by Diane Capri
Kim rooted around in the storage space until her hand rested on a familiar smooth leather sap. The weapon was the perfect size for her small hands. Durable, heavy gauge leather casing filled with molded metal weight. A two-ply leather hand strap looped at one end for a secure grip. She’d used this model before. Small enough to be concealed, it would allow a strike with the flat part ranging from a stun to an instant knockout. The side edge could target large muscle groups and even break bones when applied with high force to a small area. Ideal for an up close and personal defense, she knew from experience. Tried and true.
She slipped the sap into her trouser pocket and left the storage space open so they could re-stash the weapons and equipment quickly. Just in case.
Then Morrie entered the navigator’s seat and Gaspar settled himself behind the wheel. Both doors closed, extinguishing the dome light.
Neagley and Kim returned to their seats.
Morrie memorized the bunkhouse layout and all four quickly donned coveralls and boots and Kevlar and loaded and checked their weapons and night vision and tested the burner phones and earpieces.
Elapsed time was less than ten minutes. Too long, if the wrong people were watching. Gaspar restarted the van, moved the transmission into drive, and eased forward around and away from the stand of trees.
They didn’t move far. An unusual spate of traffic clogged the highway headed south from Matamoros. “Where did all these vehicles come from all of a sudden?” Morrie asked, as if one of the four would know. No one did.
Gaspar merged into an open spot in the traffic line and turned on the headlights.
Drove the speed limit.
Observed all traffic signs.
No one talked.
At TAM 12, they turned west for the third time today. Narrow feeder roads Kim hadn’t noticed before added vehicles at each isolated rural intersection. The line of traffic became increasingly heavier, seeming to converge from far away in all directions because the entire local population couldn’t possibly have owned so many vehicles.
Three miles from Valle Hermoso, they were boxed in by trucks and a few cars and SUVs. Gaspar was forced to slow his speed. No more than fifteen miles an hour.
Travel time to this point from Matamoros on their recon trip had been twenty minutes. Tonight, they’d already been on the road for an hour. They had plenty of time, but the unexpected delay made Kim nervous anyway.
Neagley appeared as unconcerned as ever.
Traffic crawled through Valle Hermoso, which was alive with activities tonight. Was it a local holiday? Did that explain the heavy traffic, the crowds? Kim didn’t know.
On the other side of Valle Hermoso, travel speeds began to increase and the bottleneck, whatever it was, slowly opened up.
At El Riolito, at least half the 3,208 people who lived there were moving around the town. Parents with children, elderly couples, a few young women.
Curiously absent in both towns were teenage boys and single young men.
Gaspar traveled safely through the crowds and reached Las Olas Boulevard eighty minutes after leaving the hotel. Full nautical twilight now made it too dark to read the pretentious overhead sign. In fact, it was too dark to see the sign at all.
For almost a mile as the van approached the intersection, Kim had been watching the compound’s approach. It was blindingly lit by banks of stadium lights, as though they were on their way to a professional sporting event and not the stealthier game ahead of them.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Monday, November 15
7:08 p.m.
Villa Alto, Mexico
Las Olas Boulevard was deserted, but even from a quarter mile away at the foot of the Boulevard on TAM 12, they could see vehicles parked on the sides of the road, on the weedy aprons, in every available space around the front of the compound. Kim had downloaded the latest satellite photos before dusk when the compound was practically deserted. Whatever drew these people here had happened during the past two hours.
The compound itself was lit by massive stadium lights that spread ambient light well outside the parking areas. Darkness surrounded everything beyond. Very few people could be seen wandering on foot. Activities were focused in the center open space and shielded from view by the perimeter of buildings and vehicles.
Gaspar turned the armored van onto Las Olas Boulevard and traveled ten miles an hour toward the main building. When he reached the campus, he drove slowly past. Kim and the others peered through the van’s dark tinted windows in an effort to solve the puzzle. When they reached the wide driveway, they managed an obstructed view of the open space under the lights because the driveway was jammed with cars, trucks, SUVs, and buses. Kim ticked off 124 vehicles before she stopped counting.
