‘That’s a roger from Beta One,’ said Hazard. ‘Out.’
‘Gamma One to Alpha One, roger that,’ said Angus. ‘Gamma One out.’
Charlie turned to Ben. ‘Do we know what’s on the next floor down?’
‘According to Amanda, it would be the C-Room,’ replied Ben.
‘That’s right.’ Charlie nodded, then pointed down the stairs. ‘Baz, take the lead.’
‘Roger the lodger,’ Baz cheerfully responded. MP5 at the ready, and with the light of his torch piercing the darkness, Baz led the way down the next set of concrete steps.
When they reached the bottom, the C-Room spread to their right with its masses of computer equipment. All its screens were eerily aglow. There were two empty camp beds in a corner. A pair of MP5s lay on a bench, and Baz quickly took charge of them. Searching the room, the trio didn’t find a living soul.
‘I would have expected someone to have been in here monitoring the CCTV,’ said Ben.
Charlie nodded. He looked around the room until his gaze fell upon the lift. Like all lifts, its closed metal doors had a series of numbers displayed above them, corresponding to the floors it served. The numeral ‘2’ was glowing yellow. ‘This would be the second floor, right?’
Ben nodded.
Charlie walked to the lift and pressed the down arrow, then levelled his weapon at the doors. They slid open, revealing Pancho and Cisco, cringing back against the lift wall with their hands in the air, quivering with fear.
‘Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!’ the pair cried. They had been hiding in the lift ever since the bomb had gone off at the front gate.
They were hauled out of the lift and made to lie on the floor, where their hands were handcuffed behind their backs.
‘How many more of you blokes are there in the building?’ Charlie demanded.
‘Maybe five or six,’ Cisco replied.
‘And where is the dog?’ said Ben. ‘Where is Caesar the labrador?’
‘The dog?’ Pancho looked confused. ‘Vargas was keeping him in the laundry. Next floor down.’
‘But we haven’t seen him in a while,’ added Cisco.
‘Stay there, you two,’ Charlie ordered the handcuffed pair. ‘Make a move and it could be your last.’
‘We won’t go anywhere, señor,’ Cisco assured him. ‘We are not pistoleros. We don’t even like guns.’
‘Just geeks who play with computers,’ Pancho added, looking around at the three masked Special Forces soldiers with an imploring look on his face. ‘Do not hurt us.’
‘Stay put and you’ll be hunky-dory,’ said Baz.
‘Please?’ said Cisco, looking mystified. ‘Who is this Hunky Dory?’
‘Don’t worry about it, mate,’ said Baz.
Cisco smiled weakly. ‘Okay, “mate”.’
‘Let’s go,’ said Charlie.
Leaving the two computer geeks in the C-Room, Alpha Team made their way down to the next floor. In the laundry they found a mat on the tiled floor. There, in the light of his torch, Ben located brown dog hairs on the mat.
‘Caesar was here,’ he declared, his chest tightening.
Their radios crackled. ‘Alpha One from Gamma One,’ came Angus’s voice. ‘Receiving? Over.’
‘Alpha One receiving, Gamma One,’ Charlie answered. ‘Go ahead. Over.’
‘We’ve just secured five hostiles trying to get away over the back fence. The wee brave Árbol guards were scared witless by your roof assault. Over.’
‘Copy that, Gamma One. Alpha Team has secured three floors. One floor to go. Out.’
Now they knew where the remainder of the Green Parrot’s bodyguards had disappeared to. Charlie led Ben and Baz in checking out the basement garage. All they found were Marron’s abandoned Hummer, Ferrari and Porsche.
‘Alpha One to Birdcage and all Betas and Gammas. Compound secured. Two prisoners, two hostile casualties. No sign of Caesar or Elvis.’
‘Elvis has left the building,’ Baz quipped beside him.
‘Birdcage,’ Charlie continued, ‘what has the EITS told you about that heelo that got away? Over.’
‘Alpha One from Birdcage. Heelo heading west. EITS continuing to track. Over.’
‘Heading west? Okay. So are we. Out.’
