Choke Point

by Tom Clancy

  FORTY-NINE

  They were nearly at the summit of a mountain pass that would take them down toward the port, the lights of the cranes and container ships out at the terminal just coming into view, when Ross got Pepper’s report:

  Gunship inbound. ETA two minutes.

  Unnerved by the news, Ross cut the steering yoke a little too sharply to the right – and the dreaded noise from the right track had him cursing. They’d just hit a large rock and thrown the track. With a screech of metal, the vehicle began pulling sharply to the left side and sliding sideways back down the hillside.

  Even as Ross tried to brake, he realized with a start that throwing the track was only the first of their problems. The APC was losing ground quickly, and he screamed for Kozak to get down in his hatch. Ross did likewise, and not two heartbeats later –

  The M113 rolled on to its side with a hundred groans of contorting metal, track shoes burrowing into rock, the side walls rumbling and making it sound as though they were trapped inside a snare drum during a rock concert.

  And all at once, they came to a squealing, coughing, shimmying halt. Ross immediately turned off the engine and hit the master switch, trying to prevent a fire hazard. Knowing that spilled oil and gasoline could still catch fire – and with that incoming gunship still at the fore of his thoughts, Ross barked his orders, ‘Everybody out! Out through my hatch right now!’

  30K and Pepper looked shaken but were crawling forward across the side wall of the compartment, while Kozak flashed a thumbs-up and followed Ross outside.

  Ross dragged himself down on to the dirt, then scrambled to his feet to turn back and help Kozak through the hatch. Next came Pepper, followed by 30K.

  From the muffled booming of gunfire and explosions in the distance came the distinct and inevitable sound of beating rotors. Ross whirled in that direction and spotted the running lights – tiny and innocent – down there in the valley. He brought up his Cross-Com and zoomed in with night vision.

  No, that wasn’t the local news chopper come to report on fender benders down on the highway.

  Pepper’s gunship was less than sixty seconds away, wings spread, rocket pods full, fangs out.

  ‘Let’s go! Let’s go!’ he ordered. ‘Pepper, call in the drone!’

  Ahead lay a deep groove in the mountainside, and Ross was reminded that this entire place wasn’t really a mountain at all but the inside of a volcano, and this groove might’ve been produced by flowing lava eons ago. They reached the entrance, and once Pepper had the drone back in its holster, they shifted deeper inside, tucking themselves in by some four meters and now completely shielded by the rock, their heat signatures difficult to spot by the gunship’s cameras.

  As the chopper neared, Ross got on his belly and crawled forward until he could see the M113. The chopper’s pilot directed a searchlight across the disabled vehicle, probing it with slow, deliberate movements of the beam. He was probably noting the open hatch but forgetting that his rotor wash was now wiping clean the team’s footprints.

  He hovered for what seemed like five, ten minutes before finally breaking off. Ross sighed through a handful of curses, then returned to the others. ‘Everyone all right?’

  ‘Sir, it’s nearly 2 a.m. now,’ said Pepper. ‘You think we can get down there in forty minutes?’

  ‘I think we can defy the laws of physics, tell the universe to go to hell, and make this shit happen because we’re the best there is. That’s the way we roll. That’s the way we put our money in the bank.’

  ‘Hoo-ah, sir,’ said 30K. ‘Let’s do this.’

  Pepper shrugged. ‘Still would’ve been nice to drive down there, but you take the good with the bad, and sometimes she ain’t the prettiest girl but she’s the only one in town.’

  Kozak shrugged at Ross. ‘What he said.’

  They moved out into the darkness.

  Exactly thirty-seven minutes later they reached the nearest road running parallel to the port, a main artery that no doubt by day was coursing with traffic. They kept low along the embankment, and Pepper confirmed that the Ocean Cavalier was already in the harbor. Ross spied the terminal through his binoculars. One other container ship was already moored there, and he spotted the second berth where he assumed the Ocean Cavalier would dock.

  ‘I’ve got a clean signal from the tracker,’ said Kozak. ‘Missiles are still on board, and we’re good to go so far.’

  ‘I’ve got the safe house marked on our maps,’ said 30K. ‘It’s about eight hundred meters. In your HUDs now.’

