by John Lyman
“Thank you. You’re looking beautiful this evening, Dana.” Acerbi smiled. “At least I’ve been able to make some people happy.”
“We’re all happy, Rene. Don’t pay any attention to Alan. He’s been like this for weeks … business problems.”
“Oh, but I’m afraid I do have to pay attention to him, as well as some others.”
Dana’s face became a white mask. “You mean …”
“Yes, it appears that some of our guests will not be joining us at the ceremony tomorrow. My security people have informed me that a few of our trusted friends have been discussing business with outside interests.”
“Outside interests? What outside interests?”
“Does it matter? They’ve broken a sacred bond.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Let’s just say that they’ve thrown away a very bright future.” Acerbi could see the fear in her eyes as her pace began to slow.
“Come now, Dana. Our core group must be completely trustworthy, especially now that our plan is beginning to come together. We can’t afford to overlook mistakes of this magnitude, because if we falter, everything we’ve worked for all these years will collapse overnight because some idiot had too much to drink and wanted to impress.”
“I know, Rene. It’s just that …”
“It’s just that what? That these people are friends of ours? That it’s easier to eliminate someone when you don’t have to look at their face and pretend that you’re not making plans to destroy them?”
“Yes … that’s exactly what I’m saying. Take Alan for instance. He could be a great asset to us someday.”
“No. His days are over. He’s the worst of the lot … his fate was in his hands, and he let it all slip away.”
Acerbi took her by the arm as they continued walking toward the hangar.
“How do I know I’m not next?” The question was posed in an offhand manner, as though she were making small talk.
“Have you been talking to anyone outside our little group?”
“No.” Her eyes blazed. “Of course not.”
“Then you have nothing to fear. It’s as simple as that. I’m about to send a very clear message to those who think they can betray me and get away with it.” Acerbi kept walking with a strange smile on his face. He seemed almost happy, but there was an edge to his mood. Something about him was different. Looking sideways as they walked, she studied his features. What was beneath that smile?
“Why is it that a handsome man like you never married, Rene?”
“I see you’re in a subtle mood tonight, Dana.”
“No, really … you’re good-looking, bright, ambitious … rich. You’re the perfect catch.”
“Are you interested?”
Dana stopped, her eyes wide with surprise. “You never cease to amaze me, Rene.”
“Why is that?”
“Why? Because you’re an enigma. You’re one of the most ruthless and cunning men I’ve ever known, but you can also be very charming at the same time. That’s a very dangerous combination, especially to those who don’t understand you the way I do.”
“So, you understand me?”
Dana began to laugh. “No, you’re probably right. I don’t think anyone really understands the great Rene Acerbi. Anyway, in answer to your question, just what did you have in mind … a date?”
Rene began to laugh out loud. “A date? What … you want me to pick you up in my?57 Chevy and drive you to some hamburger joint?”
Dana paused, her lips pinched together in a mischievous pout. “Why not?”
“Well, for one thing, I don’t have a ’57 Chevy. I have a Ferrari.”
Rene’s thin smile disguised the look in his eyes as he watched her throw her head back in laughter. Too bad she would be joining Alan Thorn tonight, he thought to himself, for he had discovered that she too had been discussing matters of confidence with outsiders.
Together they walked arm and arm toward the hangar, while up in the sky, a dark star ruled by a dark force was looking down on them. It was a star never before seen by astronomers, for on this night it had just blossomed in the heavens in a prelude of what was to come.
CHAPTER 58
Jack Beck opened the door and stepped from the wavering heat into the cool interior of the mobile home. “Why all the glum looks?”
“Colonel Wilson and his men are pulling out,” Alon said. “They just received orders.”
“Not good. I just found out these new drones are equipped with satellite-guided autopilots. They can fly anywhere you want … they just can’t land without a pilot guiding them.”
“They won’t be landing,” Alon said with a straight face.
Beck blinked back at him with a sudden realization. “Decoys?”
“You got it.”
“When do you want them?”
“Tonight,” Lev said.
“Whoa … that’s a tall order. I’ll ask their tech guys if it’s possible on such short notice.”
“You know where we’re going, don’t you, Jack?”
The squat CIA officer looked back at Lev and hesitated for a moment before opening the door and disappearing into the darkness outside.
“Think we can trust him?” Leo asked. “Acerbi has spies everywhere. How do we know this Beck guy is who he says he is?”
“Because I called Danny. Turns out Jack has worked with us before in the Middle East. Apparently, he’s one of the best in the business.”
“I wonder what he’s up to now,” John said, glancing out the window. “Hey, the lights are on in the hangar across the field.”
“They must be working on the drones,” Leo said, peering through the glass. “Why do I have the feeling our CIA friend has been working behind the scenes for us all along?” Leo looked at his watch. “It’s almost midnight. Let’s head over to the hangar next door and see if Ben and his men are ready to go.”
Alon stood and strapped on his pistol. “Drones or no drones, we’re going in anyway. Ben’s team won’t be able to wait any longer. Radar just picked up a passenger jet landing at Acerbi’s airstrip.”
One by one, the men filed outside, squinting in the darkness as they walked toward the hangar past a rattling sound in the brush nearby.