Gaspar drove past the last building and when he reached the corner, he executed a three-point turn and lowered all four windows. The moment the sound seal released, they heard the cheering and booing crowd. Gaspar drove slowly toward the open space; noise volume increased with every inch of covered ground.
Morrie said, “The good news is that no one will notice us with all these other people here.”
Gaspar replied, “The bad news is there’s no way to sneak in and out under cover of darkness like we planned.”
Neagley contributed her usual plain sense. “We only have one option. We’re out of time. We go in, find the hostages, bring them out.”
Gaspar snorted. “Or die trying.”
Kim shrugged in the darkness. “More likely they’d beat you to a pulp.” She gestured to two of the buses. Both sported reflective bumper stickers depicting boxing gloves.
Gaspar said, “It’s brighter than daylight out there.”
She had already moved to the back of the van again and pulled out her laptop and connected once more to the satellite. The connection might be discovered later, but at the moment, she figured everyone was involved with the big show in the compound’s center.
Neagley asked, “Can we use the path to the bunkhouse like we planned?”
“I think so,” Kim replied when she found what she was looking for. “Each of you should take a look.” She downloaded the images and saved them and disconnected the feed. Then she passed around the laptop as she’d done earlier.
The compound’s center was now a boxing ring, complete with bleacher seats on all four sides. Which meant the spectators were facing each other and the contestants, not watching the bunkhouse building they’d decided was most likely to hold the hostages. The feed showed four armed guards walking the perimeter of the crowd, but when she snapped the image, two were standing at a break in the sight line to watch the match. She figured the other two were doing the same. Everyone was preoccupied with the big match.
Their first bit of good luck, maybe.
The bleachers were full, which explained the bottlenecked inbound traffic that had lightened up and disappeared the closer they came to Las Olas Boulevard. She noted a few female spectators, but mostly males, which explained the absence of males walking the streets of the towns on the way.
The fight might have been in its first round; the boxers were unbloodied so far. Whatever the match was, hundreds of spectators and participants had gathered to participate. If they were in the opening rounds, the matches could go on for at least a couple of hours before the crowd broke up and dispersed.
Kim didn’t figure on being here that long, but they now operated in a fluid situation, which was not ideal and not what they’d planned.
Two heat sensitive images of the main house and the outbuildings were almost identical to the earlier versions. No human forms inside most of the buildings. Only two inside the house; several more inside the target bunkhouse.
After Neagley, Gaspar, and Morrie memorized the new images, Kim relocked the laptop and returned it to the hidden compartment in the floor. Gaspar parked the van in the shadow of one of the buses, raised the windows, and cut the ignition. They collected their equipment and exited the vehicle.
Ne
agley led, crouched and hanging to the shadows as well as possible. Followed closely by Gaspar, Kim and Morrie at the rear doing the same.
They traveled along the east side of the road until they reached the first building on the northeast corner of the compound. All hugged close to its eastern edge, reached the corner and turned behind the building out of the glare of overhead lights. Still, enough ambient light flooded the weeds in the back that Kim had no need to don her night vision. Nor did the others.
Kim had snugged the earpiece firmly into her right ear and made sure it worked, but she hadn’t once used it after they spent ten minutes back at the stand of trees storing one another’s numbers in their burner phones and learning how to connect by conference call. Nor did the others.
Neagley made her way quickly along the darkened north side until she reached the northwest corner, where a gap of fifteen feet between buildings presented an opportunity for discovery. One at a time, they dashed across the gap and then continued along the north side of the second building. At the second building’s northwest corner, the second fifteen-foot opening gaped. Neagley stopped and waited until Gaspar, Kim, and Morrie reached her.
Across the gap was their target.
