Operation Fireball d-3

by Dan J. Marlowe

  “I’m detailed to investigate the case,” Erikson said. “Can you provide space for me to interrogate these witnesses?”

  “Yes, sir,” the sergeant said. “You can use the O.D.'s office right there.” He pointed. “He was called out on some trouble down at the motor pool.”

  Like a liberated pickup truck, I thought. “In there, you two,” Erikson said to Wilson and me. I pointed to an electric water cooler at the far end of the room next to the barred outer doors leading to the concrete section of the building. Erikson nodded permission. I walked down to the cooler and let the cold, slightly brackish water rinse out my mouth while I studied the barred doors. From where I was standing I could see another set of barred steel doors inside a narrow corridor beyond the first set.

  “Well?” Erikson said to me when we were all in the O.D.'s office. The half-glass partition let us look outside into the larger room, where the three on-duty personnel were seated.

  “Nothing doing from the inside,” I reported. “The two sets of doors are electronically operated. The sergeant has a key, and the corporal inside the cell block has a key. Both would be needed to open the doors, and at a quick look they’re operated from separate control boxes.”

  Chico Wilson had been smiling at the Wave through the glass partition. The girl was watching him and doing no work. She looked like a rabbit fascinated by a snake. Wilson turned his head to look at us. “So let’s take these three out here an’ crush out of the place,” he said.

  Neither Erikson nor I said anything. We both knew it was impossible because of the timing involved. Even if we immobilized the sergeant, the armed guard, and the Wave, the corporal inside could button himself up and thumb his nose at us. “What about asking to have Slater brought out here so you can question him?” I asked Erikson.

  “Normally the sergeant wouldn’t have the authority without the say-so of the O.D.,” Erikson said doubtfully. “We’ve nothing to lose, though. Try it.”

  I went outside to the sergeant’s desk. “The commander wants to question the prisoner now,” I said.

  “You know I can’t bring him out here without the O.D.'s okay, sailor,” he answered.

  “Maybe you’d like to try telling the commander that?” I tried to bluff him.

  “You tell the commander,” he passed the buck to me.

  I started back to the partitioned office. Chico Wilson was seated on a corner of the Wave’s desk, speaking to her in a low tone. She was smiling and reapplying pale pastel lipstick. When I passed her desk, the large-breasted girl was snickering. “Just like you figured,” I told Erikson. “He says he can’t do it. Do we have the plastic explosives that I put on your original ‘want’ list?”

  “Yes. They’re in the smaller crate on the pickup. Why?”

  “I can shape a charge and peel off half the back wall of the cell block with no more fuss than a taffy pull. It wouldn’t even rattle their coffee cups inside here.”

  Erikson’s eyes narrowed as he stared at me. “What about the guard inside?”

  “He’d be in between the two sets of locked doors. No problem. Even Slater would only get an earache. I can muffle the blast so nobody can hear it a hundred yards away in this storm. That doesn’t go for the people in the office here. They’d have to be tied up while we siphoned Slater out of the back end and took off.”

  Nobody ever said Erikson couldn’t make up his mind. “Wilson!” he called.

  Chico Wilson left the simpering Wave and strolled into the office. He was smiling. “Guess what?” he said.

  “Wilson, go out to the pickup and open the smaller crate—”

  “Guess what?” Wilson said again, interrupting in unmilitary fashion. “Slater isn’t here.”

  “Isn’t here?” Erikson echoed.

  “I told the chick Slater was in for doin’ what I wanted to do to her, an’ after she got through sayin’ ‘Oh, you!', she mentioned that an officer an’ two guards took all the prisoners out on a work detail.”

  “But the sergeant said—”

  “She said in the rush nobody entered it in the log. The sergeant doesn’t know. An’ she said the work detail is supposed to be takin’ down the outdoor movie screens on the base.”

  “You earned your dollar today, Wilson,” Erikson said. We left the office. “I’ll be back to speak to the O.D. later, Sergeant,” Erikson said on his way out the door.

  “Are we any better off having to look for Slater all over the base?” I asked Erikson as we climbed into the pickup again.

