Spy ah-4

by Ted Bell

The current that had pinned them to the rocks was now in their favor. The canoe was moving slowly but surely toward him.

  “That’s it!” Hawke cried to the men. “You can do it, lads!”

  Yes. Pull the canoe straight for the bank, keep the bow pointed into the current as much as possible, let the bloody river swing the stern around until the canoe was parallel to the bank and pointed in the right direction. Now! The men were holding her fast to the bank, and Hawke swung himself back aboard.

  This time, they managed to stay within the narrow confines of the channel. Hawke’s watch put them at maybe twenty minutes behind Brock’s group. The fact that they’d heard no mines exploding downriver was a great comfort.

  Hawke could no longer tell if the water in his eyes was rain or fever sweat. But he paddled harder and so, too, did his crew. Stoke and Froggy had to be getting close to Top’s compound now. They might have already found Congreve. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the unbidden words:

  “Hang on, Ambrose,” Hawke muttered.

  Hang bloody on.

  82

  THE BLACK JUNGLE

  S toke caught Frogman’s eye and raised one hand into the air, palm flat. Then he clenched his fist. Enemy ahead. Nobody move. The two jihadistas were one hundred yards away. Smoking cigarettes, their hands cupped over the butts, talking to each other at the base of the enormous tree. Standing sentry, it looked like, in their dark green camo fatigues under ponchos. The wide black river was just to the right. Ambrose’s hut was supposed to be by the river. The tree looked good. The sentries guarding it made it look even better.

  A great bridge arched over the river. A real bridge, not one of the typical wood and rope one-day wonders you saw everywhere in this jungle. Not much traffic. A platoon of guards marching double-time, couple of soldiers on bicycles, two or three of the little robot tanks Brock called Trolls. There were pickets out, and probably electronic sensors in the jungle. But nobody on the bridge seemed to be aware that not only had their perimeter been breached, some bonafide badasses were on the prowl inside the henhouse.

  Probably because all the pickets were dead.

  Froggy and his guys were crouching in the heavy bush fifty yards to his left. For an hour, they had moved swiftly and silently through the jungle, taking advantage of the plentiful natural ground cover, moving from tree to tree. They had left in the bloody wake behind them a large number of seriously dead individuals, scouts and pickets who’d gotten in the squad’s way as they advanced deeper inside Top’s jungle fortress. They’d used assault knives to cut the wire fences and silence the enemy. And silenced CAR-15 submachine guns, the selector set to 3-round bursts, when they couldn’t get close enough for the knives.

  Stoke and Froggy still had all their guys, and all their guys still had all their fingers and toes. So far it was Good Guys 17, Top 0. He’d heard Brock’s guy Saladin talking on the squad radio. He was moving in from the west and sweeping up any bad guys who got between them and their rendezvous point just a mile north above the bridge.

  Stoke looked up at the underside of the dripping canopy. Treehouses, if you could believe that. A whole damn village up in the trees. It was weird. But, Stoke had to admit, strangely beautiful. Magical, like that movie he’d seen as a kid. Swiss Family Robinson, that was it. Name a kid who ever saw that movie and didn’t want to live in a treehouse. Maybe Ambrose Congreve, but that was about it.

  Stoke was ready to take the tree. He looked at his feet. He was standing in ooze that covered his boots, felt like it was sucking him down. They were on high ground now. In some places, the water was already up to your knees. The rain still came and the river was rising rapidly. In many places, camp was already flooded. That’s why the treehouses, dummy, Stoke said to himself, looking over at Froggy.

  He caught his eye and then pointed at the two tangos smoking at the base of the tree. They still had their backs to Froggy. Stoke gave his patented hand signal, pointing his index finger at the side of his own skull and lowering his thumb hammer twice. Froggy nodded. Understood. Two headshots.

  The Frogman rose up to his full height of five-foot-five and raised the CAR-15, sighting, and, almost instantaneously, firing. Pfft-pfft. The two guards crumpled to the ground, dead before they hit the mud. Good guns, these Colts. Now. When Stoke first used this weapon in the Delta, it had been too loud. Guys went deaf firing that gun. And the muzzle flash was too bright, blinding his guys at night and giving away their position to the enemy. They’d fixed all that, now. Had a longer flash suppressor that actually worked.

