PRECIPICE (20 page)

People soon streamed by him and gathered around the carousel, happy travelers arriving for the beginning of the holiday rush. Twenty minutes later there was still no sign of Sam. Several lonely unclaimed bags cycled endlessly on the carousel. Only a few travelers remained, still hoping their own wayward bags would somehow magically appear. He used his new Samsung phone to dial Sam’s cell for the fourth time and got no answer. He was on the verge of panic.

Before he could put the phone back in his pocket, a text popped up from a foreign number he didn’t recognize—country code 52. Moore hated texting but had been forced to learn how by his staff. He flipped the phone back open and called up the message, seeing that it was a multimedia attachment. When he opened it, his heart nearly stopped. It was a picture of Samantha’s face. She looked terrible. Her straight blonde hair was a tangled mess. She had large circles beneath eyes that were red from crying, and one of her eyes was blackened into a shiner. A wave of adrenaline shot through him and he felt faint. He felt cold and then hot, a clammy sweat breaking out on his bald scalp. He stood shaking, wanting with all of his being to help his little girl but powerless to act and frozen in his angst.

Another text popped up from the same number. Sheldon reluctantly scrolled to it and opened it, fearing the worst. His fears were confirmed. This time the attachment was a short video clip. The poor-quality cell phone recording began focused on his daughter’s face. She was sobbing. The video shakily panned to a man whose face Moore recognized. He had dark cropped hair and serious dark eyes, and a thick moustache sloped down over his lip. It was the man who had haunted his dreams in recent days. The man he’d made a bargain with. The man he had betrayed. He was holding a large automatic pistol, and he pressed the barrel against Samantha’s shaking head.

“I thought we had a deal.” Cardenas’ voice was the gravelly, feral rumble of a master predator, and it chilled Moore to his core. There was no emotion, no inflection, only a measured tone of controlled menace.

“Until the vote, your daughter stays with me. When the law passes, then you may have her back.” The short video clip ended abruptly.

Moore slowly flipped the phone closed. His mind was spinning. Part of him wanted to watch it again, but he couldn’t. He stood for a moment not knowing whether to call the FBI, run for the door, or sit down and cry. He took a few deep breaths and tried to slow his heart rate and get his head together. Think this out. He could still vote for the bill, but Cardenas might be killed before then.

That was when the worst bolt of fear shot through him. His daughter was there. A team was going to assassinate Cardenas, and his little girl would be right in the line of fire. It could be happening right now. What if she was killed in the attack? What if Cardenas survived and killed her in retaliation? No matter what the outcome, he was terrified that Samantha would not survive,
could
not
possibly
survive something like that.

His fear transformed to grim determination. He knew what he had to do. A shock of clarity washed over him, a wave of cool resolve. He knew how to save her. He dialed the number from which he had received the text, but he got no answer. The voicemail was a digital voice in Spanish that he couldn’t understand. Next, he found Juan Ortiz’ number in his contacts and hit send.

“Yeah,” came the disinterested answer.

“They’ve got Samantha.”

“I know.”

“You tell ‘em to make sure she’s safe.”

“As long as you vote for the bill, she will be safe.”

Moore steeled himself for what came next. It was the only way he could see to save his daughter, and he no longer cared about the cost. He plunged on, the words tumbling over each other as he urgently spit them out. “There’s a team on the way to kill Cardenas.”

“What?!” Ortiz was shocked by the news. How could Moore have possibly managed that? It was outside the realm of comprehension, far beyond any abilities or resources he had ever seen from this man. Could it be a bluff?

“It’s four men, I think they must be Navy SEALs from Team 6. I don’t know much about it, but they’re supposed to kill Cardenas any day now. Now, you tell him I told you that, and that I’m tryin’ to save his life. So I want him to spare my daughter. You tell him! I don’t care about the money. I’ll vote for the bill, whatever he wants. I just want my little girl back.”

This made more sense to Ortiz. His boss only knew about the assassination plot, but he didn’t have many details. This was far more believable. Ortiz wondered for a moment who might be behind the attempt. No matter, he would worry about figuring that out after he warned his cousin about the attack.

“I will tell him.”

