Текст книги "Piranha"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 25 страниц)

Maria Sandoval gingerly tightened the torn sleeve of her sweater around her left biceps where she’d been gashed by the glass she jumped through. The crude bandage was soaked with blood, but she didn’t want to cut off the circulation and render her arm useless.

When she leaped through the window, she had fallen ten feet onto the interior bulkhead wall of a cabin. She must have sat there for five minutes. Her mind replayed the deaths of her entire crew as she tried to rationalize the attack, the same type that must have been carried out against the company’s other vessels. These were no pirates, not if they didn’t take hostages. Obviously, their goal was to sink the ship with her on it and they weren’t going to give up just because she had pulled off the miracle of saving it.

She couldn’t return to the bridge to radio her situation. If the attackers boarded the ship, that would be their primary destination. After tending to her wound, Maria sought a hiding place until rescuers arrived.

Because of its extreme list, the ship she knew intimately was now foreign to her. She had to keep reminding herself that what used to be port was now down and what used to be starboard was now up.

The crew’s quarters—including the cabin where she was now taking refuge—galley, mess hall, and offices were all located in the one-story accommodation block atop the ship behind the bridge. Every deck below it was dedicated to cargo or equipment to run the ship.

Maria wanted to put as much distance between her and the bridge as she could. She lowered herself into the corridor. Her foot slipped onto the opposing door’s handle and it flew open, the dark room below nearly swallowing her in the process. She caught herself at the last moment and collapsed to her knees next to the yawning cavity.

Willing herself to her feet, she made her way down the hall toward the stern. Her first impediment was a corridor whose double doors were shut. To get across, she would have to stand on the doors. The frame at the top of the doors was too narrow to use at the ship’s current tilt. Two light stamps with her foot confirmed that they would hold. She crossed, fully expecting it to snap inward and cause her to plummet a hundred feet to the other side of the ship.

During her traverse she heard a helicopter and thought she’d been saved, but gunfire scared it away before she could attempt contact with it.

After a few more leaps across open cabin doors, she reached the rear of the accommodation block atop the ship. She had three options: hide in one of the rooms she’d passed, go out onto the open weather deck, or try to make her way down the stairs, where she could hide among the thousands of cars in the cargo holds. Since she would be seen immediately outside, and the hijackers would expect her to hide in the crew’s quarters, cargo was her choice.

It was only then that she noticed the tilt of the ship had lessened by five degrees, and it was continuing to decrease almost imperceptibly. The ship seemed to be righting itself.

At first, Maria was relieved, but then she had the horrible sense that something was wrong. She was sure she had shut the ballast tanks down. If some of them were now leaking, the remaining intact tanks would have to be rebalanced.

She had to get to the engineering station, though there was no way she could make it all the way to the engine room while the ship’s list was so pronounced. She would have to climb down the stairs and then wait until the decks were navigable before she could complete the trip.

She sprung the latch on the stairwell door and it swung down with a bang that was much louder than she thought it would be. She poked her head through and saw movement down the stairs.

Someone was coming.

She stood and looked for anything that she could use as a weapon. The only item close by was a fire extinguisher. She took it from the wall and crouched, ready to spray her attacker with foam before smashing him with the metal tank. Her breathing was ragged, but she minimized the sound by sucking in through her mouth.

She wasn’t sure if it was just one man or more, but it didn’t really matter. She was in no shape to make a run for it.

To her surprise, it wasn’t a head that poked out of the stairwell door. It was a mirror on the end of a stick. Her best chance was to rush the intruder, so she ran forward, stuck the fire extinguisher tube down the opening, and pulled the trigger.

A man below her shielded his eyes and dropped to his knees to avoid the spray.

“Hold your fire,” he said, but he wasn’t talking to Maria. He had turned to address someone behind him. The voice was oddly calm and controlled, and she even thought she heard relief in the way he said it.

Maria released the trigger and held the extinguisher up in a defensive posture. If they wanted to capture her alive, she wasn’t going to make it easy for them.

She could now see that there were four men in the stairwell. The man she’d sprayed stood and put his hands up. A machine gun strapped to his shoulder dangled harmlessly by his side. He was a tall, athletic man with close-cropped blond hair. He beamed up at her with a smile, genuine and warm.

“It’s okay,” he said in American English.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Juan Cabrillo. I’m captain of the ship that responded to your distress call. This is Eddie, Linc, and MacD.” The three men nodded greetings. All of them were as heavily armed as their captain.

