Ripper (18 page)

Sarah lay on the floor a moment trying to regain some of her composure. Her ears were still ringing from the blast of the shotgun, but that ringing was also successfully drowning out the cries of the frightened young girls sitting on mattresses lining the walls.

“You … have a tendency … to drive men a little … mad, dear Sarah.”

“Shut up Henri, you stopped me. I could have—”

“Gotten yourself … killed,” said Henri, stopping her complaint before it was fully voiced. He tried to sit up but fell over.

Sarah eased herself over to the Frenchman and pulled his head off the cold floor. She remained silent for a moment as she cradled his head in her lap once
more.

“And what are you going to do when he comes for these girls?” she asked, giving Farbeaux a small test of her own. She looked straight ahead, knowing in advance what his answer was going to be.

“Nothing, dear Sarah.” He opened his eyes and looked at her as she stared ahead. “They mean nothing to me.”

“I really find you heartless and disgusting sometimes, Colonel.”

“Thank … you, my dear
 … Sarah.”

Sarah looked down and saw that the Frenchman had passed out once more from his pain.

*   *   *

The three men had passed several openings in the ancient culvert as they made their way south toward Perdition’s Gate. Mendenhall used these large openings that were obviously used by the illegal immigrants for entering the concrete tube. As everyone passed he would hoist the small global
positioning unit that was part of the equipment. Thus far they were on a straight line toward their final destination.

It was at one of these openings that Jack’s cell phone vibrated. He held up a black gloved hand and Carl and Will stopped behind him, taking the opportunity to drink some vitamin water. Jack opened the phone as he drank energy drink from a small aluminum package.

“Colonel, we’ve
landed back at the airport. Imagine our surprise to see that the hostage rescue team hasn’t budged from the hangar. The Mexican element is no longer on station. Jack, their mission is on hold.” Niles Compton became silent after delivering the bad news.

“There goes our cover,” he said as he angrily tossed the energy drink into the moving water at his feet.

Everett glanced at Mendenhall and saw
the young lieutenant just shake his head, knowing without being told that the diversion they had hoped for was no longer an option.

“Jack, I think I should come clean with the president. He could possibly get this Guzman’s attention and give you some time to move in.”

“That would end up costing you your job. No, I’m sending Will and Carl back now.”

Everett smiled and shook his head. He set
his jaw, a look Collins knew well. “Tell Dr. Compton that I quit.”

“Me too,” Will added as he tried to get comfortable in the curving tune of the culvert.

Collins shook his head. “Okay, we’re going ahead; do what you can without letting the president know you were involved. This is my thing and I’ll be the only one to hang for it.” Jack closed the cell phone and looked at the other two men who
waited for his angry rebuke at their failing to follow his orders. He opened his mouth to speak, but Everett stopped him by holding up his own gloved hand. No words needed to be exchanged after that.

Colonel Jack Collins nodded his thanks and then turned to finish the last three miles to Perdition.

LAREDO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
LAREDO, TEXAS

Niles waited in front of the large-screen television
for his call to be answered. It didn’t take the president long.

“I answer my phone, but you don’t answer yours. Is that the way things work now, Niles?”

“You have my apologies, we…,” Niles paused and removed his glasses, “… I was in the air as a diversion for Colonel Collins and his two men to leave the aircraft.”

The president looked through the camera on top of the monitor on his small laptop
inside the Oval Office and didn’t say a word. He waited.

“My orders,” Niles finally said. “I think it was wrong of you not to allow me to use the assets of my department to rescue one of my people. And now that this rescue mission has been suspended, delayed, I don’t believe you ever had a handle on the situation, at least as well as you thought you did.”

The president stared at the face of
the best friend he ever had. The polar opposite of himself in most everything except politics, Niles usually knew just how far he could push his buddy from their college days. And as usual, his conscience, as he called Compton while by himself, was right.

“The president of Mexico is juggling too much. Hell, he’s hanging on to power by the skin of his teeth. This Guzman has a long reach and the
whole of the Mexican government is terrified of him.”

“This is clearly an act of war if they are allowing this to continue unchecked,” Compton said

“Baldy, they don’t believe young McIntire is even on his property any longer. They say she’s already been moved.”