  Ross examined the wireframe map and the suggested course they should take to reach the apartment building. ‘All right, guys. Camouflage up. Here we go.’

  Given the early-morning hour, the streets were mostly deserted, though any late-night pedestrian would’ve only seen a strange distortion in the air near several of the buildings. He would have attributed this to his lack of sleep or dust in his eyes, as alcohol was illegal in Yemen.

  A familiar Mercedes van was parked outside the apartment, and Ross noted the licence plate and confirmed that the van belonged to their driver from the airport, one of Naseem’s contacts. They reached the ninth-floor apartment, and before Ross had a chance to knock, the door swung open and the old man, who resembled Merlin, waved them soundlessly inside.

  ‘You never told us your name,’ Ross said.

  ‘I’m Oliver,’ he said with his crisp British accent. ‘And I’ve lived in this city for a very long time. This is my home, so please don’t get my rug dirty.’

  ‘We’ll do our best.’

  Oliver waved them through a modestly appointed living room with a bookshelf that covered the entire wall and into a bedroom, where at the window stood an elaborate collection of tripods and telescopes, along with a computer station featuring three twenty-four-inch displays, a veritable cockpit for information gathering.

  ‘How’d you know we were coming now?’ Ross asked.

  ‘Diaz told me. And if you don’t mind my saying, you gentlemen are a sodding mess.’

  ‘We could use a couple of minutes of downtime,’ said Ross. ‘Too bad we don’t have it. You got an observation post on the roof?’

  ‘I’ll get you the key to get up there.’

  ‘Kozak? You and 30K, up top. Get the drone ready. Fixed position near the ship. Obviously, I want eyes on those cargo containers as they come off.’

  ‘What if this ain’t it?’ asked Pepper. ‘What if this ain’t even the port and the container just stays on board? Long-ass night all for nothing, huh?’

  ‘If this ain’t it, then we keep going,’ said Ross.

  Pepper sighed. ‘I knew you were gonna say that.’

  ‘You think we’re getting too old for this shit?’

  Pepper’s eyes widened. ‘Hell, no, sir. I think we’re just developing a better appreciation for the irony of the situation.’

  Ross smiled tightly. ‘I agree.’

  FIFTY

  While Kozak muttered to himself and worked the drone’s remote, 30K scanned the well-lit terminal with his binoculars. The Ocean Cavalier had just slipped into her berth, and 30K’s Cross-Com had just opened a new data window with specs on the terminal itself:

  Two berths of 350 meters each and alongside depth of 16 meters.

  Four 40-ton capacity post-Panamax gantry cranes available.

  Container yard covering 35 hectares and 2,500 ground slots to accommodate more than 10,000 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units – an acronym for the standard capacity of an intermodal container) and 252 reefer outlets.

  4,700 square meter container freight station, consolidation shed, offices, independent power station, desalination plant, workshops, and water treatment plant.

  All of that was well and good, he thought. But where the hell were they taking the missiles, if they were unloading them at all?

  ‘Okay, guys, showtime,’ said Kozak as the big cranes got to work, and the cargo containers began to come off the ship.

  30K and Kozak were
joined on the roof by Ross, Pepper and the old man Oliver, and Kozak sent the drone’s video out to their Cross-Coms.

  ‘I guess I have to ask. There’s a war going on, and port operations continue?’ Ross said to Oliver.

  The old man looked amused. ‘Of course. Everyone still wants to get paid.’

  After about twenty minutes of the most boring footage known to mankind, with 30K forcing himself to keep his eyes open, Kozak broke the silence with a sudden and urgent, ‘There it is.’

  Container 11132001 was lifted off the ship and transferred to the back of a tractor-trailer. The driver, a burly man at least six foot five, wearing a sleeveless T-shirt and heavily tattooed, spoke briefly with several workers on the dock, signed off on a few papers, then climbed in his cab and drove away.

  Kozak made sure to capture some excellent close-up images of the man –

  Who didn’t drive very far. Just five hundred meters to the back of the container freight station, where he pulled directly into an unmarked warehouse.

