Chapter 5
“Can you get me down to Rio before sunrise?” Dane didn’t bother with preamble.
“What the hell?”
Dane said nothing. That was more than enough indication of his seriousness. Acer said, “I’ll meet you at the airport. I’ll be in a corporate jet.”
“I owe you.”
“What’s this all about?”
“I got a CIA Trouble call.”
“Who called?
“Oscar—rather his good-for-nothing handler. Floyd Parker.”
“Oscar’s caught up in Rio?”
“Yes.” Dane was reluctant to tell him, reluctant to even talk about it, as if talking about it made it more real. “But that’s not all.”
“Don’t tell me—”
“Shana’s gone. Someone took her and I think it was either the Tavares family organization or—”
“Or who?”
“Worse.”
“Who’s worse?”
“A rogue CIA man.”
“Floyd Parker? Gone rogue?” Acer blew out a whistling breath. “I’ll be at the airport and I’ll bring some things.”
“I’ll be in disguise.”
“That all you got? You’re rusty, man.”
“No—I’ll be bringing a pile of money.”
“That’s more like it. Out.”
Dane ended the call and went to work on his disguise. He’d be long gone—arriving in Rio or somewhere close by in Brazil—by the time his friends made it back over to the shack in the morning.
Dane got to work dying his hair black. He put in brown contact lenses and applied a skin bronzer.
Next, he applied a tattoo on his neck. That was the easy stuff.
He took out his piercer and pierced his nose and put in a gold stud.
Holding ice on his nose, he added the gold tooth cap.
He went to the safe and took out as many hundreds as he could pack in his backpack, along with some twenties.
Now all he needed was a Brazilian passport and ID. Luckily, this wasn’t his first circus act in Brazil. He shuffled through the many passports and found the one he needed. The one where he had dark hair and brown eyes.
Wasting no time, he left the beach shack in a hurry without a twinge and jumped into his Jeep.
He parked outside the General Aviation Apron on the street.
Martha’s Vineyard Airport was located in Vineyard Haven on Airport Road.
It took longer for him to jog to the terminal building from his Jeep than it had to drive there.
He skirted around the outside of the General Aviation and then walked toward the corporate hangars to wait for Acer.
He was an hour early, but there was no way he’d sit around the beach shack pacing the time away.
Better to be at the dark quiet airport. He’d blend in with the night crew if anyone noticed him.
There was no need to take any chances on bringing weapons.
Acer would have them on board in a compartment. That’s the way he always traveled.
Once Acer arrived, it took forty minutes to fuel up and then they were airborne.
“Nice ride,” Dane said. He sat in the copilot seat of the Cesna Citation, guessing from the smell of the cockpit that it hadn’t left the factory more than two months ago.
“It’s the Bryant Enterprises company jet.
Fred Bryant fell on himself to accommodate me once I told him I needed to give you a ride.
He was goddamn piss-pants excited to help and went off on asking all about the mission.
I made some shit up for him. He gets off on the James Bond crap.
I told him we hardly ever wear a tuxedo. He thought that was funny.”
“You didn’t tell him where we were going—”
“No. But he’ll eventually find out from the plane’s flight logs.”
“Some day—you’ll hide them for now,” Dane said. They didn’t need any more trouble than they already had.
*****
Dane and Acer landed in Brazil before the posse back on Martha’s Vineyard woke up.
“I can’t stay in country,” Acer said as the jet came to rest near a private hangar on the runway. They’d landed at Santos Dumont Airport, a smaller airport located in downtown Rio. “I have to return the jet. Park it stateside. I’ll be back with a bird.”
“How long?” Dane asked.
“Twenty-four hours,” Acer said. Dane whistled. There were no words to explain how much it meant to be able to count on his friend. The man was dropping everything—including sleep, apparently—and doing whatever it took to help Dane. No questions asked.
“Will you be ready?”
“Not sure,” Dane admitted. Acer raised is a brow.
“Man. That doesn’t sound like Dane the damn legend Blaise talking.”
Dane gave him the finger, stood and stepped outside the cockpit into the small area at the plane’s doorway. Acer laughed. But they both knew it was no laughing matter.
“I have a few goodies for you. I’ve been working on them.” Acer followed him out to the doorway and opened a metal locker door, pulled out a bag and unzipped it. He handed Dane a pair of sneakers, a watch and another gadget he wasn’t sure about.
“Cool.” Dane eyed the gadgets while Acer explained them.
“And here’s a burner phone.”
“I already have one.” Dane met Acer’s skeptical look. “Shana has the number,” he said.
Acer nodded. “Call me.” He was smart enough not to push it.
Dane had left his regular phone at home—the one that the rest of the crew had the number for. After they arrived at the beach shack, they would call him to find out where the hell he was.
