by Mack Maloney
“Well, they’re a strange crew,” Ozzi replied. “They’re not like the hard-ass operators we usually deal with. They’re…well, different.”
“Different, how?”
Ozzi drained his drink, then signaled for another.
“I can’t explain it any more than to say these guys are authentic heroes. I mean real patriots,” he told Fox emphatically. “They bleed the flag, Major. Remember the stories about the New York firefighters and cops who saved people on nine-eleven? Ordinary people doing extraordinary things? That describes these guys to a T. You see, they all have something in common, something the regular special op guy might not have. Every one of them lost someone on September eleventh or to some other terrorist attack. So it was personal, you know? They were so focused, their unit patch showed the Twin Towers for God’s sake. And what they went through for this Murphy guy was unbelievable. They almost had me in tears.”
Fox sipped his drink. It sounded a lot like what Israel did after the terrorist attack at the Munich Olympics in 1972. When a number of their Olympic athletes were taken hostage and eventually murdered by Palestinian gunmen, the Israelis secretly sought revenge. They identified about two dozen PLO members who’d been connected to the massacre and quietly, over the course of the next decade, hunted each one down and put a bullet through his head. What Ozzi was telling him mirrored the Israeli model yet was pumped to the max with stealthy Harriers, Delta guys, and an enormous undercover spy ship.
Fox asked his question again: “Those guys have been locked up down there for a month. Why would they spill now? Did you make them any promises?”
Ozzi shrugged. “Nothing we can’t deliver. I just assured them nothing would happen to their friends. That we’d either just let them fade away or wait until they reveal themselves. The Gitmo guys think they’re trying to get back here anyhow, to get back home on their own, and I say more power to them. They did some questionable things over there, but the good far outweighs the bad, in my opinion.
“I also told them I’d do everything in my power to make sure that what they did was officially recognized somehow — especially for the guys they lost while they were carrying out their missions. They say their buddies who got killed deserve Medals of Honor. I tend to agree with them.”
But Fox frowned mightily at this, though Ozzi was too busy sipping his drink to notice. As a senior man in the DSA, Fox knew a bit more about the politics of special operations. Rule One: No matter how brave the participants might be, they had to be tightly controlled, as exposure — of them or their mission — might lead to anything from national embarrassment to all-out war. It was a different world from what went on aboveground. And that world was no place for spies who liked staying out in the cold.
Fox was also somewhat surprised at Ozzi’s reaction to the Gitmo Four. The young lieutenant was as loyal as the next man and still impressionable to some degree. But never had Fox seen him like this, with so many stars in his eyes.
Fox asked him: “So, there’s no doubt in your mind that the guys who did the Tonka rescue are the same guys who showed up the day the Lincoln was attacked?”
“No doubt at all,” Ozzi replied. “It’s the same MO — fly by the seat of your pants, show a lot of balls, but be damn lucky at the same time.”
“Well, that might have been their thing before,” Fox said, slowly. “Poisoning fruit, bombing banks, and so on. But this last time, they did it for all the world to see. They’re all over the news channels, with this Singapore thing and not just in this country, either. They’re celebrities. And frankly, that’s making some people nervous.”
“So?” Ozzi asked.
“So they just can’t be allowed to ‘fade away,’” Fox said, “someone has to find these guys and bring them in—”
“Bring them in?” Ozzi asked, incredulous. He was drunk and suddenly getting pissed off at his boss, which was rare. Usually he and Fox agreed on everything. “Listen, Major,” Ozzi said, words slurring but sincere. “I’m not such a pup here. Especially after what I just heard down in Gitmo. And I know those guys are not a bunch of angels. But going after them, in any way, shape, or form, questioning them about what they did, it would be like going after all those firemen and cops at the World Trade Center that day. Few of them were angels, either, I suspect. But look what they became. Same thing for the people on that plane that went down in Pennsylvania. The people at the Pentagon. Our first boots on the ground in Afghanistan. God damn it, these guys are just like all of them. And they’ve gone through a lot. Why can’t we just leave them alone?”
