Skeleton Coast

  Juan tried to think of anything else he needed to say before he could no longer speak with the team, but they had gone over everything enough times so all he said was, “Good luck, Beau Geste out.”

  “Same to you. Death Valley Scotty, over and out.”

  Though he didn’t expect any more communications with his men Juan left on the radio just in case.

  To maximize the amount of time in the air and thus distance over the ground Cabrillo had to fly the parafoil so it teetered on the edge of stalling. He had to force the toggles that controlled the chute’s aerodynamic shape to his waist. It took strength and coordination, but mostly it took will to ignore the bitter cold and the pain that began to build in his shoulders and quickly spread across his back and the rippled muscles of his stomach.

  Drifting ever downward at the vagaries of the wind, Juan checked the empty desert below him. From this altitude he could see for what seemed like forever but no matter where he looked the barren wasteland remained dark. He could see no lit towns, no campfires, nothing but darkness as vast as the sea.

  When he passed through ten thousand feet his left hand slipped off the toggle. The parachute immediately twisted into a sharp turn that accelerated his descent and spun his body out from under the canopy like a pendulum. He eased off the right toggle to negate the turn and grasped the left one once again. In those frantic seconds he thought he caught sight of something far to his left, but when he looked at the spot again he could see nothing.

  Knowing it could be a mistake, he eased off the toggles again and reached across his chest for a pouch containing night vision goggles. He ripped off his safety glasses and the oxygen mask, which he no longer needed, and quickly settled the night vision rig over his eyes. Then he yanked down on the toggles to slow himself again.

  The desert went from a dull khaki color to iridescent green with the aid of the light-amplifying goggles and the object that caught his eye was revealed as a small convoy of vehicles crossing the desert. They were moving away from Cabrillo and only the lead vehicle was using its headlights. Their weak beams reflected only intermittently off the dunes while the others followed in darkness. They were also too far for him to reach, given his current altitude, but he knew they would eventually stop.

  He adjusted his glide path, arcing through the air like a bird of prey, and began following the caravan as it pulled further away. After just a couple of minutes he could no longer see the convoy and the only evidence the vehicles had existed at all were the tire tracks they had cut across the ground.

  Cabrillo remained aloft as long as he could, twenty minutes according to his watch, but eventually he had to make his landing. The ground below him was nothing but endless waves of sand, dunes that rose and fell with the regularity of ocean swells. He flared the chute just before touching down, intentionally stalling it so he landed at no more than a walking pace and managed to stay on his feet.

  Dumping air from the canopy as quickly as he could, Juan gathered up the nylon in a tight bundle so the wind wouldn’t carry it away. He unhooked the straps and thankfully dropped the parachute pack and what little gear that had remained with him. His upper body smoldered with a deep burn that would take days to ease, though already he had an idea that would add further strain to his aching muscles.

  He’d touched down just a couple of feet from the caravan’s tire tracks and taking a sip of water from his only canteen he noted they were widely spaced and that the tires that left them were heavily lugged—trucks specially fitted for the deep desert.

  That meant there were three options, two of which were good. Either they belonged to Namibia’s military or a safari company and would gladly help a man stranded in the trackless wastes. Or they were smugglers and would likely kill him as soon as he approached.

  Either way, it wasn’t in him to wait for a couple of days until Max could locate him through his subdermal transmitter and send a team to rescue him. Cabrillo would rather get himself out of this mess on his own because he’d never live down his best friend’s ridicule when he got back to the Oregon.

  Juan laid out all of the equipment that hadn’t been attached to the main chute. The pile was meager. He had his machine pistol, Glock automatic and plenty of nine millimeter ammunition, a knife, a medical kit, the canteen, and a small survival kit containing matches, water purification tables, some fishing line, and a few other odds and ends. He had his chute and its pack, which had a hard plastic plate that was molded in the shape of his back and helped alleviate some of the stress of deployment.

  All in all there wasn’t much to help him catch the caravan, but Cabrillo had an ace up his sleeve. He patted his artificial leg, thinking, Ace up my cuff, actually.