Caesar sniffed the room’s earth floor. Behind him, little Rosa did the same. Rosa was mightily impressed by her new labrador friend. He showed little interest in her, but his superior manner gave Rosa confidence. Both dogs had been bundled into the mud-walled storeroom as soon as Carlos Marron and his companions had arrived at the small hilltop farm not far from the village of San Sebastian. Juanita was locked away in another adobe farm building. Marron and his party had been sent to this farm hide-out by fellow criminals the Velásquez brothers, who had their headquarters at Cabo San Lucas, a scenic seaside town popular with American tourists. Few tourists, or locals for that matter, ventured up into the dry, inhospitable hinterland.
Apart from the escape from the shed in the Green Parrot’s Monterrey compound, Caesar had dug himself out of a room like this once before – in Afghanistan. He remembered how the soil had smelled differently at one particular part of the floor there, beside the wall, where it had been disturbed by human digging. Now, with his nose down, he went sniffing around the base of the wall. But he couldn’t find a spot where the earth smelled softer. Still, it was sandy and easy to move, so Caesar decided to dig anyway. The earth was soon flying out behind him.
Rosa came to stand beside him and, emulating him, started scratching at the ground, although her tiny paws made little impression. Soon the bottom of the adobe wall gave way, with chunks of hardened mud partly filling the sizeable hole the labrador had made. Caesar set to work again and soon had removed the pieces of adobe. By the time he had finished, the hole was much larger than before. Pushing his head down and into it, he was able to see rays of moonlight outside.
Inspired by his success, Caesar kept digging, and after many minutes the hole was big enough for him to slither into. Midway through, with his head out and his tail still inside the storeroom, and with the soft soil filling in the hole around him, he became stuck. Snorting with frustration, he tried to pull himself free. Behind him, little Rosa tried to nudge him in the rump to help him forward, to no effect. Finally, with a monumental effort, Caesar was able to scramble from the escape tunnel and out into the open, his leash trailing behind him. Once he’d emerged, Rosa was able to walk through the hole with ease. But then she struggled to clamber up the other side; the walls of the hole were too steep for her.
Caesar studied his surroundings wearily. He could see a ditch running away into a field of blue agave plants, and this seemed to Caesar to offer the best escape route. He set off at the trot toward the ditch. Behind him, Rosa began to bark, calling for him to wait for her.
Nearby, Diego and Tommy jerked awake in their wicker chairs. Both were supposed to be on guard duty. Stationed by the farm’s well, they could see the road to the farm and the black Jet Ranger, which sat on the flat a hundred metres away.
‘What is that noise?’ said Diego, raising his MP5.
‘It’s that stupid little Rosa,’ said Tommy.
‘Why is it barking?’
‘It must have got out,’ said Tommy.
‘I suppose I will have to go and get it.’ With a grunt, he came to his feet.
Caesar, seeing Tommy coming, dropped down onto his haunches and, with his head low, watched him. In the early morning light, and with his much superior night vision, Caesar could see Tommy but Tommy could not see Caesar. The pistolero walked right by him.
Tommy came to where Rosa was trapped at the end of the escape tunnel. Looking up at him with a fierce gaze, she yapped nonstop.
‘Be quiet, rat dog!’ Tommy growled. ‘You would wake the devil. And how did you dig such a large hole?’
Reaching down, he picked her up. She immediately bit him on the wrist. With a howl, Tommy let go of the pink chihuahua. Rosa dropped free from his hands and landed
on the ground. Caesar took advantage of the fact that Tommy, who was gripping his wrist and yowling with pain, was distracted. Rising up, the labrador quickly followed the ditch to the south, with Rosa trailing along in his wake. It didn’t take long for the night to swallow the two dogs.
Just after dawn, a Russian-built Mexican Air Force Mil M-8 helicopter set down outside a hangar at the Monterrey International Airport. Inside the hangar, the GRRR team members were shouldering their arms and equipment. They had all swapped night-time black for their regular daytime camouflage outfits, and Baz had happily reacquainted himself with a Minimi machinegun for the next phase of the operation.
Toushi took one last look at his computer screen. ‘Still there, Charlie,’ he called across the hangar. ‘Still in San Sebastian.’
The EITS had tracked the Jet Ranger as it flew across northwest Mexico, then across the Gulf of California, to the town of San Lucas on the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula at Cabo San Lucas. Shortly after, the Jet Ranger had flown on, heading several kilometres inland to San Sebastian.
