by Oliver North
After watching his hostage for a few minutes, Ebi went to the room off the kitchen and Marty heard bedsprings creak as the terrorist stretched out. A half hour later, Ahmad returned, found the admiral alone in the kitchen, and rushed into the bedroom beside the kitchen, berating his deputy for failing in his duty to Allah. As the pair returned to the kitchen, it happened.
* * * *
The burst of three rounds from an AK-47 was followed by shouts, another single shot, and more shouts. Ahmad reacted instantly, yelling to Ebi in Farsi, “Stay here with the Jew. If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, kill him!” With that he rushed out the back door of the farmhouse toward the sound of the shooting and shouting.
Cohen, chained to the chair, watched as Ebi grabbed a large knife off the counter and warily looked out the door toward the commotion. Before the death sentence was due to be carried out, Ahmad returned, covered in sweat and cursing in his native tongue. He stormed into the kitchen, waving the pistol about, and shouted in English, “The boy is gone. It is your fault, Jew!”
“How is it my fault?”
“All your talk about burying his brother! Massoud and Rostam were digging the grave while the boy wrapped the body in the blanket. When they looked up from the hole they saw him running into the jungle. They shot at him but both their weapons jammed. I sent them to follow his trail.”
“Perhaps he went to look for the missing cows,” the admiral responded helpfully.
“Even you know better than that, Jew,” snarled Ahmad, pointing the ancient pistol at the old man’s head. “You had better hope they catch him.”
Cohen was hoping not that the pursuers caught the boy, but that their bullets missed. With the exception of the gunshots, everything was going according to the plan he and Felipe had concocted the night before, when they were locked in the bedroom. Marty looked down at the floor and silently prayed, Godspeed, Felipe.
FINCA DEL GANADOR
3 MILES EAST OF DZILAM DE BRAVO
YUCATAN STATE, MEXICO
SATURDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER 2032
1130 HOURS, LOCAL
The boy ran as if the devil himself were on his tail. None of the four shots fired by his pursuers even came close—but Felipe wasn’t taking any chances they might catch him, so he raced the whole distance to the front door of Señor Macklin’s farmhouse. As Felipe sped past the sign at the front gate, the four English words below FINCA DEL GANADOR took on a whole new meaning: He Who Dares Wins.
Major Bruno Macklin, Royal Army (Ret.), didn’t look or act sixty-four. Though his close-cropped hair and well-maintained mustache were graying, his sharp eyes, trim build, massive shoulders, and muscled forearms suggested his life’s earlier work: as an officer in “A” Squadron, 22 SAS.
For more than two decades Macklin was involved in some of the most daring special operations undertaken by Britain’s Special Air Service regiment. His 1998 citation for the George Cross cited him for “heroic action during a prolonged, sensitive assignment of vital interest to Her Majesty’s government.” What the award did not mention was that it covered the time frame during which he was “seconded” to a highly classified Special Operations Unit commanded by a certain Lieutenant Colonel Peter Newman, USMC.
Macklin retired from the SAS in 2007 after three additional combat deployments to Afghanistan and two more to Iraq. He intended to stay in England as a security manager for a bank but emigrated to Belize in 2013 when a British court, citing Sharia law, vacated the life sentences of six men convicted of stoning a Muslim woman to death in London. The day he departed England for good he told his brother, “I didn’t fight Muslim fanatics in Mesopotamia and ‘the Stans’ so English-speaking Islamo-fascists could take over my country.”
By 2023, Macklin had married, fathered a daughter, and become a successful cattle breeder in Belize. When he heard about ranch land being abandoned in Mexico because of narco-violence instigated by competing drug cartels, he flew to Merida and paid pennies on the peso for the two-thousand-acre property now named Finca del Ganador.
A year after he moved to Yucatan, a gang of twenty-one cartelistos, enforcers for the Federation Cartel, came to the ranch while Macklin was in Merida selling cattle. He returned that night to find his wife and ten-year-old daughter raped and murdered. The killers boldly MESH-mailed digital video and photographs of themselves perpetrating the heinous acts—along with a warning for the bereaved husband and father to leave Mexico immediately.
After burying his wife and child, Bruno Macklin delivered the evidence to the Yucatan state police. They did nothing. He then went to Mexico City and gave the same digital images to the chief of the Mexican National Police and the attorney general. They suggested he take the cartel’s advice and leave the country.
