Devil's Run (37 page)

I sucked in some air and
prayed the water was deep. I knew it would be cold, so I clamped my mouth shut,
resolving to hold in as much air as possible.

Günter hit first,
gasping at the shock of the frigid water. His lungs emptied in a stream of
bubbles as we plunged towards the bottom. Out of air, he struggled towards the
surface, spinning me to one side, but he was hampered by his waterlogged
clothing and heavy boots. I wrapped my legs around his torso and tried to hold
him under, but I had no real leverage. His great strength forced us up, but
then the roaring sound increased and we were under the falls, the pounding
water pushing from above while a swirling current pulled from below. My hands
scraped along the uneven bottom and I hooked the handcuff chain on the stump of
a stalagmite, holding us both down. He punched me and clawed at my face, but his
struggles became weaker, the punches losing their power, and then he was still.

I released him, unhooked
the chain, and pushed off diagonally from the bottom, away from the waterfall.
I gulped in air when I broke the surface and began bicycling my legs to stay
there. Memories of the two weeks of torture with a Navy SEAL in North Carolina
flashed through my mind, especially the part where he taught us to swim with
our hands tied behind us and feet bound at the ankles. At the time I’d
considered reporting it as a war crime; right now I thought it the most
productive experience of my entire life. With my legs free, staying afloat was
child’s play, but I had another problem; in the icy water I had just minutes
before extreme hypothermia set in.

I started for shore and
noticed the rocky bank was speeding by. Hypothermia, it seemed, was the least
of my worries. What I had thought was an underground lake was actually a river
rushing towards some subsurface outlet. I was caught in its powerful current,
which now began to drag me under as well. I pumped my legs harder to keep my
head above the surface, but the effort and the extreme cold were stealing the
last of my strength.

I took a lungful of air
and relaxed. The vortex pulled me beneath the surface. Except for suspended
minerals, the water was gin clear in the glare of the still burning electric
lights. I flew past dissolving stalagmites, Günter’s body pacing me a few feet
ahead. Then the current shifted, taking us around a slight bend. Ahead was what
at first appeared to be solid rock, but then I saw the black mouth of a roughly
circular opening, nearly the width of a man’s body, its edges worn smooth by
the passage of countless tons of water. The suspended particles began swirling
just ahead of it, glittering briefly before disappearing inside, like stars
sucked into a black hole.

Going through that
opening would not be a good thing, and even if I wasn’t sucked through, I would
be pinned against it or jammed in partway to drown. Unless I could plug the
hole.

I surfaced for a quick
breath of air, then swam down towards Günter, reversing myself when I reached
him. I pressed my ankles against either side of his torso, catching him between
my legs so that I was approaching the drain feet first, holding his corpse
towards the opening. I maneuvered him to a somewhat vertical position, so he
would not go in head or feet first. Just before impact, I released him and
placed my feet on his chest.

We hit the opening and surrounding
rock with a force that rattled my teeth. I kicked out with both legs, over and
over, stuffing the corpse into the opening. The pressure of water on my back
seemed to ease. I moved down his body, kicking at his legs, forcing them into a
crevice at the bottom, sealing as much of the hole as possible.

The river released its
grip. I kicked up, breaking the surface into a chaotic world lit by orange
flame and shaken by secondary explosions. A tear opened in the wall of the
green house and it imploded, the lower pressure inside sucking in the flames.

The blasts and the heat
were weakening the cave. Chunks of ceiling dropped like missiles, some
splashing into the water around me, others shattering on the cavern floor. I
ignored them, concentrating on swimming towards the shore with legs that felt
dead. How I would get out with my hands cuffed behind me was not clear yet, but
my dulling mind suggested solving that problem once I got there.

When I reached the bank,
the water, backing up from the plugged hole, was noticeably higher. If it rose
high enough, I could flop over like a seal, but that was not going to happen in
time. The water was just too cold and my strength was ebbing fast. It was all I
could do to just keep my head above the surface.

I rested my chin on the
rocky bank and relaxed, so that I was just hanging there. All pain was gone,
and I was actually feeling a little elated. From my low angle I could not see
much, but a column of black smoke was pumping towards the dark ceiling and I
smiled at it, happy that at least I was taking their operation down with me.

