Her Kind of Hero: The Last Mercenary

“I know someone,” Eb said after a minute. “I’ll take care of that. Phone me when you’re on the ground in Cancún and make sure you’ve got global positioning equipment with you.”

“Will do. Thanks, Eb.”

“What are friends for? I’ll be in touch. Good luck.”

“Thanks.”

“Want me to call Cy?”

“No. I’ll go by his place on my way out of town and catch him up.” He hung up.

He didn’t want to leave Callie’s car with the door open and her purse in it, but he didn’t want to be accused of tampering with evidence later. He compromised by locking it and closing the door. The police would find it eventually, because they patrolled this way. They’d take it from there, but he didn’t want anyone in authority to know he was going after Callie. Someone had warned Lopez about the recent devastating DEA raid on his property. That person was still around, and Micah didn’t want anyone to guess that he knew about Callie’s kidnapping.

It was hard to think clearly, but he had to. He knew that Callie had a cell phone. He didn’t know if she had it with her. Kemp, her boss, had let that slip to Eb Scott during a casual conversation. If Callie had the phone, and Lopez’s people didn’t know, she might be able to get a call out. He didn’t flatter himself that she’d call him. But she might try to call the adult day care center, if she could. It wasn’t much, but it gave him hope.

He drove to the center. For one mad instant he thought about speaking to his father in person. But that would only complicate matters and upset the old man; they hadn’t spoken in years. He couldn’t risk causing his father to have another stroke or a second heart attack by telling him that Callie had been kidnapped.

He went to the office of the nursing director of the center instead and took her into his confidence. She agreed with him that it might be best if they kept the news from his father, and they formulated a cover story that was convincing. It was easy enough for him to arrange for a nurse to go home with his father to Callie’s apartment every night and to drive him to the center each day. They decided to tell Jack Steele that one of Callie’s elderly aunts had been hurt in a car wreck and she had to go to Houston to see about her. Callie had no elderly aunts, but Jack wouldn’t know that. It would placate him and keep him from worrying. Then Micah would have to arrange for someone to protect him from any attempts by Lopez on his life.

He went back to his motel and spent the rest of the night and part of the next day making international phone calls. He knew that Chet Blake, the police chief, would call in the FBI once Callie’s disappearance was noted, and that wasn’t a bad idea. They would, of course, try to notify Micah, but they wouldn’t be able to find him. That meant that Lopez’s man in law enforcement would think Micah didn’t know that his stepsister had been kidnapped. And that would work to his benefit.

But if Lopez’s men carried Callie down to the Yucatán, near Cancún, which was where the drug lord lived these days, it was going to become a nightmare of diplomacy for any U. S. agency that tried to get her out of his clutches, despite international law enforcement cooperation. Micah didn’t have that problem. He had Bojo, one of his best mercenaries, with him in the States. It took time to track down the rest of his team, but by dawn he’d managed it and arranged to meet them in Belize that night. He hated waiting that long, and he worried about what Callie was going to endure in the meantime. But any sort of assault took planning, especially on a fortress like Lopez’s home. To approach it by sea was impossible. Lopez had several fast boats and guards patrolling the sea wall night and day. It would have to be a land-based attack, which was where the DC-3 came in. The trusty old planes were practically indestructible.

He couldn’t get Callie’s ordeal out of his mind. He’d kept tabs on her for years without her knowledge. She’d dated one out-of-town auditor and a young deputy sheriff, but nothing came of either relationship. She seemed to balk at close contact with men. That was disturbing to him, because he’d made some nasty allegations about her morals being as loose as her mother’s after she’d come on to him under the mistletoe four years ago.

He didn’t think words would be damaging, but perhaps they were. Callie had a reputation locally for being as pure as fresh snow. In a small town, where everybody knew everything about their neighbors, you couldn’t hide a scandal. That made him feel even more guilty, because Callie had been sweet and uninhibited until he’d gone to work on her. It was a shame that he’d taken out his rage on her, when it was her mother who’d caused all the problems in his family. Callie’s innocence was going to cost her dearly, in Lopez’s grasp. Micah groaned aloud as he began to imagine what might happen to her now. And it would be his fault.

