Hostage Zero (24 page)

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Authors: John Gilstrap

Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction, #Thrillers

BOOK: Hostage Zero
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And where incomes are made by breaking the law, there’s always someone smart enough to hijack the process through graft. Political corruption was a constant throughout the world.
Felipe poked the air in Jonathan’s direction. “You need to be very careful, my friend. No one will want you there. And it’s not just
El Matador
. Heaven only knows who the DAS is working for today—and whoever it is, it could change tomorrow—and the Indians don’t like anyone.”
Jonathan had to laugh at the ridiculousness of it all. Truly, Colombia’s national security apparatus—
Departamento Ad-ministrivo de Seguridad
(DAS)—had been more or less up for bid since the 1960s. Every time they’d seemed to find some measure of stability over the years, someone would assassinate someone else, and then it would be time to spin the loyalty wheel again.
The native tribes, meanwhile, had grown weary of being pushed around over the past four hundred years, and they’d become famously distrustful of everyone. Literally,
everyone
who was not a member of their immediate tribe.
“As long as I sleep with my eyes open and develop three-sixty peripheral vision, I should be okay, right?”
“You make light, Señor Jones.”
“What choice do I have? Unless, of course, you would like to join my team and give me guidance along the way.”
It was Felipe’s turn to laugh. “I will show you a map. I’m not a warrior anymore. I’ve seen too much death. I’ve caused too much of it. I cannot do it anymore.” His eyes narrowed, and he regarded Jonathan with a fatherly glare. “I am surprised that you still can.”
Jonathan didn’t like the dip toward sentimentality. “I don’t kill,” he said. “I save people.”
“I mean no offense, Señor Jones.” He looked to Harvey. “You truly are a man of few words.”
Harvey shrugged. “But once I start talking, I’m freaking brilliant.”
Felipe clearly didn’t understand the humor, but he smiled anyway. To Jonathan: “So, short of putting myself in danger, how can I help you?”
“I need supplies,” Jonathan said.
The old man cocked his head. “The kind of supplies you used to need?”
“More or less.”
“Paper or hardware?”
“Both, actually. But in nowhere near the old quantities.”
Felipe’s eyes narrowed. “José said that he would provide these things.”
Jonathan leaned back in his chair and crossed his right knee over his left. “Being cautious has always served me well,” he said. “Besides, I have my share of enemies here in Colombia, and I’m more than a few hours away from my reunion with Josie.”
“I see,” Felipe said. “So, weapons for you and Mr. Smith. And one for the other Mr. Smith, just in case?”
Jonathan nodded. “Exactly. And I don’t have much time. What do you have in stock?”
There was that smile again. “Come. I’ll show you. You can shop for yourself.”
Felipe led the way back into the house, past the kitchen on the left, and into a back bedroom that was far better kept than the rest of the rooms they passed along the way.
“This is your room?” Harvey guessed aloud.
“It is not much, but it suits me,” the old man said. “I’m sure your home is much nicer.”
Harvey was about to say something about his tent, but opted not to. The building that housed the hostel was bigger than it looked from the outside, comprising two connected structures to form one. Felipe’s room was at the very end on the back side.
The old man beckoned them all the way in, and then closed and locked the door behind him.
“You’re going to like this,” Jonathan said. Obviously, he’d been here before.
A large wooden chest rested against the back wall under the window that looked out onto the chairs where they had just been sitting. On either side, at about head-height, very Mediterranean candle sconces flanked the window. Felipe pulled the curtains closed, then opened the chest and transferred three armloads of clothing and blankets to the bed. That done, he lifted the candle off the sconce on the right and handed it to Jonathan.
“If you don’t mind?”
“Not at all,” Jonathan said.
The old man then took down the entire sconce. He unscrewed the flat platelike candle holder from the wrought-iron curlicue that supported it, then rehung the sconce and brought the disk to the chest. He peeled up a corner of the wooden bottom to reveal the male end of a bolt poking straight up. Felipe screwed the disk onto the bolt. When it seated, something clicked under the floor, and he was able to lift the entire bottom out of the chest, revealing a fixed ladder that reached straight down into a lightless shaft.
Jonathan grinned at Harvey. “Didn’t I tell you you’d love it?”
Felipe found three flashlights in the top drawer of his dresser and handed one to each of them. As Harvey reached for his, Felipe hung on to it for a second longer than necessary. “I trust you because Señor Jones trusts you,” he said. “Don’t disappoint me. For your own sake.”
Jonathan kept his expression light, but he’d never heard that level of threat from the old man before. “I vouch for him in every way,” he said.
In his own time, Felipe let go of the flashlight, then led the little parade down into the ground.
