Satan (22 page)

Revenge for what?

She heard the murmur of conversation. Two men speaking in low voices. But the murmurs didn’t come from the door, but from the windows. She noticed one pane was missing and smelled cigarette smoke.

“I told you Yaman’s losing it. He’s becoming a liability. This is going to come back and bite us in the ass.”

“Agreed. She agreed to sell her shares. Yaman should have left it at that.”

Angel froze. She stared at the window, her heart thump-thumping against her ribs.
Yaman
. A
liability
.
Oh
shit
,
oh
shit.
She’d dared not hope.

“I’m telling you that Yaman planned it this way from the start. He was the one who sent her that letter from her brother. And the fucking picture.”

Yaman had sent her Martin’s letter? And the picture of his son, Bassel, aka Malik Mansoor?
Why?
Nothing made any sense.

“Yaman’s not a stupid man. He wouldn’t blow his cover.”

“I’m telling you this is all because McGuillycuddy took out his son Malik. Yaman ordered the village destroyed and all the villagers killed. It was bad PR for ISIS. That plus the firing of the Jordanian pilot’s turning the youth of the world against us.”

Angel held her breath. Satan? Had killed Yaman’s son? She couldn’t think but for the tidal wave of confusion crashing over her.

“But, it did send the correct message in one way. Cooperate with U.S. forces and you die.”

“That’s the problem. McGuillycuddy acted on his own. He wasn’t enlisted when he killed Malik. The man’s a retired SEAL. He owns a security firm that works with Homeland Security. If he goes missing, we’ll have the U.S. Navy right up our ass.”

She recognized the man’s accent as upper class English, possibly educated alongside royalty with that stiff no-lips moving elocution training. The voice sounded familiar.

“You were right to call me in. While I understand Yaman’s need for revenge, this is not a well-planned operation, but it’s too late. Let Yaman kill the two of them. I’ll take care of Yaman. Has the woman signed over her shares?”

“Not yet. Yaman’s been playing with her.”

“Get it done now.”

A phone rang. “Hello.”

Silence.

“Okay, I’ll tell him.”

A brief pause and a click.

“They’re here. They have McGuillycuddy. He’s in the dungeon. What do you want me to do? Besides get the woman to sign the documents?”

“Make sure the bodies won’t be found. Stick to Yaman like glue and call me when you’re back in Port-of-Spain. Tell Yaman to meet me for dinner at the Hyatt at seven tonight.”

Shuffling followed by muted footsteps, then nothing but silence. She began counting the seconds. Her trepidation ratcheted, and the waiting took forever. Finally, she heard clomping, and a couple of minutes later, the door opened not with a bang as per normal, but softly as if not to draw attention.

He was hooded like all the others besides Yaman, who flaunted his visage with unleashed fury. In his gloved hands were a manila file folder and a pen. He squatted right next to her and offered her the pen. “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. Makes no difference to me.”

“My fingers are numb. I don’t know if I can hold the pen.” Her voice shook. She wasn’t sure what she hoped to gain with the delay.

He blew out a sigh, dropped the envelope and the pen, and untied her hands. He chafed them between his and said, “Piece of advice. Try to escape. They’ll have to shoot you, and it will be over in a snap.”

She hated him touching her and was nauseated by his surreal “advice.” “I think I can hold the pen now.”

He gave her the pen, opened the folder, and flipped back pages. “There.”

She signed her name in trembles and twitches because of her stiff fingers.

“Initial here.”

In total, she signed and initialed seven sheets and had to repress a hysterical sneer. Her lawyers had a document on file that said she had been coerced into selling her bank shares by Yaman Moses on pain of death. She had deeded her shares to Haven under Jess’s control. That would put a sinkhole in their sinister plans.

He retied her hands in front of her again. He cupped her breasts and shook his head. “Such a waste. I suggested he sell you, but he wants McGuillycuddy to see you suffer.”

Anger sharp and heady surged through her, she gathered her saliva, and spat.

“Bitch.” He backhanded her.

She knocked her head on the cold bare concrete, saw stars, and then nothing.

Angel awoke disoriented.

Was the sun still up, or had another day dawned?

How long had she been out?

Dazed, she arched her neck and scanned the room. They had moved her. The walls were wooden not concrete. And thin, because she heard male voices and a humming engine.

