Alpha Threat (61 page)

Maas quickly regained his composure.
 
“Well, we have done some homework, have we not?
 
But that won’t stop your dying.”

“No, probably not, but it just means I will be in heaven a few minutes before you get to hell, asshole.
 
Half of the U.S. and Brazilian army are closing in on this complex with firepower you cannot conceive.
 
Talk about shock and awe… you and yours are going down, hard.”
  
Dane grinned at Maas.
 
He was still trying to piss Mass off, big time.
 
It was working.
 

Maas strode over to a telephone and dialed a number.
 
With his back to the room he spoke quietly but sternly.
 
After a minute or so he hung up the phone and turned toward Dane.
 

“You think you have won, do you?
 
Well, you have not.
 
I have called in reinforcements to match your forces.
 
They will be wiped out within hours.”

Dane laughed openly.
  
Maas threw back his head, hands on his hips and laughed.
  

Dane smiled and wiped sweat from his head and face.
 
He glanced at the guards, who were not paying attention.
 
Maas’ laugh and smile vanished in less than a second.
 
In one fluid motion, Dane leaped up from the floor, pulled a knife from his vest.
 
Before the guards could react, Dane had one arm around Maas’ neck and the tip of the knife at his throat.
  
The guards stepped back and leveled their weapons at Dane and Maas.
 

“Put down your weapons!” demanded Dane, slicing into Maas’ neck, blood oozing from the cut.
  
Maas reached up and tried to grab Dane’s arm.
 
Dane pulled back, exerting a huge amount of pressure and pain on Maas’ neck as he dug the tip of the knife into the underside of Maas’ jaw.
 
Maas immediately froze.
 
“I’ll cut this guy’s head right off if you don’t drop your guns, NOW!”
 
The two guards glanced at each other and at Maas.
 
Maas’ head was pulled back so far that the guards could not see his eyes or get a sense of Maas’ intentions.
 
Both guards dropped their weapons and stepped back.
 

“Now, that is smart,” said Dane.
 
“Get your butts over by the fire.”
 
Dane kept pressure on Maas’ neck as he turned to watch the guards move over by the fire.
 
Dane sliced into the underside of Maas’ jaw leaving a three-inch gash.
 
Maas grimaced in pain as blood began to run down his neck.
 
Dane shoved Maas to the ground over toward the two guards.
 
Before Maas hit the floor, Dane reached down and scooped up his weapon from the floor and aimed it at the men.
 

“Okay, let me tell you what will happen.
 
You,” Dane pointed at one of the guards, “get her down, now!”
 
The guard began to move over toward the lift control.
 
Maas and the other guard began to move slightly.
 
“Whoa!
 
You move, you die.
 
It’s that simple,” commanded Dane, aiming at Maas and the guard.
 
“Anyone comes through that door, you die.
 
As you said yourself, no more nice guy.”

Dane stepped back a few steps so he could survey the guard at the lift controls and the other two by the fire.
 
There was a whirring sound as the guard lowered Dana to the floor.
 
She moaned slightly as she touched the floor and her arms were relieved of the weight of her body.
  

“Unlock her shackles!” Dane commanded.
 
The guard started to move toward Dana.
 
“Very slowly,” threatened Dane, watching closely.
 
“You touch her and you die.”
  
The guard held out his hands and stepped over slowly to Dana.
 
He stood there a second and very slowly reached into his pocket and produced the shackle keys.
 
Dana painfully raised her hands toward the guard.
 
He unlocked her right hand.
 
Dane noticed a bloody ring around her wrist as she grimaced in pain when the shackle came off.
 
He fought back his emotions seeing what these pigs did to her and Randall.
 
The guard turned the key to unlock the second shackle, looked at Dane and then dove for his weapon.
 

Dane’s bullet caught the guard in the head in mid-air.
 
He was dead when he hit the floor.
 
Immediately Maas and the other guard rushed Dane.
 
One of Dane’s shots hit one guard in the chest just as Maas grabbed Dane.
 
Dane’s silenced weapon spun across the floor as Maas and Dane rolled on the floor.
 

Dana threw off her last shackle and limped over to Randall as fast as she could move.
 
Dane rolled Maas over on top of him and drove his thumb into the open gash under Maas’ jaw.
 
Maas screamed in pain and let up a bit.
 
That was all Dane needed as he threw Maas off, against the wall.
 
Dane stood up, wiped his face and glanced at Dana and Randall.
 
Dana had the guard’s keys and was trying to unlock Randall’s chains.
 

When Dane looked back Maas came at him, grabbing him in a bear hug, both men slamming into the hanging Grübner.
 
There was a nasty sounding wet, crunching sound as the impact dislocated both of Grübner’s shoulders, immediately placing all of his weight on his two out-of-socket joints.
 
Even with Grübner’s silent suffering, this was too much for him.
 
He screamed at the top of his lungs as his left shoulder joint split open revealing a bony, bloody arm socket.
 

Dane and Maas slammed against the wall, Dane getting a hand free to pummel Maas’ face with three sharp punches.
 
Maas’ face was red and swelling fast.
 
Blood from his wound flowed down his chest.
 
With a quick spin, Maas was behind Dane, his one arm around Dane’s neck and his other arm up under Dane’s armpit and behind his neck.
 
This was effectively a half nelson wrestler’s hold.
 
It was very hard to recover from the hold.
 
