Assuming I ever got that chance.
Checking to make sure the first magazine was loaded and ready, I set the rifle back down.
“By now, whoever is there knows I got out through the forest, meaning they have people patrolling it as we speak.”
If we went in through the front, we would have to fight our way out, a hundred civilians in tow.
If I started on this end, presumably I could clear a path before we ever got there.
“You bring the bag?” I asked.
The look on Ela’s face told me she didn’t like what was occurring. She didn’t appreciate that I had parachuted in and seemed to be taking over. She sure as hell didn’t like that I was the one going in first.
But, again, all things considered, it was the best we could do.
Digging into the backseat, Ela extracted a black nylon bag with a drawstring closure. Handing it over, I accepted it with a nod.
Into the bag went the bolt cutters and three spare magazines for the rifle. At five rounds each, I likely wouldn’t get any more chances than that, the weapon too large and cumbersome to be effective once I got into close quarters.
Along with them also went spare magazines for the Glocks, everything weighing in at a total of maybe five pounds. Slinging the strings around either shoulder, I bounced a few times, settling the load on my back.
Watching me, Ela stood with her arms folded, her lips pursed. Dressed in black, she cut a harsh silhouette against the white sand we stood on.
“You sure about this?” she asked.
Not even a little bit. But I didn’t have a choice.
And we both knew it.
“The other rifle is loaded,” I replied. “Five rounds, semi-automatic feed. Just point and shoot.”
Sensing that I had bypassed her question, Ela arched an eyebrow, but didn’t comment on it.
“You’re not going to ask a second time if the girl knows how to shoot it?”
Taking up the night vision goggles from the tarp, I placed them against my brow. Resting on my forehead, I tightened the elastic cord on either side, making sure it would fit snug.
“Since my wife and daughter died,” I said, “I can count on one hand the number of people I would consider friends. Of those, one is my business partner, and I trust her with my livelihood. Another is the Agent in Charge for the DEA Southwest office, and I trust her with my life.
“Me asking you that had nothing to do with your gender.”
Sliding the goggles down into place, I flipped them on, the world instantly shifting to shades of green. In the corner of my vision, Ela stood out red and white, glowing bright.
“It had to do with getting those hundred people up there out alive.”
Chapter Sixty-Five
I left Ela standing by the Jeep. I’m sure there was plenty more we could have said, enough to keep us chatting far into the night, but there was no point.
This was weak. We both knew it. Thanks to Vance it had come further than it had any business doing, but that didn’t really change things.
For this to work would take a confluence of luck and timing that no sane person would believe in.
And so I took off without another word. No wishes of luck, no false prophesies of seeing each other soon.
My last trip through the woods had been during the heat of the day. It was while fighting thirst and dehydration, spurned onward by fear of what lay behind me and the uncertainty of whatever was ahead.
This time, I had no such compunctions.
I’d had all afternoon to replenish my body. Armed with the M-24 and the Glocks, I had nothing to fear. With the goggles down over my face, I had a clear view of the world around me.
Once upon a time - when tramping through South America with a gun in hand was a common thing - I had been criticized for being a bit too aggressive. My team members more than once had to pull me back. My supervisors had to caution me time and again not to go diving headlong into something.
Never once did I think of it that way. I wasn’t foolish. I had a family at home that I cared about, and I always intended to make it back to them.
It was just that for whatever reason, there was something inside of me always hurtling me forward. Some inner thing that fed off adrenaline and refused to let me go at anything less than a breakneck pace.
After their death and my resignation from the DEA, that went dormant in me. It didn’t die, but was starved from the inside out.
I refused to acknowledge it. Made myself tuck it away.
Not until a year prior, finally given the opportunity to avenge their deaths, did that aspect of me have a chance to re-engage.
And just as I had always feared, it did so without a moment’s pause.
In the time since, there have been a few instances that caused a similar reaction. Unlike earlier in life, I had learned better to harness it, to make sure I was the one in control, but that didn’t mean that it didn’t exist.
Or that I couldn’t now feel it pulsating through me.
Driven on by that electromagnetic charge in my system, I pounded forward. What had before been covered in measured steps was now being gobbled in long strides.
For more than a mile I kept that pace, knowing that any patrol wouldn’t be that far away from the warehouse. Not given the limited manpower that I had witnessed earlier.
Certainly not with the amount of time that had passed.
If forced to guess, I would venture that whoever was in charge had assumed I was in the wind. I had eventually made it to the coast, or back into the city, and had melted into being just another face on the streets.
A face there was no way they’d recognize, not without the beard and hair I’d been carrying just hours before.
After ten minutes, I slowed my pace slightly. If my timing was right, I still had twenty more before Farkus started with the fireworks. Twenty-five before the plane was scheduled to fly over the warehouse.