“Because we have to follow orders, Lieutenant,” Fox said. with heavy emphasis on the last word.
Ozzi just stared back at him. It was clear Fox didn’t like this any more than he did. Someone must have been pressing him from above.
“That asshole, Rushton?” Ozzi asked him. “He’s behind this?”
Fox just nodded and sipped his drink. “He wants to send Team ninety-nine out after them. He’s logging it in as a rescue mission.”
Ozzi couldn’t believe his ears. In the special ops biz, Team 99 was known as the “Super-SEALs,” though some suspected it was a self-designation. In any case, they weren’t ordinary fish. They were hunter-killers, a particularly cunning and vicious SEAL element that was sent on only the toughest missions, usually to track down the most notorious bad guys. They, too, were a very secret unit.
“I had to call Rushton after we talked,” Fox revealed to Ozzi. “I had no choice. He’d been burning up my line all day — meanwhile I’m stalling for time until I hear from you. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that if you got a lead on the Tonka Tower guys, he was unleashing T Ninety-Nine.”
Ozzi continued staring at his boss in boozy disbelief. “But those assholes will more likely kill them than rescue them,” he argued, but weakly, as if all the air had gone out of him. “And those people out there are heroes, sir. They don’t deserve that….”
Fox’s eyes were downcast. “I know,” he said. “But heroes or not, we just can’t have a rogue team like them operating beyond the realm. No control? No oversight? No accountability? They might be right out of the movies, but this is the real world. And in the real world, these things cannot be allowed to exist.”
Ozzi’s eyes went black. His face turned uncharacteristically stern. He began to say something but stopped. To cause a scene here would be highly unprofessional, especially with the subject they were discussing. He finished his drink. The bar seemed to be spinning a little faster. He had to change tactics.
“But how are they going to go about finding them?” he said finally. “They’re floating around out there somewhere on a containership. And there’s got to be hundreds, if not thousands, of containerships in the world. How do you find just the right one? That’s even if they are still on the ship. They’re experts in avoiding contact. I mean look how they’ve managed to stay invisible so far.”
Fox finished his drink. “I know that, and so does Rushton,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean he’s not going to try. Besides, you know how it is these days. No one can hide for very long anymore.”
He signaled for the check. Ozzi could barely move at this point. Fox was torn between duty to follow orders and compassion for his junior officer. The bar spun so that they were looking at the nighttime skyline of Washington.
“Look, Oz-man,” Fox said, giving him a fatherly pat on the back. “If there’s some way I can derail this, I promise you, I’ll give it a shot.”
“And if not?” Ozzi asked him point-blank.
Fox put on his hat and zipped his jacket. “If not,” he said, soberly, “you’d better hope those guys out there choose not to resist.”
Chapter 4
Oki Jima
The stars always seemed extra bright above the secret air base known as XH-2.
On clear nights, with no moon, it was like you could reach up and touch them, the sky out here was so crystal clear.
The base was located on the sout
hern tip of the small jungle island of Oki Jima, which itself was just three miles off the coast of the island of Guam. XH-2 was old. Originally built by the Japanese Army as a radio listening post in the mid-1930s, it served as an intelligence base during World War II and was one of the first places to fall after the battle for Guam. The U.S. Air Force built two runways here during the Vietnam War from which to launch U-2 spy planes. The base had remained open, at various levels of readiness, ever since.
There were three hangars here. They looked like very, very expensive warehouses. They were painted with a coating of charcoal black paint that turned two shades of green during the day. This chameleon act was in place to baffle any photo-satellites going over the highly classified place, unfriendly or not.
It was almost 10:00 P.M., the hangars were charcoal now, and the stars above were dazzling, making the buildings look bejeweled. There was a distinct, if muffled, sound coming from each building. These were very elaborate air-conditioning units working overtime. It was a pleasant tropical Pacific night, low seventies and low humidity. But what lay within each structure worked best at temperatures of 55 degrees or below. For them, being chilled meant being invisible.
