Survival (15 page)

He got it loose and felt his hair, which was greasy from being under the wrap. A ridge at the back of his head got his attention – a strip of stitches, now removed, but still swollen.

And yet he had no recollection of a head injury, much less getting patched back up. He wondered whether he could have suffered some sort of brain damage that had expunged his memory, but since there was nothing he could do about it if he had, he dismissed it as a distraction.

He studied the IV cannula in his arm and the pulse oximeter on his finger. The monitor behind him beeped softly with each beat of his heart, but instead of reassuring him, it annoyed him.

He needed to get out of the hospital. Now.

Because…

It all came back to him in a rush. Of course. He had a job to do. One that he obviously hadn’t finished. But he needed to if he was going to get paid.

Eyeing the IV, he saw that it was only plasma, no antibiotic in the mixture, and was barely dripping, keeping him hydrated. He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but judging by the healing scar, it had to have been at least a week.

He drew a deep breath and extracted the cannula, then applied pressure to the vein until the hole in his skin had clotted. He waited an extra minute and wondered whether he had any clothes in the small closet on the other end of the room. Only one way to find out, he figured, and sat up.

His head throbbed a protest, but it was manageable. He’d dealt with worse. The bullet scars and knife wound were more than enough proof of that. He waited, looking at the other beds, all empty, which was a mixed blessing – if he’d had roommates, at least they might have had clothes, increasing the odds of his being able to slip away without attracting attention. A naked man would draw stares.

When he felt stable, he removed the pulse oximeter sensor and cringed involuntarily at the alarm that sounded from both the infernal machine and the nurse’s station down the hall. Running footsteps greeted him as he walked unsteadily toward the closet, and he swung the door open, half leaning against it for balance.

Maybe he’d been bedridden for more than a week, he thought sourly as a frumpy nurse with a frizz of curly red hair filled the doorway.

He ignored her and studied his clothes – the pants were ripped at the knees, and his shirt was missing. At least his windbreaker was there, if a little worse for wear.

“You…you need to lie back down. You’re in no condition to be up,” the nurse said, surprise and caution in her voice.

Drago cleared his throat, and it felt sore. He must have been intubated, judging by the raw swelling. Up until a day or two ago, he knew from prior experience. After two days it wouldn’t still hurt.

“I need to go,” he said, the four words all he could manage.

“Go? You can’t go. You can barely stand.”

He looked down at his bare legs and the blue paper gown he was wearing. “How long have…how long have I been here?”

“Nine days. You’re lucky to be alive. You suffered a concussion, broken ribs, blood loss, hypothermia…”

“Where?”

The nurse didn’t understand the question, so he narrowed it for her. “Where was I found?”

“You don’t remember? It was north of Santiago. In the mountains. Near San Felipe.”

Right. That rang a bell.

“Where am I?”

“In Santiago. At the specialty hospital. Neurology. You were in a coma. There was subcranial bleeding. They were able to stop it and dissolve the clots, but you didn’t regain consciousness…until now.”

“Well, I’m leaving. You can stay if you want to watch me dress,” he said, and retrieved his clothes from the hangers. At least someone had laundered them, he noted, as he turned toward her.

“I’m calling the doctor. You’re endangering yourself.”

“I appreciate that, but I’m an adult.”

“You’re not well.”

He tore the robe off and stood, naked, staring her down. “Are we done?”

She turned and practically ran out of the room.

He had his pants on and his windbreaker zipped up in twenty seconds, and then cursed silently when he realized he had no shoes. But he’d be able to deal with these inconveniences once he was out of the hospital. The first vulnerable pedestrian within reach would supply him with sufficient money to buy essentials – and most importantly, would probably have a phone.

Because, Drago thought, he needed to make a few calls and reassure his client that he was on the job.

And then finish it before the client expressed his displeasure in an unmistakable, and permanent, way.

Chapter 22

Colón, Panama

Jet walked quietly down the dark winding street to the waterfront, cautiously aware of her surroundings, the area deserted except for the occasional scavenger rooting through the garbage. The heat was still oppressive and the air heavy with moisture, the humidity and temperature a constant at the equator.

