River of Ruin

The Twenty Devils Mine Cocle Province, Panama

For soldiers trained in the jungles of Guyana, the four-mile night march from where the Legionnaires had baled out of the rental truck wasn’t enough to raise their heartbeat, though they did sweat in the brutal humidity. A passing rain squall couldn’t soak their uniforms more than their perspiration already had. Determined to keep pace with the lean commandos, Lauren was glad they hadn’t asked her to take point. Trailblazing through the clinging vegetation was like struggling through a nightmare. That job had gone to a Serb named Tomanovic.

Because of her experiences in the Balkans, Lauren was leery around the big man. He had the look she’d seen countless times in Kosovo, the mix of pride and defiance and hidden rage. She could easily imagine him torturing Albanians or massacring Muslims. Foch’s assurance that Tomanovic had been in the Legion long before the ethnic clashes didn’t alleviate her uneasiness. She couldn’t shake the fact that he looked like so many other mass murderers she’d seen. Still, Lauren was professional enough to place some trust in the French officer and followed the silent line of soldiers moving through the bush.

They had already verified that the mine’s main gate had heavy security, so flanking around it and approaching from a less-guarded quarter was their only option. Forced to cut across the grain of the land, daylight wouldn’t have made the hike much easier. Eroded by millions of years of rain, the terrain surrounding the mine was so wrinkled that every step was taken either uphill or down. Adding to the discomfort was the heat, humidity, and the insects that swarmed in dense clouds.

Over the rise of the final hill in their march, artificial light clung to the ground and reflected off the low cloud cover. The mine was a twenty-four-hour-a-day operation and massive lamps had been erected around the pit to illuminate the work. It was like the glow of a sports stadium.

Lauren had no trouble interpreting Foch’s hand gestures as they neared the crest of the hill. Like the Legionnaires, she shifted away from the lieutenant and approached the summit on her stomach. She crawled forward through the underbrush, using the short barrel of her borrowed FAMAS assault rifle to move aside some dripping leaves that blocked her view. When she could look across the valley separating them from the next hill, she paused to sweep the facility with binoculars.

The mine looked like she’d expected, though she’d only seen pictures of similar installations on television. Directly below their position, a squad of bright yellow earthmovers worked along the bottom of the terraced mountain. On the valley floor behind the raw cut were administration buildings, open-sided maintenance sheds, and large industrial-looking structures she assumed had something to do with ore processing. She could see a parking area for employee vehicles and an empty chopper pad. The haul road out of the valley meandered to their left, where it eventually intersected the main highway about five miles away.

In a separate enclosure within the main compound, she saw the entrance to what looked like an underground bunker. It was little more than a trench dug into the ground, but she could see the outline of the subterranean structure and several ventilation shafts poking up through the compacted soil.

It wasn’t until she focused closer at the men near the heavy equipment that she realized the scale of the operation. The dump trucks were far larger than the ones she’d seen at the Hatcherly port. These rigs would never be allowed on a regular street. She realized they must have been assembled right here. Each truck was bigger than a house, supported on six twelve-foot-tall tires and had a dump bed that looked larger than a swimming pool. The drivers’ cabs were at least twenty feet off the ground and accessible via a staircase that rose diagonally across the billboard-sized grilles. The excavators and loaders that stripped material from the mountain were equally proportioned. Just the bucket on one front-end loader was as long and even taller than the pickup truck parked next to it. Another machine that she couldn’t identify was even larger than the rest. Standing on multiple crawler treads, this towering behemoth had a mechanical arm that gouged fifty-ton bites out of the mountain.

It looked like the mine was being worked by mechanical dinosaurs.

Dispelling her awe at the enormity of the mine, she put her attention on the security of the facility and realized immediately that this place was well fortified. Three-man patrols worked the fenced perimeter of the main compound, while others mingled with the workers and still more moved outside the fence. In just a few minutes she counted twenty-three armed men.

“Pssst,” Foch hissed and the soldiers retreated off the crest of the mountain and regrouped fifty feet down the backside of the partially excavated hill.

“Combien du soldats?” he asked.

“English, please.”

“How many soldiers?”

“I counted twenty-three,” Lauren offered.

“Thirty-eight,” the French soldiers chorused, having seen many that Lauren had missed.