They were B-2Fs, a top-secret variation of the famous B-2 bat-winged Stealth bomber. They were bigger, stealthier, and more expensive than their $1 billion cousins. The stock-version B-2 had a large bomb bay where a mix of bombs weighing many tons could be carried, dispensed by a rotary launcher. The B-2Fs were equipped with these bomb launchers, too, but they were portable and could be quickly changed out, opening up a large area of the spy bomber to carry…well, just about anything. Photo recon packages. Jumbo jamming pods. Radiation detectors. Even black-ops eavesdropping gear. These exotic cargoes were called NLPs — for non-lethal payloads. Things that either the military or the intelligence services needed to be put over a target low and fast, without anyone knowing about it.
These three B-2Fs had been in existence since the late 1990s. They’d flown missions all over the world but had been home-based here on Oki Jima since the latest war in Iraq. Their mission was to help U.S. assets in and out of the Pacific Rim get whatever they needed whenever they needed it. And the B-2Fs could fly to the northern tip of North Korea and all the way to the last hill in Syria in order to get it.
Major John Atels, code-named Atlas, had been flying B-2Fs for two years. He was early forties, divorced, no kids. He was known as one of the best B-2 frame pilots around, which was actually a backhanded compliment, as the B-2 was the only plane in the U.S. inventory where the pilot was the crew member and the mission commander was the captain of the plane. Still it took great skill to jockey the big black bomber around, especially into and out of the nutty places Higher Authority wanted the B-2Fs to go.
The plane could fly anywhere in the world on auto pilot; its almost roboticlike flight system was called Hal by many of its crews. It was that sophisticated. But once the B-2F had to go in on its target — or, in its non-lethal mode, its “target sweep”—human hands were needed on the controls.
For those few sometimes scary moments, Atlas was indeed one of the best.
* * *
He’d been told to report to the flight line at 2200 hours, not an unusual time, as the B-2Fs always flew their missions at night. He was to meet his flight partner here. He, too, was an Air Force major, Ted Ballgaite. To just about everyone who knew him, though, he was “Teddy Ballgame.”
The B-2F needed someone other than the pilot to be in charge because there was a huge defensive systems suite onboard the ship; sometimes running it was more labor-intensive than flying the damn airplane. The Stealth bomber was not invisible just because of its shape, low temperature, and paint alone. It was filled with electronic countermeasures, jammers, and other secret gadgets that had to work together if the plane wanted to stay a ghost. All this hardware needed to have a good eye and a quick hand to keep running smoothly. Teddy was a good guy, in the air and to have a few drinks with. He also had a mind like a Cray supercomputer.
Teddy was speaking with two men when Atlas arrived on the flight line. He did not recognize either one. Guam was out in the middle of nowhere; Oki Jima was even farther off the map. It was a very small base and everyone knew one another. So these two had to be visitors. And because this was such a secret place, they had to be top-heavy, security-wise.
They were dressed in what Atlas liked to call “casual spy.” Jeans, denim shirts, expensive sneakers, and sunglasses, even at night. These guys were from one of the United States’ intelligence agencies. Atlas could spot them a mile away.
He’d been dealing with Intelligence types for years. These days many were from the NRO, the National Reconnaissance Office, a strange collection of individuals with the nonthreatening name. Reconnaissance to most people meant taking pictures at high altitudes by either fast-flying aircraft or satellites. But that was just a small bit of it. The NRO guys reconned everything and had the stuff to do it with. When a story came out years before that the United States had a satellite that, from 180 miles up, could zoom in so close to an individual on the ground it could read the label of the cigarette pack in his pocket, the NRO guys were pissed. That was their satellite — but they weren’t upset by the security leak. They were mad that their eye in the sky, code-named Dressing Mirror, wasn’t given its props. Reading the name of a person’s cigarette pack had been achieved approximately around the same time as Saturday Night Fever. These days, the NRO could count the number of threads holding on the top button of the smoker’s shirt. And if that button popped off, they would be able to listen in on his cell phone conversation telling his wife that she had some mending to do tonight. Then they could track the wife as she went to the sewing shop to buy thread to do the repair and hear just about every conversation she had along the way. And then they could find out what TV shows the lovebirds watched that night, what radio stations they listened to. What time they went to bed. Even what they did when the lights went out….
