“They'll be coming for us. Any ideas?”
The agent in the back, acting detail chief Gary Alcott, nodded. “We've worked this scenario. Exfiltration against a superior force on unknown terrain with the sole goal to save FROLIC from capture. We need preemptive suppression fire for three-hundred-sixty degrees plus one of us on her person. I'll take FROLIC, you take the left and Rostan takes the right. The other two can take point and rear. Braxton and Cortez can be extra cover for FROLIC. Come on, people. Move!”
Alcott tossed a box of thirty-round magazines into Simon's lap and another up to the front seat. “Set it for burst mode since we only have the ammo we carry.”
Simon stuffed several of them into his shirt and handed the box to Rostan. The agent nearest the door opened it, gun spraying as he jumped out of the car. Rostan followed, and Simon hurled himself over the seat and out the door as well. Alcott opened the rear passenger door, hopped out, and pulled Richards towards him. “Come on, ma'am, we have to move.”
Cortez followed her and grabbed Braxton to ensure that he also got out. Four weapons thundered as the driver took up the rear. Under his breath, Cortez said, “So we're extra cover, are we? Sounds a lot like human shields to me.”
The terrain on the side of the road away from the cliff rose at a sharp angle. Steep, but manageable. The difficulty was the dense tropical vegetation. Beginning a few feet from the road, it showed no obvious gaps. Fifteen feet from the car, the lead agent stopped at a wall of leaves something like palmettos. Above the sound of their own weapons, Simon could make out additional fire. Gotta be somewhere above us, he thought, right in the direction we're headed. But we have no choice.
Alcott arrived at the same conclusion. “Jack, just push your way in. I have no goddamn clue what's through there. But behind is the certain loss of our principal. Now go!”
The lead agent didn't wait any longer. To Simon, it appeared as if the jungle had swallowed him. A second later, as Alcott ushered an unusually compliant Richards into the same spot, Simon and Rostan took the plunge with Braxton and Cortez between them. Ninety seconds after the car had dropped into the crater, the final agent followed suit. The sheet of rain battering the road provided the only remaining sign of movement. The President of the United States had disappeared into the Guatemalan jungle.
CHAPTER TWELVE
August 6th, 2012
You'd think that the President's motorcade coming under fire would generate immediate response at the highest levels of government. However, to maximize security, the Secret Service keeps the details of their communication and contingency plans secret. The thing is, most of the disaster scenarios assume a sizable number of agents in the vicinity of the President, or at least good communications. Neither of these applied to the situation in Guatemala. Before leaving the dirt road, Alcott had keyed the button on a satellite-based transmitter/GPS device in his pocket. This signaled Washington that something was wrong. It also provided a method of tracking his movements. Secret Service director Linda Yarrow now knew exactly how effective this was as a last resort.
“Goddamned useless!” She screamed at Roger Wartburg. He was still in the building tying up loose ends after submitting his formal resignation. Five minutes ago, he'd felt like a free man, and now this was sucking him back in.
“Ma'am, I agree. We don't know what happened and there's little we can do. I assume a few agents stayed at the airport?”
“Of course a few agents stayed at the airport. Eight of them. And one Suburban, though not the up-armored one. But I can't order them blindly into the mountains. They're over an hour away, plus SOP will be for Alcott to get her back to the airport if possible. If he manages that, we'll need every available body there to help. Hell, we can't even send another plane down there without going to either the Chief of Staff or State to approve it. And I don't look forward to telling them we've gone to our last ditch backups, and we don't know shit about what happened.”
Wartburg let the silence hang for a moment. “So what do we do right now?”
She looked him in the eye. “You resigned, remember? Looks like a smart career move right about now. I gotta call my boss. And not just to cover my ass. DHS needs to know as well, in case this is the first move in some al Qaida wet dream. Should be a fun call. If I'm still in one piece after calling him, we'll come up with something. In the meantime, go radio the guys on the plane and tell 'em to sit tight. It'll help 'em to know you're still around, at least temporarily. They should wait for FROLIC to show up unless they get intelligence that says they need to go after her. Maybe this is all one big misunderstanding.”
