Was it fancy? Absofuckinglutely not. But ever since I was a beemish boy in Northern New Joyzey and I worked behind Old Man Gussi’s lunch counter short-order-cooking and sizing up the pussy, I’ve made it my business to discover and hang out in joints like this one. Whether it’s Casa Italia, Mama Mascalzone’s family-style trattoria in Huntington Beach, California, where I used to play with my beloved shooters from Red Cell, or Café Augustin, the French boîte owned by mes amis Henri and Collette LeClerc, they all provide me with a home away from home, and some of the best cooking this side of my own kitchen back at Rogue Manor. Not to mention the fact that the folks who own ’em don’t mind if every once in a while the boys and I get a tad rambunctious and break a dish (or a customer) or two. After all, we always help clean up the mess—and we pay our bar tab every night.
I was delighted to see Boomerang’s look of hungry anticipation. So far as I am concerned, the world is divided into two categories of people. There are those who, like me, appreciate eating in greasy spoons, old-fashioned diners where the waitresses sport tattoos, and trattorias where the food’s served family style at long tables and in big bowls. And there are those who believe they’re not eatin’ unless they’re bluten.65 Boomerang, I am happy to report, is from the former category, not the latter.
And so, we piled into the rearmost booth, three yards from the closest customers, and polished off the two small glasses of Francisco’s dry sherry that precede every meal at the Lazo. He followed the sherry with two churrascos—rump steaks, a kilo each, seared to black-and-blue perfection, served alongside piles of freshly made frites, and carafes of the restaurant’s rich, red Rioja riserva, while Boomerang and I discussed our options for the near future.
So far as I was concerned, there was only one option: a foray into BeckIndustrie. Now, perhaps we’d find something of great value to us that would help crack this nasty chain of events right open. And maybe we’d come up dry. But either way, the op would serve the real purpose of forcing Lothar Beck and Franz Ulrich to act precipitously.
We have been over this ground before, but it is significant stuff. Besides, like the old chiefs used to tell me, “You will see this material again, tadpole.”
One of the most basic lessons of warfare, something that has been taught from the days of Sun Tzu, Tai Li’ang, General Chi, and all the other masters of Warriordom, is that by provoking your enemy to act before he is ready, you will carry the day. Sure, it’s common sense. Sure it’s simple. But believe me, simple has worked for thousands of years, and it works today.
Here is simple: we break into BeckIndustrie. We leave just enough of a telltale track so that Lothar knows he’s been burgled.
And what does he do? He comes after moi. Who is set up in a Froggish ambush, waiting for lui. Result? Nasty, blood-and-guts confrontation, followed by Roguish denouement, followed by no more Lothar.
Now, I mentioned a while ago that I’d seen enough to know I could get into Lothar Beck’s impregnable fortress of a headquarters, and once inside, break into the office where those dweebs were working. And I hear you asking me how I planned to do that.
My answer is that I’m not a “tell” kind of guy, I’m a “show” kind of guy. And so, you (along with the dweeb editor) will have to wait and see. I will tell you, however, that before the steaks were served, I was on the secure cellular to Fred, because he was going to have to provide me with one basic element of the night’s work.
When he heard where I was calling from, he gave me a memorable demonstration of compound-complex German idioms all revolving around the F-word. I can report that even though he’s a general these days, Fred still swears like a sergeant-major.
By the time we’d finished our flan, and downed two cups each of Francisco’s perfect espresso, Fred had called back to say that he’d arranged for what I needed, and that I could have it all. If, that is, he could join in the evening’s fun and games.
Guess what: since we couldn’t play without his equipment, I was in no position to refuse his request. And to be frank, I was delighted to see that despite the fancy estate HQ, the stewards serving lunch, and all the antique china, he hadn’t lost his taste for down-and-dirty operations. It told me that Fred still followed the two-word definition of leadership written in blood many years ago by Roy Boehm. Those two words are: Follow me.