  ‘Who owns that warehouse?’ Ross asked Oliver.

  ‘I’ll get that to you immediately.’ The old man headed to the stairwell door.

  ‘So maybe this is it,’ said Kozak. ‘The rockets are for the South Yemen Movement, and the trail ends here.’

  Oliver stopped and turned back. ‘No, the trail does not end here, sir. Hamid has nothing to do with what’s happening in Yemen.’

  ‘They’ve got you pretty dialed in, huh?’ 30K asked.

  The old man took a step toward them. ‘Sir, I’ve been working for the CIA for over thirty years. Yes, I’m pretty dialed in, as you say.’

  ‘I thought Naseem was our contact here, and you just worked for him,’ said Ross.

  ‘Naseem worked for me.’

  ‘Why do you people have such a problem with the truth?’ Pepper asked.

  ‘Our business is finding the truth. We have no problem with that. We’re actually rather good at it. Unfortunately, it’s the people who make things rather complicated.’

  Ross stepped between Pepper and the old man. ‘All right. What do you think?’

  ‘They’re waiting to move the missiles again. Ground, ship, or air, who knows, but if they wait, we wait.’

  ‘Agreed. Pepper, get the second drone on that warehouse. They won’t make a move without us knowing about it.’

  ‘And I’ll you get you the information on that warehouse, though I suspect it won’t matter much,’ said Oliver.

  Fifteen minutes later, Ross was down at Oliver’s computer station and leaning over the old man’s shoulder to scan the intel he’d gathered. The warehouse belonged to the Al-Monsoob Commercial Group and was part of their general shipping and storage operations that they provided to more than thirty client corporations. There was nothing obvious or immediate to indicate that the owners had ties to the FARC or Bedayat jadeda, and the link could simply involve a small collection of employees who had been bribed into looking the other way while they ‘sat’ on a very ‘special’ container until it was shipped out again.

  Kozak flew the drone dangerously close to the warehouse to report only two doors, no windows and a few small vehicles parked outside, their tags run, registrations matched up to employees of Al-Monsoob, none of them fitting the description of the tractor-trailer driver who had picked up the container.

  Oliver let them crash on his recliner and sofa, and they rotated in pairs on watch, with Kozak and 30K volunteering for the first shift since the ‘old guys’ needed their sleep. Ross took that jab without retort, and within ten minutes of his head hitting the sofa, he was sound asleep.

  It was the old man who woke them, offering tea and biscuits for breakfast. Ross called up to Kozak and 30K, who said there’d been absolutely no movement around the warehouse and that the tracking beacon’s signal was strong. The big guy with the tattoos who’d picked up the container must’ve had a bunk either in his cab or in the warehouse, as they were certain he had not left.

  ‘The fighting in Crater has stopped for the time being,’ said Oliver. ‘But I suspect once night falls, the attacks will resume.’

  Ross noticed a picture on one of the bookshelves. A much younger Oliver was standing on a white sand beach with a young woman of about twenty, a lithe blonde with a spectacular smile. ‘Who’s that in the picture with you?’

  ‘My daughter, Evon. On her twenty-first birthday. A very special day.’

  ‘Beautiful girl.’

  ‘She was.’

  Ross looked at Pepper, who averted his gaze.

  Perhaps he was being too blunt, or prying, but Ross felt compelled to ask: ‘How did you lose her?’

  Oliver’s gaze went distant. ‘She was coming home from a friend’s house. She got into a car accident with a drunk driver. They pronounced her dead at the scene. She was an only child when her mother passed away, so I’d raised her by myself. This was long before I joined the CIA.’

  Ross closed his eyes. ‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’

  ‘Thank you. I miss her every day.’

  Pepper had spent most of the night back inside that tower, reliving the moment when the floor collapsed and he had plunged toward the staircase. In addition to that looping nightmare, his body cried out with new pains that woke him at least a half dozen times. The bruises were beginning to form on his arms and legs, the once minor aches turning into shooting pains. He was pretty sure he’d broken a rib or two.

  Now, as he hunkered down on the building’s roof, quietly observing the warehouse through his binoculars, with Ross at his side, he imagined lying on a waterbed and being tenderly massaged by a team of supermodel nurses. He quickly shook off the thought. Stay focused. Don’t torture yourself.

