by Ted Bell
Hawke said, “This the Mato Grosso area of Brazil. I recently had the misfortune to spend a lot of time in this region of the Amazon rain forest. Here is the true epicenter of burgeoning terrorist activity in Latin America. This region is the home of large leftist guerilla army units that include narco-terrorists, criminal gangs, and international Islamist terrorist operations.”
A hand shot up. Hawke saw it belonged to a famous-face CNN reporter, Hardy Porter.
“Why do you say that, Commander Hawke? Since when have Islamic terrorist groups had a foothold in Latin America?”
“Since 1983, when Hezbollah became the first to establish a base here. These were Shiite Muslims funded, armed, and trained by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. These dense jungles were rightly seen as an ideal place to both raise money for jihad and train raw recruits from the countryside. The plan was to forcibly recruit, indoctrinate, and train armed teenage thugs to form a large army of ruthless fighters. The plan has succeeded.”
“You’re saying such camps actually exist? How do you know?”
“I saw work camps with my own eyes. I lived among them for months doing road construction as a slave laborer. These jihadistas are comprised of every nationality, made up of every kind of narco-guerilla and criminal element. The foot soldiers are mere farmboys, recruited with the promise of high pay and cheap narcotics. The officers I saw, however, were Arab and Chinese.”
“Jihadista? Never heard that expression before.”
“I made it up,” Hawke said, suppressing a smile at the ensuing chuckles.
“How do you spell that?” the CNN fellow said, pencil to hand.
Hawke told him. Another hand shot up.
“Sheikhs in the jungle?” someone said. There was some more chuckling from the media contingent. “I thought they preferred desert warfare.”
“Many fled to the Amazon jungles, on the heels of the Lebanese Civil War in the early seventies. During Osama bin Laden’s 1999 visit to Brazil, he spent a good deal of time arousing the faithful. He started terror cells and left his officers in charge. The cells have grown exponentially in ensuing years. One of the men Osama left behind is named Muhammad Top. He poses, I’ve reason to believe, a threat to U.S. security.”
A good-looking newsreader from FOX raised her hand.
“Why the Amazon?”
“It’s a vast, ungovernable area. Little or no law at all. You have a lethal combination of poverty, illicit activity, disenfranchised cocoa farmers and guerillas, and an ill-equipped or nonexistent military. There are countless rural youths, all too ready to enlist. A terrorist’s idea of heaven on earth. Bin Laden knew a good thing when he saw it.”
“These terrorists you unearthed down there, Commander. Are they planning attacks on Rio, Buenos Aires? Bogotá?”
“Anything’s possible. Muhammad Top fancies himself as some modern day liberator who would free South America from the Yankee chains. To that end, he is massing armies and training them exhaustively with the latest weaponry. Attacks on the capitals you mention are a possibility. So is an attack on the United States.”
Then the CNN reporter said, his voice dripping sarcasm, “More weapons of mass destruction, Commander? I’d hate to see a replay of Iraq.”
“I can’t speak to that. I saw no WMD with my own eyes. I would certainly not be surprised to learn that they did. They have limitless resources to buy what they can’t build.”
An air force general raised his hand. “How do these armies of yours move around without attracting any attention?”
“Hidden, General. The forest canopy shields them from prying eyes. A huge labor force is building a strategic military highway. It could stretch as far as central America, and ultimately into Mexico. This highway would allow them to transport men and materiel. And, give them access to the southern borderline of the United States.”
“You saw plans for such a highway?”
“I built a portion of such a highway.”
A pretty blonde CBS news reporter raised her hand. “Commander Hawke, can you offer us any proof of this supposed collusion between Latin American countries allied against America? It’s a fairly preposterous charge.”
“As a matter of fact, I can,” Alex said. “Slide, please?”
The monitors filled with Stokely’s underwater images of the Russian-built Yakhont antiship missiles found aboard the sunken airplane.
