by Bob Mayer
Riley slid his hand over the doorknob and turned it. The knob rotated all the way. Slowly he tugged and the door opened with a creak. As quickly as he could, he slipped inside to the right of the door, submachine gun at the ready. Westland followed him in, moving to the inside left of the door.
They were in what looked like a small waiting room or reception area. The room was unoccupied and a dim bulb was the only illumination. Plywood walls defined the room, but there was no ceiling and the warehouse roof loomed overhead. There was one door straight ahead, another one to the left, and two to the right.
Riley could hear voices echoing from the warehouse. The two doors on the right led to bathrooms, judging from the signs on the doors. He figured, based on the setup, that the door to the left probably led to another office. The door straight ahead had to lead into the main warehouse area. Signaling Westland to cover the door to the warehouse, Riley quickly checked out the left door. The room behind it was empty.
Riley rejoined Westland. Glancing around he spotted a couch. He gestured to Westland, and the two of them picked up the couch to move it to the inner wall. He could stand on it and look over the wall before going in.
They froze as a long, drawn-out scream split the air. Westland looked at Riley; someone wasn't having a good time. They put the couch against the inner wall; Riley stood precariously on the back of it and peered over the wall.
The warehouse had stacks of shipping crates as far as he could see. From his vantage point he couldn't see the source of the screaming. Pathways large enough for small forklifts wove through the stacks at right angles.
There was another scream, followed by whimpering. Riley clambered off the couch and pointed at the door. Westland raised her pistol and nodded. Riley swung the door open and stepped through.
As he entered the warehouse, Riley sensed movement to his right. He dropped to his left knee as he turned to his right, swinging around the muzzle of the MP5. His eyes focused on a man trying to pull a gun out of a shoulder holster. As the stubby muzzle of Riley's sub centered on the target, he smoothly drew back on the trigger.
The sound of the bolt chugging back and forth as the rounds spewed out was startlingly loud to Riley. The guard grunted and slammed back against a crate as Riley stitched a pattern of five rounds from the man's chest up to his head. The expended brass casings tinkled to the floor.
Riley whirled and faced down the pathway between the crates that led to the center of the warehouse. The entire place had gone silent except for the continued sound of someone crying. Westland materialized at Riley's side, took in the sight of the body, and then turned her attention to the pathway.
Riley gestured for Westland to cover him as he started moving forward. He halted as a male voice called out, "Roberto? Roberto?" Riley pressed himself back into the shadows as he heard footsteps coming his way.
Another guard appeared, weapon still in his holster. Riley resisted the temptation to fire. Letting the sub drop on its sling along his side, he drew the knife. He waited until the man was practically upon him and then, in one powerfully smooth movement, stepped out and attacked. One hand buried the knife in the man's throat and then slashed the carotid arteries and windpipe, while the other hand applied opposite pressure against the man's head.
The guard stared at Riley in shock as his hands went to his throat. Blood bubbled over his fingers and his breath wheezed out the new opening. He dropped to his knees and fell over onto his face. Riley put the knife back in its sheath and rotated up his submachine gun. He took a deep breath and continued on his way, Westland trailing him by about fifteen feet.
The light grew stronger and the sobbing louder as they got closer to the center of the room. Reaching the end of the aisle, Riley dropped to his knees and edged forward. He could hear the voices more clearly now, raised in argument. He could make out the voices of at least two men and one woman.
Riley took a quick peek around the corner and then drew back. He examined the image imprinted in his mind. A chair in the middle of an open area. A naked man tied to the chair, his back to Riley. Two men and a woman gathered around the chair with a table next to them, discussing whether someone should go after the man Riley had just killed. One of the men called out. "Pablo!"
Riley turned and pointed, directing Westland to take a position in the shadows on the far side of the aisle. Then he stood up and took a few deep breaths to calm himself. He knew he had about twenty-five rounds left in his submachine gun magazine. He quietly released the lock and extended the telescoping stock. He placed the butt deep into his shoulder. Melding his cheek to the steel stock, with his right eye over the weapon, he peered down the barrel.
Riley stepped out from behind the crates. He fired two three-round bursts in the space of half a second. The two men flew backward, fatally hit, while they were still registering his appearance. The woman reached for an automatic rifle on the table.
"Freeze!" Riley screamed in Spanish as he started to move forward, the weapon still tight in against his cheek. The woman ignored him and grabbed the rifle. Riley fired a five-round burst, aiming low. The 9mm steel-jacketed rounds tore into the woman's legs, blowing them out from underneath her.
The crack of a pistol being fired from behind caused Riley to go into a diving spin to his left. As he brought his weapon up to bear he was treated to the sight of Westland firing a second round into the head of a guard who must have circled around the warehouse and come up the same aisle Riley had. Half the guard's face was missing as he slid to the ground. Westland gave Riley a quick nod, indicating all clear.
Riley returned his gaze to the wounded woman. She was reaching for the rifle she had dropped when she'd been shot. Riley jumped to his feet and ran to her, kicking the rifle away. She glared at him from where she lay in a puddle of blood.
