“Oh, a price on my head,” Pena said as the shock he had originally felt changed into anger, “as has worked so well for the Americans against Osama bin Laden? They’re offering what, five million for his head?”
“Instead of thinking about bin Laden,” Santiago said calmly, “you would do better to think about Saddam Hussein. Or even more to the point, his two sons—his two dead sons.”
That thought sobered Pena quickly. He had not gotten where he was by acting irrationally. He well knew the value of money as a tool to make men do things they would never consider otherwise. The anger in Pena’s face gave way to thoughtful consideration of the situation as Santiago watched the men. Now he continued his explanation of what led up to his complex plan.
“As far as the lawyers on either side of the border are concerned, you have to give the Mexican government some kind of reasonable excuse not to hunt you down. You have influence over a lot of very powerful people in Mexico City as well as all over the countryside. All they need is a reason, some kind of plausible deniability they can use to ignore any American requests. The very best one is to give some evidence of your death during this escape.”
“And how do you plan to pull off this magic feat?” Pena asked. He was more than impressed with what Santiago had accomplished up to that point. It would be very interesting to see what else the man had up his sleeve.
The trawler had moved well out of the Tuna Harbor and was heading northwest, out toward the main channel of the bay. The fat-hulled boat was moving steadily, but still hadn’t reached her maximum cruising speed of only ten knots. Even with her engines going all out, the boat could only do eleven knots. Eleven knots, little more than twelve miles an hour, was not a great speed for a getaway. But a slow trawler didn’t draw much attention at a major seaport city.
Captain Flores was well aware that the hard-looking men who had hired his fishing boat weren’t interested in commercial fishing. But the fishing had been poor and he couldn’t afford to pass up the money they had offered. He had almost balked at giving the men the keys to his boat weeks earlier, but another handful of dollars had convinced him. Besides, one of the few things that was paid up to date was his insurance on the Princesa.
The money he had received made for a good Christmas for him and his family, the first they had seen in a few years. He had ignored the large packages that he noticed around the deck and in the compartments. It was much harder to ignore the new bulkhead that cut the main hold in half. The only easy thing was to concentrate on maintaining the course and speed he was to follow. That, and ignoring the eyes of the man who was watching his back.
The bearded man who had been in the group that came aboard acted like he was used to being in charge. But it was the taller man, the one the other two deferred to, the one with the hard cold eyes, he was in command. That much was obvious for anyone who had worked with groups of men before. Flores would be glad when this job was over and he could go back to just working the sea.
As the men Captain Flores was thinking about discussed their plans, the incendiary charge back in the van ignited. The boat was too far away for him to be able to hear the explosion of the gasoline container, and then the blast from the fuel tank of the van. But Captain Flores could see the glow of the fire come in through the starboard side of the wheelhouse. He knew that whatever the trouble was behind them, it had something to do with the men he had on board.
Just a moment before Flores saw the light from the fire, Santiago had looked at his watch. The timer he had set at the van had reached zero. Stepping out onto the deck, he could see the fire in the parking lot almost three-quarters of a kilometer behind them. It wouldn’t take long for the authorities to realize that the Princesa had something to do with the fire—not with the name of the boat painted on the side of the van.
“Time to move,” Santiago said as he ducked his head back into the cabin. “Things are going to start happening fast now. Reyes, you’re going to have to take up Falcon’s station. Pena, come below with me.”
Without a word, Reyes stepped out of the cabin and headed to the stern of the boat. He crouched down behind a long crate, one of the boxes Captain Flores had noticed as now being on board.
Going over to the hatch above the central hold, Santiago lifted up what was obviously a very new steel cover. In spite of being heavily made, the hatch cover raised easily on its counterbalancing springs. There was a ladder attached to the forward bulkhead of the hold and Santiago used it to climb down into the center of the boat. Pena followed him down into the smelly darkness.
