The third-story windows of La Tumba had been blown in. The guards down on the street were staring upward in surprise.
Right! She’d arced the grenade high to get the distance across the boulevard, forgetting that there would be plenty of time for the grenade to cover the distance as it fell eighteen stories.
She winged the second one out and down and then ducked down to crawl back to Melissa.
This time the guards went down, though they should only be dazed. The first floor windows were undamaged, but several cars had lost their windows.
Sofia flipped back to the first camera just as a second sniper team burst onto the roof. She signaled Melissa who sent over three more gas canisters. One bounced off the far side of the roof, but it didn’t matter. The other two landed at the second team’s feet and they dropped where they stood.
La Tumba would be well convinced that they were the target of an attack.
Sofia triggered her radio, “Team Three. Go.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Melissa was staying low and hustling toward the roof door.
Sofia crouched and followed.
Duane didn’t have to wait long for the next stage of the attack.
Delta was transmitting in the clear, because opposition “rebels”—of which Caracas had more every day—wouldn’t have high-tech encrypted radios. They’d be lucky if they had walkie-talkies. So, for whoever was listening in on The Unit’s transmissions, they’d hear about team after team—even if Chad was the entirety of Team Three.
He didn’t bother answering over the radio, of course. Instead he answered with a South African M32 MGL—Multi-shot Grenade Launcher. It looked like an oversized revolver, right down to the six-slot rotating cylinder—big enough to launch fist-sized explosives over four hundred meters. He began lobbing rounds high into the air so that they’d drop from the sky, completely masking what direction they were coming from.
The first two forty-millimeter grenades destroyed the security checkpoint that crossed the road at the very base of El Helicoide. The next four landed on Levels One and Two.
Duane waited for Chad to reload the cylinder. This time he dropped two rounds on Level Two, three on Level Three, and one on Level Four. The attack would appear to be moving up the hill fast enough to scare the shit out of any SEBIN agents who had pulled the night shift. Most importantly, it would be seen as moving up, drawing attention away from the real action on Level Nine.
“Team One is a go,” he called his own intentions over the radio. “Team Four. Go.” That would tell Kyle, Carla, and Richie that they were now on their own.
Duane hit the first remote trigger. He’d wired three Mercedes Benzes, four BMWs and a Toyota SUV on Level Six while waiting for Team Four to get into position.
They blew with a very satisfying roar. Window glass for the entire southeast quarter of the level was blown into the offices. He’d spiked his charges into the gas tanks, so the explosions had been particularly violent and impressive. They roiled upward lighting the nearby barrio in an evil red glow and blowing flaming gasoline into the deserted offices. For a moment he was afraid he’d done too much which would spoil their game—but sprinklers came on and the flames were already quieting.
While he’d been waiting on Team Two of Sofia and Melissa, he’d ridden Richie’s street luge down to Level Five, managing not to kill himself in the process. Damn the thing was fast. Lying back with his feet on the T-bar and his hands white-knuckled on the brake handles, he’d practically flown down to the next level.
Now he understood why Richie had also given him knee and elbow pads. The pavement flashed by mere inches below his elbows. He’d bit his tongue almost hard enough to make it bleed out of near panic before he got the feel of it. His first parachute jump hadn’t felt this fast—of course then he’d only been falling through air then. Here the ground was a very immediate reminder of just how fast he was going. When he pulled the brake handles up, all they did was pivot the other end of the bar into the ground. The concrete had screamed as sparks shot behind him in a great twin rooster tail.
However, Richie had clearly forgotten to account for the fact that he had a large backpack of explosives, which forced him to sit partly up into the wind and did nasty things to his balance in corners. Still, it was the most fun he’d had since the time he and Veronica—a very limber airline stewardess—had bungee jumped at New Zealand’s Nevis Bungy, the world’s third highest. If he ever lived in a place like the Dundee Hills, instead of the ass-flat landscape of Atlanta or Fort Bragg, he was definitely going to get himself one of these.
