Desperate Rendition - Chapter 2

Caracas, Venezuela

It was mid-afternoon when the taxi dropped Taylor off at the address he’d given the man, a run-down bar that looked like its last paint job was a hundred years ago. The driver had checked with him twice to make sure he meant this address, and again as they arrived, suggesting this wasn’t the safest place for a gringo... or really anyone.

Taylor was sure.

The streets were absolutely packed, with people going in every direction, but Taylor definitely did not blend into the crowd. He could feel people watching him. Normally his attitude would be ‘let them,’ but he could feel the absence of a sidearm, which was pretty much the same thing as walking around naked.

Still, there was nothing to it. The taxi practically shot away as soon as he pulled his duffle bag out of the car and slammed the door shut.

Taylor pushed his way through a door that seemed barely on its hinges and took a second while his eyes adjusted to the dimly lit interior. The interior was dimly lit, with a few scattered patrons nursing beers at tables that had seen a lot of use over the years, while a fan lazily stirred the thick, smoky air.

He could feel the bartender, and several of the patrons, look at him, probably wondering what a gringo was doing here. Taylor ignored them. He saw who he’d come to meet in a far corner, his back against the wall and feet kicked up on a chair, a half-empty beer bottle in front of him. He looked up as Taylor approached, a grin spreading across his weathered face.

“John Taylor, as I live and breathe.” Sergeant Emilio Flores, retired, said, reaching out and clasping Taylor’s hand in a firm shake. “Never thought I’d see your ugly mug down here.”

Taylor chuckled, dropping into the chair across from Flores, pushing his feet off the chair.

“Trust me, I wouldn’t be here if I had a choice.”

“How’d you even find me?”

“Sergeant Franklin.”

“Holy shit? That old goat’s still alive?”

“Yep, runs a mechanic shop in Florida. Plus some occasional moonlighting.”

Flores signaled the bartender for two more beers and said, “Not one of us can stay out of the business, can we? So, what brings you to my neck of the woods? I’m assuming you’re not on vacation.”

“You assume right. I’m here on business. Need to extract someone.”

“I heard you were some big shot Fed these days. Kind of out of your jurisdiction.”

“I’m here on my own dime.”

“Uh-huh. Sure,” Flores said. “So who is he?”

“She, not he,” Taylor said, taking a swig of the beer the bartender had just dropped off. “American woman. Caucasian, black hair, green eyes, about five-eight. Goes by a lot of aliases and I’m betting she’s set up a new one here, so no idea what she’ll be called. She might be on the run and there’s a chance she was involved in some violence or seen around a crime scene recently.”

“The violence wouldn’t happen to include foreign mercenaries, would it?” Flores asked.

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know about any white woman, but there’s been this outfit calling themselves Paladin Solutions in town, involved in a couple of shootouts. Gunfights aren’t all that uncommon around here, especially along the border between the various gangs, but a bunch of white guys start shooting, that we notice. It’s been the talk of the town. Well, certain parts of town.”

“Do you know anything about these guys?”

“Not much. Some rinky-dink merc outfit out of Chechnya. I poked around a little when they first started making a scene, just to make sure they don’t mess with my thing. They’re amateur hour. Did some work for the Russians in a couple of the Stans. Other than that, just hired muscle.”

“So high casualties then?”

“Of course. You know how these guys operate. They’re basically one step up from the fundamentalists back in the sandbox. What’s weird, though, is a bunch of them got scooped up by the police after a nasty shootout a week ago, but they were back on the street a few days later. I mean, this city’s corrupt, but even for Caracas, that was weird.”

“Paying off the cops, or is someone protecting them?”

“Who knows? But I’ll tell you this, amigo. The gangs own most of these streets, and the cops? They’re almost as corrupt as the gangs, just more expensive. So whoever your girl pissed off, they’ve got some serious juice.”

“Well, that’s the best lead I’ve heard so far. It might even lead me to the person I’m tracking. Do you know where I can find them?”

Flores drained his beer, setting the empty bottle down with a thunk. “Yeah, they’ve set up shop in this ratty hotel just outside of town. The place is called the Hotel El Ávila. It’s a real shithole.”

“Alright,” Taylor said.

“Listen, Taylor, I know you’re a tough son of a bitch, but be careful with these guys. Most of them might be amateurs, but their leader? He’s a former Spetsnaz. He’s got a rep for being dumb as a box of rocks, but the man knows how to handle himself in a fight.”

“I appreciate the warning. I have a feeling I’m going to need a gun before this is over, and I can’t exactly go to the Venezuelan government for help. Is there any way …”

Flores waved a hand. “Don’t worry about that. I’ll make some calls, get you set up. But you’re going to owe me for this, Taylor.”

Taylor finished his drink, stood, extending his hand. “I always pay my debts, Emilio. You know that.”

