Fred’s knuckles rapped on the chopper skin impatiently. He was standing opposite me, looking through the open hatch of the chopper. “Achtung, Achtung! Are you ready, Richard?”
I tightened the strap on my ballistic goggles and gave him a double thumbs-up. “Let’s do it.”
“Max, Werner—Los!” Fred gave the pilots an upturned thumb, and the nose of the MH-6 tilted forward. It lifted off gently, taking the ropes with it, until we, too, rose off the grass, dangling at the end of our twenty-five meters of rope.
Just as my feet cleared the ground, the Little Bird banked sharply, and thrust into the darkness. The soccer field disappeared beneath my feet. The air grew cold as we rose to a thousand feet or so and swung in a wide arc to the south and east, the lights of downtown Düsseldorf disappearing in our wake.
Fred and I hung suspended, facing each other, twisting Nixon-like in the wind. Below, the lights on the Autobahn grew smaller. As we continued in the wide circle, I began to see the orangy, sodium lights of downtown Düsseldorf off in the distance.
Fred checked his wrist. He must have been wearing an altimeter, because his voice said, “Two thousand meters,” in my ears. I wagged my head. He gestured earthward with a gloved hand. “Mnhm—Monheim,” he said, somewhat incoherently, his voice affected by the wind and our speed.
I nodded. I let myself swing free, threw my arms wide, and let the wind take me where it would. There is very little that feels so wonderful as flying through the air, whether it’s the adrenaline surge of a HALO insertion, or the slow descent from 35,000 feet on a HAHO glide.
I could make out the Pave Lows ahead of us, flying with all their lights full-tilt boogie.
What I’d suggested to Fred was an old-fashioned, KISS diversion insertion. I’d last practiced the technique in Central America when I ran SEAL Team Six, and we’d been assigned to take down an FMLN headquarters in a little town called Chinameca, in the rough-country shadow of the San Miguel volcano, just north and east of Usulután Province.
What’s that you’re saying? I can’t hear you with all this ambient noise. Oh—you’re saying that American forces, including SEALs, were forbidden by Congress from engaging the enemy in El Salvador. You’re right. But we fucking did it anyway, and with the tacit approval of the White House, no less.
Remember, this took place during the Reagan administration, which was proactive, when it came to terrorists, and prodemocracy, when it came to Communist-run insurrections. Unlike the fellow who sits in the White House today, Ronald Reagan was a real commander in chief.
Anyway, Six was called in because the Salvadorans had security leaks, and snatching rebel comandantes had become a virtual impossibility for them. So, every once in a while, if the target was important enough, a gringo SpecOps unit would covertly slip in country and help ’em out. And this was one of those times.
We knew that the FMLN asshole, war-named Comandante Lobo, real name Francisco Zamora, was basing out of the Chinameca. The Salvadorans—even the elite commando brigade known as Los Panteros—had gone there half a dozen times, to no avail. The FMs would hear ’em coming, and Lobo would hightail it outta Dodge. Now it would be up to us. But I knew that if we staged a frontal assault, we’d give ourselves away—and he’d skip yet again. Let me interject here that this guy Lobo was responsible for the summary execution of two American Agency for International Development (AID) civilians, whose chopper had crash-landed in Usulután Province. And as if that weren’t enough (it certainly put him on my death list), he had also seeded Usulután’s rough countryside with between twenty thousand and fifty thousand land mines. Given the density of the population there, that meant he was responsible for blowing the feet off hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent kids as a way of inspiring terror and keeping folks in their villages, making it impossible to farm and eke out a living in the hardscrabble Salvadoran countryside.
Now, though kids may die in wartime, the Warrior does not target innocents as a way of doing his bloody work. If a twelve-year-old is holding an AK-47, or a grenade, or any other form of weapon, I will blow the little motherfucker away and think nothing of it. But I won’t go planting land mines to blow kids’ feet off just to terrorize their parents. Not in this life at least.
As you can probably imagine, I wanted Lobo’s murdering ass in a body bag. The Salvadorans, however, wanted him alive, as a propaganda victory. To snag him, what we did was something the SEALs in Vietnam often did when they went in to make a snatch: they created a diversion.
