The Cain Conspiracy (Harvey Bennett Thrillers Book 8), page 13
It was a tall order, but Garza was up to the task. He ran Ravenshadow not as a top-down company, but as a democratic dictatorship — a sample size of the larger dream.
Kurt cleared his throat. “We believe, actually sir, that it is an American team.”
Garza’s head snapped around to his security feeds in the control room and observatory. He was standing behind a bank of monitors, each manned by a Ravenshadow crewmember.
“And why do you think that?” he asked.
“Well, sir, we looked up the registration of the jeeps. They’re Peruvian through and through, but the trace on the credit card ends up at an IRS office in Salt Lake City, Utah.”
“IRS?”
“Yes, sir,” Kurt said. “And I know for a fact that the IRS is hardly efficient enough to rent jeeps in a foreign country.”
Garza was waiting for the second half of the clause. …Rent jeeps in a foreign country on such short notice, or rent jeeps in a foreign country without a mile of bureaucratic paper trail.
It didn’t come, and Kurt continued. “I was working with intelligence officers for a while before my retirement,” he said. “One the of the cleanest — and fastest — ways to ‘disappear’ a credit card purchase like this one is to make it a real purchase, just on the bill of another US organization’s line.”
“You think this is a US military entity?” Garza asked.
“I do, sir. It reeks of Army, possibly SpecOps. If I had to guess, it’s Sturdivant.”
Sturdivant’s name caused Garza to recoil. He licked his lips and stared at Kurt. He had shared his plans with no one else but his closest team of recruits and Kurt, so for Kurt to say the man’s name in a closed room with other Ravenshadow employees was a serious offense.
“You’d better be right.”
“I don’t need to be, sir,” Kurt said. “We’ll be able to ID them soon enough, but the issue will be resolved long before that.”
“Explain.”
“Well, sir, if we’re dealing with a US force that wants to infiltrate, they’ll have done their homework. My guess is they have, and my guess is they’ve decided the only plausible entrance point is through the drainage system.”
“The tunnel?” Garza asked. “We put in a massive fan pump; how would they get through? It’s as wide as the tunnel.”
When Garza had purchased the land and moved in, they had surprisingly little work to do to convert the place into a headquarters for his base of operations. They had widened a few tunnels and bracketed up power and water lines, and they had converted the old mine’s spring-fed water shaft into a waste and drainage tunnel that could supply the entire base with running water and then dump the waste into the nearby river.
“True, but again, if that’s not their plan, we’ve got nothing to worry about. If it is, disabling the fan in any way will throw an alert in the control station.”
“And you said this would be taken care of long before we need to worry about it?”
“I did, and I mean it. I’ve already dispatched a unit to head downstream and intercept them. They may not reach it before this new team enters the tunnel, but we’ll be there blocking off their exit point after they run into trouble at the pump.”
“Good,” Garza said. “But I want a backup. Send a few teams down through the original tunnels, and do your best to get them into the demonstration floor. No noise — this isn’t permission to engage, understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Garza breathed. “Thanks Kurt.” He reached out a hand and waited for Kurt to shake it. If they had become anything over the years, Garza had to admit it looked a lot like a friendship.
Kurt released his grip and turned, then left the room.
If he’s on it, it will be taken care of, Garza thought. Without a doubt.
Whoever was infiltrating his base would meet up with Garza on the demonstration floor.
32
Ben
The tunnel was, indeed, dark. Their dive lights did little to illuminate their path, but thankfully there was nothing in the way to impede their forward progress.
Ben swam confidently, keeping the distance between Lang and the other Green Beret in front of him and Julie consistent. So far they’d held their own with the soldiers, but Ben knew they hadn’t truly been tested yet. At the end of the day, they were still civilians.
But civilians who’ve been through more than most soldiers.
These guys were tough, but Ben knew his own crew had been pushed to the limit numerous times and come out the victors. The Ravenshadow attacks against them today had been spontaneous, but also unplanned and uncoordinated, so they’d been able to get away both times without fuss. Ben knew Garza, and he’d been up against the Ravenshadow men more than once.
They’d gotten lucky, twice. The geography of the river and forest around them had saved them once, and the existence of an underwater waste shaft had saved them the second time.
Ben knew that luck would run out.
Even now, he knew that Garza would be waiting. He might even have instructed his men to follow them into the tunnel — they could be entering the shaft downstream at this very moment, and Ben had no interest in finding out how an underwater close-quarters fight with professional mercenaries would go down.
So they swam upstream. He felt the pressure of the current growing, pushing against his face and body, but he pulled himself forward. It wasn’t too much to swim against, but he feared Jeffers and Lang were right: whatever it was pushing this much water was bound to be massive.
Another few minutes passed, and the current grew to a rate that began to feel oppressive. He wondered if they were still making forward progress, but it was impossible to tell. The distance between his arms and the man’s fins in front of him had stayed constant, and the current’s pressure made it seem like they were moving.
For all he knew, they were simply floating in space, not moving forward or backward in the tunnel.
He began to feel the claustrophobia of the constricting space, imagining the walls pushing in slowly. He wasn’t prone to claustrophobia, but he knew that there was a point at which everyone began to feel uncomfortable.
