Skeleton Coast

Keeping low, the two gun dogs slid into the room and swept the space with their weapons. They stuck close to the walls, making sure their perimeter was clear and that no one was in the hallways separating the rows of cells. Ski mounted a set of circular stairs on one end of the room while Mike ascended from the opposite. They climbed just high enough so they could peer into the second-story cells with their goggles switched to infrared. They were all empty. Then they checked the third story cells and again found nothing.

Back on the floor they cautiously checked the rows of cages, starting from the rear of the room and moving toward the door so they wouldn’t have to backtrack once they were finished. It was a technique that saved a couple of seconds, but every one of them counted now. Eddie remained just outside with Susan at his side.

They found a sleeping figure near the front of the room. Mike sprayed the cell door’s hinges and lock while Ski found the correct key. They were inside a moment later. Ski knelt next to Geoffrey Merrick, recognizing him through the week-old stubble on his face. He gently placed his hand over Merrick’s mouth and shook him awake.

Merrick tried to lurch off the floor but Ski held him down easily.

“We’re here to rescue you,” the former Marine said. “Everything’s okay now.”

Merrick’s eyes went from startled and fearful to relieved, and he stopped struggling. When Ski asked him if he could take his hand away, Merrick nodded.

“Who are you?” Merrick asked in a stage whisper.

“A professional hostage rescue team. Are you hurt? Can you walk?”

“I can bloody well run,” Geoffrey said. “Did my company send you?”

“The details are still being worked out. For now let’s just get you and Miss Donleavy out of here.”

“You found Susan. How is she?”

“Shaken pretty badly. She was raped.”

“After what those bastards did to her they still raped her? So help me God, Dan Singer is going to pay.”

“So it’s your former partner behind this,” Ski said and helped Merrick to his feet.

With their charge between them, Ski and Mike worked their way back to the door. Geoffrey Merrick charged ahead when he saw Susan standing next to Eddie Seng, her face wan in the moonlight. He opened his arms to hug her but stopped, a look of confusion clouding his features.

“Your face,” he said, bewildered. You’re not—”

That was all he could get out. Susan shoved Eddie at the same time she yanked his pistol from its unsecured holster. Her eyes were wild, defiant, as she brought the weapon to bear, her thumb flicking off the Beretta’s safety.

“Die, you son of a bitch!” she screamed at the top of her lungs and pulled the trigger.

Eddie’s reactions were lightning fast despite the irrationality of the situation. But even as his body reacted he thought through what had happened. Susan Donleavy wasn’t a victim at all. She was in league with the kidnappers and that was no rape in the other cell block but two lovers who’d gone to find a place to be alone.

He swung his hand upward, hitting Susan’s wrist an instant before the Beretta discharged. The recoil and the strike sent the gun clattering into the dim hallway and left her throat unprotected. Eddie whipped his hand around and slashed the edge into her neck, pulling the blow at the last second so he didn’t crush her carotid artery and kill her. He turned quickly.

Geoffrey Merrick was on the floor, Ski and Trono hunched over him. The blood splattered on the wall behind them looked like a Rorschach test.

“Is he alive?”

“Yes, but she got him high in the chest,” Ski said pulling a sterile dressing from a medical kit. Merrick’s face was bone white and he took choppy sips of air as he struggled against the pain. His chest was sodden and more blood leaked from the wound. “I don’t know if any major organs were hit, but for now you’ve saved his life.”

“Not yet I haven’t,” Eddie said as he plucked the dressing from Ski’s hand. “We don’t have time for that. She’s one of them and no doubt lied about the number of guards. This place is going to be crawling in about ten seconds. Pick him up and let’s go.”

“What’s happening?” Linc asked over the tactical radio.

“Donleavy shot Merrick. I think she’s working with the kidnappers.”

Ski hunched over so Mike and Eddie could drape Merrick over his broad shoulder. To his credit Merrick whimpered but didn’t cry out. The blood spreading down the back of Ski’s camouflage resembled ink and smelled like old pe

Linc asked, “What’s your play?”

“Stick with the plan and hope we don’t run out of time. Be prepared to lower Merrick down to the bikes. He’s hit pretty bad.”

“I’ll be waiting.”

“What about her?” Mike asked, pointing to where Susan Donleavy lay unconscious against a wall, looking like a rag doll missing most of its stuffing.

“Leave her,” Eddie said with ill-suppressed anger. He should have seen this coming, but his own feeling about what had happened to his big sister all those years ago had clouded his thinking. For such a critical lapse of judgment he fully expected Juan to fire him if they got out of this mess alive.

They took off at a trot with Eddie at point and Mike covering their rear. Lights strung along the ceiling by wires suddenly flashed brightly then dimmed before settling to a naked glow as a generator someplace within the fortress was cranked to life. Around a distant bend came the crash of a door slamming open and the rush of feet against the gritty floor. It was a race to the cell where the ropes waited, and the men instinctively picked up their pace until they were ru

It didn’t matter that Merrick grunted each time his weight shifted and the torn flesh around the wound ripped a bit more.

The cell block door was fifteen feet away when a solid wall of men rounded the far corner. Many of them just wore boxer shorts, having been woken by the sound of the pistol, but every one of them had had the presence of mind to grab a weapon. The Corporation team faced at least ten armed African guards in a hallway that now resembled a shooting gallery.

Eddie had a fraction of a second before the guards realized they’d found their quarry and opened up with everything they had. He tossed aside his machine pistol and raised his hands, playing the longest odd he’d ever gambled. None of the guards lowered their weapons and one second became two with no shots fired. Behind him, Eddie could hear Ski’s and Mike’s guns clatter to the stone floor and then the sound of more men arriving behind them. He chanced looking over his shoulder. There were a dozen more soldiers, each glaring at them over the sites of their AK-47s.

“We’re blown,” he whispered into his mike for Linc’s benefit. “Call theOregon .”

Another man arrived a moment later and, although he wore just a pair of fatigue pants and unlaced boots, he had the carriage and bearing of an officer. His face was lean, with a beaky nose and hollow cheeks.

“I had reports that there was a small army coming to rescue Moses Ndebele,” he said in perfect English.

“Not a handful of white mercenaries. Still, your execution at dawn will be most gratifying.”

“How would you feel if I told you we were hired to rescue Dr. Merrick and have never heard of Moses Ndebele?” Mike Trono asked, just to be sarcastic.

“In that case your execution won’t be gratifying at all.”

20

JUANCabrillo had never known such pain. It wasn’t the sharp agony of having his leg shot off by a Chinese gunboat, but an overall ache that cramped all his muscles until he was certain he couldn’t go on.

His thighs and back took the brunt of the strain of para-skiing and they felt like they were burning from within. His hands were formed into claws that gripped the chute’s toggles and there was no way to rest them. There was no way to rest any part of his body unless he quit.