“Ground Two, do we have entry yet at Point B?” Corvo asked.
No answer. It was a few long moments of silence and then Ramos came back up on the air.
“Air Leader, can’t tell on Ground Two at this time. Target team has approached entry point and we-”
Before the transmission was cut off, Bosch heard the unmistakable sound of automatic gunfire. He felt adrenaline begin to flood his body. Yet he could do nothing but sit and listen to the dead radio air and watch the murky yellow night vision display. He saw what he believed were muzzle flashes from the front of the bunker. Then Ramos came back up on the air.
“We’re hot! We’re hot!”
The helicopter lurched as the pilot took them up higher. As the craft rose, the night scope offered a larger view of the scene below. The entire PC became visible. Now Bosch could see figures on the roof of the bunker, moving toward the front of the structure. He pushed the switch on the side of his helmet and said into the mouthpiece, “Corvo, they’ve got people on the roof. Warn them.”
“Stay off!” Corvo shouted. Then to below, he radioed, “Ground Two, Ground Two, you have weapons on the roof of the bunker. Count two positions approaching northside, copy?”
Bosch could hear no shooting over the sound of the rotor but he could see the muzzle flash from automatic weapons from two locations at the front of the bunker. He saw sporadic flashes from the vehicles but the militia was pinned down. He heard a radio transmission open and heard the sound of fire but then it was closed and no one had spoken.
“Ground Two, copy?” Corvo said into the voice. There was just the initial strain of panic in his voice. There was no reply. “Ground Two, do you copy?”
A hard-breathing voice came back. “Ground Two. Yeah. We’re pinned down in the Point B entry. We’re in a crossfire here. Would like some help.”
“Ground One, report,” Corvo barked.
There was a long moment of silence. Then Ramos came on the air. His words were partially obscured by gunfire.
“Here. We’ve… the house,… have three suspects down. No others present. Looks like they’re… fucking bunker.”
“Get to the bunker. Two needs backup.”
“-that way.”
Bosch noticed how the voices on the radio were higher and more urgent. The code words and formal language had been stripped away. Fear did that. He had seen it in the war. He’d seen it on the streets when he was in uniform. Fear, though always unspoken, nevertheless stripped men of their carefully orchestrated poses. The adrenaline roars and the throat gurgles with fear like a backed-up drain. Sheer desire for survival takes over. It sharpens the mind, pares away all the bullshit. A once-modulated reference to Point B becomes the almost hysterical expletive.
From four hundred yards up and looking down through the night scope, Bosch could also see the flaw in the plan. The DEA agents had hoped to outrun the militia in their helicopters, charge the population center and secure things before the ground troops arrived. But that hadn’t happened. The militia was there and now one of the CLET groups was pinned down between the militia and the people in the bunker.
There was a sudden increase in the shooting from the bunker. Bosch could tell this by the flaring of repeated muzzle flashes. Then on the scope he saw a Jeep suddenly begin speeding from the back of the bunker. It smashed through a gate in the wall that surrounded the compound and began moving across the scrubland in a southeasterly direction. Bosch pushed his transmit button again.
“Corvo, we have a runner. Jeep heading southeast.”
“Have to let him go for now. It’s going to shit down there and I can’t move anybody. Stay off the fucking line.”
The Jeep was now well out of the scope’s field of vision. He flipped the lenses up off his face and looked out the window. There was nothing. Only darkness. The Jeep was running without lights. He thought of the barn and stables out near the highway. That was where the runner was going.
“Ramos,” Corvo said over the radio. “Do you want lights?”
No return.
“Ground One?… Ground Two, do you want lights?”
“… ights would be good but you’d be a sit…,” the Ground Two voice said. “Better hold it a few until we… eaned up.”
“That’s a copy. Ramos are you copying?”
There was no answer.
The shooting ended quickly after that. The pope’s guardians put down their weapons after apparently determining that their odds of survival in a prolonged firefight were not good.
“Air Leader, give us that light now,” Ramos radioed from below, the tone of his voice back to being calmly modulated and confident.
Three powerful beams from the belly of the Lynx then illuminated the ground below. Men with hands laced together on the tops of their heads were walking out of the bunker and into the hands of the militia. There were at least a dozen. Bosch saw one of the CLETs drag a body out of the bunker and leave it on the ground outside.
“We’re secure down here,” Ramos radioed.
Corvo signaled with his thumb to the pilot and the craft began to descend. Bosch felt tension drift out of him as they went down. In thirty seconds they were on the ground next to one of the other helicopters.
In the yard in front of the bunker, the prisoners were kneeling while some of the militia officers used plastic disposable handcuffs to bind their wrists. Others were making a stack of confiscated weapons. There were a couple of Uzis and AK-47s but mostly shotguns and M-16s. Ramos was standing with the militia captain, who had his radio to his ear.
Bosch did not see a recognizable face among the prisoners. He left Aguila and went to Ramos.
“Where’s Zorrillo?”
Ramos held up his hand in a do-not-disturb gesture and didn’t answer. He was looking at the captain. Corvo walked up then, too. There was a report over the captain’s radio and then he looked at Ramos and said, “Nada.”
“Okay, nothing’s happening at EnviroBreed,” Ramos said. “Nobody in or out since this went down here. The militia is maintaining a watch over there.”
Ramos saw Corvo and in a lower voice, meant just for him, said, “We’ve got a problem. We’ve lost one.”
“Yeah, we saw him,” Bosch said. “He was in the Jeep and headed southeast out of-”
He stopped when he realized what Ramos had meant.
“Who’d we lose?” Corvo asked.
“Kirth, one of the CLETs. But that’s not the whole problem.”
Bosch stepped back from the two men. He knew he had no place in this.
“What the fuck do you mean?” Corvo said.
“Come on, I’ll show you.”
The two agents headed off around the hacienda. Bosch trailed at a discreet distance behind. A covered porch ran the length of the rear of the house. Ramos crossed it to an open door. A CLET agent, his mask pulled up to expose his blood- and sweat-streaked face, was on the floor three feet inside the door. It looked to Bosch like four rounds: two in the upper chest, just above the vest, and two in the neck. A nice tight pattern, all of them through-and-through wounds. Blood was still leaking out from beneath the body into a pool. The dead agent’s eyes and mouth were open. He had died quickly.
Bosch could see the problem. It was friendly fire. Kirth had been hit with fire from one of the 636s. The wounds were too big, too devastating and bunched too close together to have come from the weapons stacked near the prisoners.
“Looks like he came running out this back door when he heard the shooting,” Ramos was saying. “Ground Two was already in a crossfire. Someone from Two’s unit must have opened on the door, hit Kirth here.”
“God damn it!” Corvo yelled. Then in a lower voice, he said, “All right, come over here, Ramos.”
They huddled together and this time Bosch could not hear what was said but didn’t have to. He knew what they would do. Careers were at stake here.