Clear and Present Danger

  Escobedo chewed on that one for a while. They were in the back of his stretch Mercedes. It was an old 600, lovingly maintained and in new-car condition. Mercedes-Benz is the type of car favored by people who need to worry about violent enemies. Already heavy, and with a powerful engine, it easily carried over a thousand pounds of Kevlar armor embedded in vital areas, and thick polycarbonate windows that would stop a .30-caliber machine-gun round. Its tires were filled with foam, not air, so that a puncture wouldn’t flatten them—at least not very quickly. The fuel tank was filled with a honeycombed metal lattice that could not prevent a fire, but would prevent a more dangerous explosion. Fifty meters ahead and behind were BMW M3s, fast, powerful cars filled with armed men, much in the way that chiefs of state had lead- and chase-cars for security purposes.

  “One of us, you think?” Escobedo asked after a minute’s contemplation.

  “It is possible, jefe.” Cortez’s tone of voice said that it was more than merely possible. He was pacing his disclosures carefully, keeping an eye on the roadside signs.

  “But who?”

  “That is a question for you to answer, is it not? I am an intelligence officer, not a detective.” That Cortez got away with his outrageous lie was testimony to Escobedo’s paranoia.

  “And the missing aircraft?”

  “Also unknown,” Cortez reported. “Someone was watching the airfields, perhaps American paramilitary teams, but more likely the same mercenaries who are now in the mountains. They probably sabotaged aircraft somehow, possibly with the connivance of the airport guards. I speculate that when they left, they killed off the guards so that no one could prove what they had been doing, then booby-trapped the fuel dumps to make it appear to be something else entirely. A very clever operation, but one to which we could have adapted except for the assassinations in Bogotá.” Cortez took a deep breath before going on.

  “The attack on the Americans in Bogotá was a mistake, jefe. It forced the Americans to change what had been a nuisance operation to one which threatens our activities directly. They have suborned someone in the organization, executing their own wish for revenge through the ambition or anger of one of your own senior colleagues.” Cortez spoke throughout in the same quiet, reasoned voice that he’d used to brief his seniors in Havana, like a tutor to an especially bright student. His method of delivery reminded people of a doctor, and was an exceedingly effective way of persuading people, particularly Latins, who are given to polemics but conversely respect those who control their passions. By reproaching Escobedo for the death of the Americans—Escobedo did not like to be reproached; Cortez knew it; Escobedo knew that Cortez knew it—Félix merely added to his own credibility. “The Americans have foolishly said so themselves, perhaps in a clumsy attempt to mislead us, speaking of a ‘gang war’ within the organization. That is a trick the Americans invented, by the way, to use the truth to deny the truth. It is clever, but they have used it too often. Perhaps they feel that the organization is not aware of this trick, but anyone in the intelligence community knows of it.” Cortez was winging it, and had just made that up—but, he thought, it certainly sounded good. And it had the proper effect. Escobedo was looking out through the thick windows of the car, his mind churning over the new thought.

  “Who, I wonder ...”

  “That is something I cannot answer. Perhaps you and Señor Fuentes can make some progress on that tonight.” The hardest part for Cortez was to keep a straight face. For all his cleverness, for all his ruthlessness, el jefe was a child to be manipulated once you knew the right buttons to push.

  The road traced down the floor of a valley. There was also a rail line, and both followed a path carved into the rock by a mountain-fed river. From a strictly tactical point of view, it was not something to be comfortable with, Cortez knew. Though he had never been a soldier—aside from the usual paramilitary classes in the Cuban school system—he recognized the disadvantage of low ground. You could be seen a long way off from people on the heights. The highway signs assumed a new and ominous significance now. Félix knew everything he needed to know about the car. It had been modified by the world’s leading provider of armored transport, and was regularly checked by technicians from that firm. The windows were replaced twice annually, because sunlight altered the crystalline structure of the polycarbonate—all the faster near the equator and at high altitude. The windows would stop a 7.62 NATO machine-gun bullet, and the Kevlar sheets in the doors and around the engines could, under favorable circumstances, stop larger rounds than that. He was still nervous, but through force of will did not allow himself to react visibly to the danger.

