Текст книги "Skeleton Coast"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 26 страниц)

They were simple, hardworking people and would assume Eddie had been into something illegal. The check would be thrown away and his name would never be mentioned again.

Eddie clenched his jaw a little tighter and blinked tears from his eyes for bringing his family shame.

He didn’t pay attention to the tiny speck of light flickering at the base of Ski’s neck until his subconscious mind realized the random pattern wasn’t random at all. It was Morse code.

“—au Geste has your back.” Eddie willed himself not to look around as they neared the execution ground. The chairman was here, using a laser, probably the sight from his gun, to send him a message.

The crafty son of a bitch was going to get them out.

“RPG B 4 U tied. Knife base centr pol.”

Eddie understood that Cabrillo was going to use a rocket-propelled-grenade attack to cover them and that there was a knife lying on the ground at the base of the center pole, the one they would likely tie him to since he was sandwiched between Mike and Ski. The plan was brilliant because with guards getting ready to tie them to the stakes their comrades would be less likely to open fire on them.

“Chairman’s here,” Seng told his comrades over the din of jeering soldiers flanking their route. There was no need to say more. They would react to whatever Cabrillo did and adapt to the changing circumstances accordingly. Ski’s only acknowledgment that he’d heard was a slight nod.

“About damn time,” Mike said and a guard slammed the heel of his hand into the back of his head.

A couple of soldiers spat at the prisoners as they passed or tried to trip them up. Eddie barely noticed.

He was focusing on how he would get the knife and mentally ran through the moves he would have to make in order to slice through Ski’s plastic ties.

The phalanx of soldiers opened up as they neared the wooden stakes. Three guards stood behind the poles with lengths of rope to tie them. One of the men leading the parade happened to be looking down when they reached the stakes. He spotted the knife and before anyone else could jump in and take it he snatched it from the ground and jammed it in the pocket of his fatigues.

When he turned to face the condemned he startled at the murderous look Eddie was giving him.

Biggest mistake of your life, pal, Eddie thought and modified his attack plan.

CABRILLO waited with only the corner of his face exposed to the men below, not that any of them were looking anywhere other than at the prisoners. His hand was on the RPG-7’s pistol grip and it would take only a second to swing the weapon onto his shoulder and fire.

The guard commandant stepped through the throng of cheering soldiers, waving and returning casual salutes. He had provided them with some unexpected entertainment and wanted to bask in the glow. He stood in front of his prisoners and held his arms aloft to silence the rowdy crowd.

Juan hoped he could personally take the man down, but in combat there were few guarantees.

The commander started speaking in an African language, his deep voice booming off the confining wall of the parade ground. The men listened and occasionally cheered when he said something particularly inciting.

Cabrillo could imagine what he was saying. Captured three CIA spies, blah, blah, blah. Long live the revolution, etc. etc. etc.Aren’t I the greatest officer you’ve ever had, yada, yada, yada.

Get on with it already.

The commandant finished his ten-minute speech, turned, and nodded to the three men positioned to tie the captives.

Juan twisted around the stone block he was hiding behind and brought the RPG up. As soon as he had one of the doors leading back inside the prison in the rocket launcher’s crude sight he squeezed the trigger and was in motion the instant the missile cleared the tube. The rocket ignited, singing the back of his hand as he raced to where he’d cached the next projectile.

Trailed by a line of white vapor, the five-pound warhead shot across the courtyard and exploded just above the door leading to the former prison’s barracks. The explosion of the shaped charge blew apart the lintel and caused the wall above to partially collapse. Loose rock tumbled across the opening until it was completely blocked.

THE instant Eddie heard the whoosh of the rocket motor igniting he spun around and kicked the guard set to tie him in the side of the head hard enough to send him flying back a half dozen feet. He then stepped to the soldier who’d found the pocketknife. Eddie got one foot behind the man’s legs and continued forward. Though the guard had him by a few inches, Eddie still had the element of surprise and had no trouble tripping him.

They crashed to the ground at the moment the missile detonated against the prison wall. With his hands bound behind him, Eddie used the momentum of the fall to slam his chin into the guard’s throat with enough force to crush his larynx. With his airway closed the soldier began to gag and thrash, clawing at his throat as if he could open it again.

