Sadly, he would have to end these men. It had been a long time since Bodie intentionally committed violence — past events had led him to commit only victimless crimes — but he knew as well as anyone that they’d been set a task, a mission, and could not return to their captain with anything less than a win. They would keep coming, but if they never made it back, it should give Bodie another day. Maybe two whilst the man that paid for his murder made some kind of re-evaluation. So Bodie did what he had to do.
To survive.
Nothing moved in the shadows. The prison still spewed forth its nightly distractions and diversions, its screams, loud music and flashing lights, its hooting and hysterical laughter, its gunfire. But where Bodie stood, and all around, sat only silence and shadow.
The bodies lay cooling where he left them, so Bodie relieved them of small weapons, cash and anything else that seemed important and then strode off, nursing wounds, to find another corner to lay his head, only one thought flashing across his mind like the urgent, bright red letters on a giant billboard.
I have to get the hell out of here!
CHAPTER FOUR
Acapulco Bay sat pretty beneath the midday sun; glistening seas and sandy beaches perhaps not quite taking enough attention away from the worn hotel facades, signifying that this ’50s Hollywood glamour spot may have lost much of its attraction and fame, if not its natural finery.
High rise hotels dominated the southern end of the bay, minimal in luxury and at maximum turnover. Tourists tended to stick to the hotel beach, or the small strip that ran around the bay, paying top-dollar for generic, well-organized trips rather than opting for a spur-of-the-moment wander around town.
Cassidy Coleman dipped her toes in the warm pool water that belonged to one of these hotels, her lithe, bronzed body glowing with oil and sunlight, reflective Ray Bans turned exclusively in a single direction, thoughts vectoring along but a single, pissed-off highway.
For fuck’s sake, these guys are supposed to be good? Just give me a name. A place. A body to go fuck up.
At least one of the others felt the heat of her glare over the heat of the day. Eli Cross glanced over.
“Cassidy, we’re doing our best here. Doesn’t help you firing the eye-daggers across.”
But she was mega-pissed, not even having the goodwill to engage in their usual banter. “Four days to find him. Four days. Now, five more and you still don’t have a plan? Fuck’s sake dude, get it together or I’m just gonna smash right through the front door.”
“That might actually be the only way,” Jemma Blunt said. “There’s nothing regimental about this prison. No routines to plan around. We’re not talking a Supermax here, Cassidy.”
“Nah, it’s not that simple.” Sam Gunn said. “If this were a Supermax we’d be sorted. Conversely, it’s the lack of proper security that’s the problem.”
Cassidy snorted. “Fuckin’ geeks. Mess with their standard cereal and they’re all at sea. You do know I could kill you with my big toe, don’t you?”
They all threw a glance across. “You’re already killing me,” Cross said with a hint of impropriety. “With that body.”
Cassidy gritted her teeth. “This ain’t the time, dude. This sure ain’t the time.”
Cross changed his attitude quickly. “You’re right,” he said. “So just gather round. We need a chat.”
Cassidy looked around the pool, unable to shake that peculiar feeling that what they were doing here was wholly wrong. The leader of their little family was reeling inside a Mexican shithole whilst they wallowed under the midday sun, dipping their toes in a pleasant, if not pristine, swimming pool. Cassidy had wanted to go all out, storm the prison with guns and swords and tanks — everything they didn’t have and Guy Bodie would never have sanctioned. Jemma had insisted they have a plan — it was her job and she did it to perfection, the best in the world. Sam Gunn had convinced her he could hack and piggyback and ‘black-hat’ his way through their systems to make their incursion fool-proof and safe. Eli Cross, with his experience and excellence, had backed them. Now… Well, now they looked shakier than a drunken man on a pogo stick. But family was family, and this was the most authentic one she’d ever had.
Home is a feeling of belonging, Bodie always said.
It rang truer with her than everything she ever learned at school.
She rose, pulled a towel around her, and padded over to the plastic table. Wet footprints charted her path. They had deliberately chosen the area where nobody wanted to be, unshaded and scorching hot in the midday sun. In Eli’s redneck enunciation: “It’s a goddamn sight better than my crappy room.”
Yeah, but was it right?
Cassidy shrugged it off. Jemma and Gunn were the morally precious ones, not her. Both, she expected, because they hadn’t quite yet shrugged off the trappings of youth. They hadn’t see it all yet, not like her.
“What you got, simpletons?”
Gunn regarded her with hurt. “Here.” He jabbed at a computer screen filled with a blueprint of the prison. “And here. Both trafficking points. We think drugs, guns, other weapons, whatever. But it’s the weakest entry point.”
“How the hell do you know that? You haven’t even set eyes on the place.”
“That’s my job, if you remember.” Gunn looked even more hurt now. “I might not be deadly with my fists like you guys, but I sure can smash up a keyboard.”
“Indulge me.” Cassidy took a long drink of bottled water, the sweat around her neck trickling downhill as she tipped her head back. “I’m not just the muscle, you know.”
“Nah, you’re the distraction too,” Cross said with the gleam of a smile.
“Google Maps gets us started.” Gunn mimicked zooming in from afar. “Diagrams from the planning office, very old, gets us a bit further. But that’s kids’ stuff, and basically unreliable. For the real cream you have to troll a little. Y’know. The dark web?” He spoke it like a narrator might reveal the name of a horror movie.
“I know the dark web,” Cassidy said. “It’s full of what you English might call ‘boring wankers.’”
Gunn looked away. “It’s also full of extremely nasty shit, hard to navigate and even harder to crack from a remote terminal like this one.” He tapped the Apple. “Give me a little credit.”
Cassidy leaned forward. “I’ll give you credit when your plan helps get Bodie back.”
“Basically, I found the men that work for the man that runs the prison. He tells them what he wants. They find it and send it through. And of course they communicate with computers. It’s the best way for a man that isn’t a prisoner living inside a prison, running it, guards, local councils and all, because he wants to.”
“And that took four days?”
“The info’s not just lying around. There’s no Dark Google. You have to coax it out of people by making a few digital friends. Most of the time, the only way they let you in is if you hack something they can’t.”
Cassidy tried to get her head around that, but failed. It didn’t matter anyway. “Focus on Bodie,” she said. “What’s next?”
“That’s where I come in,” Jemma said. “Gunn is the hacker, I’m the planner. We use Sam’s Intel to procure something valuable, something they want, and approach this ‘trafficking’ gate. Then it’ll be up to you and your silver tongue to get us inside.”
“Tongue or fist,” Cassidy vowed. “We’ll be inside about three minutes after we arrive.”
“That’ll do. Now, we have a rough idea of where Bodie will be, judging by the way they group off in there. More Gunn Intel. I believe, at night, with Eli’s and your skills, Cassidy, we can make our way to that area unseen. If they send a guard or two with us we can handle that. The disorderly way they do things inside, makes me think they might never even be found—”