“Bring her out.”
Oh
shit
, she knew that voice. It was Yaman Moses.

Immediately, she slumped back into her original position and tried to will her muscles slack and breathe evenly. They would slap her awake like they had before, but feigning sleep and having them believe it, felt like a huge victory.

She was such an ass. Yaman had played her like a maestro. She should never have agreed to have lunch at Dolphin Paradise, and had known from the time she stepped onto the boat something was drastically wrong. But it was daylight, there were tons of witnesses and never, not once, had she thought he was kidnapping her.

The door slammed open, she didn’t flinch or flicker an eyelid, not even when someone picked her up and rammed her over his shoulder. She opened her eyes when he walked out of the room and tried to absorb everything in her path, a narrow, dark corridor that smelled of fungus. One, two, three steps and then weak sunlight replaced the gloom. She blinked, raised her head, and peeked. It was dawn. The man stumbled, and the cigarette burns on her breasts scraped against the coarse shirt he wore. Her nose bumped the small of his back—he stank of stale sweat and smoke.

The man carried her up a steep incline. Shadows danced when he weaved his way through trees and trailing vines. The humidity spiraled and by the time he halted she was coated in sweat.

“Where do you want her?” The man pinched her bottom. A vicious twist, and she couldn’t repress a reflexive shudder.

“Dump her next to him.” Yaman Moses.

The man dropped her. She landed face-first on packed dirt intermeshed with reedy weeds.

“Make her stand. Him too.”

Angel now hated Yaman Moses with a venom she hadn’t realized she was capable of. She wanted to watch him die a tortuous, lingering death.

Someone grabbed her by the breasts and rammed her into a standing position. The lancing pain had her eyes misting, but she would not cry in front of them, she would not. She swayed and fixed her concentration on a rough boulder next to…she blinked—a hole, about six feet deep and maybe four feet wide. A huge wooden box about three feet wide and six long lined the bottom of the hole. Her gut cramped.

You were in a coffin. In the ground. Buried alive.
Merylle’s words reverberated in her throbbing head.

“Meet your final resting place McGuillycuddy.” Yaman Moses sneered.

She prayed Satan hadn’t come for her, bargained furiously with God, traded her life for his. Make this one of Yaman’s cruel taunts.

Bile welled up her throat, she lifted anchor-heavy lids, gasped, pressed her lips together, and tried not to let the horror she felt show.

Satan was hunched over and barely able to stand. He was on the other side of the hole in the ground and two hooded men stood behind him, all armed with machine guns. Three men thronged her side of the hole and Yaman Moses stood at the head.

They’d beaten Satan badly. His nose looked broken because it listed to one side. One eye, already purpled was almost swollen shut, and his bottom lip was split. He trapped her stare with his. She read no fear, no alarm in his expression, just ice and steel, and an astounding calm.

Like the calm before a volcanic eruption.

“Everything’s going to be okay, my Angel.”

Elation rang through her. The soft, menacing tone in which he delivered his assurance and those two words, my Angel, were spoken with such tenderness that tears pooled at the corners of her eyes.

Yaman Moses stepped forward, grabbed a shovel from one of the two men behind Satan.

“For Malik Mansoor, Avenger of Allah!” Yaman raised the shovel above his head and back-smacked Satan with the metal blade of the trowel.

Angel choked back a scream when Satan went flying sideways, and landed on his side in the box at the bottom of the hole.

“Guess what McGuillycuddy. You and your Angel are going to be buried alive. That’s right. You two are going to slowly smother to death.”

“Why’re you doing this, Yaman? Why?” Angel regretted her blurted question the second the words erupted from her mouth.

He walked slowly toward her.

Angel’s legs shook.

“Stupid bitch. Because I can,” Yaman snarled. He kicked her in the stomach. She toppled backward, and crashed into the box on top of Satan.

“Roll over onto your back when I give the order,” Satan murmured.

He sounded so composed.

She risked a quick glance up and cringed. Two men carrying a slab of wood approached the top of the hole. They swung, once, twice, she lifted her bound hands to cover her cheek and ear, and shrank into the side of the box. The lid landed with an explosive crack and they were immersed in a terrifying pitch-blackness.

