Читать книгу Mind Bomb - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

CHAPTER FOUR

Laredo, Texas

The FBI safe house was just about perfect. The Bureau kept it for running undercover stings. It was out in the sticks, and its main joy was that the little half bath off the living room had been faux walled off with a hidden door. It looked out on to the living room through what appeared to be an ornate two-way mirror. Lyons smiled. They had been serious about the war on drugs back in the eighties.

Schwarz sat ensconced in the hidden taping room with sound and video rolling. Blancanales stood beside him taking notes. Calvin James was the new factor in the equation. Blancanales was a psych-ops expert and Lyons an investigator, but James was the Farm’s number-one interrogator. He wore a white dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his tie loosened against the Texas heat. A pair of reading glasses he didn’t need perched on his nose. He wasn’t wearing a badge but even a cop would have taken him for a sympathetic law-enforcement officer trying to get to the bottom of a mystery. Lyons stood in the background like an angry stone Buddha.

Sofina Valenzuela looked at James in confusion and Lyons in naked fear. Able had kept her under heavy sedation until they’d reached the FBI sting house. Calvin James had flown in on a Farm-chartered private jet. While he had been in transit Able Team had left Señora Valenzuela alone and let her come out of the sedation naturally. For the past hour she had been in what Lyons could only describe as a fugue state. She looked like a woman who had slowly and painfully pulled herself up out of a deep, dark well and now found herself blinking into the noonday sun like a mole.

Lyons’s skin crawled. Everything about this op, since the first briefing at the Farm about the attacks along the border, had stunk; the problem was it was a smell he couldn’t put a name to, save one. Despite shooting her brother-in-law in the face and trying to kill Blancanales, Sofi Valenzuela smelled like a victim. As had her brother-in-law.

Lyons steeled himself to be the bad guy in a destroyed life.

“Where am I?” Valenzuela asked.

Calvin James opened a bottled water. “Are you thirsty?”

The woman focused on the water and spoke in a heartbreaking little-girl voice. “Please.”

Handcuffs at the wrists and ankles bound her to a heavy Edwardian chair. Lyons had a new stun gun in a small-of-the-back holster in case she pulled a Mexican Oak and snapped her restraints.

Calvin James cracked the cap on the water and held it to her mouth. She gulped half the bottle and leaned back gasping. “Why have you kidnapped me? We don’t have any money. It’s all in the land.” Lyons and Calvin shot each other a look. Valenzuela blinked again. “Where am I?”

“You’re in the United States.”

Lyons watched as she did the math, but it wasn’t the malfunction math of the Oak before he had gone all gift-of-emptiness. Valenzuela really just didn’t seem to get it. She flinched as the Ironman strode forward.

“Let me break it down for you.” Lyons held up a tablet and tapped the relevant photo file. It was the bloodbath at the Villa family farm. He brought up scenes of slaughter. “Your brother-in-law, Rafael, went to your niece Maribel’s room.” He rapidly swiped from crime scene pic to pic. “He came back with a loaded assault rifle, one with a 100-round drum. He shot your sister, the mother of his children, in the face five times.”

Valenzuela recoiled.

“Then he tried to shoot you and my friend. I managed to interrupt that. We thought it was over but then you drew a gun and shot your brother-in-law.”

Sofina Valenzuela’s face went slack. “I don’t own a gun...”

Lyons was relentless. “I could almost buy the heat-of-the-moment revenge angle, but then you turned and shot my friend four times in the chest. You were about to shoot him in the head, like you did Rafa. I had to beat you with Kaliman and choke you out. The story of the slaughter is all over Univisión. You are a missing person, considered kidnapped, which you are, and the federal police have an APB out for you.”

Valenzeula looked like she was about to throw up.

Lyons stared down at Sofi like an angry Old Testament God of the Desert with no sense of humor. “You’re telling me you don’t remember any of this?”

She shook like she might fly apart. “No...”

“Yes, you do.”

“I don’t know who you are!” The woman was close to losing it. “I don’t know what you are talking about!”

Lyons loomed in. “Yes, you do.”

Valenzeula squinted and cringed again as if she was staring into the sun. Her voice came out in a little-girl whimper. “My head hurts.”

People who had been choked out often had terrible headaches, but Lyons had put Valenzuela in a strangle. It was a relatively quiet go-to-sleep; some people actually found it refreshing.