Eddie rolled off him and reached for his pocket, but couldn’t get a hand inside because of the soldier’s spastic dance. He could feel the outline of Cabrillo’s little pocket knife through the fatigues and in a fit of concentration and strength he tore the knife free, coming away with a handful of cloth.

A second RPG arced across the open patch of sky above the courtyard and while Eddie wasn’t paying attention to where it hit, he suspected the chairman was systematically sealing off all entrances into the prison proper. He worked the knife open. Ski obviously figured what was up because he was on the ground less than a foot away with his back toward Eddie. Seng rolled over to him so they were back-to-back and cut the plastic tie binding the big Pole’s hands.

Ski took the knife and sliced through Eddie’s tie. So as not to waste even a fraction of a second Seng rolled away from Ski, knowing the ex-Marine would free Mike Trono. Now able to fight with his hands, Eddie procured an AK-47 from one of the confused guards with a strike to the back of his head. Unlike when he’d knocked Susan Donleavy unconscious, he didn’t hold back. The soldier was dead before his body crumpled into the dirt.

He whirled and saw a guard aiming at where Ski was cutting through Mike’s flex cuffs. Eddie put him down with a double tap that sent him sprawling into several of his comrades. The sound of his shots had been overwhelmed by the volley of autofire now being directed along the prison ramparts. Twenty guns or more were blasting away at the jagged stone crenellations, wreathing the low wall with a cloud of stone chips and dust. Eddie raced toward his teammates, covering them with his assault rifle until they could find cover under one of the trucks parked in the courtyard.

WITH soldiers blasting away along the east and west walls, Cabrillo stayed low and circled the prison.

He loaded another round into the RPG as he ran. He came up hard against the wall opposite the last door that led into the prison. So far none of the guards had recognized his strategy of locking them inside the parade ground, but all it took was one sharp officer to understand what was happening and order men back inside. He knew their first job would be to execute Moses Ndebele. His whole plan hinged on every guard being outside to witness the execution and him being able to prevent them from retreating.

He popped up between two stone blocks and fired, ducking back as a dozen automatic weapons backtracked the RPG’s contrail and peppered his cover position. The air was alive with grit and shattered bullet fragments. The rocket motor didn’t burn evenly, causing the missile to shoot skyward in a complete misfire. He slithered out of the worst of the fusillade and crawled thirty feet, pausing to let the undisciplined fire die down. He slipped the MP-5 over the wall and triggered off half a clip, aiming across to the second floor so as not to accidentally hit his men down below.

In response, the guards redoubled their counterfire, raking the stone as if sheer volume of rounds would bore through the rock. Juan ignored the scream and whine of bullets passing inches over his head and calmly reloaded the RPG. He crawled farther along the roof, coming to the point where he would need to fire at the most oblique possible angle and still hit the last remaining door, but he was at least fifty feet from where the guards were still hammering with their AKs.

The distance he’d covered would buy him perhaps a second before he was spotted again. Then he thought of a better strategy and rolled away from the wall lining the courtyard. He backed from the edge until when he got to his knees he couldn’t see the men down on the ground. And more important, they couldn’t see him. He shuffled forward a couple of inches and could see a little farther into the prison, a little farther down the far wall. He took another couple of tentative steps on his knees. There! He could just make out the Roman-like arch above the distant door but couldn’t see any of the guards milling around.

Cabrillo brought the RPG to his shoulder, aimed carefully, and touched the trigger.

What he couldn’t see and couldn’t know was that a sergeant of the guards had recognized Juan’s tactic and was leading a small squad to the door when the rocket streaked across the courtyard. One of the soldiers was directly under the door’s arch when the shaped charge slammed into the wall. As the explosion blew chunks of rock across the parade ground and cut the squad apart, the concussion from the blast shattered every bone in the lead soldier’s body before he was crushed under an avalanche of debris.

Juan rushed forward so he could see the results of his attack. Though badly damaged, he could still see the dark confines of the prison through the ruined doorway. There were gaps in the rubble large enough for a man to crawl through. He spied a soldier making a break for the door. Cabrillo tripped his machine pistol’s laser sight and when the tiny speck of light appeared between the guard’s shoulders he fired one-handed, forgetting the weapon was on full auto. It didn’t matter that his second, third, and fourth rounds went wild. The first one drilled the guard exactly where he’d aimed. He crashed into the pile of loose stones and lay still.