“These pictures were shot three days ago in the Dry Tortugas. They were shot inside a downed airplane lying in thirty feet of water. This plane is located about twenty-five miles from Key West. These missiles were being transported from Cuba, where they were purchased, to an air force base outside Caracas, Venezuela.”
“Chávez is buying these from Fidel?”
“Yes, indeed. Venezuela purchases weapons from Castro, who buys them from the Russians directly.”
“How did you learn this, Commander Hawke?”
“The Venezuelan intelligence officer who actually purchased the Russian missiles in Cuba told me so.”
“Any idea what Venezuela intends to do with weapons like this?”
“As I said, every crooked strongman in Latin America sees himself as the new Simon Bolívar. Chávez’s stated goal is to reunite all South America. My source indicates he has ties to the Brazilian terror cells. His primary objective, however, is annexing Cuba.”
“What? Could you say that again?”
“Cuba is mired in Venezuelan debt. Should Castro prove mortal, I think you’ll see Chávez move to annex Cuba shortly after the funeral.”
A flurry of hands shot into the air.
“Commander Hawke, do you really think America should feel threatened by a thug like Chávez?”
“Chávez is determined to humble the Yankee imperialists. Venezuela is spending billions on rearmament. President Chávez is buying helicopters, submarines, and high-tech Su-35 fighters from the Russians. Through secret agreements with Castro, he arranges for thousands of Cuban technicians, who know Russian equipment, to relocate to Venezuela and maintain it. Chávez is Castro’s rich uncle dream come true.”
“So. We got Russian anti-ship missiles built to be carried by Russian fighter jets owned by Venezuela. Who’s Chávez going to shoot at?”
“Venezuela and her allies would use the weapons in wartime against U.S. oil shipping in the Gulf of Mexico.”
“Wartime.”
“Again. That’s what my source said. Wartime. The Venezuelan military war games America all the time.”
“Sink our tankers. Venezuela, Mexico, all of them lining up against us. The south against the north. That’s what you believe?”
“My chief concern now is that Chávez is supporting the jihadistas. He’ll use them as a test for weakness before challenging America in the Gulf of Mexico. If the jungle armies succeed—next question.”
A silence fell over the gymnasium. It was the first time anyone had said out loud what many had perhaps been hearing and thinking privately. That war in the southern hemisphere was a distinct possibility. That the Islamist terrorists could be very willing pawns to an anti-U.S. movement throughout Latin America. Then a fiery old reporter, a former Yank champ at Wimbledon named Clark Graebner, puffed himself up and spoke.
“Commander Hawke, I don’t know you from Adam. I’ll take the secretary’s word you know a little bit about all this. But what you may not know is that the U.S. Navy is stretched pretty thin right now. As is our Army. As are our Marines. Hell, we hardly have enough National Guardsmen left to stop a dogfight and most of them are headed to the Mexican border. Now you waltz in here, stirring up a whole new pot of trouble with this crazy notion of terror cells in the jungle and Brazilian war games. As if we didn’t have enough on our goddamn plate with goddamn Iraq. Now, my question is, what do you have to say about that, Commander Hawke?”
Hawke looked at the red-faced man, his own face devoid of any emotion, and gave his answer.
“Well, sir, I’d say America has fetched up somewhere be
tween Iraq and a hard place.”
42
GUNBARREL, TEXAS
H omer reached up with the idea he would test the fire escape ladder. He wrapped his near-frozen fingers around the cold metal of the bottom rung, but hesitated before he yanked down on it. The damn extension ladder, which was supposed to slide easily down to the ground, was crusty with rust and grime. It might squeak like hell when he pulled on it.
He had to do something. He was tired of waiting here with his back pressed up against the brick wall. The smoker in the window up above him had flipped his butt out into the dark ten minutes ago.
Homer exhaled and saw his breath hang a second and crystallize in the air.
So, was the guy still up at the window, or not?
Hadn’t lit another one, the smoker, so, maybe he was just taking the night air. Hell, it was cold as a witch’s left tit out here. Maybe a little colder. He was freezing his butt off, missing the powerful heater in the Vic. Glad he’d thought to wear his rawhide gloves.
