Shattered (31 page)

“Like most pre-Columbian monuments, it was built in strict accordance with astronomical and astrological requirements,” she said. “The nine terraces symbolize the nine heavens, and the four staircases stand for the four cardinal points. Each staircase has ninety-one steps. Or did,” she tacked on, frowning. “Unlike a lot of other countries in the region, Vasquez and his predecessor didn’t spring for the bucks to reclaim it. Or even try to keep people from climbing all over it and taking bits of stone as souvenirs.”

She shook off the irritation. “Anyway, the number of steps adds up to three hundred and sixty-four. When you add the top platform, you get the total number of days in a year.”

“Clever folks, the Maya,” Shane said.

“And amazingly advanced for their time. While Europe was wallowing in the Dark Ages, these people practiced an astronomy so precise their calendar was as accurate as the one in use today. They plotted the courses of stars and planets, predicted the exact times of both the solar and lunar eclipses, calculated the path of Venus with an error of only fourteen seconds a year, and engineered the concept of zero.”

She sighed. “Which makes it doubly unfair that their descendants should be treated like second-class citizens.

“What?” she asked when she dragged her eyes away from the towering stone pyramid to see him smiling at her.

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re damn cute when you’re being earnest?”

“Not recently.”

“Well, you are. And where did you pick up all that stuff, anyway?”

“Once I gave up men, I gained a lot of extra reading time.”

“Should I feel guilty about keeping you away from a good book last night?”

“Not at all.” She went up on her toes and brushed her lips against his smiling ones. “I’d rather write my own story, anyway.” With you and a happily ever after ending, she thought, but was not yet prepared to say.

They’d been humping through the jungle for the last three hours. Crossing the border hadn’t been any problem, but by now Zach had figured there’d have been some sort of jeep or truck they could rent, or even liberate, if only for a few hours. It wouldn’t be like they wouldn’t pay for the damn thing.

But no. Once they entered the country, the only vehicles they saw on the road were convoys of army trucks, none of which seemed like a real good idea to hitch a ride on.

Zach was about to call Shane again, tell him he might have to add a bit more time to the plan, when they passed a gas station in an abandoned village covered in a layer of white ash. They would have passed it by, until Quinn said, “Talk about your small worlds.”

Zach’s eyes narrowed as he took in the man pumping gas into a camouflage-painted Hummer. “Roger that.”

He strolled over to the guy, who looked up at him, and nearly dropped the hose. “Oh, shit.”

“Is that any way to greet an old buddy?” Zach asked. “One who probably saved your life?

“Since I saved your pilot friend’s life, I’d say we’re even.” The CIA guy who’d been along on the Afghanistan mission put the nozzle back on its holder. “Nice to see you, Chief. But I’ve got places to go. People to see.”

“That’s a pretty big rig for three guys,” he said, glancing into the Hummer at the two guys inside. Obviously Spec Ops. Maybe even SEALs. “What the hell is going on here? We’ve been seeing army troops moving all day.”

“It’s obvious you’ve been away from the news.”

“Well, duh. Does it look like we’re carrying a satellite dish with us?”

“Vasquez’s plane is about to take off from the landing strip at his mountain retreat, if it hasn’t already. Seems the rebel forces are moving into the city, while the infamous Guardia de Seguridad are acting like rats leaving a sinking ship. And if you’re not up on that little bit of Latin American news, what the fuck are you doing down here?”

“It’s personal. We’re rescuing a WMR worker who’s being held hostage by Castillo’s guys. With, supposedly, one of your guys inside.”

“Not one of mine. I just got here from Mexico, myself.”

“Mexico?” The pieces clicked into place. Zach exchanged a look with Quinn, who, with Michael, had joined them. “Shit. You’ve got Josefina Madrid in that Hummer.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, cut the crap. Look, what you’re doing is your own business. You want to stage yourself a nice little coup, super. Go for it. Just give us a ride down to the Masaya temple. It’s not like you don’t have enough room. Or aren’t going that way.”

“How do you know where we’re going?”

“You’re either stopping at Madrid’s old hometown for a pep rally before she makes her triumphant return to the capital. Or you’re taking her directly to Ciudad Libertad, where she can make her ‘I have returned’ speech to the little people. Either way, you’re going to be passing right by where we need to be.”

“Come on, buddy,” said Quinn with a grin. “For old times’ sake.”

“Nothing personal, buddy,” the CIA agent said. “But I really, really hated our old times.”

