Damage Control

by John Gilstrap

  She climbed the ladder blindly, and with each rung, the atmosphere became less breathable.

  When her head hit hard metal, she knew that freedom had arrived. Locking the heels of her shoes against one ladder rung, and gripping the top rung tightly in her left hand, she leaned away for added leverage and used her right hand to push upward with all her strength.

  The metal disk moved more easily than she’d anticipated. Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe manhole covers just weren’t that heavy. Either way, it slid to the side. When the opening was big enough for her head and shoulders to pass, she climbed the rest of the way into the night. In her mind, as she rose through the plume of smoke that gushed from the opening in the street, she looked like a ghost emerging from the mist.

  With her waist clear, she bent until she was flat with the street and she dragged her legs out. Soaked to the skin and disgusted by what she’d endured, she shivered in the hot night air. Soon it would be over.

  Maria crouched on the ground, looking first to the left and then to the right for signs of danger. She nearly jumped out of her skin when two men approached her from behind with weapons trained on her.

  These must be her rescuers, she thought, but why were they pointing guns?

  “You must be Maria Elizondo,” one of them said. “Felix Hernandez is anxious to chat with you.”

  In his heart, Palma had known that a third explosion was coming. It only made sense. The first blast was designed to draw his people in. The second was designed to kill those responders—a well-calculated move as it turned out. If he had been planning these diversions—and he knew now that that’s what they were—he would have planted a third bomb to invoke utter confusion.

  He hadn’t expected it to be so close, however—only fifty meters away. That his adversary could get so close without being detected was at once impressive and frightening. Palma had put a man very near that location to watch the oncoming street. He couldn’t remember the soldier’s name, but that probably didn’t matter. The fact that the charge had been planted in the first place probably meant that he was dead. And if he wasn’t killed before, then the blast had most certainly taken care of it.

  Palma’s radio broke squelch. “Captain, we have Maria Elizondo,” a voice said.

  He smiled. A diversion was only as effective as its ability to divert attention. Once he’d figured out what his adversary’s plan had been, Palma had told his remaining forces to hold fast in their current positions.

  And now his decision had paid off. With the world around him on fire, he brought his radio to his lip. “Bring her to me,” he said.

  Jonathan had read about the Sandcat—in the U.S., they were called tactical protector vehicles, or TPVs—but he’d never seen the interior of one. Built on a Ford F-550 chassis, the dashboard looked just like any other pickup truck. And if it weren’t for the five-point restraint system, the seats would have looked familiar, too.

  But that’s where the similarity stopped. The doors felt heavy enough to be armored, but not quite heavy enough to be armored well. Not knowing the Mexican government’s specs for such things, the element of doubt translated to a lack of confidence that the doors or windows could stop anything heavier than a slingshot.

  Thanks to night vision, Jonathan could make out the details of the interior, as well, and was surprised to see fold-down web benches instead of seats. They attached to the side bulkheads, and to Jonathan’s eye could accommodate two people each with body armor, and three each without. He assumed that the black knobs that dotted the bulkheads on all sides were gun ports that provided for a fairly effective field of fire.

  The article he’d read about the TPVs had showed a picture of a gun turret with a mounted M60 machine gun. Here, in the spot where that turret would be mounted, was a rooftop emergency exit, instead.

  Boxers drove with the lights off and NVGs in place. It looked as if the Sandcat was equipped with a FLIR system—forward-looking infrared—but it was tough enough driving with night vision. Why complicate it with the challenge of driving from a television screen?

  Apparently, the third bomb had spread a lot of fire, evidence of a full gas tank on the vehicle where it had been set. As Boxers piloted the Sandcat toward the conflagration—there wasn’t room to turn the beast around in the narrow streets—Jonathan watched flames climb higher than the rooftops. As they turned the corner to head north before going east again, he got a glimpse of the carnage he’d created. Bodies littered the street, some of them clearly dead, and some of them writhing in pain. One of the living guys’ clothes were still smoking.

  A Mexican soldier—a sergeant, judging from his uniform insignia—spotted the Sandcat and ran toward it, his arms waving for it to stop and help.

  “Want me to run him down?” Boxers asked.

  “No,” Jonathan said. “Not unless he gets in the way or he looks like he’s going to take a shot. Just keep going.”

  Boxers did in fact gun the engine and lurch toward the sergeant, but it was a move designed to make the guy jump back, thereby saving him.

  If anyone else had been behind the wheel, Jonathan would have told the driver to slow down, but Boxers was very good at this sort of thing. Jonathan figured they were doing thirty, thirty-five miles an hour when Boxers cut the right-hand turn onto the street that ran behind Maria’s house. He cut it short, too, galumphing over the curb and taking out a bicycle that someone had foolishly left in a yard.

  Tristan yelled from the back as the impact launched him out of his bench and nearly into the ceiling before he landed in a heap on the armored floor. “Hey!”

  “Hang on, kid!” Boxers said through a laugh. The humor evaporated as quickly as it had arrived as he caught a glimpse of what lay ahead. “I think we’re in trouble, Boss,” he said.

