Operation Chaos

by Watkins, Richter

  Armando did as he was told.

  Colonel Tessler voiced his outrage: “When you get the fool awake, have him call the head of coastal patrol and the Baja command center and patch me in. Put that bastard under cold water and wake his ass up.”

  “Yes, sir,” Armando said. “I wake him.”

  Keegan didn’t give them a chance to talk more. He hung the phone up.

  Then Keegan turned to the three in the back seat and said, “We have a short window to get this done. Metzler and Duran, clean out security. Doc and I will go after Raab, get what we came for, and go. We’ll pick up Mora and head out to sea. Rainee will contact her people and we’ll go from there. And it all has to happen before Colonel Tessler decides to come in and take a look and see why nobody is contacting him.”

  It sounded so simple. All great plans . . .

  Everybody tended to their weapons, checking clips, getting ready.

  Keegan told Armando again, to reassure him, that once inside, he could leave. Go home to his family.

  As they crawled along the hillside toward the Facility, it all looked quiet, with some low light, probably Malibu type, behind the walls.

  “The big party was for the new mayor?” Keegan asked.

  “Party for governor of Baja. The man they are going to make president,” Armando said. “He stop many places. He very popular.”

  They drew closer to the twelve-foot walls topped with barbed wire. Armando said two security guards would be somewhere near the house making rounds. When they came in, they’d check them out. The rest of the compound security detail would be in the outbuilding behind the main house.

  “Doc,” Keegan said, turning to Rainee. “You’re about to meet your nemesis. You ready?”

  “As I can be.” In truth, she was very excited at the prospect of facing the man who’d stolen much of her work, kidnapped her patients, and turned them into weapons against their own country.

  She still had some concern about Keegan, though she felt that was unwarranted. Still, in spite of the logic, she needed final confirmation.

  56

  The car, driven as carefully by Armando as if he was worried about landmines, rolled through a gauntlet of palms, the road curling up over a rise to the knoll where the Facility was perched.

  Both Duran and Metzler, on either side of Rainee, had their weapons on their laps, the silencer of one touching her left leg, the butt of the other near her right knee.

  Her weapon remained for the moment in the side holster her uncle had given her.

  They slowed as they approached the entrance of high, barbed-wire-topped walls.

  She spotted the rotor blades of a helicopter on the roof, partially visible under the moon, sitting like a giant mosquito. He’s home. The bastard is home. She felt a deep satisfaction that they might yet have a chance, that is, if Keegan wasn’t gaming them. No way, she thought. She went over everything from the moment he kidnapped her and wanted to think that she and Duran were just being a little over the top paranoid, but that wasn’t enough to put to rest her apprehensions. There was a logic to it. The deaths at the Vereen compound, on the road, were all unavoidable and, maybe to Keegan, irrelevant. Collateral damage.

  They passed a small cemetery, lonely, stark under the gossamer moonlight.

  “That’s a weird place for a cemetery,” Duran remarked.

  “That’s where those who don’t make it through the operations end up buried,” Keegan said matter-of-factly. Vereen handled that.

  It was a small cemetery with crosses above each grave. Her men? The sight of those graves sent a chill through her, as she had probably worked with every one of them.

  “How many graves are there?” she asked.

  “Maybe eighteen, nineteen,” Keegan said. “They were buried with honors.”

  Rainee, angry, flared. “Men who were kidnapped, underwent experiment operations like guinea pigs, then died can’t be buried by their killers with honors. There’s no honor.”

  “They were educated about the risks and then volunteered,” Keegan said.

  Keegan turned to look back at her. The skin of his angular face stretched tight across his granite features. She’d gotten very used to the look of his face. He said nothing more, which she appreciated. Just gave her a nod, as if acknowledging her point, then turned around.

  It was a very strained moment inside the car.

  After a minute, Keegan asked her, almost as if to get away from that conversation and back to what they were doing, “When was the last time you saw Raab? At the hearings?”

  She glanced at Duran, who made a little shrugging gesture, like this was all bizarre.

  “A week before he was due to testify. I remember he had some meetings with—I thought at the time—his attorneys. Now I think they might have been his friends in the military. This was always the backup?”

  “They’d been planning a long time for what happened here,” Keegan said. “The generals and contractors who backed him had no intention of letting anyone stop the progress of the research.”

  “Apparently,” she said.

  “We’re here to end it,” Metzler said. “Let’s concentrate on that.”

  She thought about Raab and all his fantasies and rages against the deplorable state of America. Her colleagues used to joke about him. Called him Doctor No.

  But Raab turned out to be no joke. He was at the center of something serious and dangerous. She remembered his taking leaves from work. Was he coming here to build his secret research clinic?

  She stared at the back of Keegan’s head, the titanium skull plate covered by hair. What is your mindset? You got us here. You can still fulfill your mission.

  People make radical reversals, but not often and only under the influence of an extreme revelation that contradicts their beliefs. She didn’t know if that was the case with this man.

  They approached the Facility gate—massive, medieval-looking metal doors at least fifteen feet across and equally as high.