Flores gripped his hand, pulling him into a quick embrace, slapping his back. “I know. That’s why I’m helping you. Take my jeep. It’s the green one out back. Try to bring it back in one piece, will you?”

Taylor caught the keys, “No promises.”

Flores laughed, shaking his head as Taylor turned and headed for the door. The jeep was right where Flores had said it would be, a battered green thing that looked like it was on its last leg. But then, so did half the cars he’d seen.

Taylor threw his bag in the back and climbed behind the wheel, the engine sputtering to life on the third try, and pulled out, dodging a taxi and a bicycle.

It wasn’t hard to find the area Flores had mentioned and Taylor parked the jeep two blocks from the Hotel El Ávila, tucking it into an alley between two dilapidated buildings. He grabbed his gear, since anything left in the car in this neighborhood wouldn’t stay there for long, slung his bag over his shoulder, and moved through the streets toward the hotel.

Emilio wasn’t wrong. The place might have been nice when they first built it, probably in the fifties, but it was practically falling apart now, it’s front faded and crumbling. The only good part about this section of town being so run down was that there were several abandoned buildings facing the hotel to use to watch it.

It took a few tries, but Taylor found one he could force his way into without too much obvious destruction. Inside he found a bare room with a few broken pieces of furniture and a guy sleeping in one corner, which is probably why the door was so easy to open.

Taylor kicked the man in the foot to wake him up and said, “Necesito que te vayas.”

The guy sat up, swatted at Taylor a few times before really looking at him. He seemed like he wanted to argue, until he looked up at Taylor’s face.

“Ahora,” Taylor said.

“Okay, okay, me voy. No quiero problemas,” he said, grabbing a ratty backpack and edging around Taylor, trying to give him as wide of a berth as possible, before rushing outside.

Taylor watched to make sure he was gone. He wasn’t worried about the homeless guy, who’d probably find another abandoned building to sleep in. Taylor just didn’t love the idea of focusing out a window with some random person he didn’t know in the room behind him. Taking one of the broken chairs and wedging it under the dorr, just in case anyone else wanted to come in, Taylor dragged the other to a dirty window that faced the hotel across the street.

Taylor settled into the chair, pulling a pair of binoculars from his bag. He trained them on the hotel’s entrance, scanning the area for any signs of activity. The street was quiet, save for a few locals milling about, going about their daily business.

Taylor had pulled out a camera from his bag. For what he was doing, he didn’t actually need pictures, and it could have just been habit working with the FBI, but there was an off chance he might need to get IDs on people and it would be easier than trying to use cell phone pics.

Besides, it let him look at the building up close, and it’s not like he had a rifle and scope with him. At least if someone showed up, he could explain he was just taking pictures.

For ten minutes, there was no sign that this hotel was anything out of the ordinary, not that he doubted Emilio. He’d been on enough stakeouts with Whitaker to know these things took time. Finally, he got confirmation when a black SUV pulled up and four guys in the most obvious tactical gear he’d ever seen stepped out.

One of the main tasks of Army Special Forces is to work with local militaries as advisors, which sometimes meant going around kitted up, usually in war zones, but more often than not meant dressing in the same basic style and trying to blend as much as possible. It rarely did working in a foreign country to go around announcing yourself as a military unit. Especially when it was easy to tell you weren’t locals, which these guys, who probably all came from Russia or one of the satellite states, definitely weren’t.

There was one guy in the group that caught Taylor’s attention. He was taller than the others, with a thick black beard and the other guys seemed to defer to him, getting out and scanning the street before he got out and then letting him in the building first.

Odds were this was the ex-Spetsnaz guy Flores had mentioned. Taylor snapped a few pics of him and all his guys, just in case.

And then it was another long stretch of nothing happening. Hours ticked by, the sun slowly making its way across the sky. Taylor made himself as comfortable as possible, following the tricks he’d picked up from other stakeouts, watching the scene without focusing hard, to keep from tiring himself out, waiting until something happened to start scrutinizing everything.

As usually happened, it went from nothing to something in a flash, with four SUVs pulling up to the front and a dozen plus guys, including their boss, all filing out of the hotel and into them. Somehow, they’d found even more equipment to hang off themselves, looking like over-prepped military wannabes you’d sometimes see, who liked to get in front of cameras with every bit of useless hardware their credit card could cover.

They were also very publicly armed, not even trying to hide it. Most of the locals made themselves scarce as they came out.

He couldn’t sit and wait though. Kitted up like this, they were definitely onto something and expected trouble, which probably meant Bonnie.

Taylor grabbed his gear and hurried down to the jeep, which had remained unmolested in its parking space, probably because it was so beat up anyone would assume it didn’t work or wasn’t worth the effort. He pulled out quickly and managed to catch the end of the convoy of SUVs as they roared down the street.

