by Bob Mayer
"The general says go in, Mike." Pike nodded his thanks and entered.
Linders stood up to greet him. "Hey, Mike, I'm sorry about those guys you lost. It's a hell of a mess. I've had a bunch of calls from 1st SOW and SOCOM about it. I did what you asked and referred them to the Public Affairs Office but I'm not sure they're buying it. Slaight down at Bragg is being a particular pain in the butt trying to find out what the hell happened."
Pike shook his head as he sat in the offered seat. "Yes, sir. It's a problem all around. The video those assholes are releasing is screwing up the cover story. The chairman's doing a lot of tap-dancing on it. I guess he's under pressure from State and the White House to keep everything under wraps, trying to protect President Alegre's involvement."
Linders cursed. "I don't know why they don't just come out and put everything aboveboard. Let us go down and kick some ass and not have to do all this sneaky stuff. Plus it's a disgrace to those men who died not to have their accomplishments noted."
Pike was relaxing. It was obvious from his comments that Linders didn't know Pike had been fired. He decided to go for broke. "Well, that's kind of what I'm here to talk to you about."
Linders looked interested. "You going to run Hammer Four on that same target?"
Pike shook his head. "No, that target has been compromised. We're moving on to Hammer Five."
BOGOTA
6:00 P.M.
Riley and Westland sat on the edge of the bed watching the Spanish broadcast of the Colombian news on the small TV in their room. The video of the American bodies made the lead story.
Riley watched the screen fill with a slow pan of the bodies of Partusi, Marzan, Holder, and Lane. The camera was obviously handheld and the video was of poor quality, yet there was no denying the identity of the dead. Nor would there be any denying that the four men had been shot up pretty badly. The back half of Lane's head was missing where a round had torn through. The video was about twenty seconds long and showed only the bodies. No sign of Powers, dead or alive.
Riley listened to the comments of the newscaster:
"This video was delivered to El Tiempo yesterday evening. It was accompanied by a letter signed 'Protector of the People.' The text of the letter is: " 'People of Colombia, see what your president has allowed in your country. American soldiers come here and attack our citizens. And President Alegre knew about it! He allows Yankee imperialists to invade our sovereign territory and kill our people. These Americans were killed attacking farmers in the Barranquilla province.
" 'Take these bodies as our warning that we will not accept this situation.' "
The newscaster came back on.
"The office of the president has denied the report that the American soldiers were in Colombian territory at the request of President Alegre.
"The American government claims that the soldiers were killed in a helicopter crash flying out of Panama. The American military maintains that the aircraft was misoriented in flight and the crash in Colombian territory was a result of this navigational error. Washington denies that American forces have been conducting any sort of operations in our country."
Riley turned off the TV as the story shifted. He didn't feel quite so bad about the sicarios he had killed this afternoon.
8:30 P.M.
"Nice wheels." Riley took a walk around the beat-up Ford Pinto. "Your man definitely worked hard to get us something with a lot of power. At least it will fit in with all the other cars we've seen around here, except of course the BMWs and Mercedeses owned by the drug people. I've never seen so many fancy cars in one place before."
Westland laughed as she got in the driver's side. "I think there've been something like ten thousand new millionaires in Colombia over the past ten years, and they all want the good stuff."
Kate cranked the engine. Riley was relieved to hear that the engine sounded in good shape. "Do you know the way?"
"Si, Senor Gonzalo."
As Kate drove, Riley went to work disconnecting the interior dome light. She wound their way out of the city. By the time she cleared the northern limits of Bogota the sun was almost all the way down and night was beginning to blanket the sky. She turned to the north along a highway with the mountains looming in close on the right side.
Riley was sleeping on the passenger side. The lack of sleep and tremendous amounts of adrenaline he'd gone through in the last forty-eight hours had finally caught up with him.
Westland drove slowly along the two-lane road, allowing Riley as much sleep as possible. After twenty minutes she reached over and gently tapped him on the shoulder.
