Killing Time (One-Eyed Jacks) (35 page)

It was over in less than seven seconds.

And they now had a pistol and a shotgun.

“One down,” Mike mouthed and Taggart and Eva assumed their positions on either side of the door again.

For several seconds, nothing happened. But when the silence stretched, it didn’t take long for Bryant and Wagoner to check on their comrade.

“Simmons? What the fuck you doing, man?”

“I think he might have hurt himself, guys,” Mike said cheerfully. “But that could just be wishful thinking on my part.”

Bryant appeared at the door in a shot. When he couldn’t see into the dark, he peeked inside, then tentatively walked in. Eva jammed the broken lightbulb into his hand. He dropped his gun and opened his mouth to howl like a coyote—but Taggart was right behind him. He looped the electrical cord over his head from behind, jerked it tight and down. Bryant fell to his knees clawing at the cord. Taggart slammed his knee between his shoulder blades with the force of a Mack truck and drove him face-first into the floor.

Wagoner charged in the door right behind Bryant. “What the—”

Cooper dropped out of the rafters, landed on his shoulders, and rode him all the way to the ground. Wagoner’s head hit the floor with a loud thud, and it was lights out.

“I’ve got to say, I’m impressed as hell.” Mike struggled to his feet. “But I probably could have done it better if I wasn’t on the DL.”

“Still got some work to do on that humility issue, I see.” Taggart made sure both Bryant and Wagoner were well out of commission, then tossed Wagoner’s AR-15 to Mike. He kept Simmons’s shotgun for himself while Cooper confiscated Bryant’s sawed-off.

Taggart tossed Eva a pistol that he lifted from Bryant’s hip holster. “Figure a woman who can handle a lightbulb like that can sure as hell handle a pistol.”

“I’d rather it was a Glock,” she said, chambering a round, “but this’ll do.”

“And so will you,” Taggart said with a grin. “You’ll do just fine. Shall we boogie, boys and girl?”

“Remember,” Mike said. “No shots unless you absolutely have to.”

Cooper took the lead, with Mike and Eva sandwiched between him and Taggart, who was pulling up the rear. When Cooper reached the corner of the building he held up a hand, two fingers extended.

Two guards.

Taggart skirted Mike—who really was in no condition to be contemplating any full-body contact—and snuck a peek around the corner.

“They’re taking a smoke break,” he whispered. “One on the left is mine.”

Cooper nodded and grabbed one end of the electrical cord. Taggart started swinging the other end with the porcelain fixture attached. When he had a good head of steam worked up, he gave Cooper a nod. “Stand by.”

He swung the cord several more times, building up speed, then let it fly. The fixture connected with a thud just behind the guard’s left ear. He dropped like a rock.

Before the second guard could react, Cooper shot out of the shadows and used his end of the cord as a garrote. The man fought, twitched, then finally went still.

Cooper was letting him slide to the ground when the third guard rounded the corner, checking up on his two buddies.

“Hi.” Eva stepped out of the shadows, a big, flirty smile on her face. “I don’t suppose you could give a girl a light.”

In the split second it took him to get past flummoxed to “holy shit,” Mike rammed the butt end of the AR-15 into his stomach. The guy doubled over and got a second hit on the back of his head.

“Well, hell,” Cooper whispered with an approving grin. “Guess we’ll take you out of the dead weight column.”

“Damn straight.” Mike winced at the pain that grabbed him in his ribs. “The motor pool’s this way.”

“Wait.” Eva’s hand on his arm stopped him. “The motor pool?”

He laced his fingers through hers and took off running. “Unless you’ve got a better idea, but I have serious doubts about them giving us the keys to that chopper.”

“Stop.” She planted her feet, dragged him to a halt. “We’re leaving?”

“Yes. We’re leaving.”

“But I thought we’d decided . . .”

“I’m making an executive decision. Change of plans. I’m not sticking around to give them the chance to plan our execution. Did you see that woman’s eyes? She’s insane. Now come on. We’ve got to go.”

