Conquistador, page 3
Mitchell let out a tired sigh. “I don’t know.”
“I do, and as your closest friend, I’m ordering you to take some leave and forget about things for a while. The world won’t end without you being at work.”
Mitchell nodded and sat back. Perhaps Jackson was right. Jen had been asking him to take some time off. He had been working steadily since the bombing at Polaris Headquarters; it was his way of avoiding how he felt inside. Mitchell closed his eyes and made a deal with himself. He would take some time off after he spoke with a counselor to ease his troubled mind.
“Now show me your hand,” said Jackson.
“Why?”
“Because you’ve been hiding it from me ever since we took off.”
Mitchell slid his left hand from his pocket and held it up.
“That’s a nasty one,” said Jackson. “I doubt there’s anything on this chopper we can use to disinfect it with. But I’m sure our next ride will be fully stocked with medical equipment.”
“You’re looking forward to torturing me with your ham-handed medical skills, aren’t you?”
Jackson smiled. “Quit your bellyaching, Captain. If you don’t want me to patch you up all the time, stop getting hurt.”
4
Palawan Island, The Philippines
Julia Cruz couldn’t have been more bored. She sat alone at her table drumming her fingers, while her friend danced with a guy she had met while they were diving off the coast earlier that day. Her mood wasn’t helped when the cover band started playing a song that she and her ex-husband used to dance to when they first met. She had just turned forty-two, and found herself all alone. Her husband had left her six months ago for a younger woman. Julia sat there, staring at her drink, and for the first time in ages, she contemplated a life on her own. Julia and her ex-husband had decided when they first met not to have any children. Now, as she sat by herself, Julia wasn’t sure if she had made the right call.
Julia was wearing a comfortable-fitting, floral-pattern dress, with a pair of sandals on her feet. She rarely ate more than two small meals a day, and had managed to keep her slim figure over the years. Her thick, black hair was beginning to lose its fight against time. Rather than color her hair, she decided to embrace her age and let the gray come in naturally. Her only concession to growing older was the silver-rimmed glasses she wore to help her see.
Her cell phone, sitting on the table next to her, buzzed loudly. Julia picked it up and saw there was a message from her brother, Alejandro, for her to read. Although it was after nine at night where she was, it was early morning back home in the States. Julia opened the text and read it. He wished her well and asked for her to send him some pictures of the wildlife she had seen. A tear came to her eye. Her brother was doing his best to cheer her up, and yet she felt as if her chest was being held in a vise that was slowly being screwed together. Julia’s pulse began to race. She felt a panic attack coming on. Julia stood up and walked out of the lounge. She needed air. Julia walked out of the hotel lobby, stepped outside and took in a deep breath of warm, salty air. Right away she felt more in control. Her heart slowed. She reached for her cigarettes and lit one while she walked along the side of the hotel’s brightly lit pool.
“Watch out,” called out a young man as an inflated ball came flying at her head.
Julia saw it coming and knocked it back toward the pool with her hand.
“Thanks,” said the young man.
Julia waved at the man and his friends before taking a seat with an unobstructed view of the dark waters of the Sulu Sea. She looked around and saw she was the only person on the beach. Julia found the sound of the waves as they crashed against the shore was relaxing.
A white-jacketed server appeared as if out of nowhere. “Would madame like a drink?” he asked.
Julia was about to say no when she changed her mind. “Yes, please. I’d like a gin and tonic.” While she waited for the server to return, Julia dug out her phone and scrolled through her messages. There were more than a dozen from her brother, and a couple from her friends at the University of New Mexico where she taught anthropology. Sometimes, she thought Alejandro was taking her divorce worse than she was. Julia didn’t feel like replying to the texts, and put her phone away.
“Ma’am, your drink,” said the server, as he bent down to hand her a glass.
Julia took the drink and tipped the young man a couple of dollars. She sat back in her lounge chair and felt her tension begin to fade with each splash of the waves on the beach. Julia took a sip of her drink and savored the taste. She had always liked gin and tonic. When Julia went to take another sip she found she couldn’t raise her hand. She tried again. It was as if her hand was made of lead. Julia opened her mouth to call for help.
Nothing came out.
Fear gripped her heart. She had been drugged. Julia was paralyzed and helpless. She could move nothing but her eyes.
Out of the dark stepped two men. Julia recognized one as her server. He had taken off his white jacket and held a pistol in his right hand. The other man wasn’t Filipino. He was tall, with broad, muscular shoulders. With his short, black hair and dark complexion, he looked Hispanic to her.
The tall man got down on his haunches and looked deep into Julia’s brown eyes. If she could have cried out, she would have screamed her head off. The man seemed to be studying her. Finally, he said, “Good evening, Ms. Cruz. Don’t worry, the paralysis isn’t permanent. It will wear off in about six hours’ time. I just couldn’t risk having you call out for help.”
Two more men stepped from the shadows.
The tall man looked over at the men. “Take Ms. Cruz to the boat and be gentle with her. If you damage so much as a single hair on her head, I’ll feed you to the sharks.”
