by Bob Mayer
Kane smiled his thanks. He pulled his moleskin notebook out and retrieved the napkin with Caitlyn’s cut out number on it. Fished a dime out of his pocket and went to the pay phone. Just as he slid the dime in, Thao cracked open the kitchen door.
“Dai Yu, a visitor.”
Kane hung up as Caitlyn entered the Gansevoort door. She wore a gray business suit, either the same or a twin of the one from the other day. She had her purse in one hand and a legal-size manila envelope in the other. He waited for her to take the far side of the booth first, before sitting
“Ever the gentleman,” she said.
“Morning,” Kane said.
“Your plan is for shit,” Caitlyn said.
“Right.” Kane stared at her. “What plan are you talking about?”
“The one from last night.” She reached under the table and retrieved a very thin device. Held it in front of him, then put it in her purse. “Actually, your half-ass concept was more of a heroic, ‘I’m riding off into the setting sun and taking care of this’ without any specifics. Sort of ‘on my shield or with it’. Do you have specifics? Or is that how they taught you at Hudson High?”
“I was just working on that.”
“Yeah,” Caitlyn said. “It looked like that. Who were you going to call?”
“You.”
“For your plan?” she asked. When Kane didn’t reply, she tried: “To give me the ledger?”
“If you listened, and you did, you know Yazzie also wants the ledger. It seems to be a very special item even though most of it is in code.”
“Codes can be broken.”
“Not a one-time-pad,” Kane pointed out.
Caitlyn sighed. “The ledger was Damon’s entire business and knowledge base. Was any of the material that Toni found in the footlocker encrypted?”
“Yazzie has those documents now, because he has Toni.”
She tapped her purse which held the bug. “I know.”
“That thing must have good range because we were sitting over there.” Kane indicated the table at the front of the diner.
“There was no one else in here when you guys were meeting. Sound carries.”
“Right.” Kane pulled the ledger out of his map case and slid it to the middle of the table. “Seems we have the same problem. Yazzie.”
“You’re aiming too low,” Caitlyn said. “The problem is Crawford.”
“I was told he’s untouchable,” Kane pointed out. “Buddy-buddy with Bush at the CIA. And James Roosevelt, son of FDR and war hero, dating back to World War II.”
“That was an interesting story,” Caitlyn said.
“Is Crawford your problem too?” Kane asked. “Does he fall under your mandate?”
“No.”
Kane pulled the ledger back. “Then why do you want this?”
“To answer questions we have.”
“The Cellar?”
Caitlyn arched a single eyebrow.
Kane pushed ahead. “If you listened, which you did, you also heard what Plaikos told me. Let’s stop playing around. You want the ledger. Yazzie wants it for Crawford. The ledger is useless to everyone unless they have the encryption key.”
“Yazzie might have gotten it from Marcelle.”
“It’s possible,” Kane said. “Let’s find out. I need to get to Utah. With my gear. Which won’t exactly go on a civilian airliner since its comprised of all sorts of nasty things.”
“You need a favor,” Caitlyn said.
“Oh, no,” Kane disagreed. “This is not the favor you owe me. This is us working together to achieve our goals.”
The hint of a smile played on Caitlyn’s lips so briefly that Kane wasn’t sure he’d seen it.
“You didn’t mention Mister Kinsman,” she said.
“Do you know anything about him?” Kane asked. “Given that you seem on top of everything. You called what he said about Makin Island a ‘story’. Do you know any more about that?”
“Makin?” She shook her head. “What he told you is the truth.”
“Is Kinsman who he appears to be?” Kane asked. “You weren’t. I’m a little slow, but I catch up eventually.”
“It’s good to be suspicious,” Caitlyn said. “He is who he appears to be. He has a legitimate motivation to go after Crawford. Back to the ledger. What are you going to do with it?”
“I haven’t decided,” Kane said.
“What’s your plan for Yazzie and the Flint Boys?”