“You were the ones in the helicopter?”

Juan nodded. “Unfortunately, the pilot had to get back to our ship. Your arm looks like it needs some first aid. Why don’t you put that down?”

His story made sense, and she was desperate. She dropped the extinguisher. The four of them climbed out of the stairwell.

“Are you with the U.S. Navy?” she asked.

“No. Just Good Samaritans. Do you mind if one of my guys puts a new bandage on there?”

She nodded. Eddie sat her down, opened a first aid kit, and removed her slapdash bandage.

After examining the wound, he said, “It doesn’t look too bad, but it’s going to need a few stitches from Hux.” Eddie began to wrap it with gauze and tape.

“I’m glad your injury isn’t more serious. You’re the captain, I presume?”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Maria Sandoval. How did you know that?”

“When we received the distress call, we did some quick research about your vessel and I saw your name as the master. I don’t imagine there are many other women on the crew.”

“My crew,” she repeated in a low tone.

“Where are they?”

“Dead. Those bastards killed them all after they escaped on our lifeboat.”

A haunted look flashed through Juan’s eyes. As a captain himself, he would be able to imagine what it would be like to lose a crew that way. “I’m sorry.”

“Why are they doing this?”

“We’ll talk about that later. First, we need to keep them from sinking this ship. We saw one of them on the bridge.”

Maria went ashen. “Then he set more of the ballast tanks to drain. That’s why the list is correcting itself. I emptied two of the tanks to keep us from capsizing.”

“That was quick thinking to save your ship.”

“When will your ship arrive?”

“It won’t be here for at least twenty minutes.”

Maria’s shoulders sagged at the news. “I don’t even know how they put those holes in my ship.”

“It has to be some kind of submarine,” Juan said. “We saw one of the holes when we flew in. It was a perfect circle.”

“There were eight holes put in the hull at the same time, and we didn’t detect anything on sonar. What kind of submarine can do that?”

“I don’t know. There may be more than one. If so, they’re probably remotely operated.”

“Then we’re dead. How can we stop them from attacking again?”

“They might be single-use weapons. The men outside wouldn’t be climbing onto the ship if the subs were coming back.”

“We need to stop the ballast tanks from draining completely,” Maria said. “We’ll be too top-heavy if that happens. Once we reach a critical angle the other direction, we’ll flip right over.” The list continued to decrease.

“Do you think they have explosives?” Eddie asked Juan.

“If they had enough to put a sizable hole in the ship, they would have planted it on the hull outside.”

“They had grenades,” Maria said. “That’s how they sank the lifeboat.” The vision was seared into her memory.

Juan turned back to her. “What stations can you operate the ballast tanks from?”

“Just the bridge and the engine room.”

“What’s your cargo?”

“Cars and SUVs on all the decks except the bottom one. We’re carrying construction equipment there.”

“Can we get from the cargo holds directly to the bridge?”

“Yes.”

“He’s probably sabotaged the bridge controls,” Linc said. “That’s what I would have done.” Maria didn’t ask how he would know that, but given how these men were armed, she was quite sure they weren’t from any standard commercial vessel. They had to be former military. But she didn’t get the sense that they were pirates. Too helpful and concerned about her welfare.

“They’re going to outnumber us at least two to one,” Juan said, “so taking them head on is risky. We’ll have to try outflanking them. Are you able to travel, Captain Sandoval?”

“Maria. And yes. Why?”

He took a small computer tablet from his pocket. To her amazement, Juan brought up a detailed layout of her ship on its screen.

“Where did you get that?” she said.

He grinned at her. “Remember that research I told you about? I need you to show us the fastest way to the engine room.”

The accommodation block ended at the halfway point of the Ciudad Bolívar, and the weather deck covering the ship’s back half was a flat expanse of metal ringed by exhaust vents. Juan and his group would have to traverse one of the vehicle decks during their journey. Maria stayed with them. Not only was it risky to leave her alone with Dominguez’s team scouring the ship but she insisted on coming.

The list continued to lessen, which was fortunate because climbing down to the engine room in the aftmost bottom deck using ropes would take hours they didn’t have. Maria knew her ship better than anyone else and she estimated that they would have ten minutes of relatively easy travel when the deck would be transitioning from thirty-five degrees aport to thirty-five degrees astarboard. If the pitch were any greater, they wouldn’t be able to keep their footing without belaying ropes.

