Operation Southern Cross - 02

by Jack Shane

  “While Agent Weir understands that your communications equipment is probably not working, and that you are supposed to operate under strict radio silence anyway, unless it’s an emergency, he doesn’t have the slightest idea what you’re up to. All he knows is that the U.S. is trying to keep its fingers in a bunch of dikes around the world—and that starting something down here is definitely not the thing to do.”

  A deep breath.

  “So the message I’m carrying is this,” Owens concluded: “You must cease all operations and leave Venezuela as quickly as possible.”

  The senior officer listened to Owens’ speech—and then laughed darkly. So did the other two officers.

  “If only it was that simple,” one of them said.

  The senior officer just shrugged. Then he said, “We can’t.”

  “Can’t what?” Owens asked him.

  “We can’t leave,” he replied, again nervously checking his watch. “I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here, but we can’t go home. As much as I’d like to, believe me.”

  Owens wasn’t prepared for this. These Special Ops guys always followed orders, didn’t they?

  “But your bosses are expecting you to pull out immediately,” Owens told him. “What explanation do I give them? They’ll want to know.”

  Silence. For ten long seconds. It was clear the senior officer was torn about what to do. Then one of the younger officers spoke up again.

  “Don’t tell him,” this man said, betraying a Boston accent. “Show him. Show him exactly how we got here, and why we hit those targets, and why we can’t leave.”

  “But what would be the advantage of that?” the older officer asked. “So more people will think we’re nuts?”

  “No,” was the younger officer’s reply. “Because if none of us makes it back, at least we’ll have someone who can explain what we were doing up here—or trying to do, anyway.”

  The senior officer thought about this—then reached under his seat and pulled out a pack of computer printout photographs. He put the pack in front of Owens.

  “The whole story is right there,” he said starkly. “What those pictures show could change the world, maybe forever—if we don’t do something about it.”

  Owens stared at the pack of photos. When he woke that morning, he’d thought the most important thing he had to do was create a price-graph analysis on cocoa bean futures. How the hell did he get from there to here?

  The senior officer pulled out the first photo. It showed a ground-level shot of a half-finished construction project in the middle of the jungle.

  “Is that the Los Tripos project?” Owens asked. “The place where they thought the Venezuelans were building the Bear bomber base?”

  “That’s the place,” the senior officer replied. “The Venezuelans call it Area 13. We took this picture when we first made it into the country. Work has come to a standstill there lately, though. Labor problems.”

  A closer examination of the photo showed several large poured concrete-slab foundations scattered around a clearing hacked out of the jungle. But the layout of the place made no sense—at least not for an air base.

  “Those aren’t runways,” Owens said. “Are they?”

  The senior officer shook his head no.

  “So what are they?” Owens asked.

  The officer didn’t reply. Instead he put another photo in front of Owens. It was a heat-sensitive infrared aerial view showing a clearing cut out of the jungle almost exactly like Area 13; it was even hidden from above by the same kind of camo netting as Los Tripos. And it also showed beneath the netting the same kind of cement foundations. But there were more of them and these were connected by roadways.

  “Believe it or not, the Venezuelans call this place Area 14,” the senior officer explained. “It’s about twenty miles from here, deeper into this freaky nature preserve. That’s the punch line to all this, by the way. We came here because we didn’t want anyone to find us. The Venezuelan SBI came here for the same reason.”

  He returned to the photo. “You can see that it looks very much like Area 13,” he said. “Except Los Tripos never made it past being more than a third complete, so no one could ever tell what it was supposed to be. Well, this is what it was supposed to be. Area 13, Area 14—they were the same type of project, it’s just that one got started earlier than the other. We’re guessing this photo was taken about a month ago. At that point, this place—Area 14—was basically finished.”

  He passed Owens another photo. This one showed what was going on under the camo netting from ground level. It depicted a series of curved crushed-stone roadways, wide enough to support a single vehicle, each one branching off to one of the huge cement slabs. The curved roadways were the oddest-looking things.

