Meanwhile, Back in Snakeshit Acres #2
Dean stayed, gun still raised, staring directly into Barrera’s tense face. And then, mindful that he and Marcus had drawn lines, he said, “You needn’t worry. I don’t kill children.”
Barrera nodded and held his gun steady. “You could have shot him. I saw you had your gun aimed before you knew.”
But Dean had hesitated, and here they were, with Barrera’s men piling up behind him, obviously chomping at the bit to draw their guns and obliterate Stanford Dean Royal from the roster of all living things.
“I don’t kill children,” Dean said again. And then, for honesty’s sake, “I’m not really excited about killing anybody, really.”
Barrera raised his eyebrows. “And yet you invaded my compound to release a couple of hit men?” He scowled. “ Incompetent hit men, who have managed to foul up my business for months , which is what I get for trusting these—”
The word he used then wasn’t in any book of street Spanish provided by the Bureau, but Dean got the idea.
His two hit men weren’t Gael Barrera’s favorite people.
“So,” he said, thinking quickly, “you can either have me killed here and let your son see it—” To his relief, a look of revulsion crossed Barrera’s face. Good. Not a great human, no, but a decent father. “Which would be a terrible way to pay me back,” Dean felt compelled to remind him.
Barrera raised a sardonic eyebrow. “You are right,” he agreed smoothly. “I do owe you for showing mercy to my child. But I can’t simply let these men go. They were to be… dealt with for incompetence. What do you suggest I do?”
Dean smiled and thought about their plan for putting the two men in a gas Jeep and pointing them in the direction of the open desert. “Maybe send your kids back to the villa. It’s going to be busy here for a bit,” he said, and he watched Barrera’s eyebrows—both of them this time—go up.
“You do not kill children?” he said carefully.
“No,” Dean said, and this he meant. He was impressed by the fact that Gael Barrera didn’t use his sons as human shields, even though Dean had displayed this weakness for all to see.
“Anything else?” Barrera asked.
And this was where Dean’s inflection really got tricky. “Could you… I don’t know. Stay away from the northwest quadrant outside the gate,” he said blithely. “No reason to go there at all.”
“Northwest gate,” Barrera said, nodding sagely. “Okay, then. Is that all?”
And this was where Dean had to pray. “One more thing,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Give me three steps,” he said, and then he started singing the Lynyrd Skynyrd song as he turned and bolted for the cross in the corridor and the open maintenance tunnel door Marcus had ready for him.
He slid through the door, and Marcus swung it shut and bolted it from the inside mere heartbeats before the shouting mass of men scuffled past the outside, searching for him at top volume.
The men weren’t stupid; more than one man tried the handle of the maintenance corridor, but the door was locked. What could they do?
Or course they could have chosen to shoot the thing down, which was why Marcus and Dean were running top speed, heading north, Marcus counting doors as they went.
“Five,” he murmured. “Six, seven—here!”
And with a sudden wrench he skidded to a halt, hauled the door open, and dragged Dean in after him.
They were in the thick of it now, surrounded by fuse boxes and electrical panels, as they followed the almost secret passageway indicated by the plans toward the more militarized buildings in the north of the compound.
“God,” Marcus muttered, hammering one of the electrical panel covers with the flat of his hand. “One good hand grenade and—”
“And everybody will know where to find us,” Dean reminded him. “Where are our two ‘rescuees’?”
Marcus gave a crusty laugh. “I’m guessing they’re heading toward the Jeeps at the northeast entrance, why?”
“Because half of Barrera’s forces should be traveling that way too.” Yes, Dean had told Barrera the north west entrance, but he figured Barrera would assume he was lying.
“Excellent,” Marcus said. “I gave them weapons.”
Dean wanted to cackle, although a bloodbath was hardly grounds for celebration.
But then, chaos and misdirection would certainly help their cause. As they rounded another corner—this one leading to a slightly larger room, absolutely crammed with electronic servers controlling things like heating and lights and airflow—Dean pulled out a small incendiary device.
“You know what I said about telling them where we are?” he asked as Marcus carefully peered around the corner of the door leading toward the outside buildings.
“Yeah?” Marcus said. “We’ve got five seconds before we’ll be all clear.”
“Good. Because I think one of these will tell them where we were .”
Marcus grinned over his shoulder at Dean in appreciation. “I like the way you think,” he growled, and keeping one hand on the pressure handle, Dean pulled the pin.
“Okay, then,” Marcus said. “Three, two, one—”
He opened the door, and they both ran through, and Dean turned and tossed the grenade into the electronics and electrical hub on his way out.