“But we—”

The president held his hand up. “We know Guzman is lying, Baldy. That hacienda is now covered by more cameras than they
had at last year’s Superbowl.” The president closed his eyes while he thought a moment. He opened them and then looked at his friend two thousand miles away in Laredo. “This madman thinks he’s immune, that we have our hands tied. And he’s right to a point. With Department 5656 so black in nature, Congress would hang me in front of the Capitol for sending in an armed force over there for a purely law
enforcement issue.” The president shook his head angrily and held up his hand once more when he saw that Niles was about to explode.

Compton was joined by Pete Golding at the communications console. He sat out of picture range and placed his hand on the director’s arm to calm him down.

“If this fails, of course you have my resignation.”

“Resign? No, that won’t happen. If you attempt it I will
fire and then whoever else I need to fire, and then order you back to the Group without some of your key people. Is sneaky little bastard Pete Golding there listening? I know he is, so he’s witness to what I say. And if for one minute you don’t think I have the power to do it, just try me Director Compton. Friends are damned. And I want to speak with Colonel Collins if he gets out of this mess
without getting wacked in Mexico. Now, what can I do to assist the colonel and get my people back safely?”

Niles dipped his head in thanks.

“Remember Baldy, they’re also
my
people, not just yours.”

PERDITION HACIENDA
NUEVO LAREDO, MEXICO

Collins, Mendenhall, and Everett stopped to take a breath. They were muddy and filthy and because at several points in the long-winding fresh-water culvert
they had encountered age-old cave-ins and a narrowing of the pipe itself, their backs ached, and all three were feeling the cramps in their legs.

“They don’t describe things like this in all those, ‘Be All You Can Be’ or ‘Army of One’ commercials, do they Lieutenant?” Everett said smiling as he removed a small black box from Jack’s backpack. He opened the box and then quickly removed a small
flashlight-looking device attached to the box by a long cord.

“According to GPS we’re about a half a mile from the hacienda. It’s time to see just how much company we have waiting for us out there,” Everett said as he spied the broken culvert a few feet ahead of them. Jack only nodded his agreement.

As Carl positioned himself near the break, he lowered his night vision goggles and slowly eased
himself upward toward the now star-filled sky above them. As his head came free of the underground world, he brought the heat-sensing probe up and pointed it toward the spot he hoped the hacienda was located. Down below him Jack wiped sweat from his face and brought the small LCD monitor online. His heart sank when, one by one, each of the roving patrols of Guzman’s guards appeared as a bright
blob of red, yellow, and white heat. Collins hissed as Will looked over his shoulder.

“How are we looking?” Everett whispered from above them.

Jack could only lower the monitor back into the small black box and then in anger kick it away.

“What was I thinking?” he asked no one but himself.

Everett eased himself back down into the culvert and then looked from Mendenhall to the colonel.

“What’s
wrong now,” he said as he coiled up the long cord and replaced the heat sensor back on its clip on the side of the black box.

“At least two hundred men, between us and the hacienda,” Mendenhall answered for Jack. Will shook his head at Everett, not wanting the colonel to see the gesture—one of hopelessness. He then moved off farther down the culvert toward Perdition.

Jack was thinking furiously
when Mendenhall returned. “More good news here—the culvert ends. We have a massive collapse of the concrete and it’s pretty much filled in ahead.”

Collins lowered his head and angrily slapped at his wool cap, and pulling it free of his head along with the night vision goggles. Everett was also lost for words. He knew they were trained to think on the fly, to improvise; that’s how Special Forces
operatives thought. But now they were all out of options. To make a run on the hacienda through all of that open space was suicide—especially against well-armed men that basically used the same night equipment as themselves.

“I’m all out of ideas,” Collins said as he stared at the running water beneath his feet.

Everett thought as hard as he could, but he could see no way out of their dilemma.
He thought the colonel was not going to say anything, when Jack suddenly removed his right-hand glove and then shoved it into the flowing water at his feet. The small stream from the Rio Grande was moving at a pretty good clip south, toward the hacienda.

