by Ted Bell
“Of course,” Rita said. “Please follow me.”
Rita showed them into the living room. The two coat-and-tie guys sat down. One had a large briefcase. The man from Mars guy stayed in the kitchen. Rita saw him reach up to the top of the fridge for Gomer’s urn.
“What is he doing?” she said. “That’s my husband!”
“I’m very sorry, ma’am,” the guy on the couch said. “We’re doing a house-to-house search. It’s his job. Do you mind if we ask you a few questions?”
“Who are you?” Rita said, remaining on her feet, twisting the folds of her navy blue skirt in her hands.
“I’m Brigadier General Darryl Elliot, and this is Mr. Chynsky,” Elliot said. “I’m from JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. Mr. Chynsky is counterterrorist director for the NSA. That gentleman in the kitchen is Dr. Ken Beer, a chief investigator from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. He has presidential authority to search your house, ma’am.”
“Fine,” Rita said. “Let him.”
“Dr. Beer, I’d start upstairs and work down,” the one named Chynsky said. The guy in the spacesuit nodded at him and headed up the stairway.
“Mrs. Gomez,” General Elliot said, “I know this is a tough time for you. I’m sorry. But I have to talk to you regarding some things our investigators have turned up since your late husband’s death and cremation. We don’t have a lot of time here.”
“Whatever I can do to help.”
“Thank you. Did your husband exhibit any unusual behavior in the weeks leading up to his death?”
“He was drunk a lot. Nothing unusual about that.”
“Any strange new habits? Disappearances?”
“If he wasn’t sleeping he was over at the bar at the X pounding Budweisers.”
“Any new friends or associates recently?”
“He only had one friend. He wouldn’t know what an associate was.”
“Friend’s name?”
“Sparky. Sparky Rollins.”
“Yes. The guard posted on what used to be Tower 22.”
“That’s him.”
“Did you ever overhear any unusual conversations between the two of them?”
“Sparky never came here. Gomer always went over to Sparky’s apartment at the BOQ. So they could watch the Playboy Channel, I guess. He slept over there a lot, too.”
“Please try to think, Mrs. Gomez. Was there anything, anything at all, that struck you as different or unusual about your husband in the last month or so?”
“Well, Julio Iglesias did start calling here about a month ago. That was fairly unusual.”
“I beg your pardon? Julio Iglesias? You mean the singer?”
“Well, he called himself that. But he sure didn’t sound like any Julio Iglesias I’ve seen on TV, believe me.”
“What, exactly, did he sound like, Mrs. Gomez?”
“Cuban. Very strong Cuban accent. Tough guy.”
“How often would he call?”
“Every now and then. He’d call at all hours. I think there were two of them.”
“Two?”
“Two guys both pretending to be that singer. Their voices were different, you know?”
“Mrs. Gomez, this could be very important. Did you ever accidentally overhear or eavesdrop on any of those conversations?”
“No. I wouldn’t do that. Besides, he always took the calls in another room.”
“Ira,” Elliot said to Chynsky, “we need the log on all incoming and outgoing calls from this number in the last two weeks. Thanks.”
Ira got up, went into the kitchen, and got on the phone. Elliot opened his leather bag and pulled out an object in some kind of freezer bag.
“Have you ever seen this object before, Mrs. Gomez?”
It was a metal box, about the size of a brick. Little buttons on it. Banged up. It looked like it had been dropped from a ten-story building.
“Mrs. Gomez?”
“No. I’ve never seen it before. What is it?”
“Did your husband have any hobbies? Like model airplanes or model boats?”
“I already told you. His hobbies were beer and the Playboy Channel.”
“This is a radio control device, Mrs. Gomez. You could use it to fly a remote control airplane. Or you could use it to, say, program a bomb.”
“Why are you showing it to me?”
“It was found in the mud, a hundred yards from your husband’s body.”
An hour later, Rita and her two daughters were standing on the sidewalk, waiting for Mrs. Nettles to pick them up. The girls had on their best dresses. They had four pieces of luggage. Three suitcases plus an old bowling ball bag for Gomer.
