Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4) (6 page)

They’d apparently gotten the memo that she didn’t speak Spanish, or maybe they meant to kill her at the end of the flight, because they were discussing Brujos. They didn’t like him and didn’t respect him, and the leader worried about his fitness as a long-term partner for El Gorrion. At one point one of the men called the leader Guz. Short for Guzman, maybe.

They liked that she was Mikos’s whore—
la puta de Mikos
—and they seemed to know who Mikos was, but considered him a snot. They felt his fast rise was luck.

There was one thing they could agree on.

They laughed about the blonde and relived the kill, as very bad men typically did.

“¿Vieron la cara de Brujos?”
one of them said.
Did you see Brujos’s face?
When they killed her, they meant. They all laughed about that and agreed that the blonde had cried too much on the way up. They began to exchange kill stories, casually, the way people might discuss pet antics.
You should see this trick my dog does.
Except that men, women, and children were dying.
You should’ve seen…

The stories seemed to center on things they’d done recently in a village called Buena Vista. Zelda was glad they couldn’t see her face—keeping the disgust away took energy, and she needed energy for handling this. She should’ve taken the run. The odds of surviving a run into the jungle while getting shot at were far better; but no, she’d choked. Dax had been right to try to talk her out of this thing. She had no business in the field.

The old Zelda would never have made these errors. She would’ve put things together faster. She’d been in the South American network, and she’d had a keen sense for trouble. You had to if you were in the field during the regional civil wars. Valencia had been the worst—the war had ravaged the tiny country for years, a raging bonfire of mythical proportions. There hadn’t been a good side. It was one of those conflicts where the minute you decided who was least bad, they did something horrific.

These days, the regional situation was more like glowing coals with occasional flare-ups. It didn’t help that the men roaming the countryside across Valencia had only killing and terrorizing on their résumés. The men on the plane were murderers and terrorists. Fighters like them had been banding together in different factions and flavors for years. Some guerrilla factions were political and anti-drug; others were political, but funded through drugs. Some were more about kidnapping and coups. Some were simply gangs of thugs, thriving on the coca trade; others were more sophisticated, such as organized crime families with anti-government roots and international networks. Even the oil-rig pirates could be traced back to the wars. And then there were the paramilitary groups with their own varieties of hate, politics, and violence.

El Gorrion was of the quasi-political, drug-thug variety of guerrilla. He’d come up fast and hard since the sweep of arrests some ten years back, and his people were strong and battle-hardened. She had no illusions about fighting five of them, plus a teenage kid and two pilots. She’d need luck to win.

They spoke more about Buena Vista, which means
beautiful view
in Spanish.

The leader, Guz, was slowing his eating. It was about time. They’d make her go up, or Guz would come back.

Guz’s right-hand man, a guy with a small black moustache and a bandana, was back on the Buena Vista village takeover. They argued about the division of the new cropland. An overseer would be brought in. That was pretty standard guerrilla practice in order to force the farmers to grow coca. It was the most lucrative crop; yes, but most farmers would grow the legit crop if given a chance—it wouldn’t pay as much, and there were logistical and start-up obstacles, but they wouldn’t have to deal with guys like these. They argued about one of the farmers. Guz thought he would be trouble, but his right-hand man felt confident he’d stay in line.

“
Que Kabakas te castigue
,” one of the farmers said, and they all laughed about that.

Que Kabakas te castigue
.

For a second, she forgot to breathe.
Que Kabakas te castigue
. Loosely translated, it meant
I hope Kabakas will punish you
. The saying had been popular during the war; a curse. People were still saying that? Energy surged through her, a wild energy sparkling with magic and anger and longing. For a second, she wasn’t trapped on a plane clad in ridiculous maid lingerie in the midst of ruthless killer-rapists—she was back in the field, confident and fierce and in control again. Back in the field hunting Kabakas.