The first time Jonathan had seen Felipe’s underground storage tunnel, he’d been nearly speechless with admiration. He was so impressed, in fact, that he would later create a similar facility in his own home. His would be bigger, of course, and it would feature state-of-the-art temperature and humidity controls.
Felipe did the best he could with what he had. The underground chamber measured maybe twelve feet square, and it was filled with all manner of weaponry, most of it still in its original containers. Back in the day when they were fighting Pablo, Jonathan had spent tens of thousands of Uncle Sam’s dollars in this very basement, arming citizenry to rise up against the drug lords.
Without asking, the old man walked to one of the smaller crates and opened it. He pulled out a Colt Model 1911 .45 caliber pistol—long Jonathan’s preferred sidearm. He dropped the clip out of the grip and jacked the slide back to lock it open, then presented it to Jonathan for inspection. He smiled broadly. “I don’t forget, Señor Jones.”
Jonathan had to chuckle. “Indeed you don’t, my friend.” He released the slide lock and cycled it a couple of times. It seemed to be well lubricated and in good shape. He would tinker with it later, of course, but for now it seemed fine. He loaded it again, jacked a round into the chamber, then left it cocked as he stuffed it muzzle-first into the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back. It felt great to finally be armed again.
“You’ll shoot yourself in the ass keeping it cocked like that,” Harvey said.
Jonathan gave a tolerant smirk, then told Felipe, “My friend here was a Marine. He needs a dainty little pistol. Something with three safeties and a trigger lock.”
Harvey bristled. “Hey, fuck you, doughboy. I’m just trying to keep you from getting a bullet in your GI GI tract.”
Jonathan laughed. He actually had nothing but undying admiration for Marines, but man was it easy to spin them. And fun. “You a Beretta man?” That was the new standard-issue military sidearm—the one that replaced Jonathan’s beloved .45. The 9-millimeter Beretta was widely accepted as having better range and accuracy than the .45, and it was certainly more user friendly. The problem with it, Jonathan thought, was that the people you shot with the thing didn’t fall down nearly fast enough.
“I’m here as a medic,” Harvey said. “What’ve you got in the way of Band-Aids and iodine?”
Felipe looked confused.
“He’s kidding,” Jonathan said with another glare. “Josie will be getting that for us. Pull a Beretta sidearm for my friend, and another for the other Mr. Smith. How about long guns?”
“I have MP5s, one or two M4s and a lot of AKs.”
Jonathan grimaced at the mention of the AK-47. With tens of millions of the damn things in circulation, they were a perfectly acceptable assault weapon, but they weighed too much, and he’d be goddamned if he was going to look like a terrorist.
“I’ll buy you out of M4s, and I’ll take two MP5s. Let me have five hundred rounds for each of the rifles and a hundred apiece for the pistols.” Felipe shuffled as Jonathan spoke, fulfilling the orders on the fly. “What do you have in the way of night vision?”
The old man stopped short and looked embarrassed. “Nothing, I’m afraid.”
“Not a problem,” Jonathan said, even though it was concerning. The ability to operate effectively at night was a huge force multiplier, especially in a jungle environment. He hated having to trust Jammin’ Josie to be the sole supplier for something so important.
“While you’re doing this,” Jonathan went on, “I need to buy a car. What do you recommend?”
The smile returned to Felipe’s face. “I recommend that you let me sell you a car.”
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SEVEN
It wasn’t until she’d arrived in Colombia that Brandy Giddings realized her entire notion of what the country would look like had been shaped by the movie
Romancing the Stone
with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. She’d expected muddy streets teeming with chickens and goats. She’d expected scary people on every corner and motor vehicles that were thirty years out of date.
What she got instead with Santa Marta was a modern if slightly threadbare city on the seashore that housed the Hotel Santorini, which itself sported perfectly acceptable air-conditioning, and whose bartender knew his way around a good caipirinha. And why not? She was a heck of a lot closer to the birthplace of the national drink of Brazil here in Colombia than she was in DC, where she’d first tasted the concoction.
Brandy sat in the lounge near a window that gave her a panoramic view of the Caribbean, watching the street vendors hawking their wares to tourists whose pockets were the targets of roving street urchins. She found comfort in the two beefy soldiers guarding the front doors. Actually, maybe they were policemen; they all wore the same uniforms in this part of the world. Either way, their presence put a lot of brawn and bullets between her and any of the criminals out there.
For the thousandth time in just a few days, she had to pinch herself to believe that she was actually here doing this. After she’d gone home from her last meeting with Secretary Leger, her doorbell had rung, and when she’d answered it, there was a young man in a crisp white Navy uniform, absent the ubiquitous white-on-black name tag. His equally white hat sat at a studied angle over his brow.
“Ms. Giddings?” he’d said. He had that sunny-but-tough Academy look.
“I’m she,” she’d said, and instantly she’d regretted the Wellesley grammar.