  “Who might it be ... ?” Escobedo asked as the car came around a sweeping turn.

  There were five teams of two men each, gunners and loaders. They were armed with West German MG3 squad machine guns, which the Colombian Army had just adopted because it used the same 7.62mm round as their standard infantry weapon, the G3, also of German manufacture. These five had recently been “stolen”—actually purchased from a greedy supply sergeant—out of an army depot. Based on the earlier German MG-42 of World War II fame, the MG3 retained the older weapon’s 1,200-round-per-minute cyclic rate of fire—twenty rounds per second. The gun positions were spaced thirty meters apart, with two guns tasked to engage the chase car, two on the lead car, but only one on the Mercedes. Cortez didn’t trust the car’s armor quite that much. He looked at the digital clock. They were exactly on time. Escobedo had a fine set of drivers. But then, Untiveros had had a fine set of servants, too.

  On the muzzle of each gun was a cone-shaped extension called a flash-hider. Often misunderstood by the layman, its purpose was to shield the flash from the gunner—to prevent him from being blinded by his own shots. Hiding the flash from anyone else is a physical impossibility.

  The gunners began firing at the same instant, and five separate yard-long cylinders of pure white flame appeared on the right side of the road. From each muzzle flash sprang a line of tracers, allowing the gunners to walk their fire right into their targets without the need to use the metal sights on their weapons.

  None of the occupants of the cars heard the sound of the guns, but all did hear the sound of the impacts—at least those who lived long enough.

  Escobedo’s body went as rigid as a bar of steel when he saw the yellow line of tracers attach itself to the leading M-3. That car was not as heavily armored as his. The taillights wavered left, then right, and then the car left the road at an angle, rolling over like one of his son’s toys. Before that had happened, both he and Cortez felt the impacts of twenty rounds on their own car. It sounded like hail on a tin roof. But it was 150-grain bullets, not hail, impacting steel and Kevlar, not tin. His driver, well trained and always nervously alert, fishtailed the long Mercedes for a moment to avoid the BMW ahead, at the same time flooring the accelerator. The six-liter Mercedes engine responded at once—it, too, was protected by armor—doubling both horsepower and torque in a second and hurling all of the passengers back in their seats. By this time Escobedo’s head had turned to see the threat, and it seemed that the tracers were aimed straight at his face, stopped by some apparent miracle by the thick windows—which, he saw, were breaking under the impact.

  Cortez hurled his own body against Escobedo’s, knocking him down to the floor. Neither man had time to speak a word. The car had been doing seventy miles per hour when the first round was fired. It was already approaching ninety, escaping from the kill zone more rapidly than the gunners could adjust fire as the car body absorbed a total of over forty hits. In two minutes, Cortez looked up.

  He was surprised to see that two rounds had hit the left-side windows from the inside. The gunners had been a little too good; had managed to drive repeated rounds through the armored windows. There was no sign of either the lead- or the chase-car. Félix took a very deep breath. He had just won the most daring gamble of his life.

  “Take the next turn anywhere!” he shouted at the driver.

 
“No!” Escobedo said an instant later. “Straight to—”

  “Fool!” Cortez turned el jefe over. “Do you wish to find another ambush ahead of us! How do you suppose they knew to kill us! Take the next turn!” he shouted at the driver again.

  The driver, who had a good appreciation of ambush tactics, stood on the brakes and took the next turn. It was a right, leading to a small network of side roads serving local coffee farms.

  “Find a quiet place to stop,” Cortez ordered next.

  “But—”

  “They will expect us to run, not to think. They will expect us to do what all the antiterrorist manuals say to do. Only a fool is predictable,” Cortez said as he brushed polycarbonate fragments from his hair. His pistol was out now, and he ostentatiously replaced it in his shoulder holster. “José, your driving was magnificent!”

