Elizabeth Lowell - The Wrong Hostage

“I’m not a government with a government’s problems. Neither is St. Kilda Consulting. That’s why we don’t have to call failure a ‘deferred success.’”

She laughed softly, raggedly, drew a broken breath or two, and forced herself not to look at her watch.

“Ready?” Faroe asked quietly.

“As in ‘Ready or not, here it comes’?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m working on it.”

“That’s what I love about you,” Faroe said.

“Work ethic?”

“Guts.”

“Guts?” She gave a crack of laughter. “I’m so scared my hands shake if I don’t clench them together.”

“And yet you keep on doing what has to be done. That, amada, is my definition of guts.”

SAN YSIDRO

MONDAY, 7:26 A.M.

THE MOTOR COACH WAS more crowded than it had been before dawn. Quintana Blanco was seated at the dinette table, speaking in low, sharp Spanish on a cell phone and taking notes on a legal pad. Harley was seated across the table from him, talking quietly into another phone.

A new operator had taken over in the cramped little kitchen. He was building a dozen sandwiches on a long counter that looked like a short-order cook’s prep table. The new op had the lean, weather-burned look of a hunter or a cowboy. His gaunt face was buffered with a salt-and-pepper beard. He sliced open packages of meat, cheese, and bread with a double-edged dagger. He had the same focus and economy of motion that the other operators did.

“Do you have any clumsy people in St. Kilda?” she asked Faroe.

“Clumsy ops don’t last long enough to get disenchanted with government service, drop out, and join St. Kilda.”

Steele was conducting a briefing in the rear salon of the motor coach. Three more operators had squeezed into the small space. Two were strapping, muscular men whose lats and pecs bulged beneath snug T-shirts. The third was a woman in her late twenties with long brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. The big men deferred to her without hesitation.

She was the one being briefed by Steele.

When she glanced up and saw Faroe, for an instant her face softened. Then the moment passed and her look of calm competence returned.

“Hey, Joe, how’s it?” she said quietly.

“Hi, Mary,” Faroe said. “Glad you’re here. You, too, Ciro, Jake. Grace, this is Mary. She’s the coldest sniper in the can. Ciro and Jake here spot for her and provide cover.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “From you, I suppose that’s a compliment.”

She offered Grace a handshake that was strong and at the same time restrained.

“I’m not sure I’ve ever met a sniper, male or female,” Grace said.

“Maybe you’ve never needed one before.” Mary’s smile was as confident and gentle as her handshake.

Steele said, “Joe forgot to mention that Mary is also an honors graduate from UCLA, physics and literature, and she quit the U.S. Army when they wouldn’t let her train in her chosen specialty.”

“Sniping is an old boys’ club gig,” Mary said.

“The bench used to be,” Grace said.

“Step by step,” Mary said, grinning. “We’ll get ’em yet.”

“Go, sistah!”

This time it was Faroe who rolled his eyes.

Steele folded the topographic map he’d used in the briefing. “News?”

“Nothing since I called you,” Faroe said. “We’re still waiting for Beltran to call.”

“He gave that thug a third of a million dollars in diamonds,” Grace said, “with the promise of twice that amount if and when.”

“Don’t worry,” Faroe said. “It won’t show up on your bill.”

“That wasn’t what I was worried about,” she shot back.

“Money is just money, but was it a wise investment?” Steele asked.

“Our final option is pretty much fucked,” Faroe said. “This is the only other dog in the race that Hector doesn’t own, so I’m backing it.”

“A real dog,” Grace said.

“Do you have a better idea?” Steele asked her before Faroe could.

“No,” she said starkly. She closed her eyes. “I-no. I’m sorry. It’s just that Beltran should have called by now.”

Faroe slid one hand into her hair and pulled her gently against him. “You have nothing to apologize for, amada.” Because she was right. “Yes, he should have called. A three-legged dog could have made it from the telephone to the village and back.” He looked at Steele. “What about you? You have a better dog to put in this race?”

Steele smiled oddly at both of them. On another man it would have been affection. With Steele it was hard to tell.

“The intelligence monitors have picked up a lot of traffic,” Steele said, “all scrambled, all on the bands used by the Rivas satellite cell phones. Randy is very impressed by their encryption program. It has three levels that we know of. He’s working on the fourth. From the language he’s using, it’s hard going.”

Faroe said something foul in Spanish under his breath and added, “Not good.”

“No, it isn’t. If we had more time-”

“We don’t,” Faroe cut in.

Steele nodded. “Something has changed just in the last hour or so, but we haven’t the faintest idea what it might be. So if you intend to make use of this miner and his intelligence, you’d better be quick about it.”

“Anything on the law enforcement bands?” Faroe asked.

“The Bureau and the DEA are scrambled,” Harley said. “Traffic volume seems routine but who knows? There are a few local agencies whose freqs are in the clear. Cahill heard what sounded like a surveillance convoy calling out street grid coordinates in Chula Vista. There’s something cooking but we don’t know whether we’ve got the elephant by his tail or his trunk.”

Grace turned inside Faroe’s arm and faced the other people. No one mentioned the tear tracks on her face.

“See if somebody can figure out what frequency the federales use in Tijuana,” Faroe said. “They’re the key. Hector owns them.”

“We’re all over it,” Harley said. “Nothing definitive or you’d know it already.”

