Skeleton Coast

He peered overhead and nodded for Mike and then Ski to join him while Linc lowered the dirt bikes to the ground outside the fortresslike penitentiary. There was no cell directly below the window, so Eddie flicked the tail of his rope inside so he could lower himself to the catwalk encircling the upper tier of cells.

He landed on the metal deck without a sound and moments later his two teammates joined him.

He used hand gestures to deploy Mike and Ski so they could cover him as he made a slow circuit of the cell block. He switched his goggles from night vision to infrared to detect heat from someone lying in one of the lower cages.

There!

In the far corner there appeared to be two people in one of the cells, lying close enough to be touching.

He flipped the goggles back to NV mode. There was enough light filtering through the large window for him to discern two figures under a blanket. It was a man and a woman. He was on his back with his face turned away while she was turned away from him, her knees drawn tight to her chest.

He caught Mike’s and Ski’s attention, holding up two fingers and pointing to where the prisoners slept.

Ski stayed on the platform watching over Eddie and Mike with a laser-sighted machine pistol. They crept down the stairs, shifting their weight in infinitesimal increments to prevent the slightest sound.

When they reached the cell they saw that the door was ajar. Trono and Seng exchanged a surprised look. They had assumed Merrick and Donleavy would be locked in, but perhaps the main door leading out of the cell block was sufficient to keep them caged.

Eddie grabbed a small spray bottle from one of the pouches around his waist and squirted the door hinges with powdered graphite, a lubricant superior to oil in such a situation. When he pulled back on the bar the door gave a tiny chirp and Seng froze. The woman mewed softly and shifted her position but didn’t wake. Eddie moved the door another fraction of an inch but the graphite had already worked its way into the hinge and it swung silently.

The two commandos moved across the cell with their pistols drawn. Standard procedure for any hostage rescue was to verify your target before assuming anyone was friendly. When they reached the sleeping pair Eddie pointed to the woman for Mike while he positioned himself on the other side of the heap of blankets the couple was using as a bed.

As one, the two men clamped their hands over the mouths of the sleeping pair, jamming their heads flat against the ground. And almost immediately Eddie realized that the photographs they’d memorized from the Merrick/Singer website didn’t match the man coming awake in a dazed panic.

Eddie clipped him behind the ear with the butt of his pistol, and when his eyes didn’t flutter closed he hit him again until the man was out. Mike, on the other hand continued to hold the woman down until he recognized her as Susan Donleavy. He kept his hand clamped over her mouth, holding a finger to his lips to get her to calm down. She continued to struggle as Eddie taped the man’s mouth and bound his ankles and feet with plastic flex cuffs.

“We’re here to rescue you,” Mike kept repeating at a whisper until Susan finally calmed enough for him to take his hand away. Her eyes remained wary.

“Who are you?” she asked and Mike quickly clamped his hand over her mouth.

“Quietly,” he admonished. “We’re here to rescue you and Dr. Merrick. Who is this?” Mike pointed to the unconscious figure that Eddie had tied to the cell bars.

“He’s…he’s one of my kidnappers. He . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Mike didn’t need her to spell out the details of how one of her kidnappers had brought her up to this deserted cell to rape her. “Is he armed?”

“I found this under the pillow.” Eddie held up a pistol.

Trono gave Susan a reassuring look. “It’s all over now. He’ll never touch you again.”

“Is he dead?” she asked in a meek voice.

“Just knocked out.” Mike handed her a bundle of clothing that had been lying on the floor. “Get dressed.”

The clothes disappeared under the blankets and Susan contorted herself into them without getting out from under the covers.

“Do you know where they’re holding Dr. Merrick?” Eddie asked when she threw the blanket aside.

“Yes, in another cell block.”

“Tell us where.”

“I could show you,” she suggested.

Eddie shook his head. “Too dangerous.”

“Please. I want to.” She hesitated. “I need to get some control back. Besides, he was on guard outside the cell block. There’s no one on the upper floors. All of them sleep in the old administration wing.”

“How many of them are there?” Mike asked.

“I think eight or nine, but I’m not sure.”

The number seemed low considering they posted three men at the main gate, but Mike let it pass.

“Armed like this joker here?”

“A few carried machine guns when we first got here,” Susan told them. She began to weep softly.

“Please let me take you to Dr. Merrick. If I don’t feel I’ve helped I will never be able to live with what he did to me.” She flicked her chin toward her unconscious rapist.

Eddie was about to refuse again but he believed her when she said that she would never recover from her ordeal if she slinked off into the night. Lord knew his own sister had only found peace after her rape when she polished off a fifth of vodka and a bottle of sleeping pills. The beatific smile on her cold face still haunted him. And he saw no harm with Susan coming with them if the only guard on this floor of the prison was trussed up and gagged. “Okay,” he said. Mike shot him a disapproving look. Eddie waved off his concern. “You can come as far as the cell block door. I will stay with you there and then we’re all getting the hell out of here.”

“Thank you,” she said and wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.

After plucking a set of heavy brass keys from the rapist’s pants Eddie waved for Ski to join them. Ski came down the stairs and hooked up with them at the only door out of the cell block. The hinges were on the outside of the door so, to reduce the sound of it creaking open, Ski and Mike got on the ground and lifted it as Eddie swung it open just enough for them to scrape through.

The hallway outside the door was long and straight, the floor powdered with sand. There was absolutely no light for the goggles to amplify so Ski, Eddie, and Mike pushed them up on their heads. They groped their way blindly, keeping their fingertips brushing the rough stone wall until they reached a corner.

Around the bend stretched another long passageway.

“It’s halfway down on the right,” Susan whispered. “There’s usually a chair outside the door for the guard.”

Eddie chanced turning on a red-lensed flashlight, blocking half its ruddy beam with his palm. A metal folding chair was exactly where Susan said it would be, next to a door identical to the one from the first cell block. Eddie sprayed the ancient lock mechanism with the powdered graphite and handed the can to Ski to dust the hinges as he tried key after key until finding one that fit the lock.

Even with the graphite lubricant the lock turned grudgingly, but fortunately it was quiet. The men settled their night vision goggles again, and with Mike and Ski hovering just behind him with their machine pistols in position, Eddie gently pulled back on the door. The hinges made a soft grinding sound as it opened.

The barrels of Ski’s and Mike’s weapons were never still. With more and more of the cell block being revealed they swept every square inch they could see until the thick door was opened enough for them to slip through.

A shaft of light from the moon blazed across the floor through the large window and its milky glow made the iron bars shine like ivory.