“Stay put,” Lyons said. “I’ll check it out.”
“Roger.”
Lyons pressed ahead. As they closed in on Escobar’s place, the brush seemed to thin out some. He started to see real signs of life: a cigarette pack crumpled and discarded, footprints pressed into the dirt, brass shell casings, probably from when a bored guard decided to fire off a couple of rounds at a bird.
Then a scent reached him and he froze. It was the smell of men’s cologne or soap. Someone either was close by or had been close by just recently.
“Someone’s out here,” he whispered into his throat mike.
A minute or so later he reached the edge of the jungle. Ahead, he could see man dressed in camouflage pants and a black T-shirt, head tilted down and tightly focused on his hands as they rolled something. Lyons stared for another few seconds and realized the guard was rolling a joint or a cigarette.
“Got a guard out here, rolling a joint,” he whispered.
“Toss a ham sandwich at him,” Schwarz replied. “He’ll forget all about us.”
Lyons suppressed a grin. Reaching down to the ground, he picked up a rock about the size of a baked potato and threw it to his left. Leaves rustled as it flew through the air and bounced off a tree. The guard whipped his head toward the sound and stared for thirty seconds or so. Finally he muttered something under his breath and slipped the ingredients for his joint into a clear plastic sandwich bag, which he then pocketed.
Bringing around his AK-47, the guard moved into the woods a few yards from Lyons and began walking toward where he’d heard the noise. Lyons slipped a knife from his belt and crept up behind the guy, trying to bridge the gap between them while making as little noise as possible. Within seconds, he struck. His arm snaked out and he wrapped it around the guard’s neck and jerked him hard off his feet, robbing him of leverage he’d need to fight back. Lyons stabbed the blade’s tip into the side of the guard’s neck and sliced outward, tearing a wide gash in his throat.
Once the guy stopped struggling, Lyons let him fall to the ground.
As he turned, he saw that another of Escobar’s people had come up behind him. The guard had his Kalashnikov held snug against his waist and he was preparing to shoot.
Lyons had no time to think. He threw the knife. It sliced through the air and buried itself in the guy’s throat. He stiffened and his finger tightened on the trigger. A burst of 7.62 mm shredders lashed out from the rifle and punched through the air to Schwarz’s right before the guard’s body finally realized it was dead and collapsed.
“What the hell?” Schwarz asked.
Lyons keyed his mike. “Almost got shot, but I’m okay. Took the guy out.”
“We have to assume they heard that.”
“Right. Proceed as planned.”
“We’d planned on a silent entry.”
“All right, improvise.”
Lyons moved out from the dense vegetation, rolled up on the fence and began snipping through the links with a hand cutter. They were at the northwest end of the property, which left some distance between them and the main building.
Schwarz emerged from the jungle a dozen or so yards away, brandishing his M-4 and scanning for threats. He moved close to Lyons, covering him while he worked on the fence.
Once Lyons finished with the fence, he slipped through it, brought around his M-4 and returned the favor to Schwarz by covering him.
Schwarz had just made it through the hole in the fence when a pair of men came into view, jogging toward the Able Team warriors, their assault rifles blazing. Lyons fired the grenade launcher into the air. The round flew up, arced and crashed back to earth, blowing up just behind the running men. Countless bits of razor-sharp metal shredded the gunners’ backs, legs and skulls. Both were dead before they reached the ground. Lyons broke open the launcher and thumbed another fragmentation round into it as he rose to his feet and caught up with Schwarz, who already was making a beeline for the main building.
After studying the satellite photos, the pair had decided it was most likely Blancanales was inside that building. They’d start there and, if they couldn’t find him, they’d tear the rest of the camp apart. Escobar was about to see Scorched Earth tactics in action.
