“All external phones are down, boss,” Manolo told him. “The club manager says that they’ve a warrant to search the building and all sublevels and access tunnels.”
This wasn’t just a fishing trip. This was the DEA with some hard evidence. That meant that either someone had squealed or the real military plans for this place had resurfaced. He thought he had done an excellent job of clearing all public records. That meant they must have gone to the Pentagon.
“What’s the news on the tunnel?”
“They got a tank, sir,” the man said, pointing to a monitor.
As they watched, an armoured vehicle with a large gun was leading the officers through the tunnel. His men were being forced to retreat. The monitor flickered and died as the DEA took out the camera.
Roberto knew when he was beaten.
“Right, order everyone to make their own way out and to try to get away. In ten minutes, this place blows. Get out; get out now!”
Manolo didn’t question his boss, but simply issued the orders over the radio, stood up and ran from the room.
Ryan woke feeling groggy. He was taped to a chair that was bolted to the concrete. It was in the centre of a barren room, and no one else was present.
Cursing under his breath, he attempted to free himself. Whoever had taped him down knew their business, as he wasn’t going anywhere soon.
Where were his captors and why was he still alive? He wasn’t complaining, but he was curious. He went back to trying to free himself. He thought he could hear small arms fire in the distance somewhere.
Roberto walked across to a panel in the wall and unscrewed the two fastenings.
Meanwhile, Manolo ran down the corridor to the emergency stairs that came up in an old shack that was part of the green-keepers complex. He came round a bend and almost ran into a girl coming the other way. She was dressed in black, so initially he took her for one of his people.
At first he didn’t recognise her, so started speaking in Spanish.
Then he knew her as the rich English girl. The hesitation cost him his life. As he went for his gun, she shot him twice in the chest.
Roberto heard the shots, but concentrated as he took out the arming device.
It was a simple enough device, with a key pad and small digital readout plumbed into a detonator and a couple of thousand pounds of explosive that was fed along the cable ducts under the complex. There was also a large incendiary charge in the truck and warehouse bay. So as the DEA agents would enter, they’d leave to an unexpected destination.
It was set to go in ten minutes, so he was about to key in the code on the keypad when he heard the door open behind him.
“I told you get out!” he said, without turning round. He felt stupid, for he’d forgotten the code.
“Step away from it and raise your hands,” said a female voice.
He turned with surprise written on his face. Like Manolo, he did not immediately recognise the girl. But then he did, and the terrible truth dawned on him. The DEA had placed two agents under his nose.
“You!”
“Step back or I will shoot you,” she said.
At that moment, the numbers came to him, so he pushed the first button.
The two shots seemed very loud in such a confined place. At first he thought she’s missed, but then he wondered why he was going down, with no feelings in either arm. The keypad dangled tantalisingly in front of his face. Three more digits had to be entered before it was armed.
He looked up at her. Manolo was right, she was beautiful.
“Where’s Ryan?” she asked.
He started to laugh, but had to stop as blood came up his throat from his lungs. The pain hit him then, and he realised he couldn’t breathe.
“Where’s Ryan?” she repeated, still pointing the gun at him.
Roberto no longer heard her, as the darkness took him.
Shit!” she said. Then she flicked through the monitors. Many of the monitors showed panicked men running for the exits. The camera in the tunnel showed the DEA advancing rapidly. She hoped they would be in time. Frantic now, she kept clicking the channel button until she was looking at a figure tied to a chair. It was Ryan and he was struggling to free himself. In the top right hand corner of the monitor was SB18.
She glanced at the door to the control room. It had SB5 stencilled thereon. She was torn. Roberto didn’t look as if he would be a threat. He looked dead, but she wasn’t certain. The digital box still hung from the panel, simply requiring the numbers to be completed. She had no way of knowing either how many more were needed nor how to defuse it.
Did she stay here and wait for someone to come and make it safe, or did she go and release Ryan? What would Ryan do? She asked herself.
Without further hesitation, she put the control box back into the panel and screwed it shut temporarily. Then she ran from the room, searching for SB18.
Ryan had got one hand free, but it had taken some skin off his arm. He was now well into getting the next arm free when the door opened.
This is it, he said to himself. This is where I die.
The two men who came in were the same two who had secured him earlier, although of that fact he had been unaware. Their last order was to kill the DEA agent and then get out as fast as they could.
One raised his handgun and aimed at Ryan. Ryan felt an enormous sense of loss and regret that he and Michelle would never get to see old age.
There were two shots, followed by two more, in rapid succession. When Ryan opened his eyes, he discovered, quite gratefully, that he was still alive. Both men were lying in heaps by the door, and standing behind them with a smoking Sig was his girl. She looked amazing.
“Are you okay?” she asked, advancing towards him, but still pointing her gun at the two downed bad guys.
“I am now.”
He couldn’t say anything else, as she kissed him.
“Don’t you ever do that again, you hear?” she said.
“I hear. Now, do you think you can help get me out of this damn chair?”
Still holding her gun in her right hand, she took out a pocket knife and passed it to him. While she covered the door with her gun, he cut through the tape with ease.
Together, they ran to the door, so Ryan collected the guns from the two dead men as he passed them.
“So what do we do now?” he asked.
“We have to go back to the control room. They’ve wired this place to blow up, so we have to try to make sure it doesn’t happen.”
There was chaos in the corridor. People were running for their lives. The sound of gunfire was close and very loud. They made it back to the control room, so they entered and closed the door. Michelle looked at the panel, and her heart sank.
The door was open and the little digital controller was hanging free, the numbers clicking round each second. Blood stains were all over the open panel and the little box itself. Ricardo was slumped on the floor. The blood smears showed how he’d crawled over to the panel and managed to open it to set the timer off. It was his last act for he had now gone to his desserts.
“Shit,” said Ryan. “What the hell do we do now?”
Michelle felt very calm as she looked at the ticking numbers.
“You’ve made me so happy, I don’t mind if I have to die. I’ve achieved nearly all my ambitions. It can’t get better than this,” she said.
“Look, we’ve seven minutes, so think; perhaps it might get better, if we try. Do you know anything about bomb disposal?”
In the back of her mind a memory sprang forward. It was of a small boy in Holland. Every year there used to be a festival in their home town. His school celebrated with a firework display. The physics teacher wanted to try a new electronic ignition system, where by he timed each firework from a central control board, and simply pressed one button to start the whole display. It had been moderately successful, let down by the fuses on the Chinese fireworks and the igniters not being able to catch each time, but it was a good theory.