Operation Southern Cross - 02
Page 6
Autry took a huge first bite—it didn’t taste half bad. But at that point, after nonstop action for the last week on little sleep, anything would have tasted good.
At the table with him were McCune, Eliot and XBat’s chief flight engineer, an officer named “Crowbar” Cronin.
Everyone was eating flakes and booze, between draining cups of the ghastly coffee. The three XBat guys were in a rare good mood. They were finally going home. The Lex was now heading to Pensacola, Florida. Once it reached port, XBat would fly off, refuel and proceed to their base in the swamps of Georgia.
To this end, Cronin was reciting the post-combat report for the team’s eight remaining helicopters. All but one of XBat’s twelve original aircraft had been lost during the North Korean operation. This second batch had been drawn from spares belonging to TF-160’s other battalions. They were standard-issue Nightstalker helicopters. High-tech cockpits, powerful engines, airframes jammed with secret stuff, including the latest in weaponry.
Considering what they’d gone through in the past few days, their aircraft were in pretty good shape. One Black Hawk’s engine was heavily damaged from shrapnel over El Tapos. Another’s primary flight controls had been blown away by a small shoulder-launched missile. And every copter had some bullet holes in it. Autry’s own DAP had so many perforations that, when Cronin flashed a light on one side of it, several dozen points of light came out the other. Bottom line, they had a couple hundred more holes to fill. Every ship was battered, but still airworthy.
Captain Eliot poured more Jack for them—it even made the Lex’s coffee taste good. Autry was slowly climbing to cloud nine. Despite some unexpected twists, the unit had successfully completed two missions in less than a week. And as in past operations, what had gone on before was already heading for the scrap heap in his mind. There was an instant “been there, done that” element to all special ops. What was that spy’s name again? Superfly? And Pablo Escoban? Autry could barely remember who he was.
Best of all, now he was sure he’d make the meeting with his wife. But before that, Autry was looking forward to some more immediate gratification: sleep. By his order, XBat would spend the fifteen-hour trip up to Pensacola in the racks, snoozing. As it was, he could barely keep his eyes open now.
Eliot had just finished pouring out the last of the Jack when the door to the mess swung open. Everyone looked up to find Mungo standing in the doorway, staring back at them, laser beams for eyes. Autry knew exactly what Mungo was thinking. The booze. The flakes. The coffee. Here was another party he hadn’t been invited to.
Everyone stiffened in their chairs. Mungo was a walking buzz-kill and he was working his magic now. He ignored the empty bottle on the table and laid a packet of photographs in front of Autry. He was acting as if he and the XBat CO were the only ones in the room.
“What are these?” Autry asked him.
“The photos from the El Tapos raid,” Mungo replied. “Good close-ups on some of the guys we greased. More pictures of others we didn’t. It looks like our celebrity spy made it away OK. All pretty standard stuff. Except…”
“Except what?” McCune asked.
Mungo pulled one photo from the stack. It showed a building that the unit had blown in two right on the edge of the Wild West town. It wasn’t a barracks as a lot of the other buildings turned out to be. It was a warehouse. There were stacks of cardboard boxes and wooden crates within, some of which were on fire, but some that were not. And the mystery was what was in those boxes.
They were filled with arctic wear. Parkas. Boots. Gloves. Even ski poles and skis.
“What the fuck is that stuff doing down there?” McCune asked boozily. “They’re in the tropics…”
Mungo just shook his head.
“You tell me,” he said.
IT TOOK AUTRY FIFTEEN MINUTES TO MAKE HIS WAY two levels below to the carrier’s executive officer’s cabin. The whiskey was doing the walking for him by now, that’s why he got lost twice. He eventually found the place, though, and when he opened the door, it looked better than a room at the Ritz. Four gray walls, a porthole and a bed. Finally, a place where he could lie down, close his eyes and just go to sleep.
