Target Deck - 02

by Jack Murphy

  “That was gnarly man!” one of the partiers said helping him to his feet.

  “Thanks kid,” Deckard grunted. “Now get the fuck out of my face.”

  The kid took a step back, seeing that Deckard was bleeding from several cuts he'd received during the fall.

  “I'LL KILL YOU MOTHERFUCKER!”

  Looking up at the balcony he had just jumped from he could see that the Miami Dolphins linebacker had made short work of that door, expecting to find a stranger having an amorous encounter with his fiancé.

  “Go Jets!” Deckard yelled back.

  The NFL player began climbing over the railing himself as the blonde woman jumped on his back, wrapping her arms around what little neck he had to try to stop him.

  The pool party was in stunned, awed silence by the spectacle.

  Exit stage left.

  Deckard readjusted the strap of the camera bag again and began skirting around the side of the hotel. Behind him he could hear the football player still threatening his life. He could also hear the muffled siren of the hotel's fire alarm coming from inside. Moving into the pump room for the pool, he scanned for police or cartel men, finding that the coast was clear. They were still occupied searching the top floors for both him and Bashir, who was no doubt a crispy critter by now.

  Moving around to the front of the hotel Deckard found a dozen police cars parked in the roundabout next to the main entrance. The doors on many had been left ajar as the corrupt cops had stampeded into the hotel. Reaching into his pocket he found some of the screws that he had taken from the work site inside and began placing them under the rear tires of each police car except for one that he reserved for himself. The task was completed in a little over a minute and he hopped into the police cruiser he had left untouched.

  The cops had been in such a hurry that they even left the keys in the ignition for him.

  Pulling out of the hotel parking lot, he executed a hasty three point turn and was off on the main highway just as the fire department was pulling in. Above the hotel, a column of black smoke rose into the beautiful blue sky.

  Driving along the highway, he was suddenly feeling good. Real good.

  Another dead asshole and he was slipping away none the worse for wear.

  Coming up to a police checkpoint, Deckard flipped on the cruisers lights and sirens, blowing right through it as the policemen on duty waved him on.

  Fishing around for his CIA issued cell phone, he reminded himself that the mission wasn't over yet.

  “You fly plane?”

  “How the fuck did you think you got here,” the CIA pilot answered the mercenary's question.

  The two Kazakh trigger pullers that Deckard had left in the Gulfstream as a security detachment had been playing twenty questions with the two pilots since he had departed.

  “You spend lot of time in airplane?”

  “It is what I love,” the pilot responded proudly. “I did my twenty in the Air Force. I couldn't stop flying if I wanted to.”

  “You fly plane,” the second mercenary interrupted. “Meanwhile, your wife at home playing like promiscuous Uzbek whore!”

  The two mercenaries burst out laughing.

  “Laugh it up you little brown fuckers!” the pilot fumed. “It's only a matter of time before we invade whatever country you two are from!”

  Hearing his smart phone ring, the pilot answered while the Kazakhs continued to have some fun as his expense.

  “It's him,” he shouted to shut the two of them up. “He's coming in.”

  The mercenaries flipped a switch and they were all business, throwing on their plate carriers and readying weapons.

  “Shit,” the pilot cursed. “Start it up!” he yelled to the co-pilot sitting up in the cockpit. “He's coming in hot!”

  A smooth extraction had been too much to hope for.

  Stepping on the gas, the police cruiser raced across the bridge, passing over transparent turquoise waters as Deckard left Cancun and shot down the road that led through the mangrove swamps. Looking in the rear view mirror he could see several black military type vehicles belonging to the federales chasing after him.

  His subterfuge slowed down the police but they had figured it out fast enough to call in the big guns. At least the Army hadn't shown up yet.

  Clearing the hump in the middle of the bridge, Deckard decelerated slightly as he felt the rear wheels sliding out from under him. Bringing the police car back under control he gunned it down the highway. He held the steering wheel with his hands placed at the nine and two o' clock positions to help make the hair pin turns at high speed that he would need to negotiate.

  When he came to the first turn, he held the wheel tight, slowly spinning it until his forearms crossed over each other. The cruiser protested the harsh treatment but Deckard pushed the vehicle to its limits until coming out of the turn when he quickly brought the wheel back to the 12 o'clock position.

  Passing another one of Bashir's abandoned hotel projects, Deckard took the car squealing around another turn towards the airport. Looking in the mirror again, it seemed that he had bought himself some breathing room.

  Reaching for the smart phone, he redialed the pilots.

  “Hey, we kicked the engines,” the pilot picked up. “Where are you?”

  “A couple minutes out. Head away from the commercial terminals and stop on the taxiway. I'm going to have to ditch the vehicle and meet you there. They are right on my ass.”

  “We haven't been granted clearance by the tower yet.”

  “Fuck clearance if you don't want to spend thirty years in a Mexican prison!”

  Deckard threw the phone in the passenger seat next to the camera bag as the car threatened to careen off the side of the road. He had noticed on his way out of the airport that they had gone under an overpass. The highway actually passed under the taxiway that connected to the two landing strips at Cancun's airport.