The line went dead. Moore hung his head for a moment, ashamed of what he’d just done but knowing that he had no choice. After a moment he got it together and headed back upstairs for another drink to dull the edge of his worries before the long drive home.

*

Samantha felt a little bit better. They had locked her in a small bedroom with an attached bathroom, and she had helped herself to the shower to rinse the sweat and vomit off. The chugging noise from a generator not far from her room aggravated her splitting headache, but at least it meant there was hot water. They had left her a flowing white Mexican dress to wear. Although it felt a little bit ridiculous under the circumstances, she had to admit that it was beautiful. A white ribbon secured her long blonde hair in a ponytail at the back of her head. She was still shaking a little bit, but the worst of the nausea was over. It gave her a bit of satisfaction that she’d puked in the back of the car on the drive. That little monkey would have a hell of a time getting the smell out of his car.

Once she was clean and dressed, there was a knock at the door. She opened it to find the man who had kidnapped her. She thought he looked ridiculous with his long ponytail, silk shirt, and cowboy boots, and she hated the smug look on his face as he ran his eyes up and down her body and appreciatively raised an eyebrow.

“Come with me,” he said finally in thickly accented English.

“Fuck you! I’m not going anywhere.” Sam moved away from him across the small room, trying to put the bed between them.

Héctor cursed in frustration. He chased her around the room and corralled her, warding off slaps as he tried to get ahold of the squirming girl. Finally he got one of her arms twisted behind her and lifted it until she cried out sharply in pain.

“Let’s go,” he told her, pushing her toward the door.

He marched her onto a stone pathway leading through thick jungle. Sam could hear the thundering of flowing water nearby. They emerged onto a stone patio perched right at the edge of a deep, vertical-walled canyon. Mist billowed over the rim, wetting the jungle foliage into a sparkling deep emerald green. To the right was a concrete house overlooking the precipice, and on the left was an open-air, thatch-roofed structure—essentially nothing but a cone of brown palm fronds perched on a widely spaced circle of white concrete posts. Two women worked at a fire inside the shelter, and the smells wafting from it caused an involuntary grumble from Samantha’s stomach.

In the middle of the patio, a table was elegantly set for two. A man sat at one end. He had short dark hair, intense brown eyes, and a thick moustache, and he was wearing a silly looking light pink polo shirt with the collar turned up. She immediately recognized him as the man who had held a gun to her head when she’d arrived. The man who had made a video addressing her father. She had no idea what this was about, but her blood ran cold at the sight of him and she took a hesitant step backward.

He scooted his chair back from the table and stood when he saw her.

“Samantha,” he called cheerfully. “Welcome! Please join me for some dinner?” He gestured expansively toward the other chair with one arm. “You must be hungry after the long journey.”

Although she was terrified of this man, she
was
hungry. She walked tentatively toward the table, the view of the canyon and waterfall opening up in front of her as she approached. It was breathtaking. Although she was several feet back from the edge, looking over the sharp drop-off with no railing gave her a nervous feeling of vertigo. The fear mixed with her sense of wonder and muddled her emotions, and she paused for a stunned moment of confusion and took it all in.

She noticed that her host was still standing expectantly, so she turned and sat down in the other chair. The man sat back down as well, and women appeared immediately from the nearby shelter with plates of food. The beans and rice were surprisingly good, but she couldn’t bring herself to touch the thinly-sliced meat. She hadn’t realized how hungry she was. She wolfed down the food in silence.

When she’d finished and had a moment to sit back, the man addressed her again.

“I am Vicente Cardenas. I apologize for the inconvenience, but you will be my guest here for a little while.”

Sam sized the man up. She had no idea where she was. She knew only that she was in the jungles of a Spanish-speaking country. Here was a powerful man with a gun who also had well-armed henchmen. They had transported her here on a plane, so they obviously had money and power.

“What are you,” she asked dryly, “some kinda drug lord or something?”

“Yes,” he replied matter-of-factly, almost drawing the word into two syllables. “I am a drug lord…or something.” He smiled widely, and she couldn’t tell if he was being charming or condescending.

“So you got any coke around here, or what?” Her tone was flat and direct.

Cardenas let out a surprised huff of breath and his eyes widened, then his face broke into another benevolent smile and he chuckled softly.

