Gone (Michael Bennett)

that looked like a racetrack. At the rear of the house were illuminated gardens that tiered down and down to a massive, magnificent, softly lit tiled pool. Beyond the pool was a runway with three corporate jets parked at its end.
    No wonder the US government hadn’t told the Mexicans about the raid. How could this opulent palace so boldly exist out here in the middle of nowhere without their knowledge or consent?
    The answer was, it couldn’t. Staring down at the compound, I knew the rumor that Perrine was more powerful than the Mexican president was a hundred percent true.

CHAPTER 92
     
    AS WE CAME CLOSER , I tightened my helmet’s chin strap and checked the safety on my M4. I winked at Emily, across from me, to hide my mounting anxiety. Like me and the rest of the HR team, she was loaded for bear, dressed in black combat fatigues and strapped down with guns and gear. She winked back, then crossed herself and started praying.
    As I was about to join her, an alarm suddenly went off in the forward cabin’s glowing console. It sounded like a police whistle followed by a fire alarm.
    There was a lot of excited chatter over the tactical line. Before you could say surface-to-air missile , a white streak whooshed up off the slope to left. As I watched in stark, helpless, gaping horror, the corkscrewing streak connected with the forward rotor of the Chinook, at the end of our column of aircraft. There was an air-cracking boom and a bright flash of light, and the Chinook was spinning and dropping, spiraling downward like a spinning leaf in October.
    “Chalk three is hit!” came a voice over the mike. “Hard landing! Hard landing!”
    Another sizzling corkscrewing missile flew up, just missing the Black Hawk across from us. Down through its wafting contrail, I could see men on the roof of a small cinder-block house perched on the edge of a ridge.
    “Roof left! Roof left!” someone shouted over the line as one of the Cobra attack helicopters broke rank and dove toward the house.
    I almost wet myself when its electric machine gun went off. It sounded like something caught in a shredder, or a massive industrial accident at a power plant. With an extended, sizzling, spine-tingling zap, a blinding white rope of bullets and tracers the size of Coke bottles beamed down out of the attack chopper, into the structure.
    As the helicopter continued to rain lead, the second Cobra swiveled up and around on its axis like a record, and not one but two rockets sledded off from beneath its underbelly and downward in an exhilarating shower of sparks. A split second later, the guardhouse, or whatever it had been, disappeared in a blinding, three-story pa-pow ing blossom of white light. The concussion of the explosion that came a sliver of a second later whapped warm against my skin where I sat on the wobbling deck of the Black Hawk.
    “We have small-arms fire!” someone said redundantly as from all around the well-lit house and compound, small flashes of light began to sprout. I clapped my hands over my ears when the gunner in the door of our chopper suddenly opened up with his .50 caliber. The sound of its empty brass shells pinging off the metal wall beside my head sounded like a hyped-up jazz drummer hitting the high hats.
    I looked forward, behind the mansion, when I heard a tremendous thumping.
    “It’s the AC-One-Thirty,” one of the FBI commandos said as the runway was chewed up by massive explosions.
    “Hoo-rah!” someone yelled as one of the corporate jets was blown to smithereens.
    It was quite satisfying for me to witness the awesome might of our military finally brought to bear and unleashed on Perrine and his inhumanly abhorrent organization. For a moment, listening to our guns, I forgot about everything. How mad I was. How afraid I was for my family.
    Then the joy was gone as quickly as it had come as the Black Hawk descended toward the yard behind the compound’s wall. I closed my eyes and prayed to God that we weren’t too late.

CHAPTER 93
     
    THE BLACK HAWK STAYED in a hover as the HRT guys started fast-roping down into a dusty yard alongside the compound’s largest barn. The original plan was to land here with the marines in the Chinook, but obviously we were on to plan B.
    With the advance team on the ground, the Black Hawk lowered and landed. I’d just noticed that barn’s roof was on fire when someone came out of it. It was an old man with a blanket over his shoulders.
    “Look out!” I yelled as