BRAINRUSH 02 - The Enemy of My Enemy (18 page)

“Su-weeet!” Marshall said as he unpacked a midsized cooking pot, a can of Sterno fuel, and a number of vacuum-sealed packages of freeze-dried food. “I didn’t realize I was hauling dinner on my back. Dude, there’s even coffee and sugar in here. All we need now is a campfire.”

 “I-I’m hungry,” Josh said, his teeth clattering. He sat on a flat-topped rock, his knees pulled to his chest, one arm draped over Max’s neck.

Bradley sat down beside them. He smacked his soggy baseball cap against his thigh, pulled it back over his head, then wrapped an arm around the boy to keep him warm. His eyes were fixed on Marshall as he emptied the pack. “Is the satellite phone in there?”

A shadow passed across Marshall’s face. He shook his head. “Jake kept it,” he said.

Tony dumped his vest and helmet on the pile with the others and crouched down beside Marshall. He placed his hand on his buddy’s shoulder.

“He’s gonna be okay,” Tony said. “Francesca, too. One way or another, Jake would’ve put one over on those assholes.”

Marshall’s eyes were hopeful. “You think?” 

“Bank on it,” Tony said. “And we’re gonna be all right, too.” He reached down and sorted through the packets spread out on the ground in front of Marshall. When he found the one he was searching for, he held it up.

“Hell, man. We’ve even got cocoa for the kids,” he said with a grin.

 Though the temperature in the cave hovered in the high sixties, their soaking clothes were taking a toll. A steaming cup of coffee or hot chocolate would feel pretty good right about now.

Using his pocket knife, Tony levered the top off the Sterno can.“You get the water,” he said, unfolding the wire frame that would support the pot. “And I’ll start the stove.”

He unscrewed the top from a small waterproof cylinder. Pulling out one of the strike-anywhere matches, he angled its tip against the surface of a nearby boulder.

“Stop!” Becker shouted.

Tony froze.

Becker jogged out of the shadows. He held a clump of what looked like dried mud in his hand. “Whatever you do, Sarge, don’t strike that match.”

“What the hell, Beck?” Tony asked. He lifted the match away from the rock.

Becker squeezed his fist around the dark gray mound in his hand. It broke into dust and drifted to the floor. “Bat guano,” he said. “Emits ammonia. Highly flammable. The air’s full—”   

The girls’ ear-splitting screams echoed down from their perch near the top of the cavern. Tony’s gaze snapped upward but the lantern’s glow wasn’t enough to penetrate the thick shadows overhead. He started climbing immediately, with Becker right behind him. Max’s barks echoed from below.

Tony saw scattered flashes of light from the girls’ helmet lamps. They flickered on and off as if they were in the midst of a whirlwind of flying debris. The renewed shrieks spurred the two men up the steep path. Tony flicked on his torchlight. The strong beam brought the undulating mass of blackness above them into crisp detail. The area at the top of the cavern was filled with a swirling mass of angry bats.

“Hold on!” Tony shouted as he and Becker clambered up the twisting mesh of ledges and outcroppings.

“Bloody hell,” Becker said. “There’re thousands of the bleedin’ buggers.”

As they neared the girls, the black cloud of webbed wings thinned out. Becker trained his helmet light on the ceiling. Tony saw the spiraling formation of flapping wings begin to disappear into a shadowed vent as if they were being sucked into a giant vacuum cleaner.  

The screaming transitioned to sobs. Tony climbed the final ledge to find Lacey and Sarafina huddled in a tight embrace within a narrow crevice. Lacey’s hands shielded the girl’s face. He crouched beside them and wrapped them in his arms.

“I’ve got ya,” he said. “You’re gonna be fine.”

“A-are they gone?” Lacey asked, panting. There weren’t many things that shook her. Apparently bats were on the short list.

“No worries, sugar,” Becker said as he walked up and watched the last of the bats vanish. “You girls scared them silly.” He shone his light into the opening above them. “And in the process, you may have discovered a way out of here.”

