Eddie didn’t hesitate. “Though a challenging diversion, he’s worth nothing; But he has something in his possession, an antique piece of jewelry. For that, I’d give you ten million.”
“What if I told you that a person of interest we were looking for was picked up by facial-recognition software while passing through Las Vegas? Once flagged, SIGINT eventually pinpointed her in Quagmire. Surprisingly enough, under interrogation it turns out she’s friends with this Lorenzo of yours. My men will be picking him up shortly, right down the road. And for you, a special deal. I’ve neglected to mention any of this to my superiors.”
“Of course. But if your men screw this up and I don’t get my property back, I’ll hold you responsible.” A small dog began to bark in the next room. Who the hell brings a dog to a meeting like this?
“It’s already in motion,” the government man said. Somewhere, an armed squad was lying in ambush for us. They hadn’t the faintest idea where we actually were.
“I hope you realize who you’re dealing with, Gordon. Underestimating a man like Lorenzo can be fatal.”
Damn straight.
I opened the door.
VALENTINE
My blood had run cold when I’d heard Gordon’s voice. Then the Calm had washed over me, and suddenly I felt very detached. I couldn’t believe it. I had all but resolved myself to disappearing quietly. I had convinced myself that getting to Gordon was impossible, that it was just an angry fantasy. Now Gordon had been dropped right into my lap. He’d injected himself back into my life and screwed it up all over again. Beneath the Calm, at the outermost limit of my perception, I was seething with anger. He wasn’t going to get away this time. He wasn’t going to do this to me twice.
Reaper and I were in a shallow ravine that was about two-thirds of the way down the steep hill we’d come from. Hawk had crawled another twenty feet to a better position of cover. At the top of the hill was Bob with his rifle. At the bottom of the hill was the cinder-block building where they were holding Jill.
“Reaper, keep your head down,” I said. The nearest visible bad guy was far out of range of his stubby shotgun. “I’ll tell you when to move. Stay alert.”
There were two parties of men hanging around outside. One was presumably from Gordon’s group, since they had been driving the government Suburbans. Only three of them remained outside, doing a very poor job of keeping watch. The rest, more heavily armed in SWAT gear, had piled into a van and left. I figured that was the group that was supposed to be ambushing us at the arranged meeting point.
But several other cars that had just arrived, and these new guys were anxious. A handful of men got out and entered the building, including one of the biggest, fattest men I’d ever seen. This giant whale of a man was probably close to seven feet tall and had to weigh four hundred pounds.
“Who’s the fat guy?” I whispered into my radio.
“Unknown,” Bob tersely replied.
“Fat guy?” Reaper asked, suddenly sounding even more anxious. Before I could stop him, he poked his head over the ravine to see. A shocked look appeared on his face, and he immediately dropped back down.
“What is it?” I asked. But Reaper wouldn’t tell me anything. He just whispered into his radio that “the fat man” was here. Lorenzo clicked his microphone in reply.
Bob had said over the radio that these new arrivals were more alert, and that was definitely true. Compared to the government suits, the new guys looked like they belonged in a European fashion magazine, and they were all openly carrying weapons. Some had MP7 submachine guns, some had G36C assault rifles, and all were alert.
I was startled by the sound of a muffled explosion. The windows of the cinder-block building blew out, and the prison camp suddenly came alive.
The men outside were all startled by the blast. I put my aiming reticle on the upper chest of one of the new guys. He was hanging back by a sedan, his carbine shouldered, obviously providing rear security. I swiped my selector switch to the fire position and squeezed the trigger. I hit the man in the sternum, and blood from the giant exit wound on his back splashed onto the car door. He crumpled to the ground, landing in a small cloud of dust.
One of the others running full tilt toward the building caught a round in the chest and almost did a cartwheel into the dirt. With my hearing protection in I couldn’t hear the distant crack of Bob’s suppressed rifle, but I knew it was him. Another shooter, one of Gordon’s men, had drawn his pistol and was about to open the door to the cinder-block building. Before I could drop the hammer on him his head exploded into a red cloud, and down he went. Bob again. Damn. Dude knows how to shoot!
The others had turned around and were running back toward their vehicles. I fired at one of them and missed, leading him too much. But he froze when he saw the bullet impact the dirt, like a deer in the headlights. I squeezed the trigger again, and down he went. Scanning through my scope for targets, I lined up one of the new guys just in time to see a muzzle flash. Sand and tiny pebbles hit my face as his bullet impacted the dirt a few feet from me. I ducked back down into the ravine and was out of his line of sight, but more and more bullets snapped overhead and hit the rocks around us. Off to the side, Hawk slid into the gulley, calmly rocking a new magazine into his rifle.
Reaper was to my left, trying to become one with the earth. His already pale skin had gone white, and he had a death grip on his little shotgun. I could tell that this really wasn’t his cup of tea. Honestly? I wasn’t exactly having the time of my life, either, but there are worse ways to spend your time.
I got on my radio. “Bob, they got me pinned down. Help me out here.”
“Roger,” was all Bob said in response. A moment later, he spoke up again. “Hey, Nightcrawler . . . I got another one, but the rest are hunkered down pretty good. If you follow that ravine, it works its way down the hill and it’ll get you closer.” I signaled Hawk and used my hands to indicate for him to cover us. “It looks shallow as you get to the bottom, but there are some big rocks down there that’ll give you cover. You’ll come out pretty close to the corner of the building. Just make sure you watch both sides. Guys could come around the building either way. You up for it? I can’t get Lorenzo on the radio.”
“Roger. Moving.” I looked over at Reaper. “You ready?” He looked back at me, eyes wide but full of surprising determination. He nodded. “Alright, then. Follow me.”
Hawk popped back up, firing, trying to keep the bad guy’s heads down as Reaper and I moved. We snaked our way down the ravine, trying to stay out of sight. I could barely hear the occasional snap of a rifle bullet coming from Bob’s position, always followed by sporadic, sometimes automatic, weapons fire in response. They didn’t know where he was, and he was picking them off one by one.
We made it to the rocks at the bottom of the hill. We had to crawl from the end of the ravine, little more than a shallow gulley at this point, to the rocks. Reaper followed close, breathing hard and sweating heavily in his black trench coat. I crawled to the far left edge of the rocks, still in the prone. I was very close to the cinder-block building, and there was only one door on the side that was facing me. I also now had a clear view of the men taking cover behind the SUV, busily shooting at Hawk’s position.
I snapped off a shot, and one of the men fell. The other surprised me by how quickly he reacted and returned fire. I pushed myself back behind the rocks while he popped shot after shot off at us. He suddenly shifted his fire back toward Bob’s position after a near-miss from my sniper overwatch. I rolled out from the side of the boulder and fired twice. “He’s down,” I said into my radio.