“Mr. Ndebele, I am here with an army of your followers headed by a man named Mafana. We’re getting you out of here.”
The African leader shook his head. “The damned fool. I told him when they first imprisoned me not to try something like this, but I should have known he wouldn’t listen. My old friend Mafana chooses the orders he wishes to obey.”
Juan motioned him away from the cell door so he could shoot the lock open. Ndebele had to hop to keep his damaged foot from touching the ground. “I’ve got a friend named Max who pulls the same thing on me.” Juan glanced up to catch Ndebele’s eye. “And more often than not he’s right about which ones to disregard.”
He popped two rounds into the old iron lock and gave the door a heave. It slid open on protesting hinges. Ndebele made to hobble out of the cell but Juan held up a hand.
“We’re going out another way.”
When researching the Devil’s Oasis, Linda Ross had come across the account of a prisoner who tried to widen the six-inch sewer holes inside the lower-tier cells. A prison trustee checked them every other day and when he found that the man had used a spoon or other implement to scrape away at the foot-thick stone in order to make the hole big enough to escape through he immediately reported it to the guards. They systematically crammed the prisoner down the small opening, breaking whatever bones necessary until only his head remained inside the cell.
No one else ever tried to escape that way again.
Juan handed the MP-5 to Ndebele asking him to cover them and sat next to the hole. He hurriedly took off his boot and retrieved the remainder of his cache of plastic explosives. He molded the plastique into a long strand that he affixed in a ring at the bottom of the hole. He plucked the detonator from behind his leg’s ankle joint and set the timer for one minute, enough time to lead Ndebele safely away.
With his boot in hand he stuck the timer into the soft explosive and left the cell with Moses draped over his shoulder in order to protect the man’s foot. The bomb went off like a volcano, sending a geyser of flame, smoke, and chunks of stone high enough to ricochet off the ceiling. Cabrillo had his boot back on, but didn’t bother to lace it when he returned to the cell. As he’d anticipated, the charge had been more than enough for the job. The hole was now five feet wide, its jagged edges blackened by the blast.
He dropped through the opening, and helped Ndebele descend. The man sucked air through his teeth when his broken foot brushed against the ground under the prison.
“You okay?”
“I think maybe when the time comes I will ask you where you got your artificial leg. I don’t think I will have this foot much longer.”
“Don’t worry, I know a pretty good doctor.”
“He can’t be that good if you lost your leg.”
“Believe me, she is—she only started working for me after my original was blown off.”
Together they struggled through the tunnel that allowed the constant desert winds to desiccate the human waste that once fell from above and eliminate the need for emptying slop buckets.
The confines were tight and they had to crawl on elbows and knees in the dirt. Juan led them to the eastern side of the prison, closest to the airstrip. Fortunately, the wind was at their backs so the blowing sand didn’t scour their faces. It took five minutes to reach the perimeter of the building. The sunlight glaring through the opening was especially bright after the dim confines of the penitentiary. The two men lay side by side just short of the opening.
Cabrillo keyed his radio. “Beau Geste to Lawrence of Arabia. Can you hear me, Larry?”
“Five by five, Beau,” Linc answered back. “What’s your situation?”
“I have the native guest with me now. We’ve made it to the exterior wall. I’m looking at the airstrip. Give me fifteen minutes to secure the primary target and come pick us up. Our boys will know to make a break for it when they see the plane.”
“Negative, Beau. From the looks of it our allies are taking a hell of a pounding in there. They won’t last fifteen minutes. I’m coming in now.”
“Then give me ten minutes.”
“Chairman, I ain’t foolin’. You don’t have it. If we don’t come in now there won’t be enough of Mafana’s men left to count on one finger. This wasn’t a suicide operation. We owe it to them to cover their retreat.” Even as Linc spoke, the big cargo plane arrowed out of the sky. “I’ve also just gotten word from Max that our situation has changed somewhat.”
