09.Deep Black: Death Wave

by Stephen Coonts

  Later, they’d brought her a plate of scrambled eggs and watched her while she ate. At least they weren’t going to let her starve.

  “What time is it?” she murmured. The two guards were still there, sitting on chairs on the far side of the tent, watching. Always watching. Every few hours they were replaced by two others.

  “Just past twelve, where you are,” Marie Telach whispered in her ear. Back at the Art Room, it would be five hours earlier—about seven in the morning.

  She wondered if Charlie was still in south Asia, or if he’d wrapped up his part of the op and flown home.

  The interior of the tent was stiflingly hot, with the tropical sun beating down from directly overhead. Would they give her water if she asked for it?

  With startling suddenness, Feng threw back the tent flap and barked something in Arabic at the two. They leaped to their feet, slung their weapons and hurried to untie her.

  “He told them to take you to the tube,” another voice said in Lia’s ear. Dr. Fahd al-Naimi was one of Desk Three’s language specialists, fluent in both Arabic and Urdu.

  Still handcuffed, she was led out of the tent and into the dazzling midday sun.

  The small tent city was set up on the floor of the higher and shallower of the two partially merged craters. Walking her between them, the guards led her along a well-worn footpath through cinders and red sand, taking her over a low lip, then down a much steeper path into the deeper, northern crater. The drill was still in operation—she’d heard its grinding all through the long night, punctuated by the clang and clash of metal when the workers swapped out a cutting head or added more drill pipe.

  At the floor of the deeper crater, she was led around to the right. In front of her, a round and very black opening gaped in the rock, a tunnel entrance leading down into the rock beneath the higher, southern caldera.

  “They’re taking me into a cave or tunnel of some sort,” she murmured. “South wall of the northern crater.”

  “Quiet, whore,” one of her captors growled. “You talk all you want … later.”

  “We copy you, Lia,” Marie whispered. “They’re taking you into a tunnel entrance near the drilling rig in the deeper crater.”

  They walked her out of the sun and into deep shade. The difference in temperature was startling, and she suppressed a small shiver.

  “The island is riddled with tunnels and ancient lava tubes,” Marie continued, talking, perhaps, just to reassure Lia, to maintain contact with her. “Up in the northern part of the island, they use them to channel rainwater down to—”

  Marie’s voice faltered, then broke off. Lia caught a few garbled words after that, and then there was nothing but silence.

  The walls of the cave were blocking the signals between her belt antenna and the NSA communications satellite overhead.

  Lia hadn’t realized how much comfort she’d been drawing from the periodic, reassuring voices from the Art Room. As the guards led her deeper into the cool and echoing stone throat of the tunnel, Lia DeFrancesca felt more alone than she’d ever felt before in her life.

  22

  GREEN AMBER

  C-130 HERCULES

  APPROACHING LA PALMA JUMP POINT

  MONDAY, 1212 HOURS LOCAL TIME

  Stand up!” The cargo master barked the order over the intercom from his station at the front of the cargo bay. “Gear check!” Charlie Dean turned and faced Ilya Akulunin, tugging at various snaps, latches, and D-rings to make sure all was secure, having him turn so he could check his back, and then standing with arms slightly out from his body while Akulinin did the same check-over for him.

  “Ready for this, Sharkie?” he yelled.

  “Just like in training,” Akulinin yelled back.

  No, Dean thought. It never goes the way it does in training …

  The rear ramp of the Hercules ground slowly open, and Dean saw dazzling sun-glare off impossibly white clouds below. In some ways, it was good making a HALO jump in daylight; night operations were always a lot riskier. On the other hand, they would be coming down near the bad guys’ positions in broad daylight.

  The rushed timetable, he knew, had been cobbled together because no one knew when the Tangos might have their bombs planted and armed, or when they were planning on detonating them. The smart money said that the ten nuclear devices arrived at Mogador Airport Friday or Saturday, and that the terrorists started flying them out to La Palma as soon as possible to avoid complications either from the Moroccan authorities or from American or Spanish agents.

