by Dana Marton
When they didn’t see an immediate threat, they pulled back into the hacienda. They didn’t dare to cut across the compound to help their compadres. They knew the enemy was close, but they couldn’t see it, which seemed to thoroughly unsettle them.
The front door closed behind the cowardly group. Gun barrels appeared in the windows next.
The Don was making his last stand in there with the dozen or so men he had left. They would defend the place down to the last man. Unfortunately, Jase needed a satellite phone and he needed the Don, and both were in there.
He couldn’t attempt a frontal assault. He’d be dead the second he stepped out of cover.
The roof would have been a good entry point, but first he would have had to get up there. No tall trees stood around the hacienda. And he couldn’t climb the walls, because he couldn’t reach the walls, not from any side. He would have been immediately picked off by one of those rifles in the windows.
Okay, so he wasn’t going to be able to take the hacienda by force, not without help. What did that leave him?
If he was going to get in, he had to talk those men into letting him in. It pretty much came down to that.
He took a minute to think that through, then he pulled back to the burning ruins of the barracks, stayed out of sight of the men at the hacienda as he focused on the wreckage.
He could see three injured men who’d crawled away from the explosion in one piece. He picked the closest one, smeared the man’s blood all over his own face until he figured his features would be unrecognizable. Then he picked up the semiconscious man and stepped out from cover to run toward the hacienda, screaming in Spanish.
“Let me in! He’s still alive. Help!”
He held the man in a way that if the others opened fire on him, the guy would block most of the bullets, at least to Jase’s crucial organs. He also made sure to run close enough to cover so that he could lunge to safety the second any bullets began to fly.
But nobody fired on him. He reached the door safely, and then someone from the inside yanked it open for him.
He registered the two men he faced. Both had their weapons drawn, but their rifles were aimed behind Jase, at a possible enemy that might choose this vulnerable moment to attack.
Jase threw the man he carried on one of the Don’s foot soldiers, then pulled up his gun and shot the other. The man he’d knocked over recovered quickly and went for his own weapon. Jase squeezed off a shot first. He hit his target, but he didn’t have time to stop and celebrate.
Others ran forward and opened fire. He ducked through a doorway and behind a wall that kept him safe. He listened for every shot, memorized the location of every single shooter as best he could.
Then he popped out and took out the closest shooter before pulling back into safety. He let a full minute pass, let them waste a few dozen bullets. Then he took out the next man, then the next.
The rest were starting to get nervous, judging by all the swearing and shouting. They hadn’t recognized him, not yet, not with his face obscured.
When new shots came, they came from farther away. The men were retreating up the stairs.
He scanned the room he was in: furniture turned over, empty ammo boxes scattered. No sight of a satellite phone in here. He glanced out into the main room, couldn’t see a phone there, either. He had taken the lower level of the house, but everything he wanted was upstairs.
And he couldn’t take the stairs. He’d have to come out into the open first, and the men at the top of the stairs would have higher ground. Plus he was outnumbered. His enemies had every advantage.
Still, he’d gotten this far. He refused to fail now.
He simply needed a new plan. He thought of Melanie out there with Cristobal and came up with one in a hurry.
Instead of pushing forward, he pulled farther back, all the way to the window at the back of the room. He opened it and looked up to the window above him. No gun barrel protruded from there. Chances were, the Don had every available man guarding the stairs, expecting the intruder to attack there.
Jase climbed out, then up, climbed through the upstairs window, and silently stole across the room he found himself in. Then he was at his enemies’ back and opened fire, killing the men at the top of the stairs with one long, continuous burst of bullets.
As a maneuver it was damn fine and effective, but his luck finally ran out just then. A bullet had slammed into his side. Another grazed his shoulder.
He ignored both injuries as he scanned his surroundings. The door to the Don’s office was closed. He would be in there—he wasn’t among the dead at the top of the stairs. But how many men did he have with him?
However many, they would be securing the door. The Don would be cowering somewhere in the back, Jase reasoned, and he sprayed the door with bullets. Then, without leaving anyone in there a chance to recover, he rushed forward, kicked the door in and burst through it.
Pain shot through his side, through the bullet wound, nearly blinding him for a minute. He shook his head and got his vision back.
Dead men littered the floor. Alejandro stood in the far corner protecting the Don, who was trying to get through the window. Alejandro aimed and squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened. He shook his jammed weapon as he swore, his face red, his eyes bugging out with rage as he recognized Jase.
Shooting at Alejandro was out of the question. Too much of a chance that the bullet would go straight through him and hit the Don, too. Jase couldn’t afford to sacrifice that asset.
He lunged at the two men and brought them down. Snapped his head up and caught the Don in the chin, smashing the man’s head against the floor and knocking him out temporarily.
Alejandro didn’t allow himself to be subdued that easily. Since his weapon had been knocked from his hand, he went for his knife and sliced into the side of Jase’s neck, nearly taking off his ear.
Jase fought back with everything he had. Damn, but rolling on the floor hurt like hell. He was pretty sure he had a couple of cracked ribs from the beating he’d received from Cristobal’s men. The bullet hole in his side stabbed with pain. But if he didn’t win here, things would get a lot worse than that.
