Choke Point

FOURTEEN

Pepper should have seen that coming, and he cursed himself for missing it. Knowing their sub crew was being captured, those Rastrojos infantry had had no choice but to kill said crew members. Dead men tell no tales about drug smuggling.

Between the torrents of rain and cracking of gunfire, it was hard to judge how close those incoming rounds were getting, but it was easy to decide his next move: get his old-timer butt out of there. He dove under the submarine, swimming hard until he came up on the other side –

Just as the sail crashed into the water and the wave knocked him backward. No, the river didn’t taste like Campbell’s Soup — more like algae and mud. He coughed, nearly choked, and glanced around, searching in vain for Ross as a fresh spate of gunfire ripped across the submarine’s hull, rounds punching fiberglass in a triplet of dull thumps.

Pepper tugged free a fragmentation grenade from his web gear, grimaced, then let it fly in a high arc toward the SUVs.

Eat this, mis amigos.

He imagined the sound of the explosion.

Where was it?

He was about to curse when the frag detonated, lifting the front end of one SUV, its engine compartment igniting. Pepper couldn’t see the second car because more withering gunfire drove him back behind the sub. There was an eerie rhythm to the battle, automatic weapons booming at one another one second, followed by an absolute silence … and then a shout, more fire, and then a more distant explosion.

He craned his neck. Where was Ross?

Was he — holy shit — inside? Hell, yeah, he was. The package was everything.

Pepper dove beneath the rippling surface and toward the hatch. He slipped a penlight from his web gear, thumbed it on, and pointed down as the sub drifted away from him, toward the bottom nearly seven meters below.

He was no Olympic swimmer, no Navy SEAL, that was for sure. But the rigorous cross-training he’d endured during phase II of his recruitment as a Ghost had had him rescuing trapped pilots from downed and sinking aircraft, along with several other water rescue scenarios that had sent him to the edge of a liquid oblivion and back again. He paddled down toward the hatch and pulled it farther open.

The silhouette of something large passed nearby. He repressed a chill. No, he wouldn’t dwell on what else was in the water …

Ross hadn’t wasted a second after the sub had rolled and begun to sink. He’d pushed up, clutched the rim of the hatch, and had allowed the rushing water to carry him inside the cramped confines. He turned slightly to his right, a light pen in his hand, and saw a control station on one side with radar screen and navigation controls and GPS. Farther back was a series of modified water heaters and jerry-rigged air compressors, three on each side of the hull. They were used to control surfacing and submerging. The captain would fill the heaters with water to dive, then he’d use the compressors to blow out that water and surface. A label on one of the air compressors caught Ross’s attention, but he had to keep moving.

Beyond the heaters were four bunks, the blankets floating up near the ceiling now, where the smoke grenade still bubbled and hissed. Still farther back was an actual toilet and air-conditioning unit.

Ross shifted his light, pulling himself deeper into the sub, and there he was, the package, Delgado, captured in the small light’s beam and floating motionless, eyes closed, cheeks swelling, some bricks of cocaine surrounding him and turning end over end, as though he were caught in a slow-motion tornado and this was a snapshot captured by a daredevil photographer.

Ross pushed through them and seized the unconscious man by the shirt. He glanced forward where Pepper was just now entering the compartment. Seeing Ross coming with the package, Pepper immediately turned around and headed back outside, holding open the hatch for Ross, who forced Delgado through and into the open water. Pepper took over, seizing Delgado and dragging him up.

It had been a cumbersome and irritatingly slow process at best, and Ross quaked with the fact that every second counted. Just as he was running out of breath, his head beginning to spin, they broke the surface –

To the sound of so much gunfire that Ross wasn’t sure if they were pinned down yet again. He coughed and spat, then shouted to Pepper. ‘Gotta get him to the shore. He’s out. Need CPR! I’ll be right back.’

Pepper was already on it, his arm draped beneath Delgado’s chin as he began a hard paddle away from the sub. ‘Where the hell are you going?’

Ross waved him off and dove back down, paddling hard toward the sub.