Cabrillo reloaded the rocket launcher a fifth time, taking a new position to better center the door. A solid sheet of lead rose from the angered soldiers and seemed to fill the sky where he’d been standing moments earlier. He inched forward again so he could see the crown of the door opening and fired off his next round, ducking when he knew the shot to be true. He loaded the Russian antique yet again, hearing the sound of an avalanche over the frenzied fire. When he peeked over the wall he saw the doorway was now a mountain of jumbled stone blocks obscured by a cloud of dust.

The guards could no longer enter the prison proper. It was time to call in the cavalry.

DOWN in the courtyard the commanding officer screamed at the top of his lungs to get his men’s attention. The ambush had set them off like berserkers and, apart from the one sergeant who’d realized the attack was meant to trap them on the parade ground, the men seemed blithely unaware that they were standing in a potential killing field. At any moment he expected gunners on the roof to open up and cut down his command like lambs at the slaughter.

He singled out three of the smallest of his men, slender youths who had a chance to slither through the destroyed doorways and execute Moses Ndebele before the assault force could spirit him away. He also directed some men to open the prison’s main gate, but to do so carefully in case there were more troops waiting outside. With so many weapons firing it was impossible to hear if any of the perimeter alarms had been tripped.

He grunted in satisfaction when he saw one of his officers attempting to erect a long piece of pipe against the eaves so men could scale it and gain access to the roof. As soon as the top of the pipe touched in a notch between two of the stone crenellations, a soldier with an AK-47 slung across his back and no shoes on his feet shimmied up the rusted piece of steel with the agility of a spider.

EDDIE Seng saw the soldier climbing the length of pipe too late. He had scant seconds to aim before the man reached the top of the wall and vanished. With his vantage limited by the truck’s undercarriage, he flipped onto his back to get a better view, raising the assault rifle’s barrel so he had an approximate shot. He was within a hair’s breath of pulling the trigger when the man disappeared and angrily moved his finger away. There was no sense in firing and giving away their position. Juan would have to deal with this new threat on his own. Eddie slid deeper into the shadow cast by the truck. Mike laid a hand on his shoulder, a reassuring gesture meant to tell him there was nothing he could have done.

It did little good.

CABRILLO was hunched over the RPG, loading his second-to-last round. All he had to do was blow the main gates open and Mafana and his men would charge into the prison, freeing him to find Ndebele and Geoffrey Merrick. He clicked the round home and stood.

The sun was still low on the horizon and the shadows it cast were elongated to the point that it was impossible to tell what cast them. The shadow that suddenly emerged next to where he stood hadn’t been there a second ago. Juan whirled and just had time to see one of the guards standing with his back to the courtyard when the man’s AK opened up, its muzzle flash like a strobe light aimed into his eyes.

Juan dove left, hit the wooden roof with his shoulder, and before the guard could adjust to the fact his quarry had avoided the ambush, he had the RPG tucked against his flank. He pulled the trigger, aiming by instinct rather than sight.

The rocket leapt from the barrel in a cloud of stinging gas. The guard’s body didn’t provide enough resistance to set off the explosive head when it slammed into his chest, but the kinetic energy of a five-pound projectile traveling at a thousand feet per second did more than enough damage. With his ribs crushed back against his spine the guard was flung off the roof like a limp doll. He landed amid a throng of his comrades thirty feet from the wall where he’d been standing, and this time the force of the impact was enough to detonate the shaped charge. The explosion tore through flesh and bone, leaving a smoking crater rimmed with the dead and injured.

Juan had just one last round for the RPG and if it failed so would the assault. He fitted it hastily, rushed forward to get a bead on the thick slabs of wood that protected the main entrance into the prison, and fired, dimly aware that there were a cluster of men about to open the doors.

The rocket ran true and hit the gate dead center, but the projectile failed to detonate. The guards who’d dropped flat when the missile flashed over their heads got to their feet slowly, nervous laughter turning into cheers when they realized they’d been spared.

