Deep Recon

by Don Pendleton

  Bolan frowned. "If she's hiring mercenaries she used to work with, I'd say she still has a lot of her old connections. That would explain how she was able to nail so many undercovers — even McAvoy, in due course." He let out a breath, then said, "Hal, we're at the boat the mercs used. Its computer is giving a latitude and longitude for its previous stop that's nagging at me."

  The Executioner read off the coordinates from the computer.

  Silence followed on the phone.

  "Hal?"

  "I was just verifying something on the computer to make sure I wasn't misremembering. That's about halfway between Key West and the Cuban coast, and it's the location of an old undersea listening post. It used to be nicknamed Castro's Lawn. The post was decommissioned during the Clinton administration, though. We needed to be that close in the old days, but with the improvement in tech over the past couple of decades, we don't need to be so near a hostile power or keep people underwater for so long. It was put in that location because there isn't anything else there."

  "Well, there's something there now. Possibly the same thing — you sure it was dismantled?"

  "I'm looking at the file now, Striker. There's the decom order, and there's the order for dismantling — but I'm not finding a single record of the base actually being dismantled."

  "In that case, Hal, I think we've found our weapons cache — and our arms dealer."

  15

  Yvonne Dessens hated being woken up early.

  The best thing for her about being a free agent, no longer beholden to the U.S. government, was that she could sleep whenever the hell she wanted.

  So she was quite displeased when somebody woke her up before she was ready to be up — especially if that somebody was her assistant, Marty Anderson.

  Anderson had been her assistant at the CIA, too. It had taken a certain amount of arm-twisting to get him to quit with her.

  She'd always had a feeling that the house in the Bahamas was the second biggest reason why he eventually gave in and came along.

  It had taken her a few years to get him to stop wearing suits all the time and don light shirts and shorts like everyone else, but he got the hang of it eventually.

  He had just walked into her bedroom wearing a white button-down shirt and his usual khaki shorts. Anderson actually was supposed to have done that ten minutes ago, after he got the phone call from Jablonski.

  But he was deathly afraid to wake Dessens up before she was ready to be up.

  But she needed to know what was going on.

  Finally, he entered the room and just looked at her, a thin sheet of cotton covering her body, which was clad only in a pair of panties. Her near nudity was not so much of an issue. The biggest reason why Anderson had said yes and followed his boss out of the CIA was that Dessens had promised that the fantasy he'd had of sex with her would at last come true if he came with her to her new endeavor, so it was nothing he hadn't seen plenty of times before — but she looked so peaceful.

  While Dessens was in her fifties, she was still in excellent shape. She'd dyed her hair to keep it the same brown it was when she was younger, and she'd made use of moisturizers and exercise to keep herself looking young and in shape. If not for the worry lines around her mouth, she could easily pass for a woman in her thirties.

  And she was still damn gorgeous. That fantasy had been in Anderson's head for a reason, after all. From the moment he'd been hired as her assistant, he'd dreamed of ravishing her spectacular body. At home, before he went to bed, he'd imagine ever-more-absurd scenarios that would end with their intense lovemaking. She knew in general how he felt, even though he'd never said anything, because anybody with two eyes and a working brain would know how he felt. But he'd never had the nerve to act on any of his urges.

  To his delight, once they moved to the Bahamas and she started her new business, he finally got that nerve, and they'd reenacted as many of his fantasies as were physically possible.

  Anderson sighed, bringing himself back to the present. Unable to put it off any longer, he touched Dessens's shoulder. Her eyes opened suddenly, and she bolted upright.

  "What? What is it?" She blinked. "Jesus Christ, Marty, what..."

  "The whole operation's screwed," Anderson said without preamble.

  Dessens shook her head. "Once more, with clarity."

  Speaking slowly and meticulously — one of Anderson's most valuable assets as an assistant was his ability to collate information and state it clearly and unequivocally for his listener — he filled Dessens in on everything he knew about what was happening with Lee's operation on Key West.

