Force of Fire (The Kane Legacy) (22 page)

The thundering blast sent him headlong
into cobblestone.

Mark pushed to his feet and
took off down the street, flames leaping out the door at his back. He brought a
hand to his forehead when he felt the slight trickle above his left eye.

He knew then and there he was
going to get that bastard. Get that bastard – and his little dogs too.

'You have fourteen hours to
live, Miss Kane!'
Carnova
hissed, bending and
bringing his steely eyes even with hers. Ana lay sideways on some sort of bed.
They had carried her to the common area so others could watch. Her arms were
still tied behind her back. 'Now, now,
buena
chica
, what shall we do to entertain you?' Ana drew up her
knees and pulled herself more tightly into a ball.

Carnova
brought a scaly hand to the back of her neck, sending a chill down the curve of
her spine.

El
Dedo
was standing to his left toying with a large
pistol. It appeared lightweight and almost entirely made of plastic.

A third man shouted something
obscene from the table, and both men erupted in laughter.
'
Porque
no?
'
Dedo
asked
Carnova
, his face brutally calm.

'Ay
si
,'
Carnova
spouted, 'to have Albert Kane’s daughter
would be the ultimate prize.'

Ana squinted
against the light.
They were inhuman
.

All
of them.

Dedo
seized the knife from his hip holster and stepped closer, inserting the tip of
his blade just inside the collar of her shirt.

'No, please,' she begged, her
voice a trembling whisper
.

Her legs were getting
in his way. He yelled to the man at the table to get up and come hold them.
Then he laid his blade more fully under her shirt and sliced it backwards into
the room. A burst of air assaulted her torso. She let out a cry that was torn
in two by the words rushing from her throat, 'Oh God, please. God, God,
please–'

'No God can help you now,'
Carnova
said, gripping the strip of cotton that held
together the cups of her bra. He tightened his grasp. Bruising knuckles crushed
into her breastplate.

She shut her eyes and prayed
anyway, knowing she was in the house of the devil.

There was a biting tear and the
ripping sound of cotton. Then, mercifully, her world went black.

Mark paused before the double
flight of stairs to check his watch. Four o'clock. He was right on
time
. He scaled the large stone steps and passed under the
original portico of the building. He entered the darkened Cathedral and stood
in the vaulted shadows before the ornately bejeweled statue of Saint James. It
was only a few moments before one of the other bystanders approached him.

The man was short and squat,
his voice high and lilting in defiance of his girth.

'You come as a pilgrim to
Santiago?' the dwarf began in an almost feminine voice.

Mark nodded, silently
appraising. If this was Diego,
he
was
many things,
but menacing was not among them.

'I know you look for a woman,'
he said. 'She waits for you at the shore.'

He fumbled in the weave of his
coat and withdrew a folded piece of paper.

'The way to the beach house is
here. You bring us what we want, we give you the women.'

Women? Mark unfolded the map in
his hand. There was a spot circled in red on the northern coast. He had to
verify
.

'You have Ana Kane here?' he asked,
tapping the wrinkled page with the tip of his index finger.


The fat man twisted his lips in
a perverted grin
.

'We have the girl here, we
have the mother there...' he said, throwing his inflated hands in either
direction as he spoke. 'And, unless you deliver both Albert Kane and
el
archivo
azul
by sunup, the
only way you'll get either woman back will be one piece at a time, by US mail.'
The little man ended this last sentence with a demonic snort.

Mark thought about going after
him, of wringing that invisible neck with his bare hands, of beating this
disfigured dwarf senseless. But then he saw the others waiting in the shadows
– big lumbering men standing in the Cathedral's nave, their eyes upon him
and Diego.

He knew he couldn't risk it. He
had to make it back to his hotel and call Washington. So he reluctantly let the
disgusting midget go, cackling into the hollows of the near-empty Cathedral.

