by Cindy Dees
“Is that your guy?” Huayar snapped.
“How should I know? I left him back at that village. I can’t imagine why he’d follow me out here. It’s probably a bear, attracted by the smell of food.” She added dryly, “Or maybe the bear’s a meth addict looking to cop a free hit.”
Brief grins greeted her comment, but Huayar’s intense stare never wavered. Still studying her with predatory intensity, he ordered, “Julio, take some men and go have a look.”
One of the flunkies nodded and stepped outside.
Silence settled over the tent, tense now with waiting. She picked a spot on the wall to study and shifted her weight from foot to foot, her legs growing tired. There were no empty chairs in the room, and she dared not plop down on somebody’s hammock without permission.
A muffled bang made everyone in the room look up.
She jumped, both at the odd noise, a hollow whump, from outside, and at the way Huayar leaped to his feet, his eyes wild. What was that noise? It resonated too deeply for a gunshot, but wasn’t loud enough for a bomb. Huayar seemed to know what it was, though, for swearing his head off, he grabbed up a rifle and bolted for the door with his men in tow.
A strange rushing noise erupted outside, along with the sounds of shouting and general chaos. Huayar and his lieutenants vacated the tent completely at that outburst. What in the world?
The naked lightbulb hanging in the center of the room flickered and went out. Unsure of what to do with herself, she stepped away from the wall with the notion of heading for the door. But then a black specter rose up before her out of the ground itself, and her mouth opened on a scream.
Off to his right, John saw the water tower keel over in majestic slow motion, spilling its entire contents in a flood that rushed through the center of the camp a foot deep. He didn’t hear the separate charge that took out the camp’s main electric generator, but it was timed to coincide with the flood and mimic a shortout. The camp went black as the lights went off, and the big bonfire met its sudden end in the flood. He raised his night vision goggles from around his neck, and the camp leaped out at him in bright relief. Huayar’s people scurried every which way like a bunch of agitated ants. Assured that no one was looking this way, he peeled back the plywood panel whose screws he’d already loosened, and slipped into the shack. Melina’s familiar profile was just turning toward him.
She lurched, opening her mouth to scream as he lunged forward and wrapped his arms around her, slapping a hand over her mouth. “It’s me, Mel.”
She sagged in his arms, then threw herself against him, all but choking him as she knocked his NVG’s askew.
He whispered, already drawing her toward the hole in the wall, “No time for hugs, baby. We’ve got to go.”
Gunfire erupted outside. Lots of it. Crap. So much for stealth.
“My family-” Melina started.
He cut her off. “Rescue Team One’s with them. You and I won’t leave the area until they do.”
She nodded, her grateful smile looking more like a macabre grimace to him through the goggles.
“Let’s get out of here,” he muttered. He led the way through the hole, holding the plywood back as she crawled through it. The remnants of the flood were seeping this way, turning the camp’s packed dirt into a slippery morass.
She made a noise of disgust, and he cautioned under his breath, “No noise, baby.”
She nodded, picking her way beside him on her hands and knees to the nearest bush. At least it was dry back here. He leaned close to breathe in her ear, “We’ll make our way a little farther up the hill and hide there.”
She gave him a thumbs-up and he spared a moment to smile down at her. He trailed his fingertips gently down her swollen cheek and then touched her lips. It was the best he could do in the circumstances to communicate everything he felt for her. She leaned into his palm with her tender cheek. That had to hurt, and he lifted his hand away from her.
They turned to head up the hill and he took one last glance over his shoulder behind them to check for signs of pursuit.
He stopped. Swore violently under his breath. He murmured to Melina, “Change of plans.”
Chapter 18
Melina turned to look at what had put that ominous tone in John’s voice, and gasped. At least fifty of Huayar’s men surrounded the bunker. Panic leaped in her gut. Her family! She had to do something! She’d go down there and demand to know what Huayar was up to. John would just have to try to rescue her another time. She started to stand up.