She felt chagrined, but that was why soldiers backed each other up.

“Looks like our only way in is down the face of the excavation.” Foch waited for anyone to contradict him with a better idea. No one did. “There aren’t as many lights farther along our right flank. We’ll descend there. The ground looks brisé, ah, broken up, but the terrace effect of the mining should make it easier.” He looked to Lauren. “Pièce du gâteau.”

“Piece of cake,” she mimicked.

Foch outlined his plan, which amounted to little more than getting down onto the valley floor, finding cover and waiting for an opportunity to search the mine. Of the structures they’d observed, they agreed that the underground bunker seemed the likely place for Mercer if he was indeed here.

The big Serb, Tomanovic, took point as the team hiked laterally along the backside of the mountain until they reached an area that wasn’t currently being worked and was therefore quiet. The move took them farther from the underground bunker, so they’d have to cross back once they reached the valley floor.

They were like shadows against the dark earth as they slid down the first of the giant steps that made up the terraced face of the excavation. The twenty-foot drop was rendered safe by the working face’s sixty-degree angle of repose and the churned-up soil at each level, which absorbed the shock. There were eight levels to descend and when they reached the valley floor, the soldiers had their backs stained red by the clinging soil.

Their infiltration had gone unseen.

The bunker was two hundred yards away across a no-man’s-land littered with mounds of dirt, gravel, and an army of construction equipment. In the blaze cast by high-intensity lights, the vehicles looked like enormous insects, yellow army ants mindlessly bent on their task of leveling the landscape. From where they crouched behind a pile of overburden waiting to be trucked away, they could just see the bunker and the five men approaching it. Four were uniformed guards, while the fifth man, much smaller than the others, appeared to be a civilian.

They weren’t sure who he was, only that he wasn’t Liu Yousheng or any of his COSTIND cronies who ran Hatcherly.

No more than fifteen seconds after the group disappeared into the hole, one of the soldiers reappeared blowing a whistle whose shrill cry was lost to distance and the rumbling din of the trucks. Yet the call must have been heard because the alarm seemed to carry across the compound in a wave. Very quickly additional guards began pouring from a block of dormitories. More dangerously, additional lights snapped on that bathed every square foot of the mine, including the mound of dirt shielding the French team.

“Vic, get to the top of the hill,” Foch ordered the big Serb.

Tomanovic moved upward without a word.

“What do you think happened?” Lauren asked while they waited behind cover.

“Seemed they were headed down to a secure area and didn’t like what they found,” a Legionnaire said.

“Or what they didn’t find,” she corrected. “That’s got to be where they were keeping Mercer. Maybe he escaped.”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions.”

They waited in silence until Vic came back to report. “High alert now, sir.” His English was better than his French, though both were heavily accented. “They sweep outer fence with searchlight. As you hear, mining equipment still runs. More men are at the underground bunker. Civilian looks pissed.” He pronounced it peeced.

“We need to get out of here.” Foch’s face was grim.

“Whatever just happened has made this place très dangereux .”

Three hundred yards behind them was the road out of the mine. A wire security fence manned by four Chinese barred unauthorized vehicles from gaining entry. Because the gate was so distant and the hour so late, none of the commandos gave it any thought until the sound of an approaching truck grew louder than the racket of the excavators in front of them. As one, they turned and saw that a 6x6 military truck had passed through the gate and was headed straight for them. As the team scrambled to the far side of the hill, the truck stopped less than thirty yards away. Two waves of soldiers peeled from the back of the soft-topped truck.

Unlike the other guards stationed at the mine, these men were Panamanian. Lauren could tell by the cut of their uniforms and the M-16s they carried.

Two unforeseen events, the alarm raised at the bunker and the arrival of reinforcements, had rendered the rescue operation a disaster and made their retreat questionable. The Panamanian soldiers quickly assembled in a sweep line, with each man no more than twenty feet from two comrades. At a command that didn’t carry to the French, the troopers began a steady march across the graded valley floor.

“Merde!”

The commandos had just a couple minutes before the sweep line reached them. If they ran in the opposite direction, they would run into a sweep line being formed by the Chinese soldiers. They were trapped. The mound shielding them was like a blister on the hard-packed ground a hundred feet from the base of the terraced cliff. Maybe one of them could cover that distance without being detected, but not all six.

