Get Back Jack (31 page)

Then she whispered into her headset, “Visual ID. Seven accounted for.”

She looked at the time on her Seiko. She’d shaved her time estimate by thirty seconds. “Good to go when you are.”

She had ninety seconds to wait.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

Tuesday, November 16

4:43 a.m.

Black Star Ranch, TX

Kim approached each bed and placed two fingers on the carotid arteries of each hostage. Although Charlie Franz’s pulse was faint and thready, she felt it. Maybe. The Sanchez children had been anesthetized much longer. So had their mother. But they were all alive.

Angela was so fragile. She looked like an angel, for sure. Kim tried several times to feel her carotid pulse, but couldn’t. Long-term anesthesia was tricky to manage, even in a hospital setting. Which this definitely was not. Was Angela breathing? It was hard to be sure. All Kim could do at this point was to get help as soon as possible.

Finally, she returned to Dixon. Not as petite as Kim, but smaller than Neagley. Sturdy looking. She was breathing. That was the best Kim could confirm for now, but she’d probably make it.

“Seven. Alive but weak,” she whispered into her headset.

She checked her watch. Another minute more.

She pulled her night vision off and let it hang around her neck, allowing her eyes to adjust to the darkness. The light sliver guided her to the door. She remembered the layout from the videos. On the other side should be the common room where ranch hands could read or watch TV and take meals.

Kim reached for the doorknob and found it missing. Instead, she felt a lever resting in a hook on the jamb. The lever could be lifted easily from the other side with a case knife or a credit card. Probably a practical solution for a bunkhouse. Privacy wasn’t required here.

She lifted the lever slowly to avoid a noise that might alert the occupants on the other side.

When she cracked open the door slightly, a long, vertical slice of light entered the ward, almost blinding her. She felt her wide-open pupils contract to pinpoints. She blinked several times and her pupils began to resize.

Line of vision from this vantage point included the kitchen area. Berenson and a man were seated at the table, eating, speaking in low tones. Maybe they worried that the comatose hostages could hear them. Maybe it was just the early hour. Either way, Kim strained her ears to hear.

“The girls are weaker than the boys,” Berenson said, speaking Spanish.

“All four of the children are weak,” he replied in the same language. “We have to wake them up for a few days.”

“We can’t do that.”

“They need solid food.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Their lungs are filling with fluid.”

“I don’t care,” Berenson said, showing a mouth full of eggs and sausage and white gravy over biscuits.

“You brought me here because I’m a doctor. Listen to me.” His tone was stern.

“We don’t have the resources to manage them if we wake them up. You know that.”

“You’re wasting my time. If you want hostages instead of corpses, wake them up,” he demanded.

Berenson glared at him. “Corpses work just as well for my purposes.”

Kim glanced at her Seiko. Twenty-five seconds.

The man pushed back his chair, stood, and threw his napkin into his plate of congealing gravy. He walked toward Kim.

“Where are you going?” Berenson demanded.

“I’m a doctor. Not a mortician.”

Kim closed the door and flattened her back against the wall and squeezed her eyes shut to avoid light-blindness again.

When he pushed the door open, light flooded the room like a movie premier Klieg.

Berenson’s footsteps clomped along closely behind him. “Pablo! Pablo! Stop right there.”

Kim opened and closed her eyes slowly.

Pablo kept coming, intently focused. If he happened to glance back, he’d see her. But it couldn’t be helped. There was nothing to hide behind.

He approached the first cot where one of the Sanchez boys lay.

Berenson stopped at the threshold, barely inside the room, focused on Pablo. Kim opened her eyes just in time to see Berenson’s gun arm extended in the same way and holding the same weapon she’d used to kill the child’s grandmother.

Before Kim could stop her, Berenson fired twice and shot the doctor in the back.

Morrie’s voice, hard, loud enough in Kim’s ear even after the deafening gunshot, “Otto? Otto? Are you there?”

The doctor fell forward. Kim dropped silently to the floor and rolled behind one of the footlockers, peeking over the top.

Berenson walked up to the doctor’s side, nudged his head with her booted foot. His head turned. His gaze looked toward Kim, but if he saw her, he indicated nothing. He wasn’t dead, but he was close.

