He grabbed his MP5 from the floor of the passenger seat, staggered from the jeep, and climbed out of the ditch. When he reached the road, the thump-thump of an accelerating rotor filled his ears. The noise was coming from the direction of the white glow filtering through the trees.
Gadanz was escaping on a chopper.
Troy raced across the road, down into the ditch on the other side, and into the jungle. The rotors were almost to liftoff revolution — he’d been dropped off on missions enough times by helicopters to recognize the beat. He sprinted through the trees, slogged through a shallow marsh, and then broke through the trees just as the aircraft lifted from a brightly illuminated helipad thirty feet away.
He emptied everything left in the MP5’s dual banana clips, hitting the driver of the jeep and another guard as he closed in on the helipad and the chopper’s nearer landing bar, then dropped the submachine gun and lunged as the aircraft lifted away. For an instant he had a good grasp on the bar with both hands as he was hoisted into the air. But it was slick from the rain, and the air rush beating down on him from the blades felt like the gales of a Cat 5 hurricane.
He’d come so damn close, but there was no choice. It was time to cut his losses while he still could.
“Where’s the body?” Commander McCoy demanded tersely, arms folded tightly over her chest as she sat on the table facing the North Korean.
“I do not know of what you speak,” the man answered calmly in perfect English.
He was secured tightly to an uncomfortable wooden chair in the living room of the thatched-roof hut located at the edge of a sprawling rice paddy. But he didn’t seem concerned about his dire situation — or the least bit uncomfortable in the chair. Oddly, he seemed more intrigued by what would happen next than anything else.
“You know exactly who I’m talking about,” McCoy countered. “Last week the United States lost a pilot off Tanchon when his jet blew an engine. He ditched in the Sea of Japan, and you people picked him up.”
“Well, if that is true, you would have to kidnap a member of our esteemed navy to obtain more details. I am an economist at the Central Bureau of Statistics. I have no knowledge of what occurs off the coast of Tanchon other than what I read in the newspaper. And I do not recall reading anything about that.” He sighed as if he wasn’t proud of his career but had become resigned to it over the years. “I am just a mid-level bureaucrat.”
“Bullshit.”
He certainly looked the part of a North Korean bureaucrat. He was clean-cut and dressed in a dark suit, button-down shirt, conservative tie, and large-lens bifocals. In fact, he looked more like a professor than anything. But he wasn’t. She knew that for a fact. She had the right man.
“You’re a senior member of the National Security Bureau.” She removed a small .22 revolver from her coat and placed it on the table beside her leg so he could clearly see it. “You’re the secret police. You’re the bad guys in this part of the world, and you’re one of their worst.”
“I beg your pardon,” the man said politely with a perplexed smile. “I am—”
“You interrogated that pilot personally after the navy delivered him to you.” This bastard was good, very good. But she was better. “Then you executed him. You suffocated him with a steel cable.”
The man shook his head sadly. “No, I did not. It sounds so terrible. I am very sorry if it is true.” He sighed again. “I wish we could all just get along.”
She pulled a single bullet from the top pocket of her shirt, inserted it into a chamber of the .22’s cylinder, spun the cylinder, and placed the revolver back down on the table beside her leg, when it stopped spinning. “I just want to know where his body is so I can take him home. His family needs closure.”
“Well, I—”
“He wasn’t just a pilot.” McCoy eased off the table and picked up the gun. For the first time she’d seen concern on the North Korean’s face. Just a little, but it was there. “You and I both know that.”
“We do?”
“He was a spy. I’m not denying that. But I want his body. His mother is a devout Catholic. She must be able to lay his body to rest properly to have peace.” McCoy pressed the gun barrel directly to the North Korean’s forehead. Again, she had to give the man credit. He didn’t flinch as most did when metal touched skin the first time. “Tell me, or you have a one-in-six chance of surviving this first round of roulette.”
“His body is gone.” The man’s voice had gone low and gravelly in a heartbeat. His expression had gone grave as well. “There’s nothing I can do. I’m sorry. If I’d known, I would have made arrangements.”
She nodded as she turned and placed the gun back down on the table. “I appreciate your honesty.” She removed a thin steel cable from her coat pocket and uncoiled it. “But not your action.”
The man’s eyes went wide when she turned to face him and he saw the cable in her hands. As she moved behind him, he began to struggle violently against the ties binding his wrists and ankles to the chair. And as she slid the cable over his head and tightened it around his neck, he began to scream. But there was no one in the paddy field to hear him.
Tighter and tighter she twisted the cable. At first, the blood only seeped from the 360-degree wound cutting into his neck. But as she twisted harder and the cable dug deeper, blood gushed down and soaked his shirt collar.
When he was dead, she let go of the cable, and his head fell forward. “Good riddance,” she muttered, “and good revenge.”
The pilot who had ditched in the Sea of Japan had been a close friend and a good man. His death had been avenged — and now she could get to Kodiak.
After falling fifteen feet from the helicopter to the concrete pad, Troy had picked himself up and sprinted into the jungle. Miraculously, he’d avoided being shot by the guards and hadn’t been injured by the fall. His chest was still sore from the jeep crash, but it was nothing serious.
He spent several hours scouring the ruins for Bennington and his men, aware that Gadanz’s were searching for him. But he didn’t care. He didn’t leave anyone behind if at all possible.
However, when dawn began to break he headed out. It was possible that Bennington had been doing the same thing — searching for him — and they’d never find each other if they were both on the move. Hopefully, Bennington and his men had headed back to camp, and they could rendezvous there. So he began to retrace his steps through the jungle.
As he was about to reach the small clearing where he’d burned the pictures of Jennie and his family, a low growl came from above. He stepped back quickly and glanced up, appalled by the sight. Pablo’s bloody body lay sprawled across several branches, and a beautiful orange and black jaguar lay beside it, long tail twitching as the cat stared down at him menacingly.
CHAPTER 5
Daniel Gadanz reclined in a large, comfortable chair, which sat on a raised platform positioned against one wall. As he savored his favorite Cuban cigar, he gazed across the room through the dim light. His eyes were trained on two long curtains that were drawn together over the windowless room’s lone doorway. Even as he tapped an inch-long ash onto the thick rug covering the platform, he stared ahead, as if in a trance.
The ash continued to burn, and one of four raven-haired young women kneeling on the platform around the chair put it out with her palm when the rug began to smoke. She stifled a scream at the sharp pain suddenly searing her skin by biting down hard on her slender forearm. Like the other three women kneeling around Gadanz, she was beautiful — and naked.