Jonathan tapped the transmit button on his chest. “Mother Hen, Scorpion.”
In Fisherman’s Cove, Venice jumped when the SkysEye image refreshed and she saw the wrecked vehicle, the horror of the image made even worse by the fact that Jonathan hadn’t checked in afterward.
She was just reaching for the transmit switch when her speakers popped. “Mother Hen, Scorpion.”
Relief. She fought hard to keep the emotion out of her voice as she replied, “Is everybody all right? Looks like a bad wreck.”
“We’re fine, but we’re in trouble. A little lost in the forest. Can you talk us in?”
Venice spun her chair a little to view a different screen. “Where are you exactly? I won’t get another satellite image for two, almost three minutes.”
A pause. “We’re in front of unit seven-thirteen.”
“Stand by one,” she said.
“We don’t have much more than one,” Jonathan quipped. “The quicker the better.”
Anticipating a challenge like this, Venice had called up a schematic for the storage facility over an hour ago. It appeared on her screen as checkerboard of north-south streets intersecting with east-west streets. Depending on size, some blocks had more units than others.
She keyed her mike. “From seven-thirteen, you need to go five blocks north and three blocks east.”
“Roger,” Scorpion said. “Keep an eye on the SkysEye feed. I know the bad guys are close, but I don’t have a visual. We need to know where they are.”
“Will do,” she said.
Venice hated this part of her job-the passive watching and waiting while people she cared about fought for their lives. She knew they needed her-that the technology she tamed and interpreted was as critical to every mission as the weaponry wielded by the guys, but from this far away, the team felt very small and terribly isolated.
When her image finally refreshed, she used thermal imagery to find Jonathan and the team, and was pleased to see that they were making progress toward the target building. When she saw that the pursuing troops were taking the wrong path, she smiled.
The happiness evaporated in an instant when she realized what she was really seeing.
Jonathan’s earbud popped. “Scorpion, they’re trying to flank you on your right. It looks like they’ve figured out where you’re going.”
He and Boxers said it together: “Shit.”
“What?” Tristan asked.
Jonathan keyed his mike. “Any chance we’ll get there first?”
“They’ve got vehicles.”
Not the question he’d asked, but it was an answer nonetheless.
Jonathan played the next few minutes out in his mind, and it all came down to a firefight that they couldn’t possibly win. Surrender was not an option, so that left only a third alternative. If only he knew what it was.
“I’m open to suggestions, Big Guy,” he said.
“I’m sure you’ll come up with something, Boss. Meanwhile, is it your plan to keep jogging toward the ambush?”
Stopping made no sense. They had no defensive positions and they were outgunned. They’d lost the elements of surprise. So, what did that leave? If only storage units had secondary entrances.
Wait. That was it. “We’ll go in through the back door,” he announced.
Boxer gave him The Look. “What back door?”
“How much det cord do you have?”
The Big Guy beamed. “Enough to make a lot of back doors,” he said.
Jonathan keyed his mike. “Mother Hen, I need the name of the street that runs parallel to the one with our target building.”
Tristan was growing tired of the mysterious communications between Scorpion and the Big Guy. He got that they had somebody talking in their ear, but Tristan had a stake in this thing, too, you know? The least they could do was speak in complete sentences, or maybe even relay what it was they were talking about.
He was also tired of being the only one who seemed to struggle with the running. His lungs had burned before, but now with this huge bruise on his chest, the pain was even worse. The vest swung a little on his body with every step, and with each swing, it felt as if someone were poking a finger into the center of the sore spot.
And where were all the police and soldiers? Not to jinx anything, but after all that shooting, he’d have thought there’d be a little more hubbub.
Without warning, Scorpion and the Big Guy slid to a stop in the middle of the road.
“Okay, Tristan and Maria, there’s been a change in plans.”
Tristan felt something dissolve inside him. Every time Scorpion said something like that, life got a lot shittier.
As if to prove the point, the night became day as floodlights jumped to life from high atop God only knew how many poles.
The invaders’ night vision was no longer an advantage. Palma felt proud that he’d thought of finding and throwing the main power switch that he knew had to be here somewhere.
The flanking maneuver was really just an extension of the strategy that Palma had put together to catch Harris and his team at Maria’s house. Surround the one place they had to go, and wait for the prey to arrive. It was the most logical play, and therefore one that he had no choice but to deploy.
Because it was logical, and therefore obvious, he worried that his enemy would once again get a step ahead.
This time, he held back a reserve of eight men, two each to cover the likely escape routes if the criminals tried to get away.
Meanwhile, Palma himself took Sergeant Sanchez and three of the surviving members of his original team and pursued his prey on foot.
Harris and company would have to be near panic now as they realized that they were being driven to a killing zone. Palma would enjoy watching them die.
He and his tiny squad moved carefully yet quickly as they pursued their targets north and east inside the storage compound. Hernandez had been very specific about the location of his smuggling tunnel. It was the single destination for Harris to target, so therefore it made no sense for them to lie in hiding along the way. As they got closer, he’d slow down.
On the other hand, if he heard shooting, he’d know that it was time to run in earnest.
Stealth no longer mattered. Bathed in light, their final advantage had been stripped away. From this point forward, survival was all about speed.
All they had to do was outrun a shitload of people who were all bent on killing them. Jonathan grabbed Tristan by the vest and pulled him close. “Listen to me,” he said. “Do exactly as I say. Are you good with that?”
Tristan’s eyes were twice their normal size and they showed terror.
“You can’t panic on me, son. Do you understand that?”
“Yes. Yes, I understand.”
“Okay.” Jonathan spun him ninety degrees so that he was facing west. “You keep an eye on the end of the block. If you see a person-I mean, if you see anyone, shoot them. Set your selector on full-auto, and try to keep it to three-round bursts. A lot of them. Remember what we talked about. Keep the butt tightly in your shoulder, and get a lot of bullets downrange. Even if you don’t hit anything, you’ll keep their heads down. Can you do that?”
The kid nodded, and Jonathan needed to believe him. He turned to Maria, who’d overheard. “I’ll watch the other end,” she said.
Jonathan smiled. “Thank you.”
While they spoke, Boxers took a pry bar to the hasp and lock of unit eleven-seventy, the storage unit that shared a back wall with their target building. Big Guy won the battle easily, stripping the entire assembly out of the corrugated metal door.
Jonathan wished he could let Boxers set the charges himself, and stay out here with the kids keeping cover, but setting the charges was a two-person job.