Of course, everything would be moot if the draining procedure caused an unforeseen imbalance in the ship’s center of gravity or if one of the vehicles came loose and caused an avalanche of them to pile up against one side of the ship. Then the end could come so suddenly that they wouldn’t have time to find an exit. The Ciudad Bolívar would become their tomb two miles under the surface of the Caribbean.

As they picked their way down the staircase by standing on the railings, Maria said, “Do you think the risk of sinking unexpectedly will keep this Dominguez from sending men to the engine room?”

Juan threw a look at Linc. “Unfortunately, we’ve met the lieutenant before and he recognized Linc from an encounter where we made him look bad to his superiors, so there’s a personal angle. He’s the type who’ll want to make sure we don’t get out of here alive even if that means risking his own life to do it. If he returns with anything less, Admiral Ruiz will have his head on a pike.”

“Maybe literally,” Linc added.

Maria’s eyes went wide. “Admiral Dayana Ruiz?”

“You know her?” Juan said.

“I met her only once when I was serving in the Navy. She was three ranks above me. She’s a brilliant tactician, but she has a reputation for being ruthless.”

“Now you’re finding out just how ruthless. We think she’s been sinking your company’s ships to put it out of business and bankrupt the owner for her own political gain.”

“How do you know that?” Maria stopped climbing. “Wait a minute. You weren’t just on a passing ship. You knew this was going to happen, that my ship was targeted.”

“We tried to warn your company, but they wouldn’t listen, so we made the trip out here ourselves.”

“You’re American, but you’re not in the military. What’s the connection?”

“I can’t tell you that, but let’s just say that Ruiz and Dominguez are not too happy after our business dealings with them.”

Maria seemed content not to probe further, so they kept going down the stairs as the ship righted itself. When they reached the deck carrying the construction vehicles, Maria stopped them.

“It will be easiest to get there from this deck,” she said. “We can take the ramp at the far end down to the stairwell that leads to the engine room. Once I’m at the engineering station, it will only take me a few seconds to stop the ballast tanks from draining. Hopefully, it will be when the ship is upright.”

Although Juan was anxious to reach the engine room before Dominguez did, they waited to leave the stairs until the deck was walkable. Even with the ship listing at only thirty-five degrees now, they would have to be careful with their footing or they’d be somersaulting down a hill made of steel.

With his weapon at the ready, Juan took the first step out onto the vehicle deck. His rubber-soled shoes gave him plenty of traction, so he was able to take in the immense hold.

The hoistable deck above had been raised to accommodate the huge equipment. Bright fluorescent lighting allowed him to see the length of a football field in either direction. Only the interior loading ramps interrupted the view. Juan scanned the hold for a few moments but saw nothing moving. The immense space was eerily silent.

“All clear,” he said to the others. “Maria, show us the way. Eddie, keep a hand on her. Linc, you take point.”

Linc kept one hand on the deck as he came out like a roofer edging his way down slippery shingles. Eddie held on to Maria’s uninjured arm as he guided her out of the stairwell. Once they were used to the angle of the deck, they started moving toward the ramp. MacD followed, and Juan covered the rear.

Now that they were on a more expansive surface, Juan could easily sense that the ship was slowly leveling. In a few minutes it would be dead even.

The loading ramp was only twenty feet ahead. Once they reached it, they’d be able to lean against the ramp’s port wall for stability as they walked.

A clink from behind drew Juan’s attention and he turned just in time to see Dominguez and five of his men drop into the hold from a stairwell near the bridge about a hundred yards away.

Juan yelled, “Down!” a second before the Venezuelans opened fire.

Bullets careened off the metal and shattered glass windshields. Juan returned fire and found out for himself how hard it was to aim while digging his feet into the floor at such an extreme angle. He took a bead on Dominguez but Dominguez slid down to find footing on a bulldozer. Instead, Juan’s shot hit another man, who screamed and fell out of sight.

He looked ahead and saw his group unharmed. “Get down the ramp!”

Eddie grabbed Maria and scrambled forward behind Linc, but another volley of shots ricocheted off the floor next to Maria and the distraction caused her to slip.

She slid down the deck, but Eddie slid down below her, put his shoulder into her, and practically threw her to Linc, who enveloped her wrist in his huge hand and dragged her to him.

