Damage Control

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Tristan wasn’t much of a runner, even on a paved track wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Loaded down with the flopping and rattling gear that felt like it doubled his weight, every step hurt. How these old guys did it so easily was beyond him. The fact that Scorpion could do it didn’t surprise him so much, he supposed, because he had that wiry athletic look about him that suggested he jogged a lot just to keep in shape, but that the Big Guy could jog with so little effort was pretty incredible.

And as shitty as flip-flops were for hiking in the jungle, they truly sucked when running for your life.

“Keep it up, Kid,” Big Guy urged from behind. “Forward motion is what’s keeping us alive now.”

Tristan didn’t have the spare breath to offer up an answer. He just forced himself to keep up with Scorpion.

God, would it ever stop? He didn’t know how long they’d been at this, but he’d run far past the stage of

Tough it out, you can do this, and was now in the stage where every additional step was a forceful command from his brain.

They’d been running a kind of a zigzag pattern, a block or two east followed by a left turn that would take them a block or two north, followed by a right-hand turn and another block or two east. He’d long ago lost track of how many such turns they’d made, and he’d now stopped even paying attention to his surroundings. They just ran. He found himself focusing on the distance between his toes and the heels of Scorpion’s boots. If the distance opened up, which was happening more and more now, then he’d throw another log onto the fire and push himself a little harder.

Hey, if living wasn’t a strong enough motivation to give a little more, then what was?

His lungs screamed, and sweat poured into his eyes from the soaked tendrils of his hair.

He’d heard athletes on television talk about some transitional phase where running triggers endorphins or whatever and then running is like the greatest high there is.

What utter bullshit.

If there was anything good about this much discomfort, it was the fact that it displaced a lot of fear. Through the thrumming of the blood in his ears, he could still hear a growing chorus of sirens, but they didn’t seem to be getting any closer.

After ambushes, shoot-outs, and now a plane crash, maybe it was safe to assume that the worst was already behind them.

The instant Captain Palma heard over the radio that a plane had crashed, he knew that it was Harris and Lerner. The reports spoke of three armed soldiers who had all survived, and were moving east.

That put them on a direct path into the trap he had set for them. This time, they would not escape alive. He’d ordered his men to shoot at first sight.

He’d also decided to ignore his orders from Felix Hernandez. The man was acting out of anger, not out of reason, and decisions made as such were always the wrong ones. He’d be able to extract his revenge against Maria Elizondo in his own time, but Palma was not going to ruin his tactical advantage to serve a personal vendetta.

Or, more truthfully, maybe his own personal vendetta had taken precedence over that of Hernandez. Harris, Lerner, and the Wagner boy had caused too much trouble in his life these past two days to be allowed to escape yet again. Whatever their real identities-and Palma suspected strongly that they were American Special Forces-these soldiers were very good, and luck seemed to be running on their side.

By staking out Maria Elizondo’s house, Palma had set up the perfect ambush. He’d chosen the one spot on earth where his prey had to go. He felt like a cat watching a mousetrap.

While the police and the rest of the local Army forces closed in on the crash site and scoured the streets for these three who had been so evasive, he needed only wait until they came to him.

Rising from his own place of concealment behind a parked car directly across the wide street from Maria’s house, he surveyed the concealment of his troops. Even knowing where they were, he could see no sign of them. The streets were empty this time of night, as they should be, and despite the reasonably bright glow of the streetlights, he could see no shadows, no sign of an errant foot sticking out from behind a vehicle or a wall.

The street looked perfectly normal. He’d even stashed their Sandcats two blocks away so that his prey would not be spooked by their presence.

While he recognized that radio reports were never completely reliable, by all accounts, Harris and his team were unhurt. If they moved quickly, they could easily reach Elizondo’s house in the next ten or fifteen minutes.

If Palma’s men did their jobs correctly, the invaders should all be dead in the next eleven or sixteen minutes.

He lowered himself behind his concealment and waited once more.

The kid’s stamina surprised Jonathan. He’d been able to keep up for most of the run. Now that Tristan was struggling hard to keep up, Jonathan was even more impressed with his heart. The kid was working his ass off, and he wasn’t complaining about it.

