by Cherry Adair
But the dickhead had a point. There were no ifs, ands, or buts: he was fucked, because an explosives expert who couldn’t run was going to die. But then Daklin had known that from day one. As long as his men got out, he accepted the cards he'd been dealt.
"Let Gibbs know we’re on our way," he instructed Ortiz as he opened the passenger side door. They were continually testing the range of their comms and their satellite communications. The comms, when they weren't jammed, ranged about a mile, give or take. Satellite connection remained spotty and annoyingly erratic. The mountains would normally not have any impact on the powerful T-FLAC toys in the sky. But here, the signals were jammed surrounding the plant, the mine, and also Xavier's home. The jam was periodically lifted, presumably when Xavier needed to communicate, probably with his buyers. Then it slammed off again like a bolted door.
During several of the lulls, Control had procured the schematics for the mine. The two operatives working security had filled in many of the gaps. None of them had been inside the tunnels, however, and that was where they’d set their explosives.
Gibbs and Turley, on duty in their positions as security at the mine, would make sure a side gate was unlocked for them.
Ortiz spoke into his lip mic. "ETA fourteen minutes."
"Roger that." Gibbs’ voice came through the earpiece clearly as Daklin climbed into the truck with the others. Ram started the vehicle, easing out of the shadows. There was no need for headlights, it was as bright as day. The engine, as any T-FLAC sanctioned vehicle always was, was almost silent as they drove on the narrow winding road filled with potholes, and rocks of various sizes that had come loose from mountainside.
"Sit-rep?" Daklin asked Ram, over the thump-thonk-thump of the windshield wipers as they fought with the water sluicing over the car. Moonlight shone through the glittering curtain in a surreal silver sheet in front of them. On either side of the one-lane road, the trees bowed with the weight of the deluge.
"My Dad, Marcus, and Charlie team started quietly evacuating as soon as you and Xavier left the party," Ram confirmed. "Father Marcus didn't want to wait until the last minute to get his people out."
As planned, half an hour after the fiesta shut down, two transport trucks had been waiting out of sight on the winding road going north. "How many?"
"Almost three hundred," Ram confirmed. "They'll go back for another fifty and be ready to transport the others at full dark tomorrow night. Or whenever you say the word."
Half the village evacuated and transported to Abad. T-FLAC was buying their silence with premium hotel rooms, meals, and the promise of more to come, all under the guise of the Cosio Government's concern for instability in the mine. Partially true. Blowing the shit out of a mine filled with unstable E-E-1x was going to make a big fucking bang, and a crater of a size none of them could predict. It didn't matter how good Daklin and his team were, or how carefully their charges were set, the danger was off the charts. Daklin didn't want more collateral damage than necessary.
He watched the road ahead, a snake-thin sliver bisecting the lush foliage. "Xavier didn't know who ninety percent of the people were tonight at the fiesta, so he probably won't even notice they're missing." The eyes of a prowling jaguar glowed red on the verge, then disappeared. "Talk to Marcus at first light. I want Juanita Perez out of town before he fucking kills her."
"My cousin?" Ram’s Adam's apple bobbed and he nodded, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. "Her oldest sister lives in Santa de Porres."
"Get her out first thing. Were you aware Xavier’s using her as a sex toy?"
"No fucking idea."
"Have our people connect her there." Control would arrange medics, psych eval, and counseling. SOP for operatives and/or their immediate families in a similar situation. Ram was T-FLAC, and his cousin was family.
"Yeah." Ram breathed out. "I will, thanks. This sick fucker has to be annihilated."
Ram had been with his father and Marcus. Daklin knew he hadn't seen what he'd seen, and for once, Nyhuis kept his mouth shut.
River had missed tonight's show by less than ten minutes.
Xavier's sex play with the young woman had been brutal, turning Daklin's stomach. First he'd made the girl whip him until she sobbed and begged him to let her stop as she sliced open his back, the blur of the sharp silver tips of the multiple strand whip slicing through his skin. When she'd collapsed because she couldn't wield the whip any longer, he'd buckled a spiked choke collar around her throat and strung her up so she hung from a bar, her feet swinging above the floor while he masturbated on her feet.
