The Last Operation (The Remnants of War Series, Book 1)

by Patrick Astre

  As the man pitched forward, Daniels' knee came up, hitting hard just below the abdomen. He flipped the man, landing him on his back with a muffled thud. In a single blur of motion Daniels came down, knee on the man's chest, left hand on the forehead with thumb and forefinger at the edge of his eyes. Daniels' right hand flicked out and the gravity knife extended and locked. The narrow point of the honed blade rested just below the man's left eye. A tiny drop of blood glinted in the shadowed face.

  "One move I don't like and I'll pop your eye like a rotten pimple," Daniels whispered.

  The man laid still. Daniels felt his heartbeat through his knee pressing on the stranger's chest. The man gave a strangled retch, his breathing ragged as he replied.

  "Godamned, motherfucker, you treat all your old buddies that way?"

  "Rollie," Daniels said, pulling up the knife and coming off the man's chest. "You dumbass, an entire year working with me and you didn't learn shit."

  The adrenaline cooled and Daniels felt himself getting pissed off. He helped the man to his feet as he slid the gravity knife back to its sleeve pouch.

  Master Sergeant Roland Fournier Washington, US Army third Special Forces Group, stood. He shook his head, picked up the billy club and made it disappear in the bulky sweat suit.

  "Shit Rollie, what if I capped you?" Daniels said. "I'd be really pissed. With all the paper work to fill out for your miserable carcass."

  Both men stepped back in the street. An elderly Chinese couple strolled by, suddenly putting on a burst of speed when they saw them emerge from the alley. Can't say I blame them, thought Daniels.

  Rollie massaged the back of his head and groaned. He'd lost his hat and a trickle of blood ran below his eye, cutting a ruby swath in a broad face shining like Kentucky coal.

  "What the hell's wrong with you?" Daniels said. "Forgot how to use the phone or knock on doors?"

  "Nah, I just had to see if you still got it. Heard the brothers did a number on you in Africa. Thought you might be going soft."

  "They tried, but I made it out and left a few souvenirs behind."

  Rollie laughed as they started walking back to the avenue.

  "Sources tell me your souvenirs capped a whole execution squad. Definitely cleared some shit from this world."

  "So what is this, a social call?" asked Daniels. "If you wanted to shoot the breeze, you should've called. I got a meeting at eight."

  "I know. I'm going too. Old Bill Taylor is picking up the tab at Vincent's."

  Rollie and Daniels had first met in during the grueling Special Forces training and testing process at Fort Bragg. A few years later they'd jumped with a four men team for a covert rescue of a CIA informer near Medellin, Columbia. William Taylor had recruited them for that operation. It had been his show and the planning had been perfect. The operation and extraction was smooth and less then seventy-two hours later Rollie and Daniels were knocking back cold ones at the Fort Bragg officers club.

  Now, apparently, Taylor wanted them again.

  Chapter 4

  Daniels and Rollie arrived at Vincent's just after eight. They found Taylor waiting in a little empty back room sitting at a solitary table covered with Italian specialties. Two bottles of primo Chianti were decanted along with some Pellegrini mineral water. Bill Taylor knew how to spend Government funds. Better on them then some eight hundred dollar screwdrivers, thought Daniels.

  William Taylor is a man who likes to think of himself as some kind of aristocrat. He reminded Daniels of an accountant, always meticulously dressed and groomed. That large black mole on his cheek is the only thing out of place. Daniels always wondered why he never had it removed.

  They spent the first couple of hours on the old days and catching up on what each had been up to. Rollie and Daniels had the kind of friendship and easy camaraderie forged by mutual support and dependence on each other during combat operations. Only people who have had this can truly experience this kind of friendship. William Taylor didn't have it. He was the CIA recruiter and purse string holder, the CEO—they were rank and file.

  After a while the conversation slowed and Rollie leaned forward, his eyes fixed and unblinking, getting down to serious business.

