Suicide Mission (19 page)

“Thank you,” Catalina told him. She turned to look at Wade, and her lips curved in a savage grin.

“That means I'll get a chance for a rematch with you,” she said.

“Any time you're ready, señorita,” he told her.

“And you,” she went on, turning her head to glare at Bailey. “We'll see how good you do when you're not grabbing somebody from behind.”

“Whatever you say, miss.”

This might be an added complication he didn't need, Bill began to realize. But on the other hand, having Catalina around might make the men try even harder.

One thing was for sure: they needed to be as prepared as they could possibly be when they entered the Canyon of the Serpent.

Especially now that Tariq Maleef was on the loose again.

 

It was easy to see how the canyon had gotten its name. It twisted back and forth between the mountains like a snake before opening up into a wide valley. As they flew over the narrow passage in a helicopter, Tariq looked down and was reminded of his homeland in the Hindu Kush.

“The camp must be easy to defend from a ground attack,” he commented.

“Yes, we could hold off an army in there,” Alfredo Sanchez replied from the seat next to him. “And we have defenses against an attack from the air as well.”

He pointed out several gun emplacements that were cunningly concealed in the rocks so they would be hard to spot.

“There's another way in and out,” Sanchez went on, “a tunnel wide and tall enough for trucks. It runs through that ridge behind the valley and was part of an old mine. When we moved in here we widened it so that it could be used to bring in supplies.”

“Then you're vulnerable that way,” Tariq said.

Sanchez shook his head.

“Not at all. Titanium steel doors close it off when it's not in use. They're strong enough to withstand almost anything.” A thin smile curved Sanchez's lips. “Anything short of a bomb like the one you had.”

Tariq stiffened in the helicopter seat. Anger flared inside him. The Mexican's words sounded like an insult to him, a reminder of the plan that had failed.

And yet it served no purpose to deny the truth. The plan
had
failed. The device that Tariq had gone to so much trouble to obtain was now in the hands of the Americans, probably locked away somewhere in a secret vault where it would never be seen again.

As he almost had been.

He had been tempted to give in to despair during the long weeks when he was being shuffled back and forth from secret prison to secret prison. He began to think that despite the note that had been smuggled in to him at his first place of captivity, Sanchez and the rest of the cartel had found it too difficult to free him and had given up.

During his darkest hours, he had been convinced that Allah had abandoned him as well and that he would spend the rest of his days being tormented by the infidels.

But then, as three vans, with him shackled to the floor of the middle one, had sped along a lonely back road, the vehicle in the lead had hit a mine of some sort, an IED much like the ones his friends on the other side of the world had used so effectively to fight the invaders of their lands. The blast had toppled the van onto its side and blocked the road, and as the two vehicles behind it skidded to a stop, a rocket had streaked out of nowhere and blown the third van into a million pieces.

The force of that explosion had knocked the van containing Tariq onto its side. As he hung from the shackles, one of the guards had aimed a gun at his head, obviously intending to kill him rather than let him be rescued. That was just the sort of barbaric thing the Americans would do.

Before the man could pull the trigger, though, an automatic weapon had stuttered and stitched a line of bullet holes across his chest. One of the other guards was behind that gun, obviously paid off by the cartel to help free Tariq.

Then other cartel soldiers were there to finish off the remaining guards, and it was done. They found the key to unlock Tariq's shackles, and as soon as his hands were free, he bent down and picked up a fallen pistol.

When they had all climbed out of the overturned van, Tariq went to the guard who had betrayed his fellows and embraced the man.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for giving me back my freedom.” He stepped back. “How much were you paid?”

The guard, a stocky Hispanic man, looked nervous, like he wanted to be anywhere else but here right now. But he licked his lips and said, “One hundred thousand dollars.”

“I wish to give you something else,” Tariq said.

With that, he raised the gun and shot the man in the head, two swift shots that bored through his brain and blew the back of his skull off as they exited. As the corpse dropped like a sack of wet sand, Tariq had looked around at the men from the cartel and said, “A man who will betray his friends for money will betray his new friends as well. He could not be trusted.”

