Feel The Heat

by Cindy Gerard

  Nate nodded, both approval and confirmation that he, Gabe, and Reed had neutralized the rest of the exterior security detail. “You okay, Mendoza?”

  “I am fucking fine,” he muttered. “Colter’s a drama queen.”

  “Speaking of queens.” Savage nodded into the dark toward the locomotive chugging away in the distance. “That woman is royalty in my book.”

  “She had enough time?” Nate asked.

  Savage checked his watch. “Twenty minutes exactly.”

  “Then raise her on the radio.”

  “Roger that. Savage to Casey Jones,” he said into the commo mike attached to his shoulder. “Lock and load, darlin’. It’s curtain time.”

  “He called her darlin’,” Reed said, dying to get a rise out of Rafe.

  “He calls you darlin’,” Rafe grumbled back. “Anything you two want to share?”

  “An eight a.m. flight back to the States,” Lang said, then jerked his head toward the tracks.

  “Atta girl.” Savage sounded like a proud papa bear as the locomotive started barreling down on the building.

  “Let’s go,” Nate said, and they all ran to meet the oncoming engine.

  Rafe was the first to latch on to the handrail and hike himself up on the ladder as the engine chugged slowly forward. He held out his hand and, one by one, helped the other guys on board.

  “This,” Reed said, catching Rafe’s outstretched hand and pulling himself up on the moving train, “is what us Texans call a real yee-haw moment!”

  “And what do you consider adequate perimeter security?” Emilio asked Abdul Azeem in English since they did not speak each other’s languages.

  Azeem’s silence, Emilio knew, was one of disapproval. The sheik had already been on site at the facility for the launch of the sub transporting the E-bomb, which was scheduled for exactly thirty-four minutes from now. He had not been pleased when Emilio had called him in-flight from Medellín to Santa Marta and informed him he would be arriving to share concerns.

  The dark look on his face when Emilio was admitted into the facility by way of a side door a mere five minutes ago reinforced the sheik’s displeasure. Emilio did not care about the sheik’s pleasure. He cared about his investment, and everything from the senator’s call to Raphael Mendoza’s sudden disappearance told him that his investment was in jeopardy.

  “I can assure you,” Azeem said finally, “all precautions have been taken to ensure this site is secure.”

  “Then you won’t mind showing me your command center.”

  Azeem glared, then reluctantly nodded. “As you wish.”

  Emilio followed him down a long corridor that led to an open warehousing area filled with equipment and conveyor belts. “The assembly station,” Azeem explained as they proceeded another twenty yards. “Inside.” Azeem unlocked a door and opened it wide. Two men sat at a bank of blank monitors, all of them working frantically at the controls.

  A look of alarm crossed Azeem’s face and he stepped hurriedly over to the control panel. “Why are the surveillance cameras dark?” he demanded.

  The frantic technician rattled off something in Arabic that Emilio didn’t understand. A heated and frantic exchange followed.

  “What’s happening?” The knot of dread that had been clutching at Emilio’s gut since he’d discovered Raphael Mendoza had chartered a flight to Santa Marta coiled tighter.

  “The cameras all went black several minutes ago and these fools did not deem it necessary to inform me.”

  “Check with your exterior guards,” Emilio ordered. “Do it now!”

  Azeem pulled a two-way radio out of his pocket. Spoke into it. Repeated his question once. Then again.

  “They are not responding.”

  Emilio snagged an assault rifle from the rack by the door and tossed it to Azeem. “This facility is under attack!” he roared, and grabbed a weapon for himself. “Alert the interior guards, you fool!”

  He headed out the door at a run just as a horrendous screech of metal scraping metal echoed through the cavernous warehouse. The building shuddered, almost knocking him off his feet. The far corner of the steel roof sagged, ripping through electrical wires and sending sparks skittering and crackling through the expanse of the room. The lights flickered, then died.

  Emilio steadied himself, then, murder in his eyes, stalked across the warehouse.

  He didn’t have to ask himself who was responsible for this attack. He’d known that Raphael Mendoza was trouble. His mistake had been not listening to his gut soon enough.

  Mendoza’s mistake had been thinking he could lock horns with Emilio Garcia and live to talk about it.

  “Hurry!” he demanded. “They intend to stop the sub. We can’t let that happen.”

  B.J. was still gripping the Johnson bar with both hands, putting all of her weight into it as the engine finally screeched to a stop inside the building. Concrete dust rolled in billowy clouds all around them. Gnarled sheets of steel, chunks of concrete, and trailing electrical wires rained down, crashing against the locomotive as the chaos of the collision slowly ebbed to the low hiss of the steam engine and the settling of the broken building.

  Reed grinned over at her as they all gathered their gear and ordnance. “I love a woman who knows how to make an entrance.”

  She couldn’t help it. She grinned back. “That was almost better than chocolate.”

  Reed gave her a high five and was about to pull her into his arms for a big bear hug when Rafe shoved the scuba gear into his chest. “Go make like a fish, pretty boy.”

