Fixed Asset (Downrange), page 3
“If Mase starts talking about popping a boner, I’m out,” Fallon joined in.
Throughout this exchange, Jack’s gaze stayed locked with mine. There was something working behind those dark-blue orbs. Something I couldn’t make out. But whatever he was contemplating would remain a mystery.
“To answer the question you’re too stubborn to ask, Mase took your pack right before he zip-tied your ankles.”
I thought back, and I didn’t remember being divested of the bag, but I was struggling and wiggling, trying to regain my freedom, so anything was possible. I mean, obviously it was, because I no longer had my backpack.
“Way to throw me under the bus,” Mason mumbled.
“The answer to your other question is, no one is taking you back to the hotel until after we talk.”
Talk?
What the hell was there to talk about?
“A lot,” Jack answered my unasked question.
“Stop reading my mind.”
“Baby, your every thought is playing across your face.”
That wasn’t true. I had an excellent poker face.
One side of Jack’s mouth hitched up.
I narrowed my eyes, leaned closer, and inquired, “What am I thinking now?”
What was supposed to be an act of defiance backfired. I knew this when what I’d meant to sound snotty instead came out breathy.
“Do you really want me to answer that, Cat?”
“If your answer is anything other than me wanting to punch you in the face, you’d be wrong,” I lied.
Jack made a tsking sound. He lowered his head, veering to the side before his lips touched mine, but I felt them ever so gently whisper across my temple before his mouth was at my ear and he quietly said, “Such a pretty liar.”
He pulled back, leaving my brain scrambled. Since I was incapable of speaking, I stared mutely as he released my wrists, only to pry one of my hands off his chest and use it to pull me around the dingy couch.
“Excuse us.”
We were crossing the threshold of a doorless doorway when I found my voice. “Where are we going?”
“To work this out.”
Jack threatening to spank me immediately sprang to mind. My hand in his involuntarily spasmed.
“Not that way, Cat. But I like the way you think.”
Goodness gracious, the dude was the master of mixed signals. One second he looked like he wanted to throttle me and was telling me I was a pain in his ass, the next he was whispering sexy things in my ear.
“What is this place? And where is it?”
“Palmira.”
Well, that explained the short van ride. This neighborhood was only a few blocks from where I’d been eating lunch.
“Are you insane? Palmira is controlled by Adrián Lopez.”
“No crazier than you walking down the street with a neon sign flashing above your head announcing: beautiful American, please take me. And I’m impressed you’ve done your homework.”
I yanked my hand, trying to free it from his grasp. Unfortunately, this did nothing. His grip was ironclad.
“Just so you know, your insult canceled out your compliment.”
We’d only made it a few feet down the corridor when I heard a sharp whistle.
Jack jerked to an abrupt halt and turned his head to look behind me. I craned my neck to see what had stopped us.
Pete was standing at the open doorway. Right hand up, index finger extended, circling the air.
“What’s—”
“We have company,” Jack irately announced.
“What kind of company?”
“The bad kind.”
Well, shit.
This couldn’t be good. Jack and his buddies were in Lopez’s territory. I highly doubted they asked the gang leader for permission. I was equally sure if they had, Lopez would’ve killed them on the spot. His numbers weren’t as high—those numbers being members, not kills—as some of the other local gangs. I’d been warned to stay clear of Lopez and the Calaveras. Lopez was known to be ambitious. That ambition was shrouded in brutality. There was only one way for the Calaveras to claim neighborhoods that were already controlled by a rival—war.
The Calaveras had earned their name honestly by keeping the severed heads of the rival leaders when they acquired a neighborhood.
I didn’t want my skull to be Lopez’s newest keepsake.
“Our talk’s gonna have to wait.”
I bit back my ‘no shit, Sherlock’ retort and opted for something more relevant.
“I’m unarmed.”
Jack pivoted, his strides now urgent as he towed me behind him back into the large warehouse.
“Cat needs kit.”
