Nick of Time (38 page)

B
RAD
W
ARD
D
OUGHERTY
His Smile Lit My World

Chapter One

J
onathan Grave heard the sounds of ongoing torture a full minute before he arrived on the scene. An approach like this in the middle of the night through the tangled mass of the Mexican jungle was an exercise in patience. He was outnumbered and outgunned, so his only advantage was surprise. Well, that and marksmanship. And night vision.

Ahead of him, and too far away to be seen through the undergrowth, his teammate and dear friend Brian Van De Muelebroecke (aka Boxers) was likewise closing in on the source of the atrocity.

The last few yards, the last few minutes, were always the most difficult. Until now, the hostage's suffering had been an academic exercise, something talked about in briefings. But hearing the agonized cries above the cacophony of the moving foliage and screeching critters of this humidity factory made it all very real. The sense of urgency tempted Jonathan to move faster than that which was prudent. And prudence made the difference between life and death.

The slow pace of his approach was killing Jonathan. It was 02:15, the night was blacker than black, and that victim who no doubt was praying for death had no idea that he was mere minutes away from relief. All that had to happen was for Jonathan and Boxers to get into position, read the situation for what it was, and then execute the rescue plan. There was nothing terribly elegant about it. They would move in, kill the bad guys who didn't run away, and they'd pluck their precious cargo—their PC, a DEA agent named Harry Dawkins—to safety. There was a bit of yada yada built into the details, but those were the basics. If past was precedent, the torturers were cartel henchmen.

But first, Jonathan had to get to the PC, and get eyes on the situation, and he had thousands of years of human evolution working against him. As a species, humans don't face many natural predators, and as a result, we don't pay close attention to the danger signs that surround us. Until darkness falls.

When vision becomes limited, other senses pick up the slack, particularly hearing. As he moved through the tangle of undergrowth and overgrowth, Jonathan was hyperaware of the noises he made. A breaking twig, or the rattle of battle gear, would rise above the natural noises of the environment and alert his prey that something was out of the ordinary. They wouldn't know necessarily what the sound was, but they would be aware of
something
.

Alerted prey was dangerous prey, and Jonathan's two-man team did not have the manpower necessary to cope with too many departures from the plan.

Another scream split the night, this time with a slurred plea to stop. “I already told you everything I know,” Dawkins said in heavily accented Spanish. The words sounded slurred. “I don't know anything more.”

In time, the magnified light of his night vision goggles, NVGs, began to flare with the light of electric lanterns. “I have eyes on the clearing,” Boxers' voice said in his right ear. He was barely whispering, but he was audible. “They're yanking the PC's teeth. We need to go hot soon.”

Jonathan responded by pressing the transmit button on his ballistic vest to break squelch a single time. There was no need for an audible answer. By their own SOPs, one click meant yes, two meant no.

As if to emphasize the horror, another scream rattled the night.

Jonathan pressed a second transmit button on his vest, activating the radio transceiver in his left ear, the one dedicated to the channel that linked him to his DEA masters. The transceiver in his right ear was reserved for the team he actually trusted. “Air One,” he said over the radio. “Are you set for exfil?”

“I'm at a high orbit,” a voice replied. “Awaiting instructions.” The voice belonged to a guy named Potter, whom Jonathan didn't know, and that bothered the hell out of him. The Airedale was cruising the heavens in a Little Bird helicopter that would pluck them from one of three predetermined exfiltration points. He was a gift from the United States Drug Enforcement Administration as an off-the-record contribution to their own employee's rescue. For reasons that apparently made sense to the folks who plied their trade from offices on Pennsylvania Avenue, this op was too sensitive to assign an FBI or even a US military rescue team, yet somehow it could support a government-paid pilot, and that inconsistency bothered Jonathan. A lot. It was possible, of course, that Potter was every bit as freelance as Jonathan, but that thought wasn't exactly comforting. All too often, freelancers' loyalty was as susceptible to high bidders as their skills were.

“Be advised that we will be going hot soon,” Jonathan whispered.

