JET - Escape: (Volume 9) (11 page)

She ignored the look of venom the saleswomen threw her on the way out and gave herself a moment to reacclimate to the heat after the chill of the air-conditioning. Thunder rumbled in the near distance, echoing off the buildings as the morning sky darkened. Jet noted the gathering clouds and walked toward the corner to head back to the clinic. As she did, she caught a glimpse of two young men keeping pace with her. Her inner alarms sounded, but outwardly she remained calm and oblivious, and when she stopped at a shop window to look at a pair of shoes, she appeared to be innocently window shopping, her eyes hidden by the sunglasses she’d slipped on as she’d left the store.

There was no mistaking it. The two men had slowed and were watching her.

~ ~ ~

Matt nodded at the attendant behind the reception desk and led Hannah to the exam room, following another nurse who’d called for them in a tired voice. She took Hannah’s temperature and blood pressure, verified a few statistics on the paperwork Jet had filled out, and left the room. Five minutes went by and a kindly woman in her thirties entered, a stethoscope around her neck, heavy tortoiseshell-framed glasses on her round face.

After doing a short examination, she stepped away from Hannah and made a few notes as she reported to Matt. “She has an upper respiratory infection that looks like it started in her throat. You can see some white by her tonsils. I’ll give her a shot of broad-spectrum antibiotic, and then you need to keep her on oral medication for five more days. Does she have any allergies?”

“No. Is she okay to travel?”

“The more rest she gets, the better, but it should pose no danger to her. Just keep her hydrated and don’t miss any of the meds. And don’t let her stop taking them once she improves – she needs to finish the full five days or runs the risk of relapsing, only this time with drug resistance.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll be right back with the shot and a bottle of medicine. You’ll only need ten pills, one in the morning, one in the evening. With food and a full glass of water.”

Hannah watched with frightened eyes as the doctor left. Matt did his best to calm her, assuring her that the shot would only sting for a moment, and that he would see to it she got ice cream once they left the clinic. The mention of a treat calmed her down, although she was still agitated as they waited.

“Where Mama?” she asked in a small voice.

“She’s going to be right back, honey. She just had to go call someone.”

“Who?”

“A friend.”

“Oh.”

When the doctor returned, Hannah reluctantly rolled over and prepared for the indignity of a shot as Matt held her tiny hand, his eyes locked on hers.

~ ~ ~

Jet immediately suspected the woman at the store who’d been so objectionable of setting up a mugging. She’d probably texted a boyfriend to alert him that a pigeon would be leaving the shop flush with cash, ripe for plucking. Jet cursed the distraction from her primary objective, but understood that she’d have to deal with the threat. The only good news was that she wouldn’t have to do much to lure them to a desolate spot – they’d think themselves lucky when she turned down an empty street, creating an opportunity to rob her.

She glanced at her watch and sighed. No point in delaying the inevitable, although if she could lose them, that would be cleaner. There was always the chance she’d attract the attention of a passing cop as she was taking them down, and that could quickly escalate into disaster.

Jet abruptly turned and took long strides. She made it to the corner in seconds. As she rounded it, she disappeared from their view, and sprinted down the street toward the clinic. The street was empty, the district one of offices, not retail shops, which worked to her advantage in covering ground, but against her as any sort of deterrent to her pursuers.

The pounding of running feet behind her told her everything she needed to know. The muggers weren’t going to allow her to escape, so she would need to put them out of their misery somewhere private.

There.

She spotted a narrow pedestrian walkway on her left, leading a block down to a park, shadowed by trees. Not perfect, but it would do.

If she timed it right, she’d be out of sight for a few precious seconds – long enough to prepare herself to deal with the men without having to pull her pistol. Thunder roared overhead, but she didn’t waver, now laser-focused on dispatching her assailants.

She stopped and turned to face the men as they came, her hands on her hips, like a headmistress waiting to scold two misbehaving students. Jet saw that they were barely out of their teens, but the flash of steel in their hands told her they meant business.

