and pulled the fluorescent tubes from their brackets. The four donned night vision goggles, and Juan turned the doorknob. The room beyond looked like a typical dorm room, with two metal-framed beds, a pair of desks, and matching bureaus. The adjoining bathroom was a small tiled enclosure, with a drain on the floor for the shower. In the eerie green cast of the goggles, shapes were indeterminate, and colors washed out to shades of black, but the silhouettes of people sleeping on the beds were unmistakable. So was the snoring.
Eddie pulled a small plastic case from the thigh pocket of his fatigue pants. Inside were four hypodermic needles. The narcotic cocktail inside the barrels would incapacitate a grown man in under twenty seconds. Because Kyle had willingly joined the cult, he would surely resist their efforts to get him out.
The deprogrammer, Adam Jenner, had recommended drugging the youth to Linda, when they’d spoken, although Juan had planned to do it even without the advice.
Eddie gave a needle to Cabrillo and approached one of the beds. The man was sleeping on his stomach, his face turned to the wall. In a fluid movement, Seng clamped his hand around the man’s mouth and slid the needle into his neck, his thumb coming down on the plunger with even pressure. Across the room, Juan did the same thing. His victim came instantly awake and bucked against Juan’s arm, his eyes wide with panic. Juan held him down easily, even when the man’s legs began to thrash.
Juan counted down from twenty in his head. When he reached ten, the man’s gyrations were slowing, and when he hit three the guy was totally still. Juan flashed his penlight into the man’s face. Although Kyle Hanley took after his mother, Juan saw enough of Max in the boy to know it was him.
“Got him.”
As a precaution, Linc whipped FlexiCuffs around Kyle’s ankles and wrists before tossing him over his shoulder.
“All set, big man?” Juan asked.
Linc grinned in the darkness. “I carried your sorry butt for eight miles in Cambodia three years ago, so this boy’s nothing. Can’t weigh but a buck-twenty.”
Cabrillo checked the e-paper screen on his sleeve. Everything looked quiet, but he radioed Linda for confirmation.
“The janitors are still in the main building. A light came on across the compound from where you are but went out again a minute eight seconds later.”
“Pit stop.”
“My guess, too. You’re clear for extraction.”
“Roger.” He turned to his team. “We’re good to go.”
A bell began shrieking just as they started back down the corridor. It sounded like a fire alarm, a shrill, piercing sound that pounded on their eardrums like daggers. There was no way to communicate over the din, but the men were seasoned professionals and knew what was expected of them.
Eddie was in the lead, followed closely by Linc and Mark. All three men accelerated down the hallway, any attempt at stealth forgotten. This was no longer a snatch and grab but a race to the perimeter wall, where, if Linc and Eddie had done as ordered, a limpet mine was in place to blast through the blocks.
Linda Ross was near enough to hear the Klaxon and would be on the radio instructing George Adams to bring the Robinson in for a fast extraction. He’d land directly on the road and would have the team aboard before any guards knew what had happened.
A door to one side of Juan flew open, and a sleepy-eyed man wearing pajama bottoms stepped into the corridor. Cabrillo slammed his elbow into the man’s jaw, spiraling him to the carpet in a rubbery heap.
Ahead, another man poked his head out of his dormitory room. Even with the deadweight of Kyle Hanley on his shoulder, Linc juked sideways and stiff-armed the Responsivist. The man’s head hit the metal doorframe, and, as Juan raced past, the man’s eyes rolled into his head until only the whites shone.
He collapsed backward like a felled tree.
Eddie instinctively paused when they reached the exterior door. Juan checked the video feed on his sleeve, but Linda must have been occupied with Adams because the circling drone’s camera showed nothing but the ocean just north of them. He could hear her girlish voice in his radio’s earbud, but the alarm was too loud to make out her words. All he caught was her strident tone.
He shrugged at the lack of intel and opened the door, leading with his Glock. With the exception of alarms sounding across the compound, everything looked as tranquil as before. There were no rushing guards, or any movement at all. It didn’t even appear that additional lights had come on.
Clear of the sonic avalanche of the bell inside the dormitory, Juan pressed his hands to his ears to try to hear what Linda was shouting.
“—t of there. Guards on the far side. Gomez is coming in. Hurry.” He was fumbling for his night vision goggles when a trio of men in gray uniforms appeared around the corner of a nearby building. Juan took a fraction of a second too long to see if they were armed. One of them opened up with a compact submachine gun, spraying an arc of bullets that blew plaster dust into the air as the rounds dug into the dormitory. Cabrillo dropped flat and fired. His aim was perfect, hitting the guard center mass, but rather than going down the man simply staggered back a bit.
“Inside!” he shouted to his team, and crawled into the corridor once again, closing the door with his foot.
He screamed, to be heard over the alarm: “They’ve got automatics and Kevlar vests. Our plastic bullets don’t even slow them down.”
“Talk about bringing a knife to a gunfight,” Eddie yelled.
A fresh barrage of autofire tore at the building’s facade, seemingly shaking the entire structure.
Linc jammed a chair under the door handle so it couldn’t be opened from outside, then reached up the wall and tore the horn off its mount, silencing it. “More like a blowgun to an artillery duel, my friend.”
CHAPTER 13
CABRILLO NEEDED ONLY A SECOND TO DEVISE A PLAN. “There’s a window in Kyle’s bedroom. The back of this building is closer to the perimeter wall.” He led them down the hallway again, flashing his pistol at anyone peering out of his room. The sight of the weapon was more than enough to encourage them to stay inside. Kyle’s roommate continued his drug-induced sleep despite the commotion. Juan charged across the room, firing several shots at the large picture window on the far wall. The plastic bullets carried more than enough kick to loosen the glass before he hurtled himself bodily through it. Shards cascaded around him, as he rolled onto the dried-out lawn, and he felt a few rip small cuts in his hands and at the back of his neck.
With multiple lights shining from the dorm rooms, he had a clear picture of the cement-block wall fifteen yards away. The guards continued to concentrate their fire at the entrance and had yet to encircle the building. Glass crunched behind him, as Murph, Linc, and Eddie stepped through the ruined window.
Juan’s actions had bought them a few seconds at best.
The explosives Eddie had planted were midway down the wall’s length, the location chosen because of the cameras rather than it being the best tactical location. To reach it, they would have to cross a hundred yards of open ground, a perfect killing field for the Responsivist guards.
“Linda, give me a sit-rep.” Cabrillo needed a clearer overview than the tiny e-paper screen on his wrist.
“Is that you who just went through a window?”
“Yes. What’s the situation?”
“There are three guards near the dorm’s entrance and another dozen or so fanning out across the compound. All are heavily armed, and two of them are on four-wheelers. George is on his way. You should be able to hear the chopper.”
Juan could hear the drumming of the Robinson’s rotor through the evening air. “Tell Max to get moving, too. We might have to use plan C.”
“Juan, I’m on the net,” Max Hanley said over the radio. “We’re under way right now. Do you have Kyle?”
“We do. He’s fine for the moment, but we need to get the hell out of here.”
“Don’t worry, the cavalry’s coming.”
“That’s what they said at Little Bighorn when Custer showed up, and you know how that turned out.” The sound of the approaching helicopter reached a fever pitch, and just before the copter thundered over the wall Juan nodded to Eddie. There was no need to talk to each other. With plan A in ruins, they seamlessly switched to plan B.
