Fallen Hunter (Jesse McDermitt Series)

by Wayne Stinnett

  “I tossed it, Deuce,” I said. Julie and Tina both started in again, berating the both of us about the danger we were going to put ourselves through. After another minute of that, they both stopped. Neither Deuce nor I had said a word. I’d been through this before, having been married twice while I was in the Corps. Deuce must have just been following my lead. He’d come to me a few times about this very subject, how to both include and keep secret the different aspects of his life working for DHS.

  “Look,” I said to Tina. “I spent twenty years doing exactly what Deuce and I are going to do tonight.” Then I looked at Julie and added, “And Deuce has spent nine years in probably a lot hairier places than I ever was. We are what we are and we’re both damn good at it. We both know the danger. There isn’t anything in writing about it, but all of us know that nothing will keep us from leaving a man behind. Tony needs us real bad, right now. We won’t let him down. If it were me sitting there where he is, I’d know that no matter what they did to me, help was on the way. That’s exactly what’s going through Tony’s mind this very second. He knows we’re coming and we’re not going to let him down. The bad guys don’t we’re coming. It’s not in their mind set. Jules, you’re a part of something way bigger than yourself now. With more training, these things will become a part of you too. Tina, you’re a cop. What would the others on the force do, if it were one of their own?”

  That was a lot more words than I normally say at one time. Finally Julie said, “What can we do to help?”

  “I still don’t like it,” Tina said. “But, I’ll help out any way I can.”

  “I thought you were a man of few words,” Deuce said.

  The three of them laughed at that, easing the tension we were all feeling. “There’s about fifteen of them and seven of us. By my calculations, we have them outnumbered three to one.” That brought on more laughter from all of us.

  “Here’s what you can do,” Deuce said. I knew he hadn’t just been sitting there quietly waiting. “Williams is going to come in barely above the waves to avoid the Cuban air defense systems. We’re going to try to coordinate him and the Cigarette to meet us at the same time. Rusty will have the Zodiac ready to shove out of the plane and start inflating it right away. That’ll only take him about five minutes. The Cigarette will tie off to the Revenge and four of the five men aboard will enter the water and swim to the plane. Rusty can finish inflating it and hanging the engine, while they move the extra fuel tanks to the Cigarette and hand them up to Bourke, to refuel. Might be a good idea if Williams takes the empties with him to Cancun and brings back a little more fuel, just in case. Once Rusty has the Zodiac ready, he’ll board the Revenge while Julie goes over to the Cigarette and the seven of us shove off in the Zodiac. Y’all will take the two boats ten miles due north and stand by, while Williams takes off for Cancun. Julie, you have the advantage of speed. The Cubans don’t have anything as fast as that Cigarette and damn few patrol boats can match the Revenge. If it gets nasty, I’m sure Jesse has a little more under his bunk and I’m equally sure Rusty will know how to get to it and use it. At most, all of this shouldn’t take more than ten minutes.

  The three of us nodded and he continued, “Here’s my plan. There’s almost no chance of a muffled Zodiac being spotted, especially that late. We can make the twenty miles to where Tony and Art landed in about thirty minutes, gather their stashed gear and put it all on the Zodiac. We’ll do the same as they did, go overland to the smaller bay and cross it underwater. All seven of us are perfectly capable of doing it alone with no problem. We’ll regroup on shore and using Chyrel with her satellite imaging, take out the guards at the dock first. I’ll have Hinkle move to Arts position and Art can be his spotter to take out any sentries they have posted. I want Santiago and Fayyad alive. The six of us will go in, covered by Hinkle and the eye in the sky, find them and bring them and Tony back out. Tony, Art, and Doc go back in the plane. Bourke, Rusty, Hinkle, Julie, and Tina go back in the Cigarette and Grayson, Simpson, me and you, will take Fayyad and Santiago back on the Revenge. Well, at least half way back. I’ll have the Director arrange a Navy chopper to pick them up along the way and take them to Gitmo.”

  “Why do you want us to go back in the Cigarette?” Tina asked.

  “You two and Rusty are non-combatants,” I said. “The Cigarette will get you back faster and safer. Don’t worry, we’ll be back seven hours after you. Maybe sooner, if Williams brings enough fuel.”

