Ripper (11 page)

The leader of the group of men sneered as he used his boot to roll Sarah over onto her back. He pointed
at her and then at the younger woman he had just silenced with a punch to the face, and then he used the barrel of the automatic to point one last time at the bleeding and unconscious blonde professor from Baylor. He smiled and wiped the sweat from his dripping face and beard.

“Jefe will be pleased with his new guests—two gringo women and one young seniorita from Mexico City.” He reached down
and pulled Sarah up by the hair and looked her in the eyes. “Pleased indeed.”

Sarah was let go and she fell back into the dust. She immediately rolled over and tried to look at the spot where Jason had fallen, but she couldn’t see him. She managed to look up, and that was when she saw the sprawled body of Corporal Udall. He was lying face down in the dirt. Sarah shook her head, but she remained
silent as the leader of the group pulled Professor Stansfield up, also by the hair. He shook her hard.

“Our arrangement is at an end. You were supposed to delay these fools from examining the cave until we had all of the artifacts out, you stupid gringo bitch,” he shouted at the woman who was just coming around. “Señor Guzman will be very angry, so you better hope he will be happy with two new
women for his stable, or you may learn why he has earned his nickname.”

Sarah saw the American woman shake her head, still unable to find her voice after the blow to the top of her head. Sarah slowly started to rise and then stopped suddenly as she heard the nickname of the man they were to be brought to. Her heart froze as she recognized the name of one of the most ruthless men in the world.

They were to be taken to Nuevo Laredo and Sarah knew they would come face to face with the most ruthless drug lord in all of Mexico—Juan Guzman—the Anaconda.

*   *   *

The man with the binoculars lowered them and ducked behind the small rise as the women from the colleges were ruthlessly pushed and shoved and beaten until they were all inside the three vehicles. The man rolled onto his back and
felt to make sure he still had his small .38 caliber handgun in his waistband. He then pulled a cell phone from his pants pocket and with shaking hands raised it to his face. He opened the cover, still shaking from witnessing the ruthless murder of four men in front of the caves, and then to his disappointment he saw that the cell phone’s signal strength was only at two bars. That had to be enough.

“Good God,” he mumbled as he pushed a selected number from his address book and hit it. He had to do it twice as he lay with his face to the sun. He couldn’t stop the shakes from making the simplest of tasks so daunting. Finally the call went through and a phone on the other end was answered.

“Yes?” answered a firm voice.

“Señor, I did as our contract asked for and tailed the subject from her
hotel in Laredo. She crossed the border just as you said she would.”

“And the main target?”

“He was not among the two men that accompanied her.”

“That is not very good news,” came the reply.

“Señor, they are all dead,” said the man as he removed the small gun from his pants, fumbled it, and then finally caught it and held it to his chest.

“Explain that. The woman you followed is dead?” asked
the voice, this time without some of its confident manner.

“Señor, the three women are alive, but all of the men are dead. They were killed by other men who arrived in cars.”

“Who are these men?”

“There is only one man in all of Mexico that kills with such abandon, señor. It had to be the work of Juan Guzman; no one else would dare such an attack in his territory.”

“I know this name, yes I
know it well. I have done business with this rather unstable gentleman in the past. He has some silly nickname down there if I remember right.”

“Señor, the man you wanted me to find was not among the dead, but the woman I was asked to follow hoping she would lead me to him has been taken by the most brutal man in all of Mexico. What am I to do now?”

There was silence on the other end of the
phone. It lasted for a full thirty seconds until the shaking man thought he had finally lost the signal. He tried to press the gun into his chest to assist in stopping the shakes.

“You still have my business card?” the voice finally asked.

“Si,” the man answered as he rose partially to his knees and looked around to make sure he wasn’t to be the next target of the murdering men from below.

“Good, I now want you to wait for two hours and then go to see this Guzman and tell him an old acquaintance would like to discuss some business. Relay to him that I am most particularly interested in hearing about his Anasazi Indian collection. Tell him my opening offer is twenty-five million dollars, which should at least get you in the door. Once there explain that I am on my way to meet with him.
Is that clear?”

