Also by Marc Cameron

Tom Clancy Power and Empire

Dead Drop

Field of Fire

Brute Force

Day Zero

Time of Attack

State of Emergency

Act of Terror

National Security

Triple Frontier

A Jericho Quinn novella

Marc Cameron

PINNACLE BOOKS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

Also by Marc Cameron

Title Page

Copyright Page

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Teaser chapter

To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

Kensington Publishing Corp.

119 West 40th Street

New York, NY 10018

Copyright © 2018 by Marc Cameron

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

Pinnacle Books and the Pinnacle logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

First Electronic Edition: May 2018

ISBN: 978-0-7860-4273-9

“Right knows no boundaries, and justice no frontiers . . .”

—Learned Hand

Puerto Iguazú, Argentina

Monday

Nothing says “your prompt payment is appreciated” like the sight of another man’s severed toe.

Justino Medina stared down at the open ring box on his coffee table, teetered for a moment on unsteady feet, and then collapsed into the cool white leather of his expensive couch. Fernando Richter did not offer a grace period. Delinquent accounts served two very important purposes: they demonstrated Richter’s resolve to the other cartel bosses in La Triple Frontera, and they provided body parts to use as a billing notice for the next name in Richter’s ledger.

Smaller sums might cost the debtor a finger or, as in this case, a big toe. If more was owed, more digits would be taken. From there, Richter moved to the teeth. Justino thought he would rather lose a few teeth than his fingers and toes, but Fernando Richter did not let his victims have a say in these matters. And in any case, Justino and his wife owed such a large sum of money, they simply did not have enough parts to cut off.

Angelica Medina came out of the kitchen carrying a terracotta platter of baked cheese and sándwiches de miga—the trimmed whitebread finger sandwiches ubiquitous to Argentina. Two inches taller than her husband, she had high cheeks and the most exquisite of collarbones. She was absolutely breathtaking, well above Justino’s station, and he knew it. Justino was bald, with an odd little ring of fuzzy hair like some kind of botched monastic tonsure. Angelica refused to let him shave his head or cover with a toupee. She, on the other hand, had thick black hair that she wore around her splendid face like the helmet of a beautiful Amazon princess. He could not understand why such an attractive woman had married a toad like him, unless it was because he could never bring himself to tell her no—as he should have done when she’d suggested they go into business with Fernando Richter, the Paraguayan boss most people referred to simply as “The German.”

Angelica was a judge in the Misiones district court. As such, she was accustomed to order in her courtroom and the day to day activities of her life. Even a bloody toe on her coffee table could not dissuade her from afternoon tea and a subsequent two-hour siesta. She would certainly not be difficult to find if the time came for The German to start cutting.

Angelica gave her husband a peck on top of his bald head and then set the tray of food on the table, nodding at the bloody toe. “Cover that awful thing with a paper towel and have something to eat, my love.”

She folded long legs under her bottom and sat down cat-like on the couch, leaning forward to spear a piece of baked white cheese with a wooden skewer the size of a large flat toothpick. A copy of La Nación lay on the couch beside her and she picked it up, flipping through it while she ate.

Justino sat with his mouth hanging open. “How can you be so calm?”

Angelica looked up from the newspaper and gestured with the wooden skewer as she chewed a bite of cheese. “What do you wish me to do? Weep? Chew my nails? I am a judge and you are a well-respected lawyer. We are intelligent people.” She pursed her lips, the way she did when she was annoyed. “In any case, we have six days remaining.”

“Six days with no prospects,” Justino groaned. “My love, if we do not find the money to pay this monster . . .” He felt the overwhelming urge to chew his nails, but couldn’t now that his wife had made it sound so cowardly.

This plan was completely insane, but for some reason, Angelica, one of the smartest women he knew, could not see it.

Going into business with Fernando Richter was dealing with a viper. He could be trusted to lie about everything but the time he would come to kill you. Not even an Argentine, he lived instead across the river, two rivers actually—the Iguazú that separated Argentina and Brazil, and the Paraná that flowed between Brazil and Paraguay—in Ciudad del Este, thief among many other thieves.

The Medinas knew of Richter. Everyone in the Tri-Border region did. One of Justino’s clients had once said that The German had cut off his hand for nothing. Another man in the jail had overheard the conversation. “Liar!” the second man had said. “For nothing, The German only cuts off a few fingers.”

Until now, Justino had been able to steer clear of any entanglements with the cartel boss and his violent associates. Then Angelica had gotten it into her beautiful head that they simply had to build an addition to their home. Like the devil who came when one uttered his name, Fernando Richter had appeared from the other side of the river and offered to front them 1000 kilos of marijuana. The Medinas could, he said, take the drugs with a load of their soybeans bound for São Paulo, sell it there, and pay him after the fact. With Richter charging two hundred dollars per kilo they could double their money with buyers in São Paulo, easily paying him back his 200,000. It had seemed like easy money. The bulk of all the marijuana grown in Paraguay ended up in Brazil—and little of it was ever interdicted by authorities. Risks were minimal and the rewards were high.

Usually.

For the first time since they’d started shipping soy, their barge had been stopped by bandits on the Iguazú River. The marijuana had been stolen, leaving the Medinas no drugs to sell in São Paulo and therefore no profit to pay Richter back for his advance. He’d graciously given them one month to recoup his investment. In hindsight, The German had most certainly stolen the drugs himself. Justino had no doubt that his men had merely continued down the river to sell the marijuana in Brazil. Any money he got from the Medinas would be a windfall. If they did not pay him, he would simply kill them to keep up appearances. It cost him nothing, and from all accounts, he would probably enjoy it.

Justino leaned back and stared at the ceiling. They’d been happy before all this, padding their regular salaries and shipping income as buscas panzas. Literally belly hunters, they looked for pregnant women among the local population. Blue-eyed blondes of European heritage were preferable, but Guarani Indians were acceptable if that was all they could find. These indigenous women were so desperately poor that they could barely feed the children they had. It was usually a simple matter to convince them to sell one to a family who wanted to give it a better life. If the woman did not see the value of the transaction, Jelly or one of the other men who worked for Angelica would help them reach the right decision.

They had two such women now in the pipeline that were ready to pop, with couples from Buenos Aires prepared to pay ten thousand dollars for each baby. Any other time that would have been a great deal of money—but it was so far from what they needed that it might as well have been nothing at all.

“We could sell the house,” Justino offered, still unable to eat. “Perhaps we—”

“This is our home,” his wife scoffed. “And besides, no one would buy it in such a short time.”

Justino groaned. “Then what do you suggest, my love? I happened to be quite attached to my toes and my teeth.”

“Oh, Justo, you stupid, stupid man,” Angelica said, without looking up from her newspaper. “We owe The German a great deal of money. He will surely cut off something much more important than a few toes and teeth.”

“That does not help me feel better—”

Angelica held up her hand, judge-like, focusing now on something in the newspaper. “My love,” she said, her leg suddenly bouncing with energy. “I believe I have found the answer to our prayers. Do you have your mobile?”

Justino fished into his pocket, holding up the phone when he found it, and trying desperately to control his breathing.

“Good,” Angelica said. “Call Jelly and tell him to get the others together. We have a job for them among the porteños.”

“Buenos Aires?”

“Yes, Buenos Aires.” Angelica turned her copy of La Nación. At the top of the page was a photograph of what looked to be five handsome college students. Angelica tapped the face of the young man standing at the far left of the group. “I do not know about the others, but this one is worth a great deal of money.”

Justino smiled at his wife and gave a long sigh. She was either crazy or brilliant. These young people looked to be riding their motorbikes on some long journey, an adventure Justino himself had dreamed of before he’d met Angelica. They had done nothing to deserve what she had planned. Still, something had to be done about the issue of The German. If these poor youths could provide the money to pay him back, well, then that was just the way it had to be. Justino took the paper, bringing it closer for a better look at the people who were about to pay for his mistake.

Four of them—two men and two women—were smiling. The fifth man, perhaps ten years older than the others, with shaggy blonde hair and piercing eyes, did not look happy at all.

Buenos Aires

Tuesday, 7:35 a.m.

Bo Quinn finished a breakfast of ham and cheese empanada and strong coffee and stepped out the side door of the Urbanica Hotel in the upscale Belgrano neighborhood to give the bikes one final check before the morning got underway. He was charged with the safety of the riders—and that started with their motorcycles. The morning was cool, a welcome respite from the weeks of riding in the heat. It was March—autumn in Argentina—and the seedpods were falling like miniature helicopters from the tall rosewood trees outside the hotel.

Mussed straw-colored hair brushed the tab collar of Quinn’s Vanson jacket. His leather boots, once shiny black but now scuffed and a more respectable weather-worn brown, said he’d been at this riding business for some time. He bent at the waist and touched his palms to the gray paving stone, stretching his back and knees. Joints popped. Scar tissue complained. Old injuries—and there were many—ground bone on bone.

Bo looked after people. Some, he looked after by seeing that they got what they deserved. Others, that they did not.

Three of the riders under his stewardship who stumbled out of the hotel at that moment in varying stages of bleary-eyed stupor deserved to be protected. The fourth, a smarmy business school dropout with a perpetual case of bed-head, was another matter. The first three abided by Quinn’s mandate of anonymity, but Matt King never met a photo of himself he did not love—and he posted all of them on his various social media accounts.

South America was no place to advertise the fact that you were a rich North American. Matt King either didn’t understand, or he just plain didn’t care.

Yesterday, Bo’s fears had been born out when someone tipped off a reporter from La Nación to a photograph of the entire tour group on Matt King’s Instagram account. They were all standing beside their bikes in front of the Urbanica Hotel like a bunch of carefree college students—as if one of their fathers didn’t own a company worth upwards of five hundred million American dollars. It was just the sort of information you didn’t want broadcast anywhere, let alone a country where quickly planned “express” kidnappings weren’t exactly unheard of.

There was little Bo could do but cajole. He couldn’t very well slap one of the kids he was supposed to be protecting. He did mention the incident in the nightly email to his employer the evening before, but so far, he’d received no reply.

Bo looked up and down the street at the morning traffic. It was normal, so far as he could tell. They’d make a run south to their next stop in Tandil to look at a few knife shops, and then end up in Bahia Blanca before dark. Hopefully, no one would be ballsy enough to try anything stupid against five American bikers in broad daylight. At least, the plan was to leave early and arrive before dark. Trying to get these guys going in the morning was trying to push a piece of wet spaghetti.

He checked each bike’s tires while the group stowed their gear and checked emails for the tenth time that morning. Rich people didn’t have to worry about pesky things like roaming charges and out-of-country cell data fees.

Two of the motorcycles were Harley Davidson Road Kings like Bo’s. One was one a Ducati and the other, a Honda Africa Twin. All were loaded like pack mules with luggage and camping gear—though they hardly ever camped—leaning on side stands along the uneven walk in the chilly shadows of the hotel.

A tall woman sidled up next to the Africa Twin, eyeing Bo with a beautifully arched dark brow as she secured her tank bag. She wore armored riding pants similar to Bo’s. Hers were black leather; his faded denim Tobacco jeans. A wide yellow headband swept back thick auburn hair, revealing a prominent widow’s peak. Somewhere in her early twenties, Alma Cortez had impeccable taste about virtually everything but men. Bo would have loved to show her the error of her thinking, but sleeping with the girlfriend of a client seemed like a bad idea.

Alma’s boyfriend moved in behind her to check the Ducati, textile riding pants drooping like he was carrying a load in the seat of his drawers. Matt King was the son of a real estate tycoon from Houston. The sultry Chilean girl had met him at a club in Dallas. His dark superman curl and quick wit had somehow concealed the more vaporous aspects of his nature, and for reasons Quinn could not fathom, she’d agreed to accompany King and his friends on this two-month motorcycle journey to the tip of South America. The young man seemed to realize the relationship was doomed and held on to it just a little too tight, never letting Alma get too far away for more than a few moments—especially around Bo.

“Alka-Seltzer,” King demanded, rubbing his eyes with one hand while holding out an open palm.

Bo eyed the outstretched hand, weighing his options. In the end, he chose the one that wouldn’t get him fired. “You borrowed the last from my kit yesterday.”

King groaned. “Somebody’s gonna have to go get me some more before we ride. My gut’s on fire.”

“I’ll go,” Alma said. “It won’t take long.”

Bo shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere except as a group. Not after that photo stunt.”

King rolled his eyes. “It’s the twenty first century, genius. People post stuff. Get over it.”

“He’s trying to help us, Matt,” Alma said. “Cut him some slack.”

Bo shrugged it off. It was something like this every day. Privately, he vowed never again to allow the offer of a large chunk of money to lure him into such a thankless job.

“There’s a store a couple of miles away,” he said. “We’ll stop there on our way out of town so you can do the plop-plop fizz-fizz thing.”

The other two riders, an attractive blond woman who was on the smallish side and an athletic young man with a shaggy beard attended to their own bikes. Eva Turcott and Steven Grey weren’t quite engaged, but Bo was pretty sure it was going to happen any day now. The fact that Grey carried a diamond ring easily worth twenty grand in the pocket of his riding pants did nothing to help Quinn’s fears.

The two lovebirds chatted quietly, oblivious to everyone else on the trip, and frankly, most of the world around them. Steven’s father knew his son was in no mental state to ride to the tip of South America without a sheepdog to watch over him. Riley Grey was a biker himself, and had been friends with Bo Quinn since his dotcom company was barely a blip on the Internet. Few people even knew who Steven was, but he’d made the tabloids more than once and the elder Grey had decided it was a good idea to hire Bo to look after his heir. The state of the world made it an absolute necessity.

Bo threw a leg over his Road King and hit the ignition, letting the engine warm up while he slipped on his helmet and fastened the chin strap. For some reason, the others never seemed to realize it was time to get on their bikes until he started his.

When everyone was mounted and ready, Bo turned to look at the others before calling out over the Cardo Bluetooth on his helmet. Straddling their bikes, they looked like they did on most every other day of their journey—with Alma eyeing Bo in a flirtatious pout, Steven and Eva lost in a lovers’ fog, and Matt’s head up his ass.

Bo felt the first flutter of uneasiness ten blocks from the hotel when the truck in front of him slowed for a man with a hardhat and road construction flag past the Libertador tunnel. His brother, Jericho often said that the air smelled different just before a bad event. You just had to learn to recognize it. He took a deep breath through his nose, getting nothing but the sweaty odor of five thousand miles in the same helmet. “That’s no help at all, brother,” he whispered. Jericho would have called the nagging feeling in his gut by its Japanese name, haragei—“art of the belly.” Bo tapped the rear brake with the toe of his boot and hoped he just needed to take one of Matt King’s Alka-Seltzers.

The flagger directed the truck ahead to turn right, down a tree-lined residential street. Bo considered making a U-turn, but Matt hadn’t quite mastered that basic maneuver and would have to duck-walk his motorcycle in the busy thoroughfare to go the opposite direction, slowing everyone down. The presence of a second flagger at the next intersection, assisting with the construction detour, brought Bo’s nerves down a notch. The truck ahead made a left, paralleling the main street.

“Heads up,” Bo said, mouth to the Cardo Bluetooth mic inside his helmet.

The truck in front of them slowed again, as if to make another left, forcing the riders to roll to a stop behind it. Quinn gritted his teeth as a dark blue van made the turn behind the group, looming larger in his side mirror. The van accelerated quickly, roaring up behind Eva Turcott and bumped her motorcycle hard. The bike went down, engine roaring, rear wheel spinning. Eva had to crawl to drag herself out from under it. Steven jumped to check on her. Sputtering with fury and adrenaline, he forgot his side stand and let his big bike fall on its side in the middle of the street.

Three men wearing black balaclavas poured out of the van while two more bailed out of the pickup. All five of them were armed with wooden clubs. Bo saw at least one pistol, stuffed down the waistband of the stockiest of the lot.

Bo and his brother had spent many hours talking tactics—with each other, and with their old man around campfires in Alaska. Admittedly, Jericho had had more opportunity to bring those tactics to play—and he agreed with their father that it was better to attack back through any assault. You didn’t try to negotiate with five guys with clubs.

Assessing the situation in an instant, Bo used his right thumb to flick the small button on an orange device the size of a cellphone that was mounted on his handlebars. Alma’s husky voice was the only one that came across his headset.

“Bo,” she all but growled. “What do you want me to do?”

Quinn gave a tight smile at her ballsy attitude, but looked up in time to see a big guy with a pistol stuffed down his pants heading straight for her. Instead of answering, Bo gunned the throttle and plowed the front wheel of his bike directly into the one with the pistol.

The big guy’s right leg bent unnaturally as eight hundred pounds of Harley Davidson motorcycle slammed into his thigh. Bo watched him fall, and gunned the throttle again, spinning the rear tire in an attempt to turn and face one of the other threats without dismounting the bike. The full-face helmet made it impossible to see everything that was going on around him. He heard the engine on Alma’s Honda rev to his right, but before he could turn, something heavy slammed into the back of his head. He slumped forward, immediately losing control of the bike so the handlebars came around and slapped the tank. Stunned and seeing stars, he gave a valiant attempt to hop off, but something hit again, rattling his teeth and driving him to the pavement. A third blow caught him across the shoulders, keeping him there.

Alma’s scream buzzed in his earpiece as he sank into unconsciousness.

On the handlebars of Bo Quinn’s downed bike, the satellite communications device flashed a message that his SOS and GPS location had gone out to the numbers he’d preprogrammed. The little man with the baseball bat who stood over him was panting too hard to notice.

Chapter 1

Alexandria, Virginia

Six minutes earlier

Heads down, shoulders heaving, Jericho Quinn and Jacques Thibodaux faced each other, circling for the fifth time in as many minutes. Quinn’s dark eyes narrowed above a week’s growth of dark beard. Thibodaux’s high and tight haircut glistened with perspiration in the orange light that filtered through the spring foliage on the sycamore and oaks. Gravel crunched under their boots on the concrete driveway in front of Emiko Miyagi’s colonial brick, a short jog from George Washington’s Mount Vernon estate.

Copper skin and a dark beard left him with what his ex-wife called an ambiguous ethnicity. At an extremely fit thirty-seven, he could, and often did, pass for someone of Middle Eastern descent, a Native American like his maternal grandmother, or the deeply tanned son of an Irish fisherman that he was. His shaggy hair was just long enough to curl over the top of his ears.

At five feet-ten, Jericho had held the Alaska state Golden Gloves title in his weight classes through five of the eight years from sixth grade until he graduated high school, and had gone on to box for the United States Air Force Academy, winning the Wing Open his junior year. He’d trained in several martial arts, but leaned toward an ancient form of Japanese jujitsu—with plenty of striking mixed in with joint manipulation and throws. More than a series of techniques, it was a way of strategy. Beyond his years of training, he was an instinctive fighter, born with not only the physique and intelligence for close quarters battle, but the willingness to inflict maximum sudden violence on his fellow man when the need arose.

Officially a special agent with Air Force Office of Special Investigations, he’d been seconded, along with his partner, Marine Gunnery Sergeant Jacques Thibodaux to the office of the national security advisor to the president. When they weren’t working, they were training—and according to their instructor, Emiko Miyagi, there was always something to learn.

Thibodaux had Quinn by six inches and sixty pounds. The man was massive—but his were no mere mirror muscles. He had plenty of experience in the octagon, where he fought amateur MMA bouts under the name Dauxboy. The Marine’s black eyepatch and an impossibly square jaw added a severity to his already imposing look. Still, his broad face generally held a smile, even in the middle of a fight.

Both men were strategic thinkers, and both knew there were rarely any winners in an actual fight—only those who lived, and those who lost. Real fights were car-wreck quick, emergency-room gory, and brick-to-the-head final.

The problem with fighting someone who sparred with you weekly lay in the fact that you started to learn each other’s rhythms, discovering each other’s tricks. The benefit, as Miyagi explained, came from the need to constantly adapt in order to conceal one’s strategy. If an opponent knew you favored a series of exploratory left jabs prior to bridging the gap of distance, he or she would be ready for the attack long before it came. As such, both Jericho and Jacques varied their movements in an attempt to throw the other off his game.

Neither man was a tentative fighter, though Quinn was a skosh more thoughtful. Thibodaux tended to use his tremendous size to crash in and overwhelm, but when sparring with Quinn the big Cajun often switched things up—as he was doing now—circling, waiting for just the right moment to make his move.

Jacques stutter-stepped, almost tripping on a patch of gravel and glancing for an instant down at his feet. Quinn seized the opportunity and moved in, catching a strike to the nose for his trouble, feeling the cartilage grind under Jacques Thibodaux’s forearm.

Neither man was the sort to take it easy in a sparring match; training had to reflect life in order to be beneficial. So, the two men battled like bulls at eighty percent, taking care not to cause serious incapacitating injury. Unfortunately, reality came with a good deal of pain. Each man knew his abilities—and his limits. If a blow would have defined the fight at a hundred percent—the receiver would have no problem conceding that fact. Eighty percent from the mountainous Cajun would be enough to flatten anyone, but Quinn knew how to move, and a broken nose was nothing new to him.

Quinn let his head flow with the Cajun’s forearm, following up with machine-gun strikes to Thibodaux’s liver and neck as he turned sideways from the momentum of his arm-strike. The big Marine’s neck was protected by thick muscles, but Quinn knew it was folly to hit the man in his iron jaw. The liver strikes were sickening, even at eighty percent.

The six-foot-four Cajun winced, both hands raised in surrender. “Fairly certain that one chopped me down to your size, Chair Force.” Even in defeat, the Marine couldn’t help the little jab at the Air Force. Blood trickled from a small cut Quinn had given him under his left eye.

“Sorry about that,” Quinn said, dabbing at his bloody nose while he nodded to the gunny’s swelling wound.

Thibodaux waved him off, chuckling. “I ain’t no Cinderella, mi ami. Lucky enough I had a pretty face when I needed it to catch Camille.”

