Chapter Twenty-Six

The ants march in,

The ants march out,

The ants play pinochle on your snout…

Dev smiled at the silly childhood chant spinning round and round in her aching head, even as she brushed a trail of touchy, feely insects off her bare arms. Sly’s jacket, smelly as it was, would surely come in handy about now, but she’d left it behind when she’d forsaken the dubious comfort of the limo’s trunk.

Finally, enough was enough. She rolled to her back and stared at the stars overhead, brushing more crawly critters off her face and out of her hair. This was the thing about the Keys. On a clear night, there was little to no bright city lights to obstruct a person’s view of the universe. You could almost see forever.

But forever was c-c-cold. Carefully, her hands eased up over her biceps for the warmth of her own touch. Dev cringed when one palm rubbed the shredded skin on her left bicep. Freedom definitely came at a hefty price. Now all she had to do was find a way into town. Before dawn would be nice, but at least before whatever was chewing on her ass ate her alive.

Gingerly, she tipped up and onto her butt, another sore part of her anatomy. She wasn’t just bruised, she was battered, her arms, thighs, and kneecaps covered with burning patches of road rash that stretched too tight over her shivering muscles. But she was alive, and she knew where she was. Mostly.

Okay then. Let’s roll out.

Soon. Very soon…

For now, it was enough to be able to sit without throwing up. Man, she was one dizzy woman, and the stars weren’t just in the skies. Dropping her head to her knees, she avoided the tenderest skin, needing something to hold her shaking head before she lost her cookies. She just might have a concussion, but like her brother always said, a man can heal later. Guess a woman could, too.

Swallowing her fear of the night’s worst predators once they caught her scent, she climbed to her feet, with nothing but the flimsy bush at her side to help keep her balance. Not happening. Quicker than quick, she sank to her butt before she fell down. She wasn’t going anywhere. Not yet.

“You know what?” she asked herself. “You’ll feel better after a little nap. Rest now, then when the sun comes up, try again.”

Good idea…

At least Cord knew the Cuban Islands well enough to maneuver the pontoon boat past murky, alligator infested Lanier Swamp and then the American cemetery at the northeast corner of the island. This half was fairly bare of trees and more civilized, with a population of over fifty-nine thousand residents, modern looking city buildings, and paved highways, all of which Seth intended to avoid.

The city of Nueva Gerona itself lay west of the Presidio Modelo ruins, aka the ‘national monument’, but damn. The ferry to the Cuban mainland had just landed as Cord pulled in close to shore. Not many people offloaded, but scores of cars and trucks were lined up to leave, their headlights on and their brake lights flashing in the pre-dawn darkness.

“Heads on swivels, guys,” Seth cautioned as he placed one hand to the railing and jumped into the surf off Isla de la Juventud. Volcanic black sand stretched for miles in either direction, but he only had eyes for the easy climb straight ahead and up that grassy knoll. He’d purposely directed Cord to pull the pontoon into this secluded stretch of beach south of Playa Colombo. It meant for a longer hump to get to the prison, but it avoided the public dock and the road that led directly to the Presidio Modelo. Seth didn’t need witnesses to what was without a doubt, an unauthorized United States incursion into a foreign country.

While Cord maneuvered the boat, he and Eric suited up with tactical vests, holsters, knives in sheaths, and a couple gear bags loaded with extra pistols, magazines, ammo, water bottles, any and everything to ensure this mission’s success.

Seth stopped Cord before the big guy jumped in with him. “No, Shepherd. You stay with the boat. Keep it out of sight and safe,” he ordered as he slapped the plastic-encased two-way radio in the chest pocket of his tactical vest. “Channel twelve. Wait for my signal, then get here as quick as you can. We’ll be moving fast. You may need to lay down suppressive fire ‘fore we board. But if Cassidy’s hurt....” Well, Seth just plain didn’t want to think about that scenario. A wounded male was hard enough on his heart, but a wounded woman…

Thank God, Eric was here. He’d know what to do if and when.

