Skeleton Coast

  The two commandos moved across the cell with their pistols drawn. Standard procedure for any hostage rescue was to verify your target before assuming anyone was friendly. When they reached the sleeping pair Eddie pointed to the woman for Mike while he positioned himself on the other side of the heap of blankets the couple was using as a bed.

  As one, the two men clamped their hands over the mouths of the sleeping pair, jamming their heads flat against the ground. And almost immediately Eddie realized that the photographs they’d memorized from the Merrick/Singer website didn’t match the man coming awake in a dazed panic.

  Eddie clipped him behind the ear with the butt of his pistol, and when his eyes didn’t flutter closed he hit him again until the man was out. Mike, on the other hand continued to hold the woman down until he recognized her as Susan Donleavy. He kept his hand clamped over her mouth, holding a finger to his lips to get her to calm down. She continued to struggle as Eddie taped the man’s mouth and bound his ankles and feet with plastic flex cuffs.

  “We’re here to rescue you,” Mike kept repeating at a whisper until Susan finally calmed enough for him to take his hand away. Her eyes remained wary.

  “Who are you?” she asked and Mike quickly clamped his hand over her mouth.

  “Quietly,” he admonished. “We’re here to rescue you and Dr. Merrick. Who is this?” Mike pointed to the unconscious figure that Eddie had tied to the cell bars.

  “He’s…he’s one of my kidnappers. He . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Mike didn’t need her to spell out the details of how one of her kidnappers had brought her up to this deserted cell to rape her. “Is he armed?”

  “I found this under the pillow.” Eddie held up a pistol.

  Trono gave Susan a reassuring look. “It’s all over now. He’ll never touch you again.”

  “Is he dead?” she asked in a meek voice.

  “Just knocked out.” Mike handed her a bundle of clothing that had been lying on the floor. “Get dressed.”

  The clothes disappeared under the blankets and Susan contorted herself into them without getting out from under the covers.

  “Do you know where they’re holding Dr. Merrick?” Eddie asked when she threw the blanket aside.

  “Yes, in another cell block.”

  “Tell us where.”

  “I could show you,” she suggested.

  Eddie shook his head. “Too dangerous.”

  “Please. I want to.” She hesitated. “I need to get some control back. Besides, he was on guard outside the cell block. There’s no one on the upper floors. All of them sleep in the old administration wing.”

  “How many of them are there?” Mike asked.

  “I think eight or nine, but I’m not sure.”

  The number seemed low considering they posted three men at the main gate, but Mike let it pass. “Armed like this joker here?”

  “A few carried machine guns when we first got here,” Susan told them. She began to weep softly. “Please let me take you to Dr. Merrick. If I don’t feel I’ve helped I will never be able to live with what he did to me.” She flicked her chin toward her unconscious rapist.

  Eddie was about to refuse again but he believed her when she said that she would never recover from her ordeal if she slinked off into the night. Lord knew his own sister had only found peace after her rape when she polished off a fifth of vodka and a bottle of sleeping pills. The beatific smile on her cold face still haunted him. And he saw no harm with Susan coming with them if the only guard on this floor of the prison was trussed up and gagged. “Okay,” he said. Mike shot him a disapproving look. Eddie waved off his concern. “You can come as far as the cell block door. I will stay with you there and then we’re all getting the hell out of here.”

  “Thank you,” she said and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

  After plucking a set of heavy brass keys from the rapist’s pants Eddie waved for Ski to join them. Ski came down the stairs and hooked up with them at the only door out of the cell block. The hinges were on the outside of the door so, to reduce the sound of it creaking open, Ski and Mike got on the ground and lifted it as Eddie swung it open just enough for them to scrape through.

  The hallway outside the door was long and straight, the floor powdered with sand. There was absolutely no light for the goggles to amplify so Ski, Eddie, and Mike pushed them up on their heads. They groped their way blindly, keeping their fingertips brushing the rough stone wall until they reached a corner. Around the bend stretched another long passageway.

