Chapter 83
Isla de San Alejo
Gomez landed the AW right on time. Juan followed Suárez’s texted instructions and easily found the cave on the far end of the island, jogging the whole way to make sure he reached it in time.
Suárez stood inside the cave, the flamethrower tanks strapped once again to his shoulders. The pilot light burned brightly, and the pressurized relief valve on the tanks hissed.
Cabrillo noticed blood spotting through the man’s shirt.
Suárez checked his watch. “And two minutes to spare.” He glanced up with a phlegmy cough, and wiped his hand again on his filthy pants.
“Why so glum, Cabrillo? I’ve given you a great gift.
A chance to give your life as a ransom for others—they’ll be making movies about you one day, no doubt.
” He pointed at the tripod providing the live feed.
“They’re watching your great sacrifice right now.
Hollywood will want to use the footage, I’m sure. ”
“Just get on with it.”
“As you wish. First, my end of the bargain.” Suárez raised the flamethrower and pointed it at Juan as two gunmen stepped out of the shadows. One cut loose the older nun, then zip-tied her hands behind her back. She offered no resistance, like a sheep to the slaughter.
“No tricks, Cabrillo. Make one move and I’ll fry you right here—and them next.”
Juan remained frozen in place as the second nun was cut free and zip-tied by the other man.
“Sir, you don’t have to do this for us,” the young nun said. “We’re prepared to die.”
“I know. That’s why you need to live.”
“How noble, Cabrillo.” Suárez laughed, then spat.
“We will pray for you, senor.”
The younger of the two gunmen pulled a pistol, pointed at the cave exit, and followed the two nuns out. It was hardly necessary. The nuns were eager to leave the scene of horror about to unfold, both feeling guilty but relieved they were spared the impending cruelty.
As soon as the two women left the cave, Cabrillo asked, “I have your word of honor those women will be spared?”
“As soon as I give the signal that your end of the bargain has been consummated. I harbor no ill will toward them. In fact, they saved my life. I’m relieved you had the cojones to show up here. Killing them would have troubled me greatly.”
“What are we waiting for?”
“The camera’s rolling, hero. Step on over.”
Cabrillo marched over to the crucifix and let the other man cuff him to the cross, wrists first, then ankles. No way for him to move his legs.
“You can go,” Suárez said. The other gunman bolted out of the cave, happy to escape the madman.
“Any last words, hero?”
Cabrillo faced the camera.
“Serving with all of you on the Oregon has been the greatest honor of my life. Carry on.”
“That’s it? How droll.”
“I have an idea.”
“Enlighten me.”
“How about you and I play a game of Russian roulette with that flamethrower? You go first.”
“Ha! That’s more like it. Brave words, like an action hero.”
Suárez turned toward the camera.
“This pig murdered my wife by fire. Today, I am getting justice for my Nadia, and for me. Say goodbye, Juan Cabrillo.”
“Suárez,” Linda called out over the tinny phone speaker. “I have something you need to see.”
Suárez scowled. “No time for games.”
“No games. I have a video of Nadia.”
“Nadia? Impossible.”
“We found it in an old CIA file. Watch it before you do anything you might regret.”
The swarthy Colombian frowned with confusion. He turned toward Cabrillo, his finger on the trigger, ready to pull it. But curiosity got the better of him and he lowered the weapon and marched over to the phone.
Linda’s face was in a tiny picture-in-picture window on the screen.
Suddenly her face was replaced by a grainy black-and-white thumbnail captured from old surveillance footage of a young and beautiful teenage Nadia when she was a student at the Sorbonne in Paris.
The burn-in across the top left read in tiny block letters: 123 Rue Saint-Jacques | 30 April 1983 | 16:59.
Suárez nearly gasped at the haunting image, but choked down his emotions.
“Worthless. It’s just an old photo.” He turned to unleash a fiery hell onto Cabrillo.
“You’re wrong. It’s…a video. A classified video I’m sure you’ve never seen.”
Suárez’s eyes rounded like dinner plates as he let the flamethrower lance fall to his side. He snatched the phone off of its perch and pulled it close to his face.
“Activate the thumbnail to play it,” Linda said.
