“Good point. Let’s do this. You and Estefan split up. You’ll head over to the ore-processing plant and lumber mill and check for satellite dishes. All you’ll have to do is cut their coaxial lines or torque the dishes out of alignment. If they’re out of reach, just shoot their feed horns. That should disable them. Estefan will head to the south end of town and stand by to cut the phone line. I’ll wait here with Antonia until you guys are all set.”
“Sounds good.”
“Harv, if we can avoid killing anyone else tonight, we should do it. If it turns ugly over there, I know you won’t kill unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“What about the girl? We can’t keep her with us after the call. She can’t be hanging around during the fight, and we don’t want her loose to talk about us being here. We’ll have to confine her.”
“We’ll take care of that at the lumber mill. There’s got to be a good place somewhere. A storeroom or janitor’s closet. Something.”
Nathan nodded toward the motel, and they began walking back.
“Then we’re planning to neutralize the men over there?”
“Yes,” said Nate. “With nonlethal force, if possible.”
CHAPTER 27
Nathan and Harv reentered the motel room, planning to keep it brief. With all of them in here, they lacked eyes outside.
Antonia kept her head down. Her unmoving, stiff posture told all. Nathan knew the anguish and fear she felt. He’d experienced it firsthand no more than thirty miles from here. His initial captors had beaten him nearly unconscious, but that paled in comparison to what came later. He forced the corrosive memory aside.
Using English, he quickly updated Estefan on the plan to ensure Raven’s arrival, then cut communications to Santavilla. Estefan took it in without questions and pronounced it a good strategy.
“I have a question for you,” Nathan told Antonia.
She looked up at him, uncertainty in her eyes.
He asked what their chances would be of finding wire cutters at the general store.
They were in luck. Last year, after the hardware store had closed, Mrs. Perez bought its inventory. There would be plenty of wire cutters and pliers in the general store. Surprisingly, Antonia offered additional info Nathan had planned to ask for. Though the store was locked, a spare key was hidden near the cargo containers.
Nathan told Estefan to cover Antonia while Harv secured her ankles. The two-foot-long bond would allow her to shuffle along like a chain-gang prisoner, but she wouldn’t be able to run. Antonia started to object, promising she wouldn’t try to escape, but Harv silenced her with a look while he worked.
Outside the motel room, Nathan pivoted his goggles down to his eyes and activated the NV’s infrared flashlight feature. He’d likely need it to locate the spare key. At the corner of the motel, he paused and scanned the area before hustling over to the cargo containers. He was considering what to do with Antonia if she’d lied about the key when he found its tarnished form exactly where she’d said it would be. Nathan had no trouble entering the store and finding two pairs of wire cutters. He grabbed a couple more items from the same aisle, left one thousand córdobas next to the register, and relocked the store. Outside, he returned the key to its hiding place and ran back to the motel room.
Harv had Antonia fully bound, hands tied behind her back.
“Where’s Estefan?”
“I’ve got him on the north side of the motel watching the lumber mill area.”
“How far away is the lumber mill from here?”
“As I recall from the aerials, around five hundred yards, give or take. The ore-processing plant is about a hundred yards closer.”
“Okay, let’s get you two moving.” He handed Harv both pairs of wire cutters, shook the pillow out of its case, and looked at Antonia. “Hold still. I’m going to gag you.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she said quickly. “I’m not going to scream.”
“We’re a little short on trust.” Nathan didn’t make the gag overly tight. There was no point in being cruel, and she’d earned the extra slack by volunteering the location of the hidden key.
“Tell Estefan I want three-minute updates, even if there’s nothing to report.” Nathan turned off the light and sent Harv on his way. “Well, Antonia, I guess it’s just you and me for a while.”
Harv pivoted his NVGs down and powered them on. He’d elected to take his backpack rather than fill his thigh pockets to their bulging points. Although he didn’t intend to use them, he had plenty of spare magazines for his Sig. His pack also held the TI and NV binoculars.