  If the bombs were already on La Palma, they might already be planted. Marine Task Force Green Amber might be about to fly into a nuclear holocaust.

  Colonel Kemper, in charge of the FORECON elements deployed for Green Amber, had argued hard for a night drop, but he’d been overruled. It was more important that the two-man Marine elements be down and in place absolutely quickly as possible than that they come in under the cover of darkness.

  Besides, the chances that they would be seen were not as large as might be imagined, Dean knew. This was a HALO jump—the acronym standing for “high altitude, low opening.” The C-130 was currently cruising southeast at twenty-six thousand feet; the jumpers would exit the aircraft and free-fall all the way down to six thousand feet before opening their chutes. Their target drop zones along the eastern flanks of the Cumbre Vieja were all at around three thousand feet above sea level. Once they popped their chutes, they actually would be flying in along the mountainside at an altitude well below the very top of the ridge, which averaged around fifty-nine hundred feet and in places rose as high as sixty-two hundred. The op planners thought that the Tango sentries patrolling the rims of the volcanic craters wouldn’t see individual parachutists in free fall—dust motes against the sky. Even after their Ram Air chutes opened, the Marines might be too far away for the guards to spot them; the actual drop zones were almost a mile from the top of the ridge.

  The weather reports were promising. A large mass of cumulus clouds had been moving in with the northeastern trades all morning, their base at around six thousand feet. The jumpers would actually have the clouds as cover for the gliding part of their descent.

  While nothing was ever certain in a military operation, especially one with as many variables as this one, the chances were acceptable that the Marines would be able to get to their positions without being seen.

  The insertion was the easy part. Ten separate terrorist sites, ten nuclear weapons. The approach, recon, and takedown would have to work perfectly ten times in a row, or people, quite likely a lot of people, were going to die.

  Dean felt the deck of the aircraft tilt beneath his feet. The Hercules was turning now, coming around to a northerly heading. The Marine Recon jumpers would exit the aircraft two at a time, spaced out along a line five and a half miles long, matching the south-to-north line of volcanos up the center of La Palma. Dean and Akulinin would go with the first two Marines, vectoring toward San Martin, the southern most volcanic crater.

  “First jumpers! Stand ready!”

  The rear ramp was fully down now, with sunlight blasting across the slanted exit track. Dean and Akulinin stood just behind the first jumpers, Sergeant Dulaney and Gunnery Sergeant Rodriguez, waiting … waiting …

  A red light above the gaping opening flashed to green, and the jumpmaster yelled, “First jumpers … go!”

  Dulaney and Rodriguez launched themselves forward, running down the ramp and flinging themselves into the sunlight. Dean and Akulinin were right behind them, hitting the ramp, then diving headfirst into sun-brilliant emptiness.

  They fell, wind hammering at their torsos, the blast fluttering loose folds of Gore-Tex tight around their outstretched arms and legs. The sheer adrenaline rush of free fall hit Dean as it always did, a sharp, pounding exhilaration that caught at his breath and chest.

  The four jumpers drifted slowly apart, turning to orient themselves. La Palma was off to the right and below, spread out against the blue ocean like a
n immense mottled arrowhead pointed south. Clouds massed against the north and northeastern coastline, blindingly bright in the midday sunlight. Dean could easily make out the island’s principal feartures—the vast circular formation of mountains called Taburiente in the north, the straight thrust of the Cumbre Vieja toward the island’s southern point. He could see the line of craters down the central ridge, but it took him a moment or two to positively identify his target—San Martin—for there were several other craters around it. Scattered cumulus clouds drifted slowly above their own shadows down the eastern side of the ridge. He made out the clear separation in color and texture between the forested lower slopes of the ridge and the barren, volcanic cinder and rock higher up. He spotted the area designated as his drop zone—among the trees, but in an area more open, less heavily forested than others. The idea was to land somewhere sheltered by the woods but not so heavily overgrown that he ended up stuck in a tree.

  He was very glad that they weren’t doing this at night.

