Aftershock: A Donovan Nash Novel (A Donovan Nash Thriller) (25 page)

“It’s an amphibian, a Cessna 185,” Michael said. “Once they leave, they’ll be able to land anywhere, a dirt strip somewhere, a lake, even the ocean. If we ever had the upper hand, we just lost it.”

Lauren watched in distress as the Cessna with Donovan aboard began its takeoff roll. The sound of a propeller plane could be heard from outside the
Galileo
. She could see Michael’s face contort in frustration. She could also hear the sound of rotor blades spinning up, and she leaned down to look outside. Parked out at the edge of the ramp was a white helicopter that Lauren didn’t recognize, as well as a jumpsuited man in a helmet standing outside.

“Janie’s flying?” Lauren asked.

“Yeah,” Michael replied. “She’s with Eric, the pilot from the
Atlantic Titan
, and Cesar, a flight mechanic on loan to us from the Guatemalan army.”

“Buck’s pulling up now,” John said.

“Which way is the Cessna headed?” Michael said through a tightly clenched jaw.

“South,” John answered. “Due south, toward the ocean. We need to get airborne or I’m going to lose them altogether.”

“Track them as far as you can,” Michael said as he stepped away. “We’re five times faster than they are. We’ll be able to make up the ground quickly.”

Michael hurried to the cockpit and slid into the captain’s seat.

“Michael!” Buck called out as he rushed up the stairs of the
Galileo
. “Get ready to depart, but don’t start the engines until I tell you.” Without waiting for a reply, Buck dashed to the
Scimitar
console.

“Where are they?” Buck asked as he studied the screens.

“He’s headed south in a Cessna,” Lauren said. She watched as Buck did a double take, and then stood to face her.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Waiting for you, or someone, to tell me what the hell is going on—and what you’re going to do about it! Why are we waiting?”

“Our military friends are bringing over something I need,” Buck replied coolly, in stark contrast to Lauren’s urgent demands. “Lauren, please trust me, this isn’t as hopeless as it looks.”

“I have no idea
what
it looks like,” Lauren answered. “Donovan is with a woman in a small plane with two suitcases full of money. Do we know if Donovan is flying the plane—is she? Or is there someone else onboard?”

“I picked up three distinct heat sources,” John replied. “There are three people aboard the Cessna.”

“Lauren,” Buck exhaled heavily. “The woman is harmless, she’s a local named Eva Rios. She knows who took Stephanie. We’ve been protecting her, but when the ransom demands came, they wanted her and the money—she agreed to help. My guess is that the pilot is part of the kidnapping crew. They don’t know
we have the ability to follow them, so the advantage is still ours. We’ve got time to react.”

“Why is Donovan with her—instead of you?”

“They demanded that he be the courier,” William jumped into the conversation. “We felt that the situation was controllable—that the risks were acceptable.”

“Is there any chance that this Eva—is the woman from the photos you sent me?” Lauren leveled her gaze at Buck. She felt her nerves crackling in anticipation. The instant she saw the cloud of confusion spread across Buck’s face, she knew that he had no idea what she was talking about.

“What woman?”

“I’ve lost them,” John called out as he looked away from the console. “I don’t dare push the
Scimitar
any farther or we run the risk of losing the link.”

“Keep it on station,” Buck replied without taking his eyes from Lauren. “What woman?”

“We enhanced the photos.” Lauren eyed her briefcase. “Hell, it’s faster to
show
you what I’ve discovered.”

“A military jeep just pulled up,” William said.

“Hold that thought,” Buck said to Lauren, and then rushed to meet the soldier who was coming up the stairs of the Gulfstream.

Lauren snatched her computer from its case and quickly powered it up. She sat, silently urging her computer to cycle through its start-up protocols. She watched as Buck stowed the heavy satchel he’d gotten from the soldier and pushed the button that retracted the stairs into the fuselage of the
Galileo
.

“Michael, let’s go!” Buck called over his shoulder as the heavy door locked into place.

Lauren typed in her passwords and found the file that Montero had sent her. She could hear the sound of the Gulfstream’s first engine begin to spool up. She clicked the mouse and the first picture appeared on the screen. She looked up as both William and Buck leaned in over her shoulder. She didn’t
say a word as she clicked through the sequence. When she pulled up the final image, the one showing the computer-enhanced tattoo, she saw Buck’s jaw harden and his eyes threatened to burn through the screen.