“The devil will be waiting for that one,” Aiza said. “The cruelty we know of, I’m sure, is only the tip of the iceberg.”
"Yeah. He’s one sick fuck," Nyhuis said from the back seat. "I like a few of the toys he's got in there, but some of that crap. Man, we're talking mega fucked-up pain there." Apparently, there was a line even he wouldn't cross.
"We have Eliseo and the daughter, right?" It was frustrating for Daklin not to have 24/7 comm with Control.
"Yeah," Aiza told him, from the back seat. "Picked them up a couple of hours ago at their hotel. An unexpected bonus was that Trinidad was with them."
Trinidad was the plant supervisor and Xavier's younger son. Daklin twisted in his seat. "So, he wasn't sleeping off a high at the hacienda?"
"Apparently not."
Hell, was Xavier not aware of anything happening under his nose? "Now all we need is for our people to find that damned truck and Oliver Sullivan. Then we can start the party." And they could get Sullivan's sister on her way home. She needed to be out of danger and away from the valley before her brother was hauled into custody.
They drove over the narrow bridge, where rainwater flooded the road. Two miles further, Turley hid the truck near the old strip mine—-now practically a lake—-in the weeds and shrubs off an unused side road.
They walked the rest of the way, sticking to the dense shadows beneath the dripping trees. The secured area surrounding the plant and mine entrance was lit up with massive, powerful four-hundred-watt stadium lights. They didn't need moonlight. The area was as bright as fucking day. Every leaf and blade of grass stood out in sharp relief. Between the tree line and the perimeter fence was nothing but scorched earth.
"Told you this place was as bare as a hooker’s snatch," Nyhuis reminded them unnecessarily, speaking just loudly enough for their comms to pick up. "What'cha wanna do?"
"Crawl." Daklin dropped to his belly on the muddy ground. "Drop, and haul ass, ladies.”
Ten
Entry into the secured area, facilitated by Turley and Gibbs, had gone smoothly, with no one the wiser. The two operatives, still on security duty, remained outside to cover their asses. Not that Daklin and the others would know if there was a problem. As soon as the giant, titanium door blocking the entrance to the mine shut behind them and plunged them into stygian darkness deep inside the mountain, their comms wouldn’t work.
The closed up space, with no circulation, smelled of body odor, diesel oil, and the familiar, underlying sickly, cheap perfumey smell of raw E-1x.
Heavy-duty tire tracks, filled with dirty water, sliced down the middle of a muddy road behind the huge steel door. The tunnel was big enough to drive a truck through. It was obvious trucks and large equipment had gone in and out, removing schist and ore for sorting, but also transporting miners and tools.
In the strong beams of their Mag lights, they saw a row of hard hats with embedded comms hanging near the entrance, ready for the miners first shift in a couple of hours. Daklin handed one to each man, then put one on himself.
Thanks to the value of the emeralds mined here, and now the absolute secrecy of the E-1x, T-FLAC already knew that Xavier didn't allow anything extraneous on the premises other than the clothes worn by employees as they walked in. No shoes, jackets, bags, or anything carried in their pockets. Employees parked outside the perimeter fence, and were searched coming and going every shift.
Hardhat adjusted, comm on, Daklin turned his back to the others, and said softly, "Copy?" He already knew where the last explosive would be set: beside the enormous titanium doors, sealing off the mine for good.
Through the hardhat comm system, Nyhuis, Ortiz, and Aiza gave the affirmative. Although Daklin was the one who'd set the charges when the time came, the others were more than troubleshooters and muscle. They too had extensive explosives skills. It was just as important for their eyes to be on this preliminary run as Daklin’s, because if the mission turned to shit, it would be their job to finish it.
The man he really wanted to have watching his back was his friend, Rafe Navarro, whose skill and experience matched Daklin's, but Navarro was about to become a first-time father, and Daklin had insisted he stay behind in Montana.
He motioned for them to move out, then glanced at his watch and set the timer. Half their allotted time would be for going as deep into the vast tunnel as they could, half the time getting back out.
