CHAPTER 4

"Okay, are you ready?" Carl Roper looked at Matt. "And if you really want to steal the forklift it's okay – it doesn't belong to the DEA."

"Nah, I've got better tractors at the ranch." He walked on out of the DEA headquarters and out to his truck, with Uncle Roy and Michael Hoyt following.

"Matt?" Roy Houston stopped next to his nephew's truck.

"Sir?" Matt turned and looked at his uncle.

"Boy, you be careful, okay? These guys don't play around." He was worried about Matt – even though he knew that the man could take care of himself – he still worried.

"Yes sir." After digging around in the console of the truck, the young private investigator pulled out a baseball cap and put it on. He pointed at the logo on the front: "Oahu Manos". It was the professional baseball team that Matt had played for when he went undercover on a blackmail case the year before. "For good luck." Grinning, he hopped into his truck and left for the warehouse. Carl Roper had managed to get Matt a way into the warehouse posing as a worker from a temp service.

He arrived at the warehouse at 11:15 and walked on in to the office where he got his job assignment. Matt went on about the business of loading and unloading trucks until the lunch break was called at noon. He headed back to the bathroom when no one was looking. Locking the door behind him, he took a look at the vanity. After opening the cabinet doors, the first thing he noticed was that instead of coming straight down from the sink drain and then curving back like most bathroom sinks, there was a ninety degree bend right below the sink and the pipes went straight back to the wall. "Hmm, plumber's nightmare." Matt snickered. He could faintly see an outline in the floor. "And there's the door." All he had to do was report back to Roper and let him know that he had found it. But in order to make sure, he pulled the knife out of his pocket, opened the blade and inserted it into the front of the trap door. He then pried it up and could see light coming from below.

Just then someone pounded on the door. "You gonna stay in there all day?"

Matt flushed the toilet and unlocked the door, walking out into the warehouse. He rubbed his stomach. "Bad burrito, man." He walked on back to the forklift and picked up the drink that he had brought in with him, taking a sip and looking around. Roper had shown him a picture of their agent that hadn't reported in that day, but Matt hadn't seen the man anywhere.

"Hey, you're not getting paid to stand around – get your butt to work or get the hell out!" The foreman was watching Matt closely.

The private investigator nodded, picked up the clipboard that was on the forklift and looked to see where he was supposed to be next. There was a skid of lawnmowers that he was supposed to load onto a waiting truck so he headed to the back section of the warehouse to pick them up, all the while keeping an eye out for the missing agent. When he found the lawnmowers, Matt put the forks under the pallet and started to hoist them up but they were hung on something. He slid down off the forklift and walked around to the backside of the pallet – where he found the missing DEA agent. The man had been stabbed in the chest and was dead. Matt climbed back on board the machine and went to the foreman.

"Uh, I just found a dead guy back behind a pallet of lawnmowers, boss." The foreman looked at him like he was lying then stepped onto the forklift and told Matt to take him to it. He didn't act like he believed him, but once he was shown, he quickly became a believer. He went back to the office and called the police and Matt quickly called Roper to let him know what was going on.

"Damn it!" Roper told Moreno what had happened. "Okay, get out of there now, Houston. Come straight back to the office." He didn't hear anything from the private investigator. "Houston, you hear me?" There was still no response. Roper hung up and looked at Roy. "I think they might have found out Houston isn't who he claims to be. We've got to move on that place now. He found the entrance under the vanity." He started scrambling getting agents together for a raid.

Back at the warehouse, Matt started hearing someone talking before his vision came back. Someone had hit him over the head. He could tell that he was tied up and blindfolded. Immediately, the thought of his kidnapping came to mind. Okay Mattlock – you're not a kid anymore and you know how to take up for yourself. Play possum and maybe you can get the upper hand on them.

Someone walked over next to him and kicked him in the gut. He didn't react at all, but pretended to still be unconscious. "Llévalo en el túnel y pondrá su parte con la chica. Nos ocuparemos de él más tarde." Matt was fluent in Spanish and knew that the person had said, "Take him into the tunnel and put him with the girl. We'll deal with him later." As he was being moved, and none too gently, Matt heard a familiar voice: Detective Shoemake's. Son of a … Uncle Roy was right; the bastard is on the take!

"He's a private investigator. Don't you people make sure somebody is who they say they are before you let them in here? We've got way too much on the line for such stupidity to be going on." The crooked detective was really letting somebody have it.

As he was dragged into the bathroom and handed down into the tunnel, Matt kept his body limp and landed with a THUD! as he was unceremoniously dropped onto the floor. The two men who were taking him through the passageway were speaking in Spanish. "¿Van a pedir rescate por éste, también?" One man was asking the other if Matt was going to be ransomed, too. "Sí, eso es lo que el jefe dice." The other answered "Yes, that's what the boss said."

The two men loaded Matt onto a cart and hauled him through the tunnel. He listened as the two men talked about their boss in whispers. Obviously, they were afraid of "el jefe". When they reached the other end of the tunnel, a rope was lowered down, tied around Matt's chest and under his arms and he was then hoisted up. He continued to play possum, even when violently kicked twice more. After being put into a room, the private investigator heard a door slam and a lock being engaged. All was quiet, except for the sound of a woman quietly crying. Matt lay there listening for a minute before he said anything. "Jessica, is that you?"

There was silence for a few seconds, then he heard, "Who are you?"

"My name is Matt Houston. I'm a private investigator helping your dad try to find you." He heard her moving across the room. "Are you tied up?"

"No, not now; I was when I first got here, but they let me loose a couple of hours ago." She was working to untie his hands. Once they were free, he took off the blindfold and untied his feet.

"Are you okay?" Matt stood up and walked over to the door, looking at the lock.

"Yeah, just scared. I've tried to open the door but there just isn't any way." She was standing next to him.

"Sure there is." He smiled at her, then went down on his left knee, raised the right leg of his pants, and retrieved a set of lock picks from his boot. "Now before I do this, what do you know about this building? Were you blindfolded when you came in?"

"Yes, all I've seen is this room. I don't know anything about the rest of it, but I think we came through a tunnel from the warehouse."

Matt nodded. "Yeah, you did, that's how they got me over here. Okay, we're going to try to get back to the tunnel." He looked at the lock again and then began searching for the pick that he needed. "I'm working with the DEA right now. They've probably figured out by now that these guys clocked me over the head and I'm hoping that we've got some help on the way. But we can't depend on that. We'll have to assume that it's just us for right now, okay?" Choosing a pick from the set, Matt leaned over and started working on the door and after a few seconds had it unlocked. "Alright, that's done – now we need to get to the tunnel. I'm going to take a peek out here and if the coast is clear we're going to make a run for it, okay?"

Jessica nodded. Matt carefully eased the door open and looked around. He didn't see or hear anybody, so he took the girl by the hand and they eased out of the room and around the corner, where Matt figured the tunnel was. He knew that the two men who had brought him to the room went around a corner because his back had hit it.

They slipped around the corner and could see the opening of the tunnel situated next to a pallet that was holding four blue fifty five gallon drums. Carefully, the pair ran over to the opening and Matt slid his feet down in the hole and then found the rungs of a ladder and climbed down, followed immediately by Jessica. He took her by the hand and the pair began running back toward the US end of the tunnel. Matt had to bend slightly at the waist: the ceiling in the passageway was about six feet high and he was six feet three inches tall. After running for a couple of minutes, they reached the other end of the tunnel. Just as he was about to push open the door, it was snatched open and he was staring down the barrel of a gun – being held by Carl Roper of the DEA.