“My parents! Mike-” She broke off as John commenced muttering under his breath, a continuous stream of invectives with a distinct note of panic in it. She dropped back down beside him, a sick feeling of dread heavy inside her. “What’s wrong?”
“Ohgodohgodohgod…”
The same litany started up in her head. She was missing something here, and it couldn’t possibly bode well for her family. A man like John in complete meltdown was beyond bad. It was disastrous. She just wasn’t sure how, yet.
He groaned, “Huayar thinks that’s me in there. Oh, God. They’ll be shot like fish in a barrel. My fault. Bastard’s after me…”
“I don’t understand, John. What’s going on?”
“Four guys from Pirate Pete’s…in there with your family…they’ll all die…”
If it was possible to feel any sicker, she did. Not again. Not more of his comrades ambushed, this time in front of his eyes instead of around him. She squeezed her eyes shut, desperately wishing away this nightmare. But when she opened them again, that deadly ring of muzzle flashes around the building was still flashing in the night.
“Gotta save them,” John mumbled.
She grabbed his arm in alarm. “There are dozens of men shooting at that bunker. You can’t take them all. Heck, you probably don’t even have that many bullets!”
He glanced over at her, and she reeled back from the look in his eyes. It was already dead.
“Not. Happening. Again,” he ground out. “Not on my watch.”
He sounded like it was all he could do to hold it together. She said quickly, “I’ll go with you. Tell me what to do.”
“You stay.” He swore again and brought his weapon up into a firing position at his right shoulder. He stood up, emerging out of the brush like death rising from the earth itself.
“But I can’t lose you too-”
He was gone, racing down the hill, silent and lethal, deliberate flashes from his muzzle charting his course for her toward the ring of fire.
Dismayed, terrified, and torn in two, she crouched in the woods with the smells of dirt and crushed leaves rising around her as Death feasted before her. John was going to die. He was going to charge in there all alone and sacrifice himself in the name of trying to save his friends. This time, there was no way he’d walk out of it alive. He’d make darn sure of that. She’d lost him. His demons had won.
A sob shook her.
It was so damned unfair. She’d finally found the man of her heart, and now she was supposed to sit here and watch him die. If only she knew what to do. If only she had a rifle and could shoot them all, or a missile she could shoot to blow up Huayar and his men-
Her thoughts derailed abruptly. Blow them up.
She glanced over at the meth lab not far from her. She was a chemist, for crying out loud. She was the queen of playing with stuff that blew up, and right in front of her was a whole building full of volatile and highly explosive chemicals. She might not manage to destroy the whole camp, but she could create a hell of a diversion for John.
She rose to a half crouch and zigzagged down the hill, dodging trees and brush the same way John had a moment before. She raced into the camp. A man jumped out in front of her, pointing a rifle at her head. She recognized one of Huayar’s men from earlier.
“It’s me!” she shouted in Spanish over the shooting behind him. “I’ve got to secure the lab. It could blow with all this gunfire! Let me pass!”
The guy got an
alarmed look in his eyes and waved the tip of his rifle at the lab to his left, indicating for her to get moving.
She ran on, grimly ducking at each new burst of gunfire. Please be alive, John. Just a few more seconds. Don’t die on me. Not yet. She burst through the doorway and into the lab. Deserted. Thank God. The cluttered stacks of barrels, crude cook fires and filthy packing tables were as different from her pristine, stainless steel lab as could be. By the dim flicker of the firelight, she raced around the room, searching frantically for what she’d need. It had to be fast. Simple. A half-dozen ways to combine the many volatile components of methamphetamine into an explosive mix came to her mind, but many of them were multi-step reactions she didn’t have time to mess with. She needed a bomb, not a fire.
There. A stack of foot-long metal bottles. Perfect. Propane camp fuel. She ran to one of the big cauldrons hanging over a flame and swung it aside, dumping its liquid contents on the ground. She held her breath as a cloud of noxious fumes rose up. She didn’t even want to think about what was in that cloud-vaporized drain cleaner, toluene brake fluid, chloroform-ugh.
