Behind the Mask (Undercover Associates Book 4) (38 page)

“What do you make of the buildup?” she asked.

“He thinks Kabakas is coming.”

“And so he is.”

He raised his eyes to her. “I want to save the savinca, not kill more men. Kabakas is a harsh, blunt weapon. Like a bomb when a knife would do.”

“Kabakas saved me on that airfield.”

He flexed his hands in the gloves, black leather dully lit in the moonlight, enjoying the strength of her gaze. He reached up and drew a leather-clad finger down the pale skin of her cheek. She still liked the gloves. She just liked his hands better.

“Will you wear the mask?” she asked.

“Handling a few obstacles,” he said, sliding two fingers along her jawline, “I think the mask is not so much needed.” He dropped his hand. This was not so good for concentration. “I’ll put it on if I need to. You’ll stay behind.”

“They’re expecting a sidekick now.”

“I don’t care.”

“Don’t shield me.” He recognized the hitch in her voice—she got that when she felt emotion. “Trust me as a partner.”

He trusted her as he’d never trusted anyone. Didn’t she see it? He grabbed her hair and let her feel it that way. Him and the gloves, the way she sometimes liked. “I trust you as more than a partner.” It was a revolution inside him, that trust. A seismic shift. A new North Pole.

They continued on foot, staying just outside the ATV tracks with the aid of a flashlight on low. The driver had said there was a processing lab in the area and some outbuildings a mile beyond it. He used the Spanish term for crop science. That would be the greenhouse—it fit all the criteria: near the compound but not on it, accessible for deliveries, but not on a road.

Chemical scents grew stronger as they moved deeper into the midnight-black jungle. He played the dim beam on the decaying foliage, showing her where to walk. The thick canopy made it a good place for an open-air lab for coca processing, but the canopy would soon thin; the chemical waste from even the smallest processing lab was devastating to life of all kinds.

Hugo’s blood heated as he thought about the savinca bushes, trapped in the poisoned soil, just as he had been trapped as a boy, nowhere to run, veins filling with anger and fear.

Soon he felt the presence of others. A sense that they weren’t alone. Deeper in, he heard the muffled sounds of men walking quietly.

He touched her sleeve and placed a finger upon his lips. She nodded.

He never knew who tripped the wire—her, him; it didn’t matter. He heard the snap and pushed her away just as a mass of boulders crashed down from above.

Hugo put on the mask. Shouts rang out. “Don the mask and stay down.”

He rushed out onto the ATV path and walked into the gunfire, which quickly ceased as the trio of guards caught sight of him strolling toward them in the moonlight.

They lowered their weapons, stilled.

Hugo pulled out a barong.

Finally, one turned and ran. The other two followed.

He allowed it. With his ears he followed their retreat.

He’d pushed them back without killing. It gave him hope, the ease of it. He did not need them dead.

A rustle in the bushes next to a chemical drum. Somebody hiding.

He stalked toward it, blades poised. He peered over and saw a young boy cowering in the darkness, dirt on his cheek, something that was probably dried blood on his clothes. Maybe twelve, this one.

The boy stared up at him, clutching a rifle, eyes wide—as though Hugo were death itself. It made Hugo feel so tired. He’d felt like a good man for a moment, repelling without killing, but this one saw what he was.

He spoke to the boy as if in a dream. “If you run now, Kabakas cannot see you.”

The boy stared.

“Go!”

The boy ran off.

Hugo made another circuit through the area. She strolled up next to him. “Kabakas kills without mercy, allowing only the messenger to escape.”

A line from one of the songs. He’d hated those songs, but he understood her meaning; they might think him an impostor. They might come back—with others.

“El Gorrion will kill them for abandoning their posts,” Hugo said. “They will not be so eager to report this. Still, we should hurry.”

Get the intel and go.

They switched on flashlights and moved through, keeping the ATV trail in sight. Sometime later, they reached the greenhouse, set back in a small clearing. Unguarded.

They had some time here; El Gorrion would be expecting Kabakas to attack the compound or the lab they’d passed; not an out-of-the-way jungle greenhouse.

The ramshackle facility was constructed of cinder block and corrugated metal, with the jungle pushing at the seams. Panels of chicken wire glass stretched over the top.