He packed his suitcase and checked out of the motel. On the way to the airport, he went by Cy Parks’s place, to tell him what was going on. Eb was doing enough already; Micah hated the thought of putting more on him. Besides, Cy would have been miffed if he was left out of this. He had his own reasons for wanting Lopez brought down. The vengeful drug lord had endangered the life of Cy’s bride, Lisa, and the taciturn rancher wouldn’t rest easy until Lopez got what was coming to him. He sympathized with Micah about Callie’s kidnapping and Jack Steele’s danger. To Micah’s relief, he also volunteered to have one of his men, a former law enforcement officer, keep a covert eye on his father, just in case. That relieved Micah’s troubled mind. He drove to the airport, left the rented Porsche in the parking lot with the attendant, and boarded the plane to Belize. Then he went to work.

Callie came to in a limousine. She was trussed up like a calf in a bulldogging competition, wrists and ankles bound, and a gag in her mouth. The three men who’d kidnapped her were conversing.

They weren’t speaking Spanish. She heard at least one Arabic word that she understood. At once, she knew that they were Manuel Lopez’s men, and that Micah had told the truth about the danger she and Jack were in. It was too late now, though. She’d been careless and she’d been snatched.

She lowered her eyelids when one of the men glanced toward her, pretending to still be groggy, hoping for a chance to escape. Bound as she was, that seemed impossible. She shifted a little, noticing with comfort the feel of the tiny cell phone she’d slipped into her slacks’ pocket before leaving the office. If they didn’t frisk her, she might get a call out. She remembered what she’d heard about Lopez, and her blood ran cold.

She couldn’t drag her wrists out of the bonds. They felt like ropes, not handcuffs. Her arm was sore—she wondered if perhaps they’d given her a shot, a sedative of some sort. She must have been out a very long time. It had been late afternoon when she’d been kidnapped. Now it was almost dawn. She wished she had a drink of water….

The big limousine ate up the miles. She had some vague sensation that she’d been on an airplane. Perhaps they’d flown to an airport and the car had picked them up. If only she could see out the window. There were undefined shadows out there. They looked like trees, alot of trees. Her vision was slightly blurred and she felt as if her limbs were made of iron. It was difficult to concentrate, and more difficult to try to move. What had they given her?

One man spoke urgently to the other and indicated Callie. He smiled and replied with a low, deep chuckle.

Callie noticed then that her blouse had come apart in the struggle. Her bra was visible, and those men were staring at her as if they had every right. She felt sick to her soul. It didn’t take knowing the language to figure out what they were saying. She was completely innocent, but before this ordeal was over, she knew she never would be again. She felt a wave of grief wash over her. If only Micah hadn’t pushed her away that Christmas. Now it was too late. Her first and last experience of men was going to be a nightmarish one, if she even lived through it. That seemed doubtful. Once the drug lord discovered that Micah had no affection for his stepsister, that he actually hated her and wouldn’t soil his hands paying her ransom, she was going to be killed. She knew what happened in kidnappings. Most people knew. It had never occurred to her that she would ever figure in one. How ironic, that she was poor and unattractive, and that hadn’t spared her this experience.

She wondered dimly what Micah would say when he knew she was missing. He’d probably feel well rid of her, but he might pay the ransom for her father’s sake. Someone had to look after Jack Steele, something his only child couldn’t apparently be bothered to do. Callie loved the old man and would have gladly sacrificed her life for him. That made her valuable in at least one way.

The one bright spot in all this was that once word of Callie’s kidnapping got out, Micah would hire a bodyguard for Jack whether he wanted one or not. Jack would be safe.

She wished she knew some sort of self-defense, some way of protecting herself, of getting loose from the ropes and the gag that was slowly strangling her. She hadn’t had time for lunch the day before and she’d been drugged for the whole night and into the next morning. She was sick and weak from hunger and thirst, and she really had to go to the bathroom. It was a bad day all around.

She closed her eyes and wished she’d locked her car doors and sped out of reach of her assailants. If there was a next time, if she lived to repeat her mistakes, she’d never repeat that one.

She shifted because her legs were cramping and she felt even sicker.

Listening to the men converse in Arabic, she realized her abductors weren’t from Mexico. But as she looked out the window now, she could see the long narrow paved ribbon of road running through what looked like rain forest. She’d never been to the Yucatán, but she knew what it looked like from volumes of books she’d collected on Maya relics. Her heart sank. She knew that Manuel Lopez lived near Cancún, and she knew she was in the Yucatán. Her worst fears were realized.