Cord’s upper lip lifted like he wanted to buck the order, but once Eric bailed overboard and joined Seth in the water there was no choice. Someone had to man the getaway boat. “Fine. Will do,” Cord bit out. “But make it quick, guys. Sun gets damned hot this time of year.”

Seth turned his back on the most belligerent Marine he’d ever met. One thing he’d learned early in the Army was that a real tough guy didn’t have to open his mouth to prove it. He didn’t need to brag, argue, or minimize other soldiers, either. He. Just. Was.

All a real man had to do was keep on keeping on, through the best and worst of times. That was what and who had made America great, the quiet tough guys behind the scenes. The common farmer sweating in the cornfields in Nebraska. The uneducated family man in the dirty, dangerous coal mines of West Virginia. The bone-weary fishermen risking their lives and health off Alaska in crabbing boats on the Bering Sea.

America’s greatness didn’t come from the twisted halls of Washington, D.C. Oh, hell no. It came from the Heartland, from the very soul of the silent, but deadly, American majority. God bless ’em.

“You got anything in case she’s bleeding?” Seth asked out of the corner of his mouth as he splashed to shore alongside Eric. “Any QuikClot?”

“In my side pocket with my satphone.” Eric tapped two fingers to his chest pocket. “Everything I need’s right here. If I go down, you can still save her. The green hypo will slow blood loss; the red’s a painkiller. Four cc’s ought to do it. Cassidy’s no heavyweight. Also got a plastic tourniquet.”

“You’re not going down,” Seth growled, his eyes on the sloping hill ahead. “Does Alex know what we’re doing?”

Eric’s head shifted from side to side with a definite negative. “No need to call him. It’d only piss him off and we’re not in trouble yet. Figured I’d wait to see how this goes down.”

That was Alex for you. The man wasn’t one of those micro-managers out to second-guess the expert men and women he’d hired. Hell, no. Obsessive Compulsive, yes, but when Alex gave an order, he expected you to obey, file a report when the mission was accomplished, and wait for his next call to arms.

The need to confide in Eric persisted with every step Seth took. If things went bad—if he was the one who fell today—he wanted someone to tell Devereaux that he’d died loving her. Thinking about her. Yet to talk about that now…

Yeah. No. Not happening. Sharing feelings only conjured bad mojo. Seth kept his big mouth shut as he and Eric left the surf behind and climbed the scrubby hill ahead. Daylight would break soon, and they had to hurry, but what a sight. Seth dropped to his belly alongside Eric in the tall grasses just as they’d cleared the top.

A cluster of several massive, rounded buildings sat against the dark emerald backdrop of the Caballos and Casas hills to the southwest. The birds of morning called and cawed from the far-off trees beyond the national monument.

“I wasn’t expecting this many buildings,” Seth admitted hoarsely. There were five that he could see, all of them broad and imposing, with an array of smaller buildings to the north and another to the south of the prison blocks. To securely breach and check every last one of them would take days. “What’d Cord say? She might be in a honeycomb of basement cells? Where’s that and how do we get into it?”

“Let’s check.” Rolling to his back, Eric rang up their man boat-side. “Can you give me a definite place to start looking?”

Cord’s voice came through loud and clear in the early morning hush. “See the squat building in the center, the one with the wrap around portico, or whatever you call it? That’s the main interrogation building. It’s full of offices and shit. Montego keeps a couple locked rooms below. Enter through the south door on the first level, take a right and walk about a hundred steps. I promise, it’ll lead you straight to the basement, but the door’ll be locked. Either of you wise guys think to pack any C4 in those fancy bags?”

Eric looked at Seth, his thumb over his mic. “Damn, he’s abrasive. Think I should let him go on thinking he’s smart, cuz I’m here to tell you, he’s not.”

Seth nodded. “Hell, no, tell him. Might shut him up for a second.”