He’d crept around the building twice now, looking for another way inside the big building. There was a tall doorway at the rear, but it was sealed up tight with a heavy slab of aluminum. Padlocked. The door was heavily dented and pried open like a piecrust around the edges. He saw something useful lying almost hidden under a lot of trash. A tire iron. Somebody had tried to get in here a bunch of times over the years and failed.
He didn’t see any sense in trying to pry the door open now. It would be way too noisy for his purposes, but he picked up the tire iron anyway, just in case he got desperate enough later on.
Hell with it. He’d try the ladder. He pulled down slowly on the bottom rung, trying to be quiet about it.
Screeeek.
Damn!
He let it go like a hot poker. The grinding noise had been brief and not all that loud. Still, he waited, his heart thudding pretty good inside his chest, expecting to hear somebody shout from the window over his head. Or shine a light on him and shoot him. His gloved hand moved down to grip the butt of his sidearm. His heart slowed down to near normal after a couple of minutes of nothing happening.
Maybe nobody inside had heard the screeching ladder.
Hell, maybe there was nobody inside to hear anything.
He looked up at the rotted-out fire escape again. Those iron stairs would wake the dead if he yanked that extension ladder down. Hadn’t been used in a few decades probably, maybe more. He looked around the empty side lot, overgrown with weeds. He was looking for a barrel or something he could stand on, maybe reach up and grab the permanent staircase without using the extension ladder. He’d need something pretty high. A couple of big wooden crates would do it.
But he didn’t see anything like that.
There was a bunch of crap laying around in the overgrown field out back. A kind of junkyard back there, surrounded by a barbed wire fence that had seen better days thirty years ago. A couple of old Mack truck cabs and trailers from the fifties were parked right where somebody’d left them sixty years ago.
Maybe he could find something useful back there in the yard. Hell, it sure beat standing here freezing to death. He inched along the wall toward the rear of the building. In the pale moonlight, everything looked silver. Especially the rusted trailer rigs on the other side of the barbed wire fence surrounding the junkyard.
At the rear of the nearest rig, a couple of fifty-gallon steel drums were lying on their sides. Two of those babies stacked up would just be about perfect. Plus, if he ripped some of the old wire fence out, he could roll those drums back around to the fire escape without making any noise at all.
He kept low and made for the fence. He got there quick and knelt in the bushes, looking back at the looming brick building. No sound, no lights in any upstairs windows. No nothing. He grabbed a fistful of wire stands and yanked. The stuff came away nice and easy in his hand and two or three of the rotted posts just broke off at ground level. He stood up and moved at low crouch into the abandoned junkyard.
It was about twenty feet over to the oil drums by the trailer and he got there without any alarms going off.
He snapped on his mini-light and stuck it in the one upright drum. There was about a foot of black gooey stuff at the bottom, maybe just old oil, maybe worse ’cause it stunk. The two other drums were empty although the bottom of one of them was completely rusted out. But, hell, they’d do in a pinch. He’d stack ’em, and then haul himself up on the fire escape.
What the hell was that?
HE’D HEARD something. He whipped his head around, automatically looking back at the factory. No, it had been closer. Not a human sound. A kind of a snickering noise. Rats, he thought. Rats inside this trailer? That must be it.
He found himself staring up at the doors of the funky old trailer. You could still make out (barely) the faded words Tequila Mockingbird over a bottle of cheap Mexican hootch. The rear doors were locked. Not only locked, but there was a heavy chain wrapped through the handles and locked with a large, rusty padlock. Do you padlock an empty truck and leave it in a field for twenty years? No.
So, what the hell was in there was so all-fired important?
He stuck the tire iron through the twin door handles and pulled back hard as he could without making a huge racket. Didn’t budge an inch. He looked at the padlock again, yanked on it. Rusty, but it wasn’t going anywhere. Now, he was curious. He stuck the sharp end of the tire iron up under the corner of the steel door and tried to pry it upward. The rusted metal peeled up about six inches. He shoved the tire iron in deeper and pulled upwards really hard. It gave another inch or so. He dropped the iron and snapped on his mini-light again.