Jonathan’s GPS showed them to be less than a quarter mile away now-just a few blocks, actually-and if their intel was correct, the Elizondo chick would be waiting for them when they arrived. From there, it would be a ride to wherever the hell these tunnels were, and then they’d be back in nearly friendly territory. If their covers were still intact, Jonathan and Boxers would be absorbed back into obscurity while Leon Harris and Richard Lerner disappeared forever. Those aliases had had a good run. It was time to shelve them anyway.

Tristan’s future would be up to whatever Gail and Wolverine turned up. Under the circumstances, he didn’t think the charges against the kid could have any legs in the United States. As long as the idiot in the White House didn’t force some crazy extradition controversy, everything should work out fine.

Good God it was hot. Unreasonably hot, given the time of day. If he didn’t follow his own advice and hydrate soon, he was going to start cramping up.

Their current trajectory through these residential neighborhoods was going to bring them up behind the Elizondo residence. According to the maps, the street that ran behind her place was narrower and therefore presumably darker and less populated.

As Jonathan jogged north past yet another cross street, preparing to turn east again at the next corner, his earbud popped and Boxers’ voice said, “Whoa, Boss, hold up.”

Jonathan stopped, and Tristan collided with him. If Jonathan hadn’t grabbed him by the vest, the kid would have fallen to the ground.

“Jesus!” Tristan spat, a little too loud. “What’d you-”

“Quiet,” Jonathan said, looking not at Tristan, but at Boxers, who had taken a knee behind the fender of a parked sedan, his weapon up to his shoulder and trained on a spot down the perpendicular street. Never letting go of Tristan’s vest, Jonathan pivoted him toward a parked car, and pushed him down. “Sit and stay,” he said. He knew the tone would bother the kid, but he didn’t care.

As he bent low and closed the twenty feet that separated him from Boxers, Jonathan keyed his mike and whispered, “Whatcha got?” He approached with his M27 up and ready to shoot. He matched Boxers’ line of fire, but he had no idea what the target was.

Boxers waited till Jonathan was squatted at his shoulder. “Sandcat,” he said, pointing with the muzzle of his rifle.

For a second or two, Jonathan didn’t see it, but then there it was, parallel parked among other vehicles on the residential street.

“I’ve come to dislike Mexican Army vehicles,” Boxers said.

It was hard not to. And seeing one this close to where they were going rang a thousand warning bells in his head. Assuming that the Mexicans treated their Sandcats the same way that Uncle Sam treated his Humvees, these were not take-home vehicles.

That meant that someone had stashed it here to keep it out of sight. Since the Sandcat was a troop transport vehicle, Jonathan had to assume that the transported troops had been deployed somewhere nearby.

And while it was entirely possible that the Mexicans were deployed on a mission that had nothing to do with him, he was going to go with the smart money and assume that he and his team were the targets.

Jonathan turned to where he’d left Tristan, and motioned for him to join them. Following the example that Jonathan had set, the kid approached bent low at the waist, and squatted in close to Jonathan and Boxers.

“What are we doing?” Tristan whispered.

“You’re staying quiet,” Boxers said.

Jonathan softened the message by holding a finger to his lips in a silent shh.

Jonathan keyed his mike. “Mother Hen, Scorpion. You there?”

“I heard Big Guy,” she said. “What’s wrong?”

He told her about the vehicle. “I have to assume that we’ve got OPFOR deployed around our target building. What does SkysEye show you?” He knew that she’d recognize the shorthand for opposition force.

“We had a tasking problem,” she said. “So we’re just now getting images. Want to be patched in?”

“Negative,” Jonathan said. “Can’t afford the light wash.” While the SkysEye system and Venice’s bag of toys allowed her to download imagery to be shared in real time on Jonathan’s PDA or even a laptop, here at night in the middle of the street, the glow would be too obvious and could easily give away their position.

While they waited to hear back from Venice, Jonathan pulled a digital night vision monocular from its pouch on his ruck. While Boxers continued to hold his aim on the street, Jonathan rose above their cover and scanned the area for risks. Just beyond the wash of the streetlight that illuminated the Sandcat that Boxers had discovered, he saw another one parked along the curb.

“I’ve got another vehicle,” he whispered. “Shit, and a third.” This one was parked across the road from the second one, on their side of the street.

“See any guards?” Boxers asked. “If I were their commander, I’d have left at least one guy to keep an eye on the trucks.”

In a neighborhood like this, it made even more sense.

His earbud popped. “Scorpion, Mother Hen. I’ve got bad news.”