“But what about the guns?” She forced him to look at her. “I thought the plan was to stop the cartel from getting the guns.”

He looked poleaxed. “That
was
the plan . . . when we thought Gabe and the BOIs, and ATF and DEA,
and
the FBI would be charging in with enough firepower to blow this place to kingdom come. But they don’t have a clue what’s going down out here. And in case you’ve forgotten, there are over one hundred of them.” He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder, where special lights had apparently been rigged for tonight’s festivities and glowed from the big outdoor rally that appeared to be staged somewhere in the vicinity of the shooting range. “I’m getting you out of here. We’ll get word to Gabe as soon as we can. He can figure out a way to deal with it later.”

“Later will be too late.”

He stared at her, flabbergasted. “No. I let you do this to me before. I let you shame me into going for the guns. Well, we tried that. And we ended up locked up and almost dead. I’m not falling for it again.”

When she stood her ground, he appealed to Cooper and Taggart. “Help me out here, damn it. Tell her there’s nothing we can do.”

Cooper glanced uncomfortably at Taggart. “He’s probably right.”

“Probably?” Mike swore under his breath. “What is
wrong
with you? If we don’t get her out of here right now,
right this very now,
we may not get her out of here alive.”

Taggart compressed his mouth, shrugged. “I don’t think Eva is as concerned about getting herself out as you are.”

Mike glared at him. “Seriously? You’re going to take her side in this?”

“This isn’t about sides,” Eva insisted. “It’s about doing the right thing. If La Linea gets those guns, a lot of innocent people are going to die.”

“For the love of—” Mike dragged a hand through his hair. She was making him crazy. He was not going to lose her. He was
not
going to—

“Mike . . . this is bigger than us,” she appealed softly. “Way bigger.”

“I told you
not
to play the duty and honor card again. All it got me was a less than honorable discharge, my career down the tubes, my life stolen. My friends dead or gone.” He glanced at Taggart and Cooper.

He finally had them back. He couldn’t lose them again. And for the first time in his life, he had a woman worth holding on to. He would not lose her.

Yet if he didn’t stand and fight, he would lose her anyway. As he stood there in the dark, with the PA system ramping up and Lawson’s zealot voice booming across the meadow, he knew he would lose them
all
again if he insisted on saving them.

Just like he would lose what he’d recovered of himself, if he walked away from this challenge.

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Fine. But if she loses one freaking hair, I’m going to make you all wish you were never born. Especially you,” he told Eva, just before he dragged her against him and kissed her.

“Aw.” Taggart’s teeth glowed white in the dark. “Group hug?”

“I’m in.” Cooper opened his arms.

“Fuck you both,” Mike grumbled. “Let’s just get this done.”

“You sure you can make this happen?” Cooper huffed under the weight of almost eighty pounds of coiled det cord as the four of them snuck around the back perimeter of the camp and headed for the mine in the dark.

“Am I sure the sun’s gonna shine tomorrow?” Taggart humped a large canvas bag filled with blocks of C-4 on his back.

“Not sure that’s the best comparison,” Cooper muttered, “considering we might all blow like a JDAM if you screw things up.”

“I won’t screw it up. Why do you think they call me Boom Boom?”

“Because you douse all your food with chili sauce?”

“TMI, boys.” Eva kept pace behind them with the detonators.

Mike led the way carrying the blasting caps, reaching deep to outdistance the pain. They stayed as far away from each other as possible, because one tiny zap of static electricity could cause the detonators or
blasting caps to blow like an action scene in a Rambo movie.

“And I’m still gonna have all my fingers and toes when we’re through?” Mike gritted out, struggling to keep a steady pace as the sharp pain in his ribs nearly brought him to his knees.

“Save your breath and lead the way, flyboy. I’ll get you in, we’ll set the charges, get out, and this place will blow sky high.”

But Mike knew that even if Boom Boom was right and this worked, there was no guarantee they were getting out of here alive.