Daklin counted on minimizing any collateral damage by blowing the mine and mountain sky high between shifts. By that time, the villagers would've been cleared out of town.
"We have less than two hours before Turley and Gibbs go off duty," he reminded them, over the crackle of feedback from the small speaker beside his ear. "And the Bishop needs to be back at the hacienda for breakfast with his host. Which gives us less than ninety minutes to reconnoiter and ten minutes to exit the perimeter." He gave them a hurry up hand signal, and they increased their pace. "Let's make the most of it."
"Smells like shit in here," Nyhuis bitched as they splashed through muddy stagnant water. Their footsteps echoed in the cavernous space.
"It's a mine, Nyhuis, what did you expect?" Ram asked rhetorically.
Satellite images had showed them the breadth and scope of the shaft. It went a good five miles straight into the heart of the mountain. A dozen shafts dropped periodically as the miners searched for a new vein of ore. Emeralds or E-1x. Daklin doubted Xavier wasted much time with emeralds anymore. E-1x was by far the most lucrative product mined here.
As he increased speed, grinding his teeth against the pain shooting down his leg, Daklin gauged the distance. Time in, time out, where to set the charges the next time he was here, how long each set up would take. In his brain, he calculated. Tallied. Weighed odds and variables.
If he screwed up his timing by so much as a second or two, he'd become part of the big bang. A footnote in the lore of T-FLAC.
One of their fallen agents who was never resurrected.
That alcoholic Daklin guy who'd killed his brother, then fucked up an op and died himself. Too bad. So sad. The end.
Hell of a thing to leave as his legacy.
Legacy to whom? Josh was dead. Dear old wife-beating, alcoholic dad was long gone. His stepmother, who he'd always had a contentious relationship with, hated his guts for killing her golden boy.
So, no one.
No one to give a flying fuck if he lived or died.
He had his reputation, tarnished as it was; that was fucking it.
He'd do this job right, even if it killed him. Which it very well might.
He came across another side tunnel, which indicated a vertical shaft. Personally climbing down any of the shafts was a job for an able-bodied man with the use of both legs, and the ability to run like hell if things went sideways. Daklin discounted going down. He'd place the explosives along the walls lining the main tunnel, working back to front.
Timing was everything.
Poetic justice. E-1x to blow the shit out of E-1x.
"Five-ton dump truck?" Aiza jerked his chin at a secondary tire track slightly off center from the larger imprint. "Light in, heavy out?"
Miners had to remove the ore and schist. "Looks like." Daklin crouched down on his hunches, owning the pain that sluiced up his right thigh, into his hip, and sucking it up to shine his Mag light at an angle across the second set of treads.
He whistled. "Check this out. Not a tractor and semi-trailer. Look at these treads. This looks like a Bridgestone tire track. I guesstimate the transport vehicle is only a three and a half ton. Probably panel van. We've been looking for big. We should have been looking for small. Small and heavy."
"Or the E-1x could be removed from here in the panel van containing tons of E-1x, then driven into the back of that semi my dad saw," Ram suggested, adding the beam of his powerful light to the others as Daklin got to his feet. "Bringing us back to square one."
"It's a long-haul to the coast. Mountains, insurgents, rebels." Daklin’s hand signal urged them to continue walking at a faster pace. They'd set some charges at the entrance, but to get the biggest bang for their buck, he wanted to get as deep inside the mountain as possible. That meant another five miles of walking on uneven ground. Without limping. Or crying like a little girl. Or fucking passing out.
A flash of River's sweet face crumpled with stress tears caused a hard pang in his chest. He'd been dangerously close to saying fuck it all, and crushing her mouth under his. He wanted her so bad, even his teeth ached with need. Thank God she'd be gone in the morning. She was a dangerous distraction on an op where his leg was dangerously distracting already.
Fuck, a drink would hit the spot right now.
Focus. Block everything but the job at hand.