  "Is anyone besides Jablonski left alive?" Dessens asked incredulously.

  "A few, but they're all scared to death. Delgado had set up a buyer, but neither he nor Lee have been seen since they went to the meet. They've been declared dead, but we can't get a straight answer out of the medical examiner." Anderson held up a hand, cutting off a question from Dessens. "And before you ask, I've tried the usual back channels. Their manner of death is classified, and it's at a level I can't break."

  "Damn/'

  "That's not the worst of it," Anderson said reluctantly.

  By this time, Dessens had gotten out of bed and put on a bra, fresh panties and a sundress. "Give it to me, Marty, I can handle it."

  "The mercs couldn't pull the trigger on the safehouse."

  "Shit!" Dessens stood and rubbed her eyes for a moment. "All right, get the boat ready. We need to secure the cache. If Maxwell and her friend took out Perry's team, then they'll probably be able to figure out where the HQ is. And we'll need muscle. Is Jackson available?"

  Anderson shook his head. "He's in Angola."

  "Harcourt and Harper?"

  "Antarctica."

  "Why the hell are they — ? Never mind, I don't want to know. Jiminez?"

  "We sent him to Lee, remember? He was taken out the other night."

  "No, the other Jiminez — Jorge."

  "Oh — no, he's in Venezuela, along with Graboski and the guy with the funny nose."

  "Simpson." Dessens sighed. "What about Stewart and Van Hise?"

  "They were fragged in Mexico last week."

  "Green and Collins?"

  "They retired. Said their wives were sick of..."

  "I don't want to hear it." Dessens let out another long sigh. "We sent Hawkins and Brand to Lee too, right?"

  "Yeah. The fat man, Faraday, he took them out."

  "Great. So basically we're stuck with..."

  "Yeah," Anderson repeated. "All we've got available to us are Raviv and Conlon."

  Dessens yawned widely enough that Anderson could see her tonsils, then said, "Get me some coffee, then find whatever dive Raviv and Conlon are hung over in and get them to the marina. We're leaving in half an hour."

  Anderson wasn't sure he could find Raviv and Conlon in thirty minutes, but he said nothing as he headed to the kitchen. Dessens was pissed enough as it was.

  He had set the coffeemaker to start before he'd gone to the bedroom, and in the long period since then, while he'd hesitated and then explained how thoroughly they were all screwed to Dessens, the coffee was long-since done.

  Anderson poured half a mug's worth, then put in three scoops of sugar and stirred it for a minute, then poured in two-percent milk.

  It was ready by the time Dessens walked into the kitchen, still bleary-eyed.

  For her part, Dessens couldn't believe how quickly everything had gone to hell.

  Everything had been going so well, too.

  For years, she worked her way up the ladder in the CIA, only to find out that Langley had its very own glass ceiling. Men who screwed up regularly got promoted, while she toiled at the same position for years.

  Her big break actually came when a nobody congressman from Texas started taking an interest in Afghanistan, and an operation that was beyond dead in the water suddenly became an important concern. After the mujahideen beat back the Soviets, everyone involved was promoted, including Des
sens.

  But even then, they stuck her with piddly assignments in Central America. Fidel Castro was getting older, and once the Soviet Union fell, no one gave a damn about overthrowing Communist leaders in Central and South America and replacing them with U.S. friendly dictators. Meanwhile, the men who didn't know their asses from their elbows got to handle the fun stuff in the Middle East.

  That was where everything was happening.

  The straw that broke her back, though, wasn't the mistreatment, the misogyny, or the fact that she was stuck running ops that hadn't mattered since glasnost. No, it was the fact that she kept an eye on Afghanistan, and kept writing memos pointing out that the mujahideen should not have been left to their own devices.

  Then on September 11, 2001, the Taliban, a group that formed out of the ashes of the mujahideen and who had commandeered the latter's weapons and personnel, attacked the U.S.

  Even though she was the only person still in the CIA who had been around for Operation Cyclone, Dessens was not consulted on post-9/11 policy regarding Afghanistan.