Alejandro outweighed him by at least thirty pounds and carried the fury of several grudges against him, which gave the guy extra strength. Plus he’d been resting for the past hour while Jase had been taking out one man after the other.
Alejandro pinned him to the floor and had his knife at Jase’s throat the next second. “Traitor,” he hissed, and went for the kill.
But Jase rolled him and grabbed for the knife, twisted the man’s wrist, and pushed the blade through Alejandro’s black heart.
Then pulled it out and pushed it in again, just to be sure.
He didn’t wait until the man bled out and stopped breathing. He went to tie up the Don just as the man was coming to. The boss swore like the bandit he was, spouting off one threat after the other. Jase wasn’t in the mood to listen. He gagged the bastard, then grabbed the satellite phone from the bed and called the colonel at last, moving out of the room and down the stairs.
He gave his coordinates first to make sure they had that, even if the call somehow got disconnected.
“Also there’s an army unit of roughly two hundred soldiers to the north of here, ready to join the fight. If they reach us, it’s all over, sir.” He ran for the hole in the fence as he talked.
“What’s the army doing getting involved in a drug battle?”
“Cristobal might have bought off a general.” Unfortunately, those sorts of things happened around here.
A moment of silence passed. “Don’t worry about the army. I’ll deal with that via official channels. What do you need?”
“An evac chopper with medical personnel on board. I have a pregnant woman here who’s not doing well. I also have Don Pedro in custody.”
“Well done. How long can you hold your position?”
He thought of Cristobal’s men and the army that might or might not arrive
at any minute. “An hour or two at the most. And that’s pretty damn optimistic.”
“You hang in there. Help is on the way.”
“One more thing, sir. Do you think the chopper could bring about a dozen dog cages?”
He ended the call before any questions could be asked about that, and ran through the camp, scanning his surroundings to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone. He dashed straight to the hole in the fence, then through it.
Cristobal’s men would be attacking again soon, when they realized that the Don’s men weren’t defecting and handing the boss over to him after all.
Jase glanced at his watch.
He had ten more minutes.
Chapter Eleven
Jase made his way to Cristobal’s makeshift headquarters, staying out of sight. He checked the tree he’d been tied to. The body was still where he’d left it, covered with the tarp. Good. That meant that his absence hadn’t been discovered.
At least not by Cristobal’s men.
Melanie kept scanning the forest. Sure looked like she’d somehow noticed the switch and was wondering where he’d gone. When she looked his way, he quickly showed himself and gestured to her to come to him before pulling back behind the wall of green.
She immediately sat up and slid to the ground.
One of the soldiers confronted her. “You stay right there.”
She lifted her hand to her mouth and swayed on her feet. “I’m going to throw up. The baby is pushing on my stomach. I’m just going over to those bushes.” She heaved toward him.
The man stepped back and gave her an annoyed look, but didn’t stop her when she moved forward.
Jase kept his gun ready in case anyone came after her. Nobody did. She walked slowly, with an exaggerated waddle, as if to make sure that nobody who looked at her would even think of the possibility that she might run away.
Then she reached him, and he stepped back so she could move deeper into cover before he picked her up and carried her off unseen.
“You came back.” She sounded relieved, but maybe a twinge surprised, too. “Why? I’m nobody to you.”
“You’re not nobody,” he groused, annoyed that she would think he might leave her. “Either we both make it out of here, or die trying.”
“I vote for option number one.”
He looked into her eyes and wanted to kiss her more than he had ever wanted to do anything. “Smart woman.” He pushed forward. They were out of time.
Cristobal’s men were heading back to the gate, but he still had a clear path to the hole in the fence. Jase remained alert, ready to set her down and go for his gun at a moment’s notice.
“Where is everyone? Why are we going in there?” she asked when they reached the camp’s perimeter.
“It’s all ours now. The evac chopper is on the way.”
Her eyes went wide. “How?”
“Don’t worry about it. Your only job is to stay calm and well for the baby.”
Then they were through the hole, and he covered it with some branches. He picked her up again on the other side. He kept in the cover of the buildings, just in case, and reached the hacienda safely. He set her down in the nearest chair inside and barred the front door behind them.
“I can’t believe we’re back here.” She looked around, chagrin on her face. “After all I’ve done to get away from this place.”
“You sit and relax. I’ll take you up to your room in a minute.”
He ran up and dragged two dead bodies out of her room. The blood on the floor couldn’t be helped. But he had a feeling she would deal with it, like she had dealt with everything else. Gunfire sounded in the distance. Cristobal was getting impatient.
He rushed down for her and carried her up, set her on the bed. Then he pushed her rustic, solid wood armoire in front of the window so there wouldn’t be any flying glass from bullets. “You relax. Help will be here before you know it.”
He checked in on the Don tied up in his bedroom. The man shot him murderous looks but couldn’t do much else. Then Jase ran back downstairs and secured all the doors and windows, and blocked all the downstairs entrances into the house with whatever furniture was at hand.