Seeing what happened, Cabrillo flipped his machine pistol off his back. As soon as the laser sight speared out in the area around the embedded rocket he opened fire. Splinters erupted from the door as the hot-loaded 9-mm rounds chewed into the wood. Just before the magazine ran dry a bullet struck the dormant projectile. The resulting explosion scythed down the men who’d been celebrating their good fortune moments earlier and blew the door apart in a shower of smoldering boards.

Just beyond the sensor range of the perimeter alarms, four trucks idled, their occupants all battle-hardened veterans of one of Africa’s bloodiest civil wars and all ready to lay down their lives for the one man they thought could pull their nation back from the brink of ruin.

22

“LAWRENCEof Arabia calling Beau Geste. Come in, Beau.”

So exhausted by the past forty-eight hours—and especially the past twelve—Cabrillo had forgotten all about the tactical radio he was wearing and for a moment thought he was hearing voices. Then he remembered that Lawrence of Arabia was Linc’s call sign.

“Damn, Larry,” Juan radioed back. “Am I glad to hear you.”

“Just saw an explosion at the main gates and looks like our new allies are sweeping in.”

“Affirmative. What’s your position?”

“We’re about three miles out at five thousand feet. Eagle-eye Gunderson saw the blast. Are you ready for us to land yet?”

“That’s a negative,” Cabrillo replied. “I still have to secure our passengers and we need to make sure Mafana’s men can keep the guards bottled up long enough for you to come in.”

“No problem, we’ll keep circling,” Linc said, then added with humor in his deep baritone, “Danger pays by the hour, anyway.”

Juan slammed a fresh magazine into the receiver of his MP-5 and racked the bolt to chamber a round.

Before anyone else tried to outflank him by climbing onto the roof he dashed to where his parachute billowed over the outside wall of the prison, one end held fast by one of the eyebolts his men had installed earlier—when this was supposed to have been a simple clandestine hostage rescue from a bunch of long-haired ecoterrorists.

The battle in the courtyard now sounded like World War Three as the Zimbabweans fought each other in such close quarters that their assault rifles were used as clubs as much as guns.

Clutching the fabric of the chute, Juan slipped over the edge of the roof so his feet dangled three stories above the desert floor. He lowered himself slowly and carefully. The nylon was as slick as silk. When he reached the end of the writhing mass of parachute cloth he was still a good three feet above the window opening. He planted his boots against the wall, tucked his knees against his chest, and kicked off as hard as he could.

His body pendulumed away from the prison for nearly ten feet before gravity took hold of him and sent him careening back toward the building. It felt like his knees would explode when he slammed into the rough stone, but the experiment told him he could make the attempt, but his timing would have to be perfect.

Again he flexed his legs and launched himself into space, his grip on the chute like iron. When he reached the apex of his swing, he focused on nothing but the dark opening that gave entry into the prison. He started arcing down, building up speed, and more importantly angular momentum. Like a stone released from a sling, Juan let go when his feet were pointed at the window.

He flew through the window, clearing the bottom sill by inches and smashed onto the floor, rolling until he came up hard against the iron railing that overlooked the floors below. The sound of his body slamming into the loose railing echoed in the cavernous cell block.

He groaned as he got to his feet, knowing that in a couple of hours his back was going to be zebra-striped with evenly spaced purple bruises.

Feeling no need to be stealthy in this block of cells after such a loud entrance, Cabrillo rushed down the stairs. He already knew from Eddie’s reports to Linc that this particular section of the prison was empty.

On the ground floor he paused at the open door, checking the hallway in both directions, thankful that the generator was still powering the lights. When he started off to the right he took the precaution of smashing the exposed bulbs as he went. He had no intention of leaving the prison the way he had come in and he didn’t want to make it any easier for a guard who managed to enter through the blown-up doorways.

He peered around a corner, saw a chair outside a large door, exactly how Eddie had described the scene where they were holding Merrick. Although their original mission had been to rescue the scientist, Cabrillo’s first obligation now rested with getting Moses Ndebele to safety. He trotted past the door, imagining that Merrick’s kidnappers were holed up inside, not knowing how to react to the unfolding situation.