The hold Santiago and Pena were standing in stank of old fish and sawdust. Boxes of equipment lay around the hold, some of which were very familiar to Pena. There were crates of hand grenades, M26A1 fragmentation grenades according to the markings on the boxes. A long cardboard box with a side-mounted handle and webbed strapping around it had markings that said it held five M72A2 LAW rockets. There were metal ammunition cans, unmarked cardboard boxes, and a long, low mound of something on the deck of the hold, something covered with a black tarp.
“There’s enough material in here to raid the Federal Building and fight our way out,” Pena said as he looked around.
“That’s what it’s supposed to look like,” Santiago said. “Now help me with this tarp.”
Both men unlashed the tarp and pulled it back from four long, bulky bags. The bags were so cold that they seemed to suck the heat right out of the air. Pena suddenly felt a lot colder as he realized just what the bags were.
“Those are bodies?” he said.
“Can’t have a really convincing death without a body,” Santiago said. “Now help me get these out of the bags.”
Bending down, Santiago pulled an Emerson Commander knife from his right side pocket. Thumbing open the curved black blade of the Commander, Santiago turned the blade edge-up and used it to slice open the bags. As he moved to the next bag, next to him, Pena began pulling the cloth cover off the body.
Wherever Santiago had come up with the bodies, the original occupants had died hard. The flesh was cold to the touch, but not frozen. The bodies were bent and mangled, as if they had been in some kind of a wreck. One body that was Pena’s size was missing its entire face, the whole front of the head and jaw had been torn away. Even as hard as he was, Pena could feel the gorge rise up in his throat at the sight.
“But how will they ever mistake these bodies for us?” Pena said to take his mind off of what he was handling.
“They won’t really,” Santiago said as he stood up. “There won’t be enough of them left to recognize.” He flipped a tarp up that was covering a smaller mound next to the bodies. It was two green cloth haversacks. The rectangular bags were about a foot long and slightly thicker than they were wide. Several coils of green fuse lay on top of the bags with an M60 fuse igniter attached to the end of each coil.
Fascinated, Pena leaned forward to look at the explosives.
“C-4?” he asked.
“Forty pounds worth of it,” Santiago said.
“But if the bodies are blown apart by the explosions,” Pena said, “won’t they just run DNA tests?”
“Yes, but they don’t have to find a body, or even parts of it if the explosion is big enough,” Santiago said. “Just a sample of blood would be enough to limit their search once it was identified.”
Before Pena could straighten up from where he was examining the explosives, Santiago’s right hand suddenly darted out. As fast as a snake’s forked tongue, the hand seemed to just pass over Pena’s arm, the blade of the Commander in that hand leaving a bright, red line growing on the arm as it passed.
As Pena gasped and spun away, Santiago tossed an old-fashioned orange kapok life jacket to him.
“Press that over the wound,” Santiago said. “Get it good and bloody. Then I’ll give you a waterproof bandage for it.”
Without a word, Pena rubbed the bloody slash with the cloth cover of the life jacket. In front of him was a man who considered
all of the details, and accepted what had to be done. Santiago was valuable, and dangerous.
There was the sudden sound of heavy gunfire from the deck almost directly over their heads. The noise was the knocking thunder of a light machine gun being fired from the stern deck of the Princesa.
“Sounds like the party has started,” Santiago said.
Taking the bloody life jacket from Pena, Santiago handed the man a plastic bag with a four-inch Blood-stopper dressing in it.
“Here,” he said, “put this on, then gear up.”
With his foot, Santiago pushed a heavy duffle bag across the deck to Pena. Leaving the other man standing there, Santiago went back up the ladder and out onto the deck. He tossed the bloody life jacket to the deck as he headed to where Reyes was at the stern of the boat.
As he had suspected, the sheriff’s cruiser from the Embarcadero Marina Park just south of the Tuna Harbor, had come after the Princesa. Having opened up the long case on the stern deck, Reyes had pulled up a loaded M60 machine gun and sent a long burst of 7.62mm slugs dancing across the water toward the sheriff’s boat. The flashing light on top of the cabin cruiser shattered as the streaking bullets slashed through it.
