LITMIR.BIZ

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handle him.” Decker vanished. Mark grabbed a plastic bag from a stack below the register. He kept one eye on the girl as he scanned the locked, refrigerated cabinets. “Antibióticos?” he finally asked.

      She didn’t answer. He came closer, kneeling beside her. She avoided his eyes.

      “Lady, the faster we get this stuff, the faster we leave,” he said.

      “You’ll kill us anyway,” she replied in surprisingly good English. “Fucking junkies.”

      “We just want to help our friend,” Mark said. “Morphine, coagulants, antibiotics and we’ll be out of your hair.”

      “Your friend was shot?”

      He nodded. “We were kidnapped.”

      “So go to the police.”

      “I don’t trust the police.”

      “Got the bandages and the phone,” Decker called. “We ready?”

      “Almost.” Mark turned back to the cabinet. Toward the end of the row he spotted a bottle marked Morfina. He used the butt of the shotgun to shatter the case, causing the girl to suck in her breath sharply. Mark carefully stuck his hand in, avoiding the broken glass, and drew out two bottles.

      Kaplan could live without anticoagulants, but antibiotics were crucial. If they could get him through the next few hours, Tyr would be able to reach them and he had a shot at surviving. But once infection started, it was tough to beat.

      “Antibiotics?” he asked again. The girl refused to look at him. He reached back into the cabinet, swept an armful of bottles out and sent them crashing to the floor. They shattered in quick succession like bottle caps.

      “Ay!” she cried. “They’re over there!”

      He followed her pointing finger and spotted the antibiotics in the opposite cabinet. Punched a hole in the glass again, then drew out two bottles. “Syringes?”

      She motioned toward the drawers below the cabinet.

      Mark tried one: locked. “You got a key, or should I shoot the lock?”

      The girl fumbled in the pocket of her jacket. She drew out a key ring and tossed it to him.

      He caught it, unlocked the drawer and slid it open. Grabbed a box of syringes and tossed them in the bag with the other stuff. Turning to leave, something caught his eye. He bent again, shifting the other boxes aside. The girl stiffened as he drew out a package: white powder wrapped in layers of plastic.

      “Dude, we gotta bolt.” Decker reappeared on the other side of the counter. “What’s that?”

      “The cops aren’t coming, are they?” Mark asked.

      The girl slowly shook her head. “Los Zetas?”

      Her expression shifted at the name, but she didn’t reply.

      “Shit,” Decker said.

      Mark’s next words were interrupted by a spray of automatic weapon fire. He dived to the ground, landing hard. The counter in front of him bucked and splintered as dozens of rounds pumped through it. Over the barrage, he heard the girl screaming.

      “They’ve been gone too long,” Sock said. “Something went wrong.”

      “It’s only been an hour,” Flores replied. “Maybe there wasn’t a pharmacy nearby.”

      “Yeah, or maybe they got smart and decided to ditch us. It’d be a hell of a lot easier to get out of this shithole if we weren’t dragging around a guy with a gunshot wound.”

      “They’ll be back.” Flores turned his attention to Kaplan. The T-shirt he’d been using to apply pressure to the wound had soaked through. He replaced it with another from the stack Sock had stolen on his foray outside. Kaplan wasn’t looking good. He was getting paler by the minute, more waxy-looking. He’d probably lost a few pints of blood by now. It was giving Flores a bad sense of déjà vu. A year ago he was in the mountains on the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, running interference between the local warlords while trying to determine which of them was still Taliban. When their convoy was coming back from the nearest village, one of his buddies got hit by a sniper. They waited more than three hours for a Medevac chopper. As it was landing, his friend bled out. Kaplan had that same look now. If Riley and Decker didn’t get back soon, he was done for.

      Sock wasn’t making the situation any easier. He’d returned ten minutes earlier with the T-shirts and some tacos he’d scrounged up, and hadn’t stopped pacing since. This was Flores’s second mission with Tyr, and the first time he’d worked with Sock. The guy struck him as a typical SEAL asshole, convinced he was better than everyone else because he could wear a scuba tank. He’d run into the type a lot since entering the service: didn’t like them then, and couldn’t stand working with them now.

      The irony was that Flores had taken this job because it was supposed to be safer. He was sick of getting shot at in some sand-blasted country where everyone hated Americans. Now here he was, in his hometown, facing the same situation. You had to laugh.

      He thought for a minute of Maryanne, six months pregnant and waiting for him. Wondered if Tyr had even told her that something went wrong. They promised to take care of relatives if anything happened to him; he’d felt pretty good filling out a whole stack of paperwork attesting to that. But you had to wonder. If the company could screw up an operation this badly, how good was their word?

      Kaplan groaned. Flores lifted his head, forced the mouth of a water bottle between his lips and got a few drops down his throat.

      “We should leave him,” Sock said. “Riley and Decker might have gotten picked up again—we’re probably still in Zetas territory. We get our hands on a phone, we can call in, get help.”

      “Why didn’t you come back with a phone?” Flores asked.

      “Didn’t see any,” Sock said defensively.

      Flores didn’t answer. It seemed off, that Sock could find T-shirts and tacos but hadn’t managed to get his hands on the cell phone they really needed. But then, this whole operation had been screwy. None of them had discussed it yet, but clearly someone had set them up. That raid had gone too wrong too fast, like the Zetas knew they were coming. The question was, who told them? A member of the team, or someone higher up in the organization?

      Flores furtively eyed Sock. Riley and Decker seemed okay, and Kaplan was just plain unlucky, first the broken ribs, now this. But Sock had been exhibiting odd behavior from day one.

      Sock went to the doorway again and eased it open an inch to peer out.

      “Shit.” He yanked his head back.

      “What?” Flores asked.

      “We got company,” Sock said grimly, pulling a handgun out of the waistband of his jeans shorts.

      Before Flores could ask where the hell he’d gotten another gun, the door blew inward. Something hit the floor, then rolled toward them. He instinctively threw himself over Kaplan as the grenade came to a stop a few feet away.

      “See? Nobody here,” Syd said as they pulled on to the shoulder at the side of the highway.

      Kelly didn’t respond. Jake was driving, Maltz was beside her in the backseat. This time Syd had insisted on riding with them. “I know where we’re going,” she’d tossed over her shoulder, jumping in the front seat beside Jake.

      It galled the hell out of Kelly, but she didn’t say anything.

      A steady stream of cars whipped past. Kelly realized she had yet to see a single police car, despite all their driving around the city.

      “How do you know this is the spot?” Jake asked.

      “GPS,” Syd said. “Plus those.” She pointed at a set of skid marks that started in the middle of the road and zoomed off the shoulder past them into

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