“Look familiar?” Lauren sat back and studied Buck’s face.

Buck nodded. “I saw it this morning—when I was helping Eva put on her bulletproof vest.”

“She’s one of them,” Lauren said as she heard Michael start the second engine.

“Son-of-a-bitch!” Buck shook his head in frustration. “She played us the entire time.”

“She took the Navy SEAL out of the equation, and now she has Donovan,
and
the money.”

“Michael!” Buck spun and called toward the cockpit. “Get us in the air—now!”

Lauren began typing, accessed the
Galileo’
s hard drive from memory, and quickly found Eva’s picture. She attached it to an e-mail, typed “urgent” in the subject line, and then pounded out a short message:

Ronnie, this is the woman with the angel tattoo. She goes by the name Eva Rios.

–Lauren

She finished by including the number of the
Galileo’s
satellite phone, hit “send,” then reached for her phone. Montero picked up almost immediately.

“I just sent you an e-mail with a picture,” Lauren said without introduction or pleasantries. “It’s her, Eva Rios.”

“I’m looking at the photo as we speak,” Montero said. “I’m on it.”

“As fast as you can. She has Donovan and Stephanie.”

“Oh no,” Montero whispered.

Lauren disconnected the call as the Gulfstream moved away from the hangar toward the runway. She sat down and
strapped herself in tightly. Never, in her years aboard Eco-Watch’s Gulfstream, had she seen the pilots taxi as fast as they were this moment. Michael only slowed as he made a turn, and swung the big jet onto the runway and pushed up the throttles. The
Galileo
swayed gently from side to side as it hurdled forward and accelerated rapidly before lifting free from the concrete. Michael pointed the
Galileo
skyward and they were immediately swallowed by the low-hanging clouds.

Donovan was strapped into the front seat of the noisy Cessna. To his left sat the pilot, a young man with a grim expression and a serious demeanor who knew what he was doing in the cockpit. His practiced hands flew around and he quickly had the engine started and wasted no time in taxiing toward the runway.

There was no other traffic, and Donovan watched as the pilot smoothly added power to the three hundred-horsepower engine, and the lightly loaded Cessna surged forward. As they lifted off, Donovan saw the
Galileo
sitting outside the USGS hangar, and next to it sat another Gulfstream. The registration number told him it was from the US, but he had no idea who it might have brought down, or if it had anything to do with William or Eco-Watch. The last thing he saw before they left the airport behind them was the main rotor blades on the helicopter begin to turn.

They’d started flying south, but after ten minutes or so, the pilot had abruptly banked the Cessna to the west. Donovan had been watching—the pilot had been very casual about how he flew until the last few minutes. The ceiling kept dropping, as rain splattered and vaporized against the plastic windshield. Now the young man was sitting up straight, straining to keep them over the narrow ribbon of road directly beneath the airplane. It was their only defense against flying into the cloud-obscured hills.

The money was secured in the baggage compartment behind Eva. As they’d boarded, she’d whispered to him that she was afraid of heights. She sat rock-still, her arms wrapped defensively across her chest, her face a mask of anxiety.

Donovan hadn’t been offered a headset, so he had no idea who the pilot was talking with. The frequency he’d set in the radio could be anyone—air traffic control, another airplane, or the kidnappers themselves. Donovan had hundreds of hours in small single-engine airplanes like this one—though he’d never actually flown an amphibian. The pilot in him had soaked up everything that was going on around them. The floats beneath them had wheels that could be used on land or retract so they could land on water. If the airplane was headed anywhere other than Lake Atitlán, he’d be surprised. It was also the last place he wanted to go.

Now that they were airborne, he forced himself to try to relax. The lake was a good twenty minutes away. He knew it would all start in earnest once they landed, but at least he had a small breather, a time-out to try to mentally prepare for what was about to happen. He’d tried to keep Eva relaxed, but as they’d climbed into the Cessna, he’d seen the unmistakable signs of the nonstop fear she’d endured. She moved slowly and without emotion. He had no idea what was running through her mind—he turned and glanced back at her again and was met with the vacant eyes of someone who looked past the point of caring. It crossed his mind that perhaps she’d never been in an airplane before. If she’d grown up in a small village, that possibility wasn’t out of the question.

