Operation Southern Cross - 02

by Jack Shane

  That’s when Weir dropped the bombshell: SOC wanted Owens himself to find XBat and tell them to call home.

  The diplomat was bewildered. He read Weir’s message over three times. He was in agri-business. He didn’t want to get involved in this. He began typing frantically: But how can I find them if you can’t?

  Weir typed in reply: XBat’s exact location is unknown. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have an idea where they might be.

  That’s when Weir asked Owens the strangest question of all: Do you have any experience climbing mountains?

  SERGEANTS BRIAN JORDAN AND JEFF BLUM WERE guards at the British embassy in Caracas. Located in a large white building on Raul Boulevard, it was not far from the main presidential palace.

  The two soldiers spent most of their days stationed just inside the front door of the subdued embassy building. They used electronic wands to scan visitors for weapons. They also checked passports of British nationals who had business in the embassy. It made for a long, boring day—especially since Jordan and Blum weren’t ordinary soldiers, but members of the Special Air Service, the famous SAS, Britain’s version of the U.S. Green Berets.

  The two soldiers were specialists in antiterrorism tactics. They’d quietly been moved into the country about a month before, when it looked like things were getting tense in the northern half of South America. Their real function was to coordinate an evacuation of the embassy should one have to be undertaken on short notice. Helicopters would arrive on the roof for quick flights out to the island of St. George in the Lesser Antilles.

  So, it was unusual that they got a call in the middle of their breakfast tea; it was from their boss, the ambassador himself. He ordered the men to grab their weapons, some scaling gear and two Union Jacks, and report to the backdoor of the embassy in five minutes.

  “A friend needs our help,” had been the only explanation offered to them.

  A WHITE LAND ROVER DROVE UP TO THE EMBASSY’S backdoor five minutes later.

  George Owens was behind the wheel. The two SAS members recognized him right away; Owens had been a frequent guest at the British embassy’s weekly cocktail parties and sometimes played poker with the staff once most of the guests had gone home.

  Owens put his finger to his lips. The SAS men got the message. They said nothing, but simply loaded their mountain-climbing gear into the back of the Land Rover and climbed in. As they did this, two VAF jets went low over the capital, shaking buildings and windows for blocks.

  Owens put the car in gear and started out of the alley. It was widely known that the Venezuelan secret police had some parts of Caracas itself bugged, especially around the foreign embassies, using line of sight eavesdropping equipment, technology that could pick up conversations on the street, in open cafés and inside vehicles. So Owens and the soldiers would maintain their silence until they were out of the downtown section. Or at least, that’s what they hoped.

  In front of them now—on Raul Boulevard—they saw mobs of Venezuelan citizens, still on the streets after another wild night of demonstrating and rioting. Owens had encountered smaller crowds on his way over to the embassy, but nothing like this. Many of these people were armed with pipes, knives and machetes, and they looked like they were out for blood. There was no way Owens was going to drive through them, so he put the Rover in reverse and began backing out of the alley the way he had come in.

  But no sooner had Owens reached the other end of the alley when a black military jeep roared out of nowhere and came to a screeching halt behind him, blocking his way out. Owens hit the brakes so hard, the SAS man in the back seat nearly went through the rear window.

  Black uniformed soldiers jumped out of the jeep, and in two seconds the Land Rover was surrounded. A man in plainclothes stepped out of the jeep and walked over to the driver’s side. Owens rolled down the window.

  “Please get out of the car,” the man said to Owens in a thick Spanish accent.

  “What for?” Owens asked as innocently as he could.

  “Police business,” was the man’s harsh reply. He had a long scar running from the left side of his forehead all the way down to his lower right cheek.

  Owens pulled out his diplomatic pass and showed it to the man. Scarface was not impressed with his “Agri” credentials. Owens began spitting out legal jargon, essentially telling the man that he was protected by diplomatic immunity and that neither he nor his soldiers had any authority over them.

  But again, the scarred man wasn’t hearing any of it.