  “It’s halfway down on the right,” Susan whispered. “There’s usually a chair outside the door for the guard.”

  Eddie chanced turning on a red-lensed flashlight, blocking half its ruddy beam with his palm. A metal folding chair was exactly where Susan said it would be, next to a door identical to the one from the first cell block. Eddie sprayed the ancient lock mechanism with the powdered graphite and handed the can to Ski to dust the hinges as he tried key after key until finding one that fit the lock.

  Even with the graphite lubricant the lock turned grudgingly, but fortunately it was quiet. The men settled their night vision goggles again, and with Mike and Ski hovering just behind him with their machine pistols in position, Eddie gently pulled back on the door. The hinges made a soft grinding sound as it opened.

  The barrels of Ski’s and Mike’s weapons were never still. With more and more of the cell block being revealed they swept every square inch they could see until the thick door was opened enough for them to slip through.

  A shaft of light from the moon blazed across the floor through the large window and its milky glow made the iron bars shine like ivory.

  Keeping low, the two gun dogs slid into the room and swept the space with their weapons. They stuck close to the walls, making sure their perimeter was clear and that no one was in the hallways separating the rows of cells. Ski mounted a set of circular stairs on one end of the room while Mike ascended from the opposite. They climbed just high enough so they could peer into the second-story cells with their goggles switched to infrared. They were all empty. Then they checked the third story cells and again found nothing.

  Back on the floor they cautiously checked the rows of cages, starting from the rear of the room and moving toward the door so they wouldn’t have to backtrack once they were finished. It was a technique that saved a couple of seconds, but every one of them counted now. Eddie remained just outside with Susan at his side.

  They found a sleeping figure near the front of the room. Mike sprayed the cell door’s hinges and lock while Ski found the correct key. They were inside a moment later. Ski knelt next to Geoffrey Merrick, recognizing him through the week-old stubble on his face. He gently placed his hand over Merrick’s mouth and shook him awake.

  Merrick tried to lurch off the floor but Ski held him down easily.

  “We’re here to rescue you,” the former Marine said. “Everything’s okay now.”

  Merrick’s eyes went from startled and fearful to relieved, and he stopped struggling. When Ski asked him if he could take his hand away, Merrick nodded.

  “Who are you?” Merrick asked in a stage whisper.

  “A professional hostage rescue team. Are you hurt? Can you walk?”

  “I can bloody well run,” Geoffrey said. “Did my company send you?”

  “The details are still being worked out. For now let’s just get you and Miss Donleavy out of here.”

  “You found Susan. How is she?”

  “Shaken pretty badly. She was raped.”

  “After what those bastards did to her they still raped her? So help me God, Dan Singer is going to pay.”

  “So it’s your former partner behind this,” Ski said and helped Merrick to his feet.

  With their charge between them, Ski and Mike worked their way back to the door. Geoffrey Merrick charged ahead when he saw Susan standing next to Eddie Seng, her face wan in the moonlight. He opened his arms to hug her but stopped, a l
ook of confusion clouding his features.

  “Your face,” he said, bewildered. You’re not—”

  That was all he could get out. Susan shoved Eddie at the same time she yanked his pistol from its unsecured holster. Her eyes were wild, defiant, as she brought the weapon to bear, her thumb flicking off the Beretta’s safety.

  “Die, you son of a bitch!” she screamed at the top of her lungs and pulled the trigger.

  Eddie’s reactions were lightning fast despite the irrationality of the situation. But even as his body reacted he thought through what had happened. Susan Donleavy wasn’t a victim at all. She was in league with the kidnappers and that was no rape in the other cell block but two lovers who’d gone to find a place to be alone.

  He swung his hand upward, hitting Susan’s wrist an instant before the Beretta discharged. The recoil and the strike sent the gun clattering into the dim hallway and left her throat unprotected. Eddie whipped his hand around and slashed the edge into her neck, pulling the blow at the last second so he didn’t crush her carotid artery and kill her. He turned quickly.