  “You’re not thinking like a military man, Drake,” Erikson said as he shot the pickup down the road. “If any movie screen is going to be saved, you can damn well bet the very first one will be the screen at the officers’ quarters.”

  The pickup plowed through the buffeting rain. We passed the White Hats Club and the CPO Club before we came to the Officers’ Open Mess. It was a low, rambling building with a large swimming pool lashed by the rain. Just beyond it was a sloping, fan-shaped concrete slab covered with form-fitting plastic theater seats. A dozen men were wrestling with wrenches, pliers, and a block- and-tackle, attempting to ease down the wide, cinemascope screen whose upper edge fluttered and vibrated in the steadily increasing wind. An officer and two noncoms bawled conflicting instructions at the rain-soaked men.

  “Looks like a Chinese fire drill,” I said as Erikson parked the pickup.

  “You two stay here out of sight,” Erikson ordered as he opened the door. It blew out of his hand. “Or you’ll find yourselves hijacked into another work detail.” He recaptured the door, slammed it, and ran toward the melee at the front of the theater apron.

  Wilson and I scrunched down in the cab. The pickup rocked in the wind gusts. “What a night!” Wilson muttered. “An’ we got to go a good ways on foot.”

  His remark reminded me of a personal problem. I looked out at the wind-driven rain, then took off my white cap. I unfastened the tabs on my wig and removed it, rolled it tightly, pulled up my shirt, and inserted the wig in the pouch of my money belt. Then I replaced the white cap on my nude skull. A wet wig is a dead giveaway.

  Wilson watched the performance. “Man, you look like a different — hey, bulls-eye! Here they are!”

  Erikson and a panting Slater appeared beside the pickup. Slater looked pale, tired, and unhappy. He had a nasty-looking, bleeding gash on his left thumb. “Outside and into the back, Wilson,” Erikson directed when he opened the door. “Climb in there with him, Slater.”

  Wilson started to argue, then slid sullenly from the cab. He had to help Slater into the back of the pickup. “We don’t have Slater’s seabag,” I said to Erikson as he got under the wheel again.

  “We won’t have it, period,” Erikson said. “It’s impounded with his personal belongings. I’ve been trying to remember what I packed in it. Fortunately I duplicated sensitive items. I’m afraid we’re going to be short on some things. Ammunition, for one.”

  My tension must have showed more than I realized. Erikson glanced over at me and smiled. He seemed in high good humor. “Relax,” he said. “We’ve got better than a five-mile ride to the northeast gate. It’s the last driving we’ll get to do on U.S. soil for a while, so you might as well enjoy it.” He glanced at his watch as the pickup bored through the rainy night.

  It seemed to me that we’d gone more than five miles before he spoke again. “This is the perimeter road,” he said. I noticed that he spent almost as much time looking at the floodlighted chain link fence topped with four strands of barbed wire as he did watching the rain-swept road. We proceeded along the fence for what seemed to me a long time.

  At one point Erikson’s split attention almost cost us. Headlights loomed up ahead, tracking down the center of the road. Erikson jammed the heel of his hand on the horn ring and swerved hard right. The oncoming vehicle darted sideways at the last instant, and we passed with barely a foot separating the front fenders.

  “There they are,” Erikson breathed. He glanced at his watch again as
I completed a breath that had stuck halfway. “That’s the motorized patrol that guards this section of fence. They’ll backtrack this way in twelve minutes, and that’s when we start moving out.” He swung the pickup off the road, doused the headlights, and scrambled from the cab.

  I joined him at the rear of the pickup. We climbed into the body of the truck with Slater and Wilson, who looked as though they’d just emerged from a plunge into the bay. In the first few minutes I was out of the truck cab, I became completely soaked.

  Erikson ripped off the top of the smaller wooden crate and handed me a lantern-type flashlight. “Hold it so I can see what I’m doing,” he directed. I beamed the light into the interior of the crate. It was amazing the amount of equipment that Erikson had neatly packed. Half of it I couldn’t identify, but there was enough that I was familiar with to judge we’d be in good shape for an assault upon a bank vault.