The effort caused Eddie to lose his own footing, but MacD wasn’t close enough to latch onto him. Eddie scrabbled for purchase, but he was already accelerating and there was nothing to grasp. He went zooming below the undercarriage of a road grader.

Linc got Maria to the safety of the ramp, where he lay flat to take more careful aim on Dominguez. Now their attackers’ shots were even more scattered.

Juan ignored the bullets pinging off the walls around him. He raced over to the road grader and braced himself against its wheel while MacD provided covering fire. Juan peered around the tread and was relieved to see Eddie clinging to a truck axle halfway toward the port side.

It would take him several minutes to climb back on his own. It was time they didn’t have.

“Toss me your rope,” Juan said to MacD.

“Ah’ll anchor it up here,” he replied, taking it off his arm.

“No, you and Linc need to take Maria to the engine room. If she doesn’t keep the ballast tanks from emptying, we’re all dead.”

MacD grimaced at the order, throwing the coils to Juan, who caught them and shrugged them over his shoulder. Linc laid down a barrage, allowing MacD to join him and Maria.

They took one last look at Juan, who waved them to go on. He was shielded, at least for the moment, by the blade of the grader in front of him.

Juan activated his throat mic. “How are you doing, Eddie?”

“I scraped myself up pretty well, but I don’t think anything’s broken. Is Maria all right?”

“She’s fine. I sent her ahead with Linc and MacD.”

“You want me to come up there?”

“No, I’m coming down to you. We’ll see if we can keep Dominguez occupied here instead of chasing after them.”

Juan knotted the rope around the road grader’s suspension so he could control his descent. It unspooled all the way to the opposite side of the hold. Eddie was able to put a hand on it and let go of the axle.

Juan kept his speed in check as he made his way down to Eddie. As he neared Eddie, he slowed more than he expected. But it wasn’t him. It was the ship.

The speed of the tilt’s correction had drastically accelerated. By the time he was under the truck adjacent to Eddie, the ship was undergoing a radical shift to starboard.

“I think we’re—” was all Juan got out before bullets caromed off the truck’s chassis and he had to take cover behind the wheel. Two of Dominguez’s men had crawled under the equipment to get him in their sights.

The ship would be at a level beam in seconds and that meant there was an immediate threat more dangerous than the men shooting at them.

As soon as the sudden shift occurred, Maria knew what was coming. She told Linc and MacD to climb into the nearest SUV. All of the vehicles on the ship were unlocked, with the keys inside, for quick removal during unloading.

The wave of water rushing toward them was only four feet high, but it would be strong enough to knock them off their feet and send them flying if they didn’t get out of the way.

They dived into the SUV and slammed the doors as the water enveloped it. For the moment, they were unscathed, but Maria’s bigger fear was that the weight transfer would tip the ship over.

She held her breath as the water coursed down the loading ramp and settled against the starboard side. The list was only ten degrees—for now. Although the rapid shift had ceased, she could feel the Ciudad Bolívar continue to slowly roll. There must have been a sudden bulkhead failure on a lower level, but the ballast tanks were plainly unaffected and continuing to drain.

The right side of their truck was now submerged in water that was beginning to seep in. Linc turned the ignition key and unrolled the windows on the left side. They slithered out and stood on the hood of the adjacent SUV.

“This way,” Linc said, and they made their way to the port side by hopping across the hoods of the row of trucks parked fender to fender.

In two minutes they were jumping onto the deck next to the stairwell that led to the engine room. The stairs were easier to take while the list was less pronounced, but the steps were dripping and slick from the water that had immersed them only a few minutes before. The lights had shorted out, so Linc and MacD flicked on flashlights for the short walk down.

When they opened the watertight door, their ears were assaulted by the roar of still-running engines. They stopped on the catwalk overlooking the two huge engines that drove the ship’s screw and provided electrical power. The space occupied four stories and was crisscrossed by stairs, pipes, and ventilation ducts. Normally, the equipment was showroom clean, but rings of oil and grease were visible where the water had pooled and splashed before settling to the bottom. Obviously, a large amount of water had flooded into the engine room before it was evacuated and sealed from the bridge.

“Where’s the engineering station?” Linc asked.

Maria pointed at the enclosed room at the stern.

MacD stared down at the water, which had to be at least seven feet deep. “Any way around that?”

Maria shook her head. “We’re going for a swim.”

