Into the Guns (11 page)

Victoria was riding in the back of a specially equipped com truck, sitting elbow to elbow with a tech sergeant as the vic's tires bumped over the pieces of debris that lay on the pavement. An array of screens were positioned in front of them, and thanks to the video provided by no less than
three
drones, Victoria could see what lay ahead.

As her convoy pushed through a barricade manned by cheering
locals, she saw that the enemy was falling back. They had some RPG-29s and the capacity to call for artillery support, but they didn't know how to do it effectively. As a result, howitzer shells began to fall around the convoy, but none of them were on target.

Explosions threw dust and debris into the air, and Victoria could hear the rattle of small-arms fire, as the Zapatas tried to slow the juggernaut that was smashing through their lines. Those efforts failed as the tank commanders opened fire with their 105mm guns, and squads of infantry rushed forward to claim contested ground.

Because the effort was going well, Victoria felt free to turn her attention elsewhere. “Snake-Six actual to Sky-Hammer,” she said. “Do you read me? Over.”

“This is Sky-Hammer actual. I read you five by five. Over.”

“Destroy the bridge. Over.” The bridge Victoria was referring to was the B&M Bridge over the Rio Grande river. Without it, the Zapatas couldn't bring vehicles into Brownsville and would have to retreat on foot if at all.

“Roger that,” Sky-Hammer replied. “Keep your heads down. Over.”

The MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System was more than sixty miles away when two guided missiles flashed out of the boxy launcher and vanished into the low-hanging clouds. Victoria watched via one of the drones as both rockets hit the B&M Bridge at midspan and exploded. A large gap appeared as the smoke cleared. Mission accomplished.

“We're coming up on the exit for Highway 4,” the tech sergeant announced.

“Got it,” Victoria replied. “Tell the driver to pull over, so I can switch vehicles. And keep me informed.”

“Yes, ma'am. Watch your six.”

Victoria was wearing a full combat rig as she left the com truck.
She was carrying an M4 carbine. A couple of dune buggy–like Desert Patrol Vehicles had been tagging along behind the com truck, and both pulled up alongside it. Sergeant Cora Tarvin was driving one of the buggies, with Private Roy Poston riding shotgun. Corporal Jimmy Gatlin was behind the wheel of the other. A pair of retro goggles protected his eyes. “Good morning, ma'am . . . Fancy meeting you here.” All three were members of Victoria's special ops team.

Victoria slid in beside Gatlin. A pintle-mounted 7.62 machine gun was located in front of her. Victoria strapped in, ran a radio check, and held on as the DPV took off. Open country, which was to say tank country, lay to either side of the two-lane highway. There wasn't much to see other than grass and an occasional bush.

Gatlin could literally run circles around the tanks if he chose to but knew better than to enter their line of fire. That forced him to go more slowly than he would have preferred. It wasn't long before some obstacles appeared in the distance. Three trucks were positioned to block the highway. Why? So the gringo
s
would drive between the vehicles, or circle around them. But the tank commanders were smarter than that. They fired, cars exploded, and IEDs went off. Debris was thrown high into the air, only to come twirling down again.

Gatlin uttered a personal war cry and stomped on the gas. The DPV surged forward, bumped through the ditch next to the road, and turned, so Victoria could fire on the men who were hidden next to the ambush site. Hot casings flew sideways as she fired the 7.62. Bodies fell, the DPV bounced over one of them, and Victoria felt all powerful until an RPG exploded twenty feet ahead of them. Gatlin swore as a fragment of metal hit his left hand, and blood began to flow.

Then it was time to turn east again and catch up with the tanks. Victoria took a moment to check the screen mounted between them
and saw that they were about to enter Bola Chica Village. That was where the Space X control center was located. The Zapatas had control of it but not for long. The plan called for the trucks to drop two platoons of infantry outside the village, and Victoria expected them to take it back in less than an hour. In the meantime, she, along with the rest of the task force, would continue to the launch site. Unfortunately, the Russian Kashtan system would be waiting for them when they arrived.

According to the literature, the turret could engage shore targets. But did the people manning the weapons system know that? And what were they doing? Had the Zapata techs been ordered to sit there and scan the sky for Apaches? If so, they might waste time deciding what to do when ground targets appeared. Time her tanks could use to attack. That was Victoria's plan, and she was staking lives on it, hers included.

