Sis.”
“Hey, Mike. How are you?”
“Okay.”
He sounded cautious. Wary, even. She asked, “Have they hurt you? Fed you all right?”
Her brother shrugged. “It isn’t exactly the Ritz, but they haven’t treated us too badly.”
Her mother fussed over her, running her hands down Melina’s arms and squeezing her hands almost compulsively. “These boys have been polite, all things considered. They have a hard life out here. The Peruvian government has been hard on them.”
She snorted. Apparently, no one had told her mom what Huayar and his men did for a living. Just as well. No need to completely terrify the woman. She glanced over at her father. “How’s your heart holding up, dad? Any chest pains?” He’d had a mild heart attack a few years back, but had not had any recurrences. So far. The stress of being the prisoner of a vicious killer could do him in fast enough.
“I’m fine, honey. Ready to get out of here.”
She smiled gamely at him. “I’m working on it, Dad.”
Michael piped up. “What was all that hollering earlier? They told us they caught a bandit trying to rob them.”
She opened her mouth to tell the truth, but then glanced down at her mother’s naively blank face. No need to elaborate on the gory details. It would only upset her parents needlessly. She made eye contact with her brother, though, and they traded significant looks. His eyes darkened with comprehension. Fear followed closely on its heels in his black gaze. At least he understood the gravity of their situation.
“Have you come to take us home, honey?” her mother asked.
“I don’t think I’ll be going with you, but yes, I think Huayar is prepared to let you go.”
She caught a small movement out of the corner of her eye. Her brother had flinched. Dawning suspicion quickly turned into horror as she gazed across the room at him. Under the weight of her steady stare, guilt gradually bowed his shoulders. She was in front of him in two strides and had him by the shirt.
“You told, didn’t you?” she accused.
“I-uhh-”
“Melina! Turn your brother loose. We don’t act like that in this family!”
She reacted out of reflex to her mother’s berating tone and let Mike go. She took a step forward, though, and got right in her brother’s face. Under her breath so only he could hear, she snarled, “You told, didn’t you?”
“They were going to kill me, Sis. I had nothing else.”
“Why? How’d you get mixed up with people like this?”
“I needed cash. I just carried some stuff around. No big deal.”
“You were a mule for Huayar? You moved his drugs for him?” she demanded in disbelief.
Mike didn’t answer, but he didn’t need to. The answer swam miserably in his eyes.
“What the hell were you thinking? Didn’t you think about Mom and Dad? About me?”
“I told you. I needed the money. It was quick and easy. Pick up a package, drive it across the border into the States. Drop it off. Two grand for two days’ work.”
“Jeez, Mike. You could’ve asked me for a loan if you were that hard up. Look at the mess we’re all in now.”
His face crumpled. “I screwed up. Bad. We’re all gonna die, aren’t we?”
He sounded on the verge of tears. She was angry enough at him to take a certain satisfaction in his remorse, but a kernel of love for her idiot brother-buried very deep at the moment-stilled her tongue from any further recriminations.
“I’m doing my darnedest to get us all out of this thing alive. I need your help. Do what I tell you to and go along with anything I say, okay?”
“Do you have a plan?” Mike asked eagerly. “What is it?”
She glanced at the walls unsure if Huayar’s men could hear them or not. “Just go with the flow, okay?”
He nodded, a pitifully hopeful look in his eyes.
She murmured, “I’m not going to get to leave with you guys. I’ll need you to lead Mom and Dad out of here. I’ve got maps. Supplies. Some contacts for you. Can you at least handle that without screwing it up?”
He nodded eagerly, grasping at the flimsy straw of redemption she’d held out before him.
She sighed, not at all sure he could pull it off. After spending the past week with a man like John Hollister, she understood just how immature and incompetent Mike really was by comparison. John she would trust with all their lives. Mike? Not so much.
The door opened and her guide stuck his head in. “Time to go. You owe the boss a recipe.”
Mike’s gaze snapped to hers in dismay. “You’re handing it over?”
“What the hell other choice did you leave me, little brother?” she snapped at him. And with that, she turned on her heel and stalked from the room. She didn’t look back. She couldn’t. She’d lose it if she did. Her relief at seeing her parents safe and sound and her disappointment in her brother were almost more than she could bear. She wanted to sit down in the middle of the floor and cry her head off. Not yet. Not until they were out of here, away from Huayar and his fists and his hired guns.
Walking into the middle of an operational Special Forces hide with so many familiar faces around him, their movements and equipment as natural to him as breathing, was disconcerting. John had been roaming around out here with little more than camping gear for so long, it felt weird to strap on a utility belt and a headset and a submachine gun. It was like coming back to the land of the living after wandering in some alien landscape for a very long time.
Sadness hovered close to the surface of his soul. The last time he’d been out in the field like this, he’d been with his guys. His team. Oh, a few of the old Alpha Squad faces were here-Scotty and Stoner and Ripper-but so many more were missing.
He’d known guys before who’d died. It was inevitable in their line of work. But to lose so many at once, to carry the memory of their bloodied bodies and empty eyes, that was hard.
“You okay?” Hathaway murmured from behind him.
“No, I’m not okay.”
Hathaway nodded soberly. “That may be the healthiest thing I’ve heard you say since you got back from Afghanistan.”
John managed a reasonably casual shrug.
Hathaway looked down at the ground. Back up at John. “I’ve lost some men on my watch. There’s no explaining what that feels like to someone who hasn’t experienced it. It’s a knife that cuts all the way through you, but doesn’t quite kill you. It leaves you hurting so bad you wish you were dead, but instead you just suffer.”
John nodded wearily. Oh, how he knew the feeling.
Hathaway continued, “The shrinks would probably tell me to b.s. you and say it gets better. But it doesn’t. You just learn to live with it, and after a while, the pain dulls enough to stand. It sucks.”
For some reason, hearing rock solid Brady Hathaway admitting to the same weakness he’d been laboring under helped. John looked his boss squarely in the eye. “Thanks.” No need to explain what for. They both knew.
Hathaway nodded. After a moment of silence, he smiled grimly. “Ready to go kick us some bad guy ass?”
John smiled back, actually feeling a faint glow of the old passion he’d once carried for his job. “Let’s do it.”
Melina smelled the meth lab before she saw it. At least Huayar’d had the good sense to set the building a little ways away from the others. Meth manufacturing was a notoriously touchy process. Even with a knowledgeable chemist like Vito around, meth labs had an unfortunate tendency to blow up without warning.
Not surprisingly, the guard stopped well shy of the entrance to the lab and gestured for her to go in alone. She nodded and entered the building.
The crackle of a spotter’s voice came over John’s headset. “We’ve got a problem. One of our friendlies just entered the lab. The young woman.”
John swore under his breath. Huayar was wasting no time putting Mel to work reproducing the synthetic drug formula for him.
Hathaway nodded tersely, and without missing a beat said, “Change in plans. Cowboy, it looks like you get to sneak into camp and rescue the damsel in distress after all.”
John nodded grimly. “When do I go?” If he were in charge, he’d send himself down to infiltrate the camp after
