Operator Down

by Brad Taylor

  I called, “Blood, we’re set. You got eyes on?”

  “Yeah. I’m good for the short term. Not sure how long I can stay. I’ve had a couple of cops look at me.”

  I’d placed Brett across the street, in the old square from the original heart of the eighteenth-century community, adjacent to the Cape Town city hall. Once a parade field celebrating the life of the town, it had become nothing more than an acre of pavement used as a flea market. At the end of apartheid it had been a ghetto-strewn mess, but since then, there had been a lot of cleanup. It was now a location for street vendors to sell their goods—and also a place for panhandlers.

  Brett had been tasked with assuming the position of a homeless squatter, of which there were plenty, but it wasn’t a sure thing the authorities would let him remain. Technically, it was illegal, and the police ran them out on a daily basis, but because the panhandlers kept coming back, I figured it wasn’t a bad decision. Nobody returned to a place where the punishment was more than they were willing to endure.

  I said, “Any movement?”

  “None. Castle is clean. You’re good to go. Koko, break a leg.”

  She grimaced at me in the dark and said, “That’s not what I want to hear.”

  Although it had a moat and was made of stone, the castle was not a traditional one in the European or Hollywood sense, with tall spires and an imposing drawbridge. It was created more as a defensive fortification than for living. Built in the seventeenth century, it was shaped in a square, with four bastions that jutted out of the corners and an iron-gated entrance. It had been the home of the Dutch East India Company’s initial outpost for the ships plying their wares farther on, and, like most of the settlements expanding out of Europe, it had nothing to do with exploration for exploration’s sake and everything to do with the whims of the corporation.

  After making friends with the natives, the company had decided to form an outpost on the southernmost point of Africa. Knowing how precarious its position was, the Dutch had outlawed any effort to enslave the local population, choosing instead to co-opt them, a decision that would pay dividends for years, right up until the slavery was exposed not in outright ownership but in political negligence. The true slaves were brought in from Malaysia, a decision that would prove just one more bit of trouble for the eventual melting pot of modern-day South Africa.

  During its entire existence, the castle had never fired a shot in anger, nor had a shot been fired against it. In the modern day, it was a tourist attraction, but its history prevented an easy penetration for surveillance.

  Because it was a defensive fortification, it was impossible to sneak through a back door. It had none. It had one entrance, and that was on a winding path that crossed the moat, threading through a gate topped by stone lions. Something the tourists loved, but not great for sneaking in. Which led me to post up in the tourist parking lot on the side and let Brett give me atmospherics on the surrounding threat.

  I looked at Jennifer and said, “You ready to go?”

  Her eyes were glistening like they always did when I asked her to do something remotely insane. She glanced up the wall and said, “Yeah. I’m good.”

  I grinned and said, “Okay, spider monkey, get up top.”

  Before she was an actual Operator in the Taskforce, Jennifer had made the mistake of showing me a skill that was very hard to teach. It relied on talent. She’d once been a contender for Cirque du Soleil and had an acrobatic ability that few could match, which meant she could climb like a squirrel over just about any obstacle.

  Don’t get me wrong, I could get to the top of the castle just as easy, but I had to carry our kit up there, so she’d do the initial climb and give me a helping hand with a grapple hook and a knotted rope.

  Okay, that’s not exactly true. She could outclimb me on any given day. I was pretty sure she could slither up plate glass with nothing but spit on her hands. But I did have to bring up the gear.

  She went to the corner of the bastion, felt the rough stone, searching for purchase, then began climbing. She made it look effortless. She got up about eight feet and turned to look down. She said, “Catch me if I fall?”

  Which was something she always said, like it was an affirmation of her worth. I grinned, knowing she couldn’t see it in the darkness, and said, “Always.”

  I heard a couple of scrapes and then saw her shadow racing up the stone like a gecko. Four minutes later, the rope tumbled down. I clicked my earpiece and said, “Blood, we’re in. Going up now. Keep eyes out for Apple Watch.”