By landing now, Linc had forced Cabrillo’s hand. Moses would never make it to the airstrip unaided. Juan would have to carry him. The plane was too vulnerable on the ground to wait for him to return to the prison and rescue Geoffrey Merrick. And as soon as Mafana and his men began their retreat from the prison, the guards would swarm after them in hot pursuit. Without aerial cover they would be slaughtered out on the open desert.
As for whatever change Max Hanley was talking about, Juan would have to trust that his second in command had a much better grasp of the overall operational picture.
The old de Havilland Caribou was an awkward-looking aircraft, with a rudder that was as tall as a three-story building and a cockpit hunched over a blunt nose. The high wings allowed for it to carry a large payload for its size and also to make incredibly short takeoff and landing runs. The particular aircraft Tiny Gunderson had rented was painted white, with a faded blue strip running the length of the fuselage.
Juan saw that his chief pilot had lined up on the runway for his final approach. It was time to go.
“Come on,” he said to Moses Ndebele and crept out from their position under the prison. The sound of gunfire in the courtyard was muted by the building’s thick walls, but it still sounded as though a thousand men were in a fight for their lives.
When both men were on their feet Juan transferred his H&K to his left hand and stooped to lift the African leader over his shoulder. Ndebele was a tall man, but years of imprisonment had shrunk him to little more than skin and bones. He couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred and twenty pounds. Normally Cabrillo wouldn’t have had a problem carrying such a burden, however, his body was exhausted by hours of unrelenting abuse.
Juan straightened his legs, his mouth a tight, grim line. Once he had Ndebele settled on his shoulder he took off in a loping gait. His boots sank into the sand as he jogged, taxing his quivering legs and aching back with every pace. He kept a wary eye on the side of the prison where the entrance doors were located but so far none of Mafana’s men had tried to flee. They remained engaged with the guards, knowing that the longer they gutted it out the better chance their leader had of escaping.
The seventy-foot-long twin-engine cargo plane touched down when Cabrillo was halfway to the landing strip. Tiny reversed the pitch of the propellers and gunned the motors, kicking up a veritable sandstorm with the prop wash that completely obscured the aircraft. The maneuver cut the distance he needed to land to less than six hundred feet, leaving more than enough room to take off into the wind without backtracking to the end of the runway. Gunderson feathered the props so they no longer bit into the air but barely cut power to the 1,500-horsepower engines. The airframe shuddered with unreleased energy.
Motion to Juan’s left caught his eye. He glanced over to see one of Mafana’s trucks emerge from the prison. Men in the back continued to fire into the courtyard, while the driver raced for the plane. Moments later the other three trucks appeared. They weren’t going anywhere near as fast. The rescuers were trying to further delay the guards from breaking out.
Juan turned his attention back to the Caribou. The cargo ramp was coming down, Franklin Lincoln standing at its very tip with an assault carbine in his hands. He waved Juan on but kept his attention focused on the approaching truck. There was another black man with him, one of Mafana’s men whom Juan had sent to rendezvous with the plane the night before.
The ground under Cabrillo’s feet firmed as he reached the gravel runway and he put on a burst of speed, adrenaline allow
ing him to ignore the pain for a few minutes more.
Juan reached the plane and lurched drunkenly up the ramp a few seconds before the lead truck braked just beyond the edge of the ramp. Doc Huxley was waiting with her medical cases. She’d strung saline drip bags to a wire running along the ceiling, the cannulas ready to replace any blood the fighters had lost. Juan laid Ndebele on one of the nylon mesh bench seats and turned to see what he could do to help.
Linc already had the truck’s rear gate open. There were a dozen wounded men strewn on the floor and over the sound of the roaring engines Juan could hear their agony. Blood drizzled from the tailgate.
Lincoln lifted the first man out and carried him into the aircraft’s hold. Ski was right behind him, lugging another of the wounded. Mike and Eddie carried a third between them, a great bear of a man with blood saturating his pants from the thighs down. Juan helped an ambulatory man step to the ground. He cradled his arm to his chest. It was Mafana, and his face was ashen, but when he saw Moses Ndebele sitting up against a bulkhead he cried out in joy. The two wounded men greeted each other as best they could.
