Power: Special Tactical Units Division (In Wilde Country Book 3) (4 page)

Nasty.

You killed an animal for food, or because it was trying to kill you. You didn’t kill it so some rich broad could wear it—but his opinion of Alessandra Wilde or Alessandra Bellini or whatever she called herself didn’t mean he could just let her die.

“Lieutenant. Please. You have to find her before they—they hurt her.”

Tanner suspected
please
was not a common part of John Wilde’s vocabulary.

And that photo. The bruised face. The men touching her. She’d been hurt already, he thought, and his stomach rolled. The only question was how much more would they do before they killed her, because killing was what Bright Star was all about—assuming this was a Bright Star kidnapping, and his gut was telling him maybe not.

Should he tell that to Wilde? No. For one thing, he didn’t have any facts to support the supposition. A low ransom figure, a poor drawing… It wasn’t enough.

For another, he’d have to also tell him that if Alessandra had been taken by two bandits working on their own, she might well be in even greater danger.

As vicious as it was, Bright Star at least operated under an organizational umbrella.

“Okay,” Tanner said briskly. “Give me the name of your man at State. I’ll speak with him, make some suggestions.”

A flush rose in Wilde’s face. “State’s not involved.”

“But you said your contact there…”

“I said he sent the information to me. Privately. Not officially.”

“Why the hell not?”

“I told you. State isn’t involved.”

“I don’t understand. What do you mean, State isn’t involved? I’d have thought your first action would have been to pull at the strings you could.”

“They don’t… That Alessandra is my daughter is not public information.”

Tanner folded his arms over his chest. “Meaning what, exactly?”

“Meaning it’s a long story.”

The general’s tone had hardened. He’d gone into command mode. Screw that, Tanner thought. If he was going to take on the job of collecting information and formulating a plan to rescue the woman, he needed to know what was going on.

“Then give me the abbreviated version, General.”

Wilde’s face reddened. There wasn’t a way in the world anyone ever spoke to him like this. They both knew it, just as they both knew that the general was just going to have to deal with a new reality, a reality that was standing in front of him, glowering.

“Alessandra is—she’s a child I had with my, ah, my second wife.”

“And?”

“And…” Long pause. “And, nobody knows I had a second wife.”

“I don’t follow. You divorced your first wife?”

“No.”

“Then what? She died?”

“Yes. And I don’t see what any of this has to do with finding my daughter and rescuing her from the clutches of a ragtag bunch of killers.”

“Wrong.” Tanner’s voice was as grim as the look on his face. “Don’t dismiss them as a ragtag bunch. They’re well financed and their leaders, at least, are well trained. And I still don’t get why you haven’t involved the State Department. They know how to handle things like this.”

“I told you. Nobody knows about Alessandra. About my—my second marriage. It took place in Italy. There’s no record of it here. I’d have to waste precious time on a lot of pointless explanations.”

Explanations the man didn’t want to make. The unspoken words all but echoed through the room.

And yet, Tanner thought, not involving State could be the best course of action for whoever planned and coordinated a rescue. He wasn’t a fan of protocol and diplomacy and red tape, and he sure as hell hated dealing with by-the-book government functionaries making life-and-death decisions when the toughest life-and-death issue most of them ever handled was traffic on the Beltway each morning.

Somebody working off the grid with contacts in Special Forces would best know how to handle this situation—somebody with contacts in the CIA. In the NSA. In the place referred to only as The Agency.

In STUD.

A coordinator like that would have worked in the field. He’d know how to bypass the petty rules established by petty politicians.

And he was the lucky guy Blake and the general had chosen to oversee the rescue of the spoiled estranged daughter of a four-star general. Of a woman who wanted to turn cats into coats.

She’d certainly chosen the right place.

San Escobal was pretty much the jaguar capital of Central America. He’d learned that when he’d served there. A couple of times, he and his squad had been lucky enough to glimpse the big, graceful cats slipping through the trees.

Had she gone there to make the arrangements herself? Maybe she’d wanted to take a personal look at the creatures she was going to pay men to kill. There were laws against hunting the cats, but there were laws against lots of things in San Escobal and one of the reasons people went to such places was because nobody paid attention to the laws.

Amazing. He’d never met the lady, and he already didn’t like her. Still, she didn’t deserve to be raped or murdered or worse. And yeah, there was worse.

“Who else knows about this besides this jungle group and your pal at State?”

