Fleeing the advancing and thickening cloud of smoke, they seemed entirely unmoved by her screams.
For long seconds, Maria just kneeled there, allowing herself to be overtaken by the smoke and the fear and the vermin. She felt paralyzed. In her worst nightmares, she had never considered this kind of horror. Part of her reasoned that if she turned off the light, the fear would go away-or at least lessen.
No, she thought with a shiver. This is not how I am going to die. But if she locked down, dying was the only possible outcome for her.
Maria had to settle herself down and think the problem through.
The explosion had to have come from upstream of the flow of vermin and smoke. She had a direction to travel. She told herself to ignore everything but the goal. Rats were just more of God’s creatures trying to survive just as she was. They had no interest in her.
She forced herself to ignore the smoke that gouged at her eyes and tore at her throat. As long as she felt the pain, at least she knew that she was still alive.
With the light clasped in her teeth like a metal cigar, she crawled upstream through her terror, her face wet and slimy with tears and snot and fetid water. The ladder had to be here somewhere, and with the ladder would come options.
At least she’d be able to-
Stand! In the gathering and thickening smoke, she’d nearly missed the ladder, but there it was, along with the vestibule that allowed her to get her feet under her and rise to her full height. The sudden change startled the rats, and two of them clung to her as she rose above the water, their little rat nails digging into the fabric of her shirt at her shoulders, one on each side.
She swiped at them in hacking, spasmodic movements that sent them tumbling back into the disgusting flow of their fleeing cousins. Spitting out the flashlight, she grabbed the metal rungs of the ladder and started to climb.
Maria decided to ignore Mother Hen’s instructions. When she’d issued them, she couldn’t possibly have known about these complications. If this was the result of the first two explosions, then God only knew-
The third blast sounded like it might have been directly overhead. The opaque smoke over her head flashed orange with it, and the rungs of the ladder pulsed violently enough to throw her off if she hadn’t been holding on so tightly. Below her, the water surged, but she didn’t care. Her future lay above.
She climbed the ladder blindly, and with each rung, the atmosphere became less breathable.
When her head hit hard metal, she knew that freedom had arrived. Locking the heels of her shoes against one ladder rung, and gripping the top rung tightly in her left hand, she leaned away for added leverage and used her right hand to push upward with all her strength.
The metal disk moved more easily than she’d anticipated. Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe manhole covers just weren’t that heavy. Either way, it slid to the side. When the opening was big enough for her head and shoulders to pass, she climbed the rest of the way into the night. In her mind, as she rose through the plume of smoke that gushed from the opening in the street, she looked like a ghost emerging from the mist.
With her waist clear, she bent until she was flat with the street and she dragged her legs out. Soaked to the skin and disgusted by what she’d endured, she shivered in the hot night air. Soon it would be over.
Maria crouched on the ground, looking first to the left and then to the right for signs of danger. She nearly jumped out of her skin when two men approached her from behind with weapons trained on her.
These must be her rescuers, she thought, but why were they pointing guns?
“You must be Maria Elizondo,” one of them said. “Felix Hernandez is anxious to chat with you.”
In his heart, Palma had known that a third explosion was coming. It only made sense. The first blast was designed to draw his people in. The second was designed to kill those responders-a well-calculated move as it turned out. If he had been planning these diversions-and he knew now that that’s what they were-he would have planted a third bomb to invoke utter confusion.
He hadn’t expected it to be so close, however-only fifty meters away. That his adversary could get so close without being detected was at once impressive and frightening. Palma had put a man very near that location to watch the oncoming street. He couldn’t remember the soldier’s name, but that probably didn’t matter. The fact that the charge had been planted in the first place probably meant that he was dead. And if he wasn’t killed before, then the blast had most certainly taken care of it.
Palma’s radio broke squelch. “Captain, we have Maria Elizondo,” a voice said.
He smiled. A diversion was only as effective as its ability to divert attention. Once he’d figured out what his adversary’s plan had been, Palma had told his remaining forces to hold fast in their current positions.
And now his decision had paid off. With the world around him on fire, he brought his radio to his lip. “Bring her to me,” he said.
Jonathan had read about the Sandcat-in the U.S., they were called tactical protector vehicles, or TPVs-but he’d never seen the interior of one. Built on a Ford F-550 chassis, the dashboard looked just like any other pickup truck. And if it weren’t for the five-point restraint system, the seats would have looked familiar, too.
But that’s where the similarity stopped. The doors felt heavy enough to be armored, but not quite heavy enough to be armored well. Not knowing the Mexican government’s specs for such things, the element of doubt translated to a lack of confidence that the doors or windows could stop anything heavier than a slingshot.
Thanks to night vision, Jonathan could make out the details of the interior, as well, and was surprised to see fold-down web benches instead of seats. They attached to the side bulkheads, and to Jonathan’s eye could accommodate two people each with body armor, and three each without. He assumed that the black knobs that dotted the bulkheads on all sides were gun ports that provided for a fairly effective field of fire.
The article he’d read about the TPVs had showed a picture of a gun turret with a mounted M60 machine gun. Here, in the spot where that turret would be mounted, was a rooftop emergency exit, instead.
Boxers drove with the lights off and NVGs in place. It looked as if the Sandcat was equipped with a FLIR system-forward-looking infrared-but it was tough enough driving with night vision. Why complicate it with the challenge of driving from a television screen?
Apparently, the third bomb had spread a lot of fire, evidence of a full gas tank on the vehicle where it had been set. As Boxers piloted the Sandcat toward the conflagration-there wasn’t room to turn the beast around in the narrow streets-Jonathan watched flames climb higher than the rooftops. As they turned the corner to head north before going east again, he got a glimpse of the carnage he’d created. Bodies littered the street, some of them clearly dead, and some of them writhing in pain. One of the living guys’ clothes were still smoking.
A Mexican soldier-a sergeant, judging from his uniform insignia-spotted the Sandcat and ran toward it, his arms waving for it to stop and help.
“Want me to run him down?” Boxers asked.
“No,” Jonathan said. “Not unless he gets in the way or he looks like he’s going to take a shot. Just keep going.”
Boxers did in fact gun the engine and lurch toward the sergeant, but it was a move designed to make the guy jump back, thereby saving him.
If anyone else had been behind the wheel, Jonathan would have told the driver to slow down, but Boxers was very good at this sort of thing. Jonathan figured they were doing thirty, thirty-five miles an hour when Boxers cut the right-hand turn onto the street that ran behind Maria’s house. He cut it short, too, galumphing over the curb and taking out a bicycle that someone had foolishly left in a yard.