The look in Yarrow's eyes as she delivered this last line suggested she didn't believe it. This was the kind of situation where lives as well as careers evaporated. Despite the bluster, Wartburg knew she'd do anything to prevent the loss of another president.
Both of them owed their positions to the wholesale resignations that occurred after the loss of both the President and Vice President less than a year earlier. They'd talked at length about the failures that led to it, but part of it was simply bad luck. Every time the President poked her nose out the door, someone could theoretically get to her, despite the best efforts of the secret service.
And now she was gone. They needed to get her back. He racked his brain trying to figure out how the hell to do that.
The lead agent, Jack, died instantly when two slugs entered his brain. As he continued to cover their left with gunfire, Simon's mind raced to find alternatives. So far, the enemy had anticipated everything they'd done. He could sense movement. Cimil's men were positioning to get a better shot, trying to break the protective bubble around Richards. It would work, too, unless he could come up with a way to stop them. If nothing else, they'd run out of ammo in a matter of minutes.
“Hey Alcott, we gotta change this up or we're all dead.” Simon fired another burst as he spoke.
“I'm all ears, civilian.”
“Heh, time was that's what I would'a called you. They're movin' to the side and behind us. I say we take two gambles on what they're thinkin'. One is they won't have many resources left in front and two is they expect us to be cautious. Let's smash through the jungle at the highest possible speed, leading POTUS right behind us. Have Cortez and Braxton bring up the rear. Maybe we can get to a point where they're not prepared.”
Alcott looked at Rostan, who nodded his agreement.
“OK, let's do it.”
The sound of weapons fire disappeared for the first time since they'd left the car. Simon glanced at Richards, who hadn't spoken since she'd received the phone call. Her dress was torn and her shoes oozed with mud. She looked concerned and a bit scared, but not terrified or cowering. A normal response from a competent person, stripped of both calculation and ego. Despite the constant poll-watching and political games, Richards had a resume a mile long, one that included a brief non-combat role in the military at a time when no woman seeking a political future would have considered it. She wouldn't hold up their movement. The enemy with guns, bombs, and rockets, now that was a problem.
Alcott stepped to the front and called back over his shoulder as he set a fast pace.
“Let's roll.”
Andrea Schmidt thought that things could scarcely have gone better. It was fifty-fifty whether the Secret Service would abandon the car after the first two explosions, but they had it covered. Either way, they'd eventually have to leave the vehicle and strike out into the jungle. The jungle where a dozen of her people focused on picking off everyone except the three whom Cimil had ordered them not to harm. One of hers was dead, caught in the machine gun fire. But she hadn't expected to get through this with no casualties.
She thought for a moment about the mission. Not her preferred approach. A quick kill and then disappear, that was her style. She had no particular concern for the targets, who took their chances when they signed up to work for a government that did its own share of unjustified killing. If Cimil had told her to take out Ric
hards, that would have been fine, too. Politicians were almost always fair game. And it's not as if she had any illusions about Cimil: she'd have gone after him if she worked for one of his enemies.
Her screen showed the action in infrared, and she saw the pace of the agents and Richards increase. A bit of a surprise, as caution was a Secret Service hallmark. Probably one of the two soldiers talked 'em into it. The only problem for her was they'd be out of range of the cameras soon. But she couldn't radio down and let her people know. An interruption at the wrong time could prove deadly. At worst, she'd end up losing a couple more and the coverage would develop a few small holes. With only four protectors for Richards, success was the only possible outcome. She smiled and concentrated on the monitor.
Jaime Cortez had picked up the MP5 and two spare magazines from the fallen agent. Before they picked up the pace, Alcott gave him a thirty second crash course in loading and firing.
“Most important rule here is aim it away from us. Got it?”