Calvin James raised an eyebrow. He spoke sympathetically. “Señora Valenzuela? Do you suffer from migraines?”

“No.” The woman winced. “But my head, it hurts...”

“Do you tolerate aspirin?”

“I prefer ibuprofen...”

James reached into his medic bag and shook out a pair of pills. Lyons noted James’s sleight of hand and saw that one was a Valium. Calvin fed the woman the pills and helped her drink the rest of the water. “Rest for a few moments.”

James inclined his head for a private powwow and the two warriors stepped into the kitchen. “What do you think?” Lyons asked.

“If you hadn’t told me you were there? I’d believe her.”

“If I hadn’t been there? I’d believe her, too. Question is, Cal, do you believe the señora really doesn’t remember anything?”

James frowned and fished a water out of the fridge. “I don’t know her medical history, or if she or anyone in her family has any history of cognitive disorders. Of course, even if she did, she’s related to Rafa Villa by law rather than blood and it wouldn’t explain his behavior. She might have snapped from the trauma in the living room, gone berserk on everybody, and really doesn’t remember. Hysterical amnesia does exist, but it’s pretty goddamn rare, and none of that explains what she was doing with a concealed and unlicensed Walther PPK.”

“It’s louder than a rape whistle,” Lyons suggested. “And more effective.”

“I got a steak dinner that says when I ask her about the gun she says she’s never seen it before, and I’m betting she says she’s never fired a gun in her life.”

Lyons found himself agreeing. “So what do you think?”

“Positively anomalous. I want to give the Valium a few minutes to calm her down and start in again. Let me lead off, and don’t come in hard unless I give you the signal.”

“You got it.” Lyons reached into the fridge for a bottled water and vainly wished it was beer. His tablet beeped. Kurtzman appeared inset in the top right-hand corner of the screen.

Lyons tapped the screen. “What’s up, Bear?”

“Given all the weirdness I decided to keep an eye on you.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. I couldn’t get an NSA satellite since you fellows hiding out in the Lone Star State under the aegis of the FBI was a low priority and not worth the hassle.”

Lyons was pretty sure he had a glimmer of what was coming. “But?”

“So, I’m spending a little observation time on a DigitalGlobe private satellite that’s supposed to be working on precision agriculture imaging in your neck of Texas. Akira hacked me in.”

“Nice, so what do you see?”

“You’re about to have company.”

“How much company?”

“Three vehicles. SUVs. They appear to have light bars on top.”

Lyons tapped his screen and spoke to Schwarz in the hidden bathroom. “You hear that?”

“Yup, any police chatter that could be relevant to us?”

“Not on our end. Bear?”

Kurtzman shook his head. “I suggest you assume they are hostile.”

“ETA?”

“Five minutes or less, and unless they’re on patrol or a picnic the only thing at the end of the road is you.”

“How’d they know we’re here?”

“No idea. Possible tracking device on Valenzuela?”

“Gadgets?” Lyons asked.

“I didn’t detect any on her when we took her. Nothing in the house has been or is giving off a radio signal.”

Lyons smiled ugly. “So someone tattled.”

James checked the loads in his HK .45. “And that someone could only be FBI.”

Blancanales spoke over the link. “If these guys are law enforcement, good or bad, there’s a million ways this goes wrong.”

Lyons made his battle plan. “Cal, get Valenzuela secured in the cellar, then come back, stay in the house and cover our six. Pol, you and I are going to meet and greet outside. Gadgets, stay concealed. You’re our ace in the hole if they assault the house.” Lyons went to his gear bag as his team moved. “Jack? We have a situation.”

“So I hear.”

“What’s your ETA?”

Grimaldi had Dragonslayer parked at the Rancho Blanco private airport, clear on the other side of the Laredo metropolitan area. “I can be there in ten flying low and skirting Laredo city airspace. Fifteen if you want me armed.”

“We got about five before they show. Arm up.”

“Inbound.”

Lyons clicked a drum magazine into his shotgun and set his gear bag out by the front door. The ranch house was adobe, which was good for stopping bullets. The front porch was about five feet above ground level and had a nice three-foot-solid running adobe rail save the opening for the stairs. The FBI house was a semidecent little fortress as things went.

