57
Eagle’s chopper circled, then hovered, its powerful spotlight picking up pieces of the debris, searching the surrounding ocean and beach.
Colonel Tessler spoke to the commanders on the ground as Mexican coast guard boats added more light to the area.
The Mexicans had come up with two mangled and burned bodies so far. Both appeared to be Mexican nationals. No one could have survived the explosion that was seen two miles down the highway by Mexican soldiers who were now combing the beach for other bodies.
Again Tessler failed to get a contact with his security chief and now couldn’t get the driver to answer. Were they all drunk and asleep? That wasn’t impossible.
First he had to make sure what had happened below. He ordered his pilot down.
Tessler wasn’t sure whether he wanted it to be them or not. If it was, the big problem would be solved. On the other hand, it would end this insane hunt. His belief at the moment was that this had nothing to do with them, that they were heading for somewhere along the coast of South America. He would find them. Losing her would be on him. Raab would be beside himself.
The man not only needed her expertise to deal with the problems some of the soldiers were having, the man had a burning obsession for Doctor Hall. He’d been spying on her for years. Hacking into her computers, having her tracked, who she was meeting.
Man was nuts about the woman. All the women available to him and he’s obsessed with the one who didn’t want anything to do with him. Testified against him. Jesus! It made no sense.
Bastard is going to blame me for sure, however it goes, the colonel thought, no matter what lay below him.
But he was now thinking, agreeing with the Mexicans, that it was a crash involving competing smugglers.
The two coast guard boats, lights bobbing on the water, moved closer to the rocks.
Tessler didn’t want to widen the calls to locate the Facility security chief, fearing that something would get back to Raab before any answers were known.
Tessler’s chopper landed on the road. He got out, ducked under the swirl of the rotors, and made his way to the commander on the scene. A man he knew reasonably well.
“Captain Hernandez, we always seem to meet under strange circumstances.”
The smell of fuel and fire residue hung in the air.
Before he even spoke, Tessler knew it wouldn’t be in English or Spanish. Hernandez loved to parade the fact that he knew something like five languages. This time, it sounded Italian. But then, he had a beautiful wife from Milan.
“Sono mato in circostanze strame.”
“That’s great,” Tessler said. “Give it to a simple man like me in English.”
“I was born under strange circumstances,” Hernandez said with a smile.
“Weren’t we all?”
His friend smiled and nodded. They shook hands.
“What do we have?”
“Nothing so far. Pieces washing ashore. Big damn explosion. Two unidentifiable bodies.”
“Female?”
“No. Both male. Most likely Mexican, as they had big dicks.”
Tessler struggled to restrain a grin. It was Hernandez, after all. “No idea of the identity of the boats?”
“Not yet.”
Under little visibility from the foggy, overcast night sky, Colonel Tessler followed the Mexican Special Forces officer, who was also a major cartel operative, down on the beach, where the two bodies they’d recovered lay.
Tessler said, “We need to know if Americans were involved in this. The ID of the boats will help a lot. We know the boat we’re looking for.”
The Mexican commander nodded, spoke to someone on his shoulder mike, then said, “We have divers going into the water. We’ll find out soon from the debris.”
Tessler was increasingly unhappy with himself. He’d come so close to grabbing them after his team located the river camp and yet they’d escaped, reached the Silver Strand and her uncle’s.
It was a major screw-up. It had never been anticipated that they could get out of the L.A. area. That a stunt like putting the tracker in the goddamn sewer had fooled them was unacceptable. It was, to be sure, a very smart move.
The Mexican commander rambled on about how sure he was they were smugglers and the attempted escape in the waves had caused the accident. It was, Hernandez said, one of the worst boat accidents he’d ever heard of. Obliterated both craft.
More patrol boats now appeared in the immediate area and two choppers.
Tessler had mini-drones roaming out some distance and several moving south, but nothing so far.
It was still two hours before dawn, but now they had so much light, it was like a night game at a football stadium.
“We need an ID on those boats soon,” Tessler said again with growing frustration.