  “How many times have I told you jokers I don’t like water?” Reed groused as they piled out of the engine.

  Doc clapped him on the shoulder as he slung his own scuba gear over his back. “Cry me a river. Oh, wait. We’ve already got an ocean. And a date with a sub. Now shake a leg. It’s twenty-nine minutes to launch.”

  B.J. shouldered her pack of extra ammo, wouldn’t let herself think about the white bandage on Rafe’s forearm or the blood that had seeped through the field dressing. She couldn’t think about it now, not and keep her head in the game.

  Nate had pulled the blueprint out of his vest. He studied it with the help of a Maglite, looked up, flashed the strong beam around the building, checked the map again.

  “Fifty yards dead ahead, a left, two rights, and a left,” he said, pocketing the map. “Jones, Savage, Lang— you’re on point. Mendoza, B.J., and I will guard the rear after Reed and Doc. Go.”

  With Gabe and his Maglite leading the way, they set off at a run, dodging fallen steel girders, chunks of concrete, and downed power lines.

  “Rafe! Your seven o’clock!” Nate yelled just as a burst from an AK echoed through the building.

  Rafe whirled and took a knee as the rest of the team kept moving. B.J. dropped to her belly. Beside her, Nate did the same. Together the three of them fired toward the muzzle flashes of at least five rifles, an explosion of sound and concussion and men screaming. And then silence.

  “Go,” Nate ordered, and the three of them rose and sprinted to catch up with the others.

  Adrenaline overload. B.J. shook with it. Tried to regulate her breathing to control it. It was a rush. It was a pain. It was keeping her on her feet and threatening to buckle her knees. She was on autopilot now, hyper-aware and ultra-alert to even the most minuscule movement.

  A tingle raced down her spine. She stopped, spun, shouldered her rifle, and fired just as a muzzle flash burst into the dark. She heard the sound of metal clattering onto cement, the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor.

  For a moment she froze, locked in a dimension where reality warred with necessity and short-wired her brain.

  “B.J.!”

  Rafe.

  His shout snapped her out of her stupor. The fog of war. The phrase zipped in, then right out of her mind as she kicked into gear and raced to his side.

  “You okay?” he asked urgently.

  “Good. I’m good.”

  They bo
th knew she wasn’t. No one was good when they were getting shot at. When they were shooting back.

  “Go,” he said, shoving her ahead of him, making sure he was pulling up the rear, where he was the most vulnerable to attack.

  It took them ten minutes of firefights to reach the rear of the warehouse. A trail of bodies lay in their wake.

  She shut out the screams of pain, the proof of mortality, as they burst out onto the wharf and took out the four guards assigned to keep the sub secure. They still had a job to do as they hit the warm night air that smelled of everything bad the seaport had to offer: dead fish, diesel, rancid flotsam that lapped against the creosote-treated pilings.

  And there, no more than fifty yards from the dock, they could make out the humped back of the submarine where it rode, fully emerged in the inky black water.

  “Thar she blows,” Doc said.

  Nate checked out the sub with night vision binoculars. “As we suspected. She’s already armed.”

  He passed the glasses to Doc, who then gave a running commentary as he checked things out. “Missile bays are open. Check that. They’re closing as I speak.”

  “They’ll be taking her down any minute. Doubletime it,” Nate ordered, and they made a protective circle around Reed and Doc as they scrambled into their scuba gear. The waters of the Caribbean were warm enough this time of year to forgo their wetsuits. Time wasn’t going to allow it anyway. They tightened the straps on their air tanks, checked the regulators, and stepped into their flippers. Without a word, they jumped off the wharf, wet their masks, and settled them over their eyes and nose.

  “Pass down the limpets,” Nate said when Doc gave the signal that they were ready for them.

  Six mines in all, B.J. knew. Doc, a former Navy SEAL, was well schooled and highly experienced in underwater demo. He and Reed would set the limpet mines in critical spots around the hull of the sub, set the timers, then make like torpedoes and get the hell out of there.

  Nate held up ten fingers for Doc and Reed to see.

  Ten minutes. They had ten minutes to put the limpets in place or every inch of ground they’d fought to take would all be for naught.

  “Let’s go,” Nate said as soon as Doc and Reed disappeared underwater. “We’ve got a plant to destroy.”

  And most likely several more waves of resistance, B.J. thought as they headed back inside to finish the job they’d started with the train.

  It wasn’t good enough that they stop the sub. They had to destroy the entire facility and everything in it to ensure their operation was shut down for good.

  An auxiliary generator had kicked on while they’d been on the dock. Flickering, murky light illuminated a warren of hallways. Red warning lights blinked on and off above exit doors. The shrill werup, werup, werup of interior alarm sirens echoed through the space like screeching gulls, lending an eerie, grating urgency that set B.J.’s teeth on edge.

