Unlocked? What the fuck?
Dempsey put a flat palm over his other fist and popped it away, then flared out his fingers: Toss a flash-bang.
Mendez nodded and fished a nonlethal grenade from his kit with his left hand. He pulled the pin and nodded. Dempsey pushed the door open enough for Mendez to toss in the grenade and then shut it. He waited for the muted explosion, and then flung the door open wide. Mendez charged in, crouching low and moving left. Dempsey followed him through the gap, expecting gunfire but getting nothing. He cleared the right corner and continued moving right to make room for the rest of his assault team surging in behind. The main floor appeared deserted, but he noted plenty of hides—behind inventory stacks, inside tool cages, as well as atop two parallel catwalks that serviced an overhead crane. Dempsey cleared the nearby hides then shifted his attention to the catwalks. Just when he thought the steel walkways were clear, movement on his right made him drag the green IR dot quickly to the corner, where he spied a man with a rifle running after someone else fleeing out a second-story window. The man with the rifle looked nervously over his shoulder, but he didn’t seem to focus on Dempsey or his team in the darkness below. Clearly, he was still night blind from the flash bang. Dempsey was about to squeeze the trigger when a voice beckoned in Spanish from outside. The man immediately dropped his rifle and dove through the window.
Dempsey’s heart sank. These guys were cartel, too.
Shit.
Were they that far behind and the bad guys long gone? Was this the wrong building? Had he misread the intel? Maybe the tunnel entrance was in the west warehouse. He considered calling Chunk and asking him to search for the tunnel in the main warehouse, but he didn’t dare make a sound until they’d cleared the building.
Spaced in pairs, they advanced in silent synchronicity—a creeping line converging on a metal partition wall. In the middle of the partition stood a twelve-foot roll-up door and next to it a regular man-size swing door, both closed. Dempsey mentally reviewed the hand-sketched diagram of this facility. On the other side of the partition should be a machine shop. Dempsey had seen similar industrial layouts before, where quadrants of warehouse space were partitioned to separate air-conditioned from un-air-conditioned spaces. He gritted his teeth; there was no telling what was waiting for them on the other side of that wall. To clear the other side would almost be like making another breach. Then, an idea came to him.
He looked up at the catwalks and noticed that they extended past the partition into the other space. He looked at Gyro and BT and pointed at the catwalks and gestured east. They both nodded understanding. He whispered the words “Clear on two clicks” to BT, and the DEA team leader nodded.
Moments later, BT had climbed up onto the south catwalk and Gyro was on the north, creeping silently toward the machine shop. Dempsey gestured for the remaining DEA shooters to watch their flank, while he and the rest of the team trained their rifles on the roll-up and swing doors. He glanced up just in time to watch both operators disappear from sight as they stepped beyond the partition wall. His respiration rate picked up in anticipation of gunfire, while his pulse kept time in his ears.
Ten, eleven, twelve . . .
They had the high ground, which meant they had the advantage.
Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four . . .
Silence.
No gunfire. What the hell’s going on?
Then two clicks in his ear.
Dempsey exhaled and keyed his mike. “Roger, we’re coming in.”
Mendez led through the swing door, sighting over his rifle and moving right. Dempsey followed after him with Adamo right behind. Dempsey cleared the left corner and surged forward, as Adamo stepped up and took the center lane. They cleared the length of the room, scanning around all the equipment, until they reached the far wall. Satisfied, Dempsey waved BT and Gyro down from the catwalks. After regrouping, Dempsey stared out at the deserted machine-shop floor with its hydraulic press, plasma torches, bending machines, lathes, and CNC machines.
“Sorry, boss,” BT said with a sigh. “Looks like we missed ’em again.”
Dempsey nodded. That same feeling of déjà vu he’d experienced on the helo ride washed over him again, except this time without any of the nostalgia. Something was wrong; he just couldn’t put his finger on it. He decided to radio Chunk.
“Two, One, target building is clear.”
“Copy, One, west warehouse is clear. Six KIA and a couple of squirters.”
“Any dead shitheads, or just cartel guys?”
