by Weston Ochse
“Just being practical. You’re going to need the energy.” Ruiz glanced around without moving his head. “Plus, you need to look like you’re eating rather than sitting round scoping the place.”
Walker picked at the pork with his chopsticks. He slid one piece into his mouth, aware that they only had three minutes. His increasingly heightened tension made it taste like clay, but to keep up appearances he chewed the piece of meat until it was macerated into a paste.
Finally it was time.
Yaya, dressed as a woman, got up at the same time as Surrey. They both made a beeline for the bathroom. Surrey was there first, but Yaya pushed her out of the way, entered the bathroom, and slammed the door behind him.
Surrey tried to open the door, but it was locked. She began to bang heartily on the hollow wooden door. “It was my turn!” She began shouting at the top of her lungs, “Get out!” Each protest was accompanied by a thump on the door.
The entire Chinese waitstaff came running, shocked and dismayed by the ugly American antics. One of them, a petite waitress, put her hand on Surrey’s arm and was shoved away for her efforts. Meanwhile, Surrey had added bitch to her shouted mantra Get out!
By now, everyone was on their feet. One of the tables of real customers, a father, a mother, and two daughters couldn’t take it anymore. They left, but not before the father threw a scalding look at the interior of the restaurant as he dropped a pile of bills to pay for their meal.
Laws acted the part of the confused husband as he approached the door. But instead of speaking English, he spoke Arabic, which confused the waitstaff and seemed to enrage Surrey.
Surrey whirled on Laws and threw a punch toward him. The waitstaff shrieked at this. Laws ducked aside, backing away with his hands out.
“You better run, Arab lover,” Surrey growled.
The remaining customers took off without paying.
Ruiz and Walker approached the group surrounding the door. “Can I help?” Walker asked, turning on his boy-next-door charm for the Chinese to see.
Surrey gave him a smoldering look. “Sure, if you can get the towelhead out of the bathroom so I can cop a squat.”
Those Chinese who spoke enough English to understand the vulgarity whispered harshly to the others. Two male cooks who’d been standing at the door came into the front room. One held a cleaver that looked as if it had been used in the Boxer Rebellion to decapitate British soldiers.
It was time. If the ICE and FBI agents reacted according to plan, the restaurant staff had been segregated from the Triad members in the subbasement. Communications had already been cut. A cell-phone jammer was positioned outside, as was an FBI QRF, in the event the cavalry needed to be called in. Walker hoped it didn’t come to that. If it did, it meant that their mission had failed and one or all of them were dead.
The door to the bathroom opened wide. But instead of the burka-wearing Middle Eastern woman, Yaya stood there in full combat gear. He swept a Super 90 toward the waitstaff. MP5s and other gear hung from his shoulders and neck. Surrey pulled a Walther from her purse and pointed it at the waitstaff.
“Everyone outside,” Laws said in both English and Chinese.
The waitstaff’s eyes had gotten as large as soup bowls. They complied meekly, moving as a single multi-limbed mob out the front door.
The cook with the cleaver bolted. He only got as far as Ruiz, who caught him by the neck. He disarmed him and soon had him in a choke hold.
The other cook held up his hands, ducked, and hurried toward the front door.
Yaya passed MP5s to Laws and Surrey. Ruiz, having deposited the unconscious cook into one of the booths, grabbed his Super 90. From a bag, he passed around enough NVGs and MBITRs for the team and Surrey.
Walker had his 9mm in hand and was poised at the door to the kitchen.
Laws made a commo check. Everyone acknowledged, including the two ICE agents who were undercover delivering food and the FBI agent who’d been busily pretending to be a health inspector. What had begun as a hastily designed, multiagency mission the previous evening appeared to be coming off without a hitch. It had taken some doing for the FBI to relinquish operational control, which they’d initially insisted upon because of the presence of the threat on American soil. But a phone call from Senator Withers of the Sissy to the director of the FBI had ensured that cooperation would be forthcoming. All they asked was to be allowed to participate.
