Duty Bound (1995) (27 page)

"But what about Ted? The security guard and this Halley lady can make him if the cops ask who visited you at the house."

"I told Duwane and Halley to say nobody visited me while I was at the cabin. They think this is all related to me being a mob wife, remember? They're just as scared as I am. They know if they talk about Ted, it'll only cause them more trouble. Anyway, they liked Ted. They won't tell the cops about him."

"Smart," Virgil said, bobbing his head. "The lady has smarts. The story sounds good to me. Back off, Glenn; she's in with us. She's a team member."

Glenn gave Bonita a last look before backing up and nodding. "Okay, I'll back off. The story should buy us enough time."

Relieved, Ted patted Baby's head. "We got work to do.

Everybody pack up; it's time to move to our base camp and get ready for action."

Chapter 14.

2:00 A. M., Friday.

Feeling very confident about taking out the two guards, who were both sleeping soundly, Ramon crawled forward between two pines. Closing to within a couple feet of the two men, he silently pulled the buck knife from the sheath on his web belt. Lifting his other hand, holding the silenced Beretta, he slowly rose and stepped closer. Bending over, he held the knife close to one man's neck and gently nudged the other's temple with the silencer. Then he whispered in Spanish, "You fucked up, people. Shouldn't sleep on duty. You move, asshole, I'll slit your throat. You feel the steel? You, get down on your belly now. Good. Now you. Good. Now both of you put your face in the dirt. Good. Now put your hands behind you.

Do it, fuckups!"

Minutes later, his work complete, Ramon glanced at the two bound and gagged men lying at his feet as he pushed the small radio mike to the front of his lips. "Blue, this is Red. Over," he whispered.

Four hundred yards away, having heard the call in his earphone, Ted swung the boom mike around to his lips. He whispered, "Red, this is Blue. Over."

"Blue, I have a bingo, over."

"Roger, Red, understand you have a bingo. Collect the prize. Over."

"Roger, Blue. Out."

Ted lowered the mike to his chin and nodded to the blackclad men behind him. "Ramon has done it. It's our turn." He pulled his hood into place, then crept toward the porch.

Virgil and Glenn followed.

A Coleman lantern hissed, hanging from beneath the porch overhang where two men sat at a table beneath the light playing gin. One guard set his cards on the table with a grin.

"Check it out. I got your ass again. Gin."

"Shit, you're cheatin', man. No fuckin' body is that fuckin' lucky. I wanna play somethin' else."

The other man shrugged. "Like what, pig or old maid or--" He froze when a dark figure materialized out of the darkness, but he knew better than to move, because of the huge pistol pointed at his head. Another dark figure had already pressed a pistol against his companion's temple.

The bigger of the black-clad men whispered harshly, "You speak, you die. On your stomachs. Now!"

Eight minutes later Ted crept toward the Winnebago.

Grasping the door handle, he waited until Virgil was behind him before slowly opening the portal. Silenced Beretta ready, he took the steps up into the cabin and nodded toward the two men sleeping on the fold-out couch. Virgil stepped toward the two men and nodded to Ted, who continued to the back room, where the other two were sleeping. Virgil was already counting, and when he got to ten he said aloud, "Sur-prise, boys!"

Inside the old wooden cabin, Ted took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Lifting a pry bar, he inserted the tip into the loop of the lock and with a quick jerk snapped out the entire hinged lock. Looking at the other two men standing in front of the trunk, he grasped the lid. "Guys, get ready to see what we've come for." He opened the lid and grinned. "Ta da!"

Virgil sank to his knees and ran his hand over the banded stacks. "Man oh man . . . we in the money. This ride is somethin'."

Glenn smiled as he picked up one of the banded bundles and fanned himself with it. "Ted, you've outdone yourself.

There's gotta be a helluva lot more than six million here."

He looked at the other nine trunks and sighed. "Is this sweet or what?"

Ted was about to respond when a phone rang. All three men jumped, then went for the pistols in their holsters.

