Torrini let out a soft, airy breath. His expression was calm. He knew how bad this was, the poor bastard. “Online data algorithms.”
“Computer information,” Serrano corrected him. Serrano’s grasp of digital technology was so weak, he failed to understand online data algorithms was a more precise answer than his.
Ibarra kept his expression rigid. His heart was hurting more than his ear now. He must take a nitroglycerin dose as soon as possible.
“And now,” Serrano continued, “you are telling me there is no more computer information for us to read.”
Serrano’s statement was a wild over-generalization of what was happening although he had grasped the important part—that the data they needed was no longer available.
Torrini didn’t move. “That is correct,” he said, his tone the same as if he had just confirmed there were bagels for breakfast.
Serrano calmly unclipped the flap of his holster, took out his Mauser and fired.
Torrini dropped with a heavy thud. The shot had taken him in the chest, right over the heart. The blood seepage was minimal as a result, yet it still reached out toward Ibarra’s boots.
Ibarra moved farther out of the way and massaged his chest. His heart was working far too hard. Was this it? Was this the moment when it would give out on him?
He watched Serrano for clues about what he would do next. Would Ibarra join Torinni on the floor?
Serrano put his gun away and buttoned the flap of the holster.
“Is there something you would like me to do to compensate for this loss, General?” Ibarra asked cautiously.
“Something we must do, yes,” Serrano told him. “The strategy is already in play. The full weight of my forces—every man who could be spared—will land upon Peña’s pathetic army in the next few hours. Then we will kill them all. Then the Americans and the Mexicans won’t matter.”
He turned to his window and peered out, his hands back behind his spine once more. He was calm because he had vented all his anger with a single bullet.
Ibarra began to shake. He must reach his office at once. The drugs were there.
“I will collect updates on the current positions and report back, General,” he told Serrano’s back and escaped, while he still had the strength to do so.
*
THEY HAD BEEN MOVING DOWNHILL for two hours, threading through the silhouettes of trees which all looked the same, when Cristián made them stop.
He was behind Chloe in the long, single file line led by Yardley, who was some sort of navigation genius. Parris was right behind Yardley. No one spoke as they moved. Chloe was the only one giving away their presence. She was tired and stepped on twigs and dried out leaf matter which popped and cracked alarmingly in the silent night.
Cristián brushed past her, his long legs pulling him downhill at a faster rate than anyone else. Chloe looked up from her feet, startled. Cristián slipped past the two men who were pacing between Parris and her, then Parris herself, who looked around sharply.
Cristián grabbed Yardley’s arm and brought him to a halt.
Everyone gathered up behind the pair as Cristián murmured to Yardley. Parris stepped closer to listen. Chloe couldn’t make out what he was saying.
Parris, though, shook her head. “We’re still a quarter mile from the defense perimeter.”
“I’m telling you, the electronic surveillance reaches out farther than normal.” Cristián’s voice was a little louder. “We’re about to walk into it.”
Parris considered him. “Do you even know where we are?” she asked.
“I know exactly where we are.”
She simply looked at him.
“West-south-west-west of the base,” he said. “About two-fifty-three degrees around from north.”
Parris looked at Yardley. Yardley shrugged. “Close enough,” he murmured.
Parris rested the butt of her rifle on her hip. “The surveillance can see through trees, at night? You said it was visual.”
“During the day, so the townsfolk don’t keep sending up alarms. At night, it’s thermal imagery and they use algorithms to give them a heads up if anything looks hinky,” Cristián said. “I’ve seen them ignore a herd of Corrientes moving through, while they arrested two teenagers who went out for a midnight skinny dip in the river.”
Parris considered. “Is there anywhere near here where we can get a visual, which keeps us on the right side of the perimeter? It’ll be dawn soon.”
Cristián nodded. “The tree line ends half a mile down from here. We just have to travel south until we reach the point where the tree line and the perimeter meet.”