The tanks were rolling east at their top speed of 45 mph, and Victoria wished they could go faster. But that was impossible. So all she could do was hold on as the DPV bounced across open country south of the tanks. The second dune buggy was doing the same up to the north.

As the tanks began to close in on the launch site, Victoria gave orders for the drones to swing wide rather than run head-on into the metal hail that the Kashtan battery could throw up. Then she got on the horn to the captain in command of the trucks following behind. “Snake-Six actual to Bravo-Six. Order your drivers to pull over and unload your troops. Bring them forward but use cover. There's no telling what that weapons system is going to do. Over.”

The infantry officer already had his orders, but Victoria didn't know him personally, so she wanted to make sure he understood the need to hang back at first. Because if the people in the turret
were
prepared to engage shore targets, the 30mm rotary cannons
would rip the troops to shreds. “This is Bravo-Six,” the officer replied. “Roger that, over.”

“There it is!” Gatlin shouted over the engine noise, as a thicket of radio towers appeared up ahead. Victoria was thrown against her harness as he turned the wheel to avoid running into a marshy estuary. Victoria spotted the grounded ship as the DPV bounced onto the road, and Gatlin put his foot down. The destroyer's bow was higher than it should have been because of the upward slope of the beach. And that was a good thing because it meant the 30mm cannons couldn't be brought to bear on the launch site!

But the feeling of jubilation was short-lived as the Kashtan battery came to life and fired two missiles. They flashed out of their tubes, accelerated away, and were soon lost in the low-lying clouds.
They're gone,
Victoria told herself.
The tanks are too close for the rockets to hit.

That was when a missile fell from the sky and landed on top of the lead tank's turret. There was a massive explosion, and the M-1 was transformed into a pile of burning scrap. A series of secondary explosions destroyed what remained of the machine. Victoria had been wrong,
terribly
wrong, and she felt a sense of shame.

The next missile missed the second tank but not by much. And the near miss blew a storage shed to smithereens. The tank commander was firing by then, and Victoria saw a flash as one of the 105mm shells hit the destroyer's bow, but it wasn't enough.
Two
missiles fell on the Abrams in quick succession, all but obliterating the sixty-ton machine.

Most of Victoria's offensive capability had been destroyed—and she felt her stomach flip-flop as she shouted into the mike. “Get in close! They won't be able to put missiles on us there . . . See the ladders? We'll do this the hard way.”

Gatlin was driving around the road that circled the facility. Tires
screeched as the DPV entered a controlled skid. Then he jerked the wheel to the right and launched the patrol vehicle up and over the dune that lay between the facility and the beach. The DPV took to the air, landed hard, and threw sand as Gatlin stood on the brake.

Victoria hit the harness release as the second dune buggy stopped next to them. “Everybody out!” she ordered. “Follow me!”

Geysers of sand jumped up all around Victoria and Gatlin as they ran, and the men on the destroyer's main deck fired down on them. But in spite of Victoria's order, Poston had chosen to stay behind. He brought the vehicle's pintle-mounted 7.62mm machine gun to bear on the men at the railing and fired a long, sweeping burst. Zapatas fell like tenpins. And that gave Victoria and Gatlin the opportunity to reach the extension ladders that stood against the ship.

More
defenders appeared as the threesome began to climb, but the newly arrived Zapatas were forced back, as Poston continued to fire. Victoria felt the ladder tremble under her boots and paused to lob a grenade up onto the deck above. She heard a loud bang, followed by a scream.

Gatlin had made it to the top of his ladder by then, and when Victoria glanced over at him, she saw the bloody bandage on his left hand. He'd been wounded, and she'd forgotten. But there was no time for guilt as he fired his pistol one-handed, and a Zapata fell back out of sight. Then Victoria was up and over, with Tarvin right on her heels as both women arrived on the bloody deck. Bodies lay everywhere . . . And when one of them moved, Victoria put three bullets into it.

Gatlin was ahead of them at that point, having climbed a ladder closer to the bow. He kept his back to the superstructure as he made his way forward. Rather than step out into the open, he took a peek around the corner. “The turret is all buttoned up,” he announced over the radio.

