Aim and Fire (19 page)

The inside of the cavernous barn was empty, with only scattered shafts of afternoon sunlight shining through warped roof boards, illuminating the clouds of dust motes drifting lazily through the still air. Keeping his pistol at his side, Nate stepped into the room, followed by Tracy.

“Smell that?” she asked.

Wrinkling his nose, Nate nodded. “Fresh paint. I wonder if the lab boys can get enough of a sample from anything in here.”

Tracy knelt down to examine the floor. “Too hard packed to leave any tread marks or footprints. I think something was stored here in the corner, but I’m not sure what.

Painting supplies that they took with them?”

“Most likely, although they might have disposed of them out here, so they wouldn’t get caught with them.

Might as well bring in a team to go over the area, see if they can pull something up.”

Nate walked back outside, where the afternoon heat was only broiling instead of nearly incapacitating, like in the barn. A noticeably wilted Tracy followed, and he went back to the Bronco and got two chilled bottles of water Aim and Fire

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from a small cooler in the back. Going back around the building, he found her on the other side, looking for evidence. “Here.”

“Thanks, but I don’t feel particularly thirsty. I’m not even sweating.”

“I know, that’s why you need to drink. Your sweat is evaporating as soon as it hits the air, so you’re still losing body moisture—you just don’t realize it. Dehydration sneaks up on a person fast—that’s why it’s so dangerous.”

He flipped open his cell and dialed headquarters, giving them the location of the barn, directions to it and advising that they would wait for the crime-scene team to arrive.

“They figure about thirty to forty-five minutes, longer if whoever’s driving doesn’t know these roads. Nothing to do now but wait,” he said to Tracy.

Tracy gulped several swallows before Nate shook his head. “Don’t drink too fast—you’ll get cramps.”

“Sorry, it just felt better than I expected.” She lowered the bottle and eyed the surrounding landscape. “Do you want to take a look around the area, see if we could find the bury spot?”

“Not without a dozen more men and a full day to do it.

Could use a Shadow Wolf out here, too, since they probably left tracks out to it, but—” Nate lifted his head as the sound of a revving engine split the silence.

Tracy listened, as well. “What’s that? The forensic team here already?”

“Not likely. Truck engine, coming this way from the south. Get inside.”

“You think they’re coming here?”

“This place is really the only reason to be out here.”

Nate hustled her inside and pulled the barn door closed, leaving just a crack open for observation. A few seconds 174

later, another vehicle crested the rise and roared down the hill toward them. It was a bloodred, late-model pickup with an extended cab and dual wheels on the back for hauling heavy trailers. The truck turned into the driveway and approached the barn. Its bed was filled with what looked like illegal immigrants, but as it got closer, Nate saw something that made his blood run cold—automatic weapons in the hands of the two men standing at the front of the cargo bed. “Goddamnit.”

“What, more illegals?” Tracy asked.

“Worse.” Nate raised his pistol, aware it was about as useful as a flyswatter against the assault rifles roaring toward them.
“Zetas.”

Kate’s brow furrowed. “What’s a zeta?”

Unknown to Nate, he hadn’t been talking to only Tracy all this time. The cell phone she had given Tracy was a two-way communication device, even when it was closed.

Room 59 often used them to keep tabs on people of interest, or, as in this case, when they were working clandes-tinely with agents from other departments. The phone could broadcast video when it was out—although in this case, stuck at the bottom of Tracy’s purse, Kate saw nothing but blackness—and audio. Even from where it was, they had heard the conversation between the two agents.

Although Kate was well educated in all of the major terrorist groups, this one wasn’t familiar to her. The man working alongside her on this operation, however, had a much different reaction.

“Jesus Christ!” Denny Talbot’s fingers blurred over the keyboard as the director for North American operations also talked into his headset. “I need CBP backup immedi-176

ately at the following coordinates, via helicopter if possible. Advise incoming agents that there is a large group of undocumented aliens on-site, heavily armed, I repeat, heavily armed, and may be wearing body armor—approach with extreme caution. There are also two DHS

agents at the scene, currently inside the barn. Advise all units in the area to converge on this address immediately.”

