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“So much for our ambush,” Max said.
Juan sat up and shifted his sights to the tunnel entrance. “Where’s Locsin?”
“He’s coming back on the camera,” Max said. “He must have been just inside the tunnel when he saw his two goons killed.”
Locsin’s men started pouring out of the hole, but he was waving most of them back into the excavated chamber after they gathered their weapons. He kept two men behind to cover him while he took a screwdriver and opened the hood of the Bobcat. The Crawler’s view was blocked, so Juan couldn’t see what he was doing.
“Where are his men going?” Max asked, incredulous. “I checked the map, and that tunnel doesn’t have an outlet. Are they going to commit suicide?”
“Or they plan to make a last stand in there instead of out here,” Juan said. “You didn’t see any masks on them, did you?”
“Nope. And, luckily, I brought just the thing to get them to come to us.” Max removed one of the canisters of tear gas he’d brought with him. “A couple of these through that hole, and they’ll be shoving each other aside to get out.”
Locsin backed away from the Bobcat carrying the loader’s twelve-volt battery. He motioned for his men to come back and follow through the hole they’d opened.
“What’s he doing with that?” Max asked.
“Let’s find out,” Juan said. He stood and waved for the rest of the team to move forward toward the tunnel.
When they were all together, he said, “I don’t care about anyone else, but we want Locsin alive.” He looked at Raven. “It’s the only way we’re going to find Beth.”
She nodded at him, and they all went in.
47
Locsin had his men pull down the bricks of plastic explosive from the ceiling. He thought he had enough for what he was planning, assuming the RDX chemical still maintained its potency.
He knew Juan Cabrillo was coming. It had to be him out there who had killed his men. If it had been the Philippine National Police, he would have heard some idiot officer on a megaphone telling him to give up and come out.
Cabrillo was much more dangerous. He would know that Locsin would never willingly surrender and would come in after them.
And Locsin was sick of him. He wanted to finish Cabrillo once and for all, but that wasn’t possible here. Besides, killing him wasn’t enough. Locsin needed to destroy that ship of his as well.
He turned to his translator, who had gathered up all the files and papers, so many that another man had to help carry them.
“Where are the pages you showed me?”
The translator looked at him with a perplexed expression, then dug around in his armload and removed five sheets of paper. Locsin took them and tossed them on the ground. He even stepped on several of them, leaving dusty footprints. Now the scattered pages looked like they’d been dropped accidentally.
“But the Americans will find them,” the translator said.
Locsin grinned. “Exactly.”
When his men had the bricks of RDX in hand, Locsin took them and went to the end of the chamber. He pressed the plastique against the wall, shaping the charge so it would blast outward. Then he stabbed the wire ends of the detonation cord into the mass and backed up, unspooling it as he went.
The soldier at the hole said, “We’ve got movement outside.”
“Fire some warning shots,” Locsin said.
The soldier unleashed a volley through the hole.
At the same time, Locsin held the ends of the wire over the battery he’d taken from the Bobcat. He had his men flip the desk and lab tables over to use as shields.
“Get down,” he said and ducked as he touched the ends of the wire to the battery nodes.
• • •
JUAN WAS PEERING around the corner, the sight of his assault rifle to his eye, when a massive explosion shook the tunnel. Everyone on his team instinctively flattened themselves to the floor and covered their heads.
