Crossing Lines by Adrienne Giordano
25
Faith,Shane decided, was batshit crazy.
Had to be.
He walked alongside Dusty and Trevor in the hotel parking lot with a burner phone to his ear. He tossed Dusty the rental’s keys. He’d drive while Shane focused on Faith and Alfaro and destroying a shipping port.
As much as Shane admired the solid set of brass ones on the woman, she’d once again gone rogue on him. Hadn’t even given him a chance to help her. And it was about more than being a team player. This was a trust issue.
And if he expected any kind of relationship with her, romantic or otherwise, they’d have to work that shit out.
“Hello?” she said.
There was a firmness to her voice, as if she spoke directly into it. No speakerphone.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.”
The simplicity of the word somehow convinced him.
“Good. I have a plan to get you out. Stall him.”
“Don’t.”
Again with a one-word answer. Well, too fucking bad. He’d risked everything by coming here and she’d damn well take his help.
“Give me the phone.”
Alfaro’s voice.
A shuffling noise sounded and then, “You have your proof,” Alfaro said.
He sure did. This whole scenario was screwed, but at least she was alive. And talking. And apparently unharmed.
For now.
“Good,” Shane told Alfaro. “She better stay safe.”
“Or what?”
Let the fun begin.“Or we start disrupting your economy.”
At that, Alfaro laughed. “Impossible.”
“You never know who may have insinuated themselves into your business. I mean, I did it myself.”
A long pause ensued while Alfaro let that sink in.
Moment of truth. Shane could admit it. Right here, right now, tell Alfaro his identity and the war would be on. Or he could lie. Make up some random name, yet another of his many covers that Alfaro wouldn’t know but would wonder endlessly about.
Nah.
After two years of running from this asshole, saying it, actually telling him he was coming for him seemed like a banner fucking idea. If nothing else, it’d blow the guy’s mind.
“Who is this?” Alfaro finally asked.
“You don’t recognize my voice? You must be slipping. Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s George.”
“George?”
“George Hendrix.”
Again Shane waited. Just ahead of him, Dusty and Trev hopped into the rental car’s front seats. Shane took the back.
“Where are you?” Alfaro asked.
As if.“You have one hour to release her. If I don’t hear from her, you’ve got problems. One hour, Alfaro.”
Shane hung up and nearly crapped his pants because, wow. That was freaking fantastic. To finally take a stand against this fucker.
“Dude!” Dusty hollered. “One hour? We don’t even have the Semtex yet.”
Shane had just threatened the president of Venezuela and that’s what Dusty was worried about?
Each of them needed intensive therapy.
“I’m on it.” Shane tapped Sully’s name on his phone and on the first ring, he picked up.
Shane didn’t bother waiting for any pleasantries. “Where are we?”
“I’m waiting for a call back. We have someone on the ground there. He can get C-4 and possibly Semtex. There’s also a SEAL team in the area working another mission.”
SEALs were good news, but what a political shitstorm that would be. “Let’s not go there if we don’t have to.”
“You’re telling me?” Sully sighed. “Look, Shane, you know he won’t release her.”
He couldn’t think about that. Not yet. One thing at a time.
“That’s why we’re forcing it. I’ve been close to this guy. Probably closer than anyone on our side. He loves power and money. Oil brings him both. He’ll need to decide if Faith is that important.”
The phone line clicked.
“Call coming in,” Sully said. “I’ll hit you back.”
The line went dead just as Dusty pulled out of the lot.
“He’s working on it,” Shane said. “While we’re waiting, we can check access roads to the port.”
In the front seat, Trevor had his head down as if reading something on his phone and Dusty glanced over at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Checking my emails. A work thing.”
“Fuck that,” Dusty said. “Pull up a map of the port. Let’s see what we’re dealing with.”
Shane’s phone rang again. Sully. He poked the screen. “What’s up?”
“I got you Semtex!” Sully said, his voice full of wonder Shane never expected from straitlaced Sullivan.
He couldn’t blame the guy. Shane’s own pulse was slamming right now, the excitement lighting him up. He smacked the side of the driver’s seat. “Where?”
Sully rattled off an address that Shane repeated so Trevor could enter it into his phone.
“Got it,” Trev said. “It’s just outside of Caracas.”
Shane went back to Sully. “Who is he?”