  So she quit, taking Anderson and a zip drive filled with classified information.

  Within six months, she had one of the best gunrunning operations in the southern United States, mostly due to her ability to store the goods in an undersea base that almost nobody knew about, and those who did know of its existence thought it had been dismantled.

  It was during a trip to Afghanistan that Dessens had met Lieutenant Kevin Lee. She had been visiting to fulfill a contract to supply American troops with bootleg body armor, since what the U.S. government was supplying was woefully inadequate. Lee expressed an interest in getting into her business after his tour was up, and she felt that a strapping young ex-Marine would be a better front for her gunrunning operation than an ex-CIA woman in her fifties.

  She had been impressed — and surprised — when Anderson had come to her with the information that "Don Kincaid" was really a BATF agent named John McAvoy. That intel had been passed on to Lee, who had immediately taken care of things.

  Then it all went to hell.

  In the past, when she'd found a rat in her organization, she'd had said rat terminated. That, she found, was an excellent way to dissuade law enforcement from doing it again. Losing personnel made them look bad, and also made it hard to recruit replacements.

  But not this time.

  She had stupidly assumed Lola Maxwell to be just another pretty face. In retrospect, she never should have thought that, since that was the means by which she herself had often been dismissed in the CIA.

  Plus, Maxwell had that friend. Dessens still had no clue who the man was, but he was lethal.

  When Anderson came back, saying that Raviv and Conlon were getting the boat ready, she said, "We're gonna need to go with the backup site. I get the feeling that Castro's Lawn is about to get too hot."

  Anderson nodded as they headed out the door. He locked the house behind them, and then they proceeded to the marina. It would take the four of them about an hour or so to load the ten crates that had originally been earmarked first for Rico Pinguino, and then for Delgado's friend Michael Burns.

  Years ago, Dessens had negotiated the purchase of a tract of land in Venezuela, which included several caves. That was her backup location if Castro's Lawn ever became unusable, and she suspected that it was about to become so. Even if it wasn't, she didn't want to take any chances.

  Raviv and Conlon were waiting on Dessens's personal yacht, which was the same model as the Fidelis, only hers was named Grant after her father.

  Even more than an untimely wake up, Dessens hated having to work with Raviv and Conlon.

  Ira Raviv was born in Israel, but left because he felt the Israeli army was too soft. Raviv's idea of a handgun was a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. It was what he used for what he called "soft work."

  Raviv was a devout Jew, also, which Dessens had never quite understood, since he was the least spiritual person she'd ever met — and she'd spent most of her adult life in Washington, D.C., so the competition was pretty fierce. But he wore a yarmulke at all times, and refused to work on the Sabbath or during any high holy days.

  He also never shut up. As soon as Dessens and Marty arrived, Raviv stood up and smiled underneath his bushy beard.

  "We're all set to go, boss lady. Scuba gear's all loaded and double-checked, and the cargo bay's free and clear and ready for whatever you need. Just tell us what to blow up and when to blow it up, and we'll blow it right up for you, right Steve?"

  "Yeah," Steve Conlon said.

  By contrast to his partner, Conlon could rarely be motivated to use a word that had more than one syllable — and he preferred those words to only have one consonant. Conlon had been a Navy SEAL, then joined LAPD's SWAT team before moving to New York City and joining an elite drug enforcement NYPD task force.

  That task force was shut down suddenly, and Conlon was one of five detectives in the unit who turned in their badges. The reasons were never stated publicly, never put in any reports. The unit simply ceased and five cops were ex-cops.

  Conlon hooked up with Raviv in Brooklyn, and they started working together.

  At first, Dessens had thought that Conlon didn't talk much because Raviv wouldn't let him get a word in, but she soon realized that Conlon was taciturn by nature. Teaming with Raviv just gave him a good excuse to be the way he preferred.

  Dessens stepped on board and programmed the computer with the coordinates of Castro's Lawn. The computer obligingly plotted a course that would get them there at the best possible speed, given current weather conditions and reported ship and boat activity.