He collected all the guns and ammunition from the bodies in the process, then stockpiled them around the windows upstairs. He ended up with considerable firepower. The bag of hand grenades he found in one of the rooms was gravy.
His hour had been up ten minutes ago. Cristobal’s men were probably at the gate, waiting for the handover.
Jase watched from the window he picked for his first station, ready for them if they started rolling down the path that led to the hacienda. Had he more time, he could have rigged some explosives and booby traps. But no one ever had enough time to do everything on an op. You did the best you could and made sure it was enough.
Rifle fire sounded from the direction of the gate. Then more guns from the back. The battle was back on.
The men would soon figure out that nobody was returning fire. But they would still move slowly, careful in case they faced some kind of a trap.
Long minutes passed before Jase saw the first of them, keeping low, keeping in cover. Then others came, clearing one building after the other, kicking the bodies on the ground to make sure they were really dead. When they were close enough to the hacienda so that Jase knew every one of his bullets would find its target, he opened fire.
He stood in one of the front corner rooms that had one window looking to the front, the other one to the side, so he could single-handedly keep two sides of the building protected. He laid down some serious fire, then ran to the Don’s office, the corner room in the back, and did the same there.
Cristobal’s men pulled back. They had no idea how many enemies were holed up in the house, but they could see it was a well-defensible position. Jase had the higher ground and solid cover, while they would have to come out in the open to reach the place.
He alternated among the dozen windows, exchanging fire with the enemy as they continued searching the camp. Half an hour passed as more and more men arrived and took up positions around the hacienda. If they decided to rush the place all at once, he was finished. The key was to make them think the Don had overwhelming force inside the building, dozens of men who could hold their positions indefinitely.
The fighters outside tested him, varying the direction and the intensity of the attacks. He stood up to the test, guessing their every move before they made it.
“Hand over the Don,” came the demand from behind a stack of logs, at last.
Jase answered it with a hail of bullets. He needed a good show of strength. His ribs hurt, blood seeped from the bullet hole in his side. He drank to replenish fluids, but couldn’t do much beyond that.
Time seemed to crawl. Exhaustion slowed him, and the evac team was still at least an hour away.
So when Cristobal himself called out, “All I want is the Don,” Jase responded.
“Okay, okay. Give us some time to talk about this.”
He used this new ceasefire to drink some more water and check on Melanie.
She looked pale and uncomfortable.
“Are you in pain?”
She looked away from him. “No.”
His muscles tensed. “Where does it hurt?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“I need to know what’s going on with you. It’s the only way I can plan for all contingencies.”
She looked at her feet. “I think that spotting in the forest might have been the mucus plug.”
He cringed. Maybe he shouldn’t have pushed for the answer. Sounded like one of those feminine mystery things a man was better off not knowing about. But because it concerned her, he asked anyway. “The what?”
“It usually indicates the beginning of labor.”
He stopped breathing there for a second. “Have you had any contractions?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Melanie?”
“Yes.”
Co
ld fear cut through him. He would rather have faced a force twice as large as Cristobal’s, with tanks, than have to be within ten miles of a woman in labor. “Are you sure?”
She had the presence and energy to laugh at him.
Good to know that one of them still had their sense of humor.
A million questions flew threw his head. Somehow he managed to articulate one. “How soon will the baby come?”
“I don’t think these things can be predicted.”
“Can you hold it in?”
“Yeah.” She laughed again. “How about I cross my legs?”
He glared at her for making fun of him. “Call me if you need me,” he said, then fled to check on the Don, his mind a beehive of unsettling thoughts and images.
The drug boss growled at him from behind the gag as Jase stepped into the room. Blind, dark fury clouded his eyes. He would have killed Jase if he could. And yet, at the moment, Jase felt more comfortable in this room than in the other one. Violence he understood. He had skills to deal with that. He had no idea what to do with a laboring woman.
“Relax, amigo.” He passed by the man. “Right now, I’m the only thing standing between you and Cristobal, who wants to tear you limb from limb.”
He checked outside from each window, scanned the camp in every direction. Cristobal’s men kept in cover, but were relaxed. Some were even smoking. They didn’t think they needed to keep their locations concealed. While the exchange of gunfire had shown them that the hacienda was well-defended, from the number of bodies around the camp they had pretty much figured out that the Don wouldn’t have a large enough force left to risk a breakout and try to match the invading force man for man.
Jase checked his guns, made sure they were all loaded, then checked in on Melanie again. Again, she insisted that she was fine, not that he bought it. The tight lines of tension around her eyes told another story.
The grace period of this latest ceasefire lasted about half an hour before Cristobal lost his patience and ordered another attack.
It started out badly. A bullet grazed Jase’s left eyebrow almost immediately. Other than ripping off half the eyebrow, it wasn’t a big deal, but then blood began trickling into his eye. And the men were shooting like crazy. He didn’t have time to stop and stanch the wound with a makeshift bandage. He kept wiping it with the back of his hand and blinking, but the dripping blood interfered with his vision and his aim. Which slowed his return fire.