The door swung shut behind them, and they started running toward the north east side of the compound, where the planes took off.
They were long gone, and looking very purposeful and as though they belonged there, when they heard the muffled explosion, and the lights in the compound flickered and went off.
“That’s what I’m talking about,” Marcus said with satisfaction, but he said it for Dean’s ears only, and they continued through the compound.
IT TOOK them less than ten minutes to find where a small cargo plane stood gassed on the runway, with a cagey-looking Birdie doing a last-minute systems check underneath it.
“Where’s our comrades?” Marcus asked, hitting the release that would lower the back hatch.
“I sent them out the northwest gate,” Birdie said. “Didn’t want them bringing anyone this way while I prepped the plane.”
Marcus grimaced. This was the problem with thinking on the fly. “Bird, we ran into Barrera, and Dean sent him off the scent so he’d assume the Russians were leaving by the north east gate. We have to go northwest when we leave, remember?”
Birdie screwed up a visage that was mostly lines around the eyes and grooves around the mouth. “We can circle around.”
“What about the antiaircraft guns?” Dean asked. “Are those out of commission?”
“It’s gonna be close,” Birdie said. “We want to give them time to shoot the fucking Russians, and we don’t want to be around when the C-4 fulfills its destiny, if you know what I mean.”
Marcus glanced around and saw a few members of the ground crew staring at them as though trying to figure out why they would be leaving on a mission right now and said what Dean was thinking.
“Either way, I think we need to get out of here before they reset all their electronics or start shooting at us on general principle.”
“Roger that,” Birdie said. “Dean, stop double-checking my checks and get your ass on the plane.”
Dean hated to do that—he always double-checked the checks, and Birdie usually let him get away with it because they’d flown some hairy shit together, but more of the passing soldiers were stopping to stare at the one plane in the compound ready for flight, and they were flat out of time.
He clambered aboard, and Birdie had started the engines and was telling them to belt their asses down before they even pulled the ramp up.
The taxi down the miniscule runway was met with panic fire and a burst of static over the radio as the control tower—or what was left of it after Dean’s grenade to the electrical grid—protested that they had no clearance.
Well, no shit, they had no clearance—they weren’t supposed to be there!
Two bullets thunk ed into the rear tail section as the plane lifted, but they didn’t penetrate the hull, and Dean and Marcus—who hadn’t had time to belt yet—quickly latched themselves in as the bumps under the wheels leveled out and Birdie hauled up on the throttle to get the plane to clear the compound walls.
Dean started calculating vectors in his head, about how fast they had to go, how much lift they had to have for the plane to get X number of feet off the ground with Y being the distance of the runway and—
“Stop that!” Marcus shouted. “I don’t want the last words I hear to be ‘The math doesn’t math!’”
Dean nodded and kept his mouth shut after that, but inside he was doing a little happy dance, because the math did math, and barring any giant gusts of wind, they might just… might just….
He craned his neck and shifted his shoulders so he could look out the tiny portal, and his blood froze in his veins.
“Bird!” he croaked. “Do you see what I see?”
“ Fucking Russians !” Birdie snarled. “ Right underneath us !”
Oh God. Oh God. Could they overtake the Russians before the—
Behind them, he saw a flash of light and two projectiles… up, up… out of his vision… but he could see their arcs… up, up, up, up….
Birdie hit epic airspeed and sliced the plane to the right so only one of the rounds from the antiaircraft guns pierced their tail gear.
The whole plane shuddered, the airspeed radically decreasing as Birdie tried for control.
Dean was twisted fully around now, and in the distance he could see the explosion that took out the antiaircraft gun, while below them the smoldering hull of the Jeep was cartwheeling freely through the desert.
And Birdie fought valiantly to keep their plane from joining it.
“Dean?” Marcus called a little desperately.
“Marcus?”
“I meant it.”
“Meant what?” But Dean knew.
“I’d follow you into hell.”
“Same. But don’t pack for the trip yet.”
“Doing math?” Marcus asked as the plane began to descend rapidly.
“Nope,” Dean said frankly. “Praying.”
“Same.”
They gave each other a tight grin. There were no parachutes on this plane—Dean had seen that when they’d loaded on. There were no towns. There were two hundred miles of desert between where this plane would land and where they could find water… or food… or medical aid.
Bailey, I really love you.
Dean and Marcus bent double, laced their hands over the backs of their necks, and prepared for a crash landing.
And prayed.