Hot Point (24 page)

Then she knew what she wanted, why she was doing this.

Denise Conroy wanted to do something that she had very little experience with. She offered back to Vern what he gave her so freely.

Pure, undiluted, joy.

* * *

“I've been thinking—”

“You were thinking while we were doing that?” Denise cut him off.

Vern looked back at the innocent-seeming pool as he pulled on the last of his clothes. His skin was wrinkled, the sun was westering toward dinnertime, and he prayed his knees were working sufficiently to get him back to the little resort. “That would be no, Wrench. That was totally mind-numbing. Wherever in your imagination you're thinking this stuff up, please don't stop. You're gonna kill me, but I will die a very, very happy man.”

Denise offered one of those beaming smiles but provided no explanation to keep it company.

“You look like this sweet, innocent woman. In fact, I know you are. But”—he waved a hand helplessly—“you are far and away the sexiest and most sensual woman I've ever met.”

At that a look of surprise brushed across her features, but it was gone so fast he had trouble being sure of it.

The slightly smug look that replaced it almost had him dragging her back into the pool where he'd spent a long time proving that turnabout was fair play.

“You were thinking?” she prompted him.

“Right. Before this. There's something that I don't want to be a factor in your job decision.”

“What's that?” They headed back down the trail. This time she didn't squeak in surprise when the scarlet macaw swooped low to inspect them.

“If you take the job at the Restoration Center, I'll be there. Test pilot, errand boy, tour guide—I don't care. As long as we're together, everything else will work out.”

“Is that a proposal?”

“Huh!” He hadn't quite meant it that way. Or maybe he had and simply hadn't gotten that far. “Let's—” He had to clear his throat and start again. “Let's say it's certainly down that track. You're the woman I want to spend my life with—which sounds even more like a proposal—but I'm not ready for that yet.”

“Good. Because neither am I.” They were almost back to the farm before she spoke again. “But, yeah, I'm way down that track too.”

Dinner had been a convivial affair. Even Denise had joined in. They were no longer three couples plus Vern and Denise; they were four couples. Everyone felt the change.

Mark had given them a second day off, but everyone needed to be back on the base by nightfall. David had paying tourists arriving that night.

After lunch, Firehawk Oh-Two loaded up, and Vern went looking for Denise.

“No need to hurry,” Mark told him as he climbed aboard. “See you back at base.”

Vern couldn't find her. Neither could he find David or his two sons or his wife. The cows looked placid enough, but no one was in the packing barn or up in the tree house. The place was utterly deserted.

He looked up, but Firehawk Oh-Two had long since passed out of sight beyond the trees. No way she was aboard there.

He ducked into David's house. It was a simple, clean adobe building with a tin roof. In the dim light from the couple of windows, he could see that the floor was well-worn wood, the furniture simple but solid. The kitchen, two bedrooms, and generous pantry were deserted.

Stepping back into the sun, he had to squeeze his eyes shut against the blinding light.

When he managed to blink them open, Denise was standing right in front of him.

“There you—” He didn't get to finish his sentence.

Her eyes were huge.

Beside her was the most villainous man he'd ever seen, short and dark like most Hondurans.

He was pressing a massive gun against Denise's temple.

A twitch, still there from the Coast Guard, moved his hand a half inch toward his hip, but there was no firearm there to grab.

The man eyed him carefully.

Vern tried to swallow and couldn't. His throat was too painfully dry.

Slowly, he shifted his hands out to the side and focused on staying very, very still.

“Quédese donde está!”

Vern was pretty sure that meant “don't move,” mainly because the man had pointed at the ground and waved his gun in Vern's face.

Like they had a choice. They'd been pushed down to sit with their backs against the two posts holding up the outside corners of the thatched porch on the main house. Each post was a stout length of tree trunk, debarked and polished smooth, but still stout.

Then they'd been gagged with foul-tasting bandannas, and their hands had been bound behind them around the post. The posts looked as if they were just resting on a piece of stone. But even if Vern could free himself from this one, he'd have no time to free Denise before the man with the gun would be on them.

Denise was on the side away from him; he was facing her bound wrists. At least she was in the shade. He could feel the midday heat cooking his brains.

The man with the massive gun came over and shoved Vern's cowboy hat down on his head, hard. It was a relief, but he felt utterly ridiculous.

Denise could easily have shifted around the post so that they were facing each other, but she didn't seem to realize that. So all he could see were her back and hair as she cowered. With no training for anything like this, she must be terrified.

The man had rattled off some Spanish that Vern didn't understand, but he'd caught the words “
el
jefe
.” He'd read enough Tom Clancy novels to know that meant they were waiting for the chief to show up.

He wanted to comfort Denise, but the gag made that impossible. At least they weren't blindfolded.

They didn't have long to wait. A light-skinned man with a ragged, blond beard and mustache arrived in a Jeep that had seen far better days. He jumped down lightly and came over to them. He wore a black T-shirt and camo pants. He was armed with a knife, two pistols, and a rifle.

While the man who'd kidnapped them looked villainous, this man simply looked lethal. His dirty blond hair hung long and had been bound in place with a sweat-stained bandanna. He crossed in front of Denise, barely looking down at her, and knelt in front of Vern. His blue-gray eyes looked right through Vern as if he were a bug being assessed before it was squished.

