John Gilstrap - Damage Control

“That’s right,” Jonathan agreed. “By firing that first shot and killing the driver, they guaranteed that the guards would have to die. More to the point, they guaranteed that you and I would be the ones to kill them. You can’t pin the title of murderer on somebody without some bodies to point to.”

“You mean that wasn’t you who shot the driver?” Tristan asked.

“Yes, that’s what I mean,” Jonathan said, his patience thinning. As a rule, the precious cargo was not a part of strategy sessions.

“Then who?” Tristan pressed. He retreated, though, from whatever flashed behind Jonathan’s eyes.

“They haven’t even had time to find the bodies,” Boxers said. “This whole thing has been a setup.”

Jonathan closed a loop in his mind. “What do you bet that the second ambush-the one we didn’t walk into-was all about taking us into custody?”

“And how the hell did they know about Leon Harris and Richard Lerner?” Boxers pressed. He gave a bitter laugh. “I almost admire the guy who set it up. I’ll be sure to tell him when I blow his brains out.”

Jonathan didn’t respond to that. He wished sometimes that the Big Guy would be less harsh in the presence of others.

“What about the PC?” Boxers asked, tossing a glance back at Tristan. “We gonna drag him along to a forger? Seems like a lot of extra exposure.”

Jonathan winced. Big Guy had a point. The mission was to repatriate the hostage-the one who still lived-with his family. For whatever reason, it appeared that Mexico had declared war on Jonathan’s and Boxers’ aliases. The shortest distance between right now and repatriation couldn’t possibly include a side trip to some forger’s outfit.

“Maybe we can find a church somewhere,” Jonathan said. “With the ransom money, we can make a hell of a donation. Maybe big enough to handle the repatriation.”

But man, oh man, he didn’t like the thought of it. When the stakes were this high, delegation to others always felt like a mistake.

“I think you might want to think that through a little more thoroughly,” Big Guy said. Clearly, he didn’t delegate well, either.

“I’m not getting handed off to anybody,” Tristan said. “I’m only hearing a little bit of this stuff, but if I just heard something about handing me over to a church, I’ll tell you right now that that’s not happening.”

“Look, kid-” Boxers said.

“The name’s Tristan. T-R-I-S-T-A-N. And from this point on, I’m hanging with you guys-the people who have at least as many guns as the terrorists do. You just need to know that.”

Jonathan smiled. He admired attitude from people in general, and hearing it vented against Boxers was doubly entertaining. The kid-Tristan-felt exactly the way Jonathan would have if he’d been in that position.

“There are a lot of decisions that lie between here and there,” Jonathan said in an attempt to defuse things.

Where the hell had the authorities gotten ahold of their aliases? Add that to the fact that the bad guys had known exactly where the drop-off was going to be made, and it all became very perplexing.

Was it possible that Reverend Jackie Mitchell was somehow in on this? Was there any conceivable reason why she would jam him up? Could that even make sense? No, he decided, it couldn’t. Jonathan wasn’t so naive as to think that members of the clergy were beyond heartless schemes to collect money or gather power-the Crusades, anyone? — but the risk to the children, and the deaths of the chaperones was beyond the pale, even for the worst. Even Jonathan’s cynicism had its limits.

If not the Crystal Palace, then who? If he hadn’t been betrayed by the good guys, then by process of elimination, he’d been betrayed by the bad guys. They were the only other people who knew the details of the ransom exchange. He still couldn’t imagine how they’d known his alias, but at least the location part was plausible. And the bad guys would certainly know the names of the hostage takers. Just as they would know the names of the hostages.

“Uh-oh,” he said aloud, drawing a look from Boxers.

He keyed his mike again and got Mother Hen’s attention. “Do you still have ICIS up?” he asked.

“Affirmative.”

“Do me a favor and run the names of our intended PCs.”

“What are we looking for?”

“Whatever pops up.”

It only took thirty seconds or so. “Oh, my goodness,” she said. “I ran your guy Tristan and he comes up as an accomplice to murder. Same victims.” A pause. “What’s happening here?”

“I’m thinking big-time conspiracy,” Boxers said. “Too many moving parts to be the work of some drug lord.”

Jonathan agreed, but only to a point. The way this operation was playing out-with lies planted about not just him and Boxers, but about Tristan, too-the police had to be a part of it. If not the police, then the people the police reported to, which would be the Mexican government. By extension, the Mexican government meant the controlling drug lords.

“Is Gunslinger there?” Jonathan asked over the radio.

Gail’s voice chirped in his ear. “It’s Lady Justice now, remember?”

Of course. She’d specifically rejected the handle Jonathan had assigned to her after that unpleasantness in West Virginia. She’d chosen the new nickname herself, and while Jonathan thought it sounded stupid, he wasn’t going to fight that battle.

Jonathan said, “I need you both to start asking the right people the right questions and see how we can undo this nonsense before it spins out of control.”

As if it weren’t out of control already.

He went on, “In case we can’t clear the record in time, we’re going to need papers for our PC, too, so the quicker you can find me a reliable craftsman, the better off we’re going to be. Advise when you have an answer. Meanwhile, have our Special Friend contact Wolverine and see what he can dig up.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the blood-spattered apparition that had once been a healthy, stable young man. Now, he had that faraway look that never meant good things. The kid needed a break, and with a thousand-mile slog lying ahead for them, they all needed rest.

“Set the craftsman for tomorrow,” Jonathan said. “For tonight, see if there’s not a town somewhere nearby with a church. We can hole up there, gather our wits, get a shower and a change of clothes for the PC.”

A pause. “Are you looking at the same map I am?” Venice asked. “Your location defines the middle of nowhere.” Another understatement. They were driving through endless jungle, somewhere near where the states of Oaxaca and Guerrero met each other-in an area where the prominent feature was a lack of prominent features. Jonathan had heard that people actually take vacations out here. Amazing.

A couple of minutes passed before Venice contacted him again. “All right, I think I’ve found a place for you to go to ground tonight. Let me know when you’re ready to copy map coordinates.”

The easiest way was to enter them into his handheld GPS. “Go ahead,” he said.

Venice slowly read off the minutes and seconds of longitude and latitude, enunciating carefully while Jonathan punched in the numbers. When he was done, it took a few seconds for the map to materialize, and when it did, he had to look carefully to see the village that lay camouflaged beneath the canopy of leaves.

Venice explained, “That large building on the far northeast corner of the village is a Catholic church, Santa Margarita. I crossed that with church records and I found there’s a priest attached to it, a Father Jaime Peron. Beyond that, I don’t know much of anything.”

Actually, considering how little time it had taken, that seemed like a lot.