"What's up?" he asked groggily.
Westland pointed up ahead and to the right. "See those lights on the mountainside?"
"Yeah."
"According to the plot on the map, my odometer says that's got to be Ring Man's villa." She pointed as they passed a tar access road on their right. "That must be his driveway. From here it's about three klicks up that road along the mountainside to his place."
Riley watched as the lights grew closer. He rolled down his window and peered out as they passed the site. He could see very little, since the house was almost eight hundred feet above the highway. The glow indicated that the Ring Man probably had the entire grounds illuminated. Riley wasn't sure yet whether that would be an advantage or a disadvantage.
Westland was watching the odometer carefully in the dim dashboard light. She jumped as a vehicle flashed its lights in her rearview mirror and then roared around her. A truck load of drunk farm workers leaned over the railing of the truck bed, screaming at them for going too slow.
Riley reached out and put a hand on her shoulder. "Relax, Kate."
She nodded, still keeping her attention on the odometer. "Anywhere along in here." She pulled over and slowed even further.
He cracked open his door and turned to her. "See you soon." Then he rolled out, throwing the door shut as he went.
Riley hit the ground and rolled into the drainage ditch on the side of the road. He landed in the cold water at the bottom, which seeped into his clothes. Crouching in the ditch, he allowed himself a few seconds to get oriented. Looking to the east, in the dim starlight, he could make out the notch in the mountains ahead that indicated the top of the draw. Down that draw ran the stream he was looking for. He figured the stream must be somewhere off to his left, since they had not crossed it in the car prior to his jumping out.
He took out his compass and shot an azimuth to the notch, rotating the glowing lines in the base of the compass to match the illuminated north arrow on that setting. Then he offset that slightly to the north. He wanted to intersect the stream prior to the waterfall.
Counting every right footfall, Riley headed up the draw. He estimated it was 1.2 kilometers to the waterfall. He knew that his pace count, normally sixty right steps for every hundred meters, would be inaccurate due to the steep terrain. But the pace count and azimuth were really backups. He was counting on running into the left limit of the stream and following that, or hitting the front limit of the steep shelf from which the waterfall dropped, and following that to the left.
It felt good to be back out in the open again. Riley took a deep breath of the cool night air as he strode along. Being alone in the dark might be a terrifying experience for some, but it gave Riley a sense of freedom. There were no distractions, and he was accountable to no one. He always enjoyed the feeling of being out in nature, even if it was during a mission.
After fifteen minutes the noise of falling water became perceptible. He turned his course a little more to the left, hitting thicker vegetation the closer he got to the water. Suddenly he broke through to a slightly overgrown path next to the stream. Riley knelt down and ran his fingers over the dirt at the base of the path, searching for recent footprints. In the dark he couldn't see anything, and his fingers yielded no information. Drawing the knife he had taken from the sicario, he headed up the path.
Riley knew the attaché had most likely used this
same path to put in the cache. He just hoped no one else would be on it tonight. He made much better time on the path than he had in the thick brush and was quickly rewarded with the sound of water crashing into a pool ahead. Riley stepped out into the moonlit clearing at the base of the waterfall.
The rock mentioned in the cache report was easy to spot. It stood on the south side of the pool a short hop from the shore. Riley bounded over to the rock and knelt down. He felt along the north edge for a fishing line or anything else that might be connected to the cache. Nothing.
Riley sighed and took his clothes off, shivering in the chill night air. Gripping the knife in his teeth, he held onto the rock with his hands. Damn. He hated cold water. The icy mountain pool made his skin crawl as he slowly lowered himself in, sliding his feet along the side of the rock. Totally immersed, except for his head, he took a deep breath and pushed himself under the water. When his feet hit something, he turned upside down, and swam down the few feet to the bundle. Quickly feeling around, he determined that the cache was buoyant and held in place with an anchor cable. At that point, he ran out of breath and headed back up.