The bunkhouse was concrete block construction, one-story, long, and windowless. Its main entrance was on the open compound south side, ten feet from the dead center of the bleachers holding the crowd of raucous spectators.
Using the main entrance was not an option.
The bunkhouse back was the north side of the building. Only one exit door, resting square in the center. Whether the door was locked or armed with an alarm system or guarded by other means was unknown.
Without speaking, Neagley lifted her weapon of choice, a Glock 17 she’d snagged from the hidden compartment in the van. Kim had chosen a Glock 19. Morrie and Gaspar selected Berettas. All four were using the same ammunition, 9mm Parabellums. More efficient. More anonymous when they disposed of all the equipment, too.
Kim refused to think about the consequences should they be caught with any of these items before they returned to Brownsville, Texas. They’d be lucky if they only ended up in a Mexican prison.
Morrie passed Neagley and approached the bunkhouse’s back exit. From Kim’s vantage point, the door looked like heavy grey steel and seemed to have been snugged securely shut. No light leaked from cracks around the edges. When Morrie tried to turn the knob, nothing happened. He’d equipped his Beretta with its sound suppressor back in the van. Now, he slipped on his night vision and lifted the gun. The next time the crowd roared he shot three precise, quick, quiet, shattering rounds into the wooden jamb around knob’s locking mechanism. When he grabbed the knob again, the door slid easily away from the busted wood.
Still wearing his night vision, he pulled the door open, counting on the darkness behind the bunkhouse as camouflage, which was okay. Morrie entered the bunkhouse, followed by Gaspar, Kim and finally Neagley. The room felt cavernous. Damp. Hot. And empty of all life forms, human or otherwise, which wasn’t okay. Not okay at all.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Monday, November 15
7:38 p.m.
Villa Alto, Mexico
Pervasive darkness inside the bunkhouse required night vision, and Kim slipped hers on. She saw an open cement block building lined with cots on either side of the rear exit door. But the cots were nothing more than mattresses on frames. Each cot had a storage locker on the floor at the foot of the bed. The bunkhouse had no windows and only one additional door, this one identical to the first, but on the front compound side of the building.
The short ends of the room were divided by small rooms large enough to house toilets and showers, but not big enough to hold more cots. Along the front wall on the east side of the door were two picnic tables with benches to sit on. On the opposite side of the door was an open kitchen, of sorts. A white porcelain sink, low, round, white refrigerator, and a two-burner propane stove with a child-sized oven. Nothing more.
The entire room was almost soundproof, but when the boxing crowd vocalized pleasure or its opposite, high-decibel wildness penetrated like it was muffled in gallons of viscous syrup.
Kim had studied the proof-of-life videos. From memory, she confirmed the surroundings inside the bunkhouse were similar to what she’d seen. She simply wasn’t certain whether the videos were recorded here. Perhaps the hostages had been held here, and perhaps not.
She waved the others outside. They’d made their own assessment of the building’s contents. They followed without protest.
When they reconnected behind the bunkhouse, Gaspar said, “Try the main house next?”
Morrie said, “Too risky. The main house is guarded like Fort Knox. Those heat signatures we saw less than an hour ago were probably involved with what’s going on in the boxing ring. Las Olas wouldn’t risk holding hostages this close to all those spectators.”
Neagley replied, “It’s possible the hostages were moved to the main house since we checked the satellite. More than possible—it’s the only place that makes sense. We’ve come this far. One way or the other, we need to know if they’re here. Let’s be quick about it. I’m not a big boxing fan, but these matches can’t go on indefinitely.”
Every alarm in Kim’s stomach was doing backflips. “We need to be on the road before this group breaks up.” She checked her Seiko. “Twenty minutes more. Then we’ve got to go, whether we’ve found them or not.”
Neagley said nothing. Kim figured she didn’t agree, but Kim would leave Neagley and Morrie behind if she had to. The woman was maddening. And fully capable of taking care of herself.
