Gold in the Keys

by Matthew Rief

  The truck’s engine died, the driver’s-side door opened and a man stepped out wearing a black cutoff shirt and camouflage cargo pants. I kept still as he slammed the door, then walked over to the edge of the opening. After taking a few moments to examine the cave, he said something into his radio that I couldn’t hear, took one final puff of his cigarette, then flicked it into the hole and turned around. He walked back to the bed of his truck, removed the cloth canopy and pulled out a rope ladder. Tying one end to the tow hitch, he threw the rest over the edge, shaking it a few times to get all of the rungs to unravel.

  The guy stood at the edge of the opening and looked down towards the base of the rope ladder.

  “Juan, Miguel, Carlos! Get your asses up here!” he said in Spanish. “Marco wants to know what the hell’s going on down there.”

  He stood there for a moment, but there was no reply from below. Irritated, he grabbed the radio from his hip and yelled into it, ordering the three men to leave the cave and give a report. When no answer came, he grabbed a nearby rock, wedged it under the truck’s back tire, then flung himself over the ledge while holding on to the rope ladder. Before he took two steps down, he froze and listened as the sound of scuffling bodies echoed from the cave below. The sounds stopped in an instant as a gunshot went off.

  The man climbed to the top of the ladder and ran over to the back of the truck. He reached beneath the green canvas, pulled out an AK-47 and ran back over to the edge. Trying to get a better angle, he moved around the rim of the opening, sidestepping his way towards my position. As he came closer, I saw that he was much bigger than he’d looked from afar. He was at least my height and probably had twenty pounds of bulging muscle on me. I debated using my Sig but decided against it, knowing how far the sound would travel and how many cartel members it would inevitably alert. The gunshot below had been partially muffled by the cave, but a shot up here in the open would be heard for miles.

  The man stood in front of me and raised his rifle to chest height. The blacked-out stockless Draco AK-47 he was holding would be difficult to shoot at a target so far away, but I wasn’t about to give him a chance. Just as he looked like he was about to fire, I pounced on him from my cover beneath the large green Caquib leaves. Grabbing the top of his shoulders for leverage, I kicked the sole of my boot against the back of his right knee, forcing his lower body to collapse. He groaned as I whipped his body around, slamming his head into the ground and holding his left arm twisted behind him. The rifle flew from his hands as he hit the ground and tumbled just beside us, partly hanging over the edge of the opening.

  “What the fuck!” the man yelled, his face buried in the dirt.

  I pulled on his arm tighter, making sure he couldn’t move, then looked over the edge and into the cave.

  “What’s your status, Charlie?” I said, my voice echoing down into the cave below.

  After a brief silence, I heard, “All clear, Delta. Heading up the ladder now.”

  “Get off me, asshole!” the man said, this time in English. “We have a hundred men in these mountains. You two will never escape. Marco will track you down and kill you like dogs!”

  “Shut up!” I said, pulling even harder on his shoulder. He was strong and difficult to hold in place, even with his arm twisted behind his back and my boot pressed against his pelvis.

  Scott reached the top of the ladder, and I motioned for him to check the truck. While walking over to it, he grabbed the satellite phone from his pants pocket and made a quick call, informing local authorities what was happening in Sierra Gorda. When he was done, he slid it back into his pocket, opened the driver’s-side door, and leaned in to check the ignition and the driver’s and passenger seats. He looked back at me and shook his head.

  “Must be on that guy,” he said.

  “Give me the damn keys,” I said, forcing my boot down harder.

  The man grunted, then spat dirt from his mouth. His right hand reached into his pocket, and when I heard the jingle of metal, I reached down and snatched the keys from him.

  “Here,” I said, throwing them over to Scott. He caught them and started the truck.

  “Now,” I said, grabbing the radio from the man’s hip. “You’re going to tell the rest of your goons that you’re under attack on the western shore of the lake.”