Gaspar’s voice, urgent, “What happened? Morrie?”

“Two gunshots inside,” Morrie said.

“Come on, Sunshine. Let us know you’re still breathing,” Gaspar coaxed. She could barely hear his voice, which seemed muffled by a loud, ringing bell.

Kim readied for incoming. Surely, ranch hands would investigate.

Holding the weapon at her side, as if she might have to shoot him again, Berenson watched the doctor until the life left his eyes.

Kim rolled under the nearby cot. Now, she could see only along the floor. Berenson’s boots and the doctor’s lifeless body.

Berenson left him lying on the floor inside the arc of the door’s closing path, and returned to her breakfast. Kim scooted from under the cot, watching Berenson’s every move as she laid the gun on the table within easy reach near her plate. Berenson seemed unconcerned. She didn’t glance toward the open doorway again.

No one else rushed in. Dean said this hostage project was a separate deal for them. Maybe use of the extra bunkhouse came with a privacy clause or something. She’d planned to kill another hostage in less than an hour. Maybe Berenson had ordered them to stay away if they heard gunshots. Whatever kept reinforcements outside for now, Kim needed that system to continue for another sixteen seconds.

“Ten-four,” she whispered, hoping she’d spoken loud enough for the team to hear over the rudimentary communicators they’d devised. She returned to stand at the wall by the doorway where she could watch activities in the larger room.

Berenson stretched, and seemed to consider what to do next. She picked up her dishes and walked them over to the sink. She pulled the plug on the old-fashioned percolator and refilled her coffee cup. Then she turned, leaned against the sink drinking the coffee and looking toward the open doorway where the doctor’s boots were soles up.

Kim heard a toilet flush, followed by footsteps advancing from the bathroom near the kitchen.

Morrie said, “Ten seconds.”

“Good to go,” Gaspar replied.

A young man approached Berenson. Maybe seventeen years old. Attractive in the way young men are when they’ve yet to reach their potential but the fullness of their maturity beckons from the horizon. Sandy hair similar to hers, maybe a little darker. Her build, her eyes. Dean said they had kids. Could this be their son?

“Where’s the doc?” the boy said, in Dean’s voice.

“In the ward,” Berenson replied.

He walked toward the room where Kim was hiding. She tensed, ducked back, flattened herself against the wall.

“Did I hear gunshots?” he asked, as if gunshots were commonplace in his world, which they probably were.

The boy reached the threshold and stepped around Pablo’s legs and extended his hand and brushed against Kim’s bicep twice as he groped around the wall.

He turned his body toward the switch plate when he couldn’t find it by tactile exploration.

Simultaneously saw Kim and flipped the light switch, flooding the room with blinding fluorescent light brighter than an operating theater.

“Seven seconds,” advised Morrie’s voice in her ear, as Kim brought the sap out of her pocket and smoothly applied it to the boy’s temple. He crumpled to the floor, unconscious but not dead.

After he fell, Kim heard Berenson’s boots slam two long strides to the kitchen table where she’d left the Glock, and rush across the room.

Kim moved away from the line of fire.

“Who’s there?” Berenson said, coming ever closer. “Edward?” she called to the boy.

Kim said nothing. She’d exchanged wild gunfire with Berenson before. This time, Kim would place precise shots.

Berenson moved into the open doorway, her gun held firmly in her right hand, outstretched in front of her body.

Kim applied the sap to Berenson’s extended forearm. Hard.

Berenson’s arm made a sickening sound as it bent oddly and jagged bones poked through her skin. Blood spurted and spread, dripping to the floor.

But something inside her skin, muscles or tendons or both, must have remained intact because Berenson’s right hand did not drop the gun.

Only now did Kim see the military grade bayonet switchblade in Berenson’s left hand.

Tinnitus battled Morrie’s relentless voiced countdown in her ear. Berenson’s blood slicked the floor.

But Kim’s total concentration focused on the arcing knife in Berenson’s left hand.

What had Dean said?
She’s not the only one with scars.

In one slow, graceful movement, Berenson lowered her bloody right arm. She dropped the gun into the blood-pool underneath. She crouched like a wrestler and lunged as she sliced upward toward Kim’s face.

Kim jumped aside, barely avoiding the vicious blade.

