A rush coursed through his chest. The countdown had begun.
Early this morning Gadanz had flown from his compound in Tijuana to this one, which he kept in the jungles outside Bogotá. It was one of his smaller facilities, but he maintained more security here than in any other compound around the world except the one in Tajikistan. Law enforcement wasn’t the problem here in Colombia. The danger here came from other, much smaller drug lords who were desperate to somehow destroy his dominant and still-growing share of the South American cocaine trade.
For some reason he hadn’t suffered a migraine all day, even on final approach this morning to the landing strip down the hill. Generally, he was guaranteed to feel it then because of the gradual and prolonged change in cabin pressure. The pilots were under strict orders to get the plane down as fast as possible once they’d identified the landing area, but there were physical constraints, and he understood that. He hated the headaches, but they were better than fiery crashes.
Gadanz scanned the message he’d just received. Sterling now had possession of Jack Jensen’s brand-new wife and Troy Jensen’s one-year-old son, in addition to President Dorn’s illegitimate daughter. Things were going very, very well.
Gadanz leaned forward, grabbed his head, and screamed. This migraine had come from nowhere, like a blitzkrieg.
A long, mixed-freight train passed by on the bridge to Harpers Ferry. Sterling marveled at how many cars the two locomotives could pull.
The others had headed back to the inn. But he’d wanted some alone time out here on the bridge to think. By all accounts Chief Justice Warren Bolger’s death was simply as had been reported — a tragic accident. But Sterling prided himself on his data-gathering ability, and there was one piece of the puzzle that wasn’t fitting. The driver of the truck that had slammed into Bolger’s beautiful BMW had a brother. And that brother had received a sizable money transfer only two days ago.
Sterling hadn’t been able to identify the sender of the wire. He was still working on that.
Maybe it had been an accident, but it seemed awfully coincidental to have one of the targets on Gadanz’s list die so close to Operation Anarchy going live. Sterling hated coincidences. He always had.
CHAPTER 27
Jack’s gaze raced to the driver’s side mirror of Troy’s SUV when a shrill siren split the afternoon. “Damn it,” he muttered as he spotted the patrol car speeding up behind him on the country road, lights flashing. “This is all I need.”
Jack’s stress came from having Charlie Griffin gagged and hog-tied in the back. The windows were tinted, and he and Troy had draped blankets over the kid before Jack pulled away from the farmhouse thirty minutes ago. But Charlie might still be able to alert the officer during a traffic stop, despite the sock stuffed down his throat, the duct tape covering his mouth, and the rope securing his wrists to ankles behind his back.
Hopefully the cop was heading to some kind of minimal emergency, like a cat stuck in a tree, Jack prayed as he eased the SUV onto a grassy area beside the road so the cop could pass easily. Hopefully this interruption would be short. When the cop was gone, he could get to the Jensen compound, lock Charlie in the basement cell, and get back to the farmhouse.
Troy had stayed there in case Charlie’s father returned. So he could push their frantic investigation to the next rung in the ladder, to whomever Wayne Griffin was reporting to, because Troy doubted Griffin was the ringleader. The odds of L.J. and Karen being kidnapped on the same day were astronomical, which was why Troy figured it must have something to do with Red Cell Seven. How could a man like Wayne Griffin know anything of the unit? Griffin had to be simply a pawn in all of this, Troy had reasoned.
Jack had argued for both of them staying at the farmhouse until Wayne returned, but Troy was against the plan. Get a prisoner off-site and secured immediately. It was standard operating procedure in a situation like this, he’d claimed firmly.
Jack had no idea what SOP was in this situation. He just hoped Troy’s talk wasn’t simply a ruse to get an older brother off-site. An older brother who’d failed to fire first when they’d caught up to the pickup truck and almost ended up dead thanks to hesitating at a critical moment in the heat of battle.
He’d wanted to ask Troy if that was the case. But he’d let it go when Troy had told him to get back as soon as possible, after getting Charlie to the Jensen mansion.
The other possibility was that Troy didn’t want him around for the interrogation that would inevitably and quickly follow Wayne Griffin’s capture. But that didn’t matter now. He had a much bigger and more immediate problem than worrying about Troy violating a prisoner’s civil rights.
Jack groaned as the state trooper pulled up behind the SUV, and perspiration began seeping from his pores. The seep became a torrent when the kid began to shout and move about frantically in the back. The sounds were low and muffled, but the officer would definitely be suspicious if he heard them, and what the hell was he going to say then?
The kid must have figured out what was happening. When all the facts were revealed Charlie would be in bad trouble, too. But maybe the kid figured cops were the lesser of two evils.
Jack’s heart beat madly as he grabbed the registration and insurance cards from the glove compartment, turned off the engine, climbed from the SUV, and headed back toward the trooper.
What the hell was he being pulled over for, anyway? He’d made certain to do five-under the whole time just to avoid this possibility.
Before climbing out, he’d been tempted to yell at Charlie to stay quiet or there’d be hell to pay. But that might have alerted the kid to an opportunity and made him struggle harder and yell louder. So he’d said nothing.
“Stay where you are!” the cop yelled out the open window of the white cruiser with the narrow blue-and-yellow trim down the side. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Yes, sir,” Jack called back respectfully, raising his hands out of reflex as another car whizzed past. The guy driving the car laughed and pointed. Some people were such assholes. “No worries.”
He kept his hands up, where the officer could see them, but kept inching forward. He’d only made it a few feet beyond the back bumper before the officer yelled at him, and he could definitely hear the kid. The ruckus was faint, and maybe he could hear it more clearly because he knew what to listen for. But he didn’t want to count on that.
“I told you to stay put!”
Jack had made it another few feet along the pavement, but he could still hear the thumping and moaning. Couldn’t he? “Yes, sir.” At least the cop hadn’t ordered him back into the SUV. That would have been a disaster.
He glanced around. Dense woods were only a few feet to the left beyond the narrow strip of grass paralleling the road. But running would be such an extreme measure.
The officer climbed from the car and donned his gray Stetson as he strode purposefully toward Jack. He was tall and dark, and walked with a slight limp.
“What’s the problem, Officer?” Jack asked in a friendly voice. “I wasn’t speeding, was I?”
“You were talking on your cell phone.”
Jack swore he could hear the kid banging his head — or whatever — against the inside of the SUV and screaming through the gag. “Oh, right.”
Despite the text message he’d received about her kidnapping, Jack had been calling Karen’s cell number over and over. It was pathetic, but he had to do something. His calls kept going to her voice mail, and each time he told her he loved her after the beep. The officer must have seen him making the last call.
“I’m sorry,” he said, cringing as he handed over his license, registration, and insurance card. It sounded like a riot had erupted in the back of the SUV. “That was stupid. I’ll just sign the ticket, and you can get back to more important business.”