Clear and Present Danger

  “The captain’s gonna be pissed if he sees them,” Vega observed quietly.

  “They’re good luck,” Chavez replied as he put them back in his pocket. “’Sides, you never know....” He checked the rest of his gear. Everything was as it should be. He was ready for the day’s work. Next the maps came out.

  “That where we’re goin’?”

  “RENO.” Chavez pointed to the spot on the tactical map. “Just under five klicks.” He examined the map carefully, making several mental notes and again committing the details to memory. The map had no marks on it, of course. If lost or captured, such marks would tell the wrong people things that they ought not to know.

  “Here.” Captain Ramirez joined the two, handing over a satellite photograph.

  “These maps must be new, sir.”

  “They are. DMA”—he referred to the Defense Mapping Agency—“didn’t have good maps of this area until recently. They were drawn up from the satellite photos. See any problems?”

  “No, sir.” Chavez looked up with a smile. “Nice and flat, lots of thinned-out trees—looks easier than last night, Cap’n.”

  “When we get in close, I want you to approach from this angle here into the objective rally point.” Ramirez traced his hand across the photo. “I’ll make the final approach with you for the ‘leader’s recon.’ ”

  “You the boss, sir,” Ding agreed.

  “Plan the first break point right here, Checkpoint SPIKE.”

  “Right.”

  Ramirez stuck his head up, surveying the area. “Remember the briefing. These guys may have very good security, and be especially careful for booby traps. You see something, let me know immediately—as long as it’s safe to do so. When in doubt, remember the mission is covert.”

  “I’ll get us there, sir.”

  “Sorry, Ding,” Ramirez apologized. “I must sound like a nervous woman.”

  “You ain’t got the legs for it, sir,” Chavez pointed out with a grin.

  “You up to carrying that SAW another night, Oso?” Ramirez asked Vega.

  “I carried heavier toothpicks, jefe. ”

  Ramirez laughed and made off to check the next pair.

  “I’ve known worse captains than that one,” Vega observed when he was gone.

  “Hard worker,” Chavez allowed. Sergeant Olivero appeared next.

  “How’s your water?” the medic asked.

  “Both a quart low,” Vega replied.

  “Both of you, drink a quart down right now.”

  “Come on, doc,” Chavez protested.

  “No dickin’ around, people. Somebody gets heatstroke and it’s my ass. If you ain’t gotta piss, you ain’t been drinking enough. Pretend it’s a Corona,” he suggested as both men took out their canteens. “Remember that: if you don’t have to piss, you need a drink. Damn it, Ding, you oughta know that, you spent time at Hunter-Liggett. This fucking climate’ll dry your ass out in a heartbeat, and I ain’t carrying your ass, dried-out or not.”

  Olivero was right, of course. Chavez emptied a canteen in three long pulls. Vega followed the medic off to the nearby stream to replenish the empty containers. He reappeared several minutes later. Oso surprised his friend with a couple more envelopes of Gatorade concentrate. The medic, he explained, had his own supply. About the only bad news was that the water-purification pills did not mix well with the Gatorade, but that was for electrolytes, not taste.

  Ramirez assembled his men just at sundown, repeating the night’s brief already delivered to the individual guard posts. Repetition was the foundation of clarity—some manual said that, Chavez knew. The squad members were all dirty. The generally heavy beards and scraggly hair would enhance their camouflage, almost obviating the need for paint. There were a few aches and pains, mainly from the rough sleeping conditions, but everyone was fit and rested. And eager. Garbage was assembled and buried. Olivero sprinkled CS tear-gas powder before the dirt was smoothed over the hole. That would keep animals from scratching it up for a few weeks. Captain Ramirez made a final check of the area while there was still light. By the time Chavez moved out at point, there was no evidence that they’d ever been here.

  Ding crossed the clearing as quickly as safety allowed, scanning ahead with his low-light goggles. Again using compass and landmarks, he was able to travel rapidly, now that he had a feel for the country. As before, there was no sound other than what nature provided, and better still, the forest wasn’t quite as dense. He made better than a kilometer per hour. Best of all, he had yet to spot a snake.

  He made Checkpoint SPIKE in under two hours, feeling relaxed and confident. The walk through the jungle had merely served to loosen up his muscles. He stopped twice along the way for water breaks, more often to listen, and still heard nothing unexpected. Every thirty minutes he checked in by radio with Captain Ramirez.

  After Chavez picked a place to belly-up, it took ten minutes for the rest of the squad to catch up. Ten more minutes and he was off again for the final checkpoint, MALLET. Chavez found himself hoping that they’d run out of tool names.

  He was more careful now. He had the map committed to memory, and the closer he got to the objective, the more likely that he’d encounter somebody. He slowed down almost without thinking about it. Half a klick out of SPIKE he heard something moving off to his right. Something quiet, but a land creature. He waved the squad to halt while he checked it out—Vega did the same, aiming his SAW in that direction—but whatever it was, it moved off heading southwest. Some animal or other, he was sure, though Ding waited another few minutes before he felt totally safe moving off. He checked the wind, which was blowing from his left rear, and wondered if his pungent odor was detectable to men—probably not, he decided. The rank smells of the jungle were pretty overpowering. On the other hand, maybe washing once in a while was worth the effort....

