Thief (45 page)

“This I gotta take.”

*   *   *

Gloria Barnett shook her head violently. “You can't do that.”

“We attack and Hector
will
kill her out of spite,” Monarch said. “We do it my way, and I'm positive she lives and goes on with her work.”

They were all gathered in thick pinions high on that hill a half mile from the farm. The drone's thermal imaging had clearly shown a small-statured person, likely female, in the basement of the farmhouse. A male was living upstairs.

“But Robin—” John Tatupu said.

“But nothing,” Monarch said before looking to Chavez. “You okay?”

Chavez said, “Following your lead, Rogue.”

“I was saved for a reason, brother,” Monarch told Claudio.

Claudio looked torn, but nodded. “I'm with you.”

Monarch was lucky to be alive.

Back in Brazil, not ten hours before, the thief had hit the guard's wrist hard enough that the muzzle had been pointing almost straight down when the gun fired. The .38 caliber bullet blew off more than half of Monarch's right third toe. The pain had been so intense and burning, he'd staggered and gone down.

The guard stepped up, gun shaking, angry enough to kill, and pointed it at his head. Monarch believed his luck had run out. But he caught a flash in his peripheral vision just before a rock the size of a goose egg struck the guard in the temple and dropped him in his tracks.

Carson had come out of the shadows, pointed at Monarch, and said, “Louisiana State. Third base. Second team all American.”

Standing there in pines in Argentina, his foot throbbing despite three Novocain shots, Monarch thought that the guard could easily have blown his head off. Carson's throw could easily have gone wide.

Barnett's cell phone vibrated. She looked at the number, answered, “Zullo?”

She listened, and looked up in panic. “He says Vargas just got a call from an unidentified American male who told him to clean house.”

Monarch didn't pause to question it. He exploded into a limping sprint toward the road. Claudio and the big Samoan were right behind him.

*   *   *

Upstairs in the farmhouse, El Cazador returned the phone to his pocket. So Monarch
was
dead. That was unfair. But he'd take second-best revenge, especially when it paid well. He'd clean up, collect his money, pay his sister something, and call it good, disappear. The hunter roaming once more.

As he headed for the stairs, his mind flickered with the possible ways he could inflict pain and humiliation upon the missionary doctor. He decided on no particular course of action. He'd just unleash decades of hatred and see where it led him.

El Cazador unlocked the door and went in. Sister Rachel sat with her back against the wall, watching him.

“All good things must come to an end,” he said, putting on gloves.

He picked up the Taser, looked at it like an old friend, and said, “But let's have one more little go at it.”

The hunter triggered the Taser as he moved toward her. The electricity jumped between the two metal nodes in a ragged blue volt that made Sister Rachel whimper.

El Cazador smiled, coiled, and got ready to lunge at her, give her a lick of old sparky, just enough to terrorize her.

Shouting upstairs stopped him.

*   *   *

Claudio rolled down the window and put his hands up in surrender as Tatupu pulled the gray panel van up to the gate. Through the bars, Claudio could see that beyond the two guards with the AKs, Tito Gonzalez and Alonzo Miguel were in the courtyard not thirty yards away talking with Hector Vargas's sister, Galena. Both carried hunting rifles.

“I'm unarmed,” Claudio yelled out the window. “Tito? Alonzo? Hector?”

The men turned in shock, and for a moment it looked like they were going to order the gunmen at the gate to shoot.

Claudio kept yelling, “There's a way out, a way you all aren't dying today!”

Galena bolted for the house and began banging on the door.

*   *   *

Inside, El Cazador ignored his sister's cries to let her in. Gun drawn, he peered through cracks in the boards that covered the windows. That was Claudio Fortunato leaning out of that car. And that had to be the big Samoan assassin dude that Tito had described in the driver's seat.

They'd found him. He didn't know how, but it didn't matter. Life was like that in the hunter's experience. A snap of a finger and everything flipped. He'd survived for decades by accepting that fact and not being surprised or upset when it happened.

He shouted at Galena to shut up, before calling out, “What's the trade?”

