Chapter 26 August 24, 2024
Steel
By the time they arrived in the suite, the room was a hive of activity.
Nemo, Gem, Medusa, TB, and Demon had returned from following their targets and were checking and repacking their kits.
Loki, Gilgamesh, and God were grouped around the table with Midas and Cerberus, Mythos’ resident click-click-boom expert, as Nemo called him, on the split television screen.
They approached the table, Daleyza slightly in front of him, his hand across her lower back. He worried she was too exhausted for clarity, but as soon as the men began asking her questions, she perked up.
“The basics are easy to see,” God said. “But we have questions about the interiors, including the quadrangle, the support buildings, the church, and the residence. Also, if there’s anything we should know about the surrounding land.”
“As you can see, it’s atypical in some ways for missions built in that time period. It’s really built more like a medieval fortress. One whole side faces the lake. Unless you have expert rock climbers, nothing’s getting up that side.”
“Yo!” came from across the room, where Nemo and Gem raised their hands without bothering to look up as they continued packing. “You got extra carabiners?” he asked Gem.
“Does the Pope wear a funny hat?” Gem replied.
“Hey, that’s my line,” Midas complained.
“Stole it. Not sorry.”
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Daleyza found herself grinning and shaking her head. She really liked the little spitfire pixie.
“The other three sides have at least a half mile cleared in front of them, so anyone approaching will be clearly seen. When dusk hits, there are floodlights that leave the entire open expanse clear as day. The last several miles of the road have no offshoots, so it’s a straight shot.
The trees are dense and packed tightly, so traditional vehicles cannot get through.
On top of that, there’s only one road in from the southeast that curves around the front and to a delivery entrance on the south side of the building. ”
“What kind of nontraditional vehicles could be used?” God asked.
“Motorbikes. ATVs, but not big ones. Small, one-person riders only.”
“There’s no way we can haul Waters and Ka-Bar out of there on those types of transport,” Steel warned. “They’ll be in no condition to ride solo. Probably not even with a partner.”
“What about access from the tree lines on the north and south?” Medusa asked.
Daleyza replied, “There used to be some old hunting trails, but they were allowed to go wild when I was a child. Unless they’ve cleared them, which I highly doubt, they’re long overgrown.”
“So to even get into the property, we’ll need some sort of distraction, even if we go in at the dead of night. Guess I know what I’m working on.” She walked off, muttering under her breath about drones as she headed to a computer to talk to Cerberus.
Daleyza continued. “The residence and church are on the farthest corners and built near the cliff down to the lake. Inside the church, at the baptismal font, is where the entrance to the crypts and the oubliettes is, as we discussed earlier. The crypts are centered under the church, with the oubliettes lined along the cliff wall behind them.”
“Could we go through the cliff itself?” Gilgamesh asked.
God shook his head. “Gem and Nemo could easily set charges, but without knowing how deep to go, or which oubliette contained our men, we run the risk of blowing them up as well.”
Daleyza ran her finger along the northern and southern walls, tapping each area as she spoke.
“The outer walls on the south form the legitimate portion of the household. Those were the security offices and where deliveries came in by truck. The outbuilding here is a storage facility. The road is unpaved, but it forms a circle for trucks to easily load in and out.”
“Do we have surveillance on deliveries, Midas?”
“Some, but we’ve only been watching them for a little over thirty-six hours. There’s no way to know whether anything comes in regularly or at specific times.”
Loki looked up at him from the map. “We could go a mile or two out from the structure. Lie in wait and ambush a truck that comes in or stow away, depending on what type of truck it is. Get in that way.”
“That’s a high-risk option. We have no idea who the drivers are or when those trucks will arrive.
There just isn’t enough reconnaissance done for us to predict success, and there isn’t time to get what we need.
I won’t eliminate it, but it should be our last option.
” He looked at her. “Go on. What else do we have?”
“The northern portion of the complex is where the soldiers are housed. They’re small.
Rudimentary. Three men share a dorm, but they’re rarely in the same space at the same time because they work eight-hour shifts, seven days a week.
And the southern portion of the quad holds the common rooms. Cafeteria.
Entertainment room. Laundry facilities.”
“And the outbuildings?”
She pointed to each. “Armory. Training facilities. Small storage. This one is like what soldiers have on base for shopping.”
