by Jon Coon
The two SEALs led the way out, Gabe and the Master Chief followed. Gabe checked his watch; it was 0200—two A.M. for civilians. The water was clear, and the bottom, clean white sand with occasional coral heads and sea fans. Each team had a scooter, and Gabe held to the chief’s ankles as the little black scooter zipped them into shallow water.
There were no lights on the beach, and nothing that looked like a bay for the narco-subs. Ray, the team leader, scanned the beach with night vision and then dropped back beneath the surface. On his slate, he wrote, “railway, 20 m.” He pointed a course parallel to the water’s edge, and they scootered a hundred meters up through the water. Then he signaled for them to surface.
“Let’s use the jungle rather than go straight in across the open sand,” he whispered. “I didn’t see anyone, but that’s too much money to leave unguarded. We’ll lead, you follow—slow and quiet.” They nodded, and Ray crawled across the beach into the trees and waited. His partner looked both ways carefully and then moved quickly until he also was hidden by the foliage.
Gabe and Kurczewski followed. They sat quietly, waiting and watching. When Ray was satisfied they were the only predators on the prowl, he motioned them forward, carefully picking the placement of every step. They were about twenty meters out from a large hangar made of tenting and camo-mesh when Ray found the first tripwire.
Ray’s closed fist in the air stopped them all in their tracks, and with the night vision monocles, they could see they were about to enter a spider web of nearly invisible stainless wire.
Ray motioned them back, and when they were in a secure space he said, “If they’ve got the whole place wired, they might not need guards. And if they’ve got booby traps, they may have mines on the beach.”
“So what now?” Gabe asked.
Ray was looking up into the canopy above them. Kapok trees, at least 200-feet tall, hung with vines as thick as anchor lines on a good-sized yacht, made it the densest jungle he’d ever seen. It was so tight the sky was barely visible. Ray pointed up. “If I can get up there and drop in through the roof—”
“You want to play Tarzan?” Kurczewski asked. “So you get in and get down, but then how do you get out?”
“Once I get the trackers placed, I could hide in or under one of the subs. Then if you guys could remotely set off a couple of the tripwires, it would look like their defenses worked and whoever it was that made a run at them failed. Maybe it was just an animal that wandered in and tripped the wires. Once the dust settles, it should be safe for me to walk out, and we’re home free.”
“Assuming they don’t find the trackers,” Gabe observed.
“Yeah, there is that. I’m open to better ideas.”
Three heads shook in the wrong direction, and it was decided. Ray began stripping out of his gear. From his pack he took a coil of line and then put the trackers in the pack. “Give me a couple utility belts and your knives.” He sat on the ground and tied the knives to the inside of his boots to make climbing spikes, then hooked the utility belts together, making a lineman’s climbing strap.
He picked a tree and went up it like it was second nature. A hundred feet up, he rested on a branch, found a vine, and swung sixty feet to another vine. The men on the ground watched in amazement as Ray performed high-flying acrobatics until he was over the tent.
Ray found a tree that was close, climbed down, and crawled in under the fabric. Five subs, each thirty meters long, sat on skid frames on flatbed railroad cars. Stacked between them were sections of track on heavy timber frames. A bulldozer capable of moving them sat covered at the far end.
Ray dropped to the sand and removed the knives on his boots. He dropped the pack, removed the trackers, stowed the knives, large and small lines, leaving nothing behind.
The trackers were designed to look like marine zincs, for cathodic protection, identical to the ones on the sub from the Galveston attack. He was relieved to see the same ones on these propeller shafts.
It took longer to make the exchanges than he had anticipated, and as he was finishing the last, the sky over the Gulf was turning pink, and he knew it was time to go. He moved back to the spot he’d used to enter and was rolling out beneath the tent wall when he heard the truck.
Colonel Tom Bright had been a member of the Commemorative Air Force since his return from Vietnam in 1967, two years after the organization built its first hangar at Rebel Field in Mercedes, Texas. Begun as the Confederate Air Corps in Montgomery, Alabama in 1953, with a rich history of Southern humor and a love of American military aircraft, the organization had grown to over 12,000 members and by 1966 owned 166 aircraft, including several vintage bombers capable of making the flight to Mexico. Tom had plans for those bombers, but first he had to convince the club’s senior staff to join his assault on the cartel.