  FOR fifty minutes Eddie, Linc, Mike, and Ski glided gently across the night sky. Because he’d been a field agent for the CIA, Seng didn’t have the jump training of the former soldiers on his team but like nearly everything he did, Eddie was a natural. It was the decades of martial arts training, learned first from his grandfather in New York’s Chinatown, that allowed him to channel his focus into any new task. He didn’t have the combat experience of the other Corporation gun dogs, either. He’d spent his career working deep undercover, always without backup, pretending to be someone he wasn’t in order to build a network of informants to gather intelligence. However, only a few months after joining Juan made him head of shore operations because Eddie simply wouldn’t let himself fail in any situation.

  Using GPS he guided his team unerringly to the Devil’s Oasis, arriving above the forlorn desert prison with enough altitude so they could loiter for a few minutes to scan the featureless roof and enclosed courtyard. Infrared showed a trio of guards sitting just inside the closed gate and a vehicle with an engine that was still warm. Eddie guessed it had driven a perimeter screen at least an hour earlier. The other vehicles, both inside and outside the courtyard, were as cool as the night air.

  He tapped his throat mike in the prearranged signal for Linc to go in first.

  Franklin Lincoln eased up on his toggles to begin his approach, turning into the wind just as his feet cleared the crenellated parapets as far from the guards as possible. He touched down with the barest scuff of his boots and collapsed his canopy. He took a few seconds to shed most of his gear and weigh down the nylon so it wouldn’t flap. When he was set he tapped his own throat mike.

  Like a wraith, Eddie came out of the darkness, his canopy spread wide like a hawk’s wing. He angled in so the dirt bike hanging from its tether would land right next to Linc. The big SEAL grabbed the handle bars as soon as the balloon tires hit and steadied the bike so it wouldn’t fall over. Eddie’s landing was perfect, and by the time he had his chute off and secured it was Mike Trono’s turn to touch down. Again Linc made sure the bike didn’t clatter against the thick wooden roof and alert the guards.

  Jerry Pulaski was the last one in. As his bike settled onto the roof and he flared his chute a gust kicked up and suddenly yanked him backward. Linc had a firm hold on the bike, but the pressure of the wind against Ski’s parachute was like trying to push a billboard into a hurricane.

  “Help me,” he whispered, the strain making his voice raw as Ski frantically tried to collapse the chute.

  Linc’s boots skidded in the talcumlike grit that coated the flat roof so Pulaski now dangled over the edge of the building.

  Mike wrapped his arms around Linc’s waist, digging in his heels while Eddie braced himself at the front of the bike and pushed with every ounce of strength. They checked Ski’s inexorable slide for a moment but the forces in play were too great. In just a few seconds, Eddie was only a foot from falling off the roof.

  He made a snap decision. He whipped a knife that had hung inverted on his combat harness into the air, allowing Ski to see it and know what he was about to do, and then touched its edge to the tether. Under so much tension the cord separated with the slightest stroke.

  Once more able to control his chute Ski dumped air and spiraled down the s
ide of the prison, landing hard in the sand piled against the foundation. He lay stunned for a moment as the chute billowed and whipped across the desert floor, relieved that he hadn’t blown the mission. And then he saw the stake thrust into the ground thirty feet in front of him. On top of the wooden post was a piece of solid-state electronics, and he knew immediately it was a motion sensor pointing outward to warn the kidnappers of anyone approaching the prison. The nylon canopy was already under the sensor and a slight breeze would inflate it and trigger the alarm.

  He grabbed at the riser lines and frantically pulled the chute toward him in a hand-over-hand motion that puddled nylon behind him. But it seemed no matter how much material he gathered he still couldn’t get the section under the sensor to withdraw.

  The wind shifted, and like a child’s balloon, the parachute began to fill with air. Ski leapt to his feet and raced for the sensor, diving headlong so his body flattened the chute just before it blocked the motion sensor’s electronic eye. He slid on the slick nylon and would have crashed right into the pole if he hadn’t snapped his body over. He ended up on his back, his hip mere inches from the sensor.

