Shadow Watch (1999)

by Tom - Power Plays 03 Clancy

  Soon after the transmission began, those instincts proved themselves to be right on the money.

  “This ground station’s part of our Geographic Information Service division,” Nimec was explaining to Annie. “Our clients include real estate developers, urban planners, map and atlas publishers, companies involved in oil, natural gas, and mineral resource exploration ... a whole range of businesses that can benefit from high-res topographic imaging data. Essentially, though, the profits we earn from those contracts go toward defraying expenses the GIS piles up doing gratis work to satisfy Gord’s altruistic drives.”

  They were alone in the first of several rows of theater-style seats climbing toward the rear of what could have been mistaken for a small movie screening room, but for the technical staffers at horseshoe-shaped computer workstations to their left and right. A large flat-screen display covered most of the wall in front of them.

  “Spy-eye time as a charitable donation,” she said. “That’s a new one to me.”

  Nimec looked at her.

  “You remember that child abduction in Yellowstone about six months ago? The little girl, Maureen Block, got snatched out of her parents’ camper? The guy who did it was some survivalist nutcase, held her in a lean-to made of timber and leaves. She was found by park rangers after sweeps from Hawkeye-I penetrated his camouflage, captured infrared images of the girl and her kidnapper while they were in the shelter.”

  Annie put her hand up to her forehead.

  “I think,” she said, “I’ve just embarrassed myself.”

  “No reason you should feel that way,” Nimec said. “Our involvement was never disclosed. We’ve worked with local police departments, the FBI, NSA, you name it. This isn’t quite classified information, but it is for the most part held confidential by the various agencies.”

  “At whose preference?”

  “Everybody’s,” Nimec said. “It’s pretty well known how competitive law-enforcement organizations can be. They like taking their pats on the back for closing cases, and we’re glad to let them. It tends to eliminate any inclination they might have to see us as sticking our nose in where it doesn’t belong and reject our assistance. It also has the fringe benefit of keeping the bad guys off guard.” He paused, quietly watching the techs key up for the satellite feed. “There’s a whole range of other situations we help out with, besides. The birds can detect toxic chemical concentrations in soil runoff, plot out the extent of oil spills, pinpoint the specific types of mineral depletion in agricultural areas to give farmers a heads-up on potential crop failure ... it goes on and on.”

  She looked impressed. “If I may ask, just what are your satellites’ capabilities?”

  “Confidentially?”

  She nodded, and gave him a faint smile. “If not quite classified.”

  “Hawkeye can zoom in on objects less than five centimeters across and scan on over three hundred spectral bands, which matches anything the spooks at the National Reconnaissance Office have at their disposal. Same goes for the speed and accuracy of our analysis—and we hope to have moving real-time pictures within a couple of years. Also, the telemetry images we’re about to see here are going out over our corporate intranet to be viewed by members of our security team on three continents and examined by photo interpreters in San Jose.” He gestured toward the headsets jacked into the armrests of his seats. “These provide an audio link for anyone who’s got a request for the analysts, or wants a particular area enlarged, enhanced, or identified. You may want to listen in.”

  Annie got a quick flash of herself playing host to Roger Gordian and Megan Breen in the LCC firing room at Canaveral what seemed an eternity ago, pointing to the lightweight phones on her console.

  “When the event timer starts again you’ll want to put them on and eavesdrop on the dialogue between the cockpit and ground operators. ”

  A chill ran down her spine.

  Nimec noticed her far-off look. “Anything wrong?”

  “No,” she said. “Just kind of dazzled by the scope of this operation.”

  Nimec knew she was lying, but dropped it, although he couldn’t dismiss his peculiar interest in what was on her mind.

  Then, from one of the techies, a wave.

  “Get ready,” he said. “Show’s about to start.”

  Some 2,500 miles northwest as the crow flies, Roger Gordian was in a room identical to the one in which Pete Nimec and Annie Caulfield were seated, watching, as they were, the first satellite images stream down from Hawkeye-I above Brazil. Filling the row to either side of him was the group of satellite recon specialists Nimec had mentioned to Annie, most former employees of the NRS and its PHOTINT section, the National Photographic Interpretation Center.