“Affirm. Copy that you're going hot soon. Tell me what you want and I'll be there.”

Jonathan keyed the other mike. “Big Guy, are you already in position?”

Boxers broke squelch once.
Yes
.

Jonathan replayed Dawkins's plea in his head.
I already told you everything I know.
The fact that the PC had revealed information—even if it wasn't everything he knew—meant that Jonathan and Boxers were too late to prevent all the damage they had hoped to. Maybe if DEA hadn't been so slow on the draw, or if the US government in general had reacted faster with resources already owned by Uncle Sam, the bad guys wouldn't know
anything
.

The bud in Jonathan's left ear popped. “Team Alpha, this is Overwatch. Over.”

“Go ahead, Overwatch,” Jonathan replied. He thought the “over” suffix was stupid, a throwback to outdated radio protocols.

“We have thermal signatures on Alpha One and Alpha Two, and we show you approaching a cluster of uniform sierras from roughly the northwest and southeast.”

Somewhere in the United States, Overwatch—no doubt a teenager judging from his voice—was watching a computer screen with a live view from a satellite a couple hundred miles overhead. As Jonathan wiped a dribble of sweat from his eyes, he wondered if the teenager was wearing a wrap of some kind to keep warm in the air conditioning. “Uniform sierra” was what big boys wrapped in Snoopy blankets called unknown subjects.

“That would be us, Overwatch,” Jonathan whispered. He and Boxers had attached transponders to their kit to make them discernible to eyes in the sky. Even in a crowd, they'd be the only two guys flashing here-I-am signals to the satellite.

“Be advised that we count a total of eight uniform sierras in the immediate area. One of them will be your PC. Consider all the others to be hostile.”

In his right ear, Boxers whispered, “Sentries and torturers are hostile. Check. Moron.”

Jonathan suppressed a chuckle as he switched his NVGs from light enhancement to thermal mode and scanned his surroundings. It wasn't his preferred setting for a firefight because of the loss of visual acuity, but in a jungle environment, even with the advantage of infrared illumination gear, the thick vegetation provided too many shadows to hide in. “How far are the nearest unfriendlies from our locations?” he asked on the government net.

A few seconds passed in silence. “They appear to have set up sentries on the perimeter,” Overwatch said. “Alpha One, you should have one on your left about twenty yards out, call it your eleven o'clock, and then another at your one, one-thirty, about the same distance. Alpha Two, you are right between two of them at your nine and three. Call it fifteen yards to nine and thirty to three. The others are clustered around a light source in the middle. I believe it's an electric lantern.”

Jonathan, Alpha One, found each of the targets nearest to him via their heat signature, and then switched back to light enhancement. Now that he knew where they were, they were easy to see. The concern, always, were the ones you didn't see.

As if reading his mind, Venice (Ven-EE-chay) Alexander, aka Mother Hen, spoke through the transceiver in his right ear. “I concur with Overwatch,” she said. The government masters didn't know that Venice could independently tap into the same signal that they were using for imagery. She was
that good
at the business of taming electrons. He liked having that second set of eyes. While he knew no reason why Uncle Sam would try to jam him up, there was some history of that, and he knew that Venice always had his best interests at heart.

On the local net, Jonathan whispered, “Ready, Big Guy?”

“On your go,” Boxers replied.

Jonathan raised his suppressed 4.6 millimeter MP7 rifle up to high-ready and pressed the extended buttstock into the soft spot of his shoulder. He verified with his thumb that the selector switch was set to full-auto and settled the infrared laser sight on the first target's head. He pressed his transmit button with fingers of his left hand and whispered, “Four, three, two . . .”

There was no need to finish the count—it was the syntax that mattered. At the silent
zero
, he pressed the trigger and sent a two-round burst into the sentry's brain. Confident of the kill, he pivoted left and shot his second target before he had a chance to react. Two down.

From somewhere in the unseen corners of the jungle, two more bursts rattled the night, and Jonathan knew without asking that the body count had jumped to four.

Time to move.