“Only you.”

“And Captain Blake.”

“Yes. I told him everything. He immediately suggested you. He said you knew more about Central America, more about the scum operating in its jungles, than any operative he had.”

“Why did you contact the captain instead of someone else? You surely have access to every service that exists.”

“We go way back. Jim and I served on a joint task force in Europe years ago, and now he’s in charge of STUD.” Wilde managed a quick smile. “No point in playing games, Akecheta. We have the world’s best military, but everyone knows STUD is where to turn when you’re knee-deep in shit.”

Tanner walked to the wall of windows and drew open the blinds. Bright afternoon light flooded the room. A long stretch of pristine white sand led to the ocean, where gulls dipped and soared over the water. The sight was beautiful and serene, almost a gut-wrenching contrast to what might be happening in the jungles of San Escobal, more than three thousand miles away.

Slowly, he turned and looked at John Hamilton Wilde.

“I’m on rehabilitative leave, General, but you probably know that.”

“Jim told me. He also said he didn’t think it would keep you from being…effective.”

No. It wouldn’t. You could be effective behind a desk even if you had a gimpy leg.

He knew the right people to contact. He’d get in touch with them, call in some favors, set in motion a process that would, he had to admit, undoubtedly be more efficient than what Wilde could do by going through the usual channels. And he could do it all from here. Satellites would put everything he needed within his grasp.

The only question was who to ask to go in and do the dirty work. The trek through the green hell of San Escobal, the stalking of lowlifes who’d as soon murder a woman as keep her alive. And, toughest of all, the job of getting her out without getting her killed in the process.

It had to be a one-man job by a lone wolf who knew how to remain damn near invisible.

Goddammit.

He wanted it to be him.

It was the kind of work he’d been trained to do, the kind he loved. The excitement. The risk. The danger. There were times it was better than sex.

But it wouldn’t be him. He hadn’t been cleared for duty. No way Blake would let him take this on.

Who, then?

Names went through his head. Caleb Wilde, no longer in the field but still revered at The Agency…and, now that he thought about it, was that same last name a coincidence? It didn’t matter. Caleb was wrong for the job. His area of expertise had been Europe.

Zach Castelianos, who’d been with Force Recon and then The Agency. Zach was running his own outfit now, but his specialty had been Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

He needed someone who knew the jungle. Knew Bright Star.

Chay could do it, but he was only here on a training mission that he had to complete so he could rejoin their unit.

Okay. It was time to stop thinking of who wasn’t available and come up with someone who was.

“Lieutenant? Will you help me?”

Tanner looked at the general. Despite the uniform, the medals, the stiff military bearing, there was desperation in the man’s face.

“I will.”

Wilde closed his eyes, then opened them again. “Thank you.”

They shook hands. Then Tanner grabbed a pen and pad of paper from the desk.

“I want to get started immediately.”

“Of course. Just tell me what you need.”

“That’s what I’m about to do, General. I’ll need a small office here. Nothing elaborate, but it has to be private. And I’ll give you a list of what equipment I’ll require. Computers. I’ll write down the kind I want. Special satellite access. A couple of fax machines. Full access to you at all times. I’m going to check out some men who I think will… What?”

Wilde was shaking his head.

“I’m talking about what you’ll need personally. Pistols. Automatic weapons. Men. How many and with what specialties. And, of course, how to handle insertion into San Escobal. By chopper? Plane? Boat? Or do you think it’s preferable to go in on foot from Belize or Guatemala?”

“I’ll make all those determinations after I decide on an operative. That’s part of my role as coordinator.”

“I don’t want you coordinating this operation, Akecheta, I want you heading it up in the field.”

In the field.

The adrenaline rush was overpowering. For an instant, Tanner could see the green walls of the rain forest, smell the lush scents of it, hear the sounds and feel the heat.

Reality set in.

“You don’t get it, General. It won’t be me.”

“There’s nobody else who can do this job as well as you, Lieutenant. That’s straight from your captain’s mouth.”

Why screw around with modesty?

“I agree, sir, but you misunderstood the captain. I’m trapped here until I get a medical go-ahead. This thing happened to my leg. It’s nothing—hell, it’s no problem at all—but without the doctor giving me a thumbs-up…”

“She’s given it.”

Captain Blake walked into the room.

“You’ve got medical clearance, Akecheta,” he said, shutting the door behind him. “Johnny, I hope you don’t mind, but I figured it might be time for me to show my face.”