“Are you insane señor, I will be killed!”

“Do this and I will wire transfer one million dollars into your San Antonio bank account. Now do this or do not come back to the States, or you will discover that the truly ruthless men do not only reside in Mexico.” The phone connection ended.

“Madre di dios,” the man said as the cell phone fell to his chest where he allowed it to lay.
He looked at the business card he had pulled from his pocket.

The man moaned at the thought of traveling thirty miles north to Nuevo Laredo and presenting himself to Juan Guzman, the Anaconda, just like a lamb to slaughter. First he was contracted out of his agency’s offices in San Antonio to follow this small American woman. He was then told that this McIntire woman would eventually lead him
to the man that his employer sought—a Colonel Jack Collins. Now he was to be sacrificed to Juan Guzman for a reason he knew nothing of.

The man slammed the business card to his chest and cursed the one-million-dollar bribe the man had offered. He sniveled and then looked at the card once more. It was one of the expensively printed business cards you can only pick up at the best stationery stores—Mr.
Hanover Jones, Antiquities Acquisition and Auction House, New York City—London—Paris.

The man placed the card back into his pocket and knew he would follow orders as he sat up and took a deep breath. After all, a million dollars could buy a very nice funeral.

Two thousand miles away Colonel Henri Farbeaux, the man known as Hanover Jones to the legitimate world, calmly hung up the rented office
phone and then slowly stood and furiously tipped the desk he was sitting behind upside down. Not only was he not to kill Jack Collins, he now learned that the only woman he admired outside of his dead wife was being held by a murderous scum.

Farbeaux stood and looked at the phone on the floor with the broken desk tipped beside it. He took a deep breath and then forced calmness into his body.
Nothing could infuriate him more than the thought of Collins, the man responsible for his beloved wife’s death, still breathing, but nothing could ever match that feeling more than the thought of little Sarah being hurt. He reached into his expensive coat and brought out his cell phone. While he hit the number he wanted, he kicked absentmindedly at the broken phone upon the floor. His eyes were blazing
in anger.

“Have my plane ready with a flight plan to Laredo, Texas.”

EVENT GROUP COMPLEX
NELLIS AFB, NEVADA

The director of Department 5656, Niles Compton, sat on the small set of bleachers and watched the flag football game that was being played between the nuclear sciences division and the security department. The second in command of security, who was quarterbacking the muscular and far
more physical team of security personnel, Captain Carl Everett, was starting to look frustrated as the larger men and women could not seem to shake the much smaller but far more agile scientists of Assistant Director Virginia Pollock’s nuclear sciences department. The former SEAL kept looking at the clock and was seeing that time was running out on their three-point lead.

The underground complex
was built to house the greatest historical treasures, objects that had a defining moment in either the history of the United States or, more importantly, the world. Department 5656, known to a select few in the federal government as the Event Group, was tasked to find parallels in world history with the events unfolding in modern times to avoid the same pitfalls of our shared past. The artifacts
stored in the Event Group’s ten thousand steel vaults represented spectacular finds in archeological history. Most would eventually find their way into the public domain after study, while others would be forever kept secret from the people of the world, due to either political, religious, or military sensitivities. The judge as to what constituted a top secret find is the president of the United
States.

The massive complex was an underground labyrinth of naturally formed caves far beneath Nellis Air Force Base. The complex was built by President Roosevelt during World War II after the original site had been moved from Arlington, Virginia. Department 5656 is the darkest department of the American federal system and is solely answerable to the president of the Unites States. It had been
that way since its inception in 1863 through to its official charter in 1917 by Woodrow Wilson, who brought the Event Group into legitimate being.

Director Niles Compton smiled as he was nudged by the computer sciences director, Pete Golding, who nodded at the clock as it continued to run down. The intramural games played by the sixteen separate departments were a needed relief used by the six
hundred personnel inside the massive complex that ran eighty-nine levels beneath the desert sands of Nevada.