Tom stepped down from the stairway of Senator Benson’s Learjet and walked to the new national headquarters building at the Dallas Airport. He carried a message from the senator, a long-time supporter and member, and knew several of the board members were aware of the senator’s loss of his son and daughter-in-law at the hands of the cartel.
He wore a vintage bomber jacket with a CAF tribute that was a twist on the blood chits sewn into the jackets of the famous Flying Tigers, which petitioned the Chinese to give aid and cover to any American airman shot down defending the Chinese against the Japanese invaders. This CAF version read, THIS IS A CAF AVIATOR. IF FOUND LOST OR UNCONSCIOUS, PLEASE HIDE HIM FROM YANKEES, REVIVE HIM WITH MINT JULEPS, AND ASSIST HIM IN RETURNING TO FRIENDLY TERRITORY.
Tom knew that “Confederate” anything was no longer politically correct, but regretted the loss of humor that had always been a foundational element of the CAF. He also knew that while many of the older CAF members shared his view, many of the younger did not. He wore the jacket regardless.
Eight men sat at the conference table, mostly Tom’s age, mostly combat veterans, some decorated pilots. Tom was on a flight crew, “let’s play golf,” first-name basis with six, and a “let’s have a drink someday and talk about it” basis with the other two.
Tom took a seat in the only empty chair at the table. “Henry, Bill, Chuck, thanks for seeing me on such short notice. First, I have to ask that what I’m about to tell you not leave this room, and if any of you are uncomfortable with that then I’ll leave or you may. But I must have your trust and confidentiality.”
There were nods around the table.
“This is a letter from Bob Benson. As you know, his son and daughter-in-law, Bobby and Susan, died in a crash earlier this year. You may recall their daughters were kidnapped, and we made a raid and brought them home from a Mexican cartel. What you probably don’t know is that Bobby and Susan were murdered because Senator Benson wouldn’t back off on the raids. In this letter, Bob says he fully supports what I’m about to tell you.”
He handed the letter to Bill, on his right.
“Wasn’t there some TV coverage about that?” one of the men asked.
“Oh, that’s right. My memory isn’t what it was.”
“And your ranch was attacked? Is your family all right?”
“Yes, thank God. We had property loss, but no one was badly hurt.”
“Was that the cartel too?”
“It was. They have threatened me and my family. They kidnapped my grandson. We got him back too. Thank God.”
“And then they tried to blow up the Baytown refinery. What are you doing to stop this, Tom?” one of Tom’s oldest friends in the CAF, Chuck McDaniel, asked.
“Well, we stopped them from blowing up the refinery, but that’s why I’m here, Chuck. I can’t, as part of the Rangers or as the leader of Bob Benson’s drug taskforce, do what I think needs to be done. But we can. If you’re as tired of watching the news and feeling helpless as I am, of feeling like there’s nothing we can do, like our time has passed and our country is slipping away, if you’re as tired of that as I am, help me, and we can teach those bastards a lesson they won’t ever
forget. It’s time for us to be Texans again.”
The truck engine stopped, and men’s voices moved toward the back of the tent and where Ray hid. They laughed and gave one of the men in their group a hard time about a girl at a bar who couldn’t say no and a wife who wouldn’t say yes. Unwelcome and unhelpful advice was freely offered but was not appreciated. Comments were rebuffed with insults that made even a SEAL like Ray realize he’d not, after all, really heard it all.
Ray rolled out from under the tent wall and lay still, watching. Five men in work clothes carrying AK47s entered through a slit in the backwall canvas. They went to wooden lockers behind a rough-hewn table and chairs and put lunch bags inside them. One went to the larger generator and started it. Bright lights came on, and two large air compressors rumbled to life. On a skid, wooden frames awaited fiberglass panels to be screwed in place that would be sealed with a second glass skin, providing a hull strong enough to withstand depths of twenty meters or more. Ray watched as the workers began the process of creating another two-million-dollar narco-sub.
