SEAL Team Bravo: Black Ops VI - Guantanamo (15 page)

They stood still. Will turned his head to glance at Nolan.

"This don't look good, Boss."

He shook his head. "It's worse than that. When they take us in, we could find ourselves sent straight back to Mexico."

"In which case, we're fucked."

"Yep."

* * *

The inside of the truck stank. They'd been traveling for two hours, and already the hot interior was rank with the odor of sweat and stale unwashed bodies.

"How long before we stop, Omar," a man whined, "I need to go." He stared back at Hakim Baba, his eyes filled with loathing. The man had drunk more than his share of alcohol in Mexico, and now he was suffering the combined effects of too much booze and dehydration.

"You should have thought of that before," he snapped, "We have a three-day journey ahead of us, maybe more. Every time we stop, we risk detection by American law enforcement. Don't you think they're scouring the country for us?"

He stared back at the leader, feeling anger and misery in equal parts. "Why would they assume we would come to America? They'll guess we returned to Asia, surely."

"You fool! The moment they discovered our escape, they would have started a worldwide search with every resource they have. Besides, you're forgetting one thing. Daoud Khan."

"Daoud wouldn't tell them anything! He was the most devout amongst us."

"Even the Prophet would tell them what they want to know, if they administered their truth drugs and subjected him to torture for days on end. We must assume they know where we're headed, although he didn't know the target. Allah be praised. We will stop for a break in four hours, no less."

They all stared at him, shocked at his invoking the name of the Prophet. But no one argued, except Hakim.

"Omar, I have to go. My guts are churning."

The leader's gaze turned even more savage. "I couldn't give a damn! The reason for proscribing alcohol is because of the way it poisons your system."

"I'm sorry," he replied, his face miserable, "But just this once. I have to go. I need a crap."

"Too bad. Either you wait or you can foul yourself. Three hours, no less."

A silence descended on the group. They were appalled. Several of them needed to pee, although none were in Hakim's situation. But they knew he was being unreasonable. They were in the middle of nowhere. He could have asked the men to stop the truck for them to relieve themselves.

Ten minutes went by, and the sickening stench of feces filled the vehicle. Hakim looked embarrassed as they edged away from him. Soon, the stench of ammonia added to the befouled atmosphere. No one dared argue with Nasriri, although every man knew in his heart it was no way for a martyr of Allah to go to war. It was humiliating and embarrassing. Hakim felt even more strongly. He was aware of his stench and blamed Omar. He was treating him, a brave warrior, like a child. If he had the opportunity, he'd take revenge for the way he treated the brave martyrs of Islam.

He smiled at her. She sure was a beauty.

"Uh, you want to know about guns?"

She smiled back. He was a newcomer to the college and didn't seem to have any friends or interests, apart from weapons of all types.

Perfect.

"Sure I do. I want to know everything about guns. Clay, I've always been interested, but it's more than that. I wanted to talk to you, to get to know you better. But, you see, I wasn't sure," she looked away, pretending shyness, "I thought you mightn't be interested in me."

He took a few moments to collect his thoughts. "Interested in you? Of course I am, Esperanza. What do you want to know?"

"How about we go to the cafeteria for a chat? I need a coffee."

"Sure, sure. I'm not doing anything right now. Let's go."

She felt guilty about deceiving Clay Benton, but it was easy to rationalize her guilt. Her life was in danger; that was enough. She needed him, needed help so she could learn to shoot. More important, she needed a gun. She'd make it up to him as best she could, and give him a good time. A few dates, hang on his arm so he could show off to the other students.

Should I sleep with him? Maybe I should.

She found the idea of losing her virginity repugnant, but so was the scale of the deception. She gave him a dazzling smile and put her hand through his arm.

"That's lovely, Clay. You're kind. I wish we'd got to know each other before."

He looked back into her huge, deep, dark eyes, and she knew he was lost to her charms. She had him.

"We need to make up for wasted time," he grinned.

They walked together to the cafeteria, and she tried to avoid seeing the pockmarks and zits on his face. They were a minor problem, compared to defending herself from Carlos Hidalgo.

Besides, I can always close my eyes when I kiss him. That way, I won't
see them.

* * *

They stayed where they were, watching the approaching vehicles. Nolan was about to speak when another set of lights caught his eye. They were coming from different angle, from the northeast, not the southeast. Maybe the Border Patrol cops were using a pincer tactic to capture their quarry.

The new vehicle came nearer, and when it was a hundred meters away, he could see it was a Hummer, a black Hummer and coming right at them. When it was only ten meters away, the driver opened his window and shouted.

