Operation Chaos

by Watkins, Richter

  “What do you mean?”

  Rainee shrugged, shook her head. “I don’t know. He’s getting us down to the Facility. Maybe it’s just a brilliant tactic, given he had no good alternatives, but he didn’t come up with it until I mentioned my uncle had a boat near the Baja border.”

  Metzler shook his head. “I don’t buy it. I think you’ve had a big influence on him. I think he’s come over.”

  “I was supposed to have that influence on you.”

  Metzler nodded. “You win some, you lose some. Hopefully you’re wrong about Keegan.”

  He reached back as he got up and gave her a little tap on the shoulder, then went up to the men with her uncle at the helm of the speedboat.

  Rainee then settled back as the boat headed out to sea. She thought of Lester Raab, of the madness of the world, and felt a powerful sense of determination.

  Then she sent an encrypted text to Jason Styles, a man who had connections to the activities of the “dark” world about as deep as anyone she knew. They had shared extensive communication before and during the hearings and got into an affair for a time. They’d gone their separate ways, Jason overseas, she into rebuilding her career after its near destruction.

  She’d seen him on several occasions, but only in professional situations. He’d gotten himself a beautiful young wife and she’d had two subsequent trysts that were never headed anywhere.

  41

  For Doctor Lester Raab, an angry morning came accompanied by a harsh hangover, nasty headache, and a gastrointestinal track that had suffered from seriously hot Mexican food.

  But it also came with the knowledge that he’d thrown a fantastic dinner for his guests that night before they flew back to the States.

  For the party/celebration, Raab had brought in one of the top chefs and his staff from Tijuana along with a fine Mariachi band. He also had the governor of Baja there, a man who was their pick to become the next Mexican president, and who would, when the time was right, assist in the greatest merger since the Louisiana Purchase. And that would be just the beginning of what they saw as the new North America.

  These secret “merger” talks had been going on for over a year. With Mexico’s resources and labor, and America’s vast industrial and technical infrastructure, it was considered a no-brainer by all the men present. It had to be. They joked about bringing Canada on board later as well, thus creating the empire needed to deal with the global threats Islam, Russia, and China.

  They joked about it, but at the same time they had a seriousness lurking behind the joking.

  Mexico had already become a virtual colony of the US in the past year. And it was the training ground for everything that was going to happen in the US.

  He guaranteed his guest that the “problem” that kept him at the Facility would be resolved very soon.

  Now, in the harsh steely morning, needing help from an Alka-Seltzer, he swung out of bed and grabbed a bottle of water, pouring it in a cup with two tablets.

  Raab thought of General Snyder’s fine toast to him at dinner for creating the tip of the spear. “Survival and dominance throughout history are always a function of who has the superior technology and the leadership to use it,” General Snyder had added. “An unplanned society is an unmanned society.”

  Raab revered General Snyder. The man had an iron jaw, a steel fist, and the unstoppable resolve to save his country. He was the selected leader to handle the martial-law transition. As fierce and passionate as he was, he had a commanding calm. He would set the stage.

  The past year was the most exhilarating in all of their lives. They had moved out of intention into position. They had a proven force. Their time to take control, to end the idiocy, had arrived.

  And they were maybe only weeks away from implementing Operation Chaos, the beginning of the salvation and resurrection of America.

  After they had left sometime around midnight, Raab drank a little too much, then, knowing his sleep would be disturbed, he took a sleep aid. Then, before crashing, he took a last look at the pictures he had of Rainee Hall, the love of his life, and the woman he needed now more than ever.

  And the bitch was again defying him. He finally dismissed her in his sogged brain and went instead into one of his fantasies of his lectures to the nation and across the globe about the new world order.

  Now, shocked by morning, miserable, groggy, he called Colonel Tessler, demanding good news. It wasn’t.

  Colonel Tessler said, “They dumped Keegan’s tracker in the sewer and Blacksnake teams chased that around for hours. Now we’re conducting interrogations of vets in a camp south of the city by the river, where they were last known to be.”

  Raab struggled to grasp the news. “They’ve escaped?”

  “We know the vehicle they left in,” Tessler, this greatest of manhunters, said. “Keegan, Metzler, Doctor Hall, and two other soldiers. We’re tracking aerial surveillance over the whole of Southern California for any and all VW buses of that era leaving the L.A. area. It’ll take a little time, but we’ll know within a couple of hours.”

  “They can’t escape,” Raab said. “That can’t happen.”

  “We’ll have them soon enough,” Colonel Tessler assured him.

  “Keep me informed,” Raab said, his mood crashing. If they were on the run, that could mean they would attempt to “go public” or get completely out of the country. This just couldn’t happen.

  Raab felt a little sicker. He knew that Tessler was a superior operator, a man who’d brought down some of the most dangerous men on earth, but he wasn’t hunting some Jihadists, or tracking some Chink. This was different. Keegan and Metzler weren’t ordinary men. And they were with Rainee Hall. How insane was this?

  No woman, not his two wives, or any subsequent females, engaged him in the way she did. She was brilliant, and that gave her a real sexiness no other woman had.