  “Can you think of anything to add to my plan, Jesse?” Deuce asked.

  “You know what your dad used to say about battle plans?” I asked him back.

  “Yeah,” he said. “The battle plan’s always the first casualty of any battle.”

  “We have a big advantage,” I said. “Even if they have night vision, we have an overhead view they can’t hide from. I’d like to have Bond and Sayef both overseeing things. If Art is able to pick up any conversation, Sayef can translate on the fly and with Bond’s tactical training, he can move us around like chess pieces.”

  Just then, Chyrel’s voice came over the UHF, “McDermitt Charters calling the M/V Gaspar’s Revenge. Do you copy?”

  I picked up the mic and said, “We ditched the bug, Chyrel. What’s up?”

  “Suggest you go visual,” she said.

  “Give us a minute,” I said. Then to Tina I asked, “Watch the helm?”

  She slid over as I stood up and I opened the intercom to the salon and said, “You guys can listen in from here.”

  Deuce and I climbed down to the salon. I opened the laptop and Chyrel’s face appeared, “I have a fix on where they’re holding Tony,” she said. “Putting it on screen.”

  “That’s good, did Rusty have any trouble getting the Zodiac up there?” Deuce asked.

  “None,” she replied, “They took off about an hour ago and Mister Williams rigged an inflating system to utilize multiple air tanks at once. Furthermore, Mister Thurman had four tanks filled with heliox. A 10% mix.”

  “Heliox?” I asked.

  Deuce smiled, “Yeah, heliox is lighter than air. It’ll make the Zodiac lighter. And faster.”

  “Mister Williams estimates a top speed of thirty-five knots,” Chyrel said.

  “Where’s Tony being held?” I asked.

  “Currently in a wooden structure,” she said, “thirty meters southeast of the tent where the arms are stored. There are two others in there with him. I have it on satellite.” An overhead view of the terrorist camp came on screen and zoomed in on a building, showing three heat signatures inside. Two appeared to be standing and one sitting.

  “We’re less than an hour from the rendezvous point,” I said. “What’s the status of the Cigarette?”

  “They left about two hours ago,” she said. “Hang on, I’ll get a precise fix.” A moment later she said, “At present speed all three of you should arrive at the coordinates you sent within minutes of one another.”

  “Thanks, Chyrel,” Deuce said. “Anything else?”

  “That’s it for now,” she replied.

  “When we go in,” Deuce said, “Have Bond and Sayef on the coms. Let Bond know he’ll be directing us tactically and Sayef will be listening and translating anything that Art picks up. Out.”

  Deuce closed the laptop and we quickly changed into our wetsuits. Then we went back up to the bridge. Forty minutes later, we were just four miles from the rendezvous and I picked up the Cigarette on radar. It was sixteen miles away and closing fast. The minutes seemed to tic slowly as we closed on the go fast boat. When we were three miles from the rendezvous point, Williams and his Beaver suddenly appeared on the radar, about fifteen miles away and overtaking the Cigarette.

  Deuce and I both put on our night vision goggles, as I killed all the lights and said into the mic, “Going dark.”

  We watched the radar, as the plane swung out from behind the Cigarette and slowed. It passed the fast moving boat, then slowed even more. We were now only a mile from the Cigarette, so I pulled
back the throttles and came down off of plane.

  “I’ll go down and tie them off when they get here,” Deuce said as he started down the ladder. With the engines burbling now at a relatively quiet idle, I could easily hear the roar of the big radial engine. I heard the engine’s pitch change as it slowed, then for a few seconds a loud swishing sound as his pontoons made contact with the water. Now, I could see the plane as it settled onto the water and the engine quieted.

  “We’re down,” came Williams’ voice over the radio.

  “Roger,” I said into the mic, “Good job. Switching to personal com.”

  I turned on my ear wig and could hear Deuce guiding the Cigarette alongside. Once he had it tied off, I put the Revenge in gear and slowly idled toward the airplane. I could see Rusty at the cargo door, already lowering the Zodiac into the water. When we were thirty feet away, I put the engines in neutral for a second and then shut them down. It became eerily quiet.

