Out of Control (62 page)
And so Badaruddin’s men had left, taking Zdanowicz’s helicopter and Molly and Billy—both of whom had been wounded—as well.
According to Angie, Molly had been shot and pistol whipped. And right now she was the prisoner of General Badaruddin—a man who’d learned torture techniques from the Thai.
Sickened, Jones turned and headed toward his plane.
“What are you doing?” Angie called after him.
“I’m getting Molly out of there.” He checked his arsenal of weapons, slipped on the flack jacket he’d taken in trade for a twenty pack of toilet paper about four years ago, and climbed into the Cessna.
Angie came running toward him. “There’s nowhere to land a plane on Badaruddin’s island!”
“Then I guess I’ll have to improvise.” With a roar, he taxied to the end of the strip and took off into the brilliant blue of the afternoon.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nineteen
Ken sat next to Savannah on the floor of Badaruddin’s “guest quarters” and held her hand.
“Tell me again what’s going to happen,” she said.
He couldn’t blame her for being nervous. He was a little nervous himself. All those assholes out there had weapons capable of killing instantaneously. All they’d need was one person to see them and to fire his weapon and . . .
“We’ll leave through the hole in the back,” he told her, “as soon as we have contact with the SEAL team. We’ll split into smaller groups—it’ll be easier to move covertly that way.”
“But I get to stay with you,” she said. “Right?”
“Right. You get to stay with me.” Ken looked down at their hands. She was playing with his fingers. “You know, I was thinking, Van, you know, kind of about that. About you staying with me and . . .”
He laughed, suddenly uncertain as to her reaction to what he was about to say. There were times when, inside his own head, it sounded completely crazy, but there were other times when he was absolutely convinced it was the only thing to do. He decided to start with a slightly less crazy variation on the theme. “I think you should move out to San Diego.”
Her smile was slightly hesitant but completely pleased. “You really want me to?”
“Oh, yeah.” Fuck it. He was just going to say all of it. “I think you should marry me.”
She made a sound that was sort of like a laugh, but not quite. He couldn’t tell if it was a good sound or a bad sound. So he kept talking.
“I know I’m not what your parents want for you,” he said. “I’m no prince—I’ll never pass for one. I’m legitimate—my father was married to my mother, so I guess that might win me about a half a point. Right now, as a lawyer, you probably earn four times as much as me. But that’s going to change as soon as I retire from the Navy. I’ve got people who want to pay me a million dollars for my tracking device—except that’s not going to happen for a while. A good long while.”
“You’re a SEAL, you’re gone a lot of the time. That’s not going to be much fun.”
He looked at her.
“Just thought I’d add that to the con list,” she said, “since you brought it up before.”
“You’re making a list—pro and con—for whether or not you should marry me?”
“I’m not making the list,” she pointed out. “You are. But as far as I’m concerned, the pro side of the list completely cancels out the cons.”
Hope warmed him from the inside out. Not that he particularly needed warming in this heat, but it still felt nice. She was going to say yes. She was going to spend her life with him, the luckiest son of a bitch on the planet.
“What’s on the pro side?” he asked. “I’m great in bed, cute as hell, got a frog tattoo on my—”
“You love me,” she said softly. “That’s all.”
“Wait a minute, you don’t think I’m great in bed . . . ?”
Savannah laughed as she rolled her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Ken said, inwardly kicking himself. “This was one of those times when I shouldn’t make a joke. I know that. I don’t always say what I’m supposed to say. You should probably add that to the con list, because it’s a serious offense. Things just kind of come out, and I hear myself say ’em, and I know what I should’ve said just then was that I’ll love you and cherish you forever. That I have no freaking clue how to be a good husband or God, a good father, and that scares me to death, but I’ll figure it out, I know I will. I’ll try harder not to say too many stupid things, and I’ll work my ass off to make your life with me as wonderful as you’ll make my life, just by being in it.”
He knew he’d won when he saw the tears in her eyes. “I’m a control freak,” she said. “I’m going to drive you crazy.”
“Probably,” Ken agreed.
She laughed. “You don’t care?”
“You love me,” he said. “That’s all I need to know.”
“You always say the right thing,” Savannah told him, her eyes so filled with love that he almost wept. “Sometimes it takes you awhile to get to it, but you always get there, and what you say is always worth waiting for. And the rest of the time you make me laugh, so . . .”
Ken kissed her. It was that or start to cry. The woman had just told him she loved him exactly the way he was. Who would’ve thought that would ever happen?
She kissed him back the way she always kissed him—as if she were starving and he was a five-course meal. God, she made him so hot, he had his hand up her shirt before he remembered they weren’t exactly alone.
He put his mouth to her ear. “How about you pretend you’ve got something in your eye, and I’ll go with you into the bathroom? We can see how many times I can make you come inside of ten minutes.”
“Kenny!” Savannah pulled away from him, laughing and blushing, but he could see from her eyes that she was actually considering it. She looked at the bathroom door, looked at him.
Ho, now! She wanted to go for it. It was probably not the most professional thing in the world for him to do, but hey, he wasn’t here in his official capacity. He was on leave, on vacation. And they could wait for evening to fall just as well in the bathroom, getting it on, as they could out here . . .
“Come on,” he whispered, grinning at her. She was going to say yes.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he stopped her. “Wait.”
He heard a sound that could only be some kind of aircraft approaching. It wasn’t a helo, though. It was some kind of small plane.
“Hold that thought,” he said, and pushed himself off the floor, crossing to the window.