The two men nodded, picked up Julia, and started to walk toward a boat sitting dark just off shore. She couldn’t believe what was happening to her. The kidnapping of wealthy foreigners wasn’t an uncommon occurrence in Southeast Asia, but she didn’t have any money. As the light from the hotel began to fade, Julia realized this wasn’t about her. It had to be about her brother.
5
New York City
Ryan Mitchell looked at his reflection in the elevator and adjusted his tie. He was wearing a charcoal-gray suit with a matching shirt and black tie. Mitchell was in his early thirties and stood at just over two meters tall with a trim, athletic build. His best feature, according to his wife, was his penetrating blue-gray eyes. He had thick, brown hair which was cut short, just the way he liked it.
With him was Nathaniel Jackson, his closest friend, and advisor. Ten years older than Mitchell, he had a shaved head and wore a snug blue suit. The last passenger was their boss, General Jack O’Reilly. In his late fifties, O’Reilly was a health nut who insisted on exercising outdoors every day, rain or shine.
“I can see you looking at me out of the corner of your eye, Ryan, and before you say anything, I was going to go suit shopping before this appointment came up,” said Jackson, pulling at this jacket.
Mitchell raised his hands in mock surrender. “I wasn’t going to say a thing. You’ve worn the same suit to every meeting we’ve been to over the past couple of years. If you’re comfortable with it, who am I to say a thing?”
“General, how come we had to come down to New York?” asked Jackson. “Why couldn’t whoever it is we’re going to meet come to us?”
O’Reilly shook his head. “Nate, I swear you don’t read any of the internal memos I send around. Our new headquarters building won’t be open for another month, and I’m not going to meet a multi-billion-dollar client in our temporary home. We need the money to pay for all of the repairs, so play nice, and let me do all of the talking.”
The elevator slowed down. A second later, the doors slid open. O’Reilly stepped out first, followed by his colleagues.
A young woman in a tan suit with short, blonde hair smiled when she saw the men approach her desk. She stood up and offered her hand in greeting. “Good morning, gentlemen. My name is Kate James. I am Mister Cruz’s executive assistant. He is expecting you, so if you would please follow me to the boardroom.”
O’Reilly shook James’ hand. “Ms. James, your company has a very impressive office tower.”
“Thank you. It has one hundred and five floors, and is home to not just Mister Cruz’s corporation, but several other major international companies.”
James opened the twin doors to the boardroom and ushered her guests inside. In the center of the room was a long, polished, oak table. On the walls were paintings of the planes that Cruz Aerospace made and sold to both the military and civilian markets. “Please take a seat. I will let Mister Cruz know you are here.”
Mitchell’s eye was drawn to a picture of a dirigible on the far wall. It was unlike any he had ever seen. Unlike the long and slender Zeppelin-style airships, this one looked more like a giant triangle floating in the sky. It had multiple propellers on either side of the ship, and appeared to be designed to carry cargo.
“I see you like my new toy,” said Alejandro Cruz as he walked into the room.
Mitchell turned to face their host.
Cruz was a tall man in his early fifties, with salt-and-pepper hair. He had piercing, dark-brown eyes, and a handsome face. He wore a tailored, silver-gray, double-breasted suit that easily cost several thousand dollars. Never married, Cruz was devoted to two things: his work, and his younger sister. He walked over to Mitchell’s side and smiled. “The original military designation for the airship was the X-11. I call her the Avalerion. She’s magnificent.”
“That she is, sir,” replied Mitchell.
“She’s a hybrid airship. I was developing it for the air force, but with the recent budget cutbacks, the contract fell through, so I decided to finish her myself. She is unique in that she has a thin layer of solar panels on her outer skin which allows us to harness the power of the sun to help propel the ship along. Almost silent, the Avalerion can carry twenty passengers, and will lift over two hundred tons of cargo for thousands of kilometers without needing to come down to refuel.”
“That’s very impressive.”
“She’s being tested in Brazil by one of my subsidiary companies. What’s the point of being a billionaire if you can’t spend some of your money frivolously on your passions?”
Mitchell realized he was monopolizing Cruz’s attention. “Forgive me, sir, may I introduce to you, General Jack O’Reilly and Nathaniel Jackson? And my name is Ryan Mitchell.”
Cruz enthusiastically shook the men’s hands. “Please, let us take a seat at the table. Miss James has ordered us some coffee. It should be here any minute.”
As if on cue, a young man in a suit walked in, carrying a silver tray with a carafe and four cups on it. Everyone helped themselves to a cup of coffee before sitting down.
Cruz looked into his guests’ faces. “Gentlemen, I have asked you to come here today because I need your help. After what happened, Anthony Longman, my head of security, recommended that I call you.”
“I know Longman,” said O’Reilly. “He was in the SOF world for most of his career. He’s a good man. You’re lucky to have him.”
Cruz nodded. “I know, but most of my people aren’t trained to do what I need you to do.”
“Which is?”
“I want you to find my sister, Julia. She has gone missing while on holiday at a private resort on the island of Palawan in the Philippines.”
“When did she go missing?” asked Mitchell.
