Rendition Protocol Page 15

  “What?” Gaviria yelled back to the guards. “You two are paranoid.”

  “Patron,” one said, as he panted to regain his breath. “She is not as she says.”

  “What are you talking about?” Gaviria said.

  The other guard grabbed Jana. “It is her, Patron. She’s the one that put Montes in the hospital.”

  A burst of adrenaline rocketed into Stone’s veins and he hopped off the platform and onto the sand below. His first thought was to shoot both guards and then go after Gaviria. But Kyle? The instructions were clear. Gaviria must be taken quietly. 5.56 mm NATO rounds were the exact opposite of quiet. The gunfire would draw a flood of bodyguards and a firefight would ensue. Kyle could not be rescued this way.

  Gaviria looked at Jana. “Is that so?” He grabbed her throat while the bodyguards muscled her arms behind her back, then bound her wrists. Jana struggled futilely. Gaviria yanked her ponytail and said to the guards, “You two wait out here.” He looked at the cabana which was only twenty feet away. “She and I are going to have a little talk.” He wrenched her kicking and screaming into the cabana.

  46

  Predicting the Unpredicted

  Thunder cracked in the mouth of the bay and the wind gusted harder. Heavy waves crashed against the boats and shoreline. Stone looked from one guard to the other and tried to devise a plan. I’ve got to think, dammit! Whatever it was, it had to be silent and it had to happen right now.

  He slung his HK416 over his shoulder and crouched below the boardwalk. Then an idea occurred to him. It’s the lightning, he thought. He shut his right eye and held his left open, a technique used by special ops troops to allow the soldier to see his own rifle sights right after a flare-parachute illuminates a darkened battlefield.

  Come on, come on! Stone thought as he waited. But then it happened. Lightning flashed just overhead. The resulting pulse of brilliant light followed by immediate darkness provided the perfect cover. Stone leapt over the railing behind one of the bodyguards. In a blinding blur, he reached from behind and placed a hand across the man’s jaw and back of his skull. He wrenched, then twisted with a sudden, violent jerk. The spine crunched under the dual forces. But even before the body could drop, Stone leaned into him and forced the man’s torso to flop onto the side rail. Stone flipped the man’s feet over the railing. The clap of thunder was so cacophonous it covered the sound of the body crashing onto the ground.

  Stone leapt over the railing and yanked his carbine into position and prepared for the worst. Just above the crashing of the next wave, he could hear Jana scream again. Shit! I’ve got to get in there! The other guard peered into the cabana window. He had not seen Stone’s action.

  Going to have to get lucky on this next one. He heard something shatter inside the cabana, like the sound of a coffee table being crushed. He pulled off a paracord bracelet and unwound it into its sixteen-foot length. He’d used it in survival situations for everything from fishing to tying a tourniquet. But now, he had a different use in mind. He shuffled beneath the boardwalk closer to the cabana. In the darkness, he tied one end to a side rail, then tossed the length across the boardwalk to the other side. He shuffled underneath and pulled the cord taught, then tied it off.

  Lightning flashed again followed by a huge thunderclap. This time, the other bodyguard looked up. When he noticed his partner was nowhere to be seen, he took off in a blind run. He tripped across the paracord and went airborne. Before he could crash onto the hardened planks, Stone leapt the side rail. But no sooner had he pounced did the man blast Stone across the face with an enormous fist. Stone flipped over the railing and crashed onto the ground. He leapt up just in time for the man to jump down on him. They thrashed in the reeds in a blinding brawl.

  47

  Adrenaline Infused Terror

  Jana pulled against the bindings on her wrists but Gaviria shoved her into the cabana. She tripped across the entryway and crashed into the bamboo coffee table. It shattered beneath her. All the air in her lungs abated.

  “So you’re the little bitch that tried to take out Montes, huh?”

  It was all happening so quickly and Jana struggled to catch her breath.