  I stood up and said to Tina, “Take the helm, until Rusty gets up here.”

  Julie and I went down to the cockpit, then she climbed over onto the Cigarette. Her job for the next few minutes was to become familiar with the controls of the fast boat as quickly as she could. Four of the men aboard were already in the water swimming toward the plane and Bourke was explaining the controls to her, while he waited for the swimmers to return with the fuel. Deuce and I grabbed our dive gear and stepped over into the Cigarette and placed it with the others, ready to transfer to the Zodiac.

  The first of the swimmers was approaching the starboard side, so I opened the fuel tank cover and removed the cap. When he got alongside, I reached down and lifted the twenty gallon plastic gas can and handed it to Deuce, then grabbed one set of dive gear and handed it down to the swimmer to take to the Zodiac as Deuce started pouring the gas into the boats fuel tank. We did this quickly six more times, filling the tank on the starved Cigarette. Within minutes the Zodiac was inflated and the engine mounted. Rusty brought it quietly alongside the Cigarette and we quickly transferred the rest of the gas, as he went up to the helm of the Revenge. Two swimmers carried the last of the gas cans back to the Beaver and then hurried back to the Zodiac.

  With no reason to stay, Williams cranked the big Pratt and Whitney radial engine and idled away, turning into the wind. Once he was well clear, we all heard the big engine roar and watched the plane as the pontoons lifted it onto plane, bounce a few times in the chop then lift off the water and continue east out of sight. I heard one of the men, maybe Simpson say, “Too cool.”

  Tina climbed down from the bridge, leaned across the gunwale and kissed me. “Be careful,” she said and then went forward to untie the Cigarette. I cast off the stern line, then scrambled over the starboard side and into the Zodiac. I saw Deuce and Julie embrace in the back of the big go fast boat, then he joined me. As we shoved away from the two boats, both engines started and turned due north. Within seconds they were both up on plane and out of sight.

  Bourke was at the tiller and the rest of us took up positions, three on each side, hunkered down as low in the little boat as we could get, each man with his weapon tucked neatly alongside him. Deuce and I were in front, across from one another. With both of us watching through the night vision goggles, the little boat quickly accelerated. Being so low to the water, it looked and felt like we were going a whole lot faster than thirty-five knots.

  All seven of us were wearing night vision of one kind or another, except Hinkle. Bourke had taken a general heading, then chose a star to follow, but once underway, he was watching Deuce and I more than anything else. A log, turtle or just about anything on the surface could easily wreck the tiny boat, so he was watching us for hand signals to avoid anything in the water ahead.

  In less than twenty minutes of bouncing along the surface of the ocean, we entered Guadiana Bay where the water was as flat as glass. The engine barely made a whisper and the only noise was the slight wave being kicked up at the stern of the light boat.

  The tide was with us. Tony and Art had stashed their equipment up a small creek that wound its way inland almost a hundred yards. Chyrel’s voice came over my ear wig saying, “The creek mouth is ahead two hundred meters and just south of your heading.”

  Bourke adjusted course to the right slightly and I heard her say, “Dead ahead now. One hundred meters.”

  We didn’t slow until we were into the mouth of the small creek. Bourke expertly navigated up the creek, branches hanging low enough to scrape our backs in places.

  “Slow down,” Chyrel said. “Twenty meters ahead on the right. Ten meters. Turn in now.”

  Bourke killed the engine and turned the boat to starboard, easing to a stop on a small sandy beach. We scrambled out of the boat, Simpson and Grayson, moving toward the spot they knew to be where Tony and Art had stashed their gear, as the other men fanned out and set up a quick defensive perimeter. Seconds later, the two Marines returned with the gear and put it aboard the boat. We could have left it there, but once we got Tony and Art out, we didn’t want to leave any sign that we’d been in Cuba.

  Each man had studied the satellite image of this peninsula carefully, in case we got separated. We gathered our scuba gear and set out. There were two small lakes between us and the opposite shoreline and we had to take a zigzag course through the lowland swamp. It wasn’t easy going and we were in a hurry.