  "William has a bad situation he wants us to handle," Rollie said. "I told him I'm in only if you head the team. I think you're the only one who can pull this off and get us out alive."

  "Well, my mother didn't raise any fools," replied Daniels, turning to Taylor, "William, I appreciate this nice dinner but I'm sure it was more than Langley's concern for my nutrition that brought you here. What's the deal? You guys got a problem?"

  William Taylor nodded, took a sip of his Chianti and pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket.

  "Yes, I am afraid we do. We have a most vexing problem," he said.

  Daniels couldn't help grinning a little. William Taylor talks just like that, no contractions and lots of words like vexing.

  "As you know, our intervention in Panama back in the eighties, had been successful, including the capture and conviction of Manuel Noriega on drug running charges," continued Taylor. "There had been somewhat of a brouhaha throughout Latin America, but it fizzed out with time. However, certain developments have come about that could threaten to unravel our entire position in this hemisphere and perhaps bring down this administration. To put it bluntly, we are being blackmailed. The Agency, the Administration and the entire country."

  "Why don't you do what you always do," replied Daniels. "Lie or abandon a few people like you did in Iraq."

  "Please Richard," said Taylor. "The Kurds were not an agency decision."

  "I don't care whose decision it was," replied Daniels. "You pulled our team out after we promised them supplies and air support. We promised them because you told us we would. Then you changed your mind and left them between the Republican Guards and those mountains. So like I said, why don't you just lie about the whole thing?"

  "Plausible denial is not a solution in this case. It is much more serious."

  Plausible denial. Does it mean a lie so good you begin to believe it yourself, thought Daniels as William Taylor continued.

  "Two of our agents were operating with the tacit approval of the South America Desk. It appears that they had withheld some crucial details of their operations. I suppose because of their rate of success, we did not exercise the oversight we should have."

  Rollie burst out laughing. "Bullshit! If we get results you could care less how we do it as long as we have the good grace to die with our mouths shut."

  Taylor shrugged as he replied. "These agents facilitated the passage of large amounts of drugs from Peru, Ecuador and Columbia through Panama and Mexico—very large amounts. Our shares of the huge profits generated found its way into funding big anti-insurgency operations throughout the hemisphere. No bothersome congressional oversights needed. Those funds were instrumental in keeping communism contained in Cuba, Venezuela and other trouble spots."

  "Sounds like a fair trade off," replied Daniels. "You kill tens of thousands of kids, expand a scourge throughout the continent and get political juice. Sound like a good trade-off to you, Rollie?"

  "Sounds good and churchlike to me," Rollie said.

  "We are in the process of severing those relationships," said Taylor, ignoring the sarcasm. "But we are presently stymied."

  Right now he was beginning to look a little more nervous than stymied thought Daniels. He had a hunch that perhaps Taylor's career hung on their acceptance and successful completion of whatever it was he wanted done.

  "You see," continued Taylor, "the agents who constructed these, ahem, relationships, have been captured by a group that stands to profit the most from continuing those activities. By capturing those agents, they very neatly put us in a box. They claim they have documentation of those operations along with their hostages. If it was just one of those things it would be bad enough. But both are devastating. We must free those two hostages at any cost."

  "Who's holding them a
nd where?" asked Daniels.

  "Diego Durand and his brother Hector in Guadalajara, Mexico. They.."

  "Are you shitting me? The Durand brothers?" Daniels interrupted. "You want a team to take on the Durand brothers? You don't need a team, you need a Marine Regiment."

  Richard Daniels was aware of the Durand brothers. They were well known in the intelligence and military community and among mercenaries. Their business was buying, selling and transporting drugs. Their organization had risen to the top of the sewer by sheer viciousness in a business noted for its violence. They'd gotten very big and very powerful. They had kicked the Columbian Cartels out of the distribution business and controlled the product that came out of Medellin and Cali. It was known that their influence and power in Mexico was immense. Rumors had it that the Chief of the Mexican Federal Police, roughly equivalent to our FBI, had received two calls for an immediate meeting the same evening. One was from the Prime Minister of Mexico, the other from Hector Durand.

