Comandante Liam Duffy, now wearing what was apparently the Gendarmería Nacional uniform for going to war—camouflage shirt and trousers, sort of jump boots, and web equipment that seemed designed primarily to support many ammunition magazines—walked up to Castillo, pointed at his wristwatch, and raised his eyebrows in question.
“Yeah, Liam,” Castillo said. “It’s about time.”
Duffy bellowed a name.
An enormous gendarme with a sleeve full of chevrons appeared, came to attention before Duffy, and announced that he was at his orders.
“Form the men!” Duffy ordered, loudly.
The gendarme bellowed something not quite intelligible but what apparently was the gendarme command to come to attention.
All the gendarmes popped to their feet, stamped their feet in the British manner, and stood rigidly at attention.
Comandante Duffy grandly gestured for Castillo to precede him to the speaker’s platform: the cargo bay of yet another confiscated vehicle pressed into service.
More than a few of the Americans in the room—two dozen Delta Force shooters and the crews of the Hueys—obviously found this military precision amusing. Perhaps even ludicrous.
Shit, the last thing I need is for the gendarmes to think the gringos are laughing at them.
But it’s too late now for the speech about respecting the customs of your brothers-in-arms.
Castillo started to walk toward the pickup truck.
Chief Warrant Officer Five Colin Leverette put his hand on Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo’s arm, stopping him.
Leverette then screamed or shouted or bellowed, “On your feet, you candy-asses!”
This caught the attention of the Americans.
But no one moved.
Leverette then announced, at equal volume: “I will personally castrate any one of you candy-asses not standing tall by the time I get to the truck!”
Then, politely, he said to Castillo, “With your permission, sir?” and marched erectly toward the pickup truck, loudly and rapidly repeating “Up! Up! Up!” until he got there.
By then the Americans understood what was going on and had gotten to their feet.
Leverette jumped nimbly into the bed of the pickup, popped to rigid attention, and bellowed, “Assault force, atten-hut!”
The shooters and the fliers stood at rigid attention.
“Sir!” Leverette bellowed as he saluted. “Your assault force is formed!”
By then even the assault force commander understood what was going on.
Lieutenant Colonel Castillo marched across the Cathedral to the truck, jumped nimbly into the cargo area, put his hands on his hips, and examined his force as if he didn’t like what he saw.
He turned to Leverette, who was still holding his salute.
“Very well,” he said, quite loudly. “Carry on, Mr. Leverette.”
“Yes, sir!” Leverette bellowed, then ordered the men, “At-ease!”
Leverette turned back to face Castillo. Neither the assault force nor the gendarmes could see his face. And they could not hear him as he softly said, “And to think you didn’t want me to come…”
“I’ve never thought pep talks did much good,” Castillo said loudly to the assault force and gendarmes. “So I’m not going to give one. And if there’s anybody out there who doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do and when he’s supposed to do it, he’s out of luck. There’s no time for that now.
“The only things I am going to say, and I’m sure Comandante Duffy agrees with me, is that the priority of this mission—above all else—is to get our people back from these hijos de puta. And to do that, we have to follow the schedule.
“This is one of those situations where one man, acting a minute too soon or a minute too late, can screw up the whole operation. Don’t jump the gun! That’ll get people—almost certainly the people we’re going after, but members of the assault team as well—killed.
“And when your time comes to take action, don’t hesitate. Hesitation will get people killed, too!
“And that’s all I have.”
Castillo looked down at Duffy, who stood beside the truck.
“Comandante?”
Comandante Duffy put his hands on the waist of a slight man in a gendarme uniform and hoisted him into the back of the pickup.
What the hell?
The gendarmes bowed their heads, and the slight man then invoked a lengthy, somewhat flowery blessing of the Deity upon the noble mission they were about to undertake.
It was only after everyone raised their heads that Castillo saw the clerical collar under the slight man’s camouflage shirt.
Max sensed that something was going on that he was not going to be part of, but didn’t protest when Castillo put him in the back of the Mercedes SUV and firmly lashed his leash to a metal loop in the floor. Delchamps would drive the truck, and Max, to the airfield at Formosa, where Torine and Miller had taken the Gulfstream.
Castillo had planned to send Lester Bradley with Torine and Max, but the piteous look in Bradley’s eyes when he was told of this was even more piteous than the look in Max’s eyes, and Castillo’s resolve melted.
“Cover my back, Lester, and that’s all,” Castillo ordered.
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Leverette intercepted Castillo and Bradley as they walked toward Big Bad Wolf, its rotor blades already turning. Lorimer, Mullroney, and two shooters were getting situated inside.
“Go get aboard, Lester,” Leverette ordered. “I need a word with the colonel. And don’t shoot anything until I tell you.”
When Bradley was out of earshot, Castillo said, “Now what, Colin?”
“Would the colonel accept some friendly advice?”
“Not right now, thank you just the same, Mr. Leverette. I have a lot on my mind.”
“Thank you, sir. How long has it been since the colonel has been referred to as Hotshot Charley, the Boy Wonder?”
“Meaning what?”
