Adin gave him a look. “How would you know about that?”
“Lucky guess,” said Herman. That and the shoulder patch of the Shayetet 13, the anchor, sword, and shield emblazoned over the bat wings.
“What is S-13?” asked Sarah.
“If your dad is where these people are going, I’d say he’s in some serious trouble,” said Herman. Then he leaned into her ear and whispered. “Shayetet 13 are naval commandos, cross between the Seals and Delta Force. They don’t usually show up for a party unless somebody’s gonna get shot.”
The news settled on Sarah like ether, but Bugsy wanted to join the soldiers. Seeing all the movement and commotions excited him. He was like a kid who wanted to join the activity. Every once in a while one of the soldiers would lean in and pet him. He didn’t seem to mind.
“You can let him go,” said Adin. “It’s better if he gets their scent.”
Sarah let loose of the leash. Adin unclipped it from the dog’s collar and let him run.
“You and I need to go up forward and look at some maps,” he told Herman. They got to their feet and went toward the ladder leading up to the flight deck. Sarah followed.
“When we get on the ground, I’m going to ask both of you to stay onboard the plane,” said Adin.
“We’ll have to talk about that,” said Herman.
“This is not negotiable,” said Adin. “Depending on where we land, we may not have much time. We’ll offload the vehicle and a stacked trailer from the other container. That’s ground transport for the men and their equipment. Once we’re on the ground we’ll get going in less than a minute. You’re just going to be in the way. It’s very likely that the plane is going to have to take off again.”
“Why’s that?” said Herman.
“Because we won’t be landing at an airport with customs and immigrations,” said Adin. “It will be an unimproved field. We won’t know precisely where until you give us your information. Your background indicates you worked in Mexico . . .”
“How do you know that?” said Herman.
“Never mind,” said Adin. “The point is, you know as well as I do what an unimproved field in Mexico means.”
“Drugs,” said Herman.
Adin nodded. “The pilot is going to want to turn it around and get back in the air as fast as he can.”
“Understood,” said Herman.
“Good,” said Adin. “Stay right here.” Adin climbed the ladder up toward the flight cabin. He knocked on the metal door, and someone inside opened it.
Neither Sarah nor Herman could hear what was being said up in the flight cabin over the din of the four large engines.
A few seconds later, Adin came back down the ladder with a handful of maps. “What’s the name of the place we’re going?”
“Coba,” said Herman. “South of Cancún in the jungle. Twenty miles or so from the town of Tulum on the Caribbean side.”
They huddled over the map with Sarah looking on until Herman circled an area with his finger. Coba didn’t show up on the flight chart, but an unimproved landing strip off the main highway some distance to the east did. Adin marked it with a pen.
“That’s a ways. I was hoping for something closer.” Adin’s concern was not only the cartels but the Mexican military. Driving a distance on open roads with military hardware was likely to draw attention. The last thing they needed was a firefight at a roadblock with the Mexican army. “Do you know where her father is?”
“In the area somewhere,” said Herman.
“Any way to reach him?” asked Adin.
Herman shook his head. “No cell number that I know of.”
“Not much to go on,” said Adin.
“According to Paul, there’s supposed to be some kind of a large antenna array. Somewhere near Coba in the jungle.” He pointed to the area on the map once more. “If it’s big enough, it should be visible from the air.”
Adin nodded.
“Give me a second,” said Sarah. “I might have something.” She walked back over to the area where they had been sitting and found her purse. Inside was a folded piece of paper. She opened it and looked at it. It was a printout of one of the early e-mail messages sent to her by her father through the FBI. At the top was Joselyn’s e-mail address. She handed it to Adin.
He looked at it. “We’ll try it and see.” He headed back up the ladder toward the flight deck. This time he disappeared inside with the door closed.
“Listen to me!” Herman took her to one side. “When the plane lands, get over there behind that metal container and sit tight. Stay away from that fuel tank,” he told her, “in case there’s shooting.”
“Where are you going to be?”
“I’m gonna be goin’ for a ride,” he told her.
“You told Adin you would stay on board.”
“I told him I understood. I didn’t tell him I’d do it.” Herman already had his eye on one of the packs lying in the aisle. On top of the backpack was a TAR-21, a Tavor assault rifle, a shortened bull-pup design manufactured by the Israelis and used for both close-quarters combat and longer open field fire.
Physically, Herman was not yet a hundred percent. He was still recovering from the wounds Liquida had inflicted. But a gun would go a long way toward giving him a leg up. No more wrestling with knives, at least not for now.
Herman had seen the short TAR-21s but only in photographs and online. He wondered how a country that was so small could develop such cutting-edge weapons. It looked like a space gun. It fired the same round as the American M16 and was accurate out to the same range, roughly three hundred meters. But the rifle was only half the length of the M16. The Israelis knew that in tight urban combat, in a building where you had to swing the muzzle to fire, short barrels provided the shooter with a lethal edge.
Chapter
Fifty-Three
Liquida had no intention of unpacking his bags. Two days in the jungle facility and he was ready to leave. What he wanted was his money. “My job was to get Leffort and his information here, and to do it on time. I have done that. Now I want to be paid.”
