Free Targets of Revenge by Jeffrey Stephens Page B

shotgun into enemy territory.
    “We’ll be fine. Anything goes wrong on your end,” Raabe told him, “you can say we held you at gunpoint.”
    “How about you just bring Sandor and this seaplane back?”
    “That’s the plan,” Bergenn assured him.
    At first light they had taken off from the calm waters near Oranjestad and were now preparing to make their way to the shoreline near Barranquitas, where they would hopefully be able to retrieve their teammate.
    The Lago de Maracaibo is populated by numerous oil rigs, so the area is accustomed to seaplane and speedboat traffic not typical for other large bodies of water devoid of commercial drilling activities. Men and equipment are constantly being shuttled back and forth from the large platforms, which made the flight less obtrusive and Sandor’s exfiltration plan less dangerous.
    Once Bergenn and Raabe entered the airspace over the Lago deMaracaibo they would circle once or even twice. After that they would set down somewhere near the beach where Sandor was heading. They knew that repeated passes along the beach at low altitude would attract unwanted attention. They also knew they could not just sit offshore for too long without someone asking questions.
    What they did not know was that things had already gone terribly wrong.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SOUTH OF BARRANQUITAS
    A CCORDING TO S ANDOR’S rough calculations he was less than ten minutes from the shoreline south of Barranquitas. He also computed that he was more than twenty miles south of his recovery point on the beach.
    Sandor drove on for another few minutes, then pulled to a stop and switched on the phone to activate the GPS. There was no longer any risk of the electronic signal revealing his whereabouts—Adina’s men did not need a satellite fix to make his position, they already knew where he was. This was their road and there were no intersections.
    Sandor confirmed that he was now less than a mile from shore. By activating the device it would also give Raabe and Bergenn the first signal that his plans had changed.
    He turned off the GPS, pulled out his binoculars, and had a look ahead. The trail seemed fairly straight, but the vegetation was too dense to permit any view beyond a couple of hundred yards. He climbed out of the jeep, gathered together his pack with all of its contents, then stored everything in place.
    He used his knife to tear a section of cloth from the jeep’s ragtop. He opened the gas cap and forced the cloth down inside the tank with the help of a long branch he grabbed off the road. Using some vine and a couple of other broken branches, he rigged the steering wheel and the gas pedal. He tried not to put too much pressure on the accelerator, wanting the jeep to take a slow ride along the bumpy grounduntil the gasoline ignited. He did his best to set the small vehicle on a straight course, lashing the vines tightly through the spokes of the steering wheel and then securing them to the interior door handles, both left and right, for maximum leverage. Then he used his lighter to set the piece of cloth hanging from the gas tank on fire, ran to the driver’s seat, and popped the jeep into gear.
    He hoped the vehicle would get far enough and the explosion would be loud enough that it would get the attention of whoever was laying in wait for him at the end of the trail.
    As the jeep pulled away he snatched up his weapons from the ground, then hurried off to his left into the thick of the jungle.
    ————
    “I’ve got something,” Bergenn said.
    “What’ve you got?” Raabe asked.
    “It looks like he powered up his GPS for less than thirty seconds, but I’ve got a reading.”
    “Thirty seconds? You’re sure it wasn’t some crossed signal?”
    “No, it was him, it tied into his code.”
    “So where is he?”
    Bergenn punched the numbers into his tracking device. “Looks like he’s just to the west of the shoreline, south of Barranquitas.”
    “Ahead of schedule and off vector.