He moved to head out, then I remembered something.
“Wait,” I hollered. I scoured the room looking for the stainless steel vial that Navarro had shown us, but I was still dazed and couldn’t see it. I had no choice but to mention it.
“The drug. There’s a sample of it somewhere.”
I looked around urgently—then I spotted it, lying innocuously on the floor.
By Munro’s feet.
He read my reaction, followed my gaze to it, and picked it up. Then, with a smug grin, he pocketed it.
“Come on,” he barked, then he set off toward the house.
I followed, hot on his heels.
We followed a narrow passage that led to an old stairwell, then we were outside again, and we sprinted in a slight crouch along a tree-lined path that led across a football-field-size landscaped quadrangle and back to the hacienda. Off to the right, I spotted several men from Munro’s unit who were locked in a manic firefight with Navarro’s guards, the latter firing away from behind a pickup truck while three of Munro’s guys had taken cover behind a stone water trough.
Munro didn’t even cast a look at them as he ran toward the house.
We were still more than a hundred yards from the house’s main entrance when I saw Tess run out of there. I could see blood on the side of her face, but she was moving smoothly and didn’t seem badly hurt. I didn’t need any more information to know that Navarro had taken Alex and that she’d been helpless to stop him. I gestured with my arm and shouted out, “Stay down,” and as I pushed myself to move even faster, the sound of an engine straining to its limit rose above the gunfire. It was coming from the other side of what looked like some derelict stables off to the left of the house, and through an arcaded walkway, I glimpsed a Jeep tearing off away from us.
Navarro. And Alex.
Munro turned to me and pointed at the other side of the main house.
“I saw a couple of quad bikes over by the cemetery.”
Without waiting for an acknowledgement from me, he banked away and was running full tilt toward the handful of broken grave markers that were visible at the left-hand end of the house. Every muscle in my body wanted to run directly toward the engine noise. If we lost sight of Navarro and Alex, I was worried we’d never find them again, but Munro had made the right move. We’d certainly never catch the Jeep on foot. I also couldn’t take the time to go to Tess, much as I wanted to. Agonizingly, it would have to wait. So I ignored the thudding pain in my back and the torment in my head and forced myself into a run.
I caught up to Munro at the far end of the cemetery. He had already started one bike and yelled out to me, “Come on.”
I hopped onto the second four-wheeler and churned its engine to life, then twisted hard on the gas handle and powered off after the Jeep, with Munro no more than ten yards behind me.
We drew level with a big dilapidated stone building at the opposite end of the quadrangle, and it was clear that Munro’s unit was gaining the upper hand in the firefight with Navarro’s hired guns. Two of them were slumped dead behind the truck, which was riddled with bullets and not going anywhere anytime soon.
I gunned the quad and sped toward what looked like some stables, Munro now riding level with me.
As we rounded the stable block, we could see the dust cloud thrown up by Navarro’s Jeep as it was swallowed up by the dense tree line that marked the edge of the main compound.
We aimed our bikes at the jungle and charged after the Jeep.
The road was cut through the thick foliage that barely let any light through. In virtual darkness, we wound our way through some undulating ridges, then a couple of minutes later, we hit a sun-blasted clearing and slid to a halt.
Three different roads wound away from us in three entirely different directions.
And we had no way of knowing which one of them Navarro had taken.
67
I killed my engine and gestured for Munro to do the same—maybe we could hear the Jeep and get a direction that way—but Munro kept his engine running. I was about to ask him what the hell he was doing when he removed an oversize PDA from his black BDU pants’ thigh pocket, flipped open the plastic cover, and looked intently at the screen. I thought back to how Munro had managed to find us, and Munro could obviously hear the wheels spinning inside my head.
He just pointed skyward and said, “Predator,” then swung his attention back at his screen.
I looked up to the sky, which was
“Ours?” I asked.
Without taking his eyes off his screen, he said, “Well it ain’t
“You’ve been tracking us? For how long? Why didn’t you pick us up before we left U.S. soil?”
He gave me a look that reeked of disdain. “We didn’t know if Navarro was there or not. We had to follow you to get to him. What’s your problem? You’re all in one piece, aren’t you?”
“Hey, Navarro has Alex, asshole.”
He shrugged and shoved the device into his pocket.
“This way.” He pointed to a road to the left that seemed to head off the plateau and dip down toward lower ground.
I charged my quad forward and blocked his way. I scowled at him and yelled, “Alex comes first, no matter what.”
He raised his hands in feigned surrender. “Absolutely.”
I’m sure my expression betrayed the fact that I didn’t fully believe him on that.
“No. Matter. What,” I repeated, firmly.
“You got it, buddy,” he protested.
I still wasn’t buying it, but I had no choice.
I hit the gas and stormed ahead. He followed close behind as I wondered how Alex was feeling right now and hating Navarro even more for it.
The road started to slope down and turned into a dirt trail that was so narrow we had to ride single file. There was barely enough room for a Jeep to make it through, but the cluster of birds that had just burst into the air maybe half a mile ahead seemed to confirm that Navarro wasn’t too far.
We followed the trail until the tree cover fell away and we emerged into the open again. I got a clearer view of the geography and realized the track we’d been following ran along the top of one side of a wide ravine. Up ahead, the trail switched back in front of a wall of solid rock that closed the ravine at the near end.
We maneuvered the quad bikes around the 180-degree bend and were rewarded with a view down the length of the valley, which was completely open at the other end, although the ravine narrowed before it got there. This was clearly Navarro’s target. The perfect place for an escape chopper to get him out of any unexpected jam—like maybe his ex-narco buddies finding out he was still alive. It was isolated and completely out of sight while the bird was on the ground, the ravine cushioned the rotor noise, and it had good cover from the air due to the surrounding jungle.
Hence the chopper with its rotors spinning up in a flat clearing down at the far end of the ravine, with the Jeep thundering toward it, out of reach.
Rage tore through me and I choked the handle as far as it would go. The quad’s engine roared in protest as I hurtled down the trail, pushing the four-wheeler as fast as I could, sliding around the bends at the edge of adhesion with my body slung out as far as it reached as a counterweight, my heart flailing against my throat—
I burst into the clearing and beelined for the chopper as, up ahead, Navarro and his two men were hustling out of the Jeep, with Alex in the madman’s grip. They all saw me. Navarro kept herding Alex to the chopper while the