"Get in, all of you, for fuck's sake. Hurry it up!"

Evers!
How did he find us? Time for that later.

He broke into a run, shouting, "Into the Hummer. Move it, before they get here!"

As they dragged the doors open and started piling aboard, the men in the helo began to realize their quarry was slipping away. A voice boomed from the loudspeaker.

"Stay where you are! Get out of the vehicle, and stand still with your hands up."

They were already aboard, and John-Wesley was pulling the door closed as Evers stamped on the gas, and the big SUV roared away across the desert. Behind them, they could hear more shouts from the loudspeaker, and then a line of bullets chewed up the desert in front of them.

"Switch off the lights!" Nolan shouted to their rescuer.

"I won't be able to see where we're going," he exclaimed. He was a different man. Evers had changed. There was a new determination in his voice, an inner core of steel. It was as if the moment of terror in the Osprey had been a watershed in his life. Danny Evers had stepped out of the aircraft a different man than when he'd boarded it, a man with a lot on his mind.

"You won't need to see anything if you keep the lights on. They'll bracket us with that machine gun and tear us to scrap metal."

"Oh, yeah. Right."

He flicked off the lights, and they plunged on through the night in semi-darkness. Another line of bullets hammered into the ground a couple of meters from the driver's side, and Evers swung the wheel away from them.

"Why are they still shooting? How can they see us?" he shouted.

"Night Vision," Will explained. He was crammed into the front with Nolan, "We need to get underneath some cover. If we stay out in the open, they'll have us for sure."

"Cover! We're in the fucking desert."

"There's always somewhere. A clump of mesquite, if we're lucky, we might find a gully, a dried up riverbed. There's always something. Keep looking."

Vega saw it first. "To the left, we're running alongside a dark black line. It looks like there's a riverbed over there."

Evers glanced across, saw it, and swerved toward it. To his credit, there was no way of knowing what lay inside that dark line. It could have been a gully, only two meters deep. On the other hand, it could have been the edge of a deep ravine. Either way, they had no choice.

The heavy vehicle bounced as it plunged over the edge, and it sailed through the air, hitting the ground below with a stunning force that tossed them around inside the cab. The bed was some four meters deep. He lost control, and Nolan leaned across to grab the wheel and haul it over to stop the Hummer from turning over inside the narrow channel. The paintwork scraped along the side of the gully wall as the vehicle continued on two wheels, tilted over at a sharp angle. He could feel the laws of physics beginning to take over. There was no way he could stop it overturning. Then they hit a rock, which threw the vehicle back onto all four wheels.

Evers took his foot off the gas, shocked after the near miss. They shouted at him to keep going, and he accelerated, bumping along the rock-strewn channel. Another line of bullets impacted the earth, as once again the helo swooped overhead. This time two of them hit the bodywork. They were lucky. The shots missed anything vital, and the Hummer kept going, but they were on borrowed time. The crew of the helo would become irritated with their refusal to stop, and the gunner would empty an entire belt into the Hummer, which would kill them all.

Nolan was desperately working out the odds. Should they stop, and make a run for it? In which case they'd be easy meat for the helo to follow them with their NV gear and vector the Border Guards in the pursuing SUVs straight to them. On the other hand, should they keep going, in the hopes they could avoid those machine gun bullets? Either way, it was shut-ended. They needed a third option.

But what?

John-Wesley was having similar thoughts, and he called from the back, "Evers, what kind of vehicle was this? Who was the owner?"

"Owner?" he shouted over his shoulder, "A pal of mine in DEA lent it to me. Why?"

"I didn't mean that. I mean before, what did they use it for?"

"Oh, right. It would have been a confiscation from a drug smuggler. What the fuck difference does it make what it was used for? It won't stop them shooting at us."

John-Wesley rummaged in the space behind the rear seat. A few seconds later he replied, "This should help. I found a camo net in back. I guess DEA hadn't got around to clearing it out. If we can lose that helo for a couple of minutes, we could throw the net over us. If we're lucky, we'd be invisible to their NV gear."

It was a slim chance, to be sure. As well as the NV gear, they may have infrared. The border war against illegal immigrants used every device known to man, from motion detectors, sound detectors, night vision, and infrared. Probably a few gadgets they hadn't heard of as well. But it was all they had.

"Evers, next time that helo goes past, find a place you can stop, and we'll give it a try."

"That means we'll have to take fire on the next pass."

"You have a better idea?"

A pause. "No. I'm sorry, I thought this was a good idea," his voice sounded apologetic.

"Hey, it was a brilliant idea," Will told him, "If you hadn't come, we were finished. You saved our asses, man."