A compact Asian woman with her hair pulled back in a ponytail stepped onto the concrete driveway from the lawn. Emiko Miyagi wore a white t-shirt and khaki 5.11 cargo pants. The scooping neckline and thin material of the shirt did little to hide the intricate and colorful Japanese tattoos that covered her torso. As the men’s instructor, she insisted much of their training occur in street clothes—and most often on an actual street rather than the padded floor of a dojo. In this case, the concrete driveway in front of her brick home provided for the realistic backdrop—as well as plenty of bruises and raspberries for all three of the combatants.

Miyagi was forty-seven years old—but could have easily passed for a woman in her mid-thirties. Where the two men under her tutelage had years of experience in fighting, Miyagi had trained as a killer from her early teens. There was something other-worldly about the way she fought, as if she could anticipate her opponent’s moves even before they knew they were about to make them.

Her training sessions always ended with a short bout between the instructor and each man. The fights were not short because she planned them that way, but because it did not take her long to win them. Jacques was good, and Jericho was very good, but Emiko Miyagi was better—a lot better.

* * *

“I truly hate this fighting friends shit,” the monstrous Cajun said, four minutes later as he limped across the circular driveway toward a stainless steel water bottle in the shade of Miyagi’s porch. He kept his arm tucked in tight against his side, wincing from Quinn’s liver strike and the machine gun beating Miyagi had given him to his floating ribs.

Quinn stood at the edge of the driveway beside his gunmetal gray BMW GS Adventure motorcycle and pressed a wad of tissue to his bloody nose. “I’m with you there,” he said, sounding like he had a bad cold. Jacques Thibodaux knew how to throw a forearm. That was an undeniable fact.

Miyagi took a long drink from her own water bottle, then shook her head. “Are you such an excellent judge of character, Jacques-kun?” she asked, using the more familiar form of the Japanese honorific san. “Sometimes, those we believe to be our friends turn out to be something else entirely.”

“Yeah.” Thibodaux rubbed his ribs again and nodded. “I’m gettin’ that.”

Miyagi canted her head to one side and shrugged at her disbelieving student. “On more than one occasion I have found myself engaged in battle with those who should have cared for me. Each year we read of men and women who believe themselves happily married—until their spouse tries to murder them.” She gave a little nod to drive home the seriousness of her point. “Just last week an Alexandria police officer’s wife was arrested for attempting to poison him by putting rat poison in his spaghetti.”

Quinn sighed, but kept his thoughts to himself. He was sure there were times his ex-wife had been mad enough to feed him d-Con.

The big Cajun gave an adamant shake of his head.

“I trust my Camille completely.”

“I’m sure many of those involved believed that same thing about their own companion,” Miyagi said.

Thibodaux set his jaw, glaring with his good eye. “I’m tellin’ you, Camille wouldn’t do such a thing.”

“But suppose she did,” Miyagi said. “What would you do then?”

“She wouldn’t.”

“But if she did?”

Thibodaux shrugged, as if it were all so clear.

“Then I’d eat the spaghetti. No point in goin’ on if the last fourteen years have been a sham.”

Miyagi smiled softly, displaying uncharacteristic emotion. “We should all be so fortunate to have—”

The chime of a cellphone cut her off, and caused all three to look at the black leather jacket lying across Quinn’s BMW.

Thibodaux shot his friend a quizzical look. “What the hell, Chair Force? Since when did you start using a ringtone?”

A chill ran up Quinn’s back. He kept his phone set to vibrate at incoming calls from everyone but the company dispatching his brother’s emergency locator beacon.

He dug the cellphone out of his jacket pocket and answered it by the second ring. A male voice that sounded like a college student advised him that an SOS signal had been triggered at 7:46 a.m. local time on a device registered to Boaz Quinn. So far, the company had been unable to make contact with the registered number. Authorities in Buenos Aires had been notified but were not yet on scene.

Quinn looked at the TAG Heuer Aquaracer on his wrist and noted the time. It was 6:54 a.m. Eastern, an hour earlier than Argentina, eight minutes gone from the time of Bo’s SOS. He asked the dispatcher to call him back as soon as he had more information, then hung up and started the protocol he and his brother had already worked out. When an SOS went up, it was too late to start planning.

First, he called Bo’s cell, getting nothing but voice mail.

He scrolled through the list of contacts Bo had given him while he explained the situation to Jacques and Emiko. Both knew Quinn’s brother was on a protection job in South America and they listened intently, stone faced. Neither had to say anything for Quinn to know he had their complete support. At length, Quinn found the number he was looking for and called the personal cell number for the man who had employed Bo’s services.

“Riley Grey,” the voice said.

“My name is Jericho Quinn. I just received an SOS message from my brother. Has anyone been in contact with you?”

The line was silent for a long moment. Quinn could imagine the stricken look on the face of the father at the other end. He’d been there himself.

“Steven?” Riley Grey whispered. “What about my son?”

“I don’t have any more information yet,” Quinn said. “I’d hoped you might have heard something.”

“I . . . I haven’t.”

“Very well,” Quinn said. “Bo’s GPS puts them in Buenos Aires. Local authorities are en route to the coordinates where the SOS went up. I’ll let you know when I get anything else.”

“Any chance that this is a false alarm?”

Quinn took a deep breath. “It’s possible,” he said. “But unlikely. It takes two distinct movements to activate the SOS on his device—sliding a button sideways and then depressing it. Considering their location and your net worth, I’m afraid your son is a possible target . . .”

“I appreciate your honesty,” Grey said.

Quinn looked at his watch again, though only seconds had passed since he’d done it last. “I’ll call you back.”

“Ten minutes,” Grey said. “Even if you don’t hear anything.”

“I’ll try,” Quinn said. “Until then, I need to get started on some things. It’s best to move quickly in this kind of event.”

“You have experience with kidnappings?”

“I have experience with bad men,” Quinn said. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to make some calls.”

“Wait!” Grey said, clinging to the call like a lifeline. “What are you going to do?”

Quinn groaned. He couldn’t help but feel for the father’s helplessness, but every moment he spent on the phone was time he could be moving toward Bo.

“I’m going to get a ticket on the next available flight to Buenos Aires out of Dulles. If this turns out to be a false alarm, I’ll cancel. In the meantime, I need to be moving forward.”

“I can help with that,” Grey said, giving an audible sigh at being able to do something tangible. “I’m in Baltimore for meetings. My Citation is sitting at BWI airport right now. Are you closer to Dulles or Reagan?”

“I’m ten minutes from Reagan,” Quinn said.

“Good,” Grey said. “My plane will be waiting for you when you get there.”

“And you?” Quinn asked, fearing the strings that always seemed to be attached to the goodwill of the rich and powerful.

“I broke my leg waterskiing in Tahoe three weeks ago,” Grey said. “It kills me not to go down there myself, but I’ll be more use to you working from here, providing resources.”

“Okay then,” Quinn said, relieved but anxious to end the call.

“Bo and I have been friends for a long time,” Grey offered. “I don’t know much about you, but I trust him completely, and I know he trusts you. He told me that you’d pulled his fat out of the fire on more than one occasion.”

“And vice versa.”

A tense chuckle came across the line. “Bo told me you’d say that.”

Chapter 2

Anchorage, Alaska

1998

Fourteen-year-old Boaz Quinn drifted the back tire of his street-legal Honda dirt bike, throwing up a rooster tail of gravel before coming to a stop in the alley behind the Lucky Wishbone restaurant. Four other motorcycles rolled in behind him. The other riders were all in high school, or at least they should have been.

Jace, a short kid with a wild look in his eye, slid to a stop on the cracked pavement and held up his hand in the dusky light.

“Kill it,” Jace said, turning off his own bike. At eighteen, he was the oldest, and the mastermind of the would-be gang. Beef, a big Samoan who was about the same age, provided the smaller Jace with the muscle it took to be the leader. He looked ridiculous on his small dirt bike, but no one said anything about it. Chris was sixteen and already had a full beard. His mom also let him get a tattoo of a dagger on his arm, which Bo thought was pretty cool of her. Austin was a wiry kid with a long history of run-ins with the police. He’d been in and out of McLaughlin Youth Center dozens of times, which only added to his mystique among the gang. Bo was the youngest and the best rider of the group by far. He was maturing early, and looked older than he was. He could probably have given Chris a run for his money on a beard, but Bo’s old man was having none of that.

Pete Quinn often said that if either of his sons didn’t keep a decent haircut he’d take them out in the fishing boat and only he and the boat would be coming back. As big and tough as the elder Quinn was, it was an empty threat. He would, however, cut that shaggy hair himself, and the only thing he knew how to do was shear it down to the scalp. Bo wasn’t about to let that happen. He was only fourteen, but old enough to taste the legal freedom of his new motorcycle license, and had recently discovered how much the girls in eighth grade loved his curly blond locks.

Fortunately for Bo, the Coho salmon fishery would keep his dad down on the Kenai for the next couple of weeks. He didn’t have to worry about his hair or the strict curfew his old man enforced. Anchorage, Pete Quinn said, was a different town after midnight, when the meatheads came out in force. That was colorful as his old man’s language ever got. Meatheads. Oh, he had a temper, and was known to have caved in a skull or two over the years, especially if anyone disrespected his wife or boys, but that temper manifested itself through his fists, not his words.

Bo’s mother taught summer school, so she was always exhausted and gone to bed early. Bo’s older brother wanted to get into the Air Force Academy and took his studies much too seriously. He’d been in his room reviewing his brains out when Bo slipped out the back door and rolled the motorcycle down the street nearly a full block before starting it. Bo had made a clean getaway and was free to stay out all night—which was exactly what he planned to do.

Jace said he knew about a poker game at an apartment near the Lucky Wishbone. Bo was pretty good at poker, winning more than he lost in hunting camp with his brother and old man. There’d be some beer at this game, and probably some weed, but Bo thought he’d stick with the beer. His old man drank a beer now and then, so he couldn’t say much if his son decided to imbibe. Getting high, well, that would be a bridge too far in the mind of Pete Quinn.

“Quinn!” Jace snapped him out of his thoughts. “Pull your head out of your ass. You even hear what I said?”

Bo shook his head, flustered at having let the leader of his gang down. “Sorry. What?”

“I said you go in first,” Jace nodded to the apartments at the end of the alley. “You got a trustworthy face. They’ll open the door for you. Big Ray knows me and Beef, so we can’t come in until the door’s open.”

“What do you mean?” Bo said. “If they won’t even let you in the door how do you expect to get in on the game?”

The others laughed. Jace pulled out a small silver pistol. It looked cheap, but Bo knew guns and this one was plenty real. “You idiot,” he said. “We didn’t come to get in on the game. We came here to rob it.”

Bo gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to look stupid in front of his friends, but he didn’t want to commit a felony either.

“You said Ray knows you,” Bo said. “How do you expect to get away with this if he knows who you are?”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Chris said, backing Jace’s play. “It’s an illegal poker game. APD knows about it, but it floats from place to place so they haven’t been able to bust it. No way Ray’s going to report it.”

“Besides,” Beef said. “We’ll be wearing masks.”

Bo’s mouth fell open at that. “You said I had a trustworthy face. That means Ray will know who I am.”

Austin looked at Bo and gave him a half grin. “Don’t piss yourself, kid. You’re young. You never been in trouble before. Even if you did get popped for this, I doubt you’d do more than a couple hours at McLaughlin.”

Bo set his jaw and shook his head again. He’d thought smoking a little weed was a bridge too far. It was obvious all the other boys but him had been privy to the plan.

“I’m not comfortable with this,” he said.

Jace sneered. “So? None of us gives a shit if you’re comfortable. You’re either with us or you’re against us.”

“I’m not doing it.”

Jace brandished the little pistol. “Oh,” he said. “You’re doin’ it all right.”

A new voice from the shadows behind the group caused them all to look up. Bo recognized it immediately and turned to find his brother sitting astride his Harley Davidson Sportster. He wore a half helmet, jeans, and a leather jacket, zipped up against the chilly Alaska evening.

“What the hell?” Jace said, holding the pistol. Every boy knew that Bo’s seventeen-year-old brother was the Golden Glove boxing champion in Alaska.

“Jericho?” Bo said. “What are you doing here?”

The older Quinn sat quietly, considering each boy through narrow eyes, as if they were pieces of meat. That was the thing about Jericho. He was a good enough big brother, but he could scare the piss out of you with a look. Dark, like their mother, he had the intensity of their dad.

“Come on,” Jericho said at length.

Bo nodded to the Sportster. “How’d you sneak up on us with those hellacious pipes?”

Jericho shrugged. “Guess you’re not the only one who can coast a bike. Now come on.”

“Bo’s with us tonight,” Jace said. He tipped his head back and forth, motioning for the others to spread out. Beef rolled toward Jericho while Austin and Chris duck walked their motorcycles to either side, blocking him between the bikes and the back wall of The Lucky Wishbone.

Jericho ignored them, looking instead at Bo. “I said come on.”

Jace chuckled. “You let your brother tell you what to do?”

Bo’s neck burned. He didn’t want to rob the poker game, but he didn’t jump just because his big brother said to either.

“I’ve got this,” he snapped.

“I can see that,” Jericho said. “Now start your bike and ride out of here with me. Mom’s gonna be worried.”

“You just don’t get it, do you, asshole?” Jace said. He gave an almost imperceptible nod to Beef. “Bo’s made his choice. He’s not going anywhere. His mommy will be fine.”

Jericho took a long breath, staring directly at Jace.

“Let’s go,” he said again.

The Harley roared to life.

Beef rolled forward, further closing the distance. “You should get outta here before I drag you off your bike and shove that helmet up your—

Jericho didn’t go much for threats. He never had. Bo shook his head and watched as his brother popped the clutch, holding the front brake to throw up a cloud of white smoke from the spinning rear tire. The wheel came around fast, slamming into a startled Beef and catching the big Samoan’s leg between the rear sprocket and the engine of his own bike. The snapping bone was audible even over the brap of the Harley.

Both Chris and Austin bailed off their bikes, rushing Jericho from both sides.

“You son of a bitch!” Jace screamed, riding his motorcycle straight at Bo, colliding with the front tire.

Bo scrambled off in time to keep from getting run over. Seething with anger, he peeled off his helmet and swung it like a club, catching Jace in the side of the head and dropping him like a tree.

“That’s for calling my brother an asshole,” he said, spinning to help Jericho.

Chris and Austin were already flat on the pavement, noses smeared across their faces. Beef leaned against his bike clutching the injured leg.

The big kid spoke through clenched teeth. “You gonna call me an ambulance or something?”

“Nope,” Jericho said. He didn’t explain himself, but it was apparent that he thought the boys should have anticipated that things were bound to get a little bloody.

He swung a leg back over his Harley and looked at Bo. “Are you okay?”

Bo nodded. “I thought we were just going to play some cards,” he said. “I wasn’t gonna rob anybody.”

“I know that,” Jericho said.

Bo strapped his helmet back on.

“Are you gonna tell Mom?”

“Nope,” Jericho said. “Not unless she catches us coming in. I won’t lie for you.”

“I didn’t really need any help,” Bo said after he’d climbed back on his own bike. “I’m a better rider than any of those guys. I could have just run away.”

Jericho shook his head. “Running away from these meatheads is something you should have done a long time ago,” he said, sounding an awful lot like their old man.

Chapter 3

Argentina

Present Day

Bo awoke with something sharp digging into the point of his hip. He couldn’t move his arms, and for a terrifying moment, he thought he might be paralyzed. Scenes from the kidnapping came flooding back into his mind—overturned motorcycles, Steven’s roar as he ran to check on Eva, and then the staggering blow to the back of his helmet. Alma’s shouts of warning echoed in his ears with Matt’s childlike screams.

Searing pain now seeped into his neck. His eyes felt as though they were filled with hot sand. He blinked to clear his vision, finding the toe of a leather hiking boot a few inches from his face. A small man with the build of a jockey, dressed in designer jeans and a blue V-neck sweater spoke to him in hoarse, whispered Spanish—as if he’d been hit in the throat. The man was young, a boy really, and looked like a student from some Ivy League school. Foreign languages were his brother’s thing, but Bo had picked up a lot over the course of this trip. Still in a fog, he had no idea what was being said. The words came again, more pointed this time. Beside Ivy League’s seat, leaning against the wall of the van, was an aluminum baseball bat.

Alma’s trembling voice followed. “He wants you to sit up,” she said.

Bo groaned, drawing his legs around so he could get his knees under him. His hands were cuffed tightly behind him, and he could hardly feel them. They were no help at all. “Kind of stuck here,” he grunted, feeling a wave of nausea wash over him as he spoke. He gagged, nearly passing out again, and then felt rough hands grab him by the armored shoulders of his motorcycle jacket, hauling him upright.

He blinked again, fighting the grinding pain in his neck as he turned to get a better look at his situation. He breathed a sigh of measured relief when he saw everyone in his group was still alive. They were all in the back of what appeared to be a panel van with seats running along both sides. This was the one that had pulled in behind them after they’d left the hotel. Three men sat with them in the back of the van. Alma sat across from Bo, next to Ivy League. Her cuffs wrenched her elbows backward, giving her a defiant pose, though the terrified look on her face said she was anything but. Her left eye was red and swollen. Bo knew her well enough to know she would be the type to have put up a fight. His chest convulsed at the thought of someone harming her and he resolved to find out exactly which one of these guys had done it. Hell, it didn’t matter. They were all complicit in this, and if he had anything to say about it, they would all pay.

I wish you’d get here soon, Jericho, he thought, forcing his fevered brain to do the math about how long it would take to travel from DC to Buenos Aires. He nearly cried when he looked at the faces of the men who’d taken them and realized it was just too far away. Jericho would never be able to get here in time. His head lolled, feeling much too heavy to keep upright on his neck.

A fat man in a tight t-shirt slumped to Alma’s left, gripping his leg with a white-knuckled hand. Like Ivy League, this one was young, and could have easily been in his second year of college or technical school. There was something about them both that was off—if there was anything average about kidnappers, none of these fit the description. Their clothing was on the expensive end of stylish. Cable-like tendons flexed on the side of his neck. A string of invective flew from his mouth with a spray of saliva. He was obviously in pain.

Bo squinted. Nausea still rolled through his gut, but he was beginning to get a handle on it. He didn’t have to speak Spanish to understand that the curses from this one were aimed at him. Bo had broken this one’s leg with his motorcycle during the initial assault, and the injured man now wanted his pound of flesh.

A third kidnapper used a mobile phone to snap photographs of Steven and Matt where they were seated along the van’s windowless wall on either side of Bo. This one was much older than the other two, with a thick silver mustache under a hawkish nose. Bo thought he heard Ivy League call him Bruno. He made a mental note of the name, wondering if his aching brain would be able to hang on to even that tiny fragment of information.

Without windows, it was impossible to pinpoint their location. Bo had been to Buenos Aires before, but didn’t know it well, so it wouldn’t likely have mattered. Wherever they were, the road was far from smooth. Ivy League smiled passively as he watched Alma try to maintain her balance. Bo had seen that look before. This guy was enjoying her predicament, hoping she’d fall. If she didn’t, he’d push her soon enough. His youthful face held a twisted glee when he looked at either of the women, like they were wrapped presents that he could not wait to open. None of the prisoners were human to him—which, Bo knew, made him all the more dangerous.

You could do whatever you wanted to a thing.

Steven and Eva now sat across from each other on either side of the van. Their separation only added to the torture. Eva’s shoulders shuddered in uncontrolled sobs. Steven gazed at nothing, slack-jawed, his eyes unfocused as if he’d been drugged. Dried blood crusted his nostrils. The guy with the silver mustache didn’t seem to care and took all their photos anyway. Matt used a shoulder to wipe a string of drool from the corner of his mouth, as if he wanted to be presentable in his proof-of-life photo. Alma shook her head in shame and disgust.

Matt looked sideways to shoot a daggered glance at Bo as soon as Bruno took the photo.

“You had one job,” he said, his voice tinny, sounding like it might shatter into a thousand pieces at any moment. “You were supposed to keep this from happening.”

Bo could have argued, but he didn’t. This was his fault. His mom always said that no matter how thin you sliced a cheese, there were always two sides. But that wasn’t true. Sometimes there was just cheese on one side . . . and nothing but shit on the other. Matt was right. Bo was the one charged with their safety, and here they were—smack in the most dangerous situation imaginable. He should have taken a less direct route out of town as soon as he’d discovered Matt’s leak to social media.

Everyone else seemed to have sense enough not to engage, but Matt turned his attention to the kidnappers. “Where are you taking us?”

They ignored him, one of them in pain, the other two indifferent faces swaying with the moving van.

The one with the broken leg locked in on Bo, still seething.

“We are guests in your country.” Matt pressed, as if appealing to the better nature of the kidnappers. “You have no right to hold us captive.”

Ivy League lifted the tail of his sweater, revealing the grip of a black Taurus pistol. “This gives me the all the rights I need,” he said in accented English.

Bo tried to catch Matt’s eye, shaking his head to get him to shut up before he got himself—or someone else hurt. Matt would have none of it.

“Which one of you is in charge?”

Ivy League nodded toward the front, on the other side of a metal partition.

“My father has money,” Matt said. Alma threw back her head, exasperated at the stupidity, but Matt wasn’t finished. “He will make it worth your while to let me go.”

It was not lost on Bo, or, from the look on Alma’s face, on her either, that Matt made no mention of freeing anyone else in the group.

“A lot of money do you think?” Ivy League asked.

Matt gave an emphatic nod. “He’s rich, if you want to know the truth.”

“Oh my talkative friend,” Ivy League said. “But I already know the truth. Do you think we have reason to grab people who have no money?”

Matt slumped in defeat.

“Idiot,” Alma said under her breath, adding a few Spanish curses for good measure.

The kidnappers laughed.

Both Steven and Eva hung their heads.

The one with the broken leg scooted forward, his face just inches from Bo. He ponderous gut caused him to grunt. Beads of sweat covered a wide forehead. Shock and adrenaline soured his breath. He’d decided to speak English now, and did so surprisingly well.

“Some of you are worth money,” he said. “Others are not. I think you are one that is not. These others stink of wealth, but you . . . I think you are only their guide. Guides have no money to speak of, certainly not enough to pay a ransom.”

