Jax grinned at Henry. “Kagan sure put you in your place yesterday.”
Henry ignored him and started walking toward the balcony to have breakfast. Jax caught up to him.
“You won’t give him anymore shit if you’re smart.”
Henry stopped walking. “Who are you talking about?”
“Your father, duh.”
“That’s right, he’s my father, and someday I’ll be in charge. You might want to stay on my good side, Jax.”
Henry could see Jax had realized the wisdom of those words. He shrugged.
“You’re the boss’s son; I get that. I wasn’t trying to fuck with you.”
“Just stay out of my way and don’t talk to me.”
“Sure, Henry. Whatever you say.”
Kagan, Vasquez, and Faye’s replacement, Caroline, were already at the table. The mood appeared glum. Henry wondered if his war with Dante Cardoso was going badly for Kagan.
After Kagan greeted his arrival, Henry said, “Good Morning, Father.”
Kagan looked pleased to see that he had gotten in line, but then his face again wore an agitated expression. Henry didn’t know who Dante Cardoso was, but he silently wished the man the best of luck.
Along with his usual scrambled eggs, Henry ordered a steak. Kagan commented that it was good to see that he had an appetite.
Henry didn’t think that required a response and so he offered none.
The food arrived and Henry was glad to see it. The steak was large and cooked just the way he liked it. Henry didn’t give a damn about it really. He hadn’t been after a steak. What he wanted was the sharp steak knife that came with it. He would pocket the blade and put it to use the moment he got the chance.
They were finishing up the meal when an alarm sounded. Moments later, Kagan and Vasquez’s phones went off.
“Under attack?” Kagan said, after answering the call.
Across the table Vasquez said, “How many?” as he spoke into his own phone. The caller repeated what they had said and Vasquez informed Kagan. “The guards at the gate say that over a thousand men are approaching. It must be Dante Cardoso’s people.”
“He doesn’t have that many people,” Kagan said.
“He does now,” Vasquez told him. “The perimeter guards are reporting that they’re approaching from the south in a line that’s over a mile long. And Kagan, it looks like they may have rockets.”
Kagan looked confused. “Rockets? Dante Cardoso has rockets? What kind?
“The kind that can blow holes in the walls and knock down the gates.”
Kagan stood and headed toward a door that led to a corridor. “Henry, Jax, follow me. Vasquez, order ten guards to the roof. And get Gomez and the other associates up there too; we may need to fly the helicopter out of here.”
Henry took the opportunity to snatch his knife off the table. He felt like grinning. He didn’t know how he had managed it, but he doubted it was a coincidence that Kagan was being attacked when Cody was in Mexico. He had no proof that Cody was in the country, but he knew it was true anyway.
If there were a thousand men converging on them, they weren’t Kagan’s biggest problem. One Tanner was deadlier by far.
They went up a long flight of stairs, exited the stairway, and walked out onto the roof. Off in the distance was a line of vehicles.
Jax was gazing through the mounted binoculars. Everywhere he looked there were men coming. Trucks and buses were visible all along the private road leading to the compound, with additional vehicles approaching along the horizon. “Holy shit. I think there’s a lot more than a thousand.”
Vasquez was using binoculars as well. After studying the mass of men headed toward them, he suddenly straightened.
“There are rockets, Kagan. Dozens of them. If we tried to use the helicopter to get away, they’d blow us out of the sky.”
“Not if we’re in a jet. We could climb out of range of the rockets in no time. They also wouldn’t see us right away because their focus is on the compound.”
Jax pointed south to the airfield, which was miles away. “What if those men get between us and the airfield. How the hell are we going to get past them?”
Vasquez grinned as he took out his phone to call the airfield. “There’s a tunnel that goes directly to the hangar where the jet is. We’ll be in the air and out of range of the rockets before they know what’s happened.”
Kagan strode toward a corner of the roof where there was an elevator. He used a keypad to input a code and the doors hissed open. The lift was the size of a freight elevator. Everyone piled into it, including the additional guards and Kagan’s well-dressed associates. They had appeared as Vasquez was on the phone telling the jet’s pilots to get ready for flight.
Henry’s optimism ebbed after learning that they planned to use the tunnel. He assumed that there was no way for Tanner to know about it. Henry was mistaken. Kagan’s use of the tunnel was the key to the success of Tanner’s plan.
25
The Invasion That Never Was
Tanner was already at the airfield and had been there for over an hour. He was not alone. Joaquin and three other armed men were with him. Because of the presence of the other men, Tanner was wearing a green bandana across his lower face to hide his identity. Dark sunglasses hid his distinctive eyes. The bottom portion of his face was drenched in sweat due to the heat, but the discomfort was a small inconvenience and well worth it if he soon had Henry out of Kagan’s reach. Along with the bandana and shades he wore a bulletproof vest, as did the other men. They had no cover and expected to take some return fire. Their greatest advantage would be the element of surprise.
They were a hundred meters away and dressed in hues of tan, brown, and green in order to blend in with the landscape. The scrub brush around them offered concealment.