Charlie gave a thumbs up in acknowledgement of Toushi’s latest report, then turned to a group of his comrades. ‘You say the boy will be okay, Willy?’ He was referring to José, the boy caught in the blast.
‘Ja, ja, he will be fine, Charlie,’ said the medic as he stuffed bandages in his tunic pockets. ‘Because of the way the IED was placed, most of the shrapnel went straight up in the air. The blast blew the boy across the street. He is battered and bruised, but he will live.’
‘He must have put the bomb there in the first place,’ said Tim McHenry. ‘A kid should know better than to get involved with criminals.’
‘Well, Antonio Lopez and the perpetrators of that IED are behind bars now,’ said Lieutenant Peters. He was also sticking around for the next leg of the op.
‘And, with luck, we’ll have Caesar back before the day’s out,’ said Baz.
‘I do hope so, mate,’ said Ben. He’d succeeded in keeping a lid on his disappointment after just missing Caesar at El Loro’s compound, but his heart was still aching for his four-legged friend.
‘Okay, you blokes,’ Charlie called to all the team members. He twirled a finger in the air. ‘Time to get airborne.’
Determined to find Ben, Caesar was padding purposefully over the sandy soil. Behind him, with her short legs working hard, little Rosa was running to keep up. Several times she barked at him, urging him to stop and allow her to catch up. But the single-minded Caesar paid no attention – he had to locate his master.
Suddenly, Caesar stopped in his tracks. With his head cocked to one side, he listened intently. He’d picked up a sound familiar to him from both ops and training. He looked to the sky. Rosa now yapped at him, as if asking him what the delay was. But Caesar was focused on the distant sound. A minute or so later, three sleek helicopters passed overhead in formation. Flying at no more than 500 feet, they were US Army Apache AH-64 attack helicopters.
Following their course, Caesar barked at the choppers, as if calling to them: Hey, guys, I’m down here! It’s me, Caesar! Down here!
The Apaches, lethal flying machines with missiles suspended either side of their tandem-seat cockpits, flew on. Caesar hoped they were looking for him. But they weren’t. They were taking part in an exercise with the Mexican Army, and even if the heelos’ two-man crews had seen the two dogs down below, they would have had no idea that one of them was a canine military colleague in need of help.
As he watched the three helicopters disappear, and as the sound of their engines faded away, Caesar stopped barking. He snorted, then looked at Rosa, who looked back at him. As he turned and once again set off in search of Ben, Rosa hurried after him.
Mid-morning, the twenty-four-seat Mil helicopter landed the GRRR team three clicks south of San Sebastian. This time they were divided into two teams of six – Alpha and Beta, led by Charlie and Hazard. The heelo set the two teams down 500 metres apart on dry, sandy ground dotted with tall, prickly cactus plants.
Leaving the chopper to wait for them on the ground, and keeping the same 500-metre distance between them, the two teams began a fast-paced northerly yomp toward San Sebastian over rising, uneven ground. They regularly paused to check their GPSs and to rehydrate from their canteens in the blistering sun. By the middle of the day, the temperature hovered around forty degrees Celsius. Meanwhile, the glare bouncing up from the sandy ground made sunglasses mandatory.
They had been on the move for twenty minutes when a tinkling bell attracted their attention. Charlie waved his men down. Alpha Team went to ground, and on a rise in the distance Beta Team did the same. A rough track crossed Alpha’s path, and before long a donkey with a tinkling bell around its neck appeared. A boy of eight or nine was riding it bareback, and a younger girl mounted behind him clung to his waist. Seeing the soldiers, the wide-eyed boy pulled the donkey up.
‘Lieutenant, do you want to see what the children can tell you?’ Charlie asked Peters.
The lieutenant moved to the donkey. He and the boy spoke for a few moments before the lieutenant motioned for Alpha to join them. On Charlie’s command, Alpha Team rose up and surrounded the donkey and its young riders.
‘The boy says they are going to school at San Sebastian,’ said the lieutenant.
‘They’re a bit late for school, aren’t they?’ Baz remarked.
‘No, in the more remote parts of Mexico, one lot of students goes to school in the morning and another group in the afternoon,’ the lieutenant explained. ‘This makes the most of teaching resources, and frees the children to help their parents on their farms or in their shops or market stalls during the other half of the day.’