At a fast clip, it should take them, give or take, an hour fifteen to travel the length of the tunnel, an hour fifteen back. They had two hours max. In those two hours, Daklin had to figure out where he'd lay the explosives when he came back. It didn't have to be neat. All he needed was to follow the pale vein of E-1x when he found it. A timed blast, beginning, middle, and end would blow the whole mountain. He just had to figure out how to do a two-and-a-half-hour job in under two hours.
"Pick up the pace." He increased his speed at a hell of a cost. The uneven ground wasn't helping any. The pain was gripping and unrelenting. Sweat popped up on his brow despite the still, cool air.
He gritted his teeth. "Airports have all been staked out. My vote is still that they're taking the load to a ship. And if they went through a broker for the tractor and semi, the broker probably doesn't have any idea what they’re transporting.
"Find the broker, and they'll probably have an EOBR." The electronic-on-board recorder would track the semi with a GPS. No truck owner wanted his truck, or his customer's cargo, to go missing. Unless the broker was in on it, and/or there was no EOBR. Or unless Xavier's people had their own semi and tractor, which made more sense.
That was a fuck-load of ifs.
"We track it that way," he told them, able to talk at a normal volume only because of the helmet mics. The cavernous space smelled of gym socks. The space echoed and gave false direction sounds. "As soon as we have a comm link, contact Control. I want every single shipping company between here and the coast contacted. Cosio, Peru, Columbia, and Ecuador, hell, throw in Brazil as well. Anything and everything shipped out of Cosio in the past forty-five days. Also outgoing cargo on every ship stopped. It's there, we just have to find it."
"That's a fucking tall order." Aiza's voice echoed slightly. "Unless they don’t give a shit if they blow up everything en route, and lose their big payday, I think they'd make sure that the semi has hazmat signs all over it. We can start there."
"Have them do a search on any semi and tractor purchased for delivery to Cosio." Daklin mentally marked a place low on the rock wall for one of his charges and kept moving. Faster now as time ticked away and they weren't deep enough yet. "Nyhuis." Daklin had misgivings about sending Nyhuis outside on his own. No one had been killed so far. He'd like to keep it that way until it became completely necessary. Daklin changed his order. "No. Ram, go outside, see if we lucked out and have a sat link. Call this in. Meet us back at the truck. We're not waiting for anything. If they find the shipment, great, but we're lighting up the mountain tomorrow tonight."
"What about Dr. Sullivan?" Angel Aiza asked, catching up with him.
Y
eah, what the fuck about Oliver Sullivan? Where was he? Dead? Incapacitated? Didn't want to be found? "If he's able to be found, we'll find him. If not, hopefully that cloud site will give us what we need to know. Either way, we have to learn how to defuse E-1x safely."
"This time tomorrow then," Nyhuis said with relish.
Daklin figured if this was his time to die, he'd rather it came sooner than later. As long as River was far away, he'd only have himself and his men to be concerned about. Taking himself out of that equation, he just had to set the charges, and make sure he didn't kill his men or have massive, unexpected collateral damage.
Fortunately, the last of the villagers would be whisked away to safety by afternoon. River would be winging her way back to Portland, and Xavier would be trapped here to see the end of his lucrative enterprise.
A win-win.
As he walked, Daklin mentally heard the pulsing beat of a detonator echoing with his rapid footsteps.
#
A good cry was always cathartic. River didn't do it often, but when she did, like in the early hours of the morning, she gave it her all. It was both exhausting and therapeutic. This morning she felt positive and, barring seeing Bishop Daklin again, ready for anything. A few splashes of cold water, judiciously applied concealer under her makeup, and a deep breath, and she was good as new.
It was barely light, the sky still colorless and milky, the sleeping village painted in shades of hazy gray. A glance out of her window showed the dim streets empty except for a scrawny black cat, wandering down the middle of the road, presumably looking for breakfast.
Dressed in jeans, a sleeveless blue and white striped cotton top, and gray hiking shoes, River grabbed a lightweight jacket and left her room. A shiver of revulsion made her speed up her steps as she passed the closed door of the kink room. The house was quiet as she tiptoed down the stairs. Thank God she was leaving, because she’d never be able to look Franco Xavier in the eye knowing what he did in that room.