A month after the murders—and the receipt of four more death threats from the Federation—Macklin decided to act. Instead of fleeing, he hunted down and killed all twenty-one of the rapist-killers.
It took him fifty-three days—taking them one by one with a variety of weapons. He dropped seven of them in broad daylight at five hundred yards or more with a Remington 700 M40A6 sniper rifle. Six others died at night when they were struck by bullets from a SPA-SIMRAD KN253 Mk IV–equipped 7.62mm FN-Herstal SCAR. Three were killed at very close range by projectiles fired by a suppressor-fitted .22-cal Walther P22 semiautomatic pistol. Two perished by “apparently self-inflicted multiple gunshot wounds” from their own weapons. One blew himself up when he inserted the ignition key in his car. Another was found skewered by a Gurkha kukri blade. The leader of the vicious gang was the last to die—a broken neck. An accident, the police said.
Since then neither Macklin nor any of his ranch workers had been bothered by the cartels as the latter fought each other and their government for control of Mexico’s lucrative cocaine export business. When British or American diplomats asked Macklin how he managed to stay alive amid all the violence, he replied, “As long as bad people leave me alone, I leave them alone.” At least that’s how it was until Felipe banged on his front door.
* * * *
“Señor Macklin! ¡Ayúdame, por favor!” the boy gasped.
“Stop, lad!” Macklin said, holding Felipe by his sweat-drenched shoulders and closing the door behind them. “Come in here. Let’s get you some water and you tell me in English what’s the matter.”
“They are trying to kill me . . . They shot at me . . . Jorge is dead . . . They are going to kill Señor Martin . . . He is a Jew . . . They are very bad men . . .”
“Hold on, Felipe. Catch your breath and start over,” the old special operator said as he guided the boy into the kitchen and filled a glass with water from the tap.
Felipe gulped it, steadied himself, and began again after saying, “Thank you, sir.”
Five minutes into the child’s recitation of the last forty-eight horrific hours, Macklin interrupted and asked, “Are you sure the four bad men are not cartelistos?”
“No, they are not. None of them speak Spanish. Only one of them, the jefe, speaks any English. They all speak a language I do not understand. Señor Martin says they are Iranians.”
“Iranians, eh. What else does Señor Martin say?”
“Oh, I almost forgot. He made me memorize what I was to tell you.”
“What did he make you memorize?”
“I am to tell you that he is Admiral Martin Cohen of the U.S. Navy and he was kidnapped by Iranian terrorists in Houston on September 11 and would you please contact Mexican authorities and ask them to call the American Embassy for help.”
“A fair lot of good that will do,” Macklin muttered.
“I do not understand, señor.”
“Never mind,” Macklin said, patting the youngster on the shoulder. “You did very well, Felipe. I’m very sorry about your brother. Jorge was a fine lad. He knew our Lord and Savior and I am sure we will see them both together—but not today.”
Felipe looked a bit confused, so Macklin continued. “I’m glad you are all right.
Our landline and wireless phones and MESH services were knocked out by the hurricane and have not been restored, but my solar collectors and generator are working. Perhaps we can summon some assistance on the sat-phone. Come into my office.”
Following the soldier-turned-rancher into the spacious room, Felipe said, “This is where you taught Jorge and me to read, write, and speak English. Now it makes me sad.”
Macklin patted the youth on the shoulder, picked up the old but reliable Iridium 9775 handset from the docking port on his desk, and checked to ensure the roof-mounted antenna was still connected and functioning. He then keyed in a twelve-digit number from memory.
The instrument he called rang twice and answered with a simple “Hello, Bruno. Did you have much damage from the hurricane?”
“Some. Lost a few calves. We have some fences down. A couple of buildings with roof damage. How about you?”
“No serious wreckage from the storm here in the city; a little flooding, that’s about all. It’s nothing compared to the destruction caused by Washington’s new travel restrictions.”
“Are you going to have to leave?”
“Don’t know yet. Most of the consular staff have been ordered out, but they can’t go until the airport reopens. Two big hangars collapsed and the runway is covered with debris. Looks like we will all be here for a while.”
“Good,” Macklin replied. “While you are waiting around doing nothing, my friend, how about checking to see if you blokes are missing one of your navy admirals—a fellow named Martin Cohen.”