  He arrived at MALLET without further incident. He was now one kilometer off the objective. Again the squad assembled. There was a creek less than fifty meters from the checkpoint, and water was again replenished. The next stop was the objective rally point, picked for its easy identifiability. Ding got them there in just under an hour. The squad formed yet another defensive perimeter while the point man and commander got together.

  Ramirez took out his map again. Chavez and his captain turned on the infrared lights that were part of the goggle-sets and traced ideas on the map and the accompanying photos. Also present was the operations sergeant, appropriately named Guerra. The road to the airfield came in from the opposite direction, looping around a stream that the squad had followed into the rally point. The only building visible on the photo was also on the far side of the objective.

  “I like this way in, sir,” Chavez observed.

  “I think you’re right,” Ramirez replied. “Sergeant Guerra?”

  “Looks pretty good to me, sir.”

  “Okay, people, if there’s going to be contact, it’ll be in this here neighborhood. It is now post time. Chavez, I’m going in with you. Guerra, you bring the rest of the squad in behind us if there’s any trouble.”

  “Yes, sir,” both sergeants replied.

  Out of habit, Ding pulled out his camouflage stick and applied some green and black to his face. Next he put on his gloves. Though sweaty hands were a nuisance, the dark leather shells would darken his hands. He moved out, with Captain Ramirez close behind. Both men had their goggles on, and both moved very slowly now.

  The stream they’d followed in for the last half a klick made for good drainage in the area, and that made for dry, solid footing—the same reason that someone had decided to bulldoze a landing strip here, of course. Chavez was especially wary for booby traps. With every step he checked the ground for wires, then up at waist and eye level. He also checked for any disturbance of ground. Again he wondered about game in the area. If there were some, it, too, would set off the booby traps, wouldn’t it? So how would the bad guys react if one got set off? Probably they’d send somebody out to look ... that w
ould be bad news regardless of what he expected to find, wouldn’t it?

  Let’s be cool, ’mano, Chavez told himself.

  Finally: noise. It carried against the breeze. The low, far-off murmuring of talking men. Though too sporadic and confused even to guess the language, it was human speech.

  Contact.

  Chavez turned to look at his captain, pointing to the direction from which it seemed to come and tapping his ear with a finger. Ramirez nodded and motioned for the sergeant to press on.

  Not real smart, people, Chavez thought at his quarry. Not real smart talking so’s a guy can hear you a couple hundred meters away. You are making my job easier. Not that the sergeant minded. Just being here was hard enough.

  Next, a trail.

  Chavez knelt down and looked for human footprints. They were here, all right, coming out and going back. He took a very long step to pass over the narrow dirt path, and stopped. Ramirez and Chavez were now a tight two-man formation, far enough apart that the same burst wouldn’t get both, close enough that they could provide mutual support. Captain Ramirez was an experienced officer, just off his eighteen-month tour in command of a light-infantry company, but even he was in awe of Chavez’s woodcraft skills. It was now post time, as he’d told them a few minutes earlier, and his were the greatest worries of the unit. He was in command. That meant that the mission’s success was his sole responsibility. He was similarly responsible for the lives of his men. He’d brought ten men in-country, and he was supposed to bring all ten men out. As the single officer, moreover, he was supposed to be at least as good as any of his men—preferably better—in every specialty. Even though that was not realistic, it was expected by everyone. Including Captain Ramirez, who was old enough to know better. But watching Chavez, ten meters ahead, in the gray-green image of his night goggles, moving like a ghost, as quietly as a puff of breeze, Ramirez had to shake off a feeling of inadequacy. It was replaced a moment later with one of elation. This was better than command of a company. Ten elite specialists, each one of them among the best the Army had, and they were his to command.... Ramirez distantly realized that he was experiencing the emotional roller-coaster common to combat operations. A bright young man, he was now learning another lesson that history talked about but never quite conveyed: it was one thing to talk and think and read about this sort of thing, but there would never be a substitute for doing it. Training could attenuate the stress of combat operations, but never remove it. It amazed the young captain that everything seemed so clear to him. His senses were as fully alert as they had ever been, and his mind was working with speed and clarity. He recognized the stress and danger, but he was ready for it. In that recognition came elation as the roller coaster rolled on. A far-off part of his intellect watched and evaluated his performance, noting that as in a contact sport, every member of the squad needed the shock of real contact before settling down fully to work. The problem was simply that they were supposed to avoid that contact.

  Chavez’s hand went up, Ramirez saw, and then the scout crouched down behind a tree. The captain passed around a thicket of bushes and saw why the sergeant had stopped.

  There was the airfield.

  Better yet, there was an aircraft, several hundred yards away, its engines off but glowing on the infrared image generated by the goggles.

  “Looks like we be in business, Cap’n,” Ding noted in a whisper.