Riley broke the surface and took a few deep breaths. His body was shaking from the cold. He hoped the cable was cut-able. It should be, since the cache report had said to bring a knife. Gripping the knife in his hand, he dove again. Working his way around the bundle, he finally found the anchor cable. To his numbed fingers, it felt like rope. Probably attached to a heavy rock the attaché had found somewhere close by to use as an anchor. Riley sawed at the rope with the knife until he couldn't stay down any longer.
It took Riley two more trips before the rope parted and the cache popped to the surface. Hanging onto the cache with his numbed fingers, Riley pulled it to shore. Beaching the bundle, he dragged himself out of the water. He was shivering so badly it took a tremendous amount of willpower to rouse himself. He grabbed his clothes and, after inadequately drying himself with his sweatshirt, he pulled them on. Riley wanted to kick himself for forgetting to bring a towel.
He glanced at his watch. He had forty-five minutes before Kate did her first pass by on the road below. After that it would be once every hour. He knew there was much to be done tonight and decided to get going immediately. Besides, the walk down would warm him up.
He inspected the cache more carefully. It was a box about two feet by five wrapped in plastic sheets. An unwieldy package at best. Riley picked it up and carefully balanced it on his shoulder. He estimated it weighed about fifty pounds. He took off down the path, determined to follow it all the way to the road rather than beating cross-country through the brush. If he ran into someone that would be that person's tough luck, because Riley was in no mood to mess around.
As he walked, he felt his body warm up from the exercise. The box dug into his shoulder and slipped a few times as he descended. Finally, about ten meters ahead he saw the dark line of the road. He checked his watch. Five minutes to eleven. He edged up to the road and quickly crossed. Settling in behind some bushes he waited.
Finally he heard the muted rumble of a car heading his way from the north. He peered up the road and watched. Two headlights came into view. Riley smiled in relief as he saw the brights flash on and off three times in rapid succession. Looking back to make sure no cars were coming from the opposite direction, he stepped out into the road and lit his lighter. The car swung off the road next to him and stopped. Riley opened the back door and slid in the bundle. He crammed himself in next to it.
Westland pulled back out into the road and continued heading south. "How'd it go?"
"Could you turn the heat on, please? I had to take a swim. I hate cold water. That attaché did a good job putting it in. I just hope it has everything."
As Westland drove, Riley tore through the protective wrapping with his knife, uncovering a plastic case sealed with duct tape. He cut the tape and opened the lid. The contents had been individually waterproofed. Riley unwrapped each item carefully.
The largest was a rifle: an M21 sniper rifle. Riley still wasn't sure how he would hit the Ring Man, but he wanted to have the capability to do it from a distance if the opportunity presented itself. The M21 was a match grade M14 rifle with the upper receiver glazed into the lower with fiberglass to prevent any movement between those parts. With the rifle were two magazines of ten rounds each of national match 7.62mm ammunition and an ART2 scope already mounted. Riley had asked that the scope be zeroed in and he hoped it hadn't been jostled out of alignment during the emplacement and recovery of the cache. Riley felt confident he could hit the Ring Man out to a kilometer, maybe more, with this system if he got the chance. He placed the rifle on the floor.
Next, he unwrapped the second-largest package. A short, bulky muzzle soon appeared, attached to a collapsing-stock submachine gun. It was an MP5SD3 mounted with a silencer, just like the one he had carried on the missions. There were twenty thirty-round magazines of 9mm ammunition in the box. Ten of those magazines were already in the pockets of an assault vest. Riley slapped a magazine into the weapon and loaded it. He placed it next to himself on the seat and put on the vest.
Next he pulled out two similar small packages. Unwrapping them disclosed two canvas bags, each holding a Claymore mine with time pencil, remote clacker, and trip wire. Riley wasn't sure how he would use the mines but they opened up possibilities. A plastic case contained a set of PVS-5s with four spare batteries. Riley unscrewed the battery cover and put one of the batteries in the goggles.
