Peace - A Navy SEALS Novel (DeLeo's Action Thriller Singles Book 3)

by Bernard Lee DeLeo

  “I hear voices,” Peace whispered.

  “You should hear a lot more,” Julio answered. “The guards are arriving, and getting ready down below. Batiste will have to be out of there soon. Where are you?”

  “By the door,” Peace replied, keeping his voice very low, as he looked over the lock on the exit door. “I will have to make some noise getting through this one; but it will open quickly.”

  “Stay where you are until Batiste leaves with his retinue,” Julio directed. “I think you have improvised enough.” “Acknowledged,” Peace agreed.

  Peace listened over the next forty minutes as doors opened and closed adjacent to where he waited. Finally, he heard Batiste, with whomever he had in his apartments, walk past the storage room. Peace waited until the elevator noisily moved downwards toward the lower floor. With a pencil thin flashlight beam, Peace took stock of the deadbolt mechanism, keeping the storage room door locked. He took out a ring of four keys, Julio had given him, which could be used to unlock the doors throughout the complex. After spraying the hinges and locking mechanism with lubricating oil, Peace tried the keys. The second key moved the deadbolt, and Peace turned it to the fully unlocked position. Easing the door open, Peace looked into the lighted hallway on both sides of the door.

  “I’m out in the hallway,” Peace whispered.

  “Can you at least stay still long enough for Batiste to leave?” Julio suggested, exasperation beginning to enter his voice.

  “Sure, I’m just going to take a look at Batiste’s door,” Peace replied, moving towards Batiste’s apartment.

  “Madre de Dios,” Julio hissed under his breath. “Okay, they’re leaving the building now, and Batiste has his latest girlfriend, and four of the guards with him.”

  “Does the girlfriend present any problem?”

  “She’ll be with him when he comes back,” Julio replied. “We won’t be able to fool around when we take Batiste.”

  “I know. We’ll do what we can.”

  “Batiste’s limo is pulling away now.”

  “I’m going to enter Batiste’s apartment, and lock up behind me. I’ve already relocked the storage room door. With luck, I can find out if there’s a safe in his apartment, or if he left any papers laying around.”

  “I’ll let you know if you cause any concern. Luckily, Batiste values his privacy, and refuses to put up a camera surveillance system.”

  The first key Peace tried opened Batiste’s now lubricated apartment door lock. After he had stepped inside, Peace locked the door behind him in the darkness. Using his night vision ocular, Peace carefully surveyed the darkened room. When he was certain the room held no surprises, Peace flipped the light switch. He could see light coming from under the door leading into the next room, which he figured came from a window he knew to be there.

  Over the next hour, Peace searched the apartments thoroughly, finding a safe built into the floor beneath a desk in what looked like Batiste’s study. Three filing cabinets in the same room yielded a dozen folders, Peace knew related to shipping from the Middle East, North Korea, and the Republic of China. Peace did not bother searching the computer Batiste had on his desk. He quickly opened it up, and took out the hard drive. Gathering up all the loose discs, and zip drive tapes, Peace enclosed them with the folders and hard drive in a plastic bag. After sealing it, Peace stuffed them carefully into his dive bag.

  “I’m through here,” Peace informed Julio. “We’ll have to wait for

  Batiste to open the safe I found. How’s it looking?”

  “Good, the four guards are playing cards on the first level,” Julio answered. “I guess when the cat is away…”

  “Any ideas on how I might be able to capture one?”

  “Don’t kill him with the rest?” Julio suggested smartly.

  “I walked right into that one.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I’ll work my way down the stairwell. Give me about ten minutes, and then give them something to think about,” Peace directed.

  “Bueno.”

  Peace was standing outside the stairwell door, where it led into the ground level of the warehouse complex, with three minutes to spare. He laid his bag down carefully, and took out the silenced Ruger 9mm handgun. After making sure the stairwell door was unlocked, Peace waited until he heard the wailing sound of a car alarm at the front of the building.