Something floating in the water caught her eye. It was partially hidden in the shadow of the starboard engine on the far side. She held her hand out to MacD. “Can I borrow your flashlight?”

He shrugged and handed it to her.

She clicked the switch and pointed it at the object.

It was a foot.

Maria gasped and panned the light across the body, which was floating facedown. When the beam reached the holstered pistol, all three of them knew it wasn’t a stranded crew member.

Linc shoved her down behind a vent at the same time MacD opened fire at a hidden figure. Bullets whistling past in response confirmed that they weren’t the first to reach the engine room.

–

Juan’s warning about the wave had come in time for Eddie to use his cat quickness to leap onto the dump truck cab’s ladder and scale it before he was hit by the water. But because he was completely underneath his own truck, all Juan had time to do was loop the rope around the axle and wrap it around his wrist. He held his breath and rode out the rush of water like a fish hooked on a lure.

When the water had flowed to the other side, he could see that the two gunmen who’d been firing at him were bobbing on the water, limp and motionless. The one face he could see was caved in where it had met a metal protrusion.

Eddie called out. “Chairman, are you all right?”

Juan unwrapped the rope from his wrist and crawled out from underneath the truck beside Eddie. “I’m okay, but I have more sympathy for a marlin now. Dominguez is down at least three men. Do you see where he is?”

“I lost him.”

“Don’t worry. He’ll find us.”

The deck was still at a mild slant, but it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

Maneuvering under and around the construction equipment, Juan and Eddie snaked their way to the starboard side. At the last row of vehicles, they would have to cross ten feet unprotected to get to the stairwell door.

They crouched behind a bulldozer. Juan poked his head out and sparks flew where bullets stung the metal. He pulled back.

“Dominguez was obviously expecting that,” Juan said.

“Did you see where he was?”

“About thirty yards away. I couldn’t tell if he was alone. I don’t think we can both make it across without being hit.”

“How desperate are we to get off the boat right now?”

Juan keyed his throat mic. “Linc, tell me you’re about to shut off the ballast tanks.”

A background roar in his earpiece was accompanied by the staccato pop of gunfire.

“I’m glad to hear you’re up and about, Chairman,” Linc replied, “but I’m sorry, they got here first. Two of them drowned, three left. We don’t think they had time to disable the engineering station, though.”

“Can Maria reach it?”

“Not yet, but we’re working on a plan. We wouldn’t mind some help.”

“We’re kind of busy ourselves,” Juan said, “but we’ll keep you posted.”

“Roger that.”

Juan dropped to his belly. His sodden clothes squished against the metal. He was certain one of Dominguez’s men would be circling around in a pincer movement.

There. Feet scurried from the protection of one giant wheel to the next. Juan anticipated the path he was taking and placed the red dot sight on a spot five feet past the wheel.

On cue, the feet appeared. Juan led his target and shot a three-round volley. One of the bullets slammed into a knee and knocked the man to the ground, howling. He saw Juan and tried to get a shot off, but Juan cut him down with another burst.

“We know where you are, Dominguez!” Juan shouted in Spanish. “You can’t stay there forever.”

Dominguez didn’t respond. Instead, a hand grenade bounced against the wall and skittered across the floor until it stuck against the forward chain anchoring the bulldozer to the deck. Juan and Eddie dived behind the dozer’s blade, which rang with the blast.

Juan looked out and saw that the blast had severed the anchor chain. Nothing was holding the front of the forty-ton bulldozer in place except its treads.

“We need to take care of Dominguez and get down to the engine room,” Juan said.

“I saw where he was when he tossed the grenade,” Eddie said. “He’s in the bed of a dump truck. Good sight lines and a stellar defensive position. A head-on attack wouldn’t be the best idea.”

The deck tilted farther and the bulldozer was losing traction. It skidded to starboard with a shriek of metal on metal until it came to rest against the dump truck next to it. Juan held his breath, thinking this might be the start of a vehicle avalanche. The truck’s anchor chains squealed in protest at the added weight but held.

“That’s not going to last long if the list gets worse,” Eddie said.

“I agree.” Juan radioed Linc again. “I don’t mean to put pressure on you guys, but we’ve got a loose bulldozer up here that is getting ready to take half the cargo with it to the starboard side. If you don’t stop this list in the next few minutes, none of us are making it out of here.”

–

Maria’s heart pounded as the gunfire echoed through the engine room. She had no idea how Linc and MacD stayed so calm.