“You are sorely mistaken,” Alma said. “He’s not our guide, he’s my boyfriend.”

Matt’s head snapped up at that, but he said nothing.

The fat guy turned to sneer at Alma. “Then you are worthless as well.”

Alma shrugged. “We’ll see.”

Ivy League smiled, turning sideways to give Alma a slow once-over. “Oh, my dear,” he said in his otherworldly whisper. “You have worth to me.”

The fat one chuckled despite his broken leg. He directed his glare back at Bo. “They have told us we can have anyone who is not worth the ransom.”

“Some we will kill,” Ivy League said, and then turned to Alma. “Some, we will . . . entertain.”

A small metal plate in the front partition slid open. It was immediately filled with a round face. “Stop scaring the merchandise, La Pulga,” the man said. “We’re not killing anyone.”

La Pulga, Bo mused. The Flea. That suited this little squirt better than Ivy League.

“Not yet,” the fat one in back said, still focused on Bo. “But if I am right, and you are worthless, I will be the one to put a bullet in your eye—after my friend and I show your girlfriend what it means to have a real man.”

Bo heaved a deep sigh. “You’ll have to hunt a real man, because that ain’t you by a long shot.”

The fat one lunged across the van. Bo fell forward to meet him, landing with the full weight of his body against the broken leg. It would probably get him beaten to death, but he couldn’t remember anything so satisfying.

The fat one recoiled as if he’d been set on fire, yowling and cursing. “Pelotudo! I will cut off your head!”

Bruno grabbed Bo and pulled him back across the van, cuffing him hard in the ear and cutting the inside of his cheek against his teeth.

Bo spit a mouthful of blood onto the van floor in contempt. “A real man?” He glared. “I just kicked your ass with my hands cuffed behind my back.”

The injured man growled as if to attack again, but La Pulga pushed him back. “Sit down, Toro,” he hissed. “He only tries to make us angry. Be patient. We will have some fun with them this evening.” The Flea spoke in English, no doubt so Bo could understand.

Toro, Bo nodded to himself. That made sense. The fat piece of shit looked like a baby bull. Bo had been awake for five minutes and he already knew three of the kidnapper’s names, or at least their street names. If he got a chance, Bo would kill The Flea first. He was evil, even more so than Toro. But being evil didn’t make you a pro. These guys were all thugs—even if they did wear designer clothes—but their behavior made Bo doubt they’d ever kidnapped anyone before. The Flea bounced with excitement at the opportunities that lay before him. In some ways, their inexperience was a good thing. Common burglars would surely make more mistakes than a group of polished kidnappers. But amateurs sometimes realized they were in over their heads. And if they got bored with whatever torment they had planned and decided to throw in the towel, Bo and everyone with him would end up in some remote pasture, buried under Argentine dirt.

It was obvious they knew who Steven Grey was, but sooner or later, somebody was going to figure out who else they had, and when they did, things were liable to go from bad to bloody very fast.

Chapter 4

“Not a chance in hell, Chair Force,” Thibodaux said, throwing his small duffel bag in the backseat of Emiko Miyagi’s Acura MDX. “We’re not letting you go down there all by yourself. We like Bo too, in case you forgot.”

Quinn shook his head. “We’ll have no support from Palmer on this,” he said.

Miyagi looked on passively. She’d changed into a navy blue three-button polo and jeans that looked tighter than they actually were, hugging her hips while still allowing her freedom of movement in a fight. Both Quinn and Thibodaux wore button-down shirts they could leave untucked and 5.11 khaki slacks, absent the shoot-me-first cargo pockets that identified the wearer as possible law enforcement or, at the very least, a gun guy.

“That is all the more reason for us to accompany you, Quinn-san,” Miyagi said. “One of your loved ones is in trouble, so you are in trouble. Would you not do the same for us?”

Quinn sighed and threw his bag into the back with Thibodaux’s. Emiko drove so he could continue with his calls.

Both Jericho and Jacques kept go bags at Miyagi’s, obviating the need to return to their respective homes if they were suddenly activated. Quinn’s decidedly non-tactical looking Haley Strategic FlatPack didn’t have much inside, the bulk of the room taken up by a change of clothes—another pair of khakis, a second no-iron button down shirt, underwear, socks, and a Smartwool quarter-zip sweater. In addition to the extra clothing, he had a small trauma kit, a Leatherman Wave multitool, a half-roll of toilet paper, fire-starting rod, two flashlights, a Riot fixed-blade knife, duct tape, cordage, and several pairs of black nitrile gloves.

Flying on Grey’s Citation rather than going commercially allowed him to keep the blades in the carry-on bag. Even so, it would be impossible to get firearms into Argentina without some advanced planning. Quinn preferred not to dwell on what couldn’t be helped. If Bo had been kidnapped, there were bound to be weapons around when he needed them.

He called back the emergency transponder company, gave his reference number, and was connected with the same dispatcher he’d spoken with before. Buenos Aires City police had found five motorcycles, all still loaded down with gear, in the middle of the residential street, all on their sides. The one with the SOS device—Bo’s Harley—had some damage to the front forks, and a substance they believed to be blood on the fender. They were in the middle of interviewing residents in the area, but had no witnesses so far. The police commander on scene suspected it was all a traffic accident and had his men checking nearby hospitals.

Quinn thanked the dispatcher and said he would call back in fifteen minutes for an update.

“Perhaps it was a simple accident,” Miyagi said.

“Perhaps,” Quinn said. He closed his eyes, trying to picture a set of circumstances where Bo would activate the SOS button, abandon all the motorcycles and gear on the side of the street, and then not answer his cell. Either he and everyone else in the group were so badly injured that they couldn’t make telephone calls—or they’d been kidnapped. Jericho knew his brother. He wouldn’t go down without a fight. The probability of him surviving a kidnapping where he was in charge of security was slim to none.

Quinn tried to push the odds stacked against his brother out of his mind and called Ronnie Garcia.

She picked up on the second ring.

“Hey you,” she said, her voice husky from sleep. An intelligence officer for the CIA, she’d been on assignment in the Philippines for the past three weeks. She should have been coming home, but the job had gone long—as they usually did.

“Sorry,” Quinn said. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay,” Garcia said. “It’s just after eight here. I have an op tonight so I was just grabbing a short nap. Need my beauty sleep, you know, because I’ll be seeing you in a week or two.”

Quinn could picture her broad smile, her long black hair across the pillow.

“A couple of weeks, huh?”

He brought her up to speed on the situation with Bo.

“Jericho,” she gasped. The bed squeaked on the other end of the line as she sat up. A hint of her Cuban accent emerged when she was excited or nervous. “This is awful. I’ll grab a flight out right away.”

“No,” Quinn said. “Jacques and Emiko are coming with me. You stay put and finish your op. I just needed to hear your voice.”

“But Jericho, I—”

“I’m serious, Ronnie.” Quinn cut her off. “We’ll be on the ground in thirteen hours. I’m hoping this will all be a good war story by the time you could even make it to us.”

“I could help with the Spanish though.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Quinn said, “Jacques speaks Italian. He’ll be able to get the gist of everything.”

“E la veritá,” Thibodaux said from the back seat, keeping things light even in the middle of a crisis. “Mi speaka the Italiano.”

“Buenos Aires, right?” Garcia said. “You’ll be there this evening.”

“Correct,” Quinn said. He glanced at his Aquaracer. “I’m estimating around ten or eleven tonight Argentina time.”

“Okay,” she said. “Hear me out before you say no. I have a friend in Buenos Aires who I went to college with in Florida. She speaks fluent English and has enough contacts throughout the government that she can cut through some of the red tape. There are just two problems.”

Quinn leaned back against the headrest. “I’ll take all the help I can get to help me find Bo. What’s the problem though?”

“She’s beautiful,” Garcia said. “I hate hooking you up with someone as gorgeous as Soledad San Martín.”

“I wouldn’t worry about that,” Quinn said.

“I know you wouldn’t. You get to hang out with Soledad.”

“Anyway,” Quinn said, wanting to change the subject. He worked in the world of espionage, but he wasn’t James Bond. “It will be good to have someone on the inside of Argentine law enforcement.”

Garcia’s sigh was audible over the line. “That’s the other problem,” she said. “Soledad isn’t law enforcement or intelligence. She’s a reporter.”

Chapter 5

Justino Medina rubbed bloodshot eyes with the palms of his hands and read over the email, checking for at least the hundredth time that he’d not accidentally used his actual email account. The kidnapping made it obvious that he was somewhere in Argentina, but he wanted the message to bounce around the world before it dropped into Riley Grey’s inbox. Sending a ransom demand via email to a man who was a billionaire because of his computer expertise was a harrowing task.

Justino had been up most of the night researching Virtual Proxy Networks and various computer programs that would anonymize emails. He thought he had it figured out, but there was only one way to be sure. He’d heard that the police kept a record of people who purchased such programs. He would, were he a policeman. It seemed like the smart thing to do if one wanted to catch kidnappers.

Angelica hovered above him, hand on the computer desk, thick hair brushing against his face. A red silk robe hung open to reveal the swells and valleys where her black nightgown clung to the contours of her body. The odor of her rosewater soap usually intoxicated him, but he could think of nothing now but the two possible outcomes that lay before him—prison or the loss of his toes to Fernando Richter’s blade.

Convincing pregnant women to give up their babies for a modest fee was illegal, and, if Justino thought on it for too long, despicably immoral, but it was relatively safe. Angelica was a judge. She could protect them from any fallout from a crime so petty as belly hunting. And anyway, it was a service to society. Oh, they might weep and sling snot at the thought of giving up a baby, but in the end, even the women knew it was best for their little bundle of fat to go to a rich couple. What was it to them if the Medinas made a few dollars for their trouble?

Kidnapping was a different story. Justino had never done anything remotely so dangerous. Moving the drugs for Fernando Richter had been a horrible mistake—but the danger lay in the association with a madman, not in the crime itself. Local law enforcement cared little about a few hundred pounds of drugs going downriver, especially if Judge Angelica Medina was involved in the transaction. Money trickled down from her schemes, and so long as the trickling continued, no one in the province of Misiones took much of an interest.

But a kidnapping scheme meant physical violence to take the hostages into custody—sucking them up, the army used to call it—and then more brutality to keep them there. Justino had defended enough criminal thugs to know that violence was a stampeding horse. Once running, the beast was nearly impossible to turn.

“There is no turning back once I push send,” Justino said, imploring his wife to reconsider this reckless plan.

Her beautiful lips trembled as if in anticipation. She’d always been excited at the prospect of danger. “Mi amor,” she said. “Jelly has five North Americans tied up in the rear of his van. It is far too late to turn back.”

Justino took a deep breath in and out through his mouth, attempting to slow his runaway heart. “Read it over once more, then, to make sure I have typed what you wish to say.”

Angelica pushed a pair of purple glasses lower on her nose and leaned in closer, one hand squeezing her husband’s shoulder, her lips nibbling his ear as she read.

“Dear Mr. Grey:

Your son, Steven, now finds himself the unwilling guest of some very dangerous people. We offer our assistance in negotiating his safe return from these monsters.

Please reply to this email immediately.

A one-time fee of three hundred thousand U.S. dollars . . .”

Angelica took a half step back to stare at him. “That cannot be right. You ask only for three hundred thousand?”

Justino gave an emphatic nod. “Two hundred thousand for what we owe Richter, and one hundred thousand to pay for Jelly, La Pulga, the pilot, and the remainder of our expenses.”

“Oh, my darling,” Angelica sighed. “You think on much too small a scale.” She bumped him aside with her hip so she could get to the keyboard, reading as she corrected the email.

“. . . A one-time fee of three million U.S. dollars will facilitate the negotiations. Instructions regarding the transfer of these funds will follow.

We humbly await your speedy reply.

Please note, involving the police in any way would put your son in grave danger during the negotiation process.

Your most obedient servant,

Magoya”

“Magoya” was the Argentine version of John Doe.

Justino put a hand on top of his bald head, feeling an immediate flush of sweat.

“Three million? I think that might be asking too much.”

“Nonsense,” Angelica said, pressing the send key before Justino could prevail. “Riley Grey’s empire is worth billions. A few million dollars is pocket change to such a man.”

“That kind of money changes people,” Justino said.

“Of course it does, my darling.” Angelica batted long lashes.

“That kind of money changes them into people with larger houses and better cars. It changes them into world travelers and people who own villas in Tuscany.”

“But this is our home,” Justino said, struggling to keep his voice from cracking. “We would be targets here with so much wealth.”

“We will get a new home,” Angelica said. “Better than this dump.”

“I thought you loved this—”

A heavy rapping at the door nearly sent Justino out of his skin. He sat frozen in his chair. “Do you think . . .”

Angelica rolled her eyes as she pulled her robe closed and tied a knot in the sash. “No, the police have not traced the ransom note back to our computer. I doubt Grey has even had time to open the email. Now turn off the screen while I see who it is.”

She strode across the living room on long legs, flinging open the door as if she was certain it was an old friend.

It was not.

Fernando Richter stood on the other side of the metal security gate five feet away, hands clasped at his waist as if in prayer. He wore his customary white shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway up his hairy forearms. His black hair was slicked with pomade and combed straight back over a high forehead. Descending from members of a colony of Germans who’d immigrated to Paraguay after World War II, he was proud of his Aryan heritage—at least the part that had not been diluted by his grandfathers’ intermarrying with Guarani Indians. Blue eyes sparkled with the sort of dark mischief of a man who enjoyed watching the pain of others. Richter was not a big man. Justino had him by a good forty pounds, but The German gave off a predatory air that made him seem much larger. His girlfriend, Violeta, stood beside him, the imprint of a pistol under the tail of her tight black t-shirt. Heavy black boots, presumably for kicking puppies and small children that got in her way, added to her height and saw her towering above Richter. He didn’t seem to mind. Violeta was attractive enough, in the way that a piece of rich mahogany lumber was attractive. Fit and trim with a bosom Angelica swore was purchased rather than inherited, her shoulder-length hair was the color of dried pampas grass and stood out in stark contrast to deeply tanned skin. She looked like a child’s Barbie doll that had been toasted in the oven. Some said she was Richter’s brain. That may have been correct, for she was certainly not his soul. Justino suspected neither of them possessed one of those.

Two men Justino recognized but didn’t know stood directly behind the gangster.

“How goes it, my friends?” Richter said.

“Our debt is not yet due!” Justino blurted out.

Angelica turned to shoot him a glare.

Violeta chuckled. She licked her lips as if the meat of a terrified man might be appetizing.

Richter raised his hand and smiled. “A contract is a contract,” he said. “We are not here to collect.”

Angelica cocked her head to one side. It amazed Justino how she could remain so calm under the circumstances.

“How may we help you then, Fernando?” she asked, one hand on the doorframe.

“We are business partners,” Richter said. “Are you not going to invite me in?”

Angelica pushed a button beside the door and buzzed open the outer gate. Stepping back, she motioned him in with a flourish. “Of course,” she said. “Our home is your home.” She pushed the door closed immediately after Richter and Violeta came through, blocking the other two men’s path. One of them, a vicious-looking brute with a bald head, stuck out his boot to keep it from closing.

“You are not my business partner,” Angelica said, calm as if asking someone for directions. “You will have to remain outside.”

Both the men and Violeta looked at Richter for direction.

“It is fine,” he said, giving a flick of his hand. He wore a ring on every finger. “Violeta and I will not be long.”

Angelica shut the door and turned to Richter. She tightened the sash to her robe. Justino knew she kept a small pistol in the pocket. He’d even made fun of her for it, but was grateful she had the little thing now.

“May I offer you some toast?” she asked. “Some mate or coffee?”

Richter flicked his hand again. “We are fine. Please allow me to come right to the point. I understand you have five Norte Americanos as your . . . shall we say, guests.”

Angelica took a step backward, mouth open.

“That is our business,” she said. “How could you possibly have known?”

Richter shrugged. “Your husband told me.”

Angelica could not have been more surprised if Justino had slapped her.

In retrospect, he knew he should have consulted her, but it was done, and anyway, he’d showed some initiative. She was always saying he should do more of that.

“I wanted to let him know we would be on time with our payment,” Justino said, eyes downcast, unable to meet his wife’s gaze. “I did not think he would come here.”

“In any case,” Richter said, plowing ahead. “I wish to let you know that it would be my great honor to take over from here. I will assume all the risk and we will call our debt even. The ransom negotiations for these prisoners will prove a lengthy and dangerous process.”

Angelica’s eyes darkened. “And you will assume the collection of the money as well?”

“Of course,” Richter said. “There is great danger in exchanging human beings for payment. You may take my word on that.”

“Justino and I will stay the course with our present arrangement,” Angelica said. “You will be repaid before the date agreed, with interest.” Her hands dropped into the pockets on either side of her robe as if she were cold. Justino knew she was holding the pistol. She opened the door. “Now, if you will excuse us, we still have much to do.”

The two men were still waiting outside.

Violeta remained passive, snakelike, her eyes focusing on nothing—and everything. Richter cocked his head to one side, nostrils flaring at the rebuff.

“You are quite sure?” he asked. “This decision is fraught with peril.”

“We have taken precautions,” Angelica said, stone faced.

Richter shrugged. “Very well. I wish you much luck.”

He turned and left without another word.

Angelica turned the bolt on the door as soon as it was shut. “From now on,” she said. “We talk to no one unless we discuss it first. Agreed?”

Justino nodded. “I only thought—”

“I know what you thought, mi amor,” she said. “I must ask you a question. Did you tell Richter the names of our . . . guests?”

Justino shook his head. “I did not. I only told him they were North Americans and that we would be able to pay our debt on time.”

Angelica rubbed a hand across her face, thinking.

“Nothing else? No numbers?”

“No,” Justino said.

“That is interesting indeed,” Angelica said. “We could have had two college students down for a holiday. But Richter somehow knew there were five of them. And he knows that at least one of them comes from a wealthy enough family to make it worth his time and risk.”

Justino rested both palms on the desk, the chill of sudden realization washing over him. “That means one of Jelly’s men is working for Richter. Maybe even Jelly himself.”

Angelica shook her head, already pushing buttons on her mobile phone. “Not Jelly,” she said. “I have known his mother since we were children. He may as well be blood to me.” She held the phone to her ear. “I am calling him now . . . Hello, Jelly . . . Listen very carefully. There has been a change of plans. The pilot will arrive shortly to pick you up. Tell him to take you to the camp instead of the yerba mate plantation . . . Correct. Do not tell the others. And instruct the pilot not to contact anyone about the change. We will be waiting for you when you land . . . And Jelly . . . be safe, my friend. Si . . . Chau . . . Un beso.”

Justino worked to keep from rolling his eyes. Angelica had just told her lead kidnapper goodbye by giving him a figurative “kiss.”

They were both coming unhinged.

“Does your secretary still come in early?” Angelica asked.

Justino nodded.

“Very well,” she said. “Get dressed, mi amor. Richter will suspect we will change our plans and is surely waiting out front somewhere to follow us.”

“Or to murder us,” Justino offered.

“Maybe,” Angelica shrugged, stripping her robe and pulling the gown up over her head as she spoke. “But I think not. He is too greedy to kill us before we pay him back his money. Even if he takes Grey and his friends, he will still want to be paid.”

“But we will have no way to pay him then,” Justino said, near tears.

Angelica ignored his whining. “We will slip out the back and borrow your secretary’s car to go and meet the plane. Richter spoke of the prisoners and the guests. I want to know why he thinks more than one of them is worth his trouble.”

Chapter 6

A woman wearing tan slacks and a crisp white polo shirt welcomed Quinn and the others aboard Riley Grey’s spotless Cessna Citation X. She wore little makeup and her dark hair was cut pixie short, giving her a freshly scrubbed look. Quinn had to stoop as he entered the plush but narrow plane. The interior had the new-car-and-coffee smell common to corporate aircraft.

Quinn had thought the woman was one of the pilots but was surprised to find two men already seated in the cockpit. The front four seats were set up in a vis-a-vis configuration with six more identical leather seats behind it, one on each side of the aircraft in three rows. Depressions in the carpet showed that two of the seats had been added recently, probably within the last hour. The big Cajun came in behind Quinn and leaned into the cockpit, then turned to give a thumbs up. “Salt and pepper hair on both,” he said. “Just the way I like my pilots—years of experience.”

“Mr. Grey sends his regards,” the woman said. “I’m Dr. Roselyn Patrick, Mr. Grey’s personal physician.”

Thibodaux transferred his bag from his right hand to his left and reached to shake hands with the doctor.

“Damn, Doc,” he said. “Glad I didn’t jump to conclusions and ask you for coffee.”

Dr. Patrick smiled. “I don’t mind getting you some coffee,” she said. “But my medical opinion is that you should try and get some sleep. This is going to be a long flight for someone as big as you. Please, take a seat anywhere, stretch out as best you can.”

Miyagi put her bag in an aft facing seat. “Do you normally travel with Mr. Grey?”

“I do,” Dr. Patrick said. “He’s a very athletic human being—in some very remote parts of the world. He sent me to care for Steven once you retrieve him.”

Quinn nodded. That was optimistic—but what else could a father be?

The first officer, who turned out to have a soft-spoken southern drawl, craned around in his seat on the right side of the cockpit and waved to grab everyone’s attention.

“Welcome aboard,” he said. “Mr. Grey has instructed us not to spare the horses on this trip, but there’s no way around it, we’re in for a long ride. We’ll make our fuel stop in Panama quick, but even at our max cruising speed of Mach .82, we’re still looking at a thirteen-hour trip. Doctor Patrick will give you a safety briefing and should be able to answer any questions.”

Even with the new configuration, there wasn’t a bad seat on the plane. Still, Quinn left the forward seats to Thibodaux so he’d have maximum leg room, and took a spot in the back. Out of habit, he sat on the left side of the aircraft, to keep his gun hand free and in the aisle—though he was traveling light on this trip. The last thing he wanted to do was get sideways with Argentine customs by showing up in their country carrying his Kimber.