  “They’re all standing just inside the entrance like a bunch of dummies,” Julio relayed to Peace. “You can probably get all of them alive if you want.”

  “I’ll need an object lesson,” Peace said quietly, as he hurried towards the front entrance, pulling his facemask down into place.

  With all the noise outside, the guards did not notice Peace at all until one of them pitched forward to the floor of the warehouse, bleeding heavily from a new hole in his head.

  “Face down on the floor, arms and legs spread,” Peace yelled in Spanish, as Julio took his cue to shut down the alarm. One of the other guards hesitated, and Peace shot him right between the eyes. The surviving guards dropped instantly to the floor, arms and legs jutting out, with hands palms down.

  “Come on in, they’re down,” Peace told Julio.

  “On my way.”

  Peace fired one shot into the head of each already wounded or dying guard. A masked Julio came through the entrance, leveling the MAC 10 he carried at the remaining guards. Peace relieved the guards of everything they carried, and then told them to stand up and strip. When they were down to their underwear, Peace plastic tied their hands behind their backs, and led them into the stairwell. After having them lay face down, Peace plastic tied their ankles tightly together. He knelt down next to them.

  “Stay still and live,” Peace told them in Spanish. “If I hear either of you move, I will put a bullet in each of your foreheads. Now, do you guards have to check in with Batiste while he’s gone?”

  “No,” The older guard with long black hair, tied in a ponytail, answered.

  “If you lie, you die,” Peace said simply.

  “He will expect to see us when he comes in,” the younger guard said, shakily.

  “How closely does he pay attention to who greets him?”

  The two guards were silent for a moment, causing Peace to grab the younger one. He rolled the guard over to his back, and put the Ruger to his forehead.

  “He will not notice… he hardly glances at us…” the young man gasped.

  “Very well, do his guards come in before him or after him?”

  “They follow him in,” the older guard answered, having seen Peace’s finger just barely keep from pulling the trigger on the Ruger, and executing the other guard.

  Peace nodded, and left the stairwell to rejoin Julio at the front entrance, pulling up his mask.

  “Batiste marches in first, and his guards follow. They don’t check in with him,” Peace informed Julio, who surveyed the surrounding area for anything which appeared out of place.

  Julio looked back at Peace and smiled. “You are a very lucky man. I am not sure I wish to hang around with lucky men. It has been my experience when their luck runs out, very bad things happen.”

  Peace shrugged. “We will have a hard time taking the rest of the guards alive.”

  “Let Batiste and his girlfriend walk in past you, and I will take them out of the picture with my little dart gun here,” Julio pulled up his top, revealing a Taser gun. “You deal with the guards in whatever manner you think best.”

  “The girlfriend bothers me,” Peace admitted. “I wonder how smart it is to let any of these people live with what is at stake.”

  “Meaning you are afraid they will warn the people Batiste has been dealing with?”

  “It crossed my mind we may wind up with a new player taking over this operation, and they will be even more careful,” Peace answered, as he dragged one of the dead guards over against the wall, motioning for Julio to stay where he was. After Peace dragged the second body over next to the first, he went
looking for something to clean the mess at the entranceway.

  Julio pulled off his mask, and stayed on guard, as Peace came back with a large coverlet he found draped over a couch near where the guards had been playing cards. Spreading it over the pools of blood, Peace waited until it had absorbed most of the blood, and then pushed it towards the bodies. Ripping off a still clean piece of the coverlet with his knife, Piece wiped up what was left of the blood residue at the entryway. He stood up finally, tossing the rag off to the side, and looking at Julio.

  “What would be the fallout of a massive explosion here at Batiste’s complex?” Piece asked.

  Julio shook his head. “That would not be good, my friend. When little thugs get themselves shot in my country, no one pays much attention. When an asset, like this port facility, becomes a casualty along with the dead little thugs, more serious people begin to investigate.”