“Not a single raghead in the mix. Looks like the cartel guys were prepping a shipment though, which explains why they were hanging around. We have a pallet of shit over here that’ll make BT smile.”
“God, SITREP?” Dempsey said, scowling.
“They’re scattering like jackrabbits,” the lead sniper answered. “You want us to engage? They’re bugging out.”
“Negative,” Dempsey said.
“One, you want us to come to you, or toss the warehouse and see what else we can find?” Chunk asked.
Dempsey blew air through his teeth, then keyed his mike. “Later. Come help me find this damn tunnel.”
“Copy that.”
Dempsey looked at Adamo. “What do you think?”
Adamo hesitated a beat. “Just wondering why they split their force. If this is the tunnel entrance, why so much security at the other building?”
“Protecting their product.”
Adamo shook his head. “Yeah, I guess.”
“You think the tunnel is actually in the other building?” Dempsey asked.
“The diagram showed the tunnel entrance hidden under a hydraulic press in a machine shop. This is a machine shop, and there’s a hydraulic press right over there,” Mendez said, “but we’ll need that fork truck over there if we want to move it.” With a grin on his face, he turned and jogged off toward the forklift.
“Dude, do you even know how to drive that fucking thing?” Gyro called and trotted after him.
Dempsey shook his head at the thought of a kitted-up Mendez driving a forklift using night vision. Then, he noticed something that made his heart skip a beat.
“Hey, was that fucking cage door open before?”
He pointed to the right side of the room—the side Mendez had cleared—to a wire-mesh tool-cage door hanging ajar.
No one had time to answer.
Blinding muzzle flares and the roar of machine gun fire sent Dempsey to a knee. Bullets scoured the machine shop and ricocheted off the equipment all around him.
“Shooter in the cage,” he yelled, making himself small as he pushed his NVGs up on his helmet and waited for his vision to clear.
“Gyro’s hit,” a voice yelled.
“Stay down,” Mendez boomed.
There were two pops from his right as BT returned fire and advanced on the ambush shooter.
Dempsey’s vision grudgingly cleared, and he made out a silhouette standing in a firing stance in front of the tool cage, spraying the room haphazardly with automatic fire. Dempsey sighted in, squeezed his trigger twice, and dropped the shooter. A body appeared in the partition doorway. Dempsey shifted his aim and identified the new arrival as the DEA operator he’d assigned to watch their flank. The DEA man immediately sighted in on the corner and, along with Mendez and a SEAL, closed in on the fallen shooter.
Dempsey had only sighted on the ambush shooter for a fraction of a second, but something about that silhouette was wrong. Years of combat experience didn’t lie, and his brain registered the problem. That motherfucker was kitted up.
It’s Romeo all over again.
“Stop!” Dempsey screamed. “Mendez, get back.”
The explosion knocked Dempsey flat on his back. Hot, wet, fleshy stuff rained down on him. He gasped for air, the wind knocked from his lungs. Despite his brain’s frantic call for oxygen, he pulled his rifle up, got to his knees, and cleared the room for other jihadi threats. Still wheezing for his breath, he
got painfully to his feet. Someone groaned. Dempsey looked down and found Adamo sprawled on the ground next to him. The CIA man looked intact, but Dempsey asked, “You hurt?”
“I don’t think so,” Adamo answered.
Dempsey extended Adamo a hand and pulled him to his feet. Shoulder to shoulder, they walked toward the carnage, Dempsey stepping over a severed leg with half the boot missing as they crossed the shop floor. Mendez, one of Chunk’s SEALs, and a DEA operator were gone—nothing left but horrific splatter. The explosion had knocked the hydraulic press over and decimated everything in a ten-meter sphere around the cage.
“Spooky One—SITREP,” came Chunk’s desperate call in Dempsey’s ringing ears.
Dempsey spit coppery blood from his mouth, then keyed his mike. “Suicide bomber,” he said. His voice was thick and not his own. “At least three KIA.” Behind the forklift, he found Gyro. He rolled the SEAL over and saw wild eyes darting back and forth. “Where are you hit?” Dempsey asked.
