SPY IN THE SADDLE

by Dana Marton

  He loved her. It became crystal clear the moment she’d disappeared through the window. He’d somehow, in the space of three days, fallen in love with Lilly. Whether or not they could ever have anything serious between them was the question.

  He pushed the thought away. Not now.

  But soon. Whatever her true purpose was for being with his team, they’d have to talk about it and sort all that out. But it wasn’t going to change how he felt about her. He ran forward to save her.

  He only slowed when he reached the top floor and spotted twenty or so armed men crowded at the far end in front of a steel security door, banging with their rifles, trying to break it down. They weren’t making much progress. The door looked pretty heavy-duty.

  He had a feeling Lilly was behind it. Smart woman. One of the reasons he’d fallen for her.

  He squeezed off a round of shots at the men, then ducked behind cover as they shot back.

  He didn’t know how many he’d hit, but he knew that whoever was left uninjured would be coming for him. He swung both his rifles over his shoulder, ran back down the stairs and jumped through the first open door he saw on the second floor, locked the door behind him, ran to the window. Then out he went without hesitation, wanting to be out of sight by the time they broke the door down.

  He needed to go up, to Lilly, but the window directly above him was closed. Smashing it in would have given away his location, so he looked to the next one, just a few feet over. The glass pane stood open a crack.

  He maneuvered that way, his cowboy boots not exactly meant for climbing like this, slipping more than once. He hung on with everything he had. Failure was not an option.

  When he reached the windowsill, he grabbed on tight and pulled himself up to look in. Another empty office. Maybe Yo Tee had the factory on shutdown for today, to get ready for the transfer.

  He hung on with his right hand while opening the window wider with the left. Okay. Deep breath. Focus. Now would not be a good time to slip.

  He didn’t. He pulled himself up and in.

  This office was a mess, chairs turned over, the drawers on the filing cabinet hanging open. Bullet holes dotted the walls. Looked as if Yo Tee might have had a disagreement with one of his managers.

  Disagreement in the ranks was rarely good for business. Or for your health, if your boss was the Coyote.

  Shep moved to the door and could hear people talking at the far end of the hallway. Some of the men had run off to chase him, but others had remained at that steel door, still trying to figure out how to get in. And they’d be watching their backs this time; he wasn’t going to be able to take them by surprise again.

  His next move was a risky one, but he had to make it anyway.

  He filled his lungs and burst out into the hall, firing at them as he went. Six men shot back at him, barricaded behind four bodies, those he’d taken out earlier.

  He shot down one more before he had to pull back in.

  He glanced at his left arm where a bullet had ripped through his skin. Nothing serious. The injury was nearly identical to Lilly’s. They’d have matching scars to commemorate their misadventures. Provided they lived.

  Five men remained at the end of the hallway, and the other ten or so who’d run downstairs to find him would be coming back now that they’d heard the gunshots. They were likely to figure out that he’d outsmarted them and doubled back somehow.

  The small office he occupied was not a good defensible position, the door made of inch-wide simple wood, nothing to hide behind that would stop bullets. So out the window he went again.

  Man, he hated this part.

  He didn’t have any phobias, but he wasn’t a fan of heights. He went on regardless. The first thing he’d learned in this job was that as soon as a person let fear stop them, they were dead.

  He didn’t try to get into the next room or the one after that. He climbed handhold by handhold all the way to the end so he’d be outside the room with the steel door at the end of the hallway.

  He looked in carefully, not wanting to get his head blown off in case Lilly took him for one of Yo Tee’s men.

  She was in there, armed to the teeth, crouching behind a makeshift barricade of desks and chairs, facing the door. Yo Tee sat tied to a chair with his own belt in the corner.

  When Shep rapped on the glass, she swung around, her rifle aimed. Her eyes went wide when she recognized him.

  “Let me in.”

  She hurried over. “You okay?” She looked at the blood on his arm as she opened the window.

  “It’s nothing. You?”

  “We’re trapped. But at least I called reinforcements.”

  Of course she did. While evading a band of armed killers and capturing one of the biggest crime bosses south of the border. She was nothing if not efficient. He grinned at her. “I decided to forgive you if you promise to get out of this mess alive.”

  She raised a questioning eyebrow. And when he said nothing more, she nodded. “Okay. Fine.”

  Being in the same room with her made him feel a hell of a lot better, but they weren’t out of the woods yet. “There’s a pretty big group of armed thugs in front of the door.”

  “How many?”

  “Fifteen or so. There were about two dozen. I took a few out.” He glanced at Yo Tee. “I think he shut down operations and has just enough security here with him to set up the transfer.”

  She shot a dark glare at the Coyote.

  He knew what she was thinking. They were both well armed. Between the two of them, they could probably break out of here and get to a truck. But they couldn’t risk Yo Tee getting killed. The bastard had to stay alive long enough to be interrogated.

  Gunfire sounded outside.

  She shot him a questioning look.

  He shook his head. “Can’t be the reinforcements yet.” Not enough time had passed for that.

  More gunfire came. And this time it was clear that the steel door was getting hit. Yo Tee’s men had decided to shoot the door down to rescue him.