  Now he was flooring it down the straightaway, the needle on the speedometer creeping up over a hundred miles an hour. The aging police cruiser wasn't a Ferrari but it was getting his ass out of Dodge and that was all that mattered at the moment.

  Up ahead was some kind of modern art type monument in between the two lanes of traffic where he saw the police were quickly establishing another checkpoint. They were probably shutting down the airport itself at that very moment but hadn't caught on to which plane he had come in with yet.

  Deckard slowed and cut the wheel again, crossing the median and blasting into the opposing lane of traffic. Tactical driving was a piece of cake once you overcame your aversion to breaking every traffic law known to man. The police looked dumbfounded at Deckard as he shot by. The oncoming lane only had a few cars on it and it was easy for the drivers to avoid each other even as they honked their horns at the renegade cop car.

  He slowed slightly to avoid traffic when passing through a four way intersection. By now the federales were back in sight in his rear view mirror, giving chase as he closed on the airport. He had hoped for a little more stand off when he made his move, but it was what it was.

  When he came up to the overpass, he pulled the car off the side of the road while grabbing for the phone and the camera bag. Once the car came to a halt, the mercenary dove out of the door and scrambled up alongside the over pass. Climbing up the embankment to the taxiway, he pushed and clawed his way through the thick bushes.

  The black federale vehicles screamed to a stop down below, the pop of gunshots searching him out. Coming to the crest of the hill, Deckard hit the ground as a bullet cracked over his head. Crawling forwards, he could hear the federal cops breaking brush behind him. They couldn't move the way Deckard could, but they were closing the distance.

  Careful not the silhouette himself, he reached the top of the embankment just in time to see the Gulfstream V turn onto the taxiway in front of him. Rolling over, Deckard palmed the Glock 19 pistol and began firing downwards into the bushes to give some suppressive fire. Normally he wouldn't fire
on law enforcement officials but these were the goons who had lent Bashir top cover while he ran his child porn operation. They did more crime protection than law enforcement.

  The twin engines on the Gulfstream whined as it grew closer. The federales were hugging dirt, unable to react to persistent contact the way infantry troops would. Once the Gulfstream pulled around the folding stairs dropped down. Both the Samruk mercenaries piled out and ran to Deckard. Aiming their AK-103 rifles they sent a barrage of semi-automatic gunfire down the embankment and into the idling federale vehicles.

  It was just in the nick of time Deckard realized as he noted that his Glock was in slide lock as he had fired his last round.

  “Cease fire,” Deckard ordered. “That's enough, we're getting the hell out of here.”

  Deckard grabbing the Kazakhs by the sleeves, the three turned and ran for the Gulfstream, climbing back inside.

  The pilot was through playing games and disengaged the air brakes. The private jet jerked forward nearly throwing Deckard back out of the door as he was retracting the folding stairs. He barely got the door shut and locked into place before they swung onto the runway. Blowing off the warning from the control tower, the CIA pilot hauled ass the down the runway throwing the three mercenaries in the cabin to the floor as he sped for takeoff.

  The Gulfstream was only halfway down the runway when it lifted off the ground and soared into the sky.

  19

  “We're not out of the briar patch yet,” the pilot growled.

  “What is it,” Deckard asked as he braced himself in the door to the cockpit. They were still gaining altitude rapidly.

  “From the radio traffic I'm hearing it sounds like they scrambled fighters from Merida the second they realized that you were making a run for the airport.”

  “Fighter jets?”

  “F-5's.”

  “Weapons?”

  “Raphael Defense air-to-air missiles.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yeah. Thank god for our Military Assistance Program in Mexico.”

  “I take it Havana is out of the question as an escape route?”

  “We are heading for Grand Cayman but we will never make it. We will be intercepted in less than ten minutes. They got a head start on us and will clear the Yucatan in a few minutes.”

  Now the co-pilot turned around.

  “What the hell happened down there?”

  “Classified.”

  “I should have known. Whatever happened, you stirred up a real shit storm.”

  “Couldn't be helped.”

  The pilot leveled out the aircraft as they reached 30,000 feet. With the co-pilot looking out the opposite side of the window, they both scanned the sky.

  “Three o' clock,” the co-pilot announced. “Nice size formation.”

  The pilot nosed their aircraft towards the lone cloud formation off in the distance, the shadows shifting in the cabin behind Deckard as the jet changed its heading. The co-pilot was listening to something in his headset.

  “Two F-5s. They are reporting to the control tower that they are eight minutes to intercept.”

  “We'll make it,” the pilot announced but Deckard saw the sweat beading on his forehead.

  The dark clouds in front of them were quickly moving to fill up the cockpit's windshield. Once inside they would gain visual concealment but Deckard knew that modern aviators often flew by instrument alone.

  “I appreciate what you guys are doing,” Deckard said nervously. “But getting into those clouds isn't going to hide us from their radar.”

  The pilot's eyes remained fixed on his instruments.

  “We know what we are doing,” the pilot lectured him. “This happened to us in Switzerland last year. The Swiss Air Force tried to ground us as we flew through their airspace. Some jerk off in their parliament didn't like us flying captured terrorists from Kabul to Morocco so they tried to intercept us with a couple fighters.”