**

Tony and Becker stood on an eight-foot-wide ledge that curved nearly twenty feet around the crown of the cavern. They stared up at the vent.

“It’s too damn narrow,” Tony said. “Especially further up.” He extended the flashlight into the fourteen-inch-wide crevasse and scanned its interior. The twisting orifice stretched upward seven or eight feet through the rock.

“What about the kids?” Becker asked. “Could they squirm through?”

“I don’t think so,” Tony said. His gut tightened at the thought of Sarafina or Josh getting stuck halfway up. He flicked off the flashlight and saw a twinkle of starlight beyond the opening.

“Dammit,” he said, pounding a fist against the rock. “We’re so close!”

What a load of crap, Tony thought. Two days ago they’d all been safe at home. Now he and his friends were trapped beneath the surface of the Mexican desert, with two kids and a dog, no less. Jake and Francesca were either captured or dead, and his family was in serious danger. And to top it all off, Luciano Battista is on the loose and likely planning something monumental on Tony’s home turf in L.A. Man, he’d give anything to have his hands wrapped around that asshole’s throat.

Becker chipped at the limestone opening with his Bowie knife. Bits and pieces flaked away with each strike. “It won’t be easy,” he said. “But in five or six days, working in shifts—”

“Guys!” Marshall’s shout reverberated from below. “You need to get down here fast.”

Tony and Becker made their way to the base of the chamber. Tony noticed that the overflow from the pond had grown considerably. A steady stream of water snaked into the nearby chute. Marshall played his hand over the wall that climbed above the pool.

“It’s leaking,” Marshall said. He lifted the lantern above his head to illuminate more of the wall. It glistened with a thin sheen of water. “I don’t think the lower section of this wall is solid rock. It’s marbled with compacted dirt.” He pointed to a wavy line of discoloration higher up the wall. “See how the texture changes above that line? There’s no water seeping through up there. But down here?” He shrugged his shoulders. “It’s as though there used to be a passage through here, but it’s been blocked by centuries of silt buildup.”

As Tony stepped forward to get a closer look, a man-sized chunk separated itself from the sodden wall and splashed into the pond, sending a wave of water across everyone’s feet.

Bradley picked up Josh. Tony and Becker backed away. Marshall rushed to rescue the food packets. He stuffed them into his backpack along with the Sterno and cooking pot. Lacey and Sarafina were relatively safe as they sat on a ledge on the far side of the pond.

Rivulets of mud slithered down the wall.

All at once Tony realized what was happening. Pressure from the rising water in the chamber they’d left behind had reached a critical point.
If that wall burst…
  

“Everyone up to the top!” he shouted.

Another chunk of wall calved into the water. A torrent of mud flowed behind it and flooded the pond. A wash of water pushed through the fissure and swept the pile of life jackets and helmets into the exit chute. One of the helmet lamps had been left on. Its beam lit the tunnel like a car’s headlights as it vanished around a corner.

Bradley and Josh scrambled up the ledges. Max bounded beside them. Marshall followed with the backpack slung over one shoulder. Becker was next.

Lacey and Sarafina hugged the wall above the chute. Tony leapt to a nearby ledge. Lacey passed Sarafina across and he lifted her to the next ledge. Her life jacket was still snug around her, and her helmet remained strapped to her chin. Lacey jumped up on her own, agile as a mountain cat. 

Tony was next.

He was midstride when the river blasted through the passageway. The wave shoved him chest-first against the wall. He would have lost his footing had it not been for Lacey’s sudden grip around his wrist. The initial surge of water fell from his shoulders and he heaved himself to the ledge.

“Go!” he yelled to Lacey, pointing upward. He knew the deluge would quickly return after it bounced against the opposite wall and reversed its course. Its force would be tripled by the continuing surge from the other chamber.

