by Scott McEwen
Hitch was unimpressed. “Yeah, well, this isn’t Vietnam, Sheriff, and I’m not giving the Mexican police a chance to warn these guys.” He turned to his men. “Lock and load. I’ll be the first man down.” He primed his MP5 and switched on the flashlight mounted within the fore stock.
“Now, let’s think about this a minute,” the sheriff cautioned. “You people don’t even have night vision, for Jesus’s sake! Why don’t we just hide out up here and wait ’til the buggers come up? My God, man, you people could be walkin’ into an ambush down there!”
Hitch was beginning to wonder if the sheriff might be on Antonio Castañeda’s payroll. There were rumors the drug lord had made him a lucrative offer through an intermediary. “I’ll be counting on you to look after things up here, Sheriff. You can handle that much, I assume?”
The sheriff nodded. “Oh, we can handle it, but if you men get into trouble down there, you’re on your own, and I mean it. My boys aren’t trained for this kinda thing, and I’m too damn fat to be dangling myself over a bottomless pit in the middle of the night.”
“No one’s asking you to do anything above your pay grade, Sheriff.”
Nettled, the sheriff turned to his deputies, shaking his head and gesturing. “Let’s stand over here outta the way, men. We don’t wanna knock nobody down the mine shaft.”
Hitch mounted the ladder, descending with the other ICE agents lining up to follow after him. “Keep six feet between each man.”
Standing well back from the mouth of the shaft, one of the sheriff’s deputies shifted his weight uncomfortably. “How deep would you say that thing is, Sheriff?”
“Gotta be a hundred feet or more,” the sheriff said. “I aimed my Streamlight straight down and couldn’t hardly see the bottom.”
The deputy let out a low whistle. “You wouldn’t get me down there, not unless you dropped a grenade down it first.”
The sheriff frowned. “That would kindly spoil the surprise there, Jeff.”
The second deputy stood biting his thumbnail, looking around nervously. He’d been on the Castañeda payroll for the better part of eight months now, and he was more than a little worried that the tunnel’s discovery could lead to him being ratted out by any captured Mexicans. “Um, Sheriff, do you care if I smoke?”
“No, Landry,” the sheriff said sardonically. “Why don’t ya build yourself a nice big bonfire yonder; let every drug smuggler in Mexico know we’re out here. Hey, you wanna use the flare gun in my trunk—or do ya think that might be a little obvious?”
Landry cringed, realizing the sheriff must already be suspicious of him. “I asked first, didn’t I?”
“That, ya did, son. That, ya did.”
Agent Hitch was mindful of his footing as he descended the ladder, but the rungs were slippery against the hard rubber of his Vibram boot soles. Twice his foot slipped off, forcing him to grab onto the rung with the crook of his arm. The bulk of his gear made the going awkward, and he hoped the men above were having less trouble. Anyone who fell would take every man below him all the way to the bottom.
After what felt like an eternity, he saw a dim light below, and his heart began to race. If the lights were on down there, someone was using the tunnel. He whispered up a warning about the light and continued down. Hitch arrived at the bottom a minute later and stepped from the ladder onto terra firma: a concrete landing with space enough to stack large quantities of product off to the side. A pile of nylon straps and cargo hooks told him that the smugglers were using a winch to pull the drugs to the surface.
Looking south, the tunnel curved slightly to the east, reducing visibility to about eighty feet. An incandescent lightbulb burned every twenty feet or so, screwed into sockets attached to a long wire that must have been strung the length of the passage. Within two minutes, the rest of the ICE agents were on the ground and gathered tightly together at the foot of the ladder.
One of the men bumped into a shoddy fuse panel on the wall, and sparks flew, throwing the tunnel into blackness. A few seconds later, the lights came back on by themselves.
“What the fuck did you do?” Hitch hissed.
“Nothing,” the agent answered. “I barely touched the damn thing. There’s no room to move down here.”