When Santiago came up next to Reyes, the sheriff’s boat had already turned back and was heading toward shore at a high rate of speed.
“Next will be the Coast Guard,” Santiago said as he reached into the box.
Pulling on a lanyard line that went down into the engine compartment, Santiago fired several igniters buried in oil-soaked cotton waste. Smoke quickly began billowing up from behind the boat. Picking up a folding stock AKMS-47 from the box, Santiago turned to the wheelhouse where Captain Flores was looking back at the men with wide eyes.
“We will never be taken alive!” Santiago said as he brandished the AK.
Flores was beginning to look panic-stricken. To emphasize Santiago’s point, and help push Flores to the breaking point, Diaz pulled a Smith & Wesson Model 36 revolver from his pocket. The small five-shot revolver was loaded with Federal 125-grain .38 Special hollowpoints. The weapon sounded like a small cannon in the confines of the wheelhouse as Diaz fired it up into the overhead.
Deciding that he had had just about enough of these madmen, Flores darted out of the wheelhouse and made a dive over the side of the boat. He had no way of knowing that if he had frozen in place with fear, Diaz had orders to throw him over the side. The plan was to have a witness to some of the actions on the fishing boat, and Flores was that witness. Later, he would tell the authorities that he had expected to feel the impact of bullets across his back at any moment. He could see that smoke was pouring out of the engine compartment and smell the burning oil. Hot brass or whatever from the men’s weapons must have started a fire.
Stepping forward to the controls, Diaz took hold of the wheel and kept the boat moving along its original heading. Santiago and Reyes went into the hold leaving Diaz the only man up on the upper decks. The most important job Diaz had now was to keep watch. Timing was going to be tight.
In a short time, Diaz could see the bright orange and white markings on a Coast Guard boat as it came out of the station to starboard. The Princesa was just passing the end of North Island and the main Navy air base there. Instead of trying to make a run for the open sea, Diaz cut back on the throttle, killing the engines. Leaving the controls, he abandoned the wheelhouse and climbed down into the hold. The heavy steel cover on the hatch shut with a thud as Diaz pulled it down and dogged it tight.
Chapter Five
Lieutenant Commander Foxbury on board the Coast Guard Island-class patrol craft North felt that whoever it was on board the trawler, they had made a serious mistake in their seamanship. The boat was wallowing in the water, smoke pouring from her stern. These were probably the hardcases who had just made the daring jailbreak that was on all of the police frequencies in the area. At least two officers were down in the Federal Building and there was one sheriff’s deputy on the radio who was un-injured but badly shocked. He had been the first to come under fire from the boat. The men on board the trawler appeared to be heavily armed, but the 25mm Mark 38 cannon on the forward mount of the North would make short work of the wooden-hulled boat if the terrorists offered much in the way of resistance. Foxbury was not going to take any chances with the safety of his men.
“Chief Cushing,” Foxbury said, “go forward and make sure the Mark 38 is ready for action.”
Before Chief Cushing could acknowledge the order, 500 meters in front of the patrol craft, the smoking hull of the trawler vanished in a shattering explosion. An instant later, a roiling orange-red ball of burning gasoline blossomed into the early dawn sky. The shock of the blast could be felt in the superstructure of the North as the pressure wave struck the craft a second later.
“Jesus Christ and all of the saints,” Chief Cushing said as he looked at where the fishing trawler had just been obliterated. Bits and pieces of wreckage were raining down from the sky, making small splashes where they hit the waters of the bay. The time to hurry was past now, even for the Coast Guard. There could be no survivors of such a blast, no matter how tough and daring those men might have been.