“South it is, then.” Parris glanced at her watch. “Yardley, keep him by you. Find that intersection for us.”
Chloe pushed herself into moving as everyone walked on once more. This time, they cut across the slope instead of going downhill. Every now and again, they would move a little downhill, then head across the slope face again. She realized Cristián and Yardley were working their way around the perimeter of the limits of the surveillance.
The tree line ended thirty minutes later, as far as she could judge, for her phone was still completely dead. An open meadow was ahead, the grass bending as a breeze played over it.
Parris took out field glasses from a side pocket of her pack, hugged a tree and bent around it to peer to the left.
Chloe followed her example, although she didn’t have field glasses. With her normal vision, the view to the left was short on details. She could see the south end of Pascuallita, though—the buildings were whitewashed stone with the red tiles which looked gray in the night. Nothing moved on the streets.
Farther to the east, maybe a kilometer away, was a ten-foot-high chain-link fence with coiled barbed wire on top.
Between the fence and the southern extremes of Pascuallita was a heavy belt of trees and undergrowth—to discourage locals from approaching the base, she guessed. The trees were cleared farther south, which gave anyone on the base a clear view of activity beyond the fence. It also gave Parris and her people a good view of the base, too.
Beyond the fence was fifty yards of open ground, before a mishmash collection of buildings began. There were long, low wooden buildings with windows set at regular intervals which Chloe recognized as military barracks. Towering over all the buildings was a four-story tower with windows all around it at the top. It was the control tower for the runway which ran north-south on the eastern side of the base, well out of view of the townsfolk. The southern end of the flat runway was visible beyond the buildings, the barriers at the end of it were low, inverted vee shapes with grass lapping at one side.
Between the barracks and the tower were higher buildings—two stories, mostly, and made of poured concrete. In all there were over thirty buildings, none with signs announcing their purpose. It was standard for a military base where everyone knew where everything was or had no right knowing.
Parris stiffened. “Shit,” she breathed. “He’s right.”
“I see it, too,” Locke said from a tree to Chloe’s right. “Cameras at the top of the tower.”
Chloe looked up at the roof of the control tower. An active radar circled slowly, which would be for aircraft control. The second, and larger, dome on the roof was clear. Inside the dome, the mechanism turned in quick starts and stops. It was difficult to discern details without the image-enhancing field glasses Parris and Locke were using. Even without them, though, Chloe could see round lenses glinting as the mechanism shifted.
Cameras with long lenses. The lenses were multi-purpose—one or two for the thermal imagery, one or two for normal visual surveillance. A computer with AI algorithms would monitor the feeds and would alert the human guards if anything looked suspicious.
Cristián had spotted this from his bedroom window, weeks ago, and had figured out the full reach of the cameras from observations.
Now they stood just beyond the cameras’ reach.
Parris dropped her glasses,
put her shoulder against the tree and looked at Cristián. “Now what, genius?”
Cristián held out his hand. “Give me the glasses. Let me watch. Then I’ll tell you where the control room for the drone is.”
13.
DUARDO MADE SURE HE LOST the second game. It took effort to disguise what he was doing. General Thorne was a shitty chess player, but he wasn’t stupid.
While they played, Aguado kept the whisky glasses topped. Duardo was careful to make sure it only looked as though he was drinking as much as Thorne.
By the third game, Thorne was feeling the effects of the whisky. It was a decent single-malt with a high alcohol level which one of Duardo’s men had donated to the cause.
Thorne scowled at the board, trying to anticipate Duardo’s strategy, his fingers curled loosely around the glass. The weight of his hand tipped the folding table to one side. He didn’t seem to notice.
Around them, sleeping men snored. They had not raised tents, even though they had them. A decent sleeping bag was enough to hold off the cold and would allow a quick decamping in the morning…if the President gave Thorne the go-ahead.
