Chapter Twenty-Six
Ben tested his gas mask, sucking in the smell of rubber, the mask pinching tight against his face. He studied the swirls of smoke from the explosion. Flowing into the tunnel, good, they'd expected that, vents for engine exhaust from the smuggler's boat. Made life a little easier. He wouldn't have to go in as far.
He reached under his dinghy seat and pulled out an M79 grenade launcher, checked a third time to make sure he'd lined up the loads in the correct order, and then popped a CS tear gas round down the black tunnel in front of him. One of the joys of serious money — a man could buy some serious toys. If he knew the right people, and wasn't particularly worried about laws.
Morgan Doctrine — if you have to use force, use overwhelming force. No half measures.
Ben broke the launcher open, reloaded, followed up with a second CS round. Then he twisted the throttle and moved into the darkness after them.
Dan vetoed the heavy stuff. So did Gary. It would draw too much attention. Now we're going to have to do it the hard way, take more risk. Someone could get hurt. And we'll still get FBI and ATF crawling up our asses. But our tower's clean. Our tunnels are clean.
I think.
His dinghy purred into inky smoke, and he turned the lights back on. Smile, you're on Candid Camera.
He had to assume he was on some surveillance screen somewhere. He pulled up beside the ruined gate and studied it in the light of his battery lamps. Neat job, metal slats sheared off like they'd been cut with a torch. He probed the water, verifying depth. Reached overhead with the same pole. Plenty of clearance for the Maria, she wasn't any larger than that cigarette boat the Pratts had used. Then he switched off the lights. No point in being an obvious target.
Clearance, if they wanted it. Yeah. Like hell we'd bring her into this trap. Just want them to think we would.
He moved forward a few yards and stopped again in the darkness at the end of the tunnel, just short of the inner basin, mapping the cavern in his mind, going by Dan's and Gary's memories. Straight ahead where the landing should be, he fired an illumination round from the launcher, and he squeezed his eyes shut against the harsh actinic blaze of magnesium fire. Razzle-dazzle, smoke and noise and distraction. Keep them watching here. Dan's act had been mostly the same thing, distraction, even if he'd had a blast doing it.
A boat floated at the dock, a black cruiser silhouette against the flare, looked like a Bayliner from the profile. More fun. He loaded a high-explosive round, sighted the HE against the metal door at the top of the ramp, and fired. The blast squeezed him, compressed in the cavern, he felt it in his damned eyeballs, and he praised his earplugs. He did like being able to hear early morning birdsong. And people sneaking around behind him.
The inner door had vanished. Low-budget project, not designed for blast resistance. Ben made a mental note or two about the Morgan defenses. Time for a few upgrades.
Three Willie Pete rounds, lots of fire and smoke, smoke in particular. First one straight through that mangled door frame and into the tunnel beyond. The cruiser caught the second and burst into flame, orange oily flame and black smoke against the dense white blaze of phosphorous and magnesium. Final WP round at the doorway, dinghy heaved on a swell, missed to the right and high, no problem. Most of the smoke still headed up the tunnels.
Ben felt the glorious rush of revenge, all those weeks of skulking, all those weeks of wondering. Blowing things up was fun. He loaded up a frag round, two more of those left plus one HE, and waited for "targets of opportunity," a dark shape floating at the mouth of a dark tunnel.
Alice thought the place would be damn near empty. Her bats reported quiet tunnels, and she thought that damned brujo wouldn't be snatching people from the streets if he still had a captive supply of sacrifices here. She thought he needed to drink a kill every week or so just to hold off the Grim Reaper. Ben shuddered.
She thought, she thought, she thought. Morgans were getting too damned dependent on that damned witch. Have to warn Gary about that, remind him he couldn't trust anyone but his own flesh and blood.
But Caroline was his sister. That made things more complicated.
Water splashed to each side of him, something punched his body armor, and he jerked the launcher up and fired to the left, muzzle flashes out of the corner of his eye. Old rusty rotting catwalk overhead, he'd been careless, thought it was abandoned, unsafe, the fragmentation grenade burst orange and bits of wood and rusty iron flew from the catwalk and then the whole rickety length collapsed section by section like a string of dominos splashing into the basin while the blast still echoed from the stone walls. Black man-shape splashed with it and floated face down, jerking and quieting and then bobbing in the swells. Ben loaded another frag round.
His left hand fumbled, snapping the breech shut. Fingers numb, hand numb. His whole arm wasn't working right. Warmth seeped down his left side and a dull ache woke up under his armpit.
Shit. Armhole in the vest. Lucky shot.
Ben gasped as the pain woke into a fire as intense as the white-hot blazes he'd launched. Shit shit shit shit shit.
He twisted the dinghy around in the tunnel, right hand still working, right arm still working, blackness ahead might just be the shadows cast by the fire behind him. Full throttle, dinky electric trolling motor couldn't push the boat faster than a walk, they'd thought quiet was more important than speed. And the motor didn't weigh much, with the
