“How about a Kilo class diesel submarine snugged up against the shore?”
Nothing showed at visible wavelengths. The submarine, if that’s what it was, had been pulled close enough to the shoreline that it was well masked by the dense jungle canopy extending over the water’s edge. Radar seemed to show something reflective enough to be metallic, though the water itself showed up as bright and hard under radar.
“At least two hundred feet long,” Procario noted, reaching past Teller’s shoulder to use the software’s ruler tool to measure the radar footprint. “Maybe two hundred twenty.”
“About the above-water length of a Kilo-class submarine resting on the surface.”
“And the heat signature is about where the exhaust vents would be.”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“How old are these?”
“Two days.”
“Not good. If the diesels were running, they were getting ready to take her out then. She’s probably already left.”
Two days at twelve knots—that meant the sub could be anywhere at all within over five hundred nautical miles, maybe even off the northwestern coast of Cuba and approaching southern Florida. If those two mininukes were on board, it was very bad news indeed.
“Or she’d just arrived two days ago,” Teller pointed out. “Or they were charging her batteries, running her pumps, checking her engines—any of a dozen possible things.”
“Right there,” Procario said, pointing, “that could be an open forward hatch. Yeah. It must be hot as hell inside.”
“Exactly. I think they were running the air pumps to cool off inside.”
“Makes sense.”
A submarine was a tiny, enclosed metal cylinder with over fifty people stuffed inside. In the tropics, even sitting on the water’s surface and tucked back into the shade of the trees, it would be sweltering inside, stinking of sweat and diesel fuel. The crew might well have decided to take a chance and fire up the engines in order to circulate fresh air through the vessel.
“Way too big to be a home-grown narco-sub,” Procario said. “We need a team in there, and we need it now.”
“I agree,” Teller said. He picked up his phone. “Let’s see how long it takes to arm a lily pad.”
AVENIDA DEL PIÑÓN
MEXICO CITY
0920 HOURS, LOCAL TIME
“The traffic is horrible,” Chavez said.
“Maybe it’s a sign,” Dominique told him. “I should stay put.”
She was angry. Her department head, Charles Vanderkamp, had ordered her back to Langley, siding, apparently, with de la Cruz and CISEN.
“I don’t think you’ll be able to convince them,” Chavez said. “Vanderkamp sounded pretty insistent.”
“He’s just pissed that I found the submarine on those photos instead of him.”
“Well, you did kind of go outside the SOP,” Chavez reminded her. “Ah, that’s what the holdup is. Another demonstration.”
A sea of marching people was visible ahead, marching northwest along the broad and tree-lined expanse of the Avenue del Piñón. At the forefront, protestors carried an enormous green banner: LA PRIMAVERA DE LOS LATINOS.
The Latino Spring. They’d been hearing that phrase a lot over the past couple of days—a deliberate parallel with the “Arab Spring” of 2011. It wasn’t referring to an independence movement within Mexico but showed solidarity with the Aztlanista movement back in the United States.
A traffic cop just ahead was gesturing, moving traffic off the avenue and onto a side street. Flashing lights showed where police vehicles were forming a roadblock. Traffic continued to crawl forward as the main thoroughfare leading from downtown out to the airport was diverted.
“I didn’t break any regs,” Dominique told him.
“No, but you’re probably due for the official you-need-to-be-part-of-the-team lecture. If you’re lucky, they won’t accuse you of being a cowboy.”
“I’m beginning to think Chris has the right idea. Do what’s right, and fuck ’em if they don’t like it.”
“I guess you are due for the cowboy lecture. Uh-oh.”
“What?”
“Idiot,” Chavez said. He was watching his side mirror.
Dominique turned, looking back. A motor scooter was making its way past the traffic jamming the narrow street, traveling on the sidewalk to pass them. Pedestrians were leaping out of the way to avoid being hit. Abruptly, the scooter bumped back onto the street, coming up alongside the rental car carrying Chavez and Dominique. The driver was wearing a black motorcycle helmet, anonymous. He reached into a saddlebag, pulling out a package …
“Get out!” Chavez screamed. “Out of the car!”