  “Our nations are in a state of war,” he growled at Owens.

  To Owens’ surprise, the man pulled out a document, written in both English and Spanish, stating that same declaration under the Venezuelan presidential seal. Owens had seen similar documents before. This one looked legitimate, or at the very least, would have been hard to counterfeit. What Weir had told him about the “rant” that had come over the low diplomatic channel now seemed very serious.

  “So all that diplomatic immunity goes right out the window,” the man said to Owens. “Now, please, get out of the car. You have to come with us.”

  Owens just stared back at him. He’d been a diplomat for almost twenty years. By the nature of the job, he’d been in some uncomfortable spots before. He’d always managed to keep his head, show some reserve and work his way out of them; but in that moment, looking into this man’s black eyes, he knew that if he went with him, he’d never see his wife or Molly again. He couldn’t let this happen.

  But how could they escape eight heavily armed soldiers? To be shot down in the dirty Caracas street would be no big deal. It was something that happened here every day.

  That’s when his friends came through. It was Blum, the SAS man in the back seat, who acted first. In his plainclothes he didn’t look any more extraordinary than a carpet sweeper, but of course, that was one of his talents. He moved so swiftly now, Owens had a hard time believing it was real.

  Suddenly the largest handgun Owens had ever seen appeared from the back seat. At the same moment, Jordan, the SAS man sitting beside Owens, reached across him, grabbed Scarface by the back of the head and pulled him into the car in such a way, the massive pistol was pointing right between the man’s eyes.

  “We’re going fishing here, mate,” Blum said to Scarface, pushing the gun into his bushy brow. “And if we don’t get moving soon, well, now all the fish will be gone. Do you understand?”

  Scarface could barely talk. “Si,” was all he managed to blurt out.

  “That’s a smart boy,” the SAS man replied. “A few fish not worth getting your head blown off, are they?”

  Scarface was a half second away from wetting himself. Owens had tried to get out of the way as best he could. Still, he was practically eyeball to eyeball with the Venezuelan police official, who looked ready to cry.

  “Can you have your friends move, please?” Owens asked him.

  Scarface began waving his hands frantically. The soldiers quickly retreated back to their vehicle.

  Owens started the Land Rover creeping backward again, out onto the side street behind the embassy, forcing his would-be captor to dance along with him. Only when he was sure that he could hit the gas and go did the SAS men loosen their grip on the police official. The man fell backward, landing on his ass in the middle of the asphalt. Owens floored the accelerator and off they went.

  They roared out of the side street and onto a two-lane highway that ran parallel to Raul Boulevard. That thoroughfare was still filled with angry protesters. The highway too was crowded—with cars. Owens’ upbringing as a typical Massachusetts driver served him well as he weaved in and out of the heavy traffic.

  It took them about five minutes of wild driving before the SAS men could look back with certainty and know the military vehicle was not following them.

  “We lost the buggers, I think,” Blum said, still peering out of the rear window. “Breathe easy, everyone.”

  But Owens was concerned. If the SBI had targeted hi
m and failed, he wondered if his family might be next.

  Sergeant Jordan seemed to read his thoughts.

  “Don’t worry, mate,” he said to Owens. “Once we wrap up what we’ve got to do today, we can all get out of this piss-poor country—you and your family included.”

  CHAPTER 12

  THE PLACE WAS CALLED TRANERAS MONTANA NATURALEZA Reserva—the Traneras Mountain Nature Reserve. But it had a nickname: Prehistórico Criatura Cine Parque. Loosely translated: Movie Monster Park.

  A vast nature preserve located seventy-five miles southwest of Caracas, its nickname was well deserved. The place looked so prehistoric, that back in the 1950s, Hollywood used shots of the area as background for its dinosaur movies. One studio wanted to shoot an entire monster movie in the park, but the place proved too isolated and treacherous for filmmaking.