Thud, thud.

“They’re burying us alive.” Angel sucked oxygen into her lungs, but it felt as if her entire chest was on fire, and she couldn’t get enough air to breathe.

It was Carnival Monday in Trinidad and Tobago. The three newest members of the Hades Squad, Jinn, Volac, and Nikar, were on their way to what the locals called “Down The Islands,” a series of five islands off the north-west tip of Trinidad.

They had landed the night before, met up with Rutger Harlowe and his team, rented a car, and followed Satan’s GPS trail. When the track broke into three separate routes, Rutger and his team had taken two trajectories while Jinn, Volac, and Nikar had traced this one.

They’d been stymied for a few minutes when confronted with a deserted establishment called Power Boats, which was packed to the gills with power
and
sail boats. Not a single person occupied the property, which was comprised of a few office buildings, a seaside restaurant called Sail’s Inn, and two piers with several fuel dispensers.

Forced to improvise, they “borrowed” a type of fishing boat the locals called a pirogue, which was loaded with fuel and powered by twin Mercury outboard engines. To avoid detection, they weaved in and out of the moored boats and kept the speed to a crawl until the fishing trawler was a half a mile away from land.

Nikar, who piloted the pirogue, gunned the engines to full speed once they cleared sight of the Sail’s Inn standout red roof. He checked their progress on the tablet jammed into the console, which displayed a nautical map of the area, glanced at the low mountains whizzing by, and estimated their position. Choppy waves whipped by erratic gusts slapped the boat’s hull.

Ahead lay a wide expanse of ocean colored silver by the early morning sun. In the distance he spotted their target island, Monos.
Shit.
Nikar hadn’t expected such a steep-sided and heavily forested landscape. Numerous houses of different sizes, some small mansions, others mere huts, dotted the base of the island. A full two-thirds of the hillsides was nothing but jungle.

“We’re down to one GPS left functioning.” Volac pointed to a blinking light in the middle of the tablet’s screen

According to Rutger Harlowe, Satan wore five GPSs altogether.

A shirt button, his jeans button, a medical penicillin bracelet, one implanted in his left heel, and one in his armpit. Satan was a hairy bastard, so Nikar figured they hadn’t found that one. Not that the position of the GPS mattered, they just needed the blasted bug to keep functioning until he, Volac, and Jinn located Satan.

“How far are we from the GPS?” Nikar inched the joystick forward.

“Three miles. Sea’s getting rougher. This must be the Bocas Del Dragon, Rutger warned us about. And that must be the Chaguaramus peninsula where the old U.S. naval base used to be.” Volac pointed to the land mass the boat was clearing.

“The Dragon’s Mouth with the fifteen to twenty foot waves. Hope this boat handles well on open waters.” Jinn steadied himself by planting his booted feet wide and gripping the stainless steel grab rails.

The pirogue pounded the water. Ocean spray kicked at them from all sides, driven by the blasting wind and backlash when the boat hammered across the white-capped waves. The roar of the engines prevented further conversation.

As the boat neared the island, Nikar decreased their speed. “I’m going to hug the coastline. Satan’s GPS still pinging?”

“Affirmative. The coastline’s rugged and rocky. Wish we had a depth sounder.” Volac mopped his face with a bandana.

“Have one.” Jinn dug in his tactical pack and fished out a Hawkeye H22FX hand held depth sounder, which also acted as a flashlight. He activated the device and waited for the response. “We’re good. No worries. Bottom’s over two hundred feet and counting.”

Jinn’s cell dinged. He pulled the phone out of his pocket. “Lucifer just texted me. Yaman Moses owns several homes here including one on Monos Island.”

“Bingo. Location?” Volac hovered a finger over the tablet.

Another ping.

“Balmoral Bay.” Jinn snorted. “Asshole calls his island home Dolphin Paradise.”

“Gotcha. Nautical maps shows Balmoral Bay is horseshoe shaped. Sizeable. We’re going to be sitting ducks entering the bay. Narrow opening too. Wish we had reception. I could Google earth the whole thing.” Volac waved a finger over the touchscreen. “Not a fucking bar. We’re dead as far the tablet goes.”

“I count two small bays before we hit Balmoral. Do we anchor and hike the hill to survey the situation?” Jinn asked.