Lyons set his shotgun against the porch rail and pulled up a rocker. He hooked his boot under the weapon so that he could flip it up into his hands. Pol came out to join him a moment later. He took a seat on the other side of the stairs to form a cross fire on the frontage and set his carbine out of sight. Calvin James spoke low through the open door. “Valenzuela is secure in the cellar. In position. I have eyes on the road.”

“Copy that.” Lyons saw dust rising in the distance. “Here they come.” A Chevy Suburban materialized out of the heat waves distorting the access road. It was followed by a second and a third vehicle. They weren’t shiny, armored cartel toys. To Lyons’s eyes they looked like well-used-and-abused unmarked law-enforcement vehicles. He and Blancanales watched as the lead vehicle pulled up within twenty meters. The second two broke out to either side and hung back about another ten meters. They’d formed a wedge. Men began spilling out. They wore khaki pants and blue windbreakers, and most sported cowboy hats. The majority appeared to be Latino. All of them had olive-green Glock pistols in duty rigs.

Lyons subvocalized into his mike. “Bear, I don’t suppose you have enough imaging to read what’s on the backs of their jackets?”

“I wish.”

A short man jumped out of the lead vehicle. He doffed his white hat and mopped his brow. The man had gray hair and a perfectly manicured cop mustache. He resettled his Stetson and smiled. “Howdy!”

Lyons waved. “Hey, fellas! What can I do you for?”

“Name’s Ibanez, and I need to ask you a favor. By the way, what’s your name?”

“Favor?” Lyons shrugged. “Shoot.”

“Well, I need to ask you one question.”

“Ask away!”

“And I am begging you.”

“What is it?”

“Tell me.”

“Tell you what?”

The man shook his head as if embarrassed by the question. “Tell me you don’t have a Mexican citizen in there being held against her will.”

Lyons cocked his head and shook it sadly in return. “Where are you getting your information?”

“Would you mind if I ask exactly who you work for?” Ibanez countered.

“Not at all, but you go first.”

“Mind if I take a look around?”

“Not at all. Show me the warrant.”

Ibanez frowned but his demeanor remained business-like rather than hostile. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to insist.”

Calvin James came across the com link. “I’m looking through binoculars. You can’t see it from your angle, but two of the guys, right-hand car, standing behind the driver’s-side passenger door? They have tattoos. On their necks. One’s a spider. The other I can’t quite make out, but I don’t think its regulation, either.”

Grimaldi’s voice and vague rotor noise came across the link. “ETA five, Ironman.”

Lyons smelled a siege coming on. “All right, Ibanez, but you ain’t making any friends, and my people are gonna want to talk to you.”

“Well, I do feel bad about it, and I know my people will want to talk to you after this, as well.”

“And you and I are definitely going to have a little talk.”

“I owe it to you.”

“Fair enough.” Lyons set his water bottle on a little wrought-iron table. He snapped his knee up hard and flipped the AA-12 into his hands.

Ibanez froze for one heartbeat at the sight and slapped leather for his pistol. Lyons cut loose. He put a long burst of CS projectiles into each vehicle on full-auto. Midtraverse he put one round into Ibanez’s chest, then dived through the door.

Blancanales was already through and kicking the door shut. “I hope to God these guys aren’t for real!”

Lyons reached for a reload. “I hope you’re right.”

Kurtzman spoke urgently across the link. “They’re pulling stuff out of the vehicles. Looks like long arms! I—”

“Shit!” James fired a burst from his submachine gun out the window and dived for the floor. “Rocket!”

Small arms began crackling and popping outside. Lyons heard the distinctive thud of an RPG launching off its tube and the hiss of the rocket motor igniting. He rolled behind the couch and covered his eyes and jammed his thumbs in his ears. By some miracle the rocket-propelled grenade hit the adobe of the doorjamb rather than the door itself. The house shook and windows shattered.

“Enough of this less-than-lethal shit...” The Able Team leader snapped in a drum loaded with lead.

James bounced up and dropped back down. “Rocket!”

Blancanales dived to put the kitchen between him and the blast. Lyons and James dived for the hall. The grenade hit the front door and it dissolved in an orange flash. Superheated gas and shrapnel expanded to fill the living room as the heat wash rolled through the house. Lyons sat up and yawned against the ringing in his ears. Schwarz spoke from his concealed position. He’d set up a small suite of minicams to watch the house perimeter. “You got twelve guys hitting the front, five more are breaking off and flanking for the back.”