“Oui,” Lauren said, her throat tight, “merde.”

“Top of the hill,” Foch ordered. The team scrambled up the loose mound of mine waste, giving them a twenty-foot height advantage and an open field of fire. From a clandestine rescue, their mission was about to become a desperate last stand.

“Pick your targets. Officers, NCOs.” The lieutenant’s words were unnecessary. Those under him, and Lauren, knew what was expected. The Panamanian sweep line was twenty yards off, the Chinese a bit farther.

In a hopeful inspiration, Lauren said, “Concentrate your fire on the locals. They won’t have the level of training as the Chinese. If we can punch a hole through their ranks, we might be able to steal their truck.”

“Bon idée.”

There was a precious second when it appeared that the skirmish line would walk right past the hill, but then a Panamanian sergeant shouted at one of his troopers and the man angled toward the mound. Lauren couldn’t believe this was happening. In another thirty seconds she was about to enter a fight for her life. Even Kosovo hadn’t been this bad. She bit into her lower lip and watched the Panamanians approach over the sights of her machine pistol.

“Camerone Hacienda,” Tomanovic whispered. It was a rallying cry for the Legion, the site of a battle in which three officers and sixty-two regular troops held off an army of two thousand Mexicans during a war of imperial expansion under Napoleon III. In the end, like so many battles in Legion lore, the French were defeated, but only after the last five surviving Legionnaires fixed bayonets and actually charged the approaching Mexicans. The anniversary of the 1863 battle is still celebrated by Legionnaires each April 30.

By some sixth sense, Foch waited to fire until the very instant the rear gate on a dump truck slammed closed with a sound that covered the single shot. The soldier twenty feet from the base of the hill crumpled, his M-16 falling from his already dead fingers. There was a short pause, a moment in which his comrades waited to see if their buddy was kidding around. The French ended the moment with a deadly barrage. Seven of the twenty-five Panamanian troops went down before the first returned fire.

“Vic, Gerard, couvrez nos derrières!” Foch shouted as tracer fire crisscrossed the mine.

The two Legionnaires swiveled around in time to stop a sudden surge of Chinese soldiers approaching from their rear. The top of the hill became a redoubt with a commanding view. There was no cover for either the Chinese or the Panamanians and both groups quickly retreated before either side lost enough men to allow the French to escape.

“They’ll regroup and be back,” Lauren shouted, her ears ringing from the short but intense cross fire. Her gun was hot when she changed out its depleted magazine.

For five minutes, the Chinese and Panamanians sniped at the top of the hill, pinning the Legionnaires but not drawing the return fire they hoped would waste what they knew would be a limited supply of ammunition. The French picked their targets well, single shots that either killed outright or seriously injured. They knew, though, that this stalemate couldn’t last.

“Options?” Foch asked.

His men replied in sullen French, too tense to care that Lauren wouldn’t understand. Not that she couldn’t follow what was happening. She knew their options. None.

From across the compound she saw that the siege was about to end. A camouflaged pickup truck careened from around an office trailer. In its bed was a heavy machine gun. A .50 caliber if she wasn’t mistaken by the distance and the artificial lighting. The small arms the French carried were enough to keep ground troops at bay, but the machine gun could shred the top of the hill from a range they’d never be able to match. She also spotted an enormous front-end loader lumbering across the mine toward their makeshift breastwork. Its deep scoop looked like an enormous scythe.

She shouted a warning as an arc of fire reached up and out from the machine gun like water from a hose. The top of the hill came alive with bullets and ricochets and dirt kicked up by the fusillade. With the Legionnaires pinned by the sustained fire, the ground troops once again advanced on the hilltop. The top of the mound was coming apart, shredded by the heavy bullets so that the slight depression at its summit that shielded the commandos was about to be exposed. The Frenchman, Gerard, raised his FAMAS rifle to fire back blindly and had the weapon torn out of his hands by a blast from the machine gun. He lost half of his trigger finger as well.

The pickup lurched to a halt, which gave the gunner a more stable platform from which to direct his fire. Using the .50 caliber like an excavation tool, he concentrated his aim at one spot just below the crest of the hill. The heavy rounds began ripping a wedge out of the soil. It would take a few seconds, but once a breach was formed the commandos trapped on the hill would be exposed to the deadly stream of bullets.