“Hey, Asshole,” Eric drawled. “You ever heard of dimethyl ether?” Aka: industrial strength freeze-spray.

“Shit, you’ve got some of that? You got extra?”

Eric clicked off without further explanation. “Let’s just go. I can’t take this guy’s ego.”

Which wasn’t like Eric. He was one of the few who got along with every one of The TEAM members, be they jarhead, grunt, or sailor. But Eric’s nerves were stretched tight and Seth didn’t blame him, not with another agent’s life on the line.

Silently, they crossed the grassland between them and the complex. Eric led the way forward, twenty feet or so, while Seth covered his six. Once he caught up to where Eric crouched waiting, Seth tapped his shoulder, then assumed point and went forward another twenty feet, while Eric covered him. And so on until they reached the rounded porch of the center building.

But what an eerie sensation, all those dark, shadowed prison cells staring down on Seth. More than once, he caught himself looking up to see if anyone was watching from those vacant windows, not that he could’ve seen them. Every last hole in the rounded walls was dark and black. The whole place felt dead. Seth glanced upward again, certain that he and Eric were not alone.

Finally at the south door on the first level, he signed Eric to hold. All it took was one booby-trapped doorknob and this mission would be over. Dropping to one knee, Seth removed the LED flashlight from his gear belt, and illuminated the doorframe, jamb, and the transom over the door. Everything looked right, yet Seth wasn’t convinced.

Out came his miniature flex neck spy cam, a two-foot necked baby small enough to slide under doors and see around corners. Designed with an LED focused beam, it’d have no trouble pinpointing the source of Seth’s anxiety.

“You okay?” Eric asked, his gloved hand resting on Seth’s back.

There was a time when Eric did that regularly, a time when the touch of a brother soothed Seth, but Seth was a different man now. He nodded at the steady support, slid the snake beneath the door, and whispered, “Classic booby trap, Reynolds. A single grenade and a twelve-inch wire. Montego’s waiting for us.”

Smoothly, he retreated the snake, wound its neck around his fingers, and tucked it away for another day and another door. “We need a different way in.”

Eric huffed at Seth’s left. “I didn’t see any other exterior doors or low-to-the-ground windows, did you? So, where’s the basement?”

Licking his lips, Seth looked past Eric to the way they’d come. “Not in this building, but I’ll bet they’re all linked. Get Cord on the line. Maybe he knows something we don’t.”

Seconds later, Cord anted up with, “Already told you. Weren’t you listening? There’s a regular beehive below ground. If you can’t get in through that building, backtrack to the cellblock due east. No one’ll be in there, but at the rear of the main hall, you’ll see two rusted steel doors behind a long metal railing. Those doors might be how Montego comes and goes. He and his men are too lazy to set and reset traps every time they exit.”

Cord made sense, so Seth and Eric followed his opinion. Soon, they found themselves standing in the broken-down doorway of one of the prison’s massive cellblocks. The sky had barely lightened with the coming dawn, but there was enough light to see the rows upon rows of empty cells lining the hollowed interior wall of the cylindrical structure. The place was built like an enormous silo, straight up, with a wide, wooden slatted roof. A single tower, maybe three stories tall, stood in the center like a lighthouse, only with gun turrets at the highest ledge, their rifle slots now vacant, and the metal coated in rust.

A man had only to inhale one lungful to know the massive shadowy fingers climbing up the walls were layers of black mold.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Seth rasped as he craned his neck to take in the view. Talk about a desolate way to languish. Each cell contained one window facing out, while metal bars comprised the entire wall facing inward. Iron rails lined each level. And gloom. There was no privacy anywhere.

The need to run and grab Cassidy, so she wouldn’t spend one more minute in this awful place suffused Seth’s very steady nature. But it was Eric who said, “Now. We’ve got to find her and get her out of here, right damned now.”

Apparently he’d seen enough, too.

Seth gulped. “Then let’s do this.”