Spy ah-4

by Ted Bell

  “Collided,” Dixon said, pushing his short brim back on his forehead and looking at the hole.

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  Dixon said, “Anything else you can tell us?”

  “Well, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but an Officer Darius called in with something about a remote-controlled vehicle here in the Park. What’s that all about? Some kid flying a toy plane? Nobody knew what the hell to make of it. A couple of minutes later, boom.”

  “Have you heard from Officer Darius?”

  “No, sir.”

  Dixon and Hernandez looked at each other, thanked the officer, and walked away. There was a small group of uniformed officers and others who stood looking down into the hole. Three men in HAZMAT suits were down at the bottom taking soil samples or whatever it was they did. Dixon looked around. A bomb disposal technician was playing with a little robot back in the trees where the road had been cordoned off to protect any tire tracks in the snow.

  The hole was nearly fifteen feet across and ten feet deep. Hernandez released Dutch and the dog took off at a trot, circling the crater and the dirty black snow all around the edge, all fired up.

  “How good is he?” Dixon asked, watching with admiration as the dog worked.

  “They learn to detect almost nineteen thousand individual scents. After twenty-six weeks of training, Dutch scored 650 out of a possible 700 points. He’s good.”

  “I think I’ll stroll back down that road a ways. Take a look around. Let Dutch here do his job in peace.”

  “I’ll be right here, Sheriff.”

  The scene had been carefully protected for about five hundred yards. The two-lane road curved back and disappeared into some trees. There were still two sets of tire tracks in the snow, lightly covered with fresh snow but you could still make out two distinct tread patterns. Dixon bent down and looked at a point of intersection between the two. He got his pocketknife out and stuck the blade into the snow. He’d seen something while staring at the treads. He pried it out and picked it up with his handkerchief. It was shiny, maybe some kind of glass.

  Black glass.

  “What have you got, there?” the bomb technician said, walking over with his robot in tow.

  “Piece of glass.”

  “Lots of that around. A lot of this black shiny stuff. Kinda weird, isn’t it? Here, hold your piece up to my flashlight. See that? Something inside, like another layer or something.”

  “Yep. I do. It’s mirror.”

  “Mirror. That’s what I thought, too. Now, what do you suppose that is all about?”

  “Excuse me, will you please?”

  Dixon turned and hurried back through the deep snow to the crater. Hernandez was still there, working the dog.

  “Could you take a walk with me over here a little ways? The trees over yonder.”

  “Sure.” Hernandez followed the sheriff to a nearby tree, away from the crowd. “What have you got?”

  “Got your flashlight?”

  “Right here.”

  Dixon showed him the piece of glass he’d found, turning it over in his hand so it caught the light. Hernandez said, “You’re seeing something here, Sheriff. I’m not.”

  “That truck Homer and I stopped that first night? The Yankee Slugger. Had heavily tinted windows. Blackouts with a layer of mirror in the middle. I tried to see inside that truck’s windshield, with my light right up against the glass just like this. Couldn’t see through the stuff. Just like this piece right here.”

  “You check the truck in Virginia?”

  “Identical glass in the cab. That bomb technician over there says this glass is all over the place. Lots of it.”

  “So, you think this truck was one of the remote-controllers?”

  “I’d bet on it.”

  “Keep an eye on Dutch for me? I’m headed to my car to get the boss on the radio. Tell him what you’ve found. See what he wants us to do about it.”

  Dixon nodded, “Won’t let him out of my sight. Borrow your flashlight while you’re gone?”

  Dixon took the Superlight and walked back to the crater. He watched Dutch working something on the far side of the crater. Nobody in the crowd was paying any attention but he was on to something, all right. Dixon wasn’t a trained dog handler. But you didn’t need to be. You could see the whole thing in his body language. He was all over something or other.

  “Hey, Dutch,” Dixon said, rubbing his ears, “What have you got, boy? Huh?”

  There was a jagged piece of blackened metal lying between the dog’s feet. Dutch was guarding it, but decided to let Franklin look at it. Dixon took out his hanky again and held the thing up to the light. Twisted metal, burned, but you could make out some letters stamped into it.

