“Gracia, what happened, how bad is it?”
Her eyes opened. “Chief Nolan. I knew you would come. Did you find the Admiral?”
“Yes, he’s fine. We need to get you a medic.”
Her eyes looked into his, and he saw the pain. “It hurts bad. I think I’m going to die, Chief Nolan.”
“No, you’re not going to die.”
He looked around, but the hallway was empty of any fighting. It had swept past Gracia and past the doorway to the Situation Room. Of course, Salazar! He’d rallied his men and was ordering them to clear the West Wing of the enemy so that he could make his escape.
Where can I take Gracia?
There was only one place. He slung both M4s on his shoulder, picked her up under his good arm, and carried her back down the stairs. Jacks stared at her as he staggered into the room.
“Who is she?”
“One of ours, Admiral. She’s been shot.”
“Put her on the table, and we’ll take a look at her. I’ve handled a few gunshot wounds in my time. I’ll do my best.”
“She means a lot to me, Sir.”
He glanced up. “Like that, is it?”
“Yes, it is. She was guarding the entrance so I could get down here. We can’t let her die.”
“As I said, I’ll do what I can. Watch the door, and leave the other M4 near the girl. If the fighting comes down here, I’ll be ready to use it.”
Nolan unslung one of the assault rifles for Jacks and went to guard the doorway, ready to kill any enemy who came down the stairs. He hoped Salazar would come into his sights. The thought of that man ordering the death of his children had seared through him.
No matter how long it takes, Salazar has to die!
Since Grace’s death, the children were all he had left to remind him of her. He would give everything to protect them, his life if necessary. He looked over at Jacks. The man had found some water in the bathroom, cleaned her stomach, and cut away her dress. The gunshot wound was clearly visible, still leaking blood.
“How is she?”
“Not good. I’ll do my best to stop the bleeding, but she needs the bullet removed and a course of antibiotics to prevent any blood poisoning. She needs blood, too, and some morphine if we can find any.”
“When our Seals fight their way through to us, they’ll have a medical kit.”
Jacks looked up. “It’s a start, but she needs an ER room, and quick. And you’re forgetting something. Even if they do fight there way through, Salazar will blow the place once he’s made his escape.”
“Do your best with her, Admiral. We’ll deal with the problems one at a time.”
He listened to the sounds of gunfire. They were getting nearer and nearer. Bravo Platoon and Castro’s Special Forces were pushing Salazar’s men back, and it wouldn’t be long before they were all over the West Wing. And then Salazar would come back down to execute the Admiral and make his escape. Unless the fighting got too hot, in which case he would almost certainly make his escape and blow the building. The Admiral would still be dead, and he’d only miss out on his plans to broadcast an execution.
Where is the tunnel?
That was the big question. He’d said it was in the basement, but did he mean the Situation Room, or somewhere else in this rambling building? He heard a shout of pain and looked back at the table. Jacks had gone for more fresh water from the bathroom, and Gracia had picked up one of the photos and stared at it. She recognized them as obviously surveillance photos of potential targets for murder or kidnap, and she sat up to look at the others. The pain had caused her to cry out. He shouted for Jacks, but the Admiral was already running to help her.
“Your kids, Chief Nolan?” she asked him, her voice a hoarse murmur.
He couldn’t lie to her. “Yeah, they’re mine, Daniel and Mary.”
“So they’re the targets for Salazar?”
“Yes.”
“Then you must kill him. You cannot fail.”
“I won’t, Gracia. But first we must get your wound treated. Try and hang in there. Our people will be here soon.”
“Yes.”
She lay back on the table, and her eyes closed briefly, then opened wide and stared at him. He understood the question in them. There was no need for words.
“We’re doing everything we can. You should be fine. We don’t believe the wound is fatal.”
She nodded and closed her eyes again.
Jacks had come out of the bathroom, seen him with Gracia, and picked up his M4 to guard the entrance. He shouted over to Nolan from his position just inside the doorway.
“We’ve got company.”
He grabbed his own M4 and rushed to join the Admiral. He could hear Spanish voices at the top of the stairway, Salazar with his bodyguards. They both started down the stairs. Nolan leaned close to Gracia.
“I have to go. They’re coming.”
She nodded slightly, but her eyes were tight shut as she did her utmost to cope with the pain. He picked up his M4-A1 one-handed and rushed to join Jacks. The footsteps were loud on the stairs, no more than twenty feet away. He raised his eyebrows at Jacks, who nodded. Both men stepped through the opening, stood at the foot of the stairwell, and loosed a long burst at Salazar and his men. They were both lucky and unlucky. Three of the bodyguards went down, killed or seriously wounded, yet Salazar survived. He shouted at his remaining man to shoot back, but it was unnecessary, the man had lifted his assault rifle and was firing as the two Seals jumped back behind cover. Bullets spattered all around them, and they waited for the fire to end. There was a loud ‘click’. The two men needed no explanation; the gun jammed. They leapt back through the doorway and fired again. The sole surviving bodyguard screamed as several bullets ripped into him, but Salazar had ducked out of sight. They heard his voice, loud and mocking.
