Typhoon Fury

61

Because the tracker was planted underneath the rear bumper of the truck, the big screen in the Oregon’s op center could only show lateral and rear views as Kevin Nixon’s camera panned around. Still, Juan thought it was much better than simply following the blinking dot on the map next to it.

After leaving the city, the truck took the northern highway. For most of the trip, fields of sugarcane on both sides waved in the steadily worsening weather. The highway ran right along the coast for two miles before the truck turned off and headed inland on a narrow paved road.

After another few miles, the truck turned again, this time onto a muddy road toward one of the island’s central mountains. Almost immediately, the farms were replaced by a thick jungle as it started going uphill. The truck bounced so much on the bumpy road that the broadcast from the camera looked like it was coming from the back of a hyperactive kangaroo.

“I play a lot of video games,” Murph said, “but even my stomach isn’t going to be able to take much more of watching this.”

“I’ll help Kevin build an image stabilizer into the next camera,” Eric said.

“That doesn’t look like a public road to me,” Linda said. “If it is, their tax dollars are going to waste.”

The truck stopped abruptly. They could hear a few voices over the burbling exhaust, as if the driver was speaking to someone at a gate. Seconds later, the truck started moving again and was engulfed by darkness as it entered a tunnel. Just before it went inside, Juan noted that the road continued on along the hillside.

Receding into the distance at the tunnel entrance were two guards closing two chain-link gates that were covered with vegetation to disguise the opening. As soon as the gates were closed, they returned to their posts at seats inside. The positioning would give them a clear field of fire at any vehicles that approached.

“Does this remind anyone of the Bat Cave?” Murph asked.

“Locsin is pretty much the opposite of Bruce Wayne,” Juan said.

After a hundred yards, the tunnel opened into a much larger cave. Locsin was apparently so sure that the cave entrance was undetectable that he hadn’t bothered to post any guards where the tunnel entered the cave.

“This must be the cavern Beth mentioned in her email to Raven,” Linda said.

The camera’s limited view didn’t show how high the cave’s ceiling went. But the cave floor around them, leveled and compacted with crushed rock, was well lit by arc lamps powered by a huge diesel power plant. A tanker semi-trailer was parked alongside feeding it fuel, indicating Locsin’s headquarters complex was much more than simply a few men huddled in a dank cave.

The delivery truck moved through a cluster of low-slung buildings. Right now, Juan was just trying to get a feel for the overall layout of the place, but the recording from the camera feed would give them detailed intel they could review when planning the mission to infiltrate the cave and rescue Beth.

The truck continued on through a central plaza with a stalagmite in the center. For a split second, Juan saw a strange sight beyond it, unexpected for the interior of a cavern.

Eric saw it, too, because he said, “Was that a helicopter?”

“Looked like it to me,” Juan said. “Linda, I want the highest-resolution satellite photos you can get of this area. There must be another opening that we haven’t seen yet.”

“On it,” she replied.

The truck kept driving and did a three-point turn almost like they were giving a three-hundred-sixty-degree tour of the place. Juan counted at least a dozen buildings and twice as many trucks and Humvees. Beth was right in saying the place was huge.

The men they saw were all muscle-bound. Definitely long-term Typhoon users. There were enough of them to populate a small town, which meant a full-on assault was out of the question. Juan was already formulating a plan for getting in and out without being seen.

At one point in the truck’s turn, he saw a large cart being wheeled from a large three-story-tall building to one just as big but only two stories high. The tarp covering the object on top slid aside briefly before it was put back into place. It was the exact same type of black drone that had damaged the Oregon.

“I guess we know where they’re manufacturing their Kuyogs,” Murph said. “Judging by the size of those buildings, they could have hundreds of them in there.”

Given that each of the Kuyogs was packed with high explosives, Juan noted that could come in handy if the need arose.

The truck backed up to a long one-story building where the largest number of the men were entering or leaving, which meant it was likely the barracks, mess hall, and kitchen.

The driver and his companion shut down the truck, came around the back, and began unloading it. For fifteen minutes, they shuttled food crates inside with dollies. While they did, Juan had Linda pan the camera as much as she could to focus in on whatever was in view so they could construct a map of the place.

