Killing Time

36

“You sure you can make this happen?” Cooper huffed under the weight of almost eighty pounds of coiled det cord as the four of them snuck around the back perimeter of the camp and headed for the mine in the dark.

“Am I sure the sun’s gonna shine tomorrow?” Taggart humped a large canvas bag filled with blocks of C-4 on his back.

“Not sure that’s the best comparison,” Cooper muttered, “considering we might all blow like a JDAM if you screw things up.”

“I won’t screw it up. Why do you think they call me Boom Boom?”

“Because you douse all your food with chili sauce?”

“TMI, boys.” Eva kept pace behind them with the detonators.

Mike led the way carrying the blasting caps, reaching deep to outdistance the pain. They stayed as far away from each other as possible, because one tiny zap of static electricity could cause the detonators or blasting caps to blow like an action scene in a Rambo movie.

“And I’m still gonna have all my fingers and toes when we’re through?” Mike gritted out, struggling to keep a steady pace as the sharp pain in his ribs nearly brought him to his knees.

“Save your breath and lead the way, flyboy. I’ll get you in, we’ll set the charges, get out, and this place will blow sky high.”

But Mike knew that even if Boom Boom was right and this worked, there was no guarantee they were getting out of here alive.

Breaking into the armory had been a piece of cake. All the other men in the camp were attending the rally. The women and kids would not have been allowed to attend the rally, which meant they were all tucked in their cabins and would be well away from the fireworks when the C-4 detonated.

Still, Mike wasn’t going to breathe easy until they set the charges and beat feet away from the blast site.

“How much farther?” Cooper carried the heaviest load.

“Just a hundred yards or so. Now quiet down. There are bound to be guards.”

“Fuck,” Cooper sounded exhausted. “Can nothing be easy?”

Mike stumbled and almost went down, but dug deep and kept on going.

“Hold,” he whispered when they were within twenty yards of the mine shaft.

Everyone dropped to their bellies.

Taggart lifted the NV binoculars he’d tagged from the armory. “I count four.”

“I don’t have another hand-to-hand in me. Shoot ’em.” Cooper had rolled to his back. He was sucking wind, recovering from the hard pull with his heavy load. “Damn, I’m out of shape.”

“Taggart?” Mike glanced at his friend.

“I just happened to snag a sound suppressor. Lawson knows how to stock an armory.”

“Clock’s tickin’.” Mike hardened his mind against the ugly part of war. Simmons and the others deserved what they got. These guys might, too. But cold-blooded killing was one of the worst parts of combat.

Taggart handed Mike the NV binoculars, dug the suppressor out of his pocket, and threaded it onto the end of the AR-15. Balancing the rifle barrel on a fallen log, he got a bead on his targets through the NV scope and on a long exhale, popped off four rounds in rapid succession.

Through the binoculars, Mike watched each man go down.

“Let’s go,” he said, and the four of them rose to their feet and sprinted toward the entrance to the mine shaft.

“Problem,” Mike said once they’d broken the lock with bolt cutters and scrambled into the mine. “One of the semis is gone. What do you want to bet it’s sitting on the chopper pad, ready to offload onto that bad boy?”

“So they… what? Just fly across U.S. airspace uncontested?” Eva asked.

Mike answered, “If they fly at night, under radar, they’re not going to be detected. Sounds crazy but it works.”

“Let’s worry about one problem at a time.” Cooper started uncoiling the det cord, which looked like brightly colored clothesline rope—only much more lethal. “Where do you want this?”

Taggart dug into the pack and hauled out several blocks of C-4, then paused to admire it. “Beautiful. Like Play-Doh that goes boom.”

“Where do you want it?” Cooper repeated, edgy and impatient.

“Chill, bro. You can’t rush with this stuff—not unless you want to be reduced to particles that someone cleans up with a dustpan. If I do this wrong and one charge blows prematurely, another could go off due to sympathetic detonation.

“So deep breaths, all right?” He looked from one to the other, and when he was satisfied they were calm, got down to business. “For starters, we’re going to wrap each block with a loop or two of det cord, then string it around the mine shaft. Start with the timbers that brace the ceiling and walls—put extra charges near the entrance. If for some reason the trucks don’t blow, we’ll make damn sure no one gets in here to retrieve these guns.”