Hitch knew they might have just screwed the pooch, but there was nothing to do now but press on. “Okay . . . shit.” He gripped the MP5. “I’ve got point. Gutierrez, you’re on my six. Be ready to give orders in Spanish when we run into these people. No one fires unless we’re fired upon. Look sharp now! Let’s go.”
They moved out single file down the tunnel.
• • •
UP ABOVE, THE sheriff was leaning against the fender of his cruiser with his arms folded when a semi–tractor trailer came rumbling down the dirt road, gearing down and slowing near the entrance to the property. He stood up straight. “I’d say this is an odd hour for a cattle hauler to show up.” He spit another wad of tobacco juice. “Particularly when there ain’t no cattle here to haul.”
Deputy Landry recognized the yellow rig at once, knowing the driver to be one of Castañeda’s men. “I’ll see what he’s up to.” He set off at a fast trot.
“Hey, wait here!” the sheriff called, unsnapping the strap on his holster.
But Landry kept going.
The sheriff looked at Jeff. “Remind me to hunt us up a replacement for his stupid ass. That boy’s dumber’n shit.”
Jeff grunted, knowing that Landry was on the take, but not wanting to be the one to tell.
Seventy yards away, Landry was waving his arms to stop the rig as it pulled in. He jogged around to the driver’s side, recognizing the driver and grabbing the handhold to haul himself up onto the running board. “You gotta get the hell outta here, amigo. ICE is down there in the tunnel right now! Somebody called the feds and ratted the whole thing out.”
The Castañeda man looked around wildly. Spotting the cruisers and ICE vehicles parked on the far side of the corral for the first time, he grabbed a Tec-9 machine pistol from his lap and sprayed Landry point-blank with a twelve-round burst of 9 mm fire.
Landry flew off the running board, landing flat on his back with his neck and face blown apart. The Castañeda jammed the rig into gear and floored the accelerator, aiming for the cruiser where the sheriff and Deputy Jeff stood gaping.
“Holy Christ!” The sheriff jerked a .357 from its holster, emptying all six rounds at the oncoming tractor trailer. Four of the bullets struck the windshield on the driver’s side, but the rig kept coming.
Jeff drew his 9 mm Beretta and stood firing at the grill of the truck, while the sheriff skirted to the other side of the cruiser, dumping the empty shells from the cylinder as he moved. Jeff jumped aside as the rig zoomed between them and plowed into the cruiser, bashing it easily aside to roar on toward the ICE vehicles.
The sheriff snatched a speed loader from his belt to reload the .357 with six Federal hollow-points, running after the rig as fast as his squat little legs could carry him.
Jeff chased along after the cab on the passenger side, firing the last three rounds from the magazine into the front right tire. The rig crashed into the parked ICE vehicles and came to a halt. Jeff was fumbling to insert a fresh mag into the Beretta when the Castañeda bailed out on the passenger side, landing in the dirt before him to level the Tec-9 on Jeff’s belly, his eyes appearing flat and reptilian in the dim light.
Jeff froze, the fresh mag jammed into the butt of his pistol with the bullets facing backward. “Don’t shoot me!”
The Mexican cut him down and dashed toward the rear of the trailer.
The sheriff was running up the driver’s side toward the cab when he heard the burst of fire that blasted Jeff’s guts open. He jerked to a stop, pivoted on his heel, and waited to see where the Mexican would show his face. Spitting tobacco juice, he called out, “Donde estás, cabrón?” Where
are you, asshole?
The Castañeda sprang out from behind the trailer, and both men fired at the same time. The sheriff’s hollow-point round struck the Castañeda right between the eyes to blow out the back of his skull, and the Castañeda’s four-round burst struck the sheriff in the belly, dropping him to his knees.
“Goddamn!” the old man groaned in agony. “What I get for not wearin’ a vest.”
He didn’t have a portable radio on him, and the cruiser was fifty yards away, which may as well have been fifty miles. He was in too much pain to move, bleeding out fast. He swiped at the blood pooling in his shirt and looked at his hand. Even in the night, he could see the blood was very dark, realizing he’d been hit in the liver.