Quinn looked across the confines of the Citation’s cabin at Thibodaux and Miyagi, who had both settled into their seats to read—or at least stare at a book while they thought. The monstrous, one-eyed Cajun and the enigmatic little Japanese woman had dropped everything to come with him. Between the three of them they had more scars than most people had skin. Their experience and skill made them formidable weapons. But they were going into this blind, to a foreign country, with none of their usual lines of support. Friends. No, more than that. They were family.

Quinn’s cellphone buzzed in his pocket the moment he sat down. He’d long since given up on Bo calling him back, but was grateful to hear Ronnie’s voice on the other end. He gave her their ETA. She told him her friend Soledad would be there waiting.

“I feel terrible that I can’t help,” Ronnie said.

Quinn shook his head, despite the fact that he was on the phone. “Don’t,” he said. “What you’re doing there is important.”

“Maybe,” she said. “But not as important as what you’re doing.”

“I’m sure it’s important to someone,” Quinn said. “Anyway, I might need help running interference from the boss, if he catches wind that we’re down here.” The line clicked, signifying another call. He took the phone away from his ear long enough to see it was Riley Grey.

“I have to go,” Quinn said.

“Be safe,” she said. “You’ll bring him home. I know it.”

Quinn was hopeful, but not nearly so optimistic as everyone else. He’d seen too many good people die because they happened to be standing in the wrong spot or crossing the street at the wrong place.

“Quinn,” he said, answering the incoming call.

Grey started right in without a greeting, reminding Jericho of his boss, Winfield Palmer, the national security advisor. He supposed rich and powerful people got in that habit.

“I received a ransom demand of sorts in my inbox fifteen minutes ago.”

“Forward it to me.” Quinn put the phone on speaker so Jacques and Emiko could hear and then gave Grey his email address.

“It says not to contact the police,” Grey added.

“I’m not surprised,” Quinn said.

“Should I do what it tells me to? Not call the police, I mean?”

“That’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself,” Quinn said.

“Aren’t you the police?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Quinn said. “But if we’re going to bring your son and my brother back, I may not have the luxury of acting very much like a police officer.”

“That is exactly what I wanted to hear,” Grey said. “I’d prefer to trust you to do what needs to be done. We’ll keep this between us.”

Miyagi nodded. Thibodaux gave a thumbs up.

“Very well,” Quinn said. “Please tell me if you change your mind. Have you responded to the email?”

“Not yet,” Grey said. “I have my best techs combing the file for any metadata or other digital tracks that might lead us back to whoever has Steven. If there is anything there, my guys will find it. I’m surprised kidnappers would send an email to someone like me.”

“That is odd,” Quinn said. It might mean they were not particularly sophisticated, which was a concern, but he didn’t say it out loud. “How much did they ask for?”

“Three million. Instructions for payment to come later.”

Thibodaux grimaced and mouthed the amount.

“Stand by a minute,” Grey said. “Another email just landed in my inbox.”

Quinn checked the time on his Aquaracer while he waited. Argentina was an hour later than DC. With the time difference, that put them wheels down sometime around 11:00 p.m. local, almost fifteen hours from the time Bo had sent up his SOS. Light-years faster than a law enforcement team could have gotten spooled up, but it was an eternity when you had a gun to your head—as Bo and the others surely did.

The FBI and Homeland Security had capable agents already on the ground in Buenos Aires, but they were few in number, and still had to answer to the bureaucracy of their respective agencies. Officially, Quinn would have told anyone else in this present situation to share the ransom demands and every other correspondence with the FBI. They were the experts in kidnap recovery. But a federal law enforcement response to a kidnapping in another country would mean liaison with foreign governments, deconfliction with their law enforcement—who might or might not be compromised—and a lengthy negotiation.

Quinn planned to do whatever it took to bring Bo and the others home.

Negotiation wouldn’t even enter the picture.

Grey came back on the line, his voice even more hollow than it had been. “I’m not sure what to think of this.”

“Instructions for how you’re supposed to make payment?” Quinn asked.

“No,” Grey said. “A second demand for ransom, this one asking for five million dollars—from a completely different party.”

Quinn felt a knot form in his chest. “A different party?”

“I’m forwarding you the email now,” Grey said.

Quinn left the phone on speaker while he opened the email.

Mr. Grey,

Associates of mine have come into the possession of your son and others. It is my belief that these people have reached out to you for payment by this point. The situation here is fluid and your son will very soon find himself under my care. I would urge you to forgo further contact with the first party and conduct negotiations with me only. Five million dollars would aid in my expenses for your son’s safe return.

I will be in touch soon.

A Friend.

“What do you make of this?” Grey asked.

Quinn looked at the others. “I hate to say it,” he said. “A double cross maybe. Another cartel? In any case, someone smells a payday, so they’re planning to grab Steven from whoever planned the original kidnapping.”

“Could be it’s the same damned group?” Thibodaux mused. “Just makin’ us think there’s something going on because they decided they didn’t ask for enough in the first place.”

“That is a possibility,” Miyagi said, uncharacteristically agreeing with Jacques out loud.

An exhausted sigh came from the other end of the line. “If there are more people involved, maybe that will leave more of a trail.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said. But a trail of what?

Grey promised to call as soon as he got any more emails and ended the call.

A moment later, the Citation X threw Quinn back into the leather seat as it shot down the runway.

Able to get awfully close to cruising at Mach 1, the Citation X was the fastest business jet on the market—but there weren’t a lot of business owners who could afford to pay over twenty million dollars for a plane. Quinn had a fleeting thought that it must be nice to be so rich, until he realized that Riley Grey’s wealth came with a price, the price of turning his family into a target. But then, Quinn wasn’t rich, not by a long shot, and his line of work had turned his friends and family into literal targets on too many occasions to count.

He read over both emails again. Quinn wanted to believe that this was merely a case of some unsophisticated kidnappers asking for more money. But that wasn’t the case. The wording and tone were different in each note, the “voice” of two separate writers. No, Bo and the others were caught in the crossfire between two warring groups, and “fluid” didn’t even begin to describe the situation.

He leaned back and shut his eyes. “Keep your head down, little brother. I’m on my way.”

Chapter 7

The smell of chicken shit and sour apples oozed from the Cessna Caravan’s cloth seats. The pilot, an ancient man with squinty eyes and skin as dark as a roasted coffee bean, likely made his living flying whatever anyone paid him to fly, be it livestock or live human beings. He’d surely seen many things over his long life, leaving Bo to wonder if that was the reason his eyes seemed locked in a permanent squint.

Bo’s hands were still cuffed behind his back so he couldn’t get a look at his watch. He estimated they’d been in the air for nearly two hours. Counting the drive to the remote airfield out of Buenos Aires—north, judging from the sun—and the time they’d spent on the ground waiting for the aircraft to show up, something like five hours had elapsed from the time they’d been grabbed.

Steven was holding up okay, though it was clear from the pained expression on his face that he blamed himself for all this. Eva had started off in tears, but had become more and more defiant the longer they were in captivity. Defiance had a place, but not until they knew a little more about their captors. For now, her angry outbursts only incited the men. Those that were scared reacted with more brutality to hide their fear. La Pulga, the little flea with the Ivy League sweater, just looked at her and smiled as if taking notes about what he planned to do.

Not counting the grizzled old pilot, there were twelve passengers on the plane, taking up all the seats in the back and leaving the wounded Toro lying in the aisle with his head on a duffel in the rear cargo area. He’d cut a walking stick from the green limb of a jacaranda tree and used it to threaten the prisoners when they got in his way or came near his broken leg.

Jelly, the apparent leader, sat up front. He was young, like most of the rest, well dressed in a blue and white rugby shirt of Argentina’s national team. Larger than Toro, Jelly’s bulk was gained from his time in the gym rather than a diet of empanadas and sweets.

Bo felt his ears pop as the pilot began to descend. Bo recognized the confluence of the Iguazú and Paraná rivers that formed the borders of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. He watched the brown rivers and patchwork of green fields and seemingly impassable jungle as they passed beneath the plane. The deep canyon called Garganta del Diablo, or Devil’s Throat, and the frothy white Iguazú Falls came into view as the pilot banked back to the south, staying in Argentina. The sprawling city of Paraguay’s Ciudad del Este lay to the left, across the Paraná.

It made sense that Jelly would bring them here. The Triple Frontier had a reputation as a haven for smuggling everything from counterfeit goods to humans. Bo and his group had come down the Pan-American Highway, riding through Quito, Lima, and Antofagasta, before turning east in Valparaíso, Chile to reach Buenos Aires. The original plan was to spend a couple of days poking around BA before riding down to Ushuaia at the southern tip of South America before eventually heading back up to see Iguazú Falls.

Now that they were here, Bo couldn’t help but wonder if this aerial view might be the only one he’d ever get. They knew who Steven was, that was obvious from the way they kept him apart from the others and treated him like a golden egg—not exactly good, but valuable. The would be demanding ransom soon, for Steven at least. So far, they didn’t seem to know the significance of who else they had. Matt wouldn’t shut up about how his dad would be happy to buy his freedom, but for some reason, none of that seemed to impress them, least of all The Flea, who seemed to be in this for something other than money. The captors had made zero attempt at hiding their identities. Maybe that was due to inexperience, but they’d come around to the realization soon that it had been an error. It was difficult to foresee a set of circumstances where the ransom got paid and everyone was released with a handshake.

And now they’d been moved hundreds of miles to the north. Even if Jericho had gotten the SOS, it would take him a full twenty-four hours to get to Argentina—and then he’d be looking in the wrong place.

Ten minutes later, the caravan bounced to a stop on a grass field. The pilot made everyone stay in place while he got out and waddled around to put a support under the tail so the plane didn’t squat when everyone moved to the rear door. As soon as this was done, the pilot walked away, disappearing into a small metal building without looking back. Bo imagined that seeing too much in his line of work was a quick way to end up being thrown out of your own plane.

Through the side window, Bo could see a middle-aged woman follow the progress of the airplane. She was tall, and impeccably dressed in crisp white slacks and a matching sleeveless blouse. A midday sun blazed overhead, adding to the oppressive humidity, but this woman did not have a hair out of place. A stooped man in a floppy gaucho beret stood beside the woman, gazing more at her than the plane. A brown Renault Duster was parked in the grass alongside the strip. Beyond the car lay a small brick house nestled among a copse of fir and eucalyptus trees. A dozen head of whiteface cattle munched grass in the field behind the house. A windmill turned lazily over two black horses drinking from the water tank. It was a bucolic scene and would have been relaxing had Bo not recently been beaten and bound.

Bruno and The Flea climbed out of the Caravan first and then opened a wide cargo door at the back, allowing Toro to work his way out on the broken leg. It made an easier exit for the bound prisoners as well. Jelly came around from the front to meet them as they hopped down to the ground. Three others with names Bo didn’t know came around back. Through it all, Toro—still cringing in pain—leaned against his homemade walking stick. If any of the prisoners so much as looked at him, he reminded them that they no longer existed. He could, he said, do anything he wanted to someone who did not exist.

The woman in the white slacks strode to the back of the Caravan with an air that said she was obviously in charge. The man followed, with an air that said he was not.

She pointed a long finger with perfectly manicured pink nails at Toro, jabbing at the air in front of his chest. He blinked as though looking into a strong wind.

“We will treat the prisoners with respect and dignity so long as they give us no cause to do otherwise.” She turned to the group. “Please excuse my friend. His late father was a general during our former military government. Toro is sorry he missed all the mayhem. I think he would have been quite an enthusiastic interrogator.” She shrugged. “At the very least, he would have enjoyed himself.”

The woman walked down the line of prisoners, stopping one by one to study their faces individually. Even Matt was smart enough not to speak. Once she’d satisfied her curiosity, the woman flicked her fingers, motioning for Jelly to follow her toward the nose of the aircraft.

They spoke in hushed tones, shooting periodic glances at the rest of the group, paying more attention to her own men than the prisoners. Her companion wearing the gaucho hat retreated back to the Renault and stood there, looking like he’d eaten something that didn’t quite agree with him.

At length, the woman turned on her heels and marched directly back to silver haired Bruno. Standing in front of him, she put her hands in the pockets of her slacks, which, Bo had to admit, looked out of place for such a smartly dressed woman. They were nearly the same height, but the woman’s aggressive bearing made her seem taller.

Alma had maneuvered herself to stand next to Bo when they’d climbed out of the plane. All eyes were on the conversation, so no one stopped her when she gave a whispered translation as the woman began to speak in Spanish.

The woman toed at the grass looking down as she spoke. “I understand you took photographs of the prisoners.”

“Si, su señoria,” Bruno said, shuffling in place. He was nervous about something. Not a good sign.

Alma leaned sideways toward Bo, to make sure the others couldn’t hear her. “Weird,” she whispered. “But that guy just called her ‘your honor’ . . . like she’s a judge.”

Bo added the name to his mental list. If a judge was involved, then there was a chance law enforcement was involved as well.

Alma continued with her translation.

“Were you certain that the GPS location services were disabled?” the judge asked.

Bruno nodded, looking relieved. “I did, su señoria.”

The woman cocked her head. “I am curious that you did not send the photos to me. Can you explain yourself?”

Bruno shrugged, gesturing with open hands. “I knew you would meet us here and see the prisoners yourself.”

The woman’s gaze narrowed. “Then why take any photos at all?”

“Proof of life.”

“Very well,” the woman nodding smugly. “That makes sense.” She turned as if to walk away, hands still in her pockets, but then wheeled.

“Did you happen to text these photographs to anyone else?”

The man paused, then shook his head.

“Suppose I were to have a look at your mobile phone?”

“Su señoria . . .”

Two sharp cracks pierced the still morning air. A small silver pistol had suddenly appeared in the judge’s hand.

Bruno’s hand clawed at the center his torso, over his diaphragm. He dropped to his knees, eyes wide. Obscene croaking noises escaped his open mouth.

Jelly stepped in quickly and grabbed a black revolver from Bruno’s waistband as he pitched forward, writhing in the gravel beside the Caravan’s tire.

La Pulga walked up and stooped to get a better look at the dying man. Cheeks flushed, The Flea didn’t appear to be interested in his friend, but in the process of death itself.

The man in the gaucho hat leaned against the Renault for support, seeming to grow smaller, fading away by the moment.

The judge began to speak again.

“Sorry,” Alma gasped, coming out of her stupor and catching back up with her translation. “The judge just told Jelly to get Bruno’s phone. She wants him to collect everyone’s phone as well. Looks like that one called Bruno was planning a double cross, working for someone named Richter. The judge doesn’t want anyone to contact—”

Toro’s walking stick whooshed through the air, cracking against Alma’s back. “No talking in line,” he snapped. With her hands cuffed, and no way to catch herself, she pitched face first into the gravel.

Bo roared at the assault. Without thinking, he launched himself sideways, directly into Toro’s broken leg. Toro screamed in pain, hopping sideways and lashing out with the stick, catching Bo across the jaw. Bo rolled onto his stomach, curling into a ball to try and protect his head as Toro continued to batter him with the heavy stick.

Alma threw herself on top of Bo, screaming, pleading for Toro to stop.

The rest of the thugs converged on the prisoners to keep them under control.

“That is enough!” the judge barked.

Toro hunched over Alma, panting, his walking stick in the air, smiling even amid his pain. The judge had been right. He would have enjoyed doling out torture.

The judge pointed a finger at him. “I told you to treat the prisoners with respect.”

“Si, su señoria,” Toro said.

The woman turned to speak to Jelly again.

Bo waited for Alma to roll off him, and then turned gingerly onto his side. He took a couple of deep breaths and willed the world to stop spinning. Coughing, he spit out a front tooth along with a clot of fresh blood.

“How about we don’t do that again,” he said.

Alma moved her neck back and forth. “No promises.”

She was a tough one.

Matt stayed put as if welded in place, looking away.

Bo drew his legs under him, and wallowed to his feet. He was unwilling to stay down any longer than he had to, but it took him a while without the use of his arms. Alma stepped closer so he could lean his shoulder against her thigh. Not just tough, but smart as well. Sickeningly dizzy, he had to use her for support even after he was standing. The earlier blow across his helmet had rattled his brain. Toro’s beating had been icing on the cake.

“Ha!” Toro chuckled. “I gave you a good hit. Soon you will have no teeth at all—”

The judge spun where she stood and shot Toro twice in the face before he knew what was happening.

“Pelotudo!” she spat.

Beside the Renault, the pale man muttered to himself in Spanish. He was obviously not cut out for this much violence.

The rest of the men stared down at their two dead comrades. Even La Pulga had been caught off guard.

Bo couldn’t bring himself to care. He spat out another mouthful of blood and then ran his tongue over the jagged remains of his tooth. An overwhelming dread washed over him at the pain he knew he’d be in once the adrenaline wore off.

The judge walked over and prodded the dying Toro with the toe of her shoe, pistol still in hand. Smoke curled from the end of the barrel.

“I will have someone find clove oil for your tooth,” she said. “It is the best I can offer.”

Bo nodded. He wasn’t about to say thank you to the woman responsible for his kidnapping.

The judge licked her lips, studying Bo. “You are in charge of this group?”

“Yes,” he said, keeping his tongue over the broken tooth to protect it from the air.

“Good,” she said. “With any luck, we will soon put all of this behind us. It will be nothing but an unpleasant memory and a good story.”

“For those left alive at the end,” Bo said.

“You will still be alive if you behave,” she said.

Bo kept his eyes locked on her. “I’m not talking about us.”

A smile spread over the judge’s face. “I am no stranger to threats, Mr. . . .”

“Quinn,” The Flea said. He had the passports.

“Mr. Quinn,” the judge continued. “I meant what I said about treating all of you with respect. So long as you do nothing to deserve otherwise. But do not for an instant take that to mean I lack the needed resolve.” She looked down at Toro’s lifeless body and then back at Bo. “I once had a dog that killed my chickens. I was very fond of this dog, but I still shot him.” She leaned in close to make her point. “Even so, the dog’s death did not save the chickens when it came time for me to make a stew.”

Chapter 8

Riley Grey’s Citation X was set up with a satellite phone, so Quinn was able to touch bases with Ronnie Garcia somewhere over the Gulf of Mexico.

Her voice was a comfort amid the chaos going on in his brain.

“I’ve confirmed with Soledad,” she said. “She’s all set to meet you. She’s already talked to her contacts with the Buenos Aires police as well as the federal Gendarmería, to be on the safe side. The Gendarmería Captain in charge of the precinct where Bo and the others went missing admits that it was likely a kidnapping, but says they have no suspects or witnesses at this point. According to Soledad, they do appear to be working the case, so that’s good. She’s put out feelers at local hospitals and clinics, but so far she’s not heard anything.”

“I know it’s going to be late,” Quinn said, “but I’d like to go visit the scene as soon as we arrive.”

“I told her you would,” Garcia said.

“Thanks,” Quinn said. “I really appreciate this.”

“Wish I was there with you,” Ronnie said.

“Me too,” Quinn said.

Quinn had never been one for long telephone conversations, so he thanked Garcia again and said goodbye.

Quinn called his parents next, checking in on the off chance that Bo had called home. His mother answered, sounding out of breath. She said she’d been shoveling the remains of a March snow in the driveway. Quinn couldn’t imagine his dad allowing that unless he was gone or incapacitated. His mother confirmed his suspicion and said he was away at a boat show.

Rather than worry her, Jericho decided not to mention Bo. There was nothing to tell anyway. His mother had a particular soft spot for Bo. He’d broken her heart many times over the years. But he was her youngest, and, sickly as an infant, he’d needed her the most.

Quinn said he’d call back soon to catch up, and ended the call. His mother was a tough woman—she had to be with sons like Jericho and Bo. She’d cried buckets of tears over her two boys—and she would, no doubt, cry many more for one reason or another.

Across the aisle, Thibodaux looked up from his book. “You doing okay, Chair Force?”

“I’m fine,” Quinn said, though he was far from it. He held up the satellite phone. “You need to call Camille?”

“Talked to her before we left,” the Cajun said. “She’d think I was tryin’ to get her to let me buy a new gun or somethin’ if I called her twice in a four-hour period.”

Miyagi removed her earbuds and gave Quinn a quiet smile.

“I appreciate you both coming,” Quinn said.

“Arrête toi!” Thibodaux said, telling him to stop. “You got the weight of the world pressin’ down on you, ami. You need us to take care of the goats while you see to saving your brother.”

Miyagi raised an eyebrow and shook her head. She and Quinn both knew there was no way to predict what might come out of Jacques Thibodaux’s mouth. It was his way of dealing with—and helping deal with stress.

“My mémère loved to tell us about a man who had himself all kinds of misery.” Thibodaux’s Cajun accent came on stronger when he told a story. Quinn couldn’t help but grin, despite the situation. “Well,” Thibodaux continued. “This sad man, he took his self to the doctor and he say, ‘Doc, I think I’m goin’ plum braque—crazy. My wife, she givin’ me the fits. My kids, they no good rascals. My job, it have me in a rut. Life just ain’t no good at all.’ Well, the doc, he looks at the man and says, ‘You need to buy a goat.’ ‘A goat?’ says the man. ‘What would I need a goat for?’ ‘Just buy the damn goat,” the doc says. Next week, the man, he comes back, and he says things is still awful at the house and at work. The doc shakes his head and tells him to buy another goat. The man, he does what the doc orders, but comes back next week with the same story. ‘Buy a third goat,’ the doc says. A week later, the man comes back and says that things is worse than ever. The goats, they get into everything and he can’t keep them penned up to save his life. ‘Sell the goats,’ the doc says. Next week the man comes in. ‘How’s your life now?’ the doc asks. ‘C’est magnifique!’ the man say. ‘Now I don’t have no goats.’”

“Goats,” Miyagi muttered, shaking her head again.

“You focus on savin’ your brother,” Thibodaux said. “Me and Miyagi-san, we’ll take care of the goats.”

Chapter 9

The judge took the passports and then laid down the law about the treatment of her prisoners, giving a rousing speech on human rights and dignity. She then turned on her heels and took Jelly with her, leaving The Flea in charge.

