Billy was hit in the shoulder just above his vest. He felt the sharp sting of the bullet and the warmth of blood as it poured down his arm underneath the sleeve of his shirt. He lay next to one of the DEA agents who was face-down. There was a hole in the back of the other man’s head and Billy knew there was no reason to check him for a pulse. The shooting had stopped and the silence was almost as deafening as the crack and pop of the guns had been. He slowly moved his good hand up and wiped the stinging beads of sweat out of his eyes and looked around. There were two dead cartel members lying about six feet away, but no movement that he could see. He crawled over until he reached the side of the house and then painfully sat up against it. He used his legs to push himself up until he was standing on his feet and reached into the pocket of his vest. He pulled out a full magazine before ejecting the clip on the rifle he was clutching and replacing it with the full one.
Keeping his back pressed into the wall and his gun ready, he began to make his way around the side of the house toward the front. He was almost there when he reached the entrance to the storm cellar. It was the padlock on it that caught his eye. Simms had said he was in the cellar…so why was it padlocked from the outside? He went on around to the front of the house. He saw two men in black moving toward him and realized that one of them was Grant.
“Is it all clear?” Billy asked in a voice strained with pain.
“Yeah, we’re clear. Where are Cade and Marcus?”
“I don’t know. Have you seen or heard from Simms?”
The DEA agent with Grant said, “No. We lost radio contact with him as soon as the gunfire started.”
“The storm cellar is padlocked from the outside,” Billy said, moving back toward it. As soon as he got there he yelled at Grant and the agent to stand clear. He shot the padlock twice and it broke in two pieces and fell free from the storm door. As soon as he pulled up on it, the smell of gas nearly knocked him out. “Damnit! Grant, you got a bandana or anything?”
“Here.” the DEA agent held out a black face cover. Billy took it and tied it around his nose and mouth. He was halfway down the stairs when he heard Grant coming down after him. He could hear violent coughing, but it was pitch black and he couldn’t see a thing. When his feet hit the ground, the room lit up. Grant was shining a flashlight down from his perch on the stairs.
“Over there!” he said as the light fell on a large body in the corner.
Billy moved toward it quickly but cautiously. It was Cade and he was barely conscious. “Fuck!”
He lifted Cade’s head and looked over his body but saw no visible wounds. “I’m gonna get you out of here, boss, okay?” Cade tried to answer him, but had a coughing fit instead.
“Marcus!” he heard Grant yell.
The DEA agent was coming down the stairs then and Billy told him, “Check the rest of the tunnel for Simms, we’ll get them out.” Billy had to awkwardly try and lift Cade with his left arm because it was his right shoulder that had been hit with the bullet. When he realized that wasn’t going to work, he sucked in a huge breath and fought through the excruciating pain as he hauled the two-hundred-plus-pound man up off the floor. Cade was groggy, but conscious still and he was trying to help, but most of his weight was pressed into Billy’s shoulder. He dragged Cade over to the stairs where Grant was struggling himself, trying to get an unconscious Marcus to the top.
Billy lowered Cade to the floor and said, “I’ll be right back, boss.” He moved up the steps to help Grant. Once they got Marcus out into the fresh air, he began to cough and retch. They left him there and went back down for Cade. Grant took the right side first so Billy got on Cade’s left and again had to use his injured shoulder. By the time they got to the top of the stairs, Cade was covered in Billy’s blood.
“He’s bleeding!” Grant said as they lowered him to the ground.
“I think that’s my blood,” Billy said over his shoulder as he headed back into the cellar.
“What? Billy, wait!” Grant followed him down, just as the other DEA agent came through the doorway of the tunnel, dragging an unconscious Simms. Billy and Grant both grabbed a body part and the three of them got him out of the cellar. He didn’t look like he was breathing.
The DEA agent ripped the bandana off his face and said, “I found him behind a stack of drugs on a pallet. He was lying up against the wall. He’s not breathing.” Grant and the agent started CPR on Simms. Cade and Marcus were both breathing harshly, but they were breathing and Marcus was coming around. Billy decided that situation was under control and slipped back down into the cellar, unnoticed for the time being. Finding Dominguez was still his priority. There had to be a tunnel out of that cellar and he was going to find it.
********
While Grant and the agent that he knew as Mick performed CPR on Agent Simms, Cade and Marcus began to ask questions.
“Where was he?” Cade said. His voice was hoarse and strained.
“In a corner behind a pallet of drugs,” Grant told him as he did chest compressions. “Are you okay?”
Cade coughed again and said, “Which one? Which pallet?”
“The one with the cocaine. In the fifth room, I think. He was in the corner behind it, like he’d passed out there,” the agent said. That was the room Cade was checking out when Marcus called out to him. It had to be the pallet that he hadn’t checked yet.
“Are you okay, boss?” Grant asked him between compressions.
“I’m fine. I don’t know who to call for help in this Godforsaken country…”
“Dial 747,” the agent said as he came up for another breath of air to give Simms. “Tell Manuel we need as many ambulances as he can send and more backup.”
While Cade was doing that, Marcus went over and tried to help, but Grant wouldn’t let him. It was then that Marcus looked around and said, “Where’s Billy?”
“Fuck!” Cade cursed angrily as he ended his call. He was looking toward the cellar and already in motion before Marcus pulled himself up and followed him.
“Here!” Grant yelled before they got to the door. He tossed them the flashlight. Marcus picked it up and continued to follow Cade down the steps. It still smelled like gas and the odor had both of them coughing. Cade went first, but Marcus kept the light trained in front of them.
When they reached the second empty room he told Marcus in a whisper, in case they were listening, “It had to be Simms.”
“What?”
“Simms. He had to be the one that told Dominguez we were here and then he helped him escape. Someone had to be down here to move things back into place. If Simms wasn’t helping Dominguez, there would be another body down here.”
The two men hurried through the tunnel to the fifth room. The pallets of cocaine had all been pushed into the center of the room, including the one that Cade couldn’t budge. Billy had come through there like the Incredible Hulk apparently; it was what he did best. In the spot where the pallet on wheels had been was an opening in the ground. Cade and Marcus looked down into it. It barely looked big enough for one of them to get down inside of. Cade had to wonder how Billy had managed it, especially since he was claustrophobic by nature. Billy hated confined spaces.
“If anything happens to Billy or Nate doesn’t make it…” Cade choked up on that note and took a deep breath. “If Simms lives, I might just put a bullet in that bastard’s head myself. I thought I knew him. I would have trusted him with my life. I trusted him with the lives of my team.” Cade prided himself on his ability to read people and he judged himself harshly when he got it wrong. He’d never been as wrong about anyone as he had been about Simms. “I have half a mind to go back up there and put a bullet in his head right now.”
“I wouldn’t stop you,” Marcus said grimly, “but we probably don’t have that kind of time. We have to find Billy.”
Cade nodded. “I’ll go down first, follow me with the light.”
Cade had to lie down on his belly in the dirt and lower his legs into the tunnel first. When he got a toe-hold on one of the rungs, he started down. Marcus shined the flashlight down in the hole and when Cade reached the fourth rung, his hand touched something warm and sticky. He pulled it back and looked at it. It was blood.
“Damnit! Billy’s bleeding too.” The blood was fresh; it had to be Billy’s. When Cade caught up to him, he was going to kick his ass.