CHAPTER SEVEN
“This whole thing doesn’t add up,” Colt said softly from where he and Lennox hid in the darkness behind one of the warehouse’s heavily cluttered shelves. “The CIA drags the five of us all the way down here to Brazil claiming they need our help dealing with a new international terrorist organization and yet they have us sitting on an unguarded building on the edge of the city while Joe Hawkins and his SOG Team are covering a high-security target filled with precious metals and uncut gemstones in Cuiaba’s industrial zone?”
“Well, Joe did say that this new terrorist group likes to run heists in the same city they recently attacked to help fund future operations,” Lennox murmured from where he leaned against the wall. “And with that bombing at the sustainable energy company in the city’s main square two days ago, I assume the CIA probably thinks there’ll be a theft soon.”
“That still doesn’t explain what we’re doing here. I somehow doubt this new terrorist organization is going to waste their time stealing a bunch of cheap DVD players and black-market movies.”
To emphasize his point, Colt nudged one of the boxes on the nearest shelf, snorting as a thin plastic case fell out, revealing a picture of RoboCop .
“You’re not wrong there,” Lennox agreed. He hadn’t even been born yet when that movie came out. Why would anyone need a box of them? “Which is why I’m hoping this is a case of Joe and his SOG team wanting to take the more obvious target while leaving us with the less likely location.”
Colt snorted. “Nice to be part of the team. And if that was a bet, I’d take it. Joe hid it pretty well, but those other guys on the Special Operation Group weren’t thrilled to see us here, regardless of how badly they need our help.”
Lennox silently agreed. He thought back to the briefing Joe, the senior operative in charge of the SOG Team, had given them back at the house. According to him, there was a new player in the international terrorist game—or an old player under new management. Either way, this new group had been connected to multiple bombings, targeted assassinations, and high-payoff thefts throughout South America, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Southeast Asia. All of the operations, especially the heists, had been conducted with cold, calculated military efficiency. And the group’s MO seemed to be one high-profile attack followed by one extremely lucrative heist.
Apparently, nobody had taken credit for any of the attacks or thefts yet. Which was strange since the most modern terrorist organizations thrived on headlines and attention. There was also the fact that the bombings and assassination targets didn’t come close to matching the normal terrorist MO. Most of the time, terrorists went after large groups of people in open, easily accessible areas with little risk. Other times, they’d strike at symbols and political leaders of the opposition they rejected and hated. All of the attacks would be designed with one major goal—to make a big splash in the news in order to sow as much fear and doubt as possible.
But this new group seemed to focus on behind the scene political operatives and powerful corporations from the energy, defense, banking, pharmaceutical, and technology sections. It was a bewildering target list, and the CIA had been trying to find a connection between them for months with no luck.
Given the lack of detailed information on this new group and their agenda, it was entirely possible that the CIA may have simply goofed when it came to thinking this warehouse was a viable target and Lennox and the other SEALs would be sitting here all night twiddling their thumbs.
“Guys,” Kirk’s voice came across the radio, interrupting his thoughts. “I’m on the second floor on the east side with a clear view of the surrounding neighborhood. It’s dead quiet out here. There isn’t even a light turned on within a mile of this place.”
“View from the roof is the same,” Darwin said. “I got eyes to the north and Simon has the south. This entire part of town seems empty—too empty. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that the locals know something is about to go down and have cleared out.”
Lennox had been in enough war zones to know exactly what Darwin was talking about. Locals always knew when insurgents were up to something. He threw a glance Colt’s direction, seeing similar concern mirrored there.
“That’d only make sense if this warehouse is the target,” Lennox said. “Which means there was a legitimate reason for the CIA to put us here.”
Colt shrugged. “I’m not sure how it helps us. We still have no idea when these people might be coming or what they’ll be looking for once they arrive.”
“Well, since we have some time, maybe you and Colt could look around the warehouse and see if there’s something in here besides consumer electronics,” Simon suggested. “Just to satisfy our curiosity.”