2045. We assembled in my room and I drew up the evening’s assignments. Actually, things were going to be pretty KISS-simple tonight. Since Fred wanted to play, he and I would make the entry and do the sneak-and-peek. The rest of the team—all my guys and an equal number of Fred’s operators—would stake out the BeckIndustrie headquarters, to make sure we weren’t going to be surprised. Of course, if we were surprised, we’d be dog meat, since all the available backup would be outside, right? But what’s life without a challenge.
2100. I grabbed a twelve-minute combat nap followed by a two-minute cold shower. I got dressed, and packed what I was going to need in a small black, ballistic nylon duffel. Then I met Fred, dressed in soft Adidas CT boots, black jeans and turtleneck, and sporting a black civvy beret, in the Holiday Inn’s compact lobby, and we jumped into one of his big undercover Beemers. This one was a slate gray 7000 series job piloted by a six-foot, T-shirt-and-leather-clad skinhead driver named Wolf.
Wolf der Kraut kame komplete mit multiple earrings, a blue “cut on dotted line” tattoo around the base of his neck, a second tattoo—a triple strand of barbed wire—wound around his right bicep. The kid had the sort of aggressive, wiry build that reminded me of an NFL linebacker, and a set of big, even, white teeth that gave his face a kind of squared-off, Schwarzeneggerian look. Wolf obviously didn’t bother saluting or doing anything else that might identify him as military. In fact, he called Fred, “BoB,” and me “Sir,” spelled cur, and, a big grin on his wide linebacker’s face, he ushered us into the Beemer’s leather backseat, made sure we were properly buckled in (it’s a moving violation not to use your seat belt in Germany even if you’re a clandestine shoot-and-looter), retrieved an HK P7M13 from the glove compartment and slid it under his thigh, checked his side mirrors, then squealed and wheeled into the knot of late rush-hour traffic, which in Düsseldorf can go as late as 2100, on Graf-Adolf StraBe.
After four minutes of urban driving that told me Wolf was NASCAR66 qualified, he turned onto Autobahn 46, which ran roughly east/west, just south of the city center. He high-speed merged (that’s a fucking understatement), sped east for five or six kliks, then veered south (the sign said MONHEIM), onto another well-lit six-lane highway—this one labeled 58. After he’d completed the maneuver, he half-swiveled his head and looked at me, smiling. “I learned to drive like this in the United States,” he said. “At BSR, in Vest Virginia. There, I trained mit your Delta Force.”
“You see, Richard, I still believe in cross-training,” Fred said.
“I’m glad you have the budget for it,” I said. This fucking administration has cut the heart and lungs out of cross-training budgets. They’re spending more fucking money on recycling than they are on making sure the men and women in uniform can do their jobs.
Fred grunted and fiddled with a fingernail, finally biting it down to where he wanted it. Off to our left, I could barely make out a huge, dark expanse of green in the darkness.
I poked my thumb to port. “What’s that?”
“The Stadtwald,” Fred said without looking. “The city forest of Düsseldorf. We’re headed just south of the main park for the pickup.”
As I nodded, Wolf suddenly kicked the speed past 235 kliks an hour, fast even for a German driver and fast enough to flatten Fred and me against the rear seat. Fred strained against his seat belt, leaned forward, and machine-gunned some Kraut at the back of the driver’s head. The kid nodded, and we increased our speed another fifteen kilometers an hour.
“Problem?”
“Wolf says we’re being followed. Two cars, minimum. Maybe three, maybe four. They picked us up back on Graf-Adolf StraBe.”
&n
bsp; I swiveled and looked through the rear window. I saw a bunch of headlights. Nothing looked out of the ordinary. “Are you sure?”
Wolf’s close-cropped head bobbed up and down. “Ja, Herr Dickie. They are moving well, weaving in and out, und changing the headlamps. But they are mit uns, all the way.”
I slid across the seat so I could release the rear seat-back and get to the stash of automatic weapons I knew lay in the trunk. “How do you want to handle ’em?”
Fred put a restraining hand on my chest. “Let them follow,” he said. “We can deal with them later.”
I would have taken ’em out ASAP. But it was Fred’s car.