Kim scrambled back, unable to fire.

She didn’t want to screw up their plan.

The compound was lousy with Las Olas members who might still invade the bunkhouse. And the undercover investigation would be ruined. Years and thousands of hours of hard work. She couldn’t screw that up.

Berenson advanced, knife extended, slicing fast.

Kim’s intense focus anticipated each thrust, but barely.

If she could avoid the blade until the right moment—

Morrie said, “Now.”

The first explosion came immediately after Morrie’s last word. The blast felt like a sonic boom in the room next door.

It came just as Kim leapt away from another lunge, but Berenson managed to knock Kim off balance.

She fell to the floor. Landed hard on her back. Slammed her head against the concrete.

Berenson saw her chance and lunged forward.

Kim aimed and pulled the trigger.

Berenson kept coming.

Kim fired again and again and again.

The first explosion was followed by three additional explosions, but Kim barely heard them.

Berenson fell on top of her.

Kim struggled to break free of the woman’s heavy body.

Scrambled and crabbed and escaped, finally, from under the dead weight.

The fifth explosion was much smaller.

Kim stood near Berenson, gun pointed, prepared to finish the job. But the move was unnecessary.

Morrie rushed in from the front entrance, weapon drawn. He saw the seven hostages still comatose in their beds. He bent to check the three bodies on the floor, confirmed two dead, one unconscious.

“Otto? You okay?” he looked up from his crouch by the unconscious Edward to ask.

Kim was shaky. Her stomach was about to give up the dry toast she’d eaten hours before. Temporary gunshot tinnitus in her ears made it difficult to hear his question. But she read his lips, said, “Fine. Thanks.”

Morrie probably knew otherwise, but he was chivalrous enough not to say so. He did make sure she could see his face when he spoke. “Ambulances on the way. They’ll be here in four minutes. Do you want to wait?”

Gaspar burst into the room. “It’s chaos out there. We’ve got to go.”

At least, that’s what Kim thought he said. She could hear the chaos faintly, like loud white noise beyond her range.

Neagley walked in last. She looked down at Berenson and the doctor. Then she looked at Berenson’s unconscious son. She walked over to the beds and looked at each of the hostages. She put her hand on Dixon’s neck, feeling for a pulse as Kim had done. Satisfied, she turned and said, “Morrie, pick her up and bring her with us.”

“Morrie, don’t,” Kim countermanded, laying a hand on his monstrous forearm. In response to Neagley, she said, “Dixon could die if we screw up. Cooper’s sending medics. They’ll take her to Ft. Lincoln.”

Neagley said, “Morrie, pick her up. Bring her with us.”

Kim urged Neagley to think about the big picture for a change. “They’re expecting seven hostages. If we take her, they’ll come looking. We don’t want that, either. Leave her here with the others.”

Morrie looked from Neagley to Kim and back. He didn’t argue. There was no time.

Neagley said, “You go ahead. I want to just say something to Dixon and Tammy and Angela.”

“They can’t hear you,” Gaspar said.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Neagley replied.

Kim thought a signal of some kind passed between Neagley and Morrie, but she couldn’t read it.

Morrie said, “Come on. She’ll catch up.”

“We can’t be caught here,” Gaspar said to Kim before he followed Morrie outside.

“Neagley,” Kim said. “Gaspar and I are not civilians like you. We’re putting hundreds of our colleagues in jeopardy by being here at all. Anyone finds out we were here, too many questions will be asked.”

“I owe it to my unit,” Neagley said, stubborn to the end. “I need to watch out for their families.”

“Cooper will take good care of them,” Kim said. “You can see them in an hour at Ft. Lincoln.”

“I can’t leave Dixon behind,” Neagley replied. “She’s the only member of my unit left alive.”

“Don’t make us leave you behind, either. Please.”

Neagley’s lips lifted in a thin smile. “You worry too much, Otto. I can take care of myself.”

Kim grimaced, nodded, knowing what Neagley said was true. There was no way to force her. And she’d never leave Dixon and the others behind. She’d find her own way home, of that Kim was certain.

“We’re confirming all seven hostages are loaded into the ambulances,” Kim said. “Then we’re leaving. We’ll wait for you as long as we can.”