Just when Ben thought they were going to have to give up and turn around, taking their chances with the Ravenshadow men, the soldiers in front of him reached up and pulled themselves out of the water. He felt himself being pulled up as well, the soldiers lifting him from under his arms. There was a ledge, about a foot wide, that they were sitting on.
Ben pulled himself up and out once his hands found the edge of the ledge, and he turned and helped Julie get out as well. Once they were both sitting, their backs against the wall of the tunnel, Ben looked around.
By the light of their dive lamps, he could see that the tunnel had widened considerably. They had entered some sort of antechamber that had ledges built along each wall, about a foot above the water line, no doubt for maintenance purposes.
And the object of that maintenance loomed over Ben to his left. An absolutely massive fan sat halfway out of the water, stretching from the very top of the mostly circular shaft to its floor underwater. The blades, made of some sort of reinforced steel, were half an inch thick and curved, a feature that Ben knew helped push the water in the proper direction.
There were six blades, evenly spaced out and spreading from the central hub of the fan. And they were spinning. The heavy machinery hummed as it turned, and the water roiled in front of the turbine.
“A propeller,” Jeffers said. “Shit.”
The blades were moving quickly, but not so fast that Ben couldn’t see through the spaces between them as they cycled. The tunnel continued up ahead, but it seemed that the ledges they were sitting on continued on both sides of the shaft. He assumed they would lead directly to whatever maintenance exit door lay up ahead.
“Just like we thought, Lang said. He looked toward Beale, who was sitting out of the water on the other side of the shaft. “Any ideas?”
“Yeah,” Beale said. “We turn around and get the hell out of here. Work our way up the cliff, maybe?”
Lang was shaking his head. “We have to get past this thing. There’s got to be a shutoff switch or something.”
“There won’t be,” Reggie said. “Not down here. That control will be farther up the tunnel, inside the base. It would be a pretty hefty security flaw if there was a way to shut it down from here.”
“Well,” Mrs. E said. “Can we blow it up?”
“No demolitions,” Beale said. “We don’t have anything small enough that would do the trick, and we can’t risk the integrity of the tunnel. Could have a whole mountain falling on us.”
Ben sighed, then looked at Julie. She shrugged.
“Okay, well for the time being, we’re safe. Let’s think about this a bit, and —”
The sound of gunfire erupted through the tunnel, reverberating around them. One round pinged off of one of the metal blades.
“Shit!” Jeffers said. “They’re here.”
He leaned forward, mounting his foot on the opposite ledge for leverage, and he started firing back.
The noise in the small space was deafening, and Ben immediately felt his ears begin to burn. He leaned out as well, trying to see what their options were.
The entrance to the tunnel was illuminated by the bright daylight filtering in from outside, and he saw the unmistakable shape of a man standing directly in front of it.
33
Ben
“They’re not coming in,” Jeffers muttered between bursts.
Beale added. “I think they’re just locking us down. Most likely cutting off our exit plan. They’ll have another team coming in from the other side of the fan.”
“Maybe they’ll turn the fan off for us? To get shots at us from that side?”
Beale shook his head. “Maybe, but we can’t wait that long. We’re dead if we get stuck between them.” He looked around. “Anyone got any bright ideas?”
“What about a gun?” Julie asked.
“Come again?”
“A rifle,” she said, pulling hers out from over her shoulder. “Stick the barrel up on the ceiling where it’s flat for a couple of feet, really close to the front of the fan, then let the butt swing in. It might work.”
Beale was already in motion, with another Green Beret by his side. He reached out for Julie’s rifle, and she handed it over. Ben was about to protest — he would rather they use their own weapons — but he didn’t want to cause any more trouble than they were already in.
Beale and the soldier held the rifle steady, then lifted it up carefully and placed the tip of it against the flat part of the ceiling. They pushed it as far to the right as they could, where there would be the maximum amount of leverage against the blade as it spun in its counter-clockwise direction. When they were ready, Beale gave the order.
“Okay, slowly, just drop it in on three. But get ready to jump back if it starts chewing ” He counted it out quickly, all while Jeffers and the Ravenshadow man at the other end of the tunnel exchanged shots, and then the two Green Berets softly nudged the rifle into place. Only a split-second passed before the first propeller blade impacted the assault rifle.
…at which point the rifle simply crumpled into two pieces, one of which sparked and flew into the other side of the tunnel beyond the blades.
Beale and the soldier fell back, cowering for a moment at the backlash. When the blades continued moving, now once again unimpeded, Beale turned to the rest of them. “That was a disaster,” he said. “Any other great ideas?”
Ben felt the man’s frustration, but he didn’t like how he had directed his assault toward Julie. It may not have worked, but he didn’t hear anyone else offering suggestions.
“I say we fight our way back out,” the other Green Beret said. “Get to the river again and kill those assholes waiting for us.”
“Those ‘assholes’ are well-trained,” Beale said. “And they’ve got a clear shot at us. And heading downstream we’ll be unable to maneuver.”