He presented an eleven-by-seventeen-inch manila envelope. “I’ve been ordered to deliver this to you personally.”
She took it without thinking. “Ordered by whom?”
“You’re to read it carefully and speak to no one.”
She’d actually giggled at that. It sounded like something out of a movie. “Is this from—” She cut herself off, just in case. “Who sent it?”
The young officer grasped the visor of his cap with his thumb and forefinger, a gallant tip of his hat. God, he was gorgeous. “Have a good day, ma’am,” he said.
The envelope contained a second envelope, along with a U.S. passport with her picture but a new name, plus unsigned instructions for her to appear at Andrews Air Force Base in less than three hours, prepared for several days in a warm climate. She was to tell no one of the correspondence, and she was to make no unusual preparations before leaving.
The Andrews flight had taken her to Hurlburt Field in Florida, and then onto a commercial flight under her new name to Santa Marta. At a precise hour, she was to be sitting at this bar in this hotel, with but one mission: to hand the second envelope to a man who would come by and speak to her.
It was like being a freaking spy. It took everything she had just to keep her hands from shaking. Could it possibly get any cooler than this?
Five times now she’d identified men in the crowd who she knew—absolutely
knew
—would be her contact, only to be disappointed as they glided past her to either meet someone else, or to get a drink, or to do whatever else they did instead of proving her right.
She needed to settle down. If she made eyes at any more men, she was going to get thrown out on the suspicion of being a prostitute.
Without conscious thought that she was doing it, Brandy repeatedly stroked the envelope she’d been dispatched to deliver, tracing her finger along the line where the flap sealed against the paper back. She’d been unable to contain her curiosity on the plane, and while in the lavatory she’d sneaked it open to take a look inside. She wasn’t at all surprised by what she’d found. What did surprise her was how little emotion she felt when she realized that because of her actions people would soon be dead.
Commotion to her left drew her attention to the front door, where one of the soldier-policemen seemed to be having a dustup with someone. When she craned her neck for a better angle, she nearly laughed out loud when she realized that the other side of the confrontation couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. If she wasn’t mistaken, it was one of the boys she’d seen trying to score on the tourists just a few minutes ago. Poor kid probably tried to pick the wrong pocket and got caught.
Did they cut off people’s hands for stealing in Colombia, or was that somewhere else in the world?
Brandy tired of watching the show, but as she was turning back to her drink, the strangest thing happened. The policeman stood straight and looked directly at her. Then he pointed.
She instinctively turned in her seat to see who was standing behind her. No one. Her stomach flipped.
She turned back around, and sure enough, the man in the green camouflaged uniform was walking right toward her. He had the urchin with him, his fingers clamped on the boy’s ear. The kid walked cockeyed with oversized strides to keep up.
Brandy felt an inexplicable urge to hide the envelope. She couldn’t do that, of course, because it would call attention to the very thing she was trying to conceal. What on earth could be going on?
The officer brought the boy close enough that they could speak softly. “Excuse me,
señorita
,” he said in a heavy enough accent that she could barely understand his words. “Are you ...” He let go of the boy’s ear, and gestured for him to complete the question.
The boy cleared his throat. “Hello, Mrs. Chalmers,” he said in far better English than his escort.
Brandy stiffened in her seat, her skin electric with chills. That was precisely the sign she’d been waiting to hear. Her mind raced for the countersign.
Jesus, don’t blow it now.
“Hello, Peter,” she said. “How is Aunt Consuela?” It had seemed like such an odd patter when she was memorizing it, but now she realized that the boy had been part of the plan from the beginning.
“She is ill,” the boy said. “She wants to see you.”
That was it. The entire countersign had been completed. The chances of it being an accident—that a random conversation could follow the same pattern—were zero. But what was she supposed to do now? Just hand the package to a boy?
The kid seemed to be reading her mind because he glanced at the package, and then very subtly shook his head no. Without moving his head, he eyed the policeman.
“You know this boy?” the officer said. “He is bad boy. Very bad boy. Thief.”
Oh, great.
Now she was going to have to pay a fine for him or something. “No,” she said, hoping that her smile looked genuine. “He’s a friend of mine.”
The cop looked
very
confused. “He is friend?
Está un amigo?
” Apparently he thought it might make more sense if he heard it in Spanish.
Brandy nodded and smiled more widely. “
Sí
. Yes. He’s my amigo.”
Definitely a cop, Brandy thought, not a soldier. He was examining her. “But you not from Colombia,” he said.
Oh, shit!
She drew a quick breath, and her heartbeat doubled. Truly, she was not cut out for this line of work. What was she supposed to say to counter that?