  “Roger all. I’m moving now. Cops are circling, but I still have view of the entrance.”

  I grabbed the rope and started climbing, saying, “Don’t get compromised. You’re our exfil. Whatever you do, don’t get arrested.”

  He’d dropped us off at the tourist bus parking across the moat on the northern side, underneath the shadow of Table Mountain, and we’d walked in to our climb point, away from the entrance. If he was interdicted, and we were compromised, we’d be running back to the hotel on foot.

  He said, “Don’t worry about it. Worse comes to worst, you can use that privilege you have. Especially here, but I’m blending in just fine with the rest of the brothers.”

  Which was a poke in the eye to me for using his race to accomplish the mission. He hated that shit, but we both knew I understood his skills.

  I reached the top, and Jennifer held out a hand, hauling me up over the edge. I rolled over the parapet and whispered, “Anything?”

  She said, “No.”

  I pointed at my eyes, then lowered my night vision goggles. She did the same, and then we crouched for a minute, getting the sights, sounds, and smells of the battlefield. All was quiet. I mentally pulled up the map of the castle as I scanned, trying to determine what was different—because it was always different.

  The castle was laid out in a square, split in half by a single partition in the middle. The actual living, functioning parts of it were in the walls themselves, with a courtyard in the front half and a pool and smaller courtyard in the back half.

  We were kneeling on the grass-covered roof of the southeast bastion, overlooking the front courtyard, next to a mortar position that was created to defend the castle from an attack that never came.

  I surveyed the area under my NODs, looking for a vantage point. In the back of the courtyard, along the wall that split the castle in half, was an ornate portico fronted by the statues of famous native tribal leaders who’d fought the encroachment on their terrain. It was the governor’s quarters of the historical commander of the garrison, and the location of the meeting tonight.

  At least I hoped it was, because it was the closest clue Creed could come up with.

  40

  Back in the hotel, we’d spent thirty minutes designing a surveillance strategy for the meeting and had learned that it wasn’t going to be easy. The castle sprawled across acres of terrain, with museums, displays, jail cells, and offices spread throughout. They could be meeting anywhere, and that wasn’t even including the SANDF base in the rear. It was like getting tasked to pull surveillance on a meeting in the Pentagon and knowing only the address of the building.

  Creed had come back online saying he thought he’d necked down the location of the meeting. The Taskforce had managed to clarify one bit of the audio exchange at the hotel, wading through the white noise. They’d identified the words “governor” and “museum,” which, juxtaposed with what we knew about the castle, could only be the old governor’s residence.

  I’d given the orders, and Brett had brought down a unique piece of kit to help us penetrate the meeting: a clandestine laser microphone.

  We had to hear what was being said in the room and didn’t have the time to sneak in and place microphones, but the laser would do the work for us. When someone speaks in a room, the noise is transmitted throughout, and when it hits a window, the wi
ndow vibrates ever so slightly. Our laser microphone would detect the vibration, and when we captured the return, we could translate the light into sound. Yeah, I know, it sounds like Luke Skywalker magic, but it’s real.

  I looked at my watch, tossed my rucksack to my feet, and said, “Break out the kit. We’ve only got about twenty minutes to figure out the angle.”

  Jennifer started digging into the pack, pulling out the laser and receiver, while I continued scanning with my NODs, trying to find the IR cameras that I knew were there. From our initial reconnaissance, we’d determined that the cameras were at ground level, where the tourists wandered. I hoped that was correct, because if we were caught in them, we’d get a security response.

  She pulled out a small tripod and what looked like a digital SLR camera. Designed to hide what it truly was—which mattered not a whit here—it had both a visible aiming laser and the infrared reading one. She looked across the courtyard and said, “I can hit it from here, but you’ll have to be on the other side to catch the pitch.”

  I looked down the wall we were on and said, “I don’t think so. You hit it from here and that laser’s going off into space. Let’s tighten it up.”