  Ski could see three dark silhouettes peering over the top of the fortress and, careful so as not to trigger the alarm, he gave them a thumbs-up.

  He carefully retrieved his chute, bundling it in his arms like so much laundry. At the base of the prison he used the molded plastic insert from the pack to bury his entire rig in a shallow hole. He noticed that there were vent holes along the bottom of the foundation and recalled from the mission briefing that there were a series of tunnels under the prison designed so the prevailing wind would scour away waste from the latrines. When he finished with his chute he climbed the rope that Linc had unfurled.

  “Well, that was fun,” he whispered when he reached the top and was helped over by Eddie and Mike.

  “No harm, no foul,” Eddie replied.

  For the next two hours they watched the prison from various points along its roof. The guards were dark-skinned, which surprised them. They’d expected the environmentally motivated kidnappers to be white Europeans or Americans, but they didn’t discount the idea that the kidnappers had hired African mercenaries. Two of the men stationed at the gate circled the perimeter every hour on the hour while the third guarded the open portal until their return.

  The rigidity of their routine was a mark of unprofessionalism that boded well for the Corporation hostage rescue team. One of the men even smoked during his patrol, ruining his night vision when he lit the cigarette with a match and then giving away his location with the butt’s glowing ember.

  Eddie made the decision to wait until after the guards performed their next patrol to make their move. Linc would lower the bikes to the ground while he, Mike, and Ski scouted the interior of the prison. Their hope was to find Geoffrey Merrick and Susan Donleavy without alerting the kidnappers to their presence, but if they were discovered they were more than prepared.

  CABRILLO would have preferred to wait until daylight to pursue the caravan, but the temperature would top out at well over a hundred and twenty degrees and the sun would leach every pint of sweat his body could produce. Delay simply wasn’t an option.

  After checking in with Max Hanley using his sat phone, Juan made his preparations. He took off his boot and sock so he could retrieve the block of C-4 plastic explosive from the sole of his artificial leg. He then positioned the hard insert from his pack on the ground and stood on it, working the plate into the sand to find its center of gravity.

  Satisfied he had the right position, he removed his leg and molded some of the plastic explosive to the bottom of the foot. He flicked a lighter against the soft explosive, holding the flame until it began to burn. It was a trick Max had taught him. In Vietnam they would use C-4 from clay-more mines to cook their food.

  He set the foot into the plate exactly where he wanted it and pushed down with all his weight. Quickly the two pieces of plastic turned waxen and then molten as they fused together, the seam between the two becoming indistinguishable. He dumped sand onto the plate to extinguish the last of the flames and waited ten minutes for it to cool. Juan grabbed the leading edge of the plate and slammed the attached leg into the ground as hard as he could. His makeshift solder held. To further reinforce the weld he shot four holes through the plastic plate with his Glock and bound the prosthesis with a length of riser line he’d cut from the parachute.

  Juan gathered up his meager possessions, abandoning some of the ammunition to save on weight, and clambered to the top of the highest nearby dune. He laid the chute out on the ground and tied the riser to the shoulder straps of his combat harness, making sure that he’d adjusted the toggles so he could control the parachute. He sat and secured the leg onto his stump, checking his balance on the plate.

  The wind continued to blow at his back, gusting up to thirty miles per hour at times and never dropping below twenty. From the top of the dune he could see the tracks left by the vehicles vanish into the darkness, but there was enough ambient light that he wouldn’t need his night vision gear.

  He clumsily walked to the edge of the dune and, without a second thought, he launched himself down its face like a snowboarder racing for Olympic gold. The chute slithered after him as the plate glided over the soft sand. With his speed building, air was forced into the chute until it reached a tipping point and the canopy snapped open. The motion spun Juan around so that the parachute was in front of him, held taut by the wind. The power of the breeze overcame his gravity slide and Cabrillo was suddenly para-skiing.