  Jonathan saw it, too. A pair of soldiers had a woman in custody, each with a hand on a different biceps while the one on the right spoke into a radio.

  “Turn on the headlights,” Jonathan commanded, flipping his NVGs out of the way. “And keep going forward.”

  Boxers shot him a confused look, but he complied without a word.

  The guards looked startled as the headlights caught them. The one on the left shielded his eyes right away, but the one on the right had to put his radio down first.

  “Go in like we belong,” Jonathan said. “I want them to think we’re the cavalry.” As he spoke, he unclipped his M27 from its sling and drew the MP7 from its holster on his left thigh.

  “Your plan is just to go out shooting?” Boxers asked. His tone made it clear that he did not approve.

  “She’s our ticket out of town,” Jonathan said. “I don’t see—”

  Maria Elizondo moved with startling speed. While her captors stared at the approaching vehicle, she made a wild flapping motion with both arms, breaking free from their grasp. She took a step back.

  Jonathan saw that as his cue and he shouldered open his door.

  The soldiers were still reacting when petite Maria produced a massive pistol from somewhere. She drew and fired in the same motion. The guy on the right fell.

  The recoil was a problem for her, though. Before she could regain control, the soldier on the left had found his own weapon. He was bringing it to bear when Jonathan snap-shot a bullet from his MP7 into the guy’s right ear.

  Startled, Maria brought her revolver around and took a shot at Jonathan.

  He read her body language in time to spin around and duck behind the panel of his open door. The bullet punched through four inches from his ear.

  So much for the vehicle being armored.

  Maria hadn’t meant to fire at the truck. It was a reflex, a body twitch reacting to the sound of a gunshot. She saw a man drop as she pulled the trigger, and now she expected to be shot herself.

  For an instant, she considered running away, but the urge evaporated from her brain seconds after it formed.

  She had to make it clear that she’d meant them no harm.

  “She d
ropped her weapon,” Boxers said. “She’s got her hands up.”

  Jonathan felt relieved. He didn’t think that her gunplay had been an act of aggression. It would have sucked to have to kill her.

  “Put your hands in the air!” Jonathan called from behind the door. He raised up high enough to see through the closed window and saw that she was doing as she was told.

  Satisfied, he let the MP7 hang at his side as he stepped out into the open. “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Are you the Americans here to take me to the United States?”

  “That depends on what your name is,” Jonathan said. He was nearly certain, but they’d had no visual ID for her, so even shadows of doubt had to be taken seriously.

  “My name is Maria Elizondo,” she said.

  “And who do you work for?”

  “Felix Hernandez.”

  “What is the name of your FBI contact?”

  “Veronica Costanza.”

  Jonathan felt his shoulders sag with relief. He motioned for her to come to the Sandcat. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  “Can I take my pistol?” she asked.

  “Are you going to shoot at me again?” He made sure to ask that one with a smile.

  “I didn’t mean to,” Maria said. Obviously, she couldn’t see the smile.

  Jonathan pointed to the .44 with his chin. “Sure, go ahead. Quickly.”

  “Don’t be crazy, Scorpion,” Boxers said from the driver’s seat.

  Jonathan ignored him. Maria wasted no time. She bent at the waist, picked up the weapon off the street, and jogged over to him. When she closed to within a few feet, Jonathan extended his hand and smiled again. “You can call me Scorpion,” he said.

  He opened the back door for her. “The driver is Big Guy, and that young man is Tristan.”

  Jonathan offered a hand to help her up the big step, but she didn’t need it.

  He closed the back door, holstered his MP7, and climbed back into the shotgun seat.

  “Let’s go to America,” he said.

  Boxers gunned the engine.

  She was beautiful.

  As incongruous and stupid and juvenile as it seemed, that was Tristan’s first thought. Maria Elizondo was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. He’d only caught a glimpse of her in dim yellow streetlamp light that made it through the windows. Her huge brown eyes glinted in the light, and as she sat on the bench opposite him, he could make out every contour of her body through the soaked clothing that clung to her skin.

  Clung to her breasts. Her breasts that had no bra. The suspension on this truck left a lot to be desired, and every bump caused the breasts to bounce.

  Christ, he was getting hard. How much of a pervert do you have to be to get a hard-on when people are shooting at you?

  “Hello,” she said in English. From her smile, he sensed that she’d read his mind.

  Tristan’s ears turned hot. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Tristan. I’m the one who actually has a real name.”

  “Maria,” she said.

  “Tell me where we’re going, Maria,” Jonathan called from the front seat.

  She rose from her bench and duck-walked to where she could look between the two front seats to see out the windshield.

  God, her ass looked great, too.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Palma keyed the radio mike again. “I said, bring her to me,” he said. “Do you copy?”

  They, too, were dead. It was a conclusion drawn purely from speculation, but given the way everything else was going, that was the only answer.

  And why not? Clearly, the plan for their escape would bring Harris and Lerner to the alley where his soldiers had been waiting. It was just a matter of timing.

  He spat a curse and kicked the door of the car that had become his command post. He flashed on how furious Felix was going to be when he found out that Palma had not only ignored his order to grab the girl right away, but that as a result she had gotten away.