The two suits from Washington and the CDC investigator had finally left, but not before the spaceman scared the kids half to death when he went out to the garage. They’d come running into the kitchen screaming their heads off. The yellow suit was right behind them, holding some old newspapers. Cuban newspapers, he said. And some moldy twine.
“Granma,” he said. “The Cuban daily, Havana edition. Dated five weeks ago. Heavily folded and imprinted. Looks like something cylindrical was wrapped in it.”
“Bag it,” Elliot said.
When Elliot started asking her questions about a bunch of old newspapers, that’s when she’d told them, hey, old newspapers, big effing deal, pal. B.F.D. She’d had enough. She’d spent all morning at her husband’s funeral. Now she only had half an hour to pack up all her family’s stuff and head to the Kennedy. Enough.
He thanked her for her time and tried to be nice. She guessed he was only doing his job. But if he thought Gomer had anything to do with anything at all that was a Special Report on CNN, he was flat crazy. Gomer wasn’t smart enough and certainly not sober enough to pull off anything as big as this big magilla thing seemed to be.
Lost in a jumble of thoughts, she was startled by the sound of a car horn. A big white Chevy Suburban cruised right up to the curb, flags flying from all four windows. The passenger side window slid down, and Cindy Nettles stuck her head right out. She had her blond hair in pigtails, with big red, white, and blue ribbons.
“Hop in, guys! C’mon! Mom says we’re gonna be late!” Cindy said.
Ginny Nettles was nice enough to climb out and help her stow their luggage in the back with all the rest. Then Rita and the kids climbed into the backseat, one on either side of her. Ginny got back behind the wheel, and they were off.
The traffic, once they got going, was a nightmare. MPs and marines wearing gas masks were at every intersection trying to keep the endless converging lines of private vehicles and buses full of evacuees moving. Rita was grateful that no one was honking or yelling, no one was trying to cut in front of them. If she had expected panic, she saw none. These were military families, Navy families, and they acted like it.
There was confusion at various checkpoints over who was going where. Ginny and Rita were headed for the Kennedy, berthed at Wharf Bravo, and Ginny knew how to get there. But there were also evacuation vessels at Northwest Pier Lima, Northwest Pier Victor, and Southwest Pier Lima. There were no directional signs, adding to the disorder and confusion.
At Wharf Bravo, there was a sense of barely controlled chaos on the pier. In the massive shadow of the famous warship, endless rivers of women, children, and the elderly were streaming up various gangplanks. Rita watched them disappearing with agonizing slowness into the many cavernous mouths in the Kennedy’s hull. Twice, various officers recognized the CO’s wife and tried to move them up in the line. Ginny refused both times, and it took another hour before they were out of the broiling sun and inside the Kennedy.
Seated behind a long table were six officers checking the evacuees’ identification before admitting them aboard. At either end of the table were Marines armed with machine guns. The six officers checked every piece of identification carefully, Rita noticed, even Ginny Nettles’s.
Little Cindy presented herself alongside her mother a
nd handed the officer a pink plastic wallet. It matched the pink plastic suitcase she was carrying.
“Okay,” the officer said, opening the wallet. “Let’s see who you are, young lady.”
“Lucinda Nettles,” Cindy said. “My daddy is Admiral Nettles. Do you know him?”
“I certainly do,” the officer said, smiling. “Thank you, Lucinda. Next in line?”
“I hope it’s all right if I brought an extra suitcase,” Cindy said. “I had to because of my best friend.”
“Sweetheart,” Ginny said, bending down. “This nice officer is in a hurry. There are lots of people behind us. Let’s move along, darling.”
“Want to see him?” Cindy asked the officer, putting her suitcase on the table.
“Maybe later,” the officer said. “After we’ve—”
But Cindy had already popped the latches of her bright pink suitcase. A large white bear that had been crammed inside her extra bag exploded out onto the table.
“What’s his name?” the officer asked, with a smile of forced amusement.
“Mr. Teddy,” she said, hugging him tightly. “He’s my very best friend in the whole wide world!”
“Welcome to the Kennedy, Teddy,” the officer said with a smile.
Everyone got a big chuckle over that one.
