Breaking Loose Read online

  Walking along, weaving his way through the crowd, Dax ran through the frequencies of the transmitters he’d hidden in the gallery. The one in the entrance was silent, which was to be expected, considering that everyone had already left the damn place. He checked Beranger’s office, where Ponce’s men had been discussing the new whores at the Colony Club, and got nothing but static; the same as in the junk room-so who knew what in the hell had happened in those two places. The last transmitter was in the main gallery room, what might be left of it anyway, after the police had trashed and crashed their way through it. He dialed in the frequency and listened, then came to a stop in the middle of the sidewalk.

  There was something coming through, something very human-sounding.

  Checking both directions, he waited for a break in the stream of shoppers, then made his way into the doorway of an electronics store to stand next to a burly security guard holding a pistol-gripped 12-gauge-and he listened.

  Breathing, that’s what he was hearing, heavy breathing coming through the receiver, like someone was right against the transmitter. He was getting it all, a whole chorus of the raspy, rattling struggle, an inhalation of infinite, pained complexity. It could be Beranger. The man was not well.

  The guy with the 12-gauge gave him a dark look, like he was taking up important space, and Dax gave him a half-assed smile and shrugged.

  “Mi mujer,” he whispered, my woman, like there was just no help for this little moment of togetherness in the doorway. The security guy was not his fight.

  He hoped the guy was nobody’s fight, not with him carrying a shotgun for curbside security. The streets and sidewalks were jam-packed full of people. If some cholo decided to steal something, the only safe place for a hundred yards was going to be behind the guard. Nothing in the wild, wild West back home could hold a candle to this place. There were no rules in Ciudad del Este.

  Another sound came through the receiver, commanding his attention, a scraping noise echoing in rhythm with the breathing, like someone was getting dragged, like…like he didn’t know the hell who, but the visual he got was of somebody dragging Remy Beranger, who was breathing loudly, across the main gallery room to do…well, something horrible-that was the visual he got from the raspy, pained sound. He wasn’t an alarmist, far from it, but the gallery had been coming down around the Frenchman’s ears when Dax and Suzi had bailed off the roof.

  Geezus. Whatever he thought of Remy Beranger, he needed the guy.

  He looked down the street. The cab and the Land Cruiser were gone, but he knew where they were going-the Gran Chaco, and honestly, he didn’t doubt that Suzi could take care of herself at a luxury hotel, especially when she was packing a pistol, and most especially since it had been the SDF guys who had taught her how to use it. He knew guys like that. He was a guy like that, and guys like him not only would have taught her how to shoot, they would have taught her when to shoot, which in the case of self-defense was well and often, and quickly-very, very quickly. A couple of shots in a second and a half would do the trick nicely. Hawkins would have taught her that.

  Beranger, though, he’d been about half done in every time Dax had seen him, and if that really was him breathing like that and getting dragged across the floor-well, then Dax had to do something, or he was going to lose the only person he knew who might have actually seen the Memphis Sphinx.

  He looked up the street again, then swore under his breath. Half an hour, that’s all it would take for him to check on Beranger, get the damn Sphinx out of him if it was there to be gotten, and then get back on the road to the Gran Chaco.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Shot and crushed. Oh, God, he hurt. He hurt so badly… everywhere. They’d shot him, the bastards, and then pulled a bank of shelving over on top of him.

  Remy sucked another breath into his lungs, felt it rattle out in a bad way, then sucked in another, painfully, almost unbearably, and with each one he prayed it wasn’t his last.

  There was blood all over him, all over his clothes, all over his hands, pooling on the floor where his savior had pulled him out from under a pile of broken shelves-sweet, sweet Jesus, my Lord Jesucristo, savior of the world.

  Jesus Christ in blue jeans, kneeling down beside him in a Jimi Hendrix T-shirt and a snakeskin belt. Jesus with a gaze of holy compassion seeing all the way through him to his soul.

  “I… I have… have sinned,” he said, his voice a bare breath of sound, the need to confess compelling him to speak.

