Hostage Zero (30 page)

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Authors: John Gilstrap

Tags: #Suspense, #Fiction, #Thrillers

BOOK: Hostage Zero
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“So, do you think they found me by following you?” he asked.
“Must have,” she admitted. “I don’t know how, but I guess that doesn’t matter now.”
He pointed. “I think they’re coming back.”
At first, she didn’t see it, but then she did: the chopper was definitely getting bigger. It was keeping out of range, but it was circling in closer. It seemed to be on a course that would take them to the front side of the house. “What are they doing?” she wondered aloud.
“Maybe they’re just looking for us. You know, cruising around to see if we’re hiding out there.”
Gail didn’t like it. “No, they have to know we’re still in the woods somewhere. If we’d crossed into the open, they’d have seen us.”
“Even from that far away?”
“A clear day like this, you can see amazing detail when you’re on the lookout for it.” So, what could they be up to in the front of the house? When the shooter reappeared in the doorway, she knew exactly what their plan was.
“Oh, hell,” she said. “They’re going to take out my Jeep. Trap us here.”
“But I have a truck of my own,” Navarro said.
“Pray they don’t know that.”
A plan blossomed in Gail’s mind. “Okay, Bruce, listen to me,” she said. She spoke so quickly that her words ran together. In the distance, the Jet Ranger began its run. “When I say, I want you to do exactly what you did before. I want you to point that rifle directly at the chopper and unload it on full automatic. Then I want you to curl up in a ball behind that tree and not even peek out until the shooting is over.”
His jaw dropped. “What—”
The door gunner started shooting at the front of the house.
“When I say,” Gail reminded, and she sprinted ten strides farther to the right. Her leg screamed at her as she slid to a halt on her left hip, and she shouldered her AR-10. On the far side of the house, a column of smoke rolled skyward from the murdered Jeep.
“Now!” she yelled.
Her words had barely evaporated before Navarro unleashed another twenty-round string.
This time, the pilot had been setting a trap, and he was ready for it. Again with amazing speed, it pivoted in the air and raced sixty yards closer, presenting a broadside target. The shooter opened up on Navarro’s hiding spot.
And Gail opened up on the shooter. With the selector on full automatic this time, she fired two three-round bursts. The first nailed the door again, but it startled the shit out of the shooter. He pivoted on his knee and pointed his weapon directly at Gail’s muzzle flashes. Her second burst caught him as he was still moving. She noted the pink mist in the doorway, and was dimly aware of the man falling away from the chopper to the ground, but by then she’d shifted her target.
From this angle, she could no longer see the Jet Ranger’s windscreen, but she could clearly see the bulkhead that separated the cockpit from the cargo section, and she knew that the pilots’ seats were just on the opposite side. Even as the chopper’s nose dipped and attempted to race away, Gail pressed the foregrip tightly against the trunk of the tree, and she squeezed the trigger, unleashing all her remaining ammunition in a single uninterrupted blast.
This time, not a single round was wasted. Fourteen, fifteen, whatever was left in the magazine plowed into the helicopter. The bird hesitated in midair, rocking slightly on its center axis as the pilots struggled to bring stability to the critically wounded bird.
As the receiver locked open, Gail dropped out the spent magazine, slapped in a second, and slid the receiver home. She braced against the tree, instinctively held her breath, and opened up again, pouring more bullets into that bulkhead. Only five or six rounds into the second burst, it was over. The aircraft wobbled, then heeled over to its starboard side.
Gail dove for cover, pressing herself into the dirt and covering her head with her arms. As if mere flesh and bones could protect her from the shrapnel of a disintegrating helicopter. The ground under her jumped at the impact, and an instant later, a searing wall of heat preceded a low-order explosion that was more a
whump
than a
bang
.
She pressed deeper into the ground as something whistled through the air over her head and then sheared off the tops of trees, creating a rainstorm of leaves and branches.
The heat bloomed painfully over the next three or four seconds, and then it retracted just as quickly. In Gail’s mind, she could almost see the roiling fireball tumbling over itself as rolled into the sky. When she dared to raise her head, that was exactly what she saw.
That, and a world on fire. It had started with her truck, and then the helicopter; but when the chopper fell out of the sky, it clipped the roof of Navarro’s house, and now fire was consuming the building’s roof, traveling from the far end to the near.