  R-O-L-E.

  “The dog found this,” he said to the FBI man standing in the open door of the van.

  “Who are you, sir?” the skinny man with the thin black tie asked. Franklin told him as he flashed his shield, climbed up a step to hand the piece of steel to him. “Where’d he find it, Sheriff?”

  “Near the crater. He’s a White House K-9 dog, name of Dutch. That sticky stuff on the other side there’s probably bomb residue, way he’s acting. I’d take him seriously if I were you. He’s pretty good.”

  “We’ll add it to the pile. Check it out when we can. Thank you, Sheriff.”

  “I was thinking. Those letters? R-O-L-E? Could be the middle of a word. Chevrolet.”

  “Chevrolet. Well, that’s an interesting idea. But hardly likely. There were two vehicles involved in this explosion. We’ve seen the tread marks. A Ford Crown Victoria and a Peterbilt tractor trailer rig riding on Goodyear. That’s confimed all the way to the top.”

  “Well, you may be right.”

  “Thanks again.”

  The man turned to go back inside the crime van.

  “There could have been a vehicle inside the truck,” Dixon said to his narrow white back.

  “What’d you say?”

  “I say there could have been another vehicle inside the truck. Truck that big, could have been two vehicles inside of the trailer. Two Chevrolets.”

  “Two Chevrolets.”

  “I rode in one just this evening. Over to the White House to meet with the President. Big black Chevy Suburban belonging to the Secret Service. You know the ones I’m talking about?”

  “I know the ones.”

  “I’ve been seeing a lot of them since I got up here to Washington. All over town. I guess for the Inauguration?”

  “I guess.”

  “All with blacked-out windows.”

  “Right.”

  “A lot of busted black glass on the ground over there. I found this piece down the road a ways.” Franklin handed him the piece of glass he found.

  “Will you look at that? Huh.”

  “Well. It’s just an idea. Add it to the pile.”

  Dixon turned and headed back to the crater to find Agent Rocky Hernandez, Dutch trotting happily along right beside him.

  Good dog.

  77

  THE BLACK JUNGLE

  S tokley Jones stuck the flat of his hand in the air. His patrol froze at the signal. Ten minutes had elapsed since the squad’s insertion into extremely dense terrain. Two-hundred-foot trees loomed above their heads; he’d never seen anything like it. The squad was moving out carefully in patrol formation. They were moving much too slowly for Stoke, but there wasn’t much he could do about that.

  It was raining up there somewhere. The water streaming down from above made the jungle floor a boggy mess. And there were tripwires everywhere.

  Stoke was acting as point man, followed by Froggy, who’d been designated patrol leader. Right behind them was the radioman/grenadier, now using a back-up PRC 117 emergency VHF radio providing instant communications with the boat; he was giving Stiletto’s fire control officer the exact coordinates of the squad’s location. He could call for fire support if needed, but he didn’t want shells landing in h
is own backyard.

  Behind the radioman was the first of three heavily laden M-60 machine gunners whose job it was to lay down a base of fire of 7.62 rounds if the squad got hit. His objective was to use the heavy machine gun to keep the bad guys with their heads down until the squad either flanked the enemy or got the hell out of there. Bringing up the rear was another M-60 man and a second point man covering the squad’s six. Should they need to reverse direction, he automatically became the new Point.

  It was rough going, wet and muddy, but Stoke felt good. If there was a tougher, better trained, meaner Hostage Rescue Team on earth, Stokely had yet to hear of those lying sons of bitches.

  Stoke had a CAR-15 with an M-203 grenade launcher slung over his shoulder. He was also carrying a Mossberg shotgun loaded with buckshot. It would give him a broader kill zone in the tight confines of jungle combat. The shotgun could also come in handy clearing foliage in the event of a firefight. Each man also carried a machete to hack through the dense undergrowth. All were wearing identical woodland cammies, jungle boots, and floppy bush hats.

