Page 31 of Hot Soldier's Rescue

“I have a few men with the training to use such a weapon.”

Good grief. Raoul had a unit of former military men working for him? Mercenaries, maybe? But very few mercenaries would participate in the kind of mass attack this man was planning. No money was worth the manhunt to follow. Raoul’s special team had to be zealots, then. Men like Valdiron Garza and his cadre, who’d believed that the ends justified any means, including the most extreme violence.

The beginnings of a headache throbbed behind Ted’s eyes. God, he was tired of these games. Of men like this. Would they never stop coming? It seemed as though for every one he killed, two more came to take the dead one’s place. “Tell me something, Raoul. What do you believe in?”

“Pardon?”

Ted made eye contact with the would-be terrorist. “What do you believe in so strongly that you’re willing to use such a weapon? I can’t just hand these things out to anybody who wants one, you understand. You need to have a cause.”

“You presume to judge the worthiness of my cause?” Raoul half stood, his voice rising in insult.

Ted answered blandly, “Not at all. I presume to test how serious you are about going through with such a deal. These types of weapons are tracked carefully, and I will have to lie low for some time after I do this deal. I need to be absolutely certain you won’t back out of the deal and leave me holding an expensive—and very hot—cache of weapons I haven’t gotten paid for.”

Raoul sank back into his chair. “Aah. I see your thinking. You worry only about profit, while I worry about the creeping spread of American influence on this continent.”

Bingo. His guess about the target had been correct. He tuned out the usual anti-American spiel that Raoul devolved into. At the end of it, he shrugged and said only, “I am a merchant, not a philosopher.”

“I think we understand one another, Drago.”

“I’ll make a few calls.”

Ted excused himself and stepped outside. He dialed a phone number that hooked into his operational headquarters and murmured quietly, “You get all that?”

“Roger, sir. Commander Hathaway says to make the deal. We can come up with a few deactivated missiles to deliver.”

“Will do. Oh, and can you tell me how far I am from a village called Acuna?”

“One moment.” The phone went silent. “It’s about eighty kilometers northwest of your position. A bus runs from your current location through there every morning.”

That would explain how Elise just disappeared out from under everyone’s noses. Clever girl.

“Anything we should be aware of in Acuna, sir?”

“Nope. Just asking. Thanks.”

He disconnected the call. First the nun. Then the missiles.

Getting away from Raoul was a piece of cake. Ted rolled underneath his Jeep, fetched the magnetic key box he’d secreted earlier on the underside of the chassis, and used the spare key to start the engine. When a low-level flunky tried to detain him, he told the guy he was leaving to arrange Raoul’s arms deal for him. The guy shrugged and let him go.

Finding Acuna wasn’t all that hard, either. It wasn’t as if there were a million roads out here. He took the only one that led northwest out of the village, confident that it would eventually run into Acuna. He’d been driving about an hour when he came to a small settlement. A quick word with a local confirmed that this road would, indeed take him to his destination. It was apparently about thirty klicks on down the road. However, the man seemed alarmed when he heard the name Acuna. That gave Ted pause.

“Is there some danger in Acuna I should know of, amigo?” he asked the farmer.

The Colombian shrugged. “People hear things. Rumors.”

His alarm deepened. Elise was in Acuna. “And what do the rumors say of Acuna?”

“This and that.” The man’s dark-skinned face gave away absolutely nothing. Ted had seen the stony expression a thousand times. Locals all over the world had the same natural suspicion of outsiders, no matter how much that outsider could help their plight.

Reluctant to talk, huh? Ted reached for his wallet, but the farmer waved him off before the leather cleared his back pocket. Crap. The reason the guy wasn’t talking was fear, then. Not good.

He said quietly, “Look. I’m going to Acuna because I have a friend there. A nun. She gives the locals medical care. I’m supposed to pick her up and move her to another village today.”

“A nun?” The man abruptly looked distressed. “Then you’d better hurry, paisano. The Colombian Army’s headed that way.”

The army? What did that bunch want with an out-of-the-way little hole-in-the-wall like Acuna? Did it have something to do with Elise or the kids she was supposed to rescue?

He asked carefully, “Is there any group in that area that might…object…to the army’s presence?”

---