  I figured that could draw the trucks as well as the boats away from our current position near the eastern shore. But before he had a chance to speak into the radio, loud gunshots erupted from behind me. I turned around and saw a man crouching down at the edge of the jungle, firing rounds into the truck as Scott put it into gear and floored it towards me. I zeroed in on him with my Sig and fired off two shots, the first one hitting him in the shoulder and the second one going straight through his chest. He fell back, firing bullets from his Uzi into the air until he landed hard on the ground.

  The large man suddenly broke free of my grasp, proving to be much stronger than I’d thought. In an instant, I aimed my pistol towards him, but he was already lunging at me. He tackled me to the ground, and we rolled twice before I broke free and got him with a hard kick to the ribs. He tried to stop himself, but his momentum drove him over the edge of the opening and down to the bottom of the cave below. He hit the ground hard, and the sounds of his bones cracking echoed up from below. I looked over the edge just for a moment and saw him lying motionless on his back, blood spilling out from his mouth.

  “Get in!” Scott yelled as he spun the truck to a stop beside me and opened the passenger door. There were bullet holes from the guy with the Uzi all over the side of the truck, and the back windows were shattered.

  I grabbed my pistol and radio from the ground, then jumped in and slammed the door shut. Just as we were deciding where to go next, an ATV appeared from the jungle on the other side of the opening, followed closely by another truck. The skinny guy riding the ATV wore a black bandanna over his mouth and tinted riding goggles over his eyes. He raised his arm and pointed at Scott and me, yelling while looking back at the truck.

  “We gotta go!” I yelled. I looked over at Scott, who was quickly examining the jungle around us. We were boxed in by steep hills and a sharp cliff. The only flat surface was behind us, where the ATV and truck were.

  Scott revved the engine, then floored the gas pedal, forcing the wheels to spin freely through the ground and shoot back mud for a second before getting their grip and propelling us forward into the dense jungle. He drove right up the hill, weaving around tree trunks and forcing branches and bushes out of our way. Looking back, I saw the ATV closing in behind us, its driver holding a pistol over his head.

  “Hold on!” Scott said before turning sharply and driving up a steeper section of the hillside.

  When we reached a clearing, I climbed into the backseat and took aim through the broken window. The guy on the ATV saw me and fired off a few rounds, which hit the tailgate and the frame just over my head. I ducked down, then rose up and shot his front right tire. He spun out of control and crashed into a large fir tree.

  I turned around and watched Scott drive the truck through another patch of jungle towards a clearing ahead. The clearing was a small patch of grass on the windward side of a hill, and as we reached the top of the hill, I saw the truck still on our tail about two hundred feet behind us. Its engines roared, and a guy leaned out the passenger-side window, aiming a rifle in our direction. He disappeared from view, along with the truck, as we drove down the other side of the hill. Looking forward through the glass, I gasped as I realized we were heading straight for a cliff that dropped down over a hundred feet to the lake below.

  “Holy shit!” Scott yelled.

  He swerved the truck hard to the right. The tires tore through the brush, and the truck almost flipped over as Scott steadied the wheel. He drove along the top of the cliff, bouncing over boulders and swerving in and out of trees. Bullets pounded the back of the truck, and we both took cover while watching the way ahead as best as we could.

  “Keep her s
traight,” I said, dropping the clip from my Sig and loading in a fresh one. I crawled into the backseat once again and peeked over the window. The truck behind us was closing in.

  “Use this!” Scott yelled, throwing his MP5N on the seat beside me.

  I slid my Sig into my leg holster, grabbed the submachine gun and popped up through the broken window. Just as I did, a storm of bullets rained down on the truck and I dropped back down. When the shots stopped, I quickly rose, took aim and let loose on the truck behind us. I hit the guy in the passenger seat a few times before he slid back into the truck through the open window. He fell back, and I knew he was done for, but there was still the driver and a guy whom I hadn’t seen before in the bed of the truck.