Wilde nodded. “You were right. I just told the lieutenant that I want him on the ground in San Escobal and he’s telling me that’s not possible.”

Blake looked at Tanner.

“It’s absolutely possible,” he said briskly. “Turns out the doc made a mistake filling out her latest report on you. She says you’re fit for duty. So does the surgeon who worked on you.”

Tanner felt a muscle flicker in his jaw.

Part of him wanted to pump his fist in the air. Part wanted to connect that fist with his captain’s chin. He’d begged. Pleaded. Done everything but get on his knees in supplication when asking to be returned to duty. The answer, always, had been no.

Now, these two old friends, one of them among the highest-ranked officers in the country, had changed all that simply because they could.

The realization burned his ass.

He’d tell these jerks exactly that. Let them know what he thought of rules that kept a man from doing what he’d been born to do until it suited the needs of others.

“Well?” Blake said. “Are you up for this or not, Akecheta?”

There was only one possible answer.

And it was yes.

CHAPTER THREE

Somewhere over the United States, just after 8 p.m. Eastern time:

Four-star generals were
magicians.

They were good at pulling rabbits out of hats.

San Escobal was in the Caribbean. That made south Florida the logical starting point.

Small problem.

The distance between Camp Condor and south Florida was almost three thousand miles.

So the first rabbit out of the hat was fast transport.

That turned out to be no problem at all.

Tanner sat in a U.S. Navy F/A-18F Super Hornet, a two-seater version of the newest, fastest jet that existed. The pilot would bring the jet down at Boca Chica Key in Key West, where an Hughes MH-6 Little Bird helicopter would be waiting.

The other rabbits out of the hat were things he could have gotten on his own, but never with the speed that came of having them requested by a guy with four stars on his shoulder boards.

Paracord. A canvas tarp. A magnesium fire starter. A satellite phone. A GPS. A flashlight. Individual packets of antibiotic ointment. Ditto for sterile wipes. Ibuprofen. Antibiotic capsules. Power bars. A cook pot. Cups. Canteens. Half a dozen Meals Ready to Eat. The MREs were bulky, but foraging off the land was time-consuming. Besides, once he secured the woman, he’d have to feed her something substantial. He had no way of knowing what condition she’d be in, other than to be certain that the ordeal she’d experienced, hard on any civilian, would have been especially hard on a spoiled city girl.

He had his own weapons.

A Hechkler & Koch MP7. STUD operatives had access to an almost endless variety of weapons, but he’d learned to trust the MP7 for its accuracy and firepower. His SIG-SAUER P226 pistol and the SOG-TAC knife that had been with him from the start, through his deployment as a SEAL and then as a STUD.

Everything else would be waiting for him in a backpack on the chopper in the Keys.

Wilde had argued that what he was taking wasn’t sufficient.

“How about a tent? A backup pistol? A machete? Surely you’ll want flares. Anti-venom.”

Tanner said yes to the flares and considered the machete. Whether you called the stuff in San Escobal a jungle or a rain forest, it could be tough to get through. A machete would undoubtedly be useful, but it would add to what was already a bigger load of stuff than he liked. He’d be moving fast, first to find the woman and then to get her out.

STUDs learned to make-do with what was at hand.

Still, he’d agreed to the machete. He knew that it might be the difference between moving through the heavy growth quickly or getting trapped in a morass of vines, branches and trees.

As for taking someone else with him…

Both he and Blake struck that down. Fast.

He’d have satphone access to Chay, who would be his contact, but getting into San Escobal and getting the woman out was black ops, a lone-wolf mission…Call it what you wanted, it all came down to the same thing. The job called for getting in fast and getting out the same way.

He would be on his own, and he liked it that way.

Still, Wilde wasn’t convinced.

“I damn well hope you’re up to this, Akecheta,” he’d said as Tanner had prepared to leave.

Captain Blake had slapped Tanner on the back.

“He is,” he’d told the general. “If anybody can pull this off, Johnny, it’s Tanner.”

The pilot’s voice buzzed through his headphones.

“Fifteen minutes to touchdown, Lieutenant.”

“Roger that,” Tanner said, and took a long, steadying breath.

Right on time. He’d have a few hours to pore over maps, check out the satellite photos he’d requested, even though little would be visible on the ground because of the lushness of the land itself.