  “Both cars are gone,” the driver reported.

  “I’m not surprised,” Cortez replied. Quite honestly. “Jesús María—that was close.”

  Whatever Escobedo might have been, coward was not among them. He too saw the damage to the window that had been inches from his head. Two bullets had come through the car—they were half-buried in the glass. El jefe pried one loose and rattled it around in his hand. It was still warm.

  “We must speak to the people who make the windows,” Escobedo observed coolly. Cortez had saved his life, he realized.

  The odd part was that he was right. But Cortez was more impressed with the fact that his reflexes—even forewarned, he had reacted with commendable speed—had saved his own life. It had been a long time since he’d had to pass the physical fitness test required by the DGI. It was moments like this that can make the most circumspect of men feel invincible.

  “Who knew that we were going to see Fuentes?” he asked.

  “I must—” Escobedo lifted the phone receiver and started to punch in a number. Cortez gently took it away from him and replaced it in the holder.

  “Perhaps that would be a serious mistake, jefe. ” he said quietly. “With all respect, señor, please let me handle this. This is a professional matter.”

  Escobedo had never been so impressed with Cortez than at that moment.

  “You will be rewarded,” he told his faithful vassal. Escobedo reproached himself for having occasionally mistreated him, and worse, for having occasionally disregarded Cortez’s wise counsel. “What should we do?”

  “José,” Cortez told the driver, “find a high spot from which we can see the Fuentes house.”

  Within a minute, the driver found a switchback overlooking the valley. He pulled the car off the road and all three got out. José inspected the damage to the car. Fortunately neither the tires nor the engine had been damaged. Though the car’s body would have to be totally reworked, its ability to move and maneuver was unimpaired. José truly loved this car, and though he mourned for its defacement, he nearly burst with pride that it and his own skill had saved all their lives.

  In the trunk were several rifles—German G3s like those the Army carried, but legally purchased—and a pair of binoculars. Cortez let the others have the rifles. He took the field glasses and trained them in on the well-lit home of Luis Fuentes, about six miles away.

  “What are you looking for?” Escobedo asked.

  “Jefe, if he had part in the ambush, he will know by now that it might have failed, and there will be activity. If he had no such knowledge, we will see no activity at all.”

  “What of those who fired on us?”

  “You think they know that we escaped?” Cortez shook his head. “No, they will not be sure, and first they will try to prove that they succeeded, that our car struggled on for a short while—so they will first of all try to find us. José, how many turns did you take to get us here?”

  “Six, señor, and there are many roads,” the driver answered. He looked quite formidable with his rifle.

  “Do you see the problem, jefe? Unless they have a great number of men, there are too many roads to check. We are not dealing with a police or military force. If we were, we’d still be moving. Ambushes like this one—no, jefe, once they fail, they fail completely. Here.” He handed the glasses over. It was time for a little machismo. He opened the car door and pulled out a few bottles of Perrier—Escobedo liked the stuff. He opened them by inserting the bottlecaps into bullet holes in the trunk lid and snapping down. Even José grunted with amusement at that, and Escobedo was one who admired such panache.

  “Danger makes me thirsty,” Cortez explained, passing the other bottles around.

  “It has been an exciting night,” Escobedo agreed, taking a long pull on his bottle.

  But not for Commander Jensen and his bombardier/navigator. The first one, as with the first time for anything, had been a special occasion, but already it was routine. The problem was simply that things were too damned easy. Jensen had faced surface-to-air missiles and radar-directed flak in his early twenties, testing his courage and skill against that of North Vietnamese gunners with their own experience and cunning. This mission was about as exciting as a trip to the mailbox, but, he reminded himself, important things often go through the mail. The mission went exactly according to plan. The computer ejected the bomb right on schedule, and the B/N tracked his TRAM sight around to keep an eye on the target. This time Jensen let his right eye wander down to the TV screen.

  “I wonder what held Escobedo up?” Larson asked.

