Or maybe not.
“Sweetie, I love the haircut,” Jules told Gina as he gave Max back his cell phone. “You look fabulous for a woman who’s been dead for five days.”
“What?” she said, but it was time to go.
“Max’ll fill you in,” he said. There. There was no way Max was going to be able to tell Gina about receiving that report of her death without getting a little misty-eyed. At which point Gina would, at the very least, throw her arms around him. If Max couldn’t manage to turn
that
into a truthrevealing kiss, he didn’t deserve the woman. “Ow,” he added as Emilio pressed his weapon into Jules’s kidney.
“Sorry.” Emilio managed to put the right amount of apology into his voice, but he was obviously so stressed that he didn’t quite get the right facial expression to match. It was pretty odd. Particularly when he jabbed Jules again. “Let’s go.”
Wow, wasn’t
this
going to be fun?
Max, meanwhile, had stepped protectively in front of Gina. He caught and held Jules’s gaze. “We’ll wait for your call.” Silently, he sent another message entirely. If Emilio gave Jules any trouble, he should shoot him.
Never mind the fact that Emilio was the one with the drawn weapon. Never mind that Jules’s hands were out and empty, and that he’d have a major bullet hole in his body if he so much as put said hands near his pockets.
Despite the seeming disadvantage, Max had unshakable faith in Jules’s ability to gain the upper hand.
It was quite possibly the most glorious moment of Jules’s entire career—here in this musty sweatbox of a garage with some dickhead jamming a pistol into his back.
“See you soon,” Jules promised Max.
He pulled his hat down over his face, held his hands out slightly in front of him.
And away they went.
C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN
Max watched as Testa’s Escort sputtered and coughed and finally pulled off down the street, Jules behind the steering wheel.
He turned. Gina was standing there, holding on to herself, looking at him as if he’d just killed her puppy.
“He’ll be all right,” he said.
“What did Jules mean back in the other room when he said you’re not his boss anymore?” she asked.
“He meant I’m not his boss anymore,” Max said. “Look, we’ve got to move fast, so—”
“Sorry. You’re right. It’s just . . . It’s nice to see you, too. It’s been a while.” She was clearly pissed at him, which was just grand, as she turned toward the car.
Where Jones was pulling Molly out of the back seat.
“We’re leaving on foot,” Max explained before Gina could even ask. “And it is nice to see you.” More than she could possibly imagine.
“On foot? But . . .”
He knew she’d heard him tell Emilio that they’d leave in the Impala.
“We’re not taking the car,” he clarified, “because he wanted us to take the car. We don’t trust him.” He turned to Jones. “Can you get us to that airfield that you found last night?”
“Absolutely.”
Gina wasn’t happy. “But you let Jules go with him.”
“I didn’t
let
Jules do anything. Besides, he can take care of himself. Do we have something Molly and Gina can use to put over their heads?” Max asked Jones.
“What, like paper bags?” Molly quipped. “I know we must look bad, but—”
“Scarves,” Max said. “To hide your hair.” How could she take the time to make a joke? But the two American women were going to stand out anyway, in their western clothes, even with their hair covered. Maybe it didn’t matter. Except Molly’s reddish hair was so noticeable.
“Maybe there’s something in here.” Jones had found a crowbar, and was using it to try to pop the Impala’s trunk.
“We could look in the house,” Gina suggested.
“No,” Max decided. “I don’t want to take the time. Let’s just—”
“Whoa.” Jones had gotten the trunk open.
Molly went to look. “Dear Lord.”
Gina was slightly less reverent. “Holy shit.”
Max was silent as he stared down at the collection of weaponry that filled the car’s trunk. There was an abundance of everything from handguns to an array of your basic assault rifles to M3 and HK-MP5 submachine guns to Remington sniper rifles complete with scopes, to some extremely deadly-looking shotguns.
There was enough there to outfit a small army.
Or a dozen terrorist cells.
His gut had told him not to trust Emilio Testa. He just hadn’t realized how much not to trust him.
“So I guess that ‘Poor me, they kidnapped and killed my wife’ thing was just a story,” Jones said.
A well-executed story. Emilio had had his choice of weapons, yet he’d let them believe that he—and whoever had gone tearing out of here in that white van—had only one small handgun between them. Max almost admired the man. Almost.
Gina said, “Jules is with this guy.” As if he’d forgotten.
“Yeah.” Max took out his phone to try to call Jules even as, like Jones, he reached in and helped himself to one of those HKs and a generous amount of ammunition.
But, damn it, this wasn’t his phone, it was Jules’s. Somehow they’d gotten switched. Which meant Max had to call his own number, which he never did . . . He found himself on Jules’s contact list under B. Not for Bhagat, but for
Boss, Max.
