David would go to the wire with the norteamericano commandos. She stayed with the bad one. "Maria, aqui. David, con nosotros," Blancanales said simply.
She spit in the dark. "No like that man. Damn yanqui."
Blancanales and Gadgets shouldered their gear. Gadgets leaned to her. "He has a child your age. He , is very concerned. So he talks like a father."
"U.S.A. long way away," she answered. "Here he father to nothing."
She quickly kissed David, then watched him lead the two norteamericanos into the blackness. Ten meters away, she heard the other commando, digging in. Clutching her M-1, she dodged through the trees and branches. She found Lyons gouging the stony soil with a folding shovel.
"I stay," she told him. "Watch for Cubanos."
"If you see them, if they see you," said Lyons, "lead them away. Run as fast as you can—"
"No! I fight."
The man stared at her. Finally, he asked, "You have ammunition?"
"Twenty-three bullets."
He laughed. "Won't last long in a fire fight, chica."
"I fifteen, mister. I Sandinista all life. I fight for my country, for my people. I soldier."
"Well, happy birthday and merry revolution." Still laughing, Carl Lyons gave her a hand grenade. "That'll even up the odds a little. Maybe you'll live to be sweet sixteen."
THEY CRAWLED THROUGH an abandoned village. Only weed-grown fields, the furrows flattened by trucks, and the bullet-pocked earth walls remained of the community. The boy had described to Blancanales and Gadgets the continuous training and target practice that had occurred here, indeed everywhere around the base. Brass casings rolled under their feet. Spent cartridges scattered on the bare concrete slab of a burned house, glinted with the lights of the perimeter fences. A hundred yards from the camp, they stopped.
Beyond a tangle of barbed wire, they saw scraped bare dirt extending to the camp fence. David showed the men a crawl hole through the wire. He gave Blancanales information in whispered Spanish.
Blancanales summarized to Gadgets. "If we want, he can take us halfway across the no-man's-land. After that, we chance the lights. Or we can set up here. He says patrols pass here, but not often. Sometimes there aren't patrols for one or two nights."
"We don't need to risk it," Gadgets whispered. "Unnecessary with appropriate technology."
Retreating on their bellies to the ruins of a farm hut, they crouched against a stone-and-mud wall and opened the pack of modified Viper rockets.
The Viper Light Anti-Armor Weapons, solid fuel rockets in plastic disposable one-man launchers, differed from U.S. Army specifications. Originally designed to attack armoured vehicles, Stony Man's weapon smith Andrzej Konzaki had instructed the factory to manufacture some with concentric wraps of notched steel wire and white phosphorous. Though the warheads presented no threats to tanks, the redesigned weapons would shred and scorch any soldiers within a hundred-foot kill zone.
There was a second modification that radically altered the use of the rockets. Able Team would not rest the launchers on their shoulders, aim, then press the trigger bars to fire the rockets. Gadgets and Konzaki had modified the launchers to fire by radio impulses.
Gadgets slid three launchers from their packing case. He checked the radio-triggers, then picked up one of the Vipers. He crawled a few feet to a fruit tree sawn short by bullets. Studying the stump for a moment, he went on to the next living stump.
Sighting along one side of the tree stump at the camp a hundred yards away, he saw two Alouette helicopters under floodlights. Orange and white, they still bore the stencilled markings of the Department of Agriculture. Gadgets put the Viper's fiberglass launch tube to the bullet-hacked tree and lined it up on one of the helicopters. He lashed the tube securely with heavy tape.
Careful not to break the new green shoots growing from the splintered stump, he snapped down the shoulder stop and slid out the extension tube. He heard the firing-pin mechanism cock. Squinting through the launcher's sights, Gadgets adjusted the aim with a final length of tape. He checked his aim again. Perfect.
Blancanales and David stood watch as Gadgets ranged in a semicircle around the base, placing and arming the six Vipers. After two hours, he was done.
"No problems?" Blancanales whispered. "Perfecto," Gadgets answered.
15
Offshore New Jersey
Saturday
1:00 a.m.