Thorne still stewed over the order to halt. It was four in the morning, nearly ten hours after the order had come through. Thorne couldn’t let it go. He was an old-fashioned general and wouldn’t give up even with a gun to his temple.
It was why Duardo had engineered the chess game, with Aguado’s help. Playing chess with a man usually told Duardo everything he needed to know about him.
Thorne rubbed his eyes, the whisky and the hour making themselves felt.
“We can stop for the night if you want, General,” Duardo suggested. “It’s late.”
“Damn you, man, the game is even. Give me a chance to beat you, at least,” Thorne growled.
Duardo considered Thorne in the light from the pressure lantern sitting on the table beside the board. The general was exhausted. The lines of his face were dragging. It looked as if he might fall asleep where he was sitting.
A glimmer of an idea came to him. Duardo resettled himself on the fold up canvas stool and reached out for his queen and moved it across the board diagonally, to park it beside his pawn. He had been trying to crown the pawn to keep Thorne’s attention away from the other strategies he had been setting up.
It was a commando move. If Thorne had been a better player, Duardo wouldn’t have tried it. Thorne might still spot the reason for the move and counter it, although that was a risk Duardo was willing to take.
Aguado drew in a soft breath. He’d spotted it. He said nothing. Instead, he covered his reaction, turning it into a yawn.
“Go to bed, General,” Thorne told Aguado distantly. “Get your beauty sleep.”
“I may when this game ends,” Aguado said, sounding humble.
Thorne moved his knight to counter the queen.
Duardo felt a touch of guilt as he slid his rook down the board. “Checkmate.”
“What?” Thorne exploded, sitting up. He stared at the board, slowly working out the available moves for his king and finding them all covered. His scowl deepened even more. “Damn it all!” He drained the inch of whisky in his glass and returned it heavily to the tabletop.
Duardo waited.
“Another game,” Thorne said.
“It’s late,” Duardo said, pushing the test one step further. “Perhaps another time?”
“Now, damn you,” Thorne growled. “You’re one ahead. I demand a chance to even the score at least.”
He detests losing.
It was a good quality to have in a general yet pushed to the extreme, it could make a man reckless. Duardo could use it, though. He cleared the board and set up the white pieces in front of him, weighing and discarding possibilities.
“I’ve been thinking about the position your President is in,” he said casually.
Thorne frowned over the correct arrangement of his king and queen, then looked up at Duardo. “What’s that mean?”
“He can’t negotiate with terrorists. Only, it’s Serrano who has him by the short and curlies. Not exactly terrorist material.” He turned the side of his mouth down.
“Serrano is a fucking idiot, if you ask me,” Thorne said. “Nothing he’s done makes military sense.”
“It does have a rough effectiveness. You’re anchored, either way.”
Thorne grunted, his gaze on the board.
Duardo pushed his king’s pawn forward two squares. “Serrano has demonstrated he does not think in military terms. He’s linear. There might be a way to use that.”
Thorne looked up, his eyes narrowing. “Explain,” he rapped out. It was a general issuing an order. For a moment he had forgotten who he was speaking too. Duardo let it slide. This was too critical a moment to get bogged down in matters of protocol.
“What if you being anchored here wasn’t a limitation, but a tactic?” Duardo added the kicker. “A tactic which would win this war.”
Thorne sat back, the game forgotten. “You have a plan,” he said flatly.
“I do have a plan.”
Thorne considered him. “You want something from me, to make this work,” he guessed.
“Yes,” Duardo said.
“Beyond sitting on my ass here, waiting for the green light.”
“Yes.”
Thorne raised his brow. It was a silent question.
“The tanker of aviation fuel sitting on the beach behind us, where you landed,” Duardo answered.
Thorne’s gaze shifted inward. He was thinking hard. His gaze remained unfocused as he straightened, took the lid off the whisky bottle and poured himself another slug. He picked up the glass and met Duardo’s gaze and smiled. “You crafty son of a bitch.”