“I don’t know,” Kane repeated. “I can’t plan because I don’t know exactly where they are. If I do what Yazzie wants and go to Escalante and call, he’s got all the advantage. Before that, there’s the issue of how to handle the first step of any op. Infiltration. Just getting from here to Utah with my gear.”
Morticia floated by, topped off both their coffees, didn’t say anything and went away.
“How about you?” Kane asked.
“Excuse me?”
“Feel like going to Utah?” Kane asked.
“I thought you didn’t want help,” Caitlyn said.
“I’m rethinking.”
“Most guys ask a woman out to dinner. You ask me to go to a shoot-out. Tempting, although not in our mandate. I can requisition a plane to get you out there.”
“Does that mean we’re engaged or something?” Kane asked.
“Work on your plan.”
“My intel is skimpy. There’s a lot of empty space out there.”
Caitlyn shook her head. “Geez, Kane. You want everything handed to you?”
“That would be nice.”
“All right.” She put the manila envelope on the table and opened it. There was a stack of documents and aerial photos. She gave one to Kane. There were grid coordinates in the lower left corner. TOP SECRET was prominently stamped in red on top and bottom. He checked it out as Caitlyn waited. “Where am I looking at?” He could see desert, bushes, even individual rocks.
“Your area of operations,” Caitlyn said.
“Someone overflew? That was quick.”
Caitlyn shook her head. “No. That’s from a satellite.”
“You’re shitting me?”
Caitlyn glanced around. “NSA launched a new series last year called Keyholes. They’re huge. Twenty meters long by three in diameter. The ground sample distance is 2.4 inches. It can read a license plate if it gets the angle.”
Kane stared at the photo. “If we’d had this in ‘Nam it would have saved a lot of lives.” He thought of the op where they snapped pictures. “Why was a highly classified satellite taking shots of the middle of nowhere Utah?”
Caitlyn handed another photo. “Same place, two minutes later.”
A twin-engine prop plane, a dust swirl behind it, was in the middle of a long narrow promontory on top of cliffs. “I don’t see a runway.”
“It’s solid rock and smooth,” Caitlyn said. She put a map in front of Kane. Indicated a spot. “That is called Fiftymile Point. It’s got great observation and fields of fire. You can see for miles to the north. Hole in the Rock is here, below and five miles to the east. Escalante is fifty miles to the northwest. The turn off for the trail to Fiftymile Point is along the only unimproved road from Escalante to Hole in the Rock. The road on which the accident occurred, which is here, a place called Carcass Wash. Fiftymile Point is practically inaccessible from behind.”
Kane stared at the plane. Caitlyn handed him another image. The plane was parked, four vehicles next to it. People. He recognized the transport. “Land Rover Defenders. That Yazzie and his guys?”
“They’ve got a landing strip that can’t be seen from the air unless it’s being used. Southeast Utah is the last place in the United States that was ever mapped and fifty miles from the closest civilization which is Crawford’s domain. Who do you think that is?”
“What are they doing?”
Caitlyn didn’t respond. Kane waited. The silent stand-off was ended when Van Van came in the Broadway door. They were Chinese twins, identical in
very way: dark hair, five and a half feet tall, solidly built. They wore matching outfits of black silk suits, white shirts and thin black ties. Both wore black, wraparound sunglasses. Bulges under their suit jackets, even though the coats were specifically tailored to help conceal the weapons, indicated Mac-10 submachineguns. The weapon fit their personality: spray a lot of firepower, not very discerning about who got hit. They were former Nung Mercenaries who’d fought for the highest payer during the Vietnam War and escaped when Kane and Merrick launched a rescue mission after the Fall of Saigon in 1975 to rescue Thao and other Montagnards who’d served the Americans faithfully and then been abandoned.
Caitlyn picked up the shift in Kane’s attention and glanced over her shoulder. “Of course. Saturday morning. Right on time.”
