Damage Control

a week in captivity, mobility was not going to be their long suit.

If Jonathan had been allowed to write the script, this drop-off would have been made in the wide-open desert regions of northern Mexico, where everything and everyone would be in the open, but the bad guys had insisted on a jungle transfer in the south. That was a mistake that played to Jonathan’s strengths. While the wide vistas of the north played to their paranoia of not being able to get away quickly, this kind of thick foliage screamed ambush opportunity.

Accordingly, he and Boxers had poised themselves for a classic ambush, to be sprung if the kidnappers decided to break the rules. As long as they drove into the clearing and off-loaded the hostages to be counted, they would be allowed to pick up their ransom and drive away in the follow car, leaving the bus behind. Just about any other scenario would result in a very, very bad day for the kidnappers.

Then these new guys showed up. If they started shooting, the kidnappers would panic, and then there’d be a bloodbath.

“I’ve got eyes on the precious cargo,” Boxers said into his radio. He was in position to see the approaching vehicles before Jonathan could. “I can’t count heads through the windows, but it looks like a full load.”

Jonathan acknowledged with a tap on his transmit button.

Ten seconds later the flat nose of an ancient bus turned the sweeping corner into the kill zone, its engine wheezing like an old man. To his right, he heard the interlopers reacting with movement. “It’s here,” the close one said in Spanish, perhaps into a radio, or perhaps just to himself. From this range-call it fifty yards-Jonathan could see the silhouette of the driver, even though he couldn’t make out his features.

“Looks like the follow car is hanging back,” Boxers advised. “It is an SUV, and it appears to have only a driver inside.”

The newcomers had fallen silent. As Jonathan settled behind his rifle scope to track the action in and around the bus, he tried to ignore the tingle in his spine that told him trouble was coming.

“They’re going to kill us, aren’t they?” Allison asked.

If they don’t, I might, Tristan didn’t say. He’d been handcuffed to her for nearly five days now. What was that, a hundred twenty-five hours? That’s how many hours she’d been whining. Honest to God, it didn’t matter if he was trying to sleep or if he was in the middle of a conversation with someone else, Allison Bradley never shut up.

This ordeal had offered up too many cruel twists to even keep up with anymore, but none had been crueler than the kidnappers’ decision to handcuff him to Miss Bubbly Cheerleader-Turned-Doomsayer. For five long days, they’d done everything together-including the humiliation of biological chores-and at every turn, Allison had featured herself at death’s door. They were all scared, for God’s sake.

“Seriously,” she repeated, “I think they’re going to kill us.”

From behind: “Allison, shut up!”

For an instant, Tristan thought that he’d inadvertently spoken his thoughts aloud. Instead, the words had erupted from Ray Greaser, who, back in the world, had been Ken to Allison’s Barbie, the cliched quarterback- cheerleader Homecoming royalty. The resulting photo in the yearbook exuded the kind of perfection that every high school student dreamed of, yet Tristan would never achieve. He told his friends that the photo looked like an Aryan recruitment poster.

“Don’t tell me to shut up!” Allison snapped. “In fact, don’t even speak to me.”

“Callate,” snapped the nameless man up front with the machine gun. Shut up.

Great, Tristan thought. Now I’m channeling a terrorist.

Like all of the gunmen on the bus, the one up front wore military fatigues, but of a style that Tristan didn’t see in the States anymore. The green and black camouflage appeared more as smears of color than the precise digital patterns of modern warriors. The clothes didn’t matter as much as the rifles, though. Or the pistols. Or the hand grenades.

Tristan sensed that this was the beginning of the end. After all the days and nights of anger and agitation among these murderers, the past twelve hours had brought a lighter mood. Whatever the endgame was, it had apparently been achieved because the guys with the guns had been a lot more cheerful.

Assholes. Every time he thought about what they’d done to Mr. Hall and Mrs. Charlton, he wanted to kill them. He wanted somebody to kill them. Especially for Mrs. Charlton.

The bus slowed by half-if that was even possible, given the snail’s pace they’d been traveling for the last three hours-and as it did, the terrorists became more agitated.

“We’re almost there,” one of them said in Spanish. “It should be just around this curve.”

“What are they saying?” Allison asked. Why she’d decided to come on a trip to rural Mexico without knowing a word of the language was beyond Tristan.

He ignored her. A better option than punching her.

The bus took the curve at slower than a walking pace, its engine screaming and transmission rattling as if someone had thrown rocks in the gearbox. Finally, they stopped, and the men with the guns started moving and chattering quickly.

“They’re saying we’re here,” Tristan translated, hoping to get ahead of the inevitable question. “ ‘Positions, everyone.’ ”

“What does that mean?” Allison whined.

“How the hell do I know? They’re not talking to us.”

“I see it,” said the driver, pointing through the windshield to a spot ahead of them.

The other five terrorists abandoned their spots among the hostages and surged forward to get a look. In Tristan’s mind, the gunmen were essentially one person. He’d made an effort to avoid eye contact, or even to look at their faces. He knew that if he ever came out of the other end of this thing alive, he didn’t want their malignant eyes haunting his dreams. He prayed that there’d be some kind of hypnosis he could undergo that would erase this nightmare forever.

“Get ready to take your positions,” said the gunman who’d staked out the front of the bus as his own territory. Tristan figured that guy to be the one in charge because he was the one who gave the most orders. “Keep watch for any sign of soldiers or police. Are you ready?”

The answer came more as an enthusiastic roar than a verbal response.

The bus rocked as four soldiers streamed out of the fanfold front door and formed a circle around the vehicle. They kept their rifles at their shoulders, pointed out toward the jungle. Seated where he was on the right-hand side of the bus, Tristan couldn’t see any details of what they were doing, but he noted that everyone in the bus had stopped talking.

If it hadn’t been so quiet, he probably would not have heard the tick of the windshield breaking and the wet thwop of the driver’s head exploding as two distinct sounds.

CHAPTER THREE

Jonathan tightened his grip on his weapon as the bus’s folding door opened and four armed men rushed out. All of them wore ancient M81 woodland cammies, and were armed with MP5 submachine guns, no doubt courtesy of a happy gun store owner in Texas. They moved with choreographed precision that demonstrated they’d been trained, albeit to a level that didn’t concern him much. The four took up defensive positions on each corner of the bus, and waited while a fifth guy-the driver of the van-hurried forward to join them. The bus driver remained in place behind the wheel.

With everyone in position, they held for a few seconds, and then the fifth guy moved forward, his weapon pressed to his shoulder, his eyes scanning for threats. He clearly had spotted the backpack.

He’d walked maybe a half dozen steps when a high-caliber rifle shattered the silence of the afternoon and brains spattered the interior of the bus’s windshield. The shot came from the guy on Jonathan’s right, and half a second later, he heard the whip crack of Boxer’s incoming round as it sheared the shooter’s head from his