Lennox exchanged glances with Colt, who shrugged.
“Might as well,” his friend said. “It’s not like we’re doing anything better right now.”
They split up and started moving around the dark warehouse, the shelves and crates appearing in shades of green through the lenses of Lennox’s night vision goggles.
After ten minutes of opening up DVD players and video games consoles, Lennox pulled the shrink wrap off the corner of a pallet filled with unmarked cardboard boxes. Expecting more of the same, he got a surprise when he didn’t find more DVD players or games. Instead, the box contained cellophane wrapped bundles of powder. The exact color was hard to determine through the NVGs, but Lennox assumed it was white. Heroin probably—maybe cocaine. Looking through the next box on the pallet, he found more of the stuff, and then more in the next shrink-wrapped pallet, and the one after that. He didn’t look any further. There were a lot of matching pallets.
Lennox’s head spun as he tried to understand what this discovery meant. How could the CIA not know about this many pallets of drugs? And if they had known, why hadn’t they told him and the rest of the SEALs?
“Guys, I think I found the reason we’re here,” he said over the radio. “There are pallets after pallets of drugs here—heroin maybe. Hundreds of kilos of the stuff.”
“Okay,” Colt murmured as he walked over to Lennox. “Now that we know, what do we do? Destroy the stuff or guard it? Because I’m not so keen on that second option.”
“Whatever we’re going to do, we need to decide quickly,” Simon told them. “I’ve got a convoy of four vehicles coming our way from the south, including two large flatbed trucks. Unless they’re picking a DVD for date night, I’m pretty sure they’re here for the drugs.”
“Dammit,” Lennox muttered, pulling out the burner phone the CIA had provided and shooting a quick text to Joe. Not that it would help. Even at this time of night with no traffic, it’d take the SOG team at least thirty minutes to make across the city.
Screw it .
“We’ll set an ambush using the drugs as bait,” Lennox said over the radio. “Simon, you stay on the roof and keep us updated on what our bad guys are doing. Once we make contact, you’re responsible for anyone still outside the building. And no matter what else happens, don’t let those trucks go anywhere.”
“Copy that,” Simon replied.
“Kirk. Darwin. I need you two down here on the back side of the warehouse, facing the big roll-up doors,” Lennox said. “On my signal, Colt and I will hit them from the right while you guys hit them from the front in a standard L-shaped ambush. Hopefully, they’ll panic and run right back out the door and into Simon’s sniper fire. The goal is to keep them from getting the drugs out and taking at least one of them alive.”
Nobody seemed to have anything to add to the plan—or a problem with it—so they all started moving in silence. Lennox and Colt took a position behind the heaviest shelving they could find, while Kirk and Dawson did the same to the left of their position.
Around him in the darkness, Lennox could hear the sounds of magazines being released and reseated and rounds being locked and loaded. In the tight confines of the warehouse, with the metal shelves and all the boxes, it was going to get loud in here when the shooting started.
“Vehicles are thirty seconds out,” Simon said softly over the radio. “These guys know exactly where they’re going and they don’t seem worried about anyone being here.”
“They’re probably aware that the security for the warehouse has abandoned the place,” Darwin said. “Hell, they may have even dropped the rumor, ensuring that it happens.”
A few seconds later, Lennox heard the loud drone of a couple big diesel engines coming closer, followed almost immediately by the clanking of metal on metal as the front gates opened.
“One of the trucks is backing up to the warehouse doors now,” Simon told them. “The good news is that there’re only about a dozen guys. The bad news is that they look like they know what they’re doing. They’ve all got top-of-the-line tactical vests and weapons, scouts are already rolling out to check the perimeter, and a man disappeared into the building across the street carrying a sniper rifle. When I start shooting, he’s going to be all over me.”
“Crap,” Lennox murmured.
He’d known they’d be outnumbered in the coming confrontation but hoped having Simon in an over watch position on the roof would balance out the odds. The other sniper pretty much screwed that plan.