Only minutes later, the car pulled into a long paved driveway through tall steel gates. The gates closed behind them. They sped up to an impressive whitewashed beach house overlooking a rocky bay. It had red ceramic tiles and the grounds were immaculate and full of blooming flowers. Hibiscus in November. She could have laughed hysterically. Back home the trees were bare, and here everything was blooming. She wondered what sort of fertilizer they used to grow those hibiscus flowers so big, and then she remembered Lopez’s recent body count. She wondered if she might end up planted in his garden…

The car stopped. The door was opened by a suited dark man holding an automatic rifle of some sort, one of those little snub-nosed machine guns that crooks on television always seemed to carry.

She winced as the men dragged her out of the car and frog-marched her, bonds and all, into the ceramic tile floored lobby. The tile was black and white, like a chessboard. There was a long, graceful staircase and, overhead, a crystal chandelier that looked like Waterford crystal. It probably cost two or three times the price of her car.

As she searched her surroundings, a small middle-aged man strolled out of the living room with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t smile. He walked around Callie as if she were some sort of curiosity, his full lips pursed, his small dark eyes narrow and smugly gleaming. He jerked her gag down.

“Miss Kirby,” he murmured in accented English. “Welcome to my home. I am Manuel Lopez. You will be my guest until your interfering stepbrother tries to rescue you,” he added, hesitating in front of her. “And when he arrives, I will give him what my men have left of you, before I kill him, too!”

Callie thought that she’d never seen such cruelty in a human being’s eyes in her life. The man made her knees shake. He was looking at her with contempt and possession. He reached out a stubby hand and ripped her blouse down in front, baring her small breasts in their cotton bra.

“I had expected a more attractive woman,” he said. “Sadly you have no attractions with which to bargain, have you? Small breasts and a body that would afford little satisfaction. But Kalid likes women,” he mused, glancing at the small, dark man who’d been sitting across from Callie. “When I need information, he is the man who obtains it for me. And although I need no information from you, Miss Kirby,” he murmured, “it will please Kalid to practice his skills.”

A rapid-fire burst of a guttural language met the statement.

“Español!” Lopez snapped. “You know I do not understand Arabic!”

“The woman,” one of the other men replied in Spanish. “Before you give her to Kalid, let us have her.”

Lopez glanced at the two thin, unshaven men who’d delivered Callie to him and smiled. “Why not? I make you a present of her. It should arouse even more guilt in her stepbrother to find her…used. But not until I tell you,” he added coldly. “For now, take her to the empty servant’s room upstairs. And put the gag back in place,” he added. “I have important guests arriving. I would not want them to be disturbed by any unexpected noise.”

“My stepbrother won’t come to rescue me,” she said hoarsely, shocked. “He isn’t a physical sort of man. Aren’t you going to ask him to pay ransom?”

Lopez looked at her as if she were nuts. “Why do you think Steele will not come after you?”

“He’s a doctor. Or he was studying to be one. He wouldn’t know the first thing about rescuing somebody!”

Lopez seemed to find that amusing.

“Besides that,” she added harshly, “he hates me. He’ll probably laugh his head off when he knows you’ve got me. He can’t stand the sight of me.”

That seemed to disturb Lopez, but after a minute he shrugged. “No importa,” he said lightly. “If he comes, that will be good. If not, it will make him even more concerned for his father. Who will be,” he added with a cold smile, “next to feel my wrath.”

Callie had her mouth open to ask another question, but at a signal from Lopez she was half dragged out of the room, her pale blue eyes as wide as saucers as she shivered with fear.

2

Callie had never been in such danger in her life, although she certainly knew what it was to be manhandled. She’d been in and out of foster care since the age of six. On a rare visit home, one of her mother’s lovers had broken her arm when she was thirteen, after trying to fondle her. She’d run from him in horror, and he’d caught up with her at the staircase. A rough scuffle with the man had sent her tumbling down the steps to lie sprawled at the foot of the staircase.

Her mother had been furious, but not at her boyfriend, who said that Callie had called him names and threatened to tell her mother lies about him. After her broken arm had been set in a cast, Anna had taken Callie right back to her foster home, making her out to be incorrigible and washing her hands of responsibility for her.

Oddly, it had been Jack Steele’s insistence that he wanted the child that had pushed a reluctant Anna into taking her back, at the age of fifteen. Jack had won her over, a day at a time. When Micah was home for holidays, he’d taunted her, made his disapproval of her so noticeable that her first lesson in the Steele home was learning how to avoid Jack’s grown son. She’d had a lot of practice at avoiding men by then, and a lot of emotional scars. Anna had found that amusing. Never much of a mother, she’d ignored Callie to such an extent that the only affection Callie ever got was from Jack.