Operation Zulu

by Ernest Dempsey

  “The road Alpha was taking only goes in two directions.”

  “Thanks, Captain Obvious,” Zeke muttered.

  It would seem he said it too loud and caught a scathing glare in the rearview mirror from the driver.

  “My point is,” she continued, “that it’s highly unlikely that they went back toward Bagram. It would’ve pushed on toward Zulu.”

  “But that presents some of the same dangers as going back the other direction, doesn’t it?” Phoenix pressed. “Either way, it’s lose-lose.”

  “Not necessarily,” Gary said. “Multiple roads branch off the main one. Some of them go into Pakistan, another one or two go north to Tajikistan, and several others head into India.”

  “That’s not helping, Gary.”

  “Sorry. Just saying. There’re lots of places they could’ve gone with the cargo.”

  “Yeah, but we still don’t know who took these missiles and what they did with the drivers,” Zeke said with disgust. “You know, the real spies.”

  “Look,” Jessica said as she turned the truck carefully around a slippery curve, “I get it. You feel like you were lied to. Great news. That’s all of us. We’ve all been lied to. Are the other spies smarter than you two? Are they stronger, more capable of handling the rigors of missions in the field? Were they easily the better option for this particular assignment? Probably.”

  The two in the back wondered where she was going with this. So far it wasn’t helping them feel any better about themselves.

  “I don’t know who the other two are,” she confessed, “but we have to assume that if they’re not dead already, they will be soon if we don’t find those missiles. I don’t have to tell you how terrorists handle prisoners, especially American ones who are involved in military operations. They love to publicly execute them.”

  Zeke turned his head and stared out the window and into the distance. The sun was dipping low now. It would be night soon and the drive would be considerably more dangerous. There was nowhere to stop to get a place to stay for the night. It wasn’t like there was a Motel 6 every twenty miles. They were going to have to go the distance, which probably meant driving in shifts unless Jessica was too proud to admit she needed a break now and then. She struggles in that way. She was strong, independent, and in need of no knight in shining armor to save her. Lucky for him, he left his armor at home.

  After the events of the last twenty-four hours, he had no intention of pursuing anything romantic with her. When he first laid eyes on her in the office, he thought she was stunning. His natural instincts were to check her out from head to toe and then initiate some kind of conversation. He hadn’t done that, though, and then the coffee incident happened. He considered himself lucky that he hadn’t been fired for touching her breast, even though it had been an accident, a very happy accident in his case. For her, not so much. He sensed that she still wasn’t over that one. Not that he blamed her. She’d taken it better than he would have if the shoes had been reversed and he was a woman.

  He considered apologizing, but it wasn’t the right time or place. The conversation was still lingering on the location of the missiles and the two drivers that were supposed to have delivered them.

  A thought occurred to him as he gazed out the window. “What if you’re wrong about that stuff?” he asked, doing his best to sound respectful and not condescending.

  “What do you mean?” She flashed a curious glance in the mirror but didn’t look angry. “Which part?”

  “All of it.”

  “What do you mean, all of it?” Gary asked, sounding redundant.

  “The conspiracy theory about the Chinese and a war with America.”

  “You think there’s something else going on here?”

  “Maybe,” he said. “But you’ll have to keep an open mind.”

  Phoenix looked at his friend curiously. “That’s easy enough at this point. We’re in the mountains in the middle of Afghanistan. If you told me this is where I would be last week, I would’ve laughed you out of the room. So, go ahead. Hit us.”

  19

  “What do you mean you don’t know where they are, Major?” Director Madic roared. He wanted to take everything on his desk and throw it across the room. He wanted to pick up his chair and smash the windows of his office with it. “How in the world do you lose a truckload of billions of dollars worth of missiles, Major?”

  “We lost them in the mountains, sir. Visibility was low. It was difficult to track them.”

  “Surely you had a homing beacon attached to the truck. I mean, that’s just standard protocol. We do that with all of the missions we front. Please tell me you have a tracker on that rig.”

  There was a pause that told the director everything he needed to know and nothing he wanted to hear.

  “There was a homing device on it, sir, but it’s gone silent. Someone must have found it and destroyed the thing.”

  “Someone? What someone?”

  Another pause.

  “The last thing we saw, sir, was the transport coming to a stop along the road in the mountains. They were about forty minutes from their destination. It appears, from the few photographs we were able to get, that someone orchestrated an ambush. We have visual confirmation that at least ten men surrounded the truck once it stopped. We don’t know anything that happened right after those images were taken due to cloud cover in the area. However, when the sky cleared, the truck was gone. There was no trace of our team or the men who stopped them.”

  This was terrible news. Madic rubbed his scalp firmly, pressing his fingertips into it until the pressure nearly hurt. Anxiety hit him like a wrecking ball, smashing into his chest and taking out all the air. He felt his pulse racing. Stay calm, he told himself. You’re still in control. This is why you do what you do. You’re the best at this. No one else can handle it.

