by Mark Parragh
Crane thumbed his mic. “Buskirk, what’s your status?”
“Loading dock’s secure,” came the reply. “Truck’s in position. I can open the door anytime.”
“There should be an electrical panel on that side of the building. Do you see it? Can you kill the lights on my word?”
There was a pause, and then, “Here we go. Master cut-off right here. No problem.”
“Okay, stand by.” To Stokes, he murmured, “Lights, door, flashbangs, me, you. I’ll go right at the bottom; you take left.”
Stokes nodded back. He reached over and gingerly turned the doorknob to release the latch, but held it in place while Crane pulled two flash grenades from his pack.
“I’m thinking they’ll cut loose up the stairs when the door opens,” said Stokes. “Keep low.”
Crane agreed. The guards would be on edge. They could hear the shooting outside. No reinforcements were coming. Their instinct would be to aggressively defend the one doorway into their basement fortress.
He readied the two grenades and then knelt down as low as he could get and gave Stokes a look. Stokes nodded back, indicating he was ready.
Crane thumbed his mic. “Give me a three count and then kill the lights.”
“Roger that,” Buskirk answered. “Three, two, one, go!”
The strip of light beneath the door vanished. Crane heard someone shout.
Stokes whipped the door open, and just as he’d predicted, a hail of gunfire erupted up the stairwell. Bullets hissed by overhead, scarred the drywall, slammed into the ceiling. Crane could see the muzzle flashes from the darkness. Some part of his brain instinctively told him there were two shooters firing pistols. With all the flashes and noise in that confined space, the grenades seemed almost superfluous. But he tossed them down the stairwell, the first one away to the right, and then the second back to the left. They clattered down the stairs and went off, one a second before the other, with two shattering bangs and bright flashes of light.
The shooting stopped, and Crane whipped around the corner, leading with the muzzle of his F2000. His goggles picked out two figures standing near the bottom of the stairs. They were blinded and deafened, holding pistols. Crane cut them both down with quick bursts of the rifle. He kept moving, sweeping the room for any other shooters. He spun as he neared the bottom of the stairs and checked behind him. But there was no one there. All he saw were other figures on the floor, scrambling in the darkness for a safe corner.
Crane veered right at the bottom of the stairs. Behind him, Stokes was coming down fast, and headed left. Crane scooped up the pistols the guards had dropped while Stokes swept the room.
“Clear,” he said.
“Nobody move!” Crane shouted in Spanish. “We’re here to rescue you. Everyone sit up. Keep your hands where we can see them.”
He thumbed his mic again. “Buskirk, lights.”
The lights gave a dim flicker and then came back on. The room was a dingy living area, furnished with cheap, mismatched couches and chairs and a scarred coffee table. At the far side of the room, a hallway stretched the length of the building. Back there were the bedrooms. Here there were six men. They wore boxer shorts or pajamas, and they looked up at him with an odd mix of fear and hope.
“Point out any guards,” said Crane. It was doubtful, but he wanted to make sure no enemy was trying to hide himself among the hostages. But nobody moved or spoke.
“Martin Cottrell,” Stokes shouted. “Martin Cottrell, are you here?”
The men were all Mexican. They looked back and forth at each other, and then one timidly raised his hand.
“I knew Martin,” he said. “I roomed with him. He’s not here. He tried to escape … he didn’t make it.”
Sawyer is going to be devastated, Crane thought. He’d poured all his hope into this raid. Crane was glad he wasn’t the one who would have to tell him they were too late.
Crane watched the men while Stokes swept the hallway and the bedrooms and found nothing else. Then he switched his radio to a new channel.
“This is Crane,” he said. “We’ve got six civilians. What’s your status out there?”
Fralin’s voice came back. “Getting hot up here. This is definitely more than half a dozen men. We’ve got them contained for now, but don’t waste time.”
“Roger that,” he said. “Moving the hostages out now.”