  Over the previous twenty-four hours, Hawkeye-I had made a series of low-resolution passes over an area describing a radius of about three hundred klicks around the ISS installation in Matto Grosso do Sul, its field of reconnaissance determined by the results of a computerized vector analysis seeking those areas of highest probability from which the raid of April 17th might have been staged. Entered into these calculations were wind conditions on the night of the attack, approximations of the HAHO team’s point of descent into the compound, estimates of their maximum range of travel, flight controller logs from known airfields, likely sites for concealed airfields, intelligence about regional criminal and political extremist enclaves, and a galaxy of other data deemed pertinent by Sword’s electronic surveillance experts.

  After reviewing the computer analysis and initial flyby imagery, the photo interpreters had systematically narrowed their interest to two geographic areas: the alluvial plains and savannah of the Pantanal, and an overlying region of rocky, semiarid escarpments called Chapada dos Guimaraes.

  It was the highlands that came to attract their most intense scrutiny. Magnification of the images registered what appeared to be an ad hoc runway in a massive table formation at the Chapada’s western edge—some fifty kilometers from the ISS facility, and well within the bounds of a radar-eluding aircraft launch and HAHO drop. Further examination revealed the snaking, deliberate track of a roadway winding up the precipitous sandstone walls of the plateau. Light reflection patterns in the visible spectrum showed the definite earmarks of mechanical objects on the formation’s broad, flat top and in a narrow draw cut into the base of the slope—guessed to be fixed-wing aircraft and wheeled vehicles from their shapes and dimensions.

  These initial evaluations, coupled with a studied look at infrared bandwidth patterns coming from the grotto that distinctly showed human heat signatures, the long-wave IR “hot spots” of motorized activity, and the contrasting emissions of camouflage and growing vegetation, led to a rapid decision to target the area for the high-res, full-spectrum scan now in progress.

  Gordian watched as Hawkeye-I telescoped in on the flattened plateau and relayed its digital eye-in-the-sky shots from communications satellite to ground station at trillions of bits per second, a computer-generated map grid projected over the image on the display.

  “Right over there, you see those planes?” a photo interpreter beside him said. He switched on his headset and mouthed a set of coordinates into it. “What’s our res?”

  “We’re in at slightly under a meter,” a tech replied in his earpiece.

  “Get us in closer, we need to see what kind they—”

  “One of them is a Lockheed L-100, same damn transports we use,” Gordian interrupted. “The other’s an old DC-3 workhorse.”

  “Lots of hustle and bustle around them. I’d say a total of thirty, forty individuals.”

  The analyst on Gordian’s opposite side sat up straight and pointed. “The vehicles lined along the slope look like quarter-ton Jeep ‘Mutts,’ supply trucks ... some heavy-duty rigs.”

  Gordian leaned toward the edge of his seat.

  “They’re pulling up stakes,” he said.

  “Those guys in desert fatigues around the plane, how close can you zoom in on them?” Ric
ci said into his computer’s mike.

  “Give us a minute, you’ll know if any of them have acne scars,” a techie replied via his earphones.

  He waited, his attention rapt on the screen.

  It took less than a minute.

  The man at the foot of the L-100’s boarding ramp had short-cropped hair, an angular face with a strong, square jut of chin, and wore aviator glasses and a drive-on rag-type headband. He was clearly calling out orders, directing the upload of personnel and cargo.

  “You see that one?” Thibodeau said. Hands gripping the tubular safety rail of his bed, he hoisted himself painfully up from his pillow, leaning closer to the notebook computer on his hospital tray. “You see him?”

  “Rollie, maybe you’d better take it easy—”

  “Le chaut sauvage, ” he said.

  “What?”

  “Got the look of a wildcat.” Thibodeau’s eyes were alight under the brim of his battered campaign hat. “He’s in command. An’ not just of gettin’ stuff onto the planes.”

