If, on the other hand, they reneged on the deal, no one but the kids would be safe from harm.
The kidnapper’s four-vehicle motorcade traveled bumper-to-bumper at a consistent forty miles per hour, making Jonathan think that they’d done this before. Perhaps they were the security team for Cristos Silva and his deputies.
While Roxie kept them in view and continually broadcast Roman’s coordinates, Jonathan was concerned about her battery life, so they stayed as close to the motorcade as they could.
“I counted ten bad guys,” Boxers said from the driver’s seat.
“Sounds about right,” Jonathan said.
“I didn’t bother to count,” Dawkins said. From the backseat, his job was to monitor the Roxie feed. “I want to know why they started out so early.”
“To catch us setting up early,” Jonathan said. “They figure we might be setting a trap.” He chuckled. “Which is only reasonable, I suppose, because that’s what we’re going to do.”
“Maybe we should take them while they’re cooling their heels,” Boxers said. “Their guards will be down.”
Big Guy had raised an interesting point. Depending on where they set up to while away the hours between now and the handoff, maybe that would, indeed, be the best time to get the kids. “If they separate the kids from the adults,” Jonathan mused aloud, “or if they cover them with just a guard or two, you might have a point. We’ll keep the option open.”
Boxers filled out the rest of the plan that was forming in his head. “They’re not going to want to wait around in a very public place. Too much chance for the kids to make a fuss or for them to be seen.”
“The cops wouldn’t dream of interfering,” Dawkins observed.
“Still, a crowd is a crowd. I could be wrong, but we’ll see. We’d go in dark, using night vision. Pop-pop-pop, all done.”
“I think you might have skipped a couple of steps there, Big Guy, but if they’re kind enough to do exactly what we’d like them to do, we’re all set.”
“Oh, shit!” Dawkins yelled from the backseat. “Stop, stop, stop. Pull off the road.”
“God damn it!” Boxers spat as he leaned on the brakes. “What the hell!”
“They’re turning around,” Dawkins said. They’re coming back at us. Maybe a half-mile out.”
“Kill your lights and pull off the road, Big Guy,” Jonathan commanded.
Boxers cut the headlights, and Dawkins slammed the laptop shut. As their world went dark, the glow of headlights bloomed on the horizon, the only headlights they’d seen since setting out fifteen minutes ago.
“Thor, pull the NVGs out of the bag. Big Guy, duck down.” Jonathan and Boxers nearly bumped heads as they both bent toward the center. This was not a contingency Jonathan had anticipated.
As the motorcade approached, the lights on the lead car flashed bright, beaming sharp shadows against the headliner.
“They’re checking us out,” Boxers said.
“At least they didn’t stop,” Jonathan said. “We were defenseless.”
“And we were made,” Boxers said. “They’ll be keeping an eye out for us.”
“Think it was a trap of their own?” Dawkins asked. “Trying to draw us out and show ourselves?”
“If so, then it worked,” Jonathan said. “Pass out the NVGs, Thor. We’re going to go dark for a while. Is Roxie still on them?”
“Affirmative.” He handed up the night vision goggles, then reopened the laptop and toggled down the brightness of the screen.
Jonathan and Big Guy settled the arrays over their heads, and the darkness turned green. Without a word, Boxers yanked the wheel to the left and U-turned to head west.
Jonathan’s earbud popped. “Scorpion, Mother Hen.”
“Jesus,” Boxers said. “How does she know?”
Venice had a bizarre sixth sense for when operations took an odd turn. “Go ahead, Mother Hen.”
“Sitrep, please.”
Jonathan had deliberately not told her that they’d had eyes on Roman. It wasn’t pessimism, exactly, but he worried about getting her hopes up too high, only to have something go terribly wrong in the end.
Jonathan keyed his mic. “It’s a little complicated at the moment, but we think we know where the PC is.” At this stage, Jonathan didn’t like using real names—particularly when he’d formed a bond. Again, it traced to the possibility of things going bad. When an op went hot, the identities of the players didn’t matter. All that mattered was the plan, execution, and outcome. To make any of that personal only muddied everything.