  “You are right, of course,” Peace agreed reluctantly. “No one has seen your face here, nor will they. I will get what I need from Batiste, and we will leave the girlfriend and surviving guards to be found later. Will you have any trouble getting what I find North?”

  “I have those details already worked out,” Julio replied. “You will have to get over the border as quickly as possible. I will stay here for a few hours, while you make it across in my beloved Mercedes.”

  “How are you getting out of here?”

  “I have a friend waiting with a boat. Your Ford has already disappeared from the hotel parking lot by now. Simply drive back to the hotel in the Mercedes, and check out. You should be back over the border within two hours.” Julio grinned. “I am afraid we must leave this building intact though.”

  “I only mentioned it because there’s always another snake around to take over. If everything is left in place here, we could end up right back where we started,” Peace pointed out.

  “It is dangerous to improvise too much.”

  Peace laughed, and took off his outer clothing. He quickly put on the younger guard’s suit. It fit him well enough, because of their similar size. Peace did not believe he would attract Batiste’s attention when Batiste first came in. The windows were all tinted, so Batiste would not be able to see inside on his way from the limo.

  “Keep turned sideways, and they will walk right past you,” Julio told him, looking approvingly at Peace in his new attire.

  “I’m going to look around. We still have quite a while before Batiste gets here,” Peace said. “I have my equipment bag by the stairwell landing. It has all of what I could find in Batiste’s apartment without his help.”

  Julio nodded. “I’ll leave it there until I leave. What if the phone rings?”

  “Crap.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I’ll have to drag one of the live guards in, and talk him into playing nice. I should have given incoming calls more thought,” Peace said.

  “Perhaps it would be better not to answer at all. Batiste will probably think his line is down.”

  “None of his men had a cell phone, so I guess it might work. Batiste might also just send an army over to investigate.”

  “Let’s go with having one of the guards answer,” Julio sighed.

  “Your imagination is beginning to give me bad feelings.”

  “You brought it up,” Peace replied. “I’ll come running if I hear the phone.”

  Julio nodded, and returned his attention to outside the building. Peace began a methodical search of the building, starting at the level just under Batiste’s apartments, and working his way down towards the ground floor. He used the elevator, keeping it at each level he checked. When he rejoined Julio at the front entrance, Julio could see the American was not happy.

  “I take it you found more than you bargained for,” Julio remarked.

  “My friend,” Peace sighed, “we will have to make a decision, or call someone and have them make a decision.”

  “We are to contact no one until this gets done.”

  “They have a full-fledged chemical weapons lab on the second floor.”

  “How can that be,” Julio exclaimed in disbelief. “They take no precautions. They have no hi tech surveillance system. What…”

  “It’s not active yet,” Peace broke in, “but that’s not all of it. They also have a radioactive storage area on the same level, multiple shields, the works, and they have a specialized alarm system set up for entry.”

  “You were going to blow the place up,” Julio shook a finger at Peace comically, trying to lighten the mood a little. “See where too much improvisation can take you. We could have caused a biological conflagration.”

  “I would have checked around first, just as I did,” Peace pointed out. “Can you go call someone? We need help here. Tell them we’ll take Batiste first, and find out what he knows; but afterwards, we are going to need a professional team in here. All of this part of your country, and Southern California could be at risk.”

  Julio nodded in agreement. “I will go call on the satellite phone, but I must do so in a manner which will protect our mission. Batiste could return before I get back.”

  “Then the survival factor for his retinue will plummet,” Peace replied simply. “Leave the Taser, and I’ll take care of him first before the Wild West Show starts.”

  Julio handed Peace the Taser.

  “I will return as quickly as possible. What if they tell you to keep Batiste alive?”

  “No comprendo English,” Peace answered.

  Julio laughed, and walked out of the building, putting his MAC 10 out of sight under his jacket.

  Peace walked back to the stairwell, and went inside. He knelt next to the sweating guards.