“You think you have upset my plans, Mr. Nolan, but it will be the last time. Goodbye. Manuel, do it!”
They looked up and saw Rivera’s head appear over the top of the staircase. Then he started throwing grenades down the stairwell. They heard Salazar laughing insanely as bomb after bomb rolled around their feet. Both men shouted at the same moment.
“Grenade!”
Nolan dived one side of the door, grunting in pain as his injured arm made contact with hard concrete, and Jacks went the other way. The grenades went off, one after the other. There were six in all, and they produced a rolling thunder of explosions and hot shards of metal that slashed through the room. When the explosions ended, Nolan jumped up. He shouted to Jacks, but couldn’t hear his voice. His eardrums had been savaged by the violent detonations, but there was only one priority uppermost in his mind. Salazar.
“Look after Gracia,” he shouted at Jacks, hoping he could hear. Then he powered up the stairs, but there was no sign of the trafficker. He saw a movement in the corner of his eye and whipped up his rifle, but he recognized the figure of Will Bryce just in time.
“Will, have you seen Salazar?”
The big black PO1 shook his head. “No, we’re still mopping up. There’s no time to hunt him down until we’ve finished off the defenders.”
“He’s rigged the place to blow. There are explosives everywhere. We don’t have a lot of time.”
“Jesus Christ! What about Jacks?”
“He’s safe, downstairs. One of ours is wounded, Gracia. She needs a medic badly.”
“I’ll get Castro’s medics onto it. He has a couple of good people.”
“Is the Captain okay?”
“He is, just a couple of scratches, but he’s lost over half his command.”
Nolan looked around the destroyed and smoking West Wing, but there was no movement; everyone was either dead or had run. Then he heard the distinct sound of a door closing. He looked at Will.
“It could be Salazar. Can you cover me? We have to get this guy. He’s trying to escape through some kind of secret tunnel.”
“I’m with you, Chief.”
They ran through the deserted building. When they came to the room where they thought they’d heard the noise, there was nothing to be seen. A dead body lay on the floor, one of Salazar’s men, and the walls were pockmarked with bullet holes. The door to the room had been blasted off its hinges, but there was nothing to indicate a door that led to an escape route.
“Where are we?” Will asked.
Nolan shook his head. “I’ve no idea, but it must be something pretty important. It looks as if it’s fitted for high level conferences.” Then it he recognized it, the huge, dark mahogany table; he remembered seeing it in pictures. “It’s the Roosevelt Room.”
“It doesn’t seem likely, Chief. If I was building a bolt hole, this is the last place I’d put it.”
“Maybe that’s what he wants people to think. Help me search this room, see if we can find anything. We both heard that click, and it sure sounded like a door or hatch closing.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Will nodded gloomily. But he took one side of the room while Nolan took the other. They tapped along the walls, then looked underneath the big conference table, nothing. “I don’t think it’s here,” Will continued. “We’ve searched everywhere. All that’s left is the fireplace, and I doubt he went up the chimney. Shouldn’t we be clearing out of here and warning the others?”
Something rang a bell in Nolan’s mind.
The chimney! Is it possible?
It sounded like something from an adventure film. And yet, Salazar had billions to spend in the most outrageous fantasies, of which the replica White House was one.
“Help me look around the fireplace. There could be some kind of a secret door.”
They searched around the huge, marble structure, Nolan knew that time was running out if there was to be any chance of stopping Salazar.
“Chief, there’s something here.”
He joined Will on the other side of the big fireplace where the marble uprights should have been cemented flush to the wall, and there was a tiny gap.
“Look around for something to open it with, Will. If this is it, there’ll be a hidden button or lever. There must be something.”
They tapped all around the ill-fitting marble, without finding anything unusual, or anything that could be used to open a hidden door. Nolan feverishly searched around the ornate marble structure, but there was nothing.”
“Maybe we’re in the wrong place,” Will murmured. “We could try out in the hallway.”
“Maybe, but something tells me we’re real close.”
“You stay here and keep looking. I’ll search outside.”
“Okay,” Nolan replied, his mind still searching for what they’d missed. He was sure it was there; it had to be. They heard a noise outside in the hallway, and both Seals turned quickly, their rifles raised, but it was Talley with Roscoe Bremmer. As they moved, Will caught his boot on the fire irons, the ornate, wrought iron implements that stood on the hearth. But they didn’t fall across the floor. Instead, there was a ‘click’ as the base that held the tools tipped over, and the fireplace moved at one end, revealing an opening about two feet wide.