The best way to approach the lumber mill was via the river. Because of his size, Harv couldn’t pretend to be one of Raven’s men and just walk into the enemy’s camp. Estefan could’ve done it, but Harv understood Nate’s desire to avoid killing any more men.
He pressed the transmit button. “Estefan, I’m on my way to your position. Ten seconds.”
“Copy. I’ve got you.”
Harv saw Estefan peer around the corner of the motel. He too wore NV goggles now.
An idea came to Harv as he walked north along the motel’s doors. He keyed his radio. “Nate, if Estefan drives to the south end of town, I think he can stand on top of his cab to reach the phone line. After he cuts the line, he can park his truck behind the church with the other vehicles. It looks newer, but it’s pretty dirty from the drive up here. It won’t stand out too badly.”
“His diesel is noisy. Think you guys can push it a couple hundred yards south before starting it? Estefan, is there gravel where you parked?”
“No, but we should be able to move it without too much trouble.”
“Okay, push it down to the church before you fire it up. That will minimize the possibility of it being heard at the lumber mill. Maintain your perimeter. We don’t know how many more men we’re facing or where they are. Keep your heads up.”
“Will do,” Harv said and handed Estefan a pair of wire cutters. “The poles aren’t more than four or five yards high. Power should be the highest wire. The phone line’s below it and probably insulated and thicker. Don’t get zapped. As you recall from your kilo training, phone lines can pack a punch.”
“I’ll be careful.”
It took some effort to get Estefan’s truck to the front of the motel, but once they had it on the main road, their job got a lot easier because the road had a slight downhill grade to the south. Once they got some momentum going, Harv glanced around but didn’t see anything alarming. It was possible they were being watched from some of the dark residential windows, but the near blackness masked all detail. Their effort wasn’t totally silent. The tires produced a barely audible hiss-like crunch from the decomposed granite surface.
“Let’s keep going a little farther,” Harv suggested. They pushed for another fifty yards. “Okay, I think we’re good. Choose a location close to where you initially parked when we first arrived. You should hunker down outside your pickup.” Harv keyed his radio. “Nathan, it might be best to give Estefan a heads-up when you’re en route to the pay phone with Antonia. We need to minimize how long Estefan’s out in the open. And we need a new scatter point. Let’s use the wooden bridge.”
“Sounds good.”
“Estefan should be in place in the next thirty seconds. My ETA to the lumber mill is around ten mikes.”
“Copy. Ten mikes.”
“Estefan, give me thirty seconds before you start your truck. If anyone looks, they’ll only see one person. Leave your headlights off. Once you’re parked under the power line, you’re in stealth mode again. Our radios are good for several more hours of active use. Stay sharp down there.”
“I will.”
Harv walked at a brisk pace toward the river. Dotting the landscape on either side of the one-lane track, all of the houses were completely dark. If Estefan’s pisto
l shot had awoken anyone, there was no sign of activity. At the river Harv checked in with Nathan, eased down the bank, and turned north.
Estefan’s voice overpowered the frogs and crickets. “I’m in place under the power line. Standing by.”
Harv heard Nate’s acknowledgment click.
After going twenty yards through impossibly dense understory, Harv decided to scale the bank and head north along its rim. It wasn’t as stealthy, but it was five times faster. He removed the TI from his pack and scanned the area in front of him. Stationary combatants can beat NV, but the thermal imager nailed them every time. He detected no warm bodies within its range and switched back to NV. A few minutes later, he encountered the exit channel from the ore-processing plant, where the plant’s runoff flowed into the river. As the aerials had shown, a thirty-foot-wide swath of mud delineated the zone. Getting across would be a messy slog.
His night-vision goggles were a godsend. Footprints like his own marched along both sides of the expanse, showing where miners had panned for leftover gold. Where the mud was wettest, it looked like quicksand. Rather than risk sinking down to his knees, Harv diverted to the west. The channel looked to be narrowing as it got closer to the plant. Every so often he passed a large mound of dried earth, no doubt the result of excavations to keep the water flowing toward the river.