  “Who hired you?” He yanked her to her feet as she struggled to bring air back into her lungs. He shook her violently. “Who hired you?” he screamed then back-handed her across the face. As her body spun around, she jammed a back kick into his chest and he flew into the wall. But he reacted like lightning, throwing a right that impacted her jaw and sent her to the ground.

  Gaviria laughed. “Did you think, doing what I do, anyone would respect me if I was just some pussy? Now you’re going to tell me who put the contract on Montes, and you’re going to tell me right now.”

  Jana was blinded by pain in her jaw. Her vision blurred. It was hard to tell the difference between an impending PTSD episode and pure, live terror. Lightning crashed outside and the thunderclap shook the tiny bungalow. She struggled to form a plan, any plan. Before she knew it, he was atop her, his hands crushing her throat. He yanked her head up and down as he choked her. He screamed, “Who hired you?”

  Jana saw a blurred figure appear behind Gaviria just before everything went black. She had lost consciousness.

  48

  The Awakening

  Jana’s eyes flicked open but everything was so dark and loud. She was half conscious and pain permeated her body. She found her hands were still bound. Thunder exploded from somewhere above and she was being pelted with driving rain. The surface beneath her rocked violently and her body bounced up and down. Her consciousness faded and she again blacked out. In her mind’s eye, she found herself running through the woods toward her special hiding place, her fort. If she could only get to her fort, everything would be okay . . .

  The floor below her bounced again and her body slung against something. The noise above was deafening. She looked in one direction and saw Stone crouched. He was pointing his rifle in the direction behind them and Jana could now recognize they were in a boat. The boat. Cade got us a boat. It all made sense to her.

  Bolts of lightning shot horizontally across the sky, accompanied by a boom so loud she thought they had been hit. They were in the heaviest rain she’d ever experienced. She looked toward the front of the boat and squinted into the raindrops but could barely see. Though her hands were still bound, she felt the tremors. They started in her right hand but quickly spread across both arms and torso. The PTSD episode took a violent turn for the worse. Soon, she was convulsing. The last thing she remembered was a dark, murky liquid rolling across the white deck toward her. It sloshed together with rainwater to form a slurry, and there was no question, it was blood.

  49

  Gagged and Bound

  Jana awoke in a sea of darkness. She was disoriented and sat upright and looked around. She was in her bedroom at the safe house. Her hands were free but her jaw hurt. She touched it, and what felt like an electric shock pulsed. She could feel the swelling.

  She stood and steadied herself. In the distance, thunder rumbled—the storm had moved past. She heard voices and opened the bedroom door, then squinted into the brightness of a lamp.

  “Oh, come on, you big baby,” a voice said. “It’s not that bad.”

  “Ouch, dammit, that hurts,” she heard Stone reply.

  In the blur of her vision, it looked as though Cade was applying a set of butterfly bandages above one of Stone’s eyes to seal a gash.

  “Hey,” Stone said, “you’re up. You feel okay?”

  Jana placed a gentle hand on her jaw and rubbed her neck. “Well, I’ve felt better. What happened? The last thing I remember was—”

  But she stopped midsentence. Cade turned around, only it wasn’t Cade. It was her father.

  Jana’s mouth opened. “What are you doing here?” There was anger in her words but, speaking against the swelling in her throat, her volume was hushed.

  He didn’t answer, but instead turned back to Stone to apply the last butterfly.r />
  “Dammit, old man, that hurts,” Stone said.

  Ames wiped a stream of blood that had made its escape. “You’ll be fine,” he said as he pulled Stone up. “Here, take a look.” He pointed at a mirror on the wall and Stone examined the work.

  He turned to Ames. “Hey, this is pretty good. You’ve done this before?”

  Ames exhaled and shook his head. “Not my first time.”

  “I don’t understand,” Jana said. “How did he get here?” Her voice was shaky. “Kyle! Oh my God. Did we ruin our chance to get Kyle?”

  Stone said, “Relax. We still think everything is okay as far as Kyle goes. When Rojas is told that the target he assigned you is now gone, he’ll be pleased.”

