Strike Force Bravo

by Mack Maloney

  There came a commotion at the hangar’s main door. One of Ramosa’s men peeked outside, then gave a hand signal. Ramosa nodded in reply. The doors opened, and a bizarre-looking airplane taxied its way into the hangar, followed by two nondescript freight trucks.

  The noise inside was suddenly overpowering. Ramosa and Marcos had a shouted conversation, most of which only they could hear. It had to do with the crates, what was supposed to be in which crate, and where each crate was supposed to go after being repacked.

  “It’s another switch in plans!” some of the Americans heard Ramosa yell over the plane’s whining engine.

  “Are you sure?” Marcos was heard shouting back. “Another switch?”

  “Absolutely!” Ramosa yelled in reply. “I got it straight from Palm Tree….”

  Now it was Ramosa’s small army of men who went into action, repacking the crates according to the latest orders. The crates themselves were actually moved around the hangar floor to the extent that it would have been just about impossible for a casual observer to know which was crate 1, 2, or 3. Finally, though, Ramosa ordered them sealed and loaded onto their predetermined modes of transport.

  This done, Ramosa turned to Marcos and started yelling at him again, still straining to be heard over the racket.

  “After you take care of them,” some heard Ramosa tell Marcos, indicating the captured Americans, “meet me at the you-know-where.”

  With that, Ramosa took the piece of tongue, put it in his pocket, and left.

  Ozzi was surprised. The bubble of fear from just minutes before had dissipated. He wasn’t scared anymore, just the opposite in fact.

  “I’m dying for my country,” he kept whispering over and over. “I’m dying…for my country.”

  A strange peace had come over the rest of the team, too, even though a grisly death was just seconds away. Sure the tables had suddenly turned on them. But they were still Patriots all, still Ozzi’s heroes. He’d been privileged to know them. And that’s why he was so suddenly calm.

  Even still, Ozzi was doing his job, trying to remember everything he had heard. As he was one of the closest to the crates, he’d kept track of the packing process as best he could, taking mental notes as it proceeded at a fast and furious pace. Others along the line of captured Americans were doing the same thing. Even above the racket of the airplane and the trucks’ engines, they could hear the sound of more packing peanuts being dumped, more bubble wrap being snapped, more duct tape being torn and applied. They each caught fleeting glimpses of the crates being loaded, being sealed, and finally put on their means of transport. But still, because of all the movement and confusion, Ozzi and the others could not quite tell which crate held what and which crate was going where.

  In any case, the two vehicles and the airplane soon departed. One last glance over Ozzi’s shoulder confirmed only a few strands of duct tape and some packing peanuts remained.

  He turned his head slightly to the right now and could see Marcos out of the corner of his eye. The hoodlum had a huge .357 Magnum in hand and was fiddling with the safety button. He began walking down the line of prisoners, pressing the gun barrel against the neck of each American, sometimes yelling, “Boom!” to frighten one into thinking he would be the first to die.

  It didn’t work. The Americans weren’t scared. In fact, Curry was laughing at him, daring Marcos to shoot him first. Puglisi and McMahon began taunting him as well. Soon most of the others were, too. Hunn alone stayed in his private place. He’d come up with another American flag and was quietly holding it in his hands as someone might hold a rosary.

  Ramosa had left 10 men behind to cover Marcos while he performed the executions. They were gathered around the prisoners now, like lions waiting for the kill. Marcos went back down the line, muttering angrily, “I decide who will go first!” This as the Americans continued to mock him. Strangely, though, he ended not on one of the raiders but on Uni, the shuka. He’d been made to kneel up against the wall with the rest of them.

  “I shall do the world a favor, I think,” Marcos declared. “Getting rid of a stupid freak first makes us all a little bit better, don’t you think?”

  Ramosa’s men laughed on cue. “Do him good!” one of them called out.

  “And you are a fucking imbecile, you know,” Marcos hissed at the eunuch in broken English. “What ever gave you the idea that you would wind up making the headlines with this thing? That you of all people would come out on top? I guess idiots have no choice but to dream idiots’ dreams.”