He kept watch over the surroundings as she picked the lock.

She was taking too long. “Stand back.” He burst open the door with a kick and strolled into the dark, cool space. It smelled of bright, angular chemicals and soft, wet soil.

She followed behind him, playing her flashlight beam on four rows of plants of different kinds, evenly spaced apart on wide planks that were supported by sawhorses.

Her stride changed in this space, she became more confident; jaunty, even, as she inspected the rows.

“Gotcha, motherfucker.” She stopped in front of one of them. “This is what he’s testing on.” She slid a leaf through two fingers. “Watching how they die.”

He loved how disgusted she sounded. They shared this passion for the plants.

“And this one, dead.” She poked the bent-over stem of another plant.

Her anger was as gorgeous as her passion. He moved to her; he’d never wanted her more. It was thrilling and not entirely comfortable. “This is the way you were when I would not call Paolo by name,” he rumbled into her ear from somewhere deep in his heart. “Battling on the side of the weak.”

“I’m definitely in a battling mood right now.” She read a note scribbled on a small pad near one of the plants.

He moved her hair to one side and slid a finger down the back of her neck. “A battling mood renders you especially beautiful,
corazón
.”

Even from behind her he could sense her smile—he saw it in the shape of her cheek, heard it in her voice. “I’m not going to be able to concentrate if you stand there saying stuff like that.”

“I think you will,” he said. “This is your habitat, is it not?”

She sniffed and moved to the next plant. There were notes next to each one.

How could her fellow agents not have forgiven her? How could they not believe in her? Could they not feel her heart? He kissed the back of her neck.

“Ruiz made notes by each plant. Dates, a number—probably the formula used, the range of intensity. High to low.” On she went. He wasn’t listening—he couldn’t hear over the banging of his pulse in his ears and the realization that he loved her.

He loved her.

She turned to him, always sensing him. Did she sense his love? Did she sense how it made the world new and colorful and dangerous? Her eyes widened as he went to her and slid his hands around her waist—she felt things—they felt each other. The connection disturbed him, yet he wouldn’t have it any other way. He jerked her to him with all the violence of the love inside him and devoured her lips, tasting the inside of her mouth, breathing her breath, forcing himself to kiss her more gently than he wished. He would always care for her and protect her, even from himself.

She smiled into the kiss. “What’s this for?”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He didn’t know what to say to her at all, so he pulled away from her and went to the doorway, scanning the jungle beyond with his full senses. Nothing.

So far.

She set to examining a metal shelving unit that held oddly shaped glassware vessels marked with lines and letters, shoved in next to jars and boxes, some with colorful labels; some with the skull and crossbones denoting poison. She shone the flashlight on one label after another. “Likely suspects for the component parts. And let’s hope he’s as careful as I think he is, and that he has his dirty computer in here. The one he doesn’t want people to see.” She checked inside cabinets and soon came to a tall metal locker in the corner. Padlocked.

Hugo leaned in the doorway, half his attention on the surrounding jungle, but the liveliest half was on her as she went at the padlock with a pick she had fashioned from paper clips.

“Damn,” she said, shoving the clips into her mouth and shaking out her hands. “Let’s try that again.”

“I think it will never get old,” he said, “seeing you in this way.”

She smiled. “What way?”

He gestured vaguely, unable to find the words. Perhaps she would take it as her being in a lab, seeing her that way. But really, he was gesturing at the world. At the madness of being in love with her, of no longer being alone. He needed to tell her, but he did not know how. It seemed too big for three words.

She found what she’d wanted—a laptop. She opened it and hit a few buttons, warming up the computer. Then she started pulling jars of solution off the shelves. “The most accessible. The least dust. He tried these last.” She smelled one and wrinkled her nose.

“Poison,” he observed. “Be careful.”

“Doesn’t Kabakas have somewhere to be?”

He nodded once. Yes, he’d go out and search the area. He’d do this for her, be her attack dog. “How much time do you need?”

“Maybe ten minutes.”

He pulled the mask down over his face. “You’ll have it. We won’t be able to leave by the trail.”

“Roger that,” she said.