The medicinal smell of eucalyptus from the tangle of trees overhanging the small brick cottage infused the humid air, mixing with the pungent odor of cattle and horses munching hay in the pens outside. La Pulga allowed the prisoners to drink from the water spigot off the windmill, no doubt to remind them that he was in charge and could give or take away whatever he wished. Bo whispered for the others to dunk their heads in the round metal trough as they took their turns at the tap. The sticky heat was oppressive in their armored riding gear, and the cool water helped bring relief and much-needed focus.

Dripping wet, they were ushered inside.

The interior of the house was dark, with the only light streaming in through small windows and the open door. Thick walls and a tile floor kept it relatively cool. Soot from many fires in the large fireplace stained the red bricks below a rough-hewn timber mantel. The smell of wood smoke and saddle blankets hung in the still air. A number of photographs adorned the stucco walls. Most of them were of polo ponies, but a few showed the judge and the man in the gaucho hat during happier times. Bo nodded to himself. The imperious judge and her milquetoast husband made an unlikely pair of criminal masterminds. The photographs of the couple were what Jericho would have called good intel. But the fact that such evidence had been left around for the prisoners to observe gnawed at Bo’s gut.

The remaining decorations were sparse, things normally used around a cattle ranch—an Argentine saddle with a sheepskin cover just inside the heavy front door, a hooked bull goad and several rawhide quirts on the wall, and a braided lariat hanging over the saddle. The place had the feel of a cabin, and should have been cozy, but, considering their captivity, the leather gaucho equipment took on a sinister air.

The room was relatively small, maybe twelve by fifteen, forcing the prisoners to bunch together as they came through the door. With no direction, they milled in place, waiting to be told where to go.

They didn’t have long to wait.

The Flea gave a sharp clap of his hands and a gap-toothed man called Tigre grabbed Eva by the hair and hauled her back to the front door.

Steven yelled in protest, starting after her, but got knocked to the floor for his trouble. The two remaining guards pulled pistols and pointed them at the prisoners.

Tigre stopped in the threshold of the door, shoving Eva to her knees. Backlit, she slumped there, hands behind her back, while Tigre held a gun to her head.

Steven cursed. Matt cringed and looked away. Alma offered a whispered prayer in Spanish. Bo stood where he was and glared at La Pulga.

“It occurs to me,” The Flea said, his voice breathy and hoarse, “that none of you have been properly searched. Your handcuffs will be removed one at a time and you will take off your clothing so that we may check you for weapons. Cooperate fully, and Eva will remain unharmed.”

Bo had known this was coming. He’d been worried they might separate the women, and was actually relieved when La Pulga ordered them all searched as a group. He’d already decided that he would go down fighting rather than submit to watching either of the girls being violated. Alma must have read his mind, because she looked at him and shook her head.

“Just stay alive,” she said. “No matter what happens.”

“Good advice,” La Pulga said. “Now get on with it. Tigre grows tired of not shooting your friend.”

Tigre chuckled and cuffed Eva in the head with his free hand. She looked up and tried to spit, but her mouth was too dry, leaving her to sputter impotently and earning a round of derisive laughter from the men.

Bo shrugged off his riding jacket as soon as the cuffs were removed, taking a short moment to massage the circulation back into his hands. The men seemed transfixed by the tattoo of a black octopus on his forearm. The Flea let out a low whistle when he pulled the t-shirt over his head, revealing the scars that mapped his chest and torso. He didn’t have near as many as Jericho, but there were enough to know he’d survived some serious contact with people that wanted to kill him. Alma and the others in the group had seen them before, swimming or at the hotel hot tub. It was a good thing, he’d thought, for the man charged with security to have plenty of battle scars.

His arms were yanked behind his back and the handcuffs replaced as soon as he’d removed his boxers.

“Interesting, don’t you think?” The Flea observed. “How stripping away a thin layer of cloth can shatter the idea of security.”

Bo thought of a dozen threatening comebacks. The image of what he wanted to do to this guy shone bright in his mind’s eye. But he willed himself to keep his mouth shut, for Eva’s sake.

Alma’s cuffs came off next.

“Makes me wish I’d skipped that ice cream yesterday,” she whispered a moment later, as she slipped off her own t-shirt, drawing leering murmurs from the men.

Matt fumed, staring daggers. It had not gone unnoticed that Alma had decided to stand beside Bo.

Steven’s eyes stayed locked on Eva, rattling the chain on his handcuffs as soon as Alma was undressed. “Let’s hurry and get this over with,” he said.

Matt snapped at him. “Easy for you to say. Your dad is the reason we’re all in this mess.”

“Come on,” Alma said, visibly shivering, even in the warm air. “We’re all scared here.”

“Phht,” Matt said. “You sure don’t look scared.”

The Flea clapped his hands again, eyeing Matt. “I seem to remember you saying your father was wealthy as well. You said he would be happy to purchase your freedom. Perhaps you are the reason for all this, and Mr. Grey is just a fortunate coincidence. I wonder,” he said, scratching his hairless chin. “Would your wealthy father be willing to pay for the release of your friends as well?”

“My father would,” Steven said without pause. “He’d pay for all of them. No doubt.”

“That may be true,” The Flea said. “But the question is for Matthew.”

Matt shrugged “Would he pay for all of them?” He nodded, a little too slowly. “Sure. I guess so.”

“We will know soon enough,” The Flea said. He smiled, the smile of a child who pulls the legs off live baby birds. “Now, you all behaved very well . . .”

Tigre forced Eva to strip, then stood her naked in front of the fireplace with the rest of the group. Steven looked as though he might cry, but Eva stood beside him, chin up, defiant.

The men went through everyone’s clothing piece by piece. La Pulga searched Steven’s clothing, and Bo saw him stuff the expensive engagement ring into his pocket. Bo said nothing, thinking this little bit of information might come in handy in the long run. After they’d searched the clothes, the guards led their prisoners individually to the far corner of the room for a more thorough search, in full view of their friends. Quinn wasn’t proud of the fact that he’d been to jail before, but the event did give him experience being strip searched. There was a method to it. These guys had no idea what they were doing. Or if they did, their reason behind the search was to intimidate and titillate, not to find contraband. Searching Bo, Steven, and Matt went quickly, each earning a few half-hearted boots and fists to maintain compliance. The process took much longer for the women, with Flea and his men stifling giggles, turning their captives around and around and studying them like inquisitive schoolboys poring over an anatomy textbook.

Bo shuddered to think how bad it would be had the men not feared repercussions from the judge.

At length, The Flea licked his lips and gave a shuddering sigh. He tore his eyes away from Alma long enough to look at his watch. He croaked something in Spanish. Bo recognized the word for judge.

“What are you afraid of?” Bo asked, unable to contain himself. “Are you worried your boss is going to come back and catch you in the middle your fun and games?”

Tigre grabbed Eva and started to drag her toward the doorway. Her defiant attitude vanished and she began to sob, pedaling against the tile with her bare feet, begging not to be taken away from her friends. She surely thought they were taking her away to rape her, but Bo knew men like this would want an audience.

Steven rushed forward, but Tigre kicked him in the chest. Unable to catch himself, he fell across the saddle just inside the door, dragging it and the wooden rack to the floor on top of him.

Bo took a half step. “How about you use a different hostage this time?”

Flea shook his head. “Do you volunteer?”

Bo took another step. “I do.”

Flea gave a flick of his hand and one of the men drove a brutal fist into Bo’s kidney.

Bo staggered sideways, overwhelmed with nausea and explosive pain. Alma used her body to keep him upright.

“Just stay alive,” she whispered again.

“You would not make such good insurance,” Flea said. “Apart from Miss Cortez, I am not certain anyone cares enough about you to keep you from getting killed. I would prefer to have a hostage everyone does not want to see shot in the head.”

Eva calmed when Tigre placed the muzzle of his gun to her temple.

“Hey,” Matt said. “What if I had some information that could make you a lot of money?”

Alma’s face fell. “Shut up, Matt.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Matt said.

“Information?” The Flea said.

Matt gulped. “It’s good shit,” he said. “Something you won’t be able to find out unless I tell you.”

“Is that so?” The Flea mused.

“Come on, Matt,” Bo said. “You can’t bargain with these guys.”

“Of course he can,” The Flea said. “But first, we should take care of a few things.”

“I’m telling you it’s good—”

Tigre turned his pistol toward Matt, shutting him up.

The Flea held up an open palm. “Oh, we’ll talk. I promise you that. But later, my friend.”

One of the men led Bo to the center of the room, while the others were moved to the fireplace and forced to kneel on the hard tile. Bo raised his hands away from the small of his back, but instead of removing the cuffs, one of the men grabbed a handful of hair and yanked his head backward, arching his neck and pulling him to the floor. He landed on his back, hands trapped beneath him, the wind driven from his lungs.

Before he knew what was happening, a rawhide quirt was shoved between his back teeth, making it impossible to close his mouth. Tigre held his pistol on the rest of the group, while the other two tied Bo to one of the heavy timber chairs in the main room. The quirt was lashed in place like a bit and bridle, and then tied to the back of the chair, rendering his head virtually immobile—and the nerves of his broken tooth exposed to the air.

Only after Bo was restrained did The Flea step forward. He held a small plastic cooler in one hand and a pair of channel-lock pliers in the other.

Bo was vaguely aware of Steven shouting, of Eva crying again, and Alma cursing in Spanish. La Pulga, The Flea, ignored them all, focused entirely on Bo.

He dipped into the plastic cooler with the pliers.

“When I was in school,” he said, “my rugby coach told that cold is recommended to treat a variety of injuries.”

He leaned in, pressing a small piece of ice against the jagged tooth.

Bo jerked and thrashed but he could barely move his head, let alone escape. Saliva and blood drooled from the corners of his open mouth as he cursed and spat around the rawhide quirt.

The Flea touched the ice to the tooth again and again, lighting up the exposed nerve. Bo arched his back as if he were being shocked.

The Flea loomed above, pliers and ice poised just inches from Bo’s cracked lips.

“I should mention,” The Flea said. “The judge is busy seeing who is and who is not worth our trouble. She will not return for some time. So, as you can see, I can go about my studies for hours without interruption.” He touched the ice to the throbbing nerve again.

“What was it you were saying about fun and games?”

* * *

Bo regained consciousness a short time later, his head resting against the warmth of Alma’s thigh. The pain in his tooth pulsed through his skull like a flashing white light. His own breath passing over the nerve nearly brought him to tears. Alma brushed the hair out of his eyes and he looked up to see she’d been left with her hands cuffed in the front. Like him, she was dressed in nothing but underwear.

“He told me to give you this,” she said, holding up a small bottle of clove oil with both hands.

Bo nodded, turning his head like a baby bird.

She put a couple of drops directly on the tooth.

“More,” he said, moving his jaw back and forth.

Alma grimaced, tipping the glass bottle to give him a few more drops. “Swish it around, but don’t swallow,” she said. “This stuff can make you sick.”

Bo nodded, feeling immediate relief. The tooth still throbbed, but the pain was now bearable. He wanted to stay where he was, but couldn’t very well spit on Alma’s leg, so he wallowed himself into a seated position along the wall with everyone else. Steven and Eva sat together, leaning on each other for physical and emotional support. Matt was halfway across the room by himself, sulking.

All the men were outside enjoying an asado, or Argentine barbecue, around a hardwood fire.

Bo spat the clove oil out on the tile, on the side opposite Alma. “You okay?” she whispered.

“I’m fine,” Bo lied. Apart from his tooth, his head was on fire and it was a good bet that his jaw and a few ribs were shattered. Still, he had a job to do, and it helped to focus on that. He motioned at Matt by lifting his chin.

“Come on, bud,” he said. “We’re all in this together.”

Matt sneered. “Some of us are deeper in it than others.”

“Seriously,” Bo said. “There’s abetter chance of survival as a group. It’s dangerous to separate yourself.”

“Dangerous to you,” Matt said.

Bo gave up for the time being. Talking hurt his teeth—and he’d never been much of a pleader anyway. He scooted around so he could looked at Alma without turning his neck, and tried to give her a reassuring smile. With the broken tooth and the blood smeared on his face, he was pretty sure he just came off as insane.

“You’re probably wondering what I ever saw in him,” she whispered.

“Crossed my mind,” Bo admitted.

“Honestly,” Alma said. “I have no idea. He’s handsome, and not so much of an asshole when he’s not scared out of his wits.”

Bo raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“Okay,” Alma conceded. “He’s always a little bit of an asshole. Guess I’m just a sucker for a pretty face.” She leaned her head against the wall, exposing the curve of her neck. “How do you think this is going to work?”

Bo shrugged. “They will have contacted Steven’s father by now.”

Steven looked up. “I’m sure he’ll pay as soon as they tell him where to send the money. Then maybe this will be over.”

“We can hope,” Bo said. “The judge is probably building files on each of us this evening.”

Matt sneered again, staring directly at Eva. “I wonder how long it’s going to be until she figures out who you are.”

“Matt!” Steven said through clenched teeth, shooting a glance toward the door and the laughing men outside.

“What?” Matt said. “You know as well as I do that she’s our ticket out of here.”

Chapter 10

Riley Grey’s Citation X touched down at Ministro Pistarini International Airport outside Buenos Aires at 10:52 p.m. local time, fifteen hours and six minutes after Bo had sent up his SOS.

Doctor Patrick stayed back with the pilots while they closed out their flight plan, finished up a few reports, and put the airplane to bed for the night while Jericho and the others cleared Argentine immigration and customs. Clearance didn’t take long since they’d brought virtually nothing into the country. Their lack of baggage might have raised eyebrows had it not been for the fact that these Norte Americanos arrived in a twenty-million-dollar business jet. There was no explaining the fiats of the rich, some of whom preferred to travel with a platinum credit card instead of cumbersome luggage.

Thibodaux gave a low whistle when he stepped around the corner and into the main terminal.

“Ronnie’s friend Soledad,” he said. “She happen to be a long cool woman in a black dress?”

“Ha,” Miyagi said, stone faced. “The Hollies song . . .”

Quinn gave a slight nod.

“Yep,” he said.

They’d arrived in between flights and the terminal was vacant but for a few people sitting at the lounge at the far end of the lobby—and a tall woman with perfectly coiffed blond hair. A black cocktail dress hit her in the middle of her deeply tanned thighs. Her makeup was impeccable, like the on-air television journalist that she was.

“Oh ye yi,” Thibodaux sighed. “That’s our contact?”

The woman transferred a small clutch purse to her left hand and reached out to greet Quinn.

“I am Soledad San Martín,” she said, sounding like a reporter signing off the air. “Mucho gusto. Welcome to Argentina.” Her smile faded. “I am very sorry your visit is under such unpleasant circumstances.”

Quinn made the necessary introductions and then asked to be taken straight to the scene of the kidnapping.

“Of course,” Soledad said, her full lips breaking into a smile again. “My car is in the lot outside. Veronica gave me instructions as to what you would need. I only had a few hours to collect what she described. Hopefully it will be satisfactory.”

“What did she ask you to get?” Quinn asked.

Soledad turned as she walked. “It is probably best we discuss it in my car.”

Her car turned out to be a small red SUV called a Ford EcoSport. There was no way Thibodaux was going to wedge himself into the backseat so Quinn and Miyagi gave him the front.

Soledad realized the urgency of the situation and spoke as she drove, taking Autopista Luis Dellepiane to head northeast into the city. Her English was accented, but impeccable.

“I have spoken about the kidnapping to my contact with the Gendarmería four times in as many hours. They are a national force and work in concert with the Buenos Aires Police. So far, there are still no witnesses.”

“Thank you for trying,” Quinn said. “You mentioned something about Garcia’s instructions.”

“Of course.” Soledad’s brown eyes were perfectly framed in the rearview mirror. “You will find a small tote in the space behind you—where you put your other bags. I could only find one pistol, but perhaps one of my contacts will locate another by tomorrow. Knives, however, are a much easier item to obtain in this country.”

Quinn reached behind him and pulled a leather bag over the seat and into his lap between him and Miyagi. He opened it to find a single Taurus G2 pistol, one spare 12-round magazine, and a box of nine-millimeter ammunition. He passed the gun, along with the extra mag and ammo to Miyagi, who handed everything up to Thibodaux.

“For the goats,” Miyagi said.

Soledad shot a backward glance. “Goats?”

“Inside joke, chère,” Thibodaux said.

At the bottom of the leather bag Quinn found three large sheath knives. Quinn gave one to Miyagi, who drew the foot-long blade from the sheath a few inches. She tested the edge with her thumb and nodded in approval. Quinn took out a similar knife and studied the thick carbon steel blade under the glow of passing streetlights. The heft of it in his hand brought a certain comfort.

“Thank you,” he said.

“De nada,” Soledad said. “Veronica described you as a man with the soul of a gaucho. These knives are known as facónes, a slightly shorter version of the long fighting blades from early in the last century. It is said the Argentine gaucho used his knife for everything from opening a cow to closing a discussion.”

“I’m sure these will come in handy.” Quinn returned the facón to its sheath, thinking about the people who held his brother captive.

Soledad’s eyes narrowed in the mirror, growing more serious. “Veronica has never told me what she does for her job. I know at one time, she worked for your CIA in a uniformed capacity. She speaks easily of guns and knives, so I suppose I could guess if I tried very hard.”

“I don’t want to put you in a bad spot,” Quinn said. “If you could just show us where the kidnapping took place, we’ll be fine on our own from there.”

“Do you speak Spanish?” Soledad asked.

Quinn shook his head.

“Then you will need my help,” she said. “And I want to give it. I am several years older than Veronica. I was working on my masters while she just beginning her university studies. She probably did not tell you, but my father was taken off the street much like your brother. Only he was not taken for a ransom. No, he was kidnapped for the high crime of writing an article on unionization in the college newspaper. My mother was abducted and tortured for the egregious sin of being married to him. She was tortured and raped and then tortured some more before being drugged and thrown from an airplane into the Rio de la Plata. My father died of a heart attack shortly after, at the age of twenty-six.”

“I’m sorry, chère,” Thibodaux said, his voice hushed.

“I would have been adopted out to military family—or killed to make certain the subversive bloodline was stopped—but I had gone to visit my grandparents in Cordoba. The police were looking for them as well, and they sent me to live with other relatives the night before they were kidnapped. I was four years old and I never saw any of them again.” She shivered, and then shook off the emotion. “I tell you this not for sympathy, but to explain that I am no talking head on the television. Were it not for the military junta, I would have grown up to be the daughter of a college professor and a beauty queen, but those monsters bathed me in the blood of my parents and turned me into a revolutionary. I would have done anything to have saved my family if I had been able. How could I not help you do the same to save yours?”

* * *

Traffic was light and it took less than a half hour to reach the upscale Belgrano neighborhood. Quinn felt a familiar tightening in his gut as Soledad turned onto the quiet side street where the attack had occurred. Large brick houses fronted by rosewood trees lined the quiet avenue. Spiked iron fences and high walls topped with razor wire cordoned off each home.

“These places are like mini forts,” Thibodaux said, face to the side window.

“Sadly,” Soledad said, “Such measures are necessary to guard against robbery and other crimes. You have gated communities in the States. Outside of Buenos Aires, we have communities that are surrounded by electric fences and moats.”

“Is it really so bad?” Miyagi asked.

Soledad gave a solemn nod. “I supposed it depends on one’s circumstance. Many Argentines of this generation have never been affected by violent crime. They would tell you this is a safe place to go jogging at night. Others, they have had a much darker experience. They are the ones who build the fences. The only house on the block with no wall would make an awfully tempting target—so, everyone builds walls.”

Soledad parked under a street lamp, next to an ivy-covered wall with wrought iron spikes along the top, and got out of the car.

“Your brother’s motorcycle was found here, in the middle of the street. The other motorcycles were all around his. Your brother’s bike had damage to the front fender, and the bike ridden by . . .” Soledad consulted a long reporter’s notebook. “. . . the bike ridden by Eva Turcott had damage to the back tire. All the other motorcycles were simply lying on their sides.”

“Someone ran into the back of her bike,” Miyagi mused.

Soledad crossed her hands in front of her, clutching the notebook. “The police suspect that was the case, and that your brother ran into a lead vehicle when it stopped suddenly in front of him.”

Quinn shook his head, walking the area, studying the street. “Maybe,” he said. “But Bo’s not likely to have run into anything unless he intended to.” He pointed at the pavement where Bo’s bike had gone down. “See this dark patch of rubber? I’m thinking he spun his back tire here, attempting to drift his back wheel. It’s something we used to do as kids. There’s a good chance he ran into one of the bad guys and that’s what damaged his bike.”

Thibodaux walked to the middle of the dark street and did a slow three hundred and sixty degree turn. “Tidy spot for an ambush,” he said. “Especially that early in the morning. All these walls and fences keep everyone cordoned off nicely from the outside world.”

“That looks like a guard shack.” Quinn said, nodding to what looked like a white phone booth on the corner less than fifty feet away.

“It is,” Soledad said.

“Is it not staffed at night?” Miyagi asked.

“Sometimes yes,” Soledad said. “Sometimes no.”

Quinn went to get a better look. Roughly four feet by four feet, it was vacant and secured with a heavy padlock. He could see a ceramic mug and some girlie magazines on the desk, as well as a couple of unopened bottles of water. “Someone’s been here recently,” he said. “Do you think it would have been staffed early this morning?”

“I can check with the company,” Soledad said. She scribbled the telephone number stenciled on the side of the shack into her notebook. “The police may have already—”

Quinn held up his hand, motioning down the street toward an elderly gentleman out walking in the dark with his beagle.

Thibodaux, ever aware of his intimidating size, moved away to give the man plenty of space.

“Could you ask him if he lives around here?” Quinn asked.

Soledad’s smile was visible in the darkness. “Of course,” she said. “Just leave it to me.”

The beagle growled when he saw the group, but the elderly man tipped his hat as he went by.

