The hole bottomed out and curved off to the side about thirty feet down from where Reaper was standing. Lining the bottom of the hole were bodies—dozens of them. On top of the pile were recent corpses that suggested to Reaper that he didn’t have to look for the men who had ambushed him. The ambushers had used military weapons, and there were signs that these bodies may have been military men at one time.
Bloated and blackening, several of the bodies in military fatigues had ripped and torn wounds on their stiffened arms. They had died hard, that much stood out. One arm stuck up with a hand clenched into a claw—as if the owner had been trying to reach whatever it was that had killed him.
The other bodies were little more than skeletons. Whoever had made the mass grave had a lot to answer for. It was something Reaper had seen before. Only the details were different; he’d seen man’s inhumanity on battlefields all around the world. And like those times before, the sight filled him with a resolve to bring those responsible to justice, if not legal justice, then a more biblical kind.
With a cold rage deep within him, Reaper continued to follow the rails and line of lights. He wasn’t looking at the natural beauty that was all around him anymore. He had allowed himself to be distracted by the amazing appearance of the cavern, and the sight of the bodies brought him back down to earth. He didn’t like to think that an ex-SEAL gone bad could have anything to do with such a horror. But he had seen Santiago come out of the very same mine, and it would be impossible to travel along that path without noticing the heavy stench of death.
His pace count told Reaper that he had covered nearly a mile and a half across the floor of the cavern, leaving the death pit well behind him. The place was a natural wonder as the light bounced and refracted off of crystals embedded in the walls. The long cavern had probably been cut out of the rock by an underground tributary of what became the San Pedro River on the surface. But the whole thing was pretty much dry now.
Speculation about what had formed the cavern would wait for a later time. Certain that he was still moving in a southerly direction, Reaper figured that he was a mile or more on the Mexican side of the border. The place was a perfect smuggler’s route—too far underground for detection from above. The hundreds of feet of rock and earth between the top of the cave and the surface above made certain that accidental discovery was just about impossible. The site was not a common drug runner’s tunnel that could be found by accident or casual observation. The thing was a really sophisticated major asset someone had put some real money and work into.
The small rail line at that point started to go up another small wood trestle. Like the trestle far behind him, this one went up the wall and into another tunnel. The rock walls were too rough and unstable for Reaper to risk climbing them when he didn’t have to. By stepping on the ties between the rails, he cautiously walked up the trestle and made his way into the new tunnel.
That part of the tunnel was not smoothly cut by water action like a part of the Blue Star had been. Instead, the walls were rough and cracked, broken where the rock had been blasted and torn out. It was obviously a newly cut tunnel and the rails disappeared down the length of it.
Reaper’s senses remained at a peak level as he walked hundreds of feet down the tunnel. This was a rougher-cut mine, not nearly as uniform or carefully made as the Blue Star was. The support timbers along the walls and across the ceiling were often just logs, some with the bark still hanging from them in tatters. Others were new wooden posts, their wood still gleaming a little in the light.
There was almost no cover in the tunnel at all. It was like walking down a huge sewer pipe. Reaper felt terribly exposed as he walked along the rails. If he had stretched out his arms, he could have touched both sides of the tunnel at the same time. The ceiling ran along scant inches over his head. He had to duck several times to miss an overhead support and exposed lightbulbs.
As he wondered just how long the tunnel could be, Reaper spotted twin reflections up ahead. The lights were the reflections from the headlights of the engine. Reaper didn’t know it yet, but he had found the train.
Crouching down against the wall of the tunnel, Reaper once again trusted his ears as he became still and listened. There wasn’t a sound to be heard. No movement drew his eye and nothing appeared in front of him. If he had been spotted by anyone up ahead, they were incredibly disciplined and were not making a sound.
The trip through the tunnels and cavern had already gone on for hours. Everything he had discovered so far wouldn’t mean a thing if he didn’t get back to tell anyone about it. But it was obvious that there was a lot more just ahead and he needed to check it out before heading back.