  No matter how much he tried to convince himself, he felt more and more out of control. He’d been trusted with a mission of extraordinary importance. The people behind it would not be happy with failure. Not only would it put dangerous weapons in the hands of men with evil intentions, but billions of dollars would also be lost. The people he was working for weren’t the kind to take that loss with a grain of salt.

  They would kill him and no one would ever find his body. The death would, more than likely, be a swift one. Assassins didn’t like to make messes and they preferred to keep things quiet. That usually meant a bullet to the head, which was probably the best way to go.

  Madic’s mind filled with nightmarish visions as the scenario in Afghanistan faded. He would probably be asleep when his killer would sneak into the room and pop one in his skull. There would be no sense in running, no sense in trying to hide; there was nowhere you could go where they wouldn’t find you. Their resources were infinite. Failure would be met with swift and merciless punishment.

  “How did this happen?” Madic demanded, somehow regaining his composure enough to speak.

  “Sir, I don’t mean to question you or anyone else, but this plan wasn’t a great one. Sending a single truck out like that with no escort, no backup, and only two men to defend it…does not seem like a smart idea.”

  In hindsight, the major was obviously correct. Madic had concocted the idea, albeit with the approval of Ortega and Tisdale. They thought it made sense. No, it did make sense. His assessment of the potential threats in the area had been correct. Sending a single truck like that wouldn’t raise as much suspicion, it wouldn’t get as much attention. How dare this low-level functionary question his strategies?

  “The plan was approved by some of your trusted colleagues, Major. It wasn’t only my call. So I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t question my judgment. Or theirs.”

  There was a silent pause on the other end of the line. “My apologies, sir.”

  “Look, we can talk about whose idea this was, whether or not it was a good one, and what went wrong, or we can handle it. So, what are you going to do? I assume you’ll send out a r
escue team to locate the missing truck and its drivers?”

  The truth was, the director didn’t care about the drivers. He only cared about the missiles at this point. They needed to arrive at Zulu, or there would be trouble. The entire plan hinged on those weapons getting to the secret base along the Chinese border. Without them, everything else was going to fall apart. The thought brought back the visions of his murder, and he didn’t want to think about that. Doing so wasn’t helpful.

  “We…we have someone close to the situation, sir.”

  “Close to the situation?” That sounds good. Maybe he was worrying for nothing. Major Paige was a seasoned officer. He’d been in control of several missions, many were probably similar to this one. Madic was freaking out over nothing. He was panicking when it was unnecessary to do so. Major Paige was handling the situation, though he still pressed for more details. He would be remiss if he did not. “Excellent, Major. I knew I could count on you. Did you send out helicopters?”

  “No, sir. Not exactly.”

  “Oh. I would have thought that would be the fastest way to track down the truck.”

  “Not in that airspace, sir. Too many unknowns. And the weather isn’t the best up there in the mountains for flying. It’s usually very tricky at those elevations, especially with the violent shifts in weather patterns.”

  “Okay,” Madic hesitated to say anything else. “Major, if you’re sending ground units, that’s going to take a while. By the time they get there, the truck could have been dismantled and the missiles could be spread all over the country, or worse, all over the region.”

  “I’m aware of that possibility, sir. We are sending ground troops in that direction, but we already have a team in place. At last check, they were only twenty clicks from the last known location of Alpha. They’re on their way now and should arrive within the next thirty minutes.”

  Thirty minutes? That was still a lot of time, way too much time for Madic to feel the slightest bit of comfort over the situation. But what choice did he have? It wasn’t like he could force the major to magically concoct some plan that would help them locate the truck within minutes. There was no choice. Madic was going to have to trust in whoever the major had out there in the field.

  “Okay, Major. Do whatever you have to. Just make sure that truck is found. We can’t let the payload get away. There will be hell to pay if it does.”

  “Understood, sir. We’ll find it.”

  The call ended and Madic looked down at the screen. He set the device on his desk and turned to the whiskey bar. He opened a decanter and poured a generous shot into a tumbler. After replacing the stopper on top of the decanter, he picked up the glass and took a big sip. The liquid burned the back of his throat and coated his tongue with the flavors of oak, caramel, and pepper.

  He immediately felt calmer and allowed himself to think about something else. A beach came to mind. He could hear the water lapping against the sand and feel the sunshine beating down on his skin, warming him all over.

  That was better.

  Just a little visualization to get his mind at peace again. Now he just needed Major Paige to find the truck, get it safely to Zulu Base, and that beach would become a reality.

  Or if the major failed, he would probably be floating in the waters off the shore of that beach. He took another drink to squelch the paranoia.

  “I just hope whoever you have out there can get the job done, Paige. Or I’ll take you down with me.”

  20

  Zeke leaned forward in his seat, though he couldn’t move much in that direction due to the restriction of the seatbelt across his lap and shoulder.

  “Okay, so here’s the question. Why did they bring us on board?”

  “As a diversion,” Jessica answered plainly. She said the words with severe discontent as if her entire career up to that point had been nothing but a colossal waste of time.

  “Right. A diversion from what?”

  “From the real delivery truck taking the cargo to Zulu,” Phoenix answered in a rushed tone. “We already know all of that.”