Kate was busy, as well, sending out an urgent message to all of her hackers asking for whoever could patch into any satellite to get a fix on Tracy’s coordinates and patch her in ASAP.

Denny spoke to her from the computer screen, where he was teleconferencing with her on this mission from Washington, D.C. “Kate, your operative should be calling immediately, so as soon as she fills you in, let her know that help is on the way.”

As if on cue, Kate’s monitor flashed, signaling an incoming call. “This is her, hold on,” Kate said to Denny.

“Agent Stephanie Cassell,” she said to Tracy, employing her cover name.

“Stephanie, it’s Tracy. We’re at an abandoned ranch about twenty-five miles east of El Paso, and need backup right now. Armed hostiles are outside—dammit, they’re coming in!”

“Tracy, sit tight, we are routing all available units to your location.”

“Too late, Nate, what are we doin—?” The connection broke off in midsentence.

“Damn, she hung up. What are they facing down there?”

If there was one thing Kate didn’t like, it was when she wasn’t aware of something—especially since that meant she had sent someone into an assignment without the most recent information.

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“
Zetas
are highly trained, heavily armed professional soldiers working for the drug cartels in Mexico. Originally they were supposed to be helping the U.S. and Mexico fight the drug wars, but after getting trained in special weapons and tactics, many of them went to the other side and are now one of the largest threats on the border. They are ruthless, efficient and don’t take any prisoners,” Denny said.

“You mean that if some help doesn’t get down there immediately, those two operatives are dead,” Kate said.

“Yeah, that’s about the size of it.”

“Dammit, these
zetas,
whoever they are, weren’t supposed to be there.”

Denny gave her a wry look. “Kate, you know that’s the nature of any mission. As much as we try, we cannot foresee every complication.”

“That simply isn’t good enough. At the very least, we should have been able to warn them of potential incoming threats,” Kate said.

“May I remind you that these agents aren’t ours, and have their own protocols to follow? It would look pretty unusual for either the DHS or the FBI to be
that
efficient.

Like it or not, we have to work within certain parameters, especially when masquerading as someone else.”

“Unfortunately.” Although Kate grudgingly agreed with Denny, she certainly didn’t like it. That was one of the reasons that Room 59 had been created in the first place—

to circumvent the often cumbersome bureaucracy that bound more traditional intelligence agencies, and successfully complete the jobs that needed doing before disaster could strike. However, even working through their back channels and direct links, sometimes Kate still found herself in a situation like this—where she could do nothing but wait, listen and hope her operative came out alive.

“Nate, what should we do?” Tracy slipped the cell phone into her pocket and raised her pistol. “Is there a back way out of here?”

Outside, she heard what sounded like some sort of disagreement between some of the men in the truck, with at least two raised voices, but couldn’t make out what they were saying.

Nate stared through the crack in the barn door. “I count at least four, all with automatic weapons. Running would be suicide—they’d take us out with the rifles. Only one thing to do, and that’s catch them by surprise. If we get them off balance, we can take them.”

“Are you nuts?” she hissed. “Shouldn’t we wait for backup?”

Tracy now saw one of the men set his rifle down, jump off the truck and walk toward the barn. Her suddenly slick fingers gripped her pistol as she watched the man come closer. This was something she’d never thought she’d be in the middle of, and now she was only a few yards away Aim and Fire

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from smugglers armed with automatic weapons.
If I get out
of this alive, I’ll be glad to go back home and tell Paul he
was right,
she told herself.

“We wait any longer, and they’re only gonna find two dead agents out here. We go now! Follow my lead.” With that, Nate shoved the door back and leaped outside, aiming at the approaching man and shouting, “United States Border Patrol, nobody move!” He spoke first in Spanish, then in English.

Tracy followed, aiming her pistol at the men in the truck. She smelled harsh exhaust from the vehicle, and the thrum of its revving engine vibrated through her head, setting her teeth on edge. She called out, “Raise your hands, and no one move!”

