“He’s left?” Mendoza said. “This is most unfortunate for you.”
“He’s out there. I told him not to go anywhere.”
Danny could taste the salt in the air. He heard the scuff of a shoe against pavement nearby, but when he turned he saw nothing.
“You had better persuade him to turn back now.”
Danny looked at Mendoza, then looked at the water. He said nothing.
“Let us be clear, you and I,” Mendoza said. “If he does not return to shore, your daughter is dead. It is as simple as that. If you cannot persuade him, your daughter is dead. It all rests on you.”
“Christ!” Danny said. His nerves felt stretched taut. He took out his cell phone and was about to hit REDIAL.
But then he stopped. Shook his head.
“Make the call,” Mendoza said.
“No.”
Mendoza’s eyes flashed. For the first time, Danny detected anger in the man’s face. Anger was good. Anger revealed vulnerability.
“You give the order to release Abby,” Danny said, “and I’ll get Galvin back here. But you’d better do it now, or you’ll lose Tom Galvin forever. Once Galvin’s out of cell range, it’s too late for you.”
“You do not make the rules of this game.”
“Let her go and I’ll make the call. You want a hostage, you have me. But let her go now. I want to hear her voice. Then I’ll give you whatever the hell you want.”
Mendoza gave Danny a basilisk stare. Taking a small mobile phone from his suit jacket, he spoke quickly in Spanish. Danny understood nothing of what he said.
Mendoza handed the phone to Danny.
“Daddy?” Abby croaked into the phone.
“Abby!” Danny said, tears in his eyes. “Baby. Where are you?”
“They tied me up! I think there’s a furnace? It’s like the boiler room-the basement of the school.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“He just left, Daddy, he’s gone. He cut off the things, the-those, like, plastic things for handcuffs?”
“You can move?”
“Yeah. I just want to get out of here. I-”
“Call Lucy. Right now. Ask her to pick you up at school. Can you do that?”
“Yeah. I-” She started crying. “Daddy, I’m sorry. I love you. I’m sorry-”
“Boogie. Sweetie. Just call Lucy, would you do that for me?”
He hung up the phone.
Mendoza nodded, and Danny nodded back.
“As I have said, I am a man of my word,” Mendoza said. “And now it is your turn.”
Danny dialed the number for Galvin’s BlackBerry. It rang once, and then Galvin came on the line.
“Danny, what the hell is it?”
“Please, Tom, listen to me. You need to return to shore. Come back in. This is important.”
“What’s going on?”
“Just-it’s important. I’m here on shore. Come back.” He clicked off.
Mendoza, he noticed, had suddenly flinched. Danny turned to look and felt an iron grip on his left upper arm and something cold and hard pressing into the side of his head and he knew it was a gun. He froze.
He heard another scuffing sound and saw someone was holding a gun to Dr. Mendoza’s head as well. They were flanked by two men who smelled of cigarettes and body odor and whose bulging arms were tattooed down to their wrists.
In front of them stood Glenn Yeager. At his side he held a large stainless steel pistol. He wasn’t bothering to point it at Danny and Mendoza. He didn’t need to. His muscle was taking care of that for him.
“Well, Daniel,” Yeager said. “Looks like you’ve brought us a Sinaloa legend. Dr. Mendoza, it’s good to finally make your acquaintance.”
Mendoza stared straight ahead.
Danny looked back at Yeager, dazed.
“Oh, yeah,” Yeager said, smiling, “and thanks for the tip. As always, we’re three steps ahead of you. Forgot about Galvin’s BlackBerry, didn’t you? Forgot we were listening in to everything you and Galvin said. Well, you enjoy your new babysitters. Phil and I have some business to transact with your friend Tom Galvin. And, Daniel?”
Danny looked at Yeager. Yeager smiled. “I knew you’d do the right thing.”
Danny saw where Yeager was heading: down the ramp to the lower level of the pier where some of the smaller ships were tied up. Down there, Philip Slocum and several other guys with guns were boarding what looked like a large black inflatable raft with an outboard motor. Slocum had a large assault rifle slung around one shoulder.
Then the inflatable’s motor roared throatily to life. Danny turned instinctively to the loud noise, and he felt Mendoza’s left arm twitch.
Suddenly, Mendoza torqued his body to his right, whipping his free left hand around. Something caught the light, something glinting and lethal and slashing. In almost the same instant, the man on Mendoza’s right turned questioningly toward Mendoza. Around his throat was a thin red seam. As the man moved, the seam in his throat gaped open and a geyser of blood spewed forth, and the man’s knees buckled and he sank to the sidewalk.
Then Mendoza spun to his other side as Danny jumped out of the way. The man who a moment earlier had been holding a gun to Danny’s temple now lurched away from the blade concealed in Mendoza’s left sleeve.
The blade whooshed in the air, missing its target. Danny dove to the ground, taking cover behind a tall concrete planter.
What happened next took no more than ten seconds, but it seemed to take minutes, as if time had somehow slowed.
Dr. Mendoza juked behind a broad wooden column, a large gun in his hand. He moved with balletic grace. The other man fired, the muzzle flash a tongue of orange flame, and a shot splintered the wood a few inches from Mendoza’s head.
Another muzzle flash and a bullet zinged against the brick sidewalk near Danny. He could feel sharp fragments sting the side of his face. He crabbed on his knees toward where Mendoza was crouching behind the column, and with one forceful lunge, he shoved Mendoza, hard.
Mendoza lost his balance, sprawling out from behind the column, and a bullet exploded in his abdomen. Mendoza gasped. Then suddenly came another muzzle flash, and a bullet whizzed, striking him in the chest. Holding his gun level in a perfectly steady grip, he squeezed off one more shot. There was a scream, and the shooter’s weapon crashed to the ground.
For a moment, there was just the whine of the outboard motor.
Mendoza’s white dress shirt bloomed red. He’d been badly wounded. He reached down with one hand to feel his abdomen, and his pistol slipped from his hand and clattered to the sidewalk.
A moment later, he seemed to list to his left and then toppled slowly, tripping over the chain-link barrier, plummeting headlong with a great splash into the black water.
A frenzied splashing in the water as Mendoza struggled to stay afloat…
Then nothing. Just the growl of the motor.
A distant shout from the water.
Danny lay flat against the brick. He waited for another gunshot, but nothing more came. He waited some more. Then he turned toward the harbor and saw the inflatable racing toward the El Antojo.
Danny scrabbled to his knees, then onto his feet. His ears rang. Transfixed, he watched the speedboat pull up alongside Tom Galvin’s yacht. Its motor sputtered and died.
The former DEA agents and their cartel associates began boarding the yacht, intent on killing Tom Galvin.
Danny found himself praying. All was now beyond his control. He had done his best. He had done everything he could.
He took out his disposable cell phone and hit the only number he’d programmed into it. He listened to it ring precisely three times and then stop.
He waited. Three, four, six seconds…
And then the night lit up with an immense flash of fire, as if somehow the sun had suddenly climbed back up over the horizon, bleaching the sky, and a second or two later came the explosion, an enormous deafening boom, seemingly out of sync, like a badly dubbed movie, and the El Antojo had become a vast ball of fire. The sky was ablaze with orange and red and plumes of black smoke, a great roaring inferno.