  And make no mistake, she had gotten away. The ruses and diversions had all worked perfectly for them. They could be anywhere now, and they could be driving anything—

  Wait.

  The Sandcats! In his mind, he plotted the locations of the explosions as a function of the vehicle locations, and it made sense. But how could the Americans have known they were there? Did Palma have an informer among his men?

  That didn’t matter.

  At least he now knew what they were looking for. As he radioed for a helicopter, he dialed his phone with his other hand.

  “Do you know the warehouse district off of Hermanos Escobar?” Maria asked.

  “I don’t know anything about your city,” Boxers said. “Start with compass points.”

  “North and east of here,” Maria said. She gave Jonathan the address from memory. “It is very close to the American border.”

  “It’s a freaking tunnel,” Boxers said. “I hope to hell it’s close to the border.”

  Jonathan entered the address into his GPS system. He also made sure that Venice got the address and the coordinates back in Fisherman’s Cove. When he got the results, he shot Boxers a look. “Fourteen-point-three kilometers.”

  “That’s like nine miles!” Tristan exclaimed from the back.

  Boxers’ foot grew heavier on the accelerator. “I think I read somewhere that these TPVs have a top speed of seventy-five miles an hour,” he said. “What say we test that?”

  The cityscape sped by faster.

  Thank God for the early hour, Jonathan thought. Boxers drove as if Ciudad Juarez were an open racetrack. Traffic lights didn’t matter. Stoplights didn’t matter.

  “Getting there doesn’t matter unless we get there alive,” Jonathan said. He knew better than to make an overt suggestion that the Big Guy slow down. When he was this close to the barn, any criticism was likely to result in even faster speeds.

  “This thing’s got lights and siren if you want to use them,” Boxers replied.

  Jonathan had already considered and rejected that. While it might help clear the way at individual intersections, he didn’t like giving such vivid audible and visual clues to a city full of emergency responders who would relish the chance to hurt the people who had done so much damage tonight.

  “Didn’t think so,” Boxers said.

  Jonathan undid his five-point restraint and rolled out of his seat into the back. “Tristan!” he yelled over the engine noise.

  The kid jumped.

  “Come up here. Take my seat.”

  “What are you doing?” Boxers asked.

  “If only one of us survives a wreck, it needs to be the PC,” Jonathan said. “Tristan! Now!”

  Tristan half walked, half crawled the distance to the front.

  “Sit in that seat,” Jonathan instructed. He helped the kid climb over the center console.

  Tristan continued to have trouble maneuvering all his equipment in such a small space.

  “Is that safety on?” Boxers asked as Tristan’s butt made contact with the seat.

  “Yes! Jesus, yes. I haven’t touched the friggin’ safety.” He pushed Jonathan’s hands away from the belts. “I can do that. I’m not a kid in a car seat.”

  The TPV hit a pothole, and Jonathan literally hit the overhead. He landed on his side.

  “Sorry, Boss,” Boxers said in a tone that spoke far more amusement than apology.

  Jonathan flipped him off, eliciting a laugh. At least Tristan was still secure.

  He looked to Maria, who somehow had remained on the bench. Maybe if you grow up in this shit-hole town you get used to the road conditions and don’t get bounced around. “You okay?” he asked.

  She smiled and nodded.

  Even with all the speed in the open spaces, corners and the occasional obstacle still made it slow going.

  “We just passed the halfway mark,” Boxers announced.

  Jonathan looked at his watch. Twelve minutes to go a little over four miles. If he’d read
the map properly, the second half of the trip would be on wider, straighter roads. Maybe they might just make it after all.

  The thought had barely formed in his mind when he heard the chatter of automatic-weapons fire and the distinctive tink, tink of bullets hitting their vehicle.

  “We’ve picked up a tail, Boss,” Boxers said, checking his driver’s side mirror.

  Jonathan reached across the open space of the backseat, cupped his hand at the nape of Maria’s neck, and pushed her to the floor. “Get down!” he commanded. “Tristan, undo those belts and hunker down on the floor in front of your seat.”

  Another burst of gunfire didn’t produce any hits that Jonathan could see or hear.

  “What is it?” Jonathan asked Boxers. The view through the back windows was too blocked with a mesh of expanded metal brush cages for them to see any useful detail.

  Boxers’ foot got heavier on the gas and he checked his mirror again. “Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a technical,” he said. He started driving zigzags, S-turns that took the Sandcat from curb line to curb line, with the intent of providing a tougher target.

  Jonathan had no idea what the derivation of the term was, but technicals were the preferred vehicles of Third World terrorists everywhere. Consisting of a pickup truck with a mounted machine gun of some sort—usually a thirty-cal M60, but he’d seen a few with a fifty-cal Ma Deuce—they were frighteningly efficient killing machines. In Jonathan’s experience, though, marksmanship was an issue.

  With the next burst, three rounds punched through the back of the Sandcat. One went on to spider the windshield.

  “You want to take care of him for me, Boss?” Boxers asked. His tone had no more edge to it than if he’d asked for the salt to be passed at the dinner table.

  “Let me have your Four Seventeen,” Jonathan said.