She nodded to Claus, and he stepped down into a snow-filled ditch, holding the heavy cutting tool in both arms, and walked toward the thick woods. The agents filed in behind him. Anna stayed with Griffin at the back of the line, since with the leg wound the going would be slow. She knew he was grateful Brannon hadn’t decided to leave him behind.
They made their way quietly through the thick pine and maple trees, as silent as the falling snow dusting them and the trees around them in white. The morning was pure, that was the word that came to Griffin, and there was no wind. It was, he thought, like walking through a winter postcard—well, walking a bit on the slow side—and there might be people shooting at them soon.
A twig snapped beneath Anna’s hiking boot. She froze. He whispered, “It’s okay, only a field mouse could hear that.” Griffin knew he was holding Anna back, Anna the team leader, stuck staying back with him.
“Wipe the frown off your face. You’re doing great,” she whispered, her breath cold on his cheek. “Don’t worry, Captain America. We’re going to make it to the cave on time. I’m thinking they’ll come running into our arms.”
“Right into your Kevlar? Got it on tight?”
“Sure, and you?”
“I’m good to go. I figure since we didn’t bite the big one last night when they blew up our cars, we’re sprinkled with magic dust. It only looks like snow.”
She couldn’t help saying it. “I want you to promise me you won’t hot-dog. I’m the team leader here, all right?”
He gave her a blazing smile.
Claus raised his hand, and everyone stopped. He pointed across a small clearing.
About twenty yards in front of them was Winkel’s Cave. It was set into a hillside, surrounded by weeds and undergrowth, and offered a tall, narrow opening covered with an iron-barred gate. A large sign was nailed next to the opening: NO TRESPASSING. It looked deserted, no footprints in the snow, nothing. They listened, heard more nothing.
Anna went to stand by Claus, and pointed at each of them in turn, assigning them to either side of the cave entrance. She and Claus walked slowly to the barred gate along the side of the hill, the agents covering them. They would be blind for a moment if there was anyone inside the cave watching them from the darkness. She turned on her flashlight and peered through the bars. There was no one there. It was time. She whispered, “Claus, get the gate opened.” She stepped back.
The hydraulic cutter snapped the thick chain holding the gate, and it clunked to the ground, hitting a pile of rocks. It sounded like a cannon shot in the silence.
Anna checked to see everyone had turned on his headlamp. She met each agent’s eyes, nodded. She looked at her watch, raised her hand. “Let’s go. Talk in whispers, and only if you need to,” and motioned to Claus to lead them in.
Anna held up her hand again when they were all inside. There was no sound except their quiet breathing. The ceiling was high enough so they could walk upright, even Rodney Bengal, who was six foot four. They went around a corner, walked down a couple of steps, avoiding scattered rocks. Claus stopped, and everyone closed in behind him. The darkness was absolute beyond their headlamps. And quiet, Griffin thought. It was the quiet inside the cave that surprised him the most. He clearly heard Anna’s breathing.
Around them was an incredible sweep of spectacular draperies, towering stalagmites. Claus whispered, “Don’t touch them, they’re fragile, and loud if they fall.” He realized then that if any shooting started, there’d be destruction all around them. “Stay close.”
As they moved down a twisty passage with a low ceiling, Claus whispered, “We’re going to have to bend down ahead for maybe ten feet or so, then the ceiling will rise up again. It’s narrow there, too, but don’t worry, it’ll soon widen out.”
The cave walls closed in, and soon most of them were bent double. Griffin gritted his teeth and bent. To his surprise, his leg didn’t have much to say.
Claus said, “We’re going to have to crawl here, but it’s not a long passage, no more than twenty feet.”
He could do twenty feet, not a problem, Griffin thought, and crawled.
Claus stopped, and everyone stilled. “This is the passage that caved in last year,” he whispered. “You see the debris along the sides? It was completely blocked, but they’ve cleared it. We’ll get through now.”