  Stoke moved quickly to the tree, his eyes scanning the trunk, looking for the thin slash mark that would tell him he’d found the right tree. He did a three-sixty around the base. Nothing at eye level. Wait a minute. That was his eye-level. Harry’s girl, Caparina, who’d cut the bark for them, would have a lot lower eye-level, wouldn’t she? Unless she, too, was six-six. He doubted it. He’d heard she was a total babe.

  He bent down and went round again, running his index finger lightly over the bark as he circled, a foot lower this time.

  There. A thin diagonal slash, fresh greenish white wood showing.

  He took a deep breath. Ambrose Congreve was at the top of this tree. Whether he was dead or alive was the question. He waved Froggy and the squad in closer, circling the wagons with his index finger. There was heavy ground cover and good scrub not ten feet from the tree. Froggy could lay low there, cover his butt for at least the ten minutes this might take. He was going up the tree alone.

  There was a funky hand-operated elevator. Basically, you just stepped onto a four-by-four-foot metal platform, grabbed the handrail, and pushed the red button on the controller hanging from the rail. Zip, you were airborne.

  He looked up as he rose from the ground, his weapon at the ready. The treehouse was a round structure, supported by trusses underneath. The thing was built right around the trunk. Another house, slightly larger and a few feet higher up, was connected to this one by a small ropewalk. The houses had corrugated metal roofs, raised up to let the air flow in this tropical heat. There were narrow verandas that went all the way around.

  He saw a head bending out over the rail, looking straight down at him, the guy obviously wanting to say something to whichever of his buddies was on the way up.

  “How you doing?” Stoke said.

  He saw the guys eyes go wide, looking straight down into the muzzle of a light alloy CAR-15 commando rifle that must have been growing bigger and blacker by the second.

  Stoke squeezed off a shot, hoping the guy would not tumble forward and fall from the railing. He didn’t. He collapsed half way over the rail and stayed there.

  He stepped off the platform onto the circular porch. All clear so far. The door to the house was a quarter of the way around. He moved that way in a semi-crouch, gun out front. The dead guard was hanging there, blood dripping from what was left of his head. The sliding metal door was closed. To the right was a window. There was a light inside, but curtains blocked the view.

  Stoke did a three-sixty around the veranda, not taking any chances. He moved in fractions of inches, trying not to make any noise, and then edged back around to the door. He looked at the steel window again, trying to peer beyond the edges of the black-out curtain. Couldn’t see diddly.

  He put his hand on the door, pausing to control his breathing. Slowed the system way down, just the way he’d been trained to do at Heat & Skeet, down in the Keys.

  Then he slid the door along the track. Slowly. One inch at a time until he could get a look-see.

  No bad guys inside. Only a room with no furniture except a picture hung on the wall. There was a hospital gurney on the far side of the little round room. A pool of light from a lamp on a steel table lit the whole room. There were surgical instruments in a tray on the table. And a man was lying on the narrow gurney, his hands and legs shackled to the frame. An intravenous tube ran down to his arm from a bag of liquid hung on the trolley. Stoke’s heart beat a little fa
ster.

  From a distance he looked a whole lot like Ambrose might look, if he hadn’t eaten in a week. Stoke moved quickly to the gurney and looked down at the gray-faced of the man on the gurney.

  It was Ambrose Congreve, all right.

  He looked a whole lot dead.

  A voice behind him caused him to spin around and tighten his trigger finger at the sight of the soldier. Not squeeze it, which was good, because this soldier was wearing a long white coat over jungle camos. The figure framed in the doorway yanked off a floppy hat revealing a recently shaved head. It belonged to a beautiful woman. She was carrying an armful of medical supplies instead of a gun.

  “Stokely Jones?” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  “Caparina. Harry Brock’s friend.”

  “Is he dead?” Stoke said, looking at Ambrose.

  “Not yet.”

  “You think you can do anything for him, Caparina?”

  “I’m going to try.”