Mark was unable to get a line
through to the States for thirty minutes. He paced his room, considering his
options. He had to reach Cromwell and warn him about Isabel before it was too
late. And Ana. How was he to finesse her escape? It all seemed so implausible
now.

Finally the telephone rang. The
hotel operator announced, 'Washington, DC, sir.'
Mark waited impatiently
as the phone buzzed on the other side of the Atlantic. On the fifth ring it was
answered.

'Cromwell.' The greeting was
overwrought.

'Chief, it's Mark.'


'What's happened there? Did you
meet with Diego?'


'Yes, sir, and I have bad news.'
Mark jumped right in. 'They've got Isabel.'


For a moment Cromwell was
silent. Then, 'Who? Where?'


'The LPP.
And they’re demanding your delivery, as well as the
archivo
azul
,
in exchange for Isabel's and Ana's safe
return.'

'That bastard
Carnova
!'


Mark thought quickly. If
Cromwell was really Albert Kane, then he had been the one to mastermind MILO
II, and make an enemy of the Basque insurgents trying to block his effort at
the time.
Carnova
was not a very old man, but still,
if he’d started young, like so many guerrilla fighters do...

'What exactly did Diego say
about Isabel?'


Mark hated the thought of
passing it on
.

'I don't know where she is, sir,
but
Carnova's
men have threatened brutal deaths for
both women, if you and the file are not handed over by sunrise tomorrow.'

'Christ!' Cromwell bellowed.
'What time is it there?' 'Five o'clock.'

'
It's
eleven here,' Cromwell said. 'I think I can still catch the New York connection
and, with the time change, make it there by morning.'

'Surely you're not giving in to
their demands?' Mark asked, believing there had to be another way, but not
knowing what that was.

'What other Goddamned choice do
I have
?!
' Cromwell yelled into the receiver.

Mark remembered the unsecured
line and guessed that Cromwell might be speaking for
Carnova's
benefit as well as his own.

'No choice,
sir.
You're exactly right.
Carnova
has left
you no other choice.' Mark paused to wipe the building perspiration from his
brow. 'When shall I meet you?'

'I'll be on the first available
flight. Sit tight. I'll phone you from New York to let you know I'm on my way.
And Mark –'

'Yes, sir.'


'Come alone.'


Mark hung up the phone,
wondering just what Albert Kane's plan really was. The Cromwell he knew was a
smart man with good instincts. He had been in the business a long time. Mark
just hoped that Cromwell's personal involvement in the case hadn't skewed his
judgement
. But he had no way of knowing, so he stayed in
his room and kept the information to himself, not wanting to involve McFadden
in his unclear strategy. Besides, Cromwell had warned him to come alone, and he
knew enough not to disobey that order.

Joe was walking through he
hotel lobby when Salvador lowered his paper. He set it down on the table in
front of himself and poured some tea. When he lifted the lid of the sugar bowl,
Joe was standing in his face.

'And so we meet again, Mr.
McFadden,'
Rebelles
said, not looking up. 'Care for
some tea?'

Joe sat impatiently beside him,
declining the offer. 'How long you been here?'

He dragged his soppy tea bag
from its cup, coiling its string around his spoon to squeeze out the last few
drops. 'Two hours, at least.'

'And Neal?'

Rebelles
lifted three cubes from his saucer and dropped them into his tea. 'He’s your
partner, not mine.'

'
Come on,
Rebelles
,
don’t play cute with me
.
Where is he?'

'I am only one man, Mr.
McFadden.'


'One man, or one of many?'

He didn’t answer.

'Last time I saw him, he was
going for a walk,' Joe said. 'But that had to have been more than three hours
ago.'

'Mr. Neal’s in his room,'
Rebelles
said smugly
.


'What?'


'I don’t like to repeat myself,
Mr. McFadden.'


Son of a
bitch.
'Listen,
Rebelles
,' Joe said, scooting
closer and locking the Spaniard’s knee in a dead man’s hold. 'I don’t
appreciate playing games.'