The quality of cars had shifted with his descent—fewer Benzes, more Toyotas here on Level Five.
Now he scooted far enough around the road to be safe and hit his second trigger. In moments the southeast quadrant of Level Five was engulfed in flame.
The top levels of El Helicoide should be mostly empty already—top ranked SEBIN officials apparently were given the highest level offices and they weren’t the sort of people who pulled night shifts. Any techs who were working late would be Team Four’s problem.
The real challenge now was to buy enough time for Richie to get in, figure out their passwords, and hopefully find a way to intercept their microwave transmissions from La Tumba as well.
A peek over the side barricade revealed a line of explosions: the east park, a truck parked to the southeast, and four more on the front security gate. There were also a number of gaps blown in the fence to either side. Chad looked like he was a whole goddamn Army.
Duane lay down on the luge, picked up his feet, released the brakes, and raced down to wire some cars on Level Four.
“No! No! No! No!”
“Shh!”
“Don’t shh me!” Though Sofia did drop her voice to a whisper—a fierce whisper. At least that’s what she hoped it was sounded like, rather than the stark terror she was feeling.
They had raced the old SUV the seven kilometers to La Carlota Air Base. No problem! This late at night the roads were empty. Besides, all emergency equipment was racing in the other direction toward the “attack.”
They’d parked exactly where Duane and Richie’s diagram had said to park. Great!
They’d crawled through the precut hole in the perimeter fence. Perfect! Though how Duane had gotten his broad shoulders through the narrow gap she had no idea.
Then she and Melissa had scanned the field. Dozens of helicopters were parked close by the hangar. And the one right in front of them, the one marked with a big X on the diagram, wasn’t some nice little five-seat Bell JetRanger.
“Tell me I’m not losing my mind.”
Melissa giggled.
“I’m going to kill Duane.”
“Actually…” Melissa seemed to be having trouble controlling her laugh.
“If you weren’t a girl, I’d hit you,” she growled.
“Girls can hit girls, it’s boys who can’t hit girls.”
“Fine,” Sofia wanted to bury her face in the dirt. “I can’t hit you because I’m a girl. Happy?”
“Immensely,” but Melissa did get some control of her laugh. “This looks more like something Richie would do. Remind me to tell you about the time he stole a Gulfstream jet when he’d never flown anything faster than a Twin Otter seaplane before. I’ll bet he chose this just because he wants to know how it flies.”
“How about you? Do you fly?”
Melissa raised her hands palm out, “Only little planes. The Twin Otter is the biggest thing I’ve ever had to fly and that’s plenty. When it comes to rotorcraft, you’re the only one on this team with that skill.”
“I’m not on the team.”
“Yeah, right,” Melissa didn’t sound convinced.
“But…” Sofia could only wave her hand helplessly.
The helicopter was one of several dozen sitting on the tarmac. There were plenty of smaller ones. But no-o. None of those were marked on the diagram. The aircraft those idiots had selected was a Mil Mi-26—the larges
t production helicopter made anywhere in the world. It could pick up a twin-rotor Chinook or even a Marine Corps Sea Stallion—with the Marines still in it. It could carry a Boeing 737 in its harness sling. She wanted to scream. The little JetRanger had one engine and a two-blade rotor all of thirty-three feet long. It weighed one ton, not sixty. The Mi-26 had twin eleven-thousand horsepower engines to drive its hundred-foot across, eight-blade rotor.
“I can’t do this. I just can’t.”
“Duane said you’d say that.”
“I’m going to kill him,” this time she did bury her face in the dirt.
“He said to say he knows that he can count on you.”
“Dead man!” She told any passing earthworms, though they probably spoke Spanish here in Venezuela. “Hombre muerto!”
Melissa tugged on her arm.
“He said that?”
She looked up to see Melissa’s nod.
“Bastard! Next time he helps save my life, to hell with him. I’m just going to die to prove him wrong.”