Of course you do, Jonathan thought.

“SkysEye’s thermal imagery shows a number of people clustered around the target property. They all seem to be huddled behind some kind of shelter. Vehicles, mostly.”

“Shit,” Boxers spat.

Tristan went on alert. “What?”

“A small setback,” Jonathan told him. Into his radio he said, “Okay, download the photo to my PDA. I’ll find a way to look at it.”

Jonathan shifted his monocular away from the Sandcats, where he was certain there were guards, even if he couldn’t see them, and surveyed the surrounding buildings. In this part of the city, so many residences had been abandoned in place that it was hard to tell the ones that were occupied from the ones that were empty.

The houses here weren’t row houses in the strict sense of the term because they didn’t physically touch, but they were so close together that the difference was academic. Most were in various stages of rot, but a few showed visible signs of prosperity in the form of flower boxes in the windows or a wreath on the door. Scanning the closest structures on his side of the street, Jonathan focused in on the third property down, where the frayed drapes on the house were open yet the lights were off. That struck him as an odd combination. If people lived in the house, and if they were home, wouldn’t they make a point of closing the drapes-especially in a neighborhood as dangerous as this one?

If only because it was convenient, Jonathan locked on to that as an undeniable truth. He tapped Boxers on the shoulder and brought his lips to within an inch of his ear. “We need to get under cover,” he whispered. “I want to target the third house down on the left. It looks empty to me.”

Boxers said, “Aim my weapon and I’m yours.”

That was Boxers’ way of saying, Let’s go.

Jonathan turned to Tristan. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m okay. I think.” His eyes were wide, but his focus seemed sharp.

“I can’t explain all the details,” Jonathan said, “but we need to seek some shelter for a few minutes. We’re targeting the third house up there on the left. I don’t need you to do anything but stay close. Are you cool with that?” He asked the question as if there truly was a choice.

Tristan nodded. “I’m good.”

Jonathan flashed him a smile. “You’re my shadow, remember?” He stuffed the monocular back into its pouch.

“I remember,” Tristan said. He looked at Boxers. “And my safety is on.”

Boxers smiled, too. “I figured as much.”

“Hand on my ruck,” Jonathan said to Tristan. When he felt the tug, Jonathan snapped his night vision back into place and started moving.

The first two houses were obviously occupied, one of them playing the television or radio loudly enough to be heard out here on the street. That was good news. It covered the sound of their movement.

They advanced to the base of the short stairway that led to the front door of the abandoned house. Jonathan keyed his mike. “I vote we enter from the black side,” he said.

Boxers made a sweeping motion with his arm that said, After you.

While the Big Guy took a knee at the front corner of the house, his weapon to his shoulder, Jonathan made his way down the side of the house toward the back, taking care not to brush the side of the structure next door-they really were that close. About halfway down, he encountered a window that had been broken out. The bottom sill lay at chest height, an easy climb inside.

Jonathan hated anything that was easy. He didn’t trust anything that was easy.

Even with night vision in place, it was hard to see any detail of the interior, so he raised his M27 and twisted the lens ring on his muzzle light to ignite the infrared flashlight. With night vision in place, the infrared beam operated just like a visible light beam, except it was, well, invisible. Through Jonathan’s lenses, he might as well have been peering through a green-tinted window at midday.

From this angle, furniture and fixtures blocked a thorough view of every corner, but he saw no signs of recent occupancy. In fact, there appeared to be a huge water leak in the middle of the front parlor. Given that there was a second floor above the first, Jonathan considered that kind of uncorrected damage to be a good sign of abandonment.

“Do you need a boost or can you climb?” Jonathan asked.

“I think I can climb,” Tristan said.

That was the right answer. “Okay, stay there for a second.”

Jonathan shrugged free of Tristan’s grasp, planted his gloved hands on the gritty ledge, and hefted himself up. He didn’t feel any broken glass or nails or any other nasty stuff that could hurt Tristan when it was his turn. When his waist was clear, and he pulled himself inside, he drew himself to a knee, brought his rifle to his shoulder, and waited.

When no one shot at him or jumped out at him, he allowed himself to rise to a crouch, and then to a standing position. He keyed his mike. “I’m in,” he said. “I’m going to sweep the building.”

“Roger,” Boxers said. “I’ve got eyes on the PC.”