Quinn could not understand much of what she said, but Soledad introduced herself and then chatted briefly with the man. He became animated and pointed to the guard shack, rattling off what appeared to be directions. Soledad pulled a business card from a clip on her notebook, wrote something on it, and then gave it to the man. He held it briefly to his heart, and then bowed before walking away.

“Did you give him your contact number?” Quinn asked.

Soledad chuckled. “That is already on the card,” she said. “It appears that he is a big fan of my news program. He wished for my autograph. In any case, he did not see anything this morning, but he did hear the sound of yelling and a woman’s screams. By the time he came to his gate only the motorcycles remained. He said the security guard was in his booth during the kidnapping, but that he left before the police arrived.”

“Does he know the guard’s name?” Miyagi asked.

“He does,” Soledad said. “His nickname at least. The guard goes by the name Viscacha. It’s a little animal somewhat like a rabbit or a large packrat. Their meat is actually quite tasty. According to Señor Gomez, this fellow has a pinched face with big ears that resembles one of these creatures.”

Quinn tapped his thigh, gazing into the darkness, thinking. “Could your contact get us his address? I don’t have time to wait until he comes back on duty.”

“We are fortunate there,” Soledad said. “Señor Gomez said that Viscacha works at Liniers tomorrow.”

“Liniers?” Thibodaux asked.

“A cattle market in Buenos Aires,” Soledad said. “More than 40,000 animals are sold here each week to restaurants and supermarkets. Tomorrow is a big sale day.” She looked at her watch. “Cattle lorries will begin to arrive in a few hours. Viscacha works the chutes so he will get to work around four or five in the morning.”

“How about your contacts?” Quinn pushed. “Maybe they can get us his home address so we don’t have to wait.”

“Señor Quinn,” Soledad said, her voice soft but resolute. “I understand your desire to move forward and rescue your brother. But my contacts would not remain my contacts for long if I telephoned them at one o’clock in the morning and asked them to identify a man whom I only know by the nickname of a small animal.”

“I’ll give you that,” Quinn said, feeling the urge to hit something. He turned to head toward Soledad’s car. “Let’s go have a look at this auction place then.”

“Viscacha will not be there for at least four hours,” Soledad said. “We are less than forty minutes away. I suggest you take a moment to eat something in the event that we do not have a chance to do so later.”

Quinn hesitated. Bo was out there somewhere, waiting. Stopping for the trivial human appetites like food and sleep seemed unthinkable.

“She’s right, chère,” Thibodaux said. “We need to be firing on all cylinders when the time comes.

Quinn sighed. “True,” he said. “But I want to get to this Liniers place early enough that we can get the lay of the land.”

“Of course,” Soledad said, starting up her car. “I know a bar that still serves a wonderful milanesa at this time of night. It’s like a beef schnitzel. The owner is a former friend of my father’s so he can be trusted. He is one of the people I have looking for another pistol.”

“That would be good,” Thibodaux said, patting the Taurus in his jacket pocket. “But if we can’t find one, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem to get another when the time comes.”

Chapter 11

Tigre and the others found the judge’s stash of wine, and, for a time, bottles clinked and the wood fire snapped amid the bawdy songs and filthy jokes. The men laughed and farted, raising their voices when they got to the most explicit punchlines so the women inside could hear what was in store for them. Alcohol and the post adrenaline crash from a day of kidnapping and watching two of their compatriots be shot to death, eventually pushed them into deep snoring sleep.

Bo and Alma sat awake in the darkness of the little house, huddled as close as possible against the chill. The cold tile floor sent a sickening ache through the bones in Bo’s hips, but the throbbing pain in his tooth made everything else feel insignificant. Alma, whose hands were cuffed in front of her, did her best to tend to him, administering a few precious drops of clove oil every few minutes. The cold, or maybe it was the nerves, caused her to shiver uncontrollably and she had to brace her body against his to keep from spilling the entire bottle every time.

Steven and Eva leaned together, backs to the wall, in and out of fitful sleep. Matt’s head lolled to his chest, mouth open, drooling.

“I’m not worth any ransom,” Alma blinked back tears. “My father can’t even afford to replace his old pickup truck.”

“Shhh,” Bo said, snuggling closer, fighting the urge to curse at his shackled hands. “We’ll figure something out before then.”

“Maybe things always work out happily ever after in your world,” Alma snapped. “But I have seen too many times they do not.”

“Me too,” Bo whispered.

“I’m sorry,” Alma said. “It is stupid to attack the only friend I have. You must have led a very dangerous life.”

“Not really,” he said.

“Well,” Alma said. “Your ‘not really’ gave you some cruel scars.”

Bo forced a smile. “They’re worse than they look.”

“Perhaps,” she said, sounding far away. “My youth was dull. The most adventure I ever had in Valparaíso was sneaking out at night to go dancing.” She sniffed, wiping away a tear. “Dull does not sound so bad at the moment.”

“Help is on the way,” Bo said. “My brother’s not the type to wait around to make a plan. In the meantime, we need to look around for something to get out of these cuffs—a paperclip, something like that.”

Alma sighed. “I can appreciate your optimism, but does this look like the kind of place where we could find a paperclip?”

“A hairpin, then,” Bo said, refusing to let Alma slide into complete despair. “You’ve seen the judge. I imagine her to be a slave to fashion, even out here among the cattle.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But even if you’re able to pick the locks, what then? We are half naked in the middle of nowhere.”

“To be honest,” Bo said, “I wouldn’t mind a few minutes alone with The Flea.”

“I am not afraid to die,” Alma said. “But the thought of dying among these animals—”

The scrape of a shoe on tile caused her to stop and turn toward the door.

Bo sat up straighter, peering into the darkness.

“How are we doing?” It was The Flea’s croaky voice. Rather than wait for an answer, he strode across the room and planted a boot in Bo’s side, driving the wind from his lungs and cracking at least two ribs.

Bo rolled with the blow, doubling up for the next kick—because guys like The Flea were never content kicking you only once. He coughed and groaned, but refused to cry out.

La Pulga stopped once he judged Bo to be sufficiently tenderized, leaning against the wall on one hand. Panting from his efforts, he looked down at Alma and grinned.

“Are you cold, little one?” he asked, as if he genuinely cared. He squatted down beside her, speaking English, as if he wanted Bo to understand every word. “I know what would make you warm.” His put a hand on her thigh, just above her knee. “Your passport says you are from Chile, so you might not be familiar with the interrogation methods formerly used by our military here in this country.”

“Hey!” Bo grunted. He tried to pull himself into a seated position, but earned another swift kick from The Flea.

“Now,” La Pulga said, settling down beside Alma again. “I was telling you about the military methods. I think your country used the parrilla to warm prisoners up on old bedsprings with a bit of electric current. I suppose it was effective enough, but somewhat . . . hands-off if you ask me. I prefer the more personal touch of the cattle prod.” His hand began to inch upward inside Alma’s bare thigh. “They say it smells like bacon cooking . . . Such a shame to burn this precious flesh.” His voice grew huskier with every word. “But some measures are necessary—”

Alma drew her knees together, trapping The Flea’s hand long enough to launch herself forward and drive her forehead into his nose. He recoiled, doubled his fist to hit her, but Bo wheeled on his hips and reared back with both feet, planting them into the man’s unprotected groin. The Flea fell backward, out of Bo’s reach, but Alma got down, pummeling him in the neck and head with her powerful legs. Bo rolled quickly, intent on getting a leg wrapped around the man’s neck and choking the life out of him.

Unfortunately, Jelly came in and grabbed him by the shoulders, dragging him back across the tile to the wall. The muscular kidnapper gave him a half-hearted swat to the side of the head, but it was apparent he probably wanted to kick La Pulga as well, so there was no force in it.

The Flea clamored to his feet, one hand to his bleeding nose, the other clutching his groin.

Jelly raised both hands and rattled off a string of what sounded like accusatory Spanish. The Flea gave an insolent shrug, and then muttered a few halfhearted words. Jelly stood for a long moment with his arms crossed, as if considering what to do. At length, he shook his head and went out to rouse the sleeping men.

Alone again with his victims, The Flea licked the blood from his upper lip, and squatted down beside Alma again, staying just out of her reach.

“Do not worry, my sweet,” he said, congested from his broken nose. “This place has no electricity, but we will soon be someplace with more . . . how do you say it? Creature comforts. Anticipation is half the fun. No?”

He ventured forward to pat her on the knee again, and then stood before she could react. Bo jumped forward, rattling his handcuffs, causing him to recoil for fear of another attack.

La Pulga stopped cold, a crooked smile spreading over his face.

“You find yourself amusing?” he said. “Let us see how amusing you are when Jelly is not here to protect you.”

He went out the front door, leaving the prisoners alone again.

They were all awake now, staring at Bo and Alma.

Matt’s glare was enough to cut through the shadows. “You’re going to get us all killed,” he said.

“It’s not their fault.” Steven leaned his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I really thought my dad would get something rolling by now.”

Matt turned his glare toward Eva. “What about your dad?” He asked. “He got enough firepower—”

“Shut up!” Steven snapped. “So help me, Matt, I’ll kill you myself if you don’t—”

“If I don’t what?” Matt said. “Lay back and die like a good friend? I’m going to do whatever it takes to stay alive. You can take that to the bank.”

Eva sighed. “They’ll find out soon enough,” she said. “Maybe I can save the rest of you.”

“That’s not the way these guys think,” Bo said. “We keep quiet and let them find out on their own. That gives people time to mount a rescue operation.”

“We’ll see,” Matt said. “But I’m not waiting to get shot in the head.”

Bo turned to Alma. Matt was going to do what he was going to do. He leaned closer. “What did Jelly say when he came in?”

“He yelled at La Pulga for taking liberties,” Alma said. “And reminded him of the judge’s order. Then he said the judge is working out the money details and that she’s not coming back until sometime tomorrow morning. She’s supposed to be bringing an ice chest and enough food for a couple of days.”

“A couple of days?”

“That’s what Jelly said.”

Bo sighed, thinking. “La Pulga seems to think we’ll be at a place with electricity soon.”

Alma shivered. “You think they’re moving us?”

“I do,” Bo said. “And I don’t think Jelly knows.”

* * *

Angelica Medina pushed away from her the laptop and tapped long manicured fingernails on the polished wood beside her keyboard. Her red silk dressing gown flowed down either side of the squeaky office chair where she’d slipped it off her shoulders. The hotel room across the Tancredo Neves Bridge over the Iguazú River in Brazil was cramped and hot but Richter surely had people watching their home in Argentina. Angelica said it did not matter. They could log into their cloaked accounts from anywhere. According to her, the move to a different network would only make them more secure.

The kidnappings had been planned on a whim and she was still in the process of working out the method for Grey to pay the ransom. Justino was not stupid. He understood finance and banking—even the illicit kind. He and Angelica often used offshore banks to hold their proceeds from the illegal adoptions they arranged. The government was hot and cold regarding investigation and prosecution, but a sitting judicial officer could not afford to be found with an overly healthy bank account in the event some enthusiastic prosecutor decided to go snooping. As an attorney, Justino had set up the offshore accounts. But when Angelica started talking about ransoms of Bit-coin and other cryptocurrency, it all went over his head.

The killings at the camp had rattled Justino. Angelica had handed down harsh sentences, but she’d never killed anyone, so far as he knew. He didn’t know what to say to her, so he said nothing, sitting across the room instead, watching and waiting to be told what to do.

A small fan at the corner of the desk oscillated back and forth, caressing her bare shoulders and jostling her hair with every pass. Had Justino not been so terrified, it would have been sexy.

Angelica stared at the monitor for a long moment, then closed her eyes, canting her head in thought. Justino knew this look, and it made the back of his head throb. Defendants in Judge Medina’s courtroom all knew they were doomed if she closed her eyes and turned her head just so.

“What?” Justino said from his spot on the uncomfortable hotel couch. “What have you found?”

Angelica rose from her chair, her head still canted, one eye half closed. Justino started to speak again but she held up her hand to shush him.

She shrugged the dressing gown back over her shoulders. Justino couldn’t help but notice her fingers trembled as she knotted the cord. He’d never seen her kill someone before, certainly not people in her own employ. It made sense that she would be a little shaky after that.

“I am merely exhausted,” she said. “We should get some rest before returning to the camp.”

“But you found something?” Justino pressed. “Is it a problem with the ransom?”

Angelica sighed, a flicker of uncertainty in her eyes. “Eva Turcott is a problem,” she said. “I’d hoped to keep everyone alive for a few days in case we needed them, but I think we need to go ahead and have Jelly take care of her.”

Justino’s mouth fell open. He’d hoped there would be some way out of this madness, some way that didn’t leave a half dozen unmarked graves in the back of his cattle pasture. “Why so soon?”

“Eva is not who we thought she was,” Angelica said. She picked up her mobile from the desk. “The sooner Jelly makes her disappear the better.”

Chapter 12

Soledad had Jericho and the others fed and watered and back en route to the cattle market by two-thirty in the morning. There’d been plenty of coffee and milanesa, but Quinn could only pick at his food. Soledad convinced him to eat a few bites and take a to go mug of yerba mate, which tasted to Quinn like hay and hot water, but at least it woke him up.

They arrived in the rundown Mataderos neighborhood of Buenos Aires a half hour later, parking among rusty livestock trailers and junked pickups behind the block and stucco colonial building that housed the banks that financed the various cattle sales. The business side of the operation had yet to open at the early hour, but the whistle of gauchos and the lowing of cattle drifted through the warm darkness. Mataderos meant slaughterhouse—a convenient term for Quinn’s mood.

Thibodaux took a deep breath. “Smells like money.”

Miyagi shot him a sideways glance.

Soledad smiled. “Money indeed,” she said. “We Argentines each consume, on average, a hundred and fifty pounds of beef per year.” She pointed beyond a two-story office building to the right. “My contact will be inside. This man, Viscacha, will probably be out working the lanes, sorting the cattle as they are dropped off at the far end of the facility. I will go into the office and tell them I am doing research for a news story, ask permission to look around.”

She had changed into a fashionable white cotton blouse, form-fitting jeans, and only slightly more sensible flats, explaining that while they were skilled in the use of guns and knives, she was quite comfortable using the weapons God had given her.

She returned from the office a few minutes later with something long and white in her hand.

“Free calendars,” she said, holding up the roll of cardboard. “People are always giving me things.” She pointed behind her with the calendars. “This place is very large, but we have permission to walk the catwalks to look around. I told the office manager that I might want to chat with a few of the gauchos, and that I was looking for someone with a unique look for the camera—not handsome. He said there is one named Rudolfo who looks like a viscacha. He’s calling him on the radio now. We can meet him up on the catwalks.”

“Outstanding,” Quinn said, tapping the hilt of the gaucho knife under the tail of his shirt.

Acres of cattle, separated into holding pens of the same color and grade, ran along broad driving lanes below the metal catwalks. Buyers would be able to look down from ten or fifteen feet above and bid on the cattle as the auctioneer moved from lot to lot. The pens were already filling to capacity with animals bunched tightly in each one. Men in gaucho berets sat on sheepskin saddle pads, riding up and down the lanes on thick-necked Criollo horses. Some worked livestock, others were buyers who’d arrived early to survey the product without being rushed. Cowboys on foot moved up and down the alleys, driving small herds of newly unloaded animals, sorting them with long poles with plastic bags fastened to the ends.

Torture had given the cattle prod a bad reputation in Argentina. Soledad walked out in front of the group, with Quinn and Thibodaux—and their much more imposing looks—bringing up the rear. Miyagi remained in the shadows, disappearing as only she knew how to disappear. Her job was not to look for Viscacha, but to watch for incoming threats—the “goats” from Thibodaux’s story.

Even the best plans had a way of evaporating at the slightest change of wind, and this one was not even really a plan. Unfortunately, Viscacha was in the middle of a smoke break instead of where his boss thought him to be. Instead of meeting them head-on, he climbed up the catwalk from behind them. He’d been told over the radio that Soledad San Martín wanted to talk to him, but when he caught sight of the mountainous Cajun and an extremely serious Jericho Quinn, he jumped the pipe railing of the catwalk and ran into the darkness.

“Watch him!” Quinn hissed to Jacques as he vaulted over the side, and straight into a pen full of milling black cattle.

Quinn pushed his way through the frightened cows, feeling the heat and humidity that surrounded their bodies. They were packed too tightly to stampede or do much of anything but bawl and take a few terrified steps from one side of the pen to the other.

Viscacha hopped the wooden corral as if pursued by the devil, never once looking back. Quinn could hear Thibodaux running above. Maybe Miyagi was somewhere she could get ahead.

Viscacha cut back under the catwalk, making it impossible for Thibodaux to follow without going halfway around the yard or coming off the catwalk altogether. He didn’t slow down when he reached the alley, darting in front of a herd of oncoming cattle. Quinn pulled up short, narrowly avoiding being trampled. The cowboy at the back waved his stick and shouted something in Spanish but Quinn ran past as soon as the bulk of the cattle went past, waving his hands to cause the last few animals to shy and stop in their tracks.

He wasn’t about to let the only clue he had slip away.

Running again, Quinn bowed his head and dug in to pick up speed. In front of him, Viscacha ducked around a small outbuilding at the back of the yard.

In different circumstances, Quinn might have slowed down, made a more cautious approach. This guy could very well have a weapon.

Quinn swung wide instead, minimizing a possible ambush from running straight around a blind corner. He nearly tripped over the prone body of the man he’d been chasing. A large figure towered over him in the shadows. At first he thought it was Thibodaux, but he wasn’t quite that large—and the big Cajun was behind him.

Quinn was surprised by little in the world, but took a half step back when the man stepped out of the shadows with both hands raised.

“Dad?”

* * *

“What’d you think I would do?” Pete Quinn said once they’d secured an unconscious Viscacha and stowed him in the trunk of the elder Quinn’s rental car.

Both Miyagi and Thibodaux seemed amused at Jericho’s sudden loss of composure. Neither had ever seen him this off kilter, but the appearance of his father had caught him on the back foot.

“I honestly don’t know,” Jericho said. “Maybe call me and let me handle it.”

“Does that sound like something anyone in this family would do? Put yourself in my position.”

“How did you know to come here and look for Viscacha?”

“Your brother had me down as an emergency contact,” Pete Quinn said. “I was at the boat show in LA and hopped the first flight to Buenos Aires. I rented a car and went to the spot where Bo was taken. There’s a little guard shack there. I assumed whoever was in it at the time of the kidnapping probably saw something. There was a calendar inside for this cattle auction with today’s date circled. I figured I’d come here and see what I could find out. It was slim, I know, but my gut said it was worth looking into and I ended up running into this meathead.” He looked at Thibodaux with a narrow eye. “And anyway, what’s a viscacha?”

Soledad stepped forward, extending her hand. “Your gut was correct,” she said, introducing herself. “I see where Jericho gets his instinct and his good looks.”

Pete Quinn gave a shrug. “Not sure about the intellect, but he got his looks from my wife.”

Jericho couldn’t help but smile inside. Pete Quinn never missed the opportunity to mention his bride when speaking to a beautiful woman.

A pounding from the trunk of the rental car brought everyone back to the matter at hand.

“You were right,” Jericho said, as Thibodaux hauled out the mortified Rudolfo.

Soledad had found a photograph of a viscacha on the Internet, and it was easy to see where this guy got his nickname. Big ears stuck out on either side of equally large eyes. His nose was screwed up as if preparing for a sneeze that never came. The split top lip that Quinn’s father had given him only added to the look of a terrified rodent.

Surrounded by a beautiful journalist and four extremely stern foreigners, Viscacha began talking with little prompting. He quickly identified a photograph of Bo from Pete’s cellphone, admitting that he’d seen him along with four others taken from their motorcycles early the morning before. Bo was, according to Viscacha, alive when last he saw him, though badly stunned from a blow to the back of his helmet. “I only saw his face because the kidnappers took his helmet off to make sure he was still alive.”

Viscacha shied away from giving names at first, but, caught between the elder Quinn and Thibodaux, made the wise choice to tell everything.

Soledad translated.

“I did not know all the men involved,” Viscacha said, nearly in tears. “They were wearing masks, but am sure I recognized two of them. The one who hit the blonde man is very small, almost like a child. He is called La Pulga. The other one is called Jelly. I could tell by his great size and the fact that he was with The Flea. Both men work for a judge in Misiones. I only know because my sister wanted to adopt a baby and the judge sold her one. It cost ten thousand U.S. dollars, but my sister did not care. She just wanted a baby. I went with my sister to pick the child up and the men called La Pulga and Jelly were there, to make sure my sister paid her money, I think. You do not forget men like that.”

“This judge,” Jericho said. “What’s his name?”

Viscacha gave an emphatic shake of his head, speaking in heavily accented English now. “The judge is not a man, señor. Her name is Angelica Medina. She is quite beautiful for an older woman.”

Soledad and Miyagi, who were both in their forties, rolled their eyes.

Jericho snapped his fingers in front of Viscacha’s face to bring him back on track. “Let’s say Judge Medina kidnapped someone. Where would she take them?”

Viscacha sighed, weighing his options. A look from Pete Quinn let him know he didn’t have any. “One of two places. I did a little research when I found out where my sister was getting her baby. Judge Medina is a known to be a busca panzas—one who looks for pregnant bellies—to help women like my sister who cannot have children of their own. There is a good chance your friends will be at one of two places, a yerba mate plantation east of Iguazú Falls or a cattle farm that is so close to the Paraná River it is almost in Paraguay.”

“Draw me a map,” Jericho said.

“It will not be exact,” Viscacha said. “But I know the general area. The locations are a matter of public record. I found them myself on the Internet.”

Soledad gave a slight nod, letting the others know this was correct.

“There is one more thing,” Viscacha said. “Judge Medina is married, and I cannot be certain of this, but from the whispered conversations she had with Jelly, I believe the two are lovers.”

Chapter 13

Hours of pain and worry eventually pushed Bo into a dreamless sleep. The warmth of Alma’s skin against his kept him there for over an hour. Both awoke to the sound of Steven’s frenzied cries as Jelly and one of the other men dragged Eva across the tile floor by her arms. It was dark in the little house, but the fire was going again outside and Bo could see in the flickering light through the open front door that she was awake, and fully conscious of the fact that she was being dragged to her death.