He dialed.
“Let’s move.” Phone to his ear, taking up the rear, he hit the street running.
Emilio opened his cell phone as Jules took the road down the mountain, toward the harbor.
The E-man had lowered his gun after they’d left the plaza, as they’d taken the turn onto this narrow, winding road that was surrounded by jungle.
It was then Jules gave some consideration to the fact that Emilio might be telling the truth. It became possible that the next few minutes were going to play out exactly as they’d planned, with a relatively uneventful drive to the dock.
“Excuse me,” Jules said now. “I’d prefer it if you didn’t make any calls until we arrive—”
“Yes,” Emilio said into his phone. He wasn’t just pointedly ignoring Jules. He’d also raised his weapon again.
Wasn’t that just great.
Emilio spoke, rapid-fire, in a language that Jules couldn’t understand. But he didn’t need a graduate degree in Portunesian, or whatever this odd mix of Portuguese and Indonesian was called, to guess what Emilio was saying.
Change of plans. Morant’s at my house, waiting for an all-clear call, at which time he’ll be heading for the dock in my blue Chevy Impala. Get him, now.
But then he did switch to English, as if someone else had come on to the line. “No,” Emilio said angrily, “No, that’s wrong. I got him onto the island which was all I promised to do. It’s now up to you . . .”
In the pocket of that leather flight jacket, Jules’s own cell phone started to vibrate. That was weird. He’d set Max’s phone to ring silently, not his . . .
Shit.
He’d given Max the wrong phone.
He reached for it, but Emilio barked an order. “Hands on the steering wheel, where I can see them!”
He’d apparently thought Jules was going for a weapon. Which, come to think of it, was a damn good idea.
Emilio couldn’t shoot Jules, because Jules was driving. The road was crumbling and narrow, with hairpin turns, and guardrails that had rusted through in places. It wouldn’t take much to spin out and take a super-express route down the mountain.
No, Emilio couldn’t shoot Jules. But Jules could shoot Emilio.
“Pull over,” Emilio ordered, after he finished his conversation and closed his cell phone.
“I don’t think so,” Jules said, and floored it.
“Damn it,” Max said.
It was not on Molly’s list of words she was hoping to hear from him right now. Like, “Hooray!” for example. Followed quickly with, “We’re safe, we can stop running!” And then, “Who wants barbeque for lunch, followed by chocolate cake?”
She’d ended the morning-sickness phase of her day, and entered the ravenously hungry part.
“I just lost all signal for my cell,” Max said instead.
“Maybe we’re getting too close to a tower,” Gina panted. Running uphill clearly wasn’t on her fun list, either.
They’d spent a lot of time running, ever since Molly’d gotten stitched up after her biopsy.
“What the hell is that?” Jones asked.
What was what? They skidded to a stop on the dusty dirt road. Molly bent over, trying to catch her breath as . . .
That
was the unmistakable sound of an approaching truck. It was still out of sight on the street ahead of them, and ten to one it wasn’t an eighteen-wheeler with a shipment of festive paper plates and napkins for the local Wal-Mart.
“Oh, shit,” Jones said.
From Molly’s previous time spent in this part of the world, she knew that the sound of a truck—gears grinding, engine rumbling—meant only one thing.
Max spelled it out for Gina. “It’s probably a troop transport.”
Heading toward them.
The million dollar question was, whose troops were being transported?
The fact that a U.S. embassy had moved into nearby East Timor meant that there would also be U.S. Marines around to protect it, didn’t it? So it wasn’t entirely impossible to imagine that the truck might be filled with allies.
But Jones and Max were exchanging a glance that told Molly they weren’t banking on that scenario.
“Can we hide and wait for it to pass?” Gina asked.
“Sounds like there’s more than one truck coming,” Jones said. “And they’re going to be looking for us. They may not just drive past.”
Besides, the houses were close together along this road, hugging the steep mountainside. On the other side of the road was sheer cliff. The view was amazing, but there was nowhere over there to hide.
“This way,” Max ordered, and they headed back the way they’d come.
Because alternatives just weren’t plentiful.
They’d recently passed what looked like a trail, heading off the road and up the mountain.
“That dead-ends,” Jones barked, when Molly started toward it.
“How do you know?” she asked.
“I was out here last night.” He wasn’t even remotely winded. Of course, he wasn’t pregnant, with stitches in his breast. “There’s another route we can take to that airfield,” he said to Max. “It’s not as direct. We’ll have to go part way down the mountain and then back up, around the other side.”
Going down sounded good.