I heard Mason chuckle before he peeled off and disappeared behind the van.
Pete was glaring at a tablet. Fallon already had an M4 carbine hanging across his chest from a sling and was shoving a handgun into his thigh rig.
“Four tangos C-side,” Pete started, then swiped his thumb over the tablet screen. “Six coming up on A.” Another swipe. “B and D are clear.”
I glanced at Jack for an explanation.
“Side A.” He pointed to the large bay doors. “Clockwise around the building.”
In other words, side A was the front, C was the back, and B and D were the sides.
“Got it.”
“Yo, Cat,” Mason called. “You want the Beretta PX4 GS-D or the Rugger-Magpul RXM collab?”
“Is the PX4 the Langdon Tactical edition or the compact?” I asked.
“Compact.”
“I’ll take the RugPul.”
Next to me, Fallon snorted.
“What?”
“Just surprised.”
Now I was getting annoyed. “That I know the difference between an RXM and PX4?”
Fallon’s eyebrow winged up.
“Fuck no. I’m just surprised you have shit taste like your boy in platforms. The RXM is a total Glock knockoff. I took you for someone who would appreciate a G-type decocker.”
“We got ten heavily armed men converging on us; maybe you two gun nerds should wait to debate striker fire versus hammers after we put them down,” Pete suggested.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
Mason was coming my way with two rifles slung over his shoulder, a vest in one hand, and the RXM in the other. Gone was his sexy-beach-bum persona as he morphed into untouchable warrior.
“Here. It’s gonna be big on you but it’s better than nothing. Mag pouches are full.” He held out the vest. I took it and quickly put it on.
I ran my hands over the pouches, getting a feel for where my reloads were. The vest was set up differently from how I normally kept mine, but there was no time to reorganize. I pulled the straps on the sides as far as I could, but it was still huge.
“This isn’t going to work. It’ll bounce around when I run.”
I was pulling back a Velcro strap when Jack’s hand knocked mine out of the way, and he refastened the cummerbund.
“It stays on.”
“Jack—”
Suddenly we were nose to nose.
“It . . . stays . . . on.”
The tiny pauses between each word with the added enunciation left no room for argument.
“Fine. But if a thirty-round mag busts my lips, I’m blaming you.”
“You bust your lip, I’ll kiss it better. You take a round to the chest without a plate, I’ll be pissed.”
“They breached the fence. Time to roll out,” Pete commanded.
Jack stepped back.
Mason handed me the RXM, shoved my arm through the tactical strap of the M4, and told me, “They’re both chambered.”
“Locked and loaded and ready to go,” Fallon called out.
As a team, the men made their way to the van with Pete leading the way. I was sandwiched between Fallon in front of me and Jack behind me.
Jack was helping me into the van when it dawned on me . . .
“Where’s your kit?”
“Guns are already in the van.”
“Where’s your vest?”
“You’re wearing it.”
With that, he slid the metal door closed in my face.
You’re wearing it.
Jack gave me his vest, which meant he’d left himself unprotected.
Damn.
Chapter Four
By the time I got my ass planted in the passenger seat, Pete had the engine running.
“Hold tight,” he warned.
I looked over my shoulder to make sure Cat was secure, or as secure as someone in the back of a van kitted out for transport, not passengers, could be.
She was eyeing her pack behind Pete’s seat. I bet she was still trying to puzzle out how Mason had gotten it off her while I’d had her arms pinned to her sides.
She reached out, grabbed a strap, and had her answer.
“You cut my straps,” she muttered.
“I’ll buy you a new one,” Mase told her.
Pete hit the gas. Fallon grabbed Cat by the back of my vest as she pitched to the side.
“Might want to brace, he’s taking out—”
Fallon didn’t finish, mainly because Pete crashed through the garage door, rendering his warning moot. The van veered right and Pete corrected. I turned to face forward and grabbed my RXM from the glove box, leaving my M4 wedged between the center console and the seat as my last resort.