This he did, as soon as his head hit the dirty pillow. He immediately started to dream about his wife. At their old home near Hunter Airfield in Georgia. At the beach, on their honeymoon. At the school dance where they’d first met. Then she was lying beside him in bed, smiling and gorgeous, backlit by a technicolor rising sun. She was about to say something to him, when suddenly her words were drowned out by a horrendous sound. It was so loud, even in sleep Autry blocked his ears.
He woke up just in time to see one of the unit’s helicopters fall past the porthole’s window.
“What the hell?”
He was off the bunk in a flash. Just as he reached the small porthole and looked outside, another of the team’s Black Hawks went by. Not in flight—it was going into the sea.
Autry actually slapped himself. Was he still asleep? He wasn’t sure. Then one of the Killer Eggs went by. It hit with a great splash just below him. After that, there was no doubt this was real.
Someone was throwing XBat’s copters off the deck.
HE WAS UP TOP SECONDS LATER. MANY OF XBAT’S guys were standing near the carrier’s control island, watching something on the other side, just out of Autry’s sight. Joining them, he saw what they saw: members of the Lexington’s crew were pushing XBat’s battered helicopters over the side of the ship.
What the hell was going on? His men were as much in the dark as he. Then Autry spotted Weir standing nearby and felt his fists tighten. Only the CIA could be responsible for this. He wiped his eyes, hard, and started off toward Weir.
The agent saw him coming and began waving a yellow sheet of paper above his head. On its top was written, EXECUTIVE ORDERS, TOP SECRET. WHITE HOUSE.
“It just came in,” Weir told Autry. “Read it for yourself.”
Autry studied the security codes splashed across the page. They contained all the right passwords, all the right alpha-numeric symbols. And there it was: halfway down the page, the order to “remove TF-160’s Experimental Battalion’s aircraft from the inventory immediately.”
But why would the White House want XBat’s aircraft destroyed? Had they fucked up that much during the El Tapos operation? Or was this their punishment for Mungo beating up the super spy?
“Does this mean the unit is over?” Autry asked Weir in disbelief.
“Hardly,” the agent told him. “They’re just making room—and your old stuff is too hot, too secret, too fucked up to get a good repair. So…”
He pointed to a spot over Autry’s shoulder. The pilot turned and saw nothing at first except the clear blue sky.
But slowly, a dozen tiny specks came into view. They grew larger and larger, and in a matter of seconds turned into helicopters. They were soon above the carrier, going into a perfect circle at five hundred feet before landing two at a time on the forward deck. It made for an impressive sight.
Four Chinooks, six Black Hawks and a pair of the AH-6 Killer Eggs—the exact make-up of the XBat’s air squadron. But these aircraft were not retreads or ramp whores like their last batch. These were hot off the assembly line, the most advanced versions possible of the three venerable rotary designs. They looked so new, they were actually gleaming in the morning sun.
Behind them an unmarked CH-54 Sea King helicopter landed. As each of the new copters set down, its pilots would kill their engines, climb out and head over to the Sea King, which was nothing more than a ferry aircraft. As soon as it was full, it took off. Time on the Lex’s deck: less than a minute.
The members of XBat slowly gathered around the newly arrived aircraft. The copters looked sleeker, more streamlined than their previous aircraft. They were also bristling with weapons, bomb racks, missile ramps and winglets to carry extra fuel tanks or even more weapons. If their old copters had been considered Corvettes, then these were Ferraris.
The copters boasted the latest in night-vision capabilities too. According to Weir, things would be clearer, sharper, more distinct when viewed through their new NV goggles, to the extent that they would experience the illusion of X-ray vision. As far as the AWACs-equipped Chinook, its replacement had all new Galaxy Net gear installed as well: navigation systems, advanced GPS, virtual reality readouts that would be available to every copter in the unit with the push of a button.
