Aftershock: A Donovan Nash Novel (A Donovan Nash Thriller) (27 page)

Lauren put one hand over her mouth and waited—praying that Donovan wasn’t dead. William’s face was etched with equal parts concern and worry as they watched Buck slip from the parachute harness and gather in the billowing silk. He discarded the spent canopy in the water, brought his machine gun to his shoulder, and hurried to Donovan. Fresh tears filled Lauren’s eyes, and she held her breath as Buck rolled Donovan over onto his back and leaned in, the two white images blended into one.

She tried to focus on the screen, the infrared lens didn’t give a true three-dimensional view of what was happening, and the wing of the Cessna tied to the dock momentarily blocked her view. John swung the
Scimitar
into a tight turn to reposition the cameras. With the new angle, she could see that Donovan was sitting up. When Buck held his thumb in the air to signal that Donovan was alive, Lauren couldn’t see much more through the tears that filled her eyes. Everything she’d learned from Montero came flooding past the shock of seeing her husband gunned down. She had no idea what was going to happen in the next few minutes. Somewhere up the hill were Stephanie and Marie. As well as Eva—whoever she was.

Donovan gasped against the pain, trying to pull air into his lungs. He hadn’t opened his eyes, but he recognized Buck’s calm voice urging him to breathe. Strong arms had pulled him into a sitting position, and Donovan used his hands to steady himself. His lungs shrieked, and he coughed as the cool air made it all the way down. He blinked wordlessly at the pain that radiated across his back. When he opened his eyes, he could see the lake and the two bodies floating face down in the water. He groaned, managed to twist the other way, and found Buck leaning over him.

“You’re all right,” Buck said, more command than statement.

Donovan nodded, still uncertain what had happened, or how long he’d been out. “What happened?” he managed, fighting a wave of dizziness, trying to rise to his knees. The pain in his back nearly doubled him over.

“Shake it off. The vest stopped the bullets.” Buck hooked an arm under Donovan’s and pulled him to his feet. “Eva shot you. She’s one of the bad guys.”

“What?” Donovan wobbled slightly back and forth. The cobwebs were starting to clear, but each breath radiated a sharp jab from between his shoulder blades.

“She’s been playing us the whole time,” Buck explained. “Lauren figured it out.”

“Lauren? How did…?” Donovan tried to understand. He managed to grab another breath, and the pain was less this time.

“I have to get up to the house,” Buck said, letting go of Donovan to see if he could stand on his own.

Donovan read the urgency on Buck’s face and began to feel it himself. Buck held a machine gun equipped with a silencer. He saw the collapsed parachute in the water and understood at least on some level how Buck had arrived.

“You need to come with me. They might circle back down,” Buck explained. “How do you feel? You just took the equivalent of two ninety-mile-per-hour fastballs right in the back. You’re going to live, but you took a beating.”

Donovan reached down, picked up the Sig where he’d dropped it, and fell in step behind the former SEAL. Buck put the radio to his mouth and spoke quietly. The volume was turned down so Donovan could only hear a muffled reply.

“All I want you to do is stay close to me. Understand? Let me do the shooting,” Buck whispered. “John says Eva went this way; he also says there’s someone up beyond those trees.”

Each step radiated pain down Donovan’s spine, but he forced himself to keep pace with Buck. He scanned both the path and the foliage around the house. He listened carefully for anything above the soft sounds of their footsteps in the dirt. All he heard was the faint roar from the volcano, and he could feel the subtle, unnerving vibrations in the ground.

Buck hesitated for a fraction of a second and then swept his gun around the trees that John had described. On the ground lay the third body Donovan had seen since they’d landed. This one had two bullet wounds in his chest and a look of surprise etched on his lifeless face.

“She’s making quick work of her friends,” Buck whispered, then spoke into the radio. “John says it’s clear from here to the west side of the house. Follow me and stay low.”

Donovan nodded and though his back ached, he did as he was told, his fear and adrenaline propelling him forward. They reached the house and pressed themselves against the cool wall of concrete. With his gun out in front of him, Buck threw himself
through the open door, and Donovan followed. They were in what was left of the kitchen. The odor of gunpowder, burnt food, and the buzzing of flies greeted their sudden arrival. Donovan’s eyes jumped from the familiar cases of money sitting on the floor—to the body sprawled by the table. Buck kept the body in his sights as he went to the downed man, a pool of thick blood spreading out from beneath him. Donovan saw the knife in the dead man’s hand, and the trail of blood that led away from the kitchen.