I lifted out of Dam Neck, Virginia, with a squad of Six’s plank-owners: Sergeant Ahas, Pooster the Rooster, Baby Rich, Carlosito, Gold Dust Larry, Gold Dust Frank, and Horseface. We RON’d68 in San Salvador three days at a safe house, clandestinely gathering intel and poring over maps.
Our evenings were spent at the home of the MILGRP commander, an Army O-5 named Eduardo Rodriguez. Eduardo, a Bay of Pigs survivor, was one of the 2506 Brigade veterans who’d volunteered for the Army back when John F. Kennedy was still president. He had cojónes as big as bowling balls, which meant he managed to bring us in country unbeknownst to the ambassador, a pinstriped, pocket-change-jingling, heel-rocking, equivocating, C2 fudge-cutter named Reginald something-or-other the Fourth. Anyway, our intel work completed, Colonel Rodriguez slipped us onto Ilopango Air Base, which sits at the eastern edge of the capital.
In those days, Ilopango was commanded by General Juan Bustillo, one of the toughest COs I’ve ever come across. This guy was ramrod straight. A Warrior. And he was lean and he was mean when it came to dealing with the FMLN. He showed them no fucking mercy. He wasn’t easy on his troops, either. He demanded results. Just the week before we’d arrived, Rodriguez told us, a company of Bustillo’s paratroopers had hesitated before moving up a certain hill in San Vicente Province because the intel reports said it might have been seeded with land mines.
The general choppered to the scene, fired the company commander on the spot, and personally led his troopers up the fucking ridge. That is called LEADERSHIP.
Anyway, Bustillo gave us one of his two MH-6 NOTAR stealth choppers (we called them Hughes 500s in those days). Then Colonel Rodriguez personally flew us in, navigating a tough, terrain-hugging course that put us down at zero dark hundred close to the edge of the volcano, slightly southwest of the Salvadoran Army airfield at Quelepa.
We humped around the perimeter of the volcano, making our way through scrub brush and boulders, moving all night. We covered sixteen miles in nine hours. You say it doesn’t sound like a lot of ground to cover? Fuck you—you’ve never had to hump through hostile countryside carrying fifty pounds of equipment and no maps of the minefields.
We made it to our ambush site about half a mile due west of the village by 0650. Then we dug in, camouflaged our position, and waited until the critters settled back into their normal routines. Our site was situated along the one well-used escape path we’d found, using infrared photographs, courtesy of Christians In Action. Six hours after we’d settled in, I sent a series of secure radio signals. Colonel Rodriguez commandeered a regulation Salvadoran Army Huey at Ilopango. The Huey, you’ll recall, is the loudest moth-erfucking chopper we had in El Salvador, and the Salvadoran Hueys were rougher than most, because they were used day-in, day-out.
Anyway, Colonel Eduardo flew in at full throttle. You could hear him coming for fucking miles. Then he made a series of touch-and-go landings in the scrubby countryside directly to the east of Chinameca. From the village—hell, from our ambush position, too—it sounded just like a fucking company of Salvadoran regulars was about to hit.
Lobo and his people heard all the noise, and of course, he ran west, which was precisely where I and my squad of shoot-and-looters was waiting. We bagged him up—literally—and then Pooster the Rooster popped purple smoke. That was the signal Colonel Rodriguez was waiting for. He came in and hot-zone landed, we tossed Lobo into the Huey, jumped aboard, scarpered the scene, and flew direct to the reinforced roof of the Estado Major, El Salvador
’s military intel staff HQ, where we touched down three-quarters of an hour later.
I was still hearing the outraged howls from Reggie the ambassador and tasting the cold beers we’d had at Lou Rodriguez’s place that night when Fred’s voice broke into my reveries.
“Richard—target dead ahead,” Fred barked.
I looked up and focused. The Pave Lows were flying about half a mile apart. We were slightly behind ’em, and perhaps five hundred feet lower. We flew the contour of the river, veered off slightly over the harbor area, and descended slowly as we came over the Rheinkniebrücke.
As the Pave Lows veered west, our MH-6 dropped like a stone, descending precipitously. Just north of the bridge, it swung us wide as it turned east, then north, and skimmed the tall building roofs.
