Operation Southern Cross - 02

by Jack Shane

  The resulting explosion turned the night into day. No flame, no smoke, just a pure white light. Autry was sure that this was a nuclear detonation and he’d been killed, and he was seeing the white light people talked about upon facing death. It was only when WSO Winters let out a hoot that actually stung his ears did Autry realize that he was still alive and that he’d better pull the Chinook out of the way of the spectacular explosion before they were brought down by the tons of debris now falling all around them.

  Autry put the Chinook into such a violent maneuver, he nearly turned it completely over. Ferrari-like or not, these aircraft just weren’t built for such things, and that was almost the end of all of them right there. But with Winters’ help, Autry managed to right the ship, and just missed colliding with two other of the unit’s aircraft.

  Only when they’d put some distance behind them did Autry dare to look back. It was an image he’d never forget: the jungle palace still blowing up from secondary explosions, with the missile’s sparkling debris hanging over it like some incredibly massive fireworks display. Large chunks of debris were tumbling back onto the missile site itself, touching off more fuel explosions, destroying what was left of the other missiles and their launchpads and finally finishing the job of obliterating the target once and for all.

  Autry was sure all this commotion could be heard and seen for miles, but he didn’t care. A small nuke? Germs? Anthrax? Radioactive waste? Just what was contained in the warhead they blew up was irrelevant now. Whatever it was, it was falling back to earth over Venezuela, and not the United States. And at the moment, that’s all that mattered.

  He smiled darkly and banged fists with Winters.

  “That’s what you get,” the copilot declared, “when you fuck around with us!”

  CHAPTER 14

  THE STRIKE FORCE RETURNED TO THE TRANERAS MONTANA volcano in triumph, but it wouldn’t be a long stay.

  All they needed to get here was the last of their fuel; gas they’d stolen at Legos, and put in extra drop tanks as reserves. The plan from there was simple: Each copter would top off its fuel load, and then get ready for the next step, the one last detail they had to sew up. Then, finally, would come the ride home.

  The copters landed on their assigned marks inside the crater. Their crews quickly began moving fuel around, not even bothering to shut down their engines. Leaving Jurassic Park before the Venezuelans arrived was one reason for the haste. Just as important, they didn’t want to get doused by the fallout from whatever they just blew up over Area 14. A huge white cloud was still climbing over the target; the XBat troopers could see it from the top of the crater. It would be just a matter of time before it blew in their direction.

  Once the rest of the unit was down, the AWACs Chinook took off. Its fuel tanks already full, the radar-equipped copter climbed to five hundred feet and started a long, slow orbit around the volcano. The crew techs inside didn’t even bother to switch on the Galaxy Net. They activated their own long-range radar sets instead, and began sweeping the sky for 150 miles in every direction.

  Inside of thirty seconds, their readout screens showed them exactly what they wanted to see: air activity over the vast CaracCo oil refinery just a few minutes flying time north of the volcano, air activity over the country’s other major refineries as well. They tracked no less than six squadrons of Venezuelan jet fighters circling around the country’s handful of oil facilities. So many VAF planes were dedicated to the defense of the refineries, none was seen flying anywhere near the Traneras Montana Reservation. Their diversion had paid off in spades. It had kept the VAF away from Area 14, and might even help the copter unit in their escape.

  That was the good news. The bad news was a little more mysterious: Though the AWACs could see nearly fifty VAF fighters on their long-range screens, no blip the size of a Killer Egg was picked up. The AWACs guys did sweeps for ten straight minutes, looking in every direction, checking every altitude.

  But try as they might, they could find no sign of Mungo or his helicopter.

  IN THE CRATER BELOW, THE FUELING OPERATION WAS quickly completed.

  Autry’s Chinook was the last aircraft to refuel. He’d overseen the gas-up himself, this while absorbing the news about Mungo. Like any casualty situation during a combat operation, he would have to think about it later. There were just too many other things he had to do.

