131
Sitting in the beautiful terrace dining area of the Hotel El Poblado Plaza in the heart of Medellín’s business district, Mark couldn’t begin to allow himself to relax. So intense had been his concentration on the drive from Bogotá to Medellín that he had heard the movement of the soldiers’ hands on their weapons at each checkpoint, had monitored their heart rates and breathing for any sign of increased stress.
But the trip had gone remarkably smooth. They had flown into Bogotá to avoid taking a direct path to their target, staying just long enough to purchase an old car, the transaction made in cash. Thanks to Heather’s gambling talent, there was no shortage of that. Their papers had aroused no suspicion, and after listening briefly to the intonations of local people, Mark had adjusted his Spanish so that he now sounded like a native.
In years past, traveling the road between Bogotá and Medellín would have been tantamount to carrying a “Please kidnap me!” sign. Among the left-wing guerillas, the right-wing paramilitary groups, the bandits, and corrupt soldiers, any attempt to travel the Colombian countryside carried with it the near certainty of disaster. But that had changed in recent years, and while dangers still existed, the risk was acceptable.
Besides, Heather had given the travel plan her savant blessing.
Mark glanced across the table, watching her sip cappuccino, her eyes hidden behind her dark sunglasses. Heather’s powers were getting stronger—much stronger. All this practice peering into the future had been exercising her brain in ways he couldn’t even begin to imagine. And although, at times, she still needed to go into a deep trance, she was now able to pick up changes that might affect their plan while carrying on normal conversation. She called them eddies, small events that produced large impacts later on. If anything was out of place, he could count on Heather to spot it. His job was to be ready when she did.
They knew where Jennifer was being held: the estate of Jorge Espe?osa, the most feared drug lord in South America. Triangulation of the missing headbands had confirmed it. Bad news. Jen couldn’t have gotten herself into a worse spot if she’d been thrown into a Colombian prison.
Now they were sitting on the terrace of one of the nicer hotels in Medellín, having spent the last two days dreaming up a plan that gave them a chance to get Jen out alive. Today was to have been the day of reckoning. But this morning, everything had gone to hell.
Overnight, the headbands had been moved, this time to Washington, D.C.
Although Mark had been stunned by the discovery, at first he had believed it was a piece of good luck. After all, it would be far easier to rescue Jennifer in the United States than from the drug lord’s compound. Heather had just quashed that idea.
Mark looked at his plate. The half-eaten scrambled eggs and bacon had grown as cold as his formerly hot coffee, his appetite having dissipated along with the heat.
“So you don’t think Jennifer’s in D.C.?”
“No,” Heather said. “I can feel her in my head. She’s close.”
“Then how the hell did the headbands get to Washington?”
Seeing Heather’s eyebrow rise, Mark backpedaled. “Sorry. I’m just not liking what I’m thinking right now.”
“I know. It’s not good.”
“So what’re we going to do about it?”
“Nothing. Stay focused on getting to Jen.”
“And our plan?”
“Unchanged.”
Mark smiled, attempting to show a confidence he didn’t feel. After all, what good was perfect muscle control if you couldn’t use it to lie to your best friend? He reached across the table and touched Heather’s face, gently removing her sunglasses. Just because she said this was their best chance didn’t mean their odds of surviving the day were good. And before he got up and led her out of this hotel to whatever destiny awaited, he wanted to look into her beautiful brown eyes one more time.
Heather seemed to sense his thoughts. Shit, for all he knew, she was probably hearing them. Her own brave smile parted her lips. He wanted to lean across and kiss them so bad he actually started to lean forward. Instead, Mark swallowed hard and returned her sunglasses to their accustomed spot on her nose.
“Ready?” Heather asked, standing up.
“Ready.”
Mark flexed his muscles as he rose to his full height. One thing he swore to himself as he turned toward the door: he wasn’t going to fucking die before he got to deliver that kiss.
132
Having left their cash in the hotel safe, before ditching the car in the nearby barrio, Mark and Heather walked the last mile along the narrow winding road that led to the Espe?osa Hacienda’s front gate. Aside from the curious stares of a few onlookers, no one attempted to stop them.
Mark had almost forgotten what it felt like to look seventeen, although he felt older than Methuselah. He glanced over at Heather. Young or old, she still looked wonderful.
To say this plan bordered on madness would have been to give it the benefit of the doubt. When they had first begun to discuss how to rescue Jen, he had envisioned some sort of Rambo assault, bad guys pinned down by his withering gunfire as Heather led Jennifer to safety. There had certainly been nothing in his plan about two seventeen-year-old kids strolling up to the front gate and asking Don Espe?osa to see his prisoner.
When Heather had first described it to him, he had laughed out loud, thinking she was pulling his leg. It reminded him of the time his basketball coach had drawn up a last-second play for Jacob Mahoney to shoot the ball, on the theory that the other team would never expect it. No kidding. Jacob had been wide open. Right before he missed everything but the kid playing the tuba behind the goal.
The only good thing Mark saw in the plan was that they wouldn’t have to fight their way in. That and his faith in the little savant who thought it up.
As they reached the top of the low hill occupied by the Espe?osa estate, Mark inhaled deeply, glancing at Heather once again. No sunglasses and her eyes were normal. Good. Nothing in her savant mind had identified a serious problem with the way things were unfolding, at least nothing wrong enough to force her to go deep. As he refocused his attention on the armed guards beside the massive wrought-iron gate ahead, the words of the X-wing pilot in Star Wars played in his head. “Stay on target. Stay on target.”
The guards certainly didn’t appear concerned about the two high school kids walking toward them, not reacting until Mark touched the gate.
