Adin looked at her. “That has to be it.” He glanced at Herman.
“When Paul said antennas, I was thinking more along the lines of a series of towers,” said Herman.
“No.” Adin shook his head. “You see the smaller dish?”
Sarah and Herman squinted out toward the windshield and then nodded.
“That’s a radio telescope,” said Adin. “It’s not real big. Not as large as the ones in Puerto Rico, but it’s enough to see out into space.”
Herman gave him a puzzled look. “What’s that got to do with it?”
“It’s what we’re looking for,” said Adin.
“What do you mean?”
“Trust me, that’s it,” said Adin. “Look off to the left.” He took Herman by the arm and pointed. “You see that clearing next to the buildings?”
Herman squinted and then nodded.
“Pilot says it looks like a landing strip. Can’t tell if it’s paved from this distance, but it should be enough for us; that is, if it’s long enough.”
“You’re not gonna try and land there, are you?” said Herman.
Adin nodded. “It’s our best bet. If we get on the ground fast and off-load, they’ll never know what hit them.” He took a couple of steps forward and tapped the pilot on the shoulder.
“If that’s the place, you’re out of your mind,” said Herman.
Immediately the plane’s wing dipped. The C-130 made a deep banking turn, dropped altitude, and veered off to the left.
Sarah lost her footing. Adin grabbed her and held on until the plane leveled off. It circled away from the two massive dishes in the jungle and took a heading south toward Coba.
“Get your guys ready!” The pilot yelled over his shoulder to Teo Ben Rabin, who was seated behind him. “We’re only going to get one shot at this. I’ll approach low in over the trees,” said the pilot. “They gotta be ready to move the second we hit that runway.”
“Got it,” said Uncle Ben. “Excuse me.” He pushed past Sarah and Adin and headed for the cargo bay.
“I want the two of you to get down behind that first cargo container in the center aisle. When we land, I want as much metal between you and whatever is around those buildings as possible. That’ll be the safest place for now,” said Adin. “If we start to take fire and they hit the fuel tank, get out of the plane fast. Don’t go out the ramp,” said Adin. “You’ll never make it. Use one of the forward cargo doors and keep the plane between you and any incoming rounds, understood?”
Sarah nodded. “Where are you going to be?”
“On the Jeep,” said Adin. “I’ll be OK. Worry about yourself,” he told her. “It was stupid of me to allow you to come.”
“Worry about that later,” she said.
“You watch her,” he told Herman.
“I can take care of myself,” said Sarah.
“Why don’t you land somewhere else and try and buy some time?” said Herman. “Now that you know where it is, what’s the rush?”
“I’m afraid we don’t have any time,” said Adin. “It may be now or never. You understand what I said about getting off the plane?”
“Got it,” said Herman.
“You’re in charge of her and the dog. I want them alive when it’s over.” He looked at Sarah. “Take care of yourself. Stay down low.” She was trying to put on a brave face, but she was scared. He could tell by the look on her face.
What Herman didn’t tell Adin was that he had climbed up into the container where Ben Rabin’s men had first hidden. While Uncle Ben’s men were busy looking out the ramp at the back of the plane, Herman jobbed two nine-millimeter Berettas and four clips of ammunition from a duffel bag stashed inside the container. He would have preferred to take one of their nifty Tavor rifles, but he figured it might be missed.
To Herman’s thinking, if he and Sarah could stay alive long enough, there would be plenty of opportunity to pick up loose weapons off the ground from some of the S-13 men who didn’t make it. Herman didn’t think much of their plan to land on the field. To him it was suicide.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
In his heightened state of fright, Leffort wasn’t sure what he was hearing at first. With the iron asteroid out of control and the monitors in the room all dark, his mind was seized with thoughts of escape. The noise went on for several seconds before it even registered in his brain.
