Page 75 of Freedom Fighters
Chapter Fourteen
Duardo studied the fence through his binoculars. The chain-link ran around the perimeter of the compound and the wind made it ripple and bow. It had been built hastily and he doubted it would last out the storm. He needed it gonenow, though, not in twelve hours.
“Jasso?” he asked. There was no need to keep his voice down. The wind roared around them, bending trees and pickingup anything loose and hurling it along the ground. It plucked at their fatigues and made their eyes water. And this was the early stages of the storm.
Jasso laid on the ground next to Duardo, his rifle barrel propped on a backpack. He didn’t bother replying. He pushed his thumb up into the air and kept his gaze on the sights. It wasn’t a sniper rifle, for a long sniper rifle would have been impossibleto haul up the cliffs. Jasso didn’t seem bothered that he must use a normal rifle. He had trained with the United States Army in an exchange program. They had put the polish on one of the best natural shots in the Vistarian Army and turned him into a superior sniper.
Duardo wondered briefly how much the wind would screw with Jasso’s accuracy, then let the problem drop. Jasso was good enough tocompensate.
The guard they had spotted completing a desultory round of the back fence came back into view as he rounded the north corner. This round had taken him even longer to complete than the last two. He hugged the buildings, his shoulders rounded and his cap pulled down low over his eyes. As a guard, he was almost useless. He wasn’t expecting anyone to try anything in this weather and wasn’tlooking at anything but his boots.
Duardo bent and patted Jesso’s shoulder lightly.
The rifle bucked. Duardo didn’t hear the shot. The wind silenced it.
The guard crumpled and was still.
Valentin and Trajo broke from their cover behind the salt bushes and ran for the fence. Trajo had bolt cutters in his hand while Valentin carried the meter and wire clippers. Valentin was the closest to anelectronics expert among them.
They crossed the twenty yards of open ground in three seconds. Trajo dropped the bolt cutter to the dirt at the foot of the fence, then dipped and picked Valentin up on his shoulders, boosting him so he could reach the coils of barbed wire at the top. Valentin worked quickly, rewiring the alarm circuit to include an extra six feet of wire. He dropped to the groundand Trajo bent and picked up the bolt cutters and snipped the fence, opening it up.
The wind gave an extra hard gust. Trajo gripped the wire, keeping himself on his feet.
Duardo signaled to the rest to move out. They sprinted to the fence, where it sagged and folded up on itself. A two-foot gap had opened.
Following the directions Duardo had laid out earlier, before the wind made hearing toodifficult, Jasso moved through the gap and took up guard, his rifle at his shoulder. Rickardo took the other direction, while everyone else wriggled through the fence and shouldered their packs.
Another hard gust plucked at them and Duardo staggered sideways, thrusting out his boot to compensate. He signaled to Emile, then moved over to the side of the building. Being closer to a structure didn’treduce the power of the wind, but it would delay being spotted if someone came around the corner.
Emile roped them together, putting Adjuno and Trajo at the ends, for they were the heaviest of the team. This time only a few feet of slack ran between each of them.
They took up a stance in a loose semi-circle, facing the wall of the building. It was featureless, unbroken by a window or door, whichwas often the case with prefabricated buildings like this.
It was Emile and Valentin’s turn. They dropped to their knees close to the side of the building and dug in their backpacks. Duardo pulled the Glock out of his holster and cocked it, watching over his shoulder. Jasso and Rickardo guarded their flanks.
Emile and Valentin worked quickly. This particular prefabricated wall was made of twolayers of thinnest plywood, held together with light aluminum studs. Paint on the inside and a spray of stucco on the outside disguised the construction. There was no insulation. It was the cheapest building possible and light enough to be air-freighted to wherever it was needed.
Valentin used a stud-finder to locate the nearest studs. Once he had them located, Emile used the small crowbar hehad withdrawn from his thigh pocket to pry up the edges of the sheet of plywood where it ended over the stud. Once it was lifted far enough to get their fingers under it, they both hauled on the edges, peeling the plywood back like orange peel. The sheet may have groaned or cracked, only the wind whipped the sound away.
The wind was a banshee howling, tearing along the open area between the buildingand the nearest trees and making the loose ends of the chain-link rattle. It muffled Duardo’s hearing and diminished his vision. He might have felt cut off, except the rope tying him to the next man was strangely reassuring.
The sheet of plywood came free and was tossed to one side. The wind picked it up and tumbled it along the ground until it fell flat and lay with one corner lifting, threateningto take off again.
The interior cavity behind the plywood was empty except for wiring running through holes in the metal studs. The interior sheet was an unadorned brown wood, with green stenciled letters declaring the plywood manufacturer’s name.
Duardo stepped forward and pressed his ear against the wood and listened. The wood flexed inward as his weight settled against it. It was possiblyeven thinner than the exterior layer.
Nothing moved behind the wall that he could hear. That didn’t mean there wasn’t anyone there, although the odds were small. With a big storm approaching, anyone with intelligence would be on the move, finding shelter and gathering water and food.
He stepped back out of the way, taking three slow steps against the wind. Just in the time since they had steppedthrough the fence, the wind had grown stronger. While Duardo had scoped the inside, Valentin pulled out his wire cutters and crouched down by the side of the gap in the wall, the blades hovering over the wiring. He watched Duardo.
Duardo raised his Glock and wished for a moment he had his SIG assault rifle. Daniel had refused to return it after the White Sands thing. Still, even a Glock woulddrill through the parchment paper-thin wall. He nodded.
Valentin cut the wires.
* * * * *
Garrett found a metal ruler in a box of office supplies and flexed it, pleased. Carmen watched him move over to the door from her seat on the folded blanket. He had insisted she stay where she was and she was happy to comply. Her shoulder was a solid block of throbbing hurt. Even breathing put pressureon it. Her arm was useless.