  Geoffrey Merrick was on the floor, Ski and Trono hunched over him. The blood splattered on the wall behind them looked like a Rorschach test.

  “Is he alive?”

  “Yes, but she got him high in the chest,” Ski said pulling a sterile dressing from a medical kit. Merrick’s face was bone white and he took choppy sips of air as he struggled against the pain. His chest was sodden and more blood leaked from the wound. “I don’t know if any major organs were hit, but for now you’ve saved his life.”

  “Not yet I haven’t,” Eddie said as he plucked the dressing from Ski’s hand. “We don’t have time for that. She’s one of them and no doubt lied about the number of guards. This place is going to be crawling in about ten seconds. Pick him up and let’s go.”

  “What’s happening?” Linc asked over the tactical radio.

  “Donleavy shot Merrick. I think she’s working with the kidnappers.”

  Ski hunched over so Mike and Eddie could drape Merrick over his broad shoulder. To his credit Merrick whimpered but didn’t cry out. The blood spreading down the back of Ski’s camouflage resembled ink and smelled like old pennies.

  Linc asked, “What’s your play?”

  “Stick with the plan and hope we don’t run out of time. Be prepared to lower Merrick down to the bikes. He’s hit pretty bad.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  “What about her?” Mike asked, pointing to where Susan Donleavy lay unconscious against a wall, looking like a rag doll missing most of its stuffing.

  “Leave her,” Eddie said with ill-suppressed anger. He should have seen this coming, but his own feeling about what had happened to his big sister all those years ago had clouded his thinking. For such a critical lapse of judgment he fully expected Juan to fire him if they got out of this mess alive.

  They took off at a trot with Eddie at point and Mike covering their rear. Lights strung along the ceiling by wires suddenly flashed brightly then dimmed before settling to a naked glow as a generator someplace within the fortress was cranked to life. Around a distant bend came the crash of a door slamming open and the rush of feet against the gritty floor. It was a race to the cell where the ropes waited, and the men instinctively picked up their pace until they were running flat-out—all attempts at silence abandoned.

  It didn’t matter that Merrick grunted each time his weight shifted and the torn flesh around the wound ripped a bit more.

  The cell block door was fifteen feet away when a solid wall of men rounded the far corner. Many of them just wore boxer shorts, having been woken by the sound of the pistol, but every one of them had had the presence of mind to grab a weapon. The Corporation team faced at least ten armed African guards in a hallway that now resembled a shooting gallery.

  Eddie had a fraction of a second before the guards realized they’d found their quarry and opened up with everything they had. He tossed aside his machine pistol and raised his hands, playing the longest odd he’d ever gambled. None of the guards lowered their weapons and one second became two with no shots fired. Behind him, Eddie could hear Ski’s and Mike’s guns clatter to the stone floor and then the sound of more men arriving behind them. He chanced looking over his shoulder. There were a dozen more soldiers, each glaring at them over the sites of their AK-47s.

  “We’re blown,” he whispered into his mike for Linc’s benefit. “Call the Oregon.”

  Another man arrived a moment later and, although he wore just a pair of fatigue pants and unlaced boots, he had the carriage and bearing of an officer. His face was lean, with a beaky nose and hollow cheeks.

  “I had reports that there was a small army coming to rescue Moses Ndebele,” he said in perfect English. “Not a handful of white mercenaries. Still, your execution at dawn will be most gratifying.”

  “How would you feel if I told you we were hired to rescue Dr. Merrick and have never heard of Moses Ndebele?” Mike Trono asked, just to be sarcastic.

  “In that case your execution won’t be gratifying at all.”

  20

  JUAN Cabrillo had never known such pain. It wasn’t the sharp agony of having his leg shot off by a Chinese gunboat, but an overall ache that cramped all his muscles until he was certain he couldn’t go on. His thighs and back took the brunt of the strain of para-skiing and they felt like they were burning from within. His hands were formed into claws that gripped the chute’s toggles and there was no way to rest them. There was no way to rest any part of his body unless he quit.