With Cooper and Mike busy rigging the mine, Taggart turned to Eva. “I need you to wrap these blocks of C-4 with det cord, okay? I’ll crawl under the trucks and stick ’em under the trailers. Once everything’s in place, you all clear out, I’ll crimp on the blasting caps, and hook everything up to the remote detonator.”

“There’s a remote detonator?” Cooper looked relieved as he returned to Taggart’s side.

“Well, I thought about having you light a fuse, but what would the world do without your pretty face?”

“Mourn,” Cooper said, deadpan, and set about his deadly work.

When Taggart was satisfied everything was ready, he handed Mike a black box with an antenna to which he’d attached wires to two terminals. “Head outside with this.”

“Detonator?”

“You’re not as dumb as you look.”

Mike grunted. “I’m here, aren’t I?”

“Relax. I’ve got around three thousand feet of wire. We’ll be well out of the blast zone when this baby blows.

“Come on,” Taggart added after double-checking all of his connections and the work the other three had done. “Let’s beat feet.”

On Mike’s order they grabbed the rifles from the dead guards, then they all took off, running like hell, back toward the camp.

“I’m out of wire.” Mike’s ribs screamed at him as he tried to suck wind. They’d run for a little more than a quarter of a mile through dense forest, careful not to break the connection between detonator and cord.

“Must be stuck.” Taggart blew out a breath. “Fuck it. Find a tree of your choice, people. We don’t have time to go back and check it.”

Mike grabbed Eva and they dropped to the ground behind a huge deadfall tree.

Taggart checked to make certain everyone was as concealed from the blast as possible. Then he called, “Fire in the hole!”

He flipped the detonator switch, then ducked and covered.

The C-4 detonated with a roar so loud, Mike swore it broke his eardrums. The earth rumbled, fire spewed into the air a quarter mile high, and a pressure wave hit him so hard it knocked the wind out of him, leaving him deaf and speechless and in excruciating pain for several vibrating seconds.

By the time he gathered his senses around him again, shrapnel, dirt, and dust laced with embers rained from the shaft, whizzing projectiles that had him covering Eva’s head. When he felt he could chance it, he looked up. A small mushroom cloud rose and boiled against the night sky.

From Brewster and Lawson’s perspective, it must have looked like Armageddon.

Taggart’s head popped up. “Lord, that was pretty.”

“What?” Cooper poked a finger in his ear, shook his head.

“I said you were pretty,” Taggart said with a smartass grin and sprang to his feet, holding out a hand to help Cooper up.

“Ya think you used enough C-4?” Cooper stared at the cloud in awe.

Taggart looked smug. “Go big or go home, I always say.”

The two men high-fived.

“Can we hold off on the gloating until we actually get out of here?” Mike pushed slowly upright. His ears were ringing. His balance was off. He’d intended to help Eva up, but the pain in his ribs stabbed like a knife and he dropped back to his knees with a groan.

She ended up helping him. “Can you make it?”

“We’re going to get run over with UWD troops in less than five, so that pretty much says I’d better make it. And I am not over being mad at you, by the way.”

When Taggart moved in with a he’s-not-heavy-he’s-my-brother look on his face, Mike held up a hand. “I’m good.”

“Like hell.”

“I’m good,” he insisted and forced himself to stand up straight to prove it.

“Mike.” Eva’s eyes implored him to let them help.

“Mollycoddle me later,” he grumbled. “If we don’t get to the chopper pad and figure out how to stop it from taking off, we’re screwed.”

Then he headed out, ignoring the pain and their worried looks.

“So… not all of the soldiers headed for the mine.” Cooper passed the binoculars to Mike.

They were on their bellies, using a berm on the target range for concealment as they checked out the helicopter pad. Their sense of urgency magnified when they saw the big Chinook and the third semi parked beside it. Heavily tattooed, machine gun–toting men guarded it while UWD members offloaded guns from the semi to the chopper.

“I make six La Linea total—three at the front, three at the rear.” Cooper scanned the area. “As many UWDs doing the grunt work. And, lookie who just showed up to protect their investment.”

“Brewster and Lawson,” Mike speculated correctly. “Psycho babe there, too?”

“Yup. And their new business associates don’t look any too happy.”

Mike lifted his rifle, sighted through the scope, and found the men involved in the big powwow in his sites. He didn’t have to hear the conversation to know there were a lot of threats being made on the La Linea side, and a lot of cajoling coming from Brewster and Lawson. If they couldn’t control and contain their own compound, how could the cartel count on them to deliver on future shipments?