  “Tripwire,” Stoke said softly into his lipmike. It was the fifth one he’d seen in the last ten minutes. They were all over the place, slowing them way down. Some of them were even strung with little Voodoo dolls and spooky artifacts so you couldn’t miss them. Keep the natives from bothering Papa Top, he figured. Problem was, some of these little trinket clotheslines were real live wires. Blow your bottom half off. Some were not. So you had to take them all very seriously.

  Froggy, the designated PL, was maybe 20 or 30 yards behind him. He was carrying a GPS handheld as backup navigation; his job right now was to keep them moving in the right direction. The Frogman also had a CAR-15 with grenade launcher. Like every man, he was carrying an NVD or Night Vision Device. As the PL on this mission, he was trying to use it sparingly so as to give his eyes time to maintain his natural night sight.

  Stoke was the true eyes and ears of the squad. It was up to him to alert the squad of impending danger. Not that he could see much of anything in this shit. The combination of rain, fog, and foliage made it so you couldn’t see your nose in front of your goddamn face.

  “Alors,” he heard Froggy say in his headphones, “Merde and merde again!”

  Well said, Froggy. Shit and double shit.

  It was a good thing he’d stopped the squad in their tracks. He heard something mechanical, caught a glimpse of a foot patrol of heavily armed guards approaching at double time along a narrow trail just below the ridge that the squad was descending. Looked like maybe an eight-man squad. They were preceded on the trail by two of the weirdest looking war machines Stoke had ever seen. Had to be the Trolls, remote controlled tanks Brock had told them about. Moving slowly, just in front of the enemy patrol. Out looking for his squad probably.

  Stoke made a slashing motion across his throat and stepped lightly as he could over the tripwire. The men behind him carefully did the same and began moving down the hillside sloping down to the twisting trail. The darkness, foggy rain and thick vegetation provided all the cover they needed. Stoke’s flat hand shot into the air again when they reached a spot twenty yards above the muddy trail.

  “Get down,” he said, dropping to one knee and pulling two grenades from his belt. He set the timers on sixty seconds, checked his sweep second hand, and heaved the grenades underhanded. Plop-plop, into the muddy center of the trail. The two robot vehicles and the goon squad were still double-timing toward them. Using hand signals, Stoke directed his guys to move into ambush formation.

  Thirty seconds remained on his dive watch. The Troll tanks were advancing rapidly now, the barrels of the twin machine guns up front swiveling toward the incline where Stoke and his men waited, low in the undergrowth. Had they been seen? Sensors, maybe, on the jungle floor. Stoke moved the selector on his assault rifle to full auto and waited. He saw the first tank come around the bend, treads slogging through the thick brownish mud.

  C’mon, c’mon.

  Stoke’s two grenades exploded almost simultaneously. The two tanks were blown off their treads and over-turned. The enemy patrol scattered, diving into the thick underbrush on either side of the trail.

  “Boomer! Bassman!” Stoke shouted to the two machine gunners, “Move up!”

  The M-60 is a very heavy weapon and each man carried nearly a thousand rounds of linked 7.62 ammunition adding to his burden. Normally, they don’t move too quickly because of that load. This time they did. Boomer and Bassman, both seasoned veterans and ex-Navy SEALs, raced to the position indicated by Stokely and laid down a murderous wall of fire on both sides of the trail. There was no possibility that anything had survived. The vegetation, shredded and smoking, showed no signs of life.

  “Move out,” Stoke said when he was satisfied no further threat existed. The squad moved down the hill and onto the muddy trail where the enemy had just died.

  Froggy, paused at Stoke’s side, looked at his compass and GPS handheld.

  “Allons vite, mes enfants, allons vite!” Froggy said, “Quickly, children, quickly!”

  “ALL BACK ONE THIRD,” Brownlow said, eyes on the narrowed river ahead. It was raining so hard it was difficult to make out the vine-shrouded banks on either side. Only radar kept him on course. His depth-sounder depicted nearly impassable shoals and less than ten feet of water beneath his keel. Stiletto slowed to idle speed, barely moving, churning muddy black water at her stern. Any advantage afforded by the boat’s power and speed was long over.