Then a female voice made Juan sharply say, “Quiet!”

Everyone in the op center fell silent. The driver and his pal were noisily chatting while they removed boxes from the truck, masking the woman’s voice.

“Turn up the gain on the audio,” he said to Linda. “See if you can find the source of the voice.”

The camera turned until they saw Beth’s flaming red hair. Her clothes were filthy, but she was walking normally, and there was no apparent pain on her face even though she had a bandage on her left shoulder.

Salvador Locsin was walking next to her, yanking her by the arm so that she would keep up with him.

“I told you, I’m not going to help you anymore,” Beth said, her voice full of bluster.

“You will if you want any more Typhoon,” Locsin said.

“I don’t care what you do to me.”

“You’ll change your mind in a day or two without your dose.”

They entered the same building where the food was being taken and went out of range of the microphone.

“They’ve been making her take that stuff?” Linda said with disgust. “Didn’t Langston Overholt say it’s addictive?”

Juan nodded. “Very. According to the World War Two records, the addiction becomes permanent in just a few days, maybe a week at most. We need to get her out of there as soon as Hidalgo finishes passing or she might be irreversibly hooked on it.”

Then Juan heard one of the men inside the truck say Beth’s name and he held up his hand for quiet again, but the conversation was brief and in Tagalog. The men were silent as they went inside with more boxes.

“Play that back, Linda,” Juan said. “I want to hear them again.”

When the recording rewound to the point where Beth and Locsin entered the building, Linda began playing it forward, and Murph ran it through the computer interpreter to convert it to English. The translation wasn’t perfect, but they got the gist of it.

“He is right, Dolap,” one of the men said. “She tells him anything. Remember the thing that happened to that administrator, Alonzo? I wanted to throw up all the times I saw him chained to that rock out there.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Dolap said. “Locsin and Tagaan tell me we kill her tomorrow. They already see the effects of the Typhoon they want to. I will ask them to allow me do it. Beth Anders is a big pain in my side since she arrived here.”

Linda gasped. “That’s long before Hidalgo will be gone. It’ll still be near full strength tomorrow. The eye is forecast to pass right over us at four in the morning.”

Everyone in the op center was quiet again, this time from the shock of the death sentence they’d just heard. Juan didn’t want to admit defeat, not when they were so close. But mounting a mission in the middle of a Category 3 typhoon seemed beyond even their capability. In fact, he was worried that Eddie, Raven, and Hali wouldn’t make it back before the brunt of the storm hit.

Then he sat forward in his chair as something Linda said resonated.

“Linda, put the predicted storm track up on the screen and lay it over the map of the truck’s route.”

She did so, and the center of Hidalgo was not only predicted to go over the Oregon but the cavern as well.

“How wide is the eye of the typhoon and what’s the speed?” he asked her.

“The eye is twenty-three miles across, and the wind speeds could be up to one hundred and twenty-five miles per hour when it makes landfall.”

Juan shook his head. “Not the wind speed. The forward speed of the entire typhoon.”

She furrowed her brow at the odd question. “About ten miles per hour.”

“Then that gives us a little more than two hours to work with.” The cavern was only seven miles from their present position.

Both Eric and Murph turned to him at the same time with incredulous looks on their faces.

“Are you seriously thinking of going out in the middle of a typhoon?” Eric asked.

“Technically, the middle of a typhoon is very calm,” Murph said. “There could even be blue sky inside the eye during daytime hours.”

“So, technically, we can do it,” Juan said.

Eric looked at Murph, who shrugged and then said, “I guess so. But if you get stuck out there when the eye finishes passing over, you won’t be able to get back to the Oregon for a long time.”

“Then we need to have a good plan. Have Eddie and Raven join me, Linc, MacD, and Gomez when they get back.” He checked the clock. It was nearly two in the afternoon. “We’ve got fourteen hours to put together the mission.”

Linda shook her head in amazement at the idea of venturing out of the Oregon during a major storm. “Max is going to have a heart attack when he hears this one.”

“Then you get to tell him,” Juan said. “And maybe have Hux with you when you do just in case she needs to revive him.”