  I noticed two pairs of short-handled wire cutters. I picked one up and hefted it, then looked again at the formidable-appearing chain link fence. “You’ve got the wrong kind of cutters, Karl. These will only take care of barbed wire.”

  “That’s all they’re supposed to do.” Erikson was dragging material out of the crate hand over hand. “If any of us touched any part of that lower fence, the show would be over. It’s equipped with an antiintrusion device, electronically activated, so it sends an alarm to the defense center and to the guard posts if there’s any tampering with the fence.”

  He lifted out a curved piece of metal that looked like a cut-out section of a steel oil drum. Wires hung down from the back of it. When he turned it over, I could see that it was layered with a substance sandwiched between the metal back plate and the inch-thick serrated steel on the front. Chico Wilson whistled. “A Claymore mine!” he exclaimed.

  “Correct,” Erikson said.

  I don’t know much about mines, but I do about fences. “If you think that we’re going to blow a hole in that fence with this mine, we might as well go at it with the wire cutters.”

  “No sweat,” Erikson replied. He dashed a handful of rain from his face and picked up a package of what looked like flat, metal noodles. He began taping the bundle of narrow foil strips to the face of the mine. “This is called chaff or window. It gives off thousands of radar echoes, blinding alarm systems like we’re up against here.”

  Wilson caught the significance before I did. “So this is a diversion? We go over the fence somewhere else?”

  “Correct,” Erikson said again. He held up the end of what looked like a length of small-diameter garden hose and began hooking it into the mine. “This is a pressure-activated trigger. We’ll stretch it across the road, and when the perimeter patrol truck runs over it, off goes the mine. A two-minute timing device prevents it from being triggered earlier by unexpected traffic.”

  He started toward the tail gate of the truck, carrying the mine. “The charge will be directed at the fence, and the explosion will shower it with metal strips like a tinseled Christmas tree. That will set off the alarm and keep it going until they cut off the power. Then the antiintrusion apparatus will be out for at least a couple of hours. It’ll take them at least that long to remove all these strips by hand.”

  “An’ where will we be while all this is goin’ on?” Slater demanded. It was the first time I’d heard him speak since Erikson retrieved him. His voice was hoarse.

  “Going over the fence a half mile down the road,” Erikson said coolly. He climbed out of the truck carefully, hugging the mine. He ran back and forth across the road for three minutes, making his dispositions. I ran with him, carrying hand tools, coils of wire, and friction tape. He employed them all with expert ease. “The Claymore is an antipersonnel mine that explodes lethal pellets in a low arc over a wide area,” he said when we were back at the mine. “It will do the same thing with the chaff.”

  He stood up from his kneeling position and looked around. “Drop the tools here,” he said. He kicked them closer to the mine when I complied. “We’re going to have to travel lighter from here on. Get your seabag.”

  I removed it from the truck cab and handed it to him. In turn he swung it into the back of the truck where Slater and Wilson were huddled. “Get into the Cuban uniforms and put your ponchos back on over them,” he ordered. We got into the pickup again and Erikson drove it down the road.

  In four minutes he parked it ten yards off the asphalt ribbon behind a clump of jacaranda trees. I was amazed that Wilson and Slater didn’t look much different in their Cuban field uniforms. The ponchos covered most of the coarse khaki, of course. Only the peaked cloth caps with the buttonlike insignia of Castro’s guerrilla army gave outward evidence of the change.

  Erikson and I changed into the Cuban uniforms while standing at the back of the pickup. Erikson passed out hand guns to Slater and Wilson, then gave each a bulging, prepacked haversack. There was a haversack for me, too. Wilson and Slater then hooked themselves into web belts with ammunition pouches, first aid kits, and canteens. Erikson laid the backpack radio and its power pack aside for himself. Against it he leaned an M-16 rifle. I knew his load totaled much more than any of ours.

  Satisfied that we were outfitted properly, he handed me one pair of wire cutters and kept the other himself. He reached into the truck again and pulled a tarp away from the area near the now-empty crates. Beneath it was a two-section aluminum ladder. He handed a section each to Slater and Wilson. “When we get to the fence, join the sections together and settle it firmly,” he instructed them. “Try it. You won’t have much time.”

