“Captain Payne?” shouted Haney, one of the missing MANIACs. “Is that you?”
“It sure is, princess. I’ve come to rescue you from the evil dungeon. Are you alone?”
“No, Kokoska’s with me, but he’s unconscious. He took a bump on his head during the first blast. He’s been fading in and out ever since.”
Despite the conversation, Payne moved forward cautiously, just in case he was overlooking a foot snare or something more diabolical. “And the prisoners? Where’d you find them?”
“In a basement cage. Can you believe that shit? They’d be buried under tons of rubble right now if we hadn’t gotten to them. The assholes were just planning on leaving them in there with tiny bombs strapped to their legs.”
“Tiny bombs?” he asked. “Were they silver?”
“Yeah!” Haney showed his face and held up one of the devices to prove his point. “How’d you know their color, sir?”
Payne grabbed the explosive with disgust. “They used the same thing on the Plantation.”
After taking a few seconds to examine the mechanism, Payne smiled at the hostages, trying to reassure them that their lives were about to return to normalcy. None of them smiled back, which wasn’t surprising. As a group, they’d been through so much in such a short amount of time that Payne knew it would take more than a smile for any of them to start trusting the world again. He realized it would take love and friendship and a shitload of therapy to get them back on track, but he hoped that they’d be able to get over this eventually.
“Sir?” Haney blurted. “What’s the status topside? Did everyone make it out okay?”
Payne shook his head. “Chen’s resting in the tunnel behind me. He took a nasty fall into the moat, but he’ll live.”
“What about Ariane? Did she get out all right?”
Payne took a deep breath. “Unfortunately, that still remains to be seen.”
“Sir?” he asked, slightly confused.
“Don’t get me wrong. I’m confident she made it out before the blast. But my guess is there are still some loose ends that need to be taken care of before she’ll be completely free.” Payne paused in thought. “Thankfully, loose ends are my specialty.”
JONES tried to reestablish contact with Payne but met with little success. With no more time to waste, Jones decided to change his priorities and forge ahead without him.
“Team one,” Jones uttered into his headset, “what’s your status?”
Shell answered. “We’ve got the Indians surrounded. We can move on your word.”
“What’s the risk to the cowboys?”
“Higher than it was a moment ago.”
The comment bothered Jones, who had lost visuals on Holmes and Greene a few minutes before. “Please explain.”
“Everyone’s dressed the same. Long white cloaks with hoods that cover their faces.”
“Give me the numbers, Lieutenant. How risky are the odds?”
“I wouldn’t bet my dog on ’em, sir.” Shell paused to speak to one of his men before he continued his transmission. “By our count we’re looking at three black and three white, and one of the whites is definitely a woman. And two of the blacks are supersized.”
“The big ones are probably Holmes and Greene. They’re the ones we want the most.”
“Maybe so, but there’s a problem. Their size doesn’t stand out anymore.”
“Why not?”
“The six have gathered in a tight cluster, so it’s tough to tell where one person ends and the next begins.”
“In a cluster? How badly do they blend?”
“They look like a giant marshmallow, sir.”
Jones cursed before he spoke again. “What are you telling me? No go on the snipers?”
“That’s affirmative, sir-unless you can put out the fire. It’s messing up our ability to see.”
“How so, Lieutenant? It didn’t bother my sightline.”
“That’s because it’s at your back, sir. The frontal glare prevents our night vision from working properly. Without ’em, our snipers don’t have enough light to shoot.”
Jones couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Each man was equipped with enough optical equipment to see a lightning bug fart from a half mile away, but they couldn’t see a 275-pound man in the light of a raging inferno. “Let me get this straight: You’re telling me it’s too bright and too dark for you at the
?”
Shell grinned at the paradox. “Ain’t it a fucked-up world we live in?”
WHEN Payne reached the end of the passageway, he gazed through the thick wall of vines that had obscured the tunnel’s presence from the outside world and studied the scene before him. The six people who had escaped through the corridor were now dressed identically and standing in a compact huddle-their arms around each other’s shoulders and their heads tilted forward in order to obscure each other’s height.
“Damn!” he growled. Even from point-blank range, there was no way he could risk a shot.
“D.J.,” he whispered into his radio, “where are we positioned?”
Jones smiled at the sound of Payne’s voice. He knew his best friend would pop up eventually. It was just a matter of when. “We’re in a semicircle with a radius of twenty yards. We’d surround them completely, but the fence cuts off their route to the east, so there’s no need.”
“Have they attempted to make contact?”
“No, which is kind of puzzling. They obviously know we’re out here, but they haven’t come forward with any demands.”
“That is kind of strange,” Payne admitted. “Almost as strange as their formation. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
“Me, neither . . . Out of curiosity, where are you right now?”
“Me? I’m about ten feet to their rear, watching them from the door to the escape tunnel.”
“Did you say you’re
the tunnel?” Jones shook his head in amazement, stunned at Payne’s ability to turn up in the damnedest of places. “How did you pull that off?”
“Long story. Oh, and just for the record, I stumbled upon our missing brethren. They’re a little banged up but very much alive.”
“Thank God! I was worried about them. Any need for emergency evac?”
“Nah, they’ll be fine until this crisis is over. By the way, how are you planning on ending it?”
Jones laughed at Payne’s choice of words. Both of them knew who was going to put an end to things, and it certainly wasn’t going to be Jones. “Thankfully, that’s not my decision, Jon. Now that you’re back as team leader, I can sit back, relax, and watch you work your magic.”
“It’s funny you should mention magic, because that’s exactly what I had in mind. With a little help from you, I think we can make the Posse disappear.”
CHAPTER 64
JONES
waited for Payne’s go-ahead before he walked toward the enemy. Jones continued forward while doing nothing to conceal himself. In fact, he so desperately wanted to be seen by Holmes and Greene that he fired his weapon into the air just to get their attention.
“You know,” he exclaimed, “you guys are pretty damn bad at taking hostages. For this tactic to work, you’re
to issue a crazy list of demands. I’ve been waiting for several minutes now, and I haven’t heard a peep.”