No one argued with him or even looked particularly shocked. Death was an everyday thing to these men, their stock in trade.

From there Tariq had been taken across what turned out to be the New Mexico desert in a caravan of pickups and SUVs, and when they finally reached an isolated landing strip, a helicopter was waiting there with Alfredo Sanchez standing beside it. Sanchez, as handsome and immaculately groomed as ever, had come forward to meet Tariq and embraced him.

“It is good to see you again, my friend,” Sanchez had said. “You never gave up hope, did you?”

“Never,” Tariq said, and it was only a tiny lie, not big enough to worry about. And now, since he was free again, he could put it out of his mind entirely and think of only one thing.

Vengeance against the Americans.

After that greeting they had climbed into the helicopter and flown toward the border. Sanchez explained that although the Border Patrol used drone aircraft equipped with cameras to monitor activity along the border, the cartel had enough spies within the American agency that it was no trouble to find out the flight schedule for the drones.

“How have the Americans survived so long, as weak and foolish as they obviously are?” Tariq had asked. “The rest of the world should be able to have its way with them.”

“There are still too many of them who are able to see the truth and think clearly,” Sanchez had replied with a shrug. “Although the numbers of those who can are dwindling steadily. The results of their last few presidential elections prove that. Really, all we have to do is wait. It may take another fifteen or twenty years, but then their economy will crash completely and the country will be there for anyone strong enough to move in and take it.”

“Destiny will not wait,” Tariq had said. “They must be destroyed. Now.”

The helicopter reached the end of the canyon and flew over the valley, which was filled with tents, modular buildings, and metal warehouses. There was a landing strip to one side. Another helicopter sat near it, as did several small planes including a corporate jet. A road led toward the cliffs at the far end of the valley, and Tariq assumed that was where the tunnel Sanchez had mentioned was located.

There was also what looked from the air like some sort of large pit with a floor that appeared to be bare dirt. Tariq frowned at that, pointed toward it, and asked Sanchez, “What is the purpose of that?”

“You'll see, amigo,” Sanchez answered with a smile. “In fact, we have some entertainment prepared for you. We thought it might lift your spirits after your long captivity.”

Tariq had no idea what the man was talking about, nor was he interested in whatever Sanchez's idea of entertainment might be. But the alliance between their organizations was important, so he supposed he would go along with whatever the cartel had planned.

The helicopter touched down. When Tariq climbed out, he saw several of his friends waiting for him, along with some of the cartel men. He embraced his fellow fighters for Islam and nodded to the other men as Sanchez introduced them.

Then the whole group climbed into waiting cars and headed toward the pit Tariq had seen from the air.

One of the men in the car with Tariq was his old friend Anwar al-Waleed. A tall, skinny man with thick glasses and a shock of black hair that tended to fall into his eyes, Anwar had been the mastermind behind the New Sun. It had been his idea in the first place to forge the alliance with the Mexicans, and he had been the driving force behind the establishment of the camp here at Barranca de la Serpiente. Tariq considered himself a fist in the service of Allah, while Anwar fought the holy war with his brain.

“It's so good to see you again, Tariq,” Anwar said in his mild voice, smiling as he spoke. “Even though I hoped that the next time we greeted each other, it would be in paradise.”

“As did I,” Tariq said. “If only Allah had willed it so.”

“You will soon have another chance to strike at the godless Americans, my friend. Plans are already in motion.”

“Good. The day of holy reckoning for them cannot come too soon.”

People were converging on the pit from all over the camp now and gathering at its edge. There would be quite a crowd, Tariq thought, several hundred, in fact. When the little caravan from the landing strip came to a stop, he and the others got out of the cars and joined the throng. Most of them were Middle Eastern men, although a significant minority were Hispanic. Tariq saw no women, of course; they would not be allowed at a gathering of men like this.

