“Do it,” al-Habib whispered. So far as they knew, opening the gate at this hour of the morning would not trigger an automatic alarm. But no intelligence report was ever one hundred percent certain.
A moment later the gate lock buzzed, and the three bolts snapped with an audible pop.
Al-Habib’s hand tensed on his weapon, and he held his breath, once again listening for any indication that someone was coming for them. His nerves were jumping all over the place. But there was nothing. Their luck was holding, and for the first time since they’d come ashore he was beginning to feel that they might pull this off.
He motioned for Bukhari to come with him. Kamal and Sufyan would remain outside to cover their backs.
Al-Habib reached the steel door to the low concrete block building and stepped away for Bukhari to mold a one-hundred-gram block of Semtex around the door lock. A heavy wire mesh covered the narrow window beside the door. Someone in an orange shirt was there. Al-Habib urgently motioned for him to get back.
An air-conditioning unit at the rear of the building noisily kicked on at the same moment Bukhari inserted a slender pencil fuse into the gray putty material and cracked the acid chamber.
He and al-Habib moved to either side and turned their backs to the door. Two seconds later, the Semtex blew with a muffled crack, the sound all but lost to the noise of the air conditioner. The smoldering lock mechanism and handle landed in the dirt three meters away.
Bukhari pulled the door open, and al-Habib, his rifle up, safety off, his finger alongside the trigger guard, rolled inside, sweeping his M8 left to right.
There were five prisoners dressed for bed in orange suits in the corner farthest from the door, but no American guards.
“Musafa Bakr,” al-Habib called softly.
A slightly built man with a pencil-thin mustache came forward with a heavy limp. “Aywa,” he said. Yes. The other four were right behind him.
“Are you hurt?” al-Habib asked, concerned that they would have to carry him down the bluff to the fence and then to the beach. It would seriously slow them down.
“Not badly enough to cause a hindrance,” ex-Iranian Navy Commander Bakr said.
“What happened—”
“We can talk later. Do you have a weapon for me?” He held out a hand.
It wasn’t what al-Habib expected, though he could hardly deny the request. He took his 9mm Steyr GB pistol from a zippered pocket and gave it to the man. “Our luck is holding so far, but it won’t last,” he said.
Outside, al-Habib, Bukhari, and the five prisoners hurried across to the open gate. Kamal and Sufyan waited in the shadows, their attention directed toward the main entrance to Camp Delta.
“Anything?” al-Habib asked.
“Nothing,” Sufyan replied.
They shut and relocked the gate, and, al-Habib in the lead, started across the field toward the edge of the bluff. The night sky to the north was lit by the occasional flash of a mortar round. The small-arms fire had not slackened, but it would not last much longer. And once the attack was over, someone might start to wonder what was going on. If a check was made of the guard posts, the game would be up.
They had to be down on the beach before that happened if they were going to have any chance of getting away.
Al-Habib glanced back at Bakr right behind him. If something did go wrong, and the prisoners had to be killed, doing so would be more difficult because one of them was armed.
A military vehicle crested the road that came up from the main part of the base, and headed directly toward Camp Delta, the headlights briefly sweeping across the field where al-Habib and the others crouched.
“Yalla!” al-Habib whispered, his heart in his throat. Let’s go!
“What the hell is that?” Talarico demanded urgently. They had just reached the top of the hill and were heading toward Camp Delta’s main gate. Gloria was behind the wheel of a Humvee from the base motor pool.
“What was what?” Gloria turned to him. He was pointing off toward the edge of the hill that plunged down to sea level.
“Four or five people, maybe more,” he said. “Black outfits, but at least three were wearing orange.” There was the hint of amazement in his voice. “You were right, it’s a prison break.”
“Goddammit to hell,” Gloria said. She hauled the all-terrain vehicle off the road in the direction Talarico had pointed, and pulled up short, in a hail of dust and loose rocks. Nothing showed up in the headlights except for the open field that dropped off about thirty meters away. “Are you sure, Bob?”
Talarico grabbed a flashlight off its bracket on the hump and jumped out of the vehicle. “I saw something out there,” he called back through the open door. He directed the narrow beam across the field, on either side of the swath cast by the Humvee’s headlights, then slowly followed it back toward the Camp Echo facility.
“There!” he shouted. He pulled out his pistol and headed in a dead run around the front of the Humvee back to the ditch beside the road directly in front of Echo, where two figures lay facedown.
Gloria jumped out of the Humvee and yanked the walkie-talkie from her belt clip with one hand, and her 0.45in. ACP MK 23 (SOCOM) pistol from the quick-draw holster at the small of her back, her attention directed across the field.
“They’re dead!” Talarico shouted.
Gloria glanced at him. He was hunched over the two bodies. “Our guys?”
“MPs,” Talarico said, straightening up. “I’m guessing Echo guards. They’ve been shot in the head.”
Gloria motioned toward the drop-off across the field and she headed out. She keyed the walkie-talkie. “TAC One, TAC One, this is a Red Release. I repeat, a Red Release, looks like from Echo. They’re already over the hill.”
Talarico had started after her, keeping a few meters to the left. He’d switched off the flashlight.
“Who’s on this channel?” the on-duty Security Ops officer came back. He sounded harried with all that was happening along the northeastern perimeter.
“Ibenez. I’m with Talarico. We’re on your special ops duty roster,” she radioed back. The Cubans probably monitored all the non-secure channels, but it would take time for someone to figure out she was on their hit list. “You have two friendlies down outside Echo right now. About two minutes ago we spotted two or more figures in black, going over the crest of the hill to the east, with three or more guys in orange pj’s. Copy?”
“Roger, copy that,” the OD radioed back. “What’s your ten-twenty?”
“We’re in pursuit about twenty-five meters out,” Gloria responded. “Standby one.” She motioned for Talarico to hold up just before the edge of the drop-off. She didn’t want either of them to get shot by a rear guard waiting for them to show themselves.
She dropped to her hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way to the edge, where she got on her belly. For a second or two she couldn’t see any movement. A guard tower about sixty or seventy meters directly below was dark, as were the towers to the north, and the one to the south just above the beach.
But then she spotted several figures, maybe half of them in black, and the other half in orange, scurrying across the no-man’s zone where they disappeared one at a time into a tunnel under the fence. She keyed the walkie-talkie.
“TAC One, I count at least four POWs and four bad guys just going through a tunnel under the east perimeter fence, a few hundred meters off the beach.”
“The guy in the tower’s got to be asleep,” Talarico said.
“Or dead,” Gloria replied. She spotted a movement on the other side of the fence, and she keyed her walkie-talkie. “TAC One, they’re out.”
“Roger that,” the OD replied. He sounded disgusted. “It’s not our problem now. If they reach the beach the Coasties will be on them. I have people coming your way. Stand by.”