  “We’re all sinners,” Jesus said, his voice so matter-of-fact that Remy felt he’d been absolved-such was the Lord’s grace. Everyone sinned, everyone could be granted salvation, if they repented.

  Lying in his own blood, lying in pain, Remy repented-oh, God, did he repent-and he forgave those who had sinned against him, everyone, even the damn policía for shooting him, the bastards, and tearing his gallery apart.

  He dragged another breath into his lungs, felt the pain of it from beginning to end-and then he coughed… Jesusjesusjesus, the pain racked him, and the blood flowed.

  “Open your eyes, Remy, look at me,” Jesus said, his voice deep and smooth and compelling.

  Remy forced his eyes open, knowing what he’d see-his Lord Christ with his dark hair short and standing half on end, his saintly face a study in chiseled angles and perfection, his jaw strong, his cheekbones high, his gaze narrow beneath thick, straight eyebrows. Jesus was a hard, hard man, his arms powerful, his chest and shoulders broad beneath his dark T-shirt and the silky green shirt he wore open over the top of the T-shirt. The muscular length of his legs was visible beneath the worn denim of his jeans. Remy had never realized Jesus was so tall, six feet or more of power and grace, like an archangel, his body honed like granite. He had known his Lord was a warrior, and it was in his warrior guise that Jesus had come to Galeria Viejo tonight, to vanquish Remy’s enemies and save his soul. The air still thrummed with the power of his presence, the echo of it matching the rhythm of Remy’s heartbeat, and like his heartbeat, growing ever fainter.

  But it was Jesus. Remy had seen the marks, and no one else could have saved him from the violence and chaos. The policía had fled at his entrance, but the savior had caught one of Asher’s men and hauled him up by the scruff of his neck against the wall. Eye to eye, no one could resist the Lord, and harsh words had been spoken before Jesus had released the man. All was quiet now, with nothing but the sound of his own labored breaths filling the cavernous room.

  “You have a statue,” Jesus said, looking through the pockets on Remy’s jacket. He was so gentle, all his movements so smooth, so fluid, laying back the front of his coat, frisking him, checking his pants pockets. Remy didn’t mind. His savior was barely jostling him at all.

  Jesus pulled a piece of paper out of his front pants pocket and unfolded it. Remy knew what it was, the lading document for the Sphinx, though, of course, it didn’t say “Maned Sphinx of Sesostris III” anywhere on it.

  Jesus read the paper, then refolded it and returned it to the pocket where he’d gotten it.

  “You do have a statue, Remy,” he said, very calm, very sure.

  Yes, yes. Remy nodded. He still had a statue. He looked around himself and felt another wave of pain. The police had broken everything, his bookcases, the lights, the furniture, they’d broken down doors, smashed paintings and pottery, and the bastards had probably stolen him blind.

  But they wouldn’t have found the Sphinx. They would never find it, and Remy wished to God he hadn’t either, found it in a plain wooden shipping crate addressed to him, a small crate banded in metal.

  The death of him-that’s what he’d thought when he’d opened the crate and lifted the top half of the foam packing container off to reveal the Sphinx.

  He’d known exactly what it was; he’d been expecting it, while at the same time never expecting that it would really come to him and his small shop, a dangerous gift with too few strings attached, only that he let it be known that he had it to sell, the profits to be h
is-the Memphis Sphinx, a mystery of the ages, its very existence a battleground of conjecture, its expounded history rife with riddles and theories. For a brief moment when he’d first seen it, his heart had soared, then had come the foreboding of doom, crashing down on him-the death of him.

  And so it had come to pass. Death delivered to him upon the word of a white-haired stranger with a cultured American accent and lofty ties to the United States government. Bait, the man had said, to lure a shark home. For the million-dollar profit Remy had known he could make on the deal, he’d thought he could survive any shark who would come to feed on the fabled idol.

  He had not.

  Instead, he’d become the center of a maelstrom.

  “The statue, Remy, the Sphinx,” Jesus said. “Where is it?”

  Hidden, Remy thought, in a place where nobody could have come along and taken the thing away from him.