Acting on instinct, Dominique yanked the car door handle and threw herself into the street. The scooter was already accelerating, racing ahead up the street. Chavez threw his own door open …
The explosion struck her like an incoming ocean wave, slamming her over as flame seared the air above her head and bits of metal and glass snapped past her. She didn’t have her handgun, not when her next stop was going to be the airport and a security check. Rolling over, she looked up at the car, its interior twisted and flame-licked. “Ed!” she yelled, trying to rise to her feet. “Ed!”
Chavez had caught the full fury of the blast, which had peeled open the left side of the car. Close by, people screamed, or simply lay on the pavement, motionless, while others came to help. Storefront windows on both sides of the street had been blown out; the street was covered with glass.
Dominique realized she was bleeding, her face cut …
She made it to her feet at last. A man grabbed her by her shoulders and guided her toward the front step of a storefront. “¡Señorita! ¿Estás herida?”
“No, no … I’m okay…”
A second man arrived to help, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket and pressing it to her forehead to stop the bleeding, but she waved both of them off. She had to get out, get out now before the police showed up. With a government as corrupt as this one, the police who got there first would be there to finish the job.
Sirens wailed close by.
CERROS RUINS
YUCATÁN, BELIZE
1227 HOURS, LOCAL TIME
Teller lay on his belly beside a low stone wall covered with odd glyphs and ornate carvings, using his binoculars to peer down at the coast two hundred yards to the southeast. The triangle of land jutting out into the bay gave them a good vantage point looking back at the shore from across the water. Unfortunately, the coast there, deeply shaded by the jungle canopy, was heavily indented. A submarine could easily be hidden in there close to shore and remain invisible. Through binoculars, Teller could see something that might be a wooden pier running along the shore, however, and a curtain beyond, like dark green haze, that might be the hanging folds of a large camouflage net.
Of the expected Kilo class submarine there was no trace.
Beside him, Procario was aiming the Lightweight Laser Designation Rangefinder (or LLDR) at the presumed location of the sub. “I’d feel better about this if we could see the damned thing,” he said.
“It might be behind that netting,” Teller told him.
“Maybe. We’d need to get closer to see for sure.”
“That,” Teller said, “would not be a real good idea.”
Procario slapped a mosquito on his cheek, leaving a tiny smear of blood. “Bloodsuckers.”
“Hey, welcome to beautiful Belize. Land of mystery, enchantment, and mosquitoes the size of Cessnas.”
They were just ten miles south of Chetumal, across the waters of Corozal Bay. Belize was a former British colony, with town names like Sand Hill, Bermudian Landing, and Teakettle Village standing in amusing contrast to the sea of Spanish and Mayan names around them. One town in particular, Ladyville, located eight miles up the coast from Belize City, was the location of a new lily pad, a cooperative security location where prepositioned supplies and equipment could be u
sed by American forces engaged in operations against narcoterrorists.
Teller and Procario had rented a car and driven south early that morning, crossing the border into Belize at the tiny, duty-free enclave of Santa Elena, following the Northern Highway until they found the road to the fishing port of Corozal, then driving around the curve of Corozal Bay to the much tinier, sleepier village of San Fernando.
North of San Fernando, the road had been blocked off by a chain and an orange sign reading CAMINO CERRADO—“road closed.”
They’d found a place to park the car, off the road and well back under the trees, and set off cross-country, navigating by compass and lugging their equipment in heavy backpacks—their satcom gear and the thirty-five-pound LLDR. An hour’s hike through fairly open jungle had brought them to a cluster of low hills and the triangular headland on the bay. A number of Mayan ruins rose from the hilltops, including a kind of white stone platform overlooking the water, with ancient, worn steps leading to the top. The jungle here gave way to open ground and patches of brush; they’d found this vantage point alongside the wall so that they could look down at the presumed submarine pen without showing their silhouettes at the crest of the hill.