He bent down to peer inside the trailer.
Couldn’t see diddly-squat in there. But there was one thing. He could see blue starlight coming down from above. So, part of the top of the trailer was missing. Rusted out. And there was one of those narrow ladders going up to the roof that looked like it just might hold his weight. He clicked off his light and stuck it back in his Sam Browne belt.
Hell, climb up, see what was in the old truck and then go find what was going on in the building where the Yankee Slugger cab had disappeared.
He was half way up the ladder when he heard somebody shout, “Who’s out there? This is private property! I got a gun and I’ll use it, pod-nuh. I’m comin’ out there.” The voice was raw, raspy, and vaguely familiar. The smoker upstairs? The red-eye? Most likely.
He was coming through the open field along the side of the building. He had a light too, a powerful beam that was sweeping the ground in front of him in great looping arcs. In about two seconds he was going to figure out somebody must be in the junkyard.
Homer was about to shout, “Police! Drop your weapon!” but he was in an awkward position hanging on the ladder and besides he had the feeling this guy was the type to shoot first and ask questions later. Or, not ask any questions, ever. Just bury the evidence out here in the yard.
He could jump down and confront the guy but something told him that was a really bad idea. No. Homer had nowhere to go but up. He stuck his boot in the bottom rung, reached for the highest rung he could, and quickly pulled himself up. He got to the top of the ladder just before the light caught him.
“Stop! Hold it right there! You move and you’re dead.”
Homer swiveled his head around but all he could see was the blinding white light.
“I ain’t moving. I’m the law. Put your weapon down.”
There was a loud pop and a round whistled past Homer’s ear.
“The next one doesn’t miss,” the man’s scratchy voice said. “Throw down that gun and we’ll have us a little talk about what happens to trespassers here in Gunbarrel.”
Homer put his right hand to his sidearm. He wished he could see the man’s face. Judge his intent.
The next round caught him in the upper left arm and almost spun him right off the ladder. It felt like somebody had slugged him hard as they could with a two-by-four, bu
t he managed to keep his footing and hold the ladder tight with his right hand as he climbed the last rung. He could remain on the ladder and wait for the next bullet. He could leap to the ground but he couldn’t outrun that beam of light.
He knew he had to go up, up and over. Inside the truck. Now, while he still could.
In that split second, up on the top rung, he saw why there had been so much moonlight streaming down inside the trailer. The top had rusted almost completely away. And shoot, the truck bed was halfway full up to the top with something. Kind of whitish blue in the starlight, the stuff looked like a load of dried out timber and rocks. Sticks and stones, maybe.
Another bullet whistled a hot tune over his head.
He pitched forward and fell inside.
He landed on top of the pile of rattling baseball bats and tried to scramble to his feet. Except the truck wasn’t full of dried timber at all, Homer saw when he picked one up in his hand.
Hell no, it wasn’t sticks and stones.
It was bones.
43
MADRE DE DIOS, BRAZIL
C an it see us?” Saladin said from the bushes. Harry and Hassan were hiding, watching the battle robot’s steady approach across the bridge.
“God, I hope not. Stay the fuck down,” Harry said, trying to make himself invisible. “Stop moving around! It’s looking for movement!”
“I’m looking for Caparina, damn you,” Saladin said, reluctantly crouching down.
“Right. If she made it across and is still alive, we’ll get her out. How’s the leg?”
“Hurts like hell.”
“Bullets are painful things.”
The approaching Troll was nearing the end of the bridge. Having no targets, it had stopped firing. Harry studied the tall, hooded periscope camera, whipping back and forth, looking for something to kill. Something distinctly alien about this machine, Harry thought. Spooky. It reminded him of the creatures in War of the Worlds. The way they chased fleeing humans around the countryside.