By running at the container, Mercer had saved them from being caught up in the carnage.
They turned two corners and put a hundred yards between themselves and the collision before pausing. Mercer was more winded than Lauren, his body not as recovered from the dysentery as he’d believed. She recognized that his strength was flagging and immediately took point, leading them from the high walls of the container maze.
“Look.” She pointed ahead to where the port’s perimeter fence stretched across a field of waist-high grass.
“How are we going to get over it? It’s electrified.” Even as Mercer said this, bullets sparked against the trailer providing their cover.
They dashed to a maintenance shed, swinging around its far side. Lauren unscrewed her pistol’s silencer to get better accuracy and took a two-handed stance, her body hidden, her eyes expectant. A moment later, two guards ran from their cover position. She triggered her weapon twice. One dropped and remained still while the other managed to drag himself behind a pallet of roofing shingles.
“He’ll have a radio,” she panted. “We’ve got to go now.”
“The fence?”
Lauren took off without answering. Mercer struggled to keep up. He felt like he was wading through molasses, his legs were so rubbery. A fifty-foot strip had been mowed on each side of the chain-link fence, creating a killing lane patrolled by the Panamanian guards who once did Manuel Noriega’s dirtiest work. At the edge of the strip, Mercer and Lauren both saw four camouflaged men studying their patrol sector over the sights of their M-16s. Keeping to the tall grass, they tried to find an area not so well defended, their route taking them farther from the main part of the facility. After three hundred yards it was apparent that the ex- Dignity Brigade troopers were perfectly spaced and disciplined enough to remain at their posts despite the gunfire they must have heard.
There was no way out of Hatcherly Consolidated.
“We have to go back and try to get on board the ship at the pier,” Lauren suggested in a ragged whisper.
Mercer looked back at the glow from the quay, now a half mile distant. He spotted three vehicles speeding toward them, each armed with a light machine gun on a pedestal mount. They were trapped against the fence. He turned to her, his voice grave. “We’ll never make it.”
The pronouncement collapsed Lauren’s determination. She seemed to deflate. They hadn’t been spotted yet, but the trucks drew closer and the gunners swept the grass with spotlights secured to their weapons. They had seconds.
Without warning a section of the twelve-foot fence exploded inward. The broken electric field arced and hissed before the whole stockade shorted out and fell silent. Automatic fire raked the two Dignity Brigade guards not blown flat by the detonation. The pursuing trucks skidded to a halt and the three gunners opened up. Streams of tracers cut like lasers. A flaming streak shot from the darkness beyond the fence and one of the trucks somersaulted as the shoulder-fired rocket impacted on its hood.
In the seconds before the two remaining gunners recovered, dark shapes slipped through the breach in the stockade. Their gunfire cut down a pair of Panamanians running along the ribbon of mown grass. In less than a minute, the unknown gunmen had secured a beachhead in the facility. Without knowing who their saviors were, Mercer and Lauren scurried toward the gap.
“Allons! Vite! Vite!” a voice called as the rescuers fired past the fleeing duo and pinned the Chinese behind their trucks.
The extraction was well choreographed. The mysterious commandos fell back in twos but always kept Mercer and Lauren moving toward the fence. There were at least ten of them, each moving silently except when their high-tech guns barked. They maintained cover fire until reaching a dark van parked across the deserted road that abutted the Hatcherly port. The side door was open and a driver waited in his seat. Half the commandos followed Mercer and Lauren into the vehicle while the others ran ahead to another van. The two trucks became anonymous after driving a couple of blocks.
“Thank you,” Mercer said after everyone had untangled themselves and found a seat.
“De rien,” the closest soldier said and shrugged casually.
That was when Mercer realized the troops were speaking French. What in the hell ... ? And then he understood. Certain who he would find, he crawled over the second-row bench until he was in the space between the front seats. The driver glanced over and smiled.
“They say the Foreign Legion was always a moment too late for a rescue,” the man joked. “I think maybe they did all right this time.”
Mercer just stared at the man responsible for saving his and Lauren’s life—Rene Bruneseau, the security director from Jean Derosier’s Paris auction house.
Hatcherly Consolidated Terminal Balboa, Panama
It was raining by the time Liu Yousheng’s Mercedes reached the secure warehouse, a constant pounding of water that struck the asphalt like hail. The rain looked like Christmas tinsel streaming through the coronas cast by the tall gantry lights and exploded into steam when it touched the hot bulbs. The luxury car twisted around the line of dump trucks and threaded between containers and the pile of gravel, stopping next to the armored car now resting low on its suspension because of its golden cargo. Liu didn’t wait for his chauffeur to open his door.
As a result of a life of near constant work and stress, Liu was thin, almost gaunt, with deep-set eyes ringed perpetually by bruise-dark circles. He appeared older than his thirty-eight years. Not only was his face more matured, worn almost, but he possessed an intensity that seemed to infect those around him and was found in only a few leaders who’d weathered most of life’s storms. He also radiated a decisive energy, an unflagging stamina to keep fighting long after others would have surrendered. He enjoyed a position of wealth and power and worked tirelessly for more.
Greed was not a motivation to Liu Yousheng, and he’d faced down that accusation in countless business magazines. His sole interest was success, the never-ending quest to pit his wits against the global economy and come out on top. Business was more than warfare, he’d once been quoted as saying. Wars were fought between two adversaries while business was a struggle between the individual and everything else. Unlike in war, business alliances lasted only so long as profits were made. Stagger once and the corpse of your company was picked over like carrion before jackals. The other difference he’d pointed out was that all wars eventually came to an end. By definition, commerce, the continuous trade of goods and services, would go on forever.
He stepped from the Mercedes limousine, his face unreadable as he studied the ring of men near the armored car. What remained of the soldier who’d killed himself with his own grenade was an irregular red stain on the concrete floor. Liu hungered for a cigarette but had recently quit. In the wake of nicotine withdrawal he had a nervous tick of blowing on the fingertips of his right hand like a safecracker about to attempt a difficult lock.
At five feet ten inches, he was taller than all the men with the exception of Sergeant Huai and a few of his troops. Yet his slender build and hatchet-thin face made him look smaller, frailer, like a gangly teen around adults. None, however, could match his severity, nor could they avoid the palpable tension coiled within him. As his eyes swept the apologetic faces of the guards, each physically recoiled from the deep-seeing stare, casting their glances anywhere but at their leader. Liu’s eyes finally settled on Captain Chen Tai Fat, who was in overall command of the Sword of South China Special Forces detachment and whose primary responsibility was maintaining security at the warehouse.