White Dawn: A Military Romantic Suspense Novel (23 page)

He picked it up and glanced at the
caller ID, then answered it. “Nick, what’s wrong?”

“What makes you think something is
wrong?” Nick asked.

“It’s three in the morning for both of
us. I sincerely hope something
is
wrong.” Beryl stirred next
to him and Josh pulled himself out of the bed. “Wait a second, let
me get somewhere I can talk above a whisper.” He trod out into the
living room and flipped on the lamp and sank onto the sofa. “Okay,
what’s up?”

“I need another favor,” Nick said.

“Does the time of day mean you need this
done sometime yesterday?” Josh asked.

“Preferably. The safety goggles that
your miners use. I need two hundred pairs of them in Acapulco
before midday.”

Josh’s jaw dropped open. “You’re
shitting
me,” he breathed.

“They pack almost flat and two hundred
of them would fit in one big carton. There’ll be a courier company
somewhere in San Diego that will happily take the fee, but Astra
Corp has three Cessnas that all could manage the load and the
airport in Acapulco can handle all the way up to 747s. It’s a three
hour flight from where you are. That gives you until sometime after
eight am to get the plane into the air.”

There was an intense hard note in Nick’s
voice that told Josh he was very serious indeed. “Will this make a
difference?” Josh asked.

“All the difference in the world,” Nick
said flatly.

Josh didn’t press him for details.
Cellphones were wildly insecure and if the Insurrectos weren’t
tracking every cellphone in the big house they were more stupid
than they had let on so far.

“I’ll bring them down myself,” Josh
said, standing up. “Anything else?”

“Thank you,” Nick said. It was a
heart-felt expression, gusty with relief. “I don’t suppose your
company stocks climbing gear?”

Josh blinked at the unexpected question.
He made himself not ask why on earth they wanted climbing gear. The
quality in Nick’s voice, the hard and quick way he was talking,
told its own story. This was urgent. Critical.

“I’ll knock over the nearest
mountaineering store on my way to the airport,” he told Nick.

“Thank you again,” Nick said. “But you
might want to rethink coming down here yourself.”

“Why?” Josh asked sharply.

“Check a weather forecast for this
area,” Nick told him and hung up.

Daniel felt one of his phones vibrate
against his hip and shifted around under the blanket until he could
haul it out of his pants pocket. It was stifling inside the little
tent, hotter than he could remember Vistaria being in quite some
time.

He didn’t recognize the number, but that
didn’t mean anything. Now the phones and the Internet were
untraceable conduits, any phone could be used to reach him, as long
as the cloak had been installed.

“Hello,” he said shortly.

“Daniel.
Mi amor
.”

He drew in a heavy breath, happiness
making his heart leap. “Olivia. Your voice is heaven to me.”

“I can’t talk for long,” she said. “I
just wanted to hear your voice and know for myself that you’re
okay.”

“I’m okay. Better than okay now,” he
told her truthfully.

“Duardo wants to speak with you,” she
said. “It’s urgent.”

“Put him on.”

Duardo got straight to the point.
“There’s a Category 4 hurricane bearing directly for the south end
of Vistaria. It’ll be here by mid-afternoon.”

The heat
. Daniel sighed and
nodded, even though Duardo couldn’t see it. “I’ll find somewhere
solid to hole up. Thanks for the warning.”

“It’s not a warning,” Duardo said
shortly. “I have new orders for you.”

Daniel could feel his eyes widening. He
answered automatically, his mind racing. “What are my orders,
sir?”

Duardo told him.

“You have to be fucking kidding me!”
Daniel cried.

Calli woke with Nick’s hand on her
shoulder. She sat up, scanning him for injury. “What happened?” she
asked, alarmed, for it was still an hour before dawn and the
operation should have taken another forty-eight hours yet.

Nick straightened up. “Get dressed,” he
told her. “It’s an emergency. We have to move everyone in the house
and camped on the beach as far inland as we can get by noon.”

“The hurricane? It’s really going to hit
us? The weather reports said it was veering away.”

