“This is Tango. You’re clear to move, Delta.”
Caine’s voice came back. “Roger, Tango. Moving now.”
Caine slid along the wall of the building in a crouch and quickly glanced through one of the small glass panes in the wooden door.
His voice came over the mic, a barely audible whisper. “Delta here. Hostage identified. No hostiles visible. Attempting entry now.”
Pietro watched Caine try the knob. It must have been locked. As Caine eased a pry bar out of the tool holster strapped to his thigh, Pietro quickly scanned Post Three. The door on the first floor of the building was opening.
“Delta, this is Tango. Someone just came out of Post Three. He’s just walked into the yard between the buildings. You’re okay so far. Looks like he’s taking a smoke. Hold for a minute.”
Caine froze, crouched in front of the door, waiting for Pietro to give him the go-ahead.
“Tango here, continue to hold.”
Vlasky’s voice cut in. “This is Zulu, we have a problem. A spotter in Post One is looking in your—Delta, he’s got you. Alpha, what’s the call? This goes public in two seconds.”
Vlasky voice hardened as he queried Ricard.
Ricard’s’ voice came over the mic, steel in his tone.
“This is Alpha. Get the hostage, now, Delta. Zulu and Tango, engage and destroy enemy.”
CHAPTER
FIFTY-SIX
Travis County, Texas
December 8, 1999 / Wednesday / 4:00 a.m.
Andrea was familiar with the kind of chair she was chained to. The seat of the chair was connected to the base by a giant steel screw. If the seat was twisted in one direction, the chair lowered; if it was twisted in the other, it rose. Andrea started to rotate the chair around and around in circles, steadily increasing the height of the seat. She was hoping the seat would separate from the heavy base when she reached the end of the spiral. Although she would still be connected to the top half of the chair, she would be able to escape the building.
Progress had been slow, because the iron screw was old and rusted. Every turn required all her strength. Twice she’d reached a point where the chair would no longer turn. Each time she had been forced to rotate the chair a half turn backward and then whirl it back around, over and over again, smashing into the sticking point. When she finally broke through each jam, she’d almost cried with relief.
Sweat was pouring down her face. Every second she expected to hear the sounds of gunfire signaling John Caine’s death. Suddenly the chair stopped turning. She rotated backward and tried again, but hit the same sticking point. She jammed her feet against the base of the chair to prevent it from moving, rotated backward and then whirled back in the opposite direction in a frustrated rage, pushing upward with her legs at the same time.
For an instant she didn’t realize what was happening. She shot up and forward, free of the heavy base of the chair. Although she desperately tried to avoid falling, her legs wouldn’t respond quickly enough. She twisted as she went down, trying to avoid landing on her face. The top half of the chair, which was still connected to the handcuffs, hit the wooden floor first. The right side of her body followed, slamming into the hard oak floor. The crash was deafening against the background of the utter silence outside. As she struggled to a sitting position, Andrea knew with terrible certainty that someone would come to investigate the noise. Anders would come. She had to get out of there.
Andrea struggled awkwardly to her feet and shuffled to the window beside the door, bent over at the waist by the chair. She looked out the crack between the shade and the window frame across the vacant yard to the building where Anders and the other men were located. The yard was empty. Thank God. Andrea shuffled over to the door, praying that it wasn’t locked from the outside, and slowly turned the doorknob. She held her breath, as she pushed the door outward. It opened.
She looked through the open crack to the yard beyond. It wasn’t empty any longer. Anders was standing in the middle of the yard, lighting a cigarette. Andrea’s breath caught in her throat. After lighting the cigarette, Anders took a long drag and started to turn toward her. Then the night exploded.
A guttural roar bellowed outside the compound, followed by screams of pain at the other end of the compound. Anders spun around and looked over the wall, trying to find the source of the mechanical clamor. Then he turned in confusion, when he heard the screams of pain.
Andrea watched Anders’s back. He seemed transfixed by whatever he was staring at. Then the windows in the second floor of the building to his right disintegrated and Anders threw himself to the ground. A hail of projectiles ripped into the side of the structure with impossible rapidity. Andrea stared at the nightmare, as if she were watching a terrifying movie. Somewhere in the back of her mind she realized that someone was shooting at the building from outside the compound: someone with an incredibly powerful machine gun.
She heard a man inside the house scream “Get down!”
The deadly rain of steel continued unabated, and then an explosion rocked the entire building, and night became day. The force of the blast slammed the door in front of her closed. Andrea scrambled backward in shock, toward the safety of the desk on the opposite side of the room. She hesitated when she reached the desk, trying to decide whether to hide behind it, or to go back to the door and try to escape. What’s going on?
Travis County, Texas
December 8, 1999 / Wednesday / 4:13 a.m.
Anders was sitting on an old wooden chair in the darkened second-floor room of the guest house. The chair was uncomfortable and the cup of coffee he’d just poured from the thermos tasted burned, stale, and lukewarm. He was tired and cold, and he wanted a smoke, but Paquin had forbidden anyone to leave the room unless they received a direct order from him. Smoking had also been forbidden because it would reveal their position.