  The fifty-square-mile reservation was virtually empty of animal life. No one came near it, not Venezuelan citizens, not the Indians, as they considered it cursed. There was a volcano in its center, still smoldering after its last eruption 10,000 years earlier. The airspace above the park was off limits to civil aircraft, as the air currents from this hissing mountain were thought to be dangerous. For the same reason, the Venezuelan military rarely flew over the area.

  This strange place was the destination of George Owens and the two SAS men. They arrived at the foot of the volcano after several hours of driving over some very rough roads. Parking the Rover alongside a glorified dirt path, they covered the vehicle with vegitation, just in case they’d been followed. The SAS men retrieved their climbing gear and machetes. Then, on instructions from Owens, each man tied a Union Jack flag around his shoulders. Owens did the same with an American flag. Sergeant Jordan said they looked like bargain-basement superheroes. They started to climb.

  It was eerie exercise from the first step. Owens realized why Hollywood had been enamored with this place. It really was right out of the Jurassic Park. If a T-Rex or a pack of raptors were to come flying out of the jungle at any second, it wouldn’t have been that much of a surprise. Lots of vines, lots of heavy ferns, monstrous spider webs and green slime everywhere. The place was positively antediluvian.

  It was already past noon by the time they began their climb, yet they were so quickly surrounded by thick jungle, it seemed like dusk had fallen already. There were no sounds around them—that might have been the strangest thing. No birds, no signs of animal life. Barely a bug flying about or insects beneath their feet. It was a jungle with no life in it. Maybe the local Indians were right, Owens thought. Maybe this place was haunted.

  The three men were soon soaked in sweat. The grade was steep and the overgrowth so dense, it took them thirty minutes just to reach the bottom of the volcano itself. There was still jungle here, but the ground was not made of soft earth and vegetation anymore, but rather reddish rock and pumice instead.

  Still Owens amazed himself by holding his own with the SAS men. His early morning jogs through the safer parts of Caracas back in the good old days had paid off—until he looked at his hands and realized they were both bleeding and covered with the disgusting green slime. So were his knees; he’d slipped and fallen more than a few times on the way up. Suddenly, it seemed like they were climbing on broken glass, and they still had a long way to go. Owens cursed himself for ever responding to Weir’s e-mail. And he vowed to take Molly’s computer away.

  They pressed on. The jungle became even thicker, a vertical forest that hadn’t seen a human walk through it in thousands of years. Every step they took had to be hacked away. The three men took turns doing the machete work. But after an hour of this, their strength became sapped.

  When they reached a small clearing, Sergeant Blum asked Owens, “Might be time for a tea break?”

  Owens couldn’t argue. Though they had only about another five hundred feet to go to the top of the volcano, they stopped for the first time to rest.

  Owens dropped his equipment, fell to his butt and wiped the sweat from his eyes. The SAS men did the same, passing a canteen around. That Owens felt he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders was apparent now that they’d stopped. Suddenly he felt very old. What Weir had told him about the current growing crisis was bad enough; Scarface’s document of war was even more disturbing. An unlikely actor in all this, he was happy only because the two SAS men agreed to come with him. He couldn’t imagine doing this alone.

  His job was to somehow find XBat and convince them to go home. But what kind of people would they be? A bunch of real superheroes? Or so hopped up on pep pills they weren’t thinking straight? And if they were off the beam, so out of control, why would they listen to him?

  It was soon time to resume climbing. Owens capped the canteen and adjusted his American flag cape. But then he realized the machete he’d laid at his feet moments before had vanished, as if an invisible hand had taken it away. He got on his knees and searched for it, but found nothing. When he looked up at the two SAS men, though, he saw their machetes were quite visible—green hands were holding them up to the British soldiers’ throats. Owens was stunned. The SAS guys were quick, but these ghosts were quicker.

  Six camouflaged soldiers materialized out of the overgrowth. Heavily armed and green from head to toe, they’d been hiding in the clearing all along, waiting for the trio to make their move. That’s when Owens knew wearing the flags as capes had probably saved their lives.

  He hadn’t found XBat. XBat had found him.