“Sister Rachel for Robin Monarch,” Claudio shouted.

Monarch?

“No deal,” he shouted. “Monarch's dead!”

The back door of the van opened. The thief stepped out with his hands up.

El Cazador saw all the lines and angles of his situation in the blink of an eye, and understood that every one of his options led eventually to his death. It was a certainty in his mind. But it didn't make him shrink. It actually felt good.

The second he got the chance he was going to kill Monarch. He was going to watch the thief die first. The rest of it really didn't matter much to El Cazador anymore.

*   *   *

Monarch ignored the armed men at the gate and Gonzales and Miguel and Vargas's sister. He was focused laserlike on the farmhouse.

“Deal!” Vargas shouted.

“Bring her to the door,” Claudio shouted back.

There was no answer.

Monarch yelled to Gonzales and Miguel, “Come to the gate. You'll bring me in and make sure she gets out unharmed. You hurt her, you're dead men.”

The men glanced at each other. Gonzales said, “Police?”

“Not unless we have to,” Monarch said.

Miguel nodded first and lowered his gun. Gonzales followed his lead.

“Galena?” Claudio shouted. “You bring her to me, or you die. Understand?”

Vargas's sister was still on the porch, and trembling with fear. She nodded feebly.

Hands still raised, Monarch went to the gate. Gonzales and Miguel came to him.

“I'm unarmed,” the thief said, raising his shirt and the legs of his pants.

“We still got to frisk you,” Miguel said.

“Frisk away,” he said.

The gate opened. He stepped inside the yard and didn't move a muscle while they patted him down.

“What are you up to, Robin?” Gonzales asked.

“I'm saving someone who matters more than I do, Tito,” Monarch said.

“You're up to something.”

“Not this time.”

A few moments later, the thief heard a latch thrown. The front door opened. Galena put out her arm. Sister Rachel shuffled out onto the porch without her glasses. She was blinking and looking around in confusion. Monarch felt like crying, but swallowed at his emotions, and turned soldier.

“Let's go,” he said, and started walking.

They were almost abreast of each other before she recognized him. “Robin?”

“You're safe now, Sister,” Monarch said. “Go home, go back to the kids, and live a long, long time.”

She burst into tears. “No. You can't do this.”

“It's for the greater good, Sister,” Monarch said, and looked away and walked on toward the farmhouse and the door.

Behind him, Sister Rachel choked and called out to him, “I love you, Robin.”

He fought back tears, and said, “I love you, too, Sister.”

When they reached the small veranda, Monarch heard something heavy being dragged inside. He paid it little attention, and looked behind him. Claudio was helping Sister Rachel into the van. The second they were both inside, Tatupu threw the transmission in reverse and peeled out of there.

At peace now, the thief turned to Tito and Alonzo, said, “I'll take it from here, brothers.”

*   *   *

Inside El Cazador was taking no chances. He crouched behind a heavy oak table turned on its side, aiming a twelve-gauge, double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun. Close quarters like this, there was no way fucking Monarch wasn't getting hit with double-ought buck.

When he heard the thief tell Tito and Alonzo that he'd take it from here, the hunter reached up and turned on the GoPro camera. Killing Monarch once would not be enough. In whatever remaining time he had left, he wanted to relive the moment, savor it, and study every twitch and groan the thief might make dying.

The door opened. Monarch's foot became his leg, torso, and head. He had his hands up and looked calm for a man in his position. That pissed El Cazador off. He wanted to see fear. He wanted to see regret. He wanted—

“Been a long time, Hector,” Monarch said.

Vargas knew better than to engage with the thief. He should just shoot him. But he felt an overwhelming need to see his victory register on Monarch's face.

“Seems like yesterday,” he said.

The thief said nothing for a moment, and then asked, “Who bailed you out of jail after you tried to kill me the last time?”

“Some fucking American,” he snarled. “I don't know his name, and I don't care. Like I told Sister Bitch a long time ago,
la fraternidad
does not forget. And now you will die for what you did.”

“I gave my brothers a shot at another kind of life,” the thief said. “Every one of them is the better for it.”