“That’s the spirit.”
After scanning the field—everything here was still quiet—they raced to the helicopter at a professional-looking stroll. They entered the helicopter through one of the passenger doors on the side of the cargo bay. Inside was a cavern ten feet high and wide that stretched forty feet long.
“What are these?” Melissa shown a light on the mounded crates that filled most of the massive space. Stenciled clearly on the side in Russian: Igla SA-18.
“Mierda!” They swore in unison.
Sofia swallowed hard. “I saw a report that Venezuela had recently purchased five thousand surface-to-air missiles from the Russians.”
Melissa patted the side of the a box, “I’d say this is most of them right here. No wonder the boys chose this helicopter. I don’t want these in Venezuela either. How paranoid are these people?”
“Very,” Sofia began working her way forward along a narrow gap between the crate rows. “After you tell me about Richie and the jet, remind me to tell you about—” Her words dried up in her throat.
“What?” Melissa came up and looked over her shoulder. “Wow!”
There were five command seats spread comfortably in a cockpit bigger than an entire JetRanger. Each position was surrounded with more controls and readouts than the smaller helo had—total.
“I can’t wait to see how you pull this one off.”
Sofia decided she was out of options, so she punched Melissa.
But not very hard because she was going to need all the help she could get.
Level Four of El Helicoide had also blown spectacularly, but on Level Three, most of the cars were gone. Duane barely had enough vehicles to make an impressive show, which was just as well, he was running out of explosives.
He’d also been spiking the vehicle closest to each machine gun emplacement that showed up on the map projected inside his shooting glasses—the map Sofia had assembled from all of their observations last night and this morning. With Chad taking out the lower emplacements, they hadn’t been much of an issue. That and the shooters wouldn’t be able to find any identifiable targets. They were looking for an attacking army pouring out of the barrio, not for he and Chad with backpacks.
He paused to lean on the barricade awhile to watch the mayhem at the front gate.
Chad had pounded enough grenades onto the roof over the security checkpoint to collapse it onto the roadway. All it had taken was three cars abandoned in the exit lanes and that had put an end to anyone else driving off the complex. The clutter of vehicles behind them was a fast-growing snarl of dinged vehicles and men yelling at each other over the hoods.
Duane had counted up to seventy trapped vehicles, when Chad dropped a single grenade at the back of the packed traffic jam.
The panicked exodus was instantaneous. Everyone was running out the gate, across the road and into the barrio. He wondered how many of the fleeing SEBIN would survive the waiting colectivo. Sofia told him how she, Carla, and Melissa had spent their afternoon—damn but she just kept getting more amazing. No way was she getting away from him.
Duane spotted a man in rags coming across the Level Three roadway. His hands were empty, so Duane waited him out.
“Disculpame, por favor.”—Excuse me, please. The man’s voice was hoarse as if from lack of use. He was so thin that he didn’t even decently fill out the rags he wore. One of the hundreds of political prisoners incarcerated in El Helicoide.
“Sí?” Duane could see others in the distance watching them curiously.
“Is it safe?” The man continued in Spanish.
“To run?” Though Duane was surprised he could even walk in his present condition.
“Yes.”
“If you go quickly, yes. Free as many as you can and go.”
“Gracias! Gracias!” The man hobbled back to the group and in moments they were on the move. He heard glass shattering and more people joining them as they were freed. The lower levels of the massive shopping mall had been turned into a prison. He’d blown open doors where he could, but there’d been too much else to do to pay attention to the results.
Duane watched them awhile longer. He wondered if any of these prisoners had lost their wives to General Aguado’s jungle compound. He hoped so, he liked the idea of the two separate missions reuniting families. Liked it a lot.
Once they were out of sight down the road, he blew the shit out of the three vehicles left on Level Three.
He supposed that was good. It would look as if the attack was failing and leaving the top levels of El Helicoide untouched. Which was exactly what they were supposed to think.