  They practiced. Wilson looked more cheerful than at any time since the night Hazel put him on his back. The episode had done something to his machismo that only the adrenalin-paced action of the moment had restored. Slater still looked tired. Evidently he hadn’t slept much either in the destroyer’s food locker or at the Gitmo brig.

  Erikson kept looking at his watch and then down the road. Suddenly he raised his hand in caution. The headlights of the truck patrolling the perimeter, diffused and yellow-glaring in the rain, passed our position in its swing around the fence. “Three minutes now,” Erikson said calmly. He gathered together his equipment.

  I expected to hear the mine go off despite the distance. When the floodlights illuminating the fence went off suddenly, I was caught flatfooted. The contrasting darkness seemed overwhelming. “Run to the fence!” Erikson ordered. There was a ring in his voice. He took off like a sprinter.

  I couldn’t run while juggling the load on my back and the equipment in my hands, but I kept up with Slater and Wilson, who had the same problem. Erikson was waiting for us at the foot of the fence. My eyes were beginning to adjust to the blackness. Wilson and Slater slapped the two sections of the aluminum ladder together and jammed it against the fence as though in some previous incarnation they had been foot soldiers scaling the walls of Constantinople.

  “You first, Drake,” Erikson said. “Cut the barbed wire right next to an anchor point, then drop down to the other side. The other two will be right behind you. I’ll move the ladder to the other end of this fence section and cut the barbed wire again at that point as I go over so it will fall on the Cuban side of the fence. In this weather it might be a while before the missing section is noticed. Over you go!”

  The top rung of the ladder reached to the lowest of the four ugly-looking barbed wire strands. I started up the ladder, balancing carefully, wire cutters in hand. Halfway up I was blinded. The floodlights had come back on, blasting away the darkness, leaving us totally exposed. I had never felt so naked in any sexual exercise.

  “That’s just the auxiliary power cutting the lights in,” Erikson shouted. “The fence alarm is on another circuit. Get up that ladder, Drake!”

  I went up it with a rush. The sharp blades of the wire cutter sliced through the strands of wire like so much wet spaghetti. The cut wire rasped against the metal of the fence as it fell away. The light was so intense at the top of the fence that I couldn’t see the g
round below. I launched myself into the black pit, and my heavy haversack drove me to my knees when my boots hit sand. I scrambled desperately to one side and had barely made room when Wilson landed in my tracks. It took Slater longer.

  Ten feet down the fence Erikson had reset the ladder. He went up it so fast his feet hardly seemed to touch the rungs. He snipped through the four strands of dangling wire in what seemed a single motion. Still standing on the ladder, he threw the wirecutters over our heads into the darkness beyond the immediate floodlit area.

  Then he stepped up onto the tubular steel fence rail with both feet. He balanced for an instant, M-16 rifle in his left hand, before he squatted swiftly and with his right hand pulled up the ladder. He passed it across his body and dropped it on our side of the fence. It was an incredible feat of strength and balance. “Get rid of that;” he called before he jumped down to join us. Wilson grabbed the ladder and ran into the dark area with it.

  “Single file now!” Erikson ordered when Wilson reappeared. He set out at a pace that none of us could match. He had to slow down almost at once. I brought up the rear. As much as I was laboring myself, I was constantly running up on Slater’s heels. Slater’s wheezing sounded as if he were close to exhaustion. My own mouth was full of cotton before Erikson stopped in a shallow depression.

  “Everything’s fine,” he told us as we huddled close to him to hear his voice above the storm. “We’re in an area called the defensive zone. We won’t reach a Cuban outpost for almost a mile.”

  “This is no-man’s land?” Wilson asked.

  “No. It’s guarded by a regimental combat team of the second Marine Division from Lejeune, and they’re tough boys. The hubbub inside the fence should keep them tied down, though. Remember that everyone is looking the other way. No one’s supposed to be moving away from the fence. The system isn’t set up for it. If we clear this area within the next half hour, we’re in good shape.”