The gleam of a blade flashing in front of his face caught Lefleur's attention just as Guajardo's left hand came around and clamped down on his mouth. In a single, smooth motion, Guajardo jerked Lefleur's head back and onto his left shoulder as he brought the bayonet in his right hand across in front of Lefleur's face. Pressing the bayonet against the skin just under Lefleur's left ear, Guajardo jerked to the right, using all of his strength to rip Lefleur's throat open, just above the wind pipe, from ear to ear. The only sound Lefleur made was a gurgling sound as blood from his severed artery mixed with the air escaping his lungs through the slit in his neck. For an instant, Lefleur's body jerked, then stiffened in shock and surprise. When he finally went limp, Guajardo removed his hand from Lefleur's mouth, allowing the body to fall in a heap at his' feet.
After looking around to see if his action had attracted any unwanted attention, Guajardo bent over Lefleur's body. Pulling Lefleur's shirttail out of his pants, Guajardo first used it to wipe the blood from his bayonet before returning the.bayonet to its scabbard. Then he wiped Lefleur's blood off his hands as best he could. He looked around again as he unslung his submachine gun and pulled the bolt of his weapon back.
Ready, he stepped over Lefleur's body and entered the administrative building.
Once inside, Guajardo paused, flattening himself against the wall to his left while he allowed his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the building's interior. Within seconds, he could make out the four doors Lefleur had spoken of. At the end of the corridor, under the door of the room that Lefleur had indicated Delapos used for his office, there was light coming out. Guajardo could see something blocking the light under the door every now and then. Someone was up and moving around in the room.
Keeping his back against the wall and his submachine gun trained on Delapos's door, Guajardo began to move down the corridor. As he passed a door behind him, he glanced back for a split second, then returned his attention to the door where the light was coming from. When he was finally standing across from it, he steadied his submachine gun in his right hand while he slowly reached across the corridor for the doorknob with his left. Once he had a firm grip on it, he slowly began to turn the doorknob, listening for any sound and watching the light under the door.
When it would turn no more, he froze and listened a little longer. Taking several deep breaths, he prepared to go in.
Delapos was bent over, reaching down to pull up his trousers, when the door to his room flew open. Looking up, he was startled to see a tall soldier, dressed in tiger-striped camouflage fatigues and training a submachine gun on him, standing in the doorway. Like a statue, Delapos froze, watching the man with the submachine gun as he took a quick step into the room, then a step to the right, closing the door with his left hand and holding the submachine gun in his right. Easing himself back so that he was leaning against the wall, the man with the submachine gun brought his left hand up to the front hand guard of the weapon before he motioned for Delapos to stand up by wiggling the barrel of the gun up and down.
Standing upright, and recovered from his initial shock, Delapos studied the man's face for several seconds before he realized that he was looking at Colonel Alfredo Guajardo, minister of defense, member of the Council of 13, 'the Dark One.' The revelation only served to heighten Delapos's sense of shock and panic. If he, the Dark One, was standing there, in his own office, Delapos thought, then it was all over. Everything was lost.
Everything, including his life, was finished.
After circling the outside of the buildings, and seeing what he thought to be the hostages where the French mercenary had said they should be, Cerro and Fast Eddie prepared to head back to the jumpoff point. For a moment, Cerro glanced back at the tool shed as he reconsidered his decision to leave without freeing the hostages. It wouldn't, he thought, take that long. Five minutes tops. With the hostages out of the way, the rest of the operation would be a piece of cake, a real breeze. But going in like that, with only Fast Eddie as backup, was a big risk, a risk that he wasn't ready to take. At this stage of the game, there was no need to take any more chances. He'd do just like he'd briefed, go back, brief Kozak's platoon, lead them forward, position them, and then, when everything was ready, start the attack. Doing all that would take time. But in the end, Cerro knew, it was the smart thing to do.
Just as Cerro and Fast Eddie stood up and prepared to leave the shelter of the cantina, the door of the storage building facing into the center of the compound opened. Dropping down, Cerro and Fast Eddie froze in place as they watched three mercenaries leave the building and head for a pickup truck parked in front of the storage building. All three carried weapons, but they had them in one hand while hauling bundles of gear in the other. Cerro heaved a sigh of relief, realizing that he and Eddie had not been spotted.
His relief didn't last long. After dropping their gear into the open bed of the pickup truck, one man, the shortest of the three, opened the door on the driver's side while the other two shuffled across to the garage where Cerro believed some of the hostages were. When they entered the garage, the mercenary wearing a green camouflage shirt turned on the garage's outside and inside lights, just as the short one in the pickup truck flipped on the headlights. The whole open area in the center of the compound was now illuminated by the light coming from the garage and the pickup. The odds of anyone being asleep in the mining compound were now less than remote and getting worse by the minute.
Pulling back into the dark shadows of the cantina, Cerro watched as the mercenary in the green camouflage shirt came out of the garage. With his rifle slung over his shoulder, he was pushing one of the male hostages in front of him as he dragged another behind him. Both hostages, their hands bound in front of them, came out reluctantly. The mercenaries were, Cerro thought, about to move the hostages.
Turning to Fast Eddie, Cerro took a grenade off a loop of his web belt.
'Can you manage to get a grenade into the back of the pickup in one try?'
Eddie leaned over and looked past Cerro at the pickup. 'Sure thing.
Why?'
The mercenary in the camouflage shirt, instead of taking his charges over to the pickup, put them up against the front wall of the garage.
Walking away from them, he was joined in the center of the open area by the short mercenary, who had turned on the lights of the pickup. As they stood there together, the mercenary in the camouflage shirt took his rifle off his shoulder and pulled the bolt back, looking at the two hostages.
Cerro looked at Fast Eddie, the mercenaries in the open area, then at Fast Eddie again, tossing him the grenade. ' 'Cause I said so. When I say go, chuck the grenade in the truck. After it goes off, you head for the garage.
Get the hostages back inside and stay in there. I'm going after the woman in the tool shed. Got that?'
While he was in the process of slipping the radio off his back and studying the pickup, Fast Eddie nodded. 'Sure. But wouldn't it be a good idea to wait for everyone else?'
The short mercenary was also preparing his weapon, looking at the two hostages standing against the garage wall, when Cerro looked back. They weren't moving the hostages, they were going to shoot them.'No time.
Besides, once she hears the shooting, I'm sure Lieutenant Kozak will come.' At least, Cerro thought, that's what he hoped. That she might still be climbing down the mountain and be too far off to get there in time didn't really matter. What mattered was that he and Fast Eddie had to stop the mercenaries from shooting the hostages.
The sudden blaze of lights from the center of the compound startled Kozak. Without a thought, holding her rifle by the hand guard in her left hand, Kozak threw out her right hand with the palm open toward the platoon. Without a word, everyone, including Kozak, dropped down on one knee as they waited to see what was going on. Though they were less than fifty meters from the jumpoff point, Kozak knew that things were in the process of changing. The lights meant that some of the mercenaries were up and moving about. That, in turn, meant that the platoon's ability to meet Cerro, get briefed on what he had seen, and use that information to conduct a slow, quiet approach, was out.
Looking back over her shoulder, Kozak studied her platoon for a moment. The men, kneeling or squatting where they had been when she had signaled them to halt, grasped their weapons as they waited. Though it was dark, and their eyes were hidden by the deep shadows of their helmets' brims, Kozak could feel every man's eyes riveted to her, waiting for her to make a decision that would throw them into battle again. There would be no need for dramatics, no long or stirring speech. Once she had made her decision, a few words, one quick command, was