  “Yes, but think about it. The people in charge were aware of a possible leak in the chain of communication. Right?”

  Jessica nodded. “They were afraid of that, yes.”

  “They’d have to be. Otherwise, they’d have just shipped the missiles with a convoy of armed escorts to take the shipment to Zulu.”

  The rest of the vehicle’s occupants nodded in agreement.

  Zeke went on. “We know that they picked the two of us because…we’re expendable.”

  “Hey,” Phoenix said, sounding hurt.

  “We are. Look at us. If we died out here in the middle of nowhere, no one back home would know it. And no one in the office would miss us. We were the perfect decoys.”

  “I guess, but that doesn’t mean I have to like admitting it.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Still, it’s the truth.” No argument came from the front, which didn’t help, but Zeke pressed on. “Think about it, they knew there was a leak, but they still used a single transport M35 cargo truck to make the delivery, at least on our end. Jessica, do you happen to know if that’s what Alpha Team was doing too?”

  “All indications point to yes,” she said. “And all communications with the Major revolved around a single truck, not a convoy or caravan of vehicles. From the sounds of it, they used one deuce and a half, just like you guys.”

  “Right,” Zeke said, raising one finger to emphasize this point. “Why would they do that? Seems unsafe to me.”

  “The decision was made based on the fact that a convoy with lots of vehicles in it would draw too much attention, and this was a shipment that needed to fly under the radar. They figured any terrorists hiding out in the mountains wouldn’t pay much attention to a single truck passing through. Especially if the truck was disguised, like the one, you two had.”

  “We see how well that worked out,” Phoenix chirped.

  “Yes, but let’s stay focused. So, we have a shipment of expensive and powerful missiles headed toward some base that’s hidden in a nature preserve along the border of China.”

  “It’s also close to India and Pakistan,” Gary added.

  “Noted. My point is; whoever came up with this plan had the most to lose from it. Just think, if you were the person who concocted this scheme and you lost billions of dollars worth of weapons, your head would be on a platter quicker than biscuits at Cracker Barrel.”

  “That would be the Director,” Jessica realized out loud. “But that can’t be right. You’re suggesting the Director is the one behind all of this?”

  “Maybe,” Zeke said. “It sure looks like it. Think about it. Everything we were told about this secret base was vague. Paige said that a small rotation of soldiers cycles through one-month tours at that place. That means whoever goes there keeps everything hush-hush. Not only that, it’s in a remote location. When you looked at the map, did you see anything out of the ordinary in that area?”

  Gary shook his head to indicate that he hadn’t.

  “Exactly. There’s nothing there.”

  “Just a few trails, a couple of paths that could be roads from tire tracks, but right now everything is covered in snow and ice, so if there is a way in and out, we won’t see it until we get there.”

  “My point is this; I don’t think Zulu is an official military installation at all.”

  The words smacked everyone in the face. They didn’t see that one coming, not even Phoenix, and he’d known Zeke most of his life.

  “Wait, you’re saying that the army lied to us?” Jessica asked.

  “Yeah, I know, right? Sounds too crazy to believe.” Zeke made no effort to hide his sarcasm. “They’re a government-run entity, Agent Benson. Lying is what they do. They lie to the American public all the time. Why would they treat us any different? What, because we work for them? I don’t think so. Phoenix and I are the proof. They were all too happy to send us off to our deaths for whatever this mission
is. If I was a betting man—”

  “You are a betting man,” Phoenix interrupted. “You still owe me a hundred bucks, by the way.”

  “My point is; I’d be willing to bet that the missiles didn’t get taken to some terrorist outpost. They knew the missiles were coming. The terrorists that attacked us were just lucky we came along.”

  Phoenix chuckled. “Or unlucky. All of them ended up dead.”

  “True.”

  “Wait a second,” Jessica said. “If the missiles didn’t get taken by terrorists to a training camp, or a cave hidden somewhere in the mountains, where did they go?”

  Zeke held his breath for a moment, letting the tension build for effect. “I think they were taken exactly where they are supposed to go.”

  “To Zulu?”

  He nodded. “Now you’re catching on.”

  She shook her head. “Why would they do that? It wouldn’t make any sense for a group of terrorists to hijack a cargo truck, steal it, and then take it to the place it was going in the first place. Unless….” Something hit her then. “Unless you’re right and it’s not a military base and is, instead….”

  “A theme park,” Gary said.

  Everyone in the vehicle turned to him and glared with derision at his unusual and terrible guess.

  “Okay, no, that’s not even close. Why would you say that? Theme park? Really? Do they even have those over here?”

  “I was going to say an underground terrorist trading post,” Jessica said loudly to end the diversion.

  “Or that,” Gary said quickly.

  “I don’t know what it is,” Zeke said, but that’s where we need to go to find out.

  “We could waste a lot of time driving all the way out there. If we don’t find the missiles at Zulu, Paige won’t be happy.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, I don’t trust Paige. Maybe he’s innocent in all of this, despite the fact that he sent me and Phoenix out on a suicide mission. I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt until later.”