  “Do either of you know what your boss has on the second floor?”

  “We are not permitted onto the second floor. Only his personal bodyguard has access to level two,” the older guard answered.

  “Your boss has a fully constructed chemical weapons lab, and a radioactive storage facility on level two. This puts your country in a lot of danger. It is definitely more than drug running.”

  “We know nothing of this,” the younger guard said, looking fearfully at his fellow guard. “We are paid only to guard the entrance to the building.”

  “Think about the people you have seen here. You two may be able to do yourselves some good.”

  Peace left them and went back to the front entrance. For the next hour, he went over every different scenario he could think of for handling the situation he found himself in. He was relieved when he saw Julio jog towards the entrance. Julio went right over to the guard’s couch and sat down heavily, leaning his head back.

  “That good, huh?”

  Julio looked over at Peace solemnly. “My friend, we are in the middle of a firestorm.”

  “They don’t want us to walk away, do they?” Peace asked, anger beginning to show in his features. “That would be insanity.”

  “On the contrary,” Julio replied. “They must now bring Mexico into this, and they are in the process of figuring out how and when. We must find out from Batiste what he knows. Once they hear from us about Batiste’s demise, they will find a way to jointly act with Mexico to sanitize this facility.”

  “At least they understand the importance of Batiste not surviving,” Peace said, relieved.

  “I was told it would be very bad for all of us if Batiste survives more than a moment after we find out everything we can from him. They will go over all the hard data we gather later. Batiste has too many friends in the government down here. Leaving him alive will complicate any course of action our two countries take together.”

  “I have something plausible for us to use, if they can act quickly. I talked to the two guards in the stairwell. Only Batiste, and his personal bodyguard are allowed on the second level. This will mean death for everyone but the two guys in the stairwell. They can call in the tipped off Mexican authorities about the nuke danger, and then Mexico can request special help from the US.”


  “If they clamp down on it quickly enough, a joint effort might net some ships coming in with the goods, and be caught red handed,” Julio mused, rubbing his chin. “What about the girl?”

  “Why not take her with you,” Peace suggested. “You can figure out what kind of danger she represents later. I’ll take off as ordered, and you can hold things together until it’s time to let the guards loose. Tell them who to call, and then make sure they do.”

  “They were attacked by unknown rivals in the drug trade. When they checked around, they found the level two stuff, and decided to call it in. This way, we can leave out the details of a CIA mission on a supposed ally’s territory. The embarrassment of such a find so near to our border can be covered by this brilliant sting by Mexico.”

  Julio laughed. “You need to go into politics down here, hombre. You are a natural. Your solution does allow both sides to pretend, and then take care of business. If they start pointing fingers, who knows what could happen with this situation.”

  Julio leaned back again, sighing. “This was going to be a nice in and out deal. We bust an arms and drug dealer with terrorist connections, and find out who his connections are. You get back North, and I get the hard data North later. Simple as pie. Now look what we have.”

  “Let’s put a happy face on this,” Peace replied. “If we can get this facility taken care of, we will have done one hell of a day’s work. Forget about who set Batiste up for now. At least we’ve stopped a major threat.” Julio stood up, and walked past Peace, taking the proffered Taser gun from him as he went by. He walked over to the entrance, looking outwards again.

  “I am getting a little tired of playing defense, amigo,” Julio said, as Peace walked up next to him.

  “I think the big boys are coming to the same way of thinking from what Chuck told me. They’ve decided we will not luck out on this crap forever. I believe they have a major attitude adjustment in line for someone, depending on what Batiste tells us.”

  “I hope so,” Julio replied, “because if the US is going to continue basing their hopes on Mexico as their last line of defense, you gringos are in mucho trouble. I get paid very well in this dangerous game; but I would be shot as a foreign agent by my own people, even though what I do serves their best interests. I lose hope sometimes we will ever be much more than a two bit banana republic, with coin operated politicos in charge.”