There was a long pause. For a moment, Macklin thought the connection had dropped. Then he heard the voice in the handset say, “No joking around, Bruno. What do you know about Admiral Cohen? He’s been MIA from Houston, Texas, since 11 September.”
“Well, I have a young man here beside me, the son of my ranch manager. He tells me your admiral is being held by four Iranians at his house not far from here. If it’s important to you, I’ll just go next door, kill the Iranians, and bring the admiral to you.”
A. J. Jones had known Bruno Macklin for less than two years—but he was certain the retired SAS officer was capable of doing all he offered. They talked for another five minutes. By the time Macklin pushed the END CALL button on his handset, they agreed the major would do nothing except protect Felipe and try to intercept the boy’s parents until he heard from A.J. again.
As things turned out, it might have been better had Macklin immediately launched his one-man hostage-rescue operation.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAOS THEORY
U.S. NAVY EC-8; CALL SIGN: “SEEKER ONE FIVE”
22.31°N; 88.95°W
36,000’ OVER THE GULF OF MEXICO
SATURDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER 2032
1600 HOURS, LOCAL
They were seven hours into their ten-hour mission when Petty Officer 1st Class Sarah Hemingway detected the first, faint signals. She tweaked the digital array at her console, then came up on her wireless, helmet-mounted intercom: “I’m picking up a new nonhostile emitter on the EMF antenna. It appears stationary. It’s in the right spectrum to be an EPIRB signal. Looks like it’s right on the coastline . . . true bearing, one-eight-five degrees . . . looks like it’s about sixty miles out, just about on our nose.”
Lieutenant (jg) Duane Ward, mission SSO, spun around on his deck-mounted swivel seat and touched the button labeled STATION 7-EMS on one of the four flat-panel screens mounted over his console. Instantly a multicolored moving map appeared on the screen—the Caribbean in blue and the coastline of the Yucatan Peninsula in green. Hundreds of blinking red dots displayed precise locations for every radio, radar, cell phone, PID, PERT, or wireless device within range of the EC-8’s sensitive antennas.
“Which one, Hemingway?” Ward asked into his lip mike as he stared at the busy screen.
“Bogey Six Four Five,” she replied.
With the swipe of his hand across the front of the screen, Ward zoomed in on the blinking icon. He looked at it a moment and said, “Get a lock on the position.” He then said the word “All!” into the mike, listened for a second to ensure he wasn’t interrupting any crucial intercom or radio traffic, and announced to everyone in the aircraft, “This is the SSO. We have what may be an EPIRB distress signal. Recommend we hold course, descend to twenty thousand feet, and slew the FLIR and RDF antenna to one-eight-five degrees true. EMAC says it’s emitting on two frequencies, 406 and 121.5 megahertz.”
In the cockpit, Lieutenant Commander Laura Bolton, the pilot and aircraft commander, replied, “Roger. That heading is going to take us right toward the beach and we have to stay thirteen miles offshore over international waters.”
“Yes, ma’am,” replied Ward, rapidly scrolling through the data being displayed on his screen. “EMAC now confirms the emitter is a cat-one EPIRB. Am passing its registry number to your HUD.”
In the cockpit, Bolton and her copilot saw the codec, “MMSI #775-425791C,” appear on the holographic head-up displays. Over the intercom she said, “Okay, what’s this mean?”
“According to EMAC,” Ward replied, “it’s an EPIRB registered to a life raft on MV Ileana Rosario—one of the vessels we’ve been looking for. If this bogey is aboard the ship or on a life raft, we ought to be able to verify it with a visual on the high-res FLIR from thirteen miles out at twenty grand.”
“Roger. Seat belts and shoulder harnesses on. Hang on for rapid descent. We’ll level off and slow down when we reach two-zero.”
Bolton pushed the yoke forward and the entire aircrew experienced a familiar roller-coaster effect in their guts as the big bird nosed down. At the bottom of the dive the twin-engine craft leveled off, pressing them all into their seats.
Ward came up on the intercom again: “We have a steady hit on the emitter signal . . . I have a solid mark on the location . . . EMAC readout reconfirms EPIRB registry number MMSI #775-425791C; CAT I 406MHz/121.5MHz. Passing data to FLIR and on data uplink to SAR HQ . . .”
