Broker ran out and returned with his black case. Bwana and Roger went outside to check if there were any hostiles, while Bear and Chloe searched the rest of the house.
No hostiles. No humans.
Zeb went to the barrel and tapped it. It was heavy, and something sloshed when he moved it. It was one of those plastic ones with a large black cap on it.
He unscrewed the top and looked inside. Colorless liquid. He dipped a finger inside and tasted it.
Water.
Debris behind the barrel caught his attention, and he walked around it.
And froze, just as Broker grunted.
‘Meg and Beth were here. Their blood.’
‘Where did they go?’ Chloe asked in frustration.
‘Down,’ Zeb answered, aware that his voice had gone icy and remote. The beast had roused and was flooding him.
‘There’s a tunnel here. I’m sure it goes to Mexico.’
They gathered around the square opening, Broker squatting carefully and shining a light in it while Zeb sent a text message to Clare.
Tunnel inside house. Goes to Mexico.
Clare’s reply came instantly even though it was two am.
In Laredo?
Yes, ma’am. In an abandoned house. No one lives here, or in the neighboring houses.
There’s a river there.
Probably goes beneath it, ma’am.
What about the twins?
Their blood’s on the floor. Several drops of it. Looks like there was a fight.
No bodies, he added hastily before she could respond. Suspect they resisted when they knew about tunnel. Left markers for us.
Hold up.
He waited and glanced at his friends. They were crouching around the opening, their faces lean and savage under the light. They were all armed, their weapons drawn and pointing downward.
‘Ladder…strong…’ he heard before his cell buzzed.
No knowledge of tunnel in any agency. You’re clear to go. Have warned Mexican authorities, Border Protection, and Homeland. Leave a signal. Proceed, with care.
He showed the messages to his friends, and without a word, Broker, Bwana and Roger broke away.
They went to the vehicles and returned. Bwana and Roger with HK MP7 rifles and scopes that they handed out silently, while Broker had night vision goggles, a thermal imager and a GPS transponder.
Bwana and Roger made another trip to the vehicles for more gear while Broker stuck the transponder beneath the barrel, patted his pockets, which were bulging with more gear, and gave a thumbs-up.
Their friends returned with flashlight helmets, grenades, ammo, water canteens, and more equipment.
They donned the helmets silently. All of them had body armor under their clothing. Standard operating procedure. When on a mission, Kevlar had to be worn.
‘There could be hostiles inside,’ Chloe warned.
Zeb nodded. He started climbing down, gripping the ladder with his left hand, back to the steps, and went underground.
The walls were concrete, rough and uneven under the glare of his headlamp.
He breathed shallowly, peering ahead into the darkness, not yet wearing his NVGs, relying on his senses alone.
He reached bottom and estimated they were nearly fifty feet below the ground.
Probably twenty feet below the riverbed.
He moved away from the bottom of the ladder to make room for his friends.
The bottom widened and became a corridor that was ten feet wide. Wooden beams lying on the floor. Sacks dumped randomly. He poked one. Grout.
Empty water bottles and bags of chips and food containers.
What held his attention was a pair of rails to his right, on which was a hand-driven trolley.
Bear climbed on it and groped inside. He emerged and tossed out several plastic baggies.
Zeb caught one and fingered it. White powder.
Broker stopped him when he started moving down the tunnel. ‘Wait.’
Broker produced something that looked like a scope with a screen behind it.
A thermal imager. Most imagers showed human bodies in lighter shades, contrasting with dark backgrounds.
Broker had customized their devices to have color. Orange or yellow shapes indicated human presence.
He turned it on, and the screen lit to show the tunnel in green. No orange blobs as far as its range went.
‘Go.’ Broker gave the signal.
Zeb started again and fell to a crouch, his MP7 rising, when the tunnel was suddenly lit.
‘That was me,’ said Roger, sheepish, pointing to a light switch high on the wall that they had all missed.
Cables ran the length of the ceiling, and at frequent intervals, naked bulbs hung, glowing, illuminating the passage beneath the river, connecting two countries.
The tunnel was an engineering marvel.
Deep beneath the riverbed. No cracks in the ceiling. Walls are solid.
Zeb couldn’t help admiring the tenacity of the builders. The rails ran to their side and disappeared into the distance. At various lengths, he could see grease on the tracks.
To make it easy for that trolley to roll.
The floor was hardened mud, the walls and eight-foot ceiling were concrete.
Trash littered the floor as far as the eye could see.
This was dug up by some cartel. A drug-trafficking route for them.
Zeb knew Nuevo Laredo was home to several drug gangs, many of them splintered from the Zetas.
At one point, the Zetas had been one of the largest and most ruthless gangs in Mexico, but they had fallen into decline once their leader, Miguel Morales, was killed by Mexican authorities.
The gang had split into several factions after several of its leaders had started forming their own outfits.
This could have been a Zeta tunnel. They had the resources and the capability. Tunnel’s probably run by whichever gang is on the rise now.
They moved slowly, Zeb ahead, the rest of them providing cover. They had firepower with them. They had determination.
Six men and one woman. Lethal intent personified.
They would have climbed mountains or razed them. They would have dug a tunnel if one hadn’t existed.
Because this was a mission unlike any other they had been on.