In Manila, Kalas simply deposited the majority of the diamonds in a safety deposit box registered to one General Trip, golden triangle drug lord. Kalas then traded his diamonds, roughly twelve percent of the total, exchanging them for US dollars, which he deposited in a First Lucerne account. The D-G shook his head at the greed that motivated some people. The fact was, and the D-G was mindful of this, they would never have caught the criminal if it wasn’t for this Reinhardt woman. Ferallo knew that, and so did the Manila office. And because of her, they had their only hard lead to Duat. For the moment, the D-G had no idea what to do with her, except to ask her to go over her story again.
Diego Garcia, Indian Ocean
‘Pig one, behind Jaguar on short final line-up,’ instructed the tower.
Lieutenant Pete Crawford ran his eye along the eight temperature gauges monitoring the Pratt and Whitney TF33-P-3/103 turbofans, and found them to be in the green. He glanced up as the Royal Air Force Jaguar’s main gear kissed the threshold markers, flashing through their landing lights. Crawford then followed it down the threekilometre runway until it disappeared into the night. Diego Garcia was a British possession but they shared it with the Americans. The Brits were fair pilots and everyone got on well enough. They loved their ‘pints’, as they called them. Hell, aside from the odd pint, there wasn’t much else to do on the tiny island, unless you liked to fish, which Crawford didn’t.
‘Okay, Pete, let’s get this show on the road,’ said Colonel Zeke Chapman, the aircraft’s commander sitting on his left, bringing Crawford out of his daydream.
‘Roger that, sir,’ said Crawford.
The two men eased the throttle levers between them forward and the engine note rose to a shriek. The B-52 moved off the holding marks and swung onto the runway.
‘Pig one. Lining up behind the Jaguar,’ said Crawford.
‘Pig one, you are cleared for takeoff.’
‘Pig one,’ said Crawford automatically, repeating the aircraft’s callsign, confirming that the clearance was received.
Crawford and Chapman pushed the throttles forward to the stops, harnessing the turbofans’ full one hundred and thirty-six thousand pounds of thrust. The Big Ugly Fat Fucker, or BUFF as the type was affectionately known, quickly gathered speed, its massive tyres thumping into the runway’s section joints, slowly at first and then faster as it roared along, eating up the broken centre line. There was a full load of fuel aboard but the bomb bays were empty. The digits on the air speed indicator climbed rapidly, all-up weight around one hundred and fifty thousand kilograms and well within the aircraft’s maximum for takeoff.
‘Rotate,’ said Chapman when one hundred and forty-five knots was indicated on the multifunction glass screen.
Crawford pulled back on the wheel and the aircraft’s nose rose off the pavement. The air speed continued to climb as the main gear left the earth and the colonel pulled up on the lever, retracting it. ‘Flaps, twenty-five,’ Crawford said. This was the perfect training flight. ‘Flaps, ten,’ he said, retracting them further. A seven-and-a-half-hour turnaround with a delivery in the middle.
‘Pig one, turning left,’ said the colonel to the tower as they climbed through a thousand feet. He nodded at Crawford who put the aircraft into a gentle thirty-five degree turn. Standard departure procedure. They’d fly down the runway’s dead side for ten miles, gaining altitude, then set a course for the north-east.
‘Flaps zero,’ said Crawford. The long actuating screws whined until a gentle bump transmitted through the airframe signified that the flaps were seated snugly at their stops; a warning light on the instrument panel winked off and confirmed the fact.
‘Like spreading peanut butter, Pete,’ said the electronic warfare officer, a captain, sitting behind them.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Crawford over his shoulder as he again verified fuel pressures and engine temps. All normal. He then cycled through the various modes displayed by the cockpit screens, mentally ticking off the information presented. As the aircraft climbed through ten thousand feet, a bright orange rind appeared, marking the edge of the world, a band of fire in the sea. They were flying at an oblique angle towards the sun, at a ground speed of six hundred and fifty miles an hour. It would rise above the edge of the world within minutes – much sooner than if they were back on DG. Crawford was happy to be sitting between night and day with a long flight ahead of him. As a matter of interest, he called up the weapons stores on the interface shared with the radar navigator sitting on the lower deck. The display revealed that the stores were empty except for three joint stand-off weapons – JSOWs – occupying external pods under the wings.