With the muzzle of his suppressed MP5 trained on the area in front of him, Reaper moved toward the train. It appeared to be a simple affair made out of several ore cars and a battery-powered engine. A thick cable ran from one wall to the engine where it was attached through a heavy industrial socket and plug. That pretty well established that the train was electrically powered. Keeping the batteries of the engine charged was probably another reason the electricity was kept on in the mine.
Only the last car in the small train was different from the others. That ore car held what looked like a large metal-reinforced footlocker or steamer trunk. The lid wasn’t locked or even latched, but when Reaper tried to open it with one hand, it wouldn’t move.
Surprised at the weight of the lid, Reaper needed to use both hands to lift it up. Looking under the lid, Reaper could see that the trunk was empty. What had made the lid so heavy was that it, and the rest of the trunk, was lined with lead sheet. There was a thick layer of gray lead metal on every interior surface of the container. Lowering the lid, Reaper wondered just what the hell such a heavy box would be for.
Turning from the train, Reaper saw there was another elevator shaft behind it. Only this time, he was standing at the bottom of the shaft and looking up at the floor of the elevator cage far above him. Like the last elevator shaft, there was a ladder going up its side. Except that, instead of being made of iron steps, it was built of wood boards nailed across upright beams—and all of the wood looked old, dry, and brittle.
There wasn’t much choice of routes if Reaper wanted to see what was up above. With extreme care, he started climbing the wooden ladder. It looked like there was plenty of space up above to get past the floor of the elevator. The only trouble was climbing the weak old ladder up that high in order to be sure.
Several of the ladder’s steps creaked and gave a bit as Reaper put his weight on them. Each time it happened, he froze in place, hanging on to the ladder with one hand and on the pistol grip of his MP5 with the other. No face appeared up above to check out the noise, and Reaper again took hold of the ladder and continued his climb. Finally, he reached the uppermost tunnel of the mine.
This area was as well lit as the lower tunnel had been. Crawling up past the elevator floor, Reaper stayed in a low crouch as he moved through the passage. This was a much larger and more heavily used tunnel than the one far below that he had come in through. Up ahead a few dozen yards the passage curved and he could see the light coming in what was probably the entrance to the mine. As he watched, the light suddenly dimmed.
Whether it was the shadow of a passing cloud or an incoming truck, Reaper neither knew nor cared. He immediately moved to take cover in a small side tunnel a short distance away. Ducking into the side passage, he crouched down behind a large pile of crates that filled the center of the area.
The last thing he wanted was to get in a firefight with some random guard. It wasn’t that Reaper worried about himself. His faith in his skills with the weapons at hand prevented that. If it came to a silent kill of a single person, Reaper knew he could use the Silver Trident blade and take the person out. But then he would have to deal with the body. Carrying it back to that death pit back in the cavern was possible, but not very practical. And there would still be the problem of a missing guard to point out that something was wrong at
the mine.
These were the thoughts that went through Reaper’s mind as he crouched in the dark. With his MP5 up and aimed at the mouth of the side passage, Reaper waited for possible discovery. Outside of the beating of his own heart, he didn’t hear a sound. There were no shouts of discovery, no thud and crunch of running feet. After several very long minutes had passed, Reaper could see that the light in the mine had brightened and nothing else was happening.
Relaxing for a second, Reaper took a deep breath and blew it out. That had been a sharp moment of stress and he needed to make his heart slow down. It was a good thing he kept in shape through constant exercise, the walk and climbs of this recon had really started taking some of his energy away.
As he looked about, Reaper started to wonder about all of the boxes and crates that were stacked up in the side passage. There was something disturbingly familiar about a number of them. Taking his light sheath and light from his belt, he pressed down on the back of the sheath to turn the light on. What he saw startled him more than when he had first seen the cavern.