Jonathan glided swiftly through the undergrowth, rifle up and ready, closing in on the light source. They were ten seconds into the fight now, plenty of time for the bad guys to react. If their weapons were on them and they were trained, they would be ready to fight back.

An AK boomed through the night, followed by others, but Jonathan heard no rounds pass nearby. Strike the training concern. Soldiers fired at targets, thugs fired at fear. Barring the lucky shot, the shooters were just wasting ammunition.

Jonathan didn't slow, even as the rate of fire increased. His NVGs danced with muzzle flashes. The war was now fifteen seconds old, the element of surprise was gone, and that left only skill and marksmanship.

Three feet behind every muzzle flash there resided a shooter. Jonathan killed two more with as many shots.

And then there was silence.

“Status,” Jonathan said over the local net.

“Nice shooting, Tex,” Boxers said through a faked southern drawl. “I got three.”

“That makes seven.” With luck, number eight would be their PC. “Mother Hen?”

Before Venice could respond, the teenager said, “Alpha Team, Overwatch, I show all targets down. Nice shooting.”

Jonathan didn't bother to acknowledge the transmission.

“I concur,” Venice said. She could hear the teenager, but the teenager could not hear her. Of the two opinions, only one mattered.

Jonathan closed the distance to the center of the clearing. A naked middle-aged man sat bound to a stout wooden chair, his hands and face smeared with blood, but still alive. Dead men surrounded him like spokes of a wheel. This would be their PC, Harry Dawkins, and he looked terrified.

“Harry Dawkins?” Jonathan asked.

The man just stared. He was dysfunctional, beyond fear.

“Hey, Dawkins!” Boxers boomed from the other side of the clearing. At just south of seven feet tall and well north of two hundred and fifty pounds, Boxers was a huge man with a huge voice that could change the weather when he wanted it to.

The victim jumped. “Yes!” he shouted. “I'm Harry Dawkins.”

As Jonathan moved closer, he saw that most of the man's teeth had been removed, and with all the blood, it was hard to verify his identity from the picture they'd been given. “What's your mother's maiden name?” Jonathan asked.

The guy wasn't patching it together.

“Focus,” Jonathan said. “We're the good guys. We're here to take you home. But first we need to know your mother's maiden name. We need to confirm your identity.”

“B-Baxter,” he said. The hard consonant brought a spray of blood.

Jonathan pressed both transmit buttons simultaneously. “PC is secure,” he said. Then he stooped closer to Dawkins so he could look him straight in the eye. He rocked his NVGs out of the way so the man could see his eyes. Dawkins hadn't earned the right to see Jonathan's face, so the balaclava stayed in place. “This is over, Mr. Dawkins,” he said. “We're going to get you out of here.”

Boxers busied himself with the task of checking the kidnappers' bodies for identification and making sure they were dead.

The kidnappers had tied Dawkins to the chair at his wrists, biceps, thighs, and ankles using coarse rope that reminded Jonathan of the twine he used to tie up newspapers for recycling. The knots were tight and they'd all been in place long enough to cause significant swelling of his hands and feet. Several of Dawkins's fingernails were missing.

Jonathan loathed torture. He looked at the bodies at his feet and wished that he could wake the bastards up to kill them again.

“Listen to me, Harry,” Jonathan instructed. “We're going to need your help to do our jobs right, understand? I'm going to cut you loose, but then you're going to have to work hard to walk on your own.” It was good news that the torturers hadn't made it to his feet yet.

Jonathan pulled his KA-BAR knife from its scabbard on his left shoulder, and slipped its seven-inch razor-sharp blade carefully into the hair-width spaces between rope, skin, and wood. He started with the biceps, then moved to the thighs. The ankles were next, followed last by the hands. Dawkins seemed cooperative enough, but you never knew how panic or joy were going to affect people. The edge on the KA-BAR was far too sharp to have arms flailing too early.

“Who are you?” Dawkins asked.

Jonathan ignored the question. A truthful answer was too complicated, and it didn't matter. Dawkins surely understood that leaving this spot was better than staying, regardless of who the rescuer was.