Gillian shook her head, but no words would come out. She didn’t want anything to do with this. She wanted to huddle in a corner and be invisible.
The man leaned into her, and his body odor assaulted Gillian’s senses. He smelled like sweat and onions, and she forced herself not to gag. “You have two choices,” he said calmly. “Be our spokesperson or die.” Then he let go of her arm and stood back. He lifted his rifle and placed the barrel against her forehead. It was hot and felt like it was burning a hole right into her skull.
Swallowing hard, Gillian whispered, “I’d be happy to talk to whoever you want.”
His lips quirked upward in an evil, satisfied smile as he lowered his weapon. “I thought you might.” Then he grabbed her arm again and shoved his way between terrified women and children and hauled her to the area reserved for flight attendants, where the crew prepared food and drinks for the passengers.
He pushed her down, and Gillian gladly scooted until her back was against the side of the plane. “Might as well get comfortable, we’ve got a bit of time before we get to Caracas,” the hijacker told her.
Gillian closed her eyes—but she couldn’t block out the sounds. Women crying, the hijackers threatening passengers, the occasional terrifying shot from one of the guns.
People were dying all around her…and Gillian was utterly helpless. She hated the feeling. But she also knew there was nothing she could do if she was going to live through this, except try to stay calm and do as she was ordered.
Trigger grimly flipped through the folder of information he’d been given before he and the rest of his Delta Force team got onboard the flight to Caracas, Venezuela. Two days ago, a flight heading from Costa Rica to Dallas had been hijacked and flown to the South American country.
Now the plane had been parked on the tarmac for almost forty-two hours, the hijackers waiting for their demands to be met.
The group claimed to be associated with the Cartel of the Suns, who were involved in the international drug trade. It was an organization allegedly headed by high-ranking members of the military forces of Venezuela, as well as some of the most influential government employees as well. Not too long ago, in fact, the nephew of the first lady of the country had been arrested for trying to smuggle eight hundred kilos of cocaine from Venezuela to the United States for the cartel.
Trigger didn’t give a fuck about the drugs or about the man the hijackers were attempting to free from prison. Hugo Lamas was a border patrol agent in Venezuela who’d been imprisoned earlier that year for taking bribes and allowing millions of dollars’ worth of drugs to pass through his checkpoints.
What Trigger did give a fuck about was the remaining twenty-four American citizens on the plane. Twelve women, ten men, and two children. He was also worried about the dozen or so citizens from Costa Rica, Mexico, Canada, Japan, Colombia, Panama, Nicaragua, and India onboard.
The entire Delta Force team thought the demands were bullshit. There was no way the Cartel of the Suns cared about one border patrol agent; not enough to hijack an entire plane. But at the moment, Trigger didn’t care what their real agenda was. All he cared about was figuring out how to get onto that plane and take out the assholes who thought it was okay to terrorize innocent civilians.
Reports from Venezuela were that bodies had been dumped out of the plane onto the tarmac. The hijackers weren’t fucking around. They weren’t just threatening to kill people, they’d already done it. And with every hour that passed, more and more lives were in jeopardy.
The Deltas were called in to assist because they specialized in close-quarter rescue missions. These kinds of rescues weren’t exactly Trigger’s favorite. The chance of more people getting hurt was extremely high. He hated knowing passengers would most likely die in order for them to get to the hijackers. It was likely the assholes would use men and women as shields to try to survive.
“What are ya thinkin’?” Lefty asked.
Sighing, Trigger turned to his friend and teammate. “I’m thinking this stinks to high heaven.”
Nodding, Lefty agreed. “I know. It doesn’t add up.”
“Nothing adds up,” Grover chimed in. “I mean, the Venezuelan government hates the US. And with all the rumors that they’re heavily involved in the Cartel of the Suns, why would they call us in to kill their own people?”
“Unless this group isn’t their own people,” Brain said.
Everyone nodded.
“That makes sense,” Trigger said. “They could be pissed off that someone hijacked the plane using their name, and they want to send a message.”
“But at what cost?” Oz asked.
“They don’t give a shit about innocent lives,” Doc scoffed. “They don’t care about anything but staying in power and making money. Many of them don’t care about their own countrymen and women starving and suffering, so they certainly won’t care about a bunch of foreigners.”
“And I have no doubt they invited us in so if things go sideways, they can blame us,” Lucky added in disgust.
Trigger ran a hand through his hair and sighed in agitation. “It doesn’t matter why we’re going, just that we do whatever it takes to get as many people as possible out of this alive.”
The rest of the team nodded in agreement.
“What’s the latest intel?” Trigger asked Brain.
The other man flipped through his notes and said, “It looks like they’ve got one of the passengers communicating with the negotiator.”
“Smart. So we can’t use voice-recognition software,” Lucky said.
“Right,” Brain agreed. “They also don’t seem to be in a huge hurry. They’ve done the usual thing—bring us food and water or we’ll start killing passengers—but otherwise, they just seem to be hunkered down and waiting.”
“For what?” Grover asked.
“No clue,” Brain replied.
“Who’s the passenger doing the talking?” Trigger asked.
Brain shuffled some more papers. “FBI gathered background info on all the US passengers on the manifest. The spokesperson is identified as Gillian Romano. Thirty years old, single, event planner from Georgetown, Texas. She checks out clean. Five-seven, blonde hair, green eyes, a hundred and eighty-five pounds. Got her undergraduate degree from UT-Austin and worked a series of entry-level jobs before starting her own company about four years ago. Both parents are living and still together; they live in Florida. She was in Costa Rica for seven days, apparently in charge of a big shindig put on by Pillar Custom Homes out of Austin. The guests all left the day before she did.”
“You think she’s in on this somehow?” Lefty asked.
“No,” Brain said immediately. “I’ve got some of the transcripts of the calls she’s had with the negotiator, and she’s way out of her league. She’s doing as good a job as she knows how, but the ass-wipe she’s been talking to definitely hasn’t helped.”
“We taking over negotiations?” Doc asked.
“Fuck yeah, we are,” Trigger answered for Brain. He’d also seen the transcripts. Gillian Romano was clearly scared, but she’d still done what she could to keep the hijackers calm and to get the passengers what they needed to be comfortable. He supposed her skills came from being an event planner.