“Must be why it hurts so damn bad.” He rolled onto his back, tossing the .357 aside. “I shoulda taken Castañeda up on that offer,” he muttered. “I coulda been in Tahiti.”
3
DOWN IN THE TUNNEL
Zakayev and the Castañedas hunkered near the walls on either side of the passageway, bracing for an attack.
Javier ordered his men onto their bellies and covered them with a tarp. “Let them come as close as possible before you fire.” He knew that because of the crazy Chechen with his finger on the bomb, they would have to kill every cop coming against them in order to escape with their lives.
Zakayev gripped the dead-man switch, keeping a wary eye on the Mexicans. He wasn’t worried about the RA-115 taking damage in a firefight. It was of Russian manufacture, awkward looking and ugly but built to take a genuine beating.
Flashlight beams came dancing down the walls from the north.
• • •
AGENT HITCH SPOTTED what appeared to be a lump of cargo on the floor near the wall 150 feet down the tunnel. He held up a fist to halt the column.
“Looks like they took off and left their shit.” He moved out again, determined to catch the smugglers before they made it back to the other side. It didn’t matter to Hitch how far down the tunnel they caught them, just so they grabbed them before stepping out of the tunnel on the Mexican side. Let their lawyers try to prove they’d been bagged south of the border.
As they drew within fifty feet of the lump in the floor, Hitch made out the muzzles of the AK-47s sticking from beneath the edge of the tarp, stopping in his tracks.
Javier shouted, “Fuego!” and the AK-47s opened up with a deafening roar.
Hitch was struck in the face, arms, and torso, dead before he hit the concrete. Gutierrez and another agent went down at the same time, exposing three more agents to enemy fire. These three were also cut down before ever firing a shot. The seven remaining ICE men hit the deck and opened up with their MP5s.
The two groups blasted away at one another with automatic fire at 50 feet, nearly point-blank range for any automatic weapon.
The Castañedas’ ammo was old and corrosive, a mark manufactured in Korea during the midseventies, so the tunnel quickly filled with an acrid smoke, obscuring everyone’s vision. To make matters worse, a number of lightbulbs were shattered by ricocheting spall.
When the guns finally fell silent, there were only four men still left alive on each side.
Zakayev remained hunched behind the RA-115, with a death grip on the trigger mechanism.
“Deja de disparar!” Agent Gutierrez screamed. “Cease fire!”
“Regrésate!” Javier shouted from where he lay on his belly. “Go back!” He was amazed to still be alive and didn’t want to risk another hideous exchange of gunfire.
“We’re going back!” Gutierrez said. “Just give us a chance to pick up our wounded.”
“I give you one minute,” Javier shouted. “Then we fire again!”
“Cálmate,” Gutierrez said easily. “Cálmate, amigo.” Calm down. He couldn’t see much through the smoke but could hear the Castañedas switching out their magazines over the ringing in his ears. There was nothing to be served by continuing the battle. Besides, he was pretty sure he was bleeding to death, hit in the brachial artery of his right arm.
“We’re throwing away our weapons!” he called. “Just give us time to get the fuck out of here! De acuerdo?” Agreed?
“Okay. De acuerdo,” Javier replied, satisfied the fighting was over and the Americans were leaving.
Gutierrez told his men to throw away their weapons and struggled to his feet, bleeding profusely from the right arm. “I’m gonna need help,” he said to the others.
The ladder was more than twelve hundred feet back the way they’d come.
“Motha’fucker,” muttered the only unwounded ICE man, stepping over the bodies of their dead compatriots to slip Gutierrez’s good arm over his shoulders. “We just got our asses handed to us.”
“Hitch was an idiot,” Gutierrez grumbled, glancing back at the body.
“Goddamn glory hound,” added one of the others in disgust.
Gutierrez saw one of the agents still gripping a pistol. “Put that weapon down!” he ordered. “You trying to get us killed?”
The agent dropped the weapon as if it had suddenly burned his hand.
“This fight is over—we lost! Now let’s get outta here while we still can.”