(0600 Greenwich mean time)
WITH ONLY HIS GREASE-BLACKENED FACE above the dark foul water of the North Atlantic, Gary Manning stared up at the prow of the Tarala . An arm's length away, their heads bobbing with the swell, Keio Ohara and David McCarter secured the mooring line of their Sea Horse II Swimmer Delivery Vehicle.
Like the night before, when Rafael Encizo led Manning to the old freighter, the amber glare of the prow beacon glistened on the huge links of the anchor chain. Again, only luck would conceal him as he climbed the chain. But this time, Manning would take the risk of climbing first, not that mas macho Encizo.
Why he watched the deck, he did not know. From his extreme angle—almost straight down from the prow—he was unable to see if a sentry stood at the rail. And every second he watched, he endured another splash of the cold sewage-tainted tide surging out from the rivers and harbors of New York City.
Finally, he shrugged off his dread. If he could not see them, they could not see him. Those terror merchants abhorred deck watch. The night before, he and Encizo had no problems with the sentries; the Hispanics and Palestinians had stayed out of the wind and salt spray. And the Coast Guard technicians, monitoring the mini-transmitters placed in the radio room and bridge, reported no talk of intruders.
Manning checked the Velcro securing his knife and Beretta 93-R. Then he put his neoprene boot into a chain link and grabbed another with his hands.
"Hope they're staying warm with their skin flicks," he whispered to McCarter and Ohara.
"Get up that chain!" McCarter hissed. "Cold as all hell in this place."
"Think I like it?" Manning asked. He climbed slowly, hanging from the chain as it swayed with the swells and motion of the freighter. He struggled to secure a positive foothold in the links before reaching up for the next handhold. Not trusting the grip of his textured neoprene gloves, he put his hand and wrist through each slick, oily link of the chain.
Above him, nothing moved. He saw no forms at the rails, no glowing points of cigarettes.
Halfway up, he paused to listen, arching his neck back to watch the rail. He heard the creaking of the ship, a steel door banging as the ship rolled with the sea. Nothing moved on the prow.
He continued cautiously, careful not to click his Beretta, knife, or radio against the chain. Every few seconds, he looked up at the railing, the angle of the chain forcing him to arch his back and strain his neck.
Only a few more links separated him from the hawsehole. The anchor chain ran through the hull in a steel housing that was too small for a man's body to pass through. The night before, Encizo and Manning had crawled through the hawsehole and over the coiled ropes on the deck. Now Manning secured an arm through a link, reached for the stamped steel of the safety grid under the railing.
Metal clinked against metal. He listened. Boot soles squeaked. He heard boots scuff.
The wind shifted for an instant. He smelled a sickly sweet tobacco. No, tobacco and cheap hashish.
Manning waited, resigned to hanging on the chain for a few minutes. He counted to sixty, then sixty again. The wind chilled his face. Sweat ran under the tight neoprene of his suit. Above him, the boots scuffed the deck. His legs cramping from his awkward stance, his arms aching, Manning counted to sixty again. He looked up. He saw a lighter flare again.
A transistor radio blared. A New York rock-and-roll station blasted the Atlantic silence.
Bloody damn! Manning realized the sentry had found a hiding place where he could smoke and listen to American music without an officer finding him.
The electron
ic rhythms covered the sound of Manning's Velcro holster flap ripping open. Forcing his cramped hand to clamp tight on the Beretta's grip, he pushed his gloved index finger through the trigger guard and pulled out the pistol. He flipped up the safety.
He tapped the safety grid with the silencer tube. He repeated the taps, click-click-click.
The radio went off. Manning tapped again, click-click-click. He saw the sentry's hands on the railing. Pointing the pistol straight up, Manning made a low wailing sound, like a sound effect from a childhood ghost story. "VV00000000000w. . . aw00000000000w. . . . aw000whoo .."
A keffiyeh-framed faced peered down, searching for the source of the strange noise. Manning double actioned a 9mm slug into the Arab's forehead.
As the dead man fell back, Manning set the safety and jammed the pistol into the holster. In a second, he had climbed through the hawsehole and onto the deck.