  Dean checked the altimeter, which was mounted on his reserve chute in front of him. He was now falling past twenty thousand feet. He’d reached terminal velocity—about 124 miles per hour, or just under eleven thousand feet per minute. That gave him a bit over a minute of free fall; his AAD, or automatic activation device, would open his chute at eight thousand feet above sea level, with his drop zone target at five thousand. One of the dangers of HALO jumps lay in the possibility that a malfunction in the parachutist’s breathing gear might cause him to pass out. The AAD made sure his chute would open whether he was conscious or not.

  The other jumpers in his team had spread out, with plenty of room between them. They were falling past ten thousand feet now; the ones-and tens-place numerals on his altimeter’s digital readout flickered past almost too fast to read. More alarming was the loom of the mountains below and ahead. With arms and legs extended and his back sharply arched, he’d picked up some forward momentum and literally flown toward the island. The city of Santa Cruz was spread along the coast to his left, just north of the single sharp, straight slash of the island’s airport runway.

  At six thousand feet, his drogue deployed, pulling his Ram Air chute from the pack gently enough to avoid damaging it during the deployment. A moment later, the Ram Air caught hold, the sudden deceleration a sharp jerk against Dean’s harness that made it feel as though he’d suddenly grown very heavy, then started rising.

  He took a quick look up to make sure the canopy had deployed properly—no rips or tears, no “Mae West” twists in the fabric. Everything was working as it should. The canopy itself was neither night-ops black nor traditional white, and it certainly had none of the bright colors popular in sports-jumping. It was a blend of neutral grays in random computer-generated patterns that blended well with sky or with distant vegetation. He was still a good six miles from the crest of Cumbre Vieja, coming in toward the beach at Punta El Lajio. “Chute open and functioning,” he reported.

  “Copy, Charlie,” Marie Telach replied.

  It was good to know someone was listening over his shoulder.

  He could see the El Lajio lighthouse below, a stark, modernistic white tower with a rounded cap that probably had been intended as futuristic architecture but looked like a tall, skinny grain silo … or an enormous sex toy. That lighthouse had been his first waypoint marker for his drop zone approach.

  “Going feet dry,” he said. “Fifty-five hundred feet and directly above the giant dildo. I have the DZ in sight.”

  A fifteen-mile-per-hour trade wind out of the northeast had him on course. Ideally, a ground team should have been present to set out signal panels to mark the drop zone, but there hadn’t been time to organize that. Rubens had told him that two more NSA officers were on their way to La Palma—one to join CJ, the other to take charge of the writer, Carlylse—but they didn’t have any of the equipment necessary for marking one DZ, much less ten. Instead, each parachute team had memorized the rugged silhouette of the Cumbre Vieja, the position of each volcanic caldera, and the general appearance of the designated drop zones on the ridge’s eastern slope.

  As he got closer, he realized that this last wasn’t quite as easy as he’d thought at first. There were a lot of clouds floating above the east side of the island, many of them flowing up against the ridge crest itself. North, the entire northern curve of La Palma appeared to be engulfed in a sea of dazzling white, a solid cloud deck pressing against and spilling into the hollow of the big Taburiente caldera.

  The view was spectacular, the interplay of clouds and sea and mountain utterly mesmerizing. He was flying southeast, now, above a tiny village—it should be Tigalate—and that road glimpsed through the trees would be LP-132. That was waypoint two, at an altitude of two thousand feet. Beyond, the ground began rising very sharply. Directly west now was Mount Deseada, its crest at over sixty-one hundred feet, looming above him. The top was lost in a chain of clouds running down from the north, but he could tell he was already below the peak.

  His altimeter read five thousand feet.

  Much more quickly than he’d expected, the ground began rising up to meet him. Trees skimmed past beneath his jump boots in a blur. Tugging on his risers, he brought the leading edges of his Ram Air double canopy up, stalling to kill some of his forward velocity. He passed over another village, a cluster of white and brick-pink roofs seemingly imbedded in the steep hillside. That was waypoint three, the town of Monte de Luna, at a mean altitude of twenty-four hundred feet above sea level. He yanked at his right-hand risers, pulling into a sharp right turn, swinging from a southwesterly heading to directly west.