Anna said quietly, “Wait up. I hear something.”
Winkel’s Cave, front entrance
Team Two
Dix turned his Range Rover right off onto a single-lane road gouged with deep ruts and piles of rocks and fallen branches. There was no banter among his passengers, no conversation at all. The only sound was the rhythmic click of the windshield wipers brushing away the light snowfall.
They passed a couple of old wooden houses set in hollows of land a good way back from the road, surrounded by trees, snow piled high around them and over the old cars parked in the driveways. The whole valley was pristine white and silent as the snow fell lazily from a gray sky.
Ruth pointed. “That last house belonged to Walt McGuffey. He died last year. His heir showed up, looked at the house, closed it up, and left. It’s not far now.”
The road dead-ended fifty yards later.
Dix said, “We can’t go off-road in the snow. So pile out, people. We got us a ways to walk now.”
The snow drifted so deep here it was inside their boots within fifteen steps of the road. Dix paused. “Upslope to your left is Lone Tree Hill. See the single oak tree standing on top of the rise? It’s been there since before I had feet on the ground. On the far side of the hill, about a hundred yards away, is where Highway 70 runs. There’s a dogleg on a country road exit off the highway there, so you can’t see beyond it from the highway. They’ve got to be parking their vehicles under the trees there when they bring in their supplies, drugs, food, whatever they need, right over Lone Tree Hill.
“Once we climb up over this small rise, you’ll see a steep gully at the base of the hill where the cave entrance is. We’ll have only scraggly trees and some blackberry bushes for cover, and we’ll use them as much as possible. Be aware that if they have lookouts high up on the hill, they could see us at any time. Stay quiet.”
Brannon motioned to his agents, and they formed a single line behind Dix.
Dix crawled up to the edge of the rise, waved everyone to stop. He went down on his stomach in the snow, pulled out binoculars, and passed slowly from the top of Lone Tree Hill down into the deep gully in front of them some thirty yards away, then up the other side of the gully where the entrance was, some six feet up a gentle slope, thick with snow-covered scraggly trees and bushes, just as he remembered it. He didn’t see a guard, but he did see lines of boot prints in the snow, partially covered with the fresh snowfall but still visible, forming a trail going up Lone Tree Hill and disappearing over it, and coming back down the hill and across the gully to the cave entrance. Foot traffic, recent and heavy. Were they moving drugs out, or were they out of tuna fish? He scooted back to where the agents were squatted on their haunches, bunched together.
He said, “The entrance is about six feet up the hillside. The boot tracks lead right up to it. They’ve covered the entrance with tree branches, so they have a limited view out. We’ll split up and come at the entrance from both sides of the gully.”
Ruth said, “Dix and I will go in first, because it gets hairy real fast inside the cave. Remember, push hard to the right, because you’ll be on a ledge with a nearly sheer wall of rock below you about two feet to your left. I’ve told you about this already, but let me emphasize again, this entrance is dangerous. When you go into the cave, hug the wall on the right. If we take gunfire, hit the ground and stay away from the ledge on your left.”
Mac Brannon looked around. “If I had to pick the perfect hidey hole, this’d be it. Easy to access from the highway and not more than an hour and a half from Washi
ngton.” He grinned like a bandit.
While the agents crawled down the side of the bowl, fanning out, Dix whispered to Brannon, “You need to stay back, and trust that Ruth and I will take care of things.” Dix knew to his boot heels there would be at least one guard, probably right inside.
The agents came in from the sides, silent figures clothed in black, now dusted with white. There was no movement they could see, no voices they could hear. There was no sign of anyone.
Dix stood on one side of the entrance, Ruth on the other, his MP-5 in his hand. He smiled at her, then lifted the branches out of the way.
Winkel’s Cave
Team One
Anna and her team held perfectly still in the winding passage and listened. It was a ghostly sound that echoed to them from the distance off the cave walls, an alien and frightening sound to some of them as it fell and rose and wailed in the silent air. To Anna, it sounded familiar and beautiful, and she knew immediately what it was.
