Page 82 of Vaquero
Chapter Thirty-Two
Hotrod came to with amazing alacrity. One minute he was out cold, his head leaned against the interior wall beside the co-pilot’s seat, right where Julio had left him. The next, he’d jerked out of his harness, was up on his feet and grinning, as steady as if he’d never been knocked out or belly up.
“Where?” he bit out as, quickly and with practiced precision, he took in the fact that his bird was now landed and Hazelton was cuffed. As well as both closed side doors and the faint light glimmering behind the pilot seat from a single overhead bulb.
“Off the northern coast of Brazil,Chief,” Julio replied easily.
He’d remembered where he knew Hotrod from, just wished Hotrod had told him up-front who he was instead of finding out the hard way. He’d gone through Hotrod’s wallet, checking for anything that might identify a medical condition, just in case. What Julio found was Hotrod’s California driver’s license and his real name. Walker Judge. As in Navy SEAL Lieutenant Walker Judge from SEAL Team 18, the fugitive on the run. Which was why Julio taunted him with that Chief designation now. “I’d tell you more, but then I’d have to kill you. Unless there’s something you want to tell me first.”
“I didn’t do it,” Walker growled as he ran a quick hand over his head and through what little hair was there. The man didn’t look anything like the SEALs Julio had worked with. He was too neat. Too tucked in and too proper. Too good. If anything, he looked like a bright, shiny candidate for OTS.Officer Training School.
Julio was sitting opposite the spy formerly known as Barbara Hazelton. Slowly, not wanting to startle a man with Walker’s specific skill set, he leaned forward and put both palms flat on his knees. He knew Walker’s story. Who didn’t? It’d been all over the news for months. After a bungled trial where the Navy’s own Naval Criminal Investigation Service had coerced contrived confessions out of Judge’s girlfriend, her neighbor, then two pansy-assed sailors who’d served with Walker, the Navy convicted him without evidence, of murdering his commanding officer with his bare hands.
Not that he wasn’t strong enough or trained specifically to do something like that. Julio was certain Walker most certainly could. That was what SEALs did, what they were trained to do. But this particular Navy prosecutor had gone out of his way to indict Walker when all evidence had proved otherwise. Julio had read the full brief and every last word of trial transcripts. The politically-minded prosecutor had willfully ignored valid witnesses and had continually overturned evidence that would have proved, without a shadow of doubt, that Judge hadn’t been at the scene of the crime. In fact, not once had he stepped foot inside or gone near Commander Goff’s residence where the murder had taken place. Ever.
His CO wasn’t known for cozy gatherings at his lavish home on Ocean Beach, much less a get together that had ever included an invite for Walker. It was common knowledge among the teams that Goff and Walker had never seen eye-to-eye. So what? That happened when alpha males worked together. They’d argued, yes, but not once had anyone come forward with proof or evidence that Walker had ever been violent with Goff. Nada. Zip.
Never mind that the prosecutor’s office had willfully wiretapped Judge’s attorney’s office and home phones, or that NCIS had intercepted Walker’s attorney’s legal assistant’s emails. In the end, the political powers that commandeered the Navy got what they’d wanted. They’d stripped Walker of his Trident and sentenced him to fifty years hard time in Leavenworth. They ruined his life. His girlfriend dumped him a week after the verdict came out, during a less than spectacular interview with TMZ, during which she claimed he couldn’t perform. Every last word she spewed sounded like spiteful revenge porn to Julio.
Interestingly, Walker had been shackled, cuffed, and bound for Leavenworth, Kansas, when the two Navy guards transporting him contracted a bad case of food poisoning. It occurred during a refueling stop between the rental car agency and Leavenworth. No, really. The van they’d rented ran out of gas in the middle of flat-as-hell Nowhere, Kansas. The bug they’d contracted turned out to be E Coli. Julio wondered how and precisely where they’d picked that up. He also wondered why the rental agency hadn’t topped off the tank of their rental vehicle before they’d signed it out.
So many things didn’t add up. But the truth was that Walker Judge, a highly trained, highly decorated Navy SEAL had simply walked away from the rest stop while his guards were knelt over, too busy worshipping their private porcelain gods. Which made it extremely interesting that Walker had deliberately come to Brazil now to assist Senator Sullivan. That he worked out of Fort Campbell, Kentucky, as an Army Nightstalker pilot, no less. Those were both highly visible military occupations. Surely someone, somewhere, had questioned his identity, his qualifications, or worse, recognized him. Had the world gone bat shit crazy? Or was Walker just that good at this undercover business?
Since Julio thrived in the same dog-eat-dog black ops world, he had to admit that Walker had an oblique way of gliding through most crowds without drawing attention to himself. That was because he kept his head down and didn’t make eye contact. Despite the fact that he was a reasonably good-looking man, he dressed in plain, every day clothing or uniforms that matched the service members working around him. He blended in, never stood out. Seemed to have no ego. Like a man with a bounty on his head.
“Let me guess,” Julio said without a hint of sarcasm. “You work for Sullivan, too.”
There went Walker’s hand again. Scraping over his head and through his military cut, light brown hair. Down the back of his taut, shaven neck. The wrinkles etched deep on his forehead gave him away. Every action he took now revealed a man poised to run. Or fight. His shoulders were slanted, his fists positioned to strike, and his boots were primed for quick retreat. Unfortunately, there was no way off this narrow strip of sand.
“Can we talk? Somewhere else?” he asked, nodding that big chin of his at Hazelton.
Julio nodded to the side window. “It’s not a very big sandbox. We’ll have to be quick. I’m expecting visitors.”
For the first time, Walker noticed the blip on the blue force monitor. “Who are you waiting for?”
“Not them, but I’m afraidtheyare waiting for me. And now you. It’s good you woke up.”
Walker’s sharp blue eyes scrolled past Julio to the still unconscious woman sprawled across the aisle, her head tipped back, her mouth open and snoring. Not a pretty sight. But hey, she’d had a lot of dental work done. Julio was fairly certain she’d had a nose job, too.
“What’d you give her?”
“A shot of her own medicine, after a double-tap from my nine-millimeter.”
“God damn, she’s a tough broad. You shot her and she’s still alive?”
Julio shrugged. “It was me or her. I won. But she was also wearing tactical armor. I took it off in case she comes to and decides to die fighting.”
“Thank God. What’d she hit me with?”
“Horse tranq.” Julio pulled the two remaining cartridges of Ketamine out of his jacket pocket. “The same thing I also gave her.”
“You suspected her then, too?”
“From the moment I met her, yes. She has certain tells.” Julio glanced at Hazelton. “She licks her top lip when she lies. Like a snake. She wrinkles her nose. I’m certain she wears glasses when she’s not on a job.”
“Where’s her piece?”
“Her tranquilizer pistol is in the Atlantic along with her tactical plates. But these” —he gave Walker one of the hypos— “I kept. You should keep it in a safe place. We may yet need it.”