Van Van walked to Kane’s booth, ignored Caitlyn, bowed in concert, gold chains around their necks dangling. Kane bobbed his head in reply. They about faced and marched into the kitchen to give Thao their weekly tribute.
“The cops don’t hassle you about them?” Caitlyn asked as the kitchen door swung shut.
“I think they pay the cops more than they do Thao and I.”
“You know, Kane, if someone had a suspicious mind, it would appear that there’s a lot more to you. For example, the Van twins could be working for you. Your recent actions regarding Damon and Marcelle and Crawford could be interpreted as you muscling in and building your own criminal empire.”
Kane sat back and stared at her. “Do you have a suspicious mind?”
“Of course.”
Kane indicated the diner. “What do you think of my sprawling criminal enterprise?”
“The coffee isn’t bad.”
Kane looked at the imagery. “Okay. They’ve got a landing strip on top of the escarpment and can get to it with four-wheel drive. But there are no buildings or hangers. They could be—” He paused as Caitlyn slid another photo across.
This one showed the convoy of four vehicles snaking its way down the northeast side of the promontory. Caitlyn gave him another. Only three vehicles, heading straight toward the promontory which meant the first one had gone into something.
“A cave?”
“An abandoned mine that’s been expanded.”
“How do you know that?” Kane asked.
“Look here.” She picked a high-resolution image.
It took Kane a few moments, but then he saw the camouflage netting and the narrow shadow of an antenna on top of where the truck had gone in. “What’s under the net?”
“A generator and an air pump. There’s a shaft leading to the mine below. Also, FM radio antenna.”
Kane spent a few minutes looking at the map and images. He gathered them in a neat stack. “What’s Crawford doing out there? What are they flying in? Or out? Or both? Why has a top-secret satellite taken these images? The date stamps indicated they were shot months ago.”
“Smuggling whatever illicit material they can make money off of,” Caitlyn said.
“Heroin?”
Caitlyn nodded. “Mostly.”
Kane shook his head in disgust. “The CIA is covering for Crawford not because of Bush, but because he’s been helping them run heroin.”
“Not any longer,” Caitlyn said. “The Agency officially shut their operation down a few years ago.”
“At least you’re not trying to bullshit me that the Agency wasn’t doing it.”
“It’s been well-documented in unclassified sources,” Caitlyn said.
Kane checked the time stamp in the corner of the photo. “Crawford is doing this off the books?”
“Yes.”
“The two million Damon had. Was that going to Crawford for heroin?”
“Possible,” Caitlyn said. “More likely from Crawford via Damon for Marcelle to launder by buying property in Manhattan. We won’t know until we see the ledger. Get an idea how extensive this is. Who is involved. But it appears that when the CIA was forced to cut ties to the Golden Triangle, some people saw an opportunity. It was too lucrative to stop.”
“Greed and money.”
“Keep your eye on the ball, Kane. You know where they are now. Infiltration and execution of a plan.”
Kane rubbed the stubble on his chin. “There’s a way of getting right on top of that. At least for me to.”
“Helicopter?” Caitlyn asked.
“A quiet way,” Kane said, watching her, wondering how much of his unredacted file she’d seen and more importantly, what exactly was in there.
“I’m all ears,” she said. “I’m assuming this possibility would need some help?”
“Yeah,” Kane said. “Parachute in.”
“A plane is as loud as a helicopter,” Caitlyn noted. “Even a couple of thousand feet up it would—”
Kane interrupted her. “Eighteen thousand feet. And offset a couple of miles.”
“How so?”
“High altitude, high opening,” Kane said. “It requires a C-130 and a certain type of parachute.”
“What kind?”
Kane took a napkin and wrote on it, handing it to her. “If you can get a 130, you can get that chute.”
“I’m not promising anything,” Caitlyn said, putting the napkin in her pocket. “Besides, I doubt Kinsman is trained or ready to do a jump.”
“You asked for options,” Kane said. “I gave you one.” He indicated the imagery. “How long can I keep these?”
“I’ll be back this afternoon with details on your transportation. Until then.”