He looked up as Westland joined him. She kept her pistol pointed at Maria and gestured over her shoulder. "Is it Stevens?"
Riley turned his attention to the man in the chair. It was Stevens. Riley felt conflicting emotions as he stared at the bound figure. This was the man who had betrayed his team and caused the death of four of his friends. The Colombians had been doing quite a job on the DEA man. A car battery was on the table and electrodes were attached to Stevens's scrotum. A flick of a switch and current would flow. It also looked as though they had spent some time pounding him about the head and shoulders. From the droop, Riley guessed that both his collarbones were broken.
"Yeah, it's him. Keep her covered. Shoot her in the legs again if she tries moving."
"She's bleeding pretty bad. If we don't stop it she'll be dead soon."
Riley ignored the last comment and moved over in front of Stevens. The man looked up but without recognition. He was too far gone. They hadn't been torturing him for information, Riley realized. They'd been torturing him for vengeance. Riley could see where one of Stevens's fingers had been cut off.
Riley pulled his knife and cut the straps that bound Stevens to the solid wood chair. He was just starting to pull Stevens up when he realized he had made a mistake. "Get down!" he screamed as he dove for the ground, letting go of Stevens in the process.
The blast stunned Riley. He lay on the ground for a few seconds and did a mental scan of his body as debris clattered down about him. His ears were ringing and he could hear nothing. He slowly sat up and looked around. Westland was dragging herself to her knees from where the blast had knocked her down. Riley could see blood spattered on her shirt. He looked down at himself. He was covered in blood also.
Then he saw the source of the blood. A piece of gnarled meat was all that was left of Stevens. Riley suddenly remembered Maria. He got to his feet. The Colombian woman was trying to crawl away. Riley admired her guts. He tried yelling at Westland but could barely hear himself, and it was obvious that she was still too deaf and dazed from the explosion to hear him. He ran after Maria and blocked her way. She had left a copious trail of blood behind her. Weakly lifting her head, she glared at Riley.
She was trying to work up the saliva to spit at him when she died. Riley looked down on her for a few seconds. A link gone, along with Stevens. He went back to tend to Westland.
Kate had regained her senses, except for the ringing in her ears. She was staring, mesmerized by the remains of Stevens. Riley took a quick look around to see if there was anything they could use, then grabbed Kate's arm and led her out.
4:33 A.M.
Riley swung up his MP5. He could hear noises ahead where they had left the car. Signaling Westland to stay behind, he crept forward.
As he got closer he could hear what sounded like two people in the vicinity of the car. He slid forward and peered out from the tree line. A pickup truck was pulled up behind the Pinto and two men were trying to pry open the hood.
Riley shook his head in amazement. After all he'd been through, he couldn't believe that these guys were trying to rip off his car. This country was worse than the South Bronx.
He pulled off the goggles and gave his eyes a few seconds to adjust, then put down the submachine gun and pulled out his Beretta. As he broke through the brush, the two men swung around to face him, one pulling a knife, the other brandishing the tire iron they had impolitely been using on the hood.
"You have three seconds, then I blow your heads off, my friends."
The pair were in their truck in two and gone in less than ten. Riley called for Westland to join him as he retrieved his sub.
"What was that?"
"Two assholes were trying to rip off our car. You believe this place?" Riley looked at Kate with concern. "Are you all right to drive?"
She nodded weakly and got behind the wheel. Riley jumped in the other side and they headed back the way they had come. As she drove, Westland asked the question that had been disturbing her. "What happened back there in the warehouse with Stevens?"
Riley sighed. "I fucked up. One of the rules of rescuing hostages is to make sure they aren't booby-trapped before moving them. I forgot all about that when I cut Stevens free. They must have wired him up. The charge was probably a stick of dynamite shoved up his ass, because I didn't see anything. I'm lucky I heard the fuse release when I started lifting him and that there was about a second delay on the charge. His body contained most of the force of the blast. We're also lucky it was a simple wood chair and there wasn't much, other than Stevens, to turn into shrapnel when it blew, otherwise we'd both probably be dead."
Westland shook her head. "What the hell are we going up against here? Why did they still have Stevens? What were they hoping to get from him? If he compromised the mission he must have told them everything they wanted to know by now."
From what he had seen of Stevens before the explosion, Riley knew that the Colombians had wrung the DEA man dry well before this night. "I think they were letting Maria work on him for fun. Maybe that was her payment for having screwed Stevens to get the timing and locations on the missions. Just remember that these people are working with a different set of values than we are. You need to keep that in mind. Don't hesitate because of sympathy or doubt. If you do you'll be dead."
Westland glanced over at him. "I think you had that in your mind when we came down here. What you did in that bar didn't leave much room for sympathy or the possibility that you might have been making a mistake."
Riley met her gaze. "When you're in hell you play by the devil's rules."
5:00 A.M.
They flashed by the turnoff for the Ring Man's villa again. Riley rechecked the magazine in the submachine gun and placed the empty magazine in his vest. He waited until Westland pulled up next to the stream. "Don't pick up any strangers."
"Be careful, Dave."
Riley got out of the car and strode off up the hard-to-find trail next to the stream. He draped his night-vision goggles over his eyes and switched them on.