“Divers are bringing in pieces of the boats and we’ll know soon,” Hernandez said.
Two large, fast boats crashing into each other and only two bodies? That didn’t make sense.
Of course, sharks might have gotten their fill.
One of the Mexican boat commanders informed them that a gun battle had preceded the crash.
Tessler paced. He’d trained two of the most lethal and enhanced warriors on the planet, and they had at least two or three other soldiers with them who were no doubt serious business. And with them, that goddamn neuroscientist who’d betrayed them in the first place.
Tessler watched with growing frustration and anxiety as more pieces of boat were being dragged up on the beach.
Still no proof if the boat was the one owned by Doctor Hall’s uncle. They had seen pictures of it in his house.
Very bad thoughts began to form in the Colonel’s mind. Yet he resisted becoming a victim of them.
With the Facility in stand-down and nearly empty, and Keegan very familiar with the setup, an insanely dark notion began to intrude into Colonel Tessler’s thinking. He fought it off. Laughed at himself. That kind of move would be so unlikely to succeed, so impossible for Keegan to be part of, and without his okay, it wouldn’t even be possible.
What if the crash had happened after they went ashore? What if Keegan had turned?
Slowly, steadily, a sense of panic began to grip Colonel Tessler. “Get men up past the road and see if there’s any evidence of anyone having made it ashore.”
Colonel Tessler, whose career covered three disastrous wars—Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—understood how smart an enemy could be, especially if your commanders weren’t. And he was beginning to feel this had all been handled wrong.
There were three possibilities. The boat had nothing to do with his quarry and they were long gone. Or they were dead in the water. Or—the worst, what he’d never seriously entertained—they’d gotten ashore before the crash and were on their way to the Facility.
No. Ridiculous.
Tessler hesitated. Were they drunk and sleeping, as Armando had suggested. All of them?
He didn’t like getting all worked up without clear evidence. A careful man, he needed some hard evidence, assurance.
58
They entered the Facility and passed through a gauntlet of towering palms. Rainee sensed that Armando was tightening up, fearful, as if anticipating something bad, and maybe he knew something they didn’t.
Everyone had their weapons ready. Rainee’s rested on their thighs, as she half-expected a mass of soldiers to pop up and surround them as they headed toward the main villa.
But no soldiers jumped out. The compound remained quiet. Nobody so far.
Maybe they were expected because Keegan had already told Raab he was fulfilling his mission. But that made no sense. He didn’t have to hit the Vereen place. Jesus, she thought, these damn pills are making me jumpy as hell.
Keegan turned off the interior lights. “Go!”
For a moment she was confused but then realized he didn’t mean her.
Duran and Metzler exited and vanished on opposite sides into the palms and flower gardens, leaving Rainee alone in the back seat.
Keegan turned back to Rainee. “If you have nothing better to do, maybe we should go up and pay our respects to a former colleague of yours. You ready?”
“I’m way beyond ready.”
He smiled. In the dark of the car, the severe, angular, tight face of this man transformed when he smiled. It softened a bit.
She knew Keegan had plenty of reason on some level to blame her for everything that had happened, forcing him to remember things he didn’t want to remember, and causing the crisis that ended in his shooting his assets and led to everything that had happened since. He was a killing machine, after all.
In that sense, she was his greatest nightmare. And, if he still believed what was so deeply inculcated in him, it was soon going to be over and Raab would end up, once again, winning.
But the moment she had these thoughts, she dismissed them as absurd and situational paranoia.
The silver Mercedes, absent Duran and Metzler, crawled past gardens and a fountain, then Armando turned toward the front of the main house, which stood like a beautiful white villa movie set, shining softly in the moonlight, majestic and foreboding.
An armed guard in what looked like a Mexican police or special forces uniform, automatic weapon strapped to his chest, one hand on the stock and trigger guard, watched their approach.
Here we go again, Rainee thought.
Armando lowered the driver’s side window again and waved. The guard motioned them forward but ducked to check who was inside the vehicle. He held up his hand. They stopped.
