Page 30 of Seal of Honor
“We were just visiting some friends up the road.”
“What friends?”
“I’m sorry,” she said as gently as she could, thinking of Armando and his sweet wife and their five kids. “I won’t tell you that.”
She expected to be shot on the spot, or at very least hit with the butt of the rifle like Gabe had been. Instead, Cocodrilo gave a toothy smile that did his namesake proud.
“Are you American?” he asked instead.
“Yes.” She thought it better not to lie.
He nodded, looked at the printout again. “What is this?”
“My brother’s itinerary. He’s been taken captive.” She hesitated and looked at Gabe, searched his unreadable expression for help. He wouldn’t approve of what she was going to say next, but what if this was their shot at finding Bryson?
She drew a fortifying breath and turned back to Cocodrilo. “I want to make a deal for his release.”
* * *
Gabe didn’t like that he had no idea what they were saying. The few keywords he caught, though, made him curse.
Hermano. Brother.
Cocodrilo looked interested. Then got that glint in his eye, the one that says cha-ching in any language, and Gabe knew Audrey had made a possibly fatal mistake. He glanced toward the brush alongside the road where he had tossed his gun as the guerrillas yanked him out of the Jeep. Luckily, Cocodrilo was distracted by the itinerary before he found the extra clip in Gabe’s leg pocket. The clip wouldn’t do him much good without his gun, and he didn’t think he’d be able to get to the weapon without one of the guerrillas noticing. But the cell phone in his boot had GPS. His team would be able to track him as long as the phone’s battery held out.
A little guerrilla with spiky black hair ran to Cocodrilo’s side, shouting in a panicked tumble of Spanish that Gabe couldn’t begin to sort out, not to mention comprehend, but the name Mena came up repeatedly in their exchange.
Mena.
Really, could this goatfuck get any worse?
He kept a close eye on Audrey’s face, and when she frowned, he guessed it could. Cocodrilo snapped out orders and the men scrambled to pocket their loot from the cars before letting everyone, including the family with the injured boy, leave.
No such luck for him and Audrey. The muzzle of a gun jabbed his lower back, nudging him off the road.
“¡Vamos!” Cocodrilo said and forged a path into the jungle.
* * *
Well, that had been a colossal waste of their precious time.
Quinn breathed a deep sigh of relief to be out of the 4Runner as he strode toward the front door of the safe house. Stuck in a car with Ian and Jean-Luc for several hours was not his idea of a good time, akin to sitting beside a grenade sans pin and in front of an off-key jukebox that somehow knew every fucking song that came over the radio.
In Spanish.
Quinn knew at least seven ways to kill a man with his bare hands, and Jean-Luc was damn lucky he hadn’t utilized them. He’d been tempted, but Gabe would frown upon a dead linguist, so he’d restrained himself—and Ian, who more than once lunged over the seat, intent on strangling the tone deafness right out of Jean-Luc.
After canvassing the suspected EPC hangouts Harvard had dug up, they were no closer to finding Bryson Van Amee. The first two addresses had seemed abandoned. At the next two, they had seen a lot of suspicious activity, including several drug deals, gang activity, and prostitutes soliciting their wares, but no signs of anyone held against their will at either place. Hopefully alpha team had better luck. If not, they were SOL in the intel department, which did not bode well for their mission or their hostage’s continued state of breathing. That is, if he still was.
Harvard sat planted behind the computer, doing his geek thing, when Quinn pushed through the door. “Anything?”
Harvard took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Tons of information, but we’re still wading through it all.”
“Give me what you got.”
“I matched the picture I pulled off the security cameras to Jacinto Rivera. He isn’t a known member of EPC, but he’s associated through his brother, Angel.” He hit a few keys on his laptop, and the printer next to his workstation spit out a sheet. Standing, he stretched his arms over his head, then retrieved the printout and handed it to Quinn.
“From what I can gather, the nominal head of the EPC organization has little to do with the everyday decision-making. Instead, he nominated five generals to control each region of the country. Angel Rivera operates in the Andean Region, which includes Bogotá. I haven’t dug up the names of the other generals yet, but I do know the Amazon Region is controlled by a man known as Cocodrilo, who has a nasty reputation as a sadist.”
