men zip-tied the captives’ hands and feet before Cesar led his men to the freight elevator.
“Take it down!” he ordered as he reloaded.
The Padre froze when he heard the sound of gunfire coming from above. He pulled a gold-plated automatic pistol from his suit and chambered a round.
“What the hell is going on?” Yuri asked. The Ukrainian’s bodyguard pulled out his pistol.
“They’re coming,” the Padre said calmly to his men. “Prepare for them.” A dozen of the Padre’s men stopped moving equipment, and pulled machine guns and assault rifles from storage cases.
“I thought you said this place was safe?”
“Shut up, Yuri.”
“Don’t tell me to shut up! This is bullshit…you said this place…” The Padre shot Yuri in the face and then turned the gun on his bodyguard. They fired at the same time. Both men fell to the floor. The Padre’s bodyguards shot Yuri’s man with everything in their magazines. His body twitched and jerked as the bullets tore his body apart. The Padre struggled to his feet. He had a bullet wound in his left shoulder. Yuri’s body lay prone on the lab’s floor. The Padre shot him in the face again.
“I said… shut up!”
Private Foxtrot clanked along in his Spanish armor as he waved the metal detector back and forth.
“Hot damn!” he yelled out as the needle on the meter jumped all the way to the right. “Found it!”
“All right, boys, time to dismount,” the General commanded. “Bring out every entrenching tool we have.”
“Like, what do you want me to do, man?” Ziggy stroked Nancy’s back.
“Grab a flashlight and watch the perimeter. And keep that damn lizard out of my way. Out of the bus, boys!”
The men of STRAC-BOM began digging in the hard desert soil.
“Dry as a dang powder house down here,” Private Tango said as he chipped away at the packed dirt. The men had been digging for over an hour.
“Like breaking rocks.” Private Zulu took a break from digging.
“Private, quit your lollygagging,” the General said. “Church ain’t over till the singing is done.”
“I’m not lollygagging, sir. I’m just resting a spell before I get tired.” He went back to digging. Privates Tango and Zulu shrieked simultaneously like little girls.
“Calm down.” Fire Team Leader Charlie looked around the bottom of the hole and poked with his shovel.
“Dead hand…dead hand,” Private Zulu mumbled as he crawled out of the hole and wiped his hands off on his uniform.
“Well, well, well.” Fire Team Leader Charlie lifted something out of the soil with his entrenching tool.
“What is it?” the General asked as he pointed a flashlight into the small pit.
“This old fellow ain’t going to be dealing southpaw from the deck anymore.” Fire Team Leader Charlie held up the skeletal remains of a left arm balanced on the blade of his shovel.
“Is the rest of him down there?” the General asked as he examined the bones.
“I reckon so.”
“Well, get him out of there.”
“What do you want me to do with this?”
“Like, can I have it, man?” Ziggy held the squirming Nancy under one arm while he reached for the relic. “Like, my store specializes in this stuff.” Ziggy took the remains of the arm and sniffed it. Struggling to hold Nancy still, he took the skeleton arm, stretched it over his shoulder, and scratched his back with it. “People, like, pay top dollar for this stuff.”
“You’re as crazy as a soup sandwich.” Fire Team Leader Charlie went back to digging with the rest of the men.
“I’m really not, like, crazy, dude.” Ziggy examined his new treasure. “Avery just says I’m, like, mentally hilarious.”
It took a few minutes for the men to remove the rest of the skeleton. As the various pieces were excavated from the ground, Ziggy laid them out in anatomical order. “I, like, need the hip bone, man. The foot bone connected to the…leg bone. The leg bone connected to the…hip bone,” Ziggy sang as he worked at reconstructing the skeleton.
Private Tango heard a dull thunk as his shovel hit something solid. The men all looked at each other.
“We got something, General.” Fire Team Leader Bravo got down on his hands and knees, and began sweeping away dirt with his hands. “It’s wood. Looks like some kind of long crate.”
“You’re sure it ain’t a chest?” Private Zulu asked. “’Cause I never heard of a treasure crate, just a treasure chest.”
“He’s right — it’s definitely a crate,” Private Tango said as he started to dig around the sides.
“Like, you sure there isn’t a hip down there, man?” Ziggy pointed into the pit with the skeleton’s bony arm.
Avery sat in the military vehicle outside the Padre’s facility and fumed. He distinctly remembered General Morales’ comments about the value of the reward for the Padre’s capture being contingent upon the level of involvement of the individual claiming the money.
“Son of…” Avery hopped around on one leg while the other throbbed in pain. Avery took the broom handle and stuck one end in the ground. Holding the top of the long wooden stick, he placed his foot in the middle of it. He tried to snap it. Avery fell over. The stick rolled away. Picking it up, he jammed one end into the space between the tire and wheel well of a backhoe loader. Pulling back with all his strength, he leaned his weight into it. This time the broom handle snapped. It sent Avery rolling over backward. Dusting himself off, he took the two pieces of broom handle and began to alternate swinging them diagonally back and forth in front of his body in a looping motion that brought the sticks up and around his head.
“Strike, strike, deflection,” he said as he swung the sticks. Avery whipped the sticks back and forth, faster and faster in a crisscrossing figure-eight pattern. “Block, block, deflection, strike, strike.” On the balls of his feet, Avery moved side to side with small, hopping jumps. “Evasion, evasion, deflection, strike, strike. Keep the sticks moving. Never stop moving. Don’t let your opponent judge the range of your sticks. Block, block, strike…strike… deathblow!” Avery leapt in the air and took a huge downward swing with one of his sticks. “Victory is mine.”
Avery placed his arms at his side and bowed deeply to his imaginary sparring partner. He wasn’t at all happy with the weight and balance of his sticks, but they would have to do. He hoped he wouldn’t run into any Filipino martial artists inside. The odds weren’t good, but they’d die laughing if they saw his pathetic fighting sticks. Avery marched to the main door. Stepping around the bodies of dead cartel gunmen, he ducked inside.
Deep underground, Barquero watched as the Padre’s men began to barricade the massive meth lab against Cesar and his men. The majority of the Padre’s men took positions around the freight elevator at the far end of the facility as the gunfire above intensified. The rest of the Padre’s men went to guard the stairwell that Barquero had come down. He knew he couldn’t kill all of them. He needed to wait for Cesar. Then he could kill the one he wanted the most. Barquero slowly lowered himself from the platform above the facility’s floor and dropped to the ground. In the chaos and confusion, no one noticed as he hid behind a stack of chemical containers.
“General.” Fire Team Leader Alpha wiped the sweat from his face. “That’s all of them.” The General and men stood looking at the ten wooden crates.