“I’m going in,” Nolan said quietly.
“Going in where?” Talley asked.
“Salazar’s escape route. He has a helo waiting in a jungle clearing, and if we don’t get to him fast, he’ll get away.”
“Salazar? I thought you said you’d seen him making his escape into the jungle opposite the ranch?” He stared at Roscoe. The black man looked embarrassed. “Damn, Boss, several of us saw him, and we were sure it was him. I doubt Salazar is in here.”
Talley looked at Nolan. “Well?”
“It was Salazar. He was here only minutes ago.”
He nodded. “Maybe Bremmer was mistaken. You’d better go get him. Take Will with you, and call if you come across him. Don’t forget the AC-130 is still overhead.”
“Boss, Salazar had sewn this place with charges. It’s likely to go up at any time, so you need to get everyone out of here. If he’s pressed the remote detonator, the countdown has already started.”
Talley didn’t stop to question him. He barked orders at the men who’d come into the room.
“Get everyone out of here, and check every room. The building is rigged to blow!”
They didn’t wait to acknowledge, the seconds were ticking by. Nolan squeezed through the narrow gap and into a tunnel that was surprisingly well constructed. The walls were lined with smooth cement, and lights were set into armored bulkhead fittings in the roof, which was high enough to allow them to walk upright. The tunnel ran straight for the first hundred yards and then twisted at a right angle. Water seeped onto the floor that was an inch deep.
Another sharp bend appeared after three hundred yards, and the tunnel ran as straight as a die. Ahead of them, perhaps another five hundred yards away, they could see the bright light of day streaming into the tunnel; the entrance that someone had left open. They ran on until they stood at the foot of a long ladder propped against the wall. Nolan went up first and poked his head cautiously out of the hatch. There was a thunderous noise, and his automatic reflexes made him duck back down. But it wasn’t someone shooting at him. In front of him was a Bell 427 Twin Turboshaft helo. The noise had been the engines starting with a roar. He looked back out and could see Manuel Rivera reaching down to help pull Salazar into the fuselage.
He didn’t hesitate. His M4-A1 had a full clip, but this was a shot that required accuracy, not wild, automatic fire. With his feet on the ladder, and his good elbow on the ground outside the hatch, he sighted carefully plum center on Salazar’s body. Even so, it was a difficult shot. Salazar was moving as Rivera pulled him upwards in to the cabin. The first bullet took him in the lower body, and the man twisted in pain as the hot metal hammered into him. Rivera looked across the clearing, saw Nolan, and turned to shout something to the pilot. Nolan fired again, and again. Both times he saw Salazar’s body jump as the bullets hit him. The helo started to ascend, and he fired a fourth bullet; this one aimed at Rivera. The security chief flinched as the bullet hit his boss. He’d been pulling him upwards, and Salazar’s body shielded him so that the drug lord took the hit intended for him. He looked down quickly at his boss and decided he’d done enough. He let go, and the body of Victor Salazar dropped back to the ground as the helo soared into the air. The Chief ran over to it and knelt down to check for any signs of life, but the Colombian was dead. Will Bryce ran up beside him.
“Is that it?”
“Yeah, that’s it. I don’t know about his brothers, but they won’t be hard to kill, they weren’t Victor Salazar.”
“They’re both dead.” Will explained how the two had led the defense of the ranch compound. “They both went down fighting. At least at the end they were men, not running out like this one.”
It’s over. My family will be safe, and the Salazars have been destroyed.
“That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time, Will. Let’s go back through the tunnel and see how things are in the compound.”
Will shook his head. “No way I want to go back underground. That tunnel looked mighty near to collapse, and the spring was leaking through the walls something bad.”
Nolan smiled and agreed to walk back. It would be an opportunity to check out the extent of the damage to the compound. When the Seals left, there would be nothing but a smoking pile of rubble in this patch of Colombia. They walked along a narrow jungle pathway for a couple of hundred yards, and then the trees gave way to the huge, open area hacked out for the Salazar ranch. Smoke hung in the air from the gunfire and explosions, and when they walked through the gate, the devastation was obvious. Everything had been damaged, either completely or in part. Only the White House still stood, but they’d evacuated, waiting for Salazar’s own demolition charges to explode. Casualties lay everywhere, and Castro’s men were going around administering to them as best they could. Nolan hunted for Gracia. He finally found Jacks running past and grabbed his arm to stop him.
“Admiral, Gracia. Where is she?”
The older man stopped and darted a glance to where a pair of medics administering morphine to some of the worst of the casualties. Nolan followed his look.