  “What happened?”

  “We disappeared.”

  “How?”

  “Classified,” the pilot shot back.

  Finally, the cockpit went dark as they blasted into the cloud formation. The co-pilot leaned over what looked like a navigation panel and starting flicking switches. It was then that it dawned on Deckard that beneath what looked like a normal console was actually something entirely different.

  “I had wondered how Red Squadron had infiltrated into Pakistan while evading the military's radar systems,” Deckard said referring to the SEAL Team Six raid that had killed Osama Bin Laden. “They got flown in on some of those nifty stealth helicopters from 160th Special Operations Aviation, but you can only do such much to conceal the radar profile on a rotary wing aircraft.”

  The pilot and co-pilot looked at each other.

  “They tested those stealth packages at Area 51 out in Nevada so they must have known what their limitations are. Yeah, you can reduce the radar signature by using composite skin and radar absorbent paints,” Deckard thought out loud. “But those rotor blades would create a huge blip on Pakistani radar none the less. So there had to be something else involved. Maybe special electromagnetic interference?”

  “Don't know what you're talking about,” the co-pilot asserted.

  The pilot began circling the jet around inside the clouds, keeping them concealed from the F-5 fighters searching for the CIA black flight somewhere in the sky below, all while transmitting electronic counter-measures.

  “The Mexican pilots are getting into an argument with the control tower. They don't see anything and neither do the radar operators,” the co-pilot announced.

  “We'll keep circling until they run low on fuel and have to return to Merida. They burned a lot of gas scrambling out here so it shouldn't be long. Once they head back we'll shoot over to Grand Cayman as fast as we can,” the pilot said.

  Deckard walked back into the cabin where his two mercenaries were clutching their seats nervously. Grabbing another bottle of water, he took a seat.

  He had to admit, the pilots had pulled off a pretty slick maneuver by using cloud cover to visually camouflage their presence while going hot on some classified microwave weapons system to conceal their radar signature. Microwaves have the unique ability to slip through the seams of enemy radar installations and insinuate themselves into the circuitry. They sneak in through the back door and spoof the radar system or cause it to malfunction.

  More than likely, this had been the secret sauce that had allowed the SEAL Team Six operators to covertly slip into Pakistani airspace aboard 160th Stealth Black Hawk helicopters. The helicopters themselves had stealth characteristics like the F-117 Stealth Fighter, but these had to be combined with microwave spoofing techniques to completely hide radar signature created by the beating rotor blades.

  In this case, those same microwave weapons were perfect for concealing CIA black flights. The airplane could look perfectly normal on the exterior as not to arouse suspicion when it arrived in airports but could “go dark” to evade detection during covert operations. Deckard took a sip of his water.

  Clearly, the CIA wasn't hurting for funding.

  The Iridium satellite phone was picked up on the first ring.

  “Nam?” the man answered in his native language. For a moment he was confused as to where he was and who he was talking to.

  “It is a Gulfstream V. The paint job is gray but there are no commercial labels or official seals. The tail number is N44982,” the caller told him.

  “Good work Arturo,” the Arab thanked him while committing the information to memory.

  The Mexican intelligence official had become his go between with the Jimenez cartel and himself. It was now clear that the CIA would be of no use to them. They were perfectly happy to see the Jimenez cartel liquidated. The Arab worked for vested interests who were determined to ensure that this never happened. If Jimenez went down, there was no telling how many of the drug corridors would collapse if the American set off some kind of domino effect. T
hey had to nip this problem in the bud.

  The Arab smiled. He was good at troubleshooting these types of problems.

  “You are sure he is on this flight?”

  “Yes,” Arturo said. “My contact in the federales personally saw him board this plane just before the pilots made an illegal take off in Cancun. I would have left the problem in your hands but before I could intervene our air force sent up a couple fighters.”

  “Did you have them stand down?”

  Fear clenched the Arab's gut. On one hand if the Mexican Air Force shot down the jet it would save him the trouble, the job would be complete. On the other hand, he would be stuck with seven mad men that he would need to find a way to get rid of.

  “No, I was too late but somehow they managed to avoid the fighters. The Air Force is still trying to figure it out. It may have been some type of radar cloaking.”

  “But you are sure they are returning to Grand Cayman?”

  “Almost certain. My sources indicate that the island was their stop off point on their way to Cancun and they were heading back in that direction when they dropped off the radar.”

  “I will call you when it is finished.”

  “I would appreciate that my friend,” the intelligence agent sounded uneasy. “Jimenez grows...impatient.”

  “This ends today. You will hear from me soon.”

  The Arab terminated the call and set the phone down.

  In the muffled interior of the garage he could hear his seven charges initiating their prayers. The chants to Allah reverberated off the walls, filling the garage with their religious incantations. The Arab winced, his fingers tracing the thick scar tissue on his forearm. In the Caribbean heat it felt like the scars were tightening up on him. Soon it would be time for more plastic surgery to relieve the pain, his constant reminder of who he had been in a past life.

  The Arab packed away his satellite phone and edged around the side of the Toyota van towards the prostrated Muslims.

  “It's time.”