“Antonia, what’s happening up there?”
“I think he killed your men from the lumber mill. I’m really scared he’s going to kill me too!”
“Antonia, slow down and tell me—”
“He just saw me! I have to go!”
Nathan slammed the pay phone into its cradle. He’d been holding it for Antonia so he could also hear it. He keyed his radio. “Cut the lines now. You both copy?”
“Copy. It’s toast,” Estefan said.
“Likewise,” Harv added.
Nathan scanned the immediate area as he prepared to escort Antonia back to the motel. The call with Franco served its purpose, but not in the way he’d planned. Nathan had heard a distinctive humming noise coming from Franco’s end of the call. It was a sound Nathan knew well and it came from a very specific place: the cockpit of a helicopter.
Franco was already in the air.
Franco heard a click, then nothing. “Antonia, are you there? Antonia!”
Shit. Things were spiraling out of control. Franco called the pay phone back and let it ring ten times. No one answered at the lumber mill either. Where were they? The answering machine should pick up the call — unless it can’t. He called the mill again with the same result. The ore-processing center was also unreachable by phone. Like the lumber mill, its answering machine failed to pick up the call. The phone line had to be down, and Franco knew why.
Well played, Viper.
Using his other phone clipped to his knee-board, he sent an urgent e-mail to the lumber mill’s office.
If Viper killed his cousin, he’d make certain the bastard died an agonizing death.
And what about Antonia? She said he’d seen her.
He called his second-in-command at Macanas’s ranch in southern Jinotega. “Pastor Tobias’s son has made some trouble for us. Get Jaime and our three best men ready to go. I’ll be there in a few minutes. See if you can reach them by phone and patch me into a three-way call. Try to e-mail them. I want to know what’s happening up there.”
“Right away, sir.”
The air conditioner’s compressor on the north side of the office worked against Harv, severely hampering his ability to hear the presence of the enemy. He looked inside the Range Rover. If the vehicle had an alarm, it didn’t appear to be armed. He felt the hood for engine warmth and realized it was a pointless gesture — he’d done it purely out of habit. When he rounded the corner in a crouch, the drone of the AC unit grew even louder as he moved north along the office’s east wall. Identical in size and height, two more windows glowed around their perimeters. He ducked beneath them, reached the northeast corner, and peered around the corner. From here he could see the compressor unit and the mammoth form of the lumber mill’s main building. Rather than continue into the illuminated cone created by the light mounted on the building’s wall, he backtracked to the SUV, where it was much quieter. He still needed to clear the west side of the office. Since he hadn’t seen a door, it had to be on that side of the building. He was about to place an ear to the stucco when he heard the buzz of conversation. Whoever was inside didn’t seem too concerned about keeping their voices low.
Nathan’s voice on the radio interrupted his thoughts. “We’re gonna have company soon. During Antonia’s call, I heard an unmistakable hum in the background. Raven had his phone patched into the helicopter’s NavCom, I’m certain of it.”
Harv took a knee. “I’m hearing voices inside the lumber mill’s office. How much time do we have?”
“Antonia made her initial call to Raven around forty-five minutes ago. Depending on how accurate your estimate of ninety minutes is, we’re halfway there. We can’t assume the helicopter or Raven were in Managua when Antonia called, so we could be looking at a much shorter time frame. Hang on a sec.”
Harv waited through twenty seconds of silence.
“Antonia doesn’t know where Raven was when she first called. He could be incoming at any moment. Like we discussed, I doubt he’ll land at the lumber mill, even with the screen fencing. It doesn’t conceal him from an elevated SP.”
“I need a few more mikes over here. I’ll make it quick.”
Nathan continued. “Estefan, park your truck behind the church, out of sight as best you can, and double-time back here. I need eyes outside.”
“On my way.”
“I’m going radio silent,” Harv said. “Three mikes.”
“Copy. Three mikes.”
Harv heard the urgency in Nate’s voice but returned his focus to the office. Surely Raven had called his men about Estefan’s presence in town. Shouldn’t they be concerned in there? Their three friends had been gone for a long time. Maybe they’d been drinking. Tobias’s letters mentioned a chronic alcohol problem in Santavilla.
A more realistic and chilling explanation entered Harv’s mind — they had a sentry out here watching the area. It would explain why the men inside weren’t concerned about their voice levels, but it didn’t explain why Harv hadn’t been spotted by now. He ducked below the glowing windows and peered around the southwest corner. He was surprised when he saw no one. He smelled it then, the unmistakable odor of a cigarette.
Someone was out here.
He looked to the southwest and saw several houses, but the closest one sat at least one hundred yards away. The smoke he’d smelled seemed too concentrated to have originated from there, but the logging trucks were parked in that direction.
Harv tried to visualize the layout of the mill in relationship to the rest of the village. As he put the map together in his mind, he realized the mill’s office, the truck parking area, and the motel were all roughly aligned on the same vector. If Raven’s men did have a sentry posted out here, and if they believed Estefan was at the motel, then the trucks would provide a good position from which to monitor an approach from the motel.
Relying on the technology of his NV goggles, he turned the gain to maximum and kept his attention fixed on the area. He’d seen vehicle taillights reflect the glow of a cigarette before. Come on, he thought, I need a break here. He was about to do it the hard way and approach the lot without knowing where to start when the taillights of every truck came to life for several seconds before dimming and winking out. And the farthest left taillight was the brightest.
He switched to the TI.
“Got you,” Harv said. He now knew exactly where the sentry was — sitting in a backhoe and facing the motel. As luck would have it, the machine was parked in the middle of an expanse of gravel.
He could attempt a stealthy approach to the sentry’s position, but it would be next to impossible to traverse the gravel silently. Adding to the degree of risk, he’d be stuck out in the open for most of the crossing. If the sentry turned around to check his six, Harv would be blown and he’d have to shoot the guy, something Nathan wanted to avoid.
He keyed his radio. “There’s a sentry in the truck parking area on the south end of the mill’s property. I’ll need Estefan’s help if you want me to take him down without shooting him.”