Knowing there was just shy of two miles left, I leveled off at a jog. Curling my hand around the base of the rifle, I used the other to support the barrel.
Swiveling my head from side to side, I kept a careful watch for any smudges of bright color.
They were out there. It was just a matter of time before I found them.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Even though he had been the one to set up the call, President Miguel Salazar was still dreading having to make it. The sort of thing that no leader ever wanted to do, it felt like a lead brick in his stomach, threatening to force out everything he had consumed in the previous two days.
Sitting at his desk, he leaned forward with his elbows resting on the front edge of it. His fingers were laced before him. Thick furrows were carved through his hair from running his hands through it.
The plan in the beginning hadn’t been simple, but it had made sense. There was no way they could let the Americans simply come into their country and eliminate Edgar Belmonte, especially not after they had all but called and announced it.
As much as he wanted Belmonte gone, he couldn’t just let that happen. Doing so would only strengthen the narrative that Belmonte was now riding to inexplicable approval. It would prove that outside influences were having a far greater effect in Venezuela than anybody realized.
Instead, they would take the hostages and pin it on Belmonte. They would tie it to the vitriol he had already been spitting, and say this was just an extension of that.
Nobody would think to look at the president. Especially not the Americans, not in the wake of the first realistic discussions they’d had since he took office.
Politically, it would be a giant victory, the sort of thing he could ride to an easy second term. His upstart competitor had been so desperate to seek power, he had conjured an international incident, and then almost brought it to fruition.
And the best part would be in the wake of the election, once everybody had moved forward, it could almost be assured that the Americans would quietly dispatch of Belmonte fo
r what he did to their agents.
It’s not like they were one to take such things lightly.
The previous night, it had seemed like a solid plan. General Clega had made it sound so simple. There was virtually no downside.
But that was before they let someone slip away.
Where that man was now or what he knew, there was no way to be sure, which made the call he was about to make all the more daunting.
All he could do was stay the course. Continue to assign blame and hope for the best.
And the minute everything was finished, deal with Clega.
Sitting on the desk in front of him was a single scrap of paper. No more than a few inches square, it had a string of digits scrawled out in blue ink.
The penmanship he recognized as Isabel’s, his cousin now seated across from him. The look on her face matched his own.
“It’s time,” she whispered.
Knowing it already, Salazar sighed. Releasing his laced fingers, he reached out and placed the phone receiver on the desktop before beginning to dial.
The future relations of Venezuela and the United States depended on how the impending conversation went. On how well he was able to sell the fact that he was just now being made aware of what was going down and that Edgar Belmonte was behind it.
Over the speakerphone, there were three rings before the call was picked up.
“Mitchell Underall.”
“President Underall, this is Miguel Salazar. Thank you for agreeing to speak like this.”
In his voice was the din of false camaraderie, a tone that was instantly matched by his American counterpart.
“Of course, President Salazar. My hope in reaching out yesterday was to establish an open line of communication.”
Setting his jaw, Salazar looked to Isabel. The point of the previous call was nothing more than a ruse to allow Underall to sneak agents into the country.
“And in that spirit, I am now doing the same,” Salazar said. “Earlier this afternoon, it was brought to my attention that an airliner called into Bolivar International Airport here in Caracas and requested an emergency landing due to mechanical trouble.
“Rare, but not unheard of, nobody thought a thing of it. Not until many hours later was I made aware that the flight was bound from Atlanta to Punta Arenas and that the passengers onboard never made it as far as the terminal.”
There was a pause on the other end. An audible gasp that sounded forced.
“They never made it? I don’t understand.”
“I did not either,” Salazar replied, “which is why I called your office and asked to schedule a meeting for this time. In the interim, I had my men look into the report.”
He paused, glancing up at Isabel.
“Sadly, it would appear that the early reports were not only true, but may have even been an understatement.”
“Meaning?” Underall asked.
“Meaning, we have reason to believe that everybody onboard – more than a hundred people in total – are currently being detained against their will.”
The story was sterile, and required a brief suspension of belief, but it was a version of the truth. Salazar just hoped that the suddenness of it, and the faux collegiality they were both constrained by, would be enough to get it through.
“Detained?” Underall asked. “Where? Are they alive?”
Salazar let out a lengthy sigh. “My apologies, Mr. President, but right now I do not know the answer to either question. My top officials are currently out scouring the countryside, and the moment I know something, you will know something.”
Despite not being able to see Underall, Salazar could hear a series of sounds. Huffs and groans, the sorts of things that tended to denote outrage.
“Does this have anything to do with what we discussed yesterday?” Underall asked.
Looking up to Isabel, Salazar again felt his stomach draw tight. “We believe it does, sir. And like I mentioned, his third major campaign event of the week is occurring later tonight.”
“You don’t think he’s going to try something there, do you?” Underall snapped, his voice rising.