Back at the prison, the remaining trucks from the original convoy took off into the desert, their wheels kicking up spiraling columns of dust. Moments later, two other vehicles emerged. One of them started after the fleeing four-wheel drives while the second turned for the airstrip.
“Chairman,” Linc shouted over the noise as he stepped onto the ramp carrying another of the injured. “Last one. Tell Tiny to get us out of here.”
Juan waved in acknowledgment and threaded his way forward. Tiny was leaning out of his seat, and when he saw Cabrillo give him a thumbs-up he turned his attention back to the controls. He slowly changed the propellers’ angle of attack and the big aircraft began to roll.
Cabrillo headed aft again. Julia was cutting away one man’s bush jacket to expose a pair of bullet holes in his chest. The wounds bubbled. His lungs had been punctured. Undaunted by the unsanitary conditions or the bumpiness of the takeoff, she got to work on triage.
“Did you have to leave it to the last second?” Eddie asked when Juan approached. He was grinning.
Cabrillo shook his outstretched hand. “You know what a procrastinator I can be. You guys okay?”
“Couple more gray hairs, but none the worse. One of these days you’re going to have to tell me how you rustled up an army in the middle of nowhere.”
“Great magicians never divulge their secrets.”
The plane continued to pick up speed and was soon outpacing the guards’ truck. Through the open ramp Juan could see them fire off a few rounds in frustration before the driver braked hard and turned to give chase to the rest of Mafana’s men. A third and then fourth truck roared out of the prison gate after them.
Tiny hauled back on the yoke and the old Caribou lifted off the rough field. The vibrations that had built until Juan was sure he’d lose a filling finally evened out. Mindful that the ramp would have to remain open, the patients were moved to the front of the aircraft, leaving the area at the rear open. Linc stood on the ramp, a safety line stretching from a D ring on the floor to the rear of his combat vest. He wore a helmet with a microphone so he could talk with Tiny in the cockpit. There was a long crate at his feet.
Juan clipped himself in, too, and cautiously approached the big SEAL. Hot wind whipped through the cabin as Tiny banked the plane to come in behind the guards’ vehicles. With their newer trucks they had already eaten away half the lead Mafana’s troops had managed to gain on them.
The trucks were approaching a deep valley between towering dunes when the plane hurtled over the two sets of vehicles. There was less than a half mile separating them. Tiny kept them at a thousand feet as he flew along the length of the valley, but in an instant the valley came to a sudden end. Rather than opening up again onto open desert, the valley was only three miles long, a dead end. Its head was a sloping dune so steep that the trucks would have to slow to a walking pace to reach the summit.
“Bring us around again,” Linc shouted into his mike. “Come up behind them.”
He motioned for Mike and Eddie to join them. The two men quickly got themselves secured, leaning over to maintain their balance as the plane banked around. Linc opened the crate. Inside were four of Mafana’s RPGs. They were the reason Juan had sent one of Mafana’s men to hook up with Linc.
Linc handed one of the rocket-propelled grenade launchers to each of them.
“This is going to have to be some pretty fancy shooting,” Mike shouted dubiously. “Four trucks. Four RPGs. We’re doing a hundred and twenty miles an hour and they must be close to fifty.”
“Ye of little faith,” Linc yelled back.
The plane evened out again at the entrance to the valley. Tiny took them lower, fighting updrafts of hot air lofting off the desert floor. The dunes flashed by no more than a hundred feet from the wing tips. Linc was listening to the pilot as he counted down how long it would be before they shot over the guards’ convoy. When he lifted the RPG to his shoulder the other three did likewise.
He pointed at Juan and Ski. “Aim at the base of the dune to the left of the convoy. Mike and I will take the right. Drop the grenades about twenty yards in front of the lead vehicle.”
Tiny took them lower still, and then gained elevation quickly when the plane came under fire from below. He steadied the Caribou just as they passed the last truck in line. For a fleeting second, Juan and the others were looking down at the convoy and it appeared that every gun the guards had was blazing away at them.