Another uniformed security man appeared from around a fountain on the other side, also sporting an automatic weapon. The men didn’t look belligerent, just careful and professional.
But they had no chance. Duran and Metzler slipped up behind the two men from either side.
Rainee hoped it would end quickly and without gunfire.
But one of the men, the man on the right, sensed something and whirled around and he was shot point-blank by Metzler. That triggered the other guard to react and Duran had no choice but to shoot him.
Duran then headed around the north side of the villa, while Metzler went around the south.
Keegan took the car keys and Armando’s cell and told him to go and not to look back. He said, “We’ll have a lot of special ops coming in—you don’t want to be anywhere around.”
Armando got out and ran away, back toward the gate, probably praying he wouldn’t be shot on the way.
Rainee and Keegan left the car and she followed him to the entrance of the atrium in the center of the main house.
Keegan paused, listened, and then moved toward the open hall on the right.
Then there was a yell from somewhere outside, followed by a non-silenced gunshot. In her earpiece, she heard Duran exchange some sort of cryptic communication with Keegan.
She stayed close to Keegan as they headed down the hall toward a winding staircase leading up to the second floor of the massive villa.
“Oh, Jesus, what the hell!” Raab said when some noise woke him out of a deep sleep. He woke highly agitated, exhausted and under the heavy weight of sleep drugs and alcohol. Raab pulled off his sleeping mask angrily, then took out his earplugs. He peered toward the window curtains.
“Goddamnit,” he muttered. The noise that had awakened him sounded like a gunshot. One of the fucking Mexicans shooting at a snake or something. Or his security chief had come back drunk from one of the parties and slammed a door.
Then he wondered if what woke him was a just a vivid dream that the sleep drugs sometimes elicited. Raab struggled for clear consciousness. He surfaced, rising from the depths of a coma.
Then he heard a voice from somewhere outside.
At first, he was about to grab his security intercom and chew somebody out, but then he heard what sounded like a distant
pop, pop.
His heart jumped. “We’re under attack,” he muttered. He pushed the blanket off and sat up. He looked at the small screen on his bedside table that showed six small images of his grounds.
He saw what looked like a body near the fountain. Oh my God, he thought. We’re under attack! Goddamn cartels.
Raab stumbled to his feet.
He knew better than to get too comfortable in Mexico, a country constantly on the verge of falling into civil war. And now, on the verge of revolution, he was even more ready.
All his important backup files, jump drives, personal notes, and a laptop were in his safe in one suitcase; his two million in bearer bonds and running money, various passports and documents in another.
He left the lights off; using a small flashlight he kept on his bedside table, he went to his bureau and inserted his index finger in a reader under the top. The bureau then swung out, revealing his critical work in two Samsonite metal suitcases.
His pilot wasn’t there, so he’d have to fly himself out. He kept urging himself to move faster, get out. He just hoped he wasn’t too much under the influence to handle the damn machine. He was staggering a bit, unsteady. Fucking sleep drugs.
He put the suitcases on the bed and went around to find his gun, but first he grabbed his phone to let Colonel Tessler know what was going on: “Somebody’s raiding the compound. Killed the guards. I’m getting the hell out. Get a team in now.”
“I’m on my way,” Tessler said. “You just go to Miramar. Use Blue Star One for air clearance. Get out.”
Raab hung up. He went for the chopper keys and his 9mm Glock from the nightstand.
He grabbed the chopper keys and his gun, then tried to figure out how he would carry the briefcases and gun to the roof ladder.
He tried to put the gun in his pajama pocket, the keys in the other, and then grabbed the suitcases. It was all problematic as he was really messed up.
That’s when the door burst open, a powerful flashlight blinded him, and he knew he was about to be shot to death.
“Don’t shoot!” Raab pleaded. “Goddamnit, don’t shoot. I can give you millions. Don’t shoot.”
“Calm down, Doc,” a familiar raspy voice said from behind the harsh light. “I did as I was ordered. I brought you Doctor Hall.”