Chapter 16 #2
Her heart skipped. Just for a moment she thought her team had found her. But that assumption was quickly erased when the vehicles
stopped close to the buses. Armed men, obviously Hispanic, jumped out, automatic weapons in hand.
Raines greeted them and indicated the buses. They nodded. The first bus was being unloaded, the “tourists” with arms risen
herded to the side of the road.
Josie felt absolute panic. Too many armed men for one woman to fight. And who were these men? They weren’t her boss’s people;
she knew that immediately. They wouldn’t have been pointing guns at her as this one big man was suddenly doing.
“Out, with your hands up,” he said curtly, and in English, motioning with a small submachine gun.
She wasn’t stupid enough to disobey. She had to take it step by step and find a way to deal with it.
Raines was grinning from ear to ear as he reached behind her for the pistol in her pancake holster. He tossed it to one of
the men. He laughed at Josie’s shock. “These are Vega’s men,” he said proudly. “And that’s Mr. Vega himself.” He indicated
a short man holding a pistol on them.
“Velasquez treated me like an idiot, but Vega saw the genius of my plan. What I’ll get for giving him this shipment, plus
what I’ll have for the calves I infiltrated with more drugs, will set me up for life! I’m going to be richer than . . .”
He stopped and looked down at his stomach. He’d heard a shot, but only after the impact, like something hitting his stomach, like a huge fist in his gut.
He looked up, uncomprehending, at the man who’d shot him and at Josie, who was staring with faint horror.
“Traitors can never be trusted,” the man said simply.
Raines dropped to the dirt road, cold dead.
The man who’d shot her turned to Josie. “And now for you,” he said. He was short and well dressed, armed with a .45 caliber
pistol. She knew what the impact of it would be. She’d just seen it on Raines.
A man behind her suddenly curled a skinny arm around her waist and held a gun to her side, a smaller caliber than the .45.
Judging by the feel of it, probably a 9 mm.
She was thinking rapidly, her brain racing as it formulated survival strategies. Small-caliber gun. She’d seen a movie, with
Bruce Willis, where he grabbed the villain’s pistol and shot the man right through Willis’s own body. She could do that. She
knew she could. The man wouldn’t be expecting the move. She could lie still and pretend to be dead. Time to worry about the
assignment when she lived, even if she was wounded.
“And you,” the man repeated, staring at her with disdain. He was short and squat and had an air of authority. “You work for
Velasquez, yes?” he asked coldly.
She swallowed hard, still thinking. “Yes,” she managed in a tight voice.
“He is too soft for the business,” the man said coldly. “Far too soft.” He smiled. “I am going to take over his operation
and wipe him off the face of the earth. But for now, I’m going to rob him of the largest shipment of drugs in history, hidden
where nobody would ever suspect. You, though . . . you I can use. Manuel,” he said to the man behind her. He nodded.
This was it. She lived or died in the next few seconds.
Unexpectedly, she grabbed the hand with the pistol, turned it into the part of her rib cage that contained her lower lung, shifted so that the man was in the right position behind her where the shot would go and forced his finger on the trigger.
He cried out and dropped to the ground. So did Josie.
The pain was horrible, but she forced herself to lie still, unmoving. Beside her the man she’d shot was wailing and groaning
as if he’d been skewered. It was a blessing, because the drug lord’s eyes were on him, not on Josie. He was cursing nonstop
in Spanish at the man on the ground. The woman might have had intelligence about Velasquez that he could have used, he raged,
and Josie realized her ruse was working. In fury, he shot the man on the ground again and again until the groans ceased.
He was ordering his men onto the buses when it happened.
Engines. Many engines. Dust flying up from the road. Vega ran for his vehicle and sped away while his men took up defensive
positions. Gunfire erupted all around Josie, but she was in too much pain to care what happened next. She wished she could
die, so that the pain would stop. She thought of John, who would never know what happened to her. He’d think she’d just left
without another word, that she didn’t care. He’d probably hate her. Maybe that was good. It would spare him any grief. But
she grieved, thinking how it had been with him, how protective and kind he’d been. What a life they might have had together . . .
The sound of running feet came closer. Someone stopped beside her. A soft exclamation in Spanish, an order given in a deep,
commanding voice that sounded oddly familiar. After that, she blacked out and knew nothing else. At last, relief from the
burning pain . . . !
