No answer.
Her father had told her to stay by the seaplane and when the time was right, to get on board and start it. He had texted her directions that made no sense. Now her feet began to feel like needles were in them as the sensation came back.
“When everything gets crazy, you will hear guns, explosions maybe, and lots of confusion. Shortly after that, I will arrive!” her father had texted her.
Carla walked quietly up the dock to the small house. She had removed her headphones and had the phone her father gave her secured in the waistband of her bikini bottoms. Something was not right.
Her father had made her nervous with his fear and constant repeating himself, as if she were stupid.
Carla made her way to the tiny guard shack and leaned against the doorframe. Her friend was holding a joint in one hand and a walkie-talkie in the other. His face was pale, as if the shock of some massive reality had just hit him between the shoulder blades. He muttered to himself and stared at the tile floor.
“Santiago, you OK? You’re going to burn your fingers, hey!” She snapped her fingers.
“Carla.” He shook his head and looked at her. His happy-go-lucky smile had gone. He was terrified.
Carla began to sweat and feel sick. “What’s wrong?”
“Carla, sweetie, something bad, very bad, is about to happen. Men are coming down here.”
“What are you talking about? You are freaking me out!”
“Hide.”
“What?” Carla jumped at the panic in her own voice. She backed up.
“They…they are going to kill everyone on the island. They are going to…I can’t repeat what they said will happen to girls. You have to hide. They are coming.”
“What!”
“The plane. Go hide on it!”
Santiago looked around the guard shack, sucking madly on his joint. He saw some keys and lunged for them. His fingers shook as he put them in her hands. “They are coming here, right now! Go! Go! Hide on the plane. I have to wait. Carla, don’t look at me like I am not speaking Spanish. Go!”
Carla felt sweat pouring down her face and neck. Her breasts heaved with panic, and she felt sick. She glanced at the plane and knew she had moments. She snatched the keys and ran.
CHAPTER 34
The Fan Hits the…
Evan watched Jorge leave with his men. He took a quick count of the four pickups with .50 calibers that had seemed to spread out from the beginning of the dock to where the sub was. This was a decent-sized area, but considering the effective range of a .50 caliber, it was overkill. Evan’s biggest concern was that the intel they had gotten from the navy was so wrong. Four gun trucks were a big deal and could take some time to take out. The other concern was that Mario’s army of thugs seemed very unruly. The numbers were vastly underestimated.
Evan smiled and listened to Tommy and Mario talk as they admired the submarine and talked about smuggling days. Tommy was dressed again like a Don Johnson stunt double. His black sunglasses covered the dark circles under his eyes. He wore an expensive Tommy Bahamas green silk shirt with a lightweight, white blazer and jeans. His alligator shoes looked new and clashed with his peach socks.
Evan watched guests from the house slowly spread out around the crushed-coral-and-concrete walkway and LZ. He looked at elderly men with young trophy wives with boob jobs that had probably been done in Miami. He gawked at the expensive clothes, waiters, and golf carts with breakfast dishes and coffee. The whole thing was an obscene spectacle financed by one country’s insane obsession for pleasure and a quick escape from reality. The irony, Evan mused as he counted the armed guards and bikinis, was that one country looked down its nose at the other. So pious, yet it relied on them to fuel their religion of self-satisfaction.
Evan smirked and mumbled to himself, “Who’s really getting the last laugh in this duel?”
“Ivan? Ivan!”
Evan snapped out of it and looked at Tommy. “Yes?”
“Can you take Mario on a tour? I have to make my way out back and talk to an old friend.”
Evan nodded and looked at the seven armed guards who were with Mario. Evan stared for a second at Tommy.
Tommy frowned and shook his head slightly.
He realized that Tommy had no idea if this was Mario or not.
“Guess we’re gonna do this the hard way,” Evan said.
Evan looked at his guests and changed his demeanor to one of excitement.