Jet altered her stance imperceptibly, relaxing the tension in her shoulders as she opted against pulling the gun from where it was hidden at the small of her back. The men slowed and approached with a swagger, overconfident, which was good. She removed her sunglasses and slipped them into her pocket, and then met the nearest youth’s eyes.

“You don’t want to do this. When you’re on your way to the hospital, remember that I gave you fair warning,” she said quietly.

Both men chuckled. “Bitch, give us the money or we’ll gut you like a fish,” the closest mugger snarled.

She shrugged and began closing the distance between them, a hint of a smile playing across her face as thunder boomed around them.

“Have it your way.”

Chapter 17

Officer Emilio Lopez had been a proud member of the Cúcuta police force for nine years, during which time he’d distinguished himself by showing up to work sober most days, never having a brutality charge filed against him, and staying awake the majority of his shifts.

Cúcuta was a gateway for cocaine traffic to Venezuela, but a largely peaceful one, the territory well established as the turf of the Vicente Miguel organization, one of the most violent groups in the country. As such, none of its rivals dared challenge it in its home district, and a cautious peace had prevailed over the growing city for two decades, leaving it up to Officer Lopez to extort money from illegal vendors and prostitutes when he could – even a cop didn’t dare confront the street dealers, all of whom were affiliated with the group. An enterprising man, he bolstered his illicit income by acting as an informant to Mosises’ gang, offering regular reports on the Vicente Miguel cartel’s operations, for which he was paid a pittance.

All of which meant that he made far less than his police brethren in larger towns like Medellín or Bogotá – a fact that embittered him no end. But today that was all about to change. Mosises had sent over a photograph of a woman he was on the hunt for, along with her companions: a white man with a broken hand, and a little girl.

When he’d caught a glimpse of a trio matching that description crossing the parking lot on their way to the clinic, he’d done a double take, and then had promptly telephoned his contact in Mosises’ group and claimed the generous bounty for spotting them. He’d been told to watch the small building and report immediately if they left, which he agreed to do, although he couldn’t be obvious about it – he had other duties to attend to, and didn’t want to have to share his reward. So he’d kept an eye on the clinic as much as he could, only pausing to go inside the police station to answer questions or fill out reports.

He’d caught a glimpse of the woman leaving twenty minutes ago, but the man and the girl weren’t with her, so she’d be back – probably going for breakfast or coffee. The wait to see a doctor was usually terrible in the mornings, he knew from experience.

Thunder rumbled from a line of leaden clouds gathering by the foothills and he cursed under his breath. The last thing he wanted to have to do was maintain a vigil on the clinic in the rain. So far he’d played off his loitering around the front of the station house as waiting for a robbery victim to arrive and file a complaint, but nobody would believe he was doing so in a downpour. His mind worked furiously on a plausible alternative explanation with which to satisfy his supervisor, who only minutes before had demanded how much more time he was going to waste waiting for his invented victim to arrive, but a long night of coconut rum and cigars with the boys had left Lopez’s head somewhat fuzzy this morning, and he was drawing a blank.

Another peal of thunder, this one closer and louder, exploded from the sky, causing him to jump. The downpour would start any minute, he knew. The region’s storms came on suddenly and raged for a few hours, and then faded just as quickly as they’d arrived, like the angry mood of a petulant child. The air felt heavy with moisture, and the distinctive smell of ozone and approaching rain drifted on the light breeze.

An SUV caught his eye as it pulled around the corner and rolled to a stop at the edge of the parking lot, its windows down. Lightning lit the nearby clouds, followed by a loud boom, and he looked over his shoulder at the gathering storm. A flash drew his attention back to the vehicle, and then his mouth dropped open as a woman stepped from the passenger side of the SUV with a rocket launcher and took careful aim. He stood frozen as a smoke trail streaked from the vehicle and through the front doors of the clinic.

The shockwave from the explosion rattled his teeth as he stood, stunned. Voices yelled from inside the police station, and then the woman fired another rocket from beside the vehicle, into the clinic’s rear window. The detonation blew part of the roof into the air, and an orange fireball blasted skyward.