Some might argue that it was overkill to search the entire house for other people-they only needed shelter for a few minutes, after all-but a hidden bad guy had the power to ruin Jonathan’s day in enough ways that it was worth the time it took to make sure there was no one else in the building.

It took him all of three minutes. Once he got past the two front rooms on the first floor, the rest of the house had virtually no furniture, and therefore no place for bad guys to hide. He checked every closet, and saved the basement for last. He chuckled in spite of himself. He wondered if anyone entirely escaped their childhood fear of basements. Still, despite the creepiness, the cellar harbored no terrors.

As he climbed the steps back to the first floor, he radioed, “The house is clear.”

“The sidewalk isn’t,” Boxers replied. “I found our sentries. There are at least two, and it looks like they kill time crashed in the front seat of the vehicles. Lazy bastards.”

That news was bad, but it wasn’t devastating. It wasn’t even unexpected. Jonathan asked, “Are they an immediate problem?”

“Negative,” Boxers said. “So long as we’re quiet.”

Back on the first floor now, Jonathan walked casually back to the window where he’d made his entrance and announced to Tristan, “No bad guys.”

“I figured that from the absence of shooting,” the kid replied. “Am I supposed to join you in there?”

That had been Jonathan’s original plan, but now it didn’t make a lot of sense. “No, just stay put,” he said. “I’ll do this and we’ll get going.”

Jonathan moved away from the window, back toward the house’s tattered kitchen, and nestled himself behind some cabinets and a bar to fire up his PDA and open the attachment Venice had sent him.

He keyed his mike. “Okay, Mother Hen,” he said. “You have the controls. Give me a tour.”

Squinting to see the tiny screen, Jonathan opened the encrypted link and watched the satellite image move to Venice’s commentary.

“Here’s where you are,” she said. The image zoomed from a few hundred feet up to maybe thirty feet above the ground. On the screen, he saw himself and his team squatted at the corner. It was creepy to watch yourself in the past.

Then the image lifted to a hundred feet and tracked due north, passing over rooftops and abandoned streets. After three blocks, the image tracked eastward and then stopped on a building that Jonathan recognized as the target house. “As the crow flies, this distance is about a quarter mile,” Venice said. “A little less.”

Jonathan squinted harder. He couldn’t see any people, but he knew that Venice would get to it. She had her own pace for these things, and she was not to be hurried.

“You’ll note that there aren’t any people,” Venice said. “Now watch when I put in the infrared filter.”

The picture blinked, and there they were: a dozen or more human-shaped heat sources crouched behind vehicles and corners of nearby structures. While their weapons did not show up well, the ghosts of rifles were visible, and the postures of the forms holding them sold it.

“I count fourteen people,” Venice said, “but there could be more. Actually, there are more. Seventeen, counting the soldiers Big Guy spotted.” Clearly, she’d been monitoring the radio traffic.

They’d set up a textbook ambush-not that it was a particularly difficult one to engineer. “They’ve got the front pretty well covered,” Jonathan said. “Show me the black side.”

The image moved again, and when it settled down, he saw an aerial view of a standard alleyway that could have been in any city in America: tiny backyards that appeared to be enclosed by stockade fences, backing up to other backyards with stockade fences. The space in between was barely big enough to accommodate a sedan, let alone the trash trucks that no doubt cruised the space once or twice a week.

The infrared imagery revealed two more people hunkered down back there. “There are numbers eighteen and nineteen,” Jonathan said. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

“Are they ever?” Boxers asked over the radio.

When the odds were this badly stacked, their only chance for success lay in speed and overwhelming violence, and the configuration of the OPFOR confounded both of those factors. Taking out the guys in the alley would be a simple matter of expending about three dollars’ worth of ammunition, but doing so would alert the troops out front, and ignite the kind of firefight that was especially difficult to win. Throw in the fact that these guys were real soldiers-as opposed to the thugs and posers that Jonathan so often encountered in his job-and the odds diminished even more.

There had to be a way, though, because there was always a way.

“Can you pull up engineering drawings for the house?” he asked. He had no idea what he was looking for, but if you didn’t look, you couldn’t find anything.

“Stand by,” Venice said.

“Holy shit,” Jonathan said off the air. He was in Mexico, for God’s sake. How could she possibly-

“Hey, Scorpion, I’ve got good news. I just got a call from Wolverine. The house has a tunnel.”