Sweat poured down Adam Yao’s spine. His thumb hovered over the controls of his cell phone. The woman in white looked straight at the camera a half breath before a staccato crack creased the dark canopy above her. Few in the crowd were likely to have noticed the pop or the tiny flash of light amid the pounding drums and rhythmic chanting.
But the woman noticed.
Yao’s stomach convulsed, as if he’d been gut punched.
The woman canted her head, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Beside her, Joaquín Gorshkov slumped, arms suddenly devoid of muscle tone, dead on his feet as the fiery jet of molten copper pierced his forehead above the left eye. He teetered there for what seemed an eternity before crumpling to the forest floor. To Yao’s surprise, the glaring Chilean operator behind Gorshkov slumped to his knees and then pitched forward, his jowl wedged against his dead boss’s shoulder.
The molten copper had evidently pierced Gorshkov’s skull and then kept going, taking out his bodyguard in the process.
Primary target down, Sal’s Arista detonated in a split-second flash and crack.
The woman in white touched her face, likely spattered by debris from an all but vaporized micro drone. Her eyes flew wide as she looked at the two dead men at her feet.
“We’re heading your way, Adrian,” Yao said to his team member with the cars.
“I hear you, boss,” Hernandez responded immediately. That was a relief. “Ready to roll when you get here.”
Gorshkov and his guard were down, but no one outside his inner circle paid any attention. Countless lionceros—Maria Lionza devotees—smoked cigars and swayed, overcome with religious fervor. In the adjoining clearing, a man walked over a bed of glowing coals. The Viking oracle continued his guttural communion, while a crowd stood gape-jawed.
“Everyone take it easy,” Yao reminded his team. “Fade into the jungle. Slow is fast.”
The outer ring of Gorshkov’s security detail raised their MP7s, scanning for secondary attacks, while the inner perimeter closed ranks. Astonishingly, only one stooped to check on Gorshkov. Everyone else moved to surround the woman in white. The blond Slavic man stayed glued to her side.
Yao had no experience doing formal protective work, but he understood the standard response to a threat. Unlike law enforcement officers, protective agents were not immediately concerned with arresting the aggressor. Their job was to get their principal out of danger. If they saw a threat, they would neutralize it with extreme prejudice during the heat of an attack, but more important, they needed to get their protectee the hell out of Dodge. They were trained to sound off, cover, and evacuate.
The blond security officer beside Gorshkov’s twin grabbed at her shoulder, attempting to turn her toward the parking lot, and, no doubt, hustle her to safety. The woman yanked her arm away, dropping to her knees beside a motionless Gorshkov.
She cradled the dead man’s head, studying the wound, then looked up suddenly, peering into the trees as if she’d heard something.
Yao followed her gaze, watching in horror as Sal lunged from his hiding spot toward a teenage boy who was apparently attempting to steal his daypack. It was instinctive to try to protect his gear, but the movement drew too much attention—and left him exposed holding his phone—a piece of incriminating electronics mere moments after a device from the sky had killed Joaquín Gorshkov.
“Sal!” Yao hissed. “Let it go! She’s looking right at—”
Adrian, still in the parking lot, bonked over the radio, cutting him off. His voice crackled with urgency.
“Two cops just un-assed a sedan behind the buses—and the target’s motorcade is saddling up to move.”
Everyone on Yao’s team was a type A personality, a critical thinker capable of making complex decisions on the fly, but they were also team players, fully prepared to take orders from a single leader. They all stayed silent, waiting for him to speak.
The woman in white barked orders over her shoulder as the main protection detail hustled her down the mountain toward the parking lot.
Yao stood rooted beside his tree. If his team ran now, they’d reach the parking lot at the same time as the woman and her detail, drawing more unwanted attention. If they stayed, they ran the risk of being rounded up for questioning as Venezuelan police swarmed the mountain.
Sal’s voice broke squelch. “This ain’t good, boys and girls . . . Afraid I’m burned.”
The woman in white pulled away and stopped mid-trail, staring hard at Sal. She screamed an unintelligible order. Yao didn’t understand it, but her team certainly did. Two of them broke away from the main detail and now moved straight for Salazar, weapons trained at his chest. Rhythmic drumming sifted through the trees, but the men’s shouted orders were clear.
If Salazar so much as twitched, they would shoot him.
Yao groaned softly as a wide grin spread across his friend’s face.
Sal spoke like a ventriloquist, whispering over the Molar Mic through tight lips as he locked eyes with the approaching gunmen. “You guys haul ass when the crowd starts to run!”
“Negative!” Yao snapped. “There are only two—”
“There’s more of them in the trees, buddy,” Sal whispered. “You know that.” Then, “Well, hell . . . This is gonna hurt . . .”
Sal dropped the phone, turning suddenly to shove his hand into the open bag. It didn’t matter if he had a gun or not. The men leaned into their weapons, cutting him down in a hail of bullets.
Myrna, close enough to witness firsthand what had happened, gave a muted cry over the radio.
Yao thought he might vomit.
The sudden gunfire produced the exact result that Sal had intended. The drumming abruptly stopped. Terrified shrieks rose from those who’d been close enough to see the carnage, rippling through the crowd and infecting people all across the mountainside. The oracle bit through his cigar and dropped the Viking affect completely as he made a mad dash toward the trailhead.
“Go,” Yao barked to the rest of his team, swimming in despair. “Stick with the crowd—”
Myrna’s voice. “We can’t just leave him.”
“Get to the cars,” Yao said. “Sal did this for us.”