To her distant left, Navarro struggled to his feet, his rifle dangling from his hand. “Well,” he said. “Shit.” He turned to look at her. “Good thing I keep my keys in the truck, huh?”
C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY-THREE
The rain started to fall the minute Evan Guinn and his escorts arrived at the big camp in the jungle. And when it fell, it fell like a house. No little drip, drip followed by a patter that gradually increased. This rainstorm was born as a gulley-washer. That’s what Father Dom called lots of rain. But even that dramatic description couldn’t touch this deluge. No gulley could contain this rain, so thick and heavy that you couldn’t see more than fifteen feet ahead. The flood of water turned the ground to an ankle-deep river of mud, and again, the boy was grateful not to be burdened with shoes.
This camp was a lot like the one where he’d first awakened, but many times the size, with probably ten times the people, many of them carrying machine guns, and more than a few wearing soldiers’ uniforms. He saw more of those raised-floor huts, too, like the one where he’d awoke, but most had no walls. The roofs were made of weeds, but the sides were wide open. It was hard to know exactly how many there were through blinding rain, but he counted eight, and thought he could make out the outlines of several more.
As he passed the first building, the soldiers who’d been escorting him peeled off and disappeared into the rain. Evan started to follow, but Oscar cupped the back of his neck with his palm and moved him forward. Under different circumstances, it would have been a nearly playful gesture.
“Almost there,” Oscar said.
The deeper they traveled into the camp, the barer the ground became, until finally, they entered what felt like the middle, where the mud was ankle deep. The trek ended at the base of a huge hut, at the bottom of a five-stair climb.
At shoulder height, the hut buzzed with activity and stank of gasoline and rotten eggs. A dozen or so half-naked people, a few not much older than he, moved about at a frenzied pace, clearly in a hurry to finish something, but Evan had no idea what the something might be.
Oscar nudged his shoulder, less playfully than last time. “Up,” he said. “You first.”
“Where are we?”
Oscar smiled, ignoring the water that cascaded from his nose and chin. “This is your new home.”
Evan made a point of showing nothing. Shielding his eyes from the rain, he tilted his head to look up to the top of the stairs, and then climbed. He wasn’t sure it made sense, but the higher he got off the ground, the less the place stank of gasoline. He was grateful for that, because it was a smell that made his stomach uneasy.
When he reached the top, the rain stopped falling, and he realized that he was under a roof. A second later, Oscar rejoined his side and craned his neck to look around, clearly searching for something or someone in particular. He made eye contact with a man on the far side of the enclosure and waved—a big wave, high over his head.
Evan followed his eye line and saw the man return the wave with a nod before turning back and finishing his conversation. The man looked angry, and the boy on the other end of the conversation looked frightened. When the man doing the talking punctuated his remarks with a slap against the side of the boy’s face, the kid cowered long enough for the man to turn away, and then he went back to work doing whatever he was doing. Something that involved cloth suspended over a tub.
The angry man walked with long, quick strides directly at them—so sternly that Oscar took a step away from Evan, who took a step the other way. Evan was not going to let himself be slapped by a stranger. As he closed the distance even more, the man’s pockmarked face drew back into a wide grin that looked more menacing than friendly.
“So this is the famous Evan Guinn!” the man proclaimed. “You look like crap.” He turned to Oscar. “What the hell have you been doing with him?”
Oscar responded in Spanish. Evan couldn’t understand the words, but the hand gestures said he was talking about a long damn walk through the jungle. The angry man just seemed to get angrier. He turned to the gathered crowd of workers and barked something at them. A few seconds later, someone hurried over with a white block in his hand. The man snatched it away.
He handed it to Evan. “Here,” he said. “It’s soap. Go use it.”
Evan stared. He understood the words, but they didn’t make sense to him.
The man took a step closer and shoved the bar at him again. “Take the soap and go wash all that shit off your face. Your hair, too. Before I cut it off with a pair of scissors.”
“What’s your name?” Evan asked.
It was the man’s turn to look confused. Then he laughed. “My name?
Dios mio
, did I forget to introduce myself?” He bowed deeply from the waist. It was an exaggerated motion that Evan knew was designed to embarrass him in front of people. “
Me llamo
Antonio. But you can call me
jefe
.”
It sounded like “heffay.”
“Now,
por favor
Mister Evan Guinn, would you please be so kind as to wash that shit off your face and hair?”