  He saw patches of heavy forest interspersed with more open ground. He aimed for one of the thinner regions, which appeared to be riding on a bare-topped shoulder extending east from the mountain.

  Treetops skimmed beneath his boots, the ground rising swiftly. He unhooked his drop bag from his hip and let its nylon tether pay out through gloved fingers until it was dangling twenty feet below. His gliding descent carried him over open ground … the drop bag struck, and he tugged again on his risers, killing more speed and settling toward the slope.

  He touched down at a quick walk, the parachute dumping air and spilling into an unruly mass in front of him. He kept walking, bundling the fabric in with his arms. Fifty feet ahead and to his right, another parachutist touched down. He couldn’t tell whether it was Ilya or one of the Marines.

  From the drop bag he extracted electronic binoculars, pouches holding ammunition for his rifle, Kevlar vest, combat harness, water and rations, backpack, and a last-minute piece of special gear shipped out the day before from Fort Meade. The jump harness, reserve chute, breathing equipment, helmet, and attachments went into the bag.

  The other parachutist was Gunny Rodriguez, but both Dulaney and Akulinin joined them a few minutes later as they trudged up the slope from below. To the east, the falling ground offered a spectacular view of blue ocean, scattered clouds, and the village of Monte de Luna less than a thousand yards away and about nine hundred feet below. West, they looked up … and up at the slope in front of them, culminating in the peak of the San Martin caldera some fifteen hundred feet higher.

  A GPS tracker confirmed they were now just twelve hundred yards from the rim of San Martin. It was going to be one hell of a long twelve hundred yards.

  They started walking.

  LA PALMA AIRPORT

  SOUTH OF SANTA CRUZ DE LA PALMA

  LA PALMA, CANARY ISLANDS

  MONDAY, 1410 HOURS LOCAL TIME

  “Miss Howorth?” the man asked in brisk, no-nonense tones. “Mr. Carlylse?” James Castelano stepped out from behind a pillar. Nearby, on the other side of the entrance to the airport terminal, Harry Daimler pretended to read a newspaper.

  “Good to see you again, James,” CJ said—and it was good. CJ’s knees were shaking as she shook his hand. There’d been no way to know if other assassins were waiting for them along the descent off Taburiente, or here at the airport
. Being no longer alone gave her a tremendous surge of relief. Right now, Castelano looked about ten feet tall, and she was tempted to ask where his white charger was.

  “Is this our package?” He gave Carlylse a cold look up and down.

  “The very same.”

  “Are you going to board the aircraft with us now, sir,” Castelano asked in a flat voice, “or do we knock you unconscious and carry you on board?”

  Carlylse raised both hands. “I’m going with you! Jesus Christ …”

  “He’s not available at the moment, Mr. Carlylse. You’ll have to settle for my partner over there instead.”

  “You’re not going back?” CJ asked.

  “No, ma’am. I’ve been ordered to stay with you.”

  “Is it … is it safe?” Carlylse asked. He looked terrified, and CJ could understand why. He was a firm believer in the frailly of life … now.

  “We flew in on a private plane, Mr. Carlylse, a Learjet 45. It was thoroughly checked before we left Rota, and there are two U.S. Marshals standing beside it on the tarmac now. Yes, it’s safe.”

  “In that case, sir, there is nothing I want more than to get off this godforsaken island!”

  “We can get your stuff out of your room,” CJ told him. “Your computer and clothes and all that. I’m sure they can set you up at Fort Meade with a razor and a toothbrush.”

  “Thank you. I don’t want to lose the laptop. It’s got half of my next book on it.”

  They went through the terminal, and Castelano flashed a card at a security gate that let them all go through. The Learjet was waiting on the far side of the terminal, two tough-looking men in civilian clothes standing beneath it.

  “Is that your plane?” CJ asked. “You really did arrive on a white charger!”

  “I beg your pardon?” Castelano asked, looking puzzled.