”

  “What if the cops are still there?” Maltz asked.

  “They won’t be,” Syd said. “Happened early this morning, everything’ll be cleared up by now.”

  “And if some of the Zetas are there?” Kelly asked.

  “Then we consider ourselves lucky,” Syd said. “I’m dying to talk to one face-to-face.”

  Seven

  Mark Riley hunched in the shadows beside the pharmacy. One of the great things about Mexico was that you could get almost anything in their drugstores, from Botox to antibiotics. Until recently, most were poorly guarded. But lately addiction levels had spiked, and there had been a corresponding rise in pharmacy robberies. Many, like the one he was currently facing, had taken security precautions: an armed rent-a-cop was perched on a stool inside the doorway. He was clearly bored, eyes glued to the television set behind the counter. Still, he had a gun, which complicated things. Mark would prefer getting what they needed without hurting anyone. Hopefully this guy wouldn’t want to play cowboy.

  “What do you think?” Decker asked in a low voice.

  Mark had nicked a baseball cap from a sidewalk cart, and he pulled it low over his eyes. “We could try another one. Not a fan of dealing with a guard.”

  “We could. But Kaplan doesn’t have a lot of time,” Decker pointed out.

  He was right. It had taken longer than expected to find a safe place to hunker down. They’d left Kaplan, Flores and Sock in an abandoned building a few blocks away. Kaplan was losing blood too fast for them to stick together. And Mark wasn’t willing to leave him alone with Sock. So he and Decker set off to raid a pharmacy for meds and a cell phone. According to the locals, this was the only one open for blocks in any direction.

  “How’s your Spanish?” Mark asked.

  Decker shrugged. “I can get by.”

  “All right, you do the talking. Make sure they know we don’t want anyone to get hurt, we’ll just take what we need and be gone.”

  “Got it.”

  Mark took a deep breath. It was a little after 1000 hours. Despite the fact that it was late January, the sun beat down, baking the scene in a shimmery cast. A river of sweat ran down the center of his back. He was light-headed from hunger, tired and shaky in the aftermath of the crash. He’d never stolen so much as a candy bar in his life, and here he was about to knock over a drugstore. He shook his head.

  Mark slid the LMT up from the ground beside him, holding it close by his side as he stood. He lined it up with his leg as he approached the door, Decker at his heels. Of the remaining team members, Decker struck him as the most capable and trustworthy. Hopefully he wouldn’t be proven wrong.

  The guard glanced their way as the door opened with a tinkling of bells. Small guy, early twenties with a scraggly moustache. His gaze started to slide away, but then he frowned: something about them had registered. As he shifted back toward them, Mark slammed the butt of the gun hard against his temple. He crumpled off the stool, landing on the floor with a thump.

  Decker locked the door behind them. The store was empty. Mark frowned. There had been someone behind the register when they cased it five minutes earlier. Bathroom break, maybe?

  A
chunk of plaster blew off the wall behind his head. Instinctively he dived, hitting the floor. Decker landed beside him.

  “You okay?” Mark asked.

  “Holy shit!” Decker said, checking out the hole punched through the wall above where the guard had been sitting. “What was that, a missile launcher?”

  “Double barrel loaded with triple-ought buck, I’m guessing,” Mark said.

  Another chunk of plaster exploded, a few feet lower than the last. Mark slid the LMT to Decker and signaled for him to move to the far side of the store, near the bandages. From there he’d have a better angle to cover him.

  Mark commando-crawled toward the cheap plywood counter, praying it wouldn’t occur to the shooter to fire through it. After a few feet he entered a long aisle of cold and cough supplies. The good thing about a double-barrel was that after two shots it had to be reloaded, and reloading was a pain in the ass, especially if you were an amateur all hopped up on adrenaline. Mark scooped a bottle of cough syrup off the shelf by his head and hurled it toward the door.

  Another explosion, the shot wild. The window shattered, glass peppering the floor by the door. Movement across the room—and another shot. A puff of packaging exploded a few feet above him.

  Mark jumped to his feet and lunged for the counter. He slid across it and landed in a crouch. Turned and found himself facing a girl in her twenties. Shorts peeked out the bottom of her white coat. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, glasses askew on the bridge of her nose. She fumbled frantically with a shotgun shell, trying to chamber it.

  He grabbed the gun by the muzzle and pulled, yanking her off balance. She splayed out on all fours, glasses falling to the floor. One more tug and the shotgun was his. He palmed a few shells, tucking them in his pocket before chambering two.

  “Por favor, señor,” she said, scrambling away from him. “No me moleste.”