After fifteen minutes of walking he turned off the trail and beat his way cross-country to the southeast toward a knoll he had located on the map. The glow of the security lights from the Ring Man's villa lit the sky to the south. Riley clambered up the slope until he got to the tree-covered knoll, designated by its elevation on the map as 8548, that looked down on the villa's grounds about five hundred meters to the south.
Riley climbed one of the taller trees and settled himself down on a forked limb. It wasn't comfortable but would have to do. He scanned the grounds.
He could easily see over the ten-foot stone wall into the interior. The house was well lit with floodlights pointing down from along the edge of the roof. The main house was two stories tall with one-story wings on either side. A large oval swimming pool was behind the house. The driveway and circular parking area in the front were bordered by an extensive garden that stretched out to the walls on the front third of the grounds. The helipad was barely in sight over the east wing of the house.
Riley carefully watched the grounds and gradually started locating the guards. They moved in seemingly random patterns about the grounds. Whoever set up the pattern obviously had more of a security than military background. It would have been more effective to have hidden the guards in good defensive positions. There were six in the outer grounds that Riley could spot. Four were assigned one to each side of the compound; the other two roved the entire perimeter, one in each direction. It was a good system in that these two could quickly spot whether any side guard was no longer at his post.
Riley couldn't see down into the parking circle in the front so it was impossible to tell how many vehicles were parked there. From what he could see of the house, it was hard to ascertain whether or not there were interior guards. After an hour and a half of observation, Riley deduced that there had to be some sort of security command post inside the house. He had watched several of the guards talk into shoulder-mounted mikes attached to radios on their belts. He'd been unable to see any of the other outside guards reply. It would make sense to have them report to someone inside, and Riley also figured it would make sense to have a reaction force of at least the off-duty guards inside sleeping. He estimated that there were probably several more guards awake inside as a second line of defense and also as an immediate reaction force if an attack came.
The apparent lack of a roadblock or anti-armor weapons led Riley to assume that probably at least one ambush was set up along the one-lane drive that came up from the highway to the villa. No worthwhile security man would fail to defend that obvious avenue of approach.
Riley gave it another hour of watching and then climbed stiffly out of the tree. He waited a few minutes to let the blood circulate back into his legs and then set off downslope to link up with Kate.
BOGOTA
5:48 A.M.
Kate handed Riley another cup of coffee. "What do you think?"
Riley rubbed his eyes wearily. "I don't know. I've ruled out going into that place. I wouldn't last five minutes. If the Ring Man goes outside during the day to either the pool or elsewhere in the back, I could get a good shot at him from the knoll where I was doing the surveillance. Even then I'm not sure I could escape, since I imagine they'd react pretty swiftly. I'd have to make it from the firing point down to the road, and they would beat me there."
"What about hiding in the mountains after you shoot?"
Riley shook his head. "This is their territory. They'd have a better chance of finding me, or having one of the locals turn me in, than I would of being able to evade."
"What about using Spectre or the gunships? I could probably get a hold of Pike through the attaché in the embassy."
Riley shook his head dubiously. "It's worth a shot, but I doubt that either our government or the Colombians would be too willing to try anything like that after Nail Three and the video being released. I'm also not sure what Pike's status is right now. You said the task force had been disbanded. They've probably shoveled the colonel off into his old job, although if I know him as well as I think I do, he probably made quite a ruckus about Powers getting abandoned. Hell, he may even be out of the army by
now." Riley didn't add the information about the phone call he had made prior to their flight departing from New York.
He got up, went over to the bed, and flopped on it. "I'm too tired to think straight right now." He wanted to let himself drift off, but his mind was still swirling, trying to find an answer. Plus, he still had no line on Powers.
He cracked an eye open at Westland, who was slumped wearily in the armchair. "It might be worthwhile for you to talk to the attaché later today. Let's grab a couple hours of rack time and then you can head over to the embassy."
Riley patted the bed next to him. "Come on over. I don't bite. I'm too damn tired to do anything more than sleep anyway."
Westland got up and slid into the bed, still wearing her outfit from the previous evening. Within five minutes she was breathing gently and rolled over with her back to Riley, knees tucked up into her stomach. Just before Riley succumbed to the weights on his eyelids he curled up around Westland's warmth.
RING MAN'S VILLA
6:00 A.M.
The attack at the warehouse wasn't discovered until 5:10 a.m., when a new shift of guards showed up for duty. Ponte had taken the report with a certain degree of regret. He wished he hadn't gotten up so early and been present when the phone rang. The Ring Man wasn't going to like the bearer of these tidings.
Ponte ran the information through his mind one more time, summarizing it so he could be prepared for his boss's questions. The Ring Man normally swam laps in the pool at six in the morning but had been talked out of that routine by Ponte, based on the increased threat of attack. So now Ponte went down into the west wing, where a complete set of Nautilus equipment was set up. The Ring Man was already halfway through his first iteration. Ponte walked over to the biceps machine, where the Ring Man was working out. The ever-present young girl was wiping his forehead with a towel. Ring Man waved her off when he saw Ponte. "What is it?"