"Makes me nervous to be stared at," Riley drawled as he cracked open one eye. "You ready for another exciting day?"
Westland shook her head. "I don't think I could take any more excitement. Especially on an hour and a half of sleep. What's on the agenda?"
Riley sat up. "First you take me out to the villa site again. I want to check it out during the daytime. Then you go and get a hold of the military attaché and try to make contact with Pike. I've got his STU-III number. Then you come back out and meet up with me sometime this evening to let me know what you've learned. Sound good?"
Westland nodded. "Ready when you are."
Ponte stiffened as he heard the Ring Man call for him from the adjacent office. Today had not been a good one so far and it was still early in the morning. Ponte went through the connecting door into his boss's office.
The Ring Man was on the phone. He gestured for Ponte to take a seat across from his desk and paused in his conversation. "I want you to listen in. This is the type of information I like hearing." The Ring Man punched the intercom on his phone and put the receiver down. "Tell me again what you have done, my friend."
"About an hour ago I assassinated Roberto Ramirez." Ponte cringed as he heard Ariel's accent come out of the speaker.
"How did you do that?"
"I hit his limousine with an antitank missile. Completely destroyed it. From what I've been able to find out, it killed not only Roberto but his second-oldest son, Miquel."
Ring Man laughed out loud. "The Shark is fish bait now." He turned to Ponte. "Miquel was the next in line, wasn't he?"
Ponte nodded glumly. Ariel's good work made his own involvement with the mysterious American seem all that more incompetent. "The eldest, Julio, is still in the States facing trial. He's looking at a life term. That leaves the third son, Jaime, and the youngest, Carlos. I'd say the younger is the more dangerous of the two left."
The Ring Man had already turned his attention back to the phone. "What are things like there? How are Ramirez's people reacting?"
Ariel's disembodied voice floated in the room. "There hasn't been time for them to do much of anything. They've recovered the bodies and pulled back to his house on the ocean and are fortifying themselves. In my opinion they're scared. I think the time is ripe for us to move into the city here and take over. The Ramirezes will be too busy trying to protect themselves to come out and try to stop us."
The Ring Man was all smiles. "Good. Very good. I want you to come back up here. Hold on a minute." He turned to Ponte. "Is my helicopter flying yet?"
Ponte glanced at his watch. "The repairs were just completed. It will be taking off from the airport in about forty-five minutes to go up to Barranquilla."
"Have it also pick up Ariel at the airfield in Cartagena. I want him down here."
As Ponte listened to Ring Man relay this information to Ariel, he realized that Ariel wasn't coming down here just to get a pat on the back. Job security wasn't exactly the highlight of Ponte's position. Ring Man himself had sat in Ponte's office prior to assassinating Ahate. Although Ponte knew that the Ring Man didn't consider him a threat, his boss might consider Ariel to be even less of a threat. Ariel, as a foreigner, could never rule in the cartel in Colombia.
The Ring Man startled Ponte out of his self-absorbed thinking. "Do I have to tell you again? Get moving on the call to the pilot."
Ponte scurried out of the office, half of his mind on what he had to do and the other half on what he needed to do to survive.
Ariel enjoyed flying in helicopters. He'd had the pilot fly low over the coast on the short run from Cartagena to Barranquilla. He could see the bulk of the city farther up the coast as the aircraft banked right and headed down onto a dirt runway. Ariel had heard about the aborted attack by the Americans on this lab site. He wished he had been there. The thought of meeting one of these American commandos piqued his military interest.
The pilot didn't want to shut down his engines so he had radioed ahead for the guards to have the prisoner waiting. As the skids of the Bell Jet Ranger touched down, four guards rushed forward, dragging a hooded and shackled figure. Ariel opened the back door and helped them position the man inside and lash him into the seat with the safety straps. The helicopter lifted and turned to the south.
Ariel reached over and removed the hood from the American. The prisoner blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light. Ariel could see that although the man's face was unmarked he was in some degree of pain. Ariel assumed that the sicarios had amused themselves with beatings while keeping in mind the Ring Man's instructions not to mark the face. Also, Ariel knew that the man had been knocked unconscious by a grenade blast during the firefight — but not before he had killed several of Ring Man's men. Ariel wanted to talk to this man who had shown such bravery and military prowess.
The Israeli grabbed the extra headset and plunked it down over the American's ears, positioning the boom mike in front of his lips. The prisoner regarded him with dark, angry eyes. Ariel knew he would have his hands full if this bear of a man got loose. There was little chance of that, though: The Colombians had shackled his wrists with two sets of steel handcuffs, and his feet were held with two rings welded to an iron bar that was tied into the floor of the helicopter.
"Can you hear me?"
The man's gaze swung around.
"What is your name?"
The man shook his head.
"You can talk. You have a hot mike. I'm interested in what you thought you were doing when you tried to attack this facility."
The man just glared.
"My name is Ben Ariel. I might be able to help you. I'm a professional military man just like you."
That brought a reaction. "You call yourself a professional, working for these scum? You're a hired killer. You're lower than whale shit."
"Ah, I see you can talk." Ariel smiled. "Yes, I do call myself a professional. I am just like you. I get paid to provide military services. I just do it for an individual instead of a government. I don't see much difference between the two."
The American shook his head. "You work for the money. I do it for my country. I would think you'd understand that, seeing where you come from if I read your name right."
Ariel shook his head. "I don't do this for the money. I do this because I am good at it. Just this morning I set up a beautiful ambush. You would have been impressed. Destroyed an enemy vehicle at almost two thousand meters. Do you have a name?"
The man shook his head. "You get no information out of me."
Ariel laughed. "If we wanted it, we'd get it. No one is immune. Everyone breaks. There isn't anything you could tell us that we don't know already. We're just keeping you alive in case we need you as a chip on the table later on. How does that make you feel? Just a bargaining piece, and not a very valuable one, I might add, since your government is still denying it did anything and is sticking to its air crash story."
"My feelings don't matter."
Ariel considered the man. He felt a certain empathy for him. From the report he had received the American had been captured by sheer luck. He'd been moving south along the coast when he'd run into one of the patrols Ring Man had ordered out after he'd received word from Maria on the impending raid.
"It is a shame that we have to waste your talents. The Americans have at least admitted that the dead men were from the 7th Special Forces Group. I'm impressed. I have heard good things about you Green Berets. Not as good as our commandos in Israel but still a potent force."