“We’ve got two men left behind those pipes above the engine,” MacD said, before snapping off another shot.

“The Chairman says the situation up there is critical,” Linc said. “We need to get to the engineering station now. Do you think you can make it?”

“Maybe, but I wouldn’t have any idea what to do when I got there.”

“Maria could tell you over the radio how to turn off the ballast drains.”

“No, I have to do it,” Maria said. “It will take too long to talk MacD through the procedure.”

She added, “This is my ship. I’m not going to let Ruiz sink her.”

Linc grudgingly relented. “Okay. They don’t have a good angle on the lower level, but even with our covering fire you’ll be too exposed to use the stairs from the catwalk. They’ll pick you off before you get fifteen feet.” He pointedly looked down at the pool of water and Maria understood what he meant. Instead of using the stairs to get down there, she was going to have to dive over the railing directly into the water.

“I can make it,” she said more confidently than she felt.

“We’ve got another problem,” MacD said. “I’m down to my last magazine.”

“Me too. Make every shot count. Ready?”

Maria took a deep breath and nodded.

Linc said, “On my mark. Three, two, one . . . Go!”

MacD and Linc snapped up and shot three-round bursts in rapid succession. Maria didn’t wait to see if the suppressing fire worked. She jumped to her feet, pivoted around the ventilation duct, and launched herself over the railing, praying that the water was as deep as she thought it was.

She plunged into the pool feetfirst and stopped herself against the deck. There was just enough light to see the steps ahead of her, but the oil in the water stung her eyes.

Maria had the impulse to close her eyes and surface, but the less exposure to the gunmen, the better. She used a dolphin stroke to propel herself all the way across underwater. Her lungs were screaming for air by the time she reached the stairs to the engineering station.

She lunged out of the water, half expecting a bullet through her brain as soon as she hit the air, but the fire was still concentrated at the other end of the engine room. She sucked in a breath and heaved herself up the stairs. Those three steps were the longest of her life, but the moment she flung the door open and dived inside she nearly let out a victory cry. The door shut behind her, blocking out the sounds of the engine and gunshots.

Maria raced over to the terminal and tapped on the keyboard to bring up the ballast controls. She was so intent on shutting down the draining tanks that the reappearance of the noise from the engine room barely registered. Someone had opened the door.

Maria didn’t bother to see who it was, but she didn’t need to when she heard the man yell, “¡Alto!”

She ignored him and tapped on the mouse. The screen confirmed that the tanks were closed, and then the display exploded in a hail of bullets.

She closed her eyes and prepared for her own end, but the death blow never came. She turned to see the gunman staring blankly, a bloody third eye drilled through his forehead. The rest of his body knew he was dead a second later and slumped to the floor. Behind him, a neat hole had penetrated the glass, and Linc stood beyond it with his pistol raised.

He charged through the door and made sure the man was dead.

“Are you hurt?” he asked her.

“No. I was able to shut off the ballast tanks before he destroyed the terminal.”

“Good. This guy went after you, so I came after him. MacD took out the last guy, but he’s clearing the rest of the engine room to be sure.”

The dead man’s radio squawked. Linc picked it up. He listened but shook his head.

“I don’t know Spanish,” he said, and handed it to Maria.

She translated as she listened. “A ship has arrived. It’s traveling at a fantastic rate of speed.”

“The Oregon.”

The discussion went on, and she went rigid when she heard the next sentence.

Linc tensed as well. “What?”

“He said the subs are charged and ready to attack. But they’re not aimed at the Ciudad Bolívar. Lieutenant Dominguez has some kind of controller. He’s sending them to sink your ship.”

–

When Linc radioed with the news about the sub controller, Juan told him to warn the Oregon to be on the lookout for any subs. But without any intel on them, he didn’t know if they would be able to spot them or outrun them. He had to get the controller away from Dominguez and deactivate the subs.

Eddie had circled around behind the dump truck where Dominguez was hiding. Juan was waiting behind it in the shadow of another truck’s fender. Eddie prepared to flush Dominguez out.

“I’m in position,” Juan whispered into his radio.

“So am I,” Eddie replied.

Juan unloaded half his magazine into the side of the truck’s enormous bed. Dominguez and another man poked their eyes above the lip and returned fire. At the same time, Eddie used the distraction and noise to climb into the cab. He activated the bed’s hydraulic lift.