  Megan studied the screen from the chair beside his bed.

  “You think we’ve got the top man in our sights?”

  “Don’ know if he’s the brains ... but combat leader, oui,” he said. “I tell you, I know.” He paused. “From the looks of ’em, the people he’s orderin’ around ain’t no drug runners or guerrillas neither. They’re mercenaries, for sure. Got to be the ones who hit us the other night.”

  Megan turned her attention back to the face on-screen.

  “We better find out who he is,” she said.

  Thibodeau looked at her.

  “Cherie, I think it’s more important that we find out where he an’ his boys are goin’ ... an’ if we can, stop them from gettin’ there.”

  “The question is why they’re clearing out,” Nimec said into his mouthpiece.

  Ricci from across the globe: “Agreed. And if they’re mobilizing, what for?”

  “How long before we have Hawkeye-II transmitting optical images from over Kazakhstan?” Gordian asked over the voice link.

  “There’s some cloud cover over the region right now,” a tech said. “Weather readings indicate a slow-moving front.”

  “How long?”

  Listening in, Annie turned from the face being close-upped on the wall and stared at Nimec.

  “Kaza—” she mouthed silently.

  Nimec cut her off with a motion of his hand as the satellite techs gave Gordian his answer. Then he briefly switched off his headset.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I wanted to hear what—”

  It was Annie’s turn to interrupt. “You think those people are out to stop the Russian shuttle launch? Cause the same sort of thing that happened to Orion?”

  Nimec licked his lips.

  “My feeling is they could be,” he said. “The satellite pictures will tell us more.”

  She shook her head in anxious disbelief.

  “What now?” she said. “We need to ... are you going to contact the State Department?”

  Nimec saw her hand trembling on her armrest, and took hold of her wrist.

  “Annie—”

  “It can’t be allowed to happen again, Pete,” she said. “It—”

  “Annie.”

  She looked at him.

  “We’ll handle this,” he said. His grip was firm around her wrist. “I promise.”

  TWENTY

  WESTERN BRAZIL APRIL 23, 2001

  UNMARKED, GHOST-GRAY, THEIR PROP/ROTOR WING-TIP nacelles tilted at 90° angles to their fuselages in full vertical-takeoff-and-landing mode, the pair of Bell-Boeing V-22 Ospreys left their launch platforms in the ISS compound’s helipad area at 7:00 P.M Brazilian Daylight Time, rising straight and straightaway through layers of purple twilight at a speed of 1,000 feet per minute.

  In the starboard pilot seat of the lead Osprey’s glass cockpit, Ed Graham glanced out his rearview mirror and saw his wingman slot into formation off his port side. He had on a modular integrated display and sight helmet that allowed for day-or-night heads-up flight and resembled nothing more than the headgear worn by rebel star-fighter jocks in Star Wars. Beside him, the upper half of Mitch Winter’s face was also hidden under a MiDash helmet.

  Although they had spent many hours training in the Osprey, and proven their skill and teamwork at handling the Skyhawk chopper under fire, this would be their first offensive mission in the tiltrotor craft.

  Six minutes into their ascent, Graham used the thumb-wheel control on his thrust lever to graduate the nacelles down 45° to their horizontal positions—at which point the Allison T406-AD-400 turbines behind their rotor hubs began to perform like the engines of a standard high-speed turboprop, bearing the Osprey on a westerly course toward the Chapadas as it rose to its cruising altitude of 26,000 feet.

  Ferried in the spacious personnel/cargo hold of each Osprey were complements of twenty-five Sword operatives in indigo battle-dress uniforms and antiterrorist gear. They wore ballistic helmets with face shields, night-vision goggles, and digital radio headsets beneath the helmets. They wore Zylon soft body armor and load-bearing vests accessorized with baton and knife holders, incapacitant spray pouches, and other special-operations rigs. Their weapons included WRS automatic rifles, Benelli Super 90 12-gauge shotguns chambered to accept 3-inch nonlethal rounds, FN Herstal Five-Seven sidearms fitted with laser grips, and an assortment of incendiary, smoke, and phosphorous grenades. The strike team in the wing craft also wore padded knee guards, and had rappelling ropes and pitons on their web utility belts.

