Kidnap and Ransom. Michelle Gagnon

At the same time, he swept sideways with his legs, knocking Scarface off his feet.

      A grunt as Scarface landed, air squeezed out of his lungs. The sound of the rest of the Tyr team scrambling. Mark struggled for a second with the hood covering his head. The van swerved sideways as his fingers finally found a purchase and yanked it off.

      Chaos reigned in the rear of the van. Sock and Flores were struggling to hold down Scarface, who bucked against them, nose broken and bleeding. Sock punched him, three swift blows to the head. Scarface’s eyes rolled back and he went limp.

      Decker and Kaplan were engaged in a battle with the driver and passenger. The LMT had come to rest beside Mark. He flipped it around in one smooth motion.

      A gun went off in the front seat, the explosion so loud his ears rang. Kaplan collapsed backward. Mark shoved past him and drove the muzzle of the LMT against the passenger’s head. “Drop it!” he yelled. “Flores, tell this motherfucker to drop the gun!”

      The driver had slowed. “And he needs to keep driving at the same speed,” Mark snapped.

      The Zeta in the passenger seat had dropped his Glock, but still wore a shit-eating grin.

      “What are you smiling at, asshole?” Mark shoved the muzzle farther into the guy’s chest.

      The guy gave him another bemused look, then said something to Flores. Both he and the driver blanched. The driver began muttering something that sounded suspiciously like a prayer.

      “What did he say?” Mark demanded.

      “He said the van is wired to blow. All he has to do is push a button,” Flores said.

      “Bullshit,” Mark said.

      The guy held up his other hand. A transmitter was nestled in his palm. Mark wasn’t a demolitions expert, but he’d been around enough to recognize the real deal when he saw it. He swore under his breath.

      “What the fuck do we do now?” Sock asked.

      “Tell him to give me the transmitter.” Mark kept his gaze locked on the guy. “He doesn’t want to die any more than we do. He hands it over, we’ll drop them off at the side of the road. He can tell his boss we overpowered them.”

      “They’ll kill me anyway,” the man said in thickly accented English before Flores could respond.

      “Then run. Get the hell out of here,” Mark said.

      The man just shook his head. Mark recognized the look in his eye. He’d seen that same expression on a kid’s face at a roadblock outside Baghdad, right before the blast that took out half his unit.

      Mark dived forward a second too late. There wasn’t even time to shout a warning before the guy pressed the button.

      Six

      They’d been at the motel for over an hour when Syd knocked on the door. Jake opened it to find her, Kane and Fribush loaded down with two duffel bags apiece.

      “A little help?” she grunted.

      Jake took one of the bags from her, staggering slightly under the weight. She hauled the other into the room, Fribush and Kane at her heels. Jake slammed the door behind them and double-bolted it.

      “That was quick,” he said.

      “Ya gotta love Mexico,” Syd said. “They were even having a sale on C4. We cleaned them out. Figured we were doing the country a favor, getting this stuff off the streets.”

      “I feel like a patriot.” Fribush pulled an Uzi out of one of the bags and looked it over appreciatively.

      Kelly sat on a threadbare comforter mottled with stains. Her jaw had tightened, but she didn’t say anything. Jake wondered again what the hell he’d been thinking, allowing her to come along.

      “So what’s the plan?” Maltz asked. He was sitting on a chair in the corner, methodically cleaning his nails with a knife.

      “I heard from my contact at Tyr. They narrowed the search down to two boroughs.” Syd unfurled a map of the city on the bed. Kelly shifted to make room for it.

      Syd pointed at two boroughs on the Eastern side of the map. “Iztapalapa and Iztacalco. Think of them as the South Bronx of Mexico City. Both Zeta-friendly, lots of safe houses there. The initial raid took place in Iztapalapa, and Tyr thinks they hung around.”

      “Where’s the Tyr team?” Jake asked.

      “They’ve spent the past week combing through Iztapalapa block by block. They came under fire a few times, thought they might be close.”

      “What about the AFI?” Kelly asked.

      “Who?” Maltz said.

      “The Agencia Federal de Investigación. They’re kind of our—” Kelly caught herself. “The FBI’s counterpart in Mexico City. Is Tyr coordinating the search with them?”

      “I doubt it, since a quarter of their agents work for the Sinaloa Cartel,” Syd snorted.

      “But I thought—”

      “This isn’t the United States, Jones. The police don’t help you here. In fact, they’re usually the first to put a bullet in your head.”

      Kelly started to say something, then abruptly shut her mouth. Jake considered interceding, but unfortunately Syd was right. With every K&R job they had done in Mexico, their main goal was to avoid the authorities as much as possible, paying the right ones to look the other way. Tyr probably functioned on the same model. The neighborhoods they were talking about were basically war zones. If a Mexican cop wanted to last more than a week on the job, he avoided them at all costs. The Zetas were an occupying army in those territories. And considering that, some C4 might actually come in handy.

      He could see Kelly trying to reconcile that, and felt for her. This was way past anything she had ever been involved with. With any luck she was already considering booking a flight home.

      She surprised him by saying, “So we’re avoiding the Tyr team, too.”

      “Naturally,” Syd said.

      “Where do we start?” Maltz asked.

      Syd pointed to a spot in the upper right section of the map. “Tyr is here now, and moving north. I say we start above them and move south. There’s a rumor that some Americans are being held in a building in the northeast quadrant. Zetas are known for moving captives around, but we might get lucky. We’ll ask around, see what stones we can overturn.”

      “Where did you hear the rumor?” Kelly asked dubiously.

      “Sorry, hon. That’s classified,” Syd said smugly.

      “Syd has a lot of friends who owe her favors,” Jake explained. He didn’t add that he referred to them as her “shadow network.” He’d long ago learned better than to doubt her information. In his experience, those rumors were always right on the money.

      “Why do you think anyone will talk to us, if the Zetas control everything?” Kelly pressed.

      Syd dug into one of the duffels and withdrew a handful of cash. “Because we’ll be paying them. And if cash doesn’t work, we’ll try something else.”

      Kelly abruptly stood and went to the bathroom. Jake followed her. She stood in front of the mirror staring down at the floor. He could hear the rest of the team suiting up in the bedroom.

      “You don’t have to stay,” Jake said gently. “We both know this isn’t your kind of thing.”

      “Is it yours?” she asked, raising her head to meet his eyes.

      “My brother is out there,” he said, although that rang hollow even to his own ears. The truth was, aside from The Longhorn Group’s first case, Jake hadn’t done much work in the field. He usually left this sort of thing to Syd and her cohorts. He never questioned