  "The plan," Dessens said as she steered the boat out of the marina, "is to remove what we've got in Castro's Lawn, and then, Raviv, you get to have fun."

  His eyes widening behind his horn-rimmed glasses, Raviv broke into another grin. "You mean I get to blow up Castro's Lawn? Oh, that's great! I've been wanting to frag that place for years, haven't I, Steve?"

  "Yeah."

  Dessens waited until they were in international waters before letting the autopilot take over. "Let's get suited up," she said.

  The minute they arrived at the coordinates, she wanted to start the dive to get to Castro's Lawn. The sooner this was done, the better.

  16

  After asking Brognola to once again summon the Coast Guard to take a boat into custody, Bolan and Maxwell climbed back into the SUV. Maxwell drove them back down Niles Road, and then onto Horace before getting on Route 1 and driving north.

  They went through Big Pine Key and over the Seven Mile Bridge, then through several smaller Keys before arriving at Upper Matecumbe Key.

  Turning left onto Park Road, she made an immediate left down a dirt road that wound among the trees, before reaching a tiny log cabin.

  "Last thing I expected to find here."

  Maxwell smiled as she put the SUV into Park. "That's what I said when Maritza showed it to me. After she passed away, the cabin wasn't listed among her possessions. She mailed me the deed about a week before she died, and said I could have the place."

  "Who was Maritza?" Bolan asked as he climbed out of the car.

  "Someone who helped me, once."

  That had been a bad time in Maxwell's life, and she wasn't really in the mood to talk about it — especially not with Bolan. "Come on."

  She walked toward the front door, which opened at the slightest push.

  Inside was a single room with no furnishings, save for a deflated queen-size air mattress, with a thick quilt folded next to it, piled on top of four pillows.

  All were covered in dust.

  "I haven't been here for a while," Maxwell said sheepishly.

  "It's fine," Bolan said. He'd slept in worse places in his time. "You can have the mattress."

  Maxwell rolled her eyes. "Oh for crying out loud, I'm not going to try to molest you in your sleep, all right? If nothing else, I'm exhausted. Trust me, I won't make a single solitary move on you, okay
?"

  Without waiting for a response, Maxwell got on her knees and activated the pump for the air mattress. Once it was done, she grabbed the quilt and spread it out over the temporary bed, then put two pillows each on either side of the mattress and flopped down on two of them.

  "Good night," she said, and closed her eyes.

  Bolan wasn't sure whether to be impressed or disappointed that she didn't do a strip tease before going to sleep.

  Then again, the last two times she'd gone to sleep in a state of undress, she was almost killed. Perhaps she was starting to see the value of keeping her clothes on.

  It was chilly in the cabin, so Bolan just climbed under the quilt, and was asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

  * * *

  The next morning, they both awakened at the same time, when the sun came streaming through the log cabin's lone window. Stretching his back enough to crack his spine, Bolan said, "I need to rent a boat and some diving equipment. Is there someone you trust we can do that with?"

  "What do you mean, 'I'?"

  "Just what I said. You've been a help, Lola, but I need to finish this by myself."

  "By diving to this Castro's Lawn thingie by yourself?"

  "Yes."

  "You are a certified diver, right?"

  "Of course."

  "And you know that you're not supposed to go diving all alone, right?"

  "You're also not supposed to shoot people without due process," Bolan pointed out. "What're you getting at?"

  "I know every dive shop in the Keys, and none of them will rent you equipment solo. If you rent with me, then they'll do it, but no way otherwise." She stepped closer to him — she was angry. "Look, you took the certification, so you know the drill. You do not go diving without a buddy. A thousand different things can go wrong underwater, and that's before we meet the gunrunners. You want the boat and the scuba gear, I go with you. Period."

  Bolan simply said, "Fine."

  Within an hour, they had arrived at a dive shop run by a perky young woman who apparently hadn't seen Maxwell in far too long.

  As she was negotiating for the renting of two full sets of diving gear and a boat, the woman leaned in to whisper something to her.