Steven tried to follow but Jelly just shoved him back down. The other guard gave him a boot to the ribs to keep him there.

“I love you,” Eva said.

Steven continued to scream until she was out the door. And then he turned his attention to Matt, still slumped by himself on the other side of the room.

“This is your doing!” Steven hissed, spittle flying. His eyes blazed in the darkness. “You cowardly piece of shit! You got her killed. You! Do you understand?” His head sank to his knees. “Oh, Eva . . .”

“I didn’t even tell them,” Matt said, dumbfounded.

“But you told them she was worth a lot of money,” Alma said, refusing to let him off the hook. “And you would have told La Pulga everything if he’d let you.”

Matt began to hyperventilate. “I just . . . I just don’t want to die.”

Bo sighed. “We’re all going to die,” he said. “But the rest of us get to die with some dignity.”

Steven’s head snapped up. He spoke through clenched teeth. “I’ll kill you. If it’s the last thing I do—”

Eva’s screams stopped him cold. They all turned to look toward the door.

A single gunshot cracked outside. Bo’s heart sank. Everyone bowed their heads and Alma began to pray in Spanish.

And then, Eva screamed again, this time with more gusto. Men shouted and more gunshots followed on the heels of the first.

Bo recognized the sound of a gunfight when he heard it. The flat crack of pistol fire and the louder, reverberating booms of a rifle. Rounds snapped against the bricks outside. Men spoke in hushed tones, firing back, and then yelling something Bo couldn’t understand.

The shooting stopped and La Pulga appeared a moment later, backlit in the doorway. Tigre, the guard with the gap in his front teeth, stood beside him leading Eva by the arm. He shoved her inside.

Steven fell back against the wall in shock.

“Get dressed,” La Pulga said, sneering triumphantly. He pulled his pistol and pointed it at Alma. “Tigre will remove your handcuffs. I have no time for games. If you try anything I will kill you all.”

A man with his hair greased back like a wood duck came behind Tigre. Someone outside had built up the fire and it was easier to see.

“There will be no need for that, La Pulga,” the man said, blue eyes shifting around the room, dwelling on Alma’s long legs. He nodded, like someone who’d found what they were looking for in a supermarket, and then gave a little smile. “We are going to a new, more comfortable home,” he said, clapping his hands, each finger wearing a ring.

A slender woman wearing tall leather boots came in next. She was deeply tanned with flaxen hair that appeared to glow in the firelight. She whispered something into the man’s ear. He was obviously the boss.

“Excellent,” the man said. “Violeta tells me my plane will be here momentarily. Please, Tigre, unhook them so they can put their clothing back on. There is a time to take away someone’s clothes—and that time has not yet come. We are not savages.”

The prisoners huddled together as they climbed back into their clammy riding gear.

Bo leaned in closer to Eva. “What happened out there?”

“Jelly led me away from the fire,” she said. “He said he was sorry he had to shoot me but the judge said it was ‘a necessity.’ I never saw anybody with such cold eyes. He had his gun up and everything, about to do it, but La Pulga shot him instead. Then a bunch of other men came out of the trees with rifles. The two guys around the fire tried to shoot it out, but they were drunk and only had handguns. La Pulga and Tigre are the only ones left.”

“The judge?” Bo asked.

The man with the slick hair laughed at that. “I thought she would be here by now,” he said. “She owes me a great deal of money and I thought I might collect before . . . well, you know.”

The drone of an aircraft engine overhead came in through the door. It had landed by the time Tigre had replaced the cuffs, this time with everyone’s hands behind their backs. A thickset man with a gleaming bald head peeked in from outside.

“We are ready to go, Señor Richter.”

“Outstanding,” Richter said, motioning toward the door with a flourish. “Please, after you.”

“You know we’re worth a lot of money,” Matt said, unable to help himself. “My father can make it worth your while. And you already know who Eva is, or you wouldn’t have had your men—”

“I know much, Mr. King,” Richter said. “I think it’s best you keep quiet.”

“Okay,” Matt said. “I just wanted to make sure you’re aware of the entire situation since you’re a new player.”

“I am,” Richter said, rolling his eyes, clearly annoyed.

Bo smiled, trying his best to look as unthreatening as possible. “Come on, Matt,” he said. “Let’s just get to the plane.”

“You get to the plane,” Matt said. “I’m trying to let Mr. Richter here know we’re worth a hell of a lot more alive than dead.” He scoffed. “Well, most of us.”

Alma glared. “Matt!”

“What?” Matt said. “Mr. Richter is a smart man. He said he already knows—”

Richter’s voice was measured, but deadly quiet. “I also said to keep quiet.”

Dense as he was, even Matt understood the implication if he continued to speak.

Richter’s plane turned out to be another Cessna Caravan, this one painted white and red and considerably newer than the one they’d arrived in. It only had seats for eight, not including the cockpit, so several of Richter’s men left the way they’d come, in cars parked somewhere beyond the trees. Only Richter, his tan female companion, and the bald muscle rode in the plane with the prisoners.

It wasn’t until they were on board that Bo realized that the cargo door where they’d entered had been removed, the space secured only with a cargo net of nylon webbing. Richter and the bald man took seats in the back, next to the open hatch, while the woman sat up front in the right seat of the cockpit. The seat directly across from Richter remained vacant until the pilots began their takeoff roll.

Richter motioned for Matt to join him with a flick of his ringed fingers.

“Now we can talk,” he shouted over the wind and engine noise.

Matt shrugged, then wallowed up out of his seat, bending at the waist to make his way down the aisle. Hands cuffed behind him, he had to brace his hips against the seats for support as he went.

Bo caught a telltale glance between Richter and the woman up front about the time Matt reached the rear of the airplane. The woman turned and nodded to the pilot, who dipped the plane slightly to the left, causing Matt to lose his balance and stumble. The bald man helped him along, pushing him toward the webbing, which parted the moment Matt leaned against it. He was gone in an instant, disappearing into the darkness before he even had time to scream.

The plane leveled off, heading northwest and the bald man secured the webbing over the hatch.

Richter rose from his seat and came forward, stopping next to Bo. He nodded toward the hatch. “I call that a win for all of us,” he said. “That was originally going to be you, Mr. Quinn. Matt was certainly worth more money. I simply liked you more than I liked him.”

Chapter 14

Soledad used her pull as a reporter to rent a Piper Navajo—no small feat in the wee hours of the dark morning in a country where most adults ate dinner at nine p.m. and stayed up late. The plane was just large enough to carry everyone. If and when they located Bo, they would have to work out some other form of egress. First things first, Quinn thought, climbing into the low-wing airplane.

Pete Quinn sat with his head leaning against the window, lost in his own thoughts. Jericho’s daughter, Mattie, was eight, but would forever be the five-year-old girl with dark pigtails and puffy-sleeved dresses in his mind, no matter old she was. To Pete his sons were men. He’d certainly raised them to be. But in his heart, they would surely always be boys.

And now one of them was out there, hurt and needing help.

Jericho sat up front, Viscacha’s hand-drawn map on his knee directing the pilot. He’d thought about bringing the big-eared man along with them, if only to keep him from warning Judge Medina. In the end, Quinn decided to leave the talkative man with Soledad’s friend where they’d had their supper. The last time he saw Viscacha, he was drinking beer and eating a milanesa, thankful to be alive after being locked in Pete’s trunk.

The Piper Navajo made short work of the trip north, arriving as the sun was just starting to come up. The pilot stayed low, skimming the treetops over the yerba mate plantation first. The few outbuildings were quiet and there were no visible vehicles in the large gravel lot at the end of the road that cut through the trees.

“Shall I land, Señor?” the pilot asked.

Quinn pressed his face to the window, then turned toward the back of the airplane.

“What do you think, Dad? No movement. Do we land or check the other location?”

“We can always come back,” the elder Quinn said. “I say we check out the cattle operation.”

Quinn gave him a thumbs up, and advised the pilot, who banked back to the right.

The Medinas’ cattle ranch was an hour’s drive by car through winding jungle roads, but it was less than ten minutes by airplane. Quinn saw the glow of the fire outside the dark building when they were still a half mile out.

“Heads up,” he said. “Soledad, you should stick with the plane. If things go bad you and the pilot can go for help.”

She nodded.

Quinn saw the bodies as the pilot came around in a low pass. Two lay face down beside the house, on either side of the fire. Someone, it looked like a woman, knelt beside a third body some hundred feet from the house, at base of a windmill and water tank. It was difficult to tell, but none of the bodies looked the right size and shape to be Bo. It was some consolation, though a small one with so many dead just lying around.

“You have the pistol ready?” Quinn asked, looking back at Jacques.

“Affirmative,” Thibodaux said.

Miyagi spoke while looking out the window, working out her strategy. She held the long gaucho knife by the sheath. “I will circle behind the plane and approach from the south.”

“You’re with me, Dad,” Jericho said.

“Oh,” Pete Quinn said. “You are right about that.”

* * *

Justino Medina was behind the wheel of his car, too stunned to weep. Angelica had abandoned him as soon as they arrived, flinging open her door and falling over Jelly’s dead body as if . . . There was no “as if” about it. It was so clear to him now, all of it. Justino knew she had never planned to spend the ransom money with him. He wondered if the ransom note would eventually lead back to him, leaving her with the money and him rotting in prison. It was all for Jelly, a man fifteen years younger than her. The poor bastard was dead now. Justino felt sorry for him. Lucky for Jelly, he was dead. Richter had certainly been the one to kill him. Or that little piece of shit La Pulga. The fire still burned in front of the Medinas’ little house—a place that held at least a few happy memories. Justino would be dead too had they arrived a few minutes earlier.

He did not even move when the plane landed and shadowed men got out, running toward the house. If The German was coming back to clean up loose ends, that was just fine with Justino. At least he would not have to sit here and watch his wife wail over the body of her handsome young lover.

Justino hunched forward, wiping away his tears with his shirtsleeve and peering through the windshield. It wasn’t Richter, but someone else, three men, one older, one lean and predatory, the other huge, all moving quickly toward the house. Angelica had yet to see them.

Justino glanced to his right at her purse. In her haste to be with Jelly she’d left her pistol. Perhaps if he took it to her, she might forgive him for being so dull, and things would return to the way they had been with her serving sándwiches de miga for tea and pretending that she loved only him—before they became entangled with The German.

The men from the airplane were almost to the house now, trotting.

Justino reached into his wife’s open purse and snatched up the pistol. He had no plan other than to take it to her so she would see him for the devoted husband that he was.

A small Asian woman materialized from the shadows as he got out of the car. Not a fighter at heart, he held up both hands to ward her off. He forgot that he was even holding the pistol. The cruel Asian woman reminded him by cutting off his hand.

He stared down at the pulsing stump, astonished that he felt no pain. He did not see the men as they reached his wife.

* * *

Jericho came to a stop twenty feet from the weeping woman. He recognized her as Judge Medina from a photograph Soledad had found on the Misiones Court homepage. Quinn could see both her hands, but a black pistol lay in the dead man’s fist, forgotten there by whoever had killed him.

Quinn whistled to get the woman’s attention.

“Hey!”

She looked up momentarily, and then bent back over the dead man. His forehead had been shot away, but that didn’t keep her from cradling his face in her hands.

“I’m looking for some friends of mine,” Quinn said.

“They are gone,” the judge sobbed, without looking up this time.

Pete Quinn shot a glance at Jericho. “Gone where?”

“The German took them,” the woman said, breaking down. “He or that traitor La Pulga will kill them soon, just like he killed my Jelly.”

“Where?” Jericho said. “Where has he taken them?”

The judge began to mutter under her breath, swaying maniacally over the dead man. “It would have been so perfect,” she said.

Pete Quinn lowered his voice. “One of them is my son, ma’am,” he said.

Now she looked up.

“Are you Grey?”

Pete shook his head. “Quinn.”

“Bo’s father?” She began to cackle. “The most worthless one of all? You and your son may go to hell!”

She lunged for the gun in Jelly’s fist, earning her a center mass double tap from Thibodaux’s pistol. She pitched forward across her lover’s body.

Miyagi called out from the house. “We are clear!” She trotted up to him a moment later.

Quinn scooped up the Beretta look-alike, press-checked to see there was a round in the chamber, put it on safe and then stuffed it in his waistband. He clenched his teeth at the cows in long morning shadows.

“Let’s get back to the plane and see if Soledad knows who The German is,” he said.

“I have someone who can help,” Miyagi said, hooking a thumb over her shoulder toward the house. “If he hasn’t bled to death or died from his own stupidity.”

“Who is it?” Thibodaux asked as they walked toward the house.

“I believe it’s the judge’s husband,” Miyagi said. She nodded toward a slumped figure with a piece of cloth wrapped around the stump of his wrist. “He was crying when I found him.”

“Well,” Thibodaux whispered. “You sure as hell know how to console a guy.”

* * *

A broken man, Justino Medina proved to be a wealth of knowledge, providing an address to a warehouse on the outskirts of Ciudad del Este in Paraguay where Fernando Richter, a.k.a. The German, had his office and did most of his business. Richter, Medina explained, was a remnant of a society of would-be Aryans who’d immigrated to Paraguay after World War II. The man genuinely believed himself and his blond consort, Violeta, to be the smartest two people in Paraguay, and certainly in the Triple Frontier. He ran guns and drugs and human cargo, and he had police from all three countries in his pocket.

* * *

“It was my wife’s crazy idea,” Justino said, sniffing. “I love her completely, so I went along.” He began to sob in earnest. “And then I find out about Jelly . . . I have nothing more to hide.”

He gave a full confession regarding his part in the kidnapping, naming everyone involved. He even let Soledad record the conversation on her phone.

Thibodaux shot a look at Miyagi.

“This poor bastard’s eatin’ the spaghetti.”

She raised a brow. “Indeed.”

Chapter 15

Bo figured he had maybe an hour to live, less than that if The Flea kept it up.

After dropping Matt King out of his airplane somewhere over the remote jungles of Brazil, Richter had taken them into Paraguay, landing on a small strip along the meandering Monday River. Two black SUVs, which judging from their radios and grill lights did double duty as police vehicles, pulled alongside the plane when it came to a stop. Bo and the others were stuffed inside the back of one of the SUVs, still handcuffed, and the motorcade headed to the northeast toward the sprawling warrens of Ciudad del Este.

The Flea sat in the front passenger seat, turning every so often to leer back at the prisoners, paying special attention to Alma.

“Your friend is jaguar bait by now,” he said. “We could have dropped him into the Paraná or the Iguazú, then he would be fish bait.” The little man laughed. “But there is too great a danger that some passing tour boat or barge might have found his decomposing body before the fish ate him up. The jaguars will make a fast meal of him.”

Alma shivered and turned to look out the window, which only served to urge him on.

“I wonder if he was alive when he reached the trees.” La Pulga shrugged. “He seemed a man of delicate constitution. I think it more likely he had a heart attack as soon as the wind hit his face.”

Alma threw her head back and screamed, “Would you just be quiet?”

“Interesting,” he said. “If you were so fond of him, then why do you take up with your guide?”

Bo leaned forward. “Hey, Flea! Want me to look around for a phonebook back here so you can see over the dashboard?”

La Pulga darkened. “You are so amusing,” he said. “Yes, I am short. You are probably not aware of this, but Richter is famous for several things, chiefly, removing the feet and hands of people who owe him money. There are a wide variety of instruments and tools at his warehouse that I am anxious to try.” He turned to study Bo up and down before a wide smile spread across his face. “I think that you and I will be the same height very soon. In fact, I may even be a little taller than you when we are finished.”

Richter’s SUV peeled off as soon as they reached his two-story warehouse in the outskirts of Ciudad del Este. He and the brown woman went into the front of the building with the bald goon, leaving La Pulga and Tigre to see to the prisoners along with two other men that Bo did not recognize, both with jaguar tattoos on their forearms and each carrying a short-barreled SMG on a single point sling around his neck. Tigre and The Flea tromped up the metal stairs in front of prisoners, while the two jaguar boys brought up the rear.

Tigre took a key from the pocket of his jeans and opened a large padlock on the metal door at the top of the stairs. Bo’s heart sank when he walked in the room and saw clear plastic sheeting fastened to the floor with black gaffer’s tape. There were metal rings affixed to the far wall and a couple of five gallon buckets to use as makeshift toilets. Kidnapping and human trafficking was nothing new to Fernando Richter.

Just as La Pulga had promised, a variety of bone saws, machetes, tinsnips, and hoof nippers hung on a peg board beyond the plastic sheeting.

Tigre and the Jaguar boys secured everyone’s cuffs to the individual metal rings on the far side of the room while La Pulga went to a desk beside the pegboard. He’d obviously been here before and knew his way around.

He shuffled through the desk a moment, then came back with a narrow metal cylinder the size of a long flashlight. A thick copper wire protruded from the sides of the tube three quarters of the way up, coiling around the last six inches of the device. La Pulga’s thumb rested over a red button in the center of a rubber handle.

“The inventor of this little machine called it The Cat,” he said. “A strange turn of events. Don’t you think? The Flea, wielding The Cat.” He chuckled at his joke and ran the copper coil along Alma’s thigh, pushing the button.

She screamed, throwing herself backward at the sudden shock.

Bo lunged, flailing with his free hand and narrowly missing a handful of La Pulga’s sweater.

Instead of retreating, The Flea turned The Cat on Bo, driving the coil into his chest. Pinned against the wall with nowhere to go, Bo jumped and twitched like a piece of frying fish. He slumped against his cuffs when La Pulga released the button, exhausted, stifling a whimper. His tooth was on fire again, and to make matters worse, he was sure he’d just cracked a couple more.

Eva and Alma both screamed.

Steven stood, holding up his free hand. “Just stop it! My father will pay double, but we all have to leave here alive.”

“That is funny,” La Pulga said. “Your father has already agreed to Richter’s terms. Eva’s family may be a bit more problematic, but nothing he cannot handle.” He turned to Alma, giving her a quick jolt with the coil. “I will get back to you in a moment, my darling. First things first, though. Mr. Quinn and I have a little appointment.”

Bo raised his head and gave a weary chuckle. “I thought Richter liked me . . .”

“He liked you better than Matt,” La Pulga said, nodding for Tigre to unhook Bo from the ring. “Not enough to keep you alive.”

* * *

Soledad borrowed a minivan to drive Jericho and the others across the Tancredo Neves Bridge into Brazil, and then the Friendship Bridge from Brazil into Paraguay. Legally, the Americans should have had a visa to enter each country, but Soledad explained that no one would stop them unless they did something stupid to draw attention to themselves.

“Like launching a raid on a known drug lord and smuggler?” Thibodaux said.

“Exactly that sort of thing,” Soledad said.

They reached Richter’s warehouse outside Ciudad del Este an hour and a half after leaving the Medinas’ cattle ranch. They watched as a slender woman in high leather boots stepped outside to retrieve something from one of three black Suburbans parked alongside the concrete building.

“Yuck,” Thibodaux said. “She looks like she’s spent too long in the roaster.”

“That must be Violeta,” Pete Quinn said. “Richter’s girlfriend that Justino told us about. Dark skin, bleached blond hair.”

Soledad gave a low whistle. “She has the body of a twenty-year-old.”

Thibodaux harrumphed. “She better give it back,” he said, “’cause she’s wrinklin’ it.”

Violeta took a moment to scan the area outside the warehouse, missed the minivan completely, and then disappeared back inside.

“How do you plan to do this?” Soledad asked from behind the wheel.

“Richter’s not expecting us,” Jericho said. “I think I’ll walk up and knock on the front door.”

“There appears to be a side entrance,” Miyagi said. “I suggest Jacques and I approach from there, while you make your more direct approach.”

“Where do I go?” Pete Quinn asked.

“You’re with me, Dad,” Jericho said. “Soledad, thank you.”

“I will be here when you come out,” she said.

A sign above the entrance in bold red and black lettering said FERNANDO RICHTER SHIPPING CO.

“We’re at the right place,” Jericho said under his breath. “Makes things easier.”

“Okay, son,” Pete Quinn said. “This is new to me. When you say knock on the front door, you mean—”

Jericho flung open the metal door and shot the two men with guns on the inside, twice each, center mass.

“Knock, knock,” he said. “Just like that.”

Pete Quinn raised his eyebrows and gave his son a nod. “That’s kinda what I envisioned.” He scooped up one of the dead men’s SMGs.

“You know how to use that?” Jericho asked.

“I do,” the elder Quinn said.

Three more of Richter’s thugs came down a long hallway, firing as they approached. Quinn took out the leader with two shots from the Beretta and chased another back around the corner, winging him, but failing to deliver a killing shot.

Pete sent half the thirty-round magazine from his SMG downrange with one pull of the trigger. Fortunately, some of the rounds dropped one of Richter’s men.

“Take it easy with that, Dad,” Jericho said. “Short bursts.”

The second shooter poked his head out again down the hall. Pete dropped him, but spent the last fifteen rounds of his magazine doing it.

“Short bursts,” he said. “Got it.”

Bullets snapped off the wall behind them sending both men jumping for cover. Quinn brought up the Beretta in time to see Violeta slump forward, Miyagi’s blade in and then out of her dark brown throat.

“Goats,” Miyagi said, slipping back into the shadows.

“Why does she say that?” Pete asked.

“Long story,” Jericho said.

Thibodaux’s hushed voice came from the same alcove where Miyagi had disappeared. “It’s me, Chair Force. Don’t shoot.”

“We’re good,” Quinn said.

“Richter’s through there,” the Cajun said. He held up three fingers, his good eye and the Taurus trained down the hall. “Three more goats, but Emiko and I got ’em. You take care of Richter.”

Jericho was already moving toward the office. Quinn flung open the door and handed it to his dad, cutting the pie until the man inside came into view. As he suspected, one more of Richter’s men stood inside guarding the boss. This one was a bald thug wearing a black muscle-mapping shirt. Quinn got off the last round from his Beretta, rushing the shot and catching the big man in the shoulder, missing his vitals. Surprised at being hit, the man lowered his SMG and took a step back. Richter stood in the middle of the office, both hands flat on top of a wooden desk as he rose from his chair.