  “Break into pairs so we can cover more ground.” Nate divvied up the C-4. “Savage, you’re with Lang. Take the southwest quadrant of the building. Gabe, you’re with me. We’ll hit the northwest.”

  That left her with Rafe and the northeast part of the structure since they’d already decimated the southeast section.

  “Rig the blasts for fifteen minutes. Radio if you run into trouble, otherwise we’ll meet you at the vans.”

  If they ran into trouble?

  Rafe must have read her thoughts. “Almost home,” he assured her, and they took off at a sprint.

  “Clear,” he said, and plastered his shoulders against the wall again after he’d taken a peek out into the corridor.

  B.J. inched around him, then headed down the hall. Twenty yards later, they switched. “Clear,” she told him after checking around the corner. They worked their way quickly through the maze of hallways until Rafe was satisfied they’d infiltrated deep enough into the northeast portion of the building.

  “Stand back.” He kicked in a door, entered with his rifle at his shoulder while the sound of round after round of automatic weapons fire reverberated in the distance. The guys were taking fire.

  “They’re fine,” Rafe told B.J., reading her mind. His face grim, he shrugged out of his backpack and dug inside for the C-4.

  B.J. stood over him, facing the door, her M-4 locked and loaded. No one was getting past her to get to him. She’d die before she let that happen.

  She’d die before she let that happen.

  The thought had been knee-jerk. Involuntary.

  And the fear factor that had been fueling her every move since this night began kicked up a notch because she realized in that moment that it was true. She would die before she let anything happen to him.

  Damn it. God damn it! She’d fallen in love with Raphael Mendoza. And yeah, she’d have sooner dodged a bullet than dealt with that untenable truth.

  “We’re set,” he said, jerking her from one source of terror to another. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  He didn’t have to tell her twice. He took point, made sure the coast was clear, then led the way back down the trail of hallways. All they had to do now was make it across approximately fifty yards of open warehouse and they were out the door.

  “Keep low,” Rafe said, ducking down to a crouch as they scuttled across the open area, totally exposed.

  She was about ten yards behind him when she heard several rapid-fire rounds of gunfire. A sharp pinch stung her upper arm, followed by a shockwave that rocketed down her bicep. Her fingers went numb. She watched with a disjointed sense of reality as the M-4 tumbled out of her hand and the floor rose up to meet her face.

  The next thing she was aware of was a tugging pressure on the back of her vest, of multiple rounds of spent shell casings flying around her face as she was dragged across the concrete floor.

  “I’ve got you,” Rafe yelled above the tat tat tat tat of his M-4 and the thump thump thump of the answering AK-47s.

  30

  Rafe dragged B.J. behind a forklift, propped her up against the wheel as AK rounds zipped over their heads and ricocheted off the heavy piece of machinery.

  “I’m okay,” she said, struggling to sit up. “I’m okay now.”

  “Lie still,” he barked, whipping out his Ka-Bar and slicing off the two top Velcro straps securing his Kevlar vest. He had no idea how badly she was hit but she was bleeding too damn much. He willed his hands to steady as he located the wound, breathed a small sigh of relief that the bullet had missed bone and gone straight on through her upper arm.

  He found his packet of QuikClot, made a mental note to thank Doc for insisting they all carry it, and dumped it over the wound. Then he ripped an empty pocket off his cargo pants, folding it into a dressing of sorts.

  “This part’s gonna hurt,” he said, and tightened the inch-wide Velcro straps over the makeshift bandage, securing it tightly.

  “I’m good,” she whispered, biting back a yelp of pain. “We’ve gotta get out of here,” Rafe said, reaching for his rifle.

  A booted foot came out of nowhere and kicked it away.

  A uniformed guard stood over them, the business end of his AK pointed dead center at Rafe’s forehead.

  The man on the guard’s right was tall and slim, dressed in Western clothes. Rafe would have recognized Sheik Abdul Azeem in or out of traditional Afghan robes.

  Emilio Garcia, covered in dirt, his expensive shirt tattered and torn, flanked the guard on the left. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  B.J. forced herself to lie still and close her eyes as Rafe rose slowly to his feet, his hands beside his head. Slumped against the forklift’s tire, she lay in the shadows and assessed the strength in her right hand.

  The feeling had slowly come back, along with a searing pain in her upper arm where Rafe had tightened the dressing.

  “You will pay with your life for the millions you have cost me.” Emilio’s voice was gravelly from exertion and eating smoke.

  “Only millions?”

  Garcia
didn’t find Rafe’s flip response amusing.

  “So, Azeem,” Rafe said, all up close and friendly. “Next time you see Osama, tell him I said to go fuck himself for me, would you?”

  Azeem lashed out, backhanding Rafe across the mouth. “You will not speak his name, infidel.”

  Rafe staggered, steadied himself, then wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with the back of his wrist.

  “He always this touchy?” he asked Garcia.

  “So brave,” Garcia spat. “We’ll see how brave you are when I start slicing her apart. I’ll make sure I cut very small pieces, make the pain last.”