The last two packages were also identical. Each contained a Beretta 9mm pistol in a shoulder holster. There were six fifteen-round magazines with each weapon. Riley strapped his on, put the rifle and Claymores back into the plastic case, and climbed over the passenger seat into the front. He placed the other pistol on the seat next to Westland. "Got you a gift. Don't ever say I never gave you anything. You can take that Colt out of your pants now. Must be kind of uncomfortable."
Westland smiled as she negotiated the road. "Thanks. Maybe I'll get you something for Christmas."
Riley had been so busy unwrapping his toys, he had lost track of their whereabouts. "Where are we?"
"We made the turn onto route 46 about a minute ago. You're done just in time. Another two klicks and we should be at the turnoff for the warehouse."
Riley looked around. This road was more heavily traveled than the one to Ring Man's villa. "Go past the turnoff and see if you can find a place to pull over."
Riley spotted the driveway the same time as Westland did. He could make out lights and the edge of the warehouse the sicario had described to him. Westland went about four hundred meters past the turnoff and then pulled off the road, edging the car between the asphalt and the drainage ditch.
Riley grabbed the MP5 and one of the Claymore bags. "Let's go." He slipped the night-vision goggles over his head and turned them on.
Westland locked the doors and then followed, strapping on her Beretta. She kept the Colt tucked into the waist of her jeans. Riley led the way through the trees, slowing his pace for Westland, who kept her hand on his back and blindly followed him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
WEDNESDAY, 4 SEPTEMBER
OUTSKIRTS OF BOGOTA
1:38 A.M.
Riley pulled off his goggles and peered at the warehouse. He blinked for a few seconds to allow his eyes to adjust to the dimmer light. Westland stood beside him in the shadows, her shoulder touching his.
"What now?" she whispered in his ear.
Riley spent a few moments surveying the scene. The warehouse was a squat building measuring approximately fifty meters by seventy-five. A loading dock with two large bay doors encompassed the side they faced. Two tractor trailers were backed up to the loading dock, which was dimly lit by several light bulbs. The tail ends of two cars were visible parked on the left side of the building where the road to the highway came in. Riley imagined that the office and personnel door were over there. The building had no windows that he could see on this side.
All Riley knew was that Maria might be in this warehouse. The whole setup could even be a trap. Any plan was going to have to be an improvisation at best. "All right. We got two cars and two trailers. Two cars means there might be anywhere from two to eight people in there. We don't know if they're all bad guys or if this is a legitimate business or what the hell is inside. We're going to play this by ear.
"We'll try going around the right side and see if there are any windows or doors we can gain entry through. I don't like the idea of going in the front door.
"Once inside we'll move as a team. I'll go first and you cover. If we run into someone, I'll do the talking and I want you to stay out of sight. You're my ace in the hole if the shit hits the fan."
He turned and looked into Kate's eyes. "If shooting starts, remember to shoot to kill. If it's only one person, I'll try taking them out with the silenced submachine gun. If you have to fire, then we go for broke. Let people run away but take out anyone who fights. If you see a woman who matches the description of Maria, try to take her alive."
Riley smiled grimly. "I know it isn't much of a plan, but it's the best I can come up with under the circumstances. You ready?" Kate nodded.
Riley followed the trees to the right until they got around the edge of the building. The side of the building stretched to the next corner without a break. Riley continued on around until he could see the fourth side. Another solid blank.
"All right. Let's try the doors where the trailers are."
He retraced his steps. Checking to make sure no one was around, Riley led the way out of the safety of the forest and across the open area up to one of the trailers. Sidling along the vehicle, he came up to the loading dock. He clambered up onto it and then turned and helped Westland up.
Checking the loading doors, he found both of them locked. Shit, Riley thought. "We're going in the front. Be prepared to start shooting."
