Page 12 of Forty Days and One Knight
“Copy that, snake.” Darius almost laughed—Boss-man was getting his two businesses’ terminologies mixed up. But either way, Darius sure as hell hoped he wouldn’t need to use the word “snake” to indicate everything had gone to shit and his cover was compromised. But it was nice to know there were now over a dozen team members ready to come to his and the female prisoners’ rescue.
Instead of going in through the mud room and possibly running into Carlos, Darius hustled to the other side of the house to an entrance the house staff used. Once inside, there was a maid’s staircase that lead to the second floor. He snuck up the steps on silent feet.
Upon reaching the top of the stairs, he stilled at the doorway leading to the hallway and listened for a moment. All seemed quiet. Even though the security cameras were flipping out, he hit the button on his watch to be sure they didn’t come back on at the wrong time.
Peering around the door jamb, he checked to see if the long hallway was empty before he stepped out. To his left was the door to Secada’s suite. Pretending as if he was just making the usual rounds, Darius turned right and strode past several guest rooms, the main staircase, a sitting area, and the Diaz children’s rooms. He stopped outside the master bedroom suite, swung his AK-47 around to his back, and, again, listened for a moment. Outside, the storm had arrived. A clap of thunder sounded like it was right on top of the house, while rain began to pound on the roof and windows. Fuck, what more could go wrong? The weather was going to make it more difficult for him to hear his team out there and for them to see what the hell was going on with the unexpected company.
As far as Darius could tell, there were no sounds coming from the other side of the door. The hallway and foyer chandelier flickered off then back on again. Great, add in a power outage and this mission going FUBAR would be an understatement.
Trying the doorknob, he found it locked. He didn’t have his pick set with him—hadn’t thought he’d need one tonight—so he reached into his pocket to get the next best thing. While the locks on the house’s exterior entry doors were all reinforced, the interior ones were easy to bypass. Pulling one of his alias’s credit cards from his wallet, he slid it between the door and its jamb. Within seconds, he had his rifle back in his hand and was edging the door open. There were no lights on in the room, but a combination of foul and metallic odors hit his nose.
Aw, shit.
Darius pushed the door open enough to enter, then shut it again behind him, leaving the room’s lights off. A thunderbolt gave him enough just enough illumination to see Diaz lying sideways on the bed, with his feet hanging off the side. Digging a small flashlight out of his pocket, Darius turned it on, stepped forward, and stared down at the dead man. Diaz and the black comforter were covered in blood, and he’d apparently lost control of his bowels and bladder as his life had drained from him. A narrow slit in his shirt to the left of his sternum told Darius a knife had probably been plunged directly into his heart. Had Secada killed him? Most likely. But that conjured up a bunch of other questions, like who was getting ready to attack the compound and were they friend or foe of Diaz’s second-in-command? Had murdering the bastard tonight been part of a larger plot to seize control of the cartel or had it just been bad timing as someone else staged a hostile takeover? Either way, it was fucking up the entire mission. They were going to have to get the women out of there tonight. The mission had been to get the names of as many human-trafficking scumbags as possible, but not at the risk of the prisoners’ lives. At least Diaz wasn’t part of the equation anymore, and Secada would be removed as well before the night was over, if Darius had anything to say about it.
Darius stealthily moved back to the door, opened it a crack to make sure the coast was still clear, then closed it again. He lifted his wrist to his mouth and spoke softly. “Boss-man?”
“Go.”
“Diaz has been taken out—probably by Secada. No one else knows yet, as far as I can tell.”
“Fuck. Things are about to go to shit here too. We grabbed one of the tangos in the woods and not-so-politely asked a few questions before silencing him. There’s an attack coming your way, and the hostages are in the fucking middle of it. You’ve got to get them out of there, but with the fur about to fly, I can only spare two from the teams to help you. We’re going to be taking fire from both directions, and this downpour isn’t helping matters, but we’ll clear the way for you to lead the hostages into the woods.”
Well, hell.“Is Tampa on the line?”
Brody’s voice sounded in Darius’s ear. “Affirm, Batman, but not sure how much we’ll be able to help. Video feeds are still down.”
This night can’t get any freaking worse, can it?“Who’s backing me?”
“Costello, Romeo, you’re on hostage detail,” Ian ordered. “Babs, can you still fly in this mess?”
“That’s a rhetorical question, right?”
A few chuckles came over the line at the female helicopter pilot’s snark, but Ian ignored them. “Fine but change the exfil point to Bravo. You’ll be caught in a crossfire here.”
“Exfil Bravo, copy that.”
The original plan had been for Babs to land the contracted UH-60 military helicopter to extract the hostages and most of the team in the large lawn area behind the main house. Now they were going to have to figure out how to schlep the women a half mile through the jungle, in the cold rain and darkness, to reach a second area large enough for the big bird. To top it off, the women were poorly dressed for the foul weather and terrain.
“Romeo, Costello, you’re going to have to come in through the mud room—he hadn’t known what else to call it so that’s what they’d been calling it throughout the mission. The entrance to the stairs for the dungeon is off that to the right.” While they’d been studying the floor plans of the estate and satellite photos of the grounds for weeks now, he wanted to make sure they were all on the same page. “Most of the guards are in the bunkhouse for the night. I’ll take care of Carlos. There should be two others on the perimeter, but they tend to be slackers. The weather probably drove them to take cover.”
The only other guard they’d have to worry about until the alarm was raised was the one in the shack at the front gate. With any luck, he’d be snoring away or distracted by boredom, but he wasn’t Darius’s problem. His team would take the guard out, quickly and quietly.
“Boss-man, how much time do you think we have before the tangos attack?”
“According to the guy we interrogated, you’ve got twenty minutes max.”
Fuck!
12
It didn’t take long for Darius to ambush Carlos, put him in a headlock until he lost consciousness, zip-tie his hands behind his back, and then hide him in the mud room’s closet. He was just closing the closet door when Romeo and Costello—both dressed in black and heavily armed—joined him inside the house. Aside from the storm outside, everything else seemed eerily quiet, but that wasn’t going to last for long. Romeo handed Darius a black bulletproof vest. With the large amounts of ammo the cartels had available to them, every little bit of protection helped. He quickly pulled the heavy body armor over his head and secured it tightly against his torso using the Velcro straps.
Taking the lead, Darius grabbed the bulky cell door key from where it hung by the door to the converted basement, then descended the stairs, with his two teammates on his six. As usual, as soon as they heard someone approaching and the lights went on, many of the women retreated to the back of their cells, trying to make themselves as small as possible. Darius now understood why all too well. He’d had no idea Secada had been raping some of the women, but he’d make sure the man suffered for it if it was the last thing he ever did.
While Romeo manned the door to the stairs, Darius stopped in front of the first cell that held two young women. When he inserted the key into the lock, they both whimpered, their eyes widening in fear. Knowing there wasn’t much he could say that would reassure them he was one of the good guys, Darius glanced at Costello. “They’ll be more comfortable with you talking to them.”
She nodded then addressed the women. “We’re from the United States, and we’re getting you out of here, but you have to stay quiet and do what we say, okay?”