Antonio had dead eyes that scared Evan. He decided it was not a time to argue. “Where?” he asked.
Antonio laughed again. He pointed out to the rain. “Welcome to the jungle,” he said, “where you never have to find a bathtub because a shower finds you every day.”
Was he kidding? He was supposed to just stand in the rain and scrub himself down in the middle of everyone?
Antonio leaned down to look Evan square in the eye. “I have a job to do, Mister Evan Guinn, and it requires you to be clean. If I have to do it for you, I will use a wire brush, and you will not like it.” His breath stank with an odor that Evan had never smelled before—sort of like medicine, but not really.
Not seeing a choice, Evan turned. He walked back into the rain and down the stairs, the bar of soap clutched in his hand.
What the hell
, he figured. Water was water, right? He could keep his pants on like he did in the dorm showers at Resurrection House (okay, that was a swimsuit, but still) and wash around them. As he started scrubbing his chest and his face with the soap—it was Ivory, his favorite—it actually felt pretty good. He did his arms next, but decided to forgo his legs and feet. Didn’t make a lot of sense when you were standing in a mud puddle. He finished by lathering up his hair, and then put the soap on the step while he allowed the rain to rinse him.
When he was done, the ground around his feet frothed white, and he felt a lot better. It wasn’t until he started to climb the stairs again that he realized how many people were watching him, and how desperately filthy they all were.
Antonio noticed it, too, apparently, because when he barked out an order, they all went back to work.
Under cover again and out of the rain, Evan handed over the bar of soap and stood there, dripping onto the floor. “Better?” he asked.
Apparently not, judging from the look on Antonio’s face. He barked another order, and a towel appeared—a ridiculous purple one with a picture of Mickey Mouse on it. “Dry yourself off,” he ordered. “And come with me.”
He led the way to the middle of the big covered platform, where an area had been cleared. Grateful for the opportunity to at least try to be dry, Evan employed the towel and watched as Antonio opened up a three-foot-long black tube and removed what looked like a stack of aluminum rods with black plastic on the ends. Evan was fascinated, in fact, as Antonio pulled on the rods and they expanded to form a tall framework of aluminum that stretched to six feet tall when it was set on its end. With the framework erected, Antonio reached into the tube again and unrolled a picture onto the frame. When it was all done, they had a tall picture of a seaside resort, with lots of buildings built into the side of a steep hill and impossibly blue water in the foreground.
“That’s the Amalfi Coast,” Antonio said. “Very beautiful.”
With the picture set up, Antonio opened a padded envelope and removed a royal blue T-shirt with a Puma logo on the front, under an embroidered green, white, and red shield that sat dead center, just under the collar ring. The middle of the shield featured a stylized soccer ball with the letters FIGC in the middle.
“Put this on,” Antonio said.
“Why?” As soon as the question escaped his mouth, Evan pulled it back. He slipped the shirt over his head.
“You recognize?” Antonio said. “That’s the shirt for the national
fútbol
team of
Italia.
”
Evan didn’t care. He didn’t even know that they played football in Italy.
Antonio pointed to a spot on the floor in front of the picture. “Stand there.”
Evan did as he was told while Antonio produced a little camera and a newspaper from the padded envelope. The paper was called
Il Golfo
, and it featured a picture of a man Evan had never seen before.
“Hold the paper up next to your head and smile,” the man commanded.
Evan remained stone faced.
Antonio’s expression grew colder. “Mister Evan Guinn, we do not know each other good yet, but in the coming years, we will get to know each other very good, and as we do you will find that I am not a nice man. I am a mean man who does not mind hurting people. I do not mind hurting you.”
Evan’s stomach iced over. Did he just say
in the coming years
? Could that possibly be true?
“Evan Guinn, you will smile for this picture one way or the other, but I promise you that it is far harder to smile when you are in pain.”
Evan stood tall, raised the paper next to his head, and smiled.
The camera flashed a total of five times as Antonio took the same picture again and again.
When he was done, he slipped the camera back into the envelope, and he snatched the newspaper out of the boy’s hands. “Give me back the shirt,” he said.
Evan nearly asked why, but stopped himself. He retracted his arms from the sleeves, then slipped the neck ring over his head and handed it back.
“Very good,” Antonio said. He carefully folded the shirt and eased it back into the envelope, which he then placed on a nearby table.
“It’s good to have that done,” Antonio went on. “Now we put you to work.”

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