  Marcos then took a step back. Ozzi tensed himself for the gunshot. He could see everything now: Uni, Marcos, the ravenous secret police—it was all happening just a few feet away from him. This was going to be nasty, he thought. But he could not turn away.

  Marcos smiled at the cops around him, pointed the gun at the back of Uni’s shiny bald head…and pulled the trigger.

  The sound of a gunshot exploded throughout the hangar. Ozzi saw the fire and smoke spew from Marcos’s weapon. And it really did seem like the round hit Uni’s skull. But whether the gun misfired or it was divine intervention or because Uni’s head really was made of concrete, incredibly, the bullet ricocheted backward…and hit Marcos right between the eyes.

  Silence…cold and eerie. Marcos stood there for the longest time, absolute bewilderment on his face. He even reached up and felt the hole in his skull. Hunn was the closest American to him. Marcos turned to him and said one word: “How?”

  Hunn was so shocked by what he’d just seen, he couldn’t speak. He could only shrug.

  Marcos went over in a heap a second later.

  Ramosa’s men panicked. This was a little too freaky for them. Half began to run; the other half knew it would be wise to finish off the Americans first before they fled—Captain Ramosa did not forgive unfulfilled orders lightly.

  But just as these men raised their weapons to fire, one of them was shot through the left eye. He, too, went over with a thump! His comrades were aghast. Now what was happening? Did this man somehow shoot himself, too? But then the guy beside him got a bullet through the throat and another to the forehead. The cop beside him instinctively ducked, but not before he caught a round right between the eyes.

  All of the policemen panicked now. This was strange on top of strange, their comrades being shot down by ghosts. But the American prisoners knew what was going on. Ramosa’s evil policemen were getting tap-shot.

  And that could only mean one thing….

  The top of the hangar disappeared a moment later. Suddenly it was just gone, in a blinding explosion, cheap aluminum reduced to metallic cinders. A second after that, a huge airplane roared over the top of the building. Huge…and noisy. With a fuselage that looked like the bottom of a boat.

  A second after that, six men in barely opened parachutes dropped down through the gigantic hole in the roof, guns blazing. They all hit the floor at the same time.

  “We’re Americans!” one of them screamed. “Team Ninety-Nine—U.S. Navy. Get down on the floor…now!”

  Ozzi was stunned. They all were.

  Team Ninety-Nine? he thought. The SEAL assassins? What the fuck were they doing here?

  The American prisoners hit the deck as told and the hangar saw its third gunfight in less than 10 minutes. This one was as one-sided as the last one, though. Ramosa’s men weren’t combat troops; they were barely cops. They were no match for the SEALs.

  As soon as the first six intruders hit the floor, another handful of armed men descended through the roof. These guys weren’t SEALs. Just the opposite, they were dressed like they’d just walked out of a J. Crew catalog. Following them were more huge soldiers—as big as Hunn and his guys—wearing the same jet-black combat suits with the infamous 9/11 patch. They came down on ropes, leaving no doubt they were the ethereal tap-shooters.

  The invaders dispersed expertly throughout the warehouse, hunting down and brutally eliminating the last of Ramosa’s men. It took less than a minute. Then the shooting died
down again.

  Meanwhile the SEALs came along the row of the suddenly liberated Americans and by procedure frisked each one. By the time they got to Hunn, the SEALs were gloating mightily.

  “Got in a bit of a jam, Delta?” one SEAL asked Hunn sarcastically. “Glad we could be of service.”

  Hunn just moaned. Happy to be alive, he knew the special ops community would never let him forget the day that SEALs had to rescue Delta.

  Ozzi was equally relieved but felt even more embarrassed than Hunn. The Gitmo team were his heroes, yet he’d led them into not one but two very dangerous situations, this and the screw-up in the mud room. He was not one of them; just the opposite in fact. But he had one more surprise coming. One last guy came through the roof and landed right in front of him. He took off his helmet and mask and just stood there, smiling.

  Ozzi couldn’t believe it. It was his boss, Major Fox.

  “Sir? What are you doing here?” he cried.

  “Let me ask you the same thing,” Fox replied. “I thought I left you back at the office.”