  Rainee Hall was a genius in neuroscience but an idiot in politics. She didn’t grasp the realities of power and purpose. Or the necessity of what he was doing.

  If he had her, he could bring her on board, make her see the reality, and get her to solve the problem with the chip she’d designed in the first place. She’d created the foundation that led to the error. It was her responsibility to solve it and get on board. She could become a hero to the movement, or a traitor. And right now, it looked like it might be the latter.

  Raab, looking for stability, went for an early morning “correcting” vodka and orange juice. His staff had been allowed to sleep in, as they had stayed up late to clean up after the party.

  Drink in hand, he wandered through the soon to be closed down Facility, where he’d spent the last three years and done some of his very best work. He intended to keep this place as a vacation retreat once he moved to Virginia.

  42

  They were obsessed with every boat, plane, or bird, the sky both protector and hider of potential trouble. It wasn’t until they were maybe thirty miles from the coast that they relaxed even a little. And still, to avoid coastal patrols, her uncle continued his run out to sea, then south and way past their eventual entry point. They were off the coast of Chile before he turned and headed north.

  Far out from the coast, the water, agitated by El Niño, surged and fell, but in a tolerable, low rhythm.

  They slowed and drifted for the rest of the afternoon. Her uncle took a nip now and then from a flask. Nobody else needed to. They were all wired up from the hyperalert pills Keegan had provided, so anything resembling rest or naps wasn’t in the equation.

  Finally, as afternoon faded into twilight—a massive sun hanging and then disappearing in the distant clouds—twilight gave way to night. They turned north for an hour and then headed toward shore. The air was heavy and the tension heavier as they closed in on the coast.

  “El Niño is restless,” Troy said. “She will be here in force soon enough, her skirts high.”

  Troy had a sophisticated sonar system, a Seascape Doppler he’d built into the
boat himself and was very proud of. And his pair of pigeon-hunting hawks.

  The sea became choppier now, but to their favor, as a light evening fog cloaked them as they turned and headed directly east for Baja.

  Troy informed them of the schedules of Mexican police boats, which, he assured them, were synonymous with the Tijuana cartel. “The cartel is obsessed with drones. Hell, they have more than the government. Wait, they are the government.”

  He got a laugh.

  “Your uncle’s great,” Metzler said.

  She nodded. He was.

  During the whole trip, Mora and Troy had been making cracks, joking, having a good time. Soldiers for whom the tension of life and death was the most important tension of their lives, the one they understood.

  She’d gone forward and they talked about the family. He wanted to know who was doing what. He was, as always, easy to talk to, empathetic, always, as her mother once described him, a rebel with an unknown cause.

  Mora, fascinated by the hawks, wanted to know if and when they’d be released.

  “I don’t release them until I think I might need to,” Troy said. “In my opinion, they are the essence of evolutionary intelligence. Pigeons, the little spies, are a far lower species. If I pick up a signal that lets me know pigeons are flying in the area with their little cameras, and they’re headed in my direction, I release.”

  “How do you know they’re bad pigeons?” Mora asked.

  “I shoot first and ask later. My boys will take them down. On this occasion, to be sure, I’ll release them just in case.”

  Raniee thought he was just showing off.

  “And they just do their job and come back?” Mora asked.

  “It’s what they know. They’re good soldiers. I’m their momma, poppa, and drill sergeant. I learned how to train them from a guy who trained everything from geese to pigeons and hawks.”

  They ran slow and quiet toward the coastline, snaking over the waves and troughs.

  When it was time, around 1:30 in the morning, Troy released his two pigeon-killing hawks. “You can’t flourish in this world where pigeons, dolphins, and other creatures are out to do you in if you don’t have your own weapons.”

  Rainee had a fixed smile. This was what these men, and tens of thousands like them, missed. The tension, the excitement, the edge. One of the great tragedies was that of sending millions off to war, but having no plan, no means, of reintegrating them back into society. And maybe society was going to pay a big price.

  The tranquility of their journey ended when Troy picked up the approach of a boat and said, “I think we might soon have uninvited company.” He showed them on the Seascape Doppler and then some other instrument she wasn’t familiar with.

  Keegan, studying the horizon with powerful night glasses, said, “About half a mile southeast and closing. It’s locked on us. Probably Mexican Coast Guard.”

  “Those damn Mexicans,” Duran said.

  “You’re Mexican,” Mora said.

  “That’s what I mean,” Duran said and got a general laugh.

  Rainee smiled. If there was one thing above all about soldiers that she loved, it was the refusal to surrender their dark sense of humor, no matter the situation. As one of them, who died in her arms, said, “Doc, tell me a really bad joke and I’ll die happy.”

  “You’re really beautiful,” she’d said.

  He smiled. And he did die. And she thought of him every time somebody told a joke, good or bad.

  43

  Troy opened his speedboat up to full throttle and they raced toward shore at speeds Rainee had never experienced on the ocean before, not even when she went out fishing with him years ago.

  It’s going to be over before it even gets started, she thought grimly. Maybe it was delusional right from the start.

  A powerful searchlight stabbed through the foggy darkness to the south of them, the light dancing over the white wave tops.

