Don Pendleton - Devil's Playground

“Oh,” Asado answered, rolling her eyes. “That’s news to me.”

“Sarcasm will get you nowhere,” Diceverde mumbled. He took another sip.

“Beer and painkillers don’t go well together,” Asado warned for the third time.

“Says you,” Diceverde answered. “I’m feeling a nice buzz here.”

Asado looked at the arm that hung in the sling around the reporter’s neck. If the bullet had struck any closer to the joint, he’d have needed a serious hospital stay, and amputation would have been an option. The little journalist had been lucky, and she couldn’t begrudge him his minor alcohol-and-painkiller-induced high.

“Want one?” Diceverde asked, motioning the base of his bottle toward the remnants of a six-pack she’d brought him.

“I’m good,” Asado answered. “E-mail him.”

“Cooper’s people would be able to track us easily in that case,” Diceverde warned.

“He could have put a bullet in my head instead of giving me his calling card,” Asado countered. “I’ll trust him. For now.”

“You type, then,” Diceverde said. “I’m good at using a search engine typing one-handed, but doing anything more is testing my limits.”

Asado patted him on his good shoulder. “Take a rest from typing. I’ll send the e-mail.”

Diceverde sucked down a long pull of his beer before getting up and plopping on the bed, letting the woman take his place at the desk.

“Establishing contact,” she typed into the header and body of the e-mail. She sat back and waited for a response. Considering Cooper’s mysterious air, he obviously had a large organization behind him. They’d be watching for any e-mails to his contact address.

She wasn’t surprised when the phone rang after a minute. Plucking it off the cradle, she put it to her ear.

“Blanca Asado?” a woman asked on the other end.

“Speaking,” she answered.

“You made an attempt to contact Agent Matt Cooper by e-mail.”

“You’re his secretary?” Blanca inquired dryly.

From the sound of Barbara Price clearing her throat, Asado knew that she’d struck a nerve. “I’m a liaison.”

“I figured he’s busy elsewhere,” Asado continued. “Perhaps you can arrange a meeting for us, if you’re not going to drop a team of federales into my lap.”

“You’re a Fed yourself, Blanca,” Price countered. “And we’re talking a Mexican Fed to boot. We’ve got, what, a fifty-fifty chance that you’re crooked?”

“If that’s the case, then why didn’t I just take out the governor and his wife with the rest of those Commie soldiers?” Asado asked.

“A different faction,” Price mused. “You’re an unknown quantity to us.”

“You’ve done a lot to earn my trust so far,” Asado said, not bothering to keep the sneer out of her voice.

“If your sister was anything like you, no wonder she ended up dead,” Price answered. “Don’t trust authority, free-thinking, looking for what’s right. It’d be a real wrench in the works of anyone trying to run something crooked.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere,” Asado retorted. “So how are we going to arrange contact with Cooper?”

“Do you have a cell phone?” Price asked. “Using the hotel’s landline is secure, but it’ll limit your mobility.”

“I tossed mine last night,” Asado explained. “Too easy to track.”

“The airport’s only a couple of miles away. Locker 171J will have something we can establish secure communications with.”

“You have a key?” Asado asked.

“It’s locked, but the key is in a secure area. Section D of the parking lot, space 44,” Price answered. “We have the key lodged in a disguised box in the concrete pylon. The patch of concrete over it is marked with a rather large smear of bird crap.”

“That’s one way to keep someone from feeling around on it,” Asado returned. “This would have been Cooper’s ‘backup’?”

“There is a cell phone and a few survival tools in a handbag,” Price explained. “We have secure communications with you.”

“And a GPS tracker presumably,” Asado added.

“Actually, it’s deactivated. The GPS signal could possibly give his position away on a stealth insertion,” Price told her. “The tools are clean, as well. We’ll contact you when you recover what you need.”

“Very generous with someone else’s equipment,” Asado stated.

“This was a redundant supply drop,” Price said. “He has other means of reequipping. Call us on Autodial 1 when you retrieve the phone.”

Price hung up and Blanca Asado set down the receiver.

“Well, they got the e-mail,” Diceverde said. “You going to take them up on their offer?”

“What choice do I have?” Asado asked. “You’re hurt, so if we get into trouble, you won’t be able to effectively protect yourself.”

“Rosa was my friend, too,” Diceverde protested.

“Kicking ass isn’t your specialty, though. Finding things out, that’s where you’re strongest. I need to follow this conspiracy smearing my sister, and you can cut through that mess far better than I could,” Asado explained. “I need a source of information that isn’t tied to Cooper.”

“You don’t trust him?” Diceverde asked.

“I don’t trust the people on the other end of that phone,” Asado told him. “But I met Cooper face-to-face, and he seems like a good man. I’m going to get the stuff.”

She handed him her revolver. “It’s stuffed with .38s, so you can control it with your dumb hand.”

“Thanks,” Diceverde replied.

“I just hope you don’t have to use it,” Asado added, heading out to the car.

“IF WE’RE GOING TO BE WORKING together,” Anibella Brujillo began, putting two cigarettes between her luscious lips and lighting them both, “we’re going to need to be open and honest with each other.”

She took one cigarette out and turned it over to Bolan. He accepted it and could taste her. Bolan shrugged. “What makes you think I’m hiding anything?”

“Your birth name isn’t Matt Cooper,” Anibella cooed.

“It’s the name I go by,” Bolan returned, keeping irritation out of his voice.

Anibella took a deep breath, then sighed. “And who was outside helping us?”

“I exchanged fire with someone in the treeline. I couldn’t get a good look, but whoever it was was interested in taking out the Russians, too.”

“Ah…that’s the thing. Russians,” Anibella replied.

Bolan handed her a printout. “My people pulled the records on a few I got fingerprints on.”

The first lady nodded in approval as she looked at the file. “Your people work quickly.”

“Kind of a necessity in my line of work,” Bolan said. “Quick intelligence can mean the difference between success and death.”

“You seem to have both in droves, Agent Cooper. Quickness and intelligence.”

Bolan nodded, keeping his mind off of the smoldering, seductive stare that the woman burned into him. “I’d rather work independently. Being shackled to a bureaucracy will only limit my ability to hunt down those responsible for your assassination attempts.”

“You think this was round two?” the woman asked.

“Round two of what we know so far. There might have been more attacks foiled by law enforcement that didn’t filter up through your grapevine. These efforts seemed like acts of desperation,” Bolan replied.

Anibella nodded, licking her upper lip. “I am the one who is the figurehead of the antidrug campaign here in Acapulco, Matt.”

Bolan shrugged. “It’s a possibility.”

“I have a sizable dossier on local organizations, including drug processing and distribution centers, which we do not have enough evidence on to constitutionally take action,” Anibella told him, her eyes glimmering. The glimmer sparked an even hotter fire as Bolan realized that his facial expression changed ever so slightly. She’d read him, the flicker of anticipation. She’d been trying, all conversation, to find a chink in his emotional armor to pull him in to her grasp.