  “You said these photos are a month old?” Owens said. “Yet you’ve only been in-country two days. How did you get them?”

  “It goes back to us and those Venezuelan Navy ships,” the officer explained. “We didn’t really attack the Venezuelan warship. They fired at us first. We were out there trying to intercept a cargo ship that we’d learned was carrying information that could explain all this Los Tripos nonsense. We were able to get the intelligence from this cargo ship, after a few hairy moments, literally a bagful of it. Inside were plans, documents and lots of photos.

  “One of the things we gleaned from this information was that other shipments from overseas had made it to Venezuela and that whatever these shipments contained, they’d been off-loaded already and were heading out here, to this Area-14 place. But for them to get it to where they were going, they had to travel over those two bridges. That’s why we hit them. We also learned that the people putting all this together spoke to each other on cell phones, so we hit the cell towers as well. At the time, we thought it was important to isolate Area 14—at the expense of everyone in D.C. going ballistic—by what we suspected was happening there. We thought we could delay what was going on, at least long enough for someone in higher authority to figure out what to do about it.

  “The problem was, we were too late. This Area-14 thing had gone too far already. That’s where we are now. That’s why we can’t leave.”

  But Owens was shaking his head. “I don’t understand,” he said bluntly. “You got a bag full of intelligence off this ship. Plans and photos of another of these jungle places being constructed. But so what? Maybe the Venezuelans are paving over the rain forest, one square at a time, to put up a bunch of McDonalds.”

  “We’re not that lucky,” the senior officer said.

  He put another photo in front of Owens. It showed the Area-14 site again, but this time from high overhead, through a night-vision camera lens, which virtually eliminated the camo netting. This shot showed a total of six curves in the design of the roadways, and at the crest of each curve was one of the raised concrete platforms. Each platform had a fifty-foot steel tower built on top of it.

  “This photo was taken by someone else a few weeks ago,” he said. “It was in the bag with a lot of other stuff. Why it was all coming into this country, we’ll never know. But…”

  He indicated the overall design of the jungle project.

  “I saw this type of thing when I flew in the Grenada action back in 1983,” the senior officer told Owens. “It’s an engineering design the Russians and Chinese were known to use as a way of getting as many of those concrete slabs inside the smallest area possible. You can see, when you put all those roadways together, they form a perfect figure eight.”

  Owens looked at the photo closely. The platforms, the towers. The perfect figure eight. Still, nothing made sense. He wondered if he blurred his eyes whether it might help.

  “I just don’t know what it is.” He finally gave in. “Oil wells, maybe?”

  The officer put one last photo in front of him. “This photo was taken by us,” he said. “Not two hours ago.”

  Owen studied this one last image. It showed the six platforms and the six towers connected b
y the figure-eight road.

  But now he could see something hanging off each of the six towers.

  Missiles.

  Owens couldn’t believe it.

  “Oh, God,” he gasped. “Are you saying the Venezuelans have nukes?”

  The senior officer shrugged. “They have ICBMs,” he said, pointing to the last photo. “That much we know for sure. Those are SS-17s. Old Soviet design, intercontinental capable. Fairly large warhead.

  “Just what’s in the warhead? We don’t know. When we zoom in on that photo, we can see signs that have danger warnings on them. Some with skull and crossbones attached, some with the three-sided radiation sign.

  “But are the warheads nukes? Or filled with germs? Or nuclear waste, maybe? Or even anthrax, dispersed over a huge area by detonation of a regular warhead? We don’t know—and there was nothing in the bagful of intelligence that made the slightest mention of it. But you must know about the SBI. We know they are running this place. What do you think they’d put on top of an ICBM capable of reaching the U.S. if they had a chance?”

  Owens didn’t hesitate; he knew that even some of the members of the presidente’s own inner circle feared the SBI. That’s how radical they were.