Gyro heaved in a spasm of coughing. “In the vest, I think. But then that fucking explosion . . . I’m blind, Dempsey.”
Dempsey shined a light on the man’s face. It was covered in blood but he saw no major damage. He felt along the man’s shoulders and neck and found no wounds. There was a deep hole dead center in the chest of his vest, but he could feel where the 7.62 round spread out on the ceramic plate.
“Round hit your SAPI plate. Didn’t go in,” he whispered. “You’re gonna be okay. The blindness is from the flash. We’ll get you out of here.”
“My right leg feels funny,” Gyro said.
Dempsey felt along Gyro’s right thigh, but when he got to the knee everything went mushy. He cocked his head and saw that Gyro’s lower leg was turned around further than should be possible. He flicked on his light and saw the operator’s BDUs were soaked in blood. He heard footfalls and spun around, raising his rifle. He looked up to find Chunk and the rest of Team Two funneling into the machine shop.
“Gyro needs a tourniquet on his right leg,” Dempsey told the Lieutenant, who immediately pulled a blowout kit from a cargo pocket and went to work on his man.
Dempsey keyed his mike. “Thor, One. We need urgent CASEVAC at the target building.” His voice was sounding more his own and the coppery taste of blood was going away—unlike the ringing in his ears. He wiped his gloved hand across the side of his face and looked down at the blood and clots he picked up.
“One, Thor. Roger. What else?”
“Maintain overwatch. One bird for urgent CASEVAC and the other standing by for support and EXFIL.” He spit a glob of blood onto the ground, saw that Gyro was being taken care of, and then walked over to the gaping hole in the floor underneath where the hydraulic press had been. This was the tunnel entrance he’d lost three men to find. He shined his light down into the hole—no longer worried about stealth or light discipline. A metal ladder, bolted into the concrete, disappeared into the blackness below. In his peripheral vision, he saw Chunk appear beside him and stare down into the hole.
“Drug dealers don’t blow themselves up with suicide vests,” Dempsey said. “Al-Mahajer is close. I’m going after the fucker. You coming?”
“Hell yeah,” Chunk said.
By now, Grimes was on the scene and she went straight to Dempsey. “You need medical?” she asked looking him over, her eyes wide.
“Negative,” he said. “We lost Mendez.”
All the color drained from her face. “Suicide bomber?”
He nodded. “Where’s Smith?”
“Coordinating the helo landing for the CASEVAC.”
“Someone else can do that. We’re going after al-Mahajer.” He keyed his radio. “Smith, to me. Time to hit the tunnel.”
Twenty seconds later, Smith was at his side.
“All right,” Dempsey said. “Let’s go.”
Dempsey squatted, and then lowered himself into the hole until his feet found purchase on the ladder rungs. The tunnel was black as midnight, so he pulled his NVGs down and snapped them into position over his eyes. He sighted over his rifle toward the bottom of the tunnel while hanging on to the top rung of the ladder with his left hand.
“Clear,” he said and then began his descent.
At the bottom he took a knee, sighting down the tunnel as he waited on Chunk, Grimes, and Smith. The rectangular walls stretched far into the distance before fading into gray-green static. When Smith’s boots finally hit the ground, Dempsey popped to his feet. “Stay on me,” he said to the group. The time for stealth had passed. If al-Mahajer and his zealots were still below ground, they certainly knew by now that a team was in pursuit. Dempsey wouldn’t put it past al-Mahajer to station a second suicide bomber in the tunnel and told his teammates as much.
“Anything moves,” Dempsey said, taking off down the tunnel, “kill it.”
Moving as quickly as a combat crouch would allow, Dempsey took point. His lower back ached, and stingers flared down his left leg with each footfall. Chunk hugged the left wall, matching his pace, and he could hear the pounding of the other two pairs of boots behind them. After what he judged to be a hundred yards, they came to a sharp turn. Dempsey raised a closed fist and stopped just before it. He listened for a beat, but hearing nothing, he peered around the corner. Seeing nothing, he gestured with his left hand and they resumed the advance.
