But he wasn’t interested in an answer. He hurried out of the kitchen, through the living room, and up to the open front window.
“What is it?” Gail said, trailing after him.
“It’s a goddamn helicopter!” Navarro exclaimed.
“So? Maybe-”
“No maybe,” Navarro snapped. “What did you do?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Jonathan had no idea how Felipe had been able to scare up a late-model Range Rover, but as the roads got progressively nastier, he was thankful for the wide wheelbase and the four-wheel drive. Given the bargain- basement price for the vehicle, the smart money said that Felipe had either stolen it from someone himself, or he’d bought it from someone who had. The leather interior and the air-conditioning, though, didn’t exactly fit in with the nature of the cargo, or the mission that lay at the other end of their journey. Despite their best efforts to tie down their cargo, the weapons and equipment made a hell of a racket as they bounced along trails that only people in the third world would have the guts to call roads.
As they approached the rallying point-not a town or even a village, but rather the intersection of minutes and seconds of longitude and latitude-Jonathan told Harvey to stop the truck.
“Gladly,” he said. “The instant you want me to turn around, you just say the word and we’re out of here.”
Jonathan ignored him. Their time together had been defined by three hours of endless bitching, and he’d grown tired of it a long time ago. He was giving the guy a shot at a new life, for God’s sake, and all he could do was whine.
Jonathan lifted his portable radio from the center console and keyed the mike. “Big Guy, this is Scorpion. How do you copy?”
He’d expected a delay as the man on the other end of the radio scrambled to find the transmit button, so he was surprised when he heard Boxers’ voice respond right away. “It’s about time,” he said.
“We’re a half mile out,” Jonathan said. “I didn’t want to startle anyone.”
“I was hoping that was you,” Boxers said. “You make a hell of a racket. Come on in.”
“On our way.” Then to Harvey: “You heard the man. Tally-ho.”
Harvey eased pressure onto the accelerator, and they were on their way. Less than a minute later, Jonathan pointed ahead and to the right, where he spotted the first picket. “See the guy in the trees up there?”
Harvey nodded. “I got him. What do you want to do?”
Jonathan repositioned the M4 in his lap so that he could fire left-handed if he needed to. “Just keep going. If he brings a weapon to bear, I’ll take him out.”
“I thought these guys were our allies.”
“In an hour, maybe they’ll be allies. Right now, they’re just strangers with guns.”
“There’s another one on the left,” Harvey said. When he pointed, he kept his hand low so no one could misinterpret the gesture as aggressive.
Jonathan appreciated the smart thinking. “I see him.”
“How many directions can you shoot at one time?”
“When motivated?” Jonathan quipped. “You’d be surprised. Just keep going. Don’t speed up, don’t slow down. Nothing’s pointing at us, so I guess they got the word.”
“You have no idea how little comfort that gives me.”
It had been a mistake to leave the windows up, Jonathan realized. Shooting through glass was inaccurate at best. What he lacked in accuracy would have to be made up for in volume, and just to make sure he was ready for the possibility, he caressed the M4’s selector switch with his left forefinger and verified that it was in the three- round burst mode. As long as he was alive and still had a trigger finger, there wasn’t a target on the planet that he couldn’t hit with six rounds.
Ten seconds later, they were past the sentries and closing in on the clearing that would be their base camp. Including the pickets, whom he could see in his rearview mirror following the Rover, Jonathan counted seven soldiers, all dressed in jungle camouflage, and all holding rifles. To the left of center, Boxers towered over the others, and next to Boxers stood an utterly unchanged Jose Calderon.
“Boy, you don’t really get how friggin’ huge he is till you seem him next to other people, do you?” Harvey said. “He looks like Frankenstein.”
Jonathan pointed to a random spot on the ground beyond the front bumper. “Just stop anywhere in here,” he said. “And Mr. Smith?” Jonathan was fanatical about not using real names on operations, even when outside the hearing of others.
“Yeah?”
“I’m gonna give you a literal life lesson right now. As in, a lesson that will lengthen your life. Big Guy doesn’t like it when people call him names like Frankenstein. He doesn’t like Lurch; he doesn’t like Paul Bunyan. Frankly, he’s not all that fond of Big Guy, but he puts up with it because it’s his code name. In general, he doesn’t tease well.”
“A bit of a sociopath, is he?”
Jonathan’s glare darkened. “That would be calling him a name, wouldn’t it? As the man whose ass he’s saved on more than one occasion, you’re beginning to piss me off.”
Harvey opened his mouth to say something, but Jonathan wasn’t interested. He pulled the door handle and stepped out into the jungle sauna. By the time he got his door closed again, Jammin’ Josie was already on his way over, his arms outstretched. Again with the abrazos. “Senor Jones, it’s been too many years.”
Jonathan held out his arm to stop the man. When he complied, the sign to halt became an offer for a handshake. “How are you, Josie?”
At first, Jose looked confused, but then he offered up a wide grin. “I forget that you don’t like to touch,” he said.
“I don’t mind touching,” Jonathan said. “I just don’t like having to check for my wallet afterward.”
Jose put a hand to his chest, feigning a wound. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”
“Actually, it’s not at all how I greet old friends. How many people know that I’m here?”
The wound grew deeper. “I have told no one, Senor Jones.”
Sensing trouble, and no doubt welcoming the opportunity to settle it, Boxers moved closer. Behind him, Harvey stepped out of the Range Rover. Jose’s troops sensed it, too, and several unslung their rifles.
“Don’t be an idiot, Josie,” Jonathan said. “Where do you think I got the Range Rover?”
The smile dimmed, and then returned. “Oh, well, Felipe knows, of course.”
“Of course.” He scanned the faces of the men who continued to close in, ever so slowly, and reflexively calculated lanes of fire. They still had time. “Tell your men to stand down,” he commanded.
Jose said the right words in Spanish, and when the men hesitated, he repeated them more forcefully. His troops relaxed, but not entirely.
Boxers said, “You watching this, Boss?”
Jonathan opened his stance so he could keep a better eye on the crowd as he continued his chat with Josie. “Mr. Smith?” he called without looking.
Harvey said, “Sir?”
“Arm yourself, please.”
Concern fell across Josie’s face. “What are you doing, my friend?”
Jonathan dared a glance to satisfy himself that Harvey had picked up his weapon from the Rover’s seat.
Josie said, “You seem to be expecting violence from me. I am your friend.”
“Tell me how Felipe knows so much,” Jonathan said.
Jose shuffled his feet and forced a smile. “Felipe knows everything, yes?”
Boxers made himself taller still, and Josie seemed to shrink accordingly.
“Who else knows?” Jonathan pressed.