He’d made a tough decision about when to go in.

Dropping out of a chopper at night was not the recommended approach, especially into an area of dense vegetation, but zero dark thirty was the best time to get in without being noticed. The drop would be made in a clearing halfway between the place where the kidnapping had taken place and the town where the ransom was to be paid. Tanner had worked the numbers over and over, and he was sure that was as far as the woman and her captors would have gotten by now.

As for Blake’s reassurance to the general that he could pull this off…

Tanner sure as hell hoped he was right.

* * *

San Escobal, deep in the rainforest, 8 p.m., Eastern time:

Alessandra Bellini
sat gagged and bound in a darkness so complete she couldn’t even see her captors, who lay passing a bottle of whiskey back and forth not more than ten feet away.

Alessandra shuddered.

She could feel something crawling across her ankle, something else creeping over her forehead. Her skin itched and burned, her muscles screamed with pain, and those two bastards were having a party.

What time was it anyway?

Not very late. She was sure of that. And what did it matter? She bit back a bubble of hysterical laughter. It wasn’t as if she had someplace to go.

There were sounds in the trees and bushes around her. The sounds of things moving. Small things. Big things. Harmless creatures and ones that were not so harmless.

Better not to dwell on that.

She had to think about how to escape. Or how to survive.

So far, she hadn’t done very well at survival. Otherwise, she’d still be back at The FURever Fund’s compound instead of here, in the middle of nowhere.

Stupid, she thought, and not for the first time. How could she have been so damnably stupid?

Her second night at the compound she’d awakened, desperate to pee.

Sounded simple. But it wasn’t.

There were rules about nighttime peeing. One rule, really.

Use the chamber pot in your tent.

That had been explained to her right away.

“If, you know, you need to use the john at night, you’ll have to use the thing in your tent,” one of the researchers had told her.

“The thing?”

“Yeah. A chamber pot. It’s got a cover and you’ll find a roll of toilet paper next to it.” The researcher had laughed at the look on Alessandra’s face. “Just pretend it’s Victorian times,” he’d said. “When chamber pots were what everybody used.”

The thing was, the organization was new and its goals were great. Alessandra was delighted to be part of it, but she understood that it had problems. Not enough staff. A cramped office in Jersey City. Plus, she thought the name was clever, but possibly confusing. She’d mentioned it to the marketing guy, a nice kid straight out of college who’d looked stricken and said he’d just sunk hundreds of bucks into FURever brochures. Even if they came up with a new name, ditching the brochures would have wasted money they couldn’t afford to waste because FURever’s other problem, its big problem, was that it was underfunded.

The compound was a Quonset hut and half a dozen tents on a cleared patch of jungle five miles from Escobal City. A small room in the hut contained a chemical toilet, the only toilet, it turned out. And the hut was kept locked at night.

“Okay,” Alessandra had replied, “but, really, I can just go a couple of feet into the trees.”

“Better not. There’s no way of knowing what’s out there once it’s dark. I know it sounds gross, but we all use chamber pots. You can empty it into the toilet in the morning.”

He hadn’t been kidding.

There was, indeed, a pot in her tent.

Actually, it was a big round plastic container with a cover. One glance and she’d known she’d never look at a container of potato salad the same way again.

She’d also known she couldn’t use it.

Alessandra wasn’t squeamish. She wasn’t foolishly modest. But the idea of beginning the day among people she hardly knew while lugging a chamber pot in her arms just didn’t work for her.

She was fine during the first night of her stay.

The second night, she’d awakened in the dark, needing to pee.

Desperate to pee.

Dammit! One cup of coffee too many at supper.

What the hell. She’d camped out when she was a kid. Well, she’d camped out once, her first year at college. Okay. She hadn’t camped out, exactly. She and a couple of hundred other students had spent a night in tents in support of a student anti-hunger drive…

Alessandra had rolled her eyes and gotten up from her cot.

She’d gone to sleep in a cotton T and panties. Now, she pulled cargo pants over her panties, slipped her feet into a pair of canvas sllp-ons that were old and tattered, but too comfortable to throw away, grabbed some toilet paper, unzipped her tent door and headed for the nearest bushes.

Once there, she’d undone her pants, tried not to think about snakes, and done what she’d needed to do. She’d used the wad of paper she’d brought with her, pulled up her panties, then her pants…

That was when the nightmare started.