  “Looks like somebody is looking to invite us to their party,” Troy yelled. “Gonna be a few bumps in the road, folks. Get a grip.”

  Rainee grabbed a railing. Next to her, Keegan was holding on with one hand, tracking their pursuer with his night glasses in the other as they slammed over the waves.

  Her uncle hit a new gear and the powerful engines kicked like rocket engines with a violent surge.

  Troy yelled, “You bastards want to dance, let’s dance!”

  He turned the boat radically one way, then the other, slamming down over waves with amazing ease.

  He swung around and headed out to sea for a short distance, curled around, and went straight for the shore, cutting blind through the black night and fog, and now he had the boat surfing a wave.

  “We’re gonna part company,” Troy yelled as they straightened out. “I’ll run back to see if things don’t work out and you can’t get the chopper.”

  “Secure your packs,” Keegan yelled. “We’re going in.”

  “Troy,” Rainee yelled, “you just outrun them and go to Peru. Don’t worry about us. We have other ways out of here.”

  “They can catch a cold,” Troy said, “but they can’t catch me.”

  “Havin’ fun now,” Mora yelled.

  “Nothin’ like it,” Duran agreed.

  “Get ready to hit the dance floor, my pretties!” Troy yelled as they slammed down another wave. “Can’t get you too close on account of all the rocks. You’re on your own. See you later. It’s been a pleasure. I’ll lure the boat away from you.”

  Rainee prepared to jump into the black sea as the boat turned and slowed.

  “Keep tight,” Keegan said. “Water’s rough—we don’t want to get separated. Hold each other by your packs or lifejackets. Stay together.”

  Rainee didn’t have time to think about the situation. They were going to jump into rough water between a chasing boat and the rocks. It didn’t get any more exhilarating and scary.

  Their only saving grace was fog blocking the moon, the only light coming from the chasing boat.

  They prepared to hit the water as it was now obvious the boat chasing them had a lot of speed but appeared to have momentarily lost track of them.

  The darkness would make them virtually impossible to find once they were in the water. Getting to shore through the rocks was another issue.

  “You’ll bail over the starboard side,” Troy yelled. “Then I’m gonna split in a big hurry. Good luck.”

  As the boat raced toward shore, the rock formations dead ahead, if there was a miscalculation, they’d wreck and it would be over.

  The chasing boat appeared to be about a quarter mile out, a powerful light knifing across the choppy seas and now turning in their direction.

  Then a burst of automatic gunfire sent everyone ducking.

  Troy swerved violently, surfing violently across the waves.

  “Close as I can get,” Troy yelled. “See you soon.”

  He cut the engines.

  “Go, go, go!” Keegan yelled, slapping each of them as they went in. Metzler and Duran first, Mora, then Rainee, with Keegan right behind her.

  They headed for the rocks and shore. Keegan stayed with her, and when then moved toward the rocks, he had hold of her pack. As powerful a swimmer as she was, there was almost no chance she had the necessary control in that violent water without his help.

  They worked to get closer together as they headed for shore. She glanced back and saw Troy’s boat race off down the coast and turn out to sea. Troy trying to draw the chasing boat off of them.

  But the pursuing boat didn’t go after Troy. They came in closer to shore. It meant they knew what had happened and were now coming in for the kill.

  A spotlight running over the water sought to light them up as the boat closed. The sporadic automatic weapons fire snapped close and zinged off the rocks they were trying to reach.

  Keegan forced her toward the rocks as gunfire slapped the water and the rocks around them.

  44

  Fierce waves to
ssed Rainee about, dragging her under, then flipping her up into the teeth of the next wave with a force that threatened to carry her to destruction on the rocks.

  They came on relentlessly, slamming her about as she fought to keep her movement and grab onto one of the rocks. Then a massive wave crashed over them and tore her away as she flailed in desperation not to be carried back out to sea.

  Somebody grabbed her pack and pulled her back. It was Keegan. He moved her with ease to a more protective spot in a circle of the rocks.

  Duran made it beside them and then Metzler came in helping Mora, who’d smashed hard into one of the outlying rocks and had blood on his face.

  A searchlight washed over them in the crashing water.

  “We need to get out of here before reinforcements show up on the highway,” Keegan said. “We can’t get trapped here.”

  But just as he was about to lead them on shore, he turned, looking back toward the pursuing boat, and he said, “What the hell is he doing?”

  Rainee moved out between rocks to where she could see the ocean. At first all she saw was the slapping white tops of the waves, and then she saw the light of their pursuer and now her uncle’s boat riding the waves towards that light. He was coming back!

  You crazy bastard, no, get out of here! Rainee thought.

  But he never flinched from his target.

  “Jesus . . .” Rainee muttered in disbelief and her uncle’s boat shot across the waves toward the other boat.

  Then the light that had been searching for them swung around and picked up her uncle’s boat as it bore down on their boat.

  She expected Troy to turn and maybe get the other boat to give chase.

  But to her horror and disbelief, he never turned. He went straight for the gunboat like a rocket. She stopped breathing.

  Troy’s speedboat hit head-on at full throttle, sending both boats airborne in a violent, fireball embrace before crashing back into the sea in flaming pieces.