The kid took care of it. He darted the two-step distance that separated them and sat on her lap, wrapping his arms around her neck. “Don’t let him hurt me,” he said a bit too loudly, drawing attention from others in the lobby. “He hits me and kicks me. Don’t let him!”
The move startled Brandy, but nowhere near as much as it startled the cop. He seemed keenly aware that he was being watched.
“We’ll be okay,” Brandy said to the officer. Then she gave a little wave to the others in the lobby. “Really, we’re fine.”
The cop hesitated, but in the end had little choice but to slither away.
When it was just the two of them again, the boy released his death grip and eyed Brandy’s chest. “Nice boobies,” he said.
A laugh escaped her throat before she could stop it. “
What?
”
He pointed. “Boobies. A-okay.” He gave a thumbs-up and beamed a brown-eyed smile.
She laughed again. “Why, thank you.”
“Can I see them?”
“No!” Brandy felt herself blushing as she glanced around the room to make sure they weren’t still being watched. “How old are you?”
“I’m eighteen,” he said.
Uh huh.
“In that case, I’m seventy-three and way too old for you.”
The boy gave a resigned shrug. “Okay. You need to follow me.”
Brandy scowled. “To where?”
He nodded to the envelope. “To where that needs to go.”
The boy stood and without looking back, started walking back toward the main door.
Brandy struggled out of her chair, bumping the table and spilling some of her drink. “Wait!” she yelled at a whisper. Who the hell was this kid? By the time they reached the door, they were walking together, and the boy seemed more than happy to be holding her hand.
Her hours in the air-conditioning had allowed her to forget just how impossibly hot it was outside. She’d worn cotton capris and a lightweight blouse, thinking that they would fit the bill for “dressing for a warm climate,” but she realized after just one block of walking that she in fact did not own a wardrobe that would make this kind of peanut butter–thick humidity anything but oppressive. She was sweating, for heaven’s sake! That’s okay when you’re in the gym, but out here on the street it was humiliating. She was soaking her blouse. And just what are you supposed to do with a sweat-soaked blouse when you’re in a foreign country?
Two blocks away from the hotel, they turned right to head farther away from the water and the breezes it provided. “Where are we going?” she asked again.
The boy shot a smile over his shoulder. “Not far. We’ll be there soon.”
“What’s your name?”
“Soon,” he said, pointing to a spot somewhere up ahead.
As the water fell farther away and the temperature rose, so did the terrain, and there was nothing subtle about the hills. To think that she’d thought Rome was exhausting! That was like a basketball court compared to these hills.
Brandy tried her best to keep up with the boy who was her guide, but he inevitably pulled away—in one case as far as a half block ahead—before turning around and waiting for her. She felt an odd urge to apologize to the kid.
Farther still, and higher still. The street started to take on that old Europe look with narrow roadways and unbroken walls of building facades. Fifteen minutes into their sojourn, Brandy began to have second thoughts. The neighborhood was not a place where she would feel comfortable walking alone, and the presence of a twelve-year-old who featured himself a real man did nothing to make her feel safer.
Come to think of it, what kind of fool follows a kid whose name she doesn’t even know? For all she knew, she was being set up for a mugging or a kidnapping. But if that had been the case, how would he have known the signs and countersigns?
No, this was the real deal. What had Jerry Sjogren called it? Tradecraft. This was real tradecraft—the life of a covert operator. And let’s be honest, it didn’t get a lot better than this.
The boy had stopped again, but this time only four or five doors ahead of her. That smile beamed again, and he pointed to a doorway. “We are here,” he announced.
He pointed at the pink façade of a row house that might once have been grand, but now sagged with age. It occurred to her that this is what San Francisco neighborhoods might look like if no one painted or did repairs for twenty years. The heavy wooden door used to be purple. It was equipped with a substantial old-style knob that looked to be made of brass. Brandy wondered if she would be able to raise a high gloss from it if she polished it aggressively.
She stood in front of the door on the crumbling brick sidewalk and shot a glance to the boy.
He smiled.
“Should I knock?”
He jabbed a finger toward the door. “Just go in,” he said.
Brandy hesitated. This didn’t feel right at all. Why was he making such a point of her going first? Was this some sort of a trap?
“It’s okay,” the boy said. “I am not allowed.”
Oh, now that made sense, didn’t it? When you’re arranging to have someone killed, you didn’t need nosy street urchins hanging around to witness the event.
“The man is waiting for you inside,” the boy said. He sealed the deal with that magnificent smile.
For crying out loud, what was she so nervous about? She was meeting an envoy of the secretary of defense. It was as if she were walking into a meeting with Secretary Leger himself. There could be no safer place in the world for her. This was what tradecraft was all about.
There’d be no doing it slowly, though. She needed to proceed with the commitment of pulling off a Band-Aid. She climbed the stoop, turned the knob, and pushed the door open.

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