Pete sprang past Jericho, throwing himself at the bald thug, plowing into him and pummeling him with his fists. Jericho had seen the aftermath of a few of his dad’s fights. The bald guy didn’t stand a chance.

On his feet now, Richter reached for a metal box. His pistol empty, Quinn drew the long gaucho blade from the sheath on his belt and pegged the man’s hand to the top of the wooden desk, the razor-sharp edge facing outward.

Richter squealed in pain, the metal from his many rings clicking against the wooden desktop. He grabbed the wrist of his injured hand and stared down at the blade.

Quinn heard a roar behind him and turned to see his father punch Richter square on the chin. The force of his blow sent the man flying backward, slicing his hand down the centerline and leaving the blade behind, still impaled in the wood.

“Where’s my son?” Pete Quinn said, the bald man’s SMG in his hand now as he loomed over the screaming drug lord. Richter pointed upward, at the ceiling.

“Behind you, Quinn-san,” Miyagi said. She surveyed the wounded Richter and the unconscious bald man. “I’ll take care of them,” she said.

“Jacques?” Jericho asked.

“Out back,” Miyagi said. “Tending to two other goats.”

Jericho took the pistol from the box on Richter’s desk, press-checked it to make sure it was loaded, and then motioned upstairs with the muzzle.

“Let’s go get Bo.”

They cleared the stairs to the second floor in four steps, taking up positions on either side of the door.

“They’ve heard us coming,” the elder Quinn said.

Jericho nodded, the pistol at high ready. “No doubt.”

A scream came from inside the room that made Quinn’s bones ache. There was no doubt it was Bo.

Jericho looked at his father.

“You ready?”

Pete Quinn answered by putting his foot to the door, hooking around the threshold with the short barreled SMG as if he’d grown up kicking doors. Jericho followed him in, bringing the interior of the room into view over the top of his front sight. A gap-toothed thug stood to the right of three badly beaten prisoners—two women and one man—a pistol in his hand. Quinn dropped him with two shots, wheeling immediately to the left. Bo lay on the floor, chained to a metal ring by one hand, while a small man, not much larger than a boy, stood over him with what looked like a cattle prod.

Pete Quinn emptied the magazine of his SMG into The Flea’s chest, causing him to jump and twitch in place, dancing like a marionette.

“Short bursts,” Pete Quinn said, dropping the empty gun and running to his boy.

Bo raised his head, staring dumbfounded.

“Dad?”

Pete fell beside his son, cradling his head in his lap.

Jericho watched the door until Thibodaux appeared there a few moments later. “We’re clear,” the Cajun said.

“This one has the keys,” a young man who had to be Steven Grey said, pointing toward the dead gap-toothed thug.

The blond woman beside him closed her eyes, fighting back tears. The taller one with auburn hair didn’t even fight it.

Quinn unchained Steven, then gave him the key so he could release the rest while he went to check on Bo.

“What the hell, Dad?” Bo said, wincing as he sat up on one elbow. His right front tooth was nothing but a jagged shard and had to be terribly painful.

“How bad are you hurt?” Pete Quinn asked.

“Honestly, it would probably take me less time to tell you what’s not hurt.”

Pete closed his eyes and shook his head. “I have to call your mother and tell her you’re all right.”

“I say again, Dad. What the hell?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Bo groaned. “What are you doing here?”

“You sent an SOS. What did you expect me to do?”

Bo shook his head, looking incredulous. “I don’t know. Call Jericho . . .”

“Well.” Jericho sighed. “I for one am glad he came along, baby brother. Turns out our old man’s pretty good at taking care of meatheads.”

Epilogue

Leaving Paraguay without a visa and entry stamp after a prolonged gun battle would have been much more difficult had it not been for Riley Grey’s anonymous donation of ten brand-new Chevrolet Suburbans. Had immigration officials known that the vehicles were from Grey, they might have held out for twenty.

Soledad said goodbye at the base of the aircraft, vowing to visit the US again one day soon to see her old friend Veronica. She kissed everyone including Miyagi goodbye, catching the Japanese woman off guard.

On board, Doctor Patrick started Bo on fluids and he was asleep by the time the pilots began their takeoff roll. Steven and Eva held hands across the aisle. Alma Cortez sat facing Bo, watching Dr. Patrick take care of him. She’d asked permission to accompany him back to the States, to make sure he was settled.

“He saved our lives on this trip,” she said. “Many times when we did not even know he was doing it.”

Dr. Patrick brought a cellphone back from the galley and handed it to Eva Turcott. Eva punched in a number, then put the call on speaker so Steven could hear.

“. . . United States Drug Enforcement Administration,” the female voice said. “Office of the Director.” A moment later a male voice came on the line. “Director Turcott.”

Eva grinned. “Daddy?”

“Eva?”

“I know it’s been a long time, Dad.” She sniffed. “But I have someone here who wants to talk to you . . .”

* * *

Pete Quinn leaned back in his seat

“We best not tell your mother about what went on here,” he said.

“No doubt,” Jericho chuckled. “You got some moves, old man.”

“An aching back and two delinquent sons is what I got,” Pete said. He took a deep breath and looked at Jericho with a jaundiced eye.

“Tell me again what it is you do for a living.”

Keep reading for a special preview!

NATIONAL SECURITY

A Jericho Quinn Thriller

by

Marc Cameron

Warning: The next terrorist attack on American soil is coming . . . sooner than you think.

They can strike anytime, anywhere. A public landmark. A suburban shopping mall. And now, the human body itself. Three Middle Eastern terrorists have been injected with a biological weapon, human time bombs unleashed on American soil. They are prepared to die. To spread their disease. To annihilate millions. If America hopes to fight this enemy from within, we need a new kind of weapon. Meet Special Agent Jericho Quinn. Air Force veteran. Champion boxer. Trained assassin. Hand-picked for a new global task force that, officially, does not exist, Quinn answers only to the Director of National Intelligence and the President himself.

Under the radar. Brutal. Without limits.

America’s answer to terrorism.

On sale now.

Chapter 1

2 September, 2100 hours

Fallujah, Iraq

Jericho Quinn gunned the throttle, willing more power from the screaming motorcycle.

“Which one is Ghazan?” He threw the words over his shoulder, into the wind as he rode.

Blowing sand scoured his chapped face. He peered through the dusk, squinting, wishing he had a pair of goggles. Something pinched his nose in the gathering darkness—the telltale odor of wet wool seasoned with the sulfur that oozed up from the desert floor.

The smell of a sheep roasting in the flames of hell.

The scent of Iraq.

“There!” Quinn felt his passenger shudder behind him, his words ripped away by the wind.

“Which one?” Quinn scanned a knot of a half dozen FAMs—fighting-age men—loitering at the corner beneath the crumbling walls of a bombed mosque. In the three days following the horrific bombing of a Colorado shopping mall, any semblance of trust between cultures had evaporated from the streets of Iraq. Natives flinched and dropped their eyes when American patrols rolled past. Few in number from cyclical troop drawdown, U.S. forces stood on the edge of a full-blown assault at every encounter. Soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen boiled with righteous anger that over three thousand Americans—most of them women and children—had lost their lives in the blasts.

The worst act of terrorism on American soil since 9/11, the media had dubbed it the Fifth Sunday Bombing—but it was impossible to put a title on something so horrible. Most just spoke in whispered reverence about Colorado. Hunting down those responsible was priority one for men like Jericho Quinn.

Ghazan al Ghazi was the HVT—the high-value target—of the moment. Quinn felt a familiar sensation in the back of his neck—the tingle that told him violence was close at hand—and wondered if he was enjoying this too much. He had no idea what he’d do if peace suddenly broke out in the world. Not much chance of that.

“Which one?” he asked again, leaning back to be certain Sadiq heard him.

“The large one . . . he wears aviator sunglasses. He is tall . . . there on the end with the neck of a bull.” Sadiq groaned, hiding his head against Quinn’s back as he spoke. “A blue shirt . . . open down the front. Please . . . you should drive on. . . .”

In the street, horns honked and beeped, churning up whirling clouds of yellow dust. Thick, angry voices rose into the dusk on ribbons of heat as the snarl of evening traffic came to a standstill. Stopped almost directly in front of their target, Sadiq began to twitch, so much so Quinn was sure it looked as though he was having some kind of fit.

“Hold on,” Quinn yelled in colloquial Arabic as he tried to go around the jam. He nearly spilled avoiding the twisted hulk of a bombed Nissan pickup planted squarely in the road. Giving the bike enough throttle to keep it upright, he ducked down a side street away from the din of cars and military and NGO convoys. Slowing, he made a left turn on a quieter side street.

The motorcycle was a Kaweseki, a Chinese knockoff. Little more than a scooter, it had the look of a Japanese sport bike and the suspension of a skateboard. It was sure to rust or fall to pieces just when he needed it most, but it was what the locals rode. It was all they could afford. As an agent with Air Force Office of Special Investigations or OSI, Quinn had an impressive array of weapons and technology at his disposal. But for the moment he rode a piece-of-junk motorcycle and wore an ankle-length cotton dishdasha, called a man dress by American soldiers. His life, and more important, his mission, depended on the ability to blend in with the locals.

He leaned over the handlebars, twisting the last ounce of horsepower from the protesting Chinese motor. The back tire shimmied, throwing up a shower of gravel as he ducked behind an abandoned café. Behind him, Sadiq clawed at his waist in an effort to hang on.

Despite the fact that he was surrounded by men who would be happy to saw off his head with a dull pocketknife if they discovered who he was, Quinn found the orange-blue dusk oddly soothing. Above the rubble of bombed buildings and rusted vehicle hulks, a neat row of Medjool date palms lined the road, their straight trunks silhouetted against the evening sky. They were reminders of another Iraq, untouched by decades of war.

“Get off at the next corner.” Quinn leaned back as he shouted to the lanky Sunni. The boy spoke passable English, but Quinn kept their conversations in Arabic to pacify any listening ears. “I must hurry and get back to Ghazan before he slips away.”

“You will please pay me—before you go.” The sallow university student’s voice wobbled with a mixture of terror and the disorienting effects of the bumpy ride.

“Get off,” Quinn snapped. “I don’t have time to stop. I’ll pay you later tonight.” Sadiq was a good informant, but he liked to make things more difficult than they needed to be.

“I insist you pay me now.”

Jericho let off the throttle, then gunned it suddenly to spite his rider.

“Must you Americans drive so fast?” Sadiq’s voice was a curdled scream against the wind. “Ghazan is a dangerous man. He may kill you when you speak to him. Where would that leave me?”

One of the countless emaciated stray dogs that roamed the country darted in front of them, eyeing the men like a piece of meat. Quinn horsed the little bike to the right, fearing the flimsy handlebars might snap off in his hands. He took a quick moment to wish for his own motorcycle, a massive BMW 1200 GS Adventure. It was impossible to find a good motorcycle in the desert—at least one that allowed him to look like an Iraqi.

Sadiq yanked to the left to keep his seat, spewing an Arabic oath about Jericho’s family history. Quinn popped the clutch, downshifting to coax just enough power to avoid a spill. The transmission squealed as if it was about to burst into flames.

They shuddered to a stop. Quinn shot a wary glance over his shoulder and ordered Sadiq off the bike in a voice that left no room for argument. He gunned the motor again. Unencumbered by a passenger, the little bike shot forward, back toward the men who would be all too happy to put a bullet in Quinn’s head—or worse. Leaning forward, with the wind in his face, he considered his next move. His Arabic was flawless. Dark skin and a heavy beard helped him blend in with the population.

Very soon, none of that would matter. If all went according to plan, the Iraqi thug in the aviator sunglasses would find out more than he ever wanted to know about Jericho Quinn.

* * *

Ghazan split away from the others a half hour later, walking lazily in front of closed shops, their metal doors rolled to the ground and padlocked to discourage thieves. Quinn followed him a short way on the bike. He had smashed out the headlamp with a shard of brick from the side of the road. A broken headlight in a war-torn country wouldn’t cause a second look and made him more difficult to spot cruising down dark side alleys.

Quinn watched from the shadows as the bull-necked man disappeared into a shabby, three-story concrete apartment building surrounded by heaps of garbage and rubble. He waited until a light on the second-level window flicked on, then took note of its position before stashing the Kaweseki across the street, behind a trash pile almost as high as his head. For a short moment, he considered calling in backup, but in the end settled back on what he’d known from the beginning—some jobs were better done without witnesses. It protected the innocent from having to report his behavior.

Men like Ghazan didn’t worry much about heavy locks on their doors, relying instead on fearsome reputations to keep them safe. It would have been easy to assume the brute was alone, since the light had been off until he arrived. But Quinn knew relying on the probable had gotten a lot of men killed.

So, he would wait alone—and listen.

He crouched in the stifling heat of the concrete stairwell staring at the peeling white paint of Ghazan’s door for what seemed like an eternity. The odor of urine and rotting lemons hung in the stuffy alcove. Feral dogs barked from distant shadows. A tiny hedgehog, no larger than an orange, shuffled by in the darkness. The wail of an ambulance siren cut the night. Here and there, the flat crack of an M4 rifle peppered the air. Quinn’s knees began to ache. It was during just such moments, with sweat soaking the back of his dishdasha, staining the concrete wall behind him, that he took the time to wonder what he was doing. He had a little girl—a five-year-old—whom he hadn’t seen for months. She was with his now ex-wife, back in the cool mountains of Alaska, so far from the grit and gore of this desert and the never-ending war. Missing her, he consoled himself with a quote from Thomas Paine. It was a favorite of his father’s. “If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.”

The telltale hiss of a running shower came through the flimsy wood door and drew Quinn back to reality. He tapped the Sig Sauer pistol beneath his robe, taking a breath of solace in the fact it was there, then drew another item from the folds of his robe. This wasn’t the time for pistol work. Quinn put a hand on the door and took a deep breath, thinking one last time of his daughter before pressing her from his mind while he worked. He knew he should feel guilty about his absence, about the fact that he put his work even above those he loved the most—but he’d save the guilt for later. That’s what made him so good.

* * *

Quinn surprised Ghazan with a snap kick to the groin as he stepped from the shower. Water dripped from the mat of black hair that thatched the Iraqi’s body like a thick rug. The big man roared in alarm, attempting a kick of his own. The wet tile and newfound pain proved too much for his brain to handle and he hit the ground like a hairy sack of bricks.

Wasting no time, Quinn brought up the Taser X26, aiming the red laser dot at the center of Ghazan’s chest. There was a static crackle as twin darts, barbed like straightened fish hooks, unspooled on hairlike wires to strike their target just below the right nipple and above the left knee. The Iraqi’s body went taut and the muscles of his face pulled back in a grimace as fifty thousand volts of electricity arced between the two probes. He tried to cry out from the searing pain, but the best he could muster was a gurgle.

Traditional Tasers carried by law enforcement emitted a five-second burst of energy for each pull of the trigger. Quinn had taken the ride himself, along with his entire class of basic OSI agents. He found it to be like having a five-second full-body cramp, while completely engulfed in molten lava and stabbed in the back with an ice pick. It was something he hoped he’d never have to endure again.

The Taser he carried now had been modified to deliver four times that, completely immobilizing the target with pain and loss of neuromuscular control.

Ghazan’s first twenty-second ride complete, Quinn pulled the trigger a second time. The muscles in the side of the Iraqi’s neck tensed like thick cables, his glistening body arched up, bridging on shoulders and heels. Quinn took the opportunity to stick a small adhesive pad under each of Ghazan’s ears. It was remarkably easy to find a vein and inject the contents of a plastic syringe, then secure his wrists and ankles with heavy plastic zip cuffs. The shock took the path of least resistance, which happened to be between the darts in the Iraqi’s body, so Quinn felt nothing but a mild tingle as he completed his job.

Ghazan fell slack. He gave a pitiful groan and his head lolled to one side. Quinn slapped the man’s cheeks, gaining his attention. He’d be no good if he passed out. The high-dosage scopolamine patches under his ears were already beginning to have the desired effect. His eyes fluttered, but he remained conscious.

“What . . . What do . . . you want?” The big man’s words were a slurred mess, as if he had a mouth full of marbles. “You . . . you will suffer. . . greatly for this. . . .”

“The American soldiers you kidnapped,” Quinn spat in Arabic as he hauled the slippery body upright, propping him against the rough tile wall.

Ghazan gave a rattling chuckle, blinked in an effort to clear his vision. The drugs and fatigue from the two bouts of electric-shock muscle cramping had exhausted him as surely as if he’d run a marathon. “You will die . . . for this insult. . . .” Ghazan swallowed. He smiled dopily. “I am thirsty, my friend. . . .”

Quinn grabbed a bit of the man’s skin on the back of his upper arm, giving it a pinching twist.

Startled as if from another sudden shock, Ghazan yowled. “They will die tonight. . . .” he gasped.

“Where are they?” Quinn leaned forward.

The scopolamine began to combine with the drug Quinn had injected—a derivative of sodium pentathol developed by the Soviets called SP17. Together they induced a state of relaxed euphoria and, if all went well, would turn Ghazan into an Arab version of Chatty Cathy.

“What do you want with the American dogs? Fool! Farooq will kill you.”

“Farooq?”

“You know of the sheikh, yes?” Ghazan stammered. “He is a powerful man . . . with many friends. Get me some water . . . and perhaps I will let you live. . . .”

Another pinch brought a scream and a renewed sense of focus. Quinn kept his voice low, a menacing whisper, slipping seamlessly into English. “I need you to tell me about the Americans. They are my friends.”

“Your friends . . .” Sick realization crept over the big Iraqi’s face. “You are American?”

Quinn nodded slowly. “I am.”

“Impossible,” Ghazan sneered, momentarily coherent. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Quinn drew a long, slender blade from the back of his belt and held it before the Arab’s face.

Ghazan blinked sagging eyes. He gave a tight chuckle, trying to convince himself. “Put that thing away. It does not frighten me. You Americans . . . you have told the world. You are disgusted by the mere idea of torture.”

“We are disgusted by it,” Quinn said, nodding slightly. “I am sickened by the act.” He pressed the point of his blade up Ghazan’s flared nostril until a trickle of blood flowed down his twitching lip. “And yet, I find myself needing the information inside your head.” Quinn shrugged, drawing a fresh trickle of blood. “I am disgusted not for what it does to scum like you, but for what it does to the one inflicting the pain. Such violence does irreparable emotional harm to the torturer. . . .” The tip of his knife remained motionless, now more than an inch inside the big Iraqi’s nose. “Some say it damages them beyond repair.”

Quinn leaned in, almost touching the sweating man’s face with his forehead, close enough to smell the odor of spiced chickpeas he’d eaten for supper. “The bad news for you,” he whispered, “is that I’m already damaged. . . .”

* * *

Ghazan wept like a baby, but in the end, the drugs and the threat of a man even more cruel than himself loosened his mind and his tongue. He gave up an address in a bombed-over suburb outside Fallujah where American hostages were supposedly being kept. In his panic he offered information that some of the hostages were to be killed that very night as a show of insurgent solidarity.

The contents of a second syringe sent the Iraqi’s head lolling against the wet concrete, snoring. Quinn stared at him for a long moment, thinking of the innocent people the terrorist was responsible for killing. He held the knife in his clenched fist and considered all the events that had brought him up to this point. He was not yet thirty-five, a government agent, Fulbright scholar, father, PTA volunteer. . . and an extremely talented killer. The world was a very strange place.

It seemed such a simple thing to slide the razor-sharp blade between Ghazan’s hairy ribs and scramble his black heart like an egg. . . .

Instead, Quinn wiped the knife clean and reached inside the folds of his dishdasha for his secure radio, wondering just how damaged he was.

“This is Copper Three-Zero,” he said. “I have high value target Juliet for immediate pickup. . . .”

* * *

Quinn dialed his encrypted cell phone on the way back to his stashed motorcycle.

Sadiq answered, “Assalaamu alaikum, Jericho. I am so pleased that you have remained alive to pay me.”

Quinn returned the greeting and repeated the address Ghazan had provided.

“Mean anything to you?” he said.

“Nothing,” Sadiq said. “But that neighborhood is a Sunni stronghold, very dangerous.”

Quinn laughed to himself. All of Fallujah was a Sunni stronghold. “Ghazan mentioned a man named Farooq. Have you heard of him?”

The line was silent.

“Sadiq?”

“I know of this man. Most simply call him the sheikh. It is said that this man was behind the bombing of your Colorado shopping mall. He has vowed to bring the Great Satan to its knees. Your Fifth Sunday Bombing, it is said, is just the beginning. He plans something far worse. . . .”

“In the United States?” Quinn held the phone against his ear with his shoulder as he pushed the motorcycle from the shadows behind the stinking pile of cans, rotting fruit, and pungent diapers.

“Most definitely in the United States,” Sadiq said, preoccupied. “He wants to punish the Great Satan on American soil.... Jericho, these hostages, they are to be killed?”

“So says Ghazan al Ghazi.”

“In that case,” Sadiq said. “Be very careful you do not get killed yourself. Remember, I have yet to receive payment.”

“Thanks for your concern.” Quinn couldn’t help but shake his head at his informant’s abrupt manner. The kid was right though, lives ended in the blink of an eye in this part of the world. “I’ll see that you are rewarded, no matter what happens to me.” He ended the call and sped into the darkness as fast as the rattling little Kaweseki would carry him.

Intelligence was a perishable substance and if he intended to save the American prisoners, he had to move fast. Worse, he’d have to enlist the help of a man he despised.

A native of Texas, Marc Cameron has spent over twenty-nine years in law enforcement. His assignments have taken him from rural Alaska to Manhattan, from Canada to Mexico, and points in between. A second-degree black belt in jujitsu, he often teaches defensive tactics to law enforcement agencies and civilian groups. Cameron presently lives in Alaska with his wife and his BMW motorcycle.