52
All was still inside Archangel, the C-130 Hercules turboprop transport plane owned and operated by the elite counterterrorist group known in international special warfare circles as Thunder and Lightning.
Archangel had been built by Lockheed in the early fifties and was one of many C-130s still flying in every part of the world.
It was a black, moonless night, and as the big plane lumbered along at thirty thousand feet, she was nearly invisible.
The airplane’s entire fuselage and wings were painted matte black. There were no lights winking on her wingtips, none showing at her tail or nose. Even the lights in the cockpit were a muted shade of red, barely visible from the outside.
The route of flight had taken them north out over the islands of Trinidad and Tobago, then Archangel veered northwest out over the Caribbean Sea. She’d skirt the southern coasts of the Dominican Republic and Jamaica, then vector due north toward the southwest coast of Cuba.
Most of the guys were sitting along rows of canvas sling chairs that lined the fuselage interior or resting atop greasy pallets on the floor. Everyone was dressed in dark camouflage tigerstripes, wearing nothing reflective, faces blacked out with camo warpaint. Thunder and Lightning would be invisible when they floated down from the heavens toward their objective.
In addition to the two C-130 pilots up front and the jumpmaster, there was a platoon of commandos aboard. The platoon consisted of two seven-man squads. Fitz McCoy would lead Alpha squad. Bravo was under the command of Charlie Rainwater, known to his men as Boomer.
They’d been airborne for over an hour. Hawke was checking and rechecking his weapons and ammo. In a coin toss on the runway, he had been assigned to McCoy’s squad, while Stoke would tag along with his old XO, Boomer. Since Hawke was easily the least experienced member of the counterterrorist team, he’d promised Fitz he’d stay right by his side.
In what seemed like no time at all, the green light came on, and the jumpmaster was pointing at Fitz’s squad.
Fitz, sitting next to Hawke, took a long drag on his cigarette and said, “Saddle up, Commander. We’ll dip on down to twenty thousand feet now, reduce our airspeed, and then we go.”
“Five minutes!” the captain said over the intercom.
Hawke nodded. He was thinking about his last jump. He didn’t particularly want to think about it, but it kept popping up. He felt the plane dropping and cinched up the straps crossing his chest. In addition to his chute, he was carrying a lot of gear. Still, he was probably the lightest man going out.
He had an MP5, the HK 9mm submachine gun favored by SEALs, and a Sig Sauer 9mm pistol, both fitted with what the Yanks called hush puppies or silencers. He also had stun grenades and Willy-Peters hanging like grape clusters from his web belt. Willy-Peters were white phosphorus grenades, lethal and terrifying to an enemy when used.
“Two minutes!” The huge ramp began to lower and the cavernous interior was suddenly filled with a roaring wind. “Ramp open and locked,” the jumpmaster said.
Hawke eyed the jump/caution light. It was glowing crimson. He rechecked his Draeger for the third time. Since they’d be jumping into the sea and swimming ashore, all the men were equipped with Draegers. These German-made oxygen-rebreathing units produced no bubbles and made no sound. That made them ideal for secret insertions like this one. Hawke was feeling especially grateful for his tour with the SBS unit of the Royal Marines. He’d trained with all of this gear before.
Most of it, anyway.
Weight was a big problem in the thin air of high-altitude jumps. Many of these men would be going out the door with a hundred pounds or more strapped to their bodies. Two men were going out, carrying two IBS boats complete with motors. In SEAL lingo, IBS stood for Inflatable Boat, Small. Once they’d exfiltrated, each one was capable of carrying a seven-man squad, plus, in an extraction, a few hostages.
The jump alarm bell signaled one minute to drop.
Hawke used that minute to turn everything over in his mind once more. In the plan, worked out over the course of the afternoon, the two IBS boats would rendezvous with Nighthawke, the seventy-foot-long offshore powerboat carried aboard Blackhawke. The jet black oceangoing speedboat, two-time winner of the Miami–Nassau race, was capable of speeds in excess of one hundred knots per hour.
Nighthawke’s huge cockpit and hold below could easily accommodate twenty people. In the likely event of trouble, Hawke had instructed Tom Quick to mount a fifty-caliber machine gun on the stern deck.
