Exodus Code (30 page)

Stripping off his coat, his shirt and his braces, Jack pul ed on the guard’s T-shirt. He walked over to the fountain, splashed water on his hands and slicked back his hair. He needed not to be an easy mark for Rex until he was ready to be.

Jack knew Rex had to be watching this entire raid after he’d made himself obvious in the piazza. Hugging the vine-covered wal , Jack sprinted to the front of the hotel, the speakers above him blaring traditional Aymara music like the tinny soundtrack to an old Western.

Inside the compound, the hotel was made up of six pastel-painted bungalows in a U-shape around the main house that sat at the opening. Each bungalow had an inner courtyard containing a private swimming pool and its own lush tropical garden. After his arrival last night, Jack had discovered that al the bungalows were empty. Given the real function of this hacienda, Jack doubted there ever were very many guests who stayed voluntarily.

The main building housed a massive colonial dining room, the kitchens and the Castenado family’s private quarters. Through a locked gate just beyond the main building, tucked under the heavy canopy of the jungle, Jack had discovered the camouflaged barracks for Asiro Castenado’s men.

Dana’s intel igence had informed them that Castenado was running drugs and a sophisticated kidnapping business. A wealthy businessman goes missing while on vacation, his family, his business, his shareholders are alerted, and no one else; the money changes hands and after the exchange the businessman is found wandering the mountains, dehydrated but unharmed.

Problem was the kidnapping scheme was the smal est obstacle Jack had to overcome to get what he needed in the vil age if he was going to get to inside the mountain in time.

Six hours left.

When Jack reached the locked gate to the barracks, he stopped, adjusting the volume on the radio. In his earpiece, he could hear Antonio cal ing Asiro’s guards to their positions.

A voice in Jack’s earpiece crackled, ‘Acción!’

From the belfry, someone fired off a shot.

Damn! The girl was not just watching. Something else was going on.

Jack sprinted to the wal , climbing quickly and in time to see the minibus’s front wheel explode. The bus careened off the sides of the canyon wal like a pinbal , once, twice, and then wham, a final ricochet flipped it over, sending it skidding on its roof, coming to a rest against the canyon wal at the edge of the piazza.

The bus was blocking the only road off the meseta.

FOR A FEW seconds after the minibus hit the canyon wal , Juan didn’t move, taking stock of his situation and his injuries. A cut above his left eye was bleeding heavily and he felt as if he’d been in a cage fight. Shoving the deflated airbag off his lap, he listened. Steam hissed from the engine. The bus creaked and moaned as it settled against the canyon wal . He could smel hot rubber. Behind him, the student, Eva, he’d heard her boyfriend cal her, moaned and then was silent, her head flopping on her shoulder, blood trickling from the corner of her lips.

Through the shattered windscreen, Juan saw the UN soldier sprawled a few feet from the wreckage. He was breathing, but bleeding from a head wound.

Juan couldn’t worry about him right now because suddenly a line of armed men were fanning out from the gates of the hotel. As soon as they did, the piazza was ablaze with gunfire.

Unfastening his seatbelt, Juan hit his comms.

Nothing. Static. He decided to stay with the plan despite the chaos outside.

Easing out of his seat, pressing his hands on the floor that was now the roof above his head. He stared at the other couple who had been tossed up to the front of the minibus and were unconscious, an avalanche of luggage piled on top of them.

They were alive, but they were not likely to be making any sudden moves for a while. Juan crawled out through the shattered windscreen and, hugging the side of the van to avoid cal ing any attention from the gunfight in the piazza, he slipped round to the back of the minibus, and released the emergency exit. Gunfire strafed the top of the van. He pul ed open the doors and threw himself into the rear of the bus.

‘Señor Donoso,’ he cal ed, tossing backpacks and camera bags from his path. ‘Señor, you must come with me.’

Suddenly, Juan’s earpiece crackled to life. ‘Get him out of there now. This is Deputy Director Rex Matheson. We need you to take Donoso straight to the extraction point. Do not, I repeat, do not go near the piazza or the hacienda.