“An asset we have over there. An arms dealer.”
Son of a bitch. An arms dealer. God only knew what Sully had to trade for this. “What’s this costing you?”
“Right now, I don’t know. It’s a favor to be repaid later.”
Shane’s head dipped. Jonathan Sullivan might have just incinerated his precious career, because Shane’s guess was that the guy hadn’t cleared any of this with the brass. Not to mention getting in bed with an arms dealer who might kill him. “Oh, man. Obviously, you know what you just did.”
“I’ll figure it out later. Just get her back.”
After hanging up with Shane,whom she’d strangle for disrupting her plan, Alfaro checked his phone.
As half-assed as this op might be, it was working. Her goal had been to surrender and get Shane off of Alfaro’s radar.
At least until Shane decided to get into the middle of it. Up to this point, nothing in Alfaro’s tone indicated he knew Shane’s real identity. By placing that call, Shane had sacrificed himself for no reason. And for that, she should kill him.
She locked her jaw, brought her focus back to her target, who was busy reading something on his phone. And ignoring her.
Silly man.
Now.
She slid her hand from the armrest, the movement immediately drawing Alfaro’s attention.
“What do you have there?”
She shrugged. “What could I have? Your man searched me.”
Alfaro narrowed his gaze, studying her for a few seconds before tossing his phone on the desk. Total puzzle, this one.
She always hated puzzles.
“This,” he said, his face glowing, “has been a very good day. Not only have you been foolish enough to present yourself, your lovesick boyfriend has come after you. And he is the traitor who put my son in prison.” He smacked his hands together. “A good day indeed.”
Opportunity gone, she sat back again, contemplated her next move because, yes, there was always a next move. And then it hit her. If Alfaro hadn’t known who Shane was, neither did his inner circle.
As of right now, only Alfaro knew Shane’s true identity. If she eliminated Alfaro before he could share the news, Shane would be free.
Lemonade out of lemons.
Alfaro held up his phone. “He thinks he can blow up my port.”
What?
Faith dug her heels into the floor, forcing herself to remain still. To keep her facial features neutral even though, holy mother of God, what was Shane doing?
As hard as she tried, she must have flinched or given some sort of body language because Alfaro let out one of those annoying fake belly laughs that irritated the crap out of her.
“You didn’t know,” he said. “Oh, this is glorious.”
Glorious, my ass.Faith waved Alfaro’s delight away. “He’s not blowing up a port.”
He pointed at his phone. “I just received a text. George and his compatriots. They are here and have secured enough Semtex to destroy one of the LA Guairá docks.”
How the hell did he have this information?
And Semtex?
Sully must have been involved with that because Shane scoring Semtex practically the minute he arrived would be a minor miracle.
She’d given up on miracles long ago.
She shook her head. “He wouldn’t do that.”
“Yes, my dear, I assure you, he would. I have the text giving me the details.”
Alfaro definitely had a snitch. But where? Her mind whirled, shuffling through the players. The only person involved, outside of Dusty and Trevor, was Sully. And whomever else he looped in. Someone inside the CIA had burned Liz Aiken. Would they intentionally burn Shane?
For the right price, she knew, people talked.
Alfaro offered her a dramatic sigh. “You Americans. You think you’re the only ones who excel at intelligence gathering. You sit there, with all your wealth and power and look down on me?”
What the hell was he talking about?
He jabbed his finger into his desk. Jab-jab-jab. “I am a king! I know what my people need.”
Letting vicious cartels smuggle drugs and guns across their borders was what his people needed?
Not to mention those same cartels raping women and murdering innocents.
Her mind instantly brought her back to that basement, her senses recapturing the stench of urine and blood and death.
Use it.
She sat forward. “Your people need the violence to end.”
“Silence!”
“Who’s your source? You’ll kill me anyway. You might as well tell me.”
“No,” he shot back. “You’ll go to your ugly death wondering.”
Mental as well as physical torture. She’d expected no less.
Alfaro’s phone chirped. He scooped it up and she shifted her gaze, scanning her immediate surroundings for any sort of weapon.
A large, diamond-shaped crystal sculpture sat on the desk. Had to weigh a good four or five pounds. If she could be quick enough and hurl it at him, it might stun him. Give her time to fly across the desk and hit him with a palm strike.
Before she even moved, he bolted from his chair. “Get up.”
