Silent Running

The compartment behind the door was the size of a small house but was divided up into smaller sub-areas holding different cargos. Several of the cubicles held the passenger luggage he’d seen being loaded in L.A., and others held ship supplies. He motioned her inside and dogged the hatch shut behind them.

The steel deck in the compartment wasn’t carpeted, so they stepped lightly as they crossed to the hatch on the outer hull. The sign on the steel door read Loading Berth.

“This should be it,” Spellman said.

The controls for the hatch were simple, but he opened it slowly so as not to make any more noise than necessary. The lights on the pier had been turned off, but the few lights burning on the ship illuminated about a six-foot gap between the hull and the dock. He looked inside the hatchway for a gangplank to bridge the gap, but there was none.

“Can you jump that far?” he asked.

Hamilton peered down at the water. “Maybe if you go first and catch me?”

“First I have to see if anyone’s watching us,” he said softly. “Grab my belt while I take a look.”

“Be careful,” she whispered.

Spellman held on to the door frame with one arm and swung out as far into the void as he could to look up at the decks above him. It was difficult to see anything beyond the expanse of the glossy white hull, but he caught moving shadows at both the bow and the stern before swinging back inside.

“It looks like they’ve posted a guard at both ends of the boat,” he said. “But I don’t think that they’re looking this way.”

Putting his hands on Hamilton’s shoulders, Spellman looked her full in the face. “I think we have a good chance of pulling this off,” he said. “If we can get off the ship, I know we can find someone to help us. I’ll go first and if I’m spotted, I’ll take off running to draw them away from you.”

“I’ll follow you,” she said.

Spellman backed up a few feet, took a deep breath, sprinted for the open hatchway and leaped. He cleared the gap with ease, but landed hard. Getting to his feet, he made sure that no one was watching from the ship’s decks before motioning for Hamilton to join him. As he had done, she backed off to get a run at it and cleared the gap by a foot.

He caught her arm as she came by and kept her balanced on her feet. “Good jump,” he said softly. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

“You’re limping,” she said as they started off.

“I was never good at track and field. I hit wrong when I jumped, but I’ll be okay.”

“You sure?”

He grinned. “Yeah, I’m a doctor, remember?”

Taking her hand, Spellman led her across the pier into the cover of darkness.

WHEN BOLAN ENTERED the built-up area of restaurants and shops it was like being on an elaborate, full-size movie set after all of the actors and crew had gone home for the night. No one was on the streets, and none of the establishments was open for business. Again, a few dim lights glowed behind curtained windows, but that was all. Most of the streetlights had been turned off, as well, but that suited him just fine. Shadows were a scout’s best ally.

A couple hundred yards farther on, he saw that one of the plazas along the main boulevard was brightly lit. Taking that as his cue, he decided to find out what was so important that it needed to be lit up. Coming from the side, he noted a handful of black-clad gunmen lounging around the entrance of a sizable building facing the square. The machine gun mounted on top of the SUV parked beside them told Bolan that the contents of the building had to be of interest.

When he got close enough to see the bars on the windows, he realized that this had to be the town lock-up. He had no way of knowing if Brognola was actually being held prisoner in there. But it was a jail and it was being guarded by the intruders, so before he moved on, he would take a look.

Slinging his H&K, he drew his Beretta 93-R and threaded the sound suppressor onto its muzzle.

He was working his way around the plaza when the gunmen made it easy for him. The guy behind the machine gun stepped down and said something to the others who laughed as he walked into the jail. That left him with only three targets to take down, and they all had their weapons casually slung.

Their confidence was admirable and showed that they had the entire resort peninsula under their control and weren’t expecting trouble.

It was time to start changing that.

Bolan stepped unnoticed into the lighted plaza in front of the jail, the Beretta machine pistol held low against his leg.

“¡Hola!” he called.

The three gunmen turned and hesitated for a moment. This stranger was dressed in black, too, but by the time it registered on them that he wasn’t one of them, he had the 93-R up and was firing.

Bolan’s first 3-round burst took the man farthest from him, stitching a tight triangle over his heart. Retargeting smoothly, he put down the second man with another trio of 9 mm slugs before the first gunner hit the pavement.

The last guard had his AK halfway into position when a final short burst took him down, as well.

The only sounds of the hit had been the tinkle of empty brass on the pavement, the clatter of the AK hitting the steps of the jail and the soft thud of the bodies. So, before the machine gunner came back out, Bolan took the steps himself. He paused at the door, but the voices he heard inside didn’t sound alarmed.

Swinging his H&K around on its sling, he switched his 93-R to his left hand and gripped the assault rifle with his right.

Show time.

CHAPTER SIX

Slipping through the door of the Mexican jail, Bolan rushed the room firing as soon as he had clear lines of sight to his new targets. Three of the black-clad men in the room had their backs turned to him, so the guy behind the desk with the surprised look on his face was targeted.

The man still looked surprised when he took a 3-round burst in the chest from the Beretta and pitched backward in his chair.

The others were turning to face their unexpected guest when a sustained burst from the H&K swept across the room at chest level.

That served for two of them, but the third man was faster than his comrades and dropped out of the line of fire as he fumbled for his piece.

Bolan tracked him with the Beretta and touched off another silenced trio that dropped the gunman flat. The soldier stepped past the bodies and hurried behind the desk. A quick search of the guy who’d been sitting there produced a key ring with a plastic lock card, as well as several large numbered keys. The biggest key unlocked the sliding, barred door leading into the holding area.

The doors on the cells had regular locks, as well as electronic. In fact, when the power was cut, the mechanical locks worked as a fail-safe.

Hal Brognola was in the second cell Bolan checked out. The security light inside was dim, but there was no mistaking that huddled, sleeping form. The soft snoring told him that he was alive.

Bolan keyed the lock and opened the door. “You ready to go home, Hal?”

Brognola opened one eye. “’Bout goddamned time you showed up here, Striker,” he growled.

The big Fed didn’t look too much the worse for wear for his short imprisonment. He was rumpled, bleeding from one eyebrow, had a few bruises and badly needed a shower followed by a shave. But, at first glance, he didn’t look to have sustained any major physical damage.

Bolan grinned broadly. “I got hung up going through airport security. I had to strip down to my shorts, ’cause I kept setting off the metal detector. You okay?”

“I’m fine now.” Brognola sat up and reached for his jacket. “How bad is it?”

Bolan didn’t have to ask him what “it” was. For a man who lived and breathed taking care of the nation’s troubles, he could only mean one thing. “Have you been able to get any information down here at all?” he asked.

“The asshole in charge showed me some video clips of a Mexican mob storming the border crossing at Tijuana and some kind of small boat assault on a beach somewhere in Florida, but that’s about it.”

“That’s pretty typical of what happened the first two days,” Bolan confirmed. “There were also border town assaults in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico and they turned nasty real quick. We’ve got hundreds of police and firefighter casualties and the looting and arson damage in places like El Paso and Phoenix is extensive.”