Cigarette label? It was an insult….
But these guys talking to Teddy were not NRO, Atlas surmised. The NROs tended to be younger, more wide-eyed, than other U.S. spy types. These two seemed old at 30; both were smoking, supposedly verboten on a flight line. Both were also carrying side arms, sometimes a mark of the CIA.
They were gone by the time Atlas walked up to the plane. He didn’t see them leave; they just weren’t there when he arrived. He and Teddy had their traditional handshake, even though they’d seen each other just a few minutes before. The ground crew was working feverishly on their aircraft’s hollowed-out bomb bay. Although the vast majority of maintenance on the spy bomber had to be done inside its million-dollar hangar, last-minute stuff could be done out in the open. It just couldn’t take very long.
Atlas looked back and saw the ground guys loading not a “weather package” or an exhaust detector system into the open bay but…suitcases. Or what appeared to be suitcases anyway. There had to be at least thirty of them, either already up inside the spy bomber or on the ground waiting to be put on. A closer look revealed that they may have been made of some kind of composite fiber; some were black, some brown. Yet they looked like nothing more unusual than what could be seen twirling around a baggage carousel at a typical airport.
“What the hell are those things?” he asked Teddy straightaway.
A very practiced shrug was Teddy’s reply. “Beats me,” he said. “All I know is that we’re flying them in somewhere.”
Atlas thought he was joking. “Flying them in?” he asked. “As in delivering them?”
Teddy nodded. “Dat’s the plan.”
Atlas just laughed. He and Teddy had flown some freaky missions since joining the Fs, but never had they delivered something to anyone before. But a bigger surprise was yet to come. These cases were obviously going to someone who would not normally have access to whatever was inside them. A typical shipment of anything hush-hush, to a U.S. ally or customer, would be done by a slow, inexpensive cargo pl
ane, not a billion-dollar spy bomber. So Atlas just assumed they were moving the bags from one secret U.S. location to another, for later shipment to a third party somewhere. That would have made some sense at least.
But he was wrong. According to Teddy they’d be delivering them — whatever they were — to their new owners directly.
“Jessuzz…where?” Atlas asked him.
Teddy was no fool. He would never actually speak the name — there was no way of knowing who might be listening in. Instead he simply held up the cloth map just given to him by the Spooks. There were only numbers on this map, no names, no cities marked. But Atlas looked at the coordinates and knew immediately where they were going.
“Really…?”
Teddy just shrugged and rolled his eyes.
Their orders were to fly the suitcases to Hanoi. A luggage delivery to the communist government of Vietnam.
* * *
It took them a half hour to do their preflight before they were ready to fly.
Despite the highly unusual nature of their mission tonight, from the moving-through-air point of view, it was really just another milk run. Once aloft, they would fly a course due south, avoiding anything coming within 20 miles of them. They had an in-flight refueling scheduled for 0100 hours, somewhere over the northern tip of the Philippines, then a landing at Pha Dong Airfield, a secret base 20 miles northwest of Hanoi. Vietnamese soldiers would be on hand to unload the strange cargo. They knew how to unlock the lashing mechanisms on the bottom of the plane. Atlas and Teddy would not even have to shut down the engines. Departure would be no later than 15 minutes after landing.
Then after another refuel over the ’Peens, they’d be back on Oki for breakfast.
* * *
Takeoff was normal. They climbed to 20,000 feet, steering south. The clear skies, the blazing stars, good weather was predicted both down and back. These were perfect conditions for the invisible airplane.