Even their copters’ paint jobs were cool. At the moment, the aircraft appeared solid gray. But according to Weir, at night they turned a sinister black. Because they were infused with thousands of tiny magnesium nodules, under the right conditions, when these nodules would heat up and illuminate themselves, they could create a sparkling effect that mimicked the stars in the night sky. With copters able to literally get one with the stars, XBat would become more stealthy, more quiet. Almost invisible.
McCune finally turned to Autry. “Do these things really belong to us, sir?”
Autry was still in a stupor. “That seems to be the case,” he said. “The question is, what do they want us to do with them?”
That’s when Weir pulled out another set of yellow sheets.
“Damn—new orders?” Autry asked him.
The agent nodded. “I’m sorry, Bobby,” he said. “But something else has come up.”
THEY WALKED TOWARD THE END OF THE FLIGHT DECK, away from the rest of the unit. Autry grew more pissed off with every step.
“What’s with this crap?” he asked Weir harshly. “You, above all people, should know we haven’t had a break for weeks. And I’m not just talking about time in training, but doing actual missions. We just ran two in five days, for Christ’s sake. Some Special Ops teams don’t run two missions in a year. We can’t keep going on forever. I’ve got to get these guys home.”
Weir stopped and confronted Autry. “Don’t you think I’d like to go home too, Bobby?” he asked him angrily. “That would be a dream come true for me right now. But I can’t go—you know why? Because the whole fucking world is falling apart and I’m a guy with a pack of Band-aids trying to keep it together. That’s the business I’m in—and it’s the business you’re in. And there’s nothing our friends in Washington can do about it either—except give you all new equipment for your new mission.”
Another mission, Autry groaned inside. Their third in less than a week. Could his guys take it? Could he?
They resumed walking and finally reached the end of the flight deck. Weir lit a cigarette and threw the expended match overboard. They’d both calmed down a bit.
“Things are getting very strange out there,” Weir said, indicating the world beyond the old carrier. “There’s some weird shit going on, all around the globe, yet no one can put their finger on what’s happening, exactly.”
He took a long drag of his cigarette then let out a cloud of smoke.
“I mean, the problems with the Galaxy Net are one thing,” he went on, “though I’ve been assured that all your new gear will work OK. But it’s more than that. Every hot spot around the world got a little hotter just in the past week. The Middle East. Southwest Asia. Northeast Asia. The Taiwan Straits. The shit you guys ran into the other night only added to the problem. It’s like a box of hand grenades, all with their pins pulled, ready to go off at any moment.”
Another drag. Another cloud of smoke.
“Plus, like I said, every other black ops team is booked heavy somewhere else, and…”
But Autry was already tuning him out. He didn’t give a damn about the world falling part. The world was always falling apart. All he wanted was to get home and see his wife again, plain and simple, with maybe a little down time beforehand so he could get his shit together. He looked at his watch. He had just six days and a couple hours before his rendezvous with her. A typical Special Ops mission lasted about three days, so there was a chance he could do this new job and still get back up to Georgia in time to meet her. The trouble was, few Special Ops missions were typical.
He snapped out of his haze. “So where the hell do they want us to go this time?” he asked Weir.
The CIA man smiled darkly. “Weren’t you listening? I just told you they’re giving you a chance to get a little revenge.”
“What do you mean?”
Weir smiled again. “They’re sending you and your guys into Venezuela…”
Suddenly Autry was paying attention again. “Venezuela?” he asked. “Why? What’s the mission?”
Weir replied: “An operational FAD.”
FAD—for forward armed deployment. In one sense, a routine Special Ops assignment. Usually FAD missions were about tracking down a certain piece of intelligence—sometimes from a person, sometimes not—that was crucial to U.S. interests and couldn’t be had by any other means. Autry had been involved in dozens of FAD missions over the years. But why Venezuela?
“Is this connected with them trying to shoot us down?” he asked Weir.
The agent blew out another cloud of smoke.
“Not entirely, no,” he replied. “Our friends in D.C. think you guys stumbled upon some kind of arms shipment the other night. Something the wogs didn’t want you or anyone else to see. And that’s why they shot at you.”
