James Patterson - Gone

Where the hell were they?

After a few minutes, Emily heard from Command that the local federales were now coming to join the party. It was to make up for the fact that we had flagrantly invaded Mexican airspace and conducted a covert raid without even so much as a phone call to the new Mexican president’s office.

It pissed me off that the story would be that the Mexican government had helped. Forget the fact that Perrine had been hiding right out in the open, that very high-up people in the Mexican government were quite obviously on Perrine’s payroll. Back to political-bullshit business as usual , I thought. The same old lies, the same old situation.

With the scene mostly secured, the hostage rescue team decided to move Perrine up to the main house. A few minutes after being pulled from the pool, he had fallen unconscious. He was still breathing, but his blood pressure was becoming a concern, and they thought, with his head trauma and blood loss, that he might be going into shock.

I insisted on helping with his stretcher. I desperately needed him to regain enough consciousness to tell me where my family was. We took Perrine up through his Hanging Gardens of Babylon, through the back of the mansion, and pigeonholed him in a ground-floor office.

As the medics worked on trying to get him awake, I decided to scour the house for any sign of my family. The inside was as opulent as the outside, if that were possible. Twenty-foot coffered ceilings, wedding-cake moldings. In the jaw-dropping, ballroomlike kitchen was an island slabbed with some kind of blue gemstone.

Some Delta Force guys were sitting on it, passing around a bottle of Dom Pérignon. Beside them was a long-faced guy handcuffed to a chair.

“Who’s this?” I asked them.

“He says he’s the butler,” said one of the commandos, with a southern drawl. “He also claims he no habla inglés , but look at him. Look at those tombstone chompers on him. This guy’s a Brit if I ever saw one.”

“The butler, huh?” I said, immediately drawing my Glock. A round was already chambered in the pipe. I’d dealt with the fabulously rich before, back in Manhattan, and knew that butlers, like doormen, know everything.

“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Chill out!” the southern Delta Force guy said as I pressed the barrel under the guy’s chin.

I ignored him as I stared into the butler’s eyes.

“One question,” I said. “One chance to get it right. A plane arrived after Perrine. There were prisoners in it. Where are they?”

“Up at the lake house,” he said with an upper-crust British accent. “There’s a road behind the runway.”

Minutes later, I was roaring up the mountain road behind the runway on the back of one of the four-wheelers the Delta Force guys had wisely thought to bring with them.

As we were pulling into the front yard, AK-47 fire raked the dirt in front of us.

“Guess we didn’t get all of them!” I screamed as I dove off the vehicle and rolled behind a low stone wall.

The Delta Force guys seemed much less fazed by the turn of events. Instead of retreating, they sped even faster forward on the four-wheelers, pouring deadly-accurate fire into the window as they went. Some big Delta Force psycho, who I learned later had played right tackle for Georgia Tech, actually drove his four-wheeler up onto the porch and put his size-fourteen boot to the door’s lock.

Half of the door’s frame was actually ripped off as he caved it in. Then one of his buddies threw in something I’d never heard of before. Not just one flash-bang grenade, but a whole firecracker pack of them suddenly went off.

They poured into the house behind the deafening banging. I rushed in behind them, eyes scanning the corners of the rooms I ran past. There was a bar, red couches, rococo mirrors. My family couldn’t be here. This wasn’t happening. I almost got sick. It looked like a brothel of some sort.

“Bennett! Back here! Back here!” one of the Delta Force guys cried.

I burst into a room.

How can men be so evil? I thought, looking around. Just how?

There were children.

Crouching fearfully on stained mattresses were about a dozen twelve- or thirteen-year-old girls. Relief flowed through me as I put my light on their tragic faces and realized that they weren’t my kids.

Then the relief disappeared as my dread flooded back. If my guys weren’t here, then where the hell were they?

A five-truck contingent of Mexican federales and military had arrived by the time we raced back to the main house. Inside, six or seven Mexican soldiers were standing out in front of the door to the office where Perrine had been secured.

“What the hell is going on?” I said to Emily, who had her phone to her ear.

“The Mexicans are claiming they need to interrogate Perrine. Washington told us to back off. We had to let them.”

“Is Perrine conscious?” I asked.

“I think so. Just barely,” Emily said.

“I need to talk to him, Emily,” I said as I walked toward the office. “My family wasn’t up at that house. They didn’t come in on that second plane. I need to know where they are.”

“Calm down, Mike. You’ll get your chance,” Emily whispered. “Sit tight and let the honchos hash it out first. This is a delicate situation.”

“Not gonna happen,” I said, turning and marching past her, toward the guards. “No more hashing.”

A crackerjack-looking, silver-haired Mexican soldier in a beret stepped in front of the door with his hands behind his back as I approached.

“May I help you?” he said with a smile.

“I’m United States law enforcement,” I said, showing him my federal badge. “That man has been placed under arrest by me, and I need to speak with my prisoner.”

His smile didn’t waver.

“Impossible,” he said as his men stepped up beside him menacingly. “This is Mexican soil and a Mexican matter. If you persist in annoying me, I shall be forced to place you under arrest.”

I stared at him, trying to figure his angle. Will they try to take Perrine? I thought. Is that it?

I turned at a sound behind me to find my new Delta Force pals filling the hallway.

“Well, if you continue annoying my buddy,” said the monster soldier who’d smashed in the lake house door, “me and my friends will be forced to place you fellas underground, comprende? Now open that door!”

That was when it happened.

From the other side of the door came a crisp, sudden POP!

I bulled my way in past the Mexican colonel and through the door.

Perrine was still sitting on the stretcher we’d brought him in on, with his hands cuffed behind his back. He was shot through the head, and his brains were blown out against the marble lintel of the fireplace.

Another colonel inside the office shrugged as he holstered his pistol.

“I had no choice. He was trying to escape.”

I realized it then. They were cleaning up. Perrine knew too much. About the government, how far the corruption went. And still my family was missing. They’d killed the only man who knew where they were. Would this nightmare never end?

I lunged for the bastard who’d killed Perrine, but I didn’t get a foot before someone grabbed me from behind. There was a lot of shoving, a lot of cursing in two languages, but it finally died down. I started shaking as I broke free and headed for the mansion’s back door to the backyard, where they had just brought some of the Salvajes cartel guys they’d captured.

Someone is going to tell me where my family is , I thought as I reached for the handle of the French door.