The Chinese and Panamanian soldiers halted their advance to watch the inevitable.

No one paid any attention to the Caterpillar 988 bucket loader wheeling across the facility like a rampaging animal. It appeared that it was going to drive straight for the French position, but at the last second the driver spun the articulated machine and aimed it at the Chevy pickup truck.

At sixteen feet, the immense bucket was wider than the truck was long. With an easy touch on the controls, the unseen operator lowered the blade as he careened toward the pickup. The bucket scraped away the top inch of dirt as it slid under all four of the Chevy’s tires. The Chinese driver screamed as the view out his window became a solid wall of steel. The gunner was a moment too slow trying to jump clear. Once the truck was tucked inside the bucket, the operator effortlessly hoisted the vehicle off the ground. The big Cat had barely slowed as it lifted the pickup.

Snarling, the loader raced across the mine, a smear of thick smoke belching from the turbocharged six cylinder. Because the bucket was held level, the gunner managed to scramble to the pickup’s tailgate, but at a height of seventeen feet and moving at nearly twenty miles per hour, he balked at jumping clear. Then he understood what the operator intended and steeled himself. His foot slipped as he leapt, and he fell right in front of the six-foot-tall tire. The fifty-ton loader crushed him into the hard-packed soil as easily as a footfall smears an insect.

In the cab, the operator had raised the bucket high enough so he could see under it. He slowed the vehicle as he neared the working face of the open-pit mine. Just before the bucket sliced into the mountain, he tipped it forward. The pickup began to slide out as the machine crashed into the hill. The bucket’s open mouth carved into the hillside like a cookie cutter, taking a bite out of the earth. The force of the impact crushed the pickup and drove its mangled remains into the mountain. When the loader backed away, the truck was left embedded fifteen feet off the ground. A mixture of fuel and the driver’s blood drizzled from its shattered body.

On the mound, the French had reacted to their salvation much quicker than the Chinese and Panamanians. They opened fire, clearing a path for the loader to reach them. The mine’s defenders scrambled from the renewed counterattack. A few tried to shoot the Cat 988, but their rounds ricocheted harmlessly off the bucket the operator had lowered like an armored shield. Other rounds that hit the tires or body of the rig were absorbed without causing damage.

With the loader coming up behind them, Lauren and the others concentrated on keeping the Chinese from assaulting their hilltop from the front or flanks. Because the ground beneath the mound was so open, no one could get in range to prevent the rescue. The loader reached them a few seconds later, its driver powering the big excavator partially up the hill and lowering the bucket so the Legionnaires could simply leap into it.

“You guys call for a taxi?” a naked Mercer shouted from the loader’s cab.

After spending nearly eight hours in a metal culvert not far from the explosives bunker the Chinese used as his prison, Mercer was familiar with the mine’s routine. He’d watched intently all those hours, hoping for a break in the security patrols that would allow him to slip into the jungle. His uncomfortable wait, amid stinging insects and a visit from a curious snake that he’d hoped to God wasn’t a deadly fer-de-lance, had been for nothing. The mine was too well guarded and his opportunity never came.

He’d hoped that a chance would present itself when dusk came and a new work shift took over, but the scheduled relief crews came an hour before sunset and the dozens of sodium lamps that lit the facility came on long before any shadows appeared. He’d resigned himself for a longer wait, probably until Mr. Sun returned to the bunker and discovered his breakout. He hoped that in the first moments of panicked confusion he could find a way past the guards.

From his position, he could see the steps descending to the bunker prison and watched as Sun and four soldiers ducked into the fortified storehouse. He crawled partially from the culvert, checking the position of the patrols outside the perimeter fence and the nearest dormitories where he’d seen more soldiers performing afternoon drill. As soon as one of Sun’s men emerged from the bunker and blew his whistle, Mercer rolled out of the culvert and crawled bareassed across the dirt. He’d covered ten yards when he heard the distinctive crack of automatic fire from the far side of the facility.