  I kept firing at the truck, trying my best to aim as Scott drove over large rocks, bouncing us up and down. But none of my rounds penetrated inside the truck.

  “Windshield’s bulletproof!” I yelled, then ducked back down to reload.

  As I grabbed a magazine from the belt next to Scott, I noticed a large moving object in the corner of my eye in the direction of the lake. I turned to look out the side window and saw one of the center-consoles from before, flying across the water by its twin 150-hp engines. It was right alongside us but about a hundred feet below, and one of the guys wearing a camouflage tactical vest was aiming his AK-47 right in our direction.

  “We’ve got a problem, Scottie!” I yelled, motioning down towards the lake.

  He looked at the boat, then back to the road. A moment later, bullets rattled against the side of the truck from the guy in the boat below. Scott swerved and braked hard, trying to avoid the bullets as best as he could.

  “Hell yeah, we do!” Scott yelled back, pointing ahead of us.

  I looked forward and saw that the side of the mountain was about to get a lot steeper and then drop off. It was clear that there was nowhere for us to go. We were trapped.

  I fired off a few quick shots at the boat, forcing the guy with the AK-47 to drop to the deck for cover, then took aim at the truck behind us.

  “I’ll try to take out the truck!” I yelled, then fired off a few rounds. “If I can stop it, we might be able to turn around and find a way off this rock!”

  I continued firing at the truck and even took out its two front tires, but it kept gaining ground. I knew it had to have been armor-plated in addition to the bulletproof windshield and that it probably had even more upgrades than the beast we were driving.

  “Already found a way, Dodge!” Scott yelled.

  I took cover, then looked forward.

  “Remember that time in Nigeria?” he continued. “That was much higher than this!”

  I looked at the cliff, which was getting closer every second. Nearly ten years earlier, we’d been in a similar situation, Scott and I. After performing a routine reconnaissance mission in the northeast region of Nigeria near the border of Cameroon, we’d been forced to leave a compound in the mountains in a hurry along with the other six men from our platoon. In order to escape from a trail of vehicles heading our way, we’d split up and Scott and I had ended up driving a van over a cliff into a large river below.

  We took cover again as more bullets slammed into the truck, this time coming from both sides at the same time. With that kind of beating, I knew the truck wouldn’t last much longer. There was already smoke billowing out from the engine, and at least one of the tires was flat. I patted Scott on the back.

  “Just tell me when we’re about to go over so I can climb out of here!”

  “Roger that!” Scott yelled, then floored the gas pedal.

  Looking back at the truck behind us, I saw the guy in the bed leaning over the top of the truck and holding on to what I instantly realized was a small rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

  The guy yelled at the driver, telling him to move in closer. As quickly as I could, I rose from my position behind the backseat and held the submachine gun up against my shoulder. Aiming through the broken glass, I fired off a cycle of automatic rounds at the cartel. He flew back but managed to pull the trigger on the RPG. The rocket exploded from the launcher towards us. I dropped back behind the seat and yelled for Scott to brace for impact. Before I could grab onto anything, the rocket exploded, shaking the truck violently out of control. My back slammed into the front passenger seat, and for a moment I thought I’d lost consciousness. My ears rang from the explosion, which had apparently just missed the truck.

  “Time to ditch!” I heard Scott yell over the ringing in my ears.

  I rose, and Scott and I climbed through the back window and into the bed of the truck, which was half-missing from the explosion. We knelt down and held on as the truck flew over the cliff, its momentum driving it forward for an instant before nosediving towards the water below. We jumped over the side of the truck before it did a front flip, launching ourselves as far away from it as we could and splashing into the water below. Despite being flipped around, I hit the water at a good angle, feet first, and with my body straight as an arrow. I broke the surface with little discomfort and sank deep into the clear lake water before coming to a stop.