From the rear-view mirror, Wolf’s eyes smiled at me. He’d read my expression. “Don’t worry, Herr Dickie, we’ll have fun with them—just like I learn at BSR.” He pulled back into the passing lane and floored the accelerator. I turned and looked. Now I saw them—at least two of ’em, as two pair of halogen headlamps veered into the hammer lane behind us one after the other.
Wolf took us back to 235, stayed in the hammer lane, and flew south on the 58.
Fred had obviously thought about what I’d suggested, because he used the back of his hand to shoo me to my left. As I scuttled port, he pressed on the button release just behind the center of the backseat, and as the seatback sprang forward, he reached behind and into the trunk. He emerged with one, then another loaded HK MP5-PDW, followed by two pair of MP5 magazines in tandem clips. He handed me one of the weapons, and one of the double mags. “Just in case, Richard.”
Fred latched the seatback, pointed the submachine gun’s short muzzle to the floor, dropped the mag out of his PDW, checked the bolt to ensure that there was a round in the chamber, then slapped the mag home. I did the same.
Wolf jerked his thumb backward, at what looked like a quartet of rubber plugs set across the rear window. “You”—he fought for the word, then found it and used his free hand to give it the right body English—“punch, ja? The Stöpsel mit the barrel, Herr Dickie,” he said, “and zen . . . you shoot.”
The fucking car even had windshield gunports. The Krauts think of everything, don’t they?
Fred barked something at Wolf, who nodded, and retrieved a set of night-vision glasses from the glove compartment. He handed them over his shoulder to the general, who turned and focused the NVGs on the pursuing vehicles, then called out a series of letters and numbers, which Wolf scribbled on a pad sitting on the console by his right knee.67 “We’ll track the license later,” Fred said. “Meanwhile, I want to get to the rendezvous without furser incident.” He machine-gunned another series of orders.
Wolf’s Kopf went up and down in agreement. “Jawohl, BoB.” He slowed the Beemer by fifty kliks an hour and allowed our pursuers to gain on us. Then, as we came alongside a solid line of double-trailer trucks in the slow lane, Wolf slipped from the passing lane into the center one, edging behind a big Mercedes. Then he put pedal to metal and threaded a pucker factor 100 needle between a gasoline tanker and a tandem freight hauler, careened onto the wide asphalt shoulder, hit the accelerator again, and we sped onto a single-lane off ramp that wound in a half-horseshoe from the unlighted Autobahn onto a wide suburban boulevard.
Fred checked our six. I did, too. It was clean—for the moment, anyway. If Herr Murphy was around this evening, he was riding with the competition.
There was a traffic light at the bottom of the off ramp, but Wolf paid no attention to it. He slowed, checked rechts, checked links, then hit the gas and drove toward an unlighted overpass, heading east. As we accelerated, he killed the Beemer’s lights.
As we emerged from the underpass, I could see the reflection of headlights coming off the Autobahn half a klik behind us. Then I lost ’em as Wolf veered sharply right, off onto a narrow, residential street, turned right, then left onto a two-way street and followed a single set of tram tracks for two blocks. He flicked the car’s lights on again, then drifted the big car left onto a well-lit, four-lane thoroughfare. I caught a glimpse of street sign and read, BAUMBERGER STR. If that means something to you, write me in care of the publisher, because it didn’t mean shit to me. I had no idea where we were or where the fuck we were going.
Until, that is, we followed the tram tracks back under the Autobahn. There, Wolf turned right, then immediately swerved left, accelerated up the on ramp, and we were back on the 58 Autobahn—heading north this time.
The kid drove carefully, checking our six as he went. He pulled over and stopped. Waited as traffic sped past. Drove another klik or so and stopped again, repeating the exercise. Finally, Wolf pronounced us clean. At that point he retrieved a cell phone from somewhere under his seat, punched the send button, and handed the phone—and the license plate number—to Fred.
Fred read the sequence off to someone, machine-gunned some more Kraut, and hung up. “I’ll have everything waiting when we get back,” he said confidently.
Wolf took the phone back as he steered one-handed, exiting the Autobahn adjacent to the Stadtwald. We looked out at the mass of dark evergreens bordering the forest. He followed the tree line for about fifty seconds, until he came to a set of barriers manned by half a dozen police officers. He flashed his lights thrice, steered around them, and turned onto a gravel path that curved gently to our right.
