He was surprised to see that two rounds had hit the left-side windows from the inside. The gunners had been a little too good; had managed to drive repeated rounds through the armored windows. There was no sign of either the lead- or the chase-car. Félix took a very deep breath. He had just won the most daring gamble of his life.
“Take the next turn anywhere!” he shouted at the driver.
“No!” Escobedo said an instant later. “Straight to -”
“Fool!” Cortez turned el jefe over. “Do you wish to find another ambush ahead of us! How do you suppose they knew to kill us! Take the next turn!” he shouted at the driver again.
The driver, who had a good appreciation of ambush tactics, stood on the brakes and took the next turn. It was a right, leading to a small network of side roads serving local coffee farms.
“Find a quiet place to stop,” Cortez ordered next.
“But -”
“They will expect us to run, not to think. They will expect us to do what all the antiterrorist manuals say to do. Only a fool is predictable,” Cortez said as he brushed polycarbonate fragments from his hair. His pistol was out now, and he ostentatiously replaced it in his shoulder holster. “José, your driving was magnificent!”
“Both cars are gone,” the driver reported.
“I’m not surprised,” Cortez replied. Quite honestly. “Jesús María – that was close.”
Whatever Escobedo might have been, coward was not among them. He too saw the damage to the window that had been inches from his head. Two bullets had come through the car – they were half-buried in the glass. El jefe pried one loose and rattled it around in his hand. It was still warm.
“We must speak to the people who make the windows,” Escobedo observed coolly. Cortez had saved his life, he realized.
The odd part was that he was right. But Cortez was more impressed with the fact that his reflexes – even forewarned, he had reacted with commendable speed – had saved his own life. It had been a long time since he’d had to pass the physical fitness test required by the DGI. It was moments like this that can make the most circumspect of men feel invincible.
“Who knew that we were going to see Fuentes?” he asked.
“I must -” Escobedo lifted the phone receiver and started to punch in a number. Cortez gently took it away from him and replaced it in the holder.
“Perhaps that would be a serious mistake, jefe.” he said quietly. “With all respect, señor, please let me handle this. This is a professional matter.”
Escobedo had never been so impressed with Cortez than at that moment.
“You will be rewarded,” he told his faithful vassal. Escobedo reproached himself for having occasionally mistreated him, and worse, for having occasionally disregarded Cortez’s wise counsel. “What should we do?”
“José,” Cortez told the driver, “find a high spot from which we can see the Fuentes house.”
Within a minute, the driver found a switchback overlooking the valley. He pulled the car off the road and all three got out. José inspected the damage to the car. Fortunately neither the tires nor the engine had been damaged. Though the car’s body would have to be totally reworked, its ability to move and maneuver was unimpaired. José truly loved this car, and though he mourned for its defacement, he nearly burst with pride that it and his own skill had saved all their lives.
In the trunk were several rifles – German G3s like those the Army carried, but legally purchased – and a pair of binoculars. Cortez let the others have the rifles. He took the field glasses and trained them in on the well-lit home of Luis Fuentes, about six miles away.
“What are you looking for?” Escobedo asked.
“Jefe, if he had part in the ambush, he will know by now that it might have failed, and there will be activity. If he had no such knowledge, we will see no activity at all.”
“What of those who fired on us?”
“You think they know that we escaped?” Cortez shook his head. “No, they will not be sure, and first they will try to prove that they succeeded, that our car struggled on for a short while – so they will first of all try to find us. José, how many turns did you take to get us here?”
“Six, señor, and there are many roads,” the driver answered. He looked quite formidable with his rifle.
“Do you see the problem, jefe? Unless they have a great number of men, there are too many roads to check. We are not dealing with a police or military force. If we were, we’d still be moving. Ambushes like this one – no, jefe, once they fail, they fail completely. Here.” He handed the glasses over. It was time for a little machismo. He opened the car door and pulled out a few bottles of Perrier – Escobedo liked the stuff. He opened them by inserting the bottlecaps into bullet holes in the trunk lid and snapping down. Even José grunted with amusement at that, and Escobedo was one who admired such panache.
“Danger makes me thirsty,” Cortez explained, passing the other bottles around.
“It has been an exciting night,” Escobedo agreed, taking a long pull on his bottle.
But not for Commander Jensen and his bombardier/navigator. The first one, as with the first time for anything, had been a special occasion, but already it was routine. The problem was simply that things were too damned easy. Jensen had faced surface-to-air missiles and radar-directed flak in his early twenties, testing his courage and skill against that of North Vietnamese gunners with their own experience and cunning. This mission was about as exciting as a trip to the mailbox, but, he reminded himself, important things often go through the mail. The mission went exactly according to plan. The computer ejected the bomb right on schedule, and the B/N tracked his TRAM sight around to keep an eye on the target. This time Jensen let his right eye wander down to the TV screen.
“I wonder what held Escobedo up?” Larson asked.
“Maybe he got here early?” Clark thought aloud, his eye on the GLD.
“Maybe,” the other field officer allowed. “Notice how no cars are parked near the house this time?”
“Yeah, well, this one is fused for one-hundredth-of-a-second delay,” Clark told him. “Should go off just about the time it gets to the conference table.”
It was even more impressive from this distance, Cortez thought. He didn’t see the bomb fall, didn’t hear the aircraft that had dropped it – which, he told himself, was rather strange – and he saw the flash long before the sound reached him. The Americans and their toys, he thought. They can be dangerous. Most dangerous of all, whatever their intelligence source, it was a very, very good one, and Félix didn’t have a clue what it might be. That was a continuing source of concern.
“It would seem that Fuentes was not involved,” Cortez noted even before the sound reached them.
“That could have been us in there!”
“Yes, but it was not. I think we should leave, jefe.”
“What’s that?” Larson asked. Two automobile headlights appeared on a hillside three miles away. Neither man had noticed the Mercedes pull into the overlook. They’d been concentrating on the target then, but Clark reproached himself for not remembering to check around further. That sort of mistake was often fatal, and he’d allowed himself to forget just how serious it was.
Clark put his Noctron on it as soon as the lights had turned away. It was a big –
“What kind of car does Escobedo have?”
“Take your pick,” Larson replied. “It’s like the horse collection at Churchill Downs. Porsches, Rolls, Benzes…”
“Well, that looked like a stretch limo, maybe a big Mercedes. Kinda odd place for one, too. Let’s get the hell out of here. I think two trips to this particular well is enough. We’re out of the bomb business.”
Eighty minutes later their Subaru had to slow down. A collection of ambulances and police cars was parked on the shoulder while uniformed men appeared and disappeared in the pinkish light from hazard flares. A pair of black BMWs were lying on their sides just off the road. Whoever owned them, somebody didn’t like them, Clark saw. There wasn’t much traffic, but here as with every other place in the world where people drove cars, the drivers slowed down to give it all a look.
“Somebody blew the shit out of them,” Larson noted. Clark’s evaluation was more professional.
“Thirty-cal fire. Heavy machine guns at close range. Pretty slick ambush. Those are M3 BMWs.”
“The big, fast one? Somebody with big-time money, then. You don’t suppose… ?”
“You don’t ‘suppose’ very often in this business. How fast can you get a line on what happened here?”