Do you copy?’

Juan tapped his earpiece twice. ‘Señor Donoso, please come with me. You wil not be hurt. Your freedom has al been arranged.’

Donoso shoved his wife off his chest and scrambled up. ‘I’m already hurt, you fucking idiot. This was not supposed to happen. Who took out the bus?’

His wife was regaining consciousness, cal ing his name over and over again.

‘Olivares, please, what has happened?’ she cried.

‘Now, Juan,’ said the voice in his earpiece. ‘This vil age is a war zone. Get the mark to the extraction point.’

‘Sir,’ pleaded Juan, trying to ignore the demanding voice in his earpiece. ‘We do not have a lot of time. You must come.’ Juan did not speak Portuguese so he spoke in English. The cut above his eye was stinging as sweat dripped from his forehead. The temperature inside the van was stifling.

Donoso scrambled to his knees in the debris, sliding a gun from his jacket pocket as he did so.

‘Sir, please,’ said Juan, drawing his.

With no hesitation Donoso shot Juan in the head. His wife screamed, scrambling frantical y inside her Louis Vuitton satchel looking for something.

‘Is this what you’re look for?’ With his free hand, Donoso lifted a second gun from under his waistband, holding it up for his wife to see.

Cash began to stir from the backseat, his earpiece screaming static.

Donoso pointed his gun at Cash’s face.

Cash raised his hands in surrender. ‘Stop. Wait. I’m nobody.’

‘Everyone’s somebody!’ Donoso glared at him, cocked the gun, but then after a beat he lowered it. ‘Don’t move, Mr Nobody.’

Cash slid down in the seat, fiddling with his earpiece. A cut on his leg was bleeding down his calf, wetness seeping into his boot. That can’t be good, he thought. Up ahead, Vlad was staring back at Donoso and the executed driver in disbelief.

Donoso pushed Juan’s body out of his way, watching his wife crawl frantical y to the nearest smashed window, dragging her LV bag behind her.

Cash put his fingers to his lips. Vlad closed his eyes. Cash couldn’t see Hol is or Gwen because of debris, but he could see that Hol is’s arm was moving, trying to shift a section of the side door that was pinning him on top of Gwen.

The minibus reeked of petrol, the iron odour of blood and Donoso’s own perfumed stink. Donoso pul ed a cigar from his pocket, inhaling its scent, then he crumbled it in his hand, flaking the tobacco over Juan’s limp body. He shoved his wife’s gun into the waistband of his trousers then reached across and grabbed his wife’s leg before she could make it al the way through the window. She screamed. Shards of broken glass shredded her arms and legs as her husband hauled her back inside the wreckage. She raised her arms to shield her face.

‘You stupid bitch,’ he spat at her. ‘Did you real y think your skinny body could buy you more loyalty from Antonio than mine?’

Through the open emergency doors at the rear of the bus, Antonio raised his weapon and shot Donoso’s wife. Vlad gasped. Donoso turned and stared at him, then he picked up the LV bag with his ransom money in it, reached his hand out to Antonio and stepped from the rear of the bus.

‘You have ten minutes to gather your men,’ said Donoso, kissing Antonio on the mouth before heading for the other side of the bus where two armed guards waited next to a hummer. He handed one the LV bag.

‘Then we must go. I’ve business to take care of.’

FROM HER POSITION in the tower, Isela couldn’t believe what was happening. The entire hacienda was under siege and it was al her fault. She’d watched the bus flip, but that was part of the plan. It always was. Crash the bus. Give the driver time to get the mark out and turn him (almost always a male) over to her father’s personal security guards, leaving enough doubt among everyone on the bus as to whether or not the mark survived the accident while his ransom was negotiated.

If the money came through, the mark survived the crash. If not, wel it seemed his injuries were more serious than first thought.