Anders looked over at Cochrane. He was sitting in a chair about two yards from one of the windows, staring into the dark through a pair of night-vision binoculars.
“Has he come out from behind the hill yet?”
“Not yet. Must be taking his pregame crap,” Cochrane said with a chuckle.
“Fuck this. We should just go out there and kill the son of a bitch. I’m sick and tired of this goddamn waiting.”
“Won’t be long now, chief. This dude—”
The crash brought Anders to his feet so quickly that his coffee spilled on the floor. The noise came from the building where the woman was being held.
“I’ll check it out,” Anders said and walked to the door without waiting for an answer. He wanted to get out of the building before Severino came out of the bathroom. Severino wouldn’t let Anders anywhere near the girl. Cochrane just grunted and continued to stare out the darkened window through the binoculars.
When he reached the dirt yard that separated the guest house from the storage building where the woman was located, Anders stopped to light a cigarette. Screw Paquin and his rules. He drew in a long drag and turned to walk over to the other building. The angry growl from outside the compound froze him in place. He stared over the wall of the compound trying to understand what was happening. Then he heard the sound of shattering glass and a scream of pain coming from the western end of the compound.
Anders whirled around. He could just see Vargas’s position in the dim light. As he watched in stunned silence, someone dove off the roof of the three-story building and crashed to the ground below. The man lay on the ground unmoving, as the building behind him was scoured by a series of small explosions. For a moment, Anders didn’t understand what he was seeing and then it slammed into him. Someone’s blowing the shit out of that place with some kind of goddamn machine gun!
Suddenly the assault on the other end of the compound stopped. A fraction of a second later, hundreds of high-velocity projectiles ripped into the building next to him, dropping glass and pieces of wood on his head. Anders threw himself to the ground and struggled to press his body lower into
the dirt as the hail of lead walked across the face of the building above his head. A second later, the white-hot missiles found the three propane tanks on the eastern side of the house. The resulting explosion hurled flaming steel shrapnel in every direction and illuminated the compound like the midday sun.
CHAPTER
FIFTY-SEVEN
Travis County, Texas
December 8, 1999 / Wednesday / 4:15 a.m.
The frontal onslaught against Station Three stunned Paquin. What was Caine doing? A direct attack only made sense if he assumed the woman was already dead. For a moment, Paquin feared that a special weapons unit from the FBI might be assaulting the compound, but then he rejected the idea. The police or FBI would announce themselves first and demand their surrender before they attacked. Paquin grabbed the radio to call Vargas, but an incoming call from Station One cut him off. It was Cochrane.
“Control … he’s tearing the shit out of this place!”
Cochrane was screaming into the intercom, but Paquin had difficulty hearing him over the cacophony of background sound. He could hear the bullets slamming into the walls and furniture, and the sound of breaking glass. Severino was screaming something unintelligible over and over again. Cochrane started to yell something, when an explosion cut off the signal.
Paquin ran to the window and stared through the small gap in the curtains at the eastern end of the compound. A pillar of flame was reaching into the sky, illuminating the entire compound. As he watched, a piece of flaming steel crashed into the courtyard outside the window. Paquin stared at the burning piece of metal without comprehension for a moment and then it hit him. The shooter had hit the propane tanks on the south side of Station Three. They had to take out that gun position.
Travis County, Texas
December 8, 1999 / Wednesday / 4:15 a.m.
The two former Mexican Federales were resting against the three-foot adobe wall that ringed the flat roof of the main house when the shooting began. An M-16 was resting against the wall beside the smaller man, Arturo. The second man, Luis, was holding a Panther Long Range 308 rifle, with a Leupold scope. When the C9 opened up, the two men just watched the devastating attack unfold before them, in shock. Neither man made any effort to return fire.
When the propane tanks next to Station One exploded, the two men threw themselves flat against the roof and lay there unmoving. Arturo, who was closest to the radio, suddenly realized a voice was screaming at them over the radio.
“Station Two, this is Control. Respond now!”
Arturo crawled over to the receiver. “Arturo here.”
Paquin’s hard voice came through the speaker.
“Can you see the source of the fire?”
Arturo answered quickly and without thinking.
“No, sir.”
“Use the glasses and find it, now!”
Arturo crawled across the roof and grabbed the binoculars that were lying beside his M-16. He eased his head over the wall and stared in the direction of the fire. He could see white flashes coming from a hill about two hundred yards outside the perimeter of the compound.
“It’s coming from the hill. The hill to the southeast,” Arturo said after lowering his head below the top of the wall.
“Engage that position. Do you understand me? Fire on that position!” Paquin yelled through the intercom.
“Si, si!”
Arturo belly-crawled over to Luis and grabbed him by the arm. Luis yanked his head around, his face a mask of fear.
“What the fuck you doin’, man!”
“We gotta take out that shooter. You hear me? We gotta take out that fuckin’ shooter!”
Luis tightened his grip on the Panther.
“I’ll get that fucker. He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with.”
Luis put the 308 against his shoulder and sighted in on the machine gun position. There was a distant crack outside the compound and Luis’s body was thrown backward as if he’d been hit by a car. Arturo looked over at the body. There was a hole in the middle of Luis’s chest about two inches wide. Arturo dove onto his stomach, just as he heard a second crack in the distance. The missile raced over his head and punched a hole through the wall on the opposite side of the roof.