She came to later, in bed in a beautiful room with colorful accents. She was wearing the equivalent of a hospital gown. She felt a bandage over her lower ribs. She tried to move, but grimaced, although there was a drip of some sort in her arm and the pain was bearable.
Just as she started questioning her surroundings, a pretty young woman with long, beautiful curly black hair came in with
a glass of something with ice in it. She smiled. “You are awake! Good! I hope you like lemonade . . . ?”
“Oh, I love it,” Josie whispered. “My mouth is so dry!”
“Here. Easy, so you do not cause more pain.” The young woman lifted her head gently so that she could sip the cold, sweet
liquid.
“Oh, that’s so good,” Josie whispered. “Thank you! Where am I?” she added, her eyes roving around the room. “I was lying on
the ground in the dust . . .”
The young woman nodded. “But you were found in time.” Her face tautened. “It was a despicable thing that Vega and his henchmen
did, so despicable!”
“The drugs,” Josie began.
“Those poor people were made to swallow balloon after balloon of the narcotic. Two whole busloads of innocent people, whose
families were held hostage and threatened with death if they did not comply with the command.”
Josie sucked in her breath. “Oh, good Lord!” she exclaimed, wincing. “Only an animal . . . !”
“Yes.” The woman shook her head. “Even in dishonest dealings, there must be some semblance of honor. Of course, I lecture
my brother all the time and it does no good.”
“Your brother?”
There was a brief knock at the door and Eduardo stuck his head inside.
He saw that Josie was awake and smiled as he opened the door and came into the room.
He was wearing expensive jeans and boots with a pullover.
He looked younger somehow, but still very attractive.
“I am gratified that you were able to survive,” he said gently.
His face hardened. “Who shot you?” he asked in a tone that promised retribution.
She smiled sheepishly. “I did.”
His eyebrows arched. “Excuse me?”
“The drug dealer’s henchman had a small caliber pistol, a 9 mm I think, held at my rib cage and I’d seen this movie, where
the hero’s being held hostage and he shoots himself . . .”
“. . . in order to kill the villain right behind him,” Eduardo finished for her. He chuckled. “A brilliant, but painful, escape.”
She nodded. “I hoped I’d aimed in the right place. Then I played dead. I expected Vega to shoot me just the same, but he was
too busy running for his vehicle. Was it your men who interrupted the operation? I mean, our men . . .” She stopped, horrified,
at what she’d let slip.
He pursed his lips. “We seem to have done very well at hiding our identities, yes? I know who you are,” he said easily, dropping
into the comfortable chair at her bedside. “And who you really work for. I have my own spies, you see.”
She grimaced. “I guess I’m in big trouble now.”
“Not so much,” he said. “I have committed no crime in the United States for which I may be held liable. Not so much as a speeding
ticket. And here, at home, I have so many allies that it is impractical to send law enforcement after me. The neighbors would
be offended. Along with many of my relatives who occupy extremely high positions in government.”
“But what about your boss?” she asked.
He raised an eyebrow. “Duarte is my middle name. My surname is Velasquez.”
She just gaped at him. She was absolutely without words. “You know who I am, but you brought me here and treated me. Am I
a hostage?” she asked. “Are you going to trade me for somebody?”
“I would not harm a hair on your head for any profit,” he said gently. “You are too rare a person. No, actually, at the moment I am doing a favor for a cousin.” He turned to the young woman. “Elena, will you ask the gentlemen to come in, please?”
She smiled. “Of course.”
Velasquez turned his attention back to Josie. “You have more friends than you realize, it seems. On both sides of the law,”
he added with a chuckle.
She was still processing that when two men walked in. One was her boss. The other was Rodrigo Ramirez from Jacobsville, Texas.
“Hello,” she said, unnerved.
“Smart move, what you did,” her boss said with a grin. “You did us proud, Josie!”
“Very proud,” Rodrigo said, and smiled. “We expected to be too late when Raines double-crossed his boss.”
“Fortunately, we were close by,” Velasquez said, rising to exchange an embrace with Rodrigo. “And even more fortunate, my
cousin here knows his way around official channels.” He grinned at Rodrigo, who chuckled.
“You’re cousins?” Josie exclaimed.
“Yes, our grandmothers were sisters,” Rodrigo said.
“And we were always close, despite our opposite views on how to make a living,” Velasquez chuckled. “At least, I have to make
one. He—” he indicated Rodrigo “—has the worth of a small European country, but he works for wages.” He sounded disgusted.