Dirt in here smelled of old wood and damp mulch, two things that deteriorated. If this tunnel caved in, she’d die here, and no one would ever know. Nice, Hallene.Why not think about running into a slumbering anaconda and being strangled to death?
She had hacked at vegetation for over an hour to reveal parts of the crumbling shack that had collapsed over the closest access point to the ocean for this underground passage.
This tunnel would likely not be the only one along the northeastern coast of Venezuela from back when pirates stashed their stolen goods.
She didn’t want gold and jewels.
She was here to save a seventeen-year-old girl then beat the crap out of the kidnapper who had dragged her here.
According to her intel techie, a big-time pirate historian and enthusiast, this seventy-hectare, or two-hundred-seventy-acre location had once been a sugarcane plantation. But time changes everything. The plantation had been left in ruins for almost a hundred years. Then two years ago, a US businessman who had lost his entire family acquired the decaying mansion along with twenty acres the government allowed him. He spent nine months remodeling the structure back to its glory days and kept the place up without any domestic help. A loner who raised his own food as well as goats and chickens.
A sophisticated hermit.
A dead hermit by now.
She shook her head at someone who looked at a reclusive South American location and thoughtsanctuary. The government might have no interest in him so long as he paid taxes when they came due, but cartels were another story.
The person her intel indicated was currently squatting in the mansion for two days. He would not fear cartels nor be here long enough for a tax collector to show up.
Kidnappers frowned on paying taxes.
She only needed this world-class scumbag to be here one night. Just for a few more hours, in fact.
She’d been mentally counting steps in groups of fifty and bent a fourth finger into her palm. The tunnel exit leading into the basement of the remodeled mansion should be before she tucked the fifth finger.
Her head bumped something hard. She cursed and rubbed her head. She’d hit a rare crossbeam installed for support. Damn pirates. She was five-nine. Had the men back then been that much shorter than her or just too lazy to carve out a taller corridor? Ducking her head, she kept moving.
Wouldn’t a taller tunnel have made carrying trunks of gold and jewels easier?
She would not go through this hell tonight for all the lost treasures in the world.
Only for Phoebe, a seventeen-year-old girl with a bad attitude who had been a pain in Hallene’s backend since Phoebe’s birth.
Still, no girl deserved the fate her half-sister faced.
Hallene rarely had regrets in life, but she now had a few when it came to Phoebe.
Without missing a step, she peeled open the Velcro cover shielding her black watch face turned to the inside of her wrist. Closing in on half past nine at night.
Two and a half hours should be enough time if she had a team with her, but doing this solo felt as if she cut it close. Her plan required inserting and extracting Phoebe before midnight. The infamous Collector never spent more than seventy-two hours at any location once he had a captive. He’d arrived here at midnight two nights back.
Now that he’d been located once, he could be found again, but that didn’t mean Phoebe would still be in his possession or alive by his next stop.
Her intel resource had gained a tip when the Collector stopped in South America and traveled to the remodeled home. Her techie told her there was a high probability the Collector was headed to this mansion.
If that was true, Hallene would never tease her friendly hacker about his obsession with pirate lore again.
She pushed her legs harder.
Everything about this half-assed plan went against her sense of preparation. Worry climbed across her shoulders at the fear she’d make a mistake and either die before she could free Phoebe or get them both killed.
Discovering the location of El Coleccionista, aka the Collector, had been too good to pass up or to wait on backup, which she no longer had. Hacking the computer of Phoebe’s father sealed the deal when Adam Kovac received a message about an unspecified task he had to perform once details were delivered if he ever wanted to see Phoebe again.
Resources were everything.
Her tech also supplied information to UK military such as SFSG, Special Forces Support Group, where Coop had been a respected member. His buddies had been nice to her after Coop’s death, but she’d told them nothing about this or they would have hauled her away and taken time to recon the area before any insertion decision.
An excellent idea if time had any part in this equation beyond running out too quickly.
