Survival by Russell Blake Page A

and his phone rang. He lifted the handset to his ear and listened, his eyes never leaving her face. She controlled her breathing, as she’d been trained, emitting calm. She saw movement out of the corner of her eye on the far side of the large room and tried not to stare at three soldiers toting machine guns who had materialized from a side entrance. Even as she took in the new development, she smiled at the official, hoping this was just the usual officious bureaucracy, a low-level functionary relishing his ability to make her wait.
    After what seemed like hours, he stamped the passport and handed it back to her. “Enjoy your vacation,” he said in a disinterested voice, already eyeing the next victim. She took the passport and shouldered her carry-on, to anyone watching a relaxed young woman without a care in the world, arriving in an equatorial wonderland for a tropical vacation.
    Jet slipped on her sunglasses and watched the soldiers from behind the dark lenses. All three were staring at her, but she continued through the room to the baggage claim area – she recognized the expressions on their faces, and it wasn’t anything unusual or alarming. Just young men bursting with testosterone, eyeing a striking example of the opposite sex.
    She pushed past a throng of her fellow travelers and stepped outside. Stifling humidity settled over her, and she peeled off her jacket as she removed her phone from her carry-on and waited for it to acquire a signal. After a minute she dialed Matt’s sat phone, only to hear it go directly to voice mail.
    “I’m here. See you in a few hours. Hope everything’s going well on your end,” she said. “Call me when you get this. My cell’s on.”
    Jet hung up and checked the time. Matt was scheduled to arrive on the fishing boat in six hours – more than enough time to get to the tiny port of Vacamonte, west of Balboa, on a remote spit of land twelve miles from Panama City. She’d go into the city center and get a sense of the town, and then meet Matt and Hannah.
    The thought of seeing her daughter again sent a thrill of happiness through her. It seemed like forever since she’d hugged her and brushed her hair – for that matter, since she’d been in Matt’s arms. Finally, they were safe and could start a new life somewhere nobody could find them. She was exhausted from having to run, enemies from the past constantly chasing them, and wanted nothing more than a boring life as a homebody somewhere modest and quiet.
    The thought of herself standing in front of a small house, an apron tied around her waist, waiting for Hannah to run toward her and tell her all about her day at school, tugged at her heart, and a wave of melancholy washed over her. Was that too much to ask? Peace, a good man, a happy kid, the world left to its own devices as she lived out her time in tranquility?
    She waited in the taxi line for a bit and then changed her mind and returned to the terminal. A row of rental car agencies vied for her attention, and she chose the farthest from the arrivals salon, where a bored woman sat texting behind a chipped counter, her red uniform wrinkled from the humidity.
    Jet exchanged pleasantries with her and ten minutes later had rented a nondescript economy sedan. A shuttle took her to a lot off the airport grounds and dropped her at the car, and after glancing at a map helpfully supplied by the rental company, she cranked over the engine and negotiated her way out of the lot.
    The highway into town was clearly marked, and she marveled again at how modern everything seemed. As she neared the city, the high-rises astounded her, like something from photographs of Dubai or Singapore. One building in particular was arresting in a sea of new developments: forty or fifty stories of green-tinted glass that looked like a giant screw sticking straight into the sky.
    She took an off-ramp and found herself on Avenue Israel, which was gridlocked, and she resigned herself to finding that