supplies.
'I make it eight men and two women,' Luis said. 'Plus Santoro, Barbosa, and four security guards from the village.'
'It would seem that our odds of success have just dropped significantly.'
'To some extent.'
'Please explain.'
'One of those men with Barbosa would give his life for me, and one of the other guards, the one with the red hat, is my Rosa.'
CHAPTER 32
The best of all…is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all…is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation.
Ben was pleased with himself- very pleased. He had rolled the dice and had it come up seven. Nearly twenty hours among the enemy, posing as a man he was not, performing a job of which he had no knowledge, and he had succeeded. In fact, he acknowledged, he was actually quite good at serving people cheerfully and obsequiously, and equally skilled at staying out of the way when he wasn't doing that.
The flight was long, but reasonably easy, with a stop in Venezuela to take on fuel, and another one someplace in Brazil, possibly to do business with an immigration official. Never did he see an actual customs agent. It was amazing how smooth the water could be when it was blanketed with an oil slick of money. Ultimately, he watched through the small porthole in the forward door as the jet swept low over dense forest that went on for many miles, banked slightly to the right, and then dropped down on a well-lit runway that seemed to have materialized from the undergrowth.
The landing was textbook.
By far, the most distressing part of the flight had been the several visits he made to the compartment at the rear of the plane, where the woman who had been the prisoner in the Adventurer lay in what had to be a drug induced coma. The night before, she had cried out that her name was Sandy, and that she was a mother. Now, she looked only like someone who was about to die. In a bizarre, horrible sacrifice, she would unwillingly lose a vital organ so that another — probably a totally stranger — might live.
A man and a woman in surgical scrubs with stethoscopes in place were tending to her. The man, swarthy and thick-necked, sounded and looked more like a longshoreman than a doctor, but the woman, silver haired and probably in her sixties, had a cultured manner and speech suggesting she might well be a physician. They called for soft drinks, then on two occasions for meals. The woman on the stretcher had an oxygen mask and IV in place, as well as a cardiac monitor. She was a rather pretty redhead in her forties, and looked serene and at peace, but Ben was nearly overwhelmed by the memory of her pathetic cries.
The chances were slim at best, he knew, but somehow he had to find a way to help her escape.
The man named Vincent was taller and broader across the shoulders than Ben remembered. From the moment the killer stepped onto the plane, Ben was searching for any sign of having been recognized, and replaying, as best he could, every second of their encounter in Cincinnati. It was so dark in the garage, and everything had happened so quickly. It didn't seem likely the man had gotten a solid look at him. By the time they had been airborne for a few hours, Ben's concerns had largely vanished.
For his part, Vincent spent much of the flight asleep on the shoulder of his girlfriend. Connie was most definitely not the girl of Ben's dreams. She was a ferret-faced woman with a barbed-wire tattoo around her upper arm and a tight white tee that accentuated her huge breasts. She smoked throughout the flight, while the other two security guards played cards or slept.
'How're you doing, Seth? Almost finished cleaning up?'
The captain, a burly man named Stanley Holian, was as laid-back and nonthreatening as Vincent and the team of security people were menacing. Ben had been in the cockpit as much as he had been anywhere on the plane, and was grateful for every minute of Sportscenter he had ever watched. A few batting averages and an opinion as to who was going to win the National League pennant, and he was just one of the guys.
'One more minute, Stan.'
While Holian finished up in the cockpit, Ben made a final pass through the now deserted main cabin, and then entered the area at the rear of the plane, shielded from the main cabin by a curtain. He was looking for something, anything that might serve as a weapon. He found nothing that he could count on, which was probably for the good. This was not Seth Stepanski he was dealing with. It was a trio of professional killers. That he had succeeded against Vincent in Cincinnati only lengthened the odds of his succeeding again. Unless he found help in the rain forest, it was wishful, fanciful thinking to believe he could free the comatose sacrificial lamb and make it safely back to civilization.
So, what next?
He still had the elements of acceptance and surprise working for him, but that was about all. Minute by minute he would just have to assess the situation and search for a scenario — any scenario — that had even a remote chance of success. Was he willing to stand by and leave Sandy to her fate? He might have to, he acknowledged. Dying himself wasn't the answer to putting these people out of business. He felt ill at the prospect of readying the plane for the flight back to the States, knowing what had happened to the woman — knowing that because of these people, there was an eight-year-old boy who was never going to see his mother again.
Stan Holian was waiting for him by the elevator to the hold. Was there a gun someplace in the cockpit? Ben wondered. He glanced down the aisle. The door to that room was closed and almost certainly locked.
'Where in the heck are we, Stan?'
'Brazil.'
'Very funny.'
'North and west of Rio. Seventy-five, maybe a hundred miles.'
'I've never been to Brazil.'
'Nice place. Truly beautiful women. I don't expect you'll get to do much sightseeing on this trip, though. Day after tomorrow, maybe the day after that, we'll be heading back.'
'How long have you been doing this?'
Holian pointedly ignored the question and motioned Ben past the roughly dressed Brazilians who were transferring boxes of supplies to the hydraulic platform. As they were lowered from the belly of the plane, Ben caught a glimpse of a sprawling white building nestled in the forest. Then it disappeared behind the trees. Once on the ground, all he could see around them was the forest. The early morning was cool, and after so many hours in the plane, the moisture rich air, laden with the sounds of insects, tasted especially sweet.
Vincent was waiting for them by a broad dirt path off the edge of the runway. Then the three of them — pilot, flight attendant, and killer — made their way in silence until the path emptied into a road, this one much wider and more gravelly, with well-established tire impressions.
'You go on ahead, Captain,' Vincent said to the pilot. 'Same room as always. Your bag'll be there soon. I have something I want to go over with Seth, here.'
Holian did as he was asked. As the man disappeared around a bend, Ben, alone with Vincent for the first time, began feeling a nugget of apprehension.
'The hospital's just around there,' Vincent said. 'It's an amazing operation. You'll be impressed.'
'I'll bet I will,' Ben said, searching for any giveaway in the killer's tone.
'Do you know what's going to happen to that woman we brought here?'
The nugget expanded.
'Nope.'
'Well, pal, we're going to cut her heart out. How about you, Seth? Do you know what we're going to do with
