Olympus

Chapter 23

Ricardo drove the Jeep up a hill that overlooked the city before he pulled it to a stop. The moment he did, Sammy got out of the car and stomped round it angrily to face him.

"What the hell just happened back there, Rick?!" he shouted. "No one said anything about getting shot in the chest." He zipped down his jacket for Ricardo to see the dent the bullet had left in his bulletproof vest.

Ricardo sighed exasperatedly. He looked over at Megan who was just getting out of the Jeep alongside Kei. She's fine, he saw to his relief. For a moment before, he had actually been worried that she had been hit in the haze of the bullets raining down on them in the restaurant earlier and was just too excited to notice. But from what he could see, she was fine; a little distracted perhaps by the ordeal they just went through, but fine all the same.

He turned back to face Sammy who was still fuming in front of him then. "Look, Sammy," he said, "I really am sorry for what happened back in the restaurant. If I had known that it was a possibility, I would have warned you of it, but I didn't and that was my mistake."

"What exactly is this cargo of yours that someone's willing to kill you to retain possession of it anyway?" he asked.

"None of your business, that's what," Kei returned before Ricardo could say anything and came to stand in-between both men with her hand on a dagger in her belt as if warning them of the consequence if the query persisted.

Sammy looked Kei from up to down a couple of times, sizing her as if to weigh with his response; and then, he gave a wry smile. "Alright, Speedy, no need to get violent," he replied after and backed up two steps with his hands in the air in a show of surrender. "I more than anyone understand when someone wants their business to remain private. I appreciate it better though if it didn't almost get me killed."

"Me too," she returned with a smile, "which is why I memorized the faces of the guys who attacked us, perhaps Ricardo here-" she looked to him to confirm "-can run them through his facial recognition app and get us some identities to go with how they might have known about the meeting."

He nodded affirmative and Kei looked to Megan who roused herself out of her thoughts enough to hand the teenager a notepad and pencil. Within a minute, she had speed-drawn the faces of the four assailants on each leaf of the pad and handed them to Ricardo.

It took only a glance at one of the pictures for Ricardo to say, "Facial recognition won't be necessary. I have an identification for you. Emilio Juarez."

"Wait, you knew those clowns?" Kei quirked an eyebrow.

"A clown," he corrected, pointing to the drawing of a Verdi-bearded Latino man in his late thirties. "Emilio Juarez was a Colombian hacker who joined Os Buscadores three years ago; and while I didn't know him much on a personal level, he and I have coordinated on enough missions to consider him my friend, or at least, a very close colleague."

"And he's not the only "very close colleague" apparently." Sammy walked up behind the duo and pointed at the drawing of a white, bald-headed, clean shaven, twenty-something years old-looking man next to Emilio's. "That's Ronald DeVill," he said. "He was kind of my ambassador to the Middle East in the weapons business."

"So, two men close to you two banded with some other guys to kill us," Megan said suddenly from where she stood. "Is that correct?" The look in her face was that of calculation, like she was trying to figure out an equation that was elusive to the eyes.

"That looks like it, yes." Ricardo gave her his full attention. "You have a theory?"

"Not yet," she replied, "but I'm working on one. Tell me, do Emilio and Ronald have any other connection besides the two of you? Like maybe a collaboration on something outside of standard work."

"Not to my knowledge," he replied, looking to Sammy.

"I always checked my guys and Ronald came back clean," he replied, "until now, that is." He sneered angrily.

Then Ricardo and Sammy aren't the connection we're looking for, Megan decided. Plus it was fairly obvious to her that the attack at the restaurant wasn't a personal one.

Thing is, Emilio, when he had entered- she extrapolated that he was the man behind the helmet since Ricardo hadn't recognized him earlier- had shot Sammy instead of Ricardo. Logic dictated that he took out the person he was most familiar with first in the attack to prevent any complications in the proceedings of the event.

And then there's what he said to me, she remembered. "No interference allowed," she could still hear him say it even then. That denoted something much more than a personal vendetta; something that was worth trying to kill someone twice for.

Something like Item 13, it dawned on her.

Emilio and Ronald had to have been part of the group that had stolen the weapon from Olympus's storage facility, which would make much sense as Emilio, being a professional acquaintance of Ricardo, would know enough about his residence in Rio to help a team of assassins hit it successfully.

But if Emilio had tried to help the group kill Ricardo, and Ronald, Sammy, did it mean then that there's an equivalent of them in Olympus who had helped the group steal Item 13 from the storage facility? she wondered, the very thought chilling her.

Thing is, while Megan knew next to nothing about covert affairs, she had read enough spy novels to know that a mole within an organization was a very disastrous thing. They always almost end up destroying the world! She recalled so in a number of the books she had read.

"We need have the information you got on the missing cargo urgently, Sammy," she said.

He looked at her for a second, seeming reluctant to part with the information now that he caught a glimpse of what resonated around it, but looking at Kei whose hand had gone to her dagger again, he put his hand to his pocket and brought out a flash drive.

"I couldn't find anything concrete on your missing cargo," he confessed, "but this flash contains a list of transports recorded around the area you said it went missing. Hopefully, there's something on it enough to help you."

"Thank you very much, Sammy." Ricardo nodded in appreciation as he took the drive from him.

Sammy didn't say another word as he took the keys from Ricardo and got in the Jeep.

"Wait, you're not planning on leaving us here, are you?" Kei suddenly realized what he was about to do.

"You bet your fast legs I am," he returned, starting the engine, "and FYI, next time you guys have a problem-" he pointed at them all one by one to get his point across "-don't call me." He revved the engine and sped away.

"What now?!" Kei screamed as they watched the Jeep become a speck in the distance.

"Now, Kei," Megan sat down cross-legged on the hill and watched the sun setting gradually over the city, "we wait."