  Stoke pulled out the small handheld radio and hit speaker.

  “Hawke, Hawke, copy?”

  “Stoke, where are you?”

  “He’s alive, boss. I’m with him now.”

  “Hurt?”

  “Yeah. He needs an exfil, pronto. We’ve got to get him to sick bay.”

  “Your job is to keep Ambrose alive, Stoke. Whatever it takes.”

  “Can you stay in position? I’m on the river. The canoes are ten minutes away. Has Brock made the rendezvous?”

  “Negative. Haven’t seen him.”

  “He’s upriver, ahead of me. Should reach you any minute.”

  “Where’s Stiletto?”

  “Navigating the minefield with the probes. She’s maybe twenty minutes out, depending on how bad it is. I’m assuming there’s enough water to get there.”

  “We’ll do what we can for Ambrose till you get here. Meanwhile, I got another report of troop movement from Saladin’s guys. They’re all headed north.”

  “Stiletto’s got them dialed in. Saladin’s scouts radioed the position. Fire Control is launching everything we can spare. Take care of him, Stoke. Keep him breathing.”

  “You heard the man,” Stoke said to the woman bending over her gravely injured patient.

  “What’s his name?” she asked, resting a cool hand on his forehead.

  “That’s Ambrose Congreve of Scotland Yard. He’s the only man on the planet who might know how to keep Papa Top from pulling the trigger.”

  83

  WASHINGTON, DC

  F ranklin zipped up his last pair of clean blue jeans and pulled the t-shirt and sweater over his head. It was a tight squeeze with the bandages and all. His only clean clothes he had left in the bag he’d taken to Key West. He put on his boots. He was ready to go home, soon as this mess was over.

  The Secret Service had been kind enough to invite him to attend the Inauguration ceremony. He’d said he’d rather help than watch but they said no, somebody would pick him up. After that, they’d take him to Reagan Airport for the flight back home.

  He sat down on the edge of the hotel bed and reached for the phone. Right now, all he could think about was talking to Daisy. Hearing that sweet voice on the phone. A song where the music was more important than the lyrics.

  “Hello?”

  “Hey. It’s me.”

  “Oh, my lord! Franklin! Where are you, baby? Still in Washington? June and I got the TV on. They showed your picture this morning! I can’t believe what all they’re saying.”

  “You never should.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’ll tell you later. You got my messages about staying away from those trucks? I left three or four there for you on the machine.”

  “I got them, Franklin.”

  “Tell me you and June stayed away from that one in San Antone. I’ve been so worried about that.”

  “We found that sucker, honey. Big Orange.”

  “I was afraid of that. Is everybody okay? June? What happened?”

  “Franklin, we found that damn Big Orange truck! Can you believe it, the thing was parked right outside of the Alamo. Isn’t that perfect? The Mexicans blowing up the Alamo? June said, ‘Shoot, why didn’t we think of that?’ ”

  “You didn’t go near it?”

  “After what you said? Heck, no! June called the San Antone PD on her cell. They told us to go straight inside to warn all the tourists to get out of there. And you’ll never guess what happened.”

  “Tell me,” Dixon said, lying back on the bed, cradling the phone to his ear. Now that he knew she was all right, he just wanted to listen to the words.

  “We went straight to the souvenir shop, of course, because that’s where all the tourists head first anyway, right? So, we go over to the counter and there’s this really beautiful cashier girl, a dead-ringer for that June Carter actress, Reese Witherspoon, and you will never believe who she was talking to!”

  “Davy Crockett?”

  “No! She was talking to the Big Orange himself! A really cute blond guy with a Big Orange logo on his shirt! He was the Big Orange driver himself, all the way from Lakeland, Florida!”

  “What was he doing in Texas?”

  “Took a detour to see his best girl who worked at the Alamo Gift Shoppe! Isn’t that the funniest thing you ever heard in your life?”

  “What about his truck?”

  “Regular old truck. Blacked-out windows, but not the mirrored kind. My mistake, Franklin.”

  “I love you, Daisy.”

  “Well, I love you, too! When are you coming home?”