“An exchange,” Steel supplied.
“That’s it. The soldiers never leave the property unless they’re supervisors or higher.”
“What’s this building?” Loki asked, pointing at a barn structure on the northern end of the property.
“The motor pool. Not the big trucks. Those come from off-site, but I don’t know where. Smaller vehicles are kept and maintained here. Jeeps, SUVs, that kind of thing.”
“That’s the only blind spot I see,” Gilgamesh offered. “You can’t see the tree line there. Not perfect, but it would get us closer to the main structure.”
“Do you remember cameras, Daleyza?”
“Some. Back then, they were mostly at the main gate.”
“Midas,” God called out. “Scan for electronic cameras.”
“Already done. That’s one way he’s modernized. They’re everywhere. Property line at every fence post. Every external door, including those inside the quadrangle. They’re also throughout the residence.”
“Paranoid much?” Gilgamesh quipped.
“That they are. The highest concentration is in the northwest corner, which is the residence, and the southeast corner, where there’s an outcropping structure. Drone footage shows me that the farthest end is longer than the map you have.”
“So they’ve added on to the building. My guess is that’s where shipping and receiving are located. The last point before it goes out into the world. It’s only one story, but it’s long and could hold quite a bit of product.”
“Easy access for where the trucks load in and out. Makes sense.”
“How the hell are we going to get into this place? I feel like we’re missing something obvious,” God muttered.
Silence sat heavy in the room for several moments. A soft shimmer formed, causing the drawing of the mission itself to glow. “Tunnels,” he murmured.
Everyone looked at him.
He explained his thought. “In every situation where we’ve dealt with these Salieri fucks, we’ve dealt with underground tunnels. It’s how they’ve moved product. Where they’ve based the core of their activities. If Daleyza’s family is involved with the Salieri, there must be tunnels.”
Loki pulled the map toward his side of the table. “In the Caribbean, they stemmed from outbuildings, correct?”
“Yes,” Demon said, crossing over to them. “Barns and sheds. Could the motor pool be an area of entry?”
“Unless they’ve reduced the number of vehicles used in operations,” Daleyza told him, “it’s doubtful. The few times I was in there, it was packed to the gills. You’d have to move a lot of vehicles out of the space in order to open a trapdoor or something like that.”
“Midas, has your drone footage shown any outbuildings in the forested areas?”
“Most of it’s national park property. The few that are there are visitor centers, guard shacks, or wayside points for hikers.
None big enough to let trucks of substance in, and the rest are way too populated to use unless at night.
So far, we’ve seen nothing coming in late evenings, and the trail cams I’ve hacked into show only ranger jeeps traversing the fire lanes. ”
“Maybe they don’t have tunnels,” TB chimed in.
“They’ve got to,” Steel insisted. A sudden thought occurred to him. “Midas. Run your drones across the cliffside.”
“How do you drive a truck over water?”
“You don’t,” Demon said, his eye trained on Steel. “But you can drive a boat.”
TB picked up a surveillance photo and threw it in front of the medic.
“It’s a sheer face. What are you suggesting? Drive a boat to the cliff edge and then climb somewhere? You could maybe move drugs that way, but not very fast.”
“But if there were an underground cave system…”
“Puma Cove.”
All eyes went to Daleyza.
God pulled the map closer to him so the lake portion was in the center of the table. “I don’t see anything on the map. What’s Puma Cove?”
“It’s man-made, and not on the map. If you’re in the water, you can only see it if you’re at the exact angle.
There’s a sliver of space between a rock formation that rises from the water and the cliff itself.
From up top, there’s a flat surface about three feet wide that connects the two, so no one seems to know it’s there.
A small boat could get through the space at a very slow speed. ”
“Midas!”
“Drone footage to the northern tip. Got it.”
“There’s a small beach there, and I overheard one of my brothers mention a cave he explored. He used to threaten to take me there and leave me. The beach portion is very small. Maybe ten, fifteen feet from cliff to water. Depends on the lake level, I’m sure.”
“Is there a way down there from the top of the cliff?” Steel asked.
“At one time, there was a beach ladder from up top, but they took it down. My father claimed he was worried we would try to use it and fall to our deaths. Now? I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t want anyone there, afraid they’d see what he was up to.”