Taylor tried to give them a block lead. The traffic was very light and he didn’t want them to notice he was following, but even light traffic in a place like this was unpredictable and could lead to him being blocked and losing them.

And it wasn’t like he had access to a satellite like he did working on the books in the US.

At least they weren’t in the city center, where the insanity of cars driving in a dozen directions on just two lanes would have made this much harder. Taylor managed to catch up and keep several car lengths back. It was easier because their car was noticeably newer and nicer than anything else on the road, including the jeep Taylor was driving.

Taylor was a little surprised they didn’t do anything to check if they had a tail. Admittedly, several of those tactics, like running a light and unexpectedly changing lanes to see if the person changed also, didn’t work so well in this scenario, but there were others that would have. Of course, he shouldn’t have been that surprised. Outfits like this tended to believe very strongly in their own competence.

They circled the city, taking what must have been the long way around, although maybe it was faster since they avoided much of the traffic of the city itself. As the cars thinned, Taylor was forced to drop back more. Even if they weren’t taking active measures, if the traffic got light enough, they might notice him anyway. Taylor carefully kept a couple of larger delivery trucks between them, which made it harder to see him, but gave him some cover.

Thankfully, when they turned, it was into a deserted construction site without any other cars, making their fancy black SUVs stand out. Taylor passed it and pulled into some kind of workshops, warehouses, or storage places, he wasn’t quite sure which. It was late in the day, not quite yet but getting close, and whoever worked here had already gone.

Taylor pulled his jeep in so he could see through the fence separating the two buildings, but still be mostly blocked from both the street and the construction site.

If this construction site was a front for something, it was a good one. Piles of concrete pipes, stacks of rebar, and mounds of sand and gravel littered the site. A couple of rusting excavators and a cement truck that had seen better days sat off to one side. A few buildings in various states of completion stood in a rough semi-circle. The mercenaries had entered the one that looked the furthest along.

Time ticked by, and Taylor was wondering what this was all about. They’d armed up like they were going to war but then pulled into an empty building. He was just considering if he should try to edge closer and see what was happening when he heard the snap of gunfire. Single shots at first, mostly lower caliber pistols, with a shotgun mixed in. Then came the rat-a-tat-tat of automatic weapons. Long bursts of someone holding down the trigger, not short, controlled fire.

Probably the mercs. There were some screams and words he couldn’t make out, followed by more gunfire.

Taylor wished he was armed.

Suddenly, the back door of the building the mercs had gone into slammed open, and five men in what looked like shabby street clothes came sprinting out. One was clutching his arm, dark red seeping between his fingers as they scrambled over a dirt berm behind the construction site and disappeared into the buildings beyond.

A moment later, the mercenaries came back out the front door. Five of them, dragging two more that Taylor couldn’t tell if they were injured or dead. They piled back into the SUV and tore out of the construction site, leaving a cloud of dust in their wake.

Suddenly, it was quiet again, aside from the noise from the street, which rumbled on as if this happened every day.

Which maybe it did.

Taylor waited a few minutes, making sure the mercenaries were gone before he slipped out of the jeep and made his way to the construction site. He kept low, using the piles of debris and equipment for cover as he approached the building where the firefight had taken place, just in case there was someone still inside and they were jumpy. 

The back door hung open, splintered wood around the lock a testament to the force used to break it open. Taylor paused at the threshold, listening for any signs of movement inside. Silence greeted him. 

He stepped inside, the crunch of broken glass under his boots the only sound. The room was a mess of overturned tables or bullet-riddled construction equipment. Bodies lay strewn across the floor, most of them in the shabby street clothes of the men who’d fled. 

Taylor moved cautiously, checking each body for signs of life. None. He counted seven in total, all dead from bullet wounds. From their positions, it was clear this had been an ambush, not that it had done these guys any good. The mercs were better armed and wearing armor. They’d scored some hits, from the two men dragged out of here by their friends, but after that, things had gone south pretty fast. 

He knelt beside one of the bodies, pushing back the sleeve to reveal a tattoo on the forearm. A skull with a snake coiled around it. Taylor checked the others, finding the same tattoo on each of them. Gang members, most likely. But what were they doing here, and why had the mercenaries come after them? 

Taylor pulled out his phone, snapping pictures of the tattoos and the scene. This was connected, obviously, since the mercs were clearly hired to track down Bonnie, and the way they rolled out, they almost certainly thought she’d be here. 

He was stopped from any further contemplations by the sound of sirens in the distance, growing louder. The police, responding to reports of the gunshots, no doubt. Time to go. 

Taylor slipped out the back, retracing his steps to the jeep. He was behind the wheel and merging into traffic just as the first police car screamed into the construction site, lights flashing. 

He still didn’t have a lead on Bonnie exactly, but these gang members were somehow connected. He just had to find out how.