Salazar hadn’t considered such a thing before, but now that it was presenting itself, he was not about to cast it aside.
“We don’t know, but we’re not discounting anything at this point,” Salazar said. “First, it was a burning flag. Last night was a spectacle with clothes and goods.”
Nobody would do such a thing. Not with full knowledge that the eyes of the world were staring at them.
But that didn’t mean Salazar was above shoving Edgar Belmonte into the fray if he could.
“Tonight, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to think he wouldn’t march a bunch of Americans on stage and try something. What that could be, I shudder to even think about.”
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Peering through the double lens of the night vision goggles and the Leupold scope atop the M-24, the guard glowed brightly. Deep crimson and flaming orange, it was as if the man were built in Technicolor, the saturation density amplified to the highest degree.
Making him even brighter was the burning tip of a cigarette he held, the small circle moving to and from his face in even intervals.
Lying prone on the forest floor, I could feel the cool of the earth passing through my clothes. It permeated my body, leveling my breathing as I exhaled.
Pulling air back in slowly, I tugged on the trigger, the sound suppressor on the end and the heavy canopy above swallowing most of the sound.
One moment, the man was leaning against a tree, taking a smoke break.
The next, his body was a crumpled mass at the foot of it. A haphazard pattern of blood spatter decorated the bark where he had been standing, the color already fading through the night vision goggles.
Maintaining my post, I swiveled the rifle a foot to either side, scouring the grounds.
It was only a matter of time before somebody came to check on him.
If Ela would have asked, I would have told her I would encounter the first roaming patrol within ten minutes. I would have assumed that even though hours had passed, they would still have teams out scouring the area around the warehouse, awaiting a return visit.
There was, after all, still more than a hundred hostages they had to be concerned with.
And that worry had to be even higher knowing that somebody with insider information on the situation had slipped away.
To my surprise, it had taken almost twice that. The first glimpse of human life hadn’t come until I was just a mile out from the warehouse, the faint glow of the airport managing to penetrate the forest.
With each step closer, trepidation had risen, my heart rate pounding.
Ela’s contact at the airport had assured us that nothing large enough to handle even a fraction of that many people had departed. I couldn’t imagine them trying to get them out through the woods, even if that was what we were about to attempt.
The people had to still be inside. Whether or not they were alive was a question best answered by how many guards were assigned to secure the area.
Not encountering a single one on the first two miles of my journey had drawn my core into a ball. It had settled there, pressing on everything, making me almost sick as I had pounded forward.
Only once the first flare of opposition had been spotted did I release the tension, thankful for the first time ever to see an armed man standing opposite me.
A man that now had a friend coming to look for him.
Probably responding to an unanswered check-in, the man circled in from the west. With his weapon held at an angle across his torso, he moved slow and easy, obvious that he wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary.
Tracking his movement, I eased the front tip of the rifle along with him, matching his timing as he worked forward.
I couldn’t let him get close enough to see the remains of his cohort. Doing so would put him on alert, would cause him to shift his movements
in an erratic pattern.
Instead, I followed him for more than twenty yards, synching with his pace perfectly before drawing back on the trigger a second time.
The heavy weight of the round slammed into him just beneath the left armpit. Cleaving a hole directly through his chest cavity, it tossed his body laterally for several feet before depositing him on his side.
Blinking away the momentary blindness from my own muzzle flash, I focused in on the man, waiting for signs of movement I knew weren’t coming.
Nobody could survive a match grade NATO round working straight through their heart.
Still lying prone, I ejected the magazine light two rounds and inserted a new one. After it was locked in place, I slid the sat phone out from my rear pocket and flipped it open, pressing a single button to connect to Ela.
“Yeah?” she whispered.
“Two down. Call Farkus. Twelve minutes. Put Manny on standby.”
I didn’t wait for a reply. Flipping the phone shut, I was on my feet and moving again, my destination just under a mile away.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
The bolt cutters were never a way of getting in. They would take far too long and leave me overly exposed along the base of the fence.
Not to mention they would be loud as hell, each tendril of metal cleaved apart with an audible snap.
The plan was for me to go inside and work my way to the hostages. To perhaps recruit an ally or two from the ranks of the passengers to help lead the others downstairs and out through the back.
Only then would I hand over the tool, telling them to cut as big an opening as necessary and to be on their way. Ela would come and find them halfway, guiding them on to the coast.
I would stay behind, clearing any strays from trailing them before working my way back.
That plan also meant I had to go up the very same tree I had used to aid my descent earlier in the day. To climb as high as I could, use the vantage to pick off any visible opposition, and then try to get myself across.
If my footholds were strong and my memory accurate, I could probably make the leap and even reach the bottom ledge of the vent I’d climbed out of earlier in the day.
Hellfire: A Suspense Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 4) Page 21