Kabakas was a near-mythical assassin who’d burst out of nowhere at the height of the Valencian Civil War, though
assassin
was barely even accurate; Kabakas had been more like a super-mercenary, capable of taking on armies single-handedly. He’d become famous across Valencia in a matter of months, the subject of tales epic and tall. One story had it that he’d go into a killing trance that made it so bullets couldn’t touch him. Another said that he could use his mind to throw off people’s aim, or even to explode weapons in fighters’ hands. Some said that he would pre-tie his limbs before battle to prevent blood loss so that he could be shot multiple times and still fight. He killed with knives and barong blades more often than with guns. Well, that one was true. She’d seen the gruesome aftermath of his attacks with her own eyes.

Yeah, she’d known all about Kabakas—he’d been a white whale for her back when she was based in South America. It wasn’t just the bounty on his head, though you could buy a small island with it. He was the ultimate prize. The Holy Grail and Rambo rolled into one. Maybe a little bit of an obsession.

Kabakas had started out as something of a benevolent mercenary; threatened villages would often recruit him to attack their attackers, although, sometimes different factions of fighters would pay him a lot of money to destroy various enemies.

The really serious Kabakas hunters agreed he’d been trained by the Moros of the Philippines, and most believed he’d come out of the Balkans in the late 1990s—a teen mercenary with brown skin, jet-black hair, and the uncanny ability to put a blade in a man’s right eye from a hundred feet away. Similar stories came out of Algeria, and later along the Israeli/Lebanese border. The sheer old-school strangeness of throwing a blade and always hitting the eye had spooked a lot of fighters, and myths began to swirl around him. Zelda’s thinking—and she was not alone in this—was that his ideas for the Kabakas persona had been formed in these conflicts when he was just a mercenary. He’d brought the persona to Valencia at the height of the war. At this point he’d taken up the mask, a blood-red mask with silver stars painted on it.

He charged a lot for his services, but he would do freebies—that was a known fact. Fighting on the side of the really downtrodden. Not often, but he did it.

The CIA’s interest in Kabakas had been pragmatic. The fear was that he’d create a guerrilla faction of his own, seize power, and threaten the oil industry. The bounty on his head had come from the Valencian vice president himself, whose grudge seemed personal, but everybody in Valencian politics hated and feared Kabakas. His popularity made him dangerous. People thought he was something special.

And then he’d carried out the infamous Yacon fields massacre. She and the other hunters would spend hours over pitchers of Pilsen in tiny torchlit cafés, armed to the teeth, arguing about what had turned Kabakas so dark so fast, or if he’d always been dark. She’d seen the aftermath herself: all those people with blades through their eyes, bloody faces, and frozen expressions. Chilling.

Even after the Yacon fields massacre, Kabakas masks were sold in most street-corner stalls; even fake barong swords. Props for the fantasies of Valencian males, but still deadly. People still wanted to believe.

The best intelligence had it that Kabakas had died in a fire nine years back. A Kabakas hunter considered one of the best had tracked him to a small town called Vasquez, only to see him run into a burning house that exploded seconds later. She knew the man; he was good. Smart. Trustworthy.

What’s more, Kabakas’s activity had ceased at that point—further proof that he’d perished there.

Considering the Yacon fields massacre, she should’ve been overjoyed about Kabakas’s death. But losing him as a quarry had been…strange. She still thought about him and dreamed about him, too.

There was one known photo of Kabakas in existence, taken from the phone of one of the dead. The photo caught the killer in whirling motion—masked face, body, and barong swords a blur—everything a blur except for a large hand clad in a black leather glove. At the height of the hunt, Zelda had the image blown up and she’d hung it above her desk. She’d stare at that huge, muscular form and that leather-wrapped hand for hours, trying to get into his head. Wondering what it was like to have that kind of nerve, that insane level of ability, and no mercy whatsoever. Unapologetic might and darkness.

She looked around at her esteemed fellow passengers. The beauty inside the human spirit. So much bullshit.

She kept her arms behind her back—even though she’d long since worked free of the tie.

Total submission or total domination.

What would Kabakas do?

She banished the thought. Fuck Kabakas. The old Zelda could handle these guys. She could return to that mind-set.

The leader had a .357 in a shoulder holster. If he came back alone, maybe she could take it off him.