“What’s that noise?” Leo asked.
John poked Lev in the side and grinned. “Rattlesnakes.”
“What?”
“Snakes, Cardinal. They’re all over the place out here.”
Leo stopped in his tracks as he looked down at the ground around his feet. “Great … serpents.”
Leo heard snickering in the darkness as they all stepped up their pace toward the hangar. Rounding the corner, the men stopped dead in their tracks. All of the American choppers were still in place, and Ed Wilson was walking straight toward them.
“There you all are,” Wilson said. “I was just coming to talk to you boys.”
Lev placed his hands on his hips as he puffed on his cigar and eyed the tall pilot. “I thought you were pulling out, Colonel.”
“We are.” Wilson winked. “They told me I had to pull out, but they didn’t say when I was supposed to do it. Maybe we can all pull out together.”
The men stared at Wilson with the unspoken respect shared between warriors, and then, as if someone had given a command, the sound of motors roaring to life began drifting across the field.
Wilson jerked his head toward the distant hangars. “What’s going on over there?”
“Drones,” Alon said. “Jack just told us they can fly on autopilot. Sounds like they’re warming the little buggers up.”
With a huge grin spreading across his face, Colonel Wilson tossed his hat in the air and let out a loud whoop. “Well alright. Let’s get this show on the road, boys!”
Over the course of the next thirty minutes, the darkened airfield began to sound like a giant bee hive. One by one, the drones were taking off. They would climb and circle the field at stacked altitudes until they were all
in the air, then begin streaking toward their predetermined target in mass.
Around the hangar, activity swelled to a frantic pace. Under the glare of the overhead lights, American and Israeli soldiers could be seen running back and forth, hauling their battlefield gear out to the waiting choppers before climbing onboard and strapping themselves in.
The scheduled launch time for the attack against Acerbi’s compound had been set for one o’clock in the morning. At exactly five minutes to one, the intense, bee-like sound of the drones overhead began to fade away as they were electronically released to fly in a wedge-shaped formation toward their target in the Mexican desert.
As soon as the drones were on their way, twenty Blackhawks and three MH-47 Chinook helicopters full of Special Forces soldiers lifted off. After waiting on the ground another thirty minutes until the slower moving aircraft were almost to the target, five Israeli F-15 fighter planes streaked down the runway and hugged the desert floor as they passed over the border. The mission to obliterate Rene Acerbi and his compound was under way.
CHAPTER 59
In the predawn darkness, a Mexican sentry lit a cigarette and settled back against the concrete wall that surrounded the missile he was guarding. He exhaled and watched the smoke drift upward in a long, curling arc through the camouflage netting above his head, all the while wishing he were home in bed with his wife. His eyelids were growing heavy, and all he could think of at the moment was sleep. But sleeping here came with a price, and if he ever hoped to see his family again, he would have to fight the urge to close his eyes, even for a moment.
El Jefe … that’s what the men called him. The boss. Acerbi’s reputation for calculated brutality was so frightening that even the most ruthless of killers avoided his gaze. His stare was almost otherworldly, and if one of his men ever disobeyed him or even balked at an order, they would soon find out what it was like to be in that other world, one far removed from the world of the living.
It was then, just as his eyes began to droop, that the sentry heard the sound. He listened. What was that? It sounded like bees … thousands of bees. Jumping to his feet, the sentry rushed up the steel ladder and out into the desert night. By now, the ground was shaking with a resonant hum, and as he looked overhead, he could see an endless line of dark shapes parting the air as they covered the sky a few hundred feet above his head.
A sudden alarm made the sentry jump. He threw down his cigarette and began pulling the camouflage netting away from the missile as he had been taught. Soon, other men were rushing to help him, all pointing upward at the endless formation of flying machines passing overhead … and then they heard a new sound. It was the sound of approaching helicopters-lots of helicopters.
Inside the lead chopper piloted by Ed Wilson, Lev and Alon looked down from the open side door at the moonlit desert rushing by below. Highlighted by the red lighting inside the chopper flying next to them, they could plainly see Leo and John sitting behind the door gunner. In total, there were twenty-four helicopters flying so close to the ground that Lev was actually worried about colliding with one of the tall cactus plants he saw whizzing by below.
Through the cockpit window, Wilson saw the first surface-to-air missile streak skyward before hitting one of the drones in a fiery explosion that lit up the desert and sent jackrabbits scurrying for their holes. Seconds later, a dozen more missiles shot into the sky, knocking out an equal number of the single-minded drones flying en masse over the ranch.
Then, inexplicably, the sky turned quiet as the remaining drones flew on without triggering a single missile.
Lev moved up between the two pilots in the cockpit of the Blackhawk and tapped Wilson on the shoulder. “What’s happening, Colonel?”
“Your guess is as good as mine, Professor. Either a lot of missiles failed to fire for some reason, or they discovered that they were shooting million-dollar rockets at drones and adjusted their fire-control computers.”
Just then, an F-15 thundered over their heads and released a laser-guided smart bomb from under its right wing. Seconds later, Acerbi’s hangar evaporated in a shattering explosion that left nothing but scattered debris extending outward from a blackened, star-like pattern on the ground.