“Now!”
They triggered the RPGs simultaneously. The four rockets popped from their tubes and ignited, their white contrails corkscrewing through the clear air. The plane had overshot Mafana’s trucks by the time the warheads slammed into the base of the dunes. The shaped charges went off in blinding eruptions of sand. And while they seemed puny compared to the massive scale of the dunes, the explosions had their desired effect.
The equilibrium of angle and height that held the dunes in place was thrown off by the blasts. A trickle of sand began to slide down each face, accelerating and growing until it looked like both sides of the canyon were racing for each other. And caught in the middle was the guards’ convoy.
The twin landslides crashed onto the valley floor. The right-side avalanche had been going a bit faster than its partner so when it slammed into the convoy, the four vehicles were blown onto their sides. Men and weapons were tossed from the beds of the trucks only to be struck by the second wall of sand as it careened into them, burying everything under thirty or more feet of earth.
A cloud of dust was all that marked their grave.
Linc hit the button to close the ramp and all four men stepped back.
“What did I tell you?” Linc grinned at Mike. “Piece of cake.”
“Lucky thing this valley was here,” Mike retorted.
“Lucky, my butt. I saw it when I hightailed it out last night. Juan had Mafana’s men drive here specifically so we could take out all the guards in one fell swoop.”
“Pretty slick, Chairman,” Trono conceded.
Juan didn’t try to hide his self-satisfied smile. “That it was. That it was.” He turned his attention back to Lincoln. “Does Max have everything set?”
“The Oregon’s tied to the dock in Swakopmund. Max will meet us at the airport with a flatbed truck carrying an empty shipping container. We load the wounded in and hop aboard ourselves. Max will then drive down to the wharf, where a Customs inspector with a pocket bulging with baksheesh will sign off on the bill of lading and we get hoisted onto the ship.”
“And Mafana’s men are going to drive through to Windhoek,” Juan concluded, “where they can fly out to wherever we can find Ndebele a safe haven.” His tone soured. “All well and good, except we didn’t rescue Geoffrey Merrick and have lost any chance to find him again. I’m sure his kidnappers left the Devil’s Oasis five seconds after the guards.”
“Ye of so little fai
th,” Linc said for the second time with a sad shake of his head.
NINA Visser was sitting in the shade of a tarp anchored to the bed of their truck when she heard a buzzing sound. She had been writing in her journal, a habit she’d kept up since her early teens. She’d filled volumes of notebooks over the years, knowing someday it would be an important resource for her biographer. That she would be important enough to need a book written about her life was something she’d never doubted. She was going to be one of the great champions of the environmental movement, like Robert Hunter and Paul Watson, Greenpeace’s cofounders.
Of course the current operation wouldn’t be included. This was one blow she would strike from the shadows. She was only writing out of habit and knew she would have to destroy this journal and any others that mentioned her involvement with Dan Singer’s scheme.
She closed the notebook and slid her pen into the spiral binding. Crawling out from under the tarp was like opening the door of an oven. The afternoon sun beat down mercilessly. She stood, dusted off the seat of her pants, and shielded her eyes from the sun, searching the sky for the plane Danny had promised. Even with dark sunglasses it took her a few seconds to spot the little jewel glinting in the sky. A couple of her friends crawled out from the tarp to join her, including Susan. They were all tired from the drive, and thirsty because they hadn’t packed enough water.
Merrick was faring the worst since he was bound and gagged and left leaning against the side of the truck, where there was only a sliver of shadow. He hadn’t gained consciousness since being injected with the heroin and his sunburned face was rimmed with dried sweat. Flies buzzed around his wound.
The plane made a pass of the dirt runway and everyone waved as it overshot them. The pilot wagged the aircraft’s wings and circled back. It floated along the runway for a hundred feet before the pilot could finally get it down. He quickly throttled back and taxied to where the truck was parked on the edge of the field. The deserted town was a few hundred yards behind them, a clutch of crumbling buildings that the desert was slowly consuming.