The crowd parted to allow Tariq, Sanchez, Anwar, and the others through to the pit. Many of them reached out to slap Tariq on the back or the arm and shout encouragement to him. He was famous among them, he knew, because he had dared to carry the New Sun into the heart of the American city, but despite the fact that they admired him for his courage, he knew they were also well aware of his failure. That thought put the bitter, sour taste of gall in his throat, and he knew only one thing would take it away.

His own death in the service of Allah, striking a mortal blow into the heart of the infidels.

Most of the men were armed, either with pistols or automatic weapons or both. They would be a formidable army, Tariq thought, but their numbers were still too small. They could not hope to defeat the Americans by conventional means. That was why they had to rely on weapons of mass destruction. Only that would balance the scales and give their holy cause a chance of succeeding.

When they reached the edge of the pit, Tariq saw that a ladder was propped against its wall and several men had descended into it since he had seen the place from the air. The pit was roughly circular, about fifty yards in diameter, and some fifteen feet deep. The walls that had been cut into the hard ground were too sheer for a man to climb.

Two of the men in the pit wore ragged work clothes and bore the marks of rough treatment. Their faces were bruised and streaked with dried blood from an assortment of cuts and scratches. Both were Hispanic, and half a dozen other Hispanic men surrounded them. It was clear that the two men who had been roughed up were prisoners. The others held cudgels and looked quite capable of using them to beat the captives to death if they chose to.

“Are you ready?” Sanchez asked Tariq.

“Ready for what?”

“The spectacle of life and death.” Sanchez raised his voice and shouted orders in Spanish to the men in the pit. The club-wielding guards backed off, leaving the two prisoners in the center of the sunken area.

They climbed the ladder and pulled it up after them, ensuring that the prisoners were helpless to escape. Sanchez turned to one of the other men and snapped his fingers. The man stepped up and handed two machetes to Sanchez.

Stepping to the very edge of the pit, Sanchez called down to the two captives, “You know what you must do! May the best man win!”

He tossed the machetes into the pit.

Before the weapons even hit the hard-packed sand, the two prisoners were streaking toward them. A great shout went up from the assembled spectators.

Tariq understood now. He said to Sanchez, “They fight to the death, eh?”

“Exactly,” Sanchez replied with a smile.

“Did they transgress somehow against your rules? Is this their punishment?”

“Those two
cabrones
? They are not members of our group. No, we have a whole barracks full of men like them, men we have taken from buses we stopped on their way from one town to another. We take the most able-bodied men, the ones who look like they can fight . . . and the most attractive of the women. They service our men, and some of yours as well.”

Tariq nodded. Raping infidel women was allowed. Anything that caused pain to the enemies of Allah was allowed.

One of the prisoners had pulled ahead of the other. He reached the machetes first and tried to snatch up both of them, so the other man wouldn't have a chance. He fumbled one away, though, and didn't have time to reach for it again before the second man tackled him. They rolled across the sand as they struggled. The second man was able to twist the machete free from the first man's grip and chopped at his head with it.

The first man jerked aside, barely avoiding the killing blow, and scrambled after the other machete. He grabbed it and twisted, flinging the blade up just in time to block another stroke from the second man. The machetes clashed with a loud ring of steel against steel, and again the spectators surrounding the pit shouted in bloodthirsty eagerness.

The blades continued to clang against each other as the two men fought their way to their feet. It was a raw, desperate battle, a matter of sheer survival. Neither of the men in the pit was particularly skilled with the machete, but skill played little part in this contest. Speed, strength, stamina . . . and luck. These things would decide who lived and who died.

Long minutes went by as the men hacked clumsily at each other. Some of the blows found their targets and left behind gushing wounds, but none bad enough to put an end to the fight. Big drops of blood spattered on the sand like crimson rain as the combatants circled, lunged, twisted, and darted.

They were tiring before Tariq's eyes. Sweat ran in rivers from their faces and soaked their shirts; their chests heaved wildly as they struggled to draw in enough air to keep fighting.

Then luck played the part it was always destined to play. One of the men slipped, his foot sliding almost out from under him as he tried to avoid a wild swing of the other man's machete. Instinctively, he threw his arms out to the sides in an attempt to catch his balance and keep from falling.