Lacey and Sarafina hustled up to the next shelf. Tony leapt up beside them just as the next wave struck. His feet flew out from under him and he spilled toward the edge. He clawed blindly at the rock. His fingers found a sharp outcrop and he held on for dear life.

The swell retreated. He shoved himself to his feet and blinked water from his eyes. The next surge would impact any moment, carrying an even greater volume of water. Lacey stood beside him, her eyes wide in horror. He followed her gaze into the tempest below.

A flash of orange.

A girl’s scream.

Sarafina’s tiny body spun only once in the swirling vortex before it was sucked into the chute and disappeared. Lacey didn’t hesitate. She dove headfirst into the abyss, just before the next surge smashed Tony against the wall.

Chapter 32

Fifteen hundred feet above the California/Mexico border

“B
oth Falcons are running true,” Kenny announced over the radio. “Maintain a heading of one-five-five while I set up the stealth corridor.”

“Roger,” Cal replied from the cockpit.

They were about to cross the border into Mexico. It had been only a few minutes since their unauthorized takeoff at Miramar. By now every radar operator on both sides of the border had their eyes on them.

It was time to disappear.

The UAVs flew a tight formation off the CV-22’s starboard wing. Kenny’s fingers did a rock dance on the console’s keyboard. The twin birds peeled into a sharp climbing turn that would send them into high cover slots on either side of the CV-22’s route.

The genius of the drones’ manta-ray designs lay in its miniaturization and lightweight construction. With a wingspan of only fifteen feet, a cruising speed of four hundred knots, and an engine buried deep within its body, the sleek craft had a virtually undetectable radar and infrared signature. The drones were outfitted with a sophisticated array of cameras, sensors, and offensive weaponry, including internal rotating missile pods that popped out of its underside when needed. When coupled with the versatile CV-22, its autonomous midair refueling and retrieval capabilities made it a highly effective tool for reconnaissance, targeting, and close air support. But it was its advanced jamming and phantom-signal-generation equipment that Kenny was counting on to provide cover for their escape.

“On my go, drop to one hundred feet and maintain two hundred knots.”

“Ready,” Cal reported.

“Three, two, one—go.”

Kenny hit the Run Program key. He switched radio frequencies so he could monitor the response from Mexican air traffic control. Up until now, the airwaves had been filled with nothing but angry threats.

“US aircraft about to enter Mexican airspace, this is your final warn—” The distraught Mexican air defense controller stopped midsentence.

Kenny grinned.

It would appear to anyone tracking them on radar that the Osprey had suddenly reversed its course, compliments of his software program and the drones’ powerful jammers.

“Uh…sorry, Control,” Kenny announced on the international guard frequency reserved for emergency transmissions. “This is Osprey four-six-niner declaring an emergency. Two souls on board. We’ve had a major instrumentation failure and request immediate vectoring back to Miramar.”

“Stand by, four-six-niner, squawk ident,” the controller said. Relief was evident in his tone. Kenny waited as Cal complied to the request with a quick press of the Ident
button on the Osprey’s transponder. There was a brief pause as the controller presumably confirmed what his screen was telling him.

Kenny entered a few quick keystrokes to engage a program that would distort his next transmission to make it sound as if their communication gear was failing. It was an overused trick practiced in the movies by military pilots when they chose to disobey an order, made far more believable by Kenny’s software. He spoke naturally into his headset, but the transmission broke into: “M—control—com—fail—” Then static.

Switching to the internal com, Kenny said, “Okay, Cal, squawk seventy-six hundred and we’re good to go.” 

The controller would assume from the international distress code that they had lost communication. The phantom blip on their screens representing the Osprey would continue to track northward toward Miramar. The drones could maintain the charade from as far as six hundred miles away. The Mexicans would assume there was no longer a threat and pass the CV-22 over to Miramar control. Controllers on both sides of the border would breathe more easily.

In the meantime, the cloaked Osprey and its twin escorts slipped unnoticed into Mexican airspace.