If the IBS boats could make it safely to the designated rendezvous, Nighthawke could easily outrun the fastest Cuban pursuit craft. And deliver the two teams safely to the mother ship, Blackhawke, which would be cruising innocently twenty miles offshore. That was the plan anyway and—Hawke’s musings were interrupted—the jump light! It flashed from crimson to green.
The jumpmaster pointed at Fitz and said, “Good hunting, Fitz. Go!”
Hawke stood and followed his squad to the rear. One by one the five men in front of him strolled down the oily ramp of the C-130 and dove off into the blackness of the nighttime sky. It was Hawke’s turn. He hesitated a second and instantly felt Fitz’s hand on his shoulder.
“You okay, Commander?” Fitz shouted over the roaring wind.
By way of answering, Hawke stepped off the ramp.
His first sensation was that of the freezing slipstream hitting him like a wall of ice. Then the huge black airplane overhead was gone and he looked down. Nothing below but pitch black nothing. He checked the altimeter on his wrist. Four miles up. He pulled his ripcord.
He felt the chute slide out of his backpack and separate.
Instantly, he was yanked violently upwards in his harness. Then, just as he prepared to settle in and enjoy the ride, he veered sharply left and began to descend in a ferocious, out-of-control spiral. Looking skyward, he saw that one of the cells in his canopy had collapsed.
“Bloody hell!” he shouted in the darkness. This was not a good start. He yanked on the guidelines, desperately trying to fill the canopy with air. It didn’t happen. What happened is that the crazy corkscrewing continued. Then two more cells collapsed and the chute fluttering above him folded neatly in half. He was at nineteen thousand feet and plummeting in free-fall. His body felt suddenly very cold, and he realized he’d broken into a sweat.
All right, Hawke thought, he’d practiced this before. This was, in SBS parlance stolen from the SEALs, SNAFU. Situation Normal All Fucked Up. But it was not yet FUBAR, which translated to Fucked Up Beyond All Repair. He had a backup.
Hawke did a cutaway, jettisoned the useless chute, and let himself relax into free-fall again. He was now just under fifteen thousand fe
et, flying on cruise control. He spent the next ten seconds that way, then he yanked the ripcord on his second chute.
The flat chute opened beautifully.
He began a controlled descent of lazy spirals in the blackness. It reminded him of why he’d enjoyed some of his jump training at SBS. Checking his compass and altimeter, he determined that he was descending through ten thousand feet, about five miles from splash-down in the two-hundred-square-yard patch of ocean designated LZ Liberty. Boomer’s Bravo squad was going into LZ Nautilus a quarter of a mile away.
Alpha squad’s primary mission was to locate the hostage. Bravo was going to create an explosive “diversion” of sorts when the time came for both squads to link up and go in for the snatch and grab.
Five minutes later, Alex could make out the black humped outline of the island called Telaraña and the southwest coast of Cuba beyond it. He saw phosphorescent white rollers gently breaking along the island’s beaches. He estimated he had about a fifteen-minute glide remaining, so he just hung in his harness and enjoyed the view.
He was so relaxed he was startled to hear canopies fluttering all around him and the sound of men splashing down just under him. He pulled the cord that inflated his BCD vest, a buoyancy compensator device, then initiated a series of S turns to eat up speed and waited for his boots to get wet. Five seconds later, he flared up and hit the water.
He saw black faces bobbing all around him, white teeth smiling at him. He heard a whoosh as the IBS partially inflated. One man would stay offshore with the rubberized inflatable. His main problem would be staying out of the path of the Cuban patrol boat.
“You’re a bit late,” one of the faces said.
“Sorry, Fitz,” Alex said. “Minor equipment problem.”
“I noticed. Good recovery,” Fitz said. “We got lucky. We just missed landing on the fooking roof of a Cuban patrol boat. He’s gone round that point now, but he’ll be back.”
Fitz did a quick head count. Every man in Alpha had made it to the LZ. It was time to don the Draeger oxygen rebreathers and start swimming. They were a half mile from shore. Hawke could see breakers on the white sand and a dark stand of palm trees Fitz had designated as their next rendezvous point.