“Bingo,” she whispered.
It was the distorted sound of a guitar being tuned. Soon they were listening to a classical guitar being played with incredible technique, the notes frenetic but perfectly controlled. Anna recognized it as “Rumores de la Caleta,” one of Salazar’s signature pieces.
She turned off her headlamp and tunneled the flashlight between her palms so only a narrow beam of light aimed at her feet to show her where she was stepping, and made her way to the front of the line. She motioned for everyone to cut their lights and keep back. She walked forward ten steps through inky blackness, turned a sharp corner, and nearly walked into a huge stalagmite shaped like an eight-foot spear. She realized she’d seen it because it was illuminated from behind by an artificial soft gray light. So they’d brought in a generator, or batteries. There was light ahead. She switched off her flashlight, went back and beckoned for the team to follow her. They slipped to their knees, flattened, and looked down a path that curved sharply to their right.
She motioned for them to stay still while she shimmied on her elbows to get a closer look. It was the huge vaultlike limestone chamber Ruth had told them about, illuminated by electric lanterns that threw distorted shadows on the walls. Its ceiling soared upward, with groups of stalactites fashioned in incredible shapes hanging down like chandeliers. But many of the limestone formations within reach had been wantonly torn apart and hurled carelessly across the chamber, and now lay in scattered chunks across the cave floor.
Anna started when she saw a low limestone arch that covered an indented niche in the far wall of the cavern, stacked floor to ceiling with what had to be kilo bricks of cocaine. She’d made her share of drug busts and she’d seen bricks of pure cocaine before, straight from Mexico or Colombia, cocaine that hadn’t yet been cut by local dealers. But she’d never seen so much of it in one place, except in a picture. It had to be worth millions of dollars.
On the opposite wall were stacks of bagged marijuana in even larger plastic bags, and a jumbled pile of weapons, from AK-47s to .38 Specials. Next to the guns were stacks of canned goods and dozens of bags of tortilla chips, cookies, a store’s worth of junk food. She saw a half-dozen coolers, portable heaters, Coleman stoves, and two Porta Potties. All the comforts of home.
She smelled chicken noodle soup cooking over one of the Coleman stoves. There were air mattresses and blankets stacked against a wall and strewn about on the floor.
She saw Salazar, sitting in a director’s chair, his head bent low as his long fingers moved over the guitar strings. He was dressed in jeans and a thick crew sweater, boots on his feet, looking quite comfortable. She realized he was playing softly, but the incredible acoustics in the cave amplified the music, exploded it outward. His music would cover the sounds of their movement.
On either side of Salazar sat three collapsible tables, and there were men sitting at two of them, playing cards. Two of the men were eating the chicken soup she’d smelled. She counted ten of them, plus Salazar. They all looked rather bored. Only a few of them appeared to be listening to the music Salazar was playing. She supposed they’d had to live with it since he’d moved in. During the previous night?
Bored or not, they looked like hard-asses, and they each had a SIG556 SWAT semiautomatic rifle close by, with a thirty-round magazine, reliable as sunrise, and meant to kill hard.
She looked down at her watch. Brannon and his crew should be ready at the back entrance.
Anna whispered to all of them, “Ease up and take a good look. Locate all ten of the gang members. Look for available cover. Then we’ll hold here until Brannon’s team sets up a crossfire.”
Winkel’s Cave
Team Two
There was a yell from inside the cave, and it gave Dix time to flatten against the hill, then automatic rifle fire spewed bullets out of the rear entrance. One rifle, one guard. Dix waited until he finished off his magazine, stepped forward and fired into the cave.
They heard a scream that echoed back to them and faded as the man fell over the edge and crashed down on the rocks and the river below.