  It took as an hour to cross the mile and a half wide peninsula, to another smaller creek, that emptied into the small inland bay, just a mile across from the newly constructed pier at the terrorist camp. When we reached the creek, we quickly got our dive gear on and slipped into the water. All of us wore full face masks, so once we submerged we could talk without being heard. Not that a lot of talk was needed, we all knew where to go and what we would do when we got there. Simpson and Grayson broke away from the rest of us, angling toward the pier, slightly south of the camp. Both men were armed with ISR-300’s. Basically it’s an M-4 rifle with integral suppressors manufactured by Daniel Defense.

  Hinkle soon broke away to the northeast, to enter a creek and come ashore just twenty yards from where Art was. The rest of us, Deuce, Bourke, Doc, and I, continued due east, each following his own compass, as the water was too murky to see much of anything. Our plan was for everyone to switch on a tiny infrared light mounted on our night vision goggles that flashed at two second intervals, once we made it to the shore line. This would allow the four of us to regroup and also keep us from accidentally shooting one another.

  It took us almost thirty minutes to cross the small bay. Fortunately, it was very shallow and nobody used even close to half their air supply. I surfaced near a tangle of mangrove roots. I looked to the left and saw two others surfacing. To my right, just a few feet away Doc surfaced. Deuce and Bourke quietly made their way to where Doc and I were, having noted the cover the mangroves gave us. We took off our dive gear and stashed it near the mangroves, with an infrared marker that could only be seen from the water’s edge. The idea being a quick retreat to the water and locate the dive gear.

  Bourke, Doc and I moved inland and quickly established a small perimeter, to allow Deuce to contact the other three members of the team. Over my com I heard him say, “Com check.”

  Art’s voice was heard first saying, “Hinkle’s with me. There’s two guards on the pier and I can see Simpson and Grayson directly below them.”

  Two clicks were followed by two more, a signal from the two Marines that they heard, but couldn’t talk. The pier was only thirty yards south of where we were and when I looked that way I saw two simultaneous muzzle flashes from below the pier and the two men above collapsed without a sound. Then Grayson’s voice came over the com saying, “Two tangoes down.”

  “Tell us what you see, Base,” Deuce said.

  Bond’s voice came back saying, “Tony’s still in the same building, about fifty meters at 60 degrees from your pos. There’s two tangoes inside with him. Another structure right next to it, to the south appears to
be sleeping quarters. Five tangoes there in horizontal positions. The arms tent’s next and has one guard at the front and another at the back. Next to it is another wood structure. Two tangoes inside that appear to be eating.”

  “That’s Santiago and his bodyguard,” Art said. “I watched them go in.”

  “One more tango in the wooden structure next to Santiago’s,” Bond said. “A single guard outside it.”

  “That’s Fayyad,” Art said.

  “Recommendations?” Deuce asked.

  “Looks like they have, or had, five guards on duty and five sleeping, probably working in four hour shifts. Hinkle has a clear shot on the guard outside Fayyad’s hut,” Art said.

  “Suggest a pincer movement from the pier,” Bond said. “To take out the guards at the arms tent at the same time Hinkle takes his shot. That’ll eliminate all the guards on duty. Then Simpson and Grayson can move on and blow the arms tent, once the rest come out with their targets.”

  “After that, any plan we have will be out the window,” Deuce said. “Jesse, you and Doc make your way to Fayyad. Bourke and I will get Tony. Simpson and Grayson will take down Santiago and the bodyguard. Art, can Hinkle cover the sleeping guards?”

  “Affirmative,” came Art’s reply.

  “I want Fayyad, Santiago and the bodyguard alive,” Deuce said. “Let’s get into position. Simpson, you two have the furthest to go, with the least cover. Take your time. We have good cover, but it’ll be slow going. When each of us gets into position, point your infrared light toward the sky. When Bond sees that everyone’s in position, he’ll give the order.”

  We started moving then. Sticking to the mangroves for cover, we moved slowly and quietly through the swampy undergrowth. When we were twenty yards from the camp, we split into two’s. Doc and I moved slowly toward the hut that Fayyad was in. When we were in position, I shined my beacon directly up.