The Wrong Hostage

61

SAN YSIDRO

MONDAY, 7:34 A.M.

FAROE STARED AT THE handset. It took every bit of his discipline not to throw the phone against the wall.

Grace felt the rage tightening the muscles in his body. She spun toward him. “Lane? Is it Lane?”

“He’s okay,” Faroe said quickly, despite the sound of fists hitting flesh he’d heard. Some of those blows had undoubtedly been scored by Lane. He was a tough, wiry kid well on his way to becoming a man. “The guards are onto the phone. They turned it off. They’re moving him somewhere.”

“Is the phone with him?” Steele asked.

“Would you leave the phone with him?” Faroe asked sarcastically.

Steele didn’t bother to answer.

Someone from the back of the bus said, “Sat phone hasn’t moved from previous location.”

Faroe looked like he’d rather have been wrong about the phone. “Put someone on the real-time sat photos.”

“There are too many groups of people on the school’s grounds to be certain we have Lane,” Steele said. “The resolution simply isn’t that good.”

“Do it anyway.”

Grace watched Faroe. He looked calm, yet she sensed the waves of rage and frustration radiating from him. Suddenly he spun and hit the wall with his fist. A shudder went through the heavy motor coach.

No one said a word.

Everyone but Steele and Grace retreated to the far end of the motor coach, giving Faroe some room.

“Talk to me, Joseph,” Steele said quietly.

“If they get Lane away from All Saints, they’ll drag him down that rathole called Tijuana, and we’ll have hell’s own time finding him,” Faroe said.

What he didn’t say was that Lane would already be dead if and when they did find him.

Faroe didn’t have to say it aloud. It echoed in the silence that followed his words.

“We have one helicopter, one sniper, and two lightly armed shooters,” Steele said finally. “Even if we had three times that much firepower, I still wouldn’t allow an air strike on a school where an army company is bivouacked.”

The look on Faroe’s face told Grace that Steele wasn’t saying anything Faroe didn’t already know.

“Lane cracked the security on Ted’s file,” Faroe said. “I was right. He ran between fifty and a hundred million dirty dollars through some offshore business accounts and then parked it in some clever little Austrian passbook savings accounts. Nobody’s going to find it without the file, not even Ted.”

“In other words, the computer is the key to a huge amount of narco dollars,” Steele said.

“It was,” Faroe said.

“But now?”

“Now it’s time to look at our hole card.”

“Which is?” Steele asked.

“Father Magon.”

“So you trust him,” Grace said to Faroe.

He smiled thinly and turned away.

“Joe?” she asked.

“When you’re down to your hole card,” Faroe said, “trust is the least of your problems.”