Trader of Secrets: A Paul Madriani Novel

by Steve Martini

  Herman popped the clutch and raced back through the smoke to the relative safety behind the smoldering plane. He didn’t stay there long.

  Hirst quickly reloaded. He was now down to two rounds. The gunner in the back changed out his triangular magazine under the machine gun.

  Herman looked over his shoulder. As soon as he got the all-clear sign from Adin, he circled back. This time he popped out of the smoke at a different location. In less than a minute they took out the other antenna, but not before two rocket-propelled grenades streaked past them.

  The guards were beginning to take notice, zeroing in on the Jeep. Both Adin and Herman saw them coming down the line carrying boxes of grenades and shoulder-fired launchers. They knew if they could take out the only remaining vehicle, the Israelis on foot could be chopped up at will.

  Instead of heading back toward the burning plane, Herman drove toward the far end of the runway beyond the range of the RPGs. They stopped and checked their ammunition: a single recoilless round and one more magazine for the SAW. They loaded up and debated how best to use them.

  * * *

  The first two or three I blindside while they are still down on one knee. We roll over them like speed bumps. The car barely slows. In the rearview mirror I can see the bodies writhing on the ground behind us.

  The next ones I hit are standing up. The first two go airborne up over the roof. The third one hits the windshield and shatters the safety glass on the passenger side of the car. I roll over a few more and we start to lose speed.

  “Pick it up,” says Harry.

  I can feel the tires getting tangled in body parts. I pull to the right to clear the underside of the car and let the next few go.

  Our reward is to be shot at from behind as I hear the flat thud of bullets pierce the trunk of the rental car.

  “Everybody OK?”

  “Good!” says Joselyn.

  I look over.

  Harry nods.

  The strange thing is that none of the men I hit see us coming until the bumper is into their legs and they are bent sideways over the hood—deer in the headlights.

  If it was a game for points, I’d have to take a handicap. They have no chance to get the muzzle of their rifles around. Most of them can’t even see us bearing down because the man standing next to them is in their way.

  I pick up speed and plow back into the line. The first three I hit, the impact sends them flying over the sandbags. I floor the accelerator and take out some more. Two bullets pierce the back window from behind, shattering the glass. One of them takes a piece off the rearview mirror. The other goes through the windshield.

  Harry smashes out the glass in front of him with the butt of the speargun so he can see. The whole time he’s doing this he has the spear aimed at the side of my head.

  “Watch the point!” I tell him.

  “Watch where you’re going,” he says. “You hit those sandbags we’re all dead.”

  While we’re arguing, something whizzes between our heads leaving a vapor trail, a taste of aluminum in my mouth, and the smell of burnt rubber. I look at Harry and suddenly there’s an explosion somewhere behind us.

  The next guy I hit lands up on the hood of the car. Rifle in hand he reaches inside the broken windshield. Harry shows him the business end of the speargun. The guy smiles at him and rolls off the right side of the hood. He bounces on the road away from the car and strangely enough lands on his feet as if nothing has happened.

  * * *

  Ben Rabin watched as the first body flew up into the air. It spun like a rag doll and fell to the ground. Three more suddenly followed. Then an entire line of bodies, like grass being clipped in a mower, flew over the roof of the moving vehicle, flailing arms and legs.

  The car seemed to pull away from the line and gain speed, then plow back into the assembled riflemen behind the sandbags.

  Ben Rabin wondered if the driver was drunk. If so, and if Uncle Ben survived the rest of the day, he was prepared to spring for another drink or an entire bottle if the driver wanted it. He shouted for his men to hold their fire. He didn’t want them killing whoever was at the wheel. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  He picked up the wireless headset. “Rebel Two, this is Rebel One. Come in. Rebel Two, this is Rebel One. Come in, where are you?”

  * * *

  When the crackling headset in the Jeep sounded, Adin, Herman, and the wounded SAW man were sitting at the end of the runway making final preparations for a run at the building.

  Adin grabbed the headset. “This is Rebel Two.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Far end of the runway,” said Adin.

  “We need to move now,” said Ben Rabin. “Can you see what’s happening?”

  “No.”

  All of a sudden an explosion erupted behind the sandbags.

  Adin looked up. “Is that you?”

  “No,” said Ben Rabin. “They’re doing it to themselves. There’s a driver, ran a vehicle through them. Bodies flying everywhere. But we have to move now before they regroup.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Catch them in a pincer from their right flank,” said Ben Rabin. “We’ll squeeze from this direction.”

  Adin grabbed a pair of field glasses from the glove box in the front of the Jeep and checked to see what was at the near end of the sandbags and the chain-link fence. What he saw was a small blockhouse with a slit in it, what looked like a light-machine-gun installation, protecting this end of the roadway leading to the front of the buildings.

  “You got it. Give me thirty seconds to get in position.”

  “Roger. Out,” said Ben Rabin.

  Chapter

  Sixty-Three

  By now the incoming volley of fire into the trailer and the area around the plane had died down. Ben Rabin looked up and winced at the smoldering tail section over his head. A few more minutes and the steel supports holding it to the fuselage would start to give. Half a ton of hot metal would fall on the overturned trailer.