“May I remind the colonel that he is now a colonel? And that colonels—even light colonels, sir—are supposed to keep their minds free to make command decisions? Not drive helicopters.”
Castillo stared at Leverette.
“Let the kid drive, Charley. He’s good. I’ve been around the block with him, and the other kid, before.”
Castillo glanced at the Huey, then looked back at Leverette.
“If the old man’s memory serves, you’ve been around the block with me once or twice, too, Colin. Some people thought I was pretty good at this sort of thing.”
“You were. That was then, this is now.” He paused. “Let the kids drive, Charley.”
“Fuck you, Colin,” Castillo said, and walked quickly toward Big Bad Wolf.
The pilot, a young captain, was holding open the pilot’s door.
“Where would like me to ride, sir?”
“Probably there would be a good idea,” Colonel Castillo said, pointing to the pilot seat. “That’s where they keep the handles and levers and all that aircraft crap.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Big Bad Wolf light on the skids.”
“Big Bad Wolf off.”
“Big Bad Wolf. Commo check.”
“One.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Big Bad Wolf. M-Minute in ten. Engage computer on my bong.”
“Bong.”
This was far from the first time Castillo had flown an assault mission using the technique known informally as “flying the needles.” But it would be the first when he would not actually be flying from the pilot’s seat of one—usually the lead—helicopter.
I’m not flying. The “kids” are.
Colin was right about that. I haven’t flown a Huey for a long time.
I am no longer Hotshot Charley, the Boy Wonder.
This is no time for me to fuck it up by thinking I am.
Castillo knew that the destination coordinates and the desired time of arrival—in
this case, six hundred seconds from his bong setting order—had been all fed into computers aboard the Hueys. The computers would make the necessary computations and convert them to signals that activated indicator pointers—the “needles”—on the compass, the radar altimeter, and the ground speed indicator.
By keeping each helicopter’s compass and its altitude and ground speed indicator’s pointers lined up precisely with the computer-generated data—continuously making adjustments en route—as many as ten helicopters can arrive simultaneously (within two to three seconds) on target from several directions.
In our case—Big Bad Wolf and Red Riding Hood One, Two, and Three—from three different directions.
Making this damned difficult and complicated, and requiring pilots of extraordinary skill and great experience to carry it off.
And these “kids”—these Army aviators of the 160th—are the world’s best damn chopper jockeys.
At M-Minute less three seconds, Red Riding Hood One popped up from its nap of the earth altitude east of the target and rose to one hundred feet above the ground.
There were faint lights visible within the compound beneath Red Riding Hood One.
At M-Minute, what looked like an orange ribbon flashed down to the ground from the opened side door of the helicopter. It lasted about ten seconds, and then Red Riding Hood One made a steep turn and left the area.
The orange ribbon had come from a Dillon Aero M134D 7.62mm “weapon system” mounted on a pintle in the helicopter. This weapon is patterned after the Gatling gun, a multiple-barrel weapon that was developed just in time for Private Tiffany of the jewelry firm Tiffany & Company and of the First United States Volunteer Cavalry, to buy several from the Colt people with his own money and in 1899 take them to Cuba, where he put them to use assisting Lieutenant Colonel Theodore Roosevelt in chasing the Spaniards off San Juan Hill.
The M134D—with six rotating barrels like the original Gatling, but ones electrically powered rather than hand-cranked—on Red Riding Hood One was fed by a 4,400-round magazine that could empty in just over sixty seconds.
In the ten seconds the weapon did fire, it sent from Red Riding Hood One almost seven hundred 168-grain bullets into a corrugated steel shed that contained a nearly new Cummins diesel-powered one-hundred-fifty-kilowatt generator. This caused the generator to malfunction—and the lights in the compound to go black.
A moment later, the diesel fuel in the tank behind the shed burst into flame.
Several moments after that, the electric lights of the compound flickered back on as an automatic system fired up the backup generator, an identical Cummins.
This coincided with the arrival of Red Riding Hood Two from the north at M-Minute plus five seconds.
And again there was an orange ribbon coming from the sky.
And again somewhere around seven hundred bullets flowed down, these striking the shed housing the backup generator—and causing the generator to malfunction, its fuel supply to ignite, and the lights in the compound to go out again.
As Red Riding Hood Two left the immediate area, Red Riding Hood Three and Big Bad Wolf appeared from the south.
Red Riding Hood was going to go in as low as possible to the ground and train its M134D on the corrugated steel building that the satellite imagery interpreters believed to be the compound headquarters—lots of people and a rather powerful shortwave radio station had been detected—and a motor pool behind that building.
Big Bad Wolf was going to land in the compound as soon as Red Riding Hood Three fired at the headquarters building, then off-load three shooters. The shooters would rush to the pole where DEA Special Agent Timmons and the two gendarmes had been chained, free them, and load them onto Big Bad Wolf, which would then immediately take off, under cover of Red Riding Hood One and Two, which by then would have returned to lay down covering fire.
Red Riding Hood Three by then would be seeing what it could do to facilitate the passage of the gendarmes from the highway to the compound, conducting what is known as “reconnaissance by fire.”
Everything went as planned until Red Riding Hood Three picked up a little altitude to give it a better shot at the motor pool.