His accent was rough, but his English was clear. “
Amigo.
You the pilot?”

Vern grunted.

The man jerked off the gag hard enough to hurt.

Vern swallowed against a dry mouth. “I am.”

“Who's your
amiga
?” He nodded toward Denise, still gagged and bound to the other post. They hadn't touched her yet, thank God.

“Copilot and mechanic. I can't fly without her. So if you touch her—”

The man slowly turned his light gaze back on Vern.

Stone-cold killer.

Vern reached as deep into his training as he could and met the guy eye to eye. “Just don't.”

The man smiled at something for half a moment, then shifted back to his feet in a smooth motion. Ex-military. And Vern thought he'd been getting to like Honduras, or at least the Hondurans. That—

The man shouted something at his crew. They scrambled for the Jeep and began lugging supplies over to his helicopter.

A five-gallon drum of paint? Rollers and trays?

Vern looked at the man. But he didn't bother explaining.

“MHA?” he asked even as the company logo disappeared beneath medium-blue paint. It was a color used by the Honduran Air Force.

Vern didn't see any point in answering, until the man kicked him.

His boot hit Vern in the thigh, but totally missed the obvious charley-horse pressure point that every soldier learned to use in basic training. But the kick was hard enough to hurt plenty even without that.

“I speak, you answer.
Comprende
?”

“Yes, Mount Hood Aviation.”

“Boss's name?”

“Mark.” Vern didn't include Mark's last name, and the man didn't ask. It was an odd question, but for some reason he looked as if he liked the answer.

A shift of Denise's hair showed that she was listening rather than simply cowering as he'd thought. She too must have thought the question odd.

“How much fuel?”

“Three hours.” That would be obvious as soon as the chopper was powered up. Maybe he could dump fuel along the way to wherever this guy wanted to go. Force a landing.

The guy looked up at the sky, then shouted at his crew painting the chopper, “Twenty minutes!” and began walking away.

“Hey, at least take off her gag.”

The man kept walking.

* * *

Denise was thinking very hard. The panic had gone down after the gunman with the bad breath had tied them up and then left them alone.

She hadn't turned to face Vern. If she did—and saw him tied up as she knew he was, the panic would crash back over her. A helpless Vern didn't fit into her new world order. And if she panicked, she wouldn't be able to think.

She had almost broken down when Vern defended her, even if the threat was merely a verbal warning from a powerless position. Threatening the most dangerous-looking man she'd ever seen. It was crazy. It was stupid. And she loved Vern for it.

They'd tied her to the post facing the chopper. From behind the shield of her hair she could see what they were doing. Four men with rollers were painting the whole helicopter as fast as they could. Medium blue above, white belly, and a light blue wavy stripe down low in the medium blue.

The Honduran Air Force craft were a hodgepodge of camouflage patterns. This paint job was far from perfect, but it was the colors of the Honduran President's personal transport.

The unrest in the capital city hadn't been controlled as well as the sergeant at Palmerola Air Base believed. Painted presidential blue and white, the Firehawk would be able to fly anywhere with no one questioning their presence. These thugs could fly right into the presidential compound.

And then what?

The leader returned to the Jeep. He wasn't a big man, but he picked up a large machine gun as if it were merely another paint roller and carried it to the chopper. He set it inside the open cargo-bay door, then fetched a second one, and finally several big steel cases that must be ammunition and looked immensely heavy.

Denise knew from the aircraft she'd studied that these were M240 machine guns—possibly the “B” variant, though she was too far away to tell. They shot NATO 7.62 mm rounds at over eight hundred a minute. These weren't cute little rifles; these were weapons of war.

This time, the leader didn't go to Vern, but came up right in front of her. His muscles rippled as he squatted in front of her. Around the edges of his sweat-stained tank top, she could see that he'd led a rough life. There were several scars showing, a pair of them circular ones like bullet holes in his shoulder.

“No more hiding in the hair,” he snapped at her.

With a twist of her head and a dip of her shoulder, she managed to get one eye in the clear.

“I remove the gag, you do not scream. I untie you and you run, your pilot,
muerto
.” He looked over her shoulder for a long moment toward where she could feel Vern glaring at him, then back to her with a hint of a smile. “You run, your
amante
, your lover, he is dead.
Comprende
?”

She nodded.

“I need guns mounted. You
mecánico
? You know how?”

She nodded. She'd mounted enough weapons on vintage warplanes at the restoration shop to know she could do it.

“You make mistake or hurt the weapons, I know. You will no like what happen.”

That much she believed.

Vern's wrists hurt from where he'd bucked against the rope when the man freed Denise. He'd been unable to hear what he told her, but he hadn't liked the man's evil smile as he'd contemplated Vern over Denise's shoulder.

She had the guns mounted by the time the paint job was done. The guy had been watching her like a hawk.

They'd been totally set up. The sergeant back at the air base had said that they were safe, but the helicopters weren't. He hadn't said a word about what would happen if they were caught alone with the helicopter.