“Fine, sorry, forget I mentioned it.” Faroe reined in his frustration, the knowledge that the last hours of Lane’s life were racing away and Faroe was helpless to do anything but take an assault rifle down to All Saints and die with him. “If there’s traffic, there’s action. Let me know when you know.”

Grace put her hand over his, pulling herself closer to him. She didn’t need to be a mind reader to know what he was thinking.

She was thinking it too.

Lane.

Seconds racing.

Minutes gone.

Less than five hours and counting down.

Too fast.

Not enough time.

ALL SAINTS SCHOOL

MONDAY, 7:31 A.M.

LANE HEARD THE NEW guards arrive, heard just enough of their conversation to know that he was being taken away. He dove for the satellite phone and hit the button that automatically connected him to Faroe.

One ring.

Answer it.

He grabbed his computer and ran for the bathroom.

Two rings.

Be there. Oh, God, please be there!

He locked the door behind him.

Three rings.

He turned on the shower.

Just like always. Nobody but Mom to-

“Faroe,” said a voice.

“They’re moving me,” Lane whispered.

“I can’t hear you over the background noise. Pitch your voice low and don’t whisper.”

“They are moving me,” Lane said, struggling with his voice and his fear.

“When? Where?”

“As soon as I get out of the shower. I don’t know where, but I got it! I cracked that sucker bigger than shit. It was so sweet. I had this old beta tester’s code key and they used it almost verbatim in the 8.0 version.”

In San Ysidro, Faroe put together enough of the rush of words to understand. Lane had hacked the file. “Good job! What’s in the file?”

“A bunch of numbers, bank names, and dollar amounts. Greek to me. Here, I’ll read you some. There’s a January eighth date, then Bank of Vanuatu, a ten-digit number, and the figure, two million three hundred thousand, to Sparbuch…”

Faroe closed his eyes, visualizing the data. Ted Franklin had used a blind overseas account to transship a hefty sum of money, then converted it to an Austrian savings passbook account.

“…followed by another sixteen-digit number,” Lane said. “Do you want me to read the number to you?”

The Sparbuchen were anonymous. Period. Creating new accounts was difficult, but existing accounts were still as protected from money-laundering investigations as they ever had been.

“I don’t need the number yet,” Faroe said. “How many entries are there?”

Lane juggled the phone between his ear and his shoulder while he wiped steam from the shower off the computer screen. “About sixty. No, more like seventy. Some of them look like duplicates.”

He glanced over his shoulder. The guards were shouting for him to come out.

“Give me a minute to dry off!” he yelled back at them in Spanish.

Then he punched a button on the laptop keyboard.

“Lane, what’s happening?” Faroe asked.

The keyboard popped up slightly.

“They’re getting impatient,” Lane said.

Someone began hammering on the door with something harder than a fist.

Lane grabbed the computer’s hard drive.

Wood splintered.

He pushed the hard drive into one of the many deep pockets in his cargo shorts and fastened the Velcro tab.

Wood groaned and popped.

He slammed the keyboard back in and shoved the gutted computer beneath a pile of damp towels. The charging cord stuck out like a flag. He yanked the cord out of the wall and buried it with the computer.

The door shuddered on its hinges.

“I’m coming!” Lane shouted, turning off the shower with one hand and reaching for the bathroom lock with the other.

The door burst open, shoving Lane backward. He tripped and went down. The satellite phone flew against the toilet, then bounced against the shower curtain and into the bathtub.

Kicking, cursing, and slinging punches, Lane tried to get free of the hands reaching for him. Something hit him on the cheek. His head roared and things went fuzzy.

A deep male voice snarled commands. Then the man picked up the phone.

“?Digame!” he ordered.

Faroe didn’t.

“Who you talk?” the guard shouted at Lane in English.

“His name is Ivegot Thedrive!” Lane yelled toward the cell phone.

Something connected with his head.

The world exploded into a nasty shade of red, then faded to the kind of black Lane had never seen before.

SAN YSIDRO

MONDAY, 7:34 A.M.

FAROE STARED AT THE handset. It took every bit of his discipline not to throw the phone against the wall.

Grace felt the rage tightening the muscles in his body. She spun toward him. “Lane? Is it Lane?”

“He’s okay,” Faroe said quickly, despite the sound of fists hitting flesh he’d heard. Some of those blows had undoubtedly been scored by Lane. He was a tough, wiry kid well on his way to becoming a man. “The guards are onto the phone. They turned it off. They’re moving him somewhere.”

“Is the phone with him?” Steele asked.

“Would you leave the phone with him?” Faroe asked sarcastically.

Steele didn’t bother to answer.

Someone from the back of the bus said, “Sat phone hasn’t moved from previous location.”

Faroe looked like he’d rather have been wrong about the phone. “Put someone on the real-time sat photos.”

“There are too many groups of people on the school’s grounds to be certain we have Lane,” Steele said. “The resolution simply isn’t that good.”

“Do it anyway.”

Grace watched Faroe. He looked calm, yet she sensed the waves of rage and frustration radiating from him. Suddenly he spun and hit the wall with his fist. A shudder went through the heavy motor coach.

No one said a word.

Everyone but Steele and Grace retreated to the far end of the motor coach, giving Faroe some room.

“Talk to me, Joseph,” Steele said quietly.

“If they get Lane away from All Saints, they’ll drag him down that rathole called Tijuana, and we’ll have hell’s own time finding him,” Faroe said.

What he didn’t say was that Lane would already be dead if and when they did find him.