*
COMING TO HER SENSES TOOK a while. Calli let herself drift, trying to put together the last moments she remembered. Nausea swirled in her belly and she pressed her hand against it, still unwilling to open her eyes.
“It’s the Benzodiazepine making you sick.”
Calli opened her eyes. She was lying on one of the folding beds in the front half of the bordello green room. Annamaria sat on the empty bed beside her, a paperback novel in her hand, a coffee cup in the other.
Calli swallowed. “I don’t remember much. What time is it?”
“Nearly dawn.” Annamaria put the cup down. “The shop is closed for the night.” She laughed. “We shut early. You did that.”
Calli swallowed. Her throat and mouth were parched. A memory of Ibarra leaning over her leapt into her mind and she shuddered. “I bit his ear…”
“You damn near tore the thing off, is what you did,” Annamaria said. “Then he hit you and knocked you out. That’s why you can’t remember much.”
“I’ve been out since then?” She looked down at herself. She was wearing another robe. A cotton bathrobe, which was a faded blue, but clean. “You cleaned me up?”
“You remember the blood then?” Annamarie smiled. “It was everywhere, sweetheart. He bled like the pig he is.” She reached into the spine of the book she was reading and lifted the bookmark she was using. “We cleaned you up because we figured we owed you for this.” She dangled the bookmark.
It was an electronic security pass, which the Insurrectos used to pass from section to section inside the Palace.
Calli stared at it. The second step. “I remember…” She frowned. She could hear the tearing of flesh. She shuddered at the sound it had made. She had not had to do more than hold onto his ear. Ibarra had jerked backward, tearing the ear himself. He howled, clasping his hand to the side of his head.
His lurch backward dropped Calli’s head against his shoulder. It has been a simple matter to lower her chin and grip the edge of the security badge with her teeth. His jerking movement of pain had slid the spring clip off the top of his pocket. Calli dropped the pass to the quilt beneath her and shifted her hips so she was lying over it.
Then…ah, yes!...now she remembered the way he had twisted, then brought hi
s hand, arm and shoulders around in a powerful back-hand blow which smacked against her temple. After that, nothing.
Calli looked at Annamaria, and the security pass she dangled. “Put it away before someone sees,” Calli told her.
“Everyone in the room is a Loyalist,” Annamaria said. She slid the card back into her book. “What are you planning on doing with it?”
“What else?” Calli replied. “I’m going to break out of here.” She clutched at her belly. “After I vomit,” she added, with a gulp.
*
AS SOON AS THE SUN came up, Cristián set up the solar charger to charge the battery on Chloe’s laptop. He positioned the flap to absorb the maximum amount of light and adjusted it throughout the morning as the sun climbed higher.
While he worked, the men not on guard duty handed out more jerky and freeze-dried oatmeal which reconstituted when the pack was torn open. Two of them moved back into the trees to boil water to make coffee for everyone.
When he was not adjusting the solar charger, Cristián sat in the shade cast by the big kapok at the edge of the trees, his knees bent and his arms on his knees, the field glasses to his eyes. He didn’t move, except to minutely shift the glasses as he took in the movements of personnel on the base.
They were high enough above the base, up here, that they could clearly see the layout of the buildings. It wasn’t as good as looking at a map, for they were far to one side and at too low an angle. It was possible to monitor the entire base, though. Cristián was doing exactly that.
“Isn’t it bad security to clear out trees this way, so anyone can sit and watch?” Chloe asked Parris, who sat on her pack and worked on her laptop.
Parris shook her head, preoccupied. “Drones can see way more. Why bother shielding the perimeter, when clear land lets the sharp shooters keep the open spaces clear of the enemy?”
Chloe shuddered and returned to her oatmeal.
After two hours of close observation, Cristián stiffened and grew more alert. He held his position for another five minutes, while Parris stopped typing and Chloe gripped the metal of the coffee cup she was drinking from, her heart thudding.
V-Day Page 13