“Try to hold on to me,” he said.
“Who are you?” she asked, looking up at his face, which was dripping with water, grime, and blood from the dozen or so wood and metal shards embedded in it.
“An American soldier.”
“Where are we?”
“Cover your mouth and nose with the sheet and close your eyes. This might get hot.”
Chapter Fifteen
Never trouble another with what you can do yourself.
– Thomas Jefferson
Suárez was standing in the front hallway, getting ready to exit out the side door, when he saw a dark head descending through the smoke.
“Akil?” he whispered.
“No. It’s me, Crocker.”
Suárez hurried toward him, thinking he looked like a character in a slasher movie-soaking wet, blood dripping down his face and neck, holding a shroud-covered body in his arms.
“Dead?” Suárez whispered.
Crocker shook his head.
A grin spread across Suárez’s face. “What do we do now?” he asked.
The front door was covered with flames. Crocker nodded to the side one.
Suárez ran ahead and helped Crocker clear the woman’s pale legs through the doorway.
Outside, in the night air, he thought that he admired these guys more than he ever could have imagined. Not only were they the baddest of badasses, but they did their extraordinary work like it was no big deal. Another day at the office raiding a drug cartel leader’s house without planning or backup. No sweat walking through fire to rescue someone from a burning house.
Suárez helped Crocker set the shrouded body on the bed of the olive-colored pickup. The person underneath it stirred, and a woman’s blue eyes peered out.
Suárez patted Crocker on the shoulder and pointed.
Crocker nodded as the woman whispered weakly, “Am I okay?”
“Fine, Mrs. Clark,” Crocker answered. “Lie here quietly. Breathe the fresh air. We’ll get you out of here in a minute.”
As he spoke, angry flames reflected in her curious eyes. Ten yards behind him, the entire left front of the house was engulfed in smoke and fire.
Remembering something, Crocker grabbed Suárez and asked, “Where’s Gomez?”
“He’s waiting near the gate.”
“Good. Stay here.”
“And do what?”
“Talk to her. Tell her a story. I’ll be back.”
Suárez couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Crocker was actually heading to the same side door they had just exited and was about to reenter the house. “Sir?” he called softly.
Crocker paused on the lawn and spoke past his shoulder. “Don’t call me sir. Call me chief, or boss if you want. Call me dickwad or motherfucker, but don’t call me sir. I work for a living.”
“Okay, boss.”
Crocker spun on his toes and entered the house.
He found Akil in a room off the kitchen, kicking in a closet door that was covered with hand-painted vines and flowers.
“Find any sign of the other female?” Crocker asked to Akil’s back.
“Only flour, maize, beans, tortillas.”
“You recheck upstairs?”
“Yeah. Negative. I grabbed some medical papers, which I stuck in my vest.”
“No sign of the other hostage?”
“Your ears messed up? No.”
“Where’s Manny?” Crocker asked.
“Out by the pool, checking the cabanas.”
He’d forgotten about the grounds.
“Anything else I need to know?” asked Crocker.
“Yeah. In about five minutes the Federales are gonna be swarming all over this place,” Akil growled.
“Right.”
“And this guy’s got an amazing porn collection and a Pirates of the Caribbean poster signed by Johnny Depp.”
“What we need is a helo.”
They checked the rooms at the rear of the house, looking for hidden chambers or a basement of some kind, before the smoke started to overwhelm them. Then they escaped out the back, where darker smoke obscured the sky. When Crocker tried to use his headset, he discovered it wasn’t working, because part of it had melted from the flames and heat.
Turning to Akil and pointing to his, he asked, “Yours working?”
“My gear always works.”
“Tell Manny we’re on our way, and tell Suárez we’ll be at the front gate in five mikes,” he said to Akil, who did and reported back.
“Gomez and Suárez are both freaking out.”
“Good. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
Crocker pointed toward the pool, which was lit from inside and looked like a cool, inviting dream. They sprinted across the lawn and past it to the cabanas, where they found striped towels, mattress pads, inflatable pool toys, and a stack of magazines.
Crocker slapped Akil on the shoulder and led the way to the stables, where they caught up with Mancini.
“Find anything?” Crocker asked.
“Horseshit and bridles,” Mancini replied, kicking some of the former from the bottom of his boot.
“I was thinking in terms of a second hostage.”
“I found a pink bikini in one of the cabanas and a woman’s headband,” Mancini replied, pulling them out of his back pocket.
“Which means a woman was there. Any woman. Anything else of significance?”
“Like a fresh grave? No.”
Crocker tossed the bikini and headband to the ground as flames from the burning house licked the sky. There was still a lot of ground to cover, so he decided to bridle one of the stallions.
“Here’s what we’re gonna do,” Crocker said, thinking out loud. “Manny, you’re gonna inspect the barn and sheds along the front fence while I check out the landing strip and hangar.”
“What about me?” Akil asked.
“You still have your camera?”
“Yeah.”
“Run back to the gate. Have Gomez and Suárez move the vehicles away from the house. Then reenter the front gate and photograph the faces of any of the dead Mexicans you can find.”
“Okay. Where?” Akil asked.
“Where what?”
“Where do you want us to move the trucks?”
“Down the road somewhere, away from the front gate so they can’t be seen. Wait there when you’re finished photographing the dead men. We’ll find you.”
The big brown horse looked anxious to move. Crocker was in a hurry, too. He grabbed it by its mane and jumped up and slid onto its back. The horse shuddered and neighed.
“How long are you gonna be?” Akil asked.
“As long as it takes.”
Using the heels of his boots, he coaxed the brown horse from a trot to a gallop. Rotors of an approaching helicopter echoed in the distance. The thick night air caressed his face, reminding him of the last time he’d ridden a horse at night, as a teenager on his cousin Johnny’s farm in New Hampshire-which seemed like a lifetime ago.
Reaching the square tin-roofed terminal building, he tied the stallion to a lamppost and searched. His NVGs had bit the dust somewhere in the house, so he flipped on the Maglite he carried in his low-profile vest.
A concrete airstrip stretched to his left and right and faded into darkness. Over it swirled thousands of mosquitos and other insects. He heard a siren wail in the distance. The half-moon hung crooked in the sky.
The door to the little terminal was locked, so he kicked it open and surveyed its contents: a desk, a radio, navigational equipment, and a Pirelli calendar with a naked Kate Moss leering at him from the wall. Judging from the dust on the surface of the desk, it hadn’t been used in weeks. In its drawers he found some cans of soda, a loaded.38 revolver, a receipt for Jet A-1-type fuel, a chart with the variable costs of operating a Learjet 60XR per hour, a serial number (N662MS), and the purchase price ($8,950,000) and seller (Maxfly Aviation).
He stuffed the documents and the revolver into his utility pouch and moved on.
The hangar was more of the same-tools, jacks, tire blocks, spare tires, drums of Type K lubricant, a repair manual, men’s overalls, cables, ropes. But no people, or anything to indicate that anyone had used it recently.