Suárez didn’t wait for her direction. He instantly clicked on the thumbnail and opened up the video.
The undercover surveillance video Eric had managed to find and steal from the CIA archives played like an old home movie.
It was obviously shot from a parked vehicle across the street from Nadia.
She was sitting at a narrow iron café table in front of stone-fronted café flanked with worn shutters.
A striking African woman about the same age sat across from her.
They were both laughing as they chatted and smoked oily Gauloises cigarettes, with plates of croissants and demis of beer parked between them.
A whining Vespa scooter throttled past them as a distant church bell rang in the background, but Suárez couldn’t hear what Nadia was saying.
The brutal Colombian mashed the volume button as he pulled the phone closer to his face, his nose practically touching the screen. His eyes blurred with tears at seeing his wife so young and beautiful. He wiped his eyes with one hand.
“Make it bigger.”
“We can’t. The file is too small. But keep watching. There’s something you really need to see. It’s coming right up.”
★
Aboard the Oregon
Hali Kasim sat at his comms station, with Linda hovering over his shoulder. Max was in the Kirk Chair, with Eric at helm, and Murph on weapons. Hanley had ordered everyone else to clear the op center.
Suárez’s tear-streaked face loomed large and fish-eyed on the live video feed playing on the wall monitor.
Hali’s fingers hovered over the engage button.
Linda squeezed his shoulder. “Now.”
★
Isla de San Alejo
Suárez was so focused on the video he didn’t register the high-pitched whine milliseconds before the blinding white-hot flash detonated the phone battery.
Razor-sharp fragments of glass and molten battery shrapnel shredded his eyes.
He tumbled backward into the dirt, clutching at his ruined faced, blood streaming through his fingers.
Juan couldn’t believe what had just happened. Somehow the Oregon had put the phone in thermal overload—turning the lithium-ion battery into a miniature grenade.
“Cabrillo!” Suárez raged as he clutched blindly for the flamethrower lance. His hand finally found purchase, and he gripped the weapon in his bloody palm. He rolled over and raised the flamethrower in the direction he thought Cabrillo was chained.
Juan swallowed hard. The nozzle was pointed directly at him.
“Burn in hell!” Suárez shouted as his finger began to mash the trigger.
But a burst of gunfire from Eddie Seng’s MP5 put three slugs into the Colombian’s skull before Suárez could unleash a torrent of flaming napalm.
The wiry Oregon operator stormed over to the corpse with MacD hot on his heels.
Seng disabled the flamethrower as MacD fished around in Suárez’s pockets for the handcuff keys.
“We’ll get you outta here in a jiffy, boss,” MacD said.
“The nuns?” Cabrillo asked.
Pistol shots rang in the cave as bullets spanged the rock walls. Cabrillo screamed as a jacketed hollow-point bullet ripped through the palm of his right hand in a spray of blood.
Eddie and Mac wheeled on their toes and opened fire as Suárez’s two gun thugs charged into the cave. The pistoleros spilled into the dirt, nearly cut in half by the wall of lead. They both tumbled, dead before they hit the ground.
Eddie ripped a bandage from his kit as Mac unshackled Cabrillo from the cross.
“Eddie! Mac! Report!” Linda shouted in their comms.
★
Aboard the Oregon
Max, Linda, and the rest of the op center team breathed a sigh of relief as Eddie Seng reported in on a live camera feed from the AW cabin. The thrumming rotors nearly drowned out his voice. Cabrillo lay in a webbed cot on the cabin floor.
“Chairman’s stable,” Seng said over his comms. “But he’s lost some blood.”
“Doc Huxley has the surgical team prepped and ready,” Linda said. “She has two O-negative donors heading for transfusion. She’s searching records for the Chairman’s blood type now.”
“It’s O-positive.” The familiar voice came from the back of the op center.
Linda turned and nearly screamed as she faced the doorway.
Hali, Eric, and Mark whipped around in their chairs, mouths agape in utter confusion.
Juan Cabrillo stood in the op center rubbing the back of his neck, his face pinched with a throbbing headache.
“What the—?” Max did a comical double take of one Cabrillo in the doorway and the other Cabrillo on the big screen.
Juan smiled. “Tell Hux she’s prepping for Kevin Nixon.”