“You’ll let me go.”
“Absolutely. All we need is the coordinates.”
He slumped back and his face said, ‘in for a penny, in for a pound.’ He grinned. “I can do one better than that.”
“Use your words, Hugo,” Preacher said, narrowing his eyes, but it felt as if they were getting to the jackpot.
Hugo smirked. “I have the floor plans and the security set up. What would that be worth?”
Karasu pushed to her feet and walked over to Preacher. She pulled him to the front of the van where Gonchaya was driving through the city as if he did it often with a hostage in the back. “This is too good to pass up,” he said, his voice low enough, Hugo couldn’t hear them over the rattling of the vehicle and the humming of the tires.
“Agreed,” she said. “He knows he has no choice, but he’ll be in a familiar place, and we have no idea what kinds of B or C Plans he had in place for that matter.”
“Torture him for the information and ghost him,” Gonchaya said. “Either way, he doesn’t walk free.”
“Well, we got this far because you’re on the ball,” Preacher said.
Her expression tightened. “I’m not yet, we’re not. People are dead and families are destroyed.” Her voice broke a bit. “We need to think two steps ahead because whoever is planning these attacks is ahead of us.” Her words were bitter, and Preacher didn’t respond, thinking about all the people who had died in Paris, here in La Paz, in the jungle, and in Copacabana, and was afraid that if he let his anger go, he’d do more harm than good.
“We get the floor plan and the security set up. That will be freaking gold. It’s too good to pass up, so we’ll stay vigilant. He’s a hit man with no conscience, so underestimating him will not bode well for us.”
Karasu turned back to their prisoner. “Where is this intel, Hugo?”
The cold-blooded killer sat against the back of the van as easily as he pleased, but Preacher wasn’t going to take that as his acquiescence. Hugo had given them an address—his residence, it seemed.
“Drop me off a block away and let me do some recon,” he said to Karasu.
She nodded and let Gonchaya know.
The van stopped briefly, and Preacher unloaded quietly. “Let us know when it’s clear,” Karasu said, her sultry voice in his ear.
The homes were grouped together on a quiet street south of La Paz. The neighborhood was old. Hugo's condo was detached with a garden in the back. Hunched, he moved slowly, then circumvented Hugo’s place in a wide berth. His steps faltered when he spied a blue van two blocks further up the street. But it was the two men standing yards apart that got his attention. They were cleaning up the grounds, shoveling street debris into a cart. At this hour? The average person wouldn’t have noticed anything except when one of the guy’s head was down, his eyes weren’t on the job. They were on Hugo’s house.
NSH? Had Poma double-crossed them and alerted them? Preacher stayed on the far side of a small park and north, and passing the van, he punctured the rear tires with his combat knife, then made a sharp left out of the field of vision and kept walking. One of the men moved somewhere in the trees, out of sight on three sides. Preacher walked past the shoveling man. He was storing his shovel and picking up the handles of the junky-looking cart. Preacher took it all in and kept going. The dark hair, unshaved jaw, jeans and work boots, a ratty hooded sweatshirt. His steps slowed as his mind reproduced the image, bringing in clarity. The watch, he realized. Modern. Expensive.
Mercs. Hitters. Most likely NSH.
Preacher curved his path to watch the guy. The man pushed the cart to the trash cans, then set it down. He didn’t empty it or gather more debris, and instead walked to the bulk of the trees near where the first man had disappeared. Then he vanished too. Preacher couldn’t see anything. It was so dense. Not even their feet.
Preacher doubled back to their hiding spot, keeping his distance and using the trees for cover. From his vantage point, the pair scarcely shifted the bushes, but he saw the flick of movement. Hand signals. Moving behind another tree, he went down on one knee a few yards back, his heart pounding. It was dinnertime, the neighborhood quiet, lights blinking on in the widows. Hidden behind a thick line of bushes that edged the park between the cluster of trees, he slid to his stomach, saw their boots, then low crawled toward their position. Urban warfare, he thought as he curled to his knees. He rose slightly, putting his foot down slowly, careful not to make a sound as he moved forward.
He moved in, making his breathing low and shallow. Instinct and training took over. Silent and careful, he eased closer. He spied the men, a less than clear view inside the covey of bushes. Preacher rose slightly, an arm's length behind the men. They were watching Hugo’s house. The man shifted and Preacher went into action. He delivered a brutal blow to one man’s temple. He dropped. Instantly, the other spun, drawing his weapon. Before he could fire, Preacher grabbed the silencer muzzle, yanked it downward as he jabbed him in the throat. Hard and fast, cutting off his air and crushing his windpipe. A reflex shot went into the dirt as the man dropped and choked. Preacher pressed hard on his jugular and watched the guy fade out.
He finished off the other guy, searched them, but in typical fashion, the covert ops MO was to erase all telltale signs of identification, no labels or ID. He pulled them under the bushes before he edged out of the park. He approached the house. If he was running this op, he would most definitely put a man on the inside. He slipped to a window and carefully opened it. Climbing inside, he found the guy hiding behind a wall with a clear view to the front door. He put a bullet in the guy’s head with the silenced gun.
He dropped. “It’s clear,” he said.
Minutes later, Karasu and Gonchaya showed up with a flex-cuffed Hugo. He led them to his computer stashed in a hiding spot in the wall. He paled a bit as he stepped over the assassin. Once they had the laptop, they had everything they needed. Hugo gave up the coordinates and Karasu, took care of their last loose end. By the time they drove away in the van, the poison had done its job.
16
DEA Agent Nancy Chambershad expected this request from the moment she had seen her family’s faces on that NSH terrorist’s phone, because the vial they injected into her arm when they had ambushed her wouldn’t have convinced her to betray her country. The message was clear and concise on what she was supposed to do, even as her gut churned. The vision of her five-year-old daughter flashed in her head and her beloved husband’s face. God how she loved them. She really didn’t have a choice.
She walked out of her quarters at the HQ, emptying her mind, running on adrenaline and fear. The first guard she met, she pulled her silenced weapon and shot him. Stepping over the body, she went through the building, eliminating anyone who would stop her. She went downstairs to where the prisoners were being held.
She had one man on his knees until she got the information she needed, then she killed him. She walked to the other man and pulled the trigger without even going into the room.
Then with a bleak and hollow heart, she slipped into the garage and waited.