“Looks like the security force dominance may be finally coming to an end if Virginia’s people can get the ball back,” Pete said as he watched Everett and the rest of his offense take their time lining up for the snap in an attempt to take as many seconds off the clock as possible.

“Can
you imagine the look on Jack’s face when he hears his department’s unblemished record could possibly be in jeopardy? God, I wish he were here,” Niles said as he watched Everett pointing to his favorite wide receiver, Lieutenant Will Mendenhall, who had thus far caught everything thrown his way.

“Well it’s really hurt security not having Jack at running back today,” Pete countered.

“Thank God
he’s visiting his mom in Texas, and thank goodness he’s meeting Sarah there when she’s finished with the dig in Tamaulipas. Still, I think I’ll call him if security loses; I can’t pass that chance up.” Niles Compton eyed the clock and then frowned.

Everett called out the signals and the ball was snapped. Instead of running the ball, and thus running the clock out, the captain had decided to go
for the nuclear science department’s jugular and win by ten. Mendenhall shot off the line and then sprinted past the science department’s defender. Everett heaved the ball as far as he could. The female defender, a nuclear regulatory specialist on detached service from Los Alamos, tripped as Will flew by her. In the bleachers those rooting for the sciences moaned as they saw the end coming right
before their eyes. Niles frowned as he felt his wallet getting lighter due to the bet he had placed with Colonel Collins before he left on leave to see his mother.

Will smiled broadly as he saw the ball fall from the sky. His feet firmly planted on the athletic turf of the underground recreation arena, and only a foot from the out-of-bounds line, the ball was only inches from being laid into
his hands. He was merely twenty yards from the goal line for a chance to keep the security department’s winning streak alive at ten in a row.

Unbeknownst to Everett, Mendenhall, and the rest of the security department team, they had been outthought. Virginia Pollock, the least likely of suspects, had placed herself at the goal line knowing that the captain would not be satisfied with a mere three-point
victory. The tall lithe woman with the dark-brown hair sprinted in her sweatpants and shirt to the spot where Will Mendenhall thought he was alone, and just before the ball touched his fingertips she stepped in front of him and intercepted the pass. Her body nudged him just enough that Will lost his balance and went crashing onto the fake grass of the field, shocked because he had had no
idea Virginia was in the area.

The security team, the people running laps on the track, and even the weightlifters working out on the side of the field were all stunned as Virginia sprinted down the field in the opposite direction. Carl went from jumping up and down as the vision of a fifty-yard pass play went flying from his thoughts to attempting to gain momentum to head Virginia off at the
pass. He saw the MIT grad and former nuclear engineer from General Dynamics Corporation running free. Everett started his pursuit.

The spectators watching were on their feet as the older woman saw Everett approaching at an angle. She decided that, flag football or not, she could not allow Everett to catch her. She switched the ball to the protected right side of her body, and as Carl came into
reach for her flag dangling behind her, she shot out her left hand and arm, catching him squarely in the jaw and face. It was a straight-arm the pros would have been proud of. Everett grunted and then fell face first onto the turf as Virginia sprinted by. As she crossed the goal line with the rest of the security department chasing her, Virginia raised the ball into the air and then spiked it to
the cheers of all watching.

“I’ll be damned,” Everett said as he looked up from his prone position. He swiped at the blood that had come from the split lip he now had thanks to the assistant director.

Mendenhall came up out of breath and helped his boss to his feet, and as they both looked around they saw Pete Golding and Director Compton jumping up and down in the bleachers, high-fiving each
other, enjoying the celebration as Virginia’s nuclear sciences division hoisted her on their shoulders. The 0–9 sciences had just pulled off the upset of the intramural season. Both men suspected the word would spread throughout the complex as fast as a lightning strike.

“The colonel is going to be pissed,” Mendenhall said as he tried to catch his breath.