She walked out of the diner.
17
Wednesday Evening, 14 May 1969
THE PARROTS BEAK, CAMBODIA
Their canteens are bone dry and their jungle fatigues streaked with salt from sweat. Kane has twelve rounds left, Thao unlucky thirteen and Merrick ten. Merrick has two full magazines for the High Standard .22 he carries. Kane has eight rounds in his forty-five and two spare magazines of seven rounds each. Thao has his crossbow and a quiver of bolts. They also have assorted smoke grenades and some frags. There is one Claymore left.
They haven’t stopped since Merrick set off the booby trap.
Merrick twice emplaced Claymores on their backtrail. The first one detonated less than three minutes later. There is no more barking after that. The second Claymore detonated after ten, which meant they were putting distance between them and the trackers. They aren’t moving faster, the NVA are being more careful.
Their rear-guard action seems to have shaken the pursuers but none of them even suggests they stop and try to hide. They’ve been lucky once, but twice? They’ve been doing a big loop, arcing toward their emergency pick up zone, which is just a spot where a stream widens far enough to present an opening in the jungle canopy. There’s a chance they might run into the edge of the NVA sweep. But they have no choice because the NVA are jamming their emergency frequency and the backup, which confirms that this is a set-up. There’s a leak somewhere but that’s for after they get back; if they get back.
As darkness descends, they’re forced to slow down. They are two klicks from the emergency PZ. One of the reasons it was chosen was because all they have to do is hit the stream, then turn right. It should also be easy for the chopper pilots to find.
Should. If they fly, given the lack of communication. The SOP is the emergency exfil bird flies, regardless, arriving at a certain time within a four-minute window, two minutes before, two minutes after. If the pilots don’t see the infrared strobe, the chopper heads home and that is that. The team is wiped off the books like the previous two teams.
With sixty-eight minutes to spare, they reach the stream. They pause. It’s three meters wide, completely covered by interlacing branches from either side. A danger area. They pause to catch their breath and to drink, one at a time, immersing the upper half of their body into the cool water, sucking in liquid, while the other two provide security.
After each has an opportunity, Thao fills everyone’s canteens. If they don’t make it out tonight, i
t’s a long walk through dangerous territory back to South Vietnam. Their private escape and evasion plan they’d prepared prior to the mission and shared with no one.
Kane takes point, leading the way on the west side of the stream, toward the PZ. It’s tempting to walk in the stream and avoid the wait-a-minute creepers and undergrowth. Tempting is easy and easy leads to death. He presses forward.
With twenty-one minutes to spare, the stream widens to five meters and a starlit sky appears overhead. They check each other’s harness, making sure they are secure and ready.
Kane tries the radio once more, on the chance they can get through but there is only static.
At eighteen minutes they hear a dog bark. South of their position. The three men exchange glances in the dim light. After ten seconds the dog repeats.
“They’re coming up the stream,” Merrick says.
“They’ll be here before the helicopter,” Thao adds.
“We hit them first,” Kane says. “Gain time. If they get here, they’ll overrun us.”
“Let’s go,” Merrick says.
They get in the water and splash in the direction of the dog and its handlers. Thirty meters, then halt. Merrick rigs the Claymore angled toward the stream and south. They hide along the west bank.
Kane checks his watch. Nine minutes.
The dog with handler comes into view, just dark figures. The barking isn’t the howl of a bloodhound. Other teams had made contact with dogs and reported they were mutts, trained simply to sniff out humans.
Kane makes sure the flap on his forty-five is released. Puts the CAR to his shoulder. Merrick is to his left, closest to the stream, Thao to the right. An image of Lil’ Joe flashes through Kane’s mind, then he blocks it out, descends into the moment.
Merrick fires one round, striking the dog handler in the center of his face. The head snaps back and he falls into the stream, gone from sight.
In his place a torrent of green tracers erupts across the width of the stream and from the far side, all aimed toward Merrick.