  He checked his watch. It was 0330 hours. XBat had stuffed more adventure and mayhem into the past few hours than some Special Ops groups did in a decade. And still the sun was not up on one of the longest nights of Autry’s life. But clearly it was time to go. Or at least, time to get off the prehistoric crater.

  Autry climbed back into his Chinook, and started quick-booting his flight computer. The successful assault on Area 14 had taken just ten minutes, less than half the time he’d guessed. The final refueling operation had finished up quickly too; every copter was now ready to go. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but at that moment, they were actually ahead of schedule in their attempt to get the hell out of the country.

  Goddamn, Autry mused, adjusting his helmet’s intercom system. If things finally started falling his way, he might get back to Atlanta to meet his wife after all—with a few minutes to spare.

  But no sooner had the thought gone through his head when he looked out the cockpit window and saw two of his gunners running through the steam, waving their arms at him. A shadowy figure was running between them.

  Autry just shook his head. What the fuck is this…?

  He unstrapped from his seat and quickly went out the forward hatch. It was only when the trio arrived in front of him that he realized the third person was Owens, the U.S. diplomat who’d visited them earlier.

  He was crying.

  “They took my family,” he gasped, his face pale, barely able to catch his breath. He was covered with cuts and scrapes and bruises, his clothes further soaked in the green slime.

  “Who took them?”

  “Those bastards in the SBI,” he wailed. “They kicked in my door while I was up here the first time. They confiscated my daughter’s computer, then took her and my wife away. They arrested them.”

  But Autry was already having trouble processing the information; a few moments ago he was ready to bid this place goodbye forever. Now, this.

  He let Owens sit on the edge of the Chinook’s open bay. A lot of the unit members gathered around.

  “What excuse did the police give for arresting them?” Autry asked the diplomat.

  “That I went into an Internet porn room,” Owens sobbed. “That’s where I talked to Weir. It was the only place we could discuss how to find you guys. But in Venezuela, porn sites are illegal. If you’re caught in there, you can be arrested.”

  He put his head in his hands. “But I know it was just an excuse,” he went on. “They knew I was up to something. And now they have my family…”

  He looked up at Autry. “I had nowhere else I could go but back here,” he said. “Caracas is in chaos. The rioting is totally out of control. Everyone I know has already left. Even the Brits pulled out as soon as we made it back. I had nowhere else to turn.”

  Autry couldn’t believe this was happening. “Do you know where they are, at least?” he asked the diplomat.

  “A place called Carabozo,” was the reply. “It’s a top-secret military prison, about fifty miles west of here. It’s off-limits to just about everyone. But everyone knows it’s a very bad place to be.”

  Owens was trying hard to compose himself. He wiped his eyes. “Can you help me, Colonel?” he pleaded with Autry. “I have to get them back. My wife. My daughter. Those bastards will kill them…”

  Autry looked up at McCune standing nearby. The young officer just shrugged. He was of the opinion that, just like Mungo, they were never getting out of Venezuela.

  “OK,” he finally said to Owens. “Tell us where we have to go.”

  TEN-YEAR-OLD MOLLY OWENS HAD NEVER HEARD OF Carabozo.

  Neith
er had many Venezuelans. Built around a small city located in the Trullio River Valley, it was off-limits not just to ordinary Venezuelans but to most members of the Venezuelan military as well. Only persons cleared by the SBI were allowed through its gates, those and the ones who arrived in handcuffs. Prisoners, political opponents, innocent women and girls—many who went in never came out.

  Molly was crying now. So was her mother. They were sitting in a very dirty room that had a small jail cell in one corner, an old table and chairs in the middle and a window that looked into the next room. They’d been brought here after the police took them from their home, placing bags over their heads and telling them they would never see the United States again. As for her father? The police said he was already dead.

