W. Griffin - The Hostage

There was another burst of Car 4 fire, this one farther away.

And then Sergeant Kensington's voice. "Anybody alive in there?"

"Only the good guys," Castillo called back.

There was the sound of a door being kicked open. And then a hand holding a flashlight appeared in the door and the light swept the room.

Then Kensington came into the room with Corporal Lester Bradley on his heels, sniper rifle at the ready.

"Get that goddamn light out of my eyes," Castillo ordered. "There's a lamp on the floor behind the desk."

Kensington found the light and turned it on, and then walked to where Castillo was getting to his feet. He waited until Castillo was fully up, then said, "These cocksuckers, whoever the fuck they were, got past Kranz. Can you believe that?"

"Is he all right?"

"They garroted him, Major," Kensington said.

"Oh, shit!"

Castillo walked to the desk again, looked at the exploded head of Jean-Paul Lorimer, and then at the blood oozing from the chest of El Coronel Alfredo Munz, and said, "Oh, shit!" again. [FOUR] Estancia Shangri-La Tacuarembo Province Republica Oriental del Uruguay 2225 31 July 2005 "You're going to be all right, Colonel," Sergeant Robert Kensington said to Munz, who rested just about where he had fallen behind Lorimer's desk. "There's some muscle damage that's going to take some time to heal, and you're going to hurt like hell for a long time every time you move-for that matter, breathe. I can take the bullet out now, if you'd like."

"I think I'll wait until I get to a hospital," Munz said.

"Your call, Alfredo," Castillo said. "But how are you going to explain the wound? And if Kensington says he can get it out, he can."

"No offense, but that looks to me like a job for a surgeon."

"Kensington has removed more bullets and other projectiles than most surgeons," Castillo said. "Before he decided he'd rather shoot people than treat them for social disease, he was an A-Team medic. Which meant… what's that line, Kensington?"

"That I was 'qualified to perform any medical procedure other than opening the cranial cavity,'" Kensington quoted. "I can numb that, give you a happy pill, and clean it up and get the bullet out. It would be better for you than waiting-the sooner you clean up a wound like that, the better-and that'd keep you from answering questions at a hospital. But what are you going to tell your wife?"

"Lie, Alfredo," Castillo said. "Tell her you were shot by a jealous husband."

"What she's going to think is that I was cleaning my pistol and it went off, and I'm embarrassed," Munz said. "But I'd rather deal with that than answer official questions. How long will I be out?"

"You won't be out long, but you'll be in la-la land for a couple of hours."

"Okay, do it," Munz said.

"Well, let's get you to your feet and onto something flat where there's some light," Kensington said. He looked at Castillo, and between them they got Munz to his feet.

"There's a big table in the dining room that ought to work," Kensington said. "It looks like everybody got here just in time for dinner. There's a plate of good-looking roast beef on it. And a bottle of wine."

"Okay on the beef," Castillo said. "Nix on the wine. We have to figure out what to do next and get out of here."

"Major, who the fuck are these bad guys?" Kensington asked.

"I really don't know. Yung is searching the bodies to see what he can find out. I don't even know what happened."

"Well, they're pros, whoever they are. Maybe Russians? Krantz was no amateur, and they got him. With a fucking garrote. That means they had to (a) spot him, and (b) sneak up on him. A lot of people have tried that on Seymour and never got away with it."

"Spetsnaz?" Castillo said. "If this were anywhere in Europe, I'd say maybe, even probably. But here? I just don't know. We'll take the garrote and whatever else Yung comes up with and see if we can learn something."

When they got to the dining room, Kensington held Munz up while Castillo moved the Chateaubriand, the sauce pitcher, the bread tray, and the wine to a sideboard. Then he sat him down on the table.

"Tell me, physician," Munz said. "What would the effect of wine be on this happy pill you're about to give me?"

Kensington went to the sideboard and picked it up. "Cabernet sauvignon," he said. "There is a strong body of medical opinion which suggests this is indicated in a procedure of this nature. You want a glass?"

"Yes, please," Munz said.

Kensington poured wine in the glass and handed it to Munz.

"Take these with it," he said, putting two white gel capsules on the table. "And when you start to feel a little woozy-it usually takes about a minute-just lie down. I'm a little surprised you're not in pain."

"What makes you think I'm not?" Munz asked as he tossed the capsules into his mouth and then picked up the wineglass.

"You won't be out for long," Kensington said.

"What happened out there, physician?" Munz asked.

"The first thing I knew that anything was wrong was when I heard the Remington go off. And God forgive me, what I thought then was that the goddamn kid was playing with the rifle and it went off. So I ran around the side of the building to chew him a new asshole. And that's when I saw the two guys. One of them was on the ground and the other was pointing a Madsen at me-"

"A Madsen?" Castillo asked.

"Yeah. That mean something?"

"It might," Castillo said.

"And I had just decided, Oh, shit, he's got me, when another 7.62 round went off. Down he went. Two shots from the kid. Both in the head. The little sonofabitch can shoot. He saved my ass. And yours, too. The first one he popped was the guy who stuck his Madsen into the office window. Bradley told me he waited until he was sure what he was up to before he popped him."

"He was supposed to be guarding the goddamn chopper!" Castillo said.

"And aren't you glad, Major, that he didn't understand that order?" Kensington said. "And then things got a little exciting. There were six of them in all. Five at the house, and the one who garroted Kranz. Kranz managed to get his boot knife into him. When we found Kranz, that one died trying to escape."

"That wasn't smart, Kensington."

"Yeah, I know. But Seymour and I went way back, and I didn't think."

"I am starting to feel a little strange," Munz said.

"Let me help you lie down," Kensington said. Kensington gently lifted Munz's eyelid and shined a small flashlight into it.

"Okay, he's out. He'll probably be out for thirty minutes. But he's a big sonofabitch, and I have no idea what his threshold of pain is, so he may start to wake up when I'm working on him. I want you to be prepared to hold him down-lie on top of him, whatever's necessary-if he starts to move. Okay?"

"Got it," Castillo said.

"And now, before I lay out my surgical instruments, you may help me scrub."

"How do I do that?"

Kensington handed him an aerosol can.

"Spray this crap all over my hands. It's advertised as better than a good scrub with surgical soap. It fucks up your hands, but what the hell?"

Castillo sprayed a foaming, pale orange substance over Kensington's hands from the aerosol can, and then watched as Kensington pulled on rubber gloves.

Then Kensington came up with a thin black plastic envelope. He tore it open. Inside was a small set of surgeon's tools.

"No offense, Major," Kensington said, "but if you feel yourself getting a little woozy when I start to cut, for Christ's sake, sit down on the floor and put your head between your knees. The last thing we need is you cracking your head open on the table. You have to get us the fuck out of here." "No identification whatever," Special Agent David William Yung of the FBI reported to Castillo forty minutes later. "No labels in the clothing, and I'm almost sure they're manufactured locally, or at least available here, so there's nothing there. I fingerprinted the bodies, and took enough blood to do a good DNA. But a DNA is good only when you have something to compare it to. Sorry. They came in cars from Enterprise Rent-A-Car, the airport office. We can run those credit cards, but if these people are as professional as it looks, that'll be a dead end, too. Sorry."