  “I have no doubt,” Owens replied, “that if the SBI had a chance to put a nuclear warhead on top of a missile that could reach the United States, they would do it in a minute.”

  “That was our conclusion too,” the senior officer said simply.

  Suddenly Owens’ heart was beating out of his chest. At that moment, all he wanted to do was climb back off this mountain, drive like a madman back to Caracas and be with his wife and daughter.

  The XBat officer went on. “Believe me, we’ve been trying to call someone, anyone, to tell them about this. You know how people went nuts in 1962 with missiles like these in Cuba? Well, they’ll really go nuts when they see this. But even though we know it would take forever for the people in Washington to decide what to do about it, especially with everything else that is happening around the world, we knew we had to let them know. But then we learned that bugging out of here might be the worst thing we could do.”

  “Why?” Owens asked him.

  “Because we’ve also found out some more disturbing things. Technical things,” the senior officer said. “Like I said, we uncovered all kinds of documents on the missiles themselves, and they are, no doubt, vintage Cold War. Whether they are Russian or Chinese, or came from somewhere else, we don’t know. But we do know that they use liquid fuel, not solid fuel like our ICBMs use.”

  “So?” Owens asked. “They can still blast off and go around the world.”

  “Right,” the officer replied. “But the type of fuel makes a difference because of this: With those types of old Soviet missile systems, once you put the liquid fuel in them, you have to fire them, because there’s no procedure whereby you can get the fuel out again. Not safely anyway. They just weren’t built that way. So, not to fire it once it’s been fueled leaves you with a warhead sitting on top of several thousands gallons of volatile rocket fuel. A bomb on top of a bomb.”

  Owens was very concerned now. “Why are you telling me this?”

  The senior officer showed Owens a photo fresh off the computer printer. “This picture was taken, by us, just an hour ago,” he explained. “And this is the reason why we can’t leave here yet.”

  Owens studied it. It clearly showed some kind of fueling operation going on at the missile facility, with long hoses stretching to the concrete launchpads from a rather ornate building hidden in the jungle nearby. Although covered with camo netting, the structure looked like a palace. It was painted off white with lots of windows, lots of gold trim. It was on the same level, appearance-wise, as a five-star hotel—just one that had somehow found itself lost in the Venezuelan rain forest.

  “Remember how Saddam had a bunch of presidential palaces? A few out in the desert, in the middle of nowhere?”

  Owens nodded.

  “Well, we figured at first that the guy running this country did the same thing. He built palaces everywhere. But when we looked at this one, and saw the hoses and things, and its proximity to the missile base itself, we realized it was just a front. It’s the support building for the launch platforms. It’s where they keep the fuel; it’s probably where they kept the warheads. We think it’s how all this scary stuff made its way into the country—packed up like it was going into one of the president’s palaces.

  “In any case, this photo clearly shows the SBI loading those missiles with fuel, and it’s happening right now. They’re going through a lot of time and trouble, and doing stuff they probably won’t be able to do again, and are already past a point of no return. The question is, why? At first we thought this would turn into another Cuban Missile Crisis, with the U.S. having to pressure these guys to get rid of these things. But now, after we see them fueling them, we don’t know what to think. We knew things were bad between Venezuela and the U.S., but…”

  But Owens knew why.

  “It’s because Venezuela has already declared war on the U.S.,” he said bluntly.

  The senior officer stared at him in shock. “What?”

  “It’s true,” Owens insisted. “Your friend Weir mentioned it to me in our computer chat—at the time I think he was intentionally low-balling it—so I certainly didn’t want to bring it up here. But then we ran into a Venezuelan police goon before we left Caracas to come here, and he had a sealed document saying the same thing.