Arturo grabbed the radio and started screaming hysterically.
“Fuck me, man! They killed Luis. They blew him totally away. They got some kind of cannon. Do you—”
A hail of bullets from the C9 began to scour the top of the wall in front of Arturo, throwing bits of adobe all over the roof. Arturo dropped the radio and crawled frantically over to the hole in the roof that led down to the second floor. He hesitated for a moment at the opening, struggling to get on the ladder, without raising his profile. The sound of a massive explosion eliminated his hesitation. He threw himself face-first through the opening.
Travis County, Texas
December 8, 1999 / Wednesday / 4:18 a.m.
Paquin was trying to raise Vargas on the radio when a second blast rocked the building. He instinctively dropped to his knees, grabbing the Berretta on the table as he went down. When Arturo plunged down the stairway into the room to his left, Paquin spun around, ready to take out the intruder. It took him a second to recognize the Mexican. His face was covered in sweat and dust, and there was a frantic, hunted look in his eyes.
Paquin ignored him and reached for the radio on the desk. “Vargas, this is Control. Come in.”
When Paquin looked over at the Federale again, the man was pulling open one of the heavy velvet curtains on the south side of the room. Paquin reacted instantly.
“No! You’ll draw their—”
The entire window suddenly exploded inward, high-velocity bullets hollowing out one window and then moving on to the next. The incoming missiles raced through the gaping holes and destroyed the array of computer equipment and camera monitors sitting on the command table in the center of the room. Now they were blind. Paquin glanced around the corner of the desk and saw Arturo’s lifeless body on the floor in front of the shattered window.
One of the shooters outside the compound must have suspected that someone was hiding behind the large chair now visible through the shattered windows, because two heavy projectiles punched through the chair and blew fist-size holes in the wall just above Paquin’s head.
“Scheiss,” Paquin growled.
Caine had not come alone. There were at least two or three other men in the force assaulting the compound, if not a full squad. Where had he found the support and military hardware? Caine was no longer the quarry; he was the hunter.
Paquin knew that he had to reduce and centralize his defensive perimeter or his assets would be destroyed by the attacking force. Most of all, he had to retain control of the woman. That was the key to this fight, maybe even their survival. He tried Vargas on the radio again.
“Station Three, come in.”
Vargas’s voice came back. “Station Three here.”
“Station Three, redeploy to the main house, now.”
“Roger that, Control. Miguel is dead. Juan is wounded, but he can move. We’ll come in the door on the east side. Station Three, out.”
Paquin tried to contact Cochrane again.
“Station One, this is Control, come in.”
Cochrane’s voice came back in a whisper, followed by a series of coughs.
“Station One.”
“Station One, get the woman and bring her to the main house. Use the rear door.”
There was no response.
“Cochrane, did you hear me?”
Paquin could hear Cochrane hacking in the background. Then he answered in a hoarse voice.
“Yes, sir.”
“What is your situation?”
“The … the house … Station One is on fire … from the blast. There’s a lot of smoke. I’m … I’m just inside the back door.”
“Where’s Severino?”
“I don’t know. I think the blast got him. I can’t see shit in all this smoke.”
“Where’s Anders?”
“He left to check on the woman before the shooting started. He hasn’t come back.”
Paquin’s face turned white with rage. He’d made it clear to Anders that he was to stay away from the woman. They needed her alive, especially now.
“Cochrane, get the woman back here, now. That is your only priority. Kill anyone that gets in your way, and that includes Anders. Are we clear?”
“Clear, sir.”
CHAPTER
FIFTY-EIGHT
Travis County, Texas
December 8, 1999 / Wednesday / 4:16 a.m.
Caine could hear the C9 pouring rounds into the compound as he stood up, dropped the pry bar, and pulled the MP-5 into position. He stepped back and kicked the door just above the knob. The door exploded inward and he went through the opening in rush. He heard movement to his left and swung the MP-5 in the direction of the attacker. The room was dark, but Caine could see that something was wrong with the assailant rushing at him. The figure was bent over at the waist and moved awkwardly. This bought his attacker another second of life. Then Caine saw the hair and recognized the body shape. It was Andrea.
“Andrea, it’s John, John Caine,” Caine said in an urgent whisper as he pointed the gun at the ceiling and pressed his other hand against her oncoming shoulder to slow her down.
“Andrea, it’s me!” Caine said, in a louder, more urgent whisper, when she started to struggle.
Andrea stumbled to a stop and looked up. Her face was tearstained, dusty, and, to Caine, beautiful.
“Where did you—”
Andrea’s voice came out cracked and loud enough to carry outside the room.
“Shh. We have to get out of here, now,” Caine said, stepping past her. He reached into the black nylon case strapped to his thigh and pulled out a pair of wire cutters. He cut the chain between the handcuffs and lowered the seat of the chair to the floor.
Andrea wheeled around and was in his arms. Caine held her tightly. He kept the MP-5 pointed at the still-open front door as he lowered his head and kissed her hair.
Helius Legacy Page 29