  And that wasn’t an option.

  So long as the wind continued to blow across the desert, Cabrillo grimly hung on to his chute and raced over the sand. His turns were no longer crisp, and when he fell it took him longer and longer to get to his feet. He hadn’t taken a single break since his sat phone had chimed and Max Hanley had told him Eddie, Mike, and Ski had been captured.

  From what Linc could hear over the radio when his teammates had been discovered, there was a contingent of troops from Zimbabwe at the Devil’s Oasis guarding that country’s opposition leader, Moses Ndebele. Linda had done some quick research and learned that Ndebele was to be tried for crimes against the state in a couple of days and would most likely be executed. The UN’s formal complaint against Zimbabwe had done nothing except cause the government to further restrict freedoms within their borders. The entire country was under martial law and a dusk-to-dawn curfew was in effect in Harare, the capital.

  Linda learned that Ndebele had a large following that crossed tribal lines. His was the first opposition movement that had the slightest chance of overthrowing Zimbabwe’s corrupt government and establishing a democracy in what had once been one of Africa’s wealthiest countries, but was now ravaged by famine and disease. Though once a fierce guerilla leader when Zimbabwe was known as Rhodesia and was governed with an apartheid-like system by its white minority government, Moses Ndebele advocated a nonviolent approach to toppling the current regime and Linda found numerous comparisons to Gandhi.

  Max had already passed the information to Langston Overholt. Lang had said just finding Ndebele was an intelligence coup and added that if the Corporation could rescue him it would go a long way to shore up America’s position in southern Africa. It was too soon to mention a price, but Lang assured Max that the bounty to get Ndebele to safety would run into the millions.

  Max had also reported that it appeared Susan Donleavy hadn’t been kidnapped at all. She was a willing accomplice to Geoffrey Merrick’s abduction and had put a bullet into the scientist’s chest when she had the chance. Linc didn’t know the severity of the injury.

  With the rest of his men captured and being threatened with a dawn execution, Linc had asked what Max wanted him to do. The guards would sweep the entire prison and find him within minutes. He could try to fight it out or make his escape on one of the dirt bikes.

  “What did you tell him?” Juan had asked.

  “What do you thi
nk?”

  “He must have hated leaving them, but it’s the right move.” Juan had known that was the only viable option.

  “He’s one pissed hombre.”

  “Are you tracking him?”

  “He’s about twenty miles from where Tiny set down the plane and making about thirty miles per hour on one of the bikes. And for your information you’ve covered about forty miles so far.”

  The idea was ludicrous, but Cabrillo had to ask. “How far am I from the plane?”

  “Over a hundred and fifty,” Max had told him.

  Dawn would hit long before he covered half that distance, and when it arrived Juan would have to hole up or risk dehydration. The other alternative was to find someplace where Tiny could land close by, but so far Cabrillo had seen nothing but soft dunes incapable of supporting even a light plane let alone the twin-engine cargo aircraft they had rented for the drop.

  “If Linc wasn’t followed,” Juan said, “I want him to wait with Tiny and Hux.”

  “You have a plan?”

  “No, I’m just positioning assets for when I do come up with something.”

  Neither man doubted Juan would.

  That had been two hours ago, two of the longest of Cabrillo’s life.

  He eased up on the right toggle when the wind shifted and flew over the top of a sand dune, catching air for nearly thirty seconds before returning to earth. He absorbed the impact with protesting knees and barreled down the far side of the dune. The tire tracks had been to his right but with the change in wind direction he was soon running along them and then slightly to their left. He prepared to tack as he was dragged up another towering mountain of sand, the tallest yet. His momentum dropped as the wind fought the friction of the plastic plate against the sand and he had to struggle to keep from being yanked off his feet.

  He was more exhausted than he’d ever been in his life, a punch-drunk tired that dulled his reflexes and made his mind crave sleep above anything else.