A figure entered my line
of vision, coming directly at me. It was a guard, wearing the trademark orange
parka and carrying a submachine gun. He came directly towards me. There was
nothing I could do, so I just watched him, waiting for the muzzle flash that
would be the last thing I ever saw. Dimly, I saw him lay the gun down and loom
over me. I continued watching, just a spectator, while he reached out and
grabbed me by the hair. I remember thinking that was very strange. I was
pulled, none to gently, half out of the river, where he shifted his grip to my
belt and dragged me onto dry rock, turning me on my back.

“Craig! Craig!” The
guard slapped me twice on the face. “Snap out of it.”

There was a sudden burst
of new flame as the processing building caught fire. The bright orange light
lit up the face of my rescuer.

“Cat?”

“I swear to God, if you
call me that again I’ll toss you back in the water.”

“Yes, Chief Masterson.”

“Can you walk?” Her question
was punctuated by a loud blast and a mushroom of flame from the processing
building.

“I’d planned on
running.”

“You’d better. It’s
every girl for herself from this point on.”

“The elevator,” I said.

She helped me to my
feet, stepping behind me.

“What are you doing?”

“There was a cuff key in
this jacket.”

My hands came free and
then we were running behind the green house. My legs were numb and ungainly, so
I immediately fell behind. The heat was tremendous, and steam rose from my
clothes as they began to dry.

Ten yards ahead, Cat
pressed the button to call the elevator. I stopped beside her, looking at the
remains of the nearest building. Flames had reached the chemical storage room.

“We don’t have much
time,” I said. “There’s drums of cleaning solvent in there and we are way too
close.”

Above us, a thick
overcast was sinking lower and lower, eating away at the breathable air. A huge
piece of rock appeared silently from the murk, striking the concrete in front
of the blackened, mangled remains of the forklifts and breaking apart with a
sound like a cannon shot. I yanked Catherine down, covering her body with mine
as the shrapnel pelted me and clanged off the metal frame of the elevator.

The elevator thumped to
a stop and we scrambled on. Catherine punched the button, but nothing happened.

“Do you have one of the
cards?” I said.

“What cards?”

“They all carry them.
Look in your pockets”

She dug around in the
parka, and found the white card.

“Now what?”

“Swipe it.”

“It’s asking for a
code.”

“It’s eight digits. I
think it’s the date,” I said. “Punch in today’s date.”

She tapped in the eight
digits. “It didn’t work.”

“Shit! Wait, the
security people are European. Give me the card.”

I swiped it against the
panel and punched in the eight digit date military style: day first, then month
and year. The platform began to rise.

“That was some guess,”
said Catherine.

“Not really. One of the
guards gave it away back at the cell.”

The greenhouse was a
liquid mess, the molten plastic running into the river. The processing building
was a riot of explosions as the volatile chemicals ignited. Then we were in a
thick fog of toxic smoke. The chemical smell was nauseating. We held our breath
until we were through the worst of it, into a rocky shaft. Above us was light.

“You probably know more
about this than I do,” said Cat, shoving the MP5 towards me.

I took the gun and
checked the chamber and magazine. Cat had a USP in her hand now.

“Ever shot anyone?” I
said.

“No.”

“Don’t think about them
as people, just targets. Let your training take over. And remember the mag
release for that gun is on the trigger guard.”

“Right.”

The elevator bumped to a
halt and we were looking out from the tower of pallets I’d seen the previous
evening.

“We’re in the ghost town
warehouse,” I said, raising the MP5 to my shoulder. “Are you ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.”

We crept to the end of
the pallets. I felt the vibration of another explosion below my feet. The
pallets shuddered ominously. There was no sound of activity and the forklifts
stood unused. Lights were on in the office. I glanced over at the open
warehouse door. One of the Sno-Cats was idling just inside, pointed towards the
opening. Two armed men stood guard nearby.

“I’ll take those two,” I
whispered. “Cover the office.”

I led the way towards
the Sno-Cat, sweeping the barrel in front of me. The two men looked at us
curiously, confused by Catherine’s orange parka. Then one of them realized
something was wrong.

“Shit,” he said, and
raised his weapon.