“I think Eva wants the money for herself,” Buck whispered. “I also think this guy may have cut her.”

“Do you really think she did all this?” Donovan asked, matching Buck’s whisper.

Buck nodded and put his finger to his lips as they picked their way across the littered floor toward the next room. To their left, up a narrow stairwell, Donovan could hear the sound of voices. The trail of blood told them that they needed to go upstairs. Buck gingerly put his weight on the first step, then placed his foot near the side, closest to the banister; it creaked ever so slightly.

Donovan mimicked each move Buck made as they climbed. Three steps from the top, Buck stopped and crouched down as he peeked over the top—scanning the space above them before motioning for Donovan to follow. They both heard the murmur of voices coming from their left. Donovan tightened his grip on his pistol and waited for Buck to round the corner at the top of the metal banister. The voices came from just beyond the door at the end of the hall.

Buck gestured Donovan off to the side, then reached down and gripped the doorknob. The telltale crimson drops on the floor told them what they needed to know—Eva had gone into this room. Every nerve ending in Donovan’s body was crackling with energy, his mouth was dry, he swallowed hard and waited.

In one fluid motion, Buck put his shoulder to the door and pushed into the room, going low and left. Donovan followed him
and stayed high and right. The room was darker than the hallway, a piece of burlap tacked up over the single window. The air was heavy from the smell of a recently fired weapon. To his left, just within his peripheral vision, Donovan saw a man seated in a steel chair with his head bowed, his hands hanging limply at his side. The wall behind him was splattered with his blood. He knew the man was dead.

Donovan swung right, looking down the barrel of the Sig, and found Stephanie sitting upright on a filthy cot. Her blonde hair fell in tangles to her shoulders. Her eyes were covered with black fabric, her hands bound in front of her with a plastic tie-wrap. Kneeling over her was a woman. Eva snapped her head at the intrusion as her eyes flew wide in astonishment.

Donovan saw the knife in Eva’s hand—and the blood. Donovan tightened the pressure on the smooth metal of the trigger; he knew Eva wore a bulletproof vest and he leveled his aim on the flesh above her collar, confident that at this range he couldn’t miss. He heard a scream, but tuned everything out, the words didn’t register. All he wanted was to save Stephanie. He squeezed the trigger until the gun bucked in his hand.

Lauren stood transfixed, her attention torn between the building that Donovan and Buck had entered and the billowing cloud from Atitlán that now filled the window of the Gulfstream. She was tuned into everything around her, and she watched as John maneuvered the
Scimitar
, keeping the infrared pinpointed on Donovan, and the synthetic aperture radar trained on the volcano. The mountain was spewing volumes of black ash into the air; the bright sunlight had nearly turned to dusk as the sun was obscured by tons of volcanic debris. She, along with William and Michael, were waiting for word from Buck. Lauren’s fists were clinched tight, her fingernails digging into her palms.

The instant that Buck had leaped from the plane, Michael had banked the
Galileo
away from the volcano, and they’d accelerated away from the dangerous ash. Once they were a safe distance from the plume, Michael turned the airplane over to Craig, coming out of the cockpit to stand behind her. They were all waiting.

“Call them,” Michael said, breaking the nearly unbearable silence.

“Buck ordered me not to,” John stated. “He told me before they went into the house not to transmit under any circumstances. Normally, Special Forces guys are ‘wired up’ as they call it. All of the communications are silent, using earpieces and microphones. We didn’t have that kind of time. He only has the handheld radio; any transmission I make will be heard
through the speaker and could give away their position, so all we can do is wait.”

Michael leaned closer. “Do we have any idea what’s going on in there?”

John shook his head. “Only through the windows. The concrete is blocking any heat signatures from inside the building.”

“What about Janie and the helicopter?” Lauren asked, as she felt her eyes start to burn from staring at the screen.

“I just spoke to her,” Michael said. “She’s forced to go the long way around. She thinks she can be here inside half an hour—maybe.”

“What was that?” Lauren pointed at the screen.