When it did, it hit him like a shot of adrenaline. The sound was muted by the solid steel door of the control room and the heavy insulation in the walls and ceiling around him. But there was no mistaking what it was. An alarm pierced the silence in the hallway outside, the buzzing Klaxon on the wall.
Leffort was sure he had triggered it. Either the result of the unbalanced telemetry data being fed into the computers or the fact that he had powered down the large monitors on the wall-something had set it off.
There was nowhere to go. Leffort was trapped in the room with two armed guards outside the door. Someone pounded on the other side. Finally despondent, he picked up his card key and unlocked it from the inside. When he heard the electronic bolts snap open, he waited for several seconds. Leffort expected the guards to storm in and take him, but they didn’t. He opened the door a crack and looked out.
The corridor was a sea of pandemonium. The Klaxon horn on the wall blaring in his ears was deafening. Guards were running in every direction. Two of the scientists Leffort had thrown out of the room were standing there gesturing frantically as they spoke.
Leffort stepped out and closed the door behind him. “What is it?”
One of them who spoke English looked at him wide-eyed. “Radar warns of a large unidentified aircraft.”
“What?”
People racing by were bumping into the two men. One of them, the one he was talking to, tried to edge toward the closed control room door. “I must get inside to take some readings.”
“Where was the plane? How far out?” Leffort changed the subject.
“Very close,” said the man. “One of the guards outside saw it. Only a quick glimpse but he said it looked like a military plane.”
“The Mexican government?” said Leffort.
“We don’t know. They have ordered all technical staff to the underground bunker.” The alarm was the signal to battle stations. “The rest have already gone. I was waiting for you to open the door.” He reached for it.
“Never mind!” Leffort blocked him with his body. “I’ll grab the printouts, lock up, and meet you at the bunker.”
The man smiled. “Good. Thank you. You are a prince.” He was still genuflecting toward Leffort as the two of them disappeared into the sea of human chaos flowing down the hallway.
Leffort stepped back into the room, closed the door, and tried to collect his thoughts. The printer was off. He had never turned it on. For a man who was an agnostic, Leffort was beginning to believe. If there was a God, surely he had intervened.
He stepped out and closed the door to the control room behind him. This time he made sure it was locked. Then he headed down the hall the other way, away from the bunker and the other scientists.
The shock of the blaring sound was sudden and loud enough that Liquida banged his head against the sheet metal ducting above the pay room.
He didn’t know what the alarm was, but he figured there was a good chance Bruno or someone else had discovered him missing from his room.
He watched through the louvered vent as the man at the desk below him stood up and listened for a moment. First the guy turned and looked at the locked door to the hallway outside. When he turned to glance at the open safe, Liquida moved. The guy started gathering up his papers and books on the desk.
Using the stiletto, Liquida quickly popped the catch on the register cover. He allowed the vent cover to swing open and pushed the filter out of the way.
The thin flat filter floated toward the floor like a leaf. As it brushed past the man’s shoulder, the accountant looked up just in time to catch a glimpse of
Liquida’s sinister smile. The Mexicutioner descended on him headfirst with his arms straight out as if to embrace his victim with the point of the stiletto.
The bookkeeper threw up a hand to ward it off, but he was too late.
Liquida fell on him. The needle-sharp tip of the blade slipped smoothly into the right side of the man’s neck as if the wound were a ready-made sheath. With all of Liquida’s weight behind it, the stiletto buried itself to the handle in the victim’s upper chest just inside the clavicle.
The shocked man broke Liquida’s fall, and they both collapsed onto the floor. The two of them lay sprawled, the bookkeeper pulsing a river of blood as Liquida wiggled the blade in the wound. The tip had either punctured the upper chamber of the heart or severed the aorta. Either way the man would be dead within seconds.
Liquida waited a few counts for the convulsing body to become still. Then he got to his knees, stood, and pulled the stiletto from the deep wound. Liquida wiped the blade and his bloodied hand on an unsoiled portion of the victim’s pant leg.