The dead Palestinian lay sprawled against coiled ropes, his mouth agape, his eyes staring up at the swirling stars. Manning crouched low to watch for other sentries along the railing. He could see no farther than the containers stacked on the forward deck, where the curve of the bow straightened. He slipped through the ropes and cables and checked the other side. He saw no one.
He returned to the railing. Cupping his hand around a blue-lensed penlight, he signalled Ohara and McCarter. A shadow rose from the gray water. Manning crouched in the coils of rope and stripped off the waterproof casing on his hand-radio. He put the earphone in his ear and watched the deck as he buzzed Yakov on the Coast Guard tug.
"Phoenix One. Phoenix One. This is Fish One. On the boat. Fish Two coming up. Any noise?"
"No alarm," came Yakov's voice. "No extraordinary talk. Have you observed any change in cargo or personnel from last night?"
"Nothing here on the bow. Can't see amidships."
"I will alert you if there is an alarm. Over."
Glancing over the rail, Manning saw Ohara's wet-suited form ascending the chain. Manning watched the deck and listened for boots as he waited. When he heard the safety grating creak with Ohara's weight, he pulled the tall Japanese through the hawsehole. Manning checked the seals of the heavy waterproof satchel that Ohara carried on his back.
"What happened? Why did you wait?" Ohara whispered.
"Him." Manning pointed at the dead Arab.
Ohara leaned back through the hawsehole and flashed his blue light to McCarter.
In a minute, the brawny SAS veteran joined them. McCarter carried a second waterproof satchel. They tore the plastic seals and opened the satchel of weapons. Each man took a silenced MAC-10, a bandoleer of magazines, and a web belt carrying two pouches of the new Italian MU-50G controlled-effect grenades. Designed for urban and antiterrorist warfare, the hand-thrown grenades—so small a man could hold two in one hand--had a 100 percent lethal blast radius of five meters, yet presented no danger to personnel beyond twenty meters.
Manning led Ohara back along the starboard rail. McCarter crossed the bow deck to check the port rail. They slipped along the opposite sides of the stacked cargo containers.
As he came to the corner of the stack, Manning pressed his back against a container door, then crept forward. When he reached the corner, he eased his head out. He saw no one around the foremast, no sentries near the huge pump or the controls. He raced silently across to the containers stacked amidships. From there he directed Ohara to the pump.
Manning watched the deck as Ohara finished with the pump cables. Finally Ohara joined McCarter at the other rail.
They continued toward the holds. Manning had a clear view of the rail to the superstructure. He moved slowly along the deck, his shoulder brushing the wall of stacked containers. At every opening between the containers where a sentry might find shelter from the wind and Atlantic chill, he paused for an instant, the MAC-10 at chest height, to snap a look into the shadows. But he found no terrorists on the foredeck.
At the superstructure, Manning signalled the other two Phoenix Force soldiers to follow him. He re-traced his route of the previous night. As before, he saw light in the porthole of the crew quarters. Tonight, two Hispanics watched a New York program on their television.
The Phoenix Force soldiers circled the superstructure. Manning and McCarter watched the doors and walkways as Ohara moved along the railings. Every ten paces, Ohara lashed a fist-sized packet to the rail with tape.
When they completed their circle of the first level, they crept up the steel steps to the next. They glanced into lighted portholes, saw one empty cabin, another cabin where a Palestinian read the Arabic script of a torn newspaper. They circled that deck, continued up the stairs to the command level. Below them, on the main deck, sentries paced.
The Phoenix men did not attempt a complete circle of the third level. Avoiding the pilot's long plate-glass window, Ohara taped packets along three rails of the superstructure.
He took the last packet from his satchel and taped it with its convex front facing down the steps.
Manning pointed to the radio room. Ohara nodded, crept to the door. He crouched against the steel of the superstructure to wait. Manning and McCarter eased around the corner.
McCarter crouched at one end of the pilot's window. Repeating Encizo's maneuver of the night before, Manning snaked under the wide window. They inched up and peered into the wheel room.
Manning saw a Hispanic leaning back in a swivel chair, his feet on the radar console. He looked at the screen from time to time as he talked with a Palestinian. Beyond the two men, the door into the radio room stood open.