  Ramirez and Chavez moved left and right, well inside the treeline, to search for security forces. But there were none. The objective, RENO, was agreeably identical to what they’d been told to expect. They took their time making sure, of course, then Ramirez went back to the rally point, leaving Chavez to keep an eye on things. Twenty minutes later the squad was in place on a small hill just northwest of the airfield, covering a front of two hundred yards. This had probably once been some peasant’s farm, with the burned-off fields merely extended into the strip. They all had a clear view of the airstrip. Chavez was on the extreme right with Vega, Guerra on the far left with the other SAW gunner, and Ramirez stayed in the center, with his radio operator, Sergeant Ingeles.

  12.

  The Curtain

  on SHOWBOAT

  “ARIABLE, THIS is KNIFE. Stand by to copy, over.”

  The signal off the satellite channel was as clear as a commercial FM station. The communications technician stubbed out his cigarette and keyed his headset.

  “KNIFE, this is VARIABLE, your signal is five by five. We are ready to copy, over.” Behind him, Clark turned in his swivel chair to look at the map.

  “We are at Objective RENO, and guess what—there’s a twin-engine aircraft in view with some people loading cardboard boxes into it. Over.”

  Clark turned to look in surprise at the radio rack. Was their operational intel that good?

  “Can you read the tail number, over.”

  “Negative, the angle’s wrong. But he’s going to take off right past us. We are right in the planned position. No security assets are evident at this time.”

  “Damn,” observed one of the Operations people. He lifted a handset. “This is VARIABLE. RENO reports bird in the nest, time zero-three-one-six Zulu ... Roger. Will advise. Out.” He turned to his companion. “The stateside assets are at plus-one hour.”

  “That’ll do just fine,” the other man thought.

  As Ramirez and Chavez watched through their binoculars, two men finished loading their boxes into the aircraft. It was a Piper Cheyenne, both men determined, a midsize corporate aircraft with reasonably long range, depending on load weights and flight profile. Local shops could fit it with ferry tanks, extending the range designed into the aircraft. The cargo flown into America by drug smugglers had little to do with weight or—except in the case of marijuana—bulk. The limiting factor was money. A single aircraft could carry enough refined cocaine, even at wholesale value, to wipe out the cash holdings of most federal reserve banks.

  The pilots boarded the aircraft after shaking hands with the ground crews—that part seemed to their covert observers just as routine as any aircraft departure. The engines began turning, and their roar swept across the open land toward the light-fighters.

  “Jesus,” Sergeant Vega noted with bemusement. “I could smoke the bird right here and now. Damn.” His gun was on “safe,” of course.

  “Might make our life a little too exciting,” Chavez noted. “Yeah, that makes sense, Oso. The security guys were all around the airplane. They’re spreading out now.” He grabbed his radio. “Captain—”

  “I see it. Heads up in case we have to move out.”

  The Piper taxied to the end of the runway, moving like a crippled bird, bouncing and bobbing on the landing-gear shocks. The airstrip was illuminated by a mere handful of small flares, far fewer lights than were normally used to outline a real runway. It struck all who looked as dangerous, and suddenly Chavez realized that if the aircraft crashed on takeoff, some squad members would end up eating the thing....

  The aircraft’s nose dropped as the pilot pushed the engines to full throttle preparatory to takeoff, then reduced power to make sure the motors wouldn’t quit when he did so. Satisfied, they ran up again, and the aircraft slipped its brakes and started moving. Chavez set his binoculars down to watch. Heavily loaded with fuel, it cleared the trees to his right by a mere twenty yards. Whoever the pilot was, he was a daredevil. The term that sprang into the sergeant’s mind seemed appropriate enough.

  “Just took off now. It’s a Piper Cheyenne,” Ramirez’s voice read off the tail number. It had American registration. “Course about three-three-zero.” Which headed for the Yucatan Channel, between Cuba and Mexico. The communicator took the proper notes. “What can you tell me about RENO?”

  “I count six people. Four carry rifles, can’t tell about the rest. One pickup truck and a shack, like on the satellite overheads. Truck’s moving now, and I think—yeah, they’re putting out the runway lights. They’re using flares, just putting dirt over on top of them. Stand b
y, we have a truck heading this way.”

  Off to Ramirez’s left, Vega had his machine gun up on its bipod, the sight tracking the pickup as it moved down the east side of the runway. Every few hundred meters, it stopped, and the passenger jumped out and shoveled dirt on one of the sputtering flares.

  “Reach out, reach out and touch someone ...” Julio murmured.

  “Be cool, Oso,” Ding cautioned.

  “No problem.” Vega’s thumb was on the selector switch—still set on “safe”—and his finger was on the trigger guard, not the trigger itself.

  The flares went out one by one. The truck was briefly within one hundred fifty meters of the two soldiers, but never approached them directly. They merely happened to be in a place the truck had to pass by. Vega’s gun stayed on the truck until well after it turned away. As he set the buttstock back down on the dirt, he turned to his comrade.

  “Aw, shit!” he whispered in feigned disappointment.

  Chavez had to stifle a giggle. Wasn’t this odd, he thought. Here they were in enemy territory, loaded for fucking bear, and they were playing a game no different from what children did on Christmas Eve, peeking around corners. The game was serious as hell, they all knew, but the form it took was almost laughable. They also knew that could change in an instant. There wasn’t anything funny about training a machine gun on two men in a truck. Was there?