  Ozzi fell to the seat of his pants—again. “It’s a long story,” he muttered. “You must know some of it already. But how did you find me?”

  Fox reached inside the young officer’s breast pocket and took out his cell phone. He held it up to his eyes. “Don’t you ever turn this thing off?” Fox asked him.

  Ozzi slapped himself upside the head. He couldn’t believe it. He’d committed the same stupid mistake the shuka had! In this Spook-versus-mook business, only an idiot left his cell phone on these days, that is, if he used the same one more than once. Powered-up cells were how the United States tracked terrorists—after all, that’s how the Gitmo team had tracked first Kazeel and then the eunuch. Only a real amateur would have done this. But at least this time, Ozzie’s mistake turned out to be a good thing.

  Finally the two halves of the rogue American team came together in the center of the hangar. It was the first time the original team members had seen one another since the events at Hormuz. Inside 60 seconds they’d exchanged stories on exactly how they all came to be here. They rejoiced at the news of Kazeel’s demise. The Kai team highly commended the Gitmo Four (or Five) for their cunning, initiative—and just plain balls in whacking the superterrorist. The Kais adventure had been of a different sort but just as down and dirty. Though mysteriously cut off from Washington after finding the B-2 spy bomber—no one ever did return Fox’s phone calls—they felt they had no other choice but to continue the search for the people responsible for what happened on Fuggu Island. They did this by scouring every island, atoll, lagoon, shoal, and sandbar from the Bangtang Channel down to Manila Bay. They killed many Aboo terrorists along the way, as these places were infested with them. But they uncovered nothing connected to the events which occurred over the northern Philippines that night.

  But how then did they get on Ozzi’s phone trail or even know enough to start looking for him? the Gitmos asked the Kai team. What’s more, how did they know about the Stingers, and the hangar and Ramosa and the sharfa? Did they have help—as in “inside help”? Just by body language alone, the Kai team seemed to indicate this was the case, and that it went beyond simply tapping into the NSA’s ECHELON system, as the Gitmo group had done. But then the Kais warily eyed the SEALs, the SDS guys, even the DSA officers, anyone not part of the original 9/11 group and buttoned up. “We’ll tell you later,” was all they said.

  The reunion celebration was brief; everyone knew they had to get moving. It was imperative they get out of the hangar before someone else crashed in on them—that seemed to be the pattern these days. Plus the Stingers were gone, on their way to the United States, and the puke Ramosa had the sharfa. They had to try and catch up to them.

  But how were the weapons being moved? That was the big question. The combined Gitmo/Spook/Navy crash team told the Kais everything they could recall hearing during the final packing and shipping process. Again, not just Ozzi had been paying attention; others had, too. But to everyone’s dismay, these reports turned out to have a severe case of rashamons—many different versions of the same story. Some of the Americans were convinced they saw Buddhas being repacked around the missiles. Others said the bad guys had discarded the Buddhas and just packed the weapons cold. Some insisted the missiles and the Buddhas were put in a crate that went on one of the trucks. Others swore the Buddhas only went on the truck and the weapons crate was put onto the weird-looking airplane. Just about the only thing everyone agreed on was that one of the crates had been carried away empty, to be dumped on a beach nearby. But if that was the case, then why have three crates in the first place? Having an empty one didn’t make sense.

  “Thirty-six missiles, thirty-six launchers, two thousand Buddhas, and three crates,” Fox moaned. “Who knows what it all means?”

  “None of us do,” Curry replied. “Because none of us could see the whole thing.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ozzi said suddenly. “He knows….”

  He was pointing at Uni.

  Ryder needed a cigarette. Actually, he needed a carton of them. Along with a couple bottles of Jack Daniel’s, a pool, some sunblock, and a slew of babes.

  He was getting too old for this. Schlepping all over Fuggu Island was one thing. But he’d trooped across so many other islands in the past week, he’d lost count. All of them darker, scarier, and with more prehistoric animals than Kong Island. Until they got the lead on the young DSA officer’s cell phone, it had been a long, dirty, bloody trip. He was just happy that his feet were back on concrete again—and not stuck in the jungle muck.