Denise was placed in the copilot seat. Vern could see a man position himself directly behind her in the cargo bay with his gun drawn.

This time, the
jefe
had his knife out when he knelt in front of Vern. It wasn't some utility knife. It was a big, military blade with an edge that gleamed in the late-afternoon light. He twisted it to flash a reflection of sun in Vern's eyes, forcing him to blink. By the time he opened his eyes, the knife was in the man's other hand and a half inch from his eye.

“You any
problema
? Any at all?”

“No, sir.”

“You fly military,
amigo
?”

According to Vern's training, you never admitted to military training. Foreign thugs liked to think they could best U.S. military people. They'd go out of their way to prove it, even when the military person was bound and gagged. The history of the 1985 TWA Flight 847 hijacking was pounded into every U.S. military trainee's brain. The hijackers killed only one of their 150 hostages. They'd identified him as a Navy SEAL, beat the shit out of him, shot him in the head, and dumped his body on the tarmac. You didn't—

“
Respuesta
!” The knife moved closer.

“Coast Guard pilot. Search and rescue.” Vern spat it out. Hopefully that sounded neutral enough.

The man smiled. “
Bueno
.” When he leaned in to cut Vern's bonds, he spoke quickly and quietly in perfect English. “Do your preflight. We leave as soon as you can get the engines hot. You will not transmit the hijack code on your transponder. You will not tap out an SOS on your microphone.”

He acted as if he was laboring over the knot, even though Vern could feel his wrists were already free. Vern noted that the man's back was to the other men.

“The girl would have been safer if we'd left her here, but your announcement that you needed her to fly—at least two of my men would understand that. No choice now. She flies.” He hauled Vern to his feet and whispered a last instruction.“You stay scared. Really scared. But do what I say and we just might all get out of this.” Then he nearly crashed Vern to the ground when he grabbed Vern's arm and hauled him toward the chopper.

Vern tried not to be sick as he stumbled through the preflight inspection. Pretend to be scared? Not a problem! He was fucking terrified! By his own actions he'd dragged Denise right into harm's way.

He held himself together for Denise's sake and soon had the chopper running. He grabbed her hand for a moment when he was pretty sure no one was watching. She looked okay, unharmed at least. Her gaze didn't skitter or her hand shake like someone on the edge of panic or entering shock.

“They look for you soon.” The man's English was again broken and Spanish accented. “Raise your
jefe
on radio. Then you say what I say. Exact what I say.”

As soon as the radio was hot, Vern dragged on a headset, leaving the inner-side muff slid off his ear. It was uncomfortable, but that was the least of his problems at the moment. He didn't want the man on the system, but he had to be able to hear. The man was leaning forward between their seats.

“Mark? You out there? This is Vern.”

“What's up? Why aren't you back yet?”

“Uh…” He paused, but the man crouching beside him didn't give him any guidance. “We're both okay.”

“Who else is there?” Mark tried to sound casual, but Vern could hear the soldier voice come over him. In the background he could imagine frantic signals to start warming up choppers.

“Tell him,” the man leaned in and whispered, “the cave and the Silver Star.” Then he leaned back and began talking loudly to his men in rapid Spanish, and the last of them began clambering aboard with paint-scarring bangs and thumps.

So Vern repeated the message verbatim, keeping his voice low so that he couldn't be heard in back over the man's shouting.

Denise looked at him strangely; she was the only other one wearing a headset, but she had both earphones on and hadn't heard what was being said. She pulled one ear cup aside.

“Really?” Mark sounded surprised.

“That's what I was told to say.” Good. Now Mark would know that they were being held against their will.

“Remember what we talked about that night in the middle of the runway?”

That wasn't the response he'd been expecting, not even a little. Confused, he looked at Denise.

She rolled her eyes at him, and then he remembered before she mouthed, “Second contract.”

“Yes, I remember.”

“You're in it, buddy. Try to find out if he wants us in the air.”

As soon as Vern clicked off the radio, Denise whispered to him over the intercom, “
El
jefe
must have a reason for hiding who he is. I'm guessing we can't be giving him away.”

Vern nodded his agreement and tried to catch his breath. These vicious mercenaries were the
good
guys? Then what the hell did the
bad
guys look like? Even scarier?

“Oh”—Mark clicked back in—“tell him he should go take a jump.”

“No way!”

“Trust me.”

The man stuck his head back up between the seats. “Eh?” he grunted and waved his gun in front of Vern's face. Vern noted that the finger was alongside the barrel rather than on the trigger, a military man's safety—no finger on the trigger, it doesn't shoot.

“My boss told me to tell you to go jump.”

“
Excelente!
” The blond man grinned at him. “
Vámonos!
Go south! To capital!”

“Just one chopper?” Vern kept his voice low, but could feel his nerve shrivel at taking Denise into the capital on some unknown but clearly hazardous flight.

The man hesitated for a moment.

Vern could see he was thinking quickly.

“
Sí. Vámonos!
” He left enough space between the words that Vern was sure of the message.

Under cover of the liftoff, Vern transmitted a single word to Mark. “Solo.”

“Roger that.” Mark didn't sound happy.

Which he supposed was okay, because Vern didn't feel real happy at the moment himself.