With the restaurant staff safely outside, Laws, Yaya, Walker, Ruiz, and Surrey moved into the kitchen.
Laws reached into the fortune-cookie box, broke one open, and read it over the MBITR. “‘You will soon be surrounded by good friends and laughter.’”
“In bed,” Ruiz added.
“What’s that?” Surrey asked.
“One of our departed brothers used to say that at the end of every fortune in a Chinese cookie you could add the words ‘in bed’ and they’d make perfect sense,” Laws explained.
“Then it sounds like we have an auspicious beginning,” Surrey said. “Can’t wait until I’m surrounded by good friends and laughter.”
“In bed,” Ruiz added.
“In bed,” Surrey corrected herself.
FBI agent Stephens waited in the basement along with the ICE agents. They wore black ballistic jackets with their agency affiliation in big white letters. Each of them held a 9mm. Although they had MBITRs, they weren’t assigned NVGs. They seemed eager to get to the subbasement, but they weren’t eager to walk into the mouth of a dragon, even if it was sleeping. That was something better done by SEAL Team 666.
It was believed that the subbasement had only one avenue of ingress and egress, the stairs down from the actual basement where the restaurant kept its stock of supplies. Under cover of the preceding night, a Special Warfare support team had used ground-penetrating radar, originally designed for demining operations, to try and detect any tunnels. They’d found none.
One of the strategies they’d discussed was to flood the subbasement with gas. Without knowing what sort of ventilation they had and without knowing who they had down there, the fear of accidentally asphyxiating innocents like the sweatshop seamstresses convinced everyone that this strategy wasn’t the right one.
In the end, they decided to conduct a frontal assault. The power would be cut and they’d move in quick. They synced watches, then donned the NVGs. Ten seconds later, the power was out and SEAL Team 666 and Surrey spun up the green universe. They had about fifteen seconds before the backup generator kicked in.
Yaya was the first one down the stairs, with the rest of the team stacked behind him. The stairway opened directly into a large rectangular room filled with furniture and people. As soon as his aiming laser touched a Triad member, he let free two-round bursts. PopPop! PopPop! PopPop! PopPop! Four men went down hard.
Now in the room, the rest of the team fanned out behind him.
Laws’s MP5 snapped, the sound like rapid-fire dog barks.
Walker tracked the action, but held fire, just as Surrey did.
Ruiz’s Super 90 roared once.
When the lights snapped back on, they pushed the NVGs back on their heads.
One Triad enforcer was trying to get to his feet. Surrey shot him in the leg. Walker shot him in the head. When she looked questioningly at him, he said, “We’re not here to arrest anyone.”
She turned back toward the room, her face even more serious than it was before.
Eight enforcers lay dead on the floor. Several sets of tables took up the middle of the room. Couches hugged the walls, where posters of fancy cars were taped. Toward the rear of the room was a kitchenette with a microwave and a full-sized refrigerator. A steel door was in the back wall.
“Damn,” Yaya said, straightening up. “I guess there goes the element of surprise.”
Agent Stephens came down the stairs wearing his FBI jacket, three-hundred-dollar loafers, and wool pants. He had the clean features of a football player, a frat boy, or a serial killer. He wore yellow ba
llistic glasses. Behind him came the ICE agents in their own jackets. They went straight to the bodies and began checking for pulses.
Laws merely glanced at him before asking Ruiz, “Got something for that door?” He snapped a new clip into his submachine gun.
Ruiz cocked his head. “Not for the door—too thick—but look at what it’s set in.”
“That can’t be drywall. Are they that stupid?”
“I’ve seen it before.”
“Could be reinforced with MDF. They would almost have to in order to hold the weight of the steel.”
“So can we go through the wall?”
“I can do that,” Ruiz said.
Agent Stephens looked from one SEAL to the other. “Any word on how many we’re facing?”
Laws shook his head. “Nada.”
Agent Stephens shifted his expensive loafers. “I’m used to having more information.”