He shook his head. “They wobble like
tops and their path is elliptical. I’ve just spent twenty minutes I
can’t spare going over the United States’ National Weather Service
data.
Servicio Meteorológico Nacional
says it will veer, but
the data doesn’t support it. We have to prepare.”

Calli threw the sheet aside and reached
for her jeans, already building in her mind a list of supplies they
would need to take with them. “It will take hours to move the whole
household,” she said. “There’s close to three hundred people
looking to us now.”

“The army won’t be coming with us,” Nick
told her. He handed her a tee shirt.

It was one of his, but she took it
anyway. “Where are you going to take the army then?”

“I’ll be with you,” Nick said
shortly.

Calli looked up at him, startled, as she
drew the hem of the tee shirt down over her hips.

Nick’s mouth turned down. “I’m the head
of the state right now. Flores and Duardo refuse to let me come
along. Besides, we may have to deal with the Mexican authorities
and I can smooth the way.”

“Then the army
is
going somewhere
else.” She gave him a small smile. “That means whatever they’re
doing this time, it’s a much higher risk than occupying South
Rock.”

Nick grimaced. “What Duardo has planned
is so insane I don’t want to share it with you. You’ll have
nightmares.” He glanced around behind him, but the door to the room
was closed. “I won’t be sleeping until they get back.” He picked up
her cellphone from the bureau and handed it to her. “Minnie and
Rubén both think in systems. They should be able to come up with
the most efficient way to move everyone the farthest distance
possible. Do you want to wake them up, or shall I?”

“You do it,” Calli told him. “I’m going
to wake Mama Roseta and stir the kitchen to life. We will all do
this much better on coffee and an early breakfast.”

“As long as the breakfast is eaten with
one hand and standing up,” Nick said. “Noon is our deadline and
that’s pushing it. By then the winds will be howling.” He moved to
the door. “There’s an old motel, ten miles east of us, on the other
side of the highway. We’ll make for that.”

Calli shuddered and pushed her cellphone
into her pocket and headed for the door. She had never been through
a hurricane and wasn’t looking forward to this one. Then she
thought of the people on Vistaria, the refugees who were living in
camps and lean-tos since the revolution had wiped out their homes
and villages, or because the Insurrectos had taken their homes for
their own use and turned them out.

Whatever Duardo was planning, she hoped
it worked.

Once they had run out of options to
consider and weigh up, Garrett folded up the blanket and settled on
it with his back against the wall. He tugged Carmen’s hand, coaxing
her off the chair. She had settled next to him, her head on his
shoulder. Her arm was aching, but when he put his arm around her,
he slid it under her injured one. His hand settled on her stomach.
His lips pressed against her forehead.

Carmen didn’t sleep. She was too hot and
uncomfortable to do that. But she must have dozed, flirting with
sleep, for she woke with a start and looked up at Garrett. “Did you
say something?” she whispered, wondering what had roused her.

His head was resting back against the
wall and he rolled it to look at her. “Listen,” he said.

She listened. Then she heard it. The
soft whistle of wind skirting eaves and scraping around corners,
stirring sand and rattling anything loose.

Her heart thudded. “It’s coming,” she
breathed.

“I think the Insurrectos have finally
got a clue, as well,” Garrett murmured. “I heard some shouting a
while ago and there’s a lot of activity for this time of night.
Day, really. It must be almost dawn.”

“Evacuating?” she wondered.

Garrett smiled grimly. “They won’t give
up the mine. Not when they know the Loyalists are in the area and
will take the mine if they leave. That’s why we were put on display
last night.”

Carmen bit her lip. “But the Loyalists
will pull back to Acapulco and take cover on the highest ground
they can find.” The instinct to head for the hills at the approach
of a sea storm was ingrained in Vistarians from generations of
practice.

“Ibarra will stay put, right here,”
Garrett said. “I got a look at his face last night. I could see it
in his eyes. He’s quite crazy. There was no humanity in his face at
all. He’s mad, but disciplined. If he’s been told to hold the mine,
he’ll hold onto it with everything he’s got no matter what comes
his way, no matter how extreme his actions. He’ll justify anything
as following orders. That’s probably why Serrano put him in charge.
The Insurrectos can’t afford to lose the mine.”

