Kidnap & Ransom Read online

“Tranquila,” he said, before calling out, “All clear!”

  Decker’s head popped up above the counter. “Jesus. Annie Oakley, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Mark glanced at her. Both hands covered her head, as if she were attempting to ward them off. “Tell her to relax. We gotta scramble, cops’ll probably be here soon.”

  “Sure.” Decker rattled off something in Spanish. Whatever he said didn’t make the girl noticeably calmer. On the other side of the counter, the guard moaned.

  “I’ll handle him.” Decker vanished. Mark grabbed a plastic bag from a stack below the register. He kept one eye on the girl as he scanned the locked, refrigerated cabinets. “Antibióticos?” he finally asked.

  She didn’t answer. He came closer, kneeling beside her. She avoided his eyes.

  “Lady, the faster we get this stuff, the faster we leave,” he said.

  “You’ll kill us anyway,” she replied in surprisingly good English. “Fucking junkies.”

  “We just want to help our friend,” Mark said. “Morphine, coagulants, antibiotics and we’ll be out of your hair.”

  “Your friend was shot?”

  He nodded. “We were kidnapped.”

  “So go to the police.”

  “I don’t trust the police.”

  “Got the bandages and the phone,” Decker called. “We ready?”

  “Almost.” Mark turned back to the cabinet. Toward the end of the row he spotted a bottle marked Morfina. He used the butt of the shotgun to shatter the case, causing the girl to suck in her breath sharply. Mark carefully stuck his hand in, avoiding the broken glass, and drew out two bottles.

  Kaplan could live without anticoagulants, but antibiotics were crucial. If they could get him through the next few hours, Tyr would be able to reach them and he had a shot at surviving. But once infection started, it was tough to beat.

  “Antibiotics?” he asked again. The girl refused to look at him. He reached back into the cabinet, swept an armful of bottles out and sent them crashing to the floor. They shattered in quick succession like bottle caps.

  “Ay!” she cried. “They’re over there!”

  He followed her pointing finger and spotted the antibiotics in the opposite cabinet. Punched a hole in the glass again, then drew out two bottles. “Syringes?”

  She motioned toward the drawers below the cabinet.

  Mark tried one: locked. “You got a key, or should I shoot the lock?”

  The girl fumbled in the pocket of her jacket. She drew out a key ring and tossed it to him.

  He caught it, unlocked the drawer and slid it open. Grabbed a box of syringes and tossed them in the bag with the other stuff. Turning to leave, something caught his eye. He bent again, shifting the other boxes aside. The girl stiffened as he drew out a package: white powder wrapped in layers of plastic.

  “Dude, we gotta bolt.” Decker reappeared on the other side of the counter. “What’s that?”

  “The cops aren’t coming, are they?” Mark asked.

  The girl slowly shook her head. “Los Zetas?”

  Her expression shifted at the name, but she didn’t reply.

  “Shit,” Decker said.

  Mark’s next words were interrupted by a spray of automatic weapon fire. He dived to the ground, landing hard. The counter in front of him bucked and splintered as dozens of rounds pumped through it. Over the barrage, he heard the girl screaming.

  “They’ve been gone too long,” Sock said. “Something went wrong.”

  “It’s only been an hour,” Flores replied. “Maybe there wasn’t a pharmacy nearby.”

  “Yeah, or maybe they got smart and decided to ditch us. It’d be a hell of a lot easier to get out of this shithole if we weren’t dragging around a guy with a gunshot wound.”

  “They’ll be back.” Flores turned his attention to Kaplan. The T-shirt he’d been using to apply pressure to the wound had soaked through. He replaced it with another from the stack Sock had stolen on his foray outside. Kaplan wasn’t looking good. He was getting paler by the minute, more waxy-looking. He’d probably lost a few pints of blood by now. It was giving Flores a bad sense of déjà vu. A year ago he was in the mountains on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, running interference between the local warlords while trying to determine which of them was still Taliban. When their convoy was coming back from the nearest village, one of his buddies got hit by a sniper. They waited more than three hours for a Medevac chopper. As it was landing, his friend bled out. Kaplan had that same look now. If Riley and Decker didn’t get back soon, he was done for.

