million in untraceable cash. Operating cash. A nice fund to keep him going until he'd reached a safe place from which to access those other millions he'd salted away in offshore and Swiss banking accounts.
He'd picked Supremo's ace action squad for the job, the team of Rubio, Torres, and Moreno. He'd used them in the past to great effect, always operating as a shadowy presence who communicated with them solely by phone.
This was a business of compartmentalization. All they knew or needed to know was what their boss, Monatero, had told them: that they'd been chosen for an important job by a top secret operative and to follow his orders to the letter.
Beltran had been careful to make sure that the trio maintained silence and isolation once they'd come under his sway, ordering them not to contact Supremo until told otherwise. They figured it was just good tradecraft, insulating and securing their home base against possible repercussions if something went wrong.
They made the snatch, abducting Garros from the Mega Mart underground parking garage.
Rubio and Torres handled the strong-arm chores while Moreno drove the getaway car. The abduction had required more than muscle; it needed wet work. The presence of the two CTU agents in the parking garage presented a complicating factor. The American agents' focus was on Garros and the elevator door from which he'd emerge, diverting their attention from the killers until it was too late.
Rubio had used a knife on one; Torres, light-footed for a big man, had dispatched the other by hand, sneaking up behind him and breaking his neck.
They'd braced Garros when he emerged from the elevator, Torres putting a sleeper hold on him while Rubio relieved him of his gun, billfold, and cell phone. The sleeper hold had caused Garros to black out from lack of oxygen. They'd covered his head with a black hood, tied his hands behind his back, and tossed him into the trunk of their car.
The car had rolled up to the exit ramp gate, where the attendant manned a booth. Rubio had shot him; Moreno had crashed through the gate and driven away. From then on, they'd been on the move, receiving updated instructions from Beltran.
Beltran had contacted Susan Keehan to deliver his demands. He'd used an oral appliance, a portable electronic voice box that fit over his mouth, reproducing his words in digitized tones and also altering his distinctive voiceprint so it could not be used to identify him.
The Keehan wealth and power had worked in Beltran's favor to facilitate the plot. She had the ability to get the money fast, even on a Saturday when the banks were closed and the city was bracing for a storm.
Her EXECPROTEK staffers had also done their bit for Beltran, however inadvertently or unwillingly; their mission was to carry out the wishes of their employer and get the captive back alive and unharmed, not to make arrests and crack the case. They'd no more contact the police or FBI than he would.
As for CTU, they were the odd man out, the last in the game and the last to know what was going on, Beltran told himself. Keehan political clout could keep them at arm's length and out of the loop. Let them get on the trail of Paz and the Supremo cell, for all he cared; it would buy him precious time to complete his task and make his getaway.
Years of living and operating in New Orleans had worked to his advantage; he knew the terrain. The Long Canal footbridge was a site he'd marked down long ago as useful for a future operation; there would never be a better time than now to use it.
Rubio, Torres, and Moreno, and their captive, had transferred to a panel van for the final phase of the ransom exchange. The van had three motorcycles, dirt bikes, in the rear.
Moreno had driven up on the power trail; along it was a dirt road used by the utility company for their roving repair trucks. The captive, hooded and with his hands tied, was hauled out of the van and hustled downhill by Rubio and Torres, into the graveyard. Torres remained behind to keep watch over the captive while Rubio slogged back up the hill.
A ramp was lowered from the rear of the van and the first dirt bike rolled down to the ground. Rubio rode it downhill to the cemetery, then walked back up the hill and repeated the process with a second bike. He and Torres stayed in the cemetery with Garros.
Moreno drove the van along the power trail to a crossroads, where another dirt road took him down the east side of the embankment. He drove to the Kwik-Up, parked the van in the lot, and rode the third bike up the dirt path behind the convenience store, up to the power trail and down again to the cemetery.
The power trail was a popular site for dirt bikers, and the activity going on around it attracted no attention from random passersby in the parking lot or along the highway.
Rubio was the demolitions man. He'd fastened explosive charges to the underside of the footbridge and rigged the smoke bombs in and around the cemetery.
All the munitions were rigged with remote-controlled detonators.
With everything ready for the exchange, and the trio safely emplaced in the cemetery, Beltran had arrived, parking his vehicle in the Kwik-Up lot. He located the getaway van, knelt down beside it as if examining the undercarriage, busied himself there for several minutes, rose, and returned to his own vehicle.
He took out the rifle in its carrying sheath, toting it casually under an arm; the power trail was also popular with target shooters and varmint hunters, and in a state where guns were a way of life, he was unlikely to attract undue attention. All the same, he'd waited until the lot was empty of any pedestrians or shoppers who might notice him before getting out of his machine and crossing to the back of the Kwik-Up.
Going around to the rear of the building, he'd climbed the dirt path most of the way up, stopping when he saw a likely spot for his sniper's nest. He'd squirmed through the bushes, finding a spot that afforded him a clear firing line on the back of the building and the getaway van parked in the lot.
Leaving the sheathed rifle hidden under some bushes, he'd emerged on the dirt path, sticking an empty Kwik-Up white plastic bag on a branch to serve as a marker so he'd easily find the site.
He'd climbed to the top of the power trail, crossing to the other, west side, where he'd found himself a hollow in the bushes with a good vantage point on the cemetery and canal area. Settling into the nest, he'd run a routine comm check with Rubio, giving him a last-minute briefing and instructions.
After that, there was nothing to do but wait for the Keehan crowd to arrive with the money.
Now the ransom had been collected and the plan was moving into its final, terminal phase.
The dirt bikes were almost upon him, causing Beltran to involuntarily tense up. In the short time since arriving at his sniper's nest, he'd managed to recover his breath, and his heart rate had slowed to something like normal. The sputtering blat of the nearing motorcycles caused his heartbeat to speed up again.
They were here; they had arrived. The drone of their engines was offset by the sound of breaking branches as the first bike entered the gap and started down the dirt path on the east slope of the embankment.
Beltran turned his head toward the path, which was mostly hidden behind a screen of brush. The first bike flashed downhill past him, a blur of motion barely ten feet away.
Beltran could even hear the jouncing of the suspension springs over the motor noise.
The second bike followed, only a length or two behind. Turning his head away from the trail, Beltran looked down through the gap in the brush.
The first bike reached the bottom of the hill and pulled over to the side, idling.
Rubio was the rider, the knapsack slung across his back. He was barefaced, the bandana pulled down around his neck.
Beltran raised the rifle, shouldering it, pointing it downhill.
The second bike reached the bottom of the slope; its rider, Moreno. He, too, had uncovered his face.
Where was Torres? Beltran could hear him but not see him. He'd fallen well behind the other two. Not surprising, Beltran told himself. Torres was a big man and not particularly comfortable on the small, quick dirt bike.
After a pause, Torres came downhill, bouncing and sliding to a halt at the bottom of the slope.
Moreno went on ahead, riding his bike out from behind the building, around the corner, and into the lot, rolling to a halt at the rear of the van. He set the kickstand down and climbed off, opening the van's rear door and sliding the ramp to the pavement.