'Then, I’m afraid,' he said,
wincing as Joe twisted then released his hand, 'you’ve come to the wrong
place.'

Joe tried Neal’s room, but was
unsuccessful in getting anyone to answer the door. He pulled a credit card from
his wallet and wrestled it into the door jam, wiggling the knob. The door
popped open.

Joe checked the notepad on the
nightstand to see if it had been written on. It was clean. So was the
wastebasket.

Damn you, Neal.
You fucking Kamikaze.

He hurried down the stairs to
the lobby where he found
Rebelles
still nursing his
tea. He didn’t like the stinking bastard but, at the moment, he was all Joe
had.

Cromwell's 747 arrived at the
Labacolla
Airport under the blanket of night. Mark was
waiting in a tan rental car. He stepped from behind the wheel to greet his
boss, who was descending the gaunt metal steps of the plane.

'Good to see you, Chief.' Mark
stretched out his hand. Cromwell took it firmly, bringing his other hand to pat
the back of Mark's grip.

'Good work in finding Ana,
son,' he said, as they stepped into the car, and sped off from the runway.
'Where we headed?' Cromwell asked, looking around at the darkened countryside.

'To the
beach, sir.
I've got the coordinates memorized.' Mark looked down at the
gold combination lock on Cromwell's leather briefcase. 'Did you really bring
the file, sir?'

Cromwell stared straight out
through the windshield for a long moment before answering.
Their
headlights painted vertical yellow stripes on the narrow forest road.

'Yes,' he said without moving,
'I brought the file.'

Mark straightened his arms,
locking his hands around the wheel. He didn't like the sound of this.

'Sir,' he ventured after a
pause, 'what about Isabel?'

'I've got people on it. She'll
be all right,' he said, trying to mask the emotion in his voice.

Mark shook his head in
agreement, not wanting to voice an opinion.

The gruff man, the lanky one
with the pistol, pushed Isabel into Albert's chair. At his desk, she sat
trembling, wondering if her husband's spirit could somehow see her, wondering
if he knew.

A second man stood stone-faced
at the office door, keeping an eye on the front hall. Isabel could hear the
third man upstairs, overturning drawers and rustling through the medicine
cabinets. Suddenly the noises ceased, and the heavy sound of booted footfalls
descended the curved staircase. The bearded man appeared in the doorway, pushing
its guard rudely out of his way.

A cool, yellowed grin broke the
dark expanse of his facial hair. 'I have found the perfect thing,' he said,
dangling Albert's worn razor between his thumb and forefinger
.

The
other men laughed as the bearded one opened the metal instrument to extract its
rusted blade.
'So fitting for you
,
princesa
,'
he said, approaching her, blade in hand. 'To die by your husband's
instrument.'


The man who had been by the
doorway resumed his post with a question. 'Shouldn't we wait for
instructions?'


'Albert Kane will not act on
threats,' the leader said. 'He will comply only when he sees the results of his
deadly wavering.'

'Where’s the beach house?'
Cromwell asked, breaking the silence.

'To the east of La Coruna,
sir.'

'La Coruna,' Cromwell repeated
thoughtfully, 'and the Costa del
Muerto
.'

'Sir?'

'Costa del
Muerto
,'
he said.
'The Galician Coast of Death, named for its lethal
convergence of elements.
The relentless tides and crosswinds have
claimed thousands of ships and aircraft over the years.'

Mark had seen from the map that
La Coruna lay on a tip of land extending from Spain's high northwestern corner.
It sat like a narrow finger pointing to the turbulent melding of the wild
Atlantic and merciless
Cantabric
Sea.

'Sir, I have a question,' Mark
said, easing their car around a curve. Cromwell was silent, but Mark knew he
was waiting. 'Is there a problem with McFadden?'

'McFadden,
son?
Has he done something?'

'No, sir.
He’s been excellent. But when you asked me to come alone–'