I fired a three round
burst and shifted to the other man. A second burst took him in the chest and he
fell next to his buddy. Pistol shots rang out behind me. I turned to the
office, where a man was dragging himself back inside, his leg a dead weight.

“How many?” I said.

“Two. I only got the
one.”

The building shuddered
again and one of the pallet towers collapsed, spewing shards of splintered wood
across the warehouse.

“Get in the Cat.”

We ran to the vehicle. I
put a couple of bursts through the office windows while Catherine climbed in.

“Set!” she said.

“Okay, cover me.” I
snatched up the dead men’s fallen weapons and climbed up.

“You know how to drive
one of these?” she said, as I settled in front of the controls.

“How hard can it be?”

I put it into gear and stepped
on the gas. We lurched backwards. Catherine gave me a look.

“I knew that would
happen,” I said, correcting the gear. “See if you can find the heater. I’m
soaked.”

“Take this while I
look.” She shrugged out of the parka and put it over my shoulders.

The Cat rumbled out of
the warehouse into the muddy, churned up snow.

“Where are we headed?”
she said.

“I’m headed up top. The
rats will be leaving the ship. See if you can spot the service trail.”

She opened the door and
leaned out for a better look. “There, over to the right.” She looked back. “Oh,
dear God!”

“What?”

“The warehouse.”

I stopped the Cat and
looked back. The building was collapsing in on itself, the roof crumbling, the
walls folding in. It began to sink slowly, then suddenly disappeared, engulfed
in a plume of pulverized earth and black oily smoke. The sinkhole snatched a
nearby building in its widening maw.

“Jesus,” I said, “the
ceiling must have collapsed.”

“Well, get the fuck out
of here! This place is laced with mine shafts.”

I put the Sno-Cat into
gear and pressed my foot to the floor. We rattled up the service trail while a
good part of the ghost town disappeared in a debris cloud behind us. When I
felt we were safe, I stopped.

“Why are you stopping?”
said Catherine.

“Time for you to get
out.”

“Why? You’ll need me.”

“Not on this, Catherine.
You’re a cop, you’ve got rules. I’m not offering opportunities to give up. No
high priced lawyers and bought off juries.”

She looked at me. “Let’s
go.”

“It’s just the two of
us. Not very good odds.”

She grinned. “You want
to wait until they get some more bad guys?”

“Chief, I think I’m in
love.”

“Down tiger.”

I gave her a look. “No
police procedure bullshit?”

She reached down and
picked up one of the MP5s and confirmed it was loaded.

“I told you before,” she
said. “It’s outside my jurisdiction.”

I kept the pedal to the
floor, turning off the service trail onto Easy Street.

“What were they up to
back there?” said Cat.

“Making cocaine.”

“Say what?”

“It’s a long story, I’ll
tell you later. How did you get out of jail?”

“When the others dragged
Boyd away, I told the guard I had to go to the bathroom.” She shrugged. “I’m
sure he had visions of taking my pants down and having some fun. He got the
surprise of his life. Knocked him cold, took his jacket and guns. Left him
cuffed to those chains and stuffed his sock in his mouth to keep him quiet.”

“Nice,” I said.

“Then I went looking for
you. Got to the cavern just in time to see your swan dive off the elevator.
Nice escape plan, by the way. I assume the fire was courtesy of you.”

“I may have been
careless with flammable liquids.”

“Do tell. By the way,
where’d you learn to swim with your hands cuffed behind your back?”

“YouTube.”

“You really are a
jackass.”

We were silent for a
while. I noticed her staring at me.

“What?” I said.

“The way you shot those
two men in the warehouse. You were an assassin, weren’t you?”

“I guess you could call
it that. They had other names for it.”

“Who did you kill?”

I looked away and said
nothing.

“I understand if you
don’t want to talk about it.”

“It’s classified.”

“I understand.” She
turned away.

A moment later, my own
voice startled me. “Terrorists, sometimes, but mainly their money men and
support people. And a car dealer.”

“How? Why?”

“It was after nine
eleven. Military special units were concentrating on the active bad guys, the
ones who stage attacks. There’s only so many special ops people, and what with
the war on terror, Afghanistan, and then Iraq, there really weren’t many
resources left to attack the support network. Someone got the bright idea to
find people who lost someone in the attacks. Cops, ex-military, federal agents
like me, anyone with a certain type of training and personality. People so
anxious for revenge they would do just about anything.”