She sucked in a breath, reminding herself that the sexy maid outfit was a power outfit; it endowed her with a massive element of surprise.

Twenty minutes into the flight, Guz stood. He took a swig of beer and adjusted his cock, eyeing her through the crates. “
Te estoy viendo
,” he taunted.
I see you
. The guys laughed.

At that moment, something kicked in. The decision made.

She scurried backward, hiding in the corner, hands clasped behind her back. An old trick, pulling back—like pulling a line, inciting the predator to stalk toward you, luring him away from his pack.

Could she do it?

Hell, she
was
doing it. She watched herself position Guz like an out-of-body experience.

Boot on metal. One step. Another.

He arrived and stood over her, enjoying her fear.

“
Estás lista para mí
?” he asked.
You ready for me?

She whimpered as he unzipped his pants and took out his cock.

He went on, more for the benefit of his companions, of course. “
Tú sabes la palabra
mamar?”

She gave him bewilderment and fear. It wasn’t hard—she really fucking felt it, and he was enjoying it. They were connected now; what he didn’t understand was that she was stoking that connection to control him. She scooted back, drawing him deeper behind the pallets, out of sight.

He finally caught up. He reached down and grabbed her hair and stood her on her knees, shoving her face into his cock. “
Mámamela
,” he said, making a sucking sound.

And just like that, she had his gun.

She pulled his pants to his knees and jerked the fabric forward, making him fall on his ass.

She took off the safety and aimed, relieving him of the blade in his ankle sheath before he could gather his wits. Hesitation would kill her now.

“Stay down. Down!” she screamed when he lifted his head. “Down!”

Guz complied. The men up front stood and stared.

She slid his knife into her garter. With trembling fingers, she crouched behind him. She’d positioned him well; they’d have to shoot through him to get to her. What’s more, a lot of electrical was behind her.

Weapons came up.

“
No disparen
!” Guz yelled. He instructed a man named Aguilo to talk to her.

“You cannot shoot in the plane,” one of the guards said. That would be Aguilo, then. An English speaker. Good. “The plane.” Aguilo made a crashing sound.

That wasn’t exactly true. You could shoot through the skin of the plane a few times and it could still fly. A good crew could plug it up, but it was risky as hell. And if you shot out the electrical or the fuel, you were screwed.

But they didn’t need to know she knew that. Or that she could understand their Spanish.

“I’ll shoot if he moves,” she growled. “Tell him to put his head down and
keep
it down.”

Aguilo repeated her instructions in Spanish. He got it right. Good.

Guz lowered his head. He lay crosswise on the pallets a few feet in front of her, head turned toward the group.

“Look at me,” she said. She nodded to the English speaker. “Eyes?”

“
Ojos
,” he said.

“
Ojos
on me,” she said to Guz, pointing with two fingers to his eyes and then hers. She didn’t want him coordinating with his men. A good fighter could do that without a word.

Guz was obeying. For now.

Time. She needed to be tracking time. They were going to Valencia, probably the southeast. She calculated the flight time—four more hours. They would land around dawn.

Back when she was a confident, competitive, high-performing agent, she would’ve gotten off on the thrill of holding the plane for four hours; it would’ve been about feeling the men, adjusting to their emotions, keeping the rein on them from minute to minute, stoking their fear.

She’d lost so much of herself the night with Friar Hovde. His end-of-the-world cult had operations in several countries, and destructive plans involving missile theft. She’d posed as a follower, working with Agent Randall, who’d climbed into Hovde’s inner circle. Hovde had caught her with files and quickly realized he had a mole. He’d brought her to the basement of an outbuilding, tied her up, and gotten the name out of her. It had taken a few hours, but he’d gotten it in the end. And Agent Randall had paid the price. The agency had moved on Hovde soon after, but it was too late for Randall.

She’d gone on cases after that, but it was luck that she hadn’t gotten herself or anybody else killed. Shame and guilt tended to erode your sense of self-preservation, your awareness. The minute she thought of it all she could feel her very awareness contract to a small tube.