Get Back Jack (25 page)

Gaspar settled himself in the navigator’s seat. Neagley and Kim took the two captain’s chairs in the back. Morrie retraced the route they’d traveled twice already. The dashboard lights illuminated the van’s interior well enough.

When they were a few miles south of Matamoros and still northeast of Valle Hermoso, Morrie pulled the van off the road and parked behind a stand of trees. No one traveling the road could see them if they left the lights off, but they were visible to satellites and drones. Couldn’t be helped.

Neagley set up her high-tech radio interference. It wasn’t good enough to block the Boss’s ears, but maybe it would work against casual eavesdroppers who weren’t specifically focused on them.

“Let’s see that bunkhouse,” Gaspar said. Kim opened the laptop. The screen glowed eerily blue in the blackness. She passed it to Neagley, who did what Kim had already done. Committed the building’s layout and surrounding terrain to memory.

Neagley handed the laptop to Gaspar.

While he studied, Neagley asked, “Where’s the equipment?”

“Behind Otto’s seat,” Morrie said. “Move the carpet and pull up the false floor.”

Gaspar opened the side door, which turned on the overhead dome light. He slipped out onto the shoulder, facing away from the van while Morrie emerged from the driver’s side and walked around the front. The two men stood shoulder to shoulder a few seconds longer than necessary. Anyone watching would conclude they’d stopped to urinate and change drivers.

While the men established their diversion, Neagley stood, bent slightly at the waist, and slid between the captain’s chairs. She rolled back the carpet, found the pull ring on the false floor, and gave it a solid yank. It came up easily, but it wasn’t hinged and she was now at an awkward angle. She couldn’t move the heavy metal false floor panel away from the storage compartment.

Kim unbuckled her seatbelt, raised the right armrest on her seat, crouched, and slid through to the cargo area. She took the false floor panel and moved it aside while Neagley unpacked guns, ammunition, night vision headsets, four untraceable cell phones with earpieces, coveralls, boots, gloves, watch caps, and Kevlar. Kim passed gear up to Gaspar and Morrie in the front seats and placed hers and Neagley’s in the rear captain’s chairs.

Kim rooted around in the storage space until her hand rested on a familiar smooth leather sap. The weapon was the perfect size for her small hands. Durable, heavy gauge leather casing filled with molded metal weight. A two-ply leather hand strap looped at one end for a secure grip. She’d used this model before. Small enough to be concealed, it would allow a strike with the flat part ranging from a stun to an instant knockout. The side edge could target large muscle groups and even break bones when applied with high force to a small area. Ideal for an up close and personal defense, she knew from experience. Tried and true.

She slipped the sap into her trouser pocket and left the storage space open so they could re-stash the weapons and equipment quickly. Just in case.

Then Morrie entered the navigator’s seat and Gaspar settled himself behind the wheel. Both doors closed, extinguishing the dome light.

Neagley and Kim returned to their seats.

Morrie memorized the bunkhouse layout and all four quickly donned coveralls and boots and Kevlar and loaded and checked their weapons and night vision and tested the burner phones and earpieces.

Elapsed time was less than ten minutes. Too long, if the wrong people were watching. Gaspar restarted the van, moved the transmission into drive, and eased forward around and away from the stand of trees.

They didn’t move far. An unusual spate of traffic clogged the highway headed south from Matamoros. “Where did all these vehicles come from all of a sudden?” Morrie asked, as if one of the four would know. No one did.

Gaspar merged into an open spot in the traffic line and turned on the headlights.

Drove the speed limit.

Observed all traffic signs.

No one talked.

At TAM 12, they turned west for the third time today. Narrow feeder roads Kim hadn’t noticed before added vehicles at each isolated rural intersection. The line of traffic became increasingly heavier, seeming to converge from far away in all directions because the entire local population couldn’t possibly have owned so many vehicles.

Three miles from Valle Hermoso, they were boxed in by trucks and a few cars and SUVs. Gaspar was forced to slow his speed. No more than fifteen miles an hour.