  “But, but . . .” Jana stuttered. “The bodyguards! It was supposed to be so quiet. Gaviria was to be taken out without anyone knowing what happened! Rojas will know.”

  “As far as they’ll know, it was quiet,” Stone said. “The other bodyguards at the club never saw a thing. The storm covered our tracks. It’s all handled.”

  Jana pulled a chair closer and sat. She turned her attention to her father. “Then explain that,” she said as she pointed.

  Stone examined her neck and jawline. “There’s going to be some swelling, but your jaw isn’t broken.” He looked at Ames. “It if wasn’t for him, you’d be dead right now. In fact, both of us would be dead right now.”

  “What?” her voice had softened.

  “Late yesterday, after Cade went to rent the boat,” Stone said.

  “What about it?”

  “I don’t know how to tell you this. But yesterday Cade disappeared. I didn’t know where he was. He went to rent the boat and that’s the last I heard from him. When I called his cell, it rang here at the house. He’d left it. I didn’t tell you because I knew you’d lose your shit.”

  “What happened to Cade?” She stood. “Where’s Cade?”

  Stone put his arms on her shoulders. “Right now, we don’t know. But we’ll find him, okay?”

  “There’s two missing now?” Jana said as her thoughts swirled. “He’s been gone this whole time? Did he get taken?”

  “I know, I know,” Stone said. “Here, sit down. When I couldn’t find him, I looked at his phone. I don’t know, I was looking for anything. But I did find one thing I’d suspected. The little cubicle jockey hadn’t deleted the Tile tracker app from his phone like he told me he had. At first I was pissed, but then thought that it might be the one thing that could help us find him. He has a Tile tracker on his key chain. So I opened the tracker app to see if it would locate him. It did. It showed his position on the map at the marina.”

  “So you found him?” Jana said.

  “Not exactly,” Stone said. “But it made perfect sense at the time because he appeared to be right where he was supposed to be, renting a boat. But when I saw the storm approaching, I got nervous. I wanted him to get the boat under the cabana as fast as possible. Otherwise the surf may have gotten too rough for him to get into position without banging into the piers that support the place. So I pinged him.”

  “But he didn’t have his cellphone,” Jana said.

  “I didn’t ping the cell, I pinged his tracker device. Tiles have a tiny speaker in them. You can use the app on your phone to cause an alarm to sound across the speaker on the tracker. That way, you can find your lost keys or whatever. I was hoping Cade would hear the alarm and get to a landline to call me so I could warn him.” Stone turned and looked back at Ames. “But it wasn’t Cade that called. It was him.”

  Jana covered her eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  Stone continued. “Cade apparently didn’t trust Mr. Ames here, and had taken the Tile from his own keyring and threw it in Ames’s boat so he could keep an eye on him. When I pinged the tracker, Ames called Cade’s cell and I answered. It was your father who brought his boat to help us. He’s the one that took out Gaviria. He’s the one that pulled that gorilla off me. He’s the one that got you into the boat, along with Gaviria, and that’s how we got out of there. He saved our lives.”

  Jana doubled over, it was as if she had a sharp pain in her stomach. She closed her eyes and began breathing very deeply, an attempt to thwart the demons. “We’ve got to find him. Oh God, how are we going to get both Cade and Kyle?”

  Jana’s father spoke softly. “Operationally, when faced with overwhelming odds, we take one objective at a time.”

  Jana glared at him then sat upright. “We? Are you supposed to be some kind of expert? And besides, you don’t get to do that,” she said. “You don’t get to disappear for twenty-eight years and then show back up and everything’s alright.”

  He waited. “There’s nothing I can ever do to make up for the sins of my past. There’s nothing I can do that would make it right. But maybe you can put that aside, just for a little while, until we get your friends out. I can help.”

  “I don’t want to hear it!” she said. “I don’t want to hear another word. Now leave and don’t ever come back. I never want to see you again.”

  Stone said, “Jana, none of us know what your life was like growing up without your parents, but he’s right. Look at our situation. We’ve got two men missing. We need his help. Not only is he willing to help, but he’s got operational experience.”