  He met with Hector Durand.

  "We have had their Guadalajara compound under constant satellite surveillance," said Taylor. "We have two reliable informers on the inside. They have been willing to join on our side. They will be extracted as part of the rescue plan and will be placed in the Federal Witness Program. We have been working and running computer simulations. The Agency has been consumed with this problem."

  Now it was Rollie's turn to laugh.

  "Computer simulations. You guys are something else. You think this is fucking Microsoft? You're going to pull a raid on the Durand brothers with a computer simulation?"

  "Relax," said Taylor, "we have the most powerful computers and programs in the world, but in this case it is only used to confirm the plans our top analysts have devised. These people are experienced field agents like you."

  "Good," replied Daniels, "let them go. You can count me out."

  "Wait," said Taylor. "You've got to hear the rest."

  Taylor placed a photo on the table. "This is James LeCount. He is the primary agent who created and operates the distribution pipelines, he was kidnapped by the Molaca gang in Mexico City five weeks ago. The kidnapping took place during a scheduled meeting with our contact man. Our contact was also captured. The Molocas work for the Durands. They were taken directly to the Durand's compound in Guadalajara. Our inside informers confirmed they are still held in that location. Satellite surveillance gave us this photo of one of the hostages exercising in a courtroom of the compound. I believe you know him."

  As he spoke, Taylor removed a large photo from a pouch and placed it in front of Daniels. The camera caught the man stretching, looking up. On either side of him stood men holding machine pistols. His feet were manacled and dark bruises showed in his face as shadows in the grainy satellite photo. Daniels grip tightened on the checkered tablecloth as he recognized the prisoner.

  It was "Loony"

  His real name was Oscar Velez. He'd been the youngest member of the Special Ops team Daniels had commanded in Afghanistan. Velez wasn't much more than a kid who'd found the Army as the only escape route available out of the Barrios of Los Angeles. The young man had taken well to Special Forces training and somewhere down the line, probably because of his penchant for practical jokes someone tagged him with the moniker of Loony.

  The name stuck. He turned out to be one of those guys always there when needed. Never ducking or shirking duties, he pulled up the morale of the team immeasurably. He finished his combat tour and re-enlisted. He and Daniels had kept in touch for a while. After his second tour he married and moved his family, including his parents, from LA to a nice suburb of San Diego. Daniels had visited him a few years back. Nice wife and two wide eyed cute kids. He told Daniels at the time he worked for a security company. Yea, the biggest security company of them all, The CIA, thought Daniels.

  They argued over details and payments. Daniels never figured out, never wanted to figure out really, whether it was the money, Loony or the Edge that made him accept the job.

  Chapter 5

  Hector Durand played the good host. Dressed in English riding britches and silk shirt, he looked like a lord of the manor, solicitous of his guest's comfort. The room he stood in was below ground, a basement carved out of rock. It was wide but Oscar Velez and James LeCount could only roam about half of it. That was the reach the manacles and chains around their ankles would allow. Just enough room to reach the open toilet in the corner and the cots they sat on. No windows existed to let in natural light. The bare cement floor tilted slightly to a small open drain as if the room needed periodic flushing. Even though it was dry, the place had the musty damp smell of a cave. Bright lights from the ceiling lit up the dark stains etched into the floor. The wall close to Hector Durand held two closets with their doors opened. They were shallow indentations, no more than two feet recessed into the wall and three feet wide. The doors were of heavy knotted oak with thick black iron latches on the outside.

  A man entered the room carrying a burlap sack. Something moved inside the sack. A wide scar ran from the left side of the man's nose, around a mouth hidden by a bushy mustache, and down to his throat. Every few minutes his face twitched, making the scar jump like a long white tapeworm. He put the burlap bag down by Hector Durand who ignored it. Two men with dull brutish eyes followed him. They half-carried half-dragged a thin young man between them. The new prisoner was average height but seemed lost between the two human mountains holding him up. They brought him before Hector Durand and one of the guards pulled up his lolling head by his hair. The man's nose was crushed and his mouth rendered to bloody pulp. Only one tooth was visible, knocked out of the gum and driven into the pierced cheek. He moaned softly as his eyes opened and closed.

