Eddie had the explosive’s detonator in his hands. He waited a beat, as a guard in a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle approached the bomb, and then casually triggered it.
A section of wall erupted in a roiling cloud of white dust and flame. The guard was blown off the four-wheeler and thrown twenty feet, before tumbling to the ground in a loose-limbed roll. His ATV had been flipped onto its side, its balloon tires spinning uselessly. Bits of concrete fell like hail across the compound, as the mushroom of dust and fire climbed into the sky.
The team took off in a dead sprint, Linc easily keeping pace despite the deadweight of Kyle Hanley over his shoulder. When they reached the corner of the building, Juan peered around it. One of the guards who’d first opened fire was down, his face a sheet of blood from a scalp laceration caused by a chunk of cement. He was being tended to by another guard while the third was trying to get the door unstuck.
Taking careful aim, Juan cycled through the remaining four rounds in his Glock. Knowing their torsos were impervious to the plastic bullets and reluctant to kill the guards outright, he fired two low-aimed rounds at each man. The pairs of bullets wouldn’t emasculate them, but their groins were going to be swollen for weeks. They went down screaming, clutching themselves in utter agony.
“Sorry, boys. Literally,” Juan said, and relieved them of their weapons. They carried mini-Uzis, which were terrific close-work guns but useless at any meaningful range. He tossed one to Eddie and the other to Linc, who was a better shot carrying a man on his shoulder than Murph was at a firing bench with his gun bolted to the table.
The black Robinson R44 suddenly roared overhead, flying so low that the skids nearly knocked tiles off the roofs. George Adams pirouetted the chopper above the compound, using the rotor’s downwash to kick up a sandstorm. The maelstrom of grit served to cover Juan and the others, as well as keep the guards pinned.
Amid the deafening throb of the blades beating the air and the chaos all around them, no one knew where a fresh burst of gunfire originated. A flurry of white spiderwebs suddenly appeared in the chopper’s windshield and the copilot’s window. Embers of hot metal peeled away from the aircraft’s skin as bullets tore through its hull. George ducked and weaved the helo like a prize-fighter in the ring, but the stream of tracers continued to pour in until a gush of smoke erupted from the engine cowling.
Juan frantically changed frequencies on his radio, shouting, “Get out of there, George. Go! Go! Go!
That’s an order.”
“I’m outta here, sorry,” Adams drawled. With that, the chopper turned like a dragonfly and veered back over the wall, trailing smoke that was blacker than the night.
“Now what?” Murph asked the Chairman.
Seventy-five yards of open ground yawned before them, and already the Responsivists were up and getting organized. The Corporation team had cover in a shallow drainage ditch, but it wouldn’t last long.
Already, guards were forming search parties, their flashlights lancing out into the darkness.
“Where are you, Linda?” Cabrillo asked.
“Just outside the wall, not far from where you guys blew it open. Can you reach me?”
“Negative. Too many guards and not enough cover. I swear, this place is more like a military barracks than a wacko retreat.”
“Then I guess its time for a diversion.”
“Make it good.”
Over the radio, he could hear the sound of an engine accelerating, but Linda didn’t respond.
Thirty seconds later, the compound’s main gate was torn off its hinges and the back end of the van they had rented burst through, its bumper hanging askew. The dozen or more guards covering the facility turned at once. Some began running toward this latest threat, not noticing the shadows rising out of a culvert and racing for the breach in the wall.
Guns opened up on Linda’s van, forty holes appearing in its sheet-metal hide before she could wrestle the transmission back into drive. The tires kicked up feathers of gravel before regaining traction, and she drove out of the withering barrage.
As they ran for the wall, Juan called to Linc and Eddie. “Switch to plan C, and I’ll see you in a bit.”
“Where are you going?” Mark was panting.
Cabrillo thought idly that they really did need to get Murph to the ship’s exercise room. “They got one of Linda’s tires. There are jeeps in front of the main building. They’ll catch us before we make it a half mile.
I’m going to delay them so you can get to the bridge.”
“That should be my job,” Eddie said.
“Negative. Your responsibility is with Max’s son. Good luck.” Juan angled away from the smoking pile of rubble that had once been the wall. The ATV was still on its side, exhaust curling from its tailpipe. He turned to see his men climb through the gap before grabbing the handlebars. He goosed the throttle and worked the wheel, using the four-wheeler’s power rather than moist his strength to right the six-hundred-pound vehicle. It bounced onto its rubbery tires, and he threw his leg over the seat, gunning the motor before he was settled in.
The machine’s 750cc engine growled as he took off across the lawn. A detachment of guards ran for the open-topped jeeps, while those closest to the wall turned to resume their hunt of Juan’s team.
Cabrillo maintained the advantage of his night vision goggles, but more lights were being turned on all around the compound. The pole-mounted spots cast blinding pools of incandescence. He had a minute or less before they recognized it wasn’t one of their own driving the ATV. He tore around as if searching for the intruders while trying to find a guard farthest from any illumination. He spotted a man taking cover behind one of the desiccated trees near where two of the perimeter walls met. He raced over, pulling off his goggles but pausing in a shadow so his face remained hidden. Not knowing what language the guard spoke, Cabrillo waved him over, indicating he should hop on the back of the big four-wheeler.
The guard didn’t hesitate. He ran to Juan and jumped onto the seat behind him, bracing himself with one hand on Cabrillo’s shoulder while clutching a machine pistol with the other.
“Not your lucky day, pal,” Juan muttered, and torqued back on the throttle.
“I’ve got everybody,” Linda Ross called. “We’re on the main road now.” Glancing at the jeeps, Juan saw that the first one was ready to head out in pursuit. Apart from the driver and the guard in the passenger seat, there were two other armed men in the back, clinging to the metal roll bar. He knew his people would make a good show of themselves, but they were virtually unarmed, in a van with a flat tire that couldn’t do more than fifty miles per hour. The outcome was inevitable, especially when the other jeep took off after his team, too.
It was time to level the playing field.
The guard riding the back of Cabrillo’s ATV tapped him on the shoulder, pointing, that they should head toward the back of the dormitory. Juan seemed to comply, accelerating evenly across the smooth terrain.
He could feel the eyes of the other guards watching him, so he waited until the last possible second to crank the handlebars hard to the right. The balloon tires tore furrows out of the ground, and had Juan not thrown his weight in the opposite direction the four-wheeler would have flipped. Coming back down on four wheels and pointing straight at the breach in the wall, Juan put on the power. He wrenched the guard’s mini-Uzi from his hands and jammed it into his own belt. The guard was confused for a second but quickly recovered. He threw his arm around Juan’s neck, his ropy bicep crushing Cabrillo’s larynx and windpipe with unholy strength.
Juan gasped and choked, working his powerful lungs to draw in little sips of air while keeping the ATV
accelerating toward the gap. The hole had a ragged six-foot diameter, and, beneath it, was a jumbled pile of shattered cement blocks and loose mortar. They were barreling in at forty miles per hour, with less than fifteen yards to go, when bullets began to strike the wall. The Responsivist guards had seen the fleeing vehicle and assumed the two men sitting astride it were the ones who’d infiltrated their lair.
Cement chips and dust erupted from the wall as rounds were sprayed at the ATV in a punishing fusillade.
Juan could feel the heat of the bullets whizzing all around them. He even felt one graze his artificial leg but ignored the distraction, keeping his diminishing focus on the hole. His lungs convulsed from lack of oxygen, as the guard redoubled his hold, bearing down with every ounce of his strength, trying to choke the life out of his prey.