* * *
AS THEY NEARED the building, Schwarz heard the buzzing sound of an engine to his right. He whipped his head in that direction and spotted a pair of ATVs shooting out from behind a nearby building. The twin vehicles launched into wide turns and bore down on the Stony Man warriors. Each vehicle carried two people, a driver and a guy wielding a gun. The shooters were unloading their pistols, though the rounds flew wide of their targets because they were being jostled as the ATVs rolled over bumps and holes in the ground.
Schwarz fired his M-4 in a wide horizontal arc. The initial swath cut through the ATV nearest the Stony Man warriors, bullets ripping a ragged line across the driver’s chest. The guy’s fingers uncurled from the handlebars and his dead form began to slump sideways. A microsecond later the front wheel struck a rock, which caused the ATV to launch into a hard right turn. The vehicle overturned and rolled. The dead driver was thrown in one direction, arms spinning like windmills as he sailed through the air, before flesh and bone collided against hard-packed earth.
The shooter, blood streaming from beneath his hairline and into his face, pushed himself up from the ground with one hand and squeezed off a couple of shots from his pistol. The Stony Man warrior stitched the guy from right groin to left shoulder with another volley.
The second ATV spun around and knifed a path toward them. The shooter on the back of the vehicle apparently had emptied his pistol and was scrambling to reload his depleted weapon.
Lyons’s M-4 cut loose with a sustained barrage of autofire. The bullets sparked against the handlebars and headlights and savaged the driver’s torso, but didn’t change the vehicle’s trajectory. Lyons gave Schwarz a hard shove in the left biceps that sent him stumbling backward. Lyons dived to the left, where he pounded into the ground. The Able Team leader rolled and brought himself up in a sitting position, spraying the guy on the back of the ATV with a storm of bullets as the vehicle passed, killing him.
Lyons grimaced as he rose. His elbows and knees stung from striking the ground, though elbow-and knee-pads had absorbed much of the impact.
Schwarz hauled himself to standing and brushed dirt from the front of his shirt. He looked at Lyons and grinned.
“Sore, old man?” he asked.
“This old man just saved your ass.”
“Hey, thanks. Prune juice cocktails for everyone.”
“Damn kids,” Lyons muttered.
“Should we hit ’em again?”
“Hell, yeah.”
* * *
WHEN HE HEARD the first pops of gunfire coming from outside the building, Escobar looked at a couple of his gunners and gestured at a pair of double doors leading from the gymnasium. “Check it,” he snapped.
The men nodded and ran for the exit.
Escobar turned to Boudri, one of the senior Iranians. At least outwardly he seemed unfazed by the gunfire.
“We go this way,” Escobar said, jerking his head to the far end of the gymnasium. Boudri and his entourage of half a dozen high-ranking Iranians nodded their agreement and fell in beside their host.
It galled Escobar to turn away from the gunfire. It wasn’t that he hated to leave his men behind; he just didn’t want to run from a fight. He wasn’t a coward, he assured himself. His every instinct called on him to run toward the shooting. But he knew he had to wait. His first priority was to evacuate Boudri and his people from the building and get them to the helipad. Normally he would have held off on evacuating them. After the past several days, however, he knew he at least needed to be even more cautious than usual, especially with a captured American agent under his ro
of. He’d escort them to the helipad and have the pilot warm up the engines, just in case.
When they reached a single steel door on the far wall, Escobar punched a code into a keypad on the wall. The lock released and he yanked open the door. He gestured for the men to pass through. Boudri nodded for one of his men to go through first. The guy did and then a few seconds later, Boudri followed, the rest of his entourage filing in behind him like baby ducklings trailing their mother.
Escobar was last through the door. He shut and locked it. They were gathered on the landing when he turned. He pointed to a set of stairs to his right that led down into the ground.
“It’s two flights,” he said. “Follow them and you’ll end up at a tunnel. It leads to another set of stairs. Climb those and you’ll end up inside the hangar. The pilot will escort you to the helipad and fly you out of here.”
Boudri eyed him with suspicion. “You’re not going with us?”