She’d changed out of her heels and donned her boots, and the Vibram soles were silent on the pavement in spite of her hurried pace. She’d gone back to her hotel and gotten her bag, slipping out without the night clerk seeing her – not hard given the volume of the television in the office near the front desk.

The clerk had looked up when the brass bell mounted above the door had sounded, but his curiosity had only extended to a glance, and by then she was already over the threshold and on the sidewalk. Jet breezed past a group of teenagers loitering in the doorway of a run-down building, their sneers and bold looks of no consequence to her, and stopped at the corner market to get a bottle of water, partly to ensure they didn’t follow her. She wasn’t worried about fending for herself, but she didn’t have the time to deal with any distractions and so opted for discretion.

When she returned to the street, she was relieved to see that the group hadn’t moved, and she continued around the corner to the main street that led to the waterfront. It would take her no more than fifteen minutes to make it to the statue, an iconic centerpiece in a park that ran down the center of the main boulevard just before it dead-ended at the Caribbean Sea.

The streets were empty, the main boulevard lined by structures in serious disrepair, plaster peeling off the façades, doorways boarded up, and trash choking the gutters. As she neared the park, she made a mental note that the Colón waterfront was not the neighborhood in which to take a pleasure stroll at night. She caught movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced over her shoulder – no obvious danger, just a drunk vagrant passing a bottle of cheap rum to a companion in a darkened doorway.

She crossed a side street to another long block where bright yellow, green, pink, red, and blue houses fronted the street. Their porch lights were mostly broken or turned off, leaving only slim illumination from the infrequent streetlamps to light her way. The contrast between Colón and the seemingly boundless prosperity of Panama City, on the opposite end of the canal, was stark, and she wouldn’t be sad to see the last of Colón once she’d done her deal with the two miscreants.

As she passed a pink and white church at Calle 5ta, the buildings degraded even further, becoming abandoned husks, windows broken out and doors sealed with discarded wood scavenged from pallets and crates. Now the graffiti was constant, running across every surface –turf marks from street gangs to warn away any would-be interlopers.

She gazed down the length of the remaining park, which was dark as a tomb, and slowed her pace. The location of the meet was troubling, but not overtly so. Criminals tended to favor the shadows, and it didn’t surprise her that those engaged in human trafficking might want to do their transactions in a place where the police didn’t dare go. Her eyes swept the area as she walked the final two blocks to the statue. The bronze depiction of Columbus was faintly visible against the partially cloudy night sky, standing silent in the boulevard park lined by palm trees, the greenery of its grass marred by garbage.

A loud crack like a sound-suppressed rifle startled her from her right and she spun, ducking. Her eye roamed over the two-story clapboard building from where the sound had come and she relaxed. Laundry hung from a clothesline, and one of the wet sheets had caught in a random gust from the sea and slapped the deteriorating wood siding. She willed her breathing back to normal, and her pulse slowed to its usual moderate pace.

She stopped at the cement base of the statue and looked around. There was nobody about, anyone sane having abandoned the dangerous streets to the nocturnal predators. She waited, watching her surroundings, occasionally checking her watch. The two losers were late, but that hardly surprised her – they hadn’t impressed her as being particularly organized or punctual.

Muffled footsteps greeted her from the side street, and she turned to see who was approaching. It was the thinner of the pair, still wearing his hoodie and glancing around nervously, possibly because even a lowlife like him wasn’t comfortable in the deserted area.

When he was ten feet away, he stopped. Jet didn’t like that he had his hands in his hoodie’s pockets, nor how his eyes never stopped roaming around the park.

“You got the money?” he asked in a low voice.

“Of course,” she answered.

“Let’s see it.”

She reached into her bag and pulled out a wad of hundreds secured with a rubber band. “See?”

The thin man offered her a skeletal grin. “Hand it over.”

“Not so fast. Where’s your pilot buddy?”

“He’s waiting for me to call him and confirm you paid.”