The hard part would be getting out, Crane knew. When they withdrew, the cartel defenders wouldn’t be bottled up any longer. They’d pour out of the hacienda like angry wasps and go on the offensive. They would need to get the men onto the truck and get out of the compound without taking any casualties. Then it would be a race to the airstrip.
“When I point you out, give me your name!” Crane said to the hostages. He got the names and relayed them to Jessie. Then he beckoned Stokes over.
“Give them two minutes to get dressed and then get them upstairs and on the truck,” he said. “Tell Buskirk to rendezvous with the Major and withdraw.”
“Wait, where are you going to be?”
“I’ve got something else to take care of,” said Crane.
“What? Nobody told me about anything else!”
Crane was already heading up the stairs. “Tell them they’ve got two minutes.”
Jason Tate paced around the game room and slapped the eight ball from his pool table from one hand to the other and back. Outside, he could still hear muffled shouts and the crack of gunfire. The game room was windowless, a reinforced safe room designed as a defensible refuge in case of something like this.
Two nervous cartel fighters stood near the doors with heavy automatic rifles. Esteban sat at a corner desk, listening to radio chatter through a headset he held up to one ear.
When they’d gotten Jason out of bed and hurried him in here, all Esteban was able to tell him was that a plane had landed at the airstrip, and there had been gunfire. Once they reached the compound, alarm had turned to confusion. He’d told them to expect a VIP visitor, but not the one he’d originally told Lalo was coming. So they’d prepared for that, but instead this was the rescue mission the late Detective Stratton had told them about. Everything was off course. Worse, it was because of him, for reasons that had nothing to do with the cartel.
Lalo wasn’t happy about any of it, but it couldn’t be helped. Tate’s job was to serve as a bridge between two very different groups with different methods and agendas. The cartel was actually quite predictable. The others he dealt with were not.
Esteban listened to the radio chatter for a moment. “We’ve lost the workshop,” he said. “That means they’ve got the engineers out. They’ll be heading back to the airstrip. We can’t let them get out.”
He gave Tate a grim look and shook his head. Lalo had agreed to send up some three-dozen additional men with automatic weapons and some additional trucks. They were to wait outside the compound, ready to roll in when the rescue mission arrived and take them by surprise. But with his unexpected guest coming, he’d demanded that they pull back farther down the road from the compound. This was no time for some unfortunate misunderstanding.
So now it was taking longer to get them back in place to counterattack. Esteban listened to the radio chatter for a few more seconds, and his irritation was obvious. Then he seemed to come to a decision. He gestured to one of the men near the door. “Gerardo, take him back to his room. And make sure he’s safe there.”
Gerardo nodded and then gestured to Jason. “Come with me, sir.”
Jason followed him toward one door out of the room while Esteban headed for the other one.
“Where are you going?” Jason asked.
“Where do you think? To chase these bastards down and kill them!”
Then Esteban disappeared out the far door, and Jason heard him barking orders into his radio handset from the hallway. Jason followed Gerardo down the gallery to his master suite. He supposed it wasn’t good that someone had figured out that the cartel’s radio network
was built and maintained from here. In the worst case, he’d have to move somewhere else. But so what? The cartel could afford a hundred places like this one, and they needed his abilities and his connections. They’d get over it.
Ahead of him, the gallery ended at the recessed door to his suite. Gerardo went ahead to open the doors for him.
“No problem, huh, Gerardo?” he said as he followed him around the corner. “Ready for a new place, anyway, right?”
As Jason cleared the corner, his brain registered three facts in quick succession.
The man waiting there for him wasn’t Gerardo.
Gerardo lay on the floor in the doorway to his room, not moving.
The man smiling at him was John Crane.
“Hi, Boz,” Crane said as Jason stood there, too surprised to react. “Really sorry about the boat.”
Then, just as Jason was drawing breath to shout, an electric current surged through him. Jason went rigid, trembling, and then fell to the floor.
