Page 4 of Clive Cussler's Quantum Tempest
Or was the anonymous tip just a bust?
There was no way of knowing. Cabrillo could only assume danger lurked on the far side of the doorway and his job now was to get inside and find out what he could. He slipped inside in a low crouch with his head on a swivel, gun up, and sped along in short, cat-quiet steps across the rough-hewn boards smoothed by years of bare, calloused feet.
The hut was enormous by local standards, a good forty feet long from end to end and twenty feet across. The size made perfect sense, since it was a communal hut serving an entire tribe. The bulk of the structure was open-spaced with axe-cut poles serving as supports and trusses for a high-pitched roof. A few worn blankets served as room dividers on the far side of the hut.
And behind one of those blankets somebody coughed.
Cabrillo checked the rest of the cavernous space with one quick glance, then raced forward in stealthy silence. He gripped the pistol in one hand and gently pulled back the blanket with the other.
A white woman lay on a cot just a foot from the blanket door. Her eyes fluttered open at just that moment, her brain unable to process the unfolding nightmare of Cabrillo’s neoprene form looming over her, pistol in hand. She opened her mouth to scream, but Cabrillo fell on her, clasping his free hand across her mouth.
“Cállate,” Cabrillo growled, hoping to terrorize her into silence long enough to zip-tie and gag her.
But she was having none of it. Her terrified eyes suddenly narrowed with feral ferocity and she kicked at his groin as she reached up to claw his eyes out. Cabrillo had no choice but to drop his weapon on the cot and grip her neck with his empty gun hand while keeping her mouth shut. Her muffled panic rose as his grip crushed against her carotid artery, her eyes widening with terror as she embraced her last dying moment.
Only, it wasn’t.
Cabrillo had simply cut off the blood flow to her brain, depriving it of oxygen until she blacked out and slumped harmlessly into the cot.Cabrillo didn’t want to smack her skull with his pistol. Hitting her hard enough to do that was as likely to kill her as stun her and she wasn’t on his target list.
Cabrillo snatched up his pistol and listened for any other movements. He thought he heard a floorboard creak and he headed in that direction, both hands on the pistol grip, the long, suppressed barrel leading the way.
Suddenly, an old electric generator shuddered to life on the far wall. Cabrillo spun on his heel toward the rattling noise of the ancient machine powered by a rusted propane tank standing next to it.
It took Cabrillo a heartbeat to take it all in, but that was just enough time to distract him from the weight of Suárez crashing into him from out of the dark.
?
Suárez hit Cabrillo hard in a flying tackle that would have made Dick Butkus proud.
Cabrillo was tossed off his feet, his back hitting the floorboards with a sickening thud. The pack simultaneously softened the blow, but distended his spine like a plumber’s pipe bender. Despite the shock of the bone-rattling hit, Cabrillo never lost his grip on the pistol.
Suárez, the larger man, grabbed the suppressor with one hand while crushing Cabrillo’s grip on the pistol with the other, trapping Cabrillo’s finger inside the trigger guard as he arced the business end of the barrel toward the bottom of Cabrillo’s chin.
Cabrillo countered by bridging his powerful legs upward and twisting his torso, using the leverage of the pack to roll both men over. Cabrillo tried to buck Suárez off in the maneuver, but the Colombian killer was straddling him between his vice-gripped thighs and continued pressing his attack.
As the barrel inched toward Cabrillo’s face, the terrible geometry of the curved trigger against Juan’s trapped index finger finally collided and the pistol barked. The single shot blistered Juan’s cheek before plowing into the propane tank with a metallicspang. But ratherthan ricocheting off the tank, the rusting metal gave way to the hot piece of lead, instantly igniting the propane inside. The resulting explosion knocked Suárez off Juan and set the thatched wall and roof near the tank ablaze.
Suárez’s violent departure also tore the gun out of Cabrillo’s grip. The two men quickly recovered and both scrambled for the pistol some ten feet away.
Surprisingly nimble for his size, Suárez was on top of the weapon before Cabrillo could reach it. But as the Colombian rolled over on his back to put a round through the American’s skull, Cabrillo pulled another weapon from his utility—a direct-contact Taser—and jabbed it into Suárez’s crotch.
The Colombian screamed and folded in half like a spring-loaded bear trap, his entire body rigid and contorted in pain. His gnarled hand mashed the gun and a round discharged harmlessly away from Cabrillo, who emptied the last of the electric charge into the killer’s body.
Amped up on a new adrenaline load, Cabrillo hadn’t noticed the hut had entirely filled with choking smoke and half the walls and roof were now engulfed in flames. The searing heat burned the skin on his face. He suddenly remembered the woman behind the blanket in her cot. He turned to fetch her just as a giant flaming beam smashed into the makeshift bedroom, dragging a roaring heap of burning thatch with it.
He started forward, but the heat was unbearable and there was no chance she survived the crashing timber—and no time to mourn her dismal fate. The hut was going up fast. Cabrillo felt like he was standing inside a tiki torch, but he had a job to do.
He grabbed the paralyzed Colombian and dragged him across the long floor to the entrance, as far away from the flames as he could get. He pulled on his hands-free radio headset as he unzipped his pack.
“Phaeton, Phaeton. Do you read me? This is Torpedo.”
“We read you five by five, Torpedo.” Overholt’s voice rang clear on the headset. “What’s your status?”
“Ready when you are. What’s your ETA?”
Overholt’s garbled answer was swallowed in the roar of burning roof timbers crashing onto the weakening floor as the back wall tore away in a heap of embers.
Cabrillo suddenly saw a fleet of speeding headlights slashing through the dark, the beams weaving and jerking on the muddy road in his direction.