• • •
JAVIER REMAINED CROUCHED near the wall, bleeding from a shoulder wound. All things considered, he didn’t feel too bad about the firefight. He had just led a battle against the supposedly unbeatable Americans, and he had driven them back with their tails tucked. Now all he had to do was get the crazy Chechen to put away the bomb’s detonator so he could shoot him in the head. He waited five minutes after the gringos were out of sight, and then ordered his men to their feet. He walked up to Zakayev and stood looking down at him, where he remained hunched behind the bomb.
“It’s safe now,” he said harshly. “You can put the detonator away.”
Zakayev didn’t reply—didn’t even move.
“Did you hear what I said?” Javier nudged him with the muzzle of the pistol. “It’s time to go. Put the detonator away!”
The Chechen keeled over on his side, a single bullet hole in the center of his forehead. The dead-man switch clattered against the concrete.
Before Javier could even blink, the RA-115 suitcase nuke detonated with a force of nearly two kilotons, vaporizing the Castañedas and the ICE agents—who were just arriving at the foot of the ladder—within a single microsecond. A microsecond later the surrounding rock was vaporized, the temperature at the center of the explosion reaching millions of degrees Fahrenheit. A few milliseconds after that, the earth and rock covering the explosion were heaving upward, compelled by a giant bubble of high-pressure gas and steam as the heat and expanding shock wave melted or vaporized still more rock, creating a molten cavity within the bubble. This expansion continued on for another few tenths of a second until the pressure within the bubble began to equalize with that of the outside atmosphere. Then, when it could no longer sustain the rate of the expansion, the bubble collapsed back in on itself, leaving a giant subsidence crater more three hundred feet wide and sixty feet deep.
The tiny Mexican border town of Puerto Palomas was devastated by the shock wave that traveled through the alluvial plain to knock out all power not only there but also to the city of Deming. Ground tremors were felt as far away as Roswell, New Mexico. And forty miles north of the blast, the US Geological Seismographic Station at Cookes Peak registered a seismic event of 5.1 on the Richter scale.
Though most of the blast’s radiation had been contained by the encapsulating earth and rock, the open shafts at both ends of the tunnel had allowed twin jets of fallout to blast ten thousand feet into the sky, resulting in a deadly cloud of radioactive dust and debris that was soon drifting eastward toward El Paso, Texas.
4
WASHINGTON, DC,
The White House
“You still haven’t told me what the hell it was,” th
e president of the United States said to the director of Homeland Security. “Was it a meteor? An atom bomb? What? Why is it taking so much time to get information?”
DHS director Merrill Radcliff was on the hot seat. They were standing in the hall outside the Oval Office flanked by numerous representatives from nearly all US security branches. The Joint Chiefs were there, the FBI, CIA, NSA, DOD—and of course, the White House chief of staff, the ever-present Tim Hagen, a distasteful young fellow whom Radcliff couldn’t stand.
He drew a breath and held out his hands. “We just don’t know yet, Mr. President. It’s a very isolated, very remote area, and it’s taking time to get resources into—”
The president cut him off. “Are you telling me you people still haven’t learned a damn thing from the Sandy and Katrina debacles—that you’re still not ready to react when something happens?” The question was very obviously not rhetorical.
“Mr. President, we’ve learned a great deal from those disasters, but it takes time to get resources in place, to get things organized. We can’t just—”
“You’re relieved,” the president said, shocking everyone present and turning to Hagen. “Get the deputy director of DHS into position to take over for Mr. Radcliff.” He then looked to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General William J. Couture, who was just stepping from the Oval Office, cellular phone in hand. “General Couture, the military will be in charge of handling this crisis from here on—effective immediately. Now, what do you need from me?”
The jagged scar on the left side of Couture’s face made him a fierce and daunting presence, but he exuded an undeniable confidence. “Mr. President, I’ve already ordered a swift reaction team of army NBC specialists prepped and ready.” NBC stood for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological. “They’re standing by at Fort Bliss in El Paso awaiting orders to move into the impact area and begin taking readings. All I need is your clearance, sir.”