  Shep glanced back the way he’d come, at the window.

  She followed his gaze. “Can’t go that way.”

  She was right. They couldn’t go through the window, not with Yo Tee resisting.

  But the door wouldn’t hold long. The men outside were firing round after round into the lock. While it was a reinforced steel door, it wasn’t strong enough to stand up to this kind of siege.

  Shep grabbed Yo Tee, chair and all, and dragged him to the corner to the left of the door, where at least the first volley of bullets to come through couldn’t hit him. He pulled a bookshelf away from the wall a little so the man wouldn’t be immediately visible when his lackeys broke in.

  He gagged the man just as the door gave a mighty crack.

  “Get in the other corner,” he ordered Lilly, a plan forming in his head.

  Lilly did as he asked, wedging into the office’s corner behind the door, where she wouldn’t be seen when the outer steel door finally broke down.

  Shep lay down in the middle of the room, pulling Lilly’s makeshift barricade on top of him until he was buried under furniture. He hoped that, at least at first glance, the room would look deserted as the men pushed their way in. A moment of confusion, a second of pause was all he needed.

  The steel door shook. They were ramming it, probably lined up shoulder to shoulder, hoping to snap the damaged lock. Still, the steel didn’t give.

  But the brick wall did, cracking and crumbling, releasing the lock.

  The door banged open. The shouting stopped then restarted again as the men ran across the empty outer room into the office, jumping over the knocked-down pile of furniture on their way to the open window.

  “Where are they?” more than one shouted in Spanish.

  “T
hey went down. Outside,” one of the men shouted.

  They’d see Yo Tee in a second, as soon as they turned. So Shep rose, kicking furniture off him, aiming at the men who had nowhere to run, no place to hide.

  Lilly sprung from behind the door, slamming the wood into the faces of a handful of stragglers, knocking them back. She opened fire as the door swung open again, backing toward Shep until they were shoulder to shoulder. Neither of them removed their fingers from the trigger until there were no more enemies standing.

  They were both breathing hard, both bleeding and injured when the gun smoke settled, but alive—a miracle. The carnage in the room was incredible, the bloodiest destruction that could be achieved in just a few minutes.

  Yo Tee was on the ground, on his side. He’d pushed his chair over to keep down. He was staring at them wide-eyed as if they were crazy people.

  Lilly went to straighten him. She pulled the gag from his mouth.

  “Work for me,” he said in a shaky voice. “I make you both millionaires.”

  “No thanks,” Lilly told him.

  Shep moved to make sure all the men were down for good. He didn’t want to be surprised by a bullet to his back.

  Satisfied that none of the men would pop up for a surprise attack, Shep moved closer to Lilly to look her over. Her clothes were ripped and she had some scrapes plus a serious flesh wound, but it didn’t look as if any vital organs had been hit. She was standing up, not holding any body parts, a good sign.

  “Hey.” She was scanning him for injury in return. “You know where to buy a lottery ticket around here? I’m thinking this is our lucky day.”

  He grinned at her. He wanted to take her into his arms more than anything. But they weren’t done yet.

  He walked up to Yo Tee and rested the barrel of his rifle against the man’s forehead. “Where are the men that you’re sending over the border?”

  Lilly moved to the door to watch for any possible newcomers. She had her weapon ready to greet anyone who might be ill-advised enough to come after the others.

  “I don’t know what you talking about,” Yo Tee said, his dark eyes filled with hate.

  Shep held his gaze. “If the last few minutes taught you anything, it should be that I don’t play nice.” He wiped his hand on his pants, leaving a crimson stain, then shrugged. “Blood never really bothered me.”

  Yo Tee looked away first.

  “Are they coming here to be put in the back of trucks tonight?”

  They could be arriving even now, in which case a reception committee would have to be set up for them. Although, if Shep’s luck held, they wouldn’t come until after his team had gotten here.

  “There’s no easy way out of this now,” he warned Yo Tee. “There’s only the hard way and the harder way. Trust me, if there’s anything you can tell me now, it’ll save you considerable grief when the rest of my team gets here. They’re even worse at playing nice than I am.” He paused, then he moved close enough to crowd the man. “When are your buddies arriving here?”

  Yo Tee gave a superior smile. “They come and gone. You too late.”

  He looked cocky and pleased with himself enough to make Shep think he might not be lying.

  “When?”

  “The first day news came about extra attention on the border. As soon as patrols stepped up and crackdowns on smuggling started.” He looked damn proud of himself, sticking his chest out. “My men got them across without trouble. They been in U.S. for weeks.”

  Shep grabbed him by the front of his shirt and pulled him half off the chair. “Where are they now?”

  The man stared into his eyes without flinching. “They paid me. They didn’t share plans with me.”

  Shep watched him, inclined to believe the words, yet something about the man’s body language was off, something in the way his eyes darted.

  He lowered his gun as he turned back to Lilly. “Better call off reinforcements. No sense in more people coming. It’d be better if we grabbed a truck and drove back across the border on our own. Nobody would even know that we’ve been here. Might as well avoid an international incident if we can.”