Jet shook her head and replaced the wad of cash into her bag. “That’s not how I play. No pilot, no money.”

The thin man took a step toward her, his expression tightening. “Give me the money,” he snarled.

Jet heard a scrape from behind her and spun just in time to avoid being brained by Bottle-face swinging a length of heavy chain at her head. The chain struck a glancing blow on her left shoulder, and her whole arm went numb. But she remained in motion, and she followed through on her move by whipping an eighteen-inch length of pipe from her bag and swinging it hard against Bottle-face’s ribs. Her efforts were rewarded by his scream of rage and pain as several of them broke with audible snaps.

Jet didn’t have time to congratulate herself – the thin scumbag was rushing her with a knife. She had to keep him far enough away that he couldn’t stab her, the pipe and the reach of her legs her only options. She’d trained sufficiently and been in enough hand-to-hand combat situations to know that if he got close enough to use the knife, even if she won the fight, she’d be cut up, the only question being how badly.

Fortunately the thin man wasn’t very good with the blade, and when he took a swipe at her she easily avoided it before kicking him full in the center of the chest, knocking the wind out of him. He wavered for a split second, just long enough for her to bring the pipe to bear on him, and when it struck his hip he blanched and went down, hard.

Bottle-face had recovered enough to swing the chain again, but he was too slow, and she jumped back with catlike grace. He glowered as she flexed her left hand, willing the feeling to return, and he swung at her again. This time she didn’t jump back, but rather ducked the blow and slammed him in the knee with the pipe. He howled in agony as his leg buckled, his kneecap shattered, the pain obviously excruciating.

She regarded the two downed men, both having apparently lost their appetite for tackling her a third time, replaced the pipe in her bag, and removed the Glock, chambering a round. The two men’s eyes widened at the sight of the gun wielded by the completely calm, hardly winded woman who now had it trained on the thin man’s head.

“Everyone dies eventually. Tonight could be your turn.”

He shook his head and dropped the knife. “No. Please.”

“Where’s the pilot?” Neither said anything. She pointed the gun at the thin man’s knee. “You don’t answer, you’ll be walking around on sticks the rest of your miserable life. I’m looking for an excuse to shoot you. Please. Please give me one.”

The thin man grimaced in pain. “There…is…no…pilot.”

“So this was all a setup for your incompetent robbery attempt?” Her face darkened with anger at having wasted valuable time she didn’t have.

The distant rumble of engines from the canal drifted over the waterfront as huge ships worked their way through the harbor to begin their trip to the Pacific side.

Jet considered further injuring the men but decided against it. Right now they’d have to go to a hospital for the broken bones and contusions, but they probably wouldn’t tell anyone that a woman had beat them up when they were trying to assault her. If she took this any further, they might have second thoughts. Best to leave them to their fate and get going while she could make a clean getaway.

“You two are so lucky my friend hasn’t shown up yet. He’d take great pleasure in carving you into dog food with your own knife.” She paused and looked them over. “Empty your pockets.”

Bottle-face glared at her. “What?”

“Empty them. I want to see your wallets and your money, so I know who he should come after if I hear you’re causing us any grief.” She motioned with her gun. “Do it, or I’m going to play drums on your skull with the pipe. Want to add a concussion to your night’s earnings? Try me. Or maybe I’ll just wait for him to get here and leave him to deal with you.”

They had their wallets out in seconds.

“Toss them over here,” she said. Jet took their driver’s licenses and all their money – maybe sixty dollars between them. She stood and slipped the Glock back into her bag and waved the money at them. “Pleasure doing business with you. I ever see either one of you again, you’re going to be in wheelchairs. Do you understand me?”

They nodded, and she pocketed their IDs and cash. There was no point in prolonging the exchange, so she pirouetted and sprinted into the darkness, leaving them to find their way to help on their own. By the time they did, she’d be long gone from the area, although her problem hadn’t changed – she needed to get to Colombia, and there was no land route through the Darién Gap. Which meant she was right back where she’d started the evening, and had only a few more hours to find someone to help her.