Viewing the interior from a different angle, McCarter saw the two men, and on the wall behind them a map of New York City. As he watched, the Palestinian suddenly glanced to one side, breaking off his conversation with his companion at the radar console. McCarter ducked down. He waited for a signal from Manning.
The Palestinian went into the radio room. Manning crawled under the window to McCarter. "I saw two. How many you see?"
"Two."
"Let's get it over with."
They returned to the side of the bridge. Manning held up two fingers to Ohara. The Japanese nodded. The three men touched the safeties of their MAC-10s.
Ohara glanced through the radio room's porthole. He saw a Palestinian seated in front of the radio, transcribing a message. He turned to his compatriots, held up a hand. Wait.
Faint buzzes came from their hand-radios. Manning keyed an answer on his set and heard Yakov's voice whisper through his earphone.
"Fish One. Transmission in progress. Wait until message received. Repeat, wait. Acknowledge."
Manning did not risk a whisper. He clicked his transmit key, twice, then twice again.
"Are you ready to assault?" said Yakov's muffled voice.
Two clicks.
"Wait in position until I signal. . . "
Boots sounded on the steel steps. Simultaneously, the three Phoenix men shrank to the walkway, their neoprene-black forms going flat.
Voices speaking Arabic preceded two keffiyeh-wrapped heads. The Palestinians carried AKMs one with his auto rifle slung over his shoulder, the other swinging his folding stock Kalashnikov by the pistol-grip. They talked as they came up the stairs. They started across the walkway toward the door to the bridge. One reached for the door.
He stopped, stared down at Ohara as if his eyes could not be sure what they saw.
A .45 slug from Manning's MAC-10 sprayed brains from the Palestinian's forehead. A three-round burst slammed into the other terrorist's gut and chest as he swung up his Kalashnikov. The impacts of the slugs threw the Palestinian backward down the stairs, his body crashing to the walkway below, the rifle's steel clanging on the steel steps.
"Move it!" Manning hissed. Surprise had been lost.
Throwing open the doors, they rushed in, Ohara into the radio room, Manning and McCarter onto the bridge.
Keio Ohara saw the Palestinian radio operator rising from the chair, his hand going for a shoulder-holstered p
istol. Driving a front-kick into the terrorist's side, the hundreds of foot-pounds of force ripped the cartilage of several ribs and sent the Palestinian's right kidney into shock. Ohara had neutralized him without killing him. The terrorist fell to the floor, vomiting. Ohara stooped to grab the automatic from his shoulder holster, and continued on.
Manning and McCarter held their fire as they entered the bridge. The Hispanic at the radar console did not have time to sit up before McCarter slammed the butt end of his MAC-10's receiver down on his head. The man fell to the floor, stunned, his hands over his bleeding head.
No cries, no shots, no alarm. No alarm yet. The Phoenix men swept the bridge room with their eyes, the muzzles of their MAC-10s on line. They saw no one. As Ohara and McCarter looped plastic hand-cuffs around the hands and feet of their prisoners, then jammed check-patterned keffiyeh cloth into the men's mouths, Manning held his submachine gun on the other doors.
One door opened to the outside. The other, to another small room behind the bridge. When Ohara finished with his prisoner, Manning motioned him to the side of the second door.
Throwing the door open, Manning rushed in, surprising a terrorist in bed with a lurid girlie magazine in one hand, his other hand pumping up and down under the blanket. The man screamed. Manning jammed the MAC-10's muzzle against his face. The scream cut off. But Manning's laughter continued.
"I caught a commie jerking off!" he called out to the others.
A door squeaking stopped his joking. Hurrying out of the cold Atlantic night, a Palestinian startled Ohara and McCarter. Slugs slammed into the Arab's chest, the impacts throwing him against the door. His body sprawled in the doorway. McCarter grabbed it by an arm to pull it inside. He locked the door.
Manning dragged his prisoner out of the bed and put a knee on his back as he jerked plastic handcuffs tight around his wrists and ankles. He jammed a wad of bed sheet into the man's mouth.
The seizing of the bridge had taken less than sixty seconds.
Manning keyed his hand-radio. "Phoenix One. Objective Number One secured. Phase Two ready."
Super Bolan - 001 - Stony Man Doctrine Page 11