“Get us to Masaya, and I promise you’ll never see us again.” Quinn held up a hand. “Scout’s honor.”

Zach followed suit.

As did Michael.

“Who the hell is he?” the agent asked.

“We’d tell you,” Quinn said.

“But then we’d have to kill you,” Zach said. “Let’s just say he’s not anyone you want to have turned down when people start second-guessing this little black op you’ve got going.”

Michael did his job by keeping his mouth shut and looking inscrutable. Like someone with a really big, very important, very dangerous secret.

“What the hell,” the guy caved. “But you didn’t see a thing.”

“Who, me? All I see is a bunch of ash floating around in the air. And some troop convoys driving like they’ve got the hounds of hell on their tails. How about you guys?”

“That’s about it,” Quinn agreed.

“I didn’t even seen the convoys,” Michael said. “Guess that must’ve been when I was looking the other way.”

“I knew I should’ve listened to my father and become a chiropractor,” the CIA agent muttered.

The three men scrambled into the Hummer before the less-than-enthusiastic driver changed his mind.

The SEALs who’d stayed inside didn’t say anything to them. But from their nods, it was obvious that everyone knew who all the players were.

Including the woman dressed in cammies. The woman who had single-handedly—well, apparently with some help of this black ops team—done what the rebels hadn’t been able to achieve in nine long years of fighting.

Send Vasquez running with his tail between his legs.

Which didn’t mean she’d be able to piece her tattered country together again, but Zach wished her luck.

Not that this situation was all that helpful to their mission. Unless the guerillas got so happy they declared a national freedom day, abandoned their posts, and left Rachel Moore unguarded, the evacuation op was still on.

“Okay,” Zach told Kirby. “What you want to keep in mind is BLISS.”

“Yeah. That’s not too hard to imagine,” she said, sharing a look with Shane that had Quinn groaning and Zach rolling his eyes.

“If you two could quit looking like two teenagers after staying out all prom night, it’d be nice to have your attention,” he said.

“Frogs rule on the ground,” Shane told Kirby. “Now, if we were in the air, it’d be a whole different story. He’d be having to take orders from me.”

“But we’re not in the air, flyboy,” Zach said through gritted teeth. “Here’s the deal.” He was crouched down with a can of cammo makeup in his hand. “BLISS is an ancronym for Blend into your surroundings, have a Low silhouette, keep an Irregular shape, Stay small, and keep to Secluded areas.

“Now, as for your face, too many people just smear a few streaks onto their face and call it done. I’m not suggesting you spend hours putting on your makeup, like you did the other night at Swannsea.”

“The other night I wasn’t going to be going through the jungle, trying to avoid bad guys,” Kirby said, understanding he was suddenly being such a hard-ass, making her learn all this stuff she’d never need to know again, because he took his responsibility of getting everyone home safe extremely seriously.

She was also so damn hot she didn’t think there was much point in putting all this green, brown, and black stuff on her face, since it would undoubtedly melt off in the first five minutes, out in the jungle.

“I get that,” he said. “But here’s the deal. . . . Poorly applied camo can end up drawing attention to you, which actually hurts your concealment efforts.”

After handing her a plastic bottle of baby lotion to spread over her face (the better to take the stuff off once the mission was over, he explained), he scooped his fingers into the can.

“You want to make sure your nose, forehead, cheeks, and chin are well covered. You can use a blotch or line-pattern design of camouflage as you put it on. I prefer to cover high points of my face in black or dark brown. Also, it’s a good idea to cover your eyelids, because they can be seen at night when light actually shines on them.”

He held the can out to her, allowing her to do that herself. Kirby would love to see Sabrina and Titania’s reaction to this makeover.

“Don’t forget to cover your ears, both front and back. As well as your neck,” he instructed.

“Don’t you think this is overkill?” she asked.

“No,” he said abruptly.

“Don’t forget your hands and fingers,” Shane offered. “They really stand out if the rest of you is camouflaged.” He took her hand in his and applied the makeup to the webbing between her fingers.

“I don’t even want to know what I look like,” she muttered.

“Think about how you’ll look tonight,” Quinn suggested.

“And how will that be?”

“Alive.”

Since there was no way to argue that point, Kirby didn’t try.

The plan was fairly straightforward. Kirby would lead Michael, Quinn, and Zach to the compound, while Shane would liberate a small helicopter from a local airbase. When the mission had first been planned, this had seemed horribly dangerous to Kirby, but with the military in obvious disarray, she hoped the others were right about the base being less guarded.