Box after box of ammunition, weapons, and explosives were stacked up in the tunnel. Right in front of his face, the familiar-looking shapes turned out to be wire-bound wooden packing boxes. Each box had big block letters printed on it in black ink: 20 CHARGE, DEMOLITION, M118. That was forty pounds of C-4 plastic explosive in half-pound sheets.
There were crates of hand grenades, both American M33 fragmentation grenades as well as Soviet RGD-5 grenades. The contents of the tunnel were a mixture of American and ex-Soviet ordnance. The labels on some of the boxes were printed in English, the others in Cyrillic, and still more a mixture of the two languages.
The markings on a stack of boxes said that the contents were AKMS-47 rifles, ten of them to a case along with magazines and accessories. There were thousands of rounds of ammunition in sealed metal cans. Cases of PG-7v rockets for the RPG-7v launchers, with several boxes of the launchers as well. There was even a case of RPG-18 antitank weapons, the Russian version of the American M72 LAW, light antitank weapon, series. Deeper in the tunnel on the far end of the pile, was a stack of long green-painted metal boxes, each over four feet long and about a foot square.
The sight of those long boxes raised the hair on the back of Reaper’s neck. He had seen them before and knew what a threat they were. Each case held an Igla-1 9K310 missile launcher, the NATO code name was SAM-16 Gimlet, a newer Russian shoulder-fired heat-seeking antiaircraft missile. Recognizing the markings after seeing similar boxes in Bosnia, Reaper knew that these weapons were a very serious threat to U.S. airlines and even low-flying military aircraft.
There was no way immediately at hand for Reaper to destroy the missile launchers. Even with the cases full of explosives, he had no reasonable time-delay that would allow him to get to some kind of safety before everything blew. In spite of what might be done by SEALs in the movies, Reaper wasn’t about to try to blow up the missiles, along with several hundred pounds of high explosives, with a four-second delay hand grenade from one of the boxes. All he would manage to do with one would be to kill himself, maybe blow the missiles, and certainly warn anyone around that they had been discovered.
No, it was time to withdraw and tell what he had seen—and to do it quickly.
Chapter Twenty-two
The morning after Humzan’s crossing, Daumudi got up, washed, did his morning prayers, and then immediately started making a series of phone calls. Most of the communications he made over his cell phone, but there were several he conducted on the land-line phone in the main house of the hacienda.
When asked if there was anything he needed, Daumudi answered the question with rude, stony silence. Feeling in a magnanimous mood, Masque didn’t press the question with the terrorist leader. For his part, Santiago thought that the odd mood swings of his boss were becoming more and more pronounced. The man swung between calm and rage on what seemed like almost an hourly basis now.
By early afternoon, a very strange vehicle showed up at the gate to the hacienda. When called up by the gate guard over his radio, Santiago’s first impulse was to have the thing turned away. The vehicle was a huge tanker truck, old, dented, and rusty in a variety of places. The big tank on the back of the truck said AGUA on both sides in chipped black paint. It was a water tanker truck.
No one had told Santiago to expect a water truck at the hacienda. The arrival didn’t make sense. The water storage cisterns at the hacienda were full and the deep drilled well was producing large amounts of pure, clean water. So the truck was an unnecessary delivery, something that automatically set off all of the alarms in Santiago’s head and fully raised his suspicions.
Before Santiago could issue the orders to send the truck away, Daumudi came out into the central courtyard, all excited about the arrival. He was followed by an equally smiling Masque.
“Quickly,” Masque called out, “open the gate and let him in, the truck is expected.”
Surprises were something Santiago hated passionately. Gritting his teeth for a moment, Santiago smiled at Masque before he lifted the radio to his mouth and issued the orders.
The big steel gates were unlocked and swung open. The big tanker rolled into the central courtyard of the hacienda. It was a hard-used British Foden 8×4 tanker truck. Originally, it had been designed to carry 22,500 liters of fuel in its long tank. The tanker was over ten meters long and almost filled the center courtyard. There wasn’t room enough for it to be able to turn around. It would have to be backed up to go out the gate. That was something Santiago wanted to see as soon as possible.