Breaking into the armory had been a piece of cake. All the other men in the camp were attending the rally. The women and kids would not have been allowed to attend the rally, which meant they were all tucked in their cabins and would be well away from the fireworks when the C-4 detonated.

Still, Mike wasn’t going to breathe easy until they set the charges and beat feet away from the blast site.

“How much farther?” Cooper carried the heaviest load.

“Just a hundred yards or so. Now quiet down. There are bound to be guards.”

“Fuck,” Cooper sounded exhausted. “Can nothing be easy?”

Mike stumbled and almost went down, but dug deep and kept on going.

“Hold,” he whispered when they were within twenty yards of the mine shaft.

Everyone dropped to their bellies.

Taggart lifted the NV binoculars he’d tagged from the armory. “I count four.”

“I don’t have another hand-to-hand in me. Shoot ’em.” Cooper had rolled to his back. He was sucking wind, recovering from the hard pull with his heavy load. “Damn, I’m out of shape.”

“Taggart?” Mike glanced at his friend.

“I just happened to snag a sound suppressor. Lawson knows how to stock an armory.”

“Clock’s tickin’.” Mike hardened his mind against the ugly part of war. Simmons and the others deserved what they got. These guys might, too. But cold-blooded killing was one of the worst parts of combat.

Taggart handed Mike the NV binoculars, dug the suppressor out of his pocket, and threaded it onto the end of the AR-15. Balancing the rifle barrel on a fallen log, he got a bead on his targets through the NV scope and on a long exhale, popped off four rounds in rapid succession.

Through the binoculars, Mike watched each man go down.

“Let’s go,” he said, and the four of them rose to their feet and sprinted toward the entrance to the mine shaft.

•   •   •

“Problem,” Mike said once they’d broken the lock with bolt cutters and scrambled into the mine. “One of the semis is gone. What do you want to bet it’s sitting on the chopper pad, ready to offload onto that bad boy?”

“So they . . . what? Just fly across U.S. airspace uncontested?” Eva asked.

Mike answered, “If they fly at night, under radar, they’re not going to be detected. Sounds crazy but it works.”

“Let’s worry about one problem at a time.” Cooper started uncoiling the det cord, which looked like brightly colored clothesline rope—only much more lethal. “Where do you want this?”

Taggart dug into the pack and hauled out several blocks of C-4, then paused to admire it. “Beautiful. Like Play-Doh that goes boom.”

“Where do you want it?” Cooper repeated, edgy and impatient.

“Chill, bro. You can’t rush with this stuff—not unless you want to be reduced to particles that someone cleans up with a dustpan. If I do this wrong and one charge blows prematurely, another could go off due to sympathetic detonation.

“So deep breaths, all right?” He looked from one to the other, and when he was satisfied they were calm, got down to business. “For starters, we’re going to wrap each block with a loop or two of det cord, then string it around the mine shaft. Start with the timbers that brace the ceiling and walls—put extra charges near the entrance. If for some reason the trucks don’t blow, we’ll make damn sure no one gets in here to retrieve these guns.”

With Cooper and Mike busy rigging the mine, Taggart turned to Eva. “I need you to wrap these
blocks of C-4 with det cord, okay? I’ll crawl under the trucks and stick ’em under the trailers. Once everything’s in place, you all clear out, I’ll crimp on the blasting caps, and hook everything up to the remote detonator.”

“There’s a remote detonator?” Cooper looked relieved as he returned to Taggart’s side.

“Well, I thought about having you light a fuse, but what would the world do without your pretty face?”

“Mourn,” Cooper said, deadpan, and set about his deadly work.

When Taggart was satisfied everything was ready, he handed Mike a black box with an antenna to which he’d attached wires to two terminals. “Head outside with this.”

“Detonator?”

“You’re not as dumb as you look.”

Mike grunted. “I’m
here
, aren’t I?”

“Relax. I’ve got around three thousand feet of wire. We’ll be well out of the blast zone when this baby blows.

“Come on,” Taggart added after double-checking all of his connections and the work the other three had done. “Let’s beat feet.”