“Darwin, change of plans,” Lennox said, needing to make this happen quickly if he was going to do it at all. “I need you back on the roof ASAP in a position to deal with that sniper as soon as Simon flushes him out. When you’re finished, I need you back with Kirk. He’s going to be manning his leg of the ambush alone until you get back.”
“Copy that,” Darwin responded, disappearing into the depths of the warehouse without a sound.
At the front of the building, the big metal garage door rolled up, the noise jarring in the previous silence. Dim light from a streetlamp in the parking lot flooded the interior of the warehouse, casting shadows across the shelves and rows of pallets loaded with the drug-filled boxes.
Lennox expected to see a crowd of armed men immediately moving through the door, maybe even a forklift too. But instead, there were just two of them. They slipped stealthily around the edges of the door, moving immediately into the depth of the warehouse to either side, scouting out the place before committing anyone else to the operation.
Crap, crap, and double crap!
These guys were good. Far too good to be a random collection of mercenaries recruited off the battlefield to pull odd jobs for a terrorist organization. These were highly trained, experienced soldiers who worked together frequently.
“Kirk. Colt. Pull back and find cover,” Lennox said as softly as he could into his radio. “Do not engage those two scouts unless your position is compromised. We need to get more people into the warehouse before we set this thing off or it’s going to be the shortest ambush in history.”
Before the words were out of his mouth, Colt was already moving back into the deeper shadows along the wall of the warehouse. Backpedaling so he could keep his eyes on the drugs, Lennox eased away to hide between two crates the size of refrigerators. He heard the quiet footsteps of one of the men seconds before he caught sight of him weaving in and out of the shelves and boxes.
The guy moved like a ghost, checking behind each crevice and hiding spot but still moving quickly. Any doubt as to the background of these men was erased at that point. They were special forces. No idea which country’s but definitely spec ops.
Lennox held his breath as the man crossed in front of his hiding place. He kept his finger on the trigger of his M4, ready to squeeze if there was even a whiff of a chance that the guy had seen him. But as the seconds ticked by, and his heart thumped steadily in his chest, the man continued toward the front of the warehouse.
Ten seconds later, movement near the big roll-up door seemed to indicate that the warehouse had been called clear, even though no one had said a word that Lennox could hear.
The first one through the door was a big man every bit of seven feet tall dressed in tactical gear.
Lennox slipped from his hiding place and low-crawled across the concrete floor, finding a position behind some shelves that gave him a clear shot at the pallets and the heavily armed men approaching them. A puttering sound filled the interior of the warehouse as a forklift drove in, heading straight for the first pallet.
“Get ready,” Lennox said softly into the radio. “On my first shot.”
Easing his weapon forward, Lennox took aim at the large man, hoping to take out the group’s leader with the first shot. Unfortunately, the guy was moving along the pallets on the far side, which made the shot tougher. When he reached the last pallet in the row—the one that Lennox had first opened to figure out what was inside—he stopped, frowning at what he saw.
Crap .
Lennox had closed up the box, but there was nothing he could do with the shrink wrap. The man must have noticed, because one second he was standing there and the next, he was swinging his weapon up spraying rounds into the shelves above Lennox’s head, shouting that they’d walked into an ambush.
Cursing, Lennox squeezed the trigger on his M4, firing three-round bursts into the rapidly dispersing group of men. A fraction of a second later, automatic weapon fire erupted from two other locations around the warehouse as Colt and Kirk joined in.
He expected the majority of the men to start bailing—that’s what most troops did when caught in a hail of gunfire, either duck and cover or get the hell out of dodge—but once again, the men showed they were more than expected. Instead of trying to turn and make a run for it, the entire group of eight men pivoted as one and charged straight toward Lennox’s position as well as Colt’s. It was the exact right thing to do, taught by every military in the world. When faced with an ambush, attack. But only the most disciplined of troops could pull it off.
Lennox didn’t think about the people coming at him. He simply squeezed the trigger until the magazine ran empty, then reloaded and repeated. Some of the men went down, but not as many as he’d hoped. Not shocking considering they were probably wearing the best tactical vests available.