  I quickly got my bearings and watched as the truck sank to the bottom front-first, bubbles slithering out of all its open spaces and racing towards the surface. Scott, who’d jumped out of the bed on the other side of the truck before splashing into the water, was only about forty feet away from me. He looked at me, then touched his index finger and thumb together, giving me the universal “okay” sign. I repeated the gesture, then surveyed the surface of the water for any sign of the boat. After seeing no sign of it, I held my right hand out in a fist with my thumb pointed down, letting Scott know I wanted us to get deeper. The visibility in the lake was still superb, at least sixty feet, so I wanted to put some distance between us and the surface before the cartel spotted us. I held my hands out to my sides, cupped them both, then pushed up, letting my body sink down. When we reached about sixty feet, I stopped and continued my search of the surface.

  Before hitting the water, I’d taken in a deep breath and knew that Scott had done the same. During our time in the Navy, and whenever we’d gone free diving together to spearfish or catch lobster, we’d always challenged each other to stay down longer or go deeper. I could hold my breath for a little over five minutes and knew Scott could do the same. However, we’d been in a car chase and been shot at. Despite our years of training to keep calm under pressure, our hearts were beating abnormally. I figured we’d been under about a minute already and that I could go another two and a half before surfacing.

  Looking at Scott, I could tell he was thinking about just swimming for it. If we swam along the shore, we could try and get out of sight of the cartel and escape into the jungle unnoticed. I considered it but knew they would be sweeping the area with both the boat and the truck, and that more would no doubt be arriving soon. Our best shot was to hijack the boat and go full throttle across the lake back to the Jeep.

  After about two minutes underwater, we saw the hull of the boat appear quickly, then slow to a stop right above us. Occasional bubbles still trickled up from the truck, letting the cartel know exactly where we’d crashed. We watched as one of the guys above shot a few rounds into the lake. Even hitting the water straight on at a ninety-degree angle, the 7.62x32mm rounds of the AK-47 were only able to penetrate about three feet before breaking apart and stopping.

  When the shooting stopped, I motioned to Scott to ascend. We kicked our way up slowly through the water, and when we were about twenty feet from the hull, I pointed at myself, then at the bow. Scott nodded and pointed at himself and then at the stern. We would take them out by rising at different ends of the boat. I reached the hull just under the bow and eased my way up, making sure not to come into contact with the boat. A small center-console will rock slightly even with just a small amount of force applied against it.

  I rose up slowly, barely breaking the surface, and took a quick look around. The first thing I saw was the other truck idling
on the edge of the cliff overhead, but there was no sign of the driver. I listened to the two guys on the boat.

  “Where the fuck did they go?” one of the men said.

  “They couldn’t have stayed down this long,” another man replied, his voice high-pitched. He sounded young. “They must be dead.”

  “They’re not dead,” the other man barked back. He sounded much older than the other man. His voice was low and raspy, like the voice of a man who’d smoked a few packs a day for ten years. “Unless you see their bodies, they’re not dead. You got that, Danny Boy? You go telling Marco that your targets are dead when they aren’t and you’ll end up at the bottom of this lake with a tow chain strapped around your ankles. Now keep looking, damnit!”

  The young man didn’t reply, but I heard him walk towards me at the bow. His footsteps were light and I saw his shadow as he looked over the edge of the boat. This was my chance. In one quick motion, I grabbed the edge of the boat, hoisted myself up, then wrapped an arm around the young man and flipped him over the railing. I held him tight as we splashed into the water, his legs kicking and his arms moving wildly, trying to break free from my grasp. I pushed down, swimming as hard as I could until we were about fifteen feet under. Then I ripped the rifle from his shoulder and dropped it into the darkness below.

  He tried to fight back but was much smaller than I, and although it was clear he’d had hand-to-hand combat training before, he was no match for me. His body began to shake, and I knew that he was running out of air. His long hair parted away from his face and I realized he was even younger than I’d first suspected. I pegged him to be no older than eighteen, and he looked terrified as I held him beneath the surface, his lungs screaming for air. Examining his desperate body, I saw that he had no other weapon, so I swam us both up towards the surface.