Her eyes watering, she swung the now-empty cauldron back over the fire. Quickly, she grabbed an armful of the propane fuel bottles and tossed them into the pot. She added a bucket of red phosphorus, and tossed in a pile of sodium shavings for good measure. It would take a minute or two to heat the bottles sufficiently for one of them to blow. But once it went, the chain reaction would be spectacular.
She glanced around the room. She could enhance the whole thing with some vaporized gases in here, too. Ahh. There. Ether. She ran over to the store of ether tanks and opened all the stopcocks. Like any decent meth lab, this place was well-ventilated to prevent a buildup of explosive gases. Holding her breath as best she could, she raced around the room, closing all the shutters she could reach.
She reached an opening that looked out upon the bunker and the circling mass of Huayar’s men. She paused to take in the scene. Where was John? Was he already one of those ominous black heaps of clothing on the ground? Or was he still out there somewhere, fighting for all he was worth to save his buddies? Please be alive.
John dodged behind a shack, running low around its far side and double-tapping a pair of bullets into the nearest bandit. A second hostile turned, and John dropped him, too. Gripped in a fugue state of see-and-kill, he roamed the night, shooting everyone who crossed his path. Must save those men.
A mountain in Afghanistan flashed before his eyes. Taptap. Another bandit down. Blood. So damned much blood. He shot another pair of Huayar’s men. The screams. He’d never forget his men’s dying pleas for help. And there he’d been, shot in the back himself, helpless as a baby. A bandit spun to face him, raising his weapon, startled. John mowed him down with a fusillade of shots. Only long habit with ammunition preservation stopped him from emptying his weapon into the Afghani-no, wait, Peruvian-rebel.
He blinked, disoriented. Where was he? Trees. Greenery. Shouted Spanish commands. Peru. He passed a grimy hand across his eyes.
Melina.
As soon as he thought of her, the worst of his flashback drained away, replaced by a sense of calm. He knew what he had to do. If she wouldn’t leave until her family did, then he’d just have to free her family for her, even if it meant giving his life to do it. He’d die for her in a second. He looked around, surprised to see how close to the main ring of Huayar’s men he’d pushed. He was all but on top of the line.
The majority of Huayar’s men hadn’t caught on to the fact yet that shots were coming from behind them, in addition to theirs pouring into the bunker. The rescue team inside had yet to fire. They probably were afraid to draw fire to the hostages, not to mention that their current rules of engagement precluded them from starting a gun battle on Peruvian soil.
John eased backward into the deep shadows beside a shack and took stock. He needed better cover if he was going to shoot a hole in this mass of men. All of a sudden, the night and shadows and the muzzle bursts looked just like that other firefight, that other line of hostile shooters unloading on him and his men. Except this time, he was on his feet, his weapon nestled against his shoulder, and the bad guys were in his sights. He wasn’t technically part of Hathaway’s team, therefore, by his reasoning, he was exempt from the no gunfighting order. Satisfaction surged through him. Payback time.
He took aim, firing deliberately and to kill. He had about two hundred more rounds on him, which should be enough to hold him for another ten to twelve minutes. Plenty of time to eliminate Huayar and his men. But if he had anything to say about it, this whole thing would be over long before then.
“Cowboy, pull back. You’re entering our field of fire.”
He started at hearing his handle over the radios. It had been a while since anyone used it. Besides, he was in command and gave the orders on this mountain-no wait. Hathaway was here. How did he get out here? Disoriented, John vaguely heard his commander repeat the command. Whatever.
Resolutely, he kept on firing.
“Pull back, John. Now.” That was Hathaway’s clipped voice barking the order at him. He responded reflexively to the whiplash tone in his commander’s voice and lowered his weapon. He took a step back.
Hathaway ordered sharply, “Secure your target, Cowboy.”