“Héctor!” He called to his man who was still standing nearby. “Please bring some proper
refreshment
for our guest.”

As Héctor took the stone path away from where they sat, Cardenas addressed Sam in a serious tone. “Your father would not be happy if he knew you were using cocaine, no?”

“You know my father?” She asked.

“We haven’t met, but we do a little business together.”

Sam was indignant. “My father would never do business with someone like you.”

“No, you are probably right about that,” he acknowledged frankly. “He didn’t know he was doing business with me. Nonetheless, he made a deal, and now he must stick to the bargain.”

Héctor reappeared and tossed a fat plastic bag of white powder on the table. Sam was stunned.
Holy Shit!
There must be at least an ounce in there. She had never seen that much before. It must be worth thousands of dollars.

As she stared in disbelief at the bag on the table, Héctor’s satellite phone began to ring. He stepped away from the table to answer it. After a few moments of terse conversation in Spanish, he suddenly began shouting something stridently. He ripped the stainless .45 from where it hung beneath his arm, jumped to the side of his boss and whispered something urgently in his ear. As Sam watched the dramatic scene unfold, four men with machine guns ran onto the patio and surrounded the table, grabbing all of them and hustling them back toward the path into the jungle. She barely had time to snag the plastic bag off the table before she was whisked away.

16

Sunday, November 20th

THE TEAM HUSTLED out of the truck and raced into the dawn mist. They had been crammed into one vehicle for the uncomfortable ninety minute drive, and all were relieved to be out and moving. They quickly ferried loads of equipment into cover among the tall stalks of sugar cane on the side of the remote dirt road. Less than two minutes later, Carlos pulled away and disappeared down the road while the team regrouped in the concealment of the nine-foot tall sugar cane plants.

Adrenaline zipped through Chip’s veins, brightening the morning into a palpable hyper-reality. He was excited but also a little bit terrified. Truth be told, this was the part he was most scared of. The low growth between the cane plants made it almost impossible to see where you stepped. On past trips, Chip had seen workers burning the fields before venturing in to harvest the cane by hand with machetes. Although the Mexican government was trying to stop the practice to improve air quality, he knew the workers wouldn’t enter the fields without first burning them for fear of the deadly ‘cuatro narices’
—four noses
—an extremely venomous pit viper more commonly known by Americans as the
fer-de-lance
. The team all wore heavy boots for the walk through the field—Chip had warned them of the danger as they planned for the trip. He was careful to examine the ground closely before reaching a hand down to pick up his gear. He also had no idea whether the snakes could climb the sugar cane, and the thought that they might gave him a chill. At least he would be last in line.

The men set out through the cane with their packs, Chip dragging his kayak behind him with one hand and carrying his two-bladed paddle in the other. Ordinarily he carried the kayak on one shoulder to preserve the life of the plastic boat, but the brush here was too thick. He hadn’t paid for the thing anyway, and it only had to last for one more river. He struggled to keep up with the others. The rest of the group held onto the pistol grips of their suppressed Heckler & Koch 416 assault rifles, but Chip was forced to walk with his MP7 slung over his shoulder on a strap since he couldn’t spare a hand for the weapon.

It took them forty-five minutes to travel only a mile through the thick cane, and Chip slumped to a seat on his kayak for a break as soon as they entered the edge of the jungle. Everyone was sweating hard. They all took a few minutes to re-hydrate with water from their bottles and ate a quick snack of energy bars.

After less than ten minutes, they stood and began struggling against the steep slope, pulling themselves up by gripping jungle plants, tree trunks, and vines. In several places it was so steep that the gear and boats had to be hauled up with ropes. Chip was amazed by the elegant economy of the group’s motion. They swapped positions as if performing an elaborate dance, one man always in the lead checking for traps, another in the rear covering their back, all the while unfazed by terrain rugged enough to thwart the best efforts of ordinary men. It reminded him of the feeling he got when he was part of a solid group of paddlers on an unknown river moving steadily but cautiously into the unknown. Now that they were in it for real, Chip was reassured by the effortless grace with which his companions performed their jobs. It gave him some measure of confidence that they would succeed on this mission.