Without seeing who was firing, he knew what was going on. Somehow Lauren had come for him. There was no other explanation. The firing intensified. From the duration and direction of the shots, he realized that Lauren, and most likely a few of Bruneseau’s Legionnaires, were pinned. This wasn’t a running fight, but a pitched battle. There was nothing between Mercer and freedom except one hundred feet of open ground, yet he turned and began moving toward the sound of the fight. He couldn’t leave them. He’d counted at least fifty Chinese guards earlier and knew his friends wouldn’t last without his help.

With everyone’s attention focused on the fight, Mercer approached a Cat 988 front-end loader. There were several other machines next to it, big Hitachis, but he was most familiar with the American-made behemoth. The driver had idled the machine and stood on a platform outside the cab watching the battle. The engine noise covered any sound Mercer made and he reached the vehicle without being seen. Rather than climbing the integrated ladder to reach the cab, Mercer hauled himself up a massive tire, using the deep tread as hand- and footholds. The driver never knew he was there until Mercer launched himself over a safety rail and slammed the Panamanian back into the cab. Hyped on adrenaline and exploiting the element of surprise, Mercer punched the man unconscious with two well-aimed blows. He tore the man’s shirt off his back and ripped off his shoes before tossing the limp figure to the ground.

Mercer wanted to partially dress himself but saw a pickup truck pull away from the soldier’s dormitory. In the bed was a Browning .50 caliber mounted on a pedestal. As Mercer watched, the gunner racked back the cocking handle.

He pumped the Cat’s throttle, reminded himself of the controls of this model excavator and took off in pursuit. Once the pickup was destroyed, he wheeled toward the trapped Legionnaires. As he recalled his history, the Legion didn’t have a very good record when it came to making their last stand in forts, like at Dien Bien Phu or any number of desert campaigns. The difference now, of course, was that he was arriving in a fort powered by a five-hundred-horse Cat turbo-diesel and could eat the ground at nearly twenty-five miles per hour.

He took the loader partly up the hill and positioned the scoop so the soldiers could remain well protected as they leapt in. He gave Lauren a smile when she stared at him at the controls. She stood slack-jawed after Mercer’s first quip.

“Come on,” he said, “the meter’s running.”

In a wave, the four Legion soldiers plus Foch and Lauren jumped into the massive bucket. A rattling fusillade hit the back end of the articulated excavator. The engine cowl was more than thick enough to deflect the shots but Mercer needed covering fire from the Legionnaires if he hoped to get them out of here. He lowered the bucket so it was at eye level to the cab and cranked the loader away from the small hill. Rather than drive out of the facility, he kept the heavy rig in reverse and backed them down the mine’s access road. Shielded on all four sides by the bucket, the Frenchmen and Lauren began firing down at any soldier who presented himself. From their vantage, the Legionnaires were impervious to any small arm short of a missile launcher. The loader had indeed become a mobile fort.

Looking over his shoulder, Mercer steered them away from the mine, swerving the loader around mounds of mine waste and purposely clipping the front of the 6x6 truck that had brought the Panamanian reinforcements. Even the glancing shot from the Cat blew out the truck’s front tire and bent its axle.

He knew that Lauren and the others were getting a rough ride in the bucket, but they maintained a steady rate of fire to keep the guards pinned, buying precious time they would need when the Chinese got reorganized and came after the fleeing loader in faster trucks.

The haul road wasn’t much wider than the front-end loader. There were no shoulders, just muddy irrigation ditches on each side of the dirt strip that would toss the occupants out of the bucket if Mercer misjudged. Approaching the chain-link fence and security shack, he hit the horn, alerting the Frenchmen that they had targets behind them.

The four Chinese guarding the gate held out for a few seconds as the loader bored down on them, but couldn’t match the intensity of fire coming from the elevated bucket. They disappeared into the jungle and didn’t reemerge until the machine had smashed through the fence and roared past.

Because they had left the area lit by the sodium lamps and clouds hid the moon, Mercer could barely see where he was going. He had to get the rig turned so the headlights pointed in their direction of travel. Around a shallow corner he spied an open lot used for storing construction trailers. He pounded the horn again and whipped the loader into the gravel expanse, slamming the joystick steering column to its opposite lock and thumbing into the first forward gear as the machine came to a sudden stop. He had them going again in a moment. He also raised the bucket to its maximum height so the Legionnaires could fire over the cab at anything coming in their wake.