“No,” Escobar said, shaking his head. “I’ll catch up with you later. I have things to deal with here.”
Boudri regarded him for a few more seconds. Finally he shook his head in agreement, brushed past Escobar and descended the stairs with the others following him.
Escobar stared after them briefly before turning and heading back into the gymnasium. Pulling the .38 from inside his jacket, he crossed the large area, weaving between a couple of boxing rings, weight machines and other equipment.
Questions tumbled through his mind as he moved. Who was doing the shooting? Was it Vargas? He couldn’t picture it. While he knew she was tough and she had ample motivation to go on the offensive, he couldn’t see her being dumb enough to take on a camp full of armed people by herself unless she was desperate. That would be suicide.
Perez? The guy had the combat chops to launch a counterstrike and probably the balls to try it. By now, though, he shouldn’t be in any shape to walk, let alone fight. Escobar had seen Javier’s work before. If he’d been able to ply his talents, there was no way Perez was even vertical.
If Javier had started to work on him...
Escobar produced his cell phone and speed-dialed one of the security guards assigned to Perez. The phone rang a half dozen times, his jaw clenching a little tighter with each tone.
He ended the call and dialed two more of the guards assigned to Perez, neither of whom answered. He swore under his breath and started for the stairwell leading into the basement. As he moved, he called Vidal, a former Mexican army captain and one of his security team bosses.
Vidal answered on the second ring. Escobar could hear automatic weapons fire in the background.
“Yeah, boss?”
“The guys watching Perez—you heard from them?”
“No.”
“That seem strange to you?”
Vidal hesitated, as though surprised by the question.
“Hell, yeah, it seems weird.”
“Which is why you have no one looking into it, right?” Escobar killed the connection and dropped the phone into his hip pocket. Creeping through the basement door, he moved slowly down the steps, the .38 pointed in front of him. No sound emanated from the basement. By the time he reached the last couple of steps, the basement hallway came into view. One of his guards lay facedown on the floor, blood pooling beneath his body. The door leading into Perez’s cell hung open and light spilled from inside.
Exiting the steps, he moved past the fallen guard and slipped into the holding room, where more carnage awaited him. He found Javier and the remaining guards, their bodies ripped apart by bullets, the walls splattered red with blood. As he looked the room over, something else caught his eye. On a white island of tile, between two rivers of red, something glinted at him. Scowling, he crossed the room and, careful to not touch the blood, bent at the knees until he could reach the object. Though he recognized it instantly as a woman’s earring, a corner of his mind still denied what he was seeing until he picked it up between his left thumb and forefinger and brought it in for a closer look. He recognized the curve of the white-gold setting, the shape of the diamond, and it stoked rage in him.
Six months ago he’d given a pair of earrings to Vargas during a weekend sailing trip to Acapulco.
She’d been in this room. She’d helped Perez.
He knew in his gut she’d been working against him, had known it for a couple of months, even if he hadn’t known specifically who she worked for.
He’d put off dealing with it and it’d bit him in the ass.
Well, he’d deal with it now. He’d hunt her down and shoot her like a dog.
Then he’d do the same thing to Perez.
Wheeling around, he headed for the stairs. Escobar still believed she was too damn smart to willingly throw herself up against a small army of his men. For whatever reason, she’d helped Perez and they were together, he thought. But they had to be running for the helicopter, not making a last stand.
Escobar mapped it all out in his mind. He’d travel back through the gym, slip through the underground tunnel and show up on the other side of the compound, where he could get the drop on them.
* * *
LYONS AND SCHWARZ searched a couple of the smaller buildings on the property. One contained two more ATVs, a workbench and a couple of tool chests. The other was packed full of riding lawnmowers, hand tools, burlap bags filled with seeds and other landscaping gear.
When those searches yielded nothing, they moved to the large building situated in the northeast corner of the property. While they’d searched the other buildings, a pair of Escobar’s thugs had stepped outside, but stayed close to the front door.