  He leaned back against the chute, tweaking his center of gravity as he hurtled down the dune. When he hit the bottom he flexed his knees to absorb the shock and continued to sail across the desert, borne along by the wind. And when the breeze shifted slightly and took him off the caravan’s trail he was able to tack like a schooner by pulling on the toggles, never getting more than a half mile from the ruts.

  Created as an extreme sport in places like Vermont and Colorado, para-skiing involved a snowboard or skis and a chute much smaller than Cabrillo’s. The sand offered more resistance than snow; however, his large ram air reserve chute shot him across the desert at speeds adrenaline junkies could only dream of.

  He fell a couple of times during the first fifteen minutes as he learned to control his rhythm, but after that he rocketed along, carving a serpentine course up and down the towering dunes while behind him he left a shallow furrow like the path of a sidewinder.

  THE guards completed their circuit of the Devil’s Oasis ten minutes after midnight. The great door closed and the sound of a bar being lowered into place carried to the men huddled on the roof. They gave the guards ten more minutes to settle down before swinging into action.

  Mike and Ski used a silent ratchet to screw large bolts into the stout wood above where they were going to lower the bikes. They also installed two more to either side of one of the windows. They attached climbing pullies to these bolts and readied their ropes, letting the dun-colored lines dangle down the prison’s façade.

  Eddie slung his machine pistol over his back and fitted his night vision goggles. He eased himself off the parapet and shimmied down the knotted rope as quick as a monkey. When he was abreast the glassless window he unholstered a silenced automatic.

  The cell block was actually three stories high and took up approximately a quarter of the building. Just below Seng’s precarious position were two tiers of iron cages that ringed the room, accessible by metal catwalks and curved stairs. The steps and balcony were narrow in order to prevent a phalanx of prisoners from rushing the guards that once worked here. Each cell contained a pair of empty bunk bed frames with the matériel that once supported the mattresses. Eddie assumed it had been leather that had long succumbed to the ravages of the desert.

  The floor space was divided by long stone partitions that served as the rear walls for yet more cells. The cube-shaped cells weren’t more than ten feet square with iron bars se
curing their front walls and barricading their open tops. From his vantage at the window Eddie could see that the upper cells were empty, but didn’t have a clear view of the lower ones.

  He peered overhead and nodded for Mike and then Ski to join him while Linc lowered the dirt bikes to the ground outside the fortresslike penitentiary. There was no cell directly below the window, so Eddie flicked the tail of his rope inside so he could lower himself to the catwalk encircling the upper tier of cells. He landed on the metal deck without a sound and moments later his two teammates joined him.

  He used hand gestures to deploy Mike and Ski so they could cover him as he made a slow circuit of the cell block. He switched his goggles from night vision to infrared to detect heat from someone lying in one of the lower cages.

  There!

  In the far corner there appeared to be two people in one of the cells, lying close enough to be touching. He flipped the goggles back to NV mode. There was enough light filtering through the large window for him to discern two figures under a blanket. It was a man and a woman. He was on his back with his face turned away while she was turned away from him, her knees drawn tight to her chest.

  He caught Mike’s and Ski’s attention, holding up two fingers and pointing to where the prisoners slept. Ski stayed on the platform watching over Eddie and Mike with a laser-sighted machine pistol. They crept down the stairs, shifting their weight in infinitesimal increments to prevent the slightest sound.

  When they reached the cell they saw that the door was ajar. Trono and Seng exchanged a surprised look. They had assumed Merrick and Donleavy would be locked in, but perhaps the main door leading out of the cell block was sufficient to keep them caged.

  Eddie grabbed a small spray bottle from one of the pouches around his waist and squirted the door hinges with powdered graphite, a lubricant superior to oil in such a situation. When he pulled back on the bar the door gave a tiny chirp and Seng froze. The woman mewed softly and shifted her position but didn’t wake. Eddie moved the door another fraction of an inch but the graphite had already worked its way into the hinge and it swung silently.