Aside from some rusted farm equipment and abandoned cars, Harv didn’t have any cover. Most of the small houses weren’t much bigger than the Perezes’ Conex containers. Harv slowed his pace, looking for any discernible movement. At this distance of just under two football fields to the plant, he hadn’t expected to see anyone and didn’t.
The light breeze didn’t carry any traces of smoke, tobacco or otherwise. Fifty paces farther ahead he found a makeshift crossing. Side-by-side planks of old lumber bridged a stack of pallets. The pallets acted as a column in the middle of the muck. Harv tested his weight before venturing too far. The planks sagged under his two hundred pounds but held.
On the other side of the channel he resumed his trek, angling toward the ore-processing plant’s office. His gut told him the place was deserted, but he needed to be 100 percent certain. He didn’t want to worry about anyone moving in behind him when he continued over to the lumber mill.
So far, he hadn’t seen any satellite dishes attached to the eaves of any of the buildings, residential or otherwise. Weeds and waist-high growth prevented him from seeing the ground next to the plant’s office. If a dish was over there, he’d have to get a whole lot closer to find it.
He keyed his radio. “I’m fifty yards east of the processing plant. No activity or satellite dishes are visible so far. All the houses are dark. It’s quiet out here.”
Nathan’s voice came through his speaker. “You should be able to see the helipad from there. Look directly to the north from your current position. Do you see a wind sock?”
“Affirm. I have it. It looks like there’s some kind of screening fence surrounding it. The sock is attached to a post extending above the fence.”
“Verify you’re seeing a visual screen surrounding the helipad?”
“Affirm. Six feet high. It’s probably chain-link with fabric attached. I almost didn’t see it. The fabric’s got some sort of camo digital pattern, like ivy or something.”
“How did we miss this on the aerials?”
Estefan cut in. “I don’t remember seeing a fence. It must be fairly new.”
“Harv, locate the gate. It’s probably on the west side facing the buildings. Best guess on the fenced area’s diameter?”
“Forty yards, plus or minus. I didn’t see it when I had eyes on the lumber mill. There are very small trees planted along its length. It just looked like a small orchard. I missed it.”
“No worries, Harv. We’re on the clock.”
Harv issued a click. Nathan would never tell him to hurry, but “on the clock” meant proceed without haste. Harv was already at the ten-minute mark, and he hadn’t cleared the ore-processing plant yet. The longer he delayed, the more suspicious Raven’s remaining men at the lumber mill would become. Even so, he took a moment to make another TI sweep.
Something looked wrong, and it took Harv a moment to process what he saw. On the aerials, the processing plant looked like a rectangular building—its shape and shadow had been clearly visible. Looking at it from ground level revealed something quite different. It wasn’t a building at all. It was essentially a large expanse of concrete covered by a roof structure. Log-cabin-style columns supported a system of crudely made beams and trusses. Flanked by two slanted sluice boxes, the ore-crushing drum dominated the middle of the slab. The drum looked like a converted concrete truck minus its wheels. A pulley system was in place to hoist five-gallon buckets full of crushed ore to the top of the sluice boxes. Harv cringed at the thought of working next to that thing without hearing protection. He’d expected this place to be a mess, but it wasn’t. The plant’s supervisor clearly ran a tight ship. All the shovels, rakes, and other hand tools were stored in racks. Even the water hoses were neatly coiled under their spigots. At the south side of the slab next to the office, a dozen stainless-steel sinks probably served as the panning area for the material recovered from the sluice boxes. Overhead cameras monitored the panning sinks.
Harv shook his head. Macanas was getting rich while these mine workers wrecked their backs, destroyed their hearing, and ingested toxic levels of mercury. He didn’t see the retorts Estefan had mentioned, but he couldn’t miss the five-hundred-gallon propane tank that supplied their fuel for cooking the amalgam. From the look of things, Macanas had a very profitable operation going. It was tempting to burn this place to the ground, but that would only hurt the people who worked here. Then again, maybe it would be doing them a favor and even save their lives in the long run.
