by Jack Murphy
“Look out the window.”
Deckard watched as an airplane touched down on the Torreon airport runway. It was flying blacked out with all of the flight and interior lights switched off. The only way you flew into a war zone without getting shot down.
Slowing, the cargo carrier plane turned off onto the taxiway the led into Militar No. 3.
“This is Six,” Deckard said as he clicked the transmit button on his radio. “How are those charges coming?”
“Almost done,” Pat reported in. “How long you want on the time fuse?”
“Ten minutes.”
“That's it? I can cut an hour's worth,” Pat explained. “That would give us enough time to make it back to the van and be out of the city before the blast.”
“We're not taking the van,” Deckard told him. “Change of plans.”
Outside, the aircraft was lit up by the lights above the hangar doors. He could now identify the airplane as a Lockheed L-100 cargo plane, the civilian equivalent of the military's C-130 Hercules. As the rear ramp began to lower, a forklift was driven up to the back end to begin removing the pallets of weapons and ammunition.
“Save one of those charges to bring with you and start the count down on the time fuse as soon as possible. Let me know when it is burning.”
“Roger,” Pat acknowledged. “I can't wait to see this plan of yours because this is going to be a big bang. Big enough to shatter half the windows in the city.”
By now, Aghassi and Nikita had finished using a roll of duct tape to secure General Gonzalez to his chair.
“Leave him,” Deckard said. “We're leaving.”
Locking the door behind them, they left the General secured inside his office. He was going nowhere fast. Taking a knee, the three mercenaries watched as a crew of Mexican soldiers climbed onto the L-100 aircraft and began pushing pallets across the rollers set into the floor of the plane and onto the forklift where they were set down next to the hangar.
“Six,” Pat's voice crackled over the radio. “Ready to initiate?”
“Do it. Then meet us in front of the General's office across the way from your position.”
“Roger, we're burning. Ten minutes.”
Thirty seconds later, Kurt and Pat ran up to meet them.
“We need to get the fuck out of here,” Pat urged. “We'll be lucky to escape the blast as it is.”
“That's our freedom bird right there,” Deckard said, pointing towards the airplane with the barrel of his gun. “Nikita, you're on overwatch. The rest of us will assault from where they are downloading those pallets next to the hangar. We don't stop until we go right up the fuselage of the aircraft and into the cockpit.”
“Now that's a plan,” Kurt Jager said with a grin.
“The General knew a lot but didn't know the source of the weapons he was receiving. Time to find out.”
Nikita's uniform shifted colors as he stalked off into the night to find an acceptable overwatch position while the remaining four men cut across a road and crept up behind the pallets that were now sitting beside the hangar.
Taking cover behind them, Deckard took one final look as the forklift was re-positioning itself to carry off the next pallet.
“There are three pallet pushers and one forklift operator. The pallet pushers look to have side arms. I don't know about the driver behind the forklift.”
“Let's move,” Pat urged. “We're talking about less than eight minutes here.”
“Nikita, do it,” Deckard said over their radio net.
The crack of the gunshot couldn't be heard above the jet engines but the forklift operator suddenly slumped over in his seat. As the mercenaries sprung out from behind the pallets, Deckard let off a single shot that caught one of the pallet pushers in the chest. He bobbed forward and took a swan dive off the back of the ramp.
Climbing up the back of the forklift, Aghassi and Pat stood on top of it and took careful shots at the remaining two men. They had to be careful not to damage the aircraft in the process or they would all be shit out of luck if they couldn't get off the ground. Luckily, the human body was an acceptable bullet trap. One of the Mexican soldiers was caught completely by surprise, the other reached for the pistol on his hip but was just a second too late as Pat cut him down.
Shimmying across the blades of the forklift, the two mercenaries ran down the fuselage of the aircraft, dodging between several pallets that had yet to be unloaded and the exposed metal guts in the sides of the plane. Deckard clamored up behind them.
“Nikita, get your ass up here,” he ordered the sniper before he got left behind.
By the time Deckard got to the front of the cargo plane, Pat had already kicked in the cockpit door and taken the pilot hostage. The former Delta operator had plenty of experience with aircraft take downs and other tubular assaults.
“What the fuck are you idiots doing in my airplane,” the pilot complained. There was so much noise that he didn't hear the gunshots. “Are you guys with Task Force 7?”
Deckard looked the pilot right in the eye.
“In five minutes this entire military base is going to explode. Every bit of ordnance you've been ferrying into Torreon over the last month is rigged with C4 plastic explosives with a time fuse burning down to detonation.”
Looking over his shoulder, he saw Nikita set his rifle down inside the back ramp and then pull himself inside.
“We are leaving right,” Deckard wasn't asking. He was telling. “Now.”
The pilot looked like he was about to have a heart attack. Closing the hydraulic operated ramp, he turned off the air brakes and started back down the taxiway. Gaining speed, the black tarmac was rushing underneath them as they watched through the cockpit windows. Making an abrupt turn, the pilot brought them onto the runway.
“Four minutes,” Pat said, looking up from his watch.