Peering over the edge of the belfry, Isela watched in astonishment as one of the old women draped in a colourful embroidered poncho, who moments before had been lounging on the church steps beneath her, tipped over a vendor’s cart, dived behind it and began shooting at her father’s men, who tipped over tables in front of the restaurant and returned fire. The other women were in fact men, pul ing automatic weapons from their baskets, stripping off their shawls and skirts to reveal black special ops uniforms adorned with enough ammunition and grenades to take out the entire piazza, the tower included.

Stunned, Isela watched as the food vendors pul ed guns from inside their steamers and began returning fire. The few real vil agers who had been in the market were trying to flee for cover, some inside the café and others out across the airstrip to the cover of the jungle.

Without warning, a burst of gunfire sprayed the wal of the belfry. Isela threw herself to the ground, covering her head with her arms. Dust and rock rained down on her. After a few beats, she realized that the shots were col ateral from the firestorm erupting in the courtyard. Antonio and her father were the only ones who knew she was in the tower. They’d have no reason to fire at her.

But neither would anyone else. Everyone in the vil age was in her father’s pocket, which made imprisoning the mark as a doped-up patient in the hacienda one of the more manageable aspects of the plan. As for her role, it was stop the bus, create the diversion, climb down unseen as soon as Antonio extracted the mark, and then get back inside the ranch compound and wait for the ransom.

After the chalky dust settled around her, Isela watched in confusion and disbelief as Antonio and the mark, a super-wealthy businessman from Brazil, emerged from the bus, kissed… Kissed? She was stunned.

The pair split up, the mark heading for a car tucked behind the canyon wal .

Isela let the scene sink in, pinching herself that she’d real y seen what she believed. She slid down the wal . She needed to think. It was bad enough that the bus had flipped more violently than she intended and that she had no idea who the other set of soldiers were in the piazza shooting at her father’s men, but Antonio attracted to men. How could she have missed that detail?

Isela lifted her binoculars and focused on the hotel compound, scanning the area surrounding the ranch. The doors to the house were closed, the shutters too. The entire house looked deserted. Behind the ranch, she could make out the staff barracks – they too looked empty. Al of her father’s men were fighting below her. Where was her father?

Isela tapped her earpiece. ‘Antonio, what’s going on?’

No reply.

After the initial burst of gunfire, the shooting had stopped for a few minutes but, each time anyone moved, a vol ey of shots sprayed across the piazza.

The scene looked and sounded like a battle from
Call of Duty
, but with one disturbing difference. Isela had no idea who the bad guys were and what the goal of the game had become.

The perimeter of the hotel compound was unprotected although she spotted a couple of bodies lying near the delivery entrance. None of her father’s personal security guards were on the roof and the men who’d been shooting from the wal s were dead or had fled. She counted three bodies under the wal and at least three on the ground inside the compound.

With al the shooters hunkered down behind their crude barricades, the dust from the courtyard was beginning to settle and the reloading and firing of automatic weapons was replaced with the cries and yel s from the tourists left trapped inside the café.

Isela watched as two passengers from the bus crawled through the shattered windscreen, the man tossing backpacks out ahead of him and then helping the woman through. She was cradling her arm and let herself slide down from the smoking, crumpled vehicle. A second man and woman fol owed them out.

Isela watched the first couple inch across to the soldier and drag him to the rear of the bus. They had no sooner found cover than the shooting began again in the piazza. Isela kept watching the bus, waiting for Juan to crawl out next, but he never did.

In the piazza, no one screamed. No one yel ed. No one raised any alarm.

Isela had not expected anyone would. Like everyone else in the vil age, when a kidnapping was in progress they al had a part to play, especial y if they wanted to stay on the mountain and be protected.

THE KIDNAPPING OF Señor Olivares Donoso, one of the wealthiest men in South America, a man with links to the three families, was in play and Jack recognised that so far nothing was going according to plan – not his, not the kidnapper’s, or, he surmised, the CIA’s.

From a corner inside the compound, Jack activated his comms unit.