JET - Escape: (Volume 9) (16 page)

Drago nodded to him. The bodyguard grunted a greeting and twisted the doorknob. Drago squeezed past him and stepped into the office, where the young dealer was sitting behind his desk, his smirk firmly in place. Bodyguard number two stood behind him with his hand on the pistol in his belt.

“Yo, youngblood, take a load off,” he said to Drago.

Drago sat opposite him, his face impassive, waiting. The dealer pushed a mirror with a line of white powder on it to the side, reached onto the floor next to his chair, and hoisted a nylon bag onto the desktop. He unzipped it, removed a pistol and a MAC-10, and set both down in front of Drago, who eyed the machine pistol skeptically.

“What the hell is that?”

“Best I could get in the time you got, big man,” the dealer said, laying a single small suppressor on the table beside the guns.

“I’d be lucky to hit a car at ten feet with that piece of crap. MAC-10s are for drive-bys, not serious work.”

“Ain’t all that bad.”

“You can’t get me a real gun?”

“Take it or leave it, Dad.”

Drago fieldstripped the pistol and examined it, then pieced it back together. He did the same with the MAC-10 and shook his head in disgust. “Does this thing even fire?”

“It do indeed.”

“It looks like it’s straight off a B movie set.”

The dealer shrugged. “You wanted a chatter gun. That’s what it is.”

Drago shook his head and withdrew a wad of dollars wrapped with a rubber band. He tossed it to the dealer. “Highway robbery. What about a suppressor for the MAC?”

His host smirked again and began counting the cash as Drago inspected the magazines in the bag. “Couldn’t get one,” he replied, thumbing through the bills with practiced ease. He was looking up from the money when Drago slapped a magazine into the MAC-10, chambered a round, and sprayed the dealer and the bodyguard with slugs. The dealer’s shirt sprouted a collage of red blossoms and the bodyguard slammed into the wall, his weapon half-drawn, now useless to him. Drago waited a beat and then emptied the machine pistol through the wooden entry door.

The MAC-10 snapped empty and Drago moved to the bag. Even with ringing ears he could hear a woman’s scream from the club floor. He slipped another magazine into the MAC-10 and tossed the Glock into the bag with the remaining magazines. Drago paused and eyed the dealer, who was struggling for breath behind the desk, the wounds in his chest burbling blood with each inhalation.

“You were right. It’ll do,” Drago said, and after pocketing the money, made for the ruined exit.

When he stepped over the second bodyguard’s corpse and into the club’s main room, it was cleared of customers. He walked to the entrance, where the sun was shining through the partially open door, and after peering out at the sidewalk, stowed the MAC-10 in the bag and exited onto the street, his movements calm and unhurried as he walked through the run-down district, to all the world just another pedestrian on his way to work.

Drago checked the time and rounded a corner. When he was out of sight of the club, he increased his pace. At a larger thoroughfare, he flagged down a taxi and slid into the rear seat.

“How long will it take to get to La Ensenada?” he asked the driver.

“Oh, maybe fifteen minutes. Depends on traffic, you know?”

Drago nodded. “If you can get me there in ten, there’s a big tip in it for you.”

The driver put the car in gear and considered Drago in the rearview mirror. “In a hurry, huh?”

“You have no idea.”

Chapter 28

La Ensenada, Venezuela

Fernanda exhaled impatiently as Ramón piloted a Nissan sedan into the impoverished town. A group of children shambled along the dusty street on their way to school, uniforms ragged and worn, their faces already hard from an unforgiving life with little future.

As they neared the waterfront, she sat forward, her nerves tingling. She could sense it: the woman and her family were here, trying to escape Fernanda’s wrath. But they wouldn’t stand a chance. She knew that finding them wherever they were holed up would take too long, but a better idea came to her after studying the harbor and the surrounding buildings.

The Nissan reached the shore road, and Ramón looked to Fernanda for direction. She pointed to her right. “Do a lap. Let’s see what’s at the docks.”

Ramón cruised along slowly, and Fernanda eyed the various ships tied to the concrete jetties. When he reached the wall that separated a massive oil refinery from the rest of the harbor, she gave the ships a final appraisal and checked her cell phone.

