Chapter 10 #2
“I also told him that if he interfered with our mission, I’d shoot him,” Carson said.
“I’m glad you told him that and not me,” Chase admitted. “That man is my father-in-law. Shooting him wouldn’t make my new bride happy.”
“Speaking of which,” Trevor said. “What the hell made you tie the knot in the first place?”
“A lot of tequila and a special woman who loves life and has a good heart,” Chase said. “Now, let’s go get her back, or my marriage will set records for how short it was.”
“You thinking of staying married?” Trevor asked. “If I recall correctly, you always swore you’d stay a bachelor for life.”
“Things change,” Chase said, his answer short, almost terse.
He didn’t want to waste time explaining himself when he wasn’t all that sure of why he’d married Alana in the first place.
The argument because it felt right seemed lame, though it was true.
Whatever the reason, he had to save Alana from Delgado, or none of his reasons would matter.
As they were loading into Carson’s SUV, Chase’s cellphone buzzed in his pocket. He dug it out. UNKNOWN CALLER displayed on the screen. Thinking it might be Delgado, he hit the talk button. “Yeah.”
“Flannigan? Hank, here.”
“Hank, we’re about to head out. Do you have any suggestions on how to handle this situation?”
“Yeah, wait for us,” Hank said.
“What do you mean?” Chase stared out at the lengthening shadows. “I can’t wait. We’re taking the fight to Delgado at his place in the hills outside of the city. If we don’t leave now, we might not catch him at home.”
“Then go but send me the GPS location. We’re at the airport, loading into vehicles as we speak.”
“You’re here?” Chase’s heart swelled with hope. “In Cabo San Lucas?”
“We are.” Hank chuckled. “Me and five of my best men. Send us the location. We’ll join you as soon as we can.”
Chase sent Delgado’s address to Hank in a text and then asked, “What about arms?”
“We arrived in a private plane. We have what we need,” Hank said. “Don’t wait on us. If you can slow them down long enough for us to get there, we might even the odds a little.” Hank paused. “Any word on the girl? Have you located her?”
“No on both counts. All we have is Delgado’s deadline. Midnight tonight. If the preemptive attack doesn’t work out, I’ll fall back on the original demand,” his gut knotted, “and pray the bastard doesn’t change his mind and kill Alana first.”
“Right,” Hank said. “We’re on our way.”
Trevor stood at Chase’s side as he ended the call. “Was that Hank?”
Chase nodded. “I can’t believe he made it here in just a few hours.”
“Here in Cabo?”
“Yup,” Chase said. “With five of his best men.”
Trevor grinned. “That’s Hank for you. He’s there when you need him. And he has a network of friends with money and assets who can get him where he needs to be, when he needs to get there.” Trevor clapped his hands together. “Gang, we have backup. This mission’s odds just got better.”
Chase wasn’t as quick to think everything would turn out roses. “We still don’t have a bead on Alana. She might not even be in Delgado’s compound. He could’ve taken her to some other cartel location.”
“From what my sources tell me, Delgado likes to run his operation out of his house. He has it set up the way he likes, and the high wall around it slows down or keeps out the riffraff.”
“Speaking of which,” Gina said, “we’ll have to scale that wall. I was never good at vertical leaps, and I’m barely five and a half feet tall.”
“We’ve scaled walls in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Trevor said.
“We’ve got this,” Carson said. “And we’ll get you over it. No worries.”
“Good,” Gina said. “Then maybe we’d better get going so we can get into place before sundown.”
“Shouldn’t we wait for Hank and his men?” Carson asked.
Chase shook his head. “I’m afraid that if we wait too long, there might not be anything left of Alana.
He has the address and GPS. He’ll be here in time to provide the backup we’ll need.
In the meantime, we can scope the surroundings and come up with a plan to breach the compound.
Hopefully, Hank and his guys will get there before we’re in so far over our heads we can’t dig our way out. ”
Carson chose a 9mm Glock and stuffed explosives into one of his pockets and detonators in the other. “Let’s get moving.”
Gina and the three former Navy SEALs piled into Carson’s SUV and headed out of the city and up into the hills overlooking Cabo and the ocean in the distance.
The sun was just slipping into the ocean when they arrived at a location where they could hide the vehicle.
At a mile away from their target, they’d continue on foot to the compound and perform a quick reconnaissance of the walls, the security system and take a count of the number of guards on duty.
With only the four of them to start with, they could easily be bested in a matter of minutes if discovered.
An all-out attack wasn’t an option. They had to sneak in by scaling a wall.
Then they’d have to take out the exterior guards, enter Delgado’s home, locate Alana and get her out without her being harmed.
The chances of them getting in, extracting Alana and getting back out without alerting Delgado’s men were slim.
But they had to find Alana before Delgado used her to force them to lay down their arms and surrender to him and his men.
Just like surrendering to the Taliban, the odds of the SEALs surviving once that happened were nil.
Being caught wasn’t an option.
From all Carson had told them, the cartel members were ruthless and always out for blood.
They didn’t let their enemies go unharmed.
Most of the time, they used them as examples, torturing and killing them as a warning to others not to cross them.