‘Heading one-four-three climbing to flight level threefive zero,’ said the voice of the navigator in his ’phones.
‘Do it manual, son,’ the colonel said to Crawford. ‘Feel what it’s like to fondle a forty-year-old mistress.’
Crawford kept the BUFF’s flight management computer out of the loop and flew the aircraft onto the navigator’s course, marvelling again at what a sweet old girl the B-52 was.
Nam Sa River, Myanmar
The BK-117 Eurocopter had civilian markings and was flying a logged civilian flight plan but, being part of the CIA’s air wing, the aircraft was not exactly what it seemed. It had been modified. If the situation called for it, a Browning .50 calibre machine gun hidden away in a floor locker could be lifted out, mounted on a sling and fired through the side opening by the co-pilot. But apart from the Browning, Wilkes, Monroe and Federal Agent Jenny Tadzic were going in unarmed. Wilkes and Monroe were uncomfortable about it but that had been a condition of entry stipulated by their host.
‘There comes a point when you have to shrug and say, “What the fuck?” ’ Wilkes had said to Atticus when the discussion became heated. The what-the-fuck point had definitely been reached and Wilkes was in charge, so that was that. Their safety was in the lap of the gods – that and good timing. At least they had the Browning. As far as Wilkes was concerned, worse than being unarmed was that they were wearing civilian clothes rather than fatigues – jeans and T-shirts. It was like going to work naked.
The jungle slid by underneath in a series of ridgelines that stretched towards the horizon, a green sea with mountainous waves. The landscape had a familiarity about it. It reminded Wilkes of jungles from North Queensland to West Papua to Vietnam; different borders, customs, governments and problems, all of which meant nothing to this giant living band of greenery.
The helo made a course change that Wilkes felt in the muscles of his neck, to bring it low and slow over the targeted cultivated field. It was still deserted and Wilkes breathed a sigh of relief. The aircraft swung around to the right and descended into a narrow valley. The ground rose slowly to meet them as the valley broadened. And suddenly they scudded low over a vast walled compound crowned by an extraordinary building that reminded Wilkes of a Hollywood-style Roman villa: Jed Clampett’s house from The Beverly Hillbillies. He smiled at that, and began to quietly whistle the show’s theme song.
The rotors beat the air with a thump as the helo climbed into a hundred and eighty degree turn and decelerated. Goddam chopper pilots. Wilkes had never met one that didn’t like making an entrance. The helo flared and then lowered gradually onto its skids. Wilkes and Monroe hopped out, followed by Tadzic. They quickly made their way beyond the flickering circle carved by the helo’s rotors. The pilot gave them the thumbs up and then the helo was gone, climbing rapidly towards the ridge above the valley and then dropping behind it.
‘Welcome to my humble house.’
Wilkes, Monroe and Tadzic turned. The greeting came from a fat man with heavily rouged cheeks dressed in jungle greens. He was sitting atop a magnificent white horse chewing at its bit. A couple of Humvees squealed to a halt behind the horse, bristling with soldiers armed with a variety of weapons. The men swarmed out of the vehicles shouting and yelling as they ran. The soldiers snatched Wilkes’s backpack and then forced the three of them onto their stomachs and p
atted them down for weapons.
Ten miles due south of Thai–Myanmar border, 35 000 feet
The navigator reconfirmed the airway’s clearance with the flight deck. Lieutenant Pete Crawford wondered if the Thais would be so happy to wave them through if they knew that this little BUFF was not a commercial flight as indicated by the flight plan and transponder emissions.
The B-52 was in position, just inside the maximum range of the joint stand-off weapons cradled under the bomber’s wing. ‘Fly present heading,’ said the navigator sitting on the lower deck. The colonel gave Crawford the nod.