A rage nurtured for two decades ignited inside El Cazador. The heat of it pulsed through every vein and artery. It took everything not to just pound the triggers and blow the fucker off his feet.

The hunter stood up, pointed the sawed-off at the thief, and roared, “You ruined it! You ruined it all.
La fraternidad!
My life! I was
jefe!
I was gonna take the brotherhood to
Scarface
times ten! But, no. 'Cause of you, I spent fucking nine years in prisons in Chile, Bolivia, and Uruguay. 'Cause of you I had to kill myself to stop from running.”

He was shaking now, sweating and laughing. “Know how I got through it all? Every day—every stinking day!—I thought of this moment right here. Every day I thought of killing you, and now here we are.”

“Can't say I've given you much thought at all, Hector,” Monarch said. “But here we are. I'm unarmed. You've got a shotgun. Hardly seems fair. Don't you think after twenty years of waiting, you should be man enough to kill me with your bare hands?”

El Cazador almost threw down the shotgun, jumped the table, and went after the thief's throat. He'd bite it. He'd tear out Monarch's windpipe with his teeth.

“You'd like that, wouldn't you?” he sneered, putting pressure on the trigger.

“Even Julio gave me a fair fight,” Monarch said.

The hunter kicked aside the table, took two steps toward the thief, and let go of the shotgun's forestock with his left hand. He thrust the sawed-off at Monarch. The barrels were less than three feet from the thief's face. Monarch dropped his hands.

“Ain't you heard?” El Cazador said, squeezing the first trigger. “Life ain't fucking fair.”

The shot caught him under the armpit, two hundred grains of mushroomed copper that blew through the farmhouse's flimsy wood siding a nanosecond before it smashed through Vargas's rib cage, ruptured his lungs, and blew up his heart.

Vargas's body rocked sideways, his head and neck whipsawing. The shotgun tumbled from his fingers. He'd already hit the floor, glaze-eyed, and tongue limp in frothy bright blood when from eight hundred yards away the report of Chavez's sniper rifle finally reached the thief.

Monarch closed his eyes, and let out a long, slow breath of gratitude. Chavez had said she thought she could shoot through the wall with the .338, taking her aim based on the real-time thermal images the drone was sending to Barnett's computer.

But you never knew.

 

59

SISTER RACHEL'S FINGERS WENT
to the bandages around her neck as she peered out the windshield of the van taking her up the last of the steep winding road to the Hogar d'Espera. Feeling blessed to be given a second chance, she bowed her head and vowed that the rest of her days would be spent in even greater service to abandoned children and to the sick and to the poor.

“Here we are,” Abbott Fowler said, turning into the open gates of the orphanage.

The missionary doctor took one look at the cheering children and staff gathered on the lawn, and broke down crying.

When Monarch reached over the seat to pat her on the shoulder, she grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight.

A weeping Sister Evangeline rushed the van and opened the door to help her out. Sister Rachel climbed out slowly so as not to wince. She did not want to show the children any pain, or anger, nothing but love and rejoicing. Greeting and hugging the children and staff one by one, the missionary doctor felt humbled and honored to have been given another chance.

At last, Sister Rachel turned to Monarch and the team. “I can never thank you enough,” she said, tearing up again. “To see them again. To hold them. It's almost too good to be true.”

The thief's eyes welled. He rubbed at them with his sleeve and saw Fowler's lower lip was trembling. Tears were rolling down Barnett and Chavez's cheeks. And Tatupu, always the softie, was openly crying.

“You not doing what you do?” the Samoan choked. “That wasn't happening.”

The missionary nodded, grinning through her tears. “Bless you. Bless every one of you, and especially you, Robin Monarch. You've been … you are…”

She couldn't go on, and threw her arms around him.

Monarch felt her love and returned it, saying, “Always. Always.”

“Well,” Sister Rachel said when she broke their embrace. “I need to go see what's become of things while I've been gone.”

“Can that hold for a couple of seconds, Sister?” Claudio asked from the back of the group. “I think it would probably be a good thing.”