The pilot accelerated down the runway as fast as he possibly could, pulling on the yoke and getting them airborne. The L-100 felt like it was almost going vertical, forcing the mercenaries to find something to hold onto as tracer fire flashed across their vision from someone in the city shooting at the airplane.
“Once you get some altitude,” Deckard ordered. “Bring us around at a safe distance. I want to see this for myself. I also want you to see that I mean fucking business with you tonight.”
For a moment, the pilot looked as nervous as General Gonzalez had. The same General Gonzalez cooling his heels while ducked taped to a chair in his office, Deckard enjoyed recalling as he peered out of the cockpit window. They flew blacked out, the same as when the L-100 had come in to avoid ground fire and were now several thousand feet in the air above Torreon. Below, Military No. 3 was clearly lit up by the base's ground lighting. The hangar, the warehouse, guard towers, and even the General's office were clearly visible in the night.
“Thirty seconds,” Pat announced.
“We'll give you plus or minus five seconds with the time fuse Pat,” Deckard said sarcastically. “If your det is too far over or short of your estimate then you've failed the demolitions course.”
“I was a Master Breacher in Delta,” Pat snorted. “I've got this.”
“I hope so or you owe me a case of beer.”
“Well, we will see in another ten seconds.”
The Lockheed cargo plane slowly orbited the Mexican military base while the pilot looked on nervously.
“That is more than five seconds,” Deckard criticized. “I'm going to make this fucking pilot land and send you down there to inspect-”
The Samruk International commander choked on his words as the warehouse blew outwards in all directions. General Gonzalez's office looked like a shanty caught in the shock wave of a nuclear explosion like in some black and white test footage from the 1950's. The cement guard towers shook and tipped over as the blast rolled over the entire compound. Secondary explosions tore through the fuel depot and vehicles were tossed aside like matchbox cars caught in a tornado.
Sever
al seconds later the airplane suddenly dropped a dozen feet as if it had hit some serious turbulence. In a way, it had. It took a moment for the explosion to propagate outwards before the heat and pressure wave bounced them through the sky. The pilot maintained control of the aircraft as the mercenaries looked down on the burning military base. Nothing was left.
General Gonzalez was with the dust.
47
Nikita and Aghassi went into the back of the airplane to take a look inside the pallets that had not been downloaded by the ground crew while Pat and Kurt loomed over the pilot. Deckard took the seat where the co-pilot would normally sit. The weapons trafficker had been flying solo.
“Who are you guys?” the pilot asked nervously. His knuckles were white on the controls.
Internally, Deckard had to concede that it was a valid question. They were not even mercenaries, not really, not any more. They had traveled deep into the night and found a third layer of war, a third layer occupied by players with no names, where conspiracy theory was soon revealed as conspiracy fact. Beyond Special Forces, beyond the CIA, was a rogue network of criminal entrepreneurs. This network was not a governmental organization but rather one that appeared to be overlaid across numerous commercial interests, one that had hijacked systems of government, using spies and soldiers alike as pawns in their grand scheme of things.
Where did that leave the five Samruk International mercenaries?
There wasn't a name for them, the closest label that fit was vigilantes.
“What is your flight plan?” Deckard asked, ignoring the question.
“Flights like this don't have a plan,” the pilot answered.
“Where did you fly out of before arriving in Torreon?”
The pilot hesitated.
“You saw what we did to an entire military base. We probably are not the type of people you want to fuck with.”
“Fort Bliss.”
“Fort Bliss,” Deckard repeated, looking up at Pat and Kurt. “And where did you plan on flying back to?”
“Back to Bliss.”
“And on to your next destination?”
“No,” the pilot shook his head. “I would then be turning the plane over to another pilot and I'd take commercial air back home. It's a compartmentalized program. Everyone only knows their one little leg of the journey, their one little piece of the operation.”
Compartmentalization was normal during military and intelligence operations, Deckard knew from his own experience. Working in this manner, one compromised cell could not divulge information on the other components of the operation. The technique worked as the five mercenaries had been struggling to unravel the gun trafficking ring and met with serious resistance in unmasking who the players were behind the scenes. Some CIA case officer working out of OBI wasn't the senior man in charge.
“Let me guess,” Deckard said. “You work for a commercial venture that has leased a hangar on Bliss?”
“Yeah, that about sums it up.”
“Then take us to Bliss.”
“Are you nuts? Are you guys going to try to blow up an active US military base like that last one?”
“Our fight isn't with the US military, or even the Mexican military for that matter, only those who are actively participating in turning Mexico into a blood bath. Now tell me, which firm do you work for?”
“Kepper Airlines.”
“A CIA front company?”
“They front for the CIA on occasion.”
“On this occasion?”
“You gotta believe me, man. I just don't know.”
The pilot was sweating it out as he checked his instruments and got them on a heading towards Ft. Bliss.
“Who leased the hangar on Bliss?”
“G3 Communications.”
“They have provided non-official cover for Delta operations in the past,” Pat added.
“What's your name?” Deckard asked the pilot.
“Ed.”
“Well Ed, as you can see, I want to know who the puppet masters are behind sowing death and destruction in Mexico.”
“I'll tell you what I know.”