“I feel your pain,” Laws said. “This is more of a military op, but posse comitatus says you get to be here and supervise.”
“Is that what you call my participation?” Agent Stephens laughed. “I just don’t want to get in your way.”
“Me neither,” Laws admitted matter-of-factly. “Just follow our lead. We’re going to do this the right way and take our time. We’ve already lost the element of surprise, so it’s not like they don’t know we’re here.”
Agent Stephens checked the chamber of his pistol and nodded.
“Right now, our Snakehead friends and their associates from the Temple of Heaven Importers don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know what happened to these guys. They just heard some gunshots. Even though they know someone is here, they don’t know who, so we still hold an element of surprise.”
“Are we sure anyone else is behind that door?” Agent Stephens asked.
“This is a Snakehead safe house. They’re the preeminent human smugglers on the planet and have been doing it longer than America’s been a country. You can tell by looking at it. Triad soldiers guarding it, here to protect the interests of whoever set this up. Behind that door is the rest of the safe house, which should be filled with either illegals or people they’re moving into the U.S.”
The ICE agents joined their group.
“Find any pocket trash?” Laws asked.
“Nothing specific. They were pretty sterile,” said one.
“They were from Chinatown. San Francisco,” the other ICE agent said. “Tattoos identified them as Temple of Heaven forty-niners. We’re definitely on the right track.”
Laws nodded toward the door. “Ruiz, you good?”
Ruiz had been busy attaching det cord in an upside-down L shape. What looked like a cooking timer was affixed to the wall beside it.
“How far below the surface are we?” Walker asked.
“About fifteen feet,” Yaya answered.
“See how the floor slopes towards the door?” he said, pointing out a pool of blood that seemed to be sliding away from one of the bodies.
“What about it?”
“I’m wondering how deep this might go. I doubt the GPR can see more than ten or fifteen feet into the ground. They might have a way out.”
Walker glanced at the blood and watched as it slid with gravity. “Good catch. Be ready then.”
“This could be an old pirate hideout,” Surrey said, walking up to them as she adjusted her body armor. It was more than snug around her waist and bosom and seemed to be cutting off circulation.
“As in sunken treasure?” Ruiz asked.
“As in sunken treasure,” she repeated. “They’ve found hideouts like this from back in the eighteen hundreds.”
Laws eyed the explosives that were ready to blow. “What does it mean if this is an old pirate hideout—what should we expect?”
“None of this,” she said, waving her hand toward the walls and the ceilings. “Although they could have improved upon it, I doubt they would. I’d expect a cave, with maybe a concrete or wooden floor. They’ve probably since blocked out the ocean, but if I was them I’d have left some method to get in and out secretly. That would allow someone to anchor a boat offshore and come inside without ever having to surface.”
“A drug runner’s dream,” the FBI agent said.
“Or a human smuggler’s dream,” added one of the ICE agents.
“Okay then. So expect an unconventional space on the other side of that door,” Laws said. He pointed to the older of the two ICE agents. “You stay here and guard our six. The rest of you follow behind. We’re going to go in hot. There are probably innocents down with the beegees, so show some fire discipline.” He went to turn, then thought of one more thing. “And don’t any of you get so excited you shoot one of us in the back.”
Yaya and Walker stood next to each other, ten feet from the steel door. Ruiz leaned his back against it. Laws stood off at an angle to the det cord that would allow him to immediately see inside the room. When everyone appeared ready, he nodded to Ruiz.
Five seconds later an explosion halfway between a rip and a bang peeled back the wall from beside the door. A dull red light emanated from the other side, but no one had a chance to check it out because they came under immediate fire.
Bullets bit into the table and counter in the kitchenette, sending chunks of Formica and pressboard popping into the air. The ICE agents and Agent Stephens ducked, but Surrey and the SEALs let the bullets fly. Finally the barrage subsided.