Whoa.What was this now? Whatever that text was, it had the man fired up. “Why?”
“Get up! We’re leaving.”
He strode around the desk, latched on to her biceps, his fingers digging into muscle and sending sparks of pain into her shoulder. Yow. That’d leave a bruise.
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of wincing.
Not today.
Not ever.
He dragged her from the chair, pulling her to the door. Her feet tangled and she tripped, stumbling against him and knocking him off balance, but he held on to her with that iron grip.
“Guard!” he called.
The door flew open and the same guard who’d escorted her to the office stood there.
“Sir?”
“Take her downstairs and wait for me. I want one unmarked vehicle. No limousines. The SUV. We’re leaving.”
Sully’s gunrunner,Miguel, turned out to be a regular encyclopedia. Not only did he provide enough Semtex to blow a square city block, he gave Shane the motherlode of intel on access points to the passenger terminal at LA Guairá.
Not that the passenger terminal helped them in terms of crippling oil exports, but, according to Miguel, they’d be able to reach the various docks from that entry point. The guards, he assured them, would not interfere.
A total non-shocker considering the guy probably bribed most of them.
The port sat just north of Caracas, bordered by Avenida Soublette, a main thoroughfare separating the shipping lanes from a hillside stacked with ramshackle homes and businesses.
Shane leaned left from the rear passenger seat and peered through the windshield at Avenida Soublette. Overhead streetlights and lights from the port blazed against the night sky.
“There’s the access road,” Dusty said from behind the wheel.
He turned onto the dirt road, bouncing and bumping their way across potholes and ruts.
No wonder it was unguarded. People risked whiplash traveling on it.
Shane kept his gaze pinned to the right shoulder where, at any minute, they should find an unlit, abandoned guard station.
Bingo. “That’s it,” Shane pointed at the wooden shack no bigger than a toll booth. “He said to park behind it.”
Dusty pulled around, killing the engine. According to Miguel, there’d be a walking path that led to the docks.
“Are we at all concerned,” Trevor said, “that this guy could be screwing us?”
Hell, yes. He didn’t know jack about Miguel and, worse, Sully, someone Shane still wasn’t sure he completely trusted, had hooked them up.
But they’d come through with the explosives and that’s all Shane cared about. At least right now.
Shane grabbed his backpack, now stuffed with bricks of Semtex, detonator cords, blasting caps, fuses and fuse lighters, and slid from the car, closing the door behind him. “My shit-meter is in the red, so yeah, we’re concerned. As we should be.”
Before Shane could walk by him, Trev held his arm out. “Then why are we risking it?”
“You got a better idea?”
At that, Trevor shut up. Dusty pushed by them, leading the charge. Shane fell in step beside him with Trev taking up the rear.
The whole damned thing was a suicide mission. Prior to leaving the States, Shane had told them this. He’d all but begged them not to come.
Out of some sense of twisted loyalty he didn’t blame them for, they’d ignored him.
So yeah, here they were, walking down a dusty road in Venezuela that would probably snag them into a trap.
“Call me fucked up,” Dusty said, “but I miss this shit. The rush.”
Trev snorted. “You are fucked up. But, yeah, I get it.”
These two buttheads chose now to get nostalgic?
He shook it off and inhaled the salty air, letting it wash through him and knock his nerves down a notch.
His mind drifted to Faith’s battered face that first day they’d met. That’s why they were here. For Faith. And anyone else who’d suffered due to the Liborio Cartel or Alfaro’s corrupt dealings with them.
They might not be able to stop the madness, but they could save Faith.
“Hey,” Shane said, “can we focus, please? We got shit to do.”
The quickly hatched plan was simple: They’d each take a couple of bricks of Semtex, place them near the supports on a prespecified dock and blow it.
Said plan had enough holes to sink one of the oil tankers sitting in port, but they didn’t have time for a military precision op.
“Go time,” he said. “If either of you wants out, this is the time. No harm, no foul.”
“I’m good,” Dusty said.
“I’m good,” Trev said.
“Then let’s do this. Hopefully, it’ll scare the shit out of Alfaro enough that he’ll negotiate.”
Trevor looked back at Shane. “And if it doesn’t?”
Mary Sunshine. Excellent.
Shane shrugged. “I don’t have a fucking clue.”