  Sock wasn’t making the situation any easier. He’d returned ten minutes earlier with the T-shirts and some tacos he’d scrounged up, and hadn’t stopped pacing since. This was Flores’s second mission with Tyr, and the first time he’d worked with Sock. The guy struck him as a typical SEAL asshole, convinced he was better than everyone else because he could wear a scuba tank. He’d run into the type a lot since entering the service: didn’t like them then, and couldn’t stand working with them now.

  The irony was that Flores had taken this job because it was supposed to be safer. He was sick of getting shot at in some sand-blasted country where everyone hated Americans. Now here he was, in his hometown, facing the same situation. You had to laugh.

  He thought for a minute of Maryanne, six months pregnant and waiting for him. Wondered if Tyr had even told her that something went wrong. They promised to take care of relatives if anything happened to him; he’d felt pretty good filling out a whole stack of paperwork attesting to that. But you had to wonder. If the company could screw up an operation this badly, how good was their word?

  Kaplan groaned. Flores lifted his head, forced the mouth of a water bottle between his lips and got a few drops down his throat.

  “We should leave him,” Sock said. “Riley and Decker might have gotten picked up again—we’re probably still in Zetas territory. We get our hands on a phone, we can call in, get help.”

  “Why didn’t you come back with a phone?” Flores asked.

  “Didn’t see any,” Sock said defensively.

  Flores didn’t answer. It seemed off, that Sock could find T-shirts and tacos but hadn’t managed to get his hands on the cell phone they really needed. But then, this whole operation had been screwy. None of them had discussed it yet, but clearly someone had set them up. That raid had gone too wrong too fast, like the Zetas knew they were coming. The question was, who told them? A member of the team, or someone higher up in the organization?

  Flores furtively eyed Sock. Riley and Decker seemed okay, and Kaplan was just plain unlucky, first the broken ribs, now this. But Sock had been exhibiting odd behavior from day one.

  Sock went to the doorway again and eased it open an inch to peer out.

  “Shit.” He yanked his head back.

  “What?” Flores asked.

  “We got company,” Sock said grimly, pulling a handgun out of the waistband of his jeans shorts.

  Before Flores could ask where the hell he’d gotten another gun, the door blew inward. Something hit the floor, then rolled toward them. He instinctively threw himself over Kaplan as the grenade came to a stop a few feet away.

  “See? Nobody here,” Syd said as they pulled on to the shoulder at the side of the highway.

  Kelly didn’t respond. Jake was driving, Maltz was beside her in the backseat. This time Syd had insisted on riding with them. “I know where we’re going,” she’d tossed over her shoulder, jumping in the front seat beside Jake.

  It galled the hell out of Kelly, but she didn’t say anything.

  A steady stream of cars whipped past. Kelly realized she had yet to see a single police car, despite all their driving around the city.

  “How do you know this is the spot?” Jake asked.

  “GPS,” Syd said. “Plus those.” She pointed at a set of skid marks that started in the middle of the road and zoomed off the shoulder past them into the desert.

  It was a desolate stretch of r
oad, dusty scrub brush and trash running a few hundred yards to a line of dying trees. The building on the far end looked abandoned. Past the trees, Kelly discerned the bleats and rumbles of the city. To her left the terrain climbed sharply, barren foothills hunching out of the gritty soil.

  They got out of the car. Kane had pulled up behind them in the second vehicle. He, Jagerson, Fribush and Maltz followed Syd as she marched off into the brush. They spread out, examining the ground in formation. Kelly picked her way behind them, avoiding a soiled diaper and empty fast-food containers. The van’s tracks in the dirt were marred by the wheels of other vehicles and footprints: probably from emergency units that had responded to the crash.

  “You okay?” Jake asked, coming up beside her.

  “I’m fine,” she lied. The constant sitting around in cars was wreaking havoc on her leg. It had stiffened up to the point that every step was torture, but she wasn’t about to admit that to anyone.