  "You have been a little too enthusiastic Miguel," said Hector Durand. "I need him awake."

  The man with the scar, Miguel Aquilino, was enforcer and security chief for the Durand brothers. He smiled and took a hypodermic from a pouch on his belt. The sack at his feet moved slowly up and down, writhing with its own life. He injected the young man then wiped his face with a wet cloth. It was a slow move, deceptively gentle, but the eyes were pinpoints of ice in a face filled with inhumanity. The young man's eyes opened, the drug waking him, flooding his nerves with sensations of pain from the brutal beating he'd endured.

  "Please, please Senor Durand," the young man's words slurred as they passed from his ruined mouth, "I swear, I did not betray you."

  "Yes you have," said Hector Durand, his tone gentle and soft, like a father mildly reprimanding a much loved but wayward son. "You have indeed Antonio. Certain sources have told me you are an informant for the CIA. As if that could matter. But I forgive. You are weak. I will give you the strength you need."

  He stepped close to the young man until his face was inches away, the eyes in close contact like little peepholes into each other's soul. Hector Durand felt the young man's trembling and the dread in his soul. He reveled in the feelings that washed over him as he stepped back and nodded. Miguel grinned, a cruel mirthless parody of a smile, the grin of a true sadist. He reached down, picked up a corner of the burlap sack and turned it upside down. The contents slithered onto the concrete floor with a muted whispering noise.

  It was big, at least eight feet long and thick as a man's forearm. It coiled itself and raised the triangular head on the column of circular muscles that was its body. The muscles under the head expanded into the dreaded hood. Its tongue speared the air over the curved fangs, sensing the air, aware of its surroundings.

  The upper body below the terrible head expanded until it formed a foot long v-shape supporting the scaly flat head. A tiny drop of yellow venom glistened in the harsh white light. There was a sharp intake of breath from the men on the couch. The guards moved back with the young man toward the open closet.

  "A King Cobra is a creature of great beauty, is it not Antonio?" said Hector Durand. "It knows no fear. It does not betray. It kills. It kills because it is its nature. Its strength." />
  Hector removed a small silver chain from a loop on his riding britches. He held it in front of the snake, swaying it slightly. The black pinpoint eyes and the head swayed with the chain. In a blurred motion, Hector Durand's other hand whipped behind the snake, grasping it just below the head. He held it at shoulder level and still at least four feet of the body remained on the floor, swirling on the dry concrete.

  "You are fortunate Antonio," said Hector. "You will carry some of the strength of this serpent into your next life."

  Tears, snot and blood rolled from the bruised eyes and battered nose. Mewling, strangled noises erupted from his throat. The odors of sweat and fear washed out in waves from the savaged body. Miguel nodded at the men holding him. With quick coordinated moves, the guards slammed the young man backward into the tiny closet. His slim body almost took up the entire space.

  Almost.

  Hector Durand pitched the writhing, angry snake into the closet and one of the guards slammed the door and latched it. A shrieking keening wail erupted from the closet, the piercing quality hardly muffled by the wood door. The soft thump of something striking flesh repeatedly came from the nightmare of the closet in the stonewall.

  Hector Durand walked up to the two men on the cot. The one with the mustache, the contact from Mexico City, spat on the floor. The other one was visibly shaken.

  "Think my friends, think," said Hector Durand. "Your people in Washington cannot afford to let loose our secret. They must bow to my terms or the world will know that the largest drug dealer in South America is your own CIA. This they cannot afford. It is only a matter of time."

  "Fuck you and the horse you rode on," said the man with the mustache, each word a bitter pit to spit out.

  Hector Durand's smile vanished like an evil omen in a church.