Donovan had faith that Buck and John had managed to follow them after the car swap, and that the
Scimitar
was poised overhead, still tracking them. The kidnappers had played their hand well, leading them through the city, and then ending up guiding them back to the airport. The other scenario, the one that Donovan understood was just as real,
was that they’d lost him—that none of his friends had any idea he was in a small plane flying to what must finally be the rendezvous at Lake Atitlán. If that were the case, then he and Eva were in trouble. Donovan thought about the .40 caliber Sig tucked into the waistband of his pants and wondered if it would be enough.

The rain started hitting the windshield harder and the sudden onset of turbulence jolted Donovan’s attention outside the Cessna. The forward visibility had dropped to less than a mile, and they were gradually descending to maintain contact with the ground, now less than three hundred feet above the rain-slicked road. The pilot inched them closer to the lush green hillsides and began a series of well-choreographed turns that kept them centered directly over the highway. Donovan couldn’t do anything but watch as their wingtips seemed to reach out for the treetops as the pilot flew them through the valley.

Turbulence shook the small Cessna, and a rivulet of water leaked from above and dropped onto Donovan’s pant leg.

He raised his voice above the roar of the engine and the slipstream. “Can we still get there?”

The pilot simply nodded and turned his attention back to the delicate flying that now required his full concentration. Donovan looked back at Eva and saw that she looked pale and more than a little queasy. The visibility ahead was getting even worse. Donovan eyed the ragged bases of the clouds. Flying in this terrain without local knowledge would be nothing more than an accident waiting to happen. It was like walking through your own house in the dark, you could make it to the bathroom, but try it in a strange house, and you were going to run into something.

The small Cessna sliced through the hanging wisps of gray clouds, and Donovan felt the G-force from the steep bank push him down in the seat. As they sped westward, he looked down as the ground rushed past in a blur, then out
front, where the rising terrain marked the narrow mountain pass they needed to navigate. The weather dead ahead looked worse than what they’d been flying through. Donovan remembered when he and Buck had flown out to the volcano in the helicopter. If they could get past the next ridge, they’d be at the eastern shore of Lake Atitlán. Donovan had no idea what would happen after that.

“Have you found them yet?” Lauren was out of her seat and next to John the moment the
Galileo
burst out of the tops of the clouds.

“Not yet,” John replied. “Now that we’re airborne, I can widen the search parameters.”

Lauren looked back at William who was still seated, staring out the window. Up front, Buck was in the cockpit with Michael and Craig. A glance toward them and she could tell that something unusual must be happening out the left side of the Gulfstream—the attention of all three of them were fixed in that direction. She crossed the aisle, bending down to see for herself.

The morning sun, now reduced to an orange ball, cast an eerie, subdued light across the horizon. In the distance, she could see the volcano throwing ash and debris high into the sky. The dangerous cloud rose and spread out high above them. Lauren headed to the cockpit. On her way, she felt the airplane stop climbing.

“I’ll have to level off at 10,000 feet,” she heard Michael say, as he flattened out their climb and adjusted both throttles. “I need to keep us beneath the ash cloud. If the engines suck up too much ash they’ll eventually fail.”

When Lauren touched Buck on the arm, he immediately stepped aside so she could move in for a closer look. What she saw out the windshield seemed to be right out of an artist’s conception of a prehistoric past. Low clouds stretched to the
horizon, the peaks of at least five volcanoes thrusting their way up into the thin air, Atitlán spewing a boiling plume of volcanic steam and ash far into the sky.

The shrill ring of the satellite phone pealed in the cabin. Lauren raced to the science station and snatched it from its holder.

“This is Lauren.”

“Lauren, it’s Ronnie. I’ve got something. I went straight to Deputy Graham at the FBI with this photo, and he in turn sent it priority one to the National Security Agency for facial recognition. This Eva woman lit up the board. She’s been issued driver’s licenses under different names in Arizona, California, and Oregon. All the addresses she’s ever used are bogus. The only constant is she always uses the name Eva, either as a first or middle name. Other than that, she’s a ghost, a fabrication.”