  The twisting stretch of river that lay just beyond these shoals was mined. If they could even reach that stretch of water. Any time now, they’d be deploying the two minesweeper probes. According to Brock’s chart, the heavily mined portion of the Black River lay only two miles distant.

  These small minesweeper sensors had been developed by the Royal Navy’s Admiralty Mining Establishment, a quaint name for one of the most technically advanced mine countermeasures departments on earth. MCM had developed the two probes now aboard Stiletto. Mounted at the bow, launched underwater much like a torpedo, the probe raced ahead of the boat and sent back a detailed visualization of the minefield. The drone’s electro-optic system provided very high resolution 3-D images for positive mine identification and location.

  On paper, AME had shown a vessel could successfully navigate a minefield, even in littoral zones, confined straits, or choke points. But that was on paper. It had never been attempted in the field or under combat conditions. Hawke had readily agreed to be the guinea pig when C had suggested he try the damn things out.

  Hawke and Brock appeared moments after the boat slowed, both men outfitted for night jungle operations.

  “Talk to us, Cap,” Hawke said, “Are you ready to deploy the probes?”

  “We’ve got another problem, sir. We’ve run out of water.” Brownlow tapped his index finger on the 3-D depiction of the river bottom.

  “Christ,” Brock muttered.

  Hawke leaned over Brownlow’s shoulder and studied the monitor.

  “I see what you mean.”

  “Whitewater rapids ahead, sir. Judging by the bottom, this is going to get a lot worse before it gets better. I’d say we’re looking at maybe a mile of very rocky whitewater before it opens up again.”

  “Any ideas, Harry?” Hawke said.

  “Keeps raining like this, the river keeps rising at this rate, we just might be able to get through.”

  “Praying for rain is not an option. We’ll take the bloody canoes.”

  “What? And leave all these expensive weapons systems behind?” Brock grinned and cocked an eye.

  “We’ve got no choice. Skipper, all stop.”

  “Aye, sir. All stop.” Brownlow hauled back the throttles and Stiletto ghosted to a stop.

  “Mr. Brock, tell the crew on deck to launch all four canoes. Then go forward and inform our team to check their weapons. We shove off in fifteen minutes.”

  Hawke headed below to his tiny cabin to retrieve his weapons and
ammunition.

  “Sir?” the radioman said, sticking his head out into the companion-way just after Hawke passed.

  “What is it, Sparks?”

  “Call for you, sir. On the scrambled line.”

  “Who?”

  “Washington, sir. State Department. Urgent.”

  “Put it through to my quarters,” Hawke said and went two doors down into his cabin.

  “Alex?”

  “Hello, Conch.”

  “Alex, listen carefully. This is the deep shit call. Where are you now?”

  “Still on the bloody river. It’s impossible to go further. We’re launching canoes for the final leg. Weather is socked in. Good, because it keeps the drones from pestering us. Bad, because you can’t see a bloody thing. And how are you doing on this lovely January evening?”

  “Insane. The president walks down the steps of the Capitol to be sworn in at noon, less than twelve hours from now. Rumors of some kind of attack are flying so fast you can’t keep track. The Secret Service’s Joint Operations Command has assigned a threat level of most serious and credible. Your idea is only one of many we are running down right now.”

  “My idea.”

  “A feint on the Mexican border. Originating in the Amazon. An attack on a major city. Washington.”

  “Washington? How do you know that?”

  “Think about it, Alex.”

  “The Inauguration. Christ, Conch, of course. That has to be it.”

  “It gets worse. Six hours ago that nice sheriff from Texas called me. His deputy followed a convoy of remote-controlled trucks to Virginia. In one truck was some kind of remote-controlled sub. It was placed in the Potomac. We’ve been dragging the river from Fredericksburg to the Pentagon Yacht Basin. Divers are down everywhere. We haven’t found it yet.”

  “What about the airborne minesweepers? Those new helos that laser scan from above?”

  “Nothing. There is a move afoot to evacuate key government officials from the city. One more thing. I just got a call from FBI Chief Mike Reiter. He says explosion in Rock Creek Park turns out to have involved at least one Chevrolet Suburban packed with Semtex explosives. Secret Service vehicle, Alex.”