Using one hand to keep the Cat 988 on a straight stretch of road, Mercer slid his arms into the stolen shirt and loosened the laces enough so he could slip his feet into the shoes. He was beginning to feel they had a chance.

The twin headlights cut deep enough into the darkness for Mercer to see that they were approaching a deep gorge. The steel bridge across it was wide enough to accommodate the loader, but it didn’t look strong enough to handle the weight. Machines like the 988 and the big dump trucks he’d seen were usually trucked in on semitrailers and assembled on site. Though new, the bridge was simply too delicate to handle even half of the loader’s weight.

He slowed as he approached the bridge. The gorge wasn’t as deep as he’d first thought and the bridge wasn’t more than forty feet long, but it was enough to prevent them from going on in the loader. He lowered the bucket and powered down the engine so the Legionnaires could hear him.

“Out, now! And get across the bridge,” he shouted. “The loader won’t make it. From here we walk.”

“What about you?” Lauren shouted back.

“I’ll be right behind you,” he reassured. “No repeat of my stunt on the ship. I promise.”

As the Legionnaires led Lauren across the bridge, Mercer looked back up the haul road. In the distance he could see the lights of an approaching vehicle. He scraped one of the concrete abutments as he eased the loader partially onto the bridge. Over the engine vibration he could feel the metal bridge protest the tremendous load he was putting on it. Once he’d reached what he thought was the weight limit, he lowered the bucket and then used the hydraulic power of the machine to press the front tire off the ground. The bucket’s hardened steel teeth sank into the asphalt.

He shut off the ignition and pulled the key, and with an easy underhand toss threw it into the gorge. Unless the Chinese had a heavy-duty wrecker, the Cat 988 was going to block the bridge for a long time to come. He took a second to lace the shoes before joining the others.

Lauren threw her arms around him even as they started jogging up the road away from the bridge. Her lips were hot and wet on his. “Ya mind telling me how you managed that?” Her excitement had thickened her Southern accent.

Mercer was a bit stunned by the passion of her greeting but was no less delighted. “Give me just a second.” He switched to French. “Foch, est-ce qu’il y a une barricade devant nous?”

“Quoi?”

“Is there a barricade ahead of us, something blocking this road from the highway?”

“Ah, oui. Well guarded, too.”

Mercer frowned. “Those soldiers have probably been alerted by radio already. If we don’t get clear of the road we’ll be caught between them and whoever gets past the loader.”

“D’accord.” Foch pulled a small encrypted radio from his fatigue blouse. “Monsieur Herrara, are you there?”

“Yes, I’m still here,” Roddy Herrara said from behind the wheel of the rental truck. “An army vehicle passed by a few minutes ago but you said not to call you.” He’d parked a mile beyond the mine’s access road as ordered by the French lieutenant.

“We’ll be with you in about fifteen minutes. We’re coming in from the jungle so don’t be startled.”

“Sí. I’ll be ready.”

Foch led the team off the road and back into the jungle, indicating that Tomanovic should take point. The taciturn Serb was the most skilled at finding the hidden game trails through the bush. Lauren took the slot behind Mercer during the march and even in the dim jungle her position afforded her an unexpected but delightful view. Whenever Mercer stepped over a log or ducked under a branch, his naked backside peeked out from under his stolen shirt. She couldn’t stop her eyes from darting every time it flashed like twin pink moons. His was the cutest tush she’d ever seen, making her blush and want to goose him at the same time. Reaching the truck, she couldn’t resist giving a quiet wolf whistle when Mercer clambered into the van’s enclosed box. He tugged at the tails of his shirt and shot her an embarrassed smirk. The soldiers called a few ribald comments.

Once Mercer and the Legionnaires were tucked into the cargo area, Lauren pulled on a pink shirt she’d borrowed from Carmen Herrara and took her seat next to Roddy. She wiped the greasepaint from her face and tamed her dark hair with a clip. By adding a little garish makeup any passing army vehicle or police car would think the van’s driver had gotten himself a puta for the night. Lauren needn’t have bothered with the disguise. They saw nothing suspicious all the way back to Panama City and her buoyant mood made the drive seem to take half the time as the run to the mine.