by Tom Clancy
Captain Winters viewed his gunsight videotape with the men from Washington. They were in a corner office of one of the Special Ops buildings—Eglin had quite a few—and the other two wore Air Force uniforms, both bearing the rank of lieutenant colonel, a convenient middle grade of officer, many of whom came and went in total anonymity.
“Nice shooting, son,” one observed.
“He could have made it harder,” Bronco replied without much in the way of emotion. “But he didn’t.”
“How about traffic on the surface?”
“Nothing within thirty miles.”
“Put up the Hawkeye tape,” the senior man ordered. They were using three-quarter-inch tape, which was preferred by the military for its higher data capacity. The tape was already cued. It showed the inbound Beechcraft, marked as XX1 on the alphanumeric display, one of many contacts, most of which were clearly marked as airliners, and had been high over the shoot-down. There were also numerous surface contacts, but all of them were a good distance away from the area of the attack, and this tape ended prior to the shoot-down. The Hawkeye crew, as planned, had no direct knowledge of what had transpired after handing over the contact to the fighter. The guidelines for the mission were clear, and the intercept area was calculated to avoid frequently used shipping channels. The low-altitude path taken by the drug smugglers helped, of course, insofar as it limited the distance at which someone might see a flash or an explosion, neither of which had happened here.
“Okay,” said the senior one. “That was well within mission parameters.” They switched tapes again.
“How many rounds expended?” the junior one asked Winters.
“A hundred ’n eight,” the captain replied. “With a Vulcan it’s kinda hard to keep it down, y’know? The critter shoots right quick.”
“It did that plane like a chainsaw.”
“That’s the idea, sir. I could have been a little faster on the trigger, but you want me to try ’n avoid the fuel tanks, right?”
“That’s correct.” The cover story, in case anyone saw a flash, was that there was a Shoot-Ex out of Eglin—exercises killing target drones are not uncommon there—but so much the better if no one noticed at all.
Bronco didn’t like the secrecy stuff. As far as he was concerned, shooting the bastards down made perfectly good sense. The point of the mission, they’d told him during the recruiting phase, was that drug trafficking was a threat to U.S. national security. That phrasing made everything legitimate. As an air-defense fighter pilot, he was trained to deal with threats to national security in this specific way—to shoot them out of the sky with as much emotion as a skeet-shooter dispatched clay birds thrown out from the traps. Besides, Bronco thought, if it’s a real threat to national security, why shouldn’t the people know about it? But that wasn’t his department. He was only a captain, and captains are operators, not thinkers. Somebody up the line had decided that this was okay, and that was all he needed to know. Dispatching this Twin-Beech had been the next thing to murder, but that was as accurate a description of combat operations as any other. After all, giving people a fair chance was what happened at the Olympics, not where your life was on the line. If somebody was dumb enough to let his ass get killed, that wasn’t Bronco’s lookout, especially if he happened to be committing an act of war against Bronco’s country. And that was what “threat to national security” meant, wasn’t it?
Besides, he had given Juan—or whatever the bastard’s name had been—a fair warning, hadn’t he? If the asshole’d thought he could outfly the best fucking fighter plane in the whole world, well, he’d learned different. Tough.
“You got any problems to this point, Captain?” the senior one asked.
“Problems with what, sir?” What a dumbass question!
The airstrip at which they had arrived wasn’t big enough for a proper military transport. The forty-four men of Operation SHOWBOAT traveled by bus to Peterson Air Force Base, a few miles east of the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. It was dark, of course. The bus was driven by one of the “camp counselors,” as the men had taken to calling them, and the ride was a quiet one, with many of the soldiers asleep after their last day’s PT. The rest were alone with their own thoughts. Chavez watched the mountains slide by as the bus twisted its way down the last range. The men were ready.
“Pretty mountains, man,” Julio Vega observed sleepily.
“Especially in a bus heading downhill.”
“Fuckin’ A!” Vega chuckled. “You know, someday I’m gonna come back here and do some skiing.” The machine-gunner adjusted himself in the seat and faded out.
They were roused thirty-five minutes later after passing through the gate at Peterson. The bus pulled right up to the aft ramp of an Air Force C-141 Starlifter transport. The soldiers rose and assembled their gear in an orderly fashion, with each squad captain checking to make sure that everyone had everything he’d been issued as they filed off. A few looked around on the way to the aircraft. There was nothing unusual about the departure, no special security guards, merely the ground crew fueling and preflighting the aircraft for an immediate departure. In the distance a KC-135 aerial tanker was lifting off, and though no one thought much about it, they’d be meeting that bird in a little while. The Air Force sergeant who was loadmaster for this particular aircraft took them aboard and seated them as comfortably as the spartan appointments allowed—this mainly involved giving everyone ear protectors.
The flight crew went through the usual startup procedures, and presently the Starlifter began moving. The noise was grating despite the earmuffs, but the aircraft had an Air Force Reserve crew, all airline personnel, who gave them a decent ride. Except for the midair refueling, that is. As soon as the C-141 had climbed to altitude, it rendezvoused with the KC-135 to replace the fuel burned off during the climb-out. For the passengers this involved the usual roller-coaster buffet which, amplified by the near total absence of windows, made a few stomachs decidedly queasy, though all looked quietly inured to it. Half an hour after lifting off, the C-141 settled down on a southerly course, and from a mixture of fatigue and sheer boredom, the soldiers drifted off to sleep for the remainder of the ride.