The passenger-side door of the cab opened and an older man stepped out and down to the ground. He stretched slowly and then his frowning face smiled slightly as he saw Daumudi approaching him. The old man had white hair and Middle-Eastern features. He was slight of build and could have been any older college professor of history or antiquities.
The man who stepped out from behind the steering wheel of the truck was another story entirely. He was massively built and carried himself like a bull gorilla checking out his territory. The driver wore his black hair cut close to the skull, like a frizzy cap. And he had a huge hooked nose that dominated his face. His chest was so wide that his muscular arms couldn’t hang down straight to his sides. Instead, they stuck out from his body at a slight angle. If there was a definite form for an old Turkish wrestler and leg-breaker, this guy was it.
The big man looked around the hacienda with poorly concealed arrogance. The older man was warmly greeted by Daumudi, who embraced him and kissed him on both cheeks. Masque merely stood nearby smiling while the other men spoke to each other rapidly in Arabic. Catching Santiago’s eye, the big man glowered at him with an obvious challenge in his look.
Masque was being introduced to the newcomer. By Daumudi’s smile, Santiago knew that something between them all was working out to the terrorist’s satisfaction. That wasn’t necessarily a good thing in Santiago’s opinion. Finally, Santiago was called over from where he was standing with his arms crossed.
“I would like you both to meet my security chief and most trusted lieutenant, Garcia Santiago,” Masque said. “Santiago, this is Dr. Emil Ammad and his bodyguard Abu Hydar.”
“Pleased to meet you both,” Santiago said as he reached out his hand. Shaking hands with Dr. Ammad was less than pleasant. The man had a soft, moist grip that reminded Santiago of the skin of a particularly unpleasant dead fish. Shaking hands with Hydar was everything he expected from a big, dumb muscleman who appeared to think only with his fists.
When Hydar took Santiago’s offered hand, he immediately tried to nonchalantly crush it in his grip. Tensing his hand with his own not inconsiderable strength, Santiago kept smiling and simply waited. Unhappy and frowning at the loss of reaction, Hydar finally dropped the other’s hand.
The last thing that Santiago wanted to do was hold his hand while still in front of the hulking bodyguard. He turned to Masque and ignored the throbbing.
“What shall we do with the tanker truck?” Santiago asked. “It has to be moved, it is completely blocking the garage.”
“Just place it against one of the outer walls then,” Masque said. “And place a guard, no, make that two guards, to watch it twenty-four hours a day until further notice. That should be satisfactory, gentlemen?”
Astonished but not letting his surprise show, Santiago watched as Masque was asking the terrorist’s and the old man’s permission to move the truck! When the two men gruffly nodded, Santiago called over one of his men.
“No,” Dr. Ammad said sharply, “Hydar will move it. Just show him where it has to go and make sure the guards are posted.”
Things were becoming more and more unusual at the hacienda as far as Santiago was concerned. The doctor and his bodyguard were now arguing in rapid-fire Arabic. Ignoring the two men, Santiago called to Rodriguez who was standing nearby.
“Rodriguez,” Santiago said, “this vehicle will be stored close to the hacienda. See to it that men are assigned to keep it under a twenty-four-hour guard, two men to a shift.”
“Yes, sir,” Rodriguez said as he snapped to attention. Turning smartly, he began barking orders to the men standing nearby.
Normally the mercenaries were much more relaxed in their military mannerisms. The experienced sergeant could see that his leader was not happy with the present situation. Some sharp military snap could help ease things or impress the strangers.
If the Arabs were impressed, they didn’t show it at all. For himself, Masque loved the military aspects of his mercenaries. It made him feel like a true leader of men in the greatest traditions of Mexico.
Hostile Borders Page 21