“I understand. So do I. We both want payment. Believe me when I tell you, I am as anxious as you are to go, to leave this place.” Bruno cast a wary eye, as if the walls in Liquida’s sterile room had ears. “But as I have explained to you, we are not yet finished.” He was stalling.
“We are as far as I am concerned.” Camped in a building with a huge electronic dish over the top of it was to Liquida like placing a neon crosshairs on your roof. He had no desire to look out his window and come nose to nose with a cruise missile.
Whatever was going out or coming in through the gigantic saucer sticking up in the middle of the jungle was none of his business. All Liquida knew was that he wanted no part of it. That and the heavy machine guns, the concertina-wired fences, and the starched military uniforms being worn by some of the people in the building gave him the willies. He had seen prisons with less security. Dying for someone else’s cause was not high on Liquida’s list of priorities. Bruno had described the facility as a Garden of Eden, swimming pools and guest bungalows. If so, they were hiding them well. What the place really needed was a good bomb shelter.
Bruno rattled on, telling him to be patient, that everything would be fine. Sooner or later they would pay him with piles of cash that they kept in a safe down the hall. “I promised them that you would do one more job for them.”
“What is it they want?” said Liquida.
“They have asked me if you would mind disposing of Leffort.”
Before Bruno could move, Liquida turned and opened his suitcase. He pulled out his wrapped bag of stilettos. “No problem.” For Liquida this would be a labor of love. He would do it for nothing.
“Not now!” Bruno reached over and put his hand over the lace ties on the silverware bundle.
“When?” said Liquida.
“When they tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because they nee
d him, at least for now.”
“Tell them I can do it now or they can do it later,” said Liquida. “But I am not prepared to stay any longer. They do it themselves, I will give them a discount if they like.”
“It’s not the money,” said Bruno.
“If it’s not about money, then pay me,” said Liquida. “Next you’re going to tell me it’s against their religion to kill. Tell them they can put on masks, cut off his head, and show it on television if they like. It’s no problem. Happens down here all the time.”
Bruno put a finger to his lips. “You should be careful what you say.” He looked around as if someone might be listening. “Let me remind you that they could just as easily kill the two of us.”
“So we are not free to leave, is that it?” said Liquida.
“That’s not what I am saying.”
“What are you saying?”
“I am asking you to be patient, to use your head. To think.” Bruno fixed him with a long hard stare. “Do you understand? Do that and you will be well paid,” said Bruno.
Yes, but only if I’m still alive, thought Liquida. “How long before they are finished with Leffort?” he asked.
“From what I am hearing, by morning they should be done. Tonight they are supposed to be very busy. Something is happening.”
“What?” said Liquida.
“I don’t know. I don’t ask. Leffort has no idea they plan to kill him. I do know that. He told me they are going to pay him in the morning. He showed me airline tickets they bought for him. An early afternoon flight tomorrow from Belize to Mexico City and from there with connections to the French Seychelles. He is convinced they are going to honor their bargain. To pay him for the secrets he’s given them.”
“But you know better.”
Bruno nodded. “By morning I am sure they will give us the word. Kill Leffort and our job is done.”
Of course, if they were lying to Leffort, they could also be lying to Bruno. Or Bruno could be lying to him. Either way the result was the same. By sunrise Liquida could be sharing a shallow grave with Leffort. It was the one sure way to keep overhead down and loose ends tied up. The question was, how much trust did Liquida have in any of these people? The answer was none. He smiled at Bruno. “Good! Then we shall wait until morning.”
“I knew that you could be relied upon to see reason. You have a good sense for business.” Bruno clasped his shoulders and embraced him, what Liquida took for the Chechen sign of death.
Whether Bruno realized it or not, Liquida was now working for himself. The first order of business was to find a way out.
* * *
The FBI finally managed to track down Adin’s flight from Langley Air Force Base. “Better late than never,” said Thorpe. “Right from under our noses. That little bastard is bold as brass.”
“They didn’t file a flight plan,” said Britain. “But radar tracked them out over the Atlantic heading due south. They were picked up again three hours later by Pensacola Naval Air Station on the Florida panhandle. By then they were out over the Gulf in international airspace. It was too late to stop them. But they tracked the heading south-southwest.”
“Mexico,” said Thorpe.
“What it looks like,” said Britain. “We may be able to narrow it down.”
Thorpe looked at him.
“Southcom, Southern Command out of Miami, had one of their AWAC flights loitering over the central Gulf track the C-130’s IFF signal from their transponder,” said Britain.
“I’m surprised the Israelis had it turned on,” said Thorpe.
“I guess they didn’t want to get shot down,” said Britain.
IFF stood for “identify, friend or foe.” It was a system of encrypted data sent by a plane’s transponder to provide radar data and identification as part of the early-warning air defense system.
“You can bet they’ll turn it off before they reach the Mexican coast,” said Thorpe.
“Yes, but by then we may have a fix at least as to heading. It gives us something to work with,” said Britain.
“What about the girl and Diggs?” said Thorpe. “Anybody at Langley see them board the plane?”