“Come on down the ladder, sir; watch your step,” Evan said and smiled, glancing back at the crowd. He estimated there were about seventy to one hundred armed men milling about in the crowd. This is looking worse than I even thought.
“Is there a bathroom in there?” a woman asked. She pressed up against Mario and held his arm.
“Watch your step and your head!” Evan said.
“Thanks, Ivan. You must understand my security is a bit over the top. I regret that we have never met, but I feel as though I know you,” Mario said.
“Too kind, sir,” Evan said respectfully.
Evan followed Mario down the ladder into the sub. Five of his bodyguards, the female, and three guests, who he assumed were politicians by their enlightened manner, also joined them.
“Where are the lights?” someone joked.
“Hey, someone is grabbing my ass! Mario!” The woman giggled as they came to the bottom of the ladder.
Mario paused in the narrow passage and turned around.
Evan felt claustrophobic and warm as he came face-to-face with Mario. He was more worried about the five armed men behind him. Any discharge of a weapon or worse, a hand grenade, could cause a fire or explosion that would kill them all.
“Is there a bar on this thing?” the girl joked.
Mario laughed. “It’s morning time!”
The girl laughed. “It’s five o’clock somewhere!”
Evan felt like choking her but smiled. “Watch your head, sweetheart. We may have to walk one at a time up here. It gets narrow and then opens up.”
“Last time I went into such a dark place with a man, I ended up pregnant.” The girl continued to laugh and talk.
“Ah, yes. Well, where to? I want to see the kitchen and the cargo hold. This thing is big, but it is all pipes and narrow passages,” Mario said in amazement.
Evan nodded and encouraged Mario to move straight ahead. “Several tons of product can be moved in this thing. I suggest fastening it to the hull in Zodiac boats or launching it from the torpedo’s tubes. You don’t want to surface.” Evan explained the same information again. If only these idiots had read the stuff I gave them, he thought. Evan followed Mario deeper into the sub.
The low light made things seem even more ominous, like a fun house on Halloween.
Mario was in the lead being steered by Evan, who was explaining the details of the sub. The girl was behind him, talking nonstop to the five bodyguards.
Evan knew what was lurking up ahead and just hoped he survived.
“You lead the way, Ivan. I just bumped my head!”
Evan smiled and moved to the head of the line. He thought about Tommy for a moment and hoped he made it to the plane and could get it started. Tommy had decided he could wait no longer to see his daughter and the plane.
“Right up here, men. Watch your step, and duck down. Mario, you first. I am right behind you…Doors on navy vessels are called hatches, and walls are called bulkheads.” Evan helped Mario step through the next hatch ahead of him. Once he was sure he was through, he pulled the hatch shut, effectively locking Mario on the other side of the hatch.
The people on the other side locked it.
“This is when the proverbial shit hits the fan,” Evan said matter-of-factly as he turned and smiled like a tour guide. No one had noticed the long flashlight-baton-looking thing that he had picked up by the hatch. The item was actually a combination stun gun flashlight.
“I have to get the lights on. It’s too dark,” Evan said exasperated.
/> “Hey, where did Mario go?” The girl stopped midsentence to ask the question and then kept right on talking. “One time when I was in Paris…There was a guy and a pool table—”
Evan pressed the baton up against her left breast and pushed a button. A quick blue arc shot through her tissue. She dropped like a rock.
The last security guard in line yelled with surprise and then dropped.
Juan, from Green Team Two, had moved up behind the guards with a silenced .22 pistol and started shooting them at point-blank.
Evan leapt forward over the stunned girl and brought his baton down hard on the forearm of the guard closest to him. He was trying to bring his Uzi up. Evan had his knife in his other hand and slashed it across the guard’s neck less than a second after he delivered a massive undercut with his baton.
The next two guards dropped before they realized what happened, leaving the last one standing with his hands up.
“No mas. I give, please, please!” The man went to his knees, dropped his weapon, and began crying.
Juan put the pistol to the back of the man’s head and frowned. He started to squeeze the trigger.