Overhead, chunks of wood and other debris rained down from the ceiling high above him. Over the radio, Simon and Darwin were shouting and cursing. The effort of taking out that other sniper was not going well. Which meant Darwin wouldn’t be coming down here anytime soon to back up Kirk.
As if to prove that things could always get worse, an explosion suddenly ripped through the warehouse barely a dozen feet to the right of Lennox’s hiding spot behind a section of heavy shelving, sending pieces of metal whistling through the air. A moment later, another explosion shook the floor to the left.
Crap . They had grenades.
Praying there wasn’t another grenade coming, Lennox pushed himself upright and emptied an entire magazine in the general direction the bad guys had been coming from. Except, they weren’t still coming. Instead, the big man and the others left alive had used the distraction provided by the grenades to break contact. They were all escaping through the roll-up door.
Right before the big man disappeared from sight, he paused to pull a backpack off his shoulder and slung it toward the pallets with the drugs. The pack bounced off the closest one, ending up wedged between that one and the next. With a sinking feeling, Lennox was pretty sure he knew what it was.
“Get out of the warehouse now!” he shouted into his radio as he jumped to his feet. “They tossed in an IED!”
Knowing there was no way he’d make it to the roll-up doors, Lennox turned and made a mad dash for the closet window, the one covered with heavy-duty security grating like every other window in this place.
“Get off the roof!” he shouted into his radio, weaving in and out of the crates and boxes between him and the nearest exit point. “Get off right the hell now!”
Reloading in the midst of a sprint was tough, but he managed it, before aiming at the base of the window frame and squeezing off multiple three-round bursts. Then he launched himself forward, praying for the best.
He twisted his body in midair, intending to take the brunt of the impact on the thickest part of his tactical armor vest. Unfortunately, the sudden blast behind him changed his plans as the thump of overpressure caught him and tossed him through the air like a kid’s toy.
Lennox was vaguely aware of hitting the window. The grating barely slowed him down, but still hurt like hell. Then he slammed into the concrete of the parking lot outside the warehouse and learned that the ground hurt more than the window grating.
He must have bounced half a dozen times before sliding to a painful halt. Panic building up in his chest, he shoved himself upright, twisting his head left and right, praying he’d see his Teammates. But there was no one in sight. All he saw was burning debris from the partially demolished warehouse.
“Colt!” he shouted into his radio, scrambling to his feet to run toward the burning building, trying to see into the devastated interior. “Where are you? Colt, answer me!”
There was no reply.
Lennox’s heart plummeted into the pit of his stomach.
He was just about to run back into the warehouse, flames or not, when he finally heard a familiar voice in his ear.
“Lennox.” Darwin’s voice was strangely muffled, confusing Lennox a little until he realized his ears were still muted by the explosion. “We’re all up front. Colt’s radio got smashed when he was blown through the wall of the warehouse. He’s pretty beat up, but he’s okay.”
The relief Lennox felt was so overwhelming that his damn knees went weak. Then he was running toward the front of the warehouse as fast as his legs could carry him, going around to the west to avoid the smoke pouring off to the east side. He had no desire to inhale a bunch of heroin fumes.
Colt and the other guys were there waiting for him. They all looked beat up, but they were alive. Glancing around the debris strewn parking lot, Lennox realized that both of the flatbed trucks were still there, but the other two vehicles were gone. Everyone had escaped.
“What happened to the sniper?” Lennox asked. “Did he get away too?”
“No, Simon and I got him right before we had to jump off the roof to avoid the explosion,” Darwin said. “Not that it was easy. In addition to his sniper rifle, the guy was also carrying a grenade launcher. He damn near blew us off the roof.”
Lennox nodded. “I would have preferred to take one of those other guys alive, but I’m hoping Joe and his CIA people can use the sniper’s body to get information on this new terrorist group,” Lennox said.
“I hope so,” Colt said. “Because those guys weren’t like any terrorists we’ve dealt with before.”
Lennox couldn’t agree more.