Without another thought, he turned his attention to the open safe behind him. For the first time Liquida realized that the stacked wall of greenbacks inside the two yawning steel doors was nearly as tall as he was and four times as wide.
He walked across the room and grabbed one of the enclosed bundles from the top shelf. They were five-dollar U.S. banknotes, all of them vacuum packed in plastic. Liquida could tell from the way it was packaged, as well as from the residue of white film on the shrink-fitted wrapper, that it was cash from one of the cartels. No one else in the world bundled bills like that. They had to protect their money from seawater, chemicals, and fuel during storage and transit. To Liquida the narco seal of approval was better than a certificate from the U.S. Treasury. He knew it wasn’t counterfeit and no one would have a list of the serial numbers.
What better way to launder it than to transfer the narco dollars to Bruno’s clients, who in turn would wire excess oil revenues into a cartel account overseas. In the meantime, Bruno’s clients could use the narco bills to meet their payroll in the jungle. It was the perfect symbiotic relationship.
The second shelf was stacked with tens. The shelf below it held twenties.
Liquida worked his way to the floor of the safe. It was stacked at least three feet high with bundles of hundred-dollar banknotes, each one a tight plastic brick. The safe was at least two feet deep and four feet wide. If true to form, each plastic-wrapped brick of hundreds would contain ten thousand dollars.
Just like the post office, the cartels had to weigh everything for transport. Otherwise overloaded planes would nose into the jungle and their jury-rigged diesel-powered semisubs would be littering the seafloor. Liquida knew from his work with the cartels that a million dollars in hundreds would weigh just under twenty pounds. He had no idea how much money was in the bottom of the safe, but it was more than he could carry without wheels.
His worst enemy now was time. Keeping one eye on the door to the hallway outside, Liquida searched the cabinets under the counter. He found a stack of heavy canvas bags, each one the size of a twenty-five-pound sack of flour. They were cash bags without lettering on the outside. Each one had a tie string stitched near the open top of the bag.
Liquida quickly filled four of the bags with hundred-dollar bills and tied them closed with double knots. He lifted each by the tie string until he was satisfied that the thick canvas tie would hold the weight of the bag without breaking.
He went back to the cadaver on the floor and stripped the dead man’s belt from his pants. The alarm outside was still blaring. Liquida fished for the guy’s electronic key card and found it in his pants pocket.
He went back to the money bags and made a separate loop from the remaining ends of the ties on each of the bags. He threaded the leather belt through the loops and then buckled it. He hoisted the load over his shoulders so that the bags were evenly balanced, two in front, two behind, roughly eighty pounds total. It was heavy. The weight swayed as he moved, but Liquida could handle it.
What he couldn’t do was take his eyes off the safe. He had barely made a dent in the bottom stack of bills. He set the load down and grabbed two more canvas bags.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
As they came in low over the trees, wheels and flaps down, the pilot could almost feel branches scraping the belly of the plane. He feathered the engines to try and keep the noise down.
Suddenly a flock of birds flew up in front of him. Several hit the windshield, feathers and blood flying. Fortunately the plane wasn’t going fast enough to break glass. A few of the birds went through the props. The pilot pushed the throttles forward for more power. The four large Allison engines roared as the plane nosed up.
“Shit!” The pilot shook his head. “If they didn’t know we were coming, they know it now.” He eased back on the throttles once more. He could see the runway ahead of them now. It was paved and long. At least that was good news.
He glided in over the last set of trees, goosed the engines, and aimed for the end of the runway. The plan was to hit the ground as quickly as possible, reverse the props, gun the engines, and stand on the brakes while the loadmaster in the back was lowering the ramp. If they hit it right, the drop-down door on the second container would fall at the same time. The Jeep with its recoilless rifle would be on the runway before anyone knew it. Adin, with two of the commandos riding in the back, would open fire on anything that moved. Ben Rabin and the other men would push the ammo trailer onto the ramp and allow gravity to do the rest. In the meantime, two of the commandos would drop out through the forward cargo door on the port side while the plane was still moving, cross the runway, and set up two squad machine guns for covering fire.
