One Rough Man - Brad Taylor [63]
What? Jennifer’s brain refused to compute what she had just heard. She watched in a daze as Jake left the room, barking out orders as he went. Her mind finally clicked. Jesus Christ. I’m going to die. It failed to register that death was the least of her concerns.
She heard Miguel talking to the remaining guard. “Take her to the interrogation room. Pick four men who deserve a reward and give her to them.”
Her predicament began to sink in. She tried to talk through the gag in her mouth, to get Miguel to understand there was some mistake. She was ignored. The guard grabbed the manacles around her wrists without even giving her a chance to stand up. No, no, no. This isn’t happening. She was dragged kicking from the room.
37
After hanging up, I vaulted the fence and raced to the vantage point I had found earlier. Crouching in the woods, I waited, trying to see one of the guards patrolling the exterior grounds. I focused my eyes on the brick wall surrounding the compound, vaguely lit up enough to allow me to make it out. I used my peripheral vision to pick out movement, knowing that it was better in the night than my primary eyesight. Soon, I spotted a guard moving down the wall.
I moved in a crouch on a path to intersect the guard, covering the terrain as rapidly as I could without making enough noise to alert him. I closed within fifteen meters of his back and began stalking my prey. When I was five feet away, I closed the distance at a sprint. I wrapped my right arm around the guard’s neck and pressed my shoulder into the back of his head, forcing it down. Kicking the back of his knee, I flung myself backward, pulling him horizontally toward the ground. Our bodies separated like a pair of scissors. We both hit the earth at the same time, the guard on his back and me on my stomach. The force of the fall generated enormous leverage applied through my shoulder directly into the man’s neck, snapping it cleanly. I sat up, grabbed the dead man by his equipment vest, and dragged him thirty feet into the darkness. I began stripping the body, ripping away all of the junk to get to the ammunition for the 416.
JENNIFER LAY ON HER STOMACH inside the warehouse. She was still clothed, but her shoes had been removed to hamper any escape attempt. She could see the implements of torture in the gloom, along with dark brown stains at irregular intervals along the walls. In the corner she saw a pile of clothes and recognized her uncle’s shirt. She began shaking uncontrollably. What the fuck am I going to do? Something . . . there’s got to be something. Up until now, she had managed to maintain a semblance of self-control because she felt certain that the police or Pike would be arriving to help. People like her didn’t end up shackled in a drug lord’s house. At least not for long. Pike’s comments to Miguel had popped that bubble; she now knew she was on her own. Think . . . Think . . . Think. Gotta be a way out.... The door opened, and she saw five Guatemalan men enter the room, all staring at her and smiling. Oh, my God.
THE THUMB DRIVE WORKED PERFECTLY, surprising Bakr. In his heart, he hadn’t thought they would actually get the data, and in their rush to get to the hotel, he hadn’t planned a next step.
As soon as they had arrived, they had seen a red Jeep driven by a man matching the description given by Jake. They watched him and a woman enter the hotel and had barely begun to discuss their options when the man exited alone less than five minutes later, giving them an opportunity they couldn’t ignore.
Now they had the GPS location to the temple, but they didn’t have a GPS. Bakr didn’t want to return with the data to Miguel’s house, but somehow they needed to get one of the GPSs inside their test package, along with the 3M respirators. While mulling the options over dinner, Bakr decided he would be the only one who went back. Sayyidd would remain in the restaurant with the data, waiting for him to return.
I FINISHED KITTING UP and conducted a functions