Headed for Trouble - By Suzanne Brockmann Page 0,39

was buried.

At that point, five of the NR members headed toward the tank, going past it to hide, waiting for the Troubleshooters to arrive and essentially attach a homing beacon to the damn thing.

Three men had hidden near where the two paths met, waiting until the red cell had gone past. They had gone back to set up that M60 ambush on the very route Alyssa’s team would be using to exit the tunnels.

Two others had set up a similar ambush along the tunnel they themselves had used to get in.

Alyssa had hoped that they could escape the way the NR had entered, since their own path was now blocked, and had given the order to fall back along that route. They’d all followed Lindsey, but they hadn’t gone far before she’d signaled them to stop, and reported this second ambush site.

In short, they were trapped.

Jules knew that trapped wasn’t one of Alyssa’s happy-fun-time words. He also knew that she was worried about Sam. They’d been down here in these tunnels too long without radio or cell phone contact with the support team on the surface. Sam was, at times, a Neanderthal, but he could be patient, and he definitely trusted Alyssa to keep herself and her team safe. Still, Jules knew the man, and it wouldn’t be too much longer before Sam called off the drill and came down here, in search of them.

At which point he would run right into that first ambush. It was true, the M60s were pointing in the wrong direction, but they were easy enough to turn around. And Sam and every member of his rescue team could well be killed.

Knowing that there was a time limitation and no real way to communicate with Sam and the support team, Alyssa had decided to give the New Reich what they wanted.

Sort of.

She’d sent Sophia, Tess, and Lindsey to try to find a third and alternative exit and to see if they could find a jam-free place to use their radio or cell phones. And then she’d placed the signal box in a shallow room off the main tunnel, a full half-klick from both the tank and the barracks. At which point, she’d programmed in the code and turned the beacon on.

Come to Mommy and Daddy, you darling little Neo-Nazis.…

The plan was to let the NR “find” the buried “oil tank”—or at least the signal box that supposedly sat atop it. In theory, they would set their bomb, turn on its timer, and they would leave.

This was, after all, not a group that was big into suicide attacks. Jules was pretty certain that there would be a timer. And it would be set with sufficient time to allow them to make a getaway.

They’d scamper out of the tunnels, taking their machine-gun-wielding buddies with them.

At which point Alyssa and Jules would creep out from their hidey-hole in the corner of the room, take a gander at the bomb, see if there was a quick, easy, and certain way to defuse it, and then either do so or run like hell.

If it blew, it could take out part of the drainage system, causing a cave-in. But without the oil from the tank to fuel it, it wouldn’t do much more than that.

Jules hoped.

“Here they come,” Alyssa breathed again. And indeed, there they came.

CHAPTER FIVE

The base commander finally began the evacuation of the barracks.

About fucking time.

But no one with the authority to give an official go-ahead seemed able to grasp the meaning of Sam’s report that there were three unknown, unidentified men, armed with three M60 machine guns, positioned about point-five klicks inside the riverside entrance that Alyssa and her team had used to access the tunnels.

The unknowns had had their backs to the Troubleshooters support team that went down there for a quick sneak-and-peek. They’d had no idea the Troubleshooters were there, and it wouldn’t take much for them to continue to not know they were there—right up until the moment their weapons fell from their lifeless fingers.

The key word being lifeless.

But Captain O’Reilly, the OIC for the mock attack, didn’t want the Troubleshooters to use deadly force. He’d actually suggested that they go down there and shout a warning, maybe start a dialogue.

Deck was on the phone with the captain right now, suggesting that the word of the day be covert. Shouting a warning meant that those three unidentified men with very big weapons would then know that the good guys were there. If shots were fired—and