A second fighter spotted a large passenger jet that had just taken off from the runway behind Acerbi’s house and followed it up through the clouds. They had been told in their briefing to prepare for this-that Acerbi might be onboard any aircraft that took off during an attack, but whether or not he was onboard didn’t matter. For all practical purposes, this ranch was considered enemy territory, and any aircraft associated with it was considered a righteous target.
After locking onto the jet with his combat targeting computer, the pilot was just preparing to fire a Phoenix missile when he saw dozens of faces inside the lighted cabin, staring out into the darkness through the windows. Flying closer, he could see that several of the passengers were women, and two faces looked much smaller than the others. Were those children? Damn! What if this was a decoy full of innocent people, including women and children? Such was the fog of battle. The pilot knew he had to make a decision, and make it quickly. For one full agonizing minute, he ran through all his options, but in the end, he knew that he would never be able to justify taking down a plane that could be full of innocent people, even if it meant letting Acerbi escape. Cursing the lack of intelligence coming from the ground, he turned off his targeting computer and dove back down through the clouds to take out his primary target-the hacienda.
Descending at the speed of sound, the Israeli pilot let loose with one of his smart bombs, and as he watched it home in on the hacienda, he saw the flash from the launch of a surface-to-air missile as it blasted from its camouflaged hiding place and headed straight for his descending fighter plane. From that point on, it was a race between rocket power and afterburner as the F-15’s pilot turned and pointed the nose of his plane straight up in an attempt to outrun the deadly arrow now chasing him. Seconds later, a flash in the heavens signaled that the missile had either hit the fighter or exploded before it reached its target.
Looking skyward, the crews in the choppers had little time to ponder the fate of the fighter pilot as they saw the hacienda disappear in a thunderous explosion, while all around them the desert began erupting in flashes of brilliant light that signaled the launch of dozens of missiles, all headed toward the inbound helicopters. Their worst fears had just been realized.
“Turn around!” Lev shouted. “They know we’re coming … the drones didn’t work!”
Before Wilson could even begin to swing the chopper around, they were enveloped in a fireball that sent the big helicopter spinning out of control toward the desert floor. Seconds later, a jarring crash ejected both Lev and Alon through the open door into an area of soft sand. Trying to come to grips with the fact that he was still alive, Lev rose to his feet and checked his body for injury before running toward the dark shape of the burning chopper, lying on its side like a giant wounded bird.
Inside the cockpit, he found Ed Wilson, his helmet cracked in half and his face covered in blood as his twisted body lay smashed between his seat and the crumpled instrument panel. As soon as Lev saw the man’s jerky, agonal breathing pattern, he laid his hand gently on Wilson’s torn shoulder and began to pray, for he knew from experience that the colonel’s last moments were upon him, and that soon he would be in the arms of God. Before his prayer was finished, the breathing had stopped. Ed Wilson-warrior, father, and husband-was dead.
“Get out of there, Lev!”
Lev turned away slowly and saw Alon standing outside. He was limping, and his left arm was hanging uselessly down at his side. It was only then that Lev noticed the flames in the back of the chopper. With his good right arm, Alon reached in and literally pulled Lev through the jagged remains of the cockpit door. Together they backed away from the Blackhawk just as the fire whooshed through the cabin and totally engulfed what remained of a once proud flying machine.
Lev fell to his knees as a series of explosions rocked the ground around them. One after another, helicopters began falling from the sky, littering the desert with heaps of burning, twisted wreckage, while overhead, an orange trail of fire marked the spiraling descent of an F-15 that was missing a wing.
In the distance, they could see the bouncing headlights of vehicles heading their way.
“We’ve got to get out of here, Lev. Come on … we need to head north.”
Lev focused his attention on Alon’s injuries. “Can you make it?”
“My arm’s busted, but my legs are still working. I think I may have cracked a rib or two, but I’ll make it. I’ve been worse off.”
“Ok, let’s go.”
As they alternated between hobbling and trying to run over the rocky desert terrain, they could hear sporadic gunfire in the distance. Darkness was a false cover, for they knew Acerbi’s men had night vision goggles. The small sand dunes covering the ground around them would be their only place to hide.
The headlights from the vehicles could be seen crisscrossing the desert, going from one piece of flaming wreckage to another, and then there were the gunshots. Lev shuddered when he thought of what was happening to his men out there in the darkness. He wondered how many had been able to escape.
“Get down!” Alon whispered. “There’s some men headed our way on foot.”
Flattening themselves against the ground behind a small dune topped by a large stand of cactus, they reached for the only weapons they had. Two pistols against a large group of men armed with automatic rifles. It was beginning to look like this would be their last stand.
“I think they’re over here.” A voice called out in the darkness. “Lev … Alon … is that you?”
Alon winced with the pain from his injuries. “Those are our guys!”
“Who’s there?” Lev shouted.
“It’s me … Ben … Ben Zamir!”
The two men lay there, unable to make themselves move as they peered at the dark shapes crossing in front of them in a zig zag pattern. In the light from the moon, they could see the young face of Ben Zamir leading a group of about a dozen men, including Leo and John.