“I got an idea, boss,” another man said. Beale and everyone else turned to stare at him. He pulled out a small handheld weapon from a pack he had been wearing. “A harpoon gun,” he said. “The propulsion is fast enough underwater that I can get it stuck in a rock on the bottom of the river. Out of water and this close? I bet I can sink it into the concrete. It’s got a little umbrella thingy that’ll hold it steady in there. Might be enough.”
“Okay,” Beale said. “But what about the other side? You can’t just hold the thing.”
“I’ve got that covered, too,” he said.
“Go for it.”
The Ravenshadow man and Jeffers had stopped firing at one another for the moment, both obviously feeling that it was a lost cause, and Ben was finally able to hear.
The soldier stretched his legs across the chasm between the ledges and aimed his harpoon at the wall on one side of the tunnel just beyond the fan’s blades. He took a breath, steadied himself, then fired.
The harpoon shot between the blades, then mounted into the concrete, just as the man had said. He then flicked a switch, allowing the spool of steel fiber to release. It flew outward from the harpoon gun with a whizzing sound, then the man threw the entire gun into the other side of the propeller.
The gun bounced off one of the spinning blades, but then flew down into the water on the opposite side of the propeller. Ben watched it hit the water, then shoot back up and out of the water as the fan blades turned and pulled the line of steel wire tight. It re-spooled onto the propeller, the blades churning and grabbing the line until it was completely twisted and intertwined in it, and then there was no more line for it to pull.
And the fan abruptly snapped to a halt.
“Yes!” the man shouted.
Beale jumped into action. “Move, now. My team first. We don’t know how long this thing will hold.”
“Then why don’t you let the civilians go first?” Reggie asked.
Ben frowned. Yeah, what’s up with this guy?
“Because if it’s going to fail, it’ll fail early. I’d much rather one of us get caught in it.
“Right,” Reggie said. “Better get going then. We’ll hold back the Ravenshadow guys from this end.”
Beale nodded and then slid between the blades. The rest of his men followed, one on each side, and Ben motioned for Julie to move ahead. Mrs. E had taken up a position guarding the entrance to the tunnel, but the Ravenshadow men still had yet to reappear.
“Go ahead,” Ben said. “I’ll be right behind you. The sooner we get inside, the sooner we find —”
Ben heard a snapping sound, and he flicked his eyes up. Beale met Ben’s eyes, just as the propeller blades started once again to turn. He had pressed the release on the spear end of the harpoon gun, allowing the giant mechanism to spin freely.
And Ben suddenly knew everything. He had sensed it, but he hadn’t wanted to admit it.
They’d been betrayed.
“Beale, what the —”
“I’m sorry, Bennett,” Beale said, shouting over the rising sound of the fan’s hum, even though his voice came through clearly in Ben’s headset. “Things are more complicated than you think. And you — your team — you’re a complication. Too risky.”
Julie pulled away from Ben and spat through the blades. “You — you son of a —”
Julie’s voice fell away as Ben caught her arm.
“Beale,” Ben said. The leader of the Green Berets focused again on Ben. “Why? Why bring us all the way here?”
Beale hesitated, but then shrugged and offered a reply. “I told you the truth. We needed you. You got us here, but we can’t risk getting slowed down.”
“Ravenshadow is waiting for us out there!” Reggie shouted. “You’re leaving us here to die, asshole.”
“Just sit tight. Hopefully this is all over soon.”
“‘Sit tight’?” Julie scoffed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Ben watched the faces of the other Green Berets. Lang, Jeffers, the men he’d gotten to know and trust a bit. Their expressions were unreadable. They might know everything. Or they’re just as in the dark about this as we are.
It didn’t matter. They were loyal to their captain, and they were going to follow his orders.
“I’m sorry, guys. Our goals no longer align. I can’t risk it.”
And with that, the Green Beret team turned and walked up the side ledges toward the Ravenshadow base, leaving the CSO team trapped between a massive propeller and a group of ruthless mercenaries.
34
Julie
Julie sat next to Mrs. E on the ledge. The older woman’s face was a mask, but Julie had known her long enough to know she was indignant. However, Julie wasn’t sure what exactly was the source of her anger. She was likely upset about the betrayal, but Julie also wondered if part of it was the fact that none of them had suspected anything.
Perhaps she was angry with herself for not knowing better.
Still, Julie wasn’t about to reach out and console her. They had a job to do, and at the moment that job was to stay alive, and potentially to fight their way out of the tunnel.
“We’ve got company,” Reggie said.
His voice came through Julie’s headset, but it was already beginning to crack and fade out. Beale’s team was growing farther away every second, and if they lost communication with the Green Berets, they’d be completely in the dark.
He raised his voice and said it again, no doubt hearing the failing transmission.
“Ravenshadow?” Ben asked.
“Yeah. Two snorkels. Probably didn’t have time to get suited up for a dive, but they’re heading this way.”
“Can you shoot them?” Ben asked. “It’ll at least buy us some time.”
Reggie responded by lifting his rifle and aiming toward the two thin cylinders that were slowly creeping toward them. He pulled the trigger. Julie watched as he fired, his shots slowly centering in the tunnel and finding their mark. He sent three bursts into the two divers, then waited.