For a moment the men and illegals packed into the truck stared in total surprise. Then everything went straight to hell. The man walking toward the door charged at Nate, covering the distance to him faster than Tracy thought possible. Nate fired, but his aim was off, and the
zeta
barreled into him, knocking him to the ground, his hands scrabbling for the pistol. The shot made the other men and women in the cargo bed scramble out any which way they could, leaping over the side walls and out the back of the vehicle.

The second man in the back leveled his assault rifle.

Tracy swallowed around a golf-ball-size lump in her throat, but aimed at him, knowing if she didn’t shoot first, they were both dead. “Freeze!” she shouted.

Instead, he sighted in, and she squeezed the trigger, the gun bucking in her hand. The man lurched back just as the truck’s engine revved, and it zoomed forward, heading for Tracy.

Aiming at the windshield, she got one shot off, spider-180

webbing it, but the truck still kept coming, and her instincts took over. She dived out of the way, scraping her hands and knees on the sandy ground as the pickup roared past, smashing through the barn door in a crash of wood and metal. The truck revved again, and Tracy rose to see a large off-road tire in front of her. She put two bullets into it, but then the vehicle reversed out of the barn in a shower of broken boards, and she saw the passenger holding a small submachine gun as he popped out of the open window.

A shadow fell over her, and Tracy jerked her pistol up, only to see it grabbed and levered up at the sky.

“Are you crazy, woman! Let’s get the hell out of here!”

Tracy looked up to see Nate, who grabbed her hand and yanked her to her feet as he fired several rounds at the truck, which had been coming around for another attempted ram. She ran with him around the corner of the barn just as someone opened fire behind them, chewing boards apart in a hail of bullets. Running to the back, they rounded the corner to see several men trying to get into the Bronco, with one smashing the driver’s-side window with a large rock.

Nate fired into the air, scattering the illegals, but not before the window shattered. Tracy felt keys pressed into her free hand. “Drive!”

Too shocked to argue, Tracy ran for the door, unlocked it and brushed glass chips off the seat before climbing in.

“What are you doing?” she shouted.

Nate had jerked open the SUV’s tailgate and slid in the back. Grabbing the shotgun out of its holster, he racked the pump action. “Just get us to the road. I’ll keep ’em from following us out!”

Tracy jammed the key into the ignition, twisted it, slammed the clutch down and shifted into Reverse. She Aim and Fire

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stomped on the gas and the Bronco shot out from behind the barn, Tracy spinning the steering wheel as they shot toward the highway. Just as they cleared the front of the building, the other truck flew out from the other side and slammed into the Bronco. Tracy screamed and fought the wheel as the SUV slewed from side to side, but regained control and kept going.

“Jesus, watch it up there, will you!” In the back, she saw Nate get back onto his knees and rack the shotgun, then duck down again. “Get down!”

Tracy did her best to hunch down while trying to keep the wheel straight—she knew if they hit the ditch instead of the driveway, their miraculous escape would end quickly. The chatter of an AK-47 sounded right next to her, and the back window exploded in a shower of glass, followed by the roar of Nate’s shotgun.

The truck swerved away for a moment, and Tracy let up on the gas long enough to shove the gearshift into third.

The driveway seemed endless now, the distant road looking as if it were hundreds of yards away.
And even if we
reach it, there’s no guarantee they’ll stop—it’s not like
we’ll be safe there,
she thought.

“They’re coming back—make sure they don’t hit the engine!” Nate racked the shotgun again and shot at the truck’s cab, shattering the driver’s-side window.

“Hell, I’ll do better than that.” Tracy swung the wheel, feeling the Bronco lean as it lurched over and crunched into the side of the truck, making the driver fight for control of his vehicle. One of the riflemen triggered a long burst, but the bullets kicked up dirt to the left of the SUV. The pickup’s wheelman regained control, however, and nudged his heavier truck over against the Bronco, trying to send it off the driveway and into the ditch. They were only 182

about thirty yards away, and closing on the narrow entrance fast. Tracy hauled on the wheel, but couldn’t force the truck over. In a straight power contest, the other vehicle had the edge. Metal shrieked as the two vehicles rubbed together in a fight for dominance.