Now they crashed through the underbrush, trying for speed above all else. Simon moved to the front and Cortez took over his position on the left. They fired less frequently, trying to conserve ammunition. Simon could tell the difficulty would be Braxton. The CIA Director didn't complain, but his face tinged bright red and he'd already swallowed several of his heart pills. Something would have to change in the next couple of minutes.
It did.
The absent enemy fire restarted with a single shot, one that caught Rostan in the left thigh. He dropped to the ground. They all stopped, but Rostan was already tearing off his shirt to tie around the wound. He clenched his teeth.
“A clean shot, nothing major was hit. Hurts like a motherfucker, though.”
He glanced up at Richards, an almost apologetic look mixing with the pain. She smiled, the genuine article as opposed to the one seen on television.
“Don't worry about me, Major. I've heard shit that'd make even you blush. You're a tough motherfucker yourself, you can handle the pain.”
She reached down, offered him her hand, and dragged him to his feet. He winced, but managed a couple of steps without falling.
“Thanks.” After a couple of seconds, he added, “Madame President.”
They began moving again, and the air soon filled with the sounds of automatic fire. Simon noticed that it mostly came from the side, not in front, and little of it reached their position. He noticed the group behind him slowing down. He stopped and shoved his face next to Alcott's ear. With the rain and sweat covering both men, he felt almost underwater.
“We gotta move even faster. If they wanted us to move forward, they'd do all of their firing from the rear. I think our speed surprised 'em and they're trying to slow us down.”
Communicating the urgency with hand gestures, the group went even faster. Running now, Rostan and Braxton struggled, but managed to keep up. It seemed impossible, but Simon estimated they were going five miles an hour uphill through the jungle. Nothing like life and death to bring out the best in people. After five minutes, the gunfire was entirely behind them. Simon held up his hand to signal a stop. His lungs heaved as he turned to the others.
“We can't keep this up. They gotta have infrared goggles. If they've coordinated the attack with cameras, we're screwed, so let's assume they haven't. The good news is it seems like we're on top of some sort of ridge. High ground is our only hope. We can't see much with the rain and the vegetation, so let's find some big rocks or somewhere else we can take cover and wait to take 'em out. We need to do it fast.”
Alcott frowned. “I agree, but I will not allow us to split up. Too much risk to FROLIC. We have to stay together and scan the ridge.”
Rostan opened his mouth, but Simon cut him off. “I know what you're gonna say Felix, and you're right. But Alcott here is a protector, not a soldier, and he's not changing his mind. Let's just do it.”
In less than thirty seconds, they found a rock formation about five feet tall and ten feet wide. A fissure in the middle of it allowed cover from almost every direction. They rushed into it, lurching together. A yellow spider the size of a ripe orange scuttled over Braxton's boot trying to escape the intrusion. His reaction bordered on terror.
“Oh my God! Get that thing outta here!”
Richards laughed. “What's the matter, Dennis, afraid of a little spider?”
She reached out with her foot and stomped on the spider, its guts oozing around her shoe. Richards was known to never wear heels, but people didn't realize that even her seemingly delicate flats had a thick inner sole cushioned like a running shoe. Handy on this trip for more than just killing an arachnid.
Braxton stared at her, bitterness obvious in his eyes. “I see your brief interlude of understanding with Felix was a rare exception.”
“An exception to what, Dennis? Never mind, I know what everyone calls me. I figured since he had essentially taken a bullet for me, being nice was the least I could do. Plus, he has a nicer ass than you.”
No one dared respond.
The two agents, Simon, and Rostan took up positions at the corners of the rock formation. They agreed that if they caught sight of an enemy, they would signal the others but wait until the last possible minute to fire. With luck, they could get a bead on two or three before firing, as opposed to warning them with the first shot. A lot depended on how things went down, and each man would ultimately have to make his own split-second decisions.
