“So you’re saying that recovering Harry is more important than saving Maddy.” Rocco met Travis’s gaze. “Got it.”
“You haven’t got
shit.
” Travis rocked onto the balls of his feet. “You can’t even see how you’re being manipulated. Tran’s going after anyone he thinks you care about and you’re playing right into his hands. You’re too damn close to the situation. That’s why I’m doing this.” Travis turned to his watchers. “Get him out of here. Take him to this address.” He withdrew a slip of paper from his pocket.
“You can’t be serious!” Rocco wasn’t about to be locked down. “You’ve got to trust me!”
Travis exhaled, clearly exasperated. “I do trust you. Like a brother. The problem is, I know you. And I’d do the same thing you’re contemplating.”
“Then at least let me work it stateside.”
“You can work it from lockdown.”
“But what if Tran goes after someone else now that he can’t reach Adele?”
“To get to you?” Travis sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “If there’s someone new you’re seeing, I’ll order her picked up as well.”
“Not new, but someone I still care about. You’ve got to let me contact Gena.”
“I don’t believe this!” The scowl on Travis’s face deepened. “Since when have you been in contact with her?”
“I haven’t been.” Dreams didn’t count. “Not in years.”
“Then she’s just as likely off Tran’s radar—which is where I want to keep her.”
“What if Tran gets wind that the Thai government is looking for Harry and does some checking on his background?”
“Fine. I’ll get someone to check on Gena.” Travis turned to the other two men. “Now what are you waiting for? Get him out of here!”
Harlan County, Kentucky
October 4, 1:25 A.M.
Mission incomplete.
Find Rufin.
Find Hades.
No! Find Max. “Remember our plan!”
Searing heat erupted beneath Taz’s skull. Wrong thinking always triggered a penalty. The painful pressure took out his sense of equilibrium. Then it cut off his vision with a suddenness akin to the earth collapsing beneath his feet. The sensation of free-falling in unending darkness nauseated him as his suffering expanded.
You will do what we say.
We control you.
He crashed on the roadway, tumbling head over heels. The asphalt stung him as it scraped his skin, but it was the jaw-busting blow to his chin that he welcomed. For with physical pain came clarity.
He felt his arms and legs twitch and realized he was
having a seizure. In the middle of a bloody highway, for God’s sake!
Roll. Roll.
Using the last of his dwindling concentration, he forced his body to move. First he flipped onto his back, then up onto his side and over. Blind and off balance, Taz prayed his movement was linear versus circular.
The pain in his skull spiked again, threatening to crush his consciousness.
Don’t think. Don’t pray. Just roll.
The next time he became aware, he felt coarse grass and bits of gravel scraping his cheek. He was facedown in the dirt. That the ground was softer and more uneven confirmed he’d at least made it off the roadbed.
For some reason, dying in a ditch seemed preferable to being run over and smashed to smithereens by a tractor trailer.
He recalled the cabin he’d been holed up in the last few nights. It had appeared out of nowhere, replete with clothes, food, supplies. But how he’d gotten there was a mystery. Had he imagined it? Flickering memories of climbing out of a ravine and wandering for days didn’t quite fill in all the blanks.
Maybe he should have stayed at the cabin a while longer. It had been quiet and deserted. Except, the owner would have returned sooner or later. And the growing urgency to find Rufin allowed Taz no respite.
Mission incomplete.
Flipping onto his back took most of his strength, but this time when he opened his eyes he saw tiny pinpricks of light high above.
Stars. Billions of them. Crikey, when was the last
time he’d even seen the night sky? Just admired it, lying softly beneath it?
A woman’s voice teased his ear.
“And every night we’re apart, I’ll look up at the sky and think of you. Knowing you’re out there somewhere, looking up at the very same stars. Hurry home to me!”
Taz writhed as white-hot agony ripped down his spine like a glowing welder’s torch. The price for a memory of love was the worst.
Those memories aren’t real. Forget them.
Bullshit! He recalled the scent of roses and screamed as fire licked through his veins.
“Hurry home.”
It was too late. He could never go home.
Tears rolled down his cheeks as he surrendered his thoughts.
Mission incomplete.