The plane passed over the first threshold markings on the runway. The pilot pushed the yoke forward. Suddenly the portside window on the flight deck exploded. Pebbles of glass sprayed the pilot’s face as bullets whizzed past his nose, punching holes and blowing out dials in the instrument panel above his head.
A second burst of fire riveted the side of the plane, thumping the metal. The screen in front of the navigator exploded as the twenty-millimeter rounds sliced through the plane, blowing the man out of his chair and cutting him in half. Electrical shorts ignited flames in the wooden panel behind the screen. The aluminum in the plane began to burn as the flight engineer grabbed a fire extinguisher and began to spray.
“Keep it out of my eyes!” screamed the pilot. He struggled to control the plane as he tried to wipe blood from his face using his shoulder. The wheels on the undercarriage hit the ground hard, jamming the pilot’s lower back into the seat. It threw the flight engineer to the floor.
The pilot reached over and reversed the props, then pushed the throttle controls all the way forward. The plane nearly stood on its nose as it slowed. The pilot pressed on the brakes, his gaze fixed on the runway, when suddenly his eyes widened in horror. Coming head-on, the propellants’ exhaust was almost invisible as the rocket-propelled grenade smashed through the windshield and exploded inside.
The plane veered to the right. The guard with his rocket launcher still at his shoulder stood at the edge of the runway smiling for almost a second before the windmilling prop on the outboard engine sprayed him like chum into the open air.
The plane’s forward wheel rolled into a swale at the edge of the runway, then ran off the pavement. It buried itself in the deep gravel at the edge of the concrete.
The plane came to an abrupt stop with the four Allison engines racing in reverse. Ground fire, including tracers, poured into the two starboard engines from the buildings along the right side of the runway. One of the engines started to smoke, then sputtered and died.
“Could have warned him ’bout that,” said Herman. He grabbed Sarah by the arm and tried to pull her along behind him as they crawled low in the center aisle. She was anchored by the dog next to her. Bullets rattled against the plane, punching holes in the aluminum fuselage. Herman could hea
r them hitting the other side of the steel container, but none of them seemed to come through.
Up at the top of the ladder, the aluminum bulkhead to the flight deck was perforated with so many holes that it looked like lacework. The exploding grenade had peppered it with shrapnel.
Sarah jumped and Bugsy barked at the jarring clang as the heavy steel door on the second container dropped onto the deck of the cargo bay. A second later, the Jeep, its engine revving, shot out of the container and down the plane’s rear ramp.
The Hercules was stopped with its nose pitched down at an angle. This set the bottom of the ramp at a sharp angle to the concrete runway. The Jeep went airborne before it hit the ground. When it did, one of the commandos was jolted off the back of the vehicle. Sarah saw him go flying. She held her breath. He bounced and rolled like a rubber ball, landed on his feet, and started to run.
At the same instant two of the other commandos dropped out of the forward cargo door on the other side of the plane and disappeared.
Sarah looked back for the commando who had fallen from the Jeep. She watched as he took three strides before he was spun around and cut down by a swarm of bullets that sparked and chipped the concrete all around him. Sarah lay staring in shock as the man’s body continued to take hits, his life snuffed out in front of her eyes.
“Son of a bitch!” Just as Herman said it, a stitch of bullets penetrated the side of the plane in the gap between the two steel containers. Instantly four neat holes appeared in the stainless-steel fuel tank. Three of them started hemorrhaging high-octane aviation fuel into the cargo bay. “Time to go,” said Herman. “Stay with me and stay low.” Crouching down, he moved toward the open cargo door on the other side of the plane. When he looked back, Sarah was still lying on her stomach staring out the back of the plane at the dead man on the tarmac. Herman skidded across the aisle on one knee and grabbed her arm as if in a steel vise.
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