Seconds later, as the aircraft raced toward the coastline at nearly 400 knots, Petty Officer Josh Smallbone, the FLIR operator, seated at the console beside Hemingway, came up on the intercom: “I’ve got a visual on bogey six-four-five. It appears to be an international orange panel . . . No, it looks like a torn-up life raft, about fifty meters ashore, right off the beach. No thermals on any nearby life-forms . . .”
“Roger,” Bolton replied from the cockpit as she pulled back on the dual throttles. “Slowing to a hundred and fifty knots. Holding at altitude two-zero. Am coming up on sat-comm requesting permission to overfly Mexican territory to conduct a visual search for any signs of life before it gets dark and we bingo on fuel.”
With airspeed dropping, the big plane was approaching the shoreline at 2.5 miles per minute when Hemingway spoke up again: “I’ve got a new emitter, number six-four-six. It’s intermittent . . . from a fixed location about five klicks inland from the life raft. It seems to be a U.S. military PERT, but I can’t hold the signal long enough to ID it on the Blue Force tracker.”
Ward zoomed in on icon 646 and hit RECORD on his console as the aircraft crossed the thirty-mile warning zone off the Mexican coast. He watched as the emitter-marker blinked for a half second, then disappeared, blinked on again—and went out. It wasn’t much—but it was just enough for the EMAC. The computer flashed a message on his screen:
EMITTER#646: US MIL PERT JMC#327-99-8324 NO BIODATA
He spoke into his wireless lip mike: “If EMAC is right, Hemingway may have just found Admiral Cohen’s PERT. Signal is intermittent and very weak. We’re not receiving any biometric data. Could be a dying battery.”
“Or a dead host,” replied Bolton. “SSO, go up on the data link to Nav-Sea Search and the Coast Guard. Have them notify all nearby U.S. vessels what we’ve found. Let ’em know I’ve requested an okay for an overflight of the targets.”
Less than twenty-five seconds later, the USCG Search and Rescue Coordination Center in New Orleans, two dozen other U.S.
military components, including the National Military Command Center and an aging Littoral Control Ship, USS Milwaukee, LCS-5, heading south from Galveston, received the data-link message transmitted from the aircraft:
UNCLAS
182212ZSEP32
FM: SEEKER 15
TO: TF 22.3
CDG 611
USCG SAR
UMG 413.2
SUBJ: EPIRB & US PERT DETECTED NOTAM SEARCH AREA 18-4
1. 182202ZSEP32, USN EC-8, CALL SIGN SEEKER ONE FIVE, DETECTED & CONFIRMED CAT 1 EPIRB SIGNAL, MMSI #775-425791C @ FREQS 406MHz AND 121.5MHz. REGISTRY # IS CONFIRMED AS ONE [1] OF THREE [3] INFLATABLE LIFE BOATS ABOARD MV ILEANA ROSARIO.
2. 182206ZSEP32, VISUAL IDENTIFICATION OF LIFE BOAT ACQUIRED BY A/C MOUNTED HI-RES FLIR @ SITE OF EPIRB SIGNAL @ NAVGRID AL2455/GW4717. NO VISIBLE LIFE FORMS IN VICINITY OF DEBRIS. STREAMING VID FROM FLIR AVAIL ON SAT CHAN 77.1.
3. 182211ZSEP32, DETECTED INTERMITTENT SIGNAL FM US MIL PERT JMC#327-99-8324 @ VIC AN2145/BW8862. NO BIODATA RECEIVED.
4. MSN CDR REQ PERMISSION TO OVERFLY MEXICAN TERRITORY TO VERIFY PROOF OF LIFE.
Six minutes after the message was sent, Seeker One Five was directed to “Abort current mission and Romeo Tango Bravo.”
Over secure voice satellite radio, LCDR Bolton protested the order: “We’re just fourteen miles offshore. If we step on the gas we can overfly both targets and be back over international waters in less than ten minutes.”
Thirty seconds later she was told, “Overflight permission denied. Break off mission immediately and return to base. Airspace must be cleared for unmanned sensor platforms.” The crew of Seeker One Five groaned as the big bird turned and headed back toward Texas.
When the EC-8 landed at NAS Corpus Christi three hours later, the tower vectored the aircraft to a remote apron, well away from the Navy flight line. Bolton was ordered to “remain in Em-Con and await security personnel.”