  Maybe she picked up on the game he was playing, because she nodded toward Yo Tee. “What about him?”

  “He has no more useful information. If his body is found with his men, local police will write it off as a battle between rival drug bosses. No sense dragging the U.S. into this.”

  “No! I have money—” Yo Tee protested.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Lilly watched as Shep shrugged at the offer of riches.

  “I don’t care about money. I’m here for information,” he said. “You have to know more.” He didn’t look as if he was buying the man’s I-know-nothing act.

  Lilly wasn’t, either. If the terrorists had crossed the border weeks ago, why the smuggling moratorium that had been strictly enforced by Yo Tee’s men? That had to have cost millions, to him and his smuggling buddies. He wouldn’t have done that without good reason.

  She glanced down the hallway—still empty—then back to him. “So what’s planned for tonight at Galmer’s Gulley?”

  The man pressed his narrow lips together so tightly they nearly disappeared.

  Shep put the rifle barrel right between his eyes. “What are you sending across the border tonight?”

  She knew him, she was in love with him, and the way he growled at the man still sent a shiver of apprehension down her spine.

  Tension and the sense of impending violence filled the air, the silence broken by a single word Yo Tee squeaked out at last. “Weapons.”

  Lilly glanced at the hallway. He might still have men in the building, recouping and planning another attack. But there was nobody in sight, so she looked at Yo Tee again, waiting for more. According to confirmed intel, those terrorists were going to bring chemical weapons into the U.S.

  Shep glared at his captive. “Why didn’t the weapons go with the men?”

  “The vials weren’t ready yet.” Yo Tee hesitated. “They wanted a lot, and the lab messed up first batch.”

  “Where are the vials?”

  But that was the question Yo Tee decided to make his last stand on, because he just stared straight ahead and wouldn’t say a single word no matter what Shep threatened him with next.

  * * *

  THE MEXICAN AUTHORITIES arrived first, but they didn’t enter. They simply secured the perimeter and locked down the entire factory compound, as far as Shep could tell from the window. They probably had their orders. Looked as if some kind of international deal had been made at the last second.

  It wasn’t long after that his team arrived on FBI choppers. Shep debriefed them and passed on the latest intel about the terrorists to the Colonel via a secure phone. Yo Tee was immediately flown out to a secure location by the FBI for further interrogation, while Shep’s team searched the building for the chemical weapons.

  Unfortunately, several hours of thorough work later, they still didn’t have anything. Tension mounted higher and higher as they went over ground they’d already covered. By the time Shep ran into Lilly at the loading docks, he was brimming with frustration.

  She was eyeing the truck they’d passed while being marched inside when they’d first arrived, five giant rolls of paper in the back, one still on the loading dock.

  She narrowed her eyes as she measured up the roll. “We know the weapons were about to be shipped to the border. This would make sense.”

  “They’ve been scanned. No traces of chemical agents,” he told her. “We haven’t found any traces in the whole damn factory.”

  But she kept looking. “Because the lab isn’t here. If the vials came here in airtight containers, all they would have received here would have been extra wrapping. No contamination.”

  Shep
pulled out his cell and called Ryder. “Do we have a plain old metal detector?”

  “If we don’t, we can get one. Where do you need it?”

  “Loading docks.” He walked around the roll still waiting to be loaded. Nothing looked disturbed, nothing betrayed that anyone had messed with the paper, no cuts, no bulges.

  Lilly strode over. “Boost me up.”

  He did, and she moved without hesitation. They had practice at this.

  She banged on the top of the giant roll, felt around. “Doesn’t look like anything has been inserted through here. Maybe through the bottom.” She jumped down.

  Shep gave the roll a push, but it didn’t budge an inch. It had to weigh a ton. “Let’s try that with a forklift.” There were plenty of those around.

  He hopped on one and drove it over, tipped the giant roll to its side, then got out to inspect the bottom. He crouched next to Lilly, the both of them running their fingers over the ridged surface of layers and layers of paper, looking for any hidden openings.

  By the time they were done, finding nothing, a Mexican army Jeep was driving up. The arriving lieutenant handed Shep a metal detector without asking any questions, then drove away.

  “The collaboration is going better than expected,” Lilly remarked.

  Shep turned on the professional-grade instrument. “I bet it’s the Colonel’s doing.” If there was anything the Colonel, the head of the SDDU, couldn’t do, Shep hadn’t seen it yet. The man was a legend in the unit.

  He started scanning the roll of paper on the bottom and moved up, careful not to miss an inch. He was at the midpoint when the metal detector went off, issuing a series of loud beeps.

  He put the detector down and pulled out his cell phone, called Ryder. “I think we have something.”

  “We’ll be there in a minute.”

  Lilly tapped the roll as he was hanging up. “Looks like the paper was wrapped around the container in the middle. I don’t think unrolling it here would be wise.”

  He agreed. “We’ll transport everything back to the U.S.”

  “How about I take care of that?” She reached out a hand for the cell phone. “I’ll request a reinforced truck that’s built for this kind of thing. Bombproof and airtight. They’ll take everything to a special lab in D.C. for containment and analysis.”