The Able Team warriors were crouched behind the repair facility, sizing up the sentries. A waist-high concrete barrier provided partial cover for the hardmen.
“Give me ten seconds,” Schwarz said. “Then start shooting.”
Lyons nodded his understanding. Schwarz turned and walked away from Lyons, edging along the shed’s exterior. When he reached the end of the building, he turned the corner and disappeared from view.
When Lyons finished his count, he wrapped himself around the side of the building, aimed the M-4 and fired off a couple of bursts at the guards. A round bit into the upper arm of one of the guards and caused him to yelp in pain, while the other rounds flew wide.
The other guard cut loose with his own SMG, spraying the contents of its magazine in a wide arc. The rounds hammered into the building protecting Lyons and chewed through the wood planks making up its exterior. Once the guy emptied his weapon, he dropped down behind the barrier with his injured comrade.
Lyons came around the edge of the building and cut loose with another firestorm from the M-4. In the midst of the assault rifle’s chatter, he heard a popping sound and he ducked back behind the building, knowing what was about to happen. A heartbeat later he heard a loud explosion in the direction of the hardmen he’d been exchanging shots with. He peered around the corner and saw smoke rising from behind the barrier.
Hauling himself to his full height, he broke from his cover and met up with Schwarz, who was kneeling and thumbing a fresh round into his grenade launcher.
When they reached the main building, they stepped over the remains of the two gunners, moved to the door and went inside. The first room they encountered was large with high ceilings, almost like a lobby. Lyons gestured at a pair of corpses sprawled on the ground. He shot Schwarz a look.
“Blancanales?” he asked.
“Unless they’ve become a suicide cult,” Schwarz said.
“We should be so lucky.”
As they continued into the building, a corridor opened to their right. Lyons entered it first, followed by Schwarz. They found a half dozen or so rooms filled with rows of desks and white boards fixed to the walls.
“Classrooms,” Lyons muttered.
In an adjoining hallway, they found several small offices filled with desks, computers and papers, but no people.
“Probably a gold mine of information in here,” Schwarz said.
“I’m more focused on the gold mine of targets,” Lyons said.
“If Pol left any,” Schwarz said. “I think these morons have a tiger by the tail.”
They followed another corridor that led into the gymnasium. Lyons went through the door first and spotted three guards standing around a steel door on the far wall. When they saw him, they raised their weapons and began firing. Lyons darted to the left, spraying autofire at the thugs as he moved. One of the shooters got caught in his spray-and-pray barrage.
Schwarz, in the meantime, hosed down the other two with a relentless volley that punched into their torsos and legs, causing them to jerk wildly under the storm of gunfire.
When the last one fell, the Stony Man warriors cautiously crossed the room and looked at the steel door, now nicked in several places by bullets. Schwarz grabbed the handle, pulled at it, but it didn’t budge.
“Looked like they were guarding this,” he said.
“What is it?” Lyons asked.
“Door.”
“I know it’s a door. Where does it go?”
Schwarz jerked his chin at the dead guards. “Ask them.”
Lyons glared at him then turned his attention first to the door, then to the keypad next to it.
“We need a code to open it,” he said.
“Yeah, we do.”
“Which means we keep searching the building,” he said.
“Right.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Abaigael Katz darted across the manicured lawn toward the helipad, her feet thudding against the trimmed grass. A black Sikorsky 76 helicopter stood on the helipad, waiting, the sunlight gleaming on the craft’s windshield. Nearby was the large hangar that housed Escobar’s planes and helicopters when they needed maintenance.
The bay door was pulled shut and the Mossad agent guessed the mechanics were holed up inside the air-conditioned office. She looked around for the pilot, but didn’t see him. The realization caused panic to well up inside her. Her chest grew tight and she had to force herself to pull in deep breaths. She couldn’t fly the helicopter. And, without the pilot, she couldn’t leave.
Revolution Device Page 16