It was fully daylight now, hours past their planned egress. Though the beach appeared unguarded, getting back to the scooters and scuba gear presented more of a challenge in broad daylight.
And then they heard the Jeep.
An open Jeep Wrangler with big knobby tires, a roll bar with lighting, and a machine gun mounted on the hood came casually down the beach. Inside were a driver driving and one gunner scanning the beach and jungle for uninvited guests. Gabe’s team flattened into the jungle floor and watched the Jeep pass.
“If they find our gear, we’re toast,” Gabe said quietly.
Master Chief Kurczewski nodded, pointed two fingers to his eyes and then pointed back into the jungle. A squadron of wild javelina, fifteen or more, rooted its way toward the men’s hiding place. Smaller than domestic pigs, javelina were named by the Spanish for their straight, sharp tusks used for feeding and fighting. Not known as overtly aggressive, they were most capable of defending themselves when startled or attacked.
As they came closer, Gabe noticed a strong musk odor, as pungent as skunks or bear in close proximity. Gabe held his breath and waited. Then, one animal caught human scent and stomped the ground with both front feet as a deer would do. The others stopped and then bolted away from the men, toward the tent, toward the tripwires, toward Ray and total chaos.
The first charge set off others, and like falling dominos, the jungle turned orange with flame and crashing trees. Wood splinters filled the air like flights of arrows, shredding vegetation and wounding or killing the screaming hogs. The explosions came closer to the big tent. Wood splinters sliced through the canvas, some puncturing the fiberglass hulls. Huge trees fell, crashing into each other, collapsing the canopy, collapsing the tent. Adding to the cacophony, terrified black howler monkeys bellowed loudly enough to be heard for miles, and macaws of a dozen different species and brilliant colors shrieked and took to the air in terror.
Inside the tent, workers hunkered down between the subs while huge limbs and massive trees fell above them. The tent and camo-net folded above them, and outside they could hear the devastation of their security system gone wrong, the snapping and crashing of hundred-year-old trees, the screams of wounded animals.
A mile beyond the chaos, the men in the Jeep abruptly turned around. As they raced back down the beach, it looked as if the jungle had fallen into a sinkhole. The disaster covered two or three football fields, and their sub base was barely visible beneath the tangle of trees, vines, and broken limbs. They parked and walked, unaware, directly toward Gabe’s team, who were bruised, battered, and bleeding.
Master Chief Kurczewski had a splintered branch protruding from his left shoulder, and Gabe had smaller, dart-like wooden daggers in both legs. Will, the other SEAL, was lying face down, not moving, bleeding profusely from a scalp wound. The men from the Jeep came closer. Gabe clutched his MP5 and waited. When the two from the Jeep were nearly atop them and still unaware, Gabe stood and smashed the first in the face with the butt of the submachine gun. He spun quickly, catching the other in the side of the head in the same manner. Both went down and didn’t move. Gabe quickly checked for carotid pulses and, finding none, let them lie.
Will, the second SEAL, was breathing but unconscious. Gabe found the small first-aid kit in his pack and put a pressure dressing on the scalp wound and then turned to the Master Chief. The broken branch had gone all the way through Kurczewski’s shoulder and was protruding through his wetsuit.
“I think we should let this alone until we can get you to surgery,” Gabe said. “If I try to take it out—”
“Yeah, I get it. Can you cut off the big end and pack me so I don’t bleed out?”
“Yes, but it’s going to hurt.”
“It already hurts. Do it.”
Using the serrated back of his knife, Gabe sawed through the two-inch limb and cast it aside. He packed both entry and exit wounds with gauze and sealed both in place with what was left of the surgical tape. “That should hold until we get you back to the sub.”
“What about Ray?”
“I’ll find him. You just sit tight. Keep an eye on Will.”
“Roger that. Be careful.”