Raul Delgado was one of the worst for using this terror tactic.
After they hid the truck in the brush, the men and Gina gathered their weapons and took off over the hills, moving in the direction of Delgado’s home.
They moved quickly across rough terrain, careful not to expose themselves to anyone who might be lurking.
The setting sun cast long, dark shadows, giving them sufficient concealment as they navigated the hills and gullies, working their way toward Delgado’s compound.
The road curving up to the hilltop hideaway switched back and forth. The four of them kept climbing, keeping a watch on the road from a distance. So far, they hadn’t seen anyone going up or down.
Chase worried they were setting their sights on the wrong goal. Alana might not be inside the cartel leader’s compound after all. If she wasn’t, they would have wasted precious time getting there. However, with no other intel on Delgado’s haunts, they didn’t have any other choice.
First over the top of the ridge, Chase spotted the compound on the next rise. He stopped and held up a fist for the others to stop as well.
They lined up just below the ridge to look over the rise and study their target.
Surrounded by high walls, the building within them was large and sprawling, with windows on the upper level that probably offered a great view of the ocean below.
“I spot a guard on the rooftop.” Carson handed Chase the binoculars he’d brought along with him.
Chase had been looking through the scope of his rifle and had yet to spot him. With the wider range of the binoculars, he quickly located the man dressed in black, carrying a rifle. He leaned against a wall, staring out over the road leading up to the main gate.
Chase looked closer. “Two men on the gate, and one roaming the outer wall on this side. For all we know, there might be another on the other side and the rear.”
“We can take out the guy on the wall and go over the top,” Trevor said. He glanced at the last of the sun dipping downward into the ocean to the west.
“By the time we get close to the wall, it’ll be dark enough to provide cover for our approach,” Gina said.
At that moment, Chase’s cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and stared down at the name on the screen. He hit the talk button and pressed the phone to his ear. “Hey, Hank.”
“We ran into a bit of luck at the airport,” Hank said.
“At the general aviation ramp, we overheard the pilot of another plane talking to a truck driver about a delivery he had for the same address as the one you gave us. We waited until he’d loaded the cargo from the plane into the truck.
When he had it all loaded, he went back into the terminal, giving us the opportunity to add to his cargo. ”
“What are you telling me?” Chase asked.
Hank chuckled. “We hitched a ride in the back of the delivery truck. We’re well on our way.”
Chase could feel the weight of the mission ease a little. “That’s good news.”
“All we need is for you to make sure we get past whatever guards might be at the gate checking the delivery trucks,” Hank said.
“We’ll do our best,” Chase promised. “Be prepared in case we aren’t successful.”
“Roger,” Hank said and ended the call.
Chase pocketed his cell phone and turned the binoculars on the narrow, winding road leading up to Delgado’s compound. “The cavalry is on the way. They hitched a ride in the back of a delivery truck destined for the Delgado compound.”
Trevor clapped Chase on his back. “I told you Hank was a standup kind of guy. Trust him to be there when you need him.”
“We have to get to the compound before they arrive and neutralize the guards on the gate, so that they don’t inspect the back of the delivery truck. At the very least, we need to create enough of a distraction to give the guys a chance to exit the truck and enter the compound on their own.”
“I think we can do that,” Carson said. “I have the C-4 explosives I brought with me. We can set up a pretty decent distraction on the back side of the compound—enough to take their minds off what’s out front.”
“Okay, Carson, you’re on for setting charges,” Chase said.
“Make noise, not so much damage. We don’t know for sure where inside they might be keeping Alana.
We need to time it for when Trevor and I are at the wall.
Blow the charge, and we’ll go over during the confusion. Once we’re inside, we’ll find Alana.”
Trevor’s lips twisted. “That’s a tall order for three SEALs and a soldier.”
Chase shrugged. “Sometimes, less is better. We have less chance of being discovered when there are only two of us on the inside.”
“Two? No way. What about me?” Gina asked.
“You need to be Carson’s backup while he’s setting charges.
Once he triggers the explosion, you two can slip around to the front and take out the guards on the gate.
Since we don’t have radios, we’ll communicate via cell phone texts and coordinate our efforts that way.
But first, we need to get to the base of the compound.
Set your phones to silent if you haven’t already. ”
Chase checked through the binoculars again and spotted the headlights of a vehicle on the road, climbing up the hill from far below.
He trained the lenses on it. When it switched back, he could tell it was a cargo truck.
“We need to get moving. Hank and his team are on their way up now and will be here soon. We need to be ready when they arrive. I anticipate no more than ten minutes.”
“Let’s do this,” Trevor said.
Carson grinned in the dusk, his teeth flashing white in the darkening gloom. “God, I missed this.”
“Just don’t do anything to put yourself or others at any more risk than we’ll already have,” Chase warned. “Our number one goal is to get Alana out alive.”
Carson gave a mock salute. “Gotcha.”
“Will do,” Trevor said.
“Operation Save Alana,” Gina said. “But, boy, I want to kick some Delgado ass while we’re at it.”
“We might get our chance,” Chase said. “Let’s just make sure he doesn’t end up kicking ours or Alana’s first.”