A powerful arm had wrapped around her neck and hoisted her off her feet, bringing her back against a man’s body and into the stench of body odor and whiskey.

She’d tried to scream, but the arm was hard against her windpipe. So she’d kicked, tried to use her elbows as weapons.

“You fight, you die,” the man had whispered in her ear.

She’d fought anyway.

A second man called her a
puta
as he jammed a filthy piece of cloth stinking of rot and sweat between her teeth.

Seconds later, gagged and bound hand and foot, she’d been tossed over the first man’s shoulder and carried off into the night.

She had no idea how long the men had walked.

Eventually, the man carrying her had dumped her on her feet. He’d untied her ankles, looped a rope around her neck and begun dragging her after him like a reluctant dog on a leash.

She’d stumbled again and again.

It was dark. Really dark. The man in front had a flashlight and there was a moon, but she couldn’t see more than a couple of feet ahead. Each time she tripped, each time she fell, the man holding the rope yanked on it and cursed while she struggled to her feet.

At dawn, they stopped in a small clearing.

He tied the end of the rope around a tree on the clearing’s perimeter.

She’d collapsed to the ground, feet raw, wrists burning and neck sore where the rope had dug into her.

For the first time, she got a real look at her captors. One was tall and skinny. The other was short and fat.

Both of them were ugly and filthy and armed, and scared her straight into the marrow in her bones.

The tall one took the gag from her mouth and gave her a drink of water, though most of the water spilled down her T-shirt because he deliberately held the cup too high.

Both men laughed when the wet T clung to her breasts.

“Nice,” the short one said, and squeezed her nipple so hard she moaned.

“See? She likes us,” said the tall one, and jammed the gag in her mouth again.

They told her what would happen to her if she gave them any trouble.

Then they opened their backpacks, took out food of some sort and a bottle of what smelled like whiskey. They ate and passed the bottle back and forth until they fell into drunken, snoring stupors.

Alessandra had not closed her eyes.

The men woke at dusk, ate and drank again. The short one waved something half raw and stinking of rot under her nose. She’d flinched at the smell and he’d laughed and tossed whatever the thing was into the brush. Then he ordered her to stand. When she did, he untied the rope tied around her neck from the tree, looped it around his arm, and shoved her onto the trail. When he tugged on the rope, she gagged. He cursed, but he loosened it.

Then he barked, “Move!”

As if she had a choice.

This time, she was more aware of time. She didn’t have an accurate way to gauge it, but she knew they’d walked for hours.

She’d stumbled. Fallen. Bruised her knees. Torn her cargo pants. She ached everywhere. The rope around her wrists cut into the tender skin. Her ankles were bleeding where they’d been bound, attracting every bug within miles to dine on her flesh.

All of that was bad, but what was even worse was that she was terrified.

Too terrified, too shocked, too everything to do more than whimper at the pain in her feet and wrists while her mind ran in useless circles.

Her teeth had chattered with fear.

The tall one found that incredibly amusing.

“Listen to the whore,” he’d said. “She plays the castanets.”

More giggles and laughter, and all at once she’d thought,
Alessandra, exactly what in hell are you doing?

These were men, not monsters. She had to start seeing them that way.

Skinny and Stubby.

She named them on the spot, told herself they were people, not creatures out of a nightmare, but the truth was it didn’t help much except as a reminder that she’d been on the verge of giving up.

And giving up was something she’d never done, not in the worst moments of her life.

Bellinis were not cowards nor were Wildes. And she had the blood of both in her veins.

It was pointless to think about pain and fear. She had to think about a plan. About figuring out why they’d taken her.

What did they want?

Rape was a real possibility, but except for lewd jokes, pinches and touches, they hadn’t done anything overtly sexual to her. Not yet, anyway. So why had they taken her prisoner?

In late afternoon, they stopped walking. Stubby gave her a cup of water and a chunk of bloody meat he took from his pack. She’d forced herself to eat it.

Skinny produced a camera from his backpack. She recognized the brand. Her mother had owned one, an ancient Polaroid, the kind that took instant photos, and she’d thought how amazing it was that even when things were completely bleak, bits of useless trivia could float to the surface of your mind.

“Look pretty,” he said, “or nobody gonna wanna pay nothin’ for you.”

Then she understood.

They’d taken her for ransom.

Ransom?

The FURever Fund didn’t even have money for toilets. They certainly wouldn’t have the money to buy her freedom.