The tunnel jogged left and right with the occasional dogleg mixed in. At one point, Dempsey felt like they’d doubled back toward Mexico, but it was impossible to know with certainty. His normally dialed-in internal compass was slowly losing calibration with every bend, turn, and switchback. They moved at a quick pace for what he estimated was at least a mile. Had they crossed under the physical border yet? The answer had to be yes, but how much farther until they reached the tunnel exit?
He picked up the pace, his sense of urgency kicking into overdrive.
The air was heavy and damp, and sweat was pouring from his brow.
After a bend to the left, the tunnel straightened out. Unlike the buildings at the Cemex facility, the tunnel interior did not afford any place to hide. There were no alcoves, offshoots, or doors. If al-Mahajer had left another suicide jihadi behind, interception was inevitable.
Breathing hard now, Dempsey kept the pace for another four hundred yards, slowing only when he spotted the tunnel’s end—a cement wall with protruding metal ladder rungs. Cursing silently to himself, he halted the team a cautious distance from the hole. He let the team form up around him before signaling for them to stay back while he investigated. Expecting a strafe of machine-gun fire or a falling grenade, he eased forward until he was able to angle under the hole and sight up with his rifle. The tunnel exit was covered with what looked to be a piece of plywood.
“Be ready for anything on the breach,” Grimes whispered.
“On me,” he mouthed, slinging his rifle.
He pulled out his Sig Sauer P229 pistol and headed quietly up the ladder. Four feet from the top, he looked down and saw his team waiting in a line beneath him, Grimes already halfway up. He nodded at her, and then worked himself into a crouched position on the rungs as he took the next two steps, keeping his head below the plywood cover.
He waited, straining to hear anything—movement, the rustling of clothing, breathing—but he heard nothing except for the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears. He took a deep breath and, lodging his back hard against the wood, slowly pressed up with his legs. The board was heavy, heavier than a piece of plywood should be, but he felt it give under his pressure. Grunting, he pressed upward with the power of both legs, lifting the plywood and a layer of fine earth, which poured off the sides and rained down around him. Then, the board tipped and slid off his back. With the weight gone, he sprung the rest of the way out of the hole like a jack-in-the-box, raising his pistol and rolling right. Seeing no immediate threat, he scurried to a crouch and pulled his rifle into combat position while reverse holstering his pistol.
He was in a small wooden building w
ith a dirt floor. As he cleared the room, it became obvious this was a maintenance shed. Tools and yard implements lined the walls, and in the far corner sat a battered, green riding lawn mower along with a red five-gallon gas can.
Dempsey moved to the right toward the wooden door; moonlight streamed in through the slats. Grimes stepped up beside him. A heartbeat later, Chunk moved past him to the far side of the door. He nodded at the SEAL officer and then pressed his gloved left hand against the latch, took a deep breath, and pushed.
The shed door opened into the backyard of a ranch-style house. All the windows in the house were dark, and the only light was from the moon overhead and streetlights in front. The backyard was enclosed on three sides by an eight-foot, wooden privacy fence. He heard laughter and music coming from the next-door neighbors, but this property was dead quiet. He stepped out of the shed and cleared the yard for threats. The scene matched Dempsey’s memory of what the confiscated map had depicted. Using private homes to conceal secret tunnels had been an effective strategy for the cartel, and this tunnel was no exception.
He crossed the yard in a combat crouch, his team in tow, keeping away from any windows and the noisy neighbors. With his back pressed against the wall, he slid forward, pressed the latch, and quietly eased open the wooden gate. The street in front of the house was empty and so was the driveway.
Grimes pulled up beside him and whispered, “Now what?”
“We clear the house,” he grumbled. “But you know what we’re going to find.”
“Nothing,” she said.
“Yeah. They’re long gone.”
The operation had been a total failure. Mendez and two others were dead.
And Rafiq al-Mahajer had slipped through his fingers.
Again.
PART III
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.
—Robert Frost
War Shadows (Tier One Thrillers Book 2) Page 21