Plague Ship (Oregon Files 5)

“Ye of little faith.”

Linc led Cabrillo outside and paced off the exterior wall, again counting each step. “Ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred, one hundred and one.”

“You unintentionally shortened your stride.” Juan said flatly.

“Touch the back of the building,” Linc said, knowing what the Chairman would discover.

Juan yanked his fingers away. The metal was scorching hot. He cocked an inquiring eyebrow.

“The columns we saw on the other side of this wall aren’t load-bearing. The metal is too thin-gauged.”

“Are you sure?”

“SEAL training, my friend. They teach us how a building is put together so we better understand how to blow it up. That’s a false wall in there, and behind it is a three-foot void.”

“What the hell for?”

“Let’s find out.”

They returned inside the sweltering warehouse. Linc pulled a matte-finish folding knife from his pack. He flipped open the blade and rammed it into the metal siding, cutting the thin steel as if it were paper. He wrenched down on the blade, slicing a long gash nearly to the floor. Then he cut across the tear, sawing the blade back and forth with a sound that sent Cabrillo’s teeth on edge.

“Emerson CQC-7a,” Linc said, holding the knife proudly. There wasn’t a mark on the blade. “Read about them a few years ago and didn’t believe the hype. I do now.”

He kicked at the torn metal, peeling back the siding like the pedals of a flower, until he could step into the secret room. The beam of his flashlight revealed . . .

“Nothing. It’s empty. Just like the rest of this place,” Linc said with obvious disappointment.

“Damn.”

Together, they walked the width of the building in the tight space, sweeping their lights over every surface just to be sure. The heat was horrendous, like standing beside a crucible in a steel mill.

Linc had his light pointed at the floor when something caught his attention. He stooped, brushing his fingers lightly across the painted concrete. There was a grin on his face when he looked up at the Chairman.

“What have you got?”

“This concrete is new. Not the whole floor, just this section.”

Juan noticed it, too. An area about ten feet long and the full width of the secret chamber was much smoother than the rest and showed no signs of weathering.

“What do you think?” Juan asked.

“Perfect place for a stairwell to a basement level. The size is right.”

“Let’s find out.”

Juan rummaged through his pack for the block of C-4 plastic explosives. He molded it to direct its detonative force downward and inserted the timer pencil. A quick glance at Linc to make sure he was ready and Cabrillo activated the detonator.

They dashed out of the hidden room and sprinted across the warehouse floor, their lungs sucking in the overheated air and their footfalls echoing. Linc flew through the door with Cabrillo at his heels, and they ran for another fifty yards before they slowed and turned.

The explosion was a muted crump that blew the skylight panels off the roof and filled the warehouse with a roiling fog of concrete dust. Dust coiled through the damaged roof, making the building look like it was burning.

Waiting for the cloud to settle, Juan felt a vague apprehension creeping up his spine, so he carefully scanned the jungle. The glint of sunlight off a reflective surface was all the warning he needed. He shoved Linc aside and dove to the ground as a pair of bullets from two separate rifles split the air where they had been standing a microsecond earlier. The well-hidden gunmen switched their weapons to automatic and sent a devastating wall of fire into the parking lot where they believed Cabrillo and Linc were pinned.

The two men were hopelessly outgunned, and, if they didn’t find cover, they would be dead in the next few seconds. Without needing to communicate, they sprinted back into the warehouse, their legs peppered by bits of gravel thrown up by the bullets that stitched the ground in their wake.

Juan was the first to reach the blast site. The concrete had been shattered by the plastique, leaving a large crater in the floor that reeked of the explosive. But it hadn’t been enough. The plug was too thick for the amount of plastique they’d brought. Casting his flashlight over the bottom of the crater, he couldn’t see a single spot where they had breached all the way through.

Defeat was a bitter taste on the tip of his tongue.