CHAPTER 36
Crane supposed there must be other things as satisfying as dropping Jason Tate with a stun gun. But at the moment, he couldn’t think of any. He moved quickly, taping Tate’s mouth and securing his wrists and ankles with zip ties. Then he snatched the radio handset from the guard’s belt and stuck it on his own belt. Finally, he hefted Tate up over his shoulders in a fireman’s carry and headed back out into the night.
Outside, he avoided the pools of the house’s floodlights and made his way toward a small gate in the perimeter wall that he’d spotted on the drone video. Then he heard engines and stopped. Two trucks rolled in from the other side of the compound, loaded with armed men. The stragglers from the house detachment ran alongside and climbed aboard. The trucks crossed the compound and headed down the dirt road toward the airstrip. Where had they come from? And why? Did the cartel get some kind of warning they were coming?
He decided those were questions he could address later. They presented a more immediate problem. Crane thumbed his mic.
“You’ve got incoming,” he announced. “They’ve got reinforcements. Two trucks full of men heading your way.”
There was a flurry of reaction in the channel, and then Jessie’s voice cut through them. “Roger that. What’s your status?”
“Got what I came for,” said Crane. “On my way back now.”
A few moments later, Finney’s voice broke in. “Might be able to help with your truck problem.”
“Finney, where are you?” Crane asked. Tate was starting to struggle on his shoulders.
“Partway back,” he said. “I can cover the road from here. Give me a second.”
Crane hauled the struggling Tate up the wooded slope. Suddenly the cartel radio on his belt burst out in a storm of confused shouts. A moment later, in his earpiece, Finney said, “Okay, they’re on foot.”
From the cartel traffic, he gathered Finney had put a couple rounds into the lead truck’s engine and blocked the road. Crane heard someone giving orders to fan out.
“Good job, Finney,” he said. “Now get to the plane. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“You’re one to talk,” said Finney.
Crane picked up his pace. He could see the beginnings of dawn on the horizon. Tate was thrashing now and trying to shout at him through the tape. Crane put his head down and pitched Tate forward. He hit the ground with a grunt, and Crane bent down and sliced through the zip tie binding his ankles.
“Get up and move,” Crane snapped.
Tate glared up at him. Crane pointed the F2000’s muzzle at his chest. “Idea is to bring you back alive,” he said, “but if I kill you, they’ll get over their disappointment.”
Tate climbed to his feet and staggered forward. He was trying to slow Crane down, but it was still faster than trying to carry him thrashing and struggling on his back.
They reached the ridge line and headed down the far slope. Crane could hear sporadic gunfire in the distance and see the lights around the airstrip. Then Jessie spoke in his ear.
“We’ve got a problem,” she said. “The runway’s blocked.”
Crane’s heart sank. This kept getting worse.
“Blocked how?”
“Looks like an old fuel truck, about a thousand feet from here. I can’t take off in that, and we’re starting to feel some heat. How far out are you?”
This wasn’t going to work, he realized. Going after Tate had been reaching too far, and somehow they’d underestimated the numbers they’d be facing. Now the plane was pinned down. If they couldn’t clear the runway, those superior numbers would eventually overrun the rescue team.
“Not sure it matters how far out I am,” Crane answered. “Nobody’s going anywhere until the runway’s clear.”
“If you’ve got an idea …”
He had an idea. He just didn’t like it.
“How are you holding up?”
“Hostages are aboard. We’re holding for now, but nobody has cover to get to the truck.”
“Is Finney back?”
“He is.”
That meant he was the last one out. He was the one who had held things up by going after Tate. He was the only one who could get to the truck and clear the runway. It had to be him.
“Get the engines hot,” he said. “I’ll go for the truck.”
“How are you going to make it back here?”
“One thing at a time,” he said.
Tate had turned and grinned at him through the duct tape. Crane prodded him forward, and they hurried down the gentle slope through widely spaced trees. Crane listened to the chatter of the cartel soldiers on his radio. They were confident, pressing against the defensive perimeter. They moved cautiously, but they knew they were winning.