Zach and Quinn would dispatch the guards, and while Kirby knew enough not to ask details about how that was going to be done, she couldn’t miss the M4s, ugly SIG SAUER pistols and the knives stuck in their boots.

The rescue definitely wasn’t going to be pretty. And it could well prove deadly for any and all of them.

The clinic compound was surrounded by a chain-link fence topped with rolls of razor wire. Although Rachel had always told her it made her feel as if she were living in a prison, there was also the fact that they kept drugs on hand. You’d think, with the thriving drug trade, that there’d be enough for everyone in the country to have their own personal stash, but when she’d first opened up, she’d discovered that certain people in the area had taken the “free” in “free clinic” literally, helping themselves to pharmaceuticals at night.

Patterson’s man inside, if he could be trusted, which was always iffy in this part of the world, had said there were eight armed guards outside. Plus the kids. And—here was the kicker—three Rottweilers.

“Rachel’s not going to be happy if you kill those dogs,” Kirby warned as she led them through the jungle, which took longer than any of them would have liked, but as she’d explained back in Somersett, just deciding to cut through a drug patch could end up with them all dead before they even got to the compound.

“Maybe she’d be happier if we all just joined hands on the mountaintop and sang ‘Kumbaya’ and the Coca-Cola song,” Zach said. “And, hey, you can count me in to sing harmony as soon as you and she get it organized. But if the dogs present a problem, they’ve got to go.”

“How can they not?” she asked.

“I have a plan,” Michael Gannon said. “Which hopefully will work.”

“One you didn’t choose to tell me?”

“Excuse me,” Zach said. “I didn’t realize you wanted to know every little detail. Like, maybe how, if I have to, I’ll slit a bad guy’s throat to keep him from calling out to the others. Or how Quinn’s an expert at breaking a neck. One quick twist from the back, and the guy’s dead meat. It’s even better than a Vulcan nerve pinch, because it’s permanent. Or—”

“I get the point.” Kirby held up a hand. “But if you’re trying to make me abhor the physicality of what you do, it’s not going to work, because once you’ve gotten through gross anatomy, which is, by the way, appropriately named, there’s not much that can, well, gross a doctor out.

“I don’t want to hear details because I dislike the idea of violence. Even necessary violence. You may use it as a tool, which I can understand when it comes down to kill or be killed. But you also have also understand that I spent too many years seeing the results of that kind of violence.

“We’ve both watched a lot of people die. Too many. So, you can keep your damn details to yourself. But while it may not sound at all logical, I would like to know what you’re going to do about the dogs.”

“They’re usually only let out at night. But if anyone sounds the alarm, they could decide to open the cages. So, hopefully they’ll be asleep by the time we get there,” the former priest said. “Patterson’s guy’s going to feed them some tranquilizers in their food. I’m no vet, but I can figure out weight versus dosage that should work.”

“Thank you.” It wasn’t logical, Kirby allowed. But a lot of life wasn’t. Such as love.

Much of the jungle had been clear-cut and burned, destroying the land for generations to come in the name of profits. But the area they were walking in now, along a river flowing to the sea, was still in its pristine state, almost cathedral-like.

If any cathedral was like a steam bath. Although few sunbeams could penetrate the thick canopy, there was no escaping the heat, even in the shade of the dense, tropical trees. And while there was a soft sough of breeze in the tops of some of the taller trees, down at ground level no breezes were stirring.

In such stifling heat, minutes seemed like hours. The long-sleeved shirt and long pants she’d bought to protect her from insects and stinging plants were soaked within minutes, leaving her feeling as if she were carrying an extra twenty pounds.

Time and time again, one of the men offered to carry her pack. Time and time again, she refused. Which might, admittedly, be hardheaded, but she didn’t want anyone to accuse her of being deadweight just because she wasn’t a SEAL or a Night Stalker, or even a former Desert Storm doctor-turned-priest-turned-doctor again.

What could have taken thirty minutes, had they traveled as the crow flies, ended up taking two and a half hours. But they finally reached the compound. It would have been better if they could have done the mission at night. But even Zach had agreed with Kirby that to wait any longer would present an even larger risk.

“Okay,” he murmured, as they lay on their stomachs, watching the men leaning against the outer walls of the clinic, looking as hot as Kirby herself was feeling. “Game on.”