We drove slowly along the path perhaps another half klik until the trees parted, and I saw what looked like a wide expanse of grassy field dead ahead.
“Für football,” Fred said as the car’s headlights picked up a series of low goal cages set into the grass.
Beyond the tubular cages, I could make out three choppers: two Pave Lows with all their running lights on idled noisily, their long air-refueling nozzles protruding from the right sides of their fuselage. Beyond them, a pair of MH-6 NOTAR (no tail rotor) stealth-fitted Little Birds sat, rocking in the big choppers’ prop wash. We pulled onto the soft turf of the soccer field, drove past the Pave Lows, and pulled up behind the starboard-side Little Bird.
With the enthusiastic impatience of a child, Fred folded his beret, stuck it in the seat pocket, popped his seat belt release, jumped out of the car, and pounded on the black skin of the MH-6 with the meat of his hand as if he were pummeling his favorite stuffed toy. “Now begins the real fun, ja?” He shouted over the noise, his eyes smiling with anticipation.
13
2222. FRED AND I PULLED ON DARK NOMEX COVERALLS. I exchanged my sneakers for a pair of Adidas SpecOps boots just like his, retrieved the web gear I’d brought with me from the ballistic nylon bag sitting between my feet in the Beemer, cinched it around the coveralls, played with the straps until they sat just right. Then I affixed the sheath for my big, Mad Dog Taiho3 serrated assault knife to my left shoulder strap, hanging it upside down. I secured the rigid Kydex sheath with rubber straps and black duct tape.
Fred looked at the thick, seven-inch long, quarter-inch-thick, chisel-pointed weapon. “Isn’t that kleine overkill, Richard? Whose throat are you planning to slit tonight, eh?”
I shoved the blade home, then yanked it out twice to make sure I could get to it if I needed to. “Nobody’s—I hope. But every time I fucking go out without this, I end up needing it.”
The knife affixed, I took the other tools I’d be needing tonight, fitted them in their pouches, Velcro’d everything shut, then did a handstand to make sure it was all secure. Yes, friends, I’ve been at the end of my rope (literally), and watched as Herr Murphy slid down alongside me, plucked open my equipment pouches, and dropped my tools into the void, leaving me with very little more than my big Marcinko dick to work with. And believe me, assault with a friendly weapon may be fun, but it’s not very effective in wartime.
My gear all secured and double-checked out, I clambered over the coiled fast-rope and climbed aboard the Little Bird, slipped a headset and mike on, strapped myself into the rear right-hand seat, and pulled on my thick fast-roping gloves. The Pave Lows had already lifted off, their huge jet turbines deafening as they rose and disappeared
, outboard lights flashing smaller and smaller, into the opaque sky.
Fred climbed aboard and looked at me all ready to go. He grinned, and slapped the release buckle on my shoulder straps. “Nein,” he said. “Nicht fast-rope.”
He pulled me out onto the turf, handed me a stabo harness—a rig similar to SEAL SPIE gear, and a lightweight helmet with integral wireless communications package installed. I slipped the stabo straps around my waist and legs, brought it up, and cinched it tight under my arms. Fred took the end of the starboard side coiled length of black rope sitting on the chopper’s deck and hooked it onto my stabo harness. He went around to the port side of the MH-6 and did the same for himself. Then he flicked a switch on the underside of his helmet visor, and motioned for me to do the same.
I found the switch. Immediately, his voice filled my brain. “Is okay to talk,” Fred reverbed in my ears. He tapped the helmet and mike with his finger. “Alles geschützt—we’re secure.”
“Good.” I patted my stabo harness. “Good thinking.”
“Ja,” Fred said. “The chopper will spend less time than if we fast-roped, and make the extraction easier, too.”
If you believe that extracting, i.e., grabbing at the end of a one-inch rope from a moving chopper, affixing your stabo harness to the eye of the loop, and then lifting off without smashing into something hard or sharp is easy, I still have this bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. But I knew that Fred was talking in relative terms. And in relative terms, he was right on the old pfennig.
Option Delta Page 21