The DEA was told about Kagan’s tunnel by a former guard of the compound who was arrested for abducting his own baby daughter during a custody battle with his American ex-wife. Looking for a way to lessen his legal difficulties the man made a deal and discussed what he knew about Kagan. He was beaten to death in the jailhouse two days later over a dispute about a pack of cigarettes, but not before revealing details about the tunnel.
He also claimed that Kagan had ordered several of the other guards to kill the men who’d built the tunnel, and that they were buried in a mass grave. The story was plausible. Two years earlier, there had been a spate of missing person reports filed in and around Mexico City concerning construction workers and engineers.
The tunnel was said to be circular, twelve feet in diameter, and with a flat bottom that was paved with concrete. It was wide enough for an electric cart, and that was how Kagan traveled through it. The passageway was over two miles long and ended at Kagan’s private airfield.
Joaquin smiled at Tanner as there was sudden activity at one of the hangars. Two men had dashed out of a small building that resembled a pre-fab cabin and raised up the door on the first and largest of three hangars. There was a jet inside; it was different from the smaller one Henry had arrived in. It was an Embraer ERJ-135 that Kagan had configured to seat up to sixteen. The men appeared to be readying it for flight and were dressed like pilots.
“That’s a good sign,” Tanner said. “Call Dante and tell him to back off.”
Dante was a mile away from the compound and riding in a pickup truck that was in the midst of a strange caravan. He had gathered together scores of trucks, buses, and cars to accommodate his guests, most of whom were drunk or well on their way to it.
Dante had thrown a party as part of Tanner’s plan. It had started at one a.m. outside the grounds of his compound. He’d let it be known that there would be free beer and wine. Word had spread in the nearby communities and by three a.m. over two thousand people had shown up. Ninety percent of them were men and most of them were young.
Toward daybreak, the word was passed, and the throng had been told that they would be taken to a party at a fabulous villa. Dante�
�s people herded the inebriated onto the gathered vehicles. If any of them wondered why some people were carrying cardboard creations that resembled handheld surface-to-air missiles, they didn’t voice their questions. Maybe they thought they were party favors.
The phony rockets looked real enough when viewed from a distance through a telescope or binoculars. The slack faces of the partygoers were also hard to discern at that range. What Vasquez had seen when looking through the binoculars was a caravan of death closing in. It never occurred to him that the rockets were fakes or that the bodies crammed inside the buses and trucks were harmless drunks. In his mind, and in Kagan’s, they were a massively superior force headed toward them. The only sane response was to flee.
Knowing about the tunnel, Tanner was prepared to attack Kagan when his group emerged from underground. As for Dante, the party was over.
He spoke into a radio and told the drivers of the vehicles to turn back. It took nearly two minutes until the last vehicle received the word, but eventually they were all headed back the way they had come. Dante imagined the relieved but confused faces on the guards back at Kagan’s compound and laughed.
The horde of partygoers weren’t laughing. They had been promised more free booze and were wondering why they weren’t still headed toward the walls of the villa. That was when Dante’s men began passing out money and telling the crowd that they were headed into the city instead.
“You can drink for free at your favorite bar,” they were told. A few grumbled about wanting to see the villa, but most were appeased. Dante had spent a small fortune. If it resulted in Kagan’s death and a partnership with Vasquez, the investment would be well worth it.
When they were back on the main road, Dante’s vehicle and three others drove in the opposite direction from that taken by the caravan. He was returning to the safety of his own compound. He had done his part, now it was up to Tanner and Joaquin to do theirs.
Henry wondered how much Kagan had spent to construct the tunnel. It had to have been many millions. It was a clean, well-lighted, and ventilated space that stretched on for miles and had massive steel supports.
He rode in a large electric golf cart with Kagan, Vasquez, Jax, and Faye’s replacement, Caroline. The woman was seated between him and Jax and was almost climbing into Henry’s lap. Henry knew it wasn’t because she liked him but rather because she feared Jax. She had watched Jax shoot Faye as if he were swatting a fly. She wanted to sit as far away from him as she could get. It wasn’t far; the seating was tight.
The guards took up three other golf carts and two more held the helicopter pilot Gomez and the other men in suits. A cart containing guards led the way while the others followed behind the cart being driven by Vasquez. The trip through the tunnel took nine minutes.
There were charging stations for the carts, which had to be backed up to them for use. By doing so, the carts were facing out and made it easier to drive off toward the palace when you took the return trip. No one bothered hooking the carts up to charge. Kagan was in a hurry to get to the jet.
Henry had expected to have to climb up a ladder or take another elevator ride to get to the surface. Instead, there was a curved ramp that led up to a recessed area with a set of double doors. Beside the doors was a keypad.
This time Vasquez keyed in the code to make the doors open. Henry’s hand gripped the handle of the steak knife whose blade was still concealed in his pocket. One way or another, he was determined to get away from Kagan, even if he had to kill the man.
26
Like Father, Like Son
Joaquin reminded his men that no matter what, Vasquez and the two American boys were not to be harmed. The men nodded that they understood. They were all reputed to be sharpshooters who had been in gun battles before. They were as good as Dante had claimed they were, and because they would be striking without warning, the battle shouldn’t last very long. Joaquin was a dead eye as well.