“His name is Roman. And you think you know, or you know?”
Jonathan felt his cheeks flush as anger flashed. “Scorpion out,” he said.
“Wait!” she pleaded. “Don’t shut me out. Please don’t do that.”
Jonathan took a deep breath and looked to Boxers for help. “Oh, hell, no,” Big Guy said. “You’re on your own for this fight.”
Jonathan keyed his mic. “Just the facts, right? You’re too emotional. Of course you are. You have to be emotional. And if you want us to do our jobs, you need to accept that we don’t have the luxury of emotion. I am not going to give you a real-time blow-by-blow, Mother Hen. I will reach out if I need info or intel from you, but other than that, you need to trust us. You need to trust me. Now, get off the net and stay off unless you’ve got news I need to hear. Scorpion out.”
He expected pushback but was pleased when it didn’t come.
“Mama Alexander’s going to give you a spanking for the way you spoke to her daughter,” Boxers said.
“Won’t be the first time,” Jonathan said, thinking back to his childhood. “That woman has mad skills with a hairbrush.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
“Roxie’s dying,” Dawkins reported from the backseat. “Power level down to five percent.”
“She’ll be heading back to us, then,” Boxers advised. “She’s programmed to come home when she gets below five percent power.”
“Will she find the truck?” Dawkins asked.
“Yeah, she’ll find it,” Boxers replied. There was real sadness in his tone. “She’ll try to land next to the computer controlling her, but no one anticipated that computer to be going forty miles per hour. She’ll kill herself.”
“Hey, Big Guy,” Jonathan said. “It’s a machine. You talk about it like—” The look he got from Boxers froze his words. There were times when it was okay to poke the bear, but this was not one of them. And what the hell? People often said the Boxers was a machine. Maybe it was true love.
At this point, they didn’t really need her anymore. Driving blacked out, they’d been able to pull back up to within a quarter mile of the motorcade. The road was very flat, though curvy. With NVGs in place, the headlights and taillights of the four SUVs were easily followed.
“I think they’re headed for the beach, Boss,” Boxers said.
“And then what?” Dawkins asked.
“The Pacific is big and deep,” Boxers said. “I can’t think of a better place to dump a couple of bodies.” His head twitched around to Jonathan, as if he’d just heard the words he’d uttered. “Sorry, Scorpion.”
“Don’t be,” Jonathan said. “Never apologize for stating the obvious.”
“So, they’re just going to walk away from a couple million bucks?” Dawkins asked. He seemed shocked.
“These guys don’t need money,” Jonathan said. “Not at their level. Shit, they get a spiff off of every business transaction in the country. It’s about the power. Something spooked them.”
“Must’ve been something big,” Boxers said.
“What worries me,” Jonathan said, “is that it’s more complicated than just killing the kids and dumping their bodies. They could have done that anywhere. They could’ve shot them in the barn and driven them in the morning if they didn’t want to simply bury them on-site.”
“It could be to ship them to somebody else,” Dawkins said. “Smugglers cruise these waters lik
e no one even cares. Because they don’t. Maybe they’ve sold the kids to a higher bidder.”
“Nobody’s going to pay millions of bucks for a couple of juvie prostitutes,” Boxers said.
“Doesn’t matter,” Jonathan said. “The reason is unimportant. What’s scary is the possibility that they’re joining a larger group of bad guys. That’ll be a lot more guns and a lot more unknowns.”
Something heavy hit the roof of the Durango, startling the shit out of all of them.
They said it together: “Roxie.”
* * *
For the last mile or so, the road had narrowed considerably, and they seemed to be following the bank of a meandering river. The air smelled of salt and diesel fuel. The motorcade had slowed to under twenty miles per hour, then it stopped, only to start again and stop again.
“I think they’re lost,” Boxers said.
“I say they’re looking for something,” Jonathan countered. “Either way, I think it’s all about to come to a head.” As he spoke, he shrugged into the sling of his M27. “Here’s how I want to do this. Radios on VOX, set to tach channel two.”
“You don’t want Mother Hen to listen in?” Boxers asked.