Gabe picked up his pack and MP5 and, watching carefully each footfall, limped his way through the jungle refuse toward the tent. As he approached, Ray sat up on his elbow from under a large fallen tree, his machine gun ready. Ray put a finger to his lips and pointed to the collapsed tent. Gabe stopped and listened. Voices from inside the wreckage.
A branch, two feet in diameter, had Ray’s legs pinned. Gabe looked at it from both sides and realized there was no way to lift or cut it. Ray had already started trying to dig his way out. That appeared to be the only way.
Gabe remembered seeing a toolbox on the Jeep. He told Ray to stay calm, then realized that wasn’t necessary. Ray was calm; he was just trapped.
It didn’t take long to return to the Jeep, find the toolbox, break the lock, and extract a folding shovel and a small steel bucket. Gabe was back with Ray shortly, digging from both sides in the soft jungle floor. It didn’t take long before Ray was able to crawl out. His legs were badly bruised and abraded, but not broken. Gabe gathered everything in Ray’s kit, then helped him hobble to the others.
When they were all back together, Gabe whispered, “Okay, see how this sounds. I’ll drive the Jeep in the same tracks and get you all to our gear. Then I’ll bring the Jeep and one of the scooters back here, wipe my tracks, and scooter back up the coast to meet you. We use a scooter to find the SWCS, have them come in, and surface. We load Will, get a regulator in his mouth, and get the hell out of Dodge. What do you think?”
“What about the two from the Jeep? What do we do with them?”
“Cover them with branches like the falling trees got them. But I imagine if they aren’t found by morning, the hogs will solve that problem.”
“I’m afraid I’m not going to be much help,” Ray said. “For that matter, none of us are. But I don’t want to hear any sea stories about how you rescued a bunch of Navy SEALs.”
Gabe laughed. “Believe me, that’s the furthest thing from my mind. I know who the big dogs are. This mission wouldn’t have had a chance without you.”
Three days later, Will, after surgery to stop his brain bleed, was conscious and talking. Ray, with several stitches, and the master chief, after shoulder surgery, were discharged from the hospital to medical leave. And Gabe, sworn to silence, was on a plane back to Texas.
A high-altitude flyover of the narco-sub base confirmed the trackers were working, and 24/7 surveillance began.
Chapter 39
“TOM, YOU MUST REALIZE WHAT you’re asking is totally impossible.” Henry Atkins, president of the Commemorative Air Force board, looked sternly across the table at Tom. “Invading Mexico with napalm and enough ordnance to flatten a small country—that’s insane. And it would totally destroy this organization if even this conversation made
it to the press. Not only no, but hell no is the only answer I can give on behalf of this board.”
Tom looked into the eyes of his old friend and waited. He knew it was the only official answer they could give, but …
“But, on the other hand, what the individual members might choose to do, including borrowing or stealing some of the planes … well, I doubt there’s much we could do to stop that. We would just have to hope they would have the good sense to repaint any identifying insignia so as not to have the planes identified with the club. And while I, for one, could never condone such actions, if any of our planes were to go missing, I might have to go looking for them—only to help bring them safely back, you understand—from wherever they might be.”
Chuck McDaniel had been a bomber pilot along with Tom in Vietnam and was another close friend. These days he made his living as a special-effects engineer in Hollywood, stunt flyer, and pyrotechnics engineer. He chewed the ever-present unlit cigar and asked, “How soon do you need us, Tom. What’s the plan?”
“That air show is in two weeks. I know that isn’t much time, but we only need a few of the big birds, say five or six, and that should be possible if everyone helps.”
“And once we’re there, what then?”
“It should be normal setup like any other show, but that’s where the airship comes in.”
“You want to take the blimp? Why?”
“One of our agents who was recently murdered had some very sophisticated tracking devices in her earrings. We believe if we can find and track that signal, it will lead us to the viper nest. Unfortunately, those tracking devices have a limited range and battery life, so my plan is to sell the Mexican government on an aerial documentary of ancient Mayan sites to help them promote tourism. There are Maya sites everywhere—cenotes, pyramids, temples, basketball courts. And that’s our cover. Low-flying, slow-flying surveillance. We can cover every inch until we find that signal.”