Piranha (Oregon Files 10)

Linc and Eddie leaped from their hiding spot and rushed at the men.

“Drop your weapons!” they both shouted in the crude Creole that MacD had taught them over the radio.

Bazin’s mercenaries were either brave or too stupid to realize when they were caught with their pants down. They crouched against the Ratel and raised their weapons to fire.

That was all the warning they’d get. Eddie expertly took down three of them while Linc got the fourth with his sidearm pistol. But the driver inside the Ratel didn’t know when he’d been beaten. He backed it up and swiveled the main cannon around to fire at them.

Linc shook his head at the idiocy. He holstered the pistol, shouldered the RPG, and pulled the trigger before the cannon was in position. The antitank round blew the armored vehicle apart.

He dropped the empty tube and kicked the gravel in frustration.

“There goes our Return of the Jedi plan,” Linc said.

“It was a good idea,” Eddie said. He called to Linda. “What’s the damage to the PIG?”

“Nothing at all,” she replied. “With Eric’s snappy driving, they completely missed. The smokescreen worked just like you thought it would.”

The PIG powered its way up the embankment, the smoke now dissipating.

The two of them walked over and checked the mercenaries. All of them were corpses.

Eddie looked at the largest of the bodies and then at Linc as if he were comparing them.

“What’s going on in that devious mind of yours?” Linc asked.

“You could pass for a Haitian from a distance.”

“I suppose so, but we don’t have the Ratel anymore.”

“We still have the PIG. What if the mercenaries captured it and drove it back? As long as they thought you were one of the them, we could get within visual range of the last Ratel. The PIG does have one rocket left.”

Linc thought about the plan and nodded. “I like the idea, but we need something to really sell it.”

“Like what?”

Linc picked up one of the mercenaries’s walkie-talkies and started pulling off the uniform of the least bloody soldier. “We’re going to require MacD’s language skills one more time.”

—

Bazin tried to raise the third Ratel on the radio and got only static in reply. He peered from his concealed window within the main building, but all he could make out was a plume of smoke over the hill.

If the Ratel had been taken out, it still didn’t change anything. For Cabrillo and his men to attack, they would be endangering the lives of sixty hostages. And a straight-on assault would be suicidal, with the Ratel he had left and the number of men still deployed outside.

A vehicle came around the hill, but it wasn’t the missing Ratel. It was the truck that the Corporation called the PIG. He was about to order the remaining Ratel to open fire when he saw one of his men standing in the PIG’s open roof, waving his gun and shouting with glee. He could see two more men inside the cab, driving their prize back to the cement plant.

The man in the roof had a walkie-talkie to his mouth. Bazin listened on his, but the voice was almost unintelligible with the wind and engine noise. He was shouting in Creole that they had captured the American’s truck and not to shoot.

“Stand down,” he radioed to the rest of the men.

Kensit had given him the intel on Linda Ross and her men, but he had been keeping an eye on them only in short spurts, when he could divert his attention away from the drone mission. Bazin didn’t object since he had the situation under control and the Haitian National Police on the way as backup.

As the captured PIG approached, Bazin confidently called Kensit back with the intention of telling him his services wouldn’t be needed anymore and to concentrate on destroying Air Force Two.

“What the hell is going on down there?” Kensit shouted when he answered, shocking Bazin, who’d never heard Kensit so out of control.

“What are you talking about? We’ve captured the Corporation’s vehicle. It’s over.”

“It’s not over! I can’t see anything. Something happened to Sentinel. My screen went blank and I can’t contact any of the techs. I’m trying to reconnect now. You get your butt in there and find out what’s going on. And don’t waste any more time. Set the self-destruct. I’ll need an hour to complete the mission. Go!”