The pilot of Big Bad Wolf, the copilot, and Castillo—who was kneeling on the deck just behind them—almost simultaneously said, “Oh, shit!”
“Fuck, he hit a wire,” the copilot said. “It cut the fucking blade!”
Red Riding Hood Three, which was tilted to the left, straightened out for a moment, looked as if it was trying to turn, then tilted back left, and was almost upside down when it crashed into the motor pool.
The pilot looked at Castillo for orders.
Castillo gestured impatiently at the ground.
“As soon as you’re down, turn it around so we can take off the way we came in,” Castillo ordered.
“Big Bad Wolf. Three is down. Repeat, Three is down. Two, go cover the gate. One, give us some covering fire.”
“One on you, Big Bad Wolf.”
“See what you can do for the guys on Three, Colin,” Castillo ordered. “I’m going to get Timmons. Give me your chain-cutters.”
Leverette gave him a thumbs-up and jumped off the helicopter.
Castillo turned to the two shooters.
“You go with Mr. Leverette,” Castillo said to one, then to the other said, “And you come with me.”
There was also a former Green Beret and a Chicago police officer on the helicopter, the latter grasping a snub-nosed .38 Smith & Wesson revolver.
“You stay on the chopper,” Castillo ordered them.
“He’s my brother-in-law,” Mullroney protested.
Shit. That’s why we brought him along in the first place.
Castillo looked at Lorimer and shouted, “I don’t want him hurt, Pegleg. Got it?”
Lorimer nodded.
Castillo turned to Bradley.
“Lester, cover my back.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
Special Agent Timmons was sitting with his back resting against the pole to which he had been chained. He was looking with confused eyes at what was going on. The two gendarmes were asleep.
“Hey, Charley,” he said with slurred speech, dimly recognizing his brother-in-law and smiling. “What’s up?”
Mullroney and Lorimer worked as a team to hold and cut through the chain. Castillo then hoisted the freed Timmons over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. He started trotting toward Big Bad Wolf. Mullroney and Lorimer quickly snipped the chains on the gendarmes, then followed Castillo back toward the helo.
Halfway there, Castillo suddenly felt as if somebody had hit him with a baseball bat in the leg, and then, a moment later, in the buttocks.
He felt himself falling.
“Oh, shit!”
He heard a burst from a CAR-4, then his lights went out.
“It’s okay, kid, we’ve got him.”
“Don’t you call me kid, you oversized sonofabitch!”
“Goddamn, Charley, didn’t you hear me when I said to remember to duck?”
“Where’s Timmons?”
“You took a couple of hits—one in the ass, one in the leg—from what I’d say was that short Russian round, the 5.45×39. Not too much tissue damage, but you lost a lot of blood.”
“Where’s Timmons?”
“You want a shot? Or the happy pill?”
“I don’t want either. Where the fuck is Timmons?”
“Not your choice, Charley, the one you took in the leg broke it. It’s going to start hurting bad right about now.”
“I don’t want to go out, goddamn you!”
He didn’t remember a needle prick, or any sense of being drugged, or even of feeling dizzy.
One moment, he was fighting with Colin Leverette.
The next moment, nothing.
[TWO]
Room 142
Hospital Británico
Avenida Italia 2420
Montevideo, Uruguay
1035 24 September
2005
“I shudder to think how you’re going to answer the calls of nature in that apparatus, Colonel,” Chief Warrant Officer Five Colin Leverette said to Lieutenant Colonel C. G. Castillo from the door of the room.
Castillo was suspended over—not in—his hospital bed. His left leg was encased in plaster from above the knee. Stainless steel cables attached to small D-rings in the plaster held the leg six inches over the mattress. This was necessary to keep the leg straight, this in turn being necessary to accommodate a cradle under Colonel Castillo’s buttocks, which allowed his left buttock to hang free, which was also suspended from stainless steel cables attached to a frame above the bed.
Colonel Castillo gave Mr. Leverette the finger with his right hand. His left hand held a long black cigar.
“I don’t think you’re supposed to be smoking,” Leverette said.
Castillo gave him the finger again.
“Where am I, and what am doing here?”
“You’re in the British Hospital in Montevideo, Uruguay. I think the term is ‘recuperating.’ You apparently were involved in a firearms accident while hunting feral swine in the north.”
“And Timmons?”
“Special Agent Timmons is undergoing drug detoxification in Saint Albans Hospital in Washington, D.C. Sergeant Mullroney is also in Saint Albans, recovering from minor injuries he suffered while shooting feral hogs with you.”
“Anybody else get hit?”
Leverette shook his head.
“Amazing. They were waiting for us, Charley. A lot of them.”
“What I remember is Three hitting an antenna cable and going in—”
“What it hit was a fucking cable, one of a bunch of fucking cables, strung across every area in that compound large enough to land a chopper. I don’t see why everybody didn’t hit one.”
“But just Three did?”
Leverette nodded.
“And?”
“Bruises and contusions, one broken arm. We brought him here, too. They set the arm and put him on an American Airlines flight last night for Miami.”
“Why here?”
The Shooters Page 53