The road-closed sign had discouraged the arrival of any sightseeing tourists, obviously. The ruins, normally open to the public—or at least to archaeologists—were deserted. But they’d seen an armed guard at the foot of the hill, though, sitting on a block of carved masonry smoking a cigarette, and there were at least two more guards in the jungle close to the pier. Something was going on back there in the jungle, something those guards didn’t want outsiders to see.
There seemed to be no way to get down there without being seen.
“Let’s call in the hired help, then,” Procario said after another moment.
“Right.” Teller pulled out the handset for the AN/PRC-117F satcom. “Gray Fox, Gray Fox,” he called. “This is Flashlight. Ready to burn.”
“Flashlight,” a voice came back in his earpiece. “Gray Fox OTW.” On the way. “Two mikes.”
“Copy, Gray Fox. Be advised that the primary target is not in sight. Repeat, not in sight.”
“Copy that. Our orders are to go boots-on-the-ground and check it out up close and personal.”
“Roger. Target will be a wooden pier at the water’s edge. Come on in.”
Turning, he looked back to the east, searching the sky, but there was nothing there yet. “Gray Fox,” he thought, was a mildly amusing homage to the incoming unit, still one of the most highly classified operational units within the U.S. military.
Created in 1980 to conduct intelligence for a planned second attempt to liberate American Embassy hostages held in Tehran after the disaster at Desert One, the United States Army Intelligence Support Activity—usually shortened to ISA—had gone by a number of names over the years. Commonly known simply as “the Activity” within the intelligence community, its official operational names had included, among others, Centra Spike, Cemetery Wind, and Gray Fox.
As “Gray Fox,” the ISA had helped track down Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar in 1993. Since 2005, they were no longer identified by two-word Special-Access Program code names but were referred to under the general heading of Task Force Orange, or by the more cryptic—and classified—acronym OMS. Their name was changed every couple of years for security reasons; informally, though, they were still referred to as “the Activity”—and evidently a mission planner at INSCOM had dredged up the old Gray Fox code to identify the helicopter assault team now headed for Cerros from the Ladyville lily pad.
Technically, the ISA, under INSCOM direction, was intended as intelligence support, tasked with gathering HUMINT and SIGINT for a variety of classified operations. In this instance, however, it was being employed as a primary ops unit rather than in a purely intelligence-support role. The incoming strike was tasked with securing the stolen nuclear weapons first and foremost; a second, parallel raid was being mounted at this moment on the warehouse at the Chetumal airport. Gathering intelligence was the secondary objective this afternoon, including most especially information on the intended targets—and on just who was behind this nightmare of submarine-deployed A-bombs.
In Teller’s opinion, the Activity was definitely the right team for this mission. Teller had worked with the ISA before, in Afghanistan and doing cyber ops, and knew just how good they were. Delta Force was supposed to be the best, but these guys were one notch better.
“Flashlight, Gray Fox,” sounded in his earpiece. “One mike. Light ’em up.”
“Copy, Gray Fox. Light is on.” He nudged Procario. “Paint ’em.”
Procario had already lined up the small, tripod-mounted AN/PED-1 LLDR, sending a series of invisible, coded pulses of infrared laser light down and across the water to strike an exposed bollard at the side of the makeshift pier. Scattering off the target, the light would be picked up by the receivers on the incoming helicopters, guiding them in for a precise strike.
The two sentries on the stone blocks at the bottom of the hill were still smoking. They looked like locals—smugglers, probably, or rebels, or both. Revolutionary groups had used the profits from drug smuggling to fund their activities for decades—nothing new there. Teller still didn’t believe the drug cartels were behind the import of nuclear weapons. They had the money, certainly, but not the motive.
Neither did Hezbollah, despite reports of their being involved with the cartels, and despite Castro’s identification of Mohamed Hamadi as a Hezbollah operator. Even the Iranians—long the power behind Shiite Hezbollah—didn’t have a motive to launch a nuclear attack on Mexico.
Might Iran launch a nuclear strike against the United States, using a Russian Kilo class sub? Well, that was why the Activity was coming in hot right now. Prisoners might be able to shed some light on whoever was behind this plot, and on exactly what their motives might be.