He slipped out the door and melted out into the jungle, spinning his awareness out in all directions, moving lightly over the uneven jungle bed. All the years on those islands across the Sulu Archipelago had made him feel comfortable stalking and fighting in this type of terrain, even in the dark, attuned to the sounds, the scatter of small mammals and startled birds, the moist feel of the air, the scent of decay.

Crunches under the vast canopy. He stilled and closed his eyes. Regular human footsteps were heavy and easy to recognize, but a man being quiet could sound like other large animals.

He waited. Nothing.

It had felt good not to kill. He wondered now if it had been foolish. Counting on their fear of El Gorrion.

He went on, thoughts consumed by the boy hiding behind the drum and those wide brown eyes, peering up at him in terror.

People’s terror of him had never bothered him before; he’d always taken it as a badge of honor, a type of security, but that boy’s terror had felt nearly physical.

It was
her
, he realized. She’d made life feel more precious to him. When he’d looked at the old man dead in his shop in Buena Vista, when he’d bought the street-corner barongs, he’d felt bad for not having empathy. Perhaps he’d been better off without it. She’d made it hurt to be Kabakas.

Crunch.

A human. One. Near the trail, but not on it.

Nearer, now. He melted into the shadows beside a moonlit tree. Somebody was sneaking up the ATV path that led to the greenhouse.

He pulled his blades and moved toward the sound. People spoke about building up a store of goodwill; couldn’t he have a store of fear? Of soldiers staying away from him a while longer?

He spotted the man moving along the side of the road, assault rifle at the ready. Was this man playing the hero, checking on the buildings up the road, or had he drawn the short straw?

Mask fixed in place, Hugo stepped out onto the trail. He threw a warning knife, aiming it so that it whizzed by the man’s nose and stuck into a nearby tree. “The next hits you in the eye,” he said.

“You are not Kabakas.” A blast of strobe lighting assaulted Hugo’s eyes as gunfire sounded. Hugo reacted instinctively. Even blind and diving for cover he could put a blade in a man’s eye.

The shooting ceased as Hugo hit the ground. He rolled and came to a squat, bringing his hand to the stinging pain in his shoulder. Sticky wetness. It was beyond a nick and it stung like hell; his burn scars were torn and searing now, too, thanks to the roll.

But nothing like the other guy, judging from the unholy moan he’d heard so often, that begging kind of moan, not quite a wail.

The sound pierced Hugo to the core. He stood and spotted the guard on all fours on the trail. The strobe from the man’s rail mount still flashed, giving the bloody scene an unholy look. As Hugo approached, the man hovered his hand near the blade handle, wanting to pull it out of his eye, yet not. Sometimes they didn’t die right away.

Hugo continued slowly toward him.

The moaning had stopped, but even from yards away he could hear the man’s breath, frantic and ragged, more animal than human. Even his posture was animal-like, on hands and knees.

Hugo had chosen the knife through the eye for its effectiveness, for the fear it inspired, but it really was barbaric. How had he become such a fighter?

The man whimpered as Hugo crouched next to him.

“
Hermano
,” Hugo said, placing a hand on the man’s shoulder.

The man scrambled and fell onto his side. Blood streamed from the wound. “No, no, no…” Hands up defensively.

“Okay, okay, it’s okay,” Hugo said in Spanish.

The man trembled. He couldn’t see anything, but he knew Hugo was there.

Hugo squeezed the man’s shoulder.

“
Qué Dios me proteja
!” the man cried, terrified.

Hugo’s heart slammed inside his chest. Even his help terrified the soldier, who moaned again, more quietly now, as the strobe flashed on, harsh and cold. The moan twisted painfully inside Hugo, and he reached down, grabbed the blade handle, slipped it from the man’s eye, and drew it cleanly across the man’s throat. The man jerked, then stilled. Hugo kept his hand on the man’s shoulder, feeling the terror, the waning life.

He’d killed dozens like this, and this would be how they all had died—terrified, bewildered. He’d never stayed with them as they died.

“You’re okay now,” he said softly. A lie. Nothing was okay—not for either of them.

The man had doubted that he was Kabakas. Perhaps they both had.

Hugo stood and crushed the strobe mount under his boot. The darkness was back. He left the body on the trail. A sign:
Take heed. Kabakas is about.