“I’ve got four at our nine,” I said, calling out the four men to the left of the vehicle.
Pete would have to take care of them. I couldn’t shoot across him. He swerved the van to the left, gunned the engine, and played chicken with four Honduran gang members who would rather be run over than go back to Lopez and explain how they pussied out and ran for cover.
I scanned to the right, found the two others, and engaged, sending warning shots instead of taking them out.
“Brace,” I called back to the team.
A second later, Pete hit the chain-link gate. Mangled metal scraped the side of the van as he drove through.
I pulled the barrel of my RXM back into the vehicle and out of sight. The road was empty of pedestrians, but in this neighborhood, that didn’t mean shit. Lopez had scouts everywhere, peeking through dirty windows, sitting in cars, on the rooftops . . . Anywhere someone could hide, they did.
“One of you call in to Shep. Have him run the footage and catalog. We also need a new safe house,” Pete instructed.
“Shepherd Drexel?” Cat asked.
I clamped down on my molars in an effort not to growl my frustration and focused on watching the road.
I wasn’t surprised Cat knew who Shepherd Drexel was. Shep was a well-known hacker. He also skirted the boundary between morally gray and morally bankrupt. It wasn’t that the man didn’t know right from wrong—he did. He just lived by the code of: by any means necessary. Whereas most people had lines they wouldn’t cross, Shep would back up and take a running start before he leaped over them.
So Cat knowing who Shep was wasn’t what had me struggling to keep my attention on my surroundings. It was the wonder I heard that was borderline giddy. The last person Catarina Keys needed to have contact with was Shepherd Drexel. The two of them together would do my head in.
“Yeah,” Fallon answered. Now I wanted to turn around and punch my teammate. “He runs intel for us.”
“Seriously? I thought he—”
“We got a tail,” Pete thankfully cut in. “White Honda.”
I glanced in the side mirror and spotted the old hooptie.
“Driver and passenger,” I confirmed. “I can’t see if there’s anyone in the back.”
Pete made a sharp left, narrowly missing an oncoming car, taking us closer to the end of Lopez’s territory.
One of the unusual things about Tegucigalpa was the pockets of gang presence. Some of these pockets were only separated by a street. You could cross over into a rival gang’s area simply by crossing the intersection. The city was a maze of violence, some areas worse than others, some relatively safe if you stayed in the center city by the malls. Relatively safe, meaning it was relative to the daily murder count that happened in the barrios. Safety also depended on if you were a man or a woman.
Women were never safe in the Northern Triangle of Central America.
“One block until we’re clear.”
As soon as the words left Pete’s mouth, bullets peppered the back of the van.
“Motherfucker,” Mason groused. “You had to say it.”
More bullets peppered the side of the van.
“Hit the floor, Kitty. The van’s not bulletproof,” Fallon informed Cat.
Jesus fuck, I was totally punching my friend in the mouth when we got out of the van.
“Should we be shooting back?” Cat asked.
“This is just the Calaveras boys’ way of asking us nicely to leave,” Mason informed her.
More rounds popped off.
I heard the familiar whiz-crack of a projectile snap past my head right before the windshield spiderwebbed.
The high-pitched ringing started immediately. I heard loud but muffled sounds and couldn’t make out words over the painful buzzing. I reached up to touch the side of my head, ear, neck. Nothing felt sticky.
More loud pops, these coming from inside the van. I turned to look into the back and died another thousand deaths, courtesy of Catarina. She was on her knees at the back of the van, and I could tell by the jerk of her shoulders she was returning fire, along with Mason.
“Pull her the fuck back,” I shouted.
Either no one could hear me over the ringing in their ears, the gunfire, or both, or they were ignoring me.
I was getting ready to crawl into the back and remove Cat from the direct line of fire myself when Pete made another turn, and the shooting stopped.
“Driver’s out,” Mason yelled, or at least that’s the best I could interpret.