It was getting louder.
Savannah and Molly came to stand beside him. “What is it?” Billy asked from his place on the floor.
“Small airplane. Single prop—one propeller,” he translated. “Whoever it is, our hosts aren’t expecting him. Lookit.”
Outside the window there was a great deal of activity as soldiers ran in all directions, probably heading for battlestations. The guard in front of the house took several steps out into the yard.
“Be ready to move,” Ken said.
“It’s not dark,” Savannah observed.
“Sometimes a good diversion trumps cover of darkness,” he said. “Let’s get Alex up and out of bed and Billy ready to roll.”
The mood in the FBI headquarters was tense. Alyssa could feel a trickle of sweat slide down her back.
How did Max Bhagat always manage to look so cool? He was wearing a suit with a jacket, too.
Several hours ago there had been visual contact—both Savannah and WildCard Karmody had been seen in Badaruddin’s compound. They were being held in the same structure where Alex was believed to be. That was good news. Now it was just a matter of the sun setting so that the SEAL team could bring them out.
Rose’s son Karl and his wife, Priscilla—Savannah’s parents—had finally arrived. It was obvious, about ten seconds after they entered the room, that Priscilla got on Rose’s nerves. Without saying a word to each other, Jules intercepted Priscilla and Karl, and George pulled Rose into the opposite corner of the room.
Alyssa bounced back and forth between them, feeling Max’s gaze upon her.
He didn’t look away when she caught him staring. It was entirely possible that he was deep in thought and didn’t even realize that he’d fixated on her. But he tracked her when she moved, and he was still looking five minutes later.
She took the opportunity to gaze back at him, trying to see evidence of the surgery in which he’d had his sweat glands removed.
But then he smiled, and she turned away.
The radio crackled to life and everyone sat forward in their seat. “Unidentified aircraft approaching the island.” The voice was Jenk’s—Petty Officer Mark Jenkins. “Request air support be stepped up to full stand by. Be ready to come in fast. We’ve got a lot of activity in the compound.”
“What does that mean?” Priscilla asked anxiously.
“Lieutenant Starrett may decide to take advantage of all the activity,” Max explained. “If the chaos factor is high enough, he may decide to pull the hostages out right now.”
“It’s Jones,” Molly breathed as a red Cessna made a pass overhead, and Ken came back to the window.
It did look an awful lot like the plane he’d seen on the smuggler’s runway. But whoever it was, they were flying at tree level and scaring the crap out of the soldiers on the ground.
Some of them—just an erratic few—opened fire.
Skinny came running down from the general’s house, screaming at the top of his lungs, probably for the troops to hold their fire. He went on for quite some time, no doubt giving them a crash course in physics. If they shot and hit the pilot while the plane was heading north like that, it would crash directly into the general’s house.
Ken was betting Badaruddin’s homeowner’s insurance didn’t cover things like self-inflicted acts of aggression.
“What is he doing here?” Molly asked. “Go away!” she shouted, although there was no way in hell the pilot of that plane could have heard her.
Jones made one more low pass over the road, getting up his nerve to give this a try.
It was going to be fucking tight, but he’d landed in fucking tight places before, for far less important reasons.
Molly was down there.
He was going to get his ass down there, too, and get her out of there.
The red Cessna was landing. Ken could tell by the sound of the engine.
The crazy son of a bitch flying that thing was actually going to try landing on the road.
One false move, and one of the wings would get tangled in the trees, and he’d somersault and crash.
“Okay,” Ken said. “Everyone in the back room. Let’s get ready to move.”
But Molly, the missionary, wouldn’t budge from the window.
The Cessna got lower and lower and lower. Jesus, the guy had balls of steel. It had to be like flying an X-Wing through the canyons of the Death Star—without any of the technology.
The wheels hit the dirt, and the plane jerked and lurched, but it stayed in the dead center of the road.
It was only at the very end, after it had slowed significantly, that the left wing caught a tree, and it spun out and crashed headlong into the brush on the opposite side of the road, almost directly across from the guest quarters.
It was entirely possible that Jones—if that’s really who it was—had done that on purpose.
The engine cut out, and the silence was amazing. No one moved.
All weapons were aimed at the Cessna.
“I don’t know whether to pray for him to be dead or alive,” Molly said. There were tears on her cheeks. “They know who he is. They’ll send him back to . . . oh, God.”
“Who is he?” Ken asked, but she just shook her head.
The Cessna door opened, and every weapon in that compound that wasn’t locked and loaded got locked and loaded. It was quite an impressive sound.
“Jayakatong, old friend,” Jones’s voice called out. “Tell your troops to back off. I have the money you were looking for and I’m willing to trade it for something of mine that you’ve got.”
Skinny stepped forward. “And what would that be, Jones? I don’t recall taking anything of yours.”
“Some friends,” Jones called back. “Molly Anderson and Billy Bolten. They’re missionaries for chrissake. You have no business holding them here.”
“Actually, I do,” Skinny replied. “It seemed Miss Anderson had some interesting information that I wanted her to share with the general.”
“Jones!” Molly called out. “He knows who you are!”
That was Molly’s voice. She was in earshot. Jones had guessed right in assuming she’d be held in the same little “guest cottage” that he’d spent some time in about a year ago.
She was alive, and conscious. That was good.
What wasn’t so good was that she’d let slip—either on purpose or unintentionally—the fact that he was Grady Morant, the most hunted man in all of Southeast Asia and Indonesia, thanks to the price on his head, which translated to roughly five million U.S. dollars.
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