Simon could never have predicted how it would happen. Not one, not two, but three pairs of the enemy came into view almost simultaneously. His gamble with the rapid pace had paid off by forcing mistakes. Professionals wouldn't have moved so close to each other, even in bad conditions. They must have panicked when he and the others disappeared from their goggles behind the rock formation.
Andrea pressed a button on the console in front of her. They'd gotten beyond the range of the fixed cameras and now she could only see the shaking feeds from tiny cameras in each soldier's helmet. She had no idea what had happened to Richards, she just hoped she wasn't too late. “Come in, Delta One. I have no more visual, proceed with caution. I repeat, proceed with caution.”
She grabbed a headset and headed out of the control room. She needed to be down there with her troops. It was bad enough watching through the monitor, but she wasn't gonna sit here blind. She grabbed a Kevlar vest from the wall on her way out.
Simon glanced over at Rostan, then Alcott. He spoke in a loud whisper.
“Fire the instant you hear me fire.” They all turned towards the targets, who approached from three different directions. Simon took careful aim.
Before he could squeeze a trigger, the leader of Andrea's team opened fire at the rock formation, followed in short order by his other five team members. Simon ducked as bullets gouged the rocks around him, turning shards of stone into deadly projectiles.
He poked his gun through a crevice and pulled the trigger, firing towards where he had seen the team leader. Then he sprayed left to where he had seen two more. When the clip emptied, he brought the gun back down. He looked over at the others. Rostan was still firing, while Alcott sat with his back to the rock, taking deep breaths.
The other agent lay draped across the rocks, head tilted sideways and gun still in his fingers. Blood oozed from a huge gash in his head. Two down, Simon thought. What to do now? Time slowed, as it always did in combat, a dozen options flowing through his brain and rejected in an eye-blink. They could keep firing blind, or…
The idea seemed crazy, but it might turn the tables. If it didn't get him killed.
“Jaime, I need you.” He explained what he had in mind.
Rostan said, “That only works in the movies. Those bullets will go right through and hit you.”
“Maybe, but he was wearing a vest. Plus, Jaime's the one who'll fire the gun, so it doesn't matter if I get hit.”
Jaime tightened his grip on the MP5. “Man, this is a dumb idea. Let's do it.”
Simon dropped to
his knees. He grabbed the body of the dead agent with both hands under the armpits. He heaved it up so the man's torso hung over his own face and chest. A human shield. He shifted into a crouch, quads burning with the weight of the extra two-hundred pound burden. Cortez stepped behind him, also crouching.
“OK, Jaime, we gotta make it good. I'll do some firing, but it'll be blind. Two of 'em will probably still be a little to the left. Take 'em out first. Let's not get more than three feet from these rocks. If I yell ‘Back,’ dive for cover back here. We want them to focus on me and not see you until it's too late.”
Cortez didn't smile, but his eyes confirmed that he understood. The rain came down even harder. Whoever described heavy rain as sheets was severely understating it. Simon took a deep breath. Then he jumped.
They say that a battle plan never survives first contact with the enemy. When Simon broke cover, he allowed himself a fraction of a second to scan the area before ducking his head fully behind the corpse. That was the last time things went as expected.
He saw two of them to the left. He counted five others, plus one figure lying on the ground. A fourth team had showed up. Now sightless under the body, he pulled the trigger.
Cortez opened fire at the same time, catching the enemy unaware. Bursts from Cortez took out the two on the left. Simon swung his weapon in an arc from right to left, praying he'd get lucky. Three more went down. Two remained, and their bullets tore into the lifeless body of the dead agent. Simon struggled to keep his balance.
Then he felt extra weight pushing into his back. Shit, was that Cortez? Was he hurt or maybe he slipped in the mud? It didn't matter, because the extra weight was too much for Simon. He sprawled onto his stomach, the dead weight of the body driving his face so far into the muck that he couldn't breathe.
Cortez fell in the opposite direction, sprawling on his ass. A torrent of water pushed him down the steep slope. The speed with which this happened left the others just watching. All except for Felix Rostan.
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