They retraced their route until they reached the first building’s northeast corner again and then carefully hugged the east wall and moved inside the building’s shadow. At the driveway, they split up and crouched low behind and beside the vehicles, zig-zagging toward the main house.
The cheering, booing crowd seemed to be constantly in a state of agitation now. Perhaps the fight was nearing the last round. Would there be more than one bout? Was this the last of the night? Impossible to know. But Kim’s gut said time was running out. She felt it the way she felt danger at 30,000 feet. Palpably.
Kim figured the house had been a fortress for at least a decade. Armed guards patrolled as if guerilla warriors were likely to attack and be swiftly repelled. With no crowd or battering contestants to distract them, these sentries were more dedicated to the task at hand. Kim saw four in front, two pairs walking toward each other, passing in the middle, turning at the edge of the yard, walking toward and apart again. Repeat.
She saw four more guards on the north side of the building performing the same routine. She guessed there were four on the west side and four on the south side, too. Meaning two pairs of eyes watched in every direction at all times. It would be impossible to pass unnoticed.
Sixteen sentries with assault rifles and probably side arms as well. It would be equally impossible to take out fewer than the entire gang of sixteen without raising an alert of some sort.
How many more were inside protecting whatever needed protecting? Quite a bit of firepower to guard an empty house, Kim thought. A lot of firepower for seven comatose hostages, for that matter.
Gaspar said, “I’ll go ask one of them what’s going on.”
“Why you?” Neagley asked.
“I look more like them than the rest of you. I speak fluent Spanish with the right accent.” He shrugged. “And I know something about boxing. It’s a popular sport in Miami, too.”
Before anyone could argue, he pulled off his watch cap and gloves and stuffed them in the pockets of his coveralls. Handed his night vision to Morrie. And settled the Beretta comfortably in his right hand, held it casually behind his thigh.
Kim touched his arm briefly. “Let’s connect the phones. Leave your connection open. Say ‘knockout’ and we’ll be there.”
Gaspar grinned. “But what if I don’t see any good-looking women?”
Kim let
his levity slide. “You need motivation,” she said, and punched him on the bicep. “Think about what I’ll do to you if you screw this up, Chico.”
“I love you, too.” He nodded, stuffed his left hand in his pocket and sauntered jerkily forth as if he’d maybe had a bit too many shots of tequila. He’d traveled about twenty yards toward the front of the house before the first sentry noticed him and headed directly for a confrontation.
Gaspar continued straight ahead, seemingly unconcerned about the man with the AK-47 approaching.
When Gaspar was within hailing distance, the guard said in commanding Spanish, “No one is allowed here, Senor. Return to the event, please.”
Gaspar acted as if he didn’t hear or, perhaps, didn’t comprehend. He staggered and stumbled a bit. Righted himself. The guard’s steady forward pace brought them closer.
“Senor. Return to the event. You are not allowed here,” he said, as if rearranging the words and speaking slower would increase the chances of compliance. He didn’t raise the gun but didn’t back down, either. Of the east side four, Kim figured he was probably the commanding officer. If cartels had any formal structure at all, which they probably didn’t.
By now, the guard’s partner had reached the northeast corner and acknowledged the two north side sentries at the usual spot, after which all three turned and paced in opposite directions. Meaning the second east side pair were now pacing toward Gaspar, unhurried, unconcerned, thereby confirming that the first guard was the quartet’s leader. Maybe the protocol was that he could handle one drunk spectator and he’d let them know if he needed assistance.
None of the others made any attempt to investigate Gaspar or support their colleague. In an unbalanced fight, the thing to do was to take out the leader. After that, maybe one more will try as a show of support. But the last ones left standing will turn and run. Usually.
When the leader’s partner and the north side team had traveled back about twenty feet, the remaining east-side team was still fifty feet away from Gaspar and the leader. Gaspar saw his chance. Clearly enough to be heard over the open cell connection, he said, “Knockout.”