He hopped on the luge, popped the brakes, and swooped down toward Level Two. He was getting good at flying.
Melissa was reading the checklist, which was thankfully in the same language as the labels on the helicopter—Spanish. That was a good thing because her technical Russian sucked.
“You look scared,” Melissa commented while they waited for the engine temperature to stabilize. “You’re white as a sheet.”
“Más blanco que poto de monja. Whiter than a nun’s butt,” one of Nana’s favorite expressions after she’d chewed out one of Sofia’s brothers. “And I’m not scared, I’m terrified.”
She was about to risk easing up on the collective to take off when the radio squawked to life scaring the daylights out of her.
“Mil 7432, this is Carlota tower. You don’t have clearance. What are you doing?”
Melissa shrugged when Sofia looked at her.
“Some help you are.” Sofia keyed the mic, “Tower, this is 7432. I have a request for immediate evac from El Helicoide. They’re under attack.”
“Whose orders?”
She didn’t have a good answer to that. “General Aguado,” then she cringed. What if they knew he supposedly had been killed during the fire at his jungle compound?
“7432, cleared to Helicoide. Tower out.”
Melissa merely raised her eyebrows before reading off the next item on the list.
Sofia eased up on the collective and the Mi-26 wallowed aloft.
Smooth, small motions. That’s what her flight instructor had told her. She just hoped that the Mi-26 knew about that rule.
Collective up, cyclic forward, and they eased aloft without too much amateur wobble.
“Which way?”
“Which way to what?”
“El Helicoide, Melissa! Which way?”
“Uh, try a bit more to the left. I wasn’t on the airport team so I didn’t pay attention to exactly where it is.”
“I’ll get you for this. Right after I put down the rabid dogs Duane and Richie.”
“As long as someone else doesn’t do it first,” Melissa sounded worried.
And Sofia shut up. She was merely trying to fly the hugest helicopter on the planet.
She’d climbed high enough that she could see El Helicoide less than ten miles away. It was easy to spot because of the leaping flame
s.
Even as she watched another explosion roared skyward.
“Have a good ride, bro?”
“I was…” Duane growled at Chad. “Really flying along until I planted my board in one of the holes you punched in the pavement on Level Two. Must have tumbled a couple hundred feet before I stopped. Hurts like hell.”
“Aww, poor little Duane. Has he got him some ow-ees?”
“Shithead.”
“Proud to be, bro.”
They had met at the south end of Level One and were leaning out to inspect their handiwork. The fire brigade couldn’t get in because of all of the cars abandoned inside the gate. Finally someone began using the heaviest engine like a battering ram, shoving luxury sedans, crumpling late-model SUVs, and battering light trucks aside.
“We should invest in a Caracas body shop, quick.”
Duane nodded. “But it’s only a short term investment. Besides. It’s SEBIN. They’d pay you only at the official exchange rate.”
“Man, you sure know how to take the joy out of a young boy’s dreams.”
They turned away from the mayhem at the gate and rounded the south end headed west, which quickly hid the flaming southeast corner of the structure except as an on-going reflection off the facing barrio.
The west side was dark and quiet. No traffic. No lights. No people.
Duane shown a light in a couple of the storefronts. The doors were each smashed open. Every cell door inside was standing open. The prisoners were gone, filtering out through any number of gaps Chad had blown in the perimeter fence. They’d disappear into the barrio and find a very different welcome than the SEBIN who’d made the mistake of going in there.
Maybe it was time to dream a few dreams himself.
They arrived at the very west side of the lowest roadway, just as a length of black 9mm tactical line snaked down from the level above. In moments Carla, Richie, and finally Kyle slid down to join them. With a yank Kyle recovered the doubled-over line. They’d rappelled down from Level Nine—a much faster and more discreet descent than following the miles of road, pieces of which were probably still on fire.
Wild Justice (Delta Force Book 3) Page 25