  It was almost one week to the day since they had been taken by surprise and forced to do battle on the defensive; since their home ground had been invaded and torn apart with mines and plastic explosives; since fifteen of their friends and brothers-in-arms had been killed or wounded by a then-unknown invasion force.

  Now they hoped to turn the tables.

  Pocketing his aviator glasses in the waning daylight, Kuhl felt a cool breeze drift across the plateau and dry the perspiration on his dun colored head scarf. He heard the Lockheed’s turbines powering up on the airstrip behind him, turned from the partially evacuated camp in the ravine downslope, and watched as the last and most important items of payload were carried aboard the transport in plain wooden crates.

  Despite how well things had gone, he was mildly ill at ease, and could not quite put his finger on the reason why. Perhaps it was just the precise and demanding timetable to which he’d needed to adhere, coupled with an impatience to get on to Kazakhstan. There was always a tightness within him before he made his finishing thrust. Yet this unsettled feeling had a somewhat different quality, and he wondered if the almost too smooth progression of events thus far—the absence of any outward sign that Roger Gordian’s people had made substantial headway following the trail of their attackers, or were pursuing it with the aggressiveness one might expect of such an estimable force—might not be the cause of it. As a hunter, Kuhl knew the advantage of circling in silence. But he also knew that there were circles within circles. That a hunter at the edge of the smaller circle could all too easily become prey at the center of the larger ...

  A pair of men in khaki fatigues with Steyr AUG assault rifles slung over their shoulders—the FAMAS guns already on their way to Kazakhstan—approached him from outside the plane’s cargo section.

  “We’ve been told everything is ready for your takeoff,” one of them said.

  Kuhl motioned toward the retrofitted DC-3 further down the ramp. It was still being packed with freight conveyed by the lines of jeeps and trucks moving between the airfield and the gully below.

  “I want the decampment to continue without holdup,” he said. “Make sure the pilot of that plane knows he’s to leave here no longer than half an hour after we’ve gone. And stay on top of the loading.”

  The man who’d spoken to him nodded. Before he could turn to begin carrying out his orders, Kuhl took note of the bandage around his upper arm.

  “How is the w
ound, Manuel?” he asked in Spanish.

  “Está mejor, it is much better.”

  Kuhl made a fist and struck it to his heart.

  “A lo hecho, pecho, ” he said. It was an old expression he had picked up somewhere along the way. “To the chest, that which is done. Accept gladly all you have accomplished.”

  Manuel looked at him in silence. Then he nodded again and strode off toward the DC-3 with his companion.

  Kuhl lingered for a brief while afterward, his back to the runway, staring out into the shadows as they rose from the lowlands like the waters of some dark, swollen river that had begun to overflow its banks, spreading across the lofty, sand-blown table on which he stood.

  At length, he went to board the waiting transport.

  Graham cursed, gazing out his windscreen into the distance. He had spotted the taillights of a plane ascending through the gloom at twelve o’clock.

  “Got to be the Lockheed, from the size of it,” Winter said, scanning the FLIR readouts on his helmet visor. “Of all the stinking breaks.”

  “Yeah.” They were back down at just over six thousand feet, preparing to tip the Osprey’s rotors to their vertical positions as they swooped toward the plateau only two miles up ahead.

  “I can see the other one on the strip,” Winter said. He pointed slightly off to starboard. “The goddamn DC-3.”

  Now it was Graham who checked his HUD’s sensor imagery.

  “You catch its IR signature?” he asked.

  Winter nodded. “Engines are cranking. It’s getting ready to fly.”

  He cranked his head around, shot a glance portside and aft. He could make out the wingman’s face close behind them, his dismayed frown communicating that he’d also seen the L-100 take off.