And then, the huge BeckIndustrie clock was dead ahead, and the chopper swung me left, then right, in a rough-and-tumble slalom as the air currents running past the skyscrapers affected the pilot’s moves.
“Ready?” Fred’s voice came strong in my ears.
“Ready,” I shouted into the lip mike. My heart was racing now, as it always does before I make a blind jump.
It was not an easy move. Fred and the pilot had to coordinate, bringing us down gently over the roof, then making the drop at the precise instant the big, round clock that turned 360 degrees once a minute allowed the MH-6’s rotors to clear the big, electric disk.
And then it was too late for anxiety, apprehension, misgivings, or concern: we were over the perimeter of BeckIndustrie’s roof. The pilot flared. The Little Bird dropped, and I hit the deck hard enough to drive me to my knees. My ankle gave way and I went down in a heap, dragged across the rooftop.
But I still managed to hit the quick release. The rope flew away, I tucked, and rolled, then scrambled to my feet. Fuck me—eight feet away, Fred was being towed facedown by his stabo harness. His quick release hadn’t disengaged. I launched myself at him as he pulled away from me, managed a shoestring tackle and flailed at the release turnbuckle on his chest.
The fucking thing wouldn’t give. The line was getting tauter by the millisecond. Worse, we were being dragged across the roof, close enough to the brink to make me very, very nervous. I raised my eyes long enough to look ahead. Shit: another ten yards and we’d either snag on a huge, parabolic fucking antenna, which would break, or tangle us up and bring the chopper down on top of us, or we’d catch on an air vent with the same nasty result. Oh fuck oh shit oh doom on Dickie. This was not a good situation.
I snagged the Taiho, jerked it free, and slashed blindly at the rope just above Fred’s head. The line separated and the chopper pulled away into the night just as the fucking clock came around.
I rolled onto my side and tried not to hyperventilate. I didn’t succeed, so I just lay where I was until my pulse slowed to 160 or so. Then I pulled myself onto my feet. Fred was already checking himself over for dings. He watched silently as I slid the Taiho back into its sheath. I gave him a look that told him I knew what he was thinking.
2242. It was time to go play break & enter. First, I checked for cameras. They had ’em at each corner of the roof. But they were pointed out and down, just as they should be, in order to catch folks trying to climb the sides of the building. Companies don’t as a rule protect their headquarters buildings from airborne assault.
We worked our way around the roofline until we came to the air shaft vents directly above Lothar Beck’s office suite. Then I paced, working my way backward in my mind’s eye, along the entry passage, and the huge medieval foyer, until we were more or less atop the corridor where I’d seen the dweebs in lab coats.
There were three air shafts, each about two feet by two feet, sitting more or less where I thought we should make entry. We checked ’em over to make sure they weren’t booby-trapped. They appeared to be all right. I tried lifting the cover on the first one. It wouldn’t budge. Either it was secured from the inside, or it was frozen shut. I tried the next. It, too, wouldn’t move. Neither would the last of the trio. So much for easy. I extracted the Taiho, put the wedge blade under the edge of the vent, and ran the knife around the perimeter. I felt the cover give slightly. I exerted more pressure and pried as I worked the heavy blade around. The cover seal broke and the cover moved slightly. I pried it up an inch or so. Fred reached over and shone his minilight up so we could take a look and see if it was wired.
He ran the light around the underside lip of the vent cap. “Nicht,” he said. “Go ahead, Richard.”
“Jawohl, mein general.” I finished running the thick-wedge blade around the perimeter of the cap, then stowed the blade and pulled the cap off.
I took a minilight out of my web gear and shone it downward. This shaft wasn’t gonna do us any good. It ran straight down, farther than I could see. Fred stuck his nose over the edge, peered, and shook his head. We replaced the cap and tried the next one over.
2253. Zack (which is how they say “Bingo” in Düsseldorf). This cap opened up onto one of Beck-Industrie’s main electrical shafts. Fred uncoiled the knotted climbing rope he’d packed in his CQC vest, we rigged it off a plumbing vent, double-secured it to the base of the big, turning clock, and dropped over the side. Three wiggles, two shimmies, and one skinned knee later, I slithered through an air return, and lowered myself onto a convenient commode in one of the BeckIndustrie twenty-eighth-floor bathrooms.