The MH-53J left Eglin Air Force Base at about the same time, all of its fuel tanks topped off after engine warm-up. Colonel Johns took it to one thousand feet and a course of two-one-five for the Yucatan Channel. Three hours out, an MC-130E Combat Talon tanker/support aircraft caught up with the Pave Low, and Johns decided to let the captain handle the midair refueling. They’d have to tank thrice more, and the tanker would accompany them all the way down, bringing a maintenance and support crew and spare parts.
“Ready to plug,” PJ told the tanker commander.
“Roger,” answered Captain Montaigne in the MC-130E, holding the aircraft straight and level.
Johns watched Willis ease the nose probe into the drogue. “Okay, we got plug.”
In the cockpit of the -130E, Captain Montaigne took note of the indicator light and keyed the microphone. “Ohhh!” she said in her huskiest voice. “Nobody does it like you, Colonel!”
Johns laughed out loud and keyed his switch twice, generating a click-click signal, which meant Affirmative. He switched to intercom. “Why spoil it for her?” he asked Willis, who was regrettably straitlaced. The fuel transfer took six minutes.
“How long do you think we’ll be down there?” Captain Willis wondered after it was done.
“They didn’t tell me that, but if it goes too long, they say we’ll get relief.”
“That’s nice,” the captain observed. His eyes shifted back and forth from his flight instruments to the world outside the armored cockpit. The aircraft had more than its full load of combat gear aboard—Johns was a firm believer in firepower—and the electronic countermeasures racks were gone. Whatever they’d be doing, they wouldn’t have to worry about unfriendly radar coverage, and that meant that the job, whatever it was, didn’t involve Nicaragua or Cuba. It also made for mo
re passenger room in the aircraft and deleted the second flight engineer from the crew. “You were right about the gloves. My wife made up a set and it does make a difference.”
“Some guys just fly without ’em, but I don’t like to have sweaty hands on the stick.”
“Is it going to be that warm?”
“There’s warm, and there’s warm,” Johns pointed out. “You don’t get sweaty hands just from the outside temperature.”
“Oh. Yes, sir.” Gee, he gets scared, too—just like the rest of us?
“Like I keep telling people, the more thinking you do before things get exciting, the less exciting things will be. And they get plenty exciting enough.”
Another voice came onto the intercom circuit: “You keep talking like that, sir, and we might get a little scared.”
“Sergeant Zimmer, how are things in the back?” Johns asked. Zimmer’s regular spot was just aft of the two pilots, hovering over an impressive array of instruments.
“Coffee, tea, or milk, sir? The meals for this flight are Chicken Kiev with rice, Roast Beef au Jus with baked potato, and for the weight-watchers among us, Orange Ruffy and stir-fried veggies—and if you believe that, sir, you’ve been staring at the instrument panel too long. Why the hell don’t we have a stewardess along with us?”
“ ’Cause you and I are both too old for that shit, Zimmer!” PJ laughed.
“It ain’t bad in a chopper, sir. What with all the vibration and all...”
“I’ve been trying to reform him since Korat,” Johns explained to Captain Willis. “How old are the kids now, Buck?”
“Seventeen, fifteen, twelve, nine, six, five, and three, sir.”
“Christ,” Willis noted. “Your wife must be some gal, Sarge.”
“She’s afraid I’ll run around, so she robs me of my energy,” Zimmer explained. “I fly to get away from her. It’s the only thing that keeps me alive.”
“Her cooking must be all right, judging by your uniform.”
“Is the colonel picking on his sergeant again?” Zimmer asked.
“Not exactly. I just want you to look as good as Carol does.”
“No chance, sir.”
“Roger that. Some coffee would be nice.”
“On the way, Colonel, sir.” Zimmer was on the flight deck in less than a minute. The instrument console for the Pave Low helicopter was large and complex, but Zimmer had long since installed gimbaled cup holders suitable for the spillproof cups that Colonel Johns liked. PJ took a quick sip.
“She makes good coffee, too, Buck.”
“Funny how things work out, isn’t it?” Carol Zimmer knew that her husband would share it with his colonel. Carol wasn’t her original given name. Born in Laos thirty-six years earlier, she was the daughter of a Hmong warlord who’d fought long and hard for a country that was no longer his. She was the only survivor of a family of ten. PJ and Buck had lifted her and a handful of others off a hilltop at the final stages of a North Vietnamese assault in 1972. America had failed that man’s family, but at least it hadn’t failed his daughter. Zimmer had fallen in love with her from the first moment, and it was generally agreed that they had the seven cutest kids in Florida.
“Yep.”