The phrase played over and over in his mind.
Roger,
Taz acknowledged when he finally regained some control. He needed to find Dr. Rufin in order to complete the mission. The problem was, he had no idea where Rufin was. The telepathic link between them was gone. Or broken.
Taz had a vague recollection of discussing a contingency plan with Hades, but whatever strategy they’d formulated was also gone. Unfortunately, the urge to follow through—find Rufin—had not abated. In fact, it grew stronger and carried the threat that to not follow through meant punishment for someone he loved.
The scent of roses. No! If they harmed her …
I will find Rufin!
Even if that meant opening his connection to Hades once more, something Taz had actively resisted. The mixed messages he received from Hades—
“I’m Max, not Hades. You’re Logan, not
Taz”
—were confusing and ultimately short-circuited his thinking.
So why the hell could he tune into Hades’ thought but not Rufin’s? Practice? He and Hades had done it for months. Had Rufin tested the connection more than once?
Doesn’t matter.
The fact was, Taz had no choice but to contact Hades. He needed Hades’ help to find Dr. Rufin.
Closing his eyes, Taz drew his awareness into his body, focusing on his breath first, then on his heartbeat, then finally on his individual molecules. He concentrated, sensing the electrical pulse darting between cells.
On. Off.
And in that tiny space between flashes, he slipped free, to another level of mind.
Here, for a short time at least, Taz could direct and manipulate the thoughts of others. Most others anyway. He could also access a direct link to Hades.
Help me, Hades.
The message Taz sent was guarded. Not so much language as image. Sensation.
Hades’ response was swift. Strong.
I’m here.
Or rather,
we’re
here.
Taz realized Hades was with a woman. He opened his side of the connection fully, briefly, and sensed the fierce bond between Hades and this female. That Hades would risk hell’s punishment to love again astounded Taz. Instinctively he pulled away.
Wait!
Hades called out.
I can help you. Tell me where you are.
A sudden and overwhelming blitz of sensory data hit Taz, shattering the connection to Hades. Taz snapped
back to reality, hyperaware of his surroundings. A car had slowed, pulled over.
He’d been spotted.
A woman, no two women, exited the car simultaneously and ran toward where he lay. The woman carrying the flashlight gasped and skittered to a stop. “I think … he’s dead.”
Taz raised his head and groaned, getting their attention. Both women scrambled toward him once again. They were young; college age.
He managed to perform a quick mental intrusion and learned the women were headed home, to Tennessee, from Eastern Kentucky University.
The blonde with the flashlight dropped to her knees beside him. “You’re hurt. Don’t try to move. Mary Anne can call an ambulance.”
“I’m fine.” Taz winced as he pushed up on his elbows. “Maybe a scrape or two, but nothing serious. Bet I looked like roadkill.”
The one named Mary Anne glanced around the highway. “What happened? Where’s your car?”
“I was hitchhiking.” Taz realized his blunder as the women exchanged uneasy looks. Both wondered why he was hitchhiking this late at night, on a relatively deserted highway. Then he caught an undercurrent of fear. Double crikey! Mary Anne had just seen a horror movie with that same theme.
“I’ve been backpacking up in Cranks Creek,” Taz rushed on. “But a bear wandered into my camp and demolished my tent, my sleeping bag. Everything. I decided to head back to civilization and spend my last few nights in a motel, but I sure picked the wrong road to thumb a ride on. The only car that came by
didn’t see me. I jumped back, but he still clipped me with the fender and kept on going.”
“That’s hit and run,” the first girl said.
Liz.
Her name was Liz. “Did you get a tag number?”
“Nah. Too dark.” Eager to demonstrate that he was unharmed—and harmless—Taz pushed to his feet. “A hot shower will fix what ails me. That and talking to my girlfriend. Trip’s been miserable without her.”
Mary Anne and Liz both grinned, their relief evident. “We can give you a ride to the next town if you like.”
Taz smiled.
I like.
“If it’s no trouble that would be great.”
Edroy, TX
October 4, 4:15 A.M.
The
whoop-whoop
reverberation of another medivac helicopter lifting off into the night faded. Until a second one moved in,
whoop-whoop
, cleared to land.