Realizing what the sound was, Ted stopped himself and walked quickly outside to the porch, where the cell phone lay on the table.

"What do we do?" Virgil asked.

"Ignore it. Let's get the trunks out and we'll load 'em as soon as Ramon gets here."

Ted walked back inside and was about to take hold of a trunk handle when his earphone crackled with Ramon's excited voice. "Blue, this is Red! Two Suburbans are heading your way. They just pulled onto the gravel road and are moving fast, man!"

Ted spun and barked to Glenn and Virgil, "We got company! Virg, get to the clackers; two Suburbans are coming up the road! Glenn, when the claymores go off we'll rush and finish off what's left."

Ten seconds later Virgil lay behind a tree, holding the two prepositioned electrical detonators. The wire from each led to its claymore mine, which had been set up alongside the road thirty feet away. Virgil heard the vehicles approaching but could make out only their headlight beams. Heart thudding in his chest, he rose to his knees, holding a clacker in each hand. Okay, Virgil, be cool; you got to ride this train out. Be cool, be cool, be cool, he whispered to himself.

The first dark Suburban appeared, followed closely by the second. Virgil pressed himself against the tree, lifted his right hand, and waited for one more second to ensure the lead vehicle was in the kill zone, then he squeezed. For an instant night became day in a brilliant, blinding flash of light.

Then the world seemed to end. The violent, ear-shattering explosion ripped through the forest like a monstrous screaming runaway train. The first Suburban disappeared in the debris cloud. Then Virgil squeezed the second clacker.

As soon as they heard the second explosion, Ted and Glenn got to their feet. The ground still shook beneath them.

Holding their pistols, they ran into the choking dust cloud.

The first Suburban had run off the road into a tree. The vehicle's right side was peppered and all its windows were shattered by the claymore mine's hail of steel ball bearings.

Ted swung open the left passenger door, where a screaming man was trying to get out. Ted jerked the blinded man out and was ready to fire at any surviving passengers but he saw none that were a threat. The two men who had been seated on the right side had taken the full effects of the mine and were dead. The driver was bleeding from the face and neck and was shaking as if having a fit. Holding his breath because of the overwhelming reek of C-4, blood, urine, and feces, Ted grabbed the driver and pulled him from the vehicle.

Inside the second Suburban, Glenn held his breath as he swung his Beretta and minimag flashlight left then right, checking each occupant. Two were dead, two were wounded and stunned. Both were bleeding from the shattered glass.

He grabbed the first and dragged him out of the stink and blood. Virgil appeared out of the darkness and pulled out the second moaning man. Vehicle headlights suddenly sliced through the darkness and the smoke.

Ted yelled, "Don't shoot; it's ours coming in. Can he get by that Chevy?"

Glenn yelled back, "Yes, it's off the road. We've got two live ones here."

"And I've got two here. Get 'em tied up, then get to the cabin to load!"

Still wearing their black hoods, all four men were soaked in sweat as they loaded the last trunk into the rental truck.

Bonita walked up to the men and motioned to the wounded men trussed up beside the cabin. "We can't just leave them here like that."

Ted grabbed her arm and marched back to the truck. "I told you to stay in the damn cab--Jesus, they've seen you now."

Bonita worriedly looked over her shoulder at the wounded.

"You're not like them, Teddy. Don't kill them."

"Just get in the damn truck--we're not goin' to hurt them." Once she was in the cab with Baby, he walked over to the first wounded man and nudged him with his boot.

"Yo, shithead, we're leaving you all here. None of ya look like you'll bleed to death. You're lucky we're not like you and your buddies or we'd cut your throats. We'll call the police in about thirty minutes and tell them where you are so you'll get medical attention. I know you won't tell them about us because it would mean you'd have to explain what happened, and you can't do that, can you? I guess you can say you were ambushed by deer hunters. The police will love that one." Ted turned and patted Glenn's shoulder. "Get me their cell phone there on the porch. I'll use it to make the call to the police. Let's get out of here, people. Time to move!"