The Jeep roared away as Lopez fumbled his pistol into his hand, his movements seeming to him to be in slow motion. He fired at the vehicle as it screeched around the corner – mainly so he would have appeared to have done something, not because he thought he had a chance in hell of hitting it. Three officers, all with guns drawn, surged out of the station entrance as the heavens opened and rain began falling, lightly at first. Lopez stood frozen at the sight of the clinic ablaze, and then his captain was shaking him by the shoulders.

“What happened?” he demanded.

“I…a truck fired two missiles at the clinic,” Lopez blurted.

“What? Description. What kind of truck?” the captain barked, and Lopez turned from the grim scene and began earning his finder’s fee in earnest. He would describe an SUV, maybe a Dodge or a Ford, dark color, but they’d never find it – he’d see to that.

Any sense of guilt or responsibility for the slaughter quickly vanished as his own complicity dawned on him. Colluding with a cartel on a savage attack on a children’s clinic would easily land him in jail for the rest of his short life if his role were discovered. He pushed the mental image of dead mothers and babies aside and began doing damage control – there was nothing he could do to help the kids now, and it wasn’t like he’d known that Mosises’ people would stage a stunt like this.

“It was an older Ford, I think. An Explorer. I don’t think it had any plates.”

~ ~ ~

Jet was only a few meters from the first mugger when the whump of an explosion reached her. The man was momentarily startled by the sound, and she used his hesitation to pivot kick the knife from his hand, sending it skittering across the pavement as she followed through with a pair of strikes to his chest that sent him tumbling backward.

A second explosion boomed, and Jet parried the remaining assailant’s clumsy knife swipe and brought her elbow down on his forearm, snapping the radius and ulna with a crack. He howled in pain and released the weapon, his arm now useless, and she rabbit-punched him in the throat, dropping him like a bag of rocks.

The entire confrontation was over in seconds, leaving both men disabled, lying on the ground. Rain splattered around them, and after kicking their knives down the street, Jet bolted for the clinic – her stomach in a twisted knot as she ran through the drizzle, the sound of explosions impossible to mistake for thunder.

Jet covered the distance in under a minute. When she arrived at the parking lot, she stared at the clinic in horror, the structure belching black smoke from every opening. The rainstorm was intensifying, the cloudburst now coming down in sheets, but she sprinted for the smoldering building’s gaping entry, oblivious to the downpour.

“Hannah! Hannah!” she cried as she neared the gutted structure, ignoring the deluge as her panic mounted. She slowed as she approached the demolished doors and swallowed hard when she spotted the charred remains of a child’s arm in the wreckage. “Oh…God, no…”

“Mama!” Hannah’s voice cut through the storm. For a moment Jet thought she was hallucinating, and she looked around wildly.

“Hannah?” Jet called, and was rewarded by Matt’s voice from the rear of the building.

“We’re back here.”

Jet tore around the corner of the clinic. She pulled up short when she saw Matt holding Hannah in his arms, his bag hanging from his shoulder, water running down their faces. “You’re alive!” she cried and ran to them, simultaneously laughing and crying with relief.

“Barely,” Matt said. “We have to get out of here. This was a rocket attack. The first one blew through the front of the clinic. We were in the back with the doctor, and I barely got Hannah out the rear door before a second one hit the exam room.”

“Rockets?” Jet repeated in disbelief. She peered around the area, the heavy rain limiting visibility, and turned to Matt. “Come on. I see our way out.”

Chapter 18

Drago finished with the woman at the rental car desk in the Cúcuta airport terminal and followed her directions to a nearby bus stop, where a shuttle took him to the rental parking lot. He tossed his bag onto the passenger seat and glanced up at the clouds, the storm off the Andes rushing towards him. The final half hour of his flight in the prop plane had felt like an amusement park ride, the turbulent air over the mountains combining with the front making for an unpleasant approach to the border city.

A tree of lightning flashed nearby, answered a moment later by thunder. He slid behind the wheel and started the engine, and his phone vibrated. He scanned the messages that were being intercepted from Renaldo’s phone and stopped at the latest one – an informer had spotted his quarry at a clinic ten minutes from the airport.