Harry Gambrel had been lucky, pulling into the rest area not too far from Corpus Christi, just before the fiery, multicar crash closed the northbound lanes of Interstate 37.
Adding insult to injury, gawkers in the southbound lane had triggered a second, even more horrific accident that included two buses and a fuel truck. The fireball had lit up the night like high noon.
“Rubbernecking freaks,” he muttered, watching the scene beyond the crowded rest area’s parking lot continue to unfold.
Sirens wailed, indistinguishable from one another. According to news reports, traffic was backed up for twenty-plus miles in both directions. Harry could believe it.
Red and blue strobe lights flashed as far as he could see. Every cop, every fire truck, every ambulance in the southern part of the Lone Star state must have been there, which made him nervous.
That they were too busy to notice anyone in the rest area didn’t do much to help. He didn’t like being confined.
The whole thing reminded Harry of a scene from the Iraq War. He’d felt trapped back then, too.
Sweat beaded on his upper lip as he fought the flashback. Damn insurgents had moved in on the survivors of the ambushed supply convoy that Harry had hooked a ride with. Moving fast, Harry had scrambled over the wrecked Humvee to get behind a twenty-year-old Marine sniper.
Ramming a fresh clip into his nine-mil, Harry had prepared to take his own life. What the insurgents would do to a captured soldier paled in comparison to what a captured CIA operative faced. They’d skin Harry alive just to celebrate.
The sweet sound of an incoming air attack—twin Apaches raining hot lead, clearing a space so a Black-hawk could land—had sounded like angels singing.
Unfortunately, the ballsy Marine had taken a fatal hit. Harry had rolled the kid’s body away and kept on firing even though the insurgents had either fled or already been mowed down.
Harry had received credit for most of the kid’s kills, which had bought him his pick of assignments. The assignments had all basically sucked, but getting back on Travis Franks’s team had been Harry’s only goal at the time.
Back then those bastards got all the cushy jobs. When it came to connections, Travis Franks was
rumored to have God’s ear. Returning to Travis’s fold had meant sucking up to Rocco Taylor—a bitter irony since it had been Rocco’s fault that Harry had gotten kicked off Travis’s team to begin with. One more strike against his “old buddy” Rocco.
The idiom that it wasn’t what you knew but whom had since become a guiding principle in Harry’s life. Cultivating connections and multiple backup positions over the years had served him well.
As yet another medivac helicopter lifted off the interstate, Harry peered through the blinds of his old Winnebago. At least he wasn’t stuck out in the un-moving traffic. He’d spent the last three hours in relative comfort.
He tried his cell phone again but got the “all circuits are busy” recording. Not too surprising. A disaster like this quickly overwhelmed cell towers. Chances were good his contact, Edguardo, was stuck out there in traffic now, no more able than Harry to get a cell phone signal.
And once he did hear from Edguardo, they would need to decide on another location to make the transfer since the rest area probably wouldn’t clear out for a while. Lifting an unconscious woman from a car trunk was one of those things that went better under the cover of darkness.
The good news was he’d worked with Edguardo several years ago and knew the Mexican mercenary was dependable. He’d stay the course.
Edguardo had two other advantages: one, he’d worked with the Rialto family, the powerful Ecuadorian drug cartel that had expressed interest in the exclusive right to produce SugarCane, a high-powered designer opium that the dope fiends of the world
craved. The Rialto cartel had a reputation for honoring commitments, a rare trait among South American crime alliances. The Rialtos also had the cash to back up their promise to top any competitive bid.
Until recently, ’Cane had been available only through Minh Tran. Harry knew this because he’d supplied the drug to Tran. But not anymore. The supply line had dried up months ago and Dr. Rufin was the only one who could restock it. Since there was no repairing the hostility Minh Tran now felt, Harry was a free agent.
Once Harry recovered Dr. Rufin,
again,
and secured the formula for SugarCane, Edguardo could serve as Harry’s go-between with the Rialto cartel.
Edguardo’s second advantage was his unwitting status as a guinea pig. Edguardo’s failure to recognize “Bob Munson” as Harry Gambrel meant that Harry’s disguise was solid. A good plastic surgeon was worth any fee.