  He wasn’t a fool, but Esteban Ponce was, a dangerous fool. Remy had taken precautions, knowing there could be trouble, but look at him-murdered in his own gallery.

  He gritted his teeth against the pain. Ponce had brought this upon him. The cops in the city were easily bought, and they’d only been minutes behind the Brazilian. Ponce could have signaled them from the viewing room, thinking the Sphinx could be had for the price of three crooked cops instead of the opening bid of a million dollars.

  Poor fool Ponce-he’d called his dogs in without even seeing the real statue. Remy and Jimmy Ruiz had gone to great effort to make the buyers think the gorgeous plaster and composite reproduction they’d had made, with cut-glass eyes and a “gold” mane, the lapis lazuli embellishments made of plastic, was the four-thousand-year-old artifact. No one knew fakes better than Remy Beranger. He specialized in the crap-and now he was going to die for it.

  Stupid Ponce wouldn’t even have gotten the fake statue for his trouble. Remy had taken it with him when he’d left the viewing room and handed it off to Jimmy. No sense letting the marks get too close a look at it. When he’d seen their cash, he would have shown them the true Sphinx.

  He swore it by the blood of Christ.

  He had never wanted to keep the damn thing-too dangerous, too heavy for his spirit, too deadly.

  “Remy, Remy, Remy,” Jesus was saying, reaching down and sliding his hand across Remy’s brow, smoothing his hair back off his face, his palm cool, his voice hitting a tone of comforting compassion. “Don’t go yet. Tell me where you put the Memphis Sphinx.”

  It was the gentlest of caresses, made with a saintly hand-a hand made powerful by suffering and redemption, a hand of salvation. Remy knew. He’d seen. Jesus had made no attempt to hide his wrists, and in the center of each was a scar from the holy cross.

  Scars and the frightful power of his presence. From where Remy had lain beneath the broken shelving, he’d felt the power of Jesus entering the gallery, heard the resonant command of his voice, and all Remy’s enemies had fled.

  Who but the Lord could have vanquished them all?

  He drew in another rattling, pained breath, hating the sound of it, knowing it meant the end was near.

  “Dans la cage,” he said, using his last ounce of strength. In the cage. “Hidden in the… the cistern…” He wanted to say more, ask Jesus about Heaven, but the words wouldn’t come to him. Not now. Not on his last breath.

  He lifted his eyes to his Lord, and Jesus spoke to him then, the words soft and consoling, a blessed comfort as the light and the darkness drifted into an endless blanket of gray.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Outskirts of Ciudad del Este

  “Yes,” Creed answered, sitting at a table in a dingy riverside bungalow on the southern edge of Ciudad del Este-mission central for this goatfuck.

  Dylan Hart threw another question at him, and again he answered.

  “Yes.”

  Christian Hawkins’s voice this time, but again a question, in two parts and both parts like knives in his heart.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes.”

  A third voice joined the first two, Zach Prade’s, and as they all conferred, Creed kept his gaze locked on the photographs spread out across the kitchen table-Cesar Raoul Eduardo Rivera, Creed.

  The man who’d shortened Creed’s name for him twenty years ago on the streets of Denver sat opposite him, on the other side of the table, looking rode hard, and that, more than anything else, had warned Creed that he was in for one of those bad, bad times that everybody had to get through sometimes. He’d never seen Dylan look so tapped out.

  Still, when he and his partner on the mission, Zach Prade, had arrived at the bungalow an hour ago with the supplies Dylan had ordered, he hadn’t expected what he was looking at on the table.

  No one would have expected it, not after six years, not ever.

  He took a breath and settled deeper into the ladder-back chair he’d been offered, settled deep and heavy, more to keep himself steady and in one piece than to get comfortable.

  There was no comfort to be had, not in this place, not with those photographs on the table.

  Shit.

  Dylan, the head honcho of 738 Steele Street, the brains behind Special Defense Force, was unshaven, his hair long and pulled back in a pony band, his clothes sweat-stained and dirty. On Creed’s right, Hawkins, the heart of SDF, didn’t look any better. The other SDF operators, men and women alike, called him Superman for a reason, for a lot of reasons, but Superman looked like he’d run the length of South America to get to this hellhole in Paraguay.