The silence that ensued only exacerbated the incessant ringing that I knew from experience we’d be suffering for at least the next hour, if not two.
There was a tap on my shoulder. I glanced over to find Fallon shoving his phone at me. I grabbed the device, looked at the screen, and read the message on the opened Notes app.
Texted Shep. Waiting to here back.
If it hadn’t felt like an ice pick had punctured my eardrum, I would’ve made fun of him for his typo. I’d file that away for later. I kept reading.
Your woman’s a badass. I think we should keep her.
I was going to need dental work when I got back to San Diego, or I was going to give myself TMJ from the jaw clenching.
I shoved the phone into Fallon’s waiting hand and looked for a landmark.
Mas X Menos supermarket, next to a sketchy-looking auto repair station. We were officially in a gang-free zone. Or, an area that wasn’t fully controlled by a gang. The US Embassy was two blocks down. The politicians weren’t the only ones who played politics in Honduras. Just because the gang leaders were ruthless criminals didn’t mean they weren’t smart. They’d agree to keep the area around the embassy neutral for a payoff.
Fallon shoved his phone back through the space between the seats. I glanced at it and felt a headache blooming.
Three words that had me wanting to scrap the mission until I could safely escort Cat home.
San Pedro Sula—the hub of drug trafficking.
If there was one city in all of Honduras I didn’t want to take Cat to, it would be San Pedro Sula. If Shep was sending us there, that meant he’d located our target. And of course, Berta ‘the Angel of Death’ Lanza would be in San Pedro Sula. Where else would a woman on the warpath be?
Good Christ.
I jerked my chin. The phone disappeared. I pulled mine out of my pocket, opened the Maps app, and put in the city name. It was a minimum of a five-hour drive to the northern coast, closer to six if we avoided the toll roads. Not to be confused with traditional toll roads like the Jersey Turnpike or bridge tolls. These tolls were nothing more than a money grab from the police. They’d set up checkpoints for the sole purpose of extorting a few bucks.
The problem wasn’t the money, though it was annoying as fuck to have to stop every twenty kilometers to pay off another cop; it was that each time we got stopped, we courted an issue with our documents. Not that they wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny, but getting hauled in for questioning was out of the question. It was better to take the long route, avoid the tolls and possible side-of-the-road battles.
Traffic was a nightmare in this part of the city. Instead of silently showing Pete the map on my phone, I told him where we were going. I saw him wince, then jerk his chin in recognition.
One problem solved.
Next up, Cat.
I turned in my seat.
I don’t know what I thought I would find her doing, but sitting on her ass, knees cocked up, leaning up against the side wall of the van next to Fallon with her head bent to his phone and smiling, shards of broken glass littering the scarred and dirty floorboards, was not it.
I glanced at Mason. His position was the same, but his legs were stretched out, ankles crossed, armed folded over his chest, eyes firmly on Catarina, checking her out.
I knew that look. I’d spent the last nine months with my new team. Six of those months were spent training at Pete’s compound in the Jamul Mountains south of San Diego. It wasn’t battle tactics we practiced. We all had the same training from the SEAL Teams. The six months were spent team building, learning how to work together in flawless synchronicity, learning how to read each other, learning strengths and weaknesses. I’d studied them, and they’d studied me.
To the average observer, Mase looked like he was checking out a hot chick, but the once-over had nothing to do with her good looks.
Just because I didn’t see it didn’t mean I didn’t know that when Mason deemed it was time to return fire, Cat scrambled—maybe even shoved Fallon out of the way—to get into a firing position.
That was Catarina, always in the mix. Brave, skilled, fearless, and bold. Damn fine qualities—if she’d learn to protect herself.
I let out a sharp whistle. Three heads turned my way. I pointed at Cat and crooked my finger, motioning her to come to me.
The squinty-eyed gesture in return was lethal and hot. I wondered how she’d respond to the demand if she was naked. If I ordered her on her hands and knees and told her to crawl across the bed, would she throw attitude or would she be a good girl?