  The angle of reflection was exactly like hitting a bank shot on a pool table—the larger the angle of the shot, the wider the bounce off the bumper. In this case, I wanted to make sure the bounce off the bumper would be something I could catch. We slithered across the roof until we reached a small tower jutting out of the masonry. I looked at the angle again and said, “I think this’ll work. Set it up.”

  She mounted the “camera” to the tripod and initiated the visible laser. She aimed it at the governor’s residence, and I saw the splash on the brick above the French doors. She worked the tripod until the beam was hitting one of the windows. I looked at the angle of the bounce back and said, “I can catch that. Hope this is worth the effort. See you soon.”

  I moved down the wall to the spot I thought would be the catch area, then clicked my earpiece. “Send me a visible.”

  Right as I said it, I saw a security guard appear in the courtyard below. I crouched and said, “Stand by, stand by, stand by.”

  Through my earpiece I heard, “I see him.”

  The guard completed a lap, then disappeared through the wall to the back courtyard. I hit the timer on my watch to get a sense of the schedule, then said, “Send it.”

  I heard, “Roger,” then saw the splash, and in short order, I had the receiver catching the glow on my own tripod. I said, “We’re set. Switch to infrared,” then attached the octopus of cords between the receiver and the digital recording device.

  Why they made the transmitter look like a camera when the rest of the kit looked like it came from NASA was beyond me.

  Down in the courtyard, I saw the lower-level door of the governor’s residence open, and three men stepped out onto the portico. Two I didn’t recognize, but one was Tyler Malloy. Jackpot. “Koko, Koko, you seeing what I am?”

  “Roger. Got him.”

  One of the men—not Tyler—began walking across the courtyard, and my earpiece came alive. “Pike, this is Blood. Apple Watch and an unknown are walking across the moat now, heading to the front entrance.”

  “Roger, I copy. We’ve got jackpot on the meeting site. You have visibility of the entrance?”

  “Yeah, but just that. Once they pass the gate, it goes dark. Break, break—lost contact. They’re inside.”

  No sooner had he said that than the three men appeared beneath my feet, walking in the scattered illumination of the vapor lamps. They passed directly underneath one, then stopped to discuss something. A bolt of adrenaline went through me, the same feeling one gets from a near-miss car accident—the pounding heart and the fight-or-flight response.

  They left the pool of light, and I brought up my NODs, seeing the same thing I thought I had, but I wanted confirmation. I said, “Koko, Koko, take a look at the unknown from the parking lot. Anything stand out?”

  I waited, tracking the man all the way to the portico. They entered, and I saw them climb the stairwell for the second floor. Jennifer came back on.

  “No way. Is that Johan?”

  41

  Johan followed Andy through the iron portcullis, seeing Colonel Armstrong coming across the grass in the gloom of the sporadic lighting. Through the courtyard, on an ornate portico, he saw two more men.

  They met just inside the gate, shook hands, walked a bit, then Armstrong stopped, saying, “Before we go inside, a few things. Andy, did everything check out?”

  “Yeah. It’s fine. Everything we asked for is there. Ammo, explosives, grenades, rifles, it’s all there.”

  “Communications?”

  “Thales PRC-148 MBITR radios. Looks like US military surplus, but they function.”

  “Parachutes?”

  “Twenty MC-4 ram-air free-fall rigs. They’re used. Probably old US military stock as well, but they look good. We can get a rigger to check them out, right?”

  “Probably. We’ll have to ask that man on the porch.”

  Armstrong turned to Johan and said, “The man on the right is Tyler Malloy, the American providing our equipment and transport. The one you were concerned about.”

  Johan nodded, saying, “So now I have to trust the American to certify a parachute he sold us? No, thanks.”

  “No. That would be from the man on the left. Just call him Colonel Smith.”

  “He’s South African military?”

  “Yes.”

  “From where? What’s his background?”