“Not to this one, no. That would be torture for everyone. If we need her, we can switch back.” Unlike their main channel, the tactical channels were not tuned to any satellite or repeater signal. That limited their range to just a couple of miles, maybe less if the terrain didn’t cooperate.
“I’m not sure what we’re getting into,” Jonathan continued, “but don’t lose sight of the mission. We’re here to get Roman. He is the mission. Ciara Kelly, too, but she is a hard second priority. Are we clear on that?”
“You’re going to leave a little girl behind?” Dawkins asked. “I don’t think I can do that.”
“Listen to the words, Thor,” Jonathan said. “If we can rescue her, then, yes, absolutely we will. But we will not sacrifice Roman to make that happen.” Every operation needed to have a clear purpose. Once the shooting started—and how could it not in this case—it was too easy to get distracted. You get angry at the guy who’s shooting at you. You see or hear something that needs attention. If those things need to be resolved in order to move forward the mission objectives, then you had to do what you had to do. But you never let those things get in the way of rescuing the precious cargo.
“Maximum load-out,” Jonathan continued. “Whatever you can carry. And each of us brings an extra vest with plates. When we get the kids, we cover them up and get the hell out. Thor, pull those out of the bag now, please. When the cars stop, we want to be ready to go.”
“What’s the exfil plan?” Boxers asked. Getting their hands on the kids wouldn’t mean much if they couldn’t get away.
“We’re riding in it unless you have a better idea,” Jonathan said. “If not this vehicle, then one of the others. We throw the kids in and haul ass out of here.”
Boxers made a growling sound. “Whatever happened to the times when we spent days planning this shit?”
Jonathan wasn’t done. “Here’s the thing. We can’t afford a running gunfight on the way out.”
“What are you suggesting?” Dawkins asked.
“I’m suggesting that we settle all bets right here.”
“Just kill them all?”
“Kill ’em or cuff ’em,” Boxers said.
“Think about who they are and what they intend to do,” Jonathan pressed. “What they’ve done. Either we take care of business here, or you and your fellow agents have to deal with it all later.”
He let that sink in before continuing. “We work as a single team, certainly at the beginning. Once we have eyes on Roman, we move hard and fast to rescue him. Anybody with a weapon in their hands dies. Even with suppressors, they’re going to hear pops and see that their buddies are going down. Word is going to spread fast, and we’ll need to move faster. Focus, focus, focus.”
Up ahead, the night sky was bright with artificial light. In the distance, a diesel generator churned. The motorcade stopped and doors opened.
“That’s our cue,” Jonathan said. “The balloon just went up.” He turned the channel selector on his radio to channel two and toggled to VOX. “Radio check.”
Boxers and Dawkins answered in unison.
Now, they could whisper.
They climbed out of the Durango, and Dawkins held out the extra vests. “We only have two extras,” he said.
Jonathan took one of them. “Just the right number,” he said. He pulled off his ballistic helmet long enough to drop the spare over his head to rest atop his own vest, but he didn’t fasten it. He wanted quick access for when he got to Roman. “Big Guy wears custom armor,” he pointed out. “No way he can shrug into that.”
“Got it,” Dawkins said, and he donned the other spare.
“Let’s try to stay along the tree line until we can turn out the lights,” Jonathan said. He led the way toward the river.
Up ahead, people were climbing out of vehicles. Beyond those vehicles, a work crew of five or six men were offloading cardboard boxes of stuff from two small watercraft that looked more suitable for bass fishing than smuggling operations. Rifles had been teepee’d a few feet away, presumably to keep sand out of the actions.
“I think you were right,” Jonathan whispered. “There must be a vessel offshore.” The cardboard boxes were being carried to waiting trucks. The whole thing looked like a bucket brigade, with one worker handing off to another until the boxes were finally deposited into an open flatbed.
“I’ve never actually seen this unfolding in real time,” Boxers whispered.
“Where’s PC One?” Jonathan asked, referring to Roman.
“Looking from behind, I’m not sure I’d know him if I saw him,” Dawkins confessed.
That was a damned interesting point, Jonathan thought. He wasn’t sure he’d recognize him, either.