Teller heard it first, a faint, fluttering tremble in the air, coming across the bay from the north. The sound grew steadily, swelling to thunder … and then two MH-60L Black Hawk DAPs roared in scant feet above the water, zeroing in on the invisible spot of infrared light reflecting off the pier. DAPs—Direct Action Penetrators—were specially modified MH-60 helicopters used by the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, the Night Stalkers, for covert strike operations. Riding clouds of spray raised by their prop wash, the two dead-black helicopters flared and went nose-high as they approached the jungle, then rose, one slowing to a graceful hover above the tree canopy as the other banked sharply left. The two sentries stared openmouthed for a moment, then threw down their weapons and bolted, vanishing into the jungle. The lone man sitting on the ruins jumped up and started running in the other direction, racing all-out up the slope of the hill toward Teller and Procario.
“I’ve got him,” Teller said. He reached for his M-4A1 carbine, left leaning on the wall beside his pack. As the man drew closer, less than fifty yards, Teller aimed his weapon at the ground in front of him, snapped the selector switch to burst fire, and put three quick-spaced rounds into the earth. “¡Alto!” he yelled, and the man skidded to a confused stop. “¡Levante las manos!”
In response, the man raised his hands, looking around wildly for the source of the command. At his back, ISA commandos were fast-roping from one of the Black Hawks, vanishing into the trees behind the pier. Teller heard a chattering burst of full-auto gunfire and a shrill yell. The second Black Hawk circled over the jungle like a hungry predator, ready to provide close fire support.
“¡Ven! ¡Ven!” Teller shouted. “¡Ahora bajar!”
Still shouting in Spanish, Teller ordered his prisoner to come closer, then to get down on the ground. More gunfire sounded from the objective, and then the circling Black Hawk stooped, the M-230 chain gun slung beneath its left stub wing shredding the forest canopy with 30 mm shells at a rate of better than ten per second. Explosions ripped through the forest, throwing fragments of leaves and bark above the treetops as someone back i
n the woods began screaming.
For a long moment, the jungle was silent again, save for the heavy wop-wop-wop of the two aircraft.
Another civilian broke and ran from the jungle’s edge, carrying an M-16. Teller raised his M-4 and fired another burst. “¡Alto!”
The man with the rifle stopped, looked up the hill directly at Teller, and raised his weapon. Teller fired again, a three-round burst that hit the man just as Procario fired as well, multiple rounds catching him in a vicious crossfire that kicked him back and knocked him down.
Teller could see movement through the trees now and raised his M-4 once more—but the figures emerging from the tree line were anonymously garbed in Kevlar, helmets, and close-assault gear. One turned toward the hill and raised his hand in silent salute.
“Flashlight, Gray Fox.”
“This is Flashlight. Go.”
“Fox One reports AO is secure. You can come in now.”
“Copy that. We have a prisoner up here.”
“Well, welcome to the party, then, Flash. The more the merrier.”
HOSPITAL DE JESÚS
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO
1523 HOURS, LOCAL TIME
“Hello, Ms. Dominique. How are we feeling now?”
Dominique opened her eyes. De la Cruz was standing by her bed, accompanied by two other men in plain, dark civilian suits.
“I don’t know how you’re feeling, Señor de la Cruz,” she said, “but I’m doing just fine.”
“Bueno. You had us worried.”
“It was an ambush. A man on a motorcycle…”
He nodded. “I know. I came as quickly as I heard. I am … distressed to hear that Señor Chavez was killed.”
“So am I.” She reached up and touched the bandage wrapped around her head. The gash was still tender; not all that bad—only a minor cut—but a scalp wound could bleed like nobody’s business. “Thank you for coming. Maybe you can tell the doctors that I’m okay, that I want my clothes and I want to leave. Now.”
She’d been having trouble communicating with the doctors. They’d sent her up here, to a private room, straight from the ER, and told her nothing save that the police wanted to talk with her. She’d not been badly hurt; they hadn’t even needed to give her sutures, using a butterfly strip instead to close up the cut on her forehead.
The Last Line Page 18
