a seat, Sergeant. I’ll ring the general.”
Patterson sat, sensing tension around the woman. Her smile was fixed. Her eyes showed anxiety. Snipers saw the details. Missing one could get him killed. He’d downed five cups of McDonald’s coffee this morning on the way over. God, it had tasted good. It was one of the few things he’d missed about rich U.S. life.
He heard a buzzer.
“Go right in, Sergeant. General Landon will see you now.”
Patterson opened the door into the large room and saw a man in a dark green wool uniform behind a desk, a deadly look on his face. The general had short black hair with some silver at the temples, dark blue eyes and a bulldog-square face. He was about the sergeant’s height of six feet tall and around his weight, two hundred pounds.
Patterson shut the door, snapped to attention and gave his name and rank.
“At ease, Sergeant,” Harrison said, pointing to the seat in front of the desk. “Sit down.”
Patterson nodded and did so.
“This is a black op, Sergeant,” the general said. Picking up a folder, he pushed it across his spotlessly polished walnut desk.
Knowing Recons sometimes performed black ops, Patterson reached for the file. “Yes, sir.”
“Open it, Sergeant.”
The sergeant did so.
He frowned and did a double take. It was a color photo of a young woman. There was a sprinkling of freckles across her high cheekbones and she had soft blue eyes. Her face was oval-shaped, her eyes wide-spaced. She had mussed ginger-colored hair around her face and lying on her shoulders. She was smiling. And she was happy.
Josh looked up at the general, waiting to be briefed. Under ordinary circumstances, he would find this woman very attractive. She was a natural, wearing no makeup, no lipstick or blush. He instantly liked that about her. She wore a bright red tee that showed off the glint of gold, red and burgundy in the strands of her hair. He didn’t try to guess anything about her. He was sure this scowling general would tell him, so he waited, his hand atop the file on his lap.
“That’s my daughter, Sergeant. Her name is Allison Landon. She’s twenty-seven years old and is in trouble so deep I don’t even know if you can help her.”
Eyes narrowing on the officer, Josh felt the air whoosh out of his lungs. This was his daughter? For the first time he saw the general’s game face crack, momentary terror in his expression. And something else he couldn’t read. “Yes, sir.”
“My daughter is a registered nurse, Sergeant. She works for Healing Hands Charity. It’s a global charity. Presently she’s down in Brazil, in drug-lord badlands.” His mouth thinned and he snarled. “I told her it was dangerous. But she didn’t listen.”
The powerful emotion slapped at Josh. It was invisible. But it was real. He wasn’t sure Allison’s father was more angry than worried. “Sir? Do you want my questions? My input? Or do you want me to sit and listen?”
“Sit and listen, Sergeant. When I’m done briefing you, then you can ask questions.”
“Yes, sir.”
Rubbing his jaw, Landon said, “She’s worked down there for two years. About thirty miles southeast of Manaus, an old rubber town that sits on the Amazon River. Two nights ago Aly—Allison, was supposed to make a prearranged sat call to her supervisor in Manaus. It’s a safety check-in. She was supposed to have arrived at a particular Indian village. But the super never heard from her. Sometimes, sat phones go out. Especially in that kind of heavy humidity, so the super didn’t think much of it. When she didn’t get Allison’s check-in call the second evening, she called the U.S. ambassador’s office in São Paulo, Brazil. That is standard operating procedure. She’s declared Allison missing and unaccounted for.”
Josh could see sweat making the general’s deeply furrowed brow gleam.
“She’s missing,” Landon growled, his hand on the desk flexing slowly into a fist. “There’s a regional drug lord in that area. Duarte is his name. He’s active and his drug soldiers kill and ask questions later. I need you to find her. I’ve cut your orders. You’ll perform a HAHO, high-altitude, high-opening parachute drop, into the area she was last known to be. We can’t use satellites because the area is old-growth, triple-canopy jungle. Once on the ground, you will find her through whatever means at your disposal. You’ll be given a sat phone and anything else you need. If I could send a company of Marines into that friggin’ place, I’d do it, but it’s not possible. I strongly believe Duarte has her. Now, questions?”
Josh sat forward. “Sir, is this a kidnap and ransom?”
“No,” Harrison muttered. “There’s not been one phone call to me requesting money.”
“Why would Duarte grab her?”
The man’s face began to crumple and then he seemed to force himself to remain unemotional.
“Duarte deals in drugs. All kinds of drugs. There’s a dossier in there on him you can study. He...” Landon’s voice cracked for a second, and then he pushed on. “He’s known to deal in the sex trade, young girls and women. He’s got a tie to a Georgian sex ring operating out of that country. The CIA and Interpol have been trying to prove the link.”
“He’s captured Ms. Landon to sell her into the sex black market?” Even Josh felt his gut tighten over that question. But hard questions had to be asked.
Landon’s blue eyes were raw and grief-stricken.
“She’s a nurse,” he muttered. “CIA briefing in that file will show that Duarte is a diabetic. He’s slowly dying of it. I’m hoping, that if he has taken Aly...Allison, it’s because he needs her medical expertise. Duarte is a wanted criminal everywhere in South America. If he shows his face in any hospital, they’ll arrest him. And he knows it.”
With a shake of his head, the general growled. “He may need medical help and that’s why they captured her. God...I hope that’s correct...” He rubbed his face with his hand, his voice trembling for a second.
“And where is he right now?”
“He owns a villa. The map is in the file. We’ve got a few bad photos from the satellite. We simply can’t penetrate his hideout because it’s protected from all satellites by that damned triple canopy. That’s why I need you, Sergeant Patterson. You’re the best of the best. You’ve taken that jungle training course down in South America several years ago and were one of the few men to graduate from it. I need someone who can recon, sniff out the land, find her and then rescue her.” He shook his head and gave Josh a hard look. “Sergeant, she’s my little girl. The only family I have. Aly is simply incapable of dealing with something like this.... She’s fragile...idealistic.” His voice deepened and became annoyed. “Aly thinks the world is filled with hope. That there are no bad guys around. I don’t see how she can operate that way,” he muttered with a shake of his head.
“Is she capable of fighting back, sir? Does she have heart? Because if I can find her and rescue her, we’re going to be running for days. I know the Amazon jungle too well. There are no openings to get to a helicopter and be lifted out of there. The only possible route of escape is by utilizing Navy Riverine boats that ply the Amazon.”
“Aly—” Landon shook his head. “Okay, maybe this will answer your question about my daughter having heart. My wife, son and Aly were hit by a dump truck going seventy miles an hour one morning when they were being taken to school. Aly was the only survivor,” he said, his voice lowering. “She suffered many internal injuries, a broken leg, arm, jaw and nose. She was twelve years old when it happened, Sergeant. That kid fought with everything she had to get well. She was critical, but she had a fighter’s heart and soul. I was with her in ICU for two weeks before she came out of that damned coma. And from that moment on, Aly took the fight to her body. She got well faster than any of her team of doctors had ever seen.