Chapter 2 #2
Cabrillo had simply cut off the blood flow to her brain, depriving it of oxygen until she blacked out and slumped harmlessly into the cot.
Cabrillo didn’t want to smack her skull with his pistol.
Hitting her hard enough to do that was as likely to kill her as stun her and she wasn’t on his target list.
Cabrillo snatched up his pistol and listened for any other movements. He thought he heard a floorboard creak and he headed in that direction, both hands on the pistol grip, the long, suppressed barrel leading the way.
Suddenly, an old electric generator shuddered to life on the far wall. Cabrillo spun on his heel toward the rattling noise of the ancient machine powered by a rusted propane tank standing next to it.
It took Cabrillo a heartbeat to take it all in, but that was just enough time to distract him from the weight of Suárez crashing into him from out of the dark.
★
Suárez hit Cabrillo hard in a flying tackle that would have made Dick Butkus proud.
Cabrillo was tossed off his feet, his back hitting the floorboards with a sickening thud. The pack simultaneously softened the blow, but distended his spine like a plumber’s pipe bender. Despite the shock of the bone-rattling hit, Cabrillo never lost his grip on the pistol.
Suárez, the larger man, grabbed the suppressor with one hand while crushing Cabrillo’s grip on the pistol with the other, trapping Cabrillo’s finger inside the trigger guard as he arced the business end of the barrel toward the bottom of Cabrillo’s chin.
Cabrillo countered by bridging his powerful legs upward and twisting his torso, using the leverage of the pack to roll both men over. Cabrillo tried to buck Suárez off in the maneuver, but the Colombian killer was straddling him between his vice-gripped thighs and continued pressing his attack.
As the barrel inched toward Cabrillo’s face, the terrible geometry of the curved trigger against Juan’s trapped index finger finally collided and the pistol barked.
The single shot blistered Juan’s cheek before plowing into the propane tank with a metallic spang.
But rather than ricocheting off the tank, the rusting metal gave way to the hot piece of lead, instantly igniting the propane inside.
The resulting explosion knocked Suárez off Juan and set the thatched wall and roof near the tank ablaze.
Suárez’s violent departure also tore the gun out of Cabrillo’s grip. The two men quickly recovered and both scrambled for the pistol some ten feet away.
Surprisingly nimble for his size, Suárez was on top of the weapon before Cabrillo could reach it. But as the Colombian rolled over on his back to put a round through the American’s skull, Cabrillo pulled another weapon from his utility—a direct-contact Taser—and jabbed it into Suárez’s crotch.
The Colombian screamed and folded in half like a spring-loaded bear trap, his entire body rigid and contorted in pain. His gnarled hand mashed the gun and a round discharged harmlessly away from Cabrillo, who emptied the last of the electric charge into the killer’s body.
Amped up on a new adrenaline load, Cabrillo hadn’t noticed the hut had entirely filled with choking smoke and half the walls and roof were now engulfed in flames.
The searing heat burned the skin on his face.
He suddenly remembered the woman behind the blanket in her cot.
He turned to fetch her just as a giant flaming beam smashed into the makeshift bedroom, dragging a roaring heap of burning thatch with it.
He started forward, but the heat was unbearable and there was no chance she survived the crashing timber—and no time to mourn her dismal fate. The hut was going up fast. Cabrillo felt like he was standing inside a tiki torch, but he had a job to do.
He grabbed the paralyzed Colombian and dragged him across the long floor to the entrance, as far away from the flames as he could get. He pulled on his hands-free radio headset as he unzipped his pack.
“Phaeton, Phaeton. Do you read me? This is Torpedo.”
“We read you five by five, Torpedo.” Overholt’s voice rang clear on the headset. “What’s your status?”
“Ready when you are. What’s your ETA?”
Overholt’s garbled answer was swallowed in the roar of burning roof timbers crashing onto the weakening floor as the back wall tore away in a heap of embers.
Cabrillo suddenly saw a fleet of speeding headlights slashing through the dark, the beams weaving and jerking on the muddy road in his direction.
So much for Suárez being out here all alone.
The roaring flames ate away at the remaining roof and walls. Cabrillo ignored the cauldron of unbearable heat as he wrestled the groaning Colombian into the body bag and cinched it up like a madman’s straight jacket, immobilizing Suárez’s limbs, but keeping his head exposed for air.
The headlights squealed to a braking halt outside in a hail of angry shouts. Cabrillo glanced up to see a dozen men with rifles bolting through the headlight beams and splashing into the water.
He grabbed the bagged Colombian and dragged him down the steps in painful thuds, close enough to the water to toss him in and jump in behind him.
Keeping a grip on the bag and holding Suárez’s head above the water, Cabrillo pulled the charging handle on the outside of the Skyhook bag.
An attached bottle of helium instantly inflated a heavy black balloon that raced into the sky.
Seconds later, the air thundered with the roar of four big Allison turboprops as the Hercules raced in on a low-altitude approach above the rushing water.
Suárez startled, screaming curses and shouting, “Asesino! Asesino! Te mataré!”
Cabrillo was about to shut him up when the air split with a horrifying scream behind them.
The woman in the hut was still alive.
Cabrillo wanted to puke. He should’ve tried to get her.
“Nadia! Nadia!” Suárez was manic with terror.
The wire line connecting the balloon to Suárez’s bag snapped taut as the balloon reached full altitude three hundred feet above the river and clear of the tree line.
Shattering AK-47 gunfire echoed from the shoreline. Bullet splashes geysered the water around Cabrillo as he spun with Suárez in the swirling current. Cabrillo called out to Overholt.
“We’re good to go, Phaeton.”
“ETA in ten seconds, my boy.”
Cabrillo glanced back at the shore. Some of the trucks were moving again, tracking their progress downriver. In the moonlight Cabrillo caught a glimpse of the truck-mounted heavy machine guns in their beds.
The original plan was for Cabrillo to get Suárez airborne and then he would hike over to the nearby Peruvian border about ten miles away, where a local would guide him to a waiting airplane.
But with the arrival of FARC soldiers now tracking him along the shoreline, that plan was in the crapper.
They’d cut him down before he could even get out of the river, or worse, snatch him up.
He needed a plan B, and fast.
The Hercules came in like a thunderclap over the tree line, its Y-shaped nose yoke pointed directly at the Skyhook balloon line.
Cabrillo’s instincts took over. He grabbed the restraining straps on Suárez’s bag and scissored his legs around the assassin in a death grip just as the yoke snagged the cable.
The two men rocketed into the sky with a spine-jolting snap.
Red tracers from the truck-bed machine guns zipped through the night sky, alternately streaking for the Hercules or its human cargo suspended in the air as AKs flashed from the riverbanks.
The two men whirligigged as the Hercules gained altitude. Cabrillo’s guts dumped into the bottom of his boots at the nearly vertical climb. His eyes fixed on the glowing red sparks pouring up from the still-burning hut with each passing spin, wondering if the woman escaped a fiery death.
“Torpedo, status!” Overholt barked over the radio.
“No time to buy a ticket,” Cabrillo shouted as he streaked through the sky at over three hundred miles per hour.
“Thought I’d hitch a ride.” Cabrillo’s grip was wrapped through the straps and cemented with another adrenaline surge, but he wondered if he could hold on long enough for Overholt to reel the two of them in.
“We need to stay low,” Overholt said. “That means a lot of turbulence. We’re pulling you up now. You good?”
“Just peachy. One question.”
“What’s that?”
“When does a guy get a cup of coffee and a bag of peanuts on this lousy airline?”