Maas felt he had the upper hand, but again he was wrong.
 

Dane jerked his head back, slamming the back of his head into Maas’ nose.
 
There was an explosion of blood as Maas’ grip loosened and he fell back to the floor.
 
Dane lunged toward Maas, hoping to take advantage of the pain and disorientation caused when one has his nose broken.
 
Maas, however, had recovered enough to catch Dane in mid-air and fling him over into the hard rock wall near the fireplace.
 
Dane’s head crunched hard into the hot stone, nearly knocking him out.
 
As he struggled to get up again, he felt Maas’ huge arms around him again.
 
Another half nelson...
 
This time Dane was ready for it.
 

Dane fumbled with his free hand and located another large combat knife within his waistband, under his vest.
 
As the two men danced across the room in an embrace of death, Dane pulled the knife and with a quick blow stabbed the knife between Maas’ legs and deep into his crotch.
 
Maas’ eyes bulged from his face as Dane lifted Maas up on the razor-sharp blade and jerked the knife up and out between the legs of Maas.
 

The razor-sharp combat knife did its duty.
 
Maas’ grip lightened as the extreme, stinging pain ran like lightning through his loins as he realized his manhood was sliced from him.
 
Maas released his grip on Dane and instinctively reached for his crotch, now gushing blood.
 
Dane’s knife severed Maas’ genitals and opened the entire underside of his crotch from back to front.
 
Dane stepped back as a part of Maas’ insides simply dropped to the floor with a disgustingly sounding spat.
 
With his entrails hanging from his bloody body, Maas looked at Dane with a strange calm look and then down at his guts on the floor.
 

“Die, you son-of-a-bitch,” Dane said, looking directly into Maas’ eyes.
 
“Your guts are on the floor and you have tortured your last victim.
 
You should have never screwed with my sister!”
  
Maas’ eyes widened as he realized Dana was Dane’s sister.
 
That was why this man was so hell-bent in rescuing her.
 
But that was Maas’ last thought as he fell to the ground in a huge pool of blood which was getting larger each second.
 
“That was a nice day’s work,” Dane said as he stepped over to Dana and Randall.
 
He took the keys from Dana and unlocked Randall’s chains.
 
His sister and brother-in-law were now free.
 

“Oh, my God, Dane, are you all right?” asked Dana.
 

“Frankly, I’ve never felt better,” answered Dane with a smile.
 
“I’m so glad to see both of you alive.”
 

Dana’s mind turned toward Grübner.
 
“Can we get this poor man down?” asked Dana, looking over at him.
 
He was hanging by his dislocated arms, his knees a few inches from the floor.
 
If he wasn’t dead, he was very close.
 
Dane stepped over to Grübner and with one hand lifted his head and looked into his eyes.
 
The man was dead.
 
He was Maas’ last victim.
 

“Dana, he’s gone,” answered Dane.
 
“We can’t do anything for him now. “

“God, that poor man,” said Dana, tearing up.
 
She felt a strange kinship with Grübner as they both had been at the mercy of Maas.
 
She also realized she could have been hanging there dead as well.
 

Dane collected his weapon and looked about the room for the best way out.
 
Now the hard part started.
 
He had to get them out of this hellhole.
 

Monday, July 18, 2011

Outside Fortress Alpha;
 
8:10 a.m.

Ben watched calmly as yet another German patrol passed by his hiding place.
  
Tim was to his right, also well hidden.
 
Tecal and his men were still out in the jungle around them.
 
With German patrols in all directions, Ben continued to have a view of the hatch.
 
As the patrol moved away, several shots rang out to Ben’s left.
 
It must be Tecal, thought Ben.
 
Quickly there was return fire sounding like the German weapons they heard previously.
 
Tecal’s men most likely were ambushing the Germans while staying out of direct confrontations.
 

Tecal’s men were similar to the forces of
The Swamp Fox
, Francis Marion. Marion was the Revolutionary War officer who led the militia back in Ben’s home state of South Carolina.
 
His forces refused to line up as conventional forces did in European wars where the opposing forces lined up and took turns firing at each line until one side broke and ran.
 
Marion’s men instead hid in the forests and pounced upon the redcoats as they passed on roads and trails in the woods.
 
So unconventional were his ways, British officers complained he was not fighting fairly, as if war was fair.
 

Ben removed his silencer from his weapon.
 
He motioned for Tim to do the same.
 
Immediately there was a rustling in the underbrush behind him.
 
Ben raised his HK MP-5 submachine gun, moved the firing selector to automatic and waited.
 
Five seconds later a German stepped into view not five feet from Ben.
 
Ben looked the German in the eye and squeezed the trigger.
 
The noise of the weapon was loud and the result fatal.
 
The quick burst of the MP-5 sent five bullets into the German, ripping open his chest.
 
He fell immediately.
 
Thinking there may be a trailer, Ben remained alert.
 
Ben jerked his head around as Tim fired a short burst and took down another German just off to their left.
 
That was the trailing one, Ben surmised.
  
Thankfully the two bodies fell into the underbrush and were virtually hidden.
 
Tim crawled over to Ben.
 

“That was close,” Tim whispered.
 

“Too damn close,” answered Ben.
 
“Those bastards are all over the map.
 
We really stirred up a hornet’s nest this time but we are doing our job, causing a diversion.
 
I hope Dane and Hugo are having better luck.”