Minutes later, seated in the back of the truck, Ramon looked at the stacked trunks before shifting his gaze to Virgil. "Virg, are they all really full of cash, man?"

Virgil smiled. "I told ya this train had better benefits, Ray.

We're ridin' high and fast now."

"Ohh, man! I was scared shitless when I saw them coming down the road, man. I had just got to the truck when I saw them drive by. Good thing we planned for a Murphy, huh?"

"Piece of cake, Ray. Those claymores stopped 'em cold."

"Man, the next op isn't going to be a piece of cake, I can tell you that. Carlos has serious people who don't smoke and joke, you know what I mean?"

"Yeah, Ray, but we're sophisticated dudes who don't smoke or joke either. The C-man is goin' down."

Ramon shifted his gaze back to the trunks and spoke in a whisper. "No piece of cake next time, man. Uh-uh."

.

3:10 A. M.

In the darkness, an FBI agent walked with a roll of yellow crime-scene tape toward a tree to begin sealing off the area.

Near the cabin, local police and FBI vehicles were parked with their headlights shining toward a line of handcuffed men all seated on the ground. On the road, ambulance lights flashed while paramedics worked on the wounded. Just off the gravel road, Ashley and Ed Faraday followed Eli, who was using a mini flashlight to examine the faces of the dead men laid out on the road embankment. Eli stopped and leaned over the last body.

"I don't know any of them."

Ashley shined her light into the dead man's face. "This one is a Caucasian."

"Mendez must believe in equal opportunity employment." Eli turned off his minilight.

Ed Faraday stepped closer. "What in the hell are all these armed guys doin' out here?"

Eli motioned to the handcuffed men seated on the ground in front of the cabin. "Let's see if Bowlan has found the answer to that."

Agent Bowlan, the case agent in charge, met the three people as soon as they walked into the headlight beams.

"None of them are talking, and neither are the wounded.

They all have fake IDs, and we found automatic weapons in the vehicles and in the cabin."

Eli motioned toward the bodies. "It looks to me like a hit went down here. But what I don't understand is why the rest of these guys are still alive. It isn't these types' style to leave people who could talk."

Bowlan nodded toward the cabin. "You'd better take a look at what we found. I think I know what the raiders were after."

Inside the cabin, Bowlan pointed at the broken hinge on the floor. "I'd say that's a trunk hinge and lock, and take a look at those scratch marks. Doesn't that look like somebody dragged heavy objects toward the door?"

Eli squatted down, shining his light on the lock hinge, then the scratches. "They dragged something heavy all right . . . yeah, I think you're right. The money from the bank was here."

Bowlan nodded. "There's more. Just outside on the road, we've found four sets of fresh impressions made from military-style boots. And get this. There's another set that appears to be made from a pair of woman's Reeboks."

"A woman's shoe prints? Are they sure?" Ashley asked.

"My boys tell me the impressions were made by fairly new women's size-eight shoes. Based on the depth of the impression, the wearer weighed somewhere between 115 and 130 pounds--it was a woman, all right, or a small guy with narrow feet."

"Do you think a competitor of Mendez made the hit and took the money?" Ashley asked.

Bowlan shook his head. "Agent Tanner was right. A competing rival would have capped everybody. But I'll say this--whoever made the raid was good and knew what they were doing. My military vets tell me it was claymore mines that hit those two vehicles where we found the bodies."

"Claymore mines?" Ashley repeated, as if not understanding.

"They're directional mines," Eli said. "Electrically detonated by a handheld trigger mechanism called a clacker.

Each mine is crescent-shaped, with a plastic plate of steel ball bearings laid over C-4 explosive. When it's detonated, the blast blows the balls out in a fan-shaped pattern. You saw what it did."

Faraday pulled on his chin. "Looks like we have some independents in the game that we didn't know about . . . and I'd say it's pretty obvious the fellas outside didn't know about them, either."

Ashley leaned over, studying the scratches. "Whoever they are, they must know how Mendez operates; they knew where his money was and knew when to strike."