Hell Dawn

“It’s not her fault,” Cardenas said.

Cortez shot him a look and the guy shrank a little bit. “So now you’re sticking up for her.”

“All I’m saying is, it’s not her fault. Mendoza did it, not her. She just asked to go into town without the guards. She wasn’t trying to start trouble. She sure as hell didn’t want Mendoza to flip out or Carlos to die.”

Cortez started to argue the point, thought better of it and clamped his jaw shut. The other man was right. Mendoza’s wife wasn’t the problem; he was the problem. He’d been losing his grip on reality for months now, becoming increasingly paranoid and irrational with each passing day.

“When’s the guy coming?” Cortez asked.

Cardenas checked his watch. “Twenty-five minutes.”

Cortez nodded. “Good.”

“Yeah, good unless Mendoza loses his cool and blows the deal. Then Jack Mace will turn tail and leave. And he’ll take his money with him.”

“The hell he will! Mace wanted this Fox guy in the worst way. You think that once he stands within grabbing distance of Fox he’s suddenly going to change his mind, turn tail and head back to Africa? All just because Mendoza’s a flake? C’mon, man, keep your damn head on straight. This is bigger than a couple of personalities.”

“I don’t know…”

“You’re right. You don’t know. So quit worrying about it and leave stuff to me. Now, get the hell out of here and get to work.”

When Cortez was alone, he stared skyward. He squinted against the sun’s glare but enjoyed the warm rays bathing his skin. He sighed deeply and thought about what had to be done next. Though he still considered himself loyal to Mendoza, his first loyalty lay with himself. In the past several months the old man had become more and more out of touch with reality. Maybe it was the drugs he used. Maybe he was intoxicated with the beauty of the caramel-skinned woman who shared his bed. Cortez didn’t know and he didn’t care. All he knew was that he’d sacrificed his career, his honor, to serve Mendoza.

Cortez would have to see for himself how far gone Mendoza had become. If he didn’t like what he saw, he would take out the bastard. As far as he was concerned, Mendoza had already served his purpose. He’d paid for their trip to the United States, their weapons and equipment and the bribes necessary to snatch Gabriel Fox. And, whatever Cortez’s boss failed to supply, Jack Mace had happily filled the gap.

Frankly, Cortez neither liked nor trusted either man. But he dismissed his misgivings with a shrug. He was in it for the massive payday it promised. Other than that, everyone could go to hell.

Cortez slipped inside the house. The air-conditioned atmosphere cooled the sweat that had beaded on his forehead, his neck and the small of his back. He slid off his sunglasses, slipped them into his breast pocket and wound his way through the corridors of the massive house. Occasionally he passed one of Mendoza’s gunners and acknowledged the guy with a nod. All the security people knew him and let him pass without incident.

The Mexican knew that Mendoza took his lunch on the terrace, and he likely still would be there. Or he would be about ready to take a siesta. Either way, Cortez wanted to see him, look into his eyes, look into his soul, to see if he was still up to the challenge that lay ahead.

If not, Cortez would have no problem using the Glock 19 that rode at his waist. A couple of well-placed shots and he’d send the guy straight to hell.

Cortez had grown up in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, one of eight children raised in poverty. His father worked at the docks. Though he broke his back fourteen hours a day unloading ships, he barely made enough to feed his family or to keep the bank from snatching away the hovel they’d called home. His mother was given to long bouts of depression that caused her to stay in bed for days and sometimes weeks, shutters drawn despite the sweltering heat, and weep for hours on end. It was this sort of misery Cortez associated with poverty, and he wanted no part of it.

When he had become old enough, he’d lied about his age and joined the Mexican army. After that, he had become a police officer, and eventually joined an antidrug squad. The endless hours of paramilitary drills and urban combat training had helped hone his killing skills to a keening edge. The work had meant a steady paycheck. But he still supplemented it with bribes offered up by drug lords willing to exchange their money for their lives. In short, he knew how to survive. He’d proved that much when he’d chopped down that damn American in Colorado. And he would do it again as many times as was necessary to get where and what he wanted, which was money and security. Get that, he reasoned, and anything else he could want would follow.

He took the elevator to the second floor, made his way down the corridor until he reached Mendoza’s room. He rapped sharply on the door but waited for an invitation to enter. He heard footsteps and moment later, the door opened and he saw one of his men, Garcia, peering at him through the space between the door and the jamb.

“Hey,” Garcia said.

Cortez nodded. The door swung open.

Stepping inside, Cortez glanced around the room and found Mendoza seated in a corner. The old man nursed a cigar and a bluish haze hung heavily in the room. Mendoza gave Cortez a wide grin and gestured for the younger man to sit in a chair opposite him. Cortez strode to the chair, dropped into it.

