Клайв Касслер - Typhoon Fury

Once he was clear of the entrance and speeding down the road, he fished the detonator from his pocket and pushed the button.

• • •

LINC HAD HIS FOOT mashed to the floor as the Humvee rocketed into the tunnel. Then the light at the end of the tunnel vanished.

A split second later, the roar of an explosion rattled the Humvee, and Linc stood on the brakes. He came to a stop, and a roiling cloud of dust soon enveloped him.

He activated his comm link. “More bad news, Chairman.”

“Don’t tell me that explosion was you.”

“Almost. Tagaan blew the front entrance. We’re stuck in here.”

“Not necessarily,” the Chairman said. “But, first, Eddie, Raven, and Beth are pinned down. We can give them an advantage with the night vision goggles for at least a few minutes before dawn comes. Remember the diesel generator?”

Linc did indeed. He threw the Humvee in reverse. “I’ll help contribute to the mayhem.”

He backed out of the tunnel. When he was in the clear, he had a good view of the huge generator and the diesel tanker feeding it fuel.

He picked up his M4 and loaded another grenade into the launcher. He rammed it closed and fired at the tanker.

When the grenade hit the truck, it went up with a satisfying boom of thunder. A second later, the generator next to it blew up as well, and all the electric lights in the cavern went out.

• • •

“GOOD JOB, LINC,” Juan said over the radio. “I’ll meet you where Eddie and the others are.”

He stopped at the center stalagmite pillar and called Gomez.

“This is the Chairman,” Juan said. “We need immediate extraction.”

“Gotcha. Where?”

“Inside the cavern. We’re locked in.”

“Sorry, Chairman, did you say ‘inside the cavern’?” Gomez asked with disbelief.

“There’s a hole in the roof. Plenty big for you. We’ll be on the side of the cave that isn’t burning.”

“Sure! Landing inside a cave? I do it all the time. This should be interesting. See you soon.”

The gunshots were more sporadic now, so killing the electricity must have slowed down the attackers. The only remaining light was from the warehouse and truck fires. Juan was about to join the fray when he spotted a beaten-up plastic tube lying on the ground.

The Picasso.

He was bending to pick it up when he was tackled from behind. The night vision goggles were knocked from his head, the assault rifle went flying. Juan rolled to avoid being pinned to the ground. He leapt up into a fighting stance and was confronted with a bloodied and bruised man. It had to be Dolap. It looked like he’d been caught on the fringes of the warehouse explosion.

Dolap, backlit by the fire, didn’t bother looking for the assault rifle. He drew a wicked-looking knife the size of a bayonet and launched himself at Juan.

Juan fell back, as if off balance, and put his prosthetic leg up in a defensive posture as Dolap landed on him, reaching out with the knife until the blade was only inches from Juan’s neck. Juan gripped Dolap’s wrist and pushed with his foot against Dolap’s chest, but he couldn’t budge the powerfully built man. The knife edged closer.

Juan reached to his combat leg and found the hidden trigger that controlled the single-shot slug in his heel.

Just as he felt the blade digging into his skin, he activated the secret gun.

The shotgun shell blasted from his artificial foot and into Dolap’s chest. It must have pierced his heart, although it took a moment for the brain to register. Dolap went limp and toppled to the ground.

Juan stood, picked up the Picasso tube, and slung it over his shoulder. His goggles were toast, from hitting the ground, so he began to search for the assault rifle in the deep shadows.

Movement from the warehouse caught his eye, and he saw a figure climbing out of the ashes of the demolished building like a phoenix rising. Locsin’s skin was charred, and his clothes hung in tatters, but he seemed to shrug off the severe wounds and raised a radio to his face.

Instantly, Juan heard the sounds of shouting and footfalls coming his way from Eddie’s direction, far more men than he could take on by himself.

He couldn’t wait to find his weapon, and he couldn’t afford to get stuck inside a building he didn’t know. But Juan remembered the ladder on the outside of the factory building. If he could get up there, Gomez could land on it and pick him up before the charges they set went off and blew up the building underneath him.

Juan drew his pistol and ran.

67

Although Locsin had drawn most of his men away from Eddie, Raven, and Beth to go after Juan, four men still had them cornered at a curtain of limestone that formed a natural barrier at this side of the compound. They were crouched behind some rocks with nowhere to go.

“I’m low on ammo,” Raven said as she took another shot. The battle was maddening because she knew she’d hit at least a couple of them, but they simply wouldn’t go down if they weren’t shot in the head or the heart.

“Me too,” Eddie said. “Last mag for me. Conserve your shots.”

Then they heard the roar of an engine coming their way.

“Don’t shoot,” Linc said over the comm. “It’s me. Get ready to hop in.”

The Humvee screeched to a stop between them and their attackers. While they scrambled into the passenger side, Linc stuck his weapon out the window and fired a grenade at the building shielding Locsin’s men. When it exploded, they heard a single scream. It didn’t kill them all, but it at least bought time for Eddie and the others to climb in.

“Go!” Eddie yelled and fired the last of his rounds as they took off.

Instead of heading toward the factory, Linc took off for the dark nether reaches of the cave, his headlights off. He used his night vision goggles to drive.

“Why aren’t we getting Juan?” Beth asked.

“I just heard from him. He ordered me to take you all as far away from him as possible while we wait for Gomez to get here.”

They reached the edge of the paved part of the compound and bounced onto smooth rock that felt like it had been scoured by an ancient river. Raven didn’t know how far this cave went on, but in the briefing before the mission she’d found out that Vietnam’s Hang So’n Đoòng cave extended more than five miles.

Soon, the occasional shots that chased them ceased. They were now invisible.

“We have to go back and get him,” Beth protested.

Linc stopped the Humvee. “We’re not leaving the cave without him. But, right now, they have the advantage in numbers. When we have the high ground in the chopper, we’ll have better odds.”

“Well, where is he?”

Linc pointed to the largest building. It was the factory, still lit by the burning warehouse next to it.

“He’s going to be on top of that one.” He checked his watch. The timers on the charges he and Juan had set in the factory continued to count down. “And it’s going to explode in five minutes whether we get him off or not.”

• • •

THE LIGHT FROM the hole in the roof was growing as morning dawned. For a moment, Locsin lost Cabrillo’s trail, but one of his men soon spotted him climbing to the roof of the factory. The former CIA agent was an excellent shot, even with the small-caliber pistol aimed from midway up the ladder, and Locsin lost several men until Cabrillo ran out of ammo. Then he pulled another pistol from what looked like an ankle holster and used that to pick off a few more men before he got to the roof, though by that time the second one was empty as well.