  “You’re awfully quiet.”

  “There hasn’t been much to say,” Kelly retorted. “What with torturing storekeepers and leaving kidnap victims with their captors.”

  Jake grabbed her elbow, stopping her. “Why did you want to come?”

  “You know why.”

  “I don’t,” he said, shaking his head. “I know you want to prove you can still do your job. But this isn’t your job. This is my job. And clearly you hate it.”

  “It’s not what I expected,” she finally said.

  “Outside U.S. borders things go down a little differently. Whether you like it or not, that’s just how it is. If I want to save my brother and whoever else is with him, I’ve got to respect that.”

  “I know,” Kelly said. “It’s just—”

  “Got something over here!” Syd was waving her arms a dozen yards from the tree line.

  Jake took off at a trot. Kelly struggled to keep up, running a few steps alongside him before falling back. When she finally reached them, her face was flushed from the effort.

  “Blood trail,” Syd said. “They did a pretty good job covering it in the immediate vicinity of the crash, but it was probably still dark, they missed some spots.”

  “Where does it go?” Jake asked.

  “More over here!” Fribush yelled from the tree line.

  “So they went back to the city. Interesting choice,” Syd said.

  “They probably thought it would be easier to hide there until they got in touch with Tyr,” Jake mused.

  “Maybe they’ve already been picked up,” Kelly said. “Is there any way to find out?”

  “I would have gotten a call,” Syd said. “Let’s split up. You and Maltz each take a car and wait for us on the other side of these trees.” Syd bent down and gazed through them. “Looks like there’s a road a few hundred feet away, it should show up on the GPS.”

  “I’ll go with you,” Kelly said. “Have Kane take the car.”

  “Kelly—” Jake said.

  “Your leg is bothering you,” Syd said flatly. “Unless you rest it, you’ll be useless.”

  “I’m fine,” Kelly insisted.

  “You’re not. And part of the deal here is that I’m in charge of the unit’s health. You injure yourself more, it makes everyone’s life harder.”

  “But—”

  “It’s not a request, it’s an order,” Syd said.

  The rest of the team stopped and looked up at her raised voice. Kelly’s cheeks burned. She glanced at Jake, who shrugged.

  “She’s right, Kel. It’s not personal, it’s just—”

  “Give me the keys.” Kelly held out her hand.

  He started to say something else, then shut his mouth and handed them over.

  Kelly turned on her heel and marched back to the car. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t hide the limp. She fought back tears as she slid into the driver’s seat. The worst part was that they were right: she wasn’t capable enough to be here. From the look of things, she might never be able to do her job properly again. If their positions were reversed, she’d feel the same way: what was the point of having a partner who couldn’t keep up? And if she was this useless, what the hell was she going to do with the rest of her life?

  There was a rap at her window. Kelly turned to find Maltz peering down at her. She wiped away the tears with the back of her hand. Great, she thought. Not only was she crying, but she was doing it in front of the only person more messed up than she was. She rolled down the window.

  “Syd can be a pain in the ass.” Maltz bent over and crossed his arms on the window frame.

  “She’s right,” Kelly said. “I’d hold them up.”

  “Maybe.” He looked past her to where the others had vanished into the tree line. “It’s tough, huh?”

  “Yes,” Kelly said. “It is.”

  “Hang in there.” Maltz cuffed her lightly on the shoulder. “It’ll get better.” He turned and walked back toward the second car.

  “Are you sorry?” Kelly blurted out.

  He stopped and turned. “Sorry that I made it?”

  She instantly regretted the question, but nodded.

  “Every day. But what the hell, right?” He grinned at her. In spite of herself, Kelly grinned back. He tossed her a salute, then kept walking. Kelly watched as he got into the driver’s seat. In spite of everything, she felt better.

  Eight

  The automatic gunfire went on and on, but as far as Mark could tell no one had entered the store. They seemed dead set on making sure there were no survivors before risking it. The counter in front of him had been punctured by dozens of bullets; it was a small miracle he hadn’t been hit yet. He hoped Decker had been as lucky.