“Welcome back, my friend,” Mendoza said. “I trust your mission to Colorado went well? You did a good job for me?”

Cortez seated himself across from the drug lord. He smiled and nodded at the older man. “It went well. The proof’s downstairs. You hear anything from Mace?”

“He’s coming. It won’t be long now.”

“Has he transferred the rest of the money yet?”

Mendoza shook his head. “We got a third up front. We get the rest when we hand over the American. You already knew that. What’s the problem? You don’t trust me now?”

Cortez feigned a surprised look. “Hey, you know better than that. I trust you with my life. It’s Mace I’ve got the issues with. I want to make sure we get what’s coming to us.”

Mendoza gave him a hard look. “You heard something?”

“No,” Cortez replied, shaking his head. “Just my gut talking. Something tells me this SOB will stick us. I’ll feel better when we’re rid of him, that’s all I’m saying. I don’t want him to put one over on you.”

“You let me deal with Mace.”

“Sure. I was just giving you something to think about.”

Mendoza cut him off with a gesture. “I don’t need it. This is all under control. My control.”

“Sure. I’m just saying this scientist is the most important thing. If I were you, I’d focus on getting the money.”

The drug lord smacked an open palm against the table and it caused a thunderous noise. “I got it, damn it! I got it! You understand me?”

Feigning surprise, Cortez held up his hands, palms facing outward in a calming gesture. “Sure. I got it.”

“Any problem with the snatch?”

“We took out at least one police officer and left two others for dead. We killed some bystanders, too. What can I say? They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

“It will put them on our trail.”

“You think they weren’t going to follow us otherwise? What, we were going to kidnap a guy in broad daylight and the police wouldn’t investigate?”

Mendoza’s eyes narrowed and he leaned forward in his chair. “You should’ve paid some people off. That’s what I’m saying.”

“With all due respect, that was risky, too. The more folks we bribe, the more there are to sell us out. This was supposed to be a quick strike. In and out. It went bad.”

Mendoza’s nostrils flared and his fists clenched until the knuckles whitened. Cortez felt adrenaline spike through his system. The muscles in his neck, shoulders and legs tensed as he prepared to launch himself at Mendoza.

Before either man could act, the door opened and a small man dressed in a well-tailored blue suit stepped inside. “Mace is here,” he said.

Mendoza stood and two men helped him shrug into his jacket. He stared down at Cortez who waited for him to speak his piece.

“I want you to stay here,” he said.

“What?”

“You don’t trust this guy? Fine. But I don’t want you out there asking questions and pissing him off. You stay here.”

“Damn it—”

“Stay!”

Cortez threw up his hands and looked away from Mendoza. The drug lord smiled and, flanked by his security entourage, left the room.

Reaching into his pocket, Cortez touched a business-card-size CD that lay inside and smiled. The CD contained a copy of the Cold Earth worm that he had found hidden within the seams of the American’s coat. Cortez had known for months that his partnership with Mendoza was fragile, primarily because of the fragility of Mendoza’s mind. When he’d found the small CD during the return trip to Mexico, Cortez had known instantly that he had found a way to profitably end the partnership.

CHAPTER SIX

Denver, Colorado

The wait seemed to last forever.

Lyons and Blancanales sat in the hospital waiting room. Lyons, his face scarlet with anger, tapped his foot to some unheard manic beat and stared at the double doors leading into the critical care unit. Blancanales drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair as both men waited for information regarding their wounded comrade.

“That black-coated son of a bitch is mine,” Lyons said.

“Stand in line,” Blancanales replied. Lyons gave him a look that told him he was willing to do anything but that.

“Did the Farm get anything on him yet?”

“Negative,” Blancanales said. “They’re running all the usual traps. They found the abandoned car, or what was left of it, anyway, on the outskirts of town. Got a forensics team checking it out. And we do have some satellite photos that the cyberteam is running through its databases. Aaron said they look to have some positive ID within the hour.”

“Good. He doing okay? About Gabe, I mean?”

Blancanales shrugged. “As well as can be expected. He’s kicking the shit out of himself because he couldn’t do anything to help.”

“That isn’t right. I ought to kick his ass for even thinking that way. No one expected him to do any ground fighting. He was just there to make the contact.”

“Sure, but that isn’t how he sees it. He feels responsible for this kid and seems to think he should’ve done more. And I guess if I was in his situation, I’d feel the same damn way.”

Lyons grunted. “Maybe. But that doesn’t make it right.”

Blancanales smiled at his friend, who continued staring at the doors. “Anyway, maybe Jack can give Aaron a pep talk. You know, snap him out of it,” Blancanales said.

Lyons grunted once more and the two men fell silent.

