bullet to come crashing into him. His pace did not slacken when he'd reached the end of the span and the wooden planks gave way to ground beneath his feet. He did not look back.
Deauville stood waiting. Beyond him, in the middle ground, were other members of the security squad. All were standing in place, motionless, a frozen tableau; as if time stood still.
Came a blast. Several blasts, in a series of flat, crumping booms. Concussion. Pressure waves.
Sears and Garros were swept forward by an invisible hand, hurling them forward for several paces before knocking them to the ground.
Smoke, noise, heat, and fire rose in a fiery column where the bridge had been. Debris rained down, pelting the scenery.
Sears raised himself on hands and knees, reversing position to see what had happened. The footbridge no longer spanned the canal, it wasn't there anymore. The middle of it had been blown up and the two ends had collapsed into the canal.
Water fell, splashing, raining down rank canal water.
Hissing sounds now began issuing from the east side of the canal. Not falling water, but something else — smoke bombs.
On the opposite side of the canal, the weedy slope, knoll, and graveyard all became obscure through an ever-expanding pall of thickening smoke. Not from the blast that had destroyed the bridge but from a point centered in the cemetery.
Smoke clouds increased. Brown, black, gray. Billowing, streaming, screening the canal's east bank with a pall of darkness.
Sears could guess what had happened. The kidnappers had blown the bridge to foil any foot pursuit from that direction. It had been done with neatness and dispatch. A nice pro job of demolition, wiring explosive charges to the main support beams and blowing them via remote-controlled detonation. More a case of collapsing the bridge than blowing it up, though the blast had shoved the center span skyward.
The demolitions were not the source of the ever-growing smokescreen rapidly fogging the east bank. That had been caused by several smoke bombs.
The murky clouds were thickest in the graveyard area; that's where the smoke bombs must have been set. To cover the escape of the kidnappers.
The dull, fading echoes of the bridge blast were now crosscut by several high-pitched whining sounds, like the buzzing of motorized mosquitoes.
Unless he missed his guess, Sears reckoned that the buzzing blats were the sound of motorcycles being used by the masked men to make their escape. Dirt bikes probably; quick, lightweight, with fat, knobby tires designed for off-road riding. Ideal for the rugged terrain. Easily hidden and handled.
The smoke bombs were added insurance, covering the getaway, screening the fugitives from the guns of Sears's men. Helpful in case a helicopter should suddenly show up, too. A clever ruse.
Raoul Garros was battered, bruised, scared half out of his wits, terrorized — but alive. Susan Keehan had gotten her fiance back.
The kidnappers had gotten away with a million dollars in ransom money.
As far as Sears was concerned, the other side had gotten the better of the deal.
16. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 8 P.M. AND 9 P.M. CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME
Not two men but three — Rubio, Torres, and Moreno — handled the Garros ransom exchange. They were the trio of action men supplied earlier by Supremo cell commander Monatero in response to Beltran's demand for top enforcers to carry out his plans. His plans, not Havana's — a vital fact unknown to Monatero until it was too late.
Rubio was the leader, the ramrod of the team; Torres, the muscle; and Moreno, the all-around utility man.
Rubio was the one who'd been in contact with and taking his orders from Beltran by cell during the exchange. Torres, a bull of a man, had 'escorted' Garros across the footbridge and picked up the money. Moreno had been held in reserve, lurking unseen in the graveyard, covering the footbridge with an assault rifle.
Overseeing all, directing the action, was the phantom plotter and puppet master, Beltran.
He, the Generalissimo, had conceived the kidnap plot; it was he who'd spoken to Sears throughout every step of the way, giving him his instructions. Just as he'd given the Supremo action men their instructions.
Both Sears and the trio, and for that matter, Monatero, knew him solely as a voice over a phone, an unseen and intangible presence hovering over all. Sears and the EXECPROTEK contingent had obeyed him because he had Garros; the Supremo trio had obeyed him because their boss, Monatero, had told them to do so.
During the ransom exchange, Beltran had overseen the action, safely hidden in his observation post in the brush at the west side of the ridgetop power trail, overlooking the canal area below.
He was comfortably nestled in a hollow, concealed by a clump of bushes. He had several cell phones, one for communicating with Rubio and another for Sears; a pair of binoculars, and a semi-automatic pistol with several spare clips of ammo tucked in his pocket. Not neglecting minimal creature comforts, he also had a plastic bottle of water and several candy bars.
All had gone according to plan. Garros had been swapped for the ransom, the footbridge had been blown, the smoke bombs detonated. Three dirt bikes hidden in the graveyard had been started up and mounted by the action men, now beginning their climb up the east slope to the power trail. Hidden from the guns of Sears's men by the smokescreen.
Time for Beltran to get moving. He started into motion when the bridge blew, well before the motorbikes had started up.
In a sense, for him this was the hardest part of the plan, because it required him to move fast, and at his age, that just wasn't a strong suit anymore. But he could handle it.
The power trail was long but not wide, about thirty yards across.
This was the part that Beltran liked the least, not only because of the demanding physical activity, but also because it required him to expose himself in the open, however briefly.
The hour was late, dusk was at hand, deepened by the gloom spread by the low, overcast sky.
Utility company maintenance crews kept the power trail cleared of weeds and brush; a dirt road ran along its length. Beltran didn't run, didn't jog, but hustled along in a kind of quick time, bent low, making a beeline across the trail toward an opening in the bushes lining the far side of the trail.
Overhead, high-tension lines hummed, buzzed, spat, and crackled. Winds blew, rattling the wires against the condensers that linked them from tower to tower.
The mosquito whine of the motorbikes loudened, nearing. Beltran did not look back. Reaching the far side of the trail, he ducked through a gap in the wall of foliage. The gap stood at the head of a dirt path leading down the side of the slope through the brush.
Beltran forced himself to slow down. That's all he needed, to trip and fall and maybe break something right in advance of the oncoming motorbikes. They sounded very loud, very near.
Beltran went down the dirt path in a controlled slide. About a third of the way down, on his right, a white plastic sack of the kind used for carrying groceries was stuck in the branches of a bush.
It looked like it might have been blown there by the wind, but he'd placed it there earlier, spearing it through the twigs to hold it in place and make sure that it was not blown away by the rising winds.
It was a marker, a signpost. Behind the bushes lay a game trail, hemmed in on all sides by scrub brush. Beltran ducked into it, holding his arms in front of his face to keep from being scratched by twigs and branches as he made his way deeper into it.
Several paces within lay a small clearing. He ducked down below some waist-high branches and crawled on hands and knees into this hiding place. He was drenched with sweat, his clothes soaked through; his heart