Crane kept a close eye on Tate, yanking him back on course when he strayed. They had moved around the battle zone now. The airstrip was a long void in the trees to Crane’s right.
Then he saw the truck in the distance. It was an old International 4900, rusted and dented. It had been parked in a cut-out in the woods on the near side of the airstrip. Either someone had gotten the clever idea to use it to block the runway, or they actually kept it there for that purpose. Either way, it had to move.
“Hold up,” he said to Tate. Tate was tired now, breathing hard with his hands zip-tied behind his back. Crane moved him to the trunk of a tall oak and sat him down with his back against it. Then he stunned him again. That part was fun. He pulled another zip tie off his belt and restrained Tate’s ankles again. He could carry him from here if he needed to.
Satisfied that Tate would be here when he got back, Crane made his way cautiously through the trees toward the runway and the truck. Someone was moving near the edge of the airstrip. Crane heard tuneless humming and then saw the red point of a cigarette. He readied the F2000 and moved forward, faster now, dodging around saplings and leaping over a fallen branch.
The man heard him coming, but too late. He whirled and cried out, but then Crane slammed the rifle’s heavy butt into his jaw, snapped his knee with a brutal, thrusting kick, and drove him into the trunk of the tree he’d been leaning against. As he was collapsing to the ground, Crane registered a second man on the runway standing beside the truck. He was running toward Crane, raising a weapon.
Crane cut him down with a quick burst from the rifle, and then dropped to a crouch and scanned his surroundings. There was nobody else here, and nothing to indicate that the shots had drawn any attention from the main battle, where there was already plenty of shooting going on.
Crane kept low and darted out of the cover of the trees. He crossed the runway and didn’t stand until he was behind the bulk of the fuel truck. It looked intact, if aged. The driver’s door was open, and Crane pulled himself up into the cab. They’d gotten it out here under its own power, at least. The keys were in the ignition. They hadn’t pushed a dead chassis out into the runway. So the thing could be driven.
He dashed back into the trees and made his way back to where he
’d left Tate. Again he hauled him, struggling and grunting, up over his shoulders and carried him to the truck. He dumped Tate in the passenger seat with a creak of springs and sat him up. Tate ended up sitting on his hands, with his zip-tied feet in a footwell full of crushed beer cans.
Crane climbed back into the driver’s seat and closed the door. He thumbed his mic. “Jessie, I’ve got the truck. How soon can you take off?”
It took her a moment to reply. “Don’t know,” she said at last. “We’ve got a couple injured now. They’re pinned down between the warehouses. How fast can you make it back here?”
No, he thought, there’s no more time for that. The plane was going to be overrun very soon if he didn’t do something.
“I’ll find another way out,” he said. “I’m going to clear the runway, and I’m going to pull some of the pressure off you. Get everyone back aboard and get airborne as soon as you can.”
He listened to the open channel for a moment. He heard shouting and gunfire behind her, very close. Then she gave him a new frequency. “That channel, John. Soon as I get these people out of here safe, I’ll be back for you. Keep safe. Use that channel, and I’ll pluck you out of there. Good luck.”
“You too,” said Crane. Then, with a sigh, he reached over and ripped the tape off Jason Tate’s mouth.
“You son of a bitch!” Tate immediately shouted. “I’m going to kill you slow, you mother—”
Crane backhanded him. “Save your breath,” he said. “I need you to do something else for me.”
He turned the key and coaxed the truck’s aging, poorly maintained engine into sputtering life. Then he pulled the cartel radio he’d taken from his belt, opened the mic, and tossed it into Tate’s lap.
“Tell your friends where you are.”
Tate hunched over the radio and shouted, “Hey! It’s me! It’s Tate! Help me!”
Crane got the truck into gear and lurched forward. He turned the wheel in a wide, slow arc until he was facing away from the warehouses and the plane, and then he switched on the lights and drove down toward the far end of the runway.