There was silence again. Dix said over his shoulder, “They had to have heard that, so they might come at us. Remember, press against the right-hand wall. Let’s get this done.”
Winkel’s Cave
Team One
Anna’s team heard the burst of automatic fire coming from the rear of the cave. She hadn’t realized they were so close.
“Go!”
They fanned out through the front opening of the big chamber, went down on their stomachs and took cover.
Anna yelled out, “Federal agents! Drop your weapons or we will shoot!”
Some of the gang had already grabbed their weapons, realized they were cornered, and froze for an instant in shock and surprise before one of the men yelled, “Take them out!”
Salazar simply sank down to the floor when the gang opened fire, his guitar cradled against his chest, and crawled behind a big slab of limestone. Good, Anna thought. She didn’t want that beautiful guitar to get destroyed. All of her agents opened fire at once, and she saw one gang member who was shooting wildly toward them was hit, three bullets to his chest. Griffin had come up behind her, and when he fired his MP-5, another man went down to his knees and fell onto his face.
They saw Dix and his crew run in through the back entrance of the chamber, firing steadily, saw another gang member’s forehead bloom in red. The men scrambled behind tables, behind the Porta Potties, but they were flanked and found no cover.
The noise was deafening.
It was over in under two minutes. Ten gang members lay on the cave floor, dead or wounded. One DEA agent had a shard of flying limestone embedded in his arm.
The agents held their fire and looked around the vast chamber, making sure all ten men were accounted for. The silence was broken only by moans and curses. It had been a bloodbath.
“Don’t shoot me!” They all heard Salazar’s voice, saw him rise slowly from behind the slab of limestone, cradling his guitar against his chest. “Don’t shoot me!” he shouted again. “I am Professor Salazar, and I have been their prisoner, do you hear me? They came and took me, trussed me up and blindfolded me and brought me to this place. You have saved me from these men.” He spared a glance at the dead and moaning men scattered all around him. He looked scared out of his mind, his face dead-white except for a splatter of blood from one of the gang members near him. “Please. I will tell you everything I know.”
There was a sudden yell. “Die, then, you lying pig!” A gang member lying on his side six feet from Salazar pointed a .38 and shot him. The bullet exploded through Salazar’s guitar and punched into his chest. Dix was closest and fired twice. The man grabbed his neck, his blood fountaining out between his fingers before he slumped down, his head falling against his weapon.
Salazar lay moaning on his back, blood covering his chest, his guitar in shards next to
him on the ground, the strings loose and broken, the beautiful wood scattered like pieces of shrapnel.
Brannon shouted, “Dave, see to Salazar. Okay, guys, careful now. Disarm and cuff the wounded.”
There was no victory cheer, no high fives, only heavy breathing, relief on every face as the agents went from man to man to find any still alive.
Griffin examined each man’s face. The man he and Delsey had seen running down the alley the other night wasn’t among them.
DEA agent Dave Parmenter, also a paramedic, went to his knees beside Salazar. “It’s bad. We need an ambulance, Dix, right away.” As he spoke, Dave was already pressing his hands with all his strength against Salazar’s chest.
Griffin said, “We should call in a helicopter.” He started hobbling as fast as he could back toward the passage, but a DEA agent raced past him to the cave entrance and a cell connection.
Some of the agents got the two wounded gang members ready to walk or be carried to the front of the cave; another covered the dead with blankets.
Salazar still lay on his back, unconscious now, and next to him was a broken stalagmite streaked with blood.
It was Dix who carried Salazar out on his back. They were all standing outside the front cave entrance, Salazar still on Dix’s back, when the helicopter blades whumped in overhead and the pilot brought it down in a narrow clearing, with feet to spare between the blades and the pine tree branches. Two medics jumped out of the helicopter, eased Salazar onto a collapsible gurney, and slid him in. “We can fit the other two wounded,” the pilot called to them, and the men were loaded in. Dave climbed in with them, and the helicopter lifted off.