Chapter 44
FOUR HOURS PASSED, but Jody never returned.
The more Shane thought about it, the more he was sure that Santander Cortez was the White Angel. He sat in the dark, running their predicament over in his mind, studying it from every possible angle. The first thing he needed to do was pick up some coordination with the man silently brooding a few feet away.
'Tremaine…,' he said.
Tremaine raised his head and glowered at Shane.
'You and I need to work together if we plan on staying alive. We've gotta stop fighting and do some thinking.'
'We' re fucked,' Tremaine said softly. 'What we gonna do to change that?'
'For starters, how about the answers to a few questions?'
Tremaine stared at Shane but didn't respond.
'I still wanna know how come you're not inked… Why you didn't get that Viking tattoo like the rest of us.'
'I don't buy into that. That's white-boy shit.'
'That's one reason, but you wanna hear another?'
Tremaine didn't answer.
'I think you're a department mole. Internal Affairs, or something.'
Tremaine's lip curled into a snarl… Or was it a grin? It was hard to tell in the dark room.
'I know you came aboard late, after Jody had already set up the Vikings,' Shane continued. 'Wanna hear my theory?'
Tremaine still didn't answer, so he went on.
'Somehow, you or somebody in IAD found out about the Vikings, so you got yourself assigned to SWAT. Then through your friendship with Rodriquez, you put a move on Jody and got picked to be the last Viking. But since you were workin' undercover, you weren't listed in Medwick's log. Cops hate tattoos. You didn't want a tattoo, 'cause you weren't really a Viking. You were only there to find out what they were doing and bust 'em. You were the only one in the unit who wasn't on drugs-same reason. How'm I doing so far?'
'You got a big imagination.'
'Jody isn't coming back. He's gone. You and I are next. We're all gonna die. There's no police to protect us up here, and there's no government to save us, just criminals, flies, and garbage.'
'You doin' fake jacks on me now. Tryin' t'fuck with my mind.'
'I'll tell you something else that doesn't quite stack up. Your jive ghetto bullshit reads like street cover to me. Every now and then when you get surprised, it slips. I think it's just camouflage for Jody, but Jody's gone, so you're wasting this hot-shit performance on me.'
'Zat right?'
'Yep. And laugh this one off if you can…' Shane paused. 'I'm workin' undercover, too. I think we're both department plants running games on each other. Problem is, there're no Vikings left to bullshit. So maybe we oughta come clean with each other-start from there.'
'I saw you cap Sergeant Hamilton… Saw her bleed out. No fuckin' way you're workin' undercover.'
'It was rigged. She was wearing a vest.'
'Ain't no vest gonna stop a Black Talon.'
'You're wrong. It's called a level-three tactical vest… Developed by the Pentagon. I'm working a special undercover assignment for Chief Filosiani.'
'Bullshit.'
'Listen, Tremaine, whether you're Internal Affairs or not, we still need to work together. There used to be six of us. Now it's just you and me.'
'Okay, smart guy… So let's hear your plan.'
Shane glanced around the room. 'You suppose those shelves will come down? We could pry loose those heavy two-by-four supports underneath.'
Tremaine looked up at heavy wooden shelves and the two-by-four frames holding them. 'Yeah,' he said. 'So?'
Then he gave Tremaine the rest of his plan.
Chapter 45
THE DOOR OPENED an hour later, and two of the hardened mercenaries entered the room. Shane and Tremaine were pressed flat against the wall. Each swung a three-foot-long two-by-four at his man. The two Colombians doubled over and went down. Shane and Tremaine sprung out and searched them for weapons but found none. Suddenly a volley of machine-gun fire exploded through the door from four backups positioned outside. The bullets whined and ricocheted around inside the small enclosure, sparking off walls like manic fireflies.
Shane felt hot pain sear in his thigh, then another slug hit him in the side of his neck.
A moment later he was pounced on by three men and went down in a pile. Their blows rained down on him; he was clubbed with a gun butt until his vision blurred. Consciousness hovered against a black mist that finally descended and swallowed him.
When he awoke, everything ached. He was alone in the room; Tremaine was gone. He pulled himself into a sitting position and took a quick, fuzzy-headed inventory of his bruised, bleeding body. He had a nasty-looking through-and-through on his upper thigh that was still leaking blood and had completely numbed his left leg. The slug was close to his abductor canal. Karmic payback.
The second bullet had grazed his neck, and he had a furrow an eighth of an inch deep running across the right side of his throat. The blood had crusted, but that wound had stopped bleeding. His lip was split and two front teeth were loose; his head ached, and everything else felt horrible.
He slumped onto the floor, and for the next hour felt the temperature slowly drop as the desert night cooled the tiny tin-roofed room until he was freezing. Then he sat with his arms wrapped around him, his teeth chattering. He didn't know how long he waited. He dozed off once but awoke with a start when the door flew open.
Four men rushed in, grabbed him, stood him up, and laced his hands behind his back with wire. Using pliers, they twisted the wire tight until it cut painfully through his skin. Then they pushed him brutally through the door.
He was stumbling ahead of them, one leg almost numb, lurching across the lit compound. Every time he slowed, somebody would give him a hard push, knocking him forward. They herded him past the parade ground toward a small wood-frame building.
The house was painted white with green shutters; it had a peaked roof and slanting porch. A bright redbrick chimney completed an out-of-place Iowa farmhouse look.
He was dragged and pushed up the steps, then shoved through the front door.
The living room was American Gothic with a turn-of-the-century rocker and quilted chairs. Framed fox-hunting paintings of jumping hounds and horses dressed the walls. The mercenaries shoved him through an oak and glass door into a small, cozy den and pushed him down onto the floor.
'Abajo solamente, no muevesthe guard ordered.
Shane nodded and waited for what would come next.
A few minutes later the tall Hispanic man walked into the room. He had removed the tan suit jacket; in its