“No, wait.” Evan stepped forward. “He can help us and get paid or die like a dog—no offense to dogs.”
Juan shrugged, holstered his weapon, and zip-tied the man’s hands behind him.
“You do that like you’ve done that before,” Evan said with admiration.
“Used to be a cop. My whole force was corrupt, shot me twelve times and left me to die on the road,” Juan said.
“Your new name is Lucky,” Evan dubbed him.
“Been called worse, amigo.” Juan laughed.
Evan pointed at the cowering politicians and the blubbering female, who was shaking and hyperventilating.
“At least she ain’t talking.” Evan scowled. He prodded the men to their feet with his baton. “Get up. You’re lucky we are conserving ammo this week. Bad for the environment.”
Roger watched El Coyote stack against the door with a team of five men. They would go topside and secure the trawler. Two of Mario’s men were still on board, but not for long. The rest of the team gathered their supplies and made ready.
Two men opened the hatch quietly, and Roger watched as the team moved out. Roger looked at his watch.
El Coyote looked at Roger and said, “Let’s go.”
He stood up and moved out of the hold area with the rest of the operators. Once they were free, they would give the signal to the other two squads of Team One. Roger headed topside, being careful to step over a large puddle of blood that used to be Mario’s guards.
“Set the snipers up. I have to get on board the Happy Mermaid. I can’t take a shot from here with the AT-4. I need the bag of C-4! Gotta do this up close,” Roger whispered.
“Fine. Save the AT-4s for the gun trucks,” El Coyote said and then added, “We got a problem. Oscar radioed that there are four gun trucks in our LZ.”
“What? I thought they only had two.” Roger spoke quietly and was annoyed.
“There are still two on the other side of the island. They got six total!” El Coyote returned, listening to his headset. “No, they have more than we thought, and there are a huge group of civilians topside,” El Coyote whispered. “I just took a peek.”
Joaquin moved up to where Roger knelt and touched him on the shoulder. “Bravo Squad is up.”
“Where’s Luis?”
“Here, Charlie is up,” Luis said.
“Aye, let’s the four of us take a peek. Get your squads ready to get on that yacht,” Roger said.
The three squad leaders took a quick peek from the fishing trawler at their surroundings.
The trawler’s crew moved about their business, pretending that Roger and his men were invisible.
The LZ seemed alive with activity. Roger thought about a market or maybe a bazaar in some weird country. Well-dressed, well-poised men and women milled about, talking and sipping champagne or coffee. They looked at the sub and the surrounding boats as if they were at some sort of amusement park. Roger thought it was odd.
The thing that made Roger the most uneasy was that four F-150 pickups with .50-caliber machine guns were parked on the same side with the truck beds parallel to the beach house’s walls. Roger was concerned. The weapons were pointed up at the sky, yet the gun operators were sitting close-by, the belts of .50-caliber rounds were loaded, and the trucks were idling. Mario’s men looked either stoned, crazy, or like some type of medieval animals drooling over fresh meat.
“They could wipe out everyone in a matter of minutes,” Roger muttered.
“Sí, and no one could make it to the house. Interlocking sectors of fire. How many soldiers you guess?” El Coyote asked, peeking from his concealed position.
“Lad, I’d say over a hundred at least!”
“Again, the navy was wrong!” El Coyote said.
Roger growled, “Or they lied.”
Joaquin added, “Well, securing the LZ is going to take serious work.”
El Coyote spoke urgently. “We need to get on with it, Roger. I will get guys to take a bead on the trucks. But the guests? They are toast when the shooting starts.”
Roger shrugged and pointed at the Happy Mermaid, which towered above their fishing trawler. “We got to climb up on that thing. Unnoticed.”
“Piece of cake.” Joaquin laughed.
“Alpha goes first; it’ll take us five minutes. We will cover Bravo and Charlie,” El Coyote said, moving off.