  “Just go about it as you would normally,” Keegan told Armando. “Be calm. Take some deep breaths. Those sensors can detect unusual neural activity like intense nervousness.”

  “Yes, I know them well and they know me well. No problem,” Armando replied with a hint of soft sarcasm. “I do many times.”

  There were sensors on the wall. A roundish steel box at the end of a metal arm now rising at their approach, turning and tracking them as they came forward. It had different-sized apertures and looked like the head of a space alien.

  “I tell robot man what he wants to hear,” Armando said. “We have—what you say—friendship.”

  For all they knew, there could be a hundred Mexican Special Forces waiting for them. It could end very quickly and violently.

  The pulled up to the extended arm.

  Lowering the driver’s side window, Armando turned his face to the arm. It moved toward him with multiple apertures with different forms of biometric readers.

  Armando reached out, extended a finger, and one of the eyes came down. A sleeve emerged and took in the extended finger, then released it. She’d seen DNA readers like this one. Another probe went up and studied his face and his eyes. And while this was going on, another arm like an appendage came down like a live vine and went under the vehicle. A bomb sniffer.

  When the quick processing was done, a green light came on, followed by a robotic voice: “Welcome, Armando. You have successfully completed initial surveillance. Please enter with caution.”

  Armando glanced at Keegan, nodded, then turned and chuckled and answered in vulgar Spanish: “Vete a hacer punetas!”

  Which, Rainee thought, was some version of fuck off.

  The robot replied in its metallic voice, “Yes, thank you.”

  The massive gates opened.

  “The robot joke with me,” Armando said.

  Rainee wasn’t amused. She feared what lay beyond the walls.

  57

  Eagle’s chopper circled, then hovered,
its powerful spotlight picking up pieces of the debris, searching the surrounding ocean and beach.

  Colonel Tessler spoke to the commanders on the ground as Mexican coast guard boats added more light to the area.

  The Mexicans had come up with two mangled and burned bodies so far. Both appeared to be Mexican nationals. No one could have survived the explosion that was seen two miles down the highway by Mexican soldiers who were now combing the beach for other bodies.

  Again Tessler failed to get a contact with his security chief and now couldn’t get the driver to answer. Were they all drunk and asleep? That wasn’t impossible.

  First he had to make sure what had happened below. He ordered his pilot down.

  Tessler wasn’t sure whether he wanted it to be them or not. If it was, the big problem would be solved. On the other hand, it would end this insane hunt. His belief at the moment was that this had nothing to do with them, that they were heading for somewhere along the coast of South America. He would find them. Losing her would be on him. Raab would be beside himself.

  The man not only needed her expertise to deal with the problems some of the soldiers were having, the man had a burning obsession for Doctor Hall. He’d been spying on her for years. Hacking into her computers, having her tracked, who she was meeting.

  Man was nuts about the woman. All the women available to him and he’s obsessed with the one who didn’t want anything to do with him. Testified against him. Jesus! It made no sense.

  Bastard is going to blame me for sure, however it goes, the colonel thought, no matter what lay below him.

  But he was now thinking, agreeing with the Mexicans, that it was a crash involving competing smugglers.

  The two coast guard boats, lights bobbing on the water, moved closer to the rocks.

  Tessler didn’t want to widen the calls to locate the Facility security chief, fearing that something would get back to Raab before any answers were known.

  Tessler’s chopper landed on the road. He got out, ducked under the swirl of the rotors, and made his way to the commander on the scene. A man he knew reasonably well.

  “Captain Hernandez, we always seem to meet under strange circumstances.”

  The smell of fuel and fire residue hung in the air.

  Before he even spoke, Tessler knew it wouldn’t be in English or Spanish. Hernandez loved to parade the fact that he knew something like five languages. This time, it sounded Italian. But then, he had a beautiful wife from Milan. “Sono mato in circostanze strame.”

  “That’s great,” Tessler said. “Give it to a simple man like me in English.”

  “I was born under strange circumstances,” Hernandez said with a smile.

  “Weren’t we all?”

  His friend smiled and nodded. They shook hands.

  “What do we have?”

  “Nothing so far. Pieces washing ashore. Big damn explosion. Two unidentifiable bodies.”

  “Female?”

  “No. Both male. Most likely Mexican, as they had big dicks.”

  Tessler struggled to restrain a grin. It was Hernandez, after all. “No idea of the identity of the boats?”

  “Not yet.”

  Under little visibility from the foggy, overcast night sky, Colonel Tessler followed the Mexican Special Forces officer, who was also a major cartel operative, down on the beach, where the two bodies they’d recovered lay.

  Tessler said, “We need to know if Americans were involved in this. The ID of the boats will help a lot. We know the boat we’re looking for.”

  The Mexican commander nodded, spoke to someone on his shoulder mike, then said, “We have divers going into the water. We’ll find out soon from the debris.”

  Tessler was increasingly unhappy with himself. He’d come so close to grabbing them after his team located the river camp and yet they’d escaped, reached the Silver Strand and her uncle’s.

  It was a major screw-up. It had never been anticipated that they could get out of the L.A. area. That a stunt like putting the tracker in the goddamn sewer had fooled them was unacceptable. It was, to be sure, a very smart move.