‘Tell the boy we’re looking for a black helicopter,’ said Charlie.
The lieutenant and the boy conversed again. ‘He heard a helicopter last night – for the first time in his life,’ Lieutenant Peters then said. ‘He has seen them on the TV and in the movies, but this was the first one he has encountered personally. It flew over his farm and woke him. He thinks it landed nearby, at a neighbour’s farm northwest of here.’
‘Tell him we need him to lead us there,’ said Charlie. ‘Baz, you take charge of the kids.’ He flicked his radio on. ‘Beta One, from Alpha One. We have a suspect heelo sighting. Turning northwest to investigate. Follow my lead. Over.’
‘Beta One copies. Roger that. Out.’
‘Alpha One out.’
As Alpha turned northwest, so too did Beta.
The boy, whose name was Miguel, was delighted to become the soldiers’ guide. Miguel turned his donkey around and, as Baz walked beside the animal, he took great interest in Baz’s Minimi machinegun. Behind Miguel, his little sister Maria held out something to the Australian soldier. Baz always had an empathy with children, which probably had a lot to do with the fact that he was a big kid himself.
‘It’s a local confectionery,’ said Lieutenant Peters, seeing Baz hesitate.
Baz took the sweet and put it in his mouth. ‘Yum! What is that?’
‘It is made from the cactus plant,’ the lieutenant replied.
‘Who would have guessed?’ said Baz. ‘Gracias, little miss.’
Maria beamed back at him.
At the front of the column, big Chris Banner had taken point and was leading the way. Fifteen metres back in the line of troops, with the donkey in the middle of the column, Ben was walking with Charlie.
‘We have to assume that El Lorro took Caesar with him in the Jet Ranger, Charlie,’ he said, clearly worried about where Caesar might be.
‘He seems to have also taken Sergeant Del Ray with him, mate,’ said Charlie. ‘So, where we find one, we’re sure to find the other.’
‘I hope you’re right.’
After they’d gone a kilometre or so, Chris, topping a rise ahead, suddenly came to a halt and raised a hand. Charlie signalled the column to stop.
‘Charlie, Ben,’ came Chris’s voice over their radios, ‘you better come take a look at
this.’
Charlie and Ben ran toward Chris at the double. On reaching the top of the gentle incline, they too came to a halt. Following Chris’s pointing finger, both gawked in amazement. Forty metres away, a pair of dogs sat side by side on the track, looking back at them. One was a brown labrador, the other, a pink chihuahua.
‘Caesar!’ Ben exclaimed. ‘Caesar, here to me, boy! Here to Ben!’ He added a whistle, the ‘Return quickly’ signal.
Letting out a bark of recognition, Caesar jumped up and came running along the track. Rosa followed behind, yapping with each stride. When Caesar was three metres from Ben, he took a flying leap at him. Ben caught him in his arms, staggering as the labrador almost knocked him off his feet.
‘It’s all right, mate!’ Ben laughed as Caesar began to frantically lick him. ‘It’s all right. We’ve found each other again! It’s all right.’
Consumed with anger, Lola paced back and forth outside the adobe farmhouse. ‘How could you two let my Rosa run away?’ she demanded.
‘And the sniffing dog!’ Marron railed, running a hand through his thick hair.
‘They dug their way out, Padrino,’ Tommy tried to explain.
‘And it was dark,’ said Diego.
‘They dug their way out once before, you idiots!’ growled Vargas. ‘You should have taken precautions.’
‘You were in charge of the prisoners, Vargas,’ Marron exploded, turning on his deputy. ‘It is just as much your fault.’
‘Everyone, stay right where you are!’ bellowed Lieutenant Peters. ‘Drop your weapons and raise your hands.’
All eyes turned in the direction of the voice. Half a dozen heavily armed soldiers could be seen rising up from behind a low stone wall with their guns aimed at them.
‘Do as he says!’ Sergeant Hazard yelled from behind them.
Swinging around, the cartel members saw another half-dozen soldiers lining the crown of the farmhouse’s roof at their backs, all with weapons trained on them. Beta Team had come around from the north and silently climbed up onto the roof.
Marron and Lola raised their hands. Tommy and Diego dropped their MP5s. But Vargas set off for the Jet Ranger.
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