Rolling Thunder

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Brinquel couldn’t hold back his reservations any further. “I can’t believe you talked me into doing this.”

“You’ll be fine,” Miguel insisted. “Just remember to keep your window down and lay down across the seat once you hit the water. After the explosion, wait a few seconds, then you can go ahead and swim out through the window. We’ll be waiting for you ashore.”

“You make it sound so simple,” Brinquel said. “Maybe we should trade places.”

“If that’s what you want,” Miquel offered.

Brinquel thought it over, then shook his head. “No, I’ll do it,” he said warily. “But I have to tell you I don’t swim very well.”

Miguel grinned. “You said you couldn’t drive a truck, either. Maybe you’ll surprise yourself again.”

Miguel clipped the transceiver to his belt, then took the grenade launcher before closing the door and stepping back from the truck.

“Good luck, Zacharias.”

Brinquel smiled wanly. “I’ll take all the luck I can get.”

The older man sat back behind the wheel, lit his cheroot and took a few slow puffs and listened to Miguel as he spoke with his brother and the other men inside the trailer home. Then two of the men got out and climbed up onto the prefab’s roof. Brinquel knew the men were placing small plastique charges along the middle of the roof, as well as on the front and back seams that held the two halves of the trailer home together.

The work went quickly. Once it was finished, Brinquel took a final puff on his cheroot and was tossing it out the window when the sound of gunfire suddenly ripped through the night air. Alarmed, Brinquel glanced to his left.

Forty yards away, two armed commandos had materialized out of the fog, carbines blazing. There was a thump up on the roof of the trailer home, then Brinquel heard one of the men rolling over the side to the ground.

“Bastards,” Brinquel muttered. He realized the commandos had to have rappelled from the helicopter. They’d spotted the truck after all.

Outside the truck, Miguel returned fire with his pistol, as did the other gunman still on the roof. The two commandos dropped in their tracks. They weren’t alone, however. More gunfire streaked out through the fog, glancing off the side of the truck, as well as the trailer home.

“Go!” Miguel shouted to Brinquel as he holstered his Walther in favor of the grenade launcher. “Now!”

Brinquel let his foot off the brakes and ducked in the cab after a round of gunfire took out the front windshield. The truck began to pick up speed as it rolled downhill through the fog.

Miguel, meanwhile, dropped to a crouch, peering into the fog where the shots were coming from. When he spotted a faint muzzle-flash, he fired the ASG. Seconds later, a 30 mm grenade exploded loudly, drowning out the pained screams of at least two men who’d been nailed by the projectile’s shrapnel. The Basque who’d leaped from the roof stood alongside Miguel and fired in the same direction, hoping to take out anyone not killed by the grenade.

Miguel quickly readied the launcher with another round, but as the din of the explosion faded, so did the screams. Miguel waited a moment. When no further shots came his way, he set the launcher aside and rushed over to the man who’d been shot when the commandos had first attacked. The man was lying facedown where he’d fallen from the roof of the pre-fab. Miguel knew it couldn’t be his brother, but still he held his breath anxiously as he turned over the body. The dead man turned out to be one of the newer recruits. No great loss, Miguel thought to himself.