  “Maybe he got here early?” Clark thought aloud, his eye on the GLD.

  “Maybe,” the other field officer allowed. “Notice how no cars are parked near the house this time?”

  “Yeah, well, this one is fused for one-hundredth-of-a-second delay,” Clark told him. “Should go off just about the time it gets to the conference table.”

  It was even more impressive from this distance, Cortez thought. He didn’t see the bomb fall, didn’t hear the aircraft that had dropped it—which, he told himself, was rather strange—and he saw the flash long before the sound reached him. The Americans and their toys, he thought. They can be dangerous. Most dangerous of all, whatever their intelligence source, it was a very, very good one, and Félix didn’t have a clue what it might be. That was a continuing source of concern.

  “It would seem that Fuentes was not involved,” Cortez noted even before the sound reached them.

  “That could have been us in there!”

  “Yes, but it was not. I think we should leave, jefe. ”

  “What’s that?” Larson asked. Two automobile headlights appeared on a hillside three miles away. Neither man had noticed the Mercedes pull into the overlook. They’d been concentrating on the target then, but Clark reproached himself for not remembering to check around further. That sort of mistake was often fatal, and he’d allowed himself to forget just how serious it was.

  Clark put his Noctron on it as soon as the lights had turned away. It was a big—

  “What kind of car does Escobedo have?”

  “Take your pick,” Larson replied. “It’s like the horse collection at Churchill Downs. Porsches, Rolls, Benzes ...”

  “Well, that looked like a stretch limo, maybe a big Mercedes. Kinda odd place for one, too. Let’s get the hell out of here. I think two trips to this particular well is enough. We’re out of the bomb business.”

  Eighty minutes later their Subaru had to slow down. A collection of ambulances and police cars was parked on the shoulder while uniformed men appeared and disappeared in the pinkish light from hazard flares. A pair of black BMWs were lying on their sides just off the road. Whoever owned them, somebody didn’t like them, Clark saw. There wasn’t much traffic, but here as with every other place in the world where people drove cars, the drivers slowed down to give it all a look.

  “Somebody blew the shit out of them,” Larson noted. Clark’s evaluation was more professional.

  “Thirty-cal fire. Heavy machine guns at close range. Pretty slick ambush. Those are M3 BMWs.”

  “The big, fast one? Someb
ody with big-time money, then. You don’t suppose ... ?”

  “You don’t ‘suppose’ very often in this business. How fast can you get a line on what happened here?”

  “Two hours after we get back.”

  “Okay.” The police were looking at the passing cars, but not searching them. One shined his flashlight into the back of the Subaru. There were some curious things there, but not the right size and shape to be machine guns. He waved them on. Clark took that in and did some supposing. Had the gang war he’d hoped to start already begun?

  Robby Jackson had a two-hour layover before boarding the Air Force C-141B, which with its refueling housing looked rather like a green, swept-wing snake. Also aboard were sixty or so soldiers with full gear. The fighter pilot looked at them with some amusement. This was what his little brother did for a living. A major sat down next to him after asking permission—Robby was two grades higher.

  “What outfit?”

  “Seventh Light.” The major leaned back, trying to get as much comfort as he could. His helmet rested on his lap. Robby lifted it. Shaped much like the German helmet of World War II, it was made of Kevlar, with a cloth camouflage cover around it, and around that, held in place by a green elasticized cloth band, was a medusa-like collection of knotted cloth strips.

  “You know, my brother wears one of these things. Heavy enough. What the hell good is it?”

  “The Cabbage Patch Hat?” The major smiled, his eyes closed. “Well, the Kevlar’s supposed to stop stuff from tearing your skull apart, and the mop we wrap around it breaks up your outline—makes you harder to see in the bush, sir. Your brother’s with us, you said?”

  “He’s a new nugget—second lieutenant I guess you call him—in the, uh, they call it Ninja-something ... ”

  “Three-Seventeen. First Brigade. I’m brigade intel, Second Brigade. What do you do?”