Scott scrambled around the stacked kilos of cocaine and crouched beside Benny. The cart was fifty yards from the end of the tunnel. The light was much brighter now, and he could also hear the drone of a motor, probably a generator. "Stop the cart," he said. "We'll walk the rest of the way."
Benny pulled the control lever back to neutral and the cart coasted to a stop twenty yards from the end of the tun-nel. Scott jumped down onto the hard-packed floor and raised the AK-47 to his shoulder. Benny hopped down be-side him and pulled her own AK-47 up into firing position.
Benny took a step forward. Scott reached out and stopped her. She turned toward him, but he didn't explain, just pressed a finger to his lips, warning her to be quiet, even though he doubted they could be heard above the rapid-fire piston sound of the generator above them. Then he reached up and shoved the cart's control lever all the way forward.
The cart clattered ahead, accelerating as it gobbled up the last twenty yards of track. Then it banged into the far side of the hole. The impact bucked the cart a couple of inches off the rails and toppled a few kilos from the stack before the cart settled back down onto the track.
Multiple machine guns opened fire from the top of the hole. Bullets ripped through the stacked kilos and bounced off the steel cart, some ricocheting down the tunnel. Cocaine dust exploded into the air. Scott shoved Benny to the ground and covered her.
Then the shooting stopped.
And in the silence that followed, Scott heard the famil-iar sound of empty magazines being ripped from rifles. One of the shooters dropped a magazine, and Scott heard the hol-low clank as it struck what sounded like the concrete lip of the hole. Then he saw the magazine fall past the mouth of the tunnel and bang onto the packed dirt and rock floor.
"Follow me," he said. Then he charged out of the tunnel and into the open hole, eyes and rifle muzzle tracking up-ward. An instant later, Benny was raising her rifle beside him. Four men stood around the rim of the hole peering down at them, one on each side of the square that had been cut through the concrete floor. All four men were jamming fresh magazines into M-16s.
Scott fired a short burst into one man, then shifted his aim to a second. Before he could fire again, Benny cut loose with a burst and the man Scott had been about to shoot tum-bled forward into the hole and landed with a bone-cracking thud on top of the steel cart. Scott shifted to the third man and fired again just as Benny fired at the fourth. Scott put two bullets into his target's chest. Then with the natural rise of the muzzle he put a third and fourth bullet into his face. The man crumpled backward and left one leg dangling over the edge of the hole.
For several seconds, Scott and Benny scanned for addi-tional threats. None presented themselves. Just as at the oth-er end of the tunnel, an aluminum extension ladder leaned against the side of the hole. "Cover me," Scott said, slinging the rifle across his back and drawing the Glock from his waistband. He started up the ladder. The climbing was awk-ward because he had to do it with one hand while he aimed the Glock with his other hand.
At the top of the hole he peaked over the edge. No one was there. He pivoted left and right. Still no one. Climbing out of the hole, he moved into a crouched shooting position and scanned 360 degrees. The warehouse was nearly identi-cal to the one across the river, filled with the same machinery and the same pallets stacked high with cocaine. The only difference Scott could see was that in this warehouse, there were also pallets loaded with shrink-wrapped blocks of cash.
But other than the four dead men, there was no one else in the warehouse. The generator droned on. Scott could see it now and realized it wasn't connected to anything. It was just running and making noise, the sound much louder up here as it reverberated off the metal walls. The cartel men had probably cranked it up to cover the sound of their gun-fire.
"Clear," Scott shouted and waved Benny up.
She scrambled up the ladder and stood beside him. "How did you know they were waiting for us?"
"I didn't," he said. "But I thought there was a good chance that the guy who got away from us on the other side of the river might warn the people on this side, and that as soon as we stuck our heads out of that tunnel it would be like shooting fish in a barrel."
"Shooting fish how?"
"In a barrel," he said. "Never mind. We'd be easy tar-gets."
"You saved my life."
"You saved mine last night," he said. "So we're even."
Scott and Benny crept through the warehouse, rifles ready, just in case there was someone else waiting for them. As they threaded their way through the rows of pallets stacked high with cocaine and cash, Scott couldn't help but be astounded. For a DEA agent it was a wet dream come true. The bust of a lifetime. Yet as the local DEA supervisor, he had had no idea there was an active cross-border tunnel in Laredo. He and his group hadn't picked up any chatter about it at all. Which made him wonder what else he didn't know.
And now that he knew, now that he was surrounded by dope and money, he had to leave it all behind. There wasn't time to call it in and wait. He had to get the video to Glenn Peterson. The best he could do was tell Peterson about the warehouse when they met. Maybe the ASAC could put to-gether a team and hit this place this afternoon, before Los Zetas had a chance to move everything back across the bor-der.
He heard a metallic click behind him. Turning, he saw Benny had flicked open a folding knife and was slicing off the shrink-wrap from a stack of money the size of a concrete block. "What are you doing?" he said.
She closed the knife and picked up a banded brick of cash. "We need money for a cab," she said as she strolled past him. "Let's get out of here before somebody grows a pair of balls big enough to come check out all the noise."
At the door they unloaded their rifles and tossed them away. They kept the pistols. Scott tucked the Glock into the back of his waistband and covered it with his shirt. He touched the flash drive hanging around his neck. Then he checked his watch. It was 12:20 p.m. In less than half an hour he was going to dump this whole pile of shit into Glenn Peterson's lap and let him deal with it. That's why ASACs got paid the big bucks.