Travel time to this point from Matamoros on their recon trip had been twenty minutes. Tonight, they’d already been on the road for an hour. They had plenty of time, but the unexpected delay made Kim nervous anyway.

Neagley appeared as unconcerned as ever.

Traffic crawled through Valle Hermoso, which was alive with activities tonight. Was it a local holiday? Did that explain the heavy traffic, the crowds? Kim didn’t know.

On the other side of Valle Hermoso, travel speeds began to increase and the bottleneck, whatever it was, slowly opened up.

At El Riolito, at least half the 3,208 people who lived there were moving around the town. Parents with children, elderly couples, a few young women.

Curiously absent in both towns were teenage boys and single young men.

Gaspar traveled safely through the crowds and reached Las Olas Boulevard eighty minutes after leaving the hotel. Full nautical twilight now made it too dark to read the pretentious overhead sign. In fact, it was too dark to see the sign at all.

For almost a mile as the van approached the intersection, Kim had been watching the compound’s approach. It was blindingly lit by banks of stadium lights, as though they were on their way to a professional sporting event and not the stealthier game ahead of them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Monday, November 15

7:08 p.m.

Villa Alto, Mexico

Las Olas Boulevard was deserted, but even from a quarter mile away at the foot of the Boulevard on TAM 12, they could see vehicles parked on the sides of the road, on the weedy aprons, in every available space around the front of the compound. Kim had downloaded the latest satellite photos before dusk when the compound was practically deserted. Whatever drew these people here had happened during the past two hours.

The compound itself was lit by massive stadium lights that spread ambient light well outside the parking areas. Darkness surrounded everything beyond. Very few people could be seen wandering on foot. Activities were focused in the center open space and shielded from view by the perimeter of buildings and vehicles.

Gaspar turned the armored van onto Las Olas Boulevard and traveled ten miles an hour toward the main building. When he reached the campus, he drove slowly past. Kim and the others peered through the van’s dark tinted windows in an effort to solve the puzzle. When they reached the wide driveway, they managed an obstructed view of the open space under the lights because the driveway was jammed with cars, trucks, SUVs, and buses. Kim ticked off 124 vehicles before she stopped counting.

Gaspar drove past the last building and when he reached the corner, he executed a three-point turn and lowered all four windows. The moment the sound seal released, they heard the cheering and booing crowd. Gaspar drove slowly toward the open space; noise volume increased with every inch of covered ground.

Morrie said, “The good news is that no one will notice us with all these other people here.”

Gaspar replied, “The bad news is there’s no way to sneak in and out under cover of darkness like we planned.”

Neagley contributed her usual plain sense. “We only have one option. We’re out of time. We go in, find the hostages, bring them out.”

Gaspar snorted. “Or die trying.”

Kim shrugged in the darkness. “More likely they’d beat you to a pulp.” She gestured to two of the buses. Both sported reflective bumper stickers depicting boxing gloves.

Gaspar said, “It’s brighter than daylight out there.”

She had already moved to the back of the van again and pulled out her laptop and connected once more to the satellite. The connection might be discovered later, but at the moment, she figured everyone was involved with the big show in the compound’s center.

Neagley asked, “Can we use the path to the bunkhouse like we planned?”

“I think so,” Kim replied when she found what she was looking for. “Each of you should take a look.” She downloaded the images and saved them and disconnected the feed. Then she passed around the laptop as she’d done earlier.

The compound’s center was now a boxing ring, complete with bleacher seats on all four sides. Which meant the spectators were facing each other and the contestants, not watching the bunkhouse building they’d decided was most likely to hold the hostages. The feed showed four armed guards walking the perimeter of the crowd, but when she snapped the image, two were standing at a break in the sight line to watch the match. She figured the other two were doing the same. Everyone was preoccupied with the big match.

Their first bit of good luck, maybe.

The bleachers were full, which explained the bottlenecked inbound traffic that had lightened up and disappeared the closer they came to Las Olas Boulevard. She noted a few female spectators, but mostly males, which explained the absence of males walking the streets of the towns on the way.