Down on the lower flight deck, the radar navigator confirmed that the azimuth, elevation and coordinates downloaded into the missiles’ systems prior to takeoff tallied with those held on her computers. She keyed in the appropriate strokes and saw that the information was a match. No further advice had been received amending or aborting the mission from either Diego Garcia or a man-in-the-loop down on the ground. A quick scan of the system’s defensive avionics told her that no missile tracking radars had locked on to their aircraft and that electronic countermeasures were therefore unnecessary. The radar navigator knew this would be the case but it paid to stay sharp. She armed the missile, informed the flight deck that a ten-second countdown was in progress, and the JSOW designated number one on her offensive avionics display dropped from its pylon. ‘Fox one,’ she said in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.
As the AGM-154D dropped away from the B-52, its wings flipped out and locked in position, the small turbofan catching as the airflow through its fan blades turned over the compressor unit like a vehicle jumpstarting down a hill. The missile verified its position in relation to the general target area through an onboard GPS integrated with an inertial navigation system. The INS altered the JSOW’s course four degrees to the left, allowing for wind drift, and the aircraft accelerated into a shallow dive.
Sixty seconds later the radar nav announced the departure of the second AGM-154D, ‘Fox one,’ and another sixty seconds after that, a third: ‘Fox one.’
Lieutenant Pete Crawford was intrigued. Here they were up in northern Thailand cruising towards Myanmar and three live JSOWs had just been released. Where were the missiles going? What was their target? All the information fed into the missile systems was coded so not even the radar nav had any real idea. Guesses, yes, but nothing certain. The rumour was that they were in support of a covert Special Forces op aimed at toppling the military regime there. Crawford doubted that. What difference would three little missiles make? He shrugged and let the thought go. ‘We’re just the pizza delivery boy,’ he’d heard the colonel say once. ‘The only difference is, we always deliver hot.’
‘Okay, the sows have been taken to market, so let’s get this little piggy home,’ said Colonel Zeke Chapman. ‘By the way, Pete, you’re doing a fine job. Wake me up on final.’
‘Wilco, sir.’ The whole thing had been too easy, thought Crawford as he watched his commander sit back in his chair and place a fishing magazine over his face. All temps and pressures normal. A walk in the park.
Nam Sa River, Myanmar
‘I must apologise for the rough treatment, but we’re not used to the CIA dropping in,’ said General Trip.
Tadzic, Wilkes and Monroe were lifted off the ground and restrained by more than a dozen heavily armed soldiers. A couple of the men were rummaging through Wilkes’s backpack. They lifted out the satellite vone and the tactical radio beacon, examined them cursorily, then returned them to the pack and passed it to the general.
‘We have a proposition we’d like to discuss with you,’said Monroe, not wanting to delay proceedings unnecessarily.
‘Certainly,’ said the general, his horse now chewing on its bridle. ‘Always happy to thrash out an agreement with the United States of America. Indeed, I’m flattered. Perhaps you’d like to come to my pad? We can sit on the veranda out of the sun and sip something cool.’
‘Thank you, General,’ said Monroe.
‘Please,’ said the general, gesturing at one of the Humvees. He climbed down from his horse, handed the reins to a soldier, and then took a seat in the vehicle – his customary one, up behind the mounted machine gun.
‘First of all, General, we’d like to thank you for agreeing to this meeting,’ said Monroe as the vehicle headed towards the villa barely fifty metres away.
‘Yes, well, I have to admit I was intrigued,’the general said.
‘Do you think I could have my backpack returned?’ asked Wilkes.
‘No need to be impatient, Mr…?’
‘Warrant Officer Wilkes.’
‘Ah, a military man. And by the accent, I’d say Australian. Special Forces, no doubt.’
‘No doubt,’ Wilkes said.
‘I see,’ he said, eyeing Wilkes warily. ‘And you, madam?’
‘AFP.’