  “Not your concern. In fact, don’t even broach it. He’s taking a considerable risk just meeting us. Look, you wanted to come feel out the American—Tyler—so I let you. Don’t say a word during the meeting besides the initial pleasantries. Let me handle everything else.”

  Armstrong turned to Andy and said, “You’ll address any needs we have with the equipment, but it doesn’t sound like much.”

  Andy nodded, and Armstrong looked to Johan one more time. “No Lily Boy stuff here, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  They approached the porch, and Johan sized up Tyler Malloy. He was not what Johan had expected. He had a hard look, like the men Johan hired, not like the suit-and-tie set who usually worked Tyler’s end of the street. Johan shook hands, and, as expected, Tyler’s grip overcompensated. Johan returned it with a smile.

  Colonel “Smith” looked like every other high command he’d ever served. Civilian clothes that didn’t fit right and a little bit of a stick up his butt. He had a pinched face with a pencil mustache that was bordering on Hitler territory. He didn’t even bother to shake hands, apparently wanting to get out of the light before anyone noticed them standing together. They marched inside, then went upstairs, stopping in a room filled with paintings. A museum of some sort. In the center were a couch and three chairs circling an ornate coffee table.

  Johan and Andy got the couch; the rest went to the chairs. Tyler said, “So, did you check out the equipment? Does it meet your requirements?”

  Armstrong said, “We had a couple of questions, but, yes, it appears to. Andy?”

  Andy leaned forward and said, “What’s the pedigree of the HALO rigs you got us?”

  “From US Army Special Operations Command. Excess after they adopted the RA-1 system. Don’t worry, they aren’t junk. USASOC wouldn’t let them go out for garage sale if they posed a life-support risk. Any that were even close to posing a hazard due to wear and tear were destroyed.”

  Johan spoke. “And we should just trust you on that? Last thing I want is to have my lines all snap with dry rot.”

  Armstrong shot Johan a look, and Tyler said, “I don’t provide faulty equipment. I only provide what I would use myself.”

  “So you know how to operate a free-fall parachute?”

  He asked the question on
purpose, wanting to gain some insight into Tyler’s background beyond his personal appearance. Tyler turned red, giving Johan a partial answer. Armstrong cut off the conversation before it grew more heated, saying, “Colonel Smith, would it be possible to get a certified rigger to give the parachutes the once-over? Out at our training facility?”

  Smith nodded and said, “I can do that. But it’s going to cost you. I’m already hanging my ass out here.”

  Armstrong said, “I can talk to my employer. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

  Smith said, “What’s your timeline? How soon?”

  “We’re emptying the warehouse in the morning. We’ll take the equipment to the training site, zero our weapons, shake out the comms gear, do a practice jump with the rigs, and then be ready. We’re finishing up the final training package with the natives right now, so say within three days.”

  Smith said, “I can make that happen.”

  Tyler said, “So, sounds like we’re tracking. Let’s talk pay.”

  Armstrong said, “Colonel Smith?”

  He said, “I’ve got them. I can transfer them at any time.”

  In a measured tone, Johan interrupted, saying, “No offense, but not all of us are tracking. My big question is the aircraft. We have our hands on the equipment, but it’s useless without the infiltration platform. I’m going to need pilots who know something about a parachute drop, and Mr. Malloy’s not giving me a lot of confidence in that area.”

  Colonel Armstrong frowned, his expression showing the displeasure boiling underneath his words. He said, “Johan, let me worry about that.”

  Tyler leaned in and said, “You have a problem with me, Johan?”

  Johan returned his stare, his cold blue eyes not flinching. He said, “Yes, a little bit.”

  Tyler said, “Have I let you down yet? Did you have any trouble smuggling the Israeli? Or interrogating him?”

  Johan saw the anger build and was a smidge amused. Tyler stabbed a finger in his face and said, “That was my safe house. I took the risk. It’s my warehouse on the waterfront. More risk. So far, I’m the only one who has stake in this game, so back the fuck off.”