“What’s going on? She can’t be that bad. When I left her, she’d only taken a non-fatal hit.”
“You’re right, the wound wasn’t fatal, but those grenades Rivera tossed down the stairwell did the damage. The shrapnel bounced around the Situation Room, and the walls are all concrete. She took a fragment of metal in the side of the head.”
“So she’s…”
Jacks nodded. “I’m sorry. She was killed instantly.”
Rivera! He nearly blacked out. He saw Gracia’s beautiful face, the face that reminded him so much of Grace. Both dead, both killed by drug traffickers. A red mist obscured his vision, and he had to prop himself with his assault rifle as his knees buckled. His emotions were a tortuous turmoil of hate and despair, of grief, and loss, and anger.
Rivera!
“He’s getting away, Admiral. Rivera! We need to contact the AC-130 and make sure they shoot him down.
“It’s already been done, Chief. The helo disappeared in the ground clutter around Medellin. Even if they’d located it, they couldn’t open fire above a civilian area.”
Talley came up to them. “I’m sorry about Gracia, Chief. She sure was something.”
“Yeah, thanks, Boss. Listen, Rivera got away.”
“I know that. They tried to shoot down his helo, but his pilot was either too clever or too lucky.”
“You don’t understand. He’ll want revenge, and that means he’ll target my family, my kids. Now that he’s escaped, he’ll make it his number one priority to kill them, in return for us busting Salazar’s operation.”
“Where are they now? Are they safe?”
“They’re with their grandparents. No, they’re not safe, not now Manual Rivera is after them.”
“You need to contact the local cops, and get them to increase protection on them. Do you know anyone who can make things happen?”
He thought about Carol Summers. The detective was in San Diego, and the kids were outside San Francisco. But she knew the system, and knew him and his family. He nodded.
“Yes, I do, the detective in San Diego PD.”
“Okay, I’ll get a patch through to them, and you can speak to her personally. Anything you want, I’ll get NCIS onto it.”
It took a few minutes, but soon he recognized Carol Summers’ familiar voice.
“Carol, this is Kyle. We’re out of the country on a mission.”
Talley was standing within earshot, so he had to be careful. Her voice sounded puzzled and slightly cool.
“Is everything okay? Are you hurt?”
“I’m fine, yeah. It’s the kids. One of the kingpins has escaped, and he may try to take revenge on the kids.”
“Shouldn’t you ask SFPD to handle it?”
“I’m asking you, Carol. Dammit, you know how these things go. They need to hear it from one of their own, not me. I’m just a member of the public.”
She was quiet for a few moments. Then he heard her say, “I’ll get right onto it, Kyle. Are they still in the same house, with the grandparents?”
“Yeah, that’s right, same place.”
“Leave it with me. I’ll talk to someone up there, and see if we can get them to increase surveillance.”
“Christ, they’re in danger, Carol. See what you can do won’t cut it!” he shouted at her.
He felt himself going dizzy with anxiety. It was good just talking to Carol Summers, even though he was certain she couldn’t fully understand the severity of the threat. There was so much he wanted to say to her, and so much agony he wanted to share with someone. Except that maybe he was wrong about her, about her caring. The red mist started to creep in front of his eyes, and he found himself struck dumb, unable to speak. Finally, her voice penetrated the thick mist. She sounded cold.
“Is anything wrong, Kyle? Are you sure you’re okay? I said I’d do my best.”
“No, it’s, I dunno.”
He thrust the commo handset at Talley and walked quickly away. Sure, he was trained for everything, to fight, to kill, to survive for long periods in extreme terrain. But how could they train you for grief? She’d been a fine girl, Gracia, with a whole lifetime in front of her.
Just like Grace.
And she’d met a similar end. Were they doomed, these women he came into contact with, doomed to be shot down like dogs by these narco-scum? And was he doomed to live his life always checking the shadows in case there was someone waiting to get in a lucky shot at his kids. It only took one round each, two bullets, and his family would be lost forever to him. They couldn’t train you for that. It was a burden you had to bear.
But Christ, it’s hard, so hard.
He felt his eyes begin to moisten. It was ludicrous, a tough, hard-bitten Chief Petty Officer of the US Navy Seals, almost crying while on a mission in enemy territory. Except that he was human. And he was alive. Yes, as long as he lived, he’d finish Salazar’s chief murderer, Manuel Rivera. He’d find him. No matter where on the earth he tried to hide, he’d find him. And he’d kill him. Abruptly, he felt better. He was no longer the hunted. He was the hunter. And he was hungry for blood.
“Chief, are you okay?”
Talley had come up behind him. He turned and saw the Lieutenant almost flinch when he saw the expression in his eyes.
“I’m okay. Let’s get this mission squared away and go home. I’ve got some things to take care of.”