“Make a left here,” she said, and Ramón obliged. The sun’s rays washed across the dashboard and they shielded their eyes. Fernanda pointed at a beige spire jutting skyward. “There it is.”

Ramón rolled to a stop in front of the church doors and Fernanda got out of the car, rucksack in hand. “Wait over on the far end of the strand and call me if you see them.”

“You sure this is the best way to handle it?” he asked.

“Absolutely. There’s too much ground to cover for us to watch all the boats. But from the bell tower I’ll be able to monitor the entire area, and when I see them, I can pick them off before they know what hit them.”

“Okay. Same with you. Ring me if you spot them.”

Fernanda nodded and turned to the church, impatient and anxious. Even now she could be missing the woman as she neared one of the cargo ships. Ramón was a convenience, but she was tiring of him, although his presence was a necessary evil. Without Mosises’ help, she’d have never been able to pinpoint her quarry to the obscure port, much less get to Venezuela so quickly. But she wouldn’t call Ramón until after she’d put a bullet through the woman’s skull. She’d had enough of the cartel’s ineptness, and had seen all she needed to with Jaime’s botched assault on the monastery and the bad lead on the clinic to involve Ramón until after the shooting was over.

From now on she’d do things her way.

She eased one of the tall double doors open and entered the church. A young priest walked toward her from the altar area, and she smiled disarmingly as he approached.

“Welcome to God’s house, my child. Let me know if there’s anything I can–” he began.

Fernanda’s lightning blow to his throat caught him completely by surprise, instantly crushing his larynx and choking him. He collapsed on the stone floor and flailed like a beached fish as Fernanda watched him wordlessly. After several minutes his complexion turned blue from cyanosis, and he lay still. She dragged him to the confessional booth and propped him up inside, drew the red velvet curtain, and then made for the rear of the church and the stairs that led to the bell tower.

When she was beside the altar, she listened for any movement, but heard nothing. The priest, as she expected, had been alone, preparing the church for any stragglers in need of spiritual guidance. The sign out front promised a mass every evening at six, and at ten and six on Sundays, so she had all day before she had to worry about anyone getting suspicious about the good father’s absence.

The stairs were off the vestry. She took them two at a time, anxious to get into position.

The wharf was just beginning to stir when she reached the top of the tower. Two amorous pigeons flapped away, startled by her arrival, and she smiled bitterly.
Enjoy it, my feathered friends, because you never know how long it’s going to last
. Igor’s face popped into her mind and she blinked it away. She needed to stay focused, not daydream about lost love. She would mourn Igor in her own time – once he’d been avenged, and not before.

Fernanda inched toward the gap and looked out at the shimmering blue of Maracaibo Lake, which fed into the Caribbean Sea north of the city. The morning sun gilded the surface as she scanned the cargo vessels. Seamen and dock laborers were just arriving to work, the activity muted at the early hour. Near the refinery, two men wrestled a thick fuel hose to a medium-sized cargo ship as the captain watched from the deck, but there was no sign of the woman or her family.

Fernanda unzipped her bag, withdrew her sniper rifle, and set the suppressor and two magazines beside her before peering through the scope. She calculated the range and figured that the docks were no more than four hundred meters away – a manageable shot for a professional, especially with no real wind and high humidity.

Fernanda adjusted the scope and then sat back and affixed the suppressor, twisting it onto the machined threads carefully. When she was done, she slipped a magazine into the rifle and loaded a cartridge, and then went back to scanning the boats, the stock resting on the thick lip of the bell tower, the barrel all but invisible – not that she had any concerns about detection. She was positive that the last thing in the world the woman would be expecting was to be picked off on her way to a boat in Nowhere, Venezuela. She probably assumed that she’d gotten away clean, which would have been the case had it not been for Fernanda’s involvement.

Fernanda settled in for a wait, the gun comfortable in her hands. The men onboard the ships were clearly visible in the scope, the resolution so high it seemed as though she could reach out and touch them.

Now it was a matter of patience, and she could outwait the best of them.

As her quarry was going to discover as their last living realization.