Blancanales had just downed a Coke and some peanuts when a doctor stepped through the doors. She was petite, with blond hair and the golden tan of someone who spent a lot of time outdoors. A white lab coat covered her surgical scrubs and she clutched a clipboard to her chest. Letting the door swing shut behind her, she swept her eyes over the room and searched for the Stony Man commandos.

Blancanales uncoiled from his chair and met her halfway across the room, Lyons right behind him. The three exchanged brief introductions and handshakes. Using a right forefinger, the woman pushed her wire-rimmed glasses off the bridge of her nose and studied the chart in her left hand.

“Your friend’s been through a lot,” she said. “One slug penetrated his abdomen, but fortunately missed his vital organs. Another bullet cracked two ribs. One of the ribs struck a lung and bruised it. If you hadn’t gotten him in here when you did, he could have died within hours.”

Blancanales’s hands bunched into fists. He squeezed them tight as rage coursed through his body, a malignant force that seemed to overtake him. He hoped that Kurtzman and the cyberteam had been able to track down information on the shooter. He’d known Schwarz nearly his entire adult life. The two guys, along with Lyons, were fellow warriors, brothers in blood. And Blancanales vowed at that moment to extract some payback from the guy responsible for nearly killing his oldest friend. A glance at the man standing next to him told Blancanales that his friend was likewise ready to unleash a torrent of hell on the man responsible for this.

“Can we see him?” Blancanales asked.

“I can take you back there for a couple of minutes. But no longer. Like I said, he’s been through a lot, and he needs his rest.”

“Understood,” Lyons said. Blancanales nodded in agreement.

When they reached the unit, Lyons bulled his way through a pair of curtains that led into Schwarz’s room. Blancanales saw his friend stiffen, his jaw clench. An instant later he saw why. Schwarz lay on the bed, pale, unconscious. A ventilator tube wound from his mouth, held in place by medical tape. IV tubes snaked down from liquid-filled plastic bags before biting into the flesh of his arms. A heart monitor was clamped over his index finger and an occasional beep sounded as the monitor did its work. Blancanales swallowed hard.

“He unconscious?” the warrior asked.

The doctor nodded. “We had to sedate him heavily to keep him from rejecting the ventilator tube.”

“He looks like hell,” Lyons said.

“He’ll be okay,” the doctor replied. “Now that we’ve found the problem, he just needs time to recuperate.”

The doctor excused herself. Lyons and Blancanales stood at their friend’s bedside. Both men remained quiet, their eyes focused on Schwarz, for a full two minutes.

Lyons, his face a mask of rage, turned to Blancanales. “The guy who did this.” A cold rage, barely restrained, was audible in his voice. He paused as he searched for the right words. “When we find him, it isn’t going to be pretty.”

Blancanales nodded. “No, it won’t.”

“This is going to cost the bastard. We’re talking serious payback.”

“In spades, amigo.”

“We watch out for each other, right?”

“Damn straight.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

“Just think. Within days, we could have it. And it would give us the power necessary to get revenge on the United States for daring to desecrate our lands with its troops. It’s a like a gift from almighty God Himself.”

“Perhaps,” Ahmed Quissad said, unimpressed.

The former Iraqi soldier stood and crossed the room with long strides until he reached a pane of one-way glass. Stretching the length of one wall, the glass looked down upon a crowded nightclub located in one of Prague’s busier tourist districts. Quissad watched as men and women danced, drank and caroused. He found himself alternately fascinated and disgusted by their behavior, grinding against one another, sweating like animals, succumbing to decadent abandon. Though muffled by layers of soundproofing, Quissad still heard the thumping of industrial dance music as it reverberated through the nightclub below.

Animals and nothing more, he thought. Reflected in the glass, he saw his lieutenant—Tariq Khan—standing behind him, staring at his back. Apparently the little man wanted a reply. Quissad waited, knowing that the heavy silence, and the man’s sickening need for praise, would cause him to become restless.

“It is good news, yes?”

Quissad took a drag from his cigarette, shrugged. “Perhaps. What does our friend want for this piece of technology?”

“It’s a disk, one containing a virulent program—”

“Yes, yes. We’ve been over that before,” Quissad said. “Answer my question. What does our newfound friend want for his discovery?”

“One hundred million—U.S. dollars.”

Quissad turned and pinned the other man under his gaze. “One hundred million? For a diskette the size of a business card? Surely you must be joking.”

Khan shook his head. “Not at all. And, with all due respect, I think it’s a bargain.”

“And I think you’re very generous with my money.”

“It will sell for five times that much. Perhaps more.”

Quissad shrugged again, turned back to the one-way window. He watched the club patrons as they continued their rapturous gyrations on the dance floor. “You have a buyer?”