Tanner had insisted on seeing them take target practice before heading out to the airfield. All four men had impressed him with their skill.
The jet inside the hangar had been moved out of the building and a preflight check was underway. The two men, presumably a pilot and a copilot were speeding through the procedure. Both men stopped what they were doing and looked back into the hangar. Moments later, a group of people emerged. Most of them were wearing the same olive drab clothing as the guards Tanner had killed the night before, but others were dressed in street clothes of various colors, including suits. There was also one woman.
Tanner smiled when he saw Henry and was glad to spot Jax at Henry’s left. Walking beside Henry was his father, Kagan Andreas. The others had been told that Tanner would handle him while they were to concentrate on the guards.
Tanner wasn’t sure how Henry would feel about him killing his father, but he wasn’t going to hand the chore off to someone else either. Kagan had placed a spy in his home. Tanner owed the man for that, and for much more.
Joaquin looked at Tanner, Tanner nodded, and their small group began crawling closer to their targets.
When the double doors at the top of the ramp opened, Henry had looked out to see a wall covered in yellow pegboard with various tools hanging on hooks. They were in a maintenance tool room. After everyone stepped inside, Kagan ordered that the doors leading to the ramp were to remain open.
“If something goes wrong, I don’t want to waste time keying in a code.”
Henry looked back to see that the other side of the doors looked like the front of a large gray cabinet with a keypad on its right side. Anyone who gave the room a casual glance would never suspect that a tunnel lay beyond.
One of the guards opened the door of the tool room and peeked out while holding a pistol in his hand; the others had their rifles ready to bring up. The guard saw no threats and he and the other guards escorted everyone out of the tool room and into the hangar. The large jet was already outside and had its engine going. The sound echoed off the hangar walls.
Henry had no intention of getting on the jet. If he did so, he might never get home. Tanner was nearby, he was sure of it, and if he could get away, he would make it back through the tunnel and find Tanner inside the compound.
He looked at Kagan. He had expected to see a worried expression and instead found him looking calm. Was it bravery, hope that they would escape, or arrogance that left him looking so composed? Maybe it was a combination of all three.
Henry seldom feared anything, even when there was a reason to do so. During the firefight at the airport he’d been unafraid and only concerned about fighting back to stay alive. He wondered if fearlessness was a trait he had inherited from Kagan. If that was the case, he thanked God he hadn’t also been the recipient of his lack of a conscience.
They walked out into the open air and the noise of the jet lessened as the reverberation inside the hangar was no longer a factor. The copilot came over and told Kagan that they could start boarding.
“Fine, and take off as soon as you can.”
“Yes sir.”
“Where are we headed?” Jax asked.
“You’ll find out when we get there,” Kagan told him. The guards were nearby. Kagan wasn’t about to let them know his destination. Most of them would be left behind and would talk if captured.
Vasquez was reading a text on his phone. He held it up for Kagan to see. “The perimeter guards are saying that the invaders have turned around and are leaving.”
“What?” Kagan said. “Why would they do that? It doesn’t make sense.”
In a flash of insight Vasquez understood that they had been maneuvered into coming to the airfield. He was about to say as much when five of the guards went down from fatal wounds, three of which were head shots. A second set of men followed, then the remaining fell as they dashed for cover or attempted to bring up their rifles and fight back. The men in the suits dived to the ground and Caroline froze in place.
Vasquez realized the sound suppressed shots were comin
g from a field straight ahead. He took out his gun and began firing at the attackers.
“Get down!” Tanner said in Spanish. They had eliminated the guards before any of them could respond and now the one man they wanted to keep alive was firing upon them.
Tanner had opted to let Kagan wait until the threat of the guards was eliminated although it might make killing the man more difficult.
As Vasquez was taking out his gun to return fire, Kagan had sprinted back toward the hanger. Tanner didn’t have a clean shot at him because Vasquez, Henry, Jax, and the blonde were in the way. He was also taking fire from Vasquez, as were the men beside him. No one had fired back at Vasquez but had crawled to a different position. Vasquez tracked their movements by the stirring of the plants they moved among. One of his shots hit the vest of a man on Joaquin’s left. It didn’t penetrate but must have hurt like hell. That was when Henry and Jax both did the unexpected.
Henry watched the guards fall like dominoes and knew the time had come to act. Kagan had reached the same conclusion as well; he sprinted toward the hangar. If he made it back into the tunnel, he would be safe. Henry was about to grab up one of the fallen guards’ rifles and go after Kagan when Vasquez began shooting. Henry freed his knife and took aim at Vasquez’s throat. The squat man saw the attack coming from the corner of his eye and flinched away. The blade buried itself in Vasquez’s right shoulder. The pain caused him to lower his gun arm and Henry wrest the weapon out of his hand.
While that was happening, Jax had grabbed a gun from the holster of a guard then wrapped an arm around Caroline’s neck, to use her as a shield. Like Vasquez, he fired at Tanner and the others.
Joaquin reached out and grabbed Tanner’s left arm. “What the hell? One of your boys nearly killed Vasquez and the other is firing on us.”
Flesh and Blood (A Tanner Novel Book 35) Page 15