  “One more time,” Dylan said, and Creed cowboyed up, swallowing the hard ball of rage sticking in his throat like a forty-pound weight, ignoring the edge of fear licking at his emotions.

  Carefully, his movements slow and controlled, he stacked the photographs back in order and started at the top.

  “First day in camp,” he said, sliding a photograph off the stack. It showed him and a dark-haired man, J. T. Chronopolous, bound, blindfolded, and gagged, bloody and beaten, lying on the ground in the Colombian jungle, with five huts in the background and a cooking fire and open-air kitchen in the foreground.

  “Where was the camp?” Dylan asked.

  “Northern Colombia. We were three days out from the town of Coveñas on the coast, when we were ambushed. From there, we were four days on the trail, gaining altitude, before we reached the NRF outpost.” Six years ago, he and his teammate, J.T., had been captured and held by a group of Colombian guerrillas, the National Revolutionary Forces. He’d lived through the ordeal. J.T. had not.

  “Who was your connection in Coveñas?” Hawkins asked.

  “It was a CIA setup, at least the guy in charge was CIA.” This was all old news. He’d been debriefed a hundred times a hundred different ways on the mission that had cost J.T. his life, but no one had ever mentioned photographs. Whoever in the hell had taken them, Creed hoped they were long dead.

  “Who else was in Coveñas?” Dylan asked.

  “A security guy from Occidental Petroleum,” he said, “and four shooters and looters who were running their own game out of there.”

  “Had you ever seen any of them before you and J.T. got to Coveñas?”

  He shook his head. “Not before or since.” And he’d been looking. He and J.T. had been set up for that ambush, but by whom and why remained a mystery. Creed had always wanted to have a chat with those other boys who’d been at Coveñas that summer, but that whole crew seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth. The last Creed had known was the four of them heading up toward the Darien Gap in the northern Choco region of Colombia, on the border with Panama. An agent named Tony Royce had been high on Dylan’s list of suspects for the ambush, but like so many of Royce’s treacherous deeds, the confirming details had never surfaced, and Royce was dead now, killed by Hawkins.

  “Do you remember the drugs you were given by the NRF guerrillas?”

  Creed shook his head. “Only that there were a lot of them.”

  “Hallucinogenic?” Dylan asked, and Creed gave him a
hard look.

  “I know what I saw, Dylan.” It was branded on his soul.

  “Tell me…again.”

  Creed reached for the second photograph and pushed it across the table. “I saw Pablo Castano torture and beat both of us.” A close-up photo showed a man with a flattened, broken nose and a pockmarked face grinning for the camera. “For the record, for the hundredth time, I personally slit Castano’s throat in Peru, sent him straight to hell. I heard there were photos taken of the body.”

  Skeeter had told him.

  “Did you ever see Ruperto Conseco?”

  Creed looked down at the stack of photographs and spread them out again. “This guy,” he said, choosing one of the pictures and sliding it out of the stack. “I remember him coming twice, always treated like a VIP, looking things over, giving… orders.” A dull pain came to life in his gut.

  Kid, J.T.’s brother, and Hawkins and Creed had killed all the bastards in that camp, their mission sanctioned by three sovereign nations. Tracked them down over the course of a continent and a year and killed them-the guerrillas, the drug cartel boys like the Consecos, and one rogue CIA agent, Tony Royce, who had gone down in Denver in an alley, in the rain, one shot to the back of the head delivered by a steady hand-Superman’s.

  Guns and drugs and thugs-all over the world, those three things were twined together tighter than the knots on a dropped noose.

  Creed took another breath, keeping it slow and easy.

  This was going to get worse. He could tell, and a part of him wished Dylan would just get to his point-and a part of him prayed Dylan would never get to the point.

  “What else did you see?” the boss asked.

  With only the slightest hesitation, Creed reached for the pile of photographs and cut to the chase. The bottom picture was the one he needed, and he dragged it out from under all the others and pushed it squarely into the center of the table.

  It was horrifying.

  Unbearable.