His target. Melina. A small measure of sanity seeped back into his consciousness. He was in a valley in Peru in the middle of a shootout. Where was she, anyway? She’d better be back on that hill. Of course, she hadn’t stayed put the last time he told her to. What were the odds she’d done as he ordered this time? Crap. He took off running back across the camp. He cleared all around him as he went, keeping an eye out for laggards or cowards in Huayar’s ranks, hiding from the fight. After all, a rat’s bullet killed just as well as a hero’s.
What was that over there? Someone was hiding in the meth lab. A straggler back here could easily spot him and Melina in the woods behind the camp and take one or both of them out. He’d have to clear the building. He sprinted for the lab and its volatile contents.
Melina ducked under a worktable as a black shape hurtled into the lab. Now what? That cauldron wasn’t hot enough to blow quite yet. It needed another minute or two. Huayar’s man couldn’t find it! She intentionally dodged behind a stack of crates of pseudoephedrine tablets, hoping the guy would see her movement and come investigate.
Sure enough, the intruder spun around the end of the pile, the bore of his rifle leading the way. Prepared to stand up and berate the guy for scaring her, she stared at the big black-clad figure wearing elaborate goggles over his eyes. Not Huayar’s man! She barely had time to register that before the figure’s rifle swung up and away from her. He stepped forward and swept her into his dark grasp.
Only as his head buried itself in her hair did it dawn on her. “John!” she cried. “Thank God, you’re alive! My family?”
“They’re still alive in there. Huayar’s men haven’t penetrated the place.”
She sagged in relief, her legs all but collapsing out from under her.
Supporting her easily, John continued, “Our guys have enough firepower to hold off Huayar indefinitely in that hole. Assuming there’s not a back door.”
“A back door?” she repeated, confused.
“Bad guys have a tendency to put secret escape tunnels in any place they think they might get trapped someday. I’m worried that Huayar’s got men crawling down some secret tunnel as we speak to breach the place.”
She gasped, alarmed afresh. “We have to do something!”
He nodded. “We’re hamstrung out here because our rules of engagement prohibit us from launching a major firefight with Huayar.”
“What in the heck do you call that?” she gestured outside at the barrage of gunfire.
“That’s Huayar firing at our guys, and our guys not returning fire. That’s not a gunfight. Trust me. You’ll know if we start shooting back.”
“To heck with your rules of engagement! Let’s assault
those guys before they get into the bunker!”
He grinned down at her, a slash of white in the darkness of his face. “You and me? Like Bonnie and Clyde?”
“Why not? I’ve got a diversion cooking over there.” She glanced over at the cauldron where a few sparks were starting to jump. Any second that thing would blow.
“What have you done?” he asked, startled.
“I’ve cooked up an explosion. Should go any second.”
“What’s in that pot?”
“A bunch of propane tanks, red phosphorus and sodium shavings. And the ether bottles are open over there.”
“Holy sh-We’ve got to get out of here!”
“We go get my folks and my brother, right?”
“No. We head for the woods and take cover from your apocalyptic brew.”
“John, I’m not leaving-”
“You are leaving. Now. If I have to carry you!”
He made a grab for her legs and she danced back from him. She glanced over at the cauldron, which was definitely beginning to smoke. The smell of ether was strong in the air, too.
“Honey, there are fifteen commandos out there, waiting for me to get you out of here. They can’t do anything until you’re secured.”
“Commandos? I thought you said they were your buddies…”
“They are. I’ll explain outside.” He grabbed her upper arm in his powerful grasp, and all but lifted her off the ground as he propelled her from the building. Once outside, her instinct to get away from the lab took over, and she sprinted beside John for the trees.
The flash came first. She and John leaped simultaneously for a huge, downed tree, landing across it and rolling behind it as a deafening concussion of sound slammed into her. She clapped her hands over her ears as the explosion rocked through the forest. John rolled on top of her, shielding her as debris and tree branches rained down from above for several seconds.
