opened up, they did so with no warning at all. One minute Rapp was floating along with an overheated Rottweiler swimming about ten yards in front of him and the next he was fighting to breathe as water came at him from every direction.
The shouts of the soldiers were swallowed by the downpour, as were their outlines. Shots rang out but it was impossible to know if they thought they’d spotted a target or were just using the sound to locate each other. The Rottweiler, again proving its intelligence, made a beeline for the nearest land bank as the river began to swell.
Rapp stayed put, struggling against a current that kept pushing him under. He was finally forced to unhook his feet from the trunk and let them dangle in the deepening water. His head was still among the tree’s leafy branches, but now high enough to get a few breaths between waves crashing over him.
From the impact of the stationary objects he was colliding with, he could tell that the speed of the water had picked up significantly. He held on, knowing that he was leaving his pursuers well behind. Soon, though, it became too dangerous. The water was filling with larger, more jagged debris, and the current was becoming impossible to fight. Ahead, the channel narrowed enough to give him a shot at reaching the east bank.
Despite his having a gift for swimming that had helped him win the Iron Man in his youth, the fifteen-foot trip turned out to be harder than it looked. He took a few good hits from deadfall, one particularly large tree sending him to the bottom and dragging him across the rocks for almost a minute.
When he finally came up, he found himself only a few yards from the edge of the jungle. A few hard strokes put him in range of a partially submerged tree and he managed to use it to pull himself to safety. After crawling onto the muddy bank, he lay there vomiting what felt like a tanker truck full of muddy water. Finally, he pulled himself beneath a bush, using the leaves to protect himself from the pounding rain while he got his breathing under control.
Images of carving Carlos Esparza’s heart out with a dull stick flashed across his mind, but he reminded himself again that wasn’t the mission. No, that’d be too easy.
• • •
Rapp had been out of the water for just over two hours when the dogs became audible again. Someone on Esparza’s team was a pretty functional tracker and was using his canine teammates to maximum effect.
A temporary hole in the cloud cover had tipped the advantage back to the chasers, leaving Rapp with very little time. The handlers would soon get close enough to release the dogs again and then he’d have five hundred pounds of muscle, teeth, and claws bearing down on him like scent-seeking missiles.
He was currently lying in a large field of surprisingly healthy-looking coca plants. Typically, the Mexicans imported their coke from farther south, but Esparza seemed to be trying to integrate his supply chain. The plants were harder to spot from the air than marijuana, but it was doubtful that anyone was even trying. With the relationship between the United States and Mexico being what it was, the government would probably be happy to overlook this fledgling cash crop.
The compound in front of him contained four modest buildings—most notably a two-story structure that seemed to be the Mexican answer to a barn. It would have come off as a typical subsistence farm if it weren’t for a few details to the contrary. The coca plants were a pretty clear tip-off, obviously. As were the well-camouflaged fifty-five-gallon drums that likely contained the chemicals necessary to refine Esparza’s experimental crop. Most interesting to Rapp, though, were the two guards.
Both were armed with AKs, but older and more poorly maintained than the ones carried by the men pursuing him. Neither had sidearms, opting instead for knives sheathed on their hips. One was sitting on a log with his back to Rapp at a distance of about fifteen feet. The other was twenty feet farther, leaning against the barn and facing his companion. Every once in a while they spoke to each other, but neither seemed particularly interested in the conversation. Other than that, there was no sign of personnel or activity.
The sound of the dogs was getting closer. When they were released, it would be a matter of minutes before