Primary Valor, Jack Mars [black female authors .txt] 📗

ever seen what one of those things cando to people on the ground? It isn’t pretty.”

Now her smile was ear to ear. “Andthere are three of them up there.”

CHAPTER FORTY THREE

6:25 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

A Safe House

Annieville, South Carolina

 

 

“Are those really alligators?” thegirl named Charlotte said.

Luke smiled, thinking of the timewhen Ed Newsam had said the same thing… when? Monday night. It was now Thursdaymorning. Monday could have been a month ago. Luke had been through the wringersince then. He was tired.

He glanced out the window. In thefirst weak light of day, a bunch of the gators were nestled in the mud on thefar bank of the creek. If you didn’t know any better, you might mistake themfor logs that had washed up.

He nodded. “Yeah. They really are.”

“Scary,” Charlotte said.

Luke shook his head. The kid hadbeen abducted and taken prisoner. She had been flown to another country. Therewere people out there who would kill her to protect the man who had done it. Theyhad shot down an airplane and tried to murder her in the jungle. Yet alligatorswere the scary ones.

He had brought her here because itwas all he could think of. He was out of gas. His shoulder was in serious pain,and although Ed had cleaned it out and bandaged it at the airbase in Honduras,it seemed like it might be infected. He was running a fever. And at this point,he could barely put any weight on his ankle at all.

Maybe he should have brought thegirl to Washington. He didn’t know. He didn’t know who to trust at this point. Clearly,the SRT had been infiltrated by someone. Either a mole was working inside theorganization, or the headquarters was infected with listening devices. Bowleswas regular FBI, and had been sent to destroy the mission. He had nearlysucceeded.

But he didn’t, and they had gottenthe girl out after all.

Jacob had flown them in the junkerplane. He and Charlotte had simply stayed on the plane when they switched inJamaica. Ed and Rachel had made a big show of moving gear from one plane to theother, a lot of activity, in case anyone was watching. Jacob had hugged theocean the entire way here to avoid radar. Luke hadn’t told Jacob anything aboutwhere he was going or what his intentions were.

He just said, “Tell them where youdropped me off.”

Now they were here. Luke looked atthe girl. She was sitting on the same chair Louis Clare had once sat upon. Shewas wearing jeans and a gray sweatshirt a female National Guardsman had givenher in Honduras. She was still wearing Elaine’s green sneakers. The sneakerswere utterly mud caked, and were now mostly brown and black, with a little bitof green showing underneath. The girl didn’t seem to notice.

The barren kitchen surrounded her.There was nothing to eat. There was terrible stale coffee, and that was it.

Charlotte had slept on the plane,but she still looked exhausted. She seemed like she could barely keep her eyesopen. She was a pretty girl, and smart. A survivor, maybe. She had survivedthis long.

Luke wanted to do the right thingfor her, but he didn’t know what that was.

At this moment, the right thingseemed to be waiting here to see who showed up. If they wanted to kill her,Luke would kill them first. If they wanted to help her, Luke would hand herover to them.

She was watching him, more than hewas watching her. He was watching the windows and the doors, but he sensed hereyes on him.

“Thank you,” she said quietly.

He glanced at her. She was staringat him.

“For saving me.”

He shrugged. “It was my pleasure.”

“Was it? Was it really a pleasure?”

“I don’t know what it was, to behonest. I guess a lot of people died.”

It was true. Luke hadn’t tried tokeep count, but there was a pile of corpses. Luke had killed a bunch of them onthe island. Then there were the dogs, the pilot, Elaine, Buzz Mac. There was notelling how many men were killed in the jungle fight.

Now the girl began to cry. It wasn’tmuch. Just a few tears running down her cheeks. “All because I went to a party.”

Luke shook his head. “You shouldn’thave done that, but that’s not why it happened. It happened because some peopleare bad. That’s not your fault.”

She started to cry even harder. Sheput her face in her hands. Her body began to tremble.

He couldn’t comfort her. He had noidea what kind of help this kid was going to need, but he wasn’t it, not rightnow. He was spent. He didn’t even know how much longer he was going to be ableto stay awake. He almost couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore.

He looked at the instant coffeepackets again. He grunted. They were going to have to do. Brutal, stale, supermarketbrand instant coffee. He practically needed to inject it straight into hisveins.

Oh boy.

It occurred to him that Trudy hadnever gotten him the Dexedrine he asked for.

* * *

The man went by the name El Tigre.

It was a good name for a man like him.In the wild, the tiger was a professional killer. He hunted alone, at twilight,when the shadows made it hard to see. He moved under cover, camouflaged untilit was too late for the other animals to save themselves.

El Tigre liked these associations.

He moved up the backwoods dirtroad now, walking silently. He had left his car about a quarter mile back,pulled into a turnaround. There were no houses on this road, just one rundownshack on a creek, at the end.

But the road was not quiet, andthat was good. Early morning birds called to each other. Somewhere, awoodpecker was hammering on a tree. Frogs called and insects buzzed in theswamps and in the overhead trees. In some trees there were so many insects, andthey were so loud, it sounded like electricity was being generated.

All of these things were good. Thesounds covered his movements.

The shack was just up ahead. Hecould see it now. It was an old wooden place with a rusted metal roof, nofoundation, just raised up on stilts with a little space underneath. It lookedlike it didn’t know