  The Mexican commander rambled on about how sure he was they were smugglers and the attempted escape in the waves had caused the accident. It was, Hernandez said, one of the worst boat accidents he’d ever heard of. Obliterated both craft.

  More patrol boats now appeared in the immediate area and two choppers.

  Tessler had mini-drones roaming out some distance and several moving south, but nothing so far.

  It was still two hours before dawn, but now they had so much light, it was like a night game at a football stadium.

  “We need an ID on those boats soon,” Tessler said again with growing frustration.

  “Divers are bringing in pieces of the boats and we’ll know soon,” Hernandez said.

  Two large, fast boats crashing into each other and only two bodies? That didn’t make sense.

  Of course, sharks might have gotten their fill.

  One of the Mexican boat commanders informed them that a gun battle had preceded the crash.

  Tessler paced. He’d trained two of the most lethal and enhanced warriors on the planet, and they had at least two or three other soldiers with them who were no doubt serious business. And with them, that goddamn neuroscientist who’d betrayed them in the first place.

  Tessler watched with growing frustration and anxiety as more pieces of boat were being dragged up on the beach.

  Still no proof if the boat was the one owned by Doctor Hall’s uncle. They had seen pictures of it in his house.

  Very bad thoughts began to form in the Colonel’s mind. Yet he resisted becoming a victim of them.

  With the Facility in stand-down and nearly empty, and Keegan very familiar with the setup, an insanely dark notion began to intrude into Colonel Tessler’s thinking. He fought it off. Laughed at himself. That kind of move would be so unlikely to succeed, so impossible for Keegan to be part of, and without his okay, it wouldn’t even be possible.

  What if the crash had happened after they went ashore? What if Keegan had turned?

  Slowly, steadily, a sense of panic began to grip Colonel Tessler. “Get men up past the road and see if there’s any evidence of anyone having made it ashore.”

  Colonel Tessler, whose career covered three disastrous wars—Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—understood how smart an enemy could be, especially if your commanders weren’t. And he was beginning to feel this had all been handled wrong.

  There were three possibilities. The boat had nothing to do with his quarry and they were long gone. Or they were dead in the water. Or—the worst, what he’d never seriously entertained—they’d gotten ashore before the crash and were on their way to the Facility.

  No. Ridiculous.

  Tessler hesitated. Were they drunk and sleeping, as Armando had suggested. All of them?

  He didn’t like getting all worked up without clear evidence. A careful man, he needed some hard evidence, assurance.

  58

  They entered the Facility and passed through a gauntlet of towering palms. Rainee sensed that Armando was tightening up, fearful, as if anticipating something bad, and maybe he knew something they didn’t.

  Everyone had their weapons ready. Rainee’s rested on their thighs, as she half-expected a mass of soldiers to pop up and surround them as they headed toward the main villa.

  But no soldiers jumped out. The compound remained quiet. Nobody so far.

  Maybe they were expected because Keegan had already told Raab he was fulfilling his mission. But that made no sense. He didn’t have to hit the Vereen place. Jesus, she thought, these damn pills are making me jumpy as hell.

  Keegan turned off the interior lights. “Go!”

  For a moment she was confused but then realized he didn’t mean her.

  Duran and Metzler exited and vanished on opposite sides into the palms and flower gardens, leaving Rainee alone in the back seat.

  Keegan turned back to Ra
inee. “If you have nothing better to do, maybe we should go up and pay our respects to a former colleague of yours. You ready?”

  “I’m way beyond ready.”

  He smiled. In the dark of the car, the severe, angular, tight face of this man transformed when he smiled. It softened a bit.

  She knew Keegan had plenty of reason on some level to blame her for everything that had happened, forcing him to remember things he didn’t want to remember, and causing the crisis that ended in his shooting his assets and led to everything that had happened since. He was a killing machine, after all.

  In that sense, she was his greatest nightmare. And, if he still believed what was so deeply inculcated in him, it was soon going to be over and Raab would end up, once again, winning.

  But the moment she had these thoughts, she dismissed them as absurd and situational paranoia.

  The silver Mercedes, absent Duran and Metzler, crawled past gardens and a fountain, then Armando turned toward the front of the main house, which stood like a beautiful white villa movie set, shining softly in the moonlight, majestic and foreboding.

  An armed guard in what looked like a Mexican police or special forces uniform, automatic weapon strapped to his chest, one hand on the stock and trigger guard, watched their approach.

  Here we go again, Rainee thought.

  Armando lowered the driver’s side window again and waved. The guard motioned them forward but ducked to check who was inside the vehicle. He held up his hand. They stopped.

  Another uniformed security man appeared from around a fountain on the other side, also sporting an automatic weapon. The men didn’t look belligerent, just careful and professional.

  But they had no chance. Duran and Metzler slipped up behind the two men from either side.

  Rainee hoped it would end quickly and without gunfire.

  But one of the men, the man on the right, sensed something and whirled around and he was shot point-blank by Metzler. That triggered the other guard to react and Duran had no choice but to shoot him.