  “I’ve been invited by this nice lady at the State Department to attend the Inauguration. She’s swinging by here to pick me up in a few minutes. Then I’m headed to the airport.”

  “How exciting! June and I’ll be looking for you on the television. We heard they might call it off and then it was back on again. All right, I can tell you want to get off the phone. One more thing, did you hear what they found in that underground garage down in Gunbarrel?”

  “Nope.”

  “Homer opened a can of worms. It was an old Chevy dealership. Owned and operated by Mr. J. T. Rawls. Selling SUVs to the Federales last couple of years. Had a tunnel. Had a shop, too, and he was customizing those SUVs to make them look like official cars. He was in cahoots with the Mexicans the whole time! Isn’t that something?”

  “Homer would have been a fine lawman.”

  “He already was, Franklin. You know that.”

  FRANKLIN got picked up out front of the Doubletree ten minutes later. It was a State Department sedan with a driver who looked like she just got out of college. Her name was Holly Rattigan and she was from Seattle. Said she worked in the Secretary’s office but had the day off for the Inaugural Parade and had volunteered to drive the sheriff around.

  “I’m honored to meet you, Sheriff Dixon,” she said, checking traffic and then pulling out into it. “Everybody’s talking about you. Call me Holly.”

  “’Preciate that, Holly.”

  They drove in silence, headed for the Capitol Building. Downtown Washington was fortresslike. Ten-foot-high barriers lined the park in front of the White House. Security and bomb removal vehicles were everywhere. A hundred city blocks were closed. Franklin imagined there was a lot more security you could not see. He knew surveillance cameras were everywhere, sending pictures to a joint command center at a secret location in Virginia. Forty agencies there were monitoring sensors testing for chemical, nuclear, or biological agents.

  Holly’s official sedan and credentials got them through the checkpoints and roadblocks easily enough. A DC Metro policeman waved them into a special lane on Constitution Avenue. They drove toward 1st Street to a lot where they had special parking for Government employees.

  “Isn’t it exciting? Holly said, “They’re expecting 11,000 people to march in the parade down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.”

  “It’s exciting, all right,” Franklin said as Holly pulled int
o an empty parking space. He checked his watch climbing out of the car. The president would be sworn in in twenty minutes.

  Their seats were in a roped-off section in a small park near the U.S. Grant Memorial. Seemed like all of Washington had showed up. Security on the west side of the Capitol was everywhere you looked. All the roads were blocked off with huge concrete barricades. Everyone approaching the site of the president’s speech was subjected to metal detector screening and inspection by security personnel.

  It was January 20. The weather forecast for the president’s Inaugural speech was thirty degrees, cloudy, and light snow flurries. Franklin stood there beside Holly, listening to the beautiful music and admiring the beauty of the west steps of the Capitol, hung with red, white, and blue bunting. The State Department folks had provided pretty good seats. Still, you couldn’t see much from this distance. Holly and Franklin excused themselves, and started moving through the crowd, trying to get closer to the podium.

  Franklin was glad he’d come. It was festive and grand, and he liked seeing the mounted Park Police and their beautiful horses, moving slowly through the crowds keeping an eye on everything. One mounted patrolman had paused under a tree where Franklin was standing.

  “Is that the president?” Franklin asked the officer, when he heard someone speaking solemnly over the public address.

  “No, sir, that’s the vice president. He goes first.”

  Franklin looked at his watch. It was a quarter to twelve. At noon, the president would take the oath.

  “Oh my God,” Holly said, grabbing his arm. “What’s going on back there?”

  Franklin turned to see. The crowd was surging forward around him. You could hear cries of panic coming from the direction of the Grant Memorial, a few hundred yards behind where he and Holly were now standing. There was a small reflecting pool behind the monument, and parked alongside the pool were four black Suburbans belonging to the Secret Service.

  A fifth Suburban had pulled away from the curb and was moving slowly across 1st Street at a weird angle. It wasn’t speeding, but people were shouting warnings and jumping out of its path. The black truck plowed ahead, gaining a little speed. It appeared to be headed right toward the wooded park area directly in front of the West Steps. People were running, panic-stricken, scattering in all directions now.