“Then let's open it up,” Poston said, as he arrived. “This should do the trick.”

Victoria saw that he was carrying a satchel charge. She watched him set the timer, step up, and sling the pack around the corner. Would the explosion destroy the turret? Or destroy the turret
and
the ordnance stored below? If so, that would kill them all.

There were two seconds of silence followed by an explosion so powerful that it shook the entire ship and nearly knocked them down. But there were no secondary explosions. And, after congratulating herself on being alive, Victoria went forward, ready to fire. There weren't any targets. The Kashtan turret was little more than a smoking lump of twisted metal. “She-it,” Gatlin said happily. “That was sweet.”

“This is Snake-Six actual,” Victoria said into her radio. “We need a medic on the ship—and I mean
now
.”

Gatlin looked at the bloody ball of gauze as if seeing it for the first time. He frowned. “The bastards blew my fuck-you finger off . . . It's down in the DPV. God damn it, what'll I do now?”

It wasn't funny, not really, but all of them laughed. And they were still laughing when a perplexed medic came up over the rail. It was only later, after the site was secured, that Victoria allowed herself to think about the dead tankers. She felt the need to cry but didn't . . . “Good soldiers never cry.” That's what her father told her the day she fell off her bike . . . And there hadn't been any tears since.

SOUTHEAST TEXAS

More than two months had passed since the disastrous escape attempt. The first two weeks had been spent trying to recover from the severe beating that Sloan had received. The doctor who was
brought in confirmed that Sloan was suffering from a concussion and had to put in seventy-two stitches to close all of his cuts.

Sloan had been restricted to his cabin during his convalescence. Now, with cuffs on his wrists and chains on his ankles, Sloan was allowed to make ten circuits around the deck each day. Molly led the way, and Lucy brought up the rear, with her Taser at the ready.

Yes, he might be able to vault over the rail, but what then? It would be impossible to swim without the use of his hands and feet. Plus the
Belle Marie
's cook had orders to dump the galley slops over the side, a practice guaranteed to keep a cadre of alligators close by.

So each day was nearly identical to the last. Get up. Shave. Eat. Exercise. Eat. Listen to the radio. Eat again. Read the newspapers and go to bed. On and on it went until Sloan settled into a never-ending state of depression.

As for
why
Sloan was being held, that remained a mystery, as were the fates of the other prisoners who came and went. Sloan rarely caught a glimpse of them but assumed that when the Huey arrived, it was bringing a person in or taking one out.

So when he heard the helicopter arrive on the morning of the sixty-fourth day of his captivity, Sloan assumed it was business as usual and saw no reason to interrupt his push-ups. He was halfway through a set of thirty squats when the hatch opened. But, rather than Molly and Lucy, two men entered the cabin. Sloan recognized Flattop and Short Guy right away. Both were armed. “Grab a jumpsuit,” Flattop ordered, “and put it on. You're going for a ride.”

Sloan felt a stab of fear. Did that mean he was going for a gangster-style ride? Or a
real
ride? The kind where you're alive at the other end.

It took a couple of minutes to put on a fresh jumpsuit and a pair of sneakers. “Hold your hands out,” Flattop instructed. There was a click as the cuffs closed.

“You know the drill,” Short Guy said. “Do what you're told, or we'll stomp you. Do you have any questions?”

“No.”

“Good. I'll lead the way.” Sloan had no choice but to follow Short Guy out of the cabin, down to the main deck, and over to the helicopter pad. Shortly after the passengers climbed aboard the Huey, its rotors began to turn, and the chopper took off. It skimmed the treetops for a while and gradually gained altitude. That was when Sloan allowed himself to relax a little. He hoped that the Huey was taking him somewhere to meet with someone. That would be a whole lot better than a bullet in the back of the head.

Time dragged. But eventually Sloan saw farms through the side doors, soon followed by towns and sprawling suburbs. And then, as the helicopter turned, Sloan caught a glimpse of what he recognized as downtown Houston! And there, off to the right, was the skyscraper called Huxton Tower. His duties as Secretary of Energy had brought him to Houston on a frequent basis, and the building was a very visible element of the skyline. It seemed to grow as the chopper closed in on it. Then the high-rise was below them as the Huey settled onto the roof.
Finally,
Sloan thought to himself.
This will be interesting.