“Yes. And I can get us more, if you’d like.”

“I’d like.”

Khan straightened his posture, smiled. “Consider it done.” He backed away to the door.

Quissad watched his reflection in the glass, but didn’t turn and directly acknowledge his departure. He’d learned a long time ago that ignoring others only made them want to please you more. Khan, a former intelligence officer with Saddam Hussein’s government, was no exception. Though he boasted an impressive array of underworld contacts and provided invaluable information almost daily, his need to please drained Quissad. Quissad made sure those working for him got very little in the way of acknowledgment. If he’d learned anything from the deposed dictator, it was to control others through fear and uncertainty. A man who found himself on uncertain ground had little time to plot against you, not when he was worried about his own fate.

The small man exited, shutting the door softly behind him. Quissad watched the dance floor a few minutes longer. He fixed his gaze on a leggy brunette, her eyes closed, pelvis gyrating in tandem with the pounding rhythms. For a moment his mind toyed with the notion of those same hips grinding hard against his own, accompanied by sweetly satisfied groans filling his ears. He’d seen her in the club twice during the past two weeks and found himself struck by her beauty. She’d made eye contact with him both times, rousing his suspicions. He was, after all, a man on the run. He didn’t want to betray himself by involving himself with a strange woman who might also be an undercover agent. No, he’d come much too far to take such chances. Still, she intrigued him in a way he found almost intoxicating. He loved the hunt a great deal, but it was the kill that he lived for.

He made his way to a brown leather sofa and fell heavily into it. His jacket popped open, revealing the SIG-Sauer P-226 holstered in a shoulder rig. He liked the gun, and it made him feel safe. A glance at a bank of monitors on a nearby wall told him that his guards were posted outside his door, ready to stop any interlopers dead in their tracks.

He was secure and alone, and it gave him time to think about how he’d gotten to this point. He’d been a commander with Fedayeen Saddam, the former dictator’s elite army, before America had invaded his homeland. During the initial days of the invasion, he’d welcomed the challenge, been all too happy to ply his bloody skills against American soldiers. He’d even taken it a step further, occasionally killing Iraqi citizens and making it appear that they’d died at the hands of Americans. Yes, he’d fought like a man possessed. It wasn’t so much a loyalty to Iraq’s ruler, or to his homeland. Quissad had just needed the release. He’d spent a good deal of his time feeling like a fighter jet that flew unarmed and in slow, small circles. Lots of deadly capacity, but no chance to unleash it. For him it had been a mind-blowing pleasure as he’d never experienced.

When Baghdad fell, he, like other Iraqi soldiers, had shed his uniform and melted into the background. For months he performed double duty. He supplied his tactical expertise and muscle to the insurgency, while also commanding a small group of kidnappers that stole children from Iraq’s upper crust: doctors, lawyers, even his former comrades from the regime.

It had been with great reluctance that Quissad had left the country. Again, his reluctance had had nothing to do with patriotism; he’d simply wanted to spill blood. He’d been born with an unquenchable bloodlust. He knew he could kill. He’d burned, stabbed, shot and otherwise savaged Iraqis and Kurds dozens of times. Each time he’d expected the repetition to rob the experience of its joy. It never did. Rather, his bloodlust continued to return, each time with greater regularity, an unquenchable thirst that cried out with greater volume to be satisfied.

Before the war, he’d always reasoned that all-out combat would provide him with ample bloodshed to slake his thirst. Instead it had only intensified his need until it drove his every action. Now, with the Cold Earth worm and its potential to kill hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, he could finally satiate and silence the voices that drove him, prompted his every action and decision.

The very notion of such wholesale destruction caused his mouth to feel dry and hot, his nerves to tingle, and he knew better. Whether the worm was used once or a dozen times to snuff out life, it’d never be enough for him. And the best part was that he’d sell it to someone else and let them take the fall while he took their money.

He swallowed two amphetamine capsules, washed them down with a glass of water, and thought longingly of the joint in the glove compartment of his BMW parked in a garage under the club. Later, he decided. He slipped another cigarette into his mouth. Torching it with an ornate gold lighter, he settled back into the couch and stared up at the ceiling. Things definitely were falling into place for him. Within a few days, he’d be a hell of a lot richer and the world much bloodier. It was almost too good to be true.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The Black Hawk helicopter carrying Able Team skimmed over the trees. The rotor wash beat down on branches below, flattening them or causing them to whip about wildly as the craft closed in on a predetermined landing spot.

Blancanales checked over his weapons and other equipment. A glance around told him that Lyons and Grimaldi were doing likewise. A Drug Enforcement Administration pilot was navigating the craft to their destination. Another DEA agent, James Larkin, rode with the commandos.

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