It was late in Mobile, somewhere between the two southbound aircraft, and jails—especially Southern jails—are places where the rules are strictly applied. For lawyers, however, the rules are often rather lenient, and paradoxically they were very lenient indeed in the case of these two. These two had an as-yet-undetermined date with “Old Sparky,” the electric chair at Admore Prison. The jailors at Mobile therefore didn’t want to do anything to interfere with the prisoners’ constitutional rights, access to counsel, or general comfort. The attorney, whose name was Edward Stuart, had been fully briefed going in, and was fully fluent in Spanish.
“How did they do it?”
“I don’t know.”
“You screamed and kicked, Ramón,” Jesus said.
“I know. And you sang like a canary.”
“It doesn’t matter,” the attorney told them. “They’re not charging you with anything but drug-related murder and piracy The information Jesus gave them is not being used at all in this case.”
“So do your lawyer shit and get us off!”
The look on Stuart’s face was all the response either man needed.
“You tell our friends that if we don’t get off on this one, we start talking.”
The jail guards had already told both men in loving detail what fate had in store for them. One had even shown Ramór a poster of the chair itself with the caption REGULAR OR EXTRA CRISPY. Though a hard man and a brutal one, the idea of being strapped into a hard-backed wooden chair, then having a copper band affixed to his left leg, and a small metal cap set on a bale spot that the prison barber would shave on his head the day be fore, and the small sponge soaked in a saline solution to facilitate electrical conductivity, the leather mask to keep his eyes from flying out of his head ... Ramón was a brave man when he hac the upper hand, and that hand held a gun or a knife directec at an unarmed or bound person. Then he was quite brave. In had never occurred to him that one day he might be the helpless one. Ramón had lost five pounds in the preceding week. His ap petite was virtually nil and he took an inordinate interest in light bulbs and wall sockets. He was afraid, but more than that he was angry, at himself for his fear, at the guards and police for giving him that fear, and at his former associates for not getting him free of this mess.
“I know many things, many useful things.”
“It does not matter. I have spoken with the federales, and they do not care what you know. The U.S. Attorney claims to have no interest in what you might tell him.”
“That is ridiculous. They always trade for information, they always—”
“Not here. The rules have changed.”
“What do you tell us?”
“I will do my best for you.” I’m supposed to tell you to die like men, Stuart could not say. “There are many things that can happen in the next few weeks.”
The attorney was rewarded with skeptical expressions not entirely devoid of hope. He himself had no hope at all. The U.S. Attorney was going to handle this one himself, the better to get his face on the 5:30 and 11:00 Eyewitness News broadcasts. This would be a very speedy trial, and a U.S. Senate seat would be available in just over two years. So much the better that the prosecutor could point to his law-and-order record. Frying some druggie-pirate-rapist-murderers would surely appeal to the citizens of the sovereign state of Alabama, Stuart knew. The defense attorney objected to capital punishment on principle, and had spent much of his time and money working against it. He’d successfully taken one case to the Supreme Court and on a five-to-four decision managed to get his client a new trial, where the death sentence had been bargained down to life plus ninety-nine years. Stuart regarded that as a victory even though his client had survived precisely four months in the prison’s general population until someone who disliked child-murderers had put a shank into his lumbar spine. He didn’t have to like his clients—and most often he didn’t. He was occasionally afraid of them, especially the drug runners. They quite simply expected that in return for however much cash—it was generally cash—they paid for his services they would get their freedom in return. They did not understand that in law there are no guarantees, especially for the guilty. And these two were guilty as hell. But they did not deserve death. Stuart was convinced that society could not afford to debase itself to the level of ... his clients. It was not a popular opinion in the South, but Stuart had no ambition to run for public office.
In any case, he was their lawyer, and his job was to provide them with the best possible defense. He’d already explored the chances of a plea-bargain; life imprisonment in exchange for information. He’d already examined the government’s case. It was all circumstantial—there were no witnesses except his own clients, of course—but the physical evidence was formidable, and that Coast Guard crew had
scrupulously left the crime scene intact except for removing some evidence, all of which had been carefully locked up for a proper chain-of-evidence. Whoever had briefed and trained those people had done it right. Not much hope there. His only real hope, therefore, was to impeach their credibility. It was a slim hope, but it was the best he had.
Supervisory Special Agent Mark Bright was also working late The crew had been busy. For starters there had been an office and a home to search, a lengthy procedure that was just the opening move in a process to last months, probably, since all the documents found, all the phone numbers scribbled in any of eleven places, all the photographs on desks and walls, and everything else found would have to be investigated. Every business acquaintance of the deceased would be interviewed, along with neighbors, people whose offices adjoined his, members of his country club, and even parishioners at his church. For all that, the major break in the case had come in the second hour of the fourth home search, fully a month after the case had begun. Something had told them all that there had to be something else. In his den, the deceased had a floor safe—with nc record of its purchase or installation—neatly hidden by an un-tacked segment of the wall-to-wall carpeting. Discovering it had required thirty-two days. Tickling it open took nearly ninety minutes, but an experienced agent had done it by first experimenting with the birthdays of the deceased’s whole family, then playing variations on the theme. It turned out that the three-element combination came from taking the month of the man’s birth and adding one, taking the day of his birth and adding two, then taking the year of his birth and adding three. The door of the expensive Mosler came open with a whisper as it rubbed against the rug flap.