  “Take all the ammunition and grenades you can carry,” he told his men. “Get ready to move.”

  They started stripping the trailer of anything they could reach, bandoliers of bullets, bags of grenades.

  Ben Rabin grabbed two satchel bags filled with C-4, along with a roll of det-cord and two electronic and six pencil fuse detonators. He handed one of the satchels to his sergeant and draped the other over his shoulder. He looked at his watch. “Grab your weapons and follow me.”

  Ben Rabin broke cover and ran toward the gate in the chain-link fence. Eleven other soldiers followed him. He watched in amazement as the red sedan continued in the distance driving down the line, rolling up the enemy’s left flank. The driver had a perfect angle. No more than a single soldier, maybe two, could turn and draw a bead on him at a given moment. The car was moving so fast that by the time they turned, the vehicle was on them.

  The driver missed a few of them. The survivors lined up and fired toward the back of the vehicle as it sped past.

  Ben Rabin and two of his commandos aimed their assault rifles from the shoulder and fired. They dropped the guards who had escaped becoming hood ornaments before they could pull off any more rounds.

  * * *

  Liquida, looking for a vehicle, had worked his way to the end of the complex of small buildings. He found nothing and began to suspect that he was going the wrong direction.

  Hauling the heavy money bags was wearing him out. He was breathless and sweating and beginning to wish he had used the cart into which he had piled Leffort’s body.

  Occasionally he got a glimpse of the mayhem outside through the various doors in the complex. With the electronic key card from the man in the pay room, Liquida seemed to have access to everything he needed except a car.

  He picked up an assault rifle from one of the dead guards who had stumbled back into one of the buildings and died near the front door. The clip was mostly empty, but it still had three
rounds. Liquida didn’t plan to use it unless he had to.

  He sat for a moment and rested; he felt the weight of the bags and wondered how the hell he was going to get away. Suddenly there was an explosion outside. It shook the building.

  Liquida dragged himself to his feet and went to the door. He looked through the blown-out plate glass opening. One of the double doors was missing, reduced to a pile of glass pebbles under Liquida’s feet.

  He glanced down the street. A small concrete pillbox at the end of the road was belching black smoke. Chunks of fractured concrete littered the pavement around it. Liquida watched as a low-slung Jeep drove slowly past the smoldering wreckage and turned toward him, heading down the street in front of the building.

  He stepped back into the shadows inside the door and watched as if in a daze as the Jeep cruised by. The breeze from the slow-moving vehicle blew curling white tendrils of smoke from the barrel of the recoilless rifle. As he looked on, Liquida was in no doubt as to the existence of the afterlife. Otherwise how was it possible that the man he had killed in a parking garage in Washington three months ago could today be driving a car in the jungles of Mexico?

  His eyes remained riveted on the Jeep and its driver. The vehicle pulled sideways in the street as the gunner on the back opened up with a machine gun. The Jeep sat there. Liquida got an even better look at the man behind the wheel. There was no mistaking him. There couldn’t be two that looked like that, the one they called Herman Diggs, Madriani’s investigator. What was he doing here? More to the point, how was it that he was still alive?

  * * *

  Within seconds Ben Rabin and his men vaulted over the sandbags and opened fire into what was left of the confused guards. Mangled arms and legs lay everywhere. The speeding car had left a trail of carnage and chaos that unnerved the remaining defenders. Some of them threw down their weapons and gave up, while others ran.

  Ben Rabin could see the black smoke from the blockhouse at the other end of the street three-quarters of a mile away. He could hear the distinctive automatic fire from the SAW. He wondered who the driver of the red car was and whether he was still alive.

  His men started to round up the guards. Ben Rabin handed the satchel bag to his sergeant, nodded toward the huge satellite dish, and told him to take it down. “Find the control room. Gather any papers, laptops, data drives—whatever you can find—and get it ready for transport. And find the technicians. Get them all together. They don’t know yet, but they’ll be joining us for the trip back home.” In the meantime, Ben Rabin had to find a phone or a radio. By now the backup C-130 should be waiting for them in Belize.

  * * *

  Resistance seemed to stiffen at the other end of the road. Flurries of rocket-propelled grenades whistled past the Jeep. Adin sensed they were down to hard-core fanatics, the handful of guards who would fight to the death rather than give up.

  He told the commando to stick to short bursts on the SAW. They were running low on ammunition.

  He tapped Sarah on the leg and motioned her toward the back of the Jeep. “Time for you to get off,” he told her.

  “Why?”

  “Between here and the end of the road it’s liable to get hot,” said Adin. He was worried that if one of the rocket-propelled grenades ripped into the Jeep, she could be seriously wounded, or worse.

  He grabbed a pistol from a box in the back of the Jeep, a Glock 23 with a fifteen-round clip. “I’ll catch up with you,” Adin yelled to Herman.

  Herman looked back and nodded. The Jeep moved on down the street.

  Adin took Sarah by the hand and walked her toward one of the buildings. “You’ll be safe inside until we get back.” They crossed the small strip of grass and headed toward the door, Adin with the pistol in his hand to make sure they would have no problems.