"I did? Uh, good."

He stamped his foot down and picked up speed, just in time. A long burst churned up dirt and stones from the streambed behind them, right where they'd been only a second before. They weren't out of trouble. This time the gunner walked the fire in toward the Hummer.

"Down!" Nolan shouted, "We're about to take fire."

"The fuck we are!" someone shouted.

It was Ryder. He poked his assault rifle out the window, aimed at the door gunner, and pulled the trigger. He emptied the clip in a single, continuous burst. Savagely, he slammed in a second clip and fired again. There was no chance of hitting a moving target from the bucking vehicle, but some shots must have gone close enough to scare the crew. The aircraft veered away, and they saw it go into a long, climbing turn; ready to come back and standoff, to hit them from long range.

" Find somewhere, Evers. Anywhere, we're out of options. The rest of you, make ready with that camo net. We may have only a few seconds, no more. When he comes back, we have to disappear."

As he finished speaking, Vega shouted from the back. "Up ahead, the gully branches, there's a fork. It looks to me like an undercut on the left. If you..."

They were on it before he finished speaking. Evers was slow, but Nolan dragged the wheel over to the left. The Hummer swayed as it bounced, hit a rock, and skipped over an obstacle on the streambed. Then they were driving into the left fork, and the CIA man stamped on the brake. As the vehicle slowed, they were leaping out through the doors. John-Wesley and Brad grabbed the camo net. Eva and Vega helped push the cumbersome mass of fabric through the door, and they pulled it over the bodywork.

It wasn't the first time they'd camouflaged a vehicle, and inside five seconds, the net was in place. Nolan ordered them back inside the vehicle, and they waited.

Not for long. They heard the helo coming back, but this time there was no thunder of machine gun fire. The aircraft began to quarter the surrounding area, beginning a standard grid search technique. A few minutes later, the pursuit vehicles arrived and started quartering the desert. The search went on for an hour and a half, and several times they came close. Once, a Border Guard SUV bumped along the streambed, reached the fork and hesitated. They held their breath and readied their rifles. Then it drove away to the right.

There was nothing they could do. The moment they moved away on foot, the watchers would spot them. And if they drove out from under the camo, they'd show up as a ghostly green shape in the NV lenses. Nolan decided to use the time to work out their next move. He glanced at Evers.

"You did well, Danny, damn well. We all owe you a few beers. As soon as these people have gone, we need to finish what we started, and get back on their trail. Did you find out anything more from your contact?"

He nodded. "Some. My DEA friend said they picked up some chatter. Montez called in extra guards for his Miami waterfront warehouse. It may be significant. "

"Nothing else?"

He shook his head. "Nothing. I'm sorry."

"That's okay. You did well to bail us out of trouble."

"Yeah, sure. Anytime."

He grinned with pleasure at the praise; Evers was discovering he had 'cojones', balls. He'd decided it was time to man-up, to kick ass.

Will cleared his throat. "Miami. It makes sense."

"How so?"

"Think about it, Boss. They're heading for New York City, so what do they do? Drive all the way, through several states, in a vehicle? Not a good idea for escaped fugitives from Gitmo, and these people are not complete fools. They also know the man who was caught will have coughed up everything he knew, so there'll be an APB out across the country. Miami makes perfect sense. Montez has his United States operation there, and he can arrange transportation for them to New York City. By sea, by air, it has to be one way or the other. Miami is where they're heading."

Nolan mulled it over. It was still guesswork, but Will had a good point. They'd come through the tunnel under the border; that was a certainty. Once in the US, they'd need to shake off the nationwide hunt that was focused on them reaching New York City. Miami seemed a good bet.

"If you're wrong, and they've gone somewhere else?"

"Then it's all over." Will affirmed, "but right now, my vote goes for Miami."

He nodded and looked at Evers. "Danny, can you get onto your people and arrange for them to set an ambush close to Montez's place, in case we're right?"

He shook his head. "No can do. I talked to Jerry Jackson, my friend who works for DEA. He said we’d need a contingency, some help if we located them, so I called Langley and asked them to set up a channel to FBI and Homeland Security."

"Go on."

"They told me I should give them proof before they started busting down the door of Montez's place. He's well known in the city and even has a relationship with the State Governor. They said if I tried to start a war on the streets of Miami, they'd issue a warrant for my arrest."

Nolan glanced out through the camo netting as the helo came back for another sweep. "You're joking. Does the Governor of Florida know how Montez makes his money?"

"All he knows and cares about are the bundles of cash he throws at the Governor's favorite charities. It means any move against Montez would need his permission, and there's no way he'd play ball."