  But now what? They’d saved their colleagues—but the Stingers had slipped away and were heading for States, and the only guy who knew how was a certified block-head.

  But if there was one thing all of the American team members were good at, it was extricating information from people who would rather keep their mouths shut. And they were all convinced that the shuka knew something. The trouble was the shuka looked like he’d already had the shit kicked out of him—twice. He was battered and bleeding in many places; half his tongue had been cut out. His clothes were soiled and covered with many unidentifiable substances. Though he was somehow able to pull himself up to his knees, he didn’t seem to be in any shape to be “persuaded” about anything.

  That’s why they were all so surprised when the shuka indicated he wanted to make a deal.

  It took Uni a while to make this understandable to the Americans, for he was now a simpleton without a tongue. He first tried waving a rag as a white flag. Then he kissed Hunn’s American flag, the same one the Delta soldier had stuffed into his mouth just minutes before. Only when he pantomimed pledging allegiance to it did he get his point across. Yes, he wanted to “talk.”

  He had a simple proposition for them. I’ll tell you anything you want to know, he indicated. Just don’t kill me. It was only because Uni looked half-dead already that the Americans agreed.

  But then began 10 long minutes of excruciating confusion. The translation gap was not just wide; it was a chasm. No one could really understand what the hell the tongue-less, beaten Uni was trying to tell them. He was gesturing weakly, trying to use crude sign language to get his point across. He even wrote down some things in fractured, unreadable Arabic. But it was sheer torture trying to follow along.

  The Americans managed to get some of it. Uni’s two trips to Manila. Palm Tree. Ramosa. Marcos. The frightening ride in the yacht. The weapons themselves and the three different sets of orders on how to pack them. Of course, half the rogue team knew some of this already. But it was a road they all had to take, for the shuka didn’t know any other way to tell a story except from the beginning, and whenever he felt stymied in his rendition, he went right back to square one and started all over again.

  Finally, though, he approached some sort of climax: Why were three crates built instead of just two? they asked him. Or even just one? Had they and the Buddhas been part of a diversion all along?

/>   Uni seemed to confirm this deflating possibility. The Gitmo contingent hadn’t been subtle in announcing their impending arrival in Manila, nor had they laid low once their boots were on the ground. If Palm Tree knew the Crazy Americans were coming all along, just as Uni, Ramosa, et al., had, that meant time was of the essence. While the American team was off killing the Buddha man and the coffin maker, the bad guys were sewing up loose ends. By the time the Americans finally zeroed in on Uni, the bad guys had bought just enough time to send the missiles on their way, making the narrowest of escapes.

  This news didn’t sit well with the Americans; shooting first and asking questions later was almost an occupational hazard of the 9/11 team, most especially Hunn’s men. They’d blown opportunities in the past simply by being too trigger-happy while moving about as gracefully as a herd of elephants. It had happened right before Hormuz and now it had apparently happened again.

  Finally Curry spoke up: “OK—so we were duped. Misdirected, outright fooled, or whatever. And we still don’t know what went where or how. But why in God’s name were they pulling all those switcheroos with the crates?”

  They besieged Uni to spill this one last piece of information—and it was something that he knew, something he wanted to tell them. But there was just no way he could communicate it to them. Words failed him, as always, and he could not speak with his hands to any satisfaction or write it out in any legible way.

  Desperate, as he was sure the Crazy Americans would indeed kill him if he didn’t please them, he scrambled around the floor gathering up the remnants from the overturned trash can. Locating three Styrofoam coffee cups, he set them upside down on the dirty floor. Then he painfully rifled through his pockets, finally coming out with an American half dollar—a favorite in the Impatient Parrot—and two Pepsi bottle caps he’d saved from his days at the Xagat.

  As the Americans watched, totally mystified, Uni put the coin underneath one cup and the bottle caps underneath the other two—then began moving the cups around crazily. After a few seconds he stopped and lifted one cup to reveal a bottle cap. He moved the cups again, then stopped again, lifting a cup to reveal another bottle cap. He did all this a third time—but this time he lifted the third cup to reveal the coin.