Harv reminded himself that he and Nate weren’t here to play God with these people’s lives. They were here to help Estefan avenge his father’s murder and now, his bludgeoned wife and torched house. They were here to stop a rogue killer, a killer they’d created. Harv had never liked Raven, though it was difficult to pinpoint why. Maybe it was a chemistry thing. There’d just been something about the guy he found unsettling. It wasn’t normal to act so calmly all the time. Nothing ever seemed to rattle the guy.
He pushed the thought aside to remain focused. The helipad’s fence became an asset. He could use it as a visual screen to approach the lumber mill. Beyond the wind sock, he saw the ominous black form of the mill’s huge gabled roof. The main building had to be forty feet high and at least one hundred twenty feet long. His NV registered the glow of the trees to the east, which meant at least one exterior light was on over there. Confident he was alone, Harv advanced to the office wall and flattened himself against it. He reached over to the air conditioner’s compressor and felt it for warmth. It was cool to the touch.
“I’m at the ore-processing plant’s office. No satellite dishes present. Stand by.”
Nathan gave him a click, and he eased along the wall toward the dark window. Before pivoting his NV goggles up, he took a slow look around. Even though the office was dark, he knew someone could still be in there. He placed his ear against the stucco wall and didn’t hear anything. Surprisingly, the window’s shade was only partially drawn. He leaned forward and used his NV to scan the interior. The tiny light on the computer’s CPU blinked sleep mode, providing one-second intervals of illumination. Excepting the digital scale on the desk, presumably used to weigh gold, it looked like a moderately furnished office. Nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at him. A door on the west side probably led to a bathroom.
Time to move on.
Harv walked directly toward the helipad, planning to skirt the fence’s eastern hemisphere. He wondered why the canvas covering the fence had an ivy pattern. Was it for aesthetic or tactical purposes? Whatever the case, it had prevented him from seeing it earlier. At the fenc
e he peered over the top and saw the gate on its west-facing side. In the middle, a round concrete pad was surrounded by a sea of fist-sized river rocks. Smart, Harv thought. The rocks wouldn’t be disturbed by the rotor wash. No vegetation was present—not even a single weed. The fence didn’t screen the helipad from an elevated position, but it did offer privacy at ground level. Harv didn’t think Raven would be overly worried about anyone besides kids scaling the mountainside to watch the helicopter land and take off—what would be the point? Everyone in town could clearly see it as it overflew the area. As Pastor Tobias’s letters had indicated, it was no secret why it came and went.
Just north of the covered slab, Harv encountered the supply side of the canal and saw a well head and several large pressure tanks. Apparently, the pressurized water for the hose bibs came from here. Harv had no trouble stepping over the three-foot-wide channel. At the helipad fence he turned east and worked his way around to where he had a clear view of the lumber mill.
The illumination he’d seen earlier got increasingly brighter as he navigated the fence. Once he had a clear view of the mill, he made a TI sweep and didn’t detect any warm bodies. He’d expected to see a sentry.
The mill looked a lot bigger than it had on the aerials. The main building towered over the other two structures. Harv estimated it was at least forty feet high with a rectangular footprint of fifty by one hundred fifty feet. The smaller of the two buildings was on the south side of the property, and Harv saw light leaking from drawn blinds or curtains. He also heard the drone of an air conditioner, its noise originating from the far side of the small structure. A larger freestanding building was on the north side of the lumber mill’s property, likely the barracks where Raven’s men lived. A large parking lot to his left held half a dozen lumber trucks, a backhoe, a front-end loader rigged with grappling arms for moving timber, and some smaller vehicles that appeared deserted. He studied the area surrounding the office and almost missed seeing the satellite dish mounted on the wall. Half of its oval form was screened by a light-colored Range Rover. Harv saw an opportunity to look inside. Superbright slits of light came from the upper parts of the windows. With a little luck, he’d be able to peer inside, but he’d have to climb onto the Range Rover’s hood. First things first. He needed to disable the satellite dish. At this distance he couldn’t see if the coaxial cable ran down the wall or if it punched directly through the wall behind the mounting bracket. He’d know soon enough. He also needed to check in with Nate, which he did.