“Hey, what are you kids doing there?” the guard on the left yelled in Spanish, not bothering to raise the submachine gun cradled in his arm. “Get away from the gate!”
Mark responded with flawless Spanish of his own. “We’re here to see Don Espe?osa.”
This brought a round of loud laughter. “And what makes you think he wants to see you?”
Mark took another deep breath. Here it was. “Because he has my sister.”
The change in the guards was immediate, their machine gun muzzles rising in unison. Mark had never before looked directly down the barrel of a loaded weapon, certainly not one gripped with a twitchy trigger finger. Now, with two of those round black holes pointed directly into his face, he decided he didn’t like it.
The gate opened and one of the guards grabbed Mark’s arm, shoving him face-first against the railing as the other motioned for Heather to face the fence beside him. Covered by his partner’s weapon, the swarthy fellow with the Che Guevara hairdo frisked him, cuffed his hands behind his back with a plastic tie, then repeated the procedure with Heather.
A quick glance at Heather showed tension in her face, but no white eyes. Everything was still on plan. Wonderful. That made him feel so much better.
Mark and Heather were pulled inside the compound, and while one guard placed a call on his cell phone, the other pushed them along the driveway leading up to a sprawling two-story house with arches that opened into a central patio area. At the base of the steps leading up to a pair of twelve-foot-tall wooden doors, the guard brought them to a stop.
“Where are you taking us?” Mark asked, drawing a sharp jab in the back from the muzzle of the machine gun.
As if in response to the question, the huge doors opened outward, revealing an elegantly dressed man sporting a Fu Manchu mustache and a thick cigar clamped in his teeth. Five khaki-clad bodyguards as big as pro wrestlers moved down to take charge of the prisoners.
“Thank you, Umberto,” the man said, taking a puff on the cigar as he stepped closer to Mark. “You may return to your post.”
The guard gave a stiff salute, pivoted, and walked rapidly back toward the now-closed gate.
Don Espe?osa smiled. “So, you are Mark Smythe. Your sister has told me so much about you. And this must be Heather McFarland.”
Heather was the first to react. “Where is Jennifer? Can we see her? It’s safe. No one knows we’re here.”
If anything, the drug lord’s smile grew broader. “Oh, I know. You two have been all over the American news channels. The mentally unstable friend and the distraught brother searching for his runaway sister. Quite a tabloid story.”
The smile faded from the Don’s face. “Take them to the gym and wait until I get there.”
Mark felt himself grabbed by each arm as he and Heather were dragged forward, not into the house, but through the arches that led into the beautiful central patio. Mark’s mind whirled. Despite the unpleasant tone he had heard in the Don’s last command, it was still possible that he was having them taken to the room where Jen was being held. Or maybe he had gone to get Jennifer.
The gym turned out to be a large room on the west side of the patio. Unlike the tile that had covered the entranceway and the walkway under the overhanging porch, black rubber mats covered the floor. Two mirrored walls reflected the racks of dumbbells and Nautilus equipment that filled the right side of the workout room. A chrome bar ran along the left wall, the kind ballet dancers used for stretching their legs, and that part of the floor was clear of equipment. A closed door in the far wall apparently gave access from within the main house.
Mark felt a metal handcuff slapped onto his right wrist just above the plastic tie. Then his back was shoved up against the weight rack and the second cuff applied, securing him to the equipment. Another drug thug cuffed Heather’s wrists to the dancer’s bar.
Anticipation hung in the air like campfire smoke, an anticipation that didn’t feel right. The bodyguards looked like kids waiting to open their Christmas presents. Before Mark had time to think about that, Don Espe?osa entered the room, closing the door behind him.
No Jennifer.
He walked directly up to Heather. “So, you two thought you could just walk up to my estate and demand to see Jennifer Smythe. I guess word of my fabled good nature has reached your ears.”
Two of the bodyguards snickered.
The don lifted Heather’s chin with his hand. “What’s wrong with her? Some kind of fit or something?”
Mark caught sight of the milky-white of Heather’s eyes. Shit. She’d gone deep.
“No matter,” the don said, nodding toward Mark. “Kill the boy, then we’ll have some fun with this one.”
Before the bodyguards could turn to comply, Heather’s brown eyes rolled back into place. With a noisy hawking sound, she spat directly in the Don’s face, the wad of spittle splashing his nose and left eye.
Don Espe?osa’s lip curled into an ugly grimace as he wiped at his face.
“Wait!” His command brought the bodyguard who had begun to advance toward Mark to a halt.
The drug lord turned his attention back to Heather. “So you care about this boy, huh? Okay. Then we’ll let him watch before we kill him.”
With a grin that became a sneer, the don signaled four of the thugs forward. “Un-cuff her hands and stretch her out here on the floor.”
To Mark’s horror, the men released Heather’s handcuffs, and although she struggled mightily, they pulled her down onto her back, one each pinning her arms while two more spread her legs. Don Espe?osa knelt down between them, reaching forward to rip open Heather’s blouse.
“Ah, such sweet titties.” Don Espe?osa reached down and began fondling Heather’s breasts. “So nice and firm. You probably never even got to touch these, did you, Smythe?”
To Mark, the panting breath of the men, the sound of the racing hearts pumping blood into the bulges in their pants, the smell of their sweat, felt like the rupture of hell’s gate, and from that gate poured a firestorm of rage that scorched his brain.
Mark’s heart pulsed in his chest, sending a massive surge of blood and adrenaline coursing through his arteries.
With a snap loud enough to spin Don Espe?osa’s head in his direction, the metal and plastic of his double handcuffs split apart.