Especially, as they continued to backtrack, the sheer cliff on their left turned into a steep, densely covered jungle. Max led the way up and over the guard rail, stopping to give Gina and then Molly a hand.
“Careful,” he said, but Gina slipped. “Jones!”
He was right behind Molly. He held onto her tightly, as Max grabbed Gina by the back of her shirt.
“Oh my
God
!” Flailing, Gina went down on her bottom, knocking Max off his feet, too. But he didn’t let go of her. He hung on as they both slipped and skidded, sliding quite a ways until Max managed to hook his elbow around one of the sturdier trees.
By this point, she was clinging to one of his legs.
“You all right?” Molly heard Max ask Gina.
“Oh my God,” she said again.
Jones wrapped his hand around Molly’s wrist, showing her how to hold tightly to his wrist, too, so that they were locked together. They began their descent significantly more slowly. “Wish I had a rope,” he said.
“If I had a wish,” Molly told him, “I wouldn’t waste it on a rope.”
“Good point,” he said as they shuffled down the hill. “Wish I could have a half a dozen decades to grow old with you in a little house in some one-stop-sign town in, I don’t know, maybe northern California?”
She laughed her surprise. “Really?” she asked. “I thought you hated the United States.”
Jones shrugged. “I do.” It was possible that admitting that embarrassed him. “That doesn’t mean I don’t want to go home.”
And here she’d thought his push to go back to America had been pure selfless sacrifice. She liked it better this way, but there was no time to tell him that, because they’d caught up to Max and Gina.
Max was showing Gina how to hook her arm around the jungle vegetation if she started to slip again.
The fool was holding her around the waist, securely against him, and one of her arms was around his neck. They were practically nose to nose but he didn’t take the opportunity to kiss her.
Instead, Max loosened his hold, looking up at Jones. “Which way?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “This is part of the mountain I didn’t explore last night.”
Max was not happy. “Me neither.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re north of Emilio’s,” Jones told him. “We head due south, we’ll hit that cliff that looks down on the roof of his house. Our best bet is east. Away from the road.”
East it was.
Max led the way, holding onto Gina the same way that Jones held Molly.
“Think you can go any faster?” Jones asked her.
Faster
? Oh, Lord . . . “I can try,” Molly said.
But slipping and sliding their way down the mountain was even harder than running uphill, and it wasn’t long before she was out of breath. And Jones slowed their pace.
“Why don’t you go for help?” Molly asked him, barely able to get the words out. God, her heart was pounding.
“Not a chance.” He put his arm around her waist, slowing them down even more.
“Grady, please—”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” he said. “Don’t waste your breath.”
Jules needed both hands on the steering wheel as he took the first hairpin turn on two wheels. The side of the car scraped the metal guardrail with an ear-splitting screech.
And Emilio clung to the grab bar, up above the door.
With his gun hand.
It was now or never, and Jules blessed Cranky Hank, the former Ranger who ran the firing range where Max’s team regularly trained, who’d made Jules practice shooting with his left hand—over and over, until his eyes were ready to cross.
He reached for his weapon, trying to hold the car steady with his right hand, as they went skidding sideways down the mountain road.
It was easier said than done, and he quickly put both hands back on the wheel before they went into a roll.
“Motherfucker!” Emilio shouted—or at least the Italian equivalent.
His weapon fired, bullet shattering the passenger window behind Jules.
Jesus yikes! That had missed Jules’s head by mere millimeters. He jerked the car hard left, directly into the guardrail as he stood on the brakes, because once they came to a stop—suddenly and unexpectedly from Emilio’s standpoint—he’d be able to get his own weapon into his own hand and . . .
Okay—not part of his plan, this blasting through the rail and . . .
The car flipped as it went down the mountain, and Jules hung on for dear life.
As Emilio somehow managed to shoot at him yet again.
Sky.
There was too much brilliant blue sky ahead and Max tightened his grip on Gina, slowing them both down.
For about a half a second, he dared to hope that they’d reached the road that snaked down this side of the mountain. But there was way too much sky for a mere road.
“Hold up,” he called to Jones who, with Molly, was lagging quite a bit behind.
No, instead of finding the road, they’d come to the edge of the world.
Not really, of course. It just looked like it.
The jungle ended at a sheer cliff.
“Hold on to this.” He anchored Gina to a sturdy tree, making sure she clasped her hands together, then cautiously approached the edge.
“Be careful,” she called, anxiety in her voice.
Max moved even more slowly. He didn’t want to scare her. God knows Gina scared him enough for both of them, back when she’d started sliding down the hill, up by the guardrail.
It was due to some pretty solid luck that his fingers had caught her shirt, and he’d managed to hang on to her.