Miguel watched as the car slowed down but failed to make the turn. Still unable to see the occupant’s face, he lifted the assault rifle that sat next to the window. He was beginning to feel a little freaked out himself. First the Federales had appeared and now this. Some bad shit was going down and he was too long in the tooth to be unprepared. At the sight of the older and more experienced man lifting his rifle, Hector reached for his and cocked it, ready to go.

Pytor watched Sean’s car as he approached the house. Unfortunately, the glare of the sun was hitting his windshield and all he knew was that the woman was about to get a visitor. Pyotr nudged Alexa awake and she raised her camera and shot off a few snaps of the car as it slowed down near the house.

“What should we do?” she asked.

“Who knows?” responded Pytor. “We don’t even know why we’re here, I mean exactly what are we surveilling?!”

“So you’ve not heard back from Mikhail?”

“Nothing.”

“So we just sit in the car watching the house?”

“Those are the orders,” confirmed Pyotr. His voice did not hide the monotony that he expected. He had been doing this for many, many years.

Sean recognized the young boy from his photo. He had obviously just finished school and was walking home. Sean had passed the school when he entered the estate and knew it wasn’t far for the boy to walk but even so, the heat was unbearable. The boy was approaching from the opposite direction. Sean surmised that either his SAT NAV was useless or there was a shortcut for walkers. Obviously, the heat was a little more bearable for those who were used to it. He then thought about another option. The boy had walked home with a friend and took a slightly different route. Sean shook his head. He had to stop analyzing every situation to death. He was retired. Sean turned his attention to the boy again but rather than focus on his route, he was amazed at the likeness the boy had to him as a child; it really was uncanny.

The front door of the house he was about to pull into opened to reveal his doppelganger’s wife. Her eyes were fixed on her son and she didn’t even notice Sean’s impending arrival. He had to hand it to his doppelganger, he had seriously good taste. The wife was stunning. It helped that she was wearing nothing more than a skimpy pair of shorts and a bikini top. Exactly the reason Sean was about to spend the rest of his life in the Southern and warm parts of the US.

Sean caught a movement in his left eye and he instantly chastised himself for letting down his guard. His mind returned to active mode and the serene view of the son returning home to his mother at the end of the school day instantly changed.

Two agents were in a car further down the street and a camera or some type of lens was being aimed at him. There was movement in a window on the upper floor of the house. There was only one small window, it wasn’t a bedroom, more like a loft window. The sun hit something shiny as the movements seemed to quicken. They were reacting to Sean’s arrival, possibly raising a weapon.

However, Sean’s focus was not on any of these. He was far more interested in the intentions of a white van that had blasted around the corner at the top of the street and was barreling towards the young boy, its side door being thrown open as it neared the youngster.

A scream screeched across the scene completing the change from serenity to horror.

Sean was unarmed, and, it appeared, from the intentions of the people in the loft window, about to come under fire. As the loft window broke, the rifle appeared. Sean calculated angles and distances and came back to his original instinct, get the hell out of there quick. There was nothing he could do. The young boy was already half way into the van. He couldn’t ram the van without endangering the boy and whoever was in the loft was about to start firing with what Sean recognized as a pretty fucking big gun.

Sean hit the accelerator and thankfully, the one saving grace of his getting screwed by the rental company, kicked in. The Mustang GT’s 400 horses bit into the road and threw the car forward; the screech from the tires drowning out the mother’s scream for her child. Sean could see the flashes but no sound followed. The assault rifle was silenced. Whoever was in the house had some serious equipment.

Miguel watched in horror as the sleepy neighborhood exploded into life. First the kid was snatched. El Jefe was going to kill them for that alone. Next, somehow, the driver of the car caught wind of their attack and had accelerated hard. Miguel tried desperately to catch the car with his bullets but to no avail. As he neared the car, it flashed behind the van which had just taken the woman’s son. He had to stop firing. His 7.62mm rounds would have torn the van and its occupants apart. Something he was not willing to do, unless of course El Jefe told him to kill the kid. Through it all, the hysterical screams from the woman below were matched by the shouts of his young assistant who was, Miguel thought, really beginning to get on his fucking nerves.

Miguel drowned out the screams and let his own military training kick in. The man was gone. Whether he was the ghost Hector claimed him to be, he didn’t know. Miguel had not seen his face. The van had the child and was already making its way to the end of the street. Throughout everything that had just happened, one action stood out. The Federales had done nothing. Miguel knew he had to report in as a matter of urgency. El Jefe needed to know what had just happened.

Chapter 9

Sean kept the pedal down and continued to accelerate. He had to follow the van and the boy. He glanced at his SAT NAV and was rewarded with a map that showed two exits from the Lakes area but only one near them. He just had to make sure he got there before the van disappeared into the wider Laredo area. He cursed his stupidity for not having purchased even a basic cell phone. Instead, he had planned to go to an Apple store the first chance he got and get the latest iPhone that everybody was raving about. Too late for the boy and a decision he would forever regret. A $20 prepaid cell would have been perfectly sufficient to call the police and ultimately ensure the safety of the child.

The Mustang tore through the estate as Sean raced to the entrance and was rewarded with a view of the van as it careened onto the main highway, the Bob Bullock Loop, and a sign for the Mexican border. The next sign was even less encouraging — Mexico 9 miles. The van slowed down as it blended in with the mid afternoon traffic. Sean hung back. From the van’s pace, they hadn’t spotted him.

Sean ran through the options. Stop and raise the alarm. But the risk of losing the van was too high, so not an option. Ram the van off the road and rescue the boy. The van was far bigger than him and unlike the old cliche, when it came to vehicles, it was all about size. So that option was out. In short, he had no option but to do what he was doing. Follow and strike when he had the chance. That chance would only arise when they stopped. However, that would then start a whole new dilemma. Sean was unarmed and he doubted the occupants of the van would have kidnapped the child without at least some weaponry but he’d worry about that when the time came. At that moment, all he could think about was why the hell he hadn’t just gone to the beach.

Miguel dragged the screaming mother back into the house and slammed the door closed. He had glanced across at the Federales and was dumbfounded by their inaction. They just sat there as though nothing had happened. They had seen him shooting at the Mustang and witnessed a boy being kidnapped. One thing was certain, they weren’t Federales.

The woman needed two slaps before her screaming became a whimper.

As her screaming died down, the police sirens came to life.

“Shit!” Miguel ran upstairs to check on Hector. “Hector, what the fuck are you doing?” he screamed.

Hector failed to answer, infuriating him even more. “Hector!” he shouted as he entered the loft area.

Hector waved at him wildly, his finger to his lips.

“I assure you everything is fine, we don’t need anybody here.” Hector was saying into his phone. “Don’t be ridiculous, nobody has been kidnapped, the boy’s uncle picked him up.”

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