Designated climbers had already been picked and were standing by. The men would use ropes with grappling hooks to get themselves up and then toss down several rope ladders. The actual climbing would be out of sight from prying eyes, thanks to the placement of the fishing trawler.
“We have to cripple that yacht, but I mainly want that minigun taken out,” Roger told his leaders. They nodded.
El Coyote continued after some thought, “Well, if that sailboat from California had not taken our parking space, we could have parked in front of the boat as planned and boom!”
“Aye. Look, why don’t we go with the other option we discussed?” Roger proposed.
El Coyote frowned again. “OK.”
Roger said, “Let’s get a move on, gents. Can’t stand around all freakin’ day.”
Roger did a radio check with the whole Dark Cloud assault force and announced what he was doing.
Green Team Two
Oscar watched as his men grabbed the two men and one female as they neared the water. The second female was quicker than they expected and bolted. She had the build of a college athlete, which meant they would have to get her quickly.
Oscar lay prone among the flies and watched it go down. One of his men chased her until she got into the open field. She made it across the sand and began screaming. Oscar looked in the distance. Surely no one could hear or see her, but if she made it back, they were done.
Oscar’s operative dropped down into the prone position and hid himself, taking aim. “Shit,” he exclaimed.
The bullet tore through her, and she tumbled.
The four men and Tanya looked down at the unconscious body and then looked up and at each other.
“Well, Tanya?”
She shrugged. “I need light. Problem is they all look alike!” Tanya felt her heart race. She was not feeling so positive any longer.
Someone shone a flashlight in Mario’s face. The team worked just as rehearsed. Mario had been hit with a stun gun and then injected with morphine. He groaned and mumbled.
The team stripped him naked, took dental x-rays with a small hand-held x-ray device, and checked his fingerprints on an electronic scanner.
“I think it’s the Mario who I talked to, for whatever that means!” Tanya said, hopeful.
“Dental records don’t match. Tattoos do, build does, and blood type. Fingerprints have been melted off with acid!” one of the team members said.
The team looked baffled.
“I
say it’s him,” one of the team members stated with great confidence. Clearly he wanted this to end.
A loud scream could be heard on the other side of the door, and then silence.
“What do we do?” Tanya asked.
“It’s him! We have to tell Roger and the rest,” the team member with the portable x-ray machine, Eduardo, announced. He looked relieved.
“Wait!” Tanya knelt down and put her nose next to Mario’s lips. She opened his mouth.
“We have to go, Tanya.” Eduardo stepped past Tanya to bang on the hatch. This was the signal to open it.
“Hold on!” she screamed.
The three men stood and looked down at her as if she were nuts.
“What are you?” Eduardo asked, alarm rising in his voice.
“Not him. I know that Mario has a drink every morning. This guy’s mouth smells like mouthwash. The more I look at him, no! I can tell this is not the man I spoke with!” She kicked his feet, and he stirred. “Platform shoes and watch on the wrong hand!”
“You may be wrong,” Eduardo spoke rapidly.
The team members were beginning to sweat.
Tanya shook her head. “Not him!”
Fernando, who was a medic and member of the GAFE, spoke up quickly. “If it’s not him, that means this whole mission could be a huge waste!”
“What’s going on in there?”
Tanya heard Evan’s voice on the other side of the hatch.
“One minute.” Tanya began to pace and crossed her arms across her chest. She cursed and balled up her fists.
Eduardo shrugged and pulled out a syringe. He gave Mario a shot of Narcan and waited. The man came around and sat up.
“Are you the real Mario?” Eduardo asked.
“Who the hell are you?” The man looked terrified and tried to back across the floor.
“Mario?”
“Y-y…yes?”
“Not him!” Tanya had reached her snapping point. “Why won’t you believe me?” She picked up an M-4 that had been propped against the bulkhead, aimed it at Mario’s head, and pulled the trigger.
Mario’s head exploded, and for a second they were all deaf.
Silver Lead and Dead (Evan Hernandez series Book 1) Page 32