The prison never really shed the heat it absorbed during the torturous days, and now that the dawn had arrived the passageway was growing hotter. Sweat ran from Cabrillo’s pores as he jogged. He was halfway down the long hall when motion ahead caught his eye. Two slightly built guards ran toward him from the opposite direction. They were much closer to the entrance to the next cell block than Cabrillo, and their presence told him that this was where they were holding their prize prisoner.

Juan dove flat, his elbows scraping against the stone floor as he aimed his machine pistol. He fired a wild spray that forced the soldiers back the way they’d come and around another bend.

They must have climbed through the debris piled outside the doors, he thought absently and tried to ignore the fact he was too exposed and out-gunned. He slithered back to where the hallway was much darker and rolled to the opposite wall to confuse them. He fired every time one of the guards tried to check the hallway, filling the air with the stench of burned gunpowder. The area around the Chairman was littered with stumpy brass shell casings.

He slid across the hall again a moment before one of the soldiers laid down a blistering barrage of cover fire. Bits of stone and hot copper bullets seemed to fill the corridor. Juan tried to suppress the burst of autofire with a return volley, but the guard hung tough and continued to shoot.

His partner dashed from around the corner to add his gun. While neither of them could see Cabrillo in the darkened passage, the chance of a lucky shot doubled. The first guard broke from his position and raced for the entrance to the cell block. Either the door hadn’t been locked or he’d shot away the mechanism because he disappeared inside before Juan could take him down.

Cabrillo had seconds before the guard assassinated Moses Ndebele. In what must have seemed like reckless rage, he launched himself from the floor and out of the murky shadows. His gun spit flame as he ran, firing from the hip. The beam from his laser sight was a ruby line cutting through the smoke. It finally settled on the guard’s torso; the next three rounds hit center mass and tossed him off his feet.

Cabrillo kept sprinting. Rather than slow to enter through the open door to the cell block, he careened off the stout jamb, absorbing the blow on his shoulder with barely a check in speed.

A line of cells was directly in front of him, each enclosure fronted by iron bars. They all appeared empty.

For all he knew Ndebele could be on the second or third floor and the guard had too much of a head start to find him. Then, over the sounds of his ragged breathing and hammering heart, he heard voices coming from behind the cells. The voice was melodious, soothing, not the plaintive cries of the condemned, but rather the fatherly understanding of a priest granting absolution.

He raced around the corner. The guard was just outside of one of the cells while a man wearing a filthy prison uniform stood next to the bars, not two feet away from the soldier aiming at his head with an AK-47. Moses Ndebele stood calmly, with his arms at his side as if he weren’t facing his executioner but rather talking with a friend he hadn’t seen in while.

Juan raised his gun to his shoulder, the laser never wavering from the guard’s shiny forehead as the African turned at the sound of Cabrillo coming to a halt thirty feet away. The soldier started to draw down on his weapon in order to engage but wouldn’t have the time before Juan pulled the trigger. The bolt crashed against an empty chamber. The click of metal on metal was loud but at the same time nothing compared to what was supposed to happen.

The guard had his weapon aimed halfway between Juan and Moses Ndebele. He wasted a half second of thought between his sworn duty and the need to eliminate Cabrillo. He must have figured he could riddle the main rival of his nation’s dictator and still gun down Juan before Cabrillo could reload the machine pistol or draw a handgun because he started to turn back toward Ndebele.

Juan let the Heckler & Koch drop from his hands and kicked his artificial limb up into his chest so he could wrap his hands around his calf, his knee braced against his shoulder as though he were holding a gun.

The barrel of the soldier’s AK was just a couple of arc degrees from pointing at Ndebele when Juan’s fingers found a button recessed into the touch plastic exterior of his combat leg. It was a safety device that allowed him to depress another button on the opposite side of the limb.

Integrated within the prosthesis was one more trick Kevin Nixon in theOregon ’s Magic Shop had devised—an eighteen-inch-long, nickel-pipe in .44-caliber. The dual triggers guaranteed the weapon would never discharge accidentally. When Juan hit the second one the single-shot gun went off with an explosion that shook dirt from the rafters and blew a nearly half-inch hole through the bottom of his boot.

The recoil sent him tumbling. He picked himself up quickly, yanking at his pants cuff so he could draw the Kel-Tec .380 automatic pistol. He needn’t have bothered. The hollow-point .44-caliber slug had hit the guard in the right arm as he stood in profile to Cabrillo and transited his entire body through his chest cavity, shredding his internal organs. The exit wound in his opposite shoulder was the size of a dinner plate.