I stepped off the seat cover and helped Fred down onto the black-and-white tile floor. We made our way to the door. I turned the lever handle and—nothing happened. I tried again. Nada. The fucking thing was locked from the outside.
Of course it was. First of all, I’d forgotten that we hadn’t been alone on the Little Bird tonight. Herr Murphy had stowed away, too. Second, you will recall, even though I suffer from CRS Syndrome,69 that each of the doors on the corridor had electronic locks that had to be scanned from the outside. And outside was where the hinges were, too. Obviously, these were smart locks. Once you’d scanned your way inside, the door would let you out. But if, like us, you’d dropped out of an air shaft, you were stuck inside. Moreover, I couldn’t pull the hinge pins from in here.
So much for “easy.” I jerked my thumb at the air return. Fred didn’t look happy.
2307. I slit the silicon seal at the back of an air return, removed it, stowed it in the air shaft, and then slithered down and into the corridor I’d traveled earlier in the day. Fred followed. We scanned the area. The lights were still on, but so far as I could tell, no one was home. I’d checked earlier for TV cameras, and as I recalled, there were none here. Even so, we moved cautiously, wary of pressure plates in the wall-to-wall, and other nasty devices that could bring the blazered security men scrambling.
I pointed out the doorway I wanted to breech. I gestured at the hinges, then extracted a nail punch and a small rubber mallet from my vest. This was going to be easy: punch out the hinges, slide the door to one side, and we’d be inside, all without disturbing the electronic lock.
I moved to the top hinge. Fred put a restraining hand on my shoulder before I could tap it out.
He examined the hinge. He slid his minilight out and examined each one of the door hinges closely, then turned to me, a somber expression on his face. “Electric,” he whispered, pointing at the middle one.
I followed his eyes. Sure enough, I made out the thin strands of wire that ran along the inside of the middle hinge.
Fred said, “You cut—Alles kaput.”
He was right. We were fucked.
I hunkered down, my back to the wall, and bemoaned my fate. Once again, I was being fucked by Herr Murphy, and there was nothing I could do about it.
It is at times like this, friends, when the spirit of Roy Boehm comes to me and gives Froggish inspiration. Roy and Mister Murphy engaged in mortal combat for thirty-some years, and Roy never gave in, not once.
And so, as I sat there, Roy’s advice: “attack, attack, attack, you asshole,” rang in my ears. I pulled myself to my feet.
<
br /> It was so fucking obvious I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it immediately. I went to the first secretary’s desk I saw. Pried open the big center drawer in the Queen Anne desk and pillaged it. I came up empty, and so I shifted to the next one and did the same thing. Fred looked at me quizzically.
Until I retrieved what I’d been looking for.
I waved the magnetic card at Fred. “Der Schlüssel,” I said, proudly remembering my German language training. I took the credit card-sized piece of plastic and ran it through the scanner.
Nothing happened. I tried again. Nothing happened again. It occurred to me at that moment that my well-laid plan was being fucked by Herr Murphy more than normal, even for me.
Fuck me? No: fuck Murphy. Because you know as well as I do that as I walked past the “No entry” door this very afternoon, a secretary was using a card to open its magnetic lock for those silly-looking dweebs in blue lab coats.
Okay: I simply had the wrong card. I proceeded to the next desk and pried away, leaving a nasty laceration in the dark wood in my eagerness. You might think I was careless. No, friends—that’s the little telltale sign I was talking about leaving for Lothar that I’d been snooping around. I’d just started to rifle the drawer when a faint but nonetheless audible bing blipped on my radar screen.
Simultaneously, Franz’s voice erupted inside my head. “Richard, Richard—das security ist gelandet.”
I have said it before, and at the risk of being a redundant Rogue I will say it again. I am going to kill Mister Murphy when I finally meet the no-good cock-sucker face-to-face.
I eased the drawer shut, hoping that the gouge I’d made on the drawer edge wouldn’t show up in any cursory examination. I wanted it discovered, all right—but not yet; not now.
We had no place to go. The fucking desks had no privacy panels—they were Queen Anne, remember, and they looked more like library tables than office desks.
Option Delta Page 22
