whereabouts.
“It’s tough to say, sir. That basement is a labyrinth of empty jail cells and twisting corridors. There’s no telling where they are or if they can even hear you. The walls are pretty thick.”
“Damn!” Payne growled. He knew if he didn’t get his men out of the house immediately, they were going to die. It was as simple as that. Out of sheer desperation, Payne used their real names over the airwaves. “Kokoska? Haney? Do you read me? Squawk if you can hear me.”
But the only noise that followed was the foreboding sound of silence.
CHAPTER 62
THE sound of Payne’s radio disrupted the quiet of the Nigerian night, but the message didn’t come from the missing MANIACs. It came from Jones, and his words were ominous.
“The Posse’s taking cover. Prepare for detonation.”
Without delay, Payne ordered his men from the area while he dropped to his knees to secure the wooden plank with his good arm. After locking it in place, he yelled to Chen, the soldier on the other side of the moat. “Run for it!”
The young MANIAC did as he was told and started across the temporary bridge. Unfortunately, as he neared the halfway point, the first explosion erupted and its shock wave knocked him forward with the force of a hurricane. He instinctively tried to regain his balance using his arms as counterweights, but the jolt was way too powerful to overcome.
As Chen started to fall, Payne was tempted to lunge for him but knew it wouldn’t do either of them any good. Even if he’d managed to latch on, there was no way he would be able to maintain his own balance. So, instead of doing something impossible, Payne used his energy to yank the board off the far side of the moat while holding on to his end the best that he could. Agony gripped its claws into his injured biceps as the plank slammed into the water below, but he didn’t have time to suffer. If he didn’t get to the bottom of the chasm immediately, Chen was going to be the only human in a battle royal, and he wasn’t about to let that happen.
Grabbing his Glock, Payne sat on the smooth plank, which rested at a forty-five-degree angle, and started his descent on the kiddie slide from hell. He’d gotten a third of the way down the slope when he spotted Chen, who was injured and struggling to get out of the shallow water by the far bank, and the twelve-foot crocodile that was chasing him.
With the confidence of a big-game hunter, Payne aimed his weapon at the croc’s head and fired. The bullet struck his target directly below its eye, causing the reptile to roar in anguish and thrash its tail like a flag in a violent storm, but that wasn’t good enough for Payne. He realized that wounded animals were often the most dangerous, so the instant his feet touched liquid he finished the job by depositing two more rounds into the angry beast.
“Holy shit!” Chen gasped from the nearby shore. “That was unbelievable.”
“Not really. I practice that move in my swimming pool all the time.”
“Seriously, that was awesome!”
But Payne shrugged off the praise. After all, Chen was there to do him a favor. “Are you hurt? Can you make it back up the plank?”
“Doubtful, sir. I messed up my knee pretty bad when I landed.”
Payne nodded as he scouted the waist-deep water for more crocs. Thankfully, the others huddled lazily on the opposite shore. “But you’ll live, won’t you? I mean, I shouldn’t just leave you here as an entrée, right?”
Chen smiled through his pain. “No, sir. I don’t think I’d like that very much.”
“Good, then let’s figure a way to get you out of—”
Before he could finish, a second explosion ripped through the house, one that lit the surrounding sky with a massive ball of flame and hurled chunks of wood and metal high into the air. To escape the falling debris, Payne shoved Chen under the lip of the concrete ledge and sheltered him with his own body while waiting for things to calm down.
JONES covered his head as another blast shook the earth but refused to take his eyes off the enemy. They had settled behind a rock formation near the escape tunnel, and he figured they’d stay there as long as there were more charges to detonate. At least he hoped that was the case, because while they sat on their asses watching the fireworks, his