The fight might have been in its first round; the boxers were unbloodied so far. Whatever the match was, hundreds of spectators and participants had gathered to participate. If they were in the opening rounds, the matches could go on for at least a couple of hours before the crowd broke up and dispersed.

Kim didn’t figure on being here that long, but they now operated in a fluid situation, which was not ideal and not what they’d planned.

Two heat sensitive images of the main house and the outbuildings were almost identical to the earlier versions. No human forms inside most of the buildings. Only two inside the house; several more inside the target bunkhouse.

After Neagley, Gaspar, and Morrie memorized the new images, Kim relocked the laptop and returned it to the hidden compartment in the floor. Gaspar parked the van in the shadow of one of the buses, raised the windows, and cut the ignition. They collected their equipment and exited the vehicle.

Neagley led, crouched and hanging to the shadows as well as possible. Followed closely by Gaspar, Kim and Morrie at the rear doing the same.

They traveled along the east side of the road until they reached the first building on the northeast corner of the compound. All hugged close to its eastern edge, reached the corner and turned behind the building out of the glare of overhead lights. Still, enough ambient light flooded the weeds in the back that Kim had no need to don her night vision. Nor did the others.

Kim had snugged the earpiece firmly into her right ear and made sure it worked, but she hadn’t once used it after they spent ten minutes back at the stand of trees storing one another’s numbers in their burner phones and learning how to connect by conference call. Nor did the others.

Neagley made her way quickly along the darkened north side until she reached the northwest corner, where a gap of fifteen feet between buildings presented an opportunity for discovery. One at a time, they dashed across the gap and then continued along the north side of the second building. At the second building’s northwest corner, the second fifteen-foot opening gaped. Neagley stopped and waited until Gaspar, Kim, and Morrie reached her.

Across the gap was their target.

The bunkhouse was concrete block construction, one-story, long, and windowless. Its main entrance was on the open compound south side, ten feet from the dead center of the bleachers holding the crowd of raucous spectators.

Using the main entrance was not an option.

The bunkhouse back was the north side of the building. Only one exit door, resting square in the center. Whether the door was locked or armed with an alarm system or guarded by other means was unknown.

Without speaking, Neagley lifted her weapon of choice, a Glock 17 she’d snagged from the hidden compartment in the van. Kim had chosen a Glock 19. Morrie and Gaspar selected Berettas. All four were using the same ammunition, 9mm Parabellums. More efficient. More anonymous when they disposed of all the equipment, too.

Kim refused to think about the consequences should they be caught with any of these items before they returned to Brownsville, Texas. They’d be lucky if they only ended up in a Mexican prison.

Morrie passed Neagley and approached the bunkhouse’s back exit. From Kim’s vantage point, the door looked like heavy grey steel and seemed to have been snugged securely shut. No light leaked from cracks around the edges. When Morrie tried to turn the knob, nothing happened. He’d equipped his Beretta with its sound suppressor back in the van. Now, he slipped on his night vision and lifted the gun. The next time the crowd roared he shot three precise, quick, quiet, shattering rounds into the wooden jamb around knob’s locking mechanism. When he grabbed the knob again, the door slid easily away from the busted wood.

Still wearing his night vision, he pulled the door open, counting on the darkness behind the bunkhouse as camouflage, which was okay. Morrie entered the bunkhouse, followed by Gaspar, Kim and finally Neagley. The room felt cavernous. Damp. Hot. And empty of all life forms, human or otherwise, which wasn’t okay. Not okay at all.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Monday, November 15

7:38 p.m.

Villa Alto, Mexico

Pervasive darkness inside the bunkhouse required night vision, and Kim slipped hers on. She saw an open cement block building lined with cots on either side of the rear exit door. But the cots were nothing more than mattresses on frames. Each cot had a storage locker on the floor at the foot of the bed. The bunkhouse had no windows and only one additional door, this one identical to the first, but on the front compound side of the building.