“You lost someone in the
attack?”

“I thought I did. My
wife. Mary.”

“So, this was like what
the Israelis did after Munich?”

“Yeah. We always improve
on the past by making the exact same mistakes. Protocols were created to avoid
their little errors, through redundant vetting of the targets. We even brought
in one of the Mossad executioners as a consultant. He didn’t think it was such
a good idea, but, what the hell, we were going to do it anyway and his fee was
good.”

“The man who was killed
in New York.”

“Yes. Raviv Peled.”

“Why didn’t we hear
about this? There was nothing in the papers.”

“It was a ‘black op’.
Completely off the books and kept secret from Congress. Training, deployment,
salary, everything was done through a private contractor.”

“A contractor?”

“You’ve heard of them.”
I told her the name.

“Wasn’t there some
scandal?”

“That was a byproduct of
the cover. They used a bookkeeping trick to launder the money used to pay us
and finance operations and equipment. It made it look like their contractors in
Iraq were earning a fortune in taxpayer money. In reality, a large chunk was
siphoned off to fund us. They also got caught shipping weapons that clearly
weren’t for combat, like that shipment of silenced pistols hidden in dog food
that made the New York Times. They took the financial and public relations hit
and said nothing.”

“So, what did you do?
Were you a sniper or something?”

“You can’t travel freely
if you’re armed. We used guns rarely.”

“So.” She trailed off,
as the implications of that statement became apparent.

“That’s right,” I said,
“we used whatever was at hand. Up close and personal.”

“How many people did you
kill?” she said, quietly.

“In my official
capacity? Thirty-six bad guys and one innocent.”

“The innocent. That’s
when you stopped?”

“Yes.”

“How did it happen?”

I didn’t speak for a
minute, thinking back, remembering the hit, the abort order that came ten
minutes too late.

“We got a tip
from an informant about a Pakistani in Paris. That he was a
hawaladar
.
You know what that is?”

“Some sort of money
launderer.”

“That’s not entirely
fair. Hawal is a way of moving money through personal contacts, usually
families. I need fifteen thousand bucks in New York, so my cousin in India
gives the fifteen grand to some guy there and his cousin in the Bronx hands me
the money. Of course, that evades the bank transfer tracing mechanisms, so Al
Qaeda uses it to fund some of its cells. We were told this particular guy’s
family was tight with Al Qaeda back in Pakistan, and they were using him to
funnel funds to a guy in Munich who was organizing an attack on an airliner.”

“But, he wasn’t a money
launderer.”

“No, he wasn’t. He was a
successful Peugeot dealer with multiple locations, a fat bank account, and a
wife who didn’t love him. Our informant turned out to be her boyfriend. I
didn’t learn any of this, of course, until about ten minutes after I’d killed
him. I did it in the Metro, with a cute little device hidden in an umbrella.
Just tap the target with the tip and compressed air blows nerve toxin through
the pores of his skin. Kills thirty-seconds later without leaving a trace.
Looks like a heart attack.”

“That’s awful.”

“His wife didn’t think
so.”

We were getting close. I
could see the meadow below The Retreat dead ahead.

“What happened to the
informant?”

“As far as I know, he
and the missus lived happily ever after.”

“You didn’t…?”

“Kill him? I got out of
the killing business the second I heard. Took the next plane home and went off
the grid. Thirty-seven bodies later my wife was still dead, and I didn’t miss
her any less. Only now I was a murderer.”

“Wait, you said you
thought she was killed in the attacks.”

“Yeah, and I shit canned
my career and killed thirty seven people because of it.” I laughed. “What a
stupid asshole.”

“I’m confused. She
didn’t die in the towers?”

“She died there,
alright, but not in the attack.” I looked at her. “Imperatrice murdered her.”

When we entered the
meadow, I turned off Easy Street and angled across to the right.

“Where are you going?”

“Devil’s Run. There’s
more cover there. They’ll see us coming a mile away on Easy Street.”

We reached Corrida del
Diablo and turned uphill. Three minutes later we rounded a bend.

“Look,” said Catherine.

The stone walls of The
Retreat were in sight.