Lucile felt it, too, and hopped out of the pool, streaming a trail of water as she padded quickly to her folded towel, where she’d left her Beretta. Pistol in hand, she pointed to the far end of the house without speaking and melted into the evening air to see what had happened to Ramirez.
Da Rocha had no weapon. That’s what he hired guards for. Feigning disinterest but half expecting a bullet to scream in and blow his head off, he walked nonchalantly until he was five or six feet from the patio door. A single bullet thwacked off the wall in front of him, chipping a perfect half-moon from the white stucco. Another zinged off the pavement, narrowly missing his heel. He heard the staccato cracks of supersonic bullets but no boom from the ignition. They must have been using suppressors.
He didn’t wait around to figure it out but ducked his head and ran.
Lucille Fournier tasted blood, as she always did when she was about to spill some. The toe of a leather shoe protruded around the corner, revealing the presence of a man, hiding there to ambush her. She smiled, the pink tip of her tongue moistening her lips, tasting the air, serpentlike. She would have just shot through the wall, but da Rocha believed in solid, near-soundproof houses, and like many of the interior walls, this one was painted concrete. With the Beretta aimed in with both hands, she began to sidestep, cutting the pie, planning to shoot the first bit of the man that she saw and then take care of the rest of the bits as they presented themselves. She’d made it almost all the way around when she realized it was just an empty shoe. Clenching her teeth, she spun too late, catching a powerful fist that slammed her against the wall and sent a shower of lights exploding behind her eyes. She attempted to bring up the Beretta, but her attacker struck her in the forearm with some sort of truncheon. He kicked the gun away when it hit the floor.
Two more rapid blows to the face left her staggered and dazed. She had to use the wall to keep her feet. Her vision was fogged, but she could just make out the Russian with the odd haircut standing in front of her, smirking.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk, Ms. Fournier,” he said, a pained expression on his face. “You make things so complicated. Internal piston ammunition, sophisticated shellfish toxins… People are not so hard to kill.”
As if to prove his point, the Russian raised his pistol and shot her just below the nose. If she’d had any thoughts of arguing, she left them on the concrete wall behind her, along with her teeth.
Clark shot the first Russian twice as he turned the corner by the pool. “Splash one,” he said. He kicked the man’s suppressed Glock into the deep end of the pool and continued forward. A deafening boom to his right told him Chavez’s Tac-14 had spoken. Another Russian staggered backward from behind one of the villa’s winged buttresses. Clark and Adara both shot the third Russian as he came out of a bedroom, unaware that the previous gunfire had been at, not from, his comrades. Adara shot the fourth Russian as he was drawing a bead on da Rocha, who wore a bizarre-looking swimsuit that looked like he’d made it from matador pants. The arms dealer was now sprinting as fast as his legs could carry him down the gravel lane toward the main road.
“Stay alert,” Clark said. He scanned across the top of his M4, pointing out while Ding covered the interior of the house behind him with the shotgun. “We saw four on the drone, but we might have missed one — and that doesn’t count Lucile Fournier. Midas, think you can get da Rocha so we can talk to him?”
Rather than wasting breath on an answer, Midas, who was already running, just waved over his head with his left hand. Clark couldn’t help but smile as the retired Delta operator’s long strides chewed up the distance between him and da Rocha. He caught up quickly, falling in behind the arms dealer to give him a mighty shove between the shoulder blades. Midas grabbed his quarry by the hair as he went down, riding him to the ground like a sled. Da Rocha took the brunt of the impact on his chest and nose, yowling as he skidded to a stop. Midas rolled him over and slapped him across the ear. Thirty seconds later he was flex-cuffed, on his feet, and trudging back up the gravel road in his ridiculous-looking shorts.
Adrenaline ebbing, da Rocha’s shoulders trembled when he looked around his estate at all the carnage. He blinked several times and then settled in on Clark, whom he’d identified as the leader. “Who are you? What… what is the meaning of this?”
Adara leaned out the sliding glass door and gave a grim shake of her head. “I found Fournier.”
Clark sighed. “Mr. da Rocha. I’m the guy who just saved your life. That means you owe me some information.”
Chavez leaned in. “We should go, boss.”
“Right,” Clark said, his eyes never leaving da Rocha. “I know a place near the coast where we can talk in private.” He turned to Chavez. “No shit. The place I’m talking about is soundproof. There’s a lake out back that must be a hundred feet deep. We can do whatever we want and no one will ever know.”
Completely overwhelmed, da Rocha’s face screwed up in a twisted grimace and he began to sob.
47
Dominic Caruso had wandered away from the rest of his family in Shenandoah National Forest when he was six years old. With darkness falling, every tree and bush looked like the other trees and bushes. In no time, he was so turned around he had no idea where he was. He’d sat down on a rock and cried as only a six-year-old boy can cry when he is hopelessly lost. But even then, he’d known that somewhere in the gathering darkness, there were people who loved him and wanted to make him safe.
Now he was slumped on the side of this isolated dirt road somewhere southwest of Herat, covered in mud and blood and bits of broken glass. The charred remains of the van steamed and smoked behind him. There’d been no explosion when the fuel tank caught fire, just a great whoosh and intense heat. The wind had whipped the flames and smoke into a black pyre that was surely visible for miles, but no one came to investigate. Caruso may as well have been on the face of the moon. Not a soul within a thousand miles cared enough to look for him. Hell, no one even knew he was missing. Jack was gone, snatched away along with Ysabel and the Russian. Life was cheap in this part of the world, and if Jack wasn’t dead already, it was only a matter of time.
The bandits hadn’t seen Dom, belly-down in the muddy ditchwater, or they would have taken him, too.
He dabbed at the side of his head, feeling the bristles of singed hair and blisters of the second-degree burns above his ear. Half his shirt on that side had been burned away as well. The incessant wind coated him in dust, as if he’d been rolled in yellow flour, making it impossible to accurately assess his injuries. One eye was swollen shut, his vision blurred. He could stand, though it made him feel like he might throw up. Both hands seemed functional enough for gross motor skills, but they shook so badly from shock that he’d likely have shot himself in the foot had he been able to find a pistol.
He allowed himself a two-minute pity party and then stood, realizing only then that he’d somehow lost his shoes while crawling through the mud. No one was coming for him. Be your own rescue, John Clark always said. That old son of a bitch had a mantra for everything. Caruso took a tentative step on wobbly legs, wincing from the rocks that cut his feet. Facing the wind, he laughed out loud in spite of the situation.
Pain from the burns and sprains and cuts had yet to overwhelm him, but it was only a matter of time. He had to get to a phone. To tell NATO troops or CIA or somebody with big guns and eyes in the sky that Ryan needed help. Caruso realized that as bad as this shit sandwich was, Jack’s was far worse. At least Caruso was free, such as it was. Hamid had passed an Afghan National Army base after they’d left the airport, somewhere before he’d turned onto this road. Caruso would walk all night, crawl if he had to. He laughed again. Hell, crawling would probably be faster.