“Just our luck,” Autry said, adding: “Coming out of one situation and flying right on top of another. But what were they moving that was so important they’d shoot down U.S. aircraft just to keep it a secret?”
Weir shook his head. “That’s just it,” he said. “No one knows for sure. But there are some theories…”
“Such as?”
“You know what a Bear bomber is?” Weir asked him.
Autry thought a moment. “The Russian Tu-95?”
Weir nodded. “Right—the big Russian muthafucker. It’s their equivalent of our B-52. Turbo-prop engines, extremely long range. Can carry tons of ordnance, cruise missiles, nuclear bombs.”
“Yeah, so?” Autry asked. “What’s that have to do with anything?”
Weir lowered his voice a bit, even though there was no way anyone could hear them.
“This information is just speculation,” he told Autry. “But a theory going around says that in addition to increasing their army to two million men, the Venezuelans have also bought a squadron of these Bear bombers, airplanes thought to be scrapped years ago under one of the arms treaties. As this premise goes, they were secretly acquired and refurbished by the Chinese—or the Indians, or the North Koreans, take your pick—and then sold to a certain radical element within the Venezuelan military. The planes are being brought in, in pieces, on tramp steamers and cargo ships so as not to attract attention. You might have gotten close to a couple of these ships the other night.
“Now, none of this is good news. Like I said, these airplanes are like our B-52s. To have an aircraft of such destructive potential in South America would be a major disruption in the balance of power. No one else in the region flies anything bigger than a fighter, so even a half dozen of these rebuilt Bears would pose a threat to other countries in the area. Colombia certainly, Brazil. All of Central America. And the U.S. would feel very uncomfortable if these increasingly unstable Venezuelan politicians have access to such a powerful airborne weapon.”
“So where do we come in?” Autry asked.
“They want you guys to go down there and scope out a piece of territory,” Weir replied. “It’s where some of our great minds think the Venezuelans are building an air base. One big enough to handle these large airplanes but also in an area where no one would suspect them of building it. Now, if such a thing is happening, how far along are they? That’s the important question. Because if they have a field almost completed, and they get these planes put together and operational, it will be a lot harder fo
r us to convince them to get rid of them.
“So, they want you guys to sneak in there and see what’s what. Off the record, though, everyone’s just praying that any bomber base is just in its infant stages and that this is something we don’t have to worry about for a while.”
Autry asked: “And none of this can wait? It’s that serious that we can’t even take a nap before going out again?”
Weir shrugged. “It’s always serious, Bobby,” he replied. “You know that. It just depends on how serious. Now, if all this other crap wasn’t happening around the world, where would this rate? Who knows? Maybe higher. Maybe lower. But like I said, they’re hoping you come back with info that shows that this air base is nothing more than a hole in the ground, and that these Bear bombers, if they even exist, are still in crates, rusting on a dock somewhere.”
Autry stared out at the sea for a moment. It seemed unusually calm. “You say this is all just a theory. Something pieced together from several different streams of intelligence.”
“That’s how it usually works,” Weir replied. “We’ve got teams of analysts we pay big bucks to come to these conclusions.”
“So what’s the probability that this theory is the right one?” Autry wanted to know. “You have analysts working things like that too, am I right?”
Weir thought a moment. “Again, yes,” he replied. “And if you asked any of these probability analysts, they’d tell you they’re behind this theory one hundred percent. But if you got one to speak honestly, they’d probably tell you it’s fifty-fifty that this Bear thing is going on.”
“And you can’t tell this sort of thing from satellites? Or people you’ve already got on the ground down there?”
Weir puffed on his Marlboro again. “I wish,” he said. He held two fingers up. “One, no satellite photos because the Galaxy Net was employed other places before this came up. Two, we don’t have anyone on the ground in Venezuela. Their government kicked out all our military people a few months ago and about ninety percent of the diplomatic staff went with them. We got more people inside Iran these days than Venezuela. That’s why you’re going in.”