Carmen shivered. She didn’t doubt
Garrett’s analysis. “When the hurricane arrives, he will realize
his mistake.”

“That might be when we can make a move,”
Garrett said. “Sleep,” he told her. “I’m going to keep listening.
If anything interesting happens, I’ll wake you.”

Carmen shook her head, her chin rubbing
against his shoulder. “No, I’ll stay awake with you. I can’t sleep
now.”

But five minutes later, as she listened
to Garrett’s heart beat under her ear, she realized that sleep was
stealing over her again and marveled. When she had been hiding in
the palace, up in the rafters where the Insurrectos couldn’t find
her, she had spent three days so terrified she would be discovered
and so distraught over her inability to help Minnie, who had been
captured by Zalaya, that she hadn’t been able to sleep at all. She
had grown up in the palace, but with the Insurrectos living in it,
the building had become a foreign land to her. And that had been a
minor thing compared to this.

Garrett made the difference. Because he
was here, she could sleep in complete confidence that nothing would
get past his guard. Garrett…whom she loved. How strange the way the
world worked. What would it throw at her next?

The west side cliffs of
Las Piedras
Grandes
were considered the most dangerous cliffs in all of
Vistaria. They were called, poetically,
S
alto
de
los Amantes
. Many lovers
had
thrown themselves over
their steep sides, to tumble to the exposed rocks and wild waves
that smashed up against the base of them. Others had made promises,
standing on the edge, gripping each other’s hands. Gulls and other
seabirds rode the soaring thermals above them. Tourists would come
each summer to toss coins into the wind and make a wish.

No one had ever thought of climbing the
cliffs. They were inaccessible thanks to the thundering waves and
unclimbable, rising one hundred and sixty-three feet to the sharp
edge at the top.

An hour after dawn, Duardo took a good
grip with his left hand and rested against the rope, letting his
right arm relax completely. He looked down at the sea surging below
his feet. He was twenty yards above the water and no longer was
being sprayed with every wave that rolled up against the wall. The
only things holding him up was his left hand gripping a small
jagged rock, his toes thrust into the creases that Emile had found,
and the rope around his waist, which was held taut against the
piton Emile had driven into the rock.

Emile was ten feet higher, hammering at
the rock to widen a vent to drive in a piton. He was a private, but
he was also a world-class mountain climber and had tackled Everest
only a year ago. Duardo spent a few nights a month playing poker
with his men, so that he could get to know them better when they
were off duty and had their guard down. Three weeks ago, Emile had
tried to explain to him how the cold and thin air made Everest such
a challenge, so Duardo had known that there was at least one man in
his unit who could tackle these cliffs.

There were five other men strung out
behind Duardo. Each of them was watching the man ahead of him
carefully, placing his hands and feet exactly where the first man
had and moving precisely like the first man. All of them except
Emile were complete novices at climbing, including Duardo, but
Emile had been confident that he could get them to the top as long
as they did exactly what he did.

Emile looked back over his shoulder and
down at Duardo. “Sir?” he asked. His voice was all but snatched
away by the wind. It was picking up speed, slowly but surely.

“I’ve got it,” Duardo assured him and
flexed the fingers of his right hand. He was glad he had been able
to improve his fitness and cardiovascular conditioning in the last
few weeks at the big house. If he had been in the physical shape
now that he had been in when posing as Zalaya, he couldn’t have
done this.

The five men below him had all been
chosen for similar physical condition. He had also questioned them
on their ability to handle heights. He had weeded out those who he
knew might choke during such a high-risk challenge, leaving him
with a seven man team, including Emile and him.

Flores had been outraged when Duardo
laid out the plan. “No! I will not consider it! You would put every
man in this army at risk. You would put them all in the way of a
hurricane, when we should be returning to safe ground.”

They were standing on the heaving deck
of the launch that Flores was using as his command post and it was
just past two a.m. The sea was inky black, rolling away into the
black night sky. There had been barely any moon and no wind.