“Can we say, ‘ass in a sling’?” Beside him, Taggart also sighted through his rifle scope.

“Wonder how they’re explaining how they couldn’t contain four hostages—one of them a woman.” Eva sounded a lot more calm than Mike felt, since it was a pretty safe bet that they’d undoubtedly launched a full-out manhunt. They were still a long ways from being out of the woods.

“So,” Mike moved wrong, then silently cursed the pain in his ribs that was steadily getting worse. “What’s the plan?”

“You’re the chopper pilot. How do we keep it grounded—no, wait.” Taggart refocused the binoculars. “How do we drop it out of the sky? The semi’s pulling out and the main rotor blade is starting to spin up.”

“Forget about the rotors. Those suckers are strong enough to chop down trees.”

He thought about the bird’s vulnerabilities. “Chinooks are very slow on takeoff, so we might have a chance to keep her grounded. Eva—hammer the hell out of the engine. I’ll be right there with you. You two aim for the fuel tanks,” he said decisively. “They’re located right by the side wheels. I’m guessing the civilian models don’t have self-sealing fuel tanks, so they should be susceptible to small-arms fire. If we can get the engines burning, that fire will race right back to the leaking tanks and we might get lucky. And now, by the way, would be good.”

Mike had confiscated an AK-47 from one of the guards at the mine site. He took aim and popped off several three-round bursts—and got immediate results.

The men on the ground by the chopper scattered and ducked for cover. Then, spotting their muzzle flashes, they fired back.

Mike ignored them, pecking away like a rooster after grit. Beside him, bellied down in the dirt, Taggart, Cooper, and Eva followed his example.

“Holy shit,” Cooper sputtered when several rounds zipped past his head. “Bastard’s either a deadeye or damn lucky.”

Luck was something they needed a lot of, if they were going to keep that bird grounded and keep from getting killed in the process.

Mike kept firing; burning sweat poured into the cuts on his face, fire seared through his side. It was dark, the nightscopes were difficult to focus, the distance was not desirable—the chances of them taking down the bird were growing slimmer with every minute, which meant Brewster and his boys would be on them as soon as the threat was over.

They were sitting ducks out here. UWD soldiers behind them, Satan’s spawn in front of them, wilderness in either direction. And him with a broken rib and, fuck, an empty magazine, he realized when he squeezed the trigger.

He quickly ejected the mag and rapid-loaded a second thirty-round clip. His last one.

“She’s about to lift off,” Taggart yelled, his focus and his shots steady on the Chinook.

“Keep firing!” Mike yelled.

“I’m out of ammo.” Cooper lowered his gun.

Pick a doomsday cliché, they were living it.

Eva, rock-solid steady, kept her eye glued to the scope and methodically fired again and again.

But it was too late. The bird hovered, then lifted, and spun slowly skyward.

“Fuck.” Taggart watched the flight lights as the chopper gained elevation.

Mike roared in frustration and emptied his magazine, knowing it was hopeless—until the engine cowling blasted off the bird in an explosion of sound and a huge, raging fireball. Smoke roared out of the damaged fuselage, billowing in a black, spiraling plume. The chopper listed sideways, spun, dropped, and corkscrewed down fast.

“No way.” Mesmerized, Cooper stood, shielding his eyes from the white-hot blaze of fire as the chopper fuel combusted, and twenty tons of electronics and metal slammed to the ground and blew anything within thirty yards into fireballs, dust, and rubble.

“No freaking way did we drop that chopper,” Cooper uttered again.

Stunned, Mike stared at what was left of the Chinook. No one on the ground nearby could have survived that explosion.

The La Linea lieutenants were dead. The woman with the empty eyes was dead. Lawson and Brewster—dead.

His satisfaction was undercut by disappointment. The sonofabitches had gotten off way too easy.

“Listen.” Eva touched a hand to his arm. “Hear that?”

Above the roar of the blaze, the ammo in the bird exploding, and the blood pounding in his ears, Mike finally heard what she had. The sound of choppers. A bunch of them.

Mike looked up and finally spotted the flight lights of four Black Hawks zooming in. Their searchlights flashed on, the wide beams sweeping the crash site like a scene out of a SWAT movie. The remaining UWD members had to be running for the hills.

“You’re right, Cooper,” he said, grinning because he knew who had to be in one of those birds. “We didn’t take it out. Gabe did.”