The sun was up and burning off the cloud layers above San Diego a few hours later as Ensign Rawlings stood next to the helm of the twenty-five-foot homeland security response boat as it approached another civilian craft tied up to a mooring ball near the Grape Street Pier #1, south of the Coast Guard station. This was going to be the fifth boat the ensign had approached since he had been sent out to look for witnesses to the action that morning. The fifty-foot custom catamaran he was approaching was a beautiful motor-sailer. The single tall mast holding furled sails as the boat rode against her mooring line. The Coast Guard craft was coming in from the stern of the catamaran, moving to approach between the twin hulls that gave that class of boat her name.
Before Ensign Rawlings could even hail the big catamaran, a man in a white windbreaker walked out onto the forward deck. Chief Boatswain’s Mate Majors at the controls of the Coast Guard boat cut the two 250-horsepower Honda outboards driving the small boat as the man on deck caught a tossed line. Seaman Watson held the bright orange foam floatation collar of the Coast Guard boat away from the catamaran as they came up to a boarding ladder, hanging next to a secured Zodiak F-450 inflatable boat.
“Permission to come aboard,” Ensign Rawlings said as he took the extended hand offered by the man on deck.
“Permission granted,” the man said. “I’m Captain Wellings. Welcome aboard the Freedom. What can I do to help the Coast Guard today?”
“Thanks, Captain Wellings,” Rawlings said. “We’re looking for any witnesses to the explosion out in the bay this morning.”
“That was quite a blast,” Wellings said. “Knocked us around and put the boat’s owner and his wife right out of their bed. They just came down from Orange County last night. But no one saw anything. That’s Samuel Green and his wife and daughter right here in the main salon if you would like to ask them yourself.”
Looking forward, Rawlings could see several people sitting around a large table in the main salon of the boat. The older-looking man was leaning back in his seat, a cup in his hand. The heavy blue bathrobe he was wearing framed his smooth-shaven face and short black hair shot with gray. A mature red-haired woman sitting to the man’s right was wearing a matching bathrobe. The bulky robe wasn’t able to mask what looked like a spectacular figure on the redhead.
The much younger blonde wearing very stylish blue and white sportswear looked like almost any other Southern California college girl, one who came from a well-to-do family. The very pretty girl smiled brightly and waved to the young officer, who was suddenly very concious of his appearance in his waterproof, insulated coveralls.
“No, that won’t be necessary,” Rawlings said.
“Just what was that explosion this morning anyway?”
“A boat caught fire and there was a fuel explosion,” Rawlings said. “They’re se
arching for evidence at the site right now.”
“We’re planning to go out and do some whale watching to the south over the weekend, Ensign,” Wellings said. “The grays are migrating south and the sightings have been pretty good off Point Loma. Is there anything about the incident this morning that would interfere with that?”
“No,” Rawlings said. “Just give a wide berth to the anchored boats in the channel. And remember, don’t disturb the whales directly. You can’t take a boat within a hundred-yards of them and I would advise that you run on sail as much as you can—the whales don’t like the sound of engines.”
“Not a problem,” Wellings said with a wide smile. “Thanks, Ensign.”
Standing on the rear deck of the Freedom, Garcia Santiago, aka “Captain Wellings,” watched the Coast Guard boat push away from the catamaran and move off to head to the next craft moored some distance away. He turned and headed back into the salon where Pena sat rubbing his hand across his freshly shaved chin. A fast application of makeup by the redheaded woman had masked the lighter pallor of the skin under his beard.
“I must say, a busy morning,” Pena said.
“Nothing wrong with a jump and underwater swim before breakfast,” Santiago said. “It’s a great way to start the day back in the SEAL Teams.”
“But I imagine you used to go over the side of the boat,” Pena said, “not down through her hull.”
“No, but now the Coast Guard are witnesses to the fact that no one got off that boat before she blew,” Santiago said. “So as far as anyone knows, everyone who was aboard is now dead. They’ll search hard enough. But there won’t be anything to find but pieces. And ‘Mr. Green’ and his family are free to spend a leisurely weekend following the migration of the Pacific gray whales to their calving grounds off the coast of Mexico. Maybe even stop off at a port or two while south of the border.”
Hostile Borders Page 5