  There was some kind of police captain in the room with them now. He was fat and his breath smelled awful. Two police soldiers were guarding the only door. There were three more soldiers in the room next door; Molly could see them through the window. All of these people were angry at Molly and her mother. Angry at something her father had done. But in the five hours since they’d been taken, the police had never really come out and said exactly what it was.

  Molly knew her father had something to do with helping the U.S. government get things done in Venezuela, even though her classmates at the American School teased her that he was really a CIA spy. And she knew that Venezuela and America weren’t exactly friends these days. But she couldn’t imagine what had gone so wrong that these men would kill her father and now scare her and her mother so much. It didn’t make sense.

  The police captain was maybe the angriest of them all. He looked like the sort of person who enjoyed being angry. He’d come into the room an hour ago, and since then he hadn’t stopped accusing Molly and her mother of all kinds of things: hating Venezuela, hating Venezuela’s president and even being spies.

  The police captain directed most of this anger at her mother, who was sitting just out of reach of Molly in a very squeaky chair, one that seemed to be irritating him as well. He was screaming at her mother, his face just a few inches from hers, telling her that in Venezuela, all spies were shot. Even though she was absolutely petrified, Molly couldn’t imagine how bad it was for her mother, especially since this man had such terrible breath!

  If the police captain’s intent was to make them both cry even more, he was doing a good job of it. He’d been berating them nonstop and was showing no signs of letting up. And it was the same things, over and over again: how bad the United States was, and how criminals were executed for their crimes in South America, no matter how old they were. But Molly knew that her mother wasn’t really hearing much of it because she was crying so much and asking the man over and over, “Please don’t hurt my daughter.”

  But then suddenly, her mother stopped crying. For a moment, she was more angry than scared. She looked up at the police captain and said: “Why do you hate women so much?”

  The man’s face turned beet red. He reached into his holster and pulled out a pistol. Even the two soldiers standing guard at the door looked shocked by this. Molly saw them through her tears. The police captain first raised the gun over her mother’s head as if to strike her, but then he thought better of it and pressed the barrel against her temple. Her mother started crying again, and tried to reach over to touch Molly, but there was too much room between the chairs.

  The captain pulled back the gun’s hammer and wrapped his finger around the trigger. Molly knew that in just a few seconds, her mother was going to die, and that she was going to die too. But it was at that moment, when Molly was the most frightened of her life, that she looked through the glass into the next room and instead of the Venezuelan soldiers who’d been standing there, saw three other men. They were wearing black uniforms and huge black helmets and were carrying the biggest guns Molly had ever seen. Her eyes went wide, twice as wide as normal at least, as she just stared at these three strange soldiers. They looked like they were from a Star Wars movie.

  But who were they?

  One of them caught her attention. First, he put his finger over his lips—he wanted her to be quiet. Then he put his shoulder up to the window to show her a patch he was wearing. It was the flag of the United States, the stars and stripes. Molly felt her eyes go wider still.

  Oh, my God, she thought. They’ve come to save us.

  She would always have a hard time remembering what happened next. The last motion the soldier made to her was covering his eyes with his hands for a second. Molly had to think a moment about what he was trying to tell her. Then she got it.

  She put her hands over her eyes and shut them tight. A second later she heard a very loud bang!

  She heard her mother scream and then many voices yelling at once: “Get down! Get down!”

  Then she heard gunshots—lots of them, but only for a few seconds—and then everything was quiet again. She kept her eyes shut even though now they were beginning to hurt. And she heard her mother crying, but she sounded different this time—not as scared. And then there were even more voices, coming from the American soldiers, Molly was sure, telling her mother that everything was OK, and for Molly to keep her eyes shut and that they were all getting out of there.

  Then Molly felt someone very strong pick her up in his arms.

  And they started running.

  ALL HELL HAD BROKEN LOOSE ON THE ROOF OF Carabozo Prison.