“Two days ago,” replied Cruz. “When her roommate went back to their room for the evening, Julia wasn’t there. She spoke with the hotel staff, and no one saw her leave the hotel that night. The only people who even remotely recall seeing her were a bunch of college students who were partying in the hotel pool. They said she walked past them and took a seat looking out over the beach. No one saw her after that. It was as if she had vanished into thin air.”
“Sir, please don’t take this the wrong way,” said O’Reilly, “but is there any chance your sister was distraught enough over something that she might have walked out into the water and taken her own life?”
Cruz shook his head. His voice was unequivocal. “No. I know my sister. She’s going through a rough patch in her life, but she is not suicidal.”
“I’m sorry for the blunt question, sir, but I had to ask.”
“I’m not upset. Mister Longman asked me exactly the same thing.”
“Has there been a ransom demand?” asked Jackson.
“Not yet, but I’m sure there will be one soon enough,” responded Cruz. “My sister is a tenured professor of anthropology. They’re not after her pitiful life savings; it’s mine they’ll be coming for.”
“Have your people been in contact with the Philippine police?” said O’Reilly.
“Yes. But the impression I get is that they’re not taking it too seriously. They told Mister Longman she probably took off with a man and will show up in the next few days.”
“Sir, they could be right,” said Mitchell.
“No. If you knew my sister like I do, you’d know that she’d never just take off with a man she just met,” replied Cruz. “She’s very old-fashioned when it comes to relationships. Running off in the middle of the night with a stranger is not her style. Mister Longman has all but given up on the police and has been in contact with a private investigator, who has been looking into Julia’s disappearance for me.”
“Has he found out anything that could help us determine what happened?”
Cruz shook his head. “Unfortunately, nothing so far.”
“Her cell phone must have a GPS device in it,” said Mitchell. “Have you tried tracking it?”
“I didn’t have to,” said Cruz. “The phone was found on the beach by one of the hotel’s staff the next morning.”
“Sir, the Philippines is an enormous country, with over seven thousand islands spread out over thousands of kilometers,” pointed out O’Reilly. “After forty-eight hours, she may not even be in the country anymore.”
“I have considered that, but we must start from somewhere, which is why I would like to hire your people to go to the Philippines and try to find my sister for me. Trust me when I say money is not a problem. I’d rather pay you millions of dollars to bring my sister back to me alive, than a single dime to her kidnappers.”
O’Reilly looked over at his colleagues. “Well, gents, what do you think?”
“I say we give it a try,” said Mitchell. “There’s nothing on the books for my team right now.”
“Ryan, I won’t authorize Samantha’s involvement in this mission,” said O’Reilly. “She’s still on leave, and until she is declared fit for duty by a medical doctor and the company’s mental health counselor, she’s not going anywhere.”
“Nate and I can handle things.”
“We’ll be okay by ourselves,” added Jackson.
“If we need backup, I’ll give Yuri a call,” said Mitchell.
“So I take it, you’ll accept my offer?” said Cruz.
“Yes,” replied O’Reilly. “I’ll have my finance department contact your financial officer to work out payment.”
Cruz stood. He had tears in his eyes. “Gentlemen, please find my sister and bring her back to me. Our parents are both gone. She’s all I’ve got in the world.”
O’Reilly held out his hand. “Sir, I’ll keep you in the loop with daily updates from my people, but you need to be aware that things can sometimes go horribly wrong when you are dealing with kidnappers in that part of the world.”
Cruz shook O’Reilly’s hand. “I have faith in God that my sister will soon be free.”
“Sir, can Mister Longman give me a call, so I can get the name and number of his private investigator?” asked Mitchell.
“Most certainly. I’ll have him meet you in the lobby. He can give you everything he has.”
“Thank you.”
Mitchell and Jackson stood and exited the room, so O’Reilly and Cruz could discuss in private the fee and any other business that didn’t need their input.
“Ever have a feeling of déjà vu?” said Jackson. “This is how it all began before we lost Sam.”
A shiver went down Mitchell’s spine. “Well, let’s just make damn sure this doesn’t end the same way. I’d rather not go through that again for the rest of my career.”
“You should give Yuri a call before we leave for the Philippines. The last time we were all together, I thought I heard him saying something about doing a job in Africa with Grace Maxwell.”
“Good idea. If we can’t get Yuri to give us a hand, I’m sure he has some shady contacts in Southeast Asia who would sell out their mothers for a few thousand dollars.”
6
Palawan Island
The Air Philippines 737 came to a gradual stop outside of the main terminal of the Puerto Princesa International Airport. Inside the plane, Mitchell and Jackson stood and grabbed their overhead luggage before joining the queue of people waiting to disembark. A pair of portable staircases were hauled over and placed at the front and back exits.
“The first thing I want to do when we get to the hotel is have a long hot shower,” proclaimed Jackson. “Between flights and waiting around in terminals, we’ve been on the go for a day and a half already.”
“This was the most direct flight we could get. Be happy the folks back home aren’t paying for our flights, or we’d still be somewhere in China waiting for our connection,” said Mitchell.
Although only mid-morning, the air outside was hot and humid. Lush jungle trees surrounded the airport. It took a few minutes for them to move through customs and to retrieve their luggage.
“I’ll send the boss a text and let him know we’re on the ground,” said Jackson, reaching for his phone.