“Will, if the culvert is collapsed ahead, where in the hell is this water disappearing to?” he asked as he replaced his cap and night vision
goggles and then lowered them and moved off to the spot Mendenhall had been at earlier.

Everett gave Will a curious look and then followed Jack. Mendenhall, instead of going with his commanding officers, leaned once more against the old and cracked concrete of the culvert and pulled out another foil container of energy drink.

When Everett caught up with Jack twenty feet farther along the culvert,
he saw the colonel was looking down at the water as it disappeared about a foot before the cave-in.

“Look at this,” he said without looking up at Everett. “Where in the hell is this water draining off to?”

“It could be anything, Jack. Maybe there’s a fault under the old culvert.

“But wouldn’t it be—”

Before Jack could state his own opinion on the disappearing stream, they both heard a loud
crack and then the vibration hit them and they felt the cave-in. Collins knew immediately what had happened and bending over ran past Everett. When he got to the spot they had just been he raised his goggles and then quickly turned on a small flashlight and panned it around through the swirling dust. Everett hurried in behind him, and Jack had to put his hand out to stop Carl before he fell into
the large hole that had appeared at the very spot they had been just a moment before.

“Damn, Will, are you alive down there?” Collins asked as he leaned over the hole where the water was falling on a prone shape about ten feet below them. He saw movement.

“Yeah, I hit my goddamn tailbone though, and I bit my tongue. Other than that, I think I’m in one piece.”

“What in the hell did you fall
into?”

Jack saw a light come on far below and then he saw Mendenhall go to his knees in the gathering water as it fell into the hole from above.

“A tunnel,” he called up through the swirling dust. He saw something dug into the side of the tunnel and then plucked it from the wall. “It’s a reinforced tunnel, and it’s an old one, Colonel,” he said as he leaned back and heaved the object up and
through the hole where Collins caught it.

“A lantern,” Jack said as he looked it over and then handed it to Everett.

The lantern had an old reflection dish attached to its back. They all knew that the reflector was once used to add enhanced light to the otherwise weak oil-filled lantern.

“This is over a hundred years old,” Everett said. “We have so many in our vaults at the Group that I would
recognize them anywhere.”

Down below Jack watched as Mendenhall limped off toward the south. He knew it wasn’t prudent to start shouting in the enclosed space, so he would have to be patient while the lieutenant did his job—one that he was very good at. It only took a few minutes for Will to return—the longest few minutes of Jack’s life. Mendenhall looked up at the two officers as they waited
for his word.

“You’re not going to believe this one, Colonel. We have a large door down here. It’s half buried, but damn, it’s a door to somewhere.”

Jack shook his head and then without hesitation made the jump down to join Mendenhall. Everett quickly followed. When Collins examined the tunnel he saw that it was well worn and expertly constructed. Every few feet there were old timbers supporting
the roof and walls of the excavation. Every ten feet or so there was another oil lantern half dug into the dirt wall. He used his flashlight to examine the door Mendenhall had found. It was buried almost to the top with a small cave-in that happened many years before their arrival on site. Jack tossed his light to Will and then started scraping dirt away. Everett joined him while Mendenhall kept
the light on them both. Using the stock of his weapon, Carl made more headway than Jack and they soon had the old, wooden door uncovered.

“The lady or the tiger?” Everett quipped as he tried the old and rusty latch.

“I’m betting on the lady,” Jack said hoping beyond hope it was a secret way into Perdition.

Carl tugged on the door, but it refused to budge. He gripped the old steel handle with
both gloved hands and tried again. This time the door opened so suddenly that it caught Everett unawares. The cascade of sand and dirt almost covered him before Jack could pull him free of the avalanche of debris from the opposite side of the wooden door.

Mendenhall stepped forward and his eyes widened. In the greenish hue of the ambient-light goggles a secret underground world opened up beyond
the door. He raised his goggles and brought his flashlight up and shined it around. The dust was thick, but that didn’t stop Will from seeing an amazing site. It looked like an ancient, underground laboratory. He recognized items used in the labs back at the Group and many more things that were just as unfamiliar to him. Jack and Everett added their light to the strange scene in front of them.