Kate huddled with the children, covering their faces. Her burning eyes streamed tears down her cheeks, and her nose ran without stopping, making her queasy. The coughing had grown unbearable and made her throat sore and chest tight. A heavy fog of gas filled the room, leaving them nowhere to hide from it. Disoriented from the gas, she had trouble thinking clearly, and her body ached all over.
Yet for her, there was something far more painful to endure than tear gas. Seeing the terrified faces of the children broke her heart.
And the Haitian police were as deadly as their captors.
“Please…make this stop!” she cried to no one, more out of frustration—and fear. Her screams didn’t stop the violence. She doubted anyone heard her over the deafening noise.
“Sister…I’m scared.” A child’s voice filtered through her muddled brain as a small, dark-skinned hand clutched her veil. Her eyesight blurred and made it impossible to see who had said it. She pulled the children closer and lowered her head to pray.
It was all she had left.
The Haitian police hadn’t been very sympathetic. From what he saw, they were poorly equipped and lacked discipline and training for a hostage-rescue operation. And although they made promises to do what they could for the hostages, Kinkaid noticed that didn’t stop their siege of the clinic. As long as the terrorists fired their weapons, the police returned fire, shooting at anything that moved. The armed men inside the medical facility had not communicated their demands, nor had the police asked their intentions. Both sides let bullets do the talking.
Feeling dizzy and sick, Kinkaid retreated to a spot away from the front line. He clutched his side to stop the bleeding, but it was too dark for him to see. Blood loss had weakened him. His body raged between feverish and an intolerable chill. And even though everything had happened too fast, now he needed time to think. The Haitian police had escalated the violence and posed a bigger problem. He couldn’t act on his own. He needed help from someone who had connections in the area. And one name came to mind.
Joe LaClaire. He pulled out his cell phone and made a call. His friend answered with a groggy voice.
“Hey, boss. What’s up?”
“Listen, Joe. I don’t have much time to explain.” He briefed the man on what had happened and where he was. “I don’t care who you contact. I need results. Call in some markers if you have to.”
An AK-47 punctuated the urgency of his call. Kinkaid ducked for cover.
“Do I hear gunfire?”
“Yeah, Joe. A friend is in trouble. My friend Kate.” He plugged an ear and kept talking. “We need to mobilize a covert hostage rescue. People have died…and there’ll be more. The cops are treating the hostages like collateral damage. Rescue isn’t part of their operation.”
“Understood. What are you going to do?” Joe asked. His friend knew him well enough to know he wouldn’t sit on the sidelines of a fight with innocent lives at stake.
“I’m going to find another way into the clinic.”
“Are you insane? Crossing police lines can get you killed. And cornered terrorists don’t play nice.” Joe raised his voice. “Getting stuck in the cross fire will be a bitch.”
“The hostages have no one else, Joe. And if you’re only questioning my sanity now, what does that say about you?” He winced, with pain radiating heat across his belly. “Please…do like I told you. And with any luck, I’ll meet you like we planned. I’m turning off my phone now. Leave a message when you know something.”
Without waiting for a reply, he ended the call. Sticking to the shadows, he made his way back to the Toyota and retrieved the AK-47 he’d stashed in the trunk. The Haitian police had the building surrounded, but with any luck, he’d find a way in.
He had to.
Tortuga Island, Haiti
Being awakened in the middle of the night by a troubling call from his boss, Jackson Kinkaid, left Joe LaClaire on edge. Raking a hand through his dark hair, he paced the floor of his motel room on Tortuga Island. Sweat beaded the skin of his bare chest. Even wearing nothing but boxers, he felt the muggy heat close in on him. And although his mind raced with names of people who might help, only one name hit the top of his list and stuck.
Garrett Wheeler.
The man had resources and plenty of them. And he could mobilize a covert hostage-rescue operation anywhere in the world, fast. Joe reached for the fifth of Crown Royal on his nightstand and downed the rest. His throat burned as the whisky went down.
There was only one drawback—Kinkaid had something against Garrett Wheeler.
The two men had a history that had created a rift between them, and Joe knew nothing about the particulars. He only knew Wheeler by reputation and from being in Kinkaid’s inner circle. And although men like Jackson Kinkaid were frequently short on details, he respected the man’s privacy.
His friend had urgently asked for results, even if he had to call in markers.
If that meant pissing Kinkaid off to get the job done, then fuck it. Mission accomplished. He’d deal with the consequences later.
“Move. NOW!” The leader yelled in English and gave orders to his men in his own language.
Sister Kate felt the sharp jab of a rifle at her back. Metal hit her spine and sent a chilling jolt of pain to her neck and shoulders. One of the terrorists shoved her toward a door. She had no choice but to move. A hail of police gunfire had killed another man and one of the women hostages. And George, the guy who’d lost his wife, was holding a bloodied hand to his shoulder. She had no time to assess the damage. Bullets pounded the walls above her head and sent chunks of plaster raining down on her. And the screams of women and children raised goose bumps across her skin.
Kate prodded the children to stay low and shielded them from the horror. She looked back to see her captors crouched behind her—masked faces with hostile, glaring eyes—but a few of them remained to return fire and cover their retreat.
A suicide mission.
Kate wiped tears from her face—dealing with the aftermath of the tear-gas assault—and resisted the urge to throw up as she scrambled through the door with the children ahead of her. She clutched her habit and pulled up her tunic so she could move. When more bullets pounded the wall behind her, she stifled a scream. She pressed a tight fist to her lips, not wanting to panic the children more. The gunfire made her ears ring, and sounds were muffled in her head. Her captors had them moving in a line and winding through corridors. Kate never looked up. She kept her head down and made sure the children stayed together.
Two men led them to a stairway that took them into a basement. The darkness swallowed them, and she lost track of the children. She whispered for them to hang on to the one in front, but she wasn’t sure they heard her. Gripping the shirt of the boy ahead of her, Andre, she held on and kept moving. Crouching low, she stepped down the stairs with aching knees. And when her tunic got in the way again, she hoisted the folds of the garment, and the cross on her rosary beads clanged on a metal railing.
One of the terrorists must have taken offense. In the dark, a hand grabbed her. He groped her body until he found what he wanted and yanked the rosary she wore. Beads fell to the floor. And she felt the force of his hostility to her faith, but she didn’t resist or give the man any reason to kill her. For the children’s sake, she had to do as she was told.
When she reached the bottom level, she turned a corner and squinted. A dim glow in the basement came from narrow windows at ground level. And a pale gray washed over the cramped space of a storage area for the clinic, where wooden shelves held boxes and other supplies. She peered across the room through sore, watering eyes. In the sweltering heat, a layer of grit covered her skin, and trickles of perspiration crawled down her back and armpits. The smothering stale air and the lingering effects of the tear gas intensified her feeling of hopelessness by making it harder to breathe.
At the first sign of movement at the windows, she ducked and reached for the children, drawing them closer.