  “Your friend Agent Weir said because of you guys and these attacks you pulled off, this SBI crowd—the people who have been pushing for war—are probably going to get their wish. If the president of Venezuela is listening to them right now, he probably thinks the 82nd Airborne is already in-country and that cruise missiles are coming next. And that what you did is a prelude to an invasion. That’s why they declared war on us. Now, again, I don’t think anyone in Washington was taking it seriously, because it arrived via a very low priority diplomatic channel. But it appears the Venezuelans, or at least the people really running things, are taking it very seriously…”

  The senior officer was clearly horrified. “Jeesuz—if they think we’re already at war with them, then they’re planning on launching those things. That’s why they’re putting the fuel in them.”

  The two other officers slumped back into their seats. “In other words,” one said, “we’re all screwed.”

  “If we leave now,” said the second, the guy with the Boston accent, “who’s going to take care of this mess? Taking out a few bridges is one thing. But this?”

  Owens just stared blankly back at them. He couldn’t believe the predicament he’d stumbled into. He thought of Molly and his wife, back in the city. His number-one priority was to stay alive long enough to see them again. But he was also a member of the U.S. Government, and it was his job to do everything in his power to protect the country.

  There was a very long silence, made even more unnerving by the complete lack of noise coming from the outside. Not even the wind was blowing. It was as if the world had suddenly stopped.

  Finally Owens spoke up. “You have no choice,” he said.

  The senior officer turned back to him. “What do you mean? To get out of here?”

  “No,” Owens declared. “Just the opposite. You have to hit that place. Immediately…”

  The three officers were very surprised. “Are you sure?” one asked. It really wasn’t something they wanted to do on their own.

  But Owens hardly had to think about it now. It was all suddenly very clear to him. Whether by design or not, the Venezuelans let slip out a piece of intelligence that the CIA had swallowed whole. But it was clear now that the SBI wasn’t building bomber bases in the middle of the rain forest. They’d been building missiles bases instead—and not just building them, actually bringing in missiles too.

  XBat had uncovered what was going on, but because of their aggressiveness in getting to the truth, the Venezu
elans were probably convinced the copter unit was the vanguard of an all-out American attack. This caused them to jump the gun, declare war—and start fueling up their missiles. Owens too knew a little bit about stumbling toward war.

  Obviously he was the only ranking U.S. Government official on the scene albeit a diplomat more informed about the growing of the jungle carrots and Venezuelan duck potatoes. But there was no way they were going to get a message out. And even sending one of the XBat copters back to their mother ship was dangerous—if he got caught—and time consuming even if he didn’t. And to what end? So a message could be flashed to D.C. and mulled over by majors and generals and politicians and press secretaries?

  No—there was no time for any of that. Area 14 had to be destroyed now, and he, George Owens III, had to make the call.

  “I mean, we have to assume these things have nukes or something just as bad on them,” he said. “They wouldn’t go through all this just to lob some conventional explosives at us. But do you even know what happens if you shoot at a nuclear-tipped missile? If you blow one up, does its warhead detonate?”

  The three officers shook their heads gloomily. “That’s the problem,” the senior officer said. “We have no idea.”

  That’s when another jolt of reality hit Owens square on the jaw. Yes, these guys could have left a long time ago—they hadn’t, because they knew how serious the situation was. But now, if there was a chance they were going to do something about it, it quite possibly meant that, in addition to creating a hole in the jungle even bigger that the volcano’s crater, they would all probably lose their lives in the process as well. Still, they remained.

  That was courage.

  “Just go do it,” Owens finally told the XBat officers. “I’ll take the heat.”

  CHAPTER 13

  BOBBY AUTRY WAS FLYING HIGH.

  He was in the pilot’s seat of Chinook One, one of the three double-rotor gunships, eyes locked into his night-vision goggles, chewing gum like a madman. WSO Winters was beside him, his copilot again. They were hovering twenty feet above the lip of the dormant volcano, trying to stay as steady as possible, looking for any potential airborne threats that might affect the upcoming mission. The rest of the unit was still down below, waiting for their signal to take off. In the Chinook’s rear compartment was a handful of improvised weapons, including one containing the destructive force of a small MOAB, the so-called Mother of All Bombs. The most important operation in XBat’s short history was about to take place.