Hostage Zero by John Gilstrap

Author:John Gilstrap [Gilstrap, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Suspense, Fiction, Thrillers
ISBN: 0786020881
Google: UuUXAvw7nkYC
Amazon: B007NZQTFU
Barnesnoble: B007NZQTFU
Goodreads: 7828937
Publisher: Pinnacle
Published: 2010-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

It wasn’t until she’d arrived in Colombia that Brandy Giddings realized her entire notion of what the country would look like had been shaped by the movie Romancing the Stone with Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. She’d expected muddy streets teeming with chickens and goats. She’d expected scary people on every corner and motor vehicles that were thirty years out of date.

What she got instead with Santa Marta was a modern if slightly threadbare city on the seashore that housed the Hotel Santorini, which itself sported perfectly acceptable air-conditioning, and whose bartender knew his way around a good caipirinha. And why not? She was a heck of a lot closer to the birthplace of the national drink of Brazil here in Colombia than she was in DC, where she’d first tasted the concoction.

Brandy sat in the lounge near a window that gave her a panoramic view of the Caribbean, watching the street vendors hawking their wares to tourists whose pockets were the targets of roving street urchins. She found comfort in the two beefy soldiers guarding the front doors. Actually, maybe they were policemen; they all wore the same uniforms in this part of the world. Either way, their presence put a lot of brawn and bullets between her and any of the criminals out there.

For the thousandth time in just a few days, she had to pinch herself to believe that she was actually here doing this. After she’d gone home from her last meeting with Secretary Leger, her doorbell had rung, and when she’d answered it, there was a young man in a crisp white Navy uniform, absent the ubiquitous white-on-black name tag. His equally white hat sat at a studied angle over his brow.

“Ms. Giddings?” he’d said. He had that sunny-but-tough Academy look.

“I’m she,” she’d said, and instantly she’d regretted the Wellesley grammar.

He presented an eleven-by-seventeen-inch manila envelope. “I’ve been ordered to deliver this to you personally.”

She took it without thinking. “Ordered by whom?”

“You’re to read it carefully and speak to no one.”

She’d actually giggled at that. It sounded like something out of a movie. “Is this from—” She cut herself off, just in case. “Who sent it?”

The young officer grasped the visor of his cap with his thumb and forefinger, a gallant tip of his hat. God, he was gorgeous. “Have a good day, ma’am,” he said.

The envelope contained a second envelope, along with a U.S. passport with her picture but a new name, plus unsigned instructions for her to appear at Andrews Air Force Base in less than three hours, prepared for several days in a warm climate. She was to tell no one of the correspondence, and she was to make no unusual preparations before leaving.

The Andrews flight had taken her to Hurlburt Field in Florida, and then onto a commercial flight under her new name to Santa Marta. At a precise hour, she was to be sitting at this bar in this hotel, with but one mission: to hand the second envelope to a man who would come by and speak to her.

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