“I see PC Two,” Boxers said, pointing.
Sure enough, Ciara was flanked between two of the henchmen from the hacienda. Her wrists were cuffed behind her back, and her stooped posture showed terror. Her presence drew leers from the workers along the water.
“Every one of these assholes is armed,” Boxers said. “We need to start shooting soon.”
“Negative,” Jonathan said. “Not until we have eyes on PC One.” He pulled binoculars out of their pouch on his vest and searched the crowd. These guys were hustling, working hard. They had a rhythm to their efforts, a kind of choreography. Solid focus.
Then the rhythm faltered. Far to the left of the ongoing operations, there seemed to be some kind of disturbance. A discussion had started between two of the laborers and one of the henchmen. But the angle was bad. Jonathan couldn’t make out the faces of the players.
There he was. Truthfully, Jonathan recognized the clothes before he noticed the face, but that was definitely Roman. His hands were still pinioned to his sides, and workers were helping him board the second motorboat—the one that apparently had already been offloaded. There was more discussion among the men, then a worker fired up the motor and wheeled the small craft around to the west to head into the Pacific.
“Shit,” Jonathan said. “They’re taking him out to sea. Big Guy, take out the generator.”
Boxers already had his HK 417 pressed into his shoulder. Before Jonathan finished the command, he’d fired two suppressed .30 caliber bullets through the guts of the generator. The machine sparked, then belched flame, and darkness fell over everything.
“Weapons free,” Jonathan said. He snapped his NVGs over his eyes, and the darkness transformed to shades of green. The air seemed alive with a lattice of infrared laser sights from his team’s firearms as the three of them lit up targets that were both blind and terrified.
Jonathan settled on one of the workers offloading the remaining small craft—maybe a hundred yards away—and dropped him with two to the chest. To Jonathan’s left, the others on his team pounded at their own targets.
&nb
sp; “I’m going after the PC-One,” Jonathan said. “Get a vest on PC Two.”
Even in the blackness, the cartel crowd knew they were under attack, but they clearly did not know from where or by whom. They moved in random motions and meaningless directions, reminding Jonathan of activity from a ruptured anthill. Some tried to take cover, some tried to run. A few shot back, but into the darkness, wasting ammunition on trees and humidity.
Jonathan focused on getting to the boat at the shore before it had a chance to escape into the open ocean to follow its mate.
His NVGs gave him the additional advantage of advancing on his enemies in a straight line, rather than zigzagging his steps. That made aiming downrange a much simpler task.
“Easy, Scorpion,” Boxers said in his ear. “You’re getting too far ahead.”
“PC-Two is yours,” Jonathan said. “I’m going for One.”
He double-tapped two people who ran toward the boat and then a third as he scrambled to pull a rifle from the teepee.
He’d closed the distance by half when a bad guy logged a lucky shot that glanced off Jonathan’s chest plate. Had it been full-on, it might have taken him out of the fight. As it was, it spun him to his left and knocked him to his knees.
“Scorpion down!” Boxers yelled.
Jonathan sat back on his heels and leveled his M27 at the shooter who’d nailed him. He shot him in the throat and the chin, and the man dropped into the sand. “I am not down!” Jonathan replied.
“Then quit relaxing and get to work,” Boxers said.
Close behind him, Jonathan heard a heavy thwop and a grunt just before a bad guy he’d never seen dropped dead.
“You’re welcome,” Boxers said.
The targets were thinning out quickly now, as was the pace of return fire. Jonathan saw an unimpeded path now to the transport boat, but he fought the urge to charge toward it. The fact that he was in a hurry didn’t change the fact that he was also in the middle of a battle. He had himself and his team to be concerned about.
“I got her!” Dawkins exclaimed over the air. “I got PC-Two. She appears unhurt yet terrified.”
“Package her up and get her to safety,” Jonathan said. He never paused in his forward progress. “Take our vehicle and di di mao like a madman.” He’d invoked a Vietnamese phrase from back in the day that translated roughly to “run like a burning bunny rabbit.” “Lights out, pedal to the metal. Can you find your way back to the Underground Railroad?”
Stealth Attack Page 30