“No,” said Britain. “But there was no real reason for them to check. It was pretty much hands off. Hirst had it all well covered. According to the flight documents, they picked up a load of fuel and twelve boxes under consular seal from the Israeli embassy.”
“So nobody was watching,” said Thorpe.
Britain nodded. “Right.”
“He thought of everything.” Thorpe sat silent for a moment. “So what do we know?”
“We know Hirst and whoever else is on that plane is headed for Mexico, but we don’t know where,” said Britain.
“We can be reasonably certain that Madriani and his two companions are there, along with Liquida,” said Thorpe.
“That is, if anything Madriani has told us is accurate,” said Britain.
“I think what he’s told us is dead-on,” said Thorpe. “The problem is he hasn’t told us enough. No cell phone calls from him, right?”
“Nothing,” said Britain. “The last communication was an e-mail from Paris. That and the telephone call he placed to his daughter and the investigator in the condo.”
“According to the transcript of the phone call, we should be looking for a large antenna array somewhere in the Mexican jungle,” said Thorpe, “but where?”
“What about Intel Sats?” said Britain.
“The CIA?”
Britain nodded.
“I thought of it, but unless we can narrow it down, at least give them some kind of a reliable vector from that plane when it crosses over into Mexican airspace, their analysts could be looking at images for days. Something tells me we don’t have that kind of time,” said Thorpe.
“What do we do?” said Britain.
“Let’s hope that Israeli pilot keeps his transponder turned on,” said Thorpe. “In the meantime, get ahold of drug enforcement. Tell them we’re going to need help. Boots on the ground. The Mexican army, the judicial police, the whole nine yards. But only people they can trust. Any kind of political or law enforcement juice they have with the Mexican government, tell them we may need it all.”
It was a helpless feeling, throwing himself on the mercy of another agency, and burning whatever goodwill the bureau may have amassed with a foreign country. Whatever was happening in Mexico was beyond the reach of the U.S. government unless they were prepared to go to war.
Thorpe picked up the phone. It was not going to be a pleasant conversation. He would have to call the White House and tell Fowler that the bureau had lost whatever information they might have gleaned from Herman Diggs and that the Israeli government appeared to know all about Project Thor.
Chapter
Fifty-Four
We decide to time our reconnaissance of the road north of Coba for late afternoon, to drive slowly, and if need be, to wait until dark to take a closer look.
Harry and I select a pair of hundred-power binoculars from a local sporting goods shop. We buy a half-dozen bottles of water, put them in an Igloo container filled with ice, and pick up two large hunting knives for defense along with a handful of road flares, anything that might come in handy if we need help. We would buy guns but we can’t.
Possession of a firearm or even a single round of ammunition by a foreign national in Mexico will net the visitor a long and harsh prison term. Mexico is a testament to the failure of gun laws to curb bloodshed. It has among the most severe firearm restrictions in the world. Yet the country has become a veritable war zone of gun-fueled drug violence. Any Mexican teen with a trigger finger can buy a fully automatic assault rifle and bandoliers of bullets for a few pesos from black marketers. The fact that the transaction is illegal means only that the dead victims are all law abiding.
Since guns are not available to tourists, Harry and I have to make do with what we can find. We settle on two rubber-sling spearguns from one of the dive sh
ops in Playa del Carmen. All the while Joselyn is laughing. “Why don’t you get the mask and flippers and finish out the outfit?”
Harry is in no mood for humor. He throws one of the spearguns onto the front seat and nearly ends up sitting on the tip as he gets into the car.
By three thirty we reach the highway intersection at Coba. I turn, and we head north. We turn off the air conditioner and open the windows so that all of our senses are alive as I drive slowly up the road. Within two miles, the absence of any other traffic becomes obvious to all of us.
“Get the feeling we’re in the land of the dead?” says Harry.
We pass occasional mud-brick huts and small concrete houses, all of them abandoned. Some have their windows broken out with their front doors off the hinges. A few show the scorch marks and black soot of fire.
To Joselyn it reminds her of some of the test sites in the Nevada desert, what she calls “atomic city.” “All that is missing,” she says, “are the mannequins strapped to posts along the road.”
Harry and I are in the front seat. Joselyn is in the back, her head almost on my shoulder as her eyes give the road the thousand-yard stare. The three of us strain constantly to see what is up ahead.
Each curve brings us to a near stop until I can creep around and see what’s there. The foliage is so thick that it crowds the road in places, growing over the edges of the asphalt as if to reclaim the offending ribbon that runs through the jungle.
We come to an intersection with a dirt road off to the right.
“Stop!” Harry is halfway out of the car before I can hit the brake. “If anything happens, don’t wait for me.” With the speargun in hand, he runs cautiously toward the dirt road as Joselyn and I sit in the hot car with windows open, my foot ready to hit the gas pedal to pick him up if I have to. He disappears down the dirt road, and a few seconds later comes back and waves me forward. Neither Joselyn nor I have to ask what Harry is doing. We all know that the road of death is likely to be a dead end. Without saying it, the thought of a vehicle getting behind us and blocking our retreat is ever present.
Trader of Secrets: A Paul Madriani Novel Page 29