  Autry was up here, at the controls of a Black Hawk DAP gunship. Sergeants Staples and Bell were in the back, firing the side-mounted M-60s like madmen. Autry was firing his own M-16 out the side window of the copter, all this while hovering two feet above the flat roof, with Autry turning the copter this way and that, and the rounds from the three powerful machine guns going everywhere, all around them.

  This was good, because SBI soldiers were coming at them from all directions. They were climbing up the vent shafts of adjoining structures, and over walls to reach them below. They were even leaping from the roofs of other buildings nearby.

  All the firing lit up the dark of the early morning; there were so many tracers flying around, it was nuts. Every time Autry squeezed his trigger, the muzzle report was so bright it almost blinded him. But he had no choice: they had to keep firing or the SBI soldiers were going to eventually reach the roof, jump on the struts of the copter and pull them back down. And that would be the end of them all.

  There were two other copters up here with them, both Special K troop trucks. One had transported the so-called doorbreakers; the guys who’d actually gone down into the prison. The other was filled with XBat’s best marksmen, and they were firing in all directions as well. The three copters had arrived only two minutes ago, but it got hot quick—and was getting hotter by the second.

  “Where the fuck are they?” Autry finally screamed in frustration.

  “Right here!” he heard Staples cry out.

  Autry couldn’t believe it. But a second later an attractive middle-aged woman was literally thrown into the rear bay of his copter. Next came one of the Special K guys with a young girl in his arms. The rest of the XBat rescue team dove in right after them.

  “Go! Go!” everyone was screaming at Autry.

  He needed little prompting. Up they went, straight up as the gunners continued shooting, now straight down. The SBI’s green tracers looked yellow through the night-vision goggles. That’s how close some of them came. Autry pushed the throttles to max emergency power, though, and they went up like a rocket.

  McCune was flying one of the Special Ks. He came up on Autry’s right side. The second Special K then locked on to Autry’s tail.

  Autry’s copilot turned to him and said: “OK, everyone’s here. Let’s kick it!”

  Alerted now by all the commotion, everyone with a gun in Carabozo was waiting for the three copters to fly low over the city, making their escape. But this didn’t happen. Instead of leveling off, Autry put the Black Hawk into a crushing, nearly nose-up profile and continued the climb, the two other c
opters right beside him. The Black Hawk’s rivets sounded as if they were going to pop at any second—but they held. Soon enough the gunners in Carabozo were shooting at empty sky.

  Once they’d reached ten thousand feet, Autry finally pushed his nose down and returned to level flight. He could hear both laughing and crying coming from the back—Owens’ wife and daughter, happy to be rescued, but terrified at the wild flying.

  “It’s OK,” Autry yelled back to them. “No one’s shooting at us anymore. This will be no worse than Magic Mountain at Disneyland.”

  That’s when the MiG showed up.

  Autry spotted it first; it was up at 15,000 feet coming in from the east. It was a MiG-21—as old an aircraft as the VAF’s Mirages were new. But he could tell by the jet fighter’s extended nose and the way it was flying that it was obviously equipped with night vision and special IR-guided weapons. In other words, the MiG was a night fighter.

  The drivers of the other two copters saw it too. Immediately all three abandoned their high-altitude escape route. They banked over and began a terrifying plunge back down to the deck where they belonged.

  But the MiG came right down after them.

  And the chase was on.

  This was madness now.

  This was not a military thing—the way they flew for the first two minutes of the MiG’s pursuit. This was just pedal to the metal trying-not-to-get-killed-type of flying. Weaving, zigzagging up, down, this way and that—pulling every low-level maneuver that the XBat pilots had in their book while the MiG was absolutely hammering them with cannon fire, air-to-air missiles and God knows what else.

  The problem was they were trying the escape down the Celona Valley—emphasis on Valley. This was not the square inch or two found between the mountains elsewhere in Venezuela. This was a flat, open plain that ran all the way up to Maracaibo Lake. With nowhere to go and nothing to do but go as fast as they could, it was just a matter of time before the MiG was able to pick off the copters, one at a time.