Walker started to approach the opening and felt the now-familiar buzz of electricity. With each step, it got stronger and stronger. By the time he was halfway to the hole, he was completely frozen. His legs quivered, but wouldn’t move. He held the 9mm at the end of paralyzed arms. Even his teeth vibrated. Had this been in the middle of a firefight, he’d have been full of holes.
“You okay?” Laws asked, heading to the same destination. But when he saw the fear in Walker’s eyes, he stopped and turned back. “Walker?”
It was as if the electric hum had invaded his bones.
Laws grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him hard. “Is it the feeling? Is there something in the room?”
Walker tried to answer, but he lacked the capacity to move his mouth.
Laws smacked him across the face.
Walker felt some of the buzz decrease. “More,” he managed to say through clenched teeth.
“What the hell is going on?” Agent Stephens asked. “Is the boy scared?”
Laws shot a heated look at the agent, and the man shut up. Then Laws turned his attention back to Walker. “Here goes. Sorry, bud,” he said, then he hit Walker four times in a row with the flat of his hand.
On the fourth blow, it was as if he’d been released. Walker sagged, almost falling to his knees.
Laws helped him so that the metal door was between them and the other side.
“Jesus hell!” Walker finally managed.
“Looks like his spooky meter is turned all the way up,” Ruiz said.
“Walker? You okay?” Laws asked.
Walker really didn’t know. Was he? He didn’t feel anything now. He nodded and rubbed the side of his face. “Yeah. I’m good now.”
Walker slid to the right of the door. He spooled a cable from his cargo pocket, screwed it into a transmitter, and slid it around the corner. He held it in place with his left hand, pulled out a tablet, and turned it on. It took about thirty seconds, during which time Walker stuck his pistol around the corner and fired several times. It felt good to do something, especially since there was a moment there when he was afraid he wasn’t going to be able to do anything … ever again.
When the tablet was finally synced with the sniffer, Walker and Laws took in the fish-eye image of the other room. Walker was taken aback. At first it looked as if the ceiling was dripping blood. But the resolution and the focus came and went as the sniffer tried to adjust the picture for the low red light. What looked like blood on closer inspection appeared to be long red ChemLights, dangling from the rough-hew
n ceiling of the room. He’d used ChemLights since he’d been in the Navy but he’d never seen them used by anyone outside the service, except maybe at raves. To see the cylindrical plastic tubes that when broken emit a colored light here in a pirates’ cave infested with Triad enforcers made the event seem surreal. Then, when he saw the skittering of a small orange figure, it went from surreal to grotesque.
“Homunculus,” he said.
“I figured one would be here,” Laws said.
Walker saw several more orange blurs. “I’d say there’s more than one. We might be in trouble.” The image of a gang of demonic Stretch Armstrongs slinging themselves from the top rope of his imagination like whacked-out serial-killer midget professional wrestlers wrenched his vision back to his compatriots. He knew this wasn’t going to end well.
33
IMPERIAL BEACH. PIRATES’ CAVE.
A heavy stench of unwashed bodies and saltwater rot filled the air. The room was more or less what Surrey had prepared them for. It had been water-carved from the rock, which even now wept moisture. The ground was concrete, but had been covered with so much dirt and detritus that it was a mottling of grunge atop the concrete gray. There’d been rows of cots along one wall that had been hastily shoved to the back of the room. The strangest thing about their view into the room was that they didn’t see anyone. Walker couldn’t even make out the homunculus that he’d spotted just a few seconds ago, which meant that there must be more to the room than they were seeing.
Laws saw it first. “Look. See the darkness there … and there.”
Walker discerned it the moment Laws pointed it out. Twin ovals of darkness in the far wall that could be cave openings, large recesses, or deeper caverns. But seeing into either of them was impossible. Then he had an idea.
“Wait for me,” he whispered. Then he stood, grabbed a broken chair leg, and began to hammer at the overhead lights. The ICE agents, Agent Stephens, and Surrey covered their heads and moved out of the way.
Soon they were in darkness, the only light leaking from the door at the top of the stairs and the red ChemLights dangling in the other room. It would have to do.