  “Wait here.” He peeked inside. It was a small lobby. The building had taken the brunt of some of the fighting, window glass on the floor. One of the doors was missing.

  He checked inside, took a couple of minutes, and found the place was empty. “Come on in.”

  Sarah stepped over the broken glass.

  “We’ll look for Bugsy when I get back.” He smiled at her. “We’ll find him, I promise. He won’t go far. He’s a good dog.”

  “I know he is. I just want him back,” she said. Sarah started to cry.

  He wiped her cheek with the back of his hand. “Don’t think about anything now. Just sit and relax.”

  She laughed. “How can I? That’s easy for you to say. This is probably all in a day’s work.”

  He gave her a serious look. “No. This is at least two days’ worth of work.” They both laughed.

  Sarah had seen enough violence in a few hours to last her a lifetime.

  “Here, take this.” He handed her the pistol.

  “What about you? Aren’t you going to need something for protection?”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “No, really.” She tried to press the gun back into his hand.

  Adin looked down and lifted his left pant leg a few inches. Strapped to his ankle in a holster was a small snub-nosed revolver.

  They were still laughing when Sarah looked over his shoulder and saw him. At first she just stood there with a quizzical look on her face.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Look out!”

  Before the words cleared her lips, the shot rang out. The explosion of the Kalashnikov reverberated through the room as Adin flung himself into Sarah. They landed in a heap on the floor.

  Liquida tried to line up for another shot, but the guy was on top of her. He moved for a better angle. As he did, the wall behind him came alive with bullet holes as the blast of gunfire echoed through the room. At first he wasn’t sure where the shots were coming from. Then he saw the gun in her hand pressed to the floor by the weight of the man’s body.

  A second flurry of shots, one of which nicked his shoulder, told Liquida he’d had enough. He fired another round from the rifle as he retreated out through the back door, the way he had come in.

  Sarah pulled herself out from underneath Adin and fired two more well-aimed rounds at Liquida’s fleeting shadow. “Are you all right?” She turned and looked at Adin. He wasn’t moving. There was blood on the floor. She rolled him over and looked into his face. She put her cheek to his nose searching for breath and felt for a pulse at his throat. There was nothing. She knew that the spark of life that had danced so freely in those large brown eyes had been extinguished. He was dead.

  Sarah knelt there looking at him. She wanted to cry but she couldn’t. She tapped the muzzle of the gun on the polished stone floor as rage crowded out every other emotion. Fury filled her as she raised herself up and glared at the dark hallway and the wall with the two shadowed bullet holes.

  With purpose she walked toward the rear of the building, squeezing the pistol in her hand. She saw drops of blood where Liquida had gone. Sarah knew she hit him. Now she would track him into the bush and kill him. She was not without caution, but anger filled her every pore. Her body was awash in a sea of adrenaline.

  Chapter

  Sixty-Four

  The wounded soldier leveled the barrel of the machine gun at the wrecked red sedan as it raced toward them. Finger on the trigger, he was trying to save the last few rounds. He would wait until the car was on top of them before he opened up.

  The Jeep blocked the road. At the last second, Herman held up a hand. “Hold it! Don’t shoot.”

  The commando eased off on the SAW.

  “I know them.” Herman smiled as he saw Harry through the broken windshield. He looked like Poseidon holding a trident in his lap.

  As the car pulled up next to them, Herman realized that the fire engine red exterior was not all paint. The driver’s-side window came down. Herman was left staring at the stern and angry face of his boss.

  * * *

  “Where is she?” I ask.

  “She’s OK,” says Herman. “She’s in a building back t
here for safekeeping. Adin is with her.”

  “Who the hell is Adin?”

  “That’s right, the two of you never met,” says Herman. “A young man. Nice guy.”

  “I’ll bet. So tell me, is he responsible for bringing her down here or are you?”

  Herman swallows hard.

  Joselyn is behind me with her hand on my shoulder. “Relax!” she says. “You’ve killed enough people for one day.”

  “I’m just getting warmed up,” I tell her.

  “Don’t say something you’re going to regret. She’s OK and that’s what counts.”

  “We’ll talk about it later,” I tell Herman. “Where is she?”

  He points up the road behind him. “Third building on the right. How you doin’?” He looks at Harry.

  “Better than you at the moment.” Harry smiles. “See you later.”

  We pull away and drive toward the building.

  “Cut him some slack,” says Harry. “If you lived with your daughter and tried to tell her no lately, you would know it ain’t easy.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “She’s a lot like you.”

  “Hold your chin up just a little higher and ask a couple more questions, I’m sure he can hit you dead center,” says Joselyn.

  “OK, enough,” I tell them.

  “He’s in a bad mood,” she says.

  “You think he’s bad now, wait till he talks to his daughter,” says Harry.

  * * *

  Liquida lugged the money as far as he could. He wasn’t going to run any farther. He stashed the bags behind some brush and started dripping false blood spoor down the path leading to the small lake behind the complex.

  The area was dotted with deep cenotes, some of them with sheer cliffs, walls fifty feet high. In other places, surface lakes bubbled up in the otherwise dry jungle where thick, deep mudlike brown cement ringed their shores.