“How are you making these illegal border crossings with an aircraft loaded down with guns?”
“We fly in a safe corridor, whoever is flying that corridor doesn't get harassed or searched by customs. They know to stay hands off.”
“In other words, someone freezes the operational area during your overflights so you can pass through unmolested?”
“No, not really. It's a permanent corridor that is run by the Defense Intelligence Agency. It's been in place since the mid-1970's.”
Deckard rolled with the punches. He knew it was going to get a lot worse before it got better.
“For running covert operations in Central America?”
“Among other things. There used to be a series of radio beacons stretching from Colombia all the way into the United States that pilots could home in on. Nobody flying the corridor would be intercepted as long as they transmitted the correct response transmission signal. Today, everyone uses GPS so the radio towers were dismantled.”
“What is the correct transmission signal?”
“Hotel Tango Romeo 585.”
“That's the pass phrase you will have to give when we cross over the border?”
“Only if they radio and ask for the bonafides. The radar operators are so used to these black flights that they don't even bother asking as long as you are in the right corridor.”
“So how does Ft. Bliss figure into this?”
“Briggs Army Airfield on Ft. Bliss is considered a power projection platform by the Department of Defense.”
“Basically, it's like an aircraft carrier but instead of in the ocean, it is on land at a strategic location,” Deckard said.
“Yeah, like that. Ft. Bliss also hosts the El Paso intelligence center which deals with analyzing narco-terrorism coming out of Mexico. I drive onto the base when Kipper Airlines calls me in, get on a plane that has already been loaded with cargo and fly it to Torreon. Then I fly back and go home until the next call.”
“And cash the paycheck,” Deckard added. “Did you ever question where all these weapons were heading?”
“I thought they were being used to fight against the drug cartels. We sell guns to the Iraqis, Afghanis, and dozens of other less than democratic countries. So we sell guns to Mexico? This is hardly the biggest skeleton in Uncle Sam's closet.”
“Yeah, it does kind of pale in comparison to the Arabs you've been flying in and out.”
Ed jerked at the controls.
“You know about that?”
“Who are they?”
“I've never spoken to them and they've never spoke to me. Spooky guys. They get on the aircraft, I fly them in, and they get off. When OBI makes the call, my dispatcher at Bliss has me fly back in to pick them up.”
“They are being housed at Ft. Bliss?”
“I don't know. I doubt it. There are other flights as a part of this operation. They don't tell me what their destination is, but I never got the sense that they were staying at Bliss. A bunch of shady looking Arabs hanging around a military installation would certainly raise some eyebrows.”
Just then, Aghassi opened the door and walked into the cockpit.
“He's packing some heavy shit back there. 90mm recoilless rifles and armor penetrating rounds. AK-47 ammunition, and get a load of this,” Aghassi held out a drab green colored tube.
“LAWs,” Deckard said, recognizing the Light Anti-Tank weapon. “Make sure you grab a few. I have a feeling we are going to need them.”
“I never really knew what I was flying in and out, I just picked up the pallets and-”
“Shut up and fly Ed,” Deckard cut him off. “By the way,” he said turning back to Aghassi. “Can I borrow your notebook for a second? I think Ed needs to see something.”
Aghassi went into his kit and withdrew his notebook computer, handing it to Deckard. Opening the computer, he
pressed the power button to get it fired up.
“Let me ask you Ed, have you ever seen one of the Arabs you ferried around with some really gnarly scars on his arms?”
“Like some deep cut marks on his arms?”
“Yeah, exactly like that.”
“There was one guy who had these crazy scars that walked all the way up his arms. One time I saw them when he was wearing a short sleeved shirt in the summer. He is the one I see most frequently, I think he is the leader of the group.”
“Take a look at this,” Deckard said turning the computer screen towards Ed. The Torreon beheading video played, The Arab's scars clearly visible on his arms as he sliced the head off a living teenage girl.
“Jesus Christ.”
“Hardly. The first time I encountered this guy was on Grand Cayman when he killed a couple CIA pilots by sending suicide bombers after us. The next time I saw his handy work was at a Christian mission. Listen Ed, it was a massacre. They lined up mentally disabled people and recovering drug addicts. Even the padre and the nurse who I found with her panties around her ankles. This Arab put them against a wall and executed them.”
“I have to ask you again man, who the hell are you guys? You obviously are not SEAL Team Six or Delta Force.”
“We are mercenaries. Freelancers. We fight and we get paid for it. This is what we do. This is what we are good at. When someone kills my men, when some coward takes the fight to civilians, when they cut the heads off teenage girls and execute the sick, then they have taken the fight to me. This isn't about money Ed, not anymore. This is about justice. We blew up that Mexican military base because those bastards were supporting this shit, just like you.”
“I had no way of knowing.”
“Now you do. Decision time. Make the call. You just ran out of gray areas to hide in.”
The pilot looked away, wiped his hand across his face, and then set it back on the controls.
“What do you need?”
“Who from Kepper or G3 Communications works at the hangar? You said something about a dispatcher.”
“There is a dispatcher and an operations officer who monitors black flights shooting up and down the flight corridor.”