‘So, let me get this straight,’ said the general as they pulled up to the sweeping stairs of the absurd villa. ‘CIA, SAS and Australian Federal Police. An interesting cocktail.’
Soldiers, all of whom appeared tense and nervous, surrounded the general’s Humvee. A guard of six escorted Tadzic, Monroe and Wilkes into the house. The general led the way, his fat legs taking small, effeminate steps. Monroe eyed his watch and glanced at Wilkes, who gave a barely perceptible nod.
‘Please sit,’ he said to his guests when they arrived at a balcony overlooking the ornate garden. The guards withdrew when the general gave them a staccato order. ‘Well now, what’s this about?’ he asked, leaning back in his seat.
‘Well, I could say world peace, but I’ll break it down for you further so there’s no misunderstanding,’ said Monroe. ‘Let’s talk about your continued survival.’
‘Ah, I see,’ said the general, frowning. ‘Brave words indeed from a man deep inside – what do you Americans call it? Injun country?’
‘General, you surprise me. You should know we Americans never go anywhere without a big stick.’
The first of the JSOWs arrived in the target area and switched to imaging infrared seeker, comparing the chosen target with the photo stored in its preset memory. The target successfully confirmed by the IIR, it banked steeply left. Four seconds later, half a dozen of the general’s soldiers on patrol gawked as the missile flew past them up the valley floor. Loaded with a BLU-11/B variant of the Mk 82 five hundred pound general-purpose bomb, it slammed into the general’s land-based Phalanx system and turned it instantly into scrap metal.
The sudden massive explosion shook the villa and a fireball rolled skywards from the wall that ringed it. The Phalanx’s munitions then began to cook off, a battery of smaller explosions within the firestorm banging away like lethal popcorn. The general leapt to his feet and shouted something at the soldiers, who rushed pointlessly from other buildings in the compound like ants from a nest poked with a stick.
Wilkes smiled and quietly said, ‘…five, four, three, two…’
Tadzic, better prepared this time, squeezed her hands against her ears.
The second JSOW made its presence known. It was loaded with four anti-armour BLU-108/B sub-munitions that released six projectiles each. With nothing other than the heat signature of the first missile’s hit to zero in on, their impact was concentrated at the fire raging at the base of the thick perimeter wall. Clustered in this small area, their explosively formed shaped charges easily defeated the general’s prized reactive armour and, with a series of earshattering eruptions, created a gaping breach.
The thunderous detonations were followed by multiple shock waves that rolled through the villa’s foundations and up through the floor, bouncing the chairs Monroe, Wilkes, Tadzic and the general were seated on.
‘This is you, your doing!’ the general leapt up and screamed accusingly at Monroe, Wilkes and Tadzic. ‘I will have you killed!’
‘If you wish to stay in business, General Trip, you will sit down and you will shut the fuck up,’ said Monroe, trying hard to keep the grin off his face.
; General Trip removed an H&K pistol from a holster beside him and pointed it, shaking with anger, at Monroe.
‘If you don’t do as I ask, we will start destroying your crops,’ Monroe said calmly.
‘And you will be dead,’ screamed the general, cocking the weapon.
‘You are being attacked by precision guided missiles launched from a B-52 bomber orbiting in Myanmar airspace,’ said Monroe, not too far from the truth and enjoying himself. ‘Your government has sold you out. We are the only ones who can stop the attack. If you kill us, the assault will go on until you have nothing left.’
‘You are lying,’ he said, unsettled by Monroe’s confidence.
The third JSOW, containing a hundred and forty-five BLU-97/B bomblets, scattered its cargo over a heavily cultivated field. The devices detonated when they hit the ground, their cases fragmenting into metal splinters that cut swaths through the ordered rows of mature poppies. An instant later, the zirconium contained within each bomblet ignited and combined in a raging firestorm that immolated the entire hillside.
A large, black mushroom of smoke rose from the valley beyond. The general’s mouth dropped open when he saw the cloud forked with red and orange snakes rising above the ridge, the heat from it washing over them a handful of seconds after the sound.
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