They’d be pissed when they called and heard his phone ringing from his bedroom where he’d tossed it on his bed—where he hadn’t slept. They’d follow the ring and discover his desertion. The full picture of his deceit would crystallize. He was damn glad he’d be out of shooting range at that moment.
Then they would see the note. He’d left it pinned under the phone. He felt stupid now having written it. They were his friends. The note was an attempt to convince them he hadn’t betrayed them. It was an attempt at convincing them to let him do the legwork, to give him twenty-four hours.
Dane swiped the back of his hand across his brow, catching the trickle of sweat. Brazil was a goddamn hot jungle of a place. He sighed. There wasn’t a chance in hell his friends would wait. They would be off the island like a shot.
He didn’t want to have to rescue them all. But what the hell—who was he? Maybe he’d started to believe the legend bullshit about himself.
“I promised to call the rest of the crew in twenty-four hours. If I’m not back, call David. At 0600.”
“You’re a pip. You know that? If I didn’t owe you for saving my ass—”
“Never mind. We’re here to get Shana.”
“And Oscar. Remember him?”
Dane laughed. “Sure, if I run across Oscar while I’m in this godforsaken jungle nation, I’ll bring him out too.”
“We will. I’m on the team.” Acer set his jaw. Dane knew the look.
“One other thing,” Dane said. “Do not tell the CIA I’m down here. Under any circumstances.”
*****
Shana came to in the back seat of a car, not with a sore head, but with a sore arm.
The sore spot was a bruise likely surrounding a needle puncture.
She was still foggy a few seconds later when the car stopped and two men she didn’t recognize pulled her from the car and carry-walked her to a waiting helicopter.
Her heart pounded with alarm and her head pulsed with confusion as she tried to orient herself.
In spite of the clearing brain fog giving way to the recognition of a dangerous predicament, the one thought her mind continued to dish up as she was hustled up and into the bird was what happened to Dane?
She recognized the copter as an NH Industries NH90 and felt the tic of alarm. This was a military model notable for its long-range capacity. She wondered how the hell these thugs had got hold of it—and where the hell they were taking her.
But the thought relentlessly slamming through her head distracted her. Where the hell was Dane?
She refused to push her mind past the question to speculate on the answer. Palpitations threatened as she was dragged inside the obviously customized NH90. She was cuffed in place to a seat—which ominously came equipped with the cuffs for her wrists and ankles built in to the floor and sides.
The noise was too loud for her to bother to try and speak to the men—her captors.
By the time she was in full control of her limbs, she was left with no way to fight back save a head butt, which would only end up knocking her backwards against the seat and back into the dreaded fog of senselessness.
The only thing left to her—which she embraced—was to listen and observe the men and everything around her, to watch and wait for her chance, to understand what their end game was. And most importantly, to figure out who the hell they were.
If she wanted to keep herself together and survive without sinking into despair, Shana had to leave unanswered and unexamined the question of what happened to Dane.
The first cogent observation she made, that penetrated even in the disoriented first few moments of her awakening, was that the three men were not speaking English.
By the time she’d been cuffed to her seat, her mind had cleared sufficiently to puzzle out the fact that they were speaking Portuguese. These men were Brazilians.
The chill of goose bumps flashed to her skin from the sudden hard freeze in her gut. Every bit of the surface of her body had been raised and every hair follicle seemed to electrify to stand on end with the sudden knowledge.
These men were connected to the Tavares brothers. They were part of the human trafficking organization that she and Dane had encountered in their first mission. The chill along her skin redoubled.
One of the Tavares brothers had been killed during the confrontation leading to the arrest. It didn’t matter who took the shot—the Tavares brothers and their band of thugs had been about to ship out in their yacht with a beautiful young heiress in their cargo hold when she, Dane and Cap had led the charge in a shoot-out to stop them.
The Tavares brothers had been stopped dead. Literally. One dead and the other arrested and put on trial. She was certain he was in a federal prison now. Shana felt momentarily satisfied as she kept her jaw rigid and her eyes watchful.
As her mind spun through her options, she realized it might be prudent to look scared and intimidated, though it was against her grain. She decided to feign disorientation until she figured out the best strategy and how to carry it off.
The men spoke to each other loudly over the rotor noise, and she listened hard, trying to discern what they said.
When she heard the one single word that confirmed her suspicions, she shuddered.
The pilot had clearly and distinctly said, “Blaise.” Terror spread from her gut and she struggled to keep control, to make herself believe that she was not doomed.
How wrong she realized she’d been, relying on Dane to come to her rescue.
How she’d relied on him to have her back.
That wasn’t her. She’d always been self-reliant.
She would fight with every last ounce of life she had to get herself out of this—and she would need to use her head.
She would need to appear helpless and unthreatening.
The man in charge, who seemed to be the oldest of the three, turned to her and shouted above the noise, “Enjoy the flight. You are now the property of the Tavares family organization. You will enjoy Rio. Far, far away from everyone you know.”