“Get in here!” he ordered. “Do you know how to get to the airfield?”
“The only road leads straight there. But we can’t leave without Jen!”
“Who?”
“My friend, Jen Davis. She’s—”
Kehoe heard shouts in the distance, near the road. The road that was their only way out. Kristin waved toward one of the buildings, no doubt to signal her friend to join them. A gunshot rang out and a bullet pinged off the jeep, and Kehoe thought, Consulting, that’s really where I need to be.
“Get in now!” he shouted.
She ignored him, and he saw the second girl running toward them.
Kehoe turned the key and the diesel engine rattled obediently to life. The briefcase was still on the hood, and after a very short internal debate, he snatched it and threw it on the seat next to him. By the time he had the jeep in gear both girls had vaulted into the back seat. He decided introductions could wait. They had advanced no more than twenty feet when Kehoe’s foot slammed on the brake, the jeep skidding to a stop in a squall of dirt and gravel. Two men with raised semiautomatics were blocking the way out, positioned perfectly where the road funneled to the forest. A third soldier approached from the side, armed with a Steyr machine pistol and looking very sure of himself. Kehoe pondered the AK between the two front seats. Then he considered the two young girls behind him.
“Don’t do it!” said the man to his left.
Kehoe stood down, his hands going open palmed on the steering wheel. The voice was familiar, and he got his first good look at the man in charge. He was short and thick, dusty fatigues over sun-etched skin. A thick beard and lively, intelligent eyes. A street-smart ranch hand.
“Carlos!” Kristin said. “I’m so glad you came back to—”
“Be quiet!” he snapped.
Now Kehoe had a name to go with the face.
Carlos looked at the girls, then at him. “You have all made a serious mistake.”
Kehoe watched the two men a hundred feet ahead edge nearer. They were closer together than they should have been, he thought, limiting their lines of fire. Unfortunately, there were times when sheer numbers and firepower compensated for a lack of training. Carlos reached into the jeep, pulled out the AK and tossed it into the dirt. He seized a handful of Kristin’s long hair and wrenched her out of her seat.
Kehoe sat still. His tactical situation was not good, but he knew the value of control. Waiting for a decent opening, he watched the man named Carlos push Kristin to her knees, and then whisper something into her ear. She shuddered visibly as he nodded to his men, and then gestured toward the second girl. When Carlos pointed the Steyr directly at his chest, Kehoe realized the chance he was waiting for might never come.
Nothing to lose, he inched his right hand between the seats. The prospect could not have been more slim, but it was all he had left. Kehoe was all concentration, preparing to instigate what might be the final conscious act of his life, when the most implausible thing happened. A massive form came flying out of the brush.
In a blur a man crashed into the soldiers in front, clothes-lining one with an arm and tackling the other to the dirt. Three seconds and two haymakers later it was done. Both soldiers lay sprawled on the ground, motionless.
Carlos, as stunned as anyone, whipped the barrel of his gun toward the new threat. That was Kehoe’s cue. In one fluid motion, he rotated in his seat and flung his weapon.
The world went on pause.
Two soldiers lay unconscious.
One man stood over them.
Kehoe’s attention was fixed entirely on Carlos. He watched as the bearded Colombian seemed to hesitate, the Steyr curiously silent. Then he spun a lazy half turn, aimless and wobbling, and everyone saw the reason — the massive combat knife was embedded to its hilt in his back. When Carlos eventually fell it was a slow thing, like a felled tree clinging to its roots. The look of surprise in his unblinking eyes was absolute as he lay motionless on the ground amid a fast-spreading pool of red.
Kehoe was the first to recover. “Who the hell is that?” he exclaimed, staring at the hulk who’d burst out of the jungle.
It was the second girl who answered. “Dad!”
Jen jumped out of the jeep and ran.
It was just one word, but it made Davis’ heart leap like nothing he’d ever heard.
“Dad!”
He saw Jen running toward him. Full of joy. Full of life. God, so full of life!
Standing frozen, Davis realized that in nineteen years he had never before worried about his daughter. Not really. Not like the mind-numbing fear that had consumed him since last Sunday. After five days of dread and anxiety, five days of never giving up… it was here. This was the vision that had filled his dreams.
He opened his arms as wide as the sky.
Jammer Davis, who had stood tall and strong against four hardened soldiers in the last five minutes, was knocked flat on his ass by his hundred-and-twenty-pound daughter.
Jen was in his arms.
He would never, ever let her go.
FORTY-SEVEN
The overloaded jeep careened wildly with Kehoe at the wheel, and everyone took a handhold to keep from being tossed into the jungle. Davis sat in the back of the jeep with an arm around each of the girls — he hadn’t let go of Jen since she’d jumped into his arms.
McBain was in the front passenger seat talking on the sat-phone, struggling to keep the handset in the vicinity of his ear as the jeep bucked over massive tree roots and bottomed out on potholes.
“I knew you’d come,” said Jen.
Davis pulled her even closer. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
She rolled her eyes at his awful joke — like she always did.
He said, “We have an airplane a few miles from here, the same dirt strip where you and Kristin were pulled off that flight.”
“Is there a pilot too?” Jen asked.
He gave his daughter a pained look. “What am I?”
“Well,” she hesitated, “it’s just that I’ve seen you fly through rough situations. Like that time in Egypt when you nearly crashed into the—”
“Trust me,” he interrupted, “I’ll get you out of here. The worst is behind us.”
“We can’t assume that,” Kehoe said over his shoulder. “We aren’t the only ones with communications gear.”
Kristin said, “Carlos’ father was supposed to come today. He must be nearby, and I’ve been told he never travels alone.”
“His father?” Davis asked. “Who’s he?”
The jeep hit a massive rut and everyone went airborne in their seats. Shouting over the engine noise, Kristin gave a rundown of her relationship with Carlos, explaining that his father commanded a paramilitary force, but also had close ties to the government.
“Any idea what the government connection is?” McBain asked.
“I don’t know, but Carlos talked to his father every day on the phone, and he always had good information. He knew all the details of my flight, including that Agent Mulligan would be on it. He also knew a lot about the crash investigation.”
“Does Carlos have a last name?” McBain asked. “His father might be somebody we’ve tracked at DEA.”
“I always thought it was Duran,” said Kristin. “That’s what he used at school. But a few nights ago I saw an old passport with a different name — Carlos Echevarria.”
“Echevarria?” said McBain. “That’s a pretty common name.”
Davis was only surprised by his lack of surprise. “Not as common as you might think,” he said, without bothering to explain.
McBain went back to his sat-phone, and soon was relaying bad news. “Kristin is right. Jorgensen says reinforcements are heading our way. There’s a group of four vehicles less than a mile away on an intersecting trail.”