  “Yeah!” Jana yelled. “Experience in selling classified information to the Russians!”

  Stone continued. “As much as I agree with you, we need his help. He saved our asses out there tonight. Do you know what your father did at CIA before he became a case officer? He was a field operative.”

  Jana looked up.

  “That’s right,” Stone said. “His experience might date back to the Cold War, but the field is the field. I couldn’t get to you inside the cabana because of the two bodyguards. I thought you were dead for sure. But your dad, he came down on that guard. He didn’t hesitate. Before I even knew what had happened, your dad yanked a knife from my belt and jammed it into the guy’s neck. But he came for me only after he had saved you. It’s you, Jana. Your dad risked his life to save you. And look at him. He’s sitting there, ready and willing to do it again.”

  Jana shook her head and stood to walk into the bedroom. “In a couple of hours it will be daylight. I’ve got to get ready to tell Diego that Rojas Gaviria is dead. And I’ve got to have a plan to get Kyle out. After that, we’ll start looking for Cade.” She glanced at her father. “And you stay away from me. Don’t speak to me, don’t look at me.”

  “Jana, wait,” Stone said. “We’ve got a problem.”

  “What now?”

  Stone walked to the other bedroom door and opened it. Lying on the floor was Carlos Gaviria. His hands were bound behind his back and he was gagged.

  50

  A Hidden Agenda

  “What is he doing here?” Jana said. “He’s not dead?”

  The duct tape across Gaviria’s mouth muffled his angered screaming.

  “But, there was blood,” Jana said. “Blood was all over the boat.”

  Stone said, “It was his blood alright, but he’s not dead. Your dad knocked him cold though.”

  Jana thought back to the moments before she was choked out, the blurred figure in the cabana behind Gaviria.

  Jana said, “What are we going to do? Just leave him on the floor? I thought you had dumped his body. We can’t keep him here.”

  “It all happened so quickly,” Stone said. “I was pretty out of it.” He pointed to the gash above his eye. “But without a rendition team, this is our problem now.”

  A ring tone emitted from Cade’s laptop and Jana walked over to it. “I can’t believe it. It’s that son of a bitch.”

  “Jana, wait,” Stone said. “Ames, get out of sight of the video camera. I don’t want anyone to know you’re here.”

  Ames walked behind the table so he could not be seen.

  She clicked a button on the secure video conference window. “Wallace? What the hell do you want?”

&nb
sp; “To offer my help, as always,” Lawrence Wallace said from the screen. His expression was smug.

  “Help? Yeah,” she said, “CIA has been so helpful so far.”

  “You would have preferred to locate Gaviria yourselves? And how would you have done that? As it is now, you have accomplished what you set out to.”

  “Really?” Jana said. “What we want is to get Kyle MacKerron out of harm’s way.”

  “The path to Agent MacKerron is through Carlos Gaviria.”

  Jana leaned into the monitor. “That was your agenda, wasn’t it? You provided Diego Rojas with a full dossier on Carlos Gaviria and he then gave it to me. Something is up, and I want to know what it is. What does the CIA want with a drug lord?”

  Wallace ignored the question. “As I said, I am here to offer my assistance.”

  “What makes you think we need any help?” Stone joked.

  Wallace said, “First, I congratulate you on taking out Gaviria. I am impressed.”

  “Great,” Jana said. “It’s been my lifelong goal to impress you.”

  “But you have quite a problem, don’t you?”

  “And what’s that?” Jana said, though she knew the answer.

  “Gaviria isn’t dead, is he? You can’t possibly hold Gaviria while you try to free Agent MacKerron. You need me to take him off your hands.”

  Jana looked at Stone then back to the monitor. “How do you know that?”

  “I know a great many things, Agent Baker,” Wallace said. “I can take Gaviria. A rendition team is what you’ve needed all along, am I right?”

  “I don’t trust you, Wallace. So I’ll ask you again. What does the CIA want with a drug lord?”

  “You let me worry about that.”