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Lena spoke up. “Cell phones are not permitted in the building.”
“And yet, this woman has one.” He held up Grace’s cell phone with a triumphant smirk.
“She was waiting outside for me to finish my work.”
The captain dropped Grace’s phone back into her bag and tossed it atop the coffee bar. “And what is it youdohere,señorita?” His tone oozed with suspicion as he swaggered closer to Lena, searching her stony expression.
“Payroll.” She stared back at him, seemingly unfazed by what was about to happen to them, but the telltale throbbing at the base of her throat betrayed her.
A cold shiver coursed Grace’s spine. They were going to die here. Amos and Simon would never see her again.
“Hmph.” Under his breath, the captain added words to Lena that Grace was glad she couldn’t hear. “Hand me the tape,” he then barked at one of his soldiers. “I will tie them myself.”
Getting no resistance from Lena, the captain shoved her down into the nearest chair and, with expertise that chilled Grace, secured both her wrists and ankles to the chair’s arms and legs, using duct tape.
Next, he approached Grace and pushed her into the only other seat available, a wheeled desk chair. She tried to kick him as he crouched to bind her feet. Clearly it was just her mind playing tricks on her, but he so much resembled the soldier who used to haunt her, she said to him in English, “I willneverbelong to you.”
Whether he understood her defiant words, she had no way of knowing. He glanced up with a frown before snaring one ankle, then the other, and binding them with the sticky tape, which he wound around her legs six times. Standing abruptly, he backed to the door while muttering for his men to follow him.
“They will die when the rebels strike the building.”
Grace glanced in horror at Lena. Why was she behaving with such docility? Surely the CIA had taught her how to defend herself.
The office door closed, locking with aclick.
CHAPTER19
“Something’s wrong. It’s not like Zorra to be late.”
Carrigan’s observation gave voice to the uneasiness pitching in Amos’s stomach. They’d been waiting on the beach of the rendezvous point for over an hour, and, in that time, the only thing they’d heard and seen under the starry, Venezuelan sky were the iridescent waves crashing onto the shore they’d pulled up onto. All he could do as they waited was torment himself, thinking of how much closer to Grace he had to be, wondering where she was and whether she’d received or heeded his messages.
“Round up the men,” Carrigan finally said. “We’re going in.” With those words, he took off toward the dunes at a run.
The words gratified Amos’s need to take action. He bolted after the lieutenant, with Bambino, Theo, and Ben right behind him. As they sank into the softening sand, the thumbnail moon skated out of the smoke wafting from the not-too-distant airport and lighted their way.
Back at the beach, the waves had apparently muffled the noises that now floated toward them: the low throttle of engines, an occasional shout. As they crested the last dune, the scene that awaited them pulled a word of dismay from Carrigan. The National Army had descended on the depot and was hard at work loading up the stored arsenal into the back of three canvas-covered cargo trucks.
Amos turned his head to observe Carrigan’s grim reaction.
The CIA-SEAL crouched on all fours, breathing hard, not from the run, Amos suspected, but from the grim possibility that they would have to pit themselves against dozens of armed men in order to save Zorra.
Jake ducked back behind the dune and sat on the sand, making it clear they weren’t going anywhere just yet. He consulted his watch, which Amos knew gave Zorra’s exact global positioning, so long as she still wore her watch. “She’s still in the building.”
If Zorra was there, then Grace was possibly there, too, if she’d made it to Caracas.
“We’re not causing an international scandal. We wait for the Nats to leave and pray to God they don’t take Zorra with them.”
Amos would have made the same call—especially the part about praying to God, though he wasn’t sure Jake meant that literally. “Yes, sir.” He turned toward his men. “Ben put eyes on the warehouse and tell us what happens.”
The Vortex Optic scope on Ben’s TAC-50 was better than any of the scopes on their own M4s. As Ben so colorfully put it, he could see a gnat on a rhino’s rump with his Vortex.
The bald sniper was already setting the tripod for his big gun on the lip of the dune. “Hooyah, Mako.”
Unwilling to take his eyes off the scene, Amos scooted higher and peered through his own scope across the scrubby field, through the chain-link fence, to the brightly lit warehouse within. Were Grace and Mateo possibly in there? If so, he would do exactly what he should have done the last time: whatever it took to get them back to the States alive.
* * *
“Quiet!” Lena hissed when Grace begged again for her to do something. “I need to think. Stop talking.”