  He and Ross spent the entire day on that rooftop, allowing 30K and Kozak to get some much-needed rest. Those two boys had looked pretty ragged when Ross and Pepper came up to relieve them. It’d been a long journey since Colombia.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ Ross said, consulting his watch. ‘Other ships have come and gone, trucks at the other warehouses, lots of activity and movement all around our target.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, if this is just a transfer point, wouldn’t you want your cargo to be on its way as quickly as possible? The longer it remains in one location, the more vulnerable it is …’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Pepper. ‘They could be waiting on another ship or truck. The delay could be a necessary evil.’

  ‘So you think I’m just impatient?’

  ‘I think by nightfall you’ll send 30K and Kozak down there to pick the lock and get inside. Kozak will send off his little Dragonfly.’

  ‘That’s what you’d do?’

  Pepper lowered his binoculars and regarded Ross with a faint smile. ‘We ain’t gettin’ any younger.’

  FIFTY-ONE

  30K’s watch read 10:41 p.m. local time.

  He had the warehouse door open in seven seconds and lost his bet with Kozak. He’d bragged to his teammate that he could do it in six. A second is a second, but at least the six-pack of Terrapin Hopsecutioner craft beer he now owed his buddy wouldn’t set him back very much. Kozak had wanted to wager fifty bucks, but 30K was too damned cheap for a bet that large. So there it was: six seconds or a six-pack.

  The warehouse was large enough to accommodate at least four tractor-trailers parked side by side, but they found only one with their cargo container still seated on the trailer. Assuming that at least the driver was still there, they shifted to the nearest wall and remained still, hidden beneath their optical camouflage while Kozak deployed the drone, wings buzzing as it flew toward the container.

  Meanwhile, 30K surveyed the rest of the place. On shelves and stacked on at least fifty or more pallets were boxes with labels from the Abu Dhabi Tanker Company, Ethiopian Shipping Lines, Fuzhou Fishing Company, and Assaf Marine Services, among many others. Drums of fuel, lubricating oil, and marine chemicals filled nearly an entire wall near the loading dock at the
rear. This was a busy warehouse, all right, which made the lack of activity for the past twenty-four hours all the more suspect.

  ‘30K, this is Ghost Lead. SITREP?’

  Ross was crouched down on the apartment building’s roof, along with Pepper and Oliver. Pepper was staring through the sight of his Remington while Oliver had borrowed a pair of the team’s binoculars.

  ‘Ghost Lead, 30K. We’re inside,’ came 30K’s whispered report.

  A window opened in Ross’s HUD. A night-vision-enhanced image of the warehouse’s interior captured by 30K’s helmet camera showed the tractor-trailer and container exactly as Ross had imagined them.

  ‘Container’s still locked up,’ said Kozak. ‘Cab is empty. Our driver’s either sleeping in the back and I can’t see him, or somehow he got out of here.’

  ‘Go check that office in the back,’ Ross ordered.

  At the same time, Ross’s cell phone vibrated: It was an incoming call from Diaz. Not now …

  The call was immediately followed by a text: I need to talk to you! Urgent!

  Another data window opened in Ross’s HUD, and he now had access to the drone’s video as the micro UAV swooped down and through an open door, wheeling over a desk –

  To find their driver lying on the floor with a foam cup still clutched in his hands.

  ‘Holy shit, Captain, you seeing this?’ asked Kozak. ‘He looks dead.’

  Ross’s cell phone vibrated again – another text message from Diaz:

  We’ve questioned Takana all day. Accessed his e-mail account. There’s a chance the weapons exchange in Sudan was observed. Security may have been compromised!

  ‘30K, I need you inside that container,’ Ross cried. ‘Do it now!’

  ‘Roger that.’

  ‘Kozak, I want to know what happened to that driver. Get over there and check him out. See if he’s got an ID.’

  ‘On it.’

  ‘What’s up, boss?’ Pepper asked.

  ‘Remember how you said this might’ve been for nothing?’

  Pepper’s shoulders slumped. ‘Can I take it back?’