  Mark had landed a few feet from the girl. She was facing him, hands over her ears, face twisted in a rictus of fear. She hadn’t stopped screaming since the shooting started. The plastic bag full of meds had landed near him. He grabbed it, tucking it in the back pocket of his jeans. Hopefully some of the bottles had survived the fall. Mark checked to make sure he still had the spare shells for the shotgun, then reached out and grabbed her arm. She started at the contact.

  “Is there another way out?” he yelled over the noise.

  The girl didn’t appear to have heard him. He dragged himself closer, shouting directly into her ear. “We have to get out. Is there a back door?”

  “They’ll kill me!” she yelled back.

  “They’ll kill you anyway,” he shouted. He could see her thinking it over, realizing he was right.

  Decker scuttled around what remained of the counter.

  “You hurt?” Mark yelled.

  Decker shook his head. “The guard bought it, though.”

  The girl scrambled forward on her belly. Mark motioned for Decker to follow. Wherever she was going, it couldn’t be worse than here.

  There was a sudden lull in the fire. Mark peeked through one of the holes in the counter and saw boots crossing the threshold into the store. He hustled after Decker.

  The girl had crawled into a back room the size of a closet. Once inside, she scrambled to her feet and started tugging at a pile of boxes on the floor. “Help me!” she cried, exasperated. Decker helped push them aside. Underneath lay a trapdoor. The girl hauled it up and descended a steep flight of metal stairs. Decker followed. Mark went last, pulling the door closed behind them and turning the bolt. It wouldn’t hold their attackers off for long, but might buy them a few minutes.

  The stairs ran through a concrete shaft. The air was cold, dank. The girl hit a switch and low-level bulbs flickered on.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “The pharmacy used to be a bar. This was where they stored the liquor,” she said.

  “Which way out?” Decker asked.

  She pointed, and Mark pushed past her. Up ahead, a short flight of stairs led to a set of double doors, bolted from the inside. A smooth ramp ran parallel to them.

  “For kegs,” she explained.

  The sound of thumping metal behind them: some
one was trying the door. Voices shouted orders in Spanish. Then the steady pound of bullets against metal.

  “Where does this come out?” Mark asked.

  “Follow me.” She unbolted the lock and pushed the doors open.

  It took a second for Mark’s eyes to adjust to daylight. He focused on Decker, running ahead of him down the long alley behind the store. A line of metal service doors abutted overflowing Dumpsters. A few doors down a guy in a soiled apron smoked a cigarette in an open doorway. Through slitted eyes, he watched them pass.

  The girl led them to the end of the block, took a sharp right down a narrow street, then hooked left. Mark and Decker trotted behind her, guns held down by their sides. At any moment Mark expected to feel bullets tearing through him from behind. The few people they passed took them in, then quickly looked away. Didn’t want to get involved, Mark gathered. He’d seen the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan, people so acclimated to violence they went about their everyday lives as if it wasn’t happening all around them.

  The girl set a good pace, weaving with the confidence of a native through a maze of crumbling adobe buildings. After five solid minutes of running she ducked under the metal fence surrounding a dilapidated warehouse. Decker and Mark followed. She eased aside a door that dangled on its hinges and came to a stop in the middle of the room.

  It was an old factory, long abandoned by the look of things. In the far corner a rat scratched at something in an oily puddle. It glanced up at them, then returned its attention to lunch.

  “Where are we?” Decker asked.

  It was a good question. They’d taken so many turns that even with his infallible sense of direction Mark would be hard-pressed to find true north.

  “El Eden,” the girl responded.

  “Is that still in Mexico City?” Mark asked.

  “You really were kidnapped, weren’t you?” The girl examined them more closely. “You’re in Iztapalapa. It’s one of the delegaciones.”

  “The ninth borough,” Mark said, remembering the map he’d studied prior to the mission.

  “Shit, we barely moved at all.” Decker barked a short laugh.

  He was right. The rescue mission had been launched in the southern section of Iztapalapa. They were probably less than two miles from where this all began.