Retribution Road by Jon Coon (e reader comics .TXT) 📕

“Thank God. Was it Semtex, like Maria said?”

“Yes, and a lot of it. I didn’t count the boxes but there were a couple hundred or more. At fifty pounds a case, that’s a lot of bang.”

“Sitting under two million barrels of oil. God help us.”

“I think he often does,” Gabe said. He slid out of his tank and took a steaming cup of coffee from the helmsman. “What happened with the other sub?”

Galveston Bay was a flurry of activity. Choppers in the air, Navy and Coast Guard on the water, divers in inflatables, shipping diverted, yellow sonobuoys deployed, and yet, with all electronics shut down, the engine off, and the crew silent, the fiberglass sub, built for this single mission, rolled across the bottom on the four retractable tires. Hugging the shore out of the deeper water where the ships were hunting them, they made slow but steady progress toward Galveston and open water.

Heat from the batteries made the sub hot and uncomfortable. With only two bunks and very little deck room because of the batteries and sandbags for additional ballast, the crew suffered in silence. Time passed, and Sebastian nervously glanced at his watch. When the detonation time came and went, he shook his head in disappointment and disgust. He had plenty to say, but no safe place to vent his anger. Somehow, they had been betrayed. Somehow they were expected. Someone was going to feel the full fury of El Patrón’s vengeance. His only hope was that the target of the boss’s anger would be someone else.

Chapter 33

A CRANE BARGE WITH ITS own dive crew was being pushed by a tug into place over the sub as Gabe and the crew of the inflatable boat tied up to a pier in the turning basin. Senator Benson was standing in front of a dozen reporters and cameras giving a blow-by-blow description of the attack on the ranch and Gabe’s rescue of the refinery.

“Can’t you keep me out of this?” Gabe asked Tom as they tied up the boat.

“Not this time, son. Cowboy up. This one is all about you.” He put his hand on Gabe’s shoulder and marched him up the ramp into the senator’s clutches.

The interviews were way too long and full of “How do you feel?” questions, and Gabe had to bite his tongue to keep from answering honestly. How he felt was like he’d rather be bitten by a rattler than have to stand there and answer their inane questions. But for Tom’s sake and the senator’s too, his answers were the politically correct ones the reporters wanted.

Carol and the kids watched from the TV in the bunker, but the most interested viewer was Juan Mateo Caldera.

Caldera paced in front of his television hurling expletives, a whiskey glass, and then a half-full bottle of fifteen-year-old bourbon against the stucco wall. He’d been waiting expectantly for news of the explosion: the complete destruction of the refinery, the impact on the US economy, and the staggering death toll. Now the reality of millions of dollars wasted and the possibility that the attack might be traced back to him hung heavily in the air.

He swore. “How did they know?”

It didn’t take long for that line of questioning to lead in a single direction—Maria. He wasn’t sure how, but he was certain who. It had to be Maria.

He went to his desk and punched in the intercom for his assistant. “Find Maria and bring her to me. Now!”

But Maria had known the minute she gave the target destination to Tom she was signing her death warrant. She’d left the hacienda before she made the call and pushed her Mercedes convertible through the mountain curves as fast as it would take her, as far away as she could get. With a six-hour head start she felt confident she could vanish into the nearly nine-million population of Mexico City and wait for Tom to extract her. She used her secure satellite phone to call him.

Tom answered the call just as Senator Benson’s news conference was concluding.

“You need to get me out of here,” was the way she began the call. “I’m in Mexico City, and I’m going to our safe house, but you need to get me out of here today.”

“I’ll arrange it. Sit tight and I’ll call you back. Are you sure you’re safe there?”

“Not at all, so hurry up.”

“Then ditch the Mercedes and go to a hotel. Get a room with a view of the street and stay there—”

“I know how to do this, Tom. Just get me out of here as fast as you can.”

“Be safe, Maria. I lo—”

But she was already gone.

Cristóbal and Sebastian continued running the shallows and pushing slowly toward the channel leaving Galveston Bay. The air was foul, the temperature rank, and the morale worse.

The sub was equipped with a small digital periscope with a piece of driftwood hiding it. The driftwood also contained a radio antenna, but Sebastian was sure all lines of communication would be monitored in an area as confined as the bay, so they maintained radio silence. He was, however, using the periscope to keep them from hitting docks, piers, and tanker buoys, and avoiding anything that looked like a sonobuoy.

From the bunk, Eduardo moaned in pain. He’d been comatose for the past hour, and Sebastian, who had served in the Mexican Navy and had some basic first aid training, doubted the wounded man would survive the night. In fact, he doubted any of them would survive if they couldn’t find a safe place to surface and vent the sub. The air had an acid taste that meant the single carbon dioxide scrubber wasn’t doing the job for eight it had easily done for four. Sebastian scoured the shore for any cover they could hide under and safely surface.

So far there was nothing. The darkness that gave them some cover would only last another two hours and then going to the surface would be