Stranger Mine: a Base Branch novel Read Free Page B

stomach gave a sympathetic shudder.
    I kill so the good may live. That the light may equal the dark. That the world maintains her balance.
    Breath blew through his lips in a calming pull and push of his lungs as he recited part of the creed, the foundation, of the Base Branch.
    While he reminded himself he wasn’t a bloodthirsty monster, he kept an ear on the doorway. His eyes scanned the computer screen. “Mother fucker.” His entire body clenched in pure rage, obliterating his bid for serenity. The force of his blow gouged the tip of his blade into the cherry wood. “Why the hell else would they need five extra guys, Noble?” He raged at himself, since the rest of them were dead.
    When most people thought about gangs and cartels, they imagined haphazard chaos. In reality, they kept better records than the IRS. They knew where every cent came from and where it went. Sure they lost shipments and payments in transit and at the border, but they knew exactly how much, who stopped their money from getting back to them, and where they lived.
    Ryan read the flat screen monitor once more to make certain he hadn’t lost his mind. Too bad he hadn’t. The open spreadsheet had several columns, but two interested him most. Type and date. The type jumped back and forth between goods, which meant drugs, or cargo, which meant people. They had a shipment of cargo due to arrive in two days, not two weeks like their source had said. This meant the cargo had already been gathered, whether by coercion or force, and were en route.
    The hands on his watch flipped him the bird, telling him he had fifteen minutes to set the charges and leave. Not even enough time for all the C-4 in his ruck, but still enough time to exert maximum damage to the facility. His conscience wagged its finger. For the truckload of women it wouldn’t matter that the Sinaloa lost their leader and several key buildings in their network. Time and disorganization would eventually eat at the cartel, but for a while things would run as though nothing had changed. The cogs El Chapo placed long ago would continue turning until they caught up with the news, realized their leaders dropped like the stock market, and that their guaranteed payments were no longer a sure thing.
    Doomed from the outset. Ryan tried to convince himself that the women on the truck were doomed regardless of his actions, but he didn’t believe himself. Ever the loyal soldier, he shoved the unease aside, stowed his knife, and slung the ruck onto the table. He had a mission to complete and a HELO to catch.
    He set six charges in the main house, which boasted a kitchen fit for Easton Wells. During the short time he’d visited his old partner, Sloan, in London, the butler she’d married into had whipped up the meanest meals of his entire life in a kitchen this size. Too bad none of these thugs put this kitchen to proper use. They had no problem utilizing the eight bedrooms and nearly as many bathrooms. The fuckers had all the amenities you could ask for, and in the middle of the desert no less. Even a pool table and a flat screen big enough to make him weep.
    In the detached garage, he skimped, only setting one on a blacked-out Suburban and one high on the back wall.
    Time check. Six minutes.
    Ryan bolted, churning the gravel and kicking up dust as he cleared the forty yards between the garage and prison. A spotlight from the main house centered the only entrance and exit on the twenty-by-thirty shed. Had it housed tools or lawn equipment, the building itself wouldn’t have held menace, but knowing thirty or more people per delivery had been crammed into the meager confines at near constant intervals over the last five years made the tan metal structure a house of horrors.
    He could place four charges on the exterior walls and call it good. Even with no one inside, the thought of seeing the inside of the clandestine jail chilled the heated skin of his nape. Guilt would eat at him whether he went inside