“I missed it,” John said. “What did it look like?”

“Some sort of whitish something?” Michael hesitated as he spoke. “It came from left to right. There it is again. Is it just a glitch in the transmission?”

“Uh oh,” Lauren said under her breath. She immediately went to one of the large oval windows and looked south. The objects on the screen were white-hot debris raining down from the volcano. A fresh wave of boiling ash mushroomed skyward.

“Oh God,” William said in a hushed tone as Michael bolted for the cockpit.

Lauren gripped the back of John’s chair as Michael threw the Gulfstream into a steep bank and brought the engines up to full power, climbing to a point above the debris.

Lauren absorbed every shred of data on the
Scimitar
control panel. Her eyes jumped from one screen to the other—the volcano was starting to expel huge chunks of thick orange lava. Each mass was flung free of the cone as it fell away into the cauldron of ash. On the infrared screen, Lauren watched the house. Tied up at the dock, she could see the Cessna’s wings rocking back and forth in a wide arc from the waves created by the initial shock wave. She glanced at William and discovered that his face had gone slack, as if he couldn’t quite grasp what he was seeing.

“Call them!” Lauren urged again. “Buck’s radio can’t be any noisier than a volcano!”

“We have to be patient,” John replied. “Give them a little more time. When he’s clear, he’ll call. He knows we’re up here waiting.”

“It’s just one woman,” William said to no one in particular. “How hard could it be for Buck to take down one woman?”

“William, I think I know what Eva’s doing,” Lauren’s brain was churning at a hundred miles per hour. “We watched as she shot Donovan in the back and then killed the two men on the dock. Eva doesn’t know we’re watching. She killed another man as she made her way up to the house with the money. She’s eliminating all the kidnappers.”

“But why?” William replied. “For the money?”

“Perhaps, but that’s not her endgame. If all she wanted was the money, she could have taken it in Guatemala City when she was with Donovan.”

“Did she come back to the lake to release Stephanie?” William asked, a tiny vestige of hope in his voice.

“The girl,” Lauren said, as it all made sense to her. “I think Eva’s plan is to take the money, the girl,
and
free Stephanie. To do that, she needed to eliminate her foot soldiers, and, if I’m right, Eva didn’t kidnap Marie Vargas. She rescued her. Now all she has to do is survive Buck and Donovan.”

Donovan’s ears rang from the gunshot. The recoil had forced the gun upward. He tried to bring it down, to level the pistol for a second shot if necessary—but it wouldn’t move. Only then did he realize that Buck had an iron grip around his wrist, keeping him from aiming his weapon. His shot had missed Eva by only inches.

Buck snatched the pistol out his hand. “Donovan, it’s under control!”

“Donovan?” Stephanie had curled up defensively at the sound of the gunshot. She slowly turned her head at the sound of Buck’s voice, her blindfold still firmly in place. “Donovan—are you there?”

Frantically, through the bluish smoke that lingered in the air, Donovan searched for Eva’s body. He found her next to the cot, her eyes were wide open and staring at him with a mixture of anger and disbelief. Buck had the silencer of his gun pointed at her temple, her knife-wielding hand pinned to the floorboard by his boot.

Donovan stepped past Eva and went to Stephanie’s side. He sat and carefully pulled off the blindfold. As her eyes fluttered open, she buried her face in his shoulder. He could feel her tears of relief.

“Stephanie?” A small, tentative voice sounded from across the room.

“Marie! It’s okay. We’re safe!” Stephanie sobbed the words over Donovan’s shoulder.

Donovan turned and saw the curled-up form of a young girl huddled under one of the empty cots. A blindfolded face was barely visible in the shadows.

“Get her,” Buck called out to Donovan, as he picked up Eva’s knife and sliced Stephanie’s bonds, all the while keeping a careful watch on Eva.

As Donovan gently helped the little girl out from under the cot, he could feel her tremble. Stephanie joined him and pulled the girl close. Donovan took the knife from Buck, and with great care, freed the little girl’s hands, which instantly shot around Stephanie’s neck in a fierce hug. Both of them sobbed quietly as days and days of stress flowed from them.

“Stephanie said you’d come,” the little girl said, as she looked up adoringly at Donovan. “She promised me you’d save us, and you did.”