Chapter 29

La Ensenada, Venezuela

The taxi carrying Drago stopped at the waterfront, and he paid the driver the promised bonus. He took in the empty square as he climbed from the cab. The taxi rumbled away over the distressed pavement, and Drago moved to a small park across the street from the quay and sheltered himself from the morning sun beneath a grove of trees. Not much was moving on the docks, which didn’t surprise him, and should work in his favor. The town was small enough that there could only be one reason for Matt and the woman to have come there instead of continuing to Maracaibo, and that was to find a boat.

They would be smart enough to figure out that any major harbor would likely be on alert – but a second-string port like La Ensenada would be at the bottom of most lists, which made it perfect. It’s what he would have done. And they were pros, so their instincts would be similar.

Now he just needed to find them.

He considered the layout of the wharf and asked himself how he would have done it. He was sure they’d already found a willing vessel, given their motivation. While it was possible they were already aboard, it was unlikely, in case there was an unexpected search by the authorities – a fairly common occurrence in ports near Colombia. No, they’d wait until the last possible second and then board just before the boat departed.

He fished his binoculars from his bag and killed time by scanning the ships – as sorry a collection of rust buckets as he’d ever seen. A vendor pushed a cart across the parking lot toward the first jetty, ringing a chime to alert the workers, but other than that and a few scraggly seagulls marching along the concrete embankment, the area was deserted.

After ten minutes, he grew bored and studied the surrounding buildings, the ache in his head reminding him of his sleep deficit. The town was a shithole, even by third world standards, with its noxious lake water and all the structures in disrepair. He tried to imagine what it must be like to live in a purgatory like La Ensenada and shook his head.

Something flashed on the edge of his vision, and he turned the spyglasses toward it. He saw a multistory home, a few warehouses, a church… Whatever it was caught the sun again and glinted.

In the bell tower.

He cursed. He’d gotten it wrong. His quarry hadn’t assumed they were in the clear at all. They were conducting surveillance on the port, watching for watchers. Watching for him.

And he was exposed. Although…his appearance was different enough that it was possible they wouldn’t recognize him, especially under his stained baseball cap and sunglasses. The woman had only seen him in the dark, at the river, for a moment. Matt was a different story, but depending on which of them was up there working the morning shift…

He dropped the binoculars back into his bag and stood. Now committed to making a move, he crossed the road at a measured pace, taking care to do so while walking away from the port so all a watcher would see was the back of his head. As Drago approached the sidewalk, he turned and skirted the buildings until he arrived at a street that led toward the church. He hadn’t felt the sensation of being in the crosshairs, so he was confident that he hadn’t been spotted. That, and he was still breathing, which he was sure he wouldn’t be if the woman or Matt had placed him.

At the next intersection he took another small street, and within a minute had the church in sight, closing on it from the rear, out of the field of view of the bell tower. Once near the building, he felt in his bag for the pistol and slipped it into his waistband. It wasn’t easily concealable with the suppressor on, so he’d have to risk his shots being heard – a small enough concession for being able to exact his vengeance. Slipping away after shooting them would simply be more difficult. Then again, Drago had built a reputation for specializing in the impossible, and dodging some small-town cops would pose little challenge for him.

Drago moved to the rear entry to the church, but the door was locked. He glanced around and, after confirming he was unobserved, broke the pane of glass in the door with his elbow and reached in to unlock the deadbolt. The door offered no resistance and he pushed into the vestry, which was in keeping with the rest of the town, Spartan and bleak.

Once inside, his ears strained for sounds of life, but he didn’t hear anything. He made his way toward the bell tower stairs and, as he moved, pulled the MAC-10 from the bag and felt for a magazine. His fingers grazed one of the distinctive long shapes, and he retrieved it and slid it into the handle before locking the bolt back and ready, taking care to do so as quietly as possible.

The stairway was narrow, the ancient wood planks worn smooth from generations of the faithful. Drago mounted the steps with silent caution, aware that any slip at this point would warn his quarry. He winced with each creak of the old timbers, seemingly deafening to him, but in reality almost inaudible. When he neared the landing at the top, he quieted his heart rate, preparing for the kill as he fingered the machine-pistol trigger in anticipation.