Moses Ndebele looked at Juan in stunned silence as the chairman rammed a fresh magazine into his machine pistol and returned the Kel-Tec to its hiding place inside his leg. There were blood splatters on his prison uniform and a trickle of crimson on one cheek. Juan noticed the burn marks on Ndebele’s bare arms, the swelling around his eyes and mouth, and how he stood with all his weight on one leg. Juan looked down at Ndebele’s bare feet. One was normal, the other was so swollen it resembled a football.

He guessed every bone from ankle to toe had been broken.

“Mr. Ndebele, I am here with an army of your followers headed by a man named Mafana. We’re getting you out of here.”

The African leader shook his head. “The damned fool. I told him when they first imprisoned me not to try something like this, but I should have known he wouldn’t listen. My old friend Mafana chooses the orders he wishes to obey.”

Juan motioned him away from the cell door so he could shoot the lock open. Ndebele had to hop to keep his damaged foot from touching the ground. “I’ve got a friend named Max who pulls the same thing on me.” Juan glanced up to catch Ndebele’s eye. “And more often than not he’s right about which ones to disregard.”

He popped two rounds into the old iron lock and gave the door a heave. It slid open on protesting hinges. Ndebele made to hobble out of the cell but Juan held up a hand.

“We’re going out another way.”

When researching the Devil’s Oasis, Linda Ross had come across the account of a prisoner who tried to widen the six-inch sewer holes inside the lower-tier cells. A prison trustee checked them every other day and when he found that the man had used a spoon or other implement to scrape away at the foot-thick stone in order to make the hole big enough to escape through he immediately reported it to the guards.

They systematically crammed the prisoner down the small opening, breaking whatever bones necessary until only his head remained inside the cell.

No one else ever tried to escape that way again.

Juan handed the MP-5 to Ndebele asking him to cover them and sat next to the hole. He hurriedly took off his boot and retrieved the remainder of his cache of plastic explosives. He molded the plastique into a long strand that he affixed in a ring at the bottom of the hole. He plucked the detonator from behind his leg’s ankle joint and set the timer for one minute, enough time to lead Ndebele safely away.

With his boot in hand he stuck the timer into the soft explosive and left the cell with Moses draped over his shoulder in order to protect the man’s foot. The bomb went off like a volcano, sending a geyser of flame, smoke, and chunks of stone high enough to ricochet off the ceiling. Cabrillo had his boot back on, but didn’t bother to lace it when he returned to the cell. As he’d anticipated, the charge had been more than enough for the job. The hole was now five feet wide, its jagged edges blackened by the blast.

He dropped through the opening, and helped Ndebele descend. The man sucked air through his teeth when his broken foot brushed against the ground under the prison.

“You okay?”

“I think maybe when the time comes I will ask you where you got your artificial leg. I don’t think I will have this foot much longer.”

“Don’t worry, I know a pretty good doctor.”

“He can’t be that good if you lost your leg.”

“Believe me, she is—she only started working for me after my original was blown off.”

Together they struggled through the tunnel that allowed the constant desert winds to desiccate the human waste that once fell from above and eliminate the need for emptying slop buckets.

The confines were tight and they had to crawl on elbows and knees in the dirt. Juan led them to the eastern side of the prison, closest to the airstrip. Fortunately, the wind was at their backs so the blowing sand didn’t scour their faces. It took five minutes to reach the perimeter of the building. The sunlight glaring through the opening was especially bright after the dim confines of the penitentiary. The two men lay side by side just short of the opening.

Cabrillo keyed his radio. “Beau Geste to Lawrence of Arabia. Can you hear me, Larry?”

“Five by five, Beau,” Linc answered back. “What’s your situation?”

“I have the native guest with me now. We’ve made it to the exterior wall. I’m looking at the airstrip.

Give me fifteen minutes to secure the primary target and come pick us up. Our boys will know to make a break for it when they see the plane.”

“Negative, Beau. From the looks of it our allies are taking a hell of a pounding in there. They won’t last fifteen minutes. I’m coming in now.”