  “I’m George Owens, State Department Diplomatic Service,” he was finally able to croak at the green faces staring back at him. “And if you men are part of TF-160’s Experimental Air Battalion, then I have an urgent message for you from the President of the United States…”

  THE FIRST THING OWENS NOTICED AFTER BEING TAKEN up and over the lip of the crater was the steam. There were hundreds of plumes rising out of the slanted ground, creating a white cloud so dense, he could hardly see in front of him.

  They climbed down about a hundred feet into the crater itself, their silent captors leading the way to a very small, semi-horizontal clearing. There was still thick jungle all around them, though, especially overhead. In fact the vegetation on the inside of the volcano appeared even thicker than on the outside. At the same time, all this green seemed somehow unnatural, like one of those computer-generated pictures that looked nonsensical until the viewer blurs his eyes and sees the image hidden underneath. Owens took a good look at the flora around him—and that’s when he realized that he wasn’t staring at jungle at all, but lots of camouflage hiding a squadron of helicopters.

  It was amazing. The copters’ bodies were covered with hundreds of small bushes and weeds; their rotor blades were draped with intricately interwoven vines overhead. They were positioned in such a way as to resemble just another piece of heavily forested inner crater. But between the steam and the fake jungle, Owens found it almost impossible to see the sky—and, he supposed, just as difficult for someone up high to see what was really on the ground below.

  These guys are good, Owens thought, I’ll give them that.

  While the SAS men were given water and a cool place to sit, Owens was brought to one of the large, well-hidden helicopters. Three soldiers were kneeling near the door as he stepped in. They too were painted green, head to toe, carrying massive weapons and wearing oversize helmets wired for sound. They had an S2S satellite phone on the floor in front of them. It was in a dozen pieces, and like a trio of emerald-skinned surgeons, they were trying to put it back together again.

  “Don’t bother,” Owens told them. “The Galaxy Net stopped taking calls days ago.”

  He was led to the cockpit of the big copter where another green soldier, older than the rest, was sitting in the pilot’s seat. He was trying to raise someone on the radio. Owens pegged this man as the unit’s CO. Even though his back was to him, it was obvious this officer was very agitated. Between making unsuccessful radio calls he was constantly checking his watch and swearin
g under his breath.

  There were no introductions. The two soldiers escorting Owens interrupted the officer and passed the diplomat’s ID to him. They explained Owens and two bodyguards had climbed up through their defense line and that he claimed to have an important message for them.

  The officer seemed surprised to see Owens here.

  “Are you really a diplomat?” was the officer’s first question to him. “Or are you CIA?”

  “Strictly diplomatic corps,” Owens assured him. “I’m an expert in South American agriculture, and definitely not a cloak-and-dagger guy.”

  “How did you locate us, then?” was the next question.

  “The CIA expected you would eventually find yourselves the perfect hideout,” Owens replied. “And what better place is there than this? Inside a piece of the jungle that no one wants to come to, not even the animals? It was the natural place to look for you.”

  At this point, two more soldiers walked to the front of the copter. Owens correctly guessed they were officers as well.

  “What’s this message you have for us?” the senior officer asked him, checking his watch again. “We’ve been trying to reach someone for the past two days.”

  Owens launched into the speech he’d been rehearsing since leaving his house that morning. He told the officer he knew all about XBat and why the unit had been sent to Venezuela. He explained that he’d spoken via the Internet with their CIA handler, Gary Weir, and that it was Weir who’d sent him on this mission.

  “And frankly,” Owens went on, “Washington is in a state of shock at what you boys have been doing down here. They watched you attack that air base. They saw you take the aviation fuel. They know you hit the bridges and the cell-phone towers. Anytime this Galaxy Net thing decided to turn itself on, they found you doing something else.

  “You were sent down here to see what was happening at this Area 13 place. Your orders said nothing about attacking the Venezuelan navy, or bombing the Venezuelan air force. You weren’t supposed take any aggressive actions at all.