“Copy that, Gadgets. Hold position, wait for the shot. Pol, don’t let ’em in.”

Lyons fired a burst around the hall doorway. About a hundred bullets seemed to bee-swarm back in response. He could hear coughing and ragged shouts in Spanish. Lyons knew a few words and none of it sounded police procedural.

Schwarz spoke again. “Grenade!”

A green metal baseball looped through the blackened, smoking orifice of the front door and clattered to the floor. Lyons snapped back around the hall door as the grenade whip-cracked and lethal metal fragments buzz-sawed everywhere. Bullets began tearing through the front windows.

“They’re on the porch,” Schwarz reported.

“Wait for the shot.”

“They’re at the back door,” Blancanales reported from the kitchen.

Lyons heard the floor vibrate with boots. Schwarz told him what he already knew. “They’re entering the house, front door and front windows.”

“Take them.”

Schwarz cut loose. The two-way observation mirror shattered. Schwarz had a 60-round, quad-stack magazine loaded in his carbine and he held the trigger down. He took the attackers by surprise and from the flank. Schwarz reaped them like wheat.

Calvin James had flown out for an interrogation rather than a firefight, but the ex-SEAL had packed an MP5 submachine gun just in case. He put burst after burst into the men in the windows. Lyons stayed on one knee and leaned around the corner. He had a straight shot at the back door. Blancanales had an angle on it with his carbine-shotgun combo. The door hammered on its hinges, but the nice boys at the Federal Bureau of Investigations had installed decent doors, and anyone pounding on it had to be standing on the narrow stair.

Blancanales nodded at Lyons and burned an 8-round mag of his car-killing ammunition through the wooden portal.

Screaming out back joined the cacophony of screaming and gunfire at the front.

Grimaldi came across the link. “I have you in sight.”

“Copy, Jack,” Lyons responded. “Anything outside is hostile and legit.”

“Commencing gun run.”

“Copy. Everyone down!”

Dragonslayer was currently in civilian camouflage. Part of the facade was a rescue winch mounted over the starboard-side cabin door. The aerodynamic fairing did not house a motorized winch and three hundred feet of cable. It was a facade that contained a six-barrel “six-pack” micro-gun. The mini Gatling gun snarled into life and swept the porch and everyone still on it. Dragonslayer banked in a tight orbit and hosed down the surviving men at the back door.

“Ironman, I have drivers in the vehicles.”

“Disable the trucks.”

“Copy that.” Grimaldi continued his orbit and put a long burst through the hood of each vehicle.

“Gadgets, what do you have on the porch and the living room?”

“All targets are down.”

“Break position and cover the vehicles. Cal, go get Valenzuela. Pol, on me. Sweep and clear.”

Lyons and Blancanales checked the fallen. There wasn’t much to check. Schwarz had an assault rifle with a 60-round mag and the range had been fifteen feet or less. He’d fired high in case the men were wearing concealed armor. The fallen mostly had spaghetti for heads. Calvin James had been more surgical. His targets still averaged 75 percent of their facial features.

Dragonslayer’s PA system thundered like God on High. “You! In the vehicles! Throw out your weapons! Come out with your hands up and lay facedown on the road!”

Calvin came out of the cellar with an unconscious Sofina Valenzuela over his shoulder. Lyons suspected James had tranquilized her so she wouldn’t have to see the slaughterhouse upstairs. Lyons stepped out into the sunshine. The enemy outside had fared little better. Grimaldi’s six-pack fired 3,000 rounds a minute. The weapon was slaved to the pilot’s helmet-mounted sight. It didn’t fire unless he had a lock. Anyone the pilot gave even a one-second burst took fifty rounds.

The annihilation of the enemy was total.

Lyons nodded to himself. Not quite, he had three drivers currently going prone in the road and he was secretly relieved they appeared to be shit-scared as opposed to going into some brain-dead Kamikaze mode.

The Able Team warrior smiled as his boots crunched on the gravel road and he stood over his main quarry. The man lay sprawled on his back gasping. He had taken two CS rounds in the chest and was feebly swatting at the mass of smoldering CS particulate that had scorched the front of his uniform. Lyons made a mental note to buy stock in the company.

“Ibanez! About that little talk you owe me...”