by Tom Clancy
“I think our people won’t need much in the way of encouragement to fight back after what those bastards did to the Project!”
“I agree, but we’ll just have to see what happens. Damn, I wish we’d gotten some radar installed here.”
“Huh?” John asked.
“They will come, if they come, by helicopter. Too far to walk through the jungle, and boats are too slow, and our people think in terms of helicopters. That’s just how they do things.”
“How do they even know where we are, Bill? Hell, we skipped the country pretty fast and—”
“And they can ask the flight crews where they delivered us. They had to file flight plans to Manaus, and that narrows it down some, doesn’t it?”
“They won’t talk. They’re well paid,” John objected. “How long before they can figure all that out?”
“Oh, a couple of days at worst. Two weeks at best. I think we ought to get our people trained in defense. We can start that tomorrow,” Henriksen proposed.
“Do it,” John Brightling agreed. “And let me call home and see if anybody’s talked to our pilots.”
The master suite had its own communications room. Project Alternate was state-of-the-art in many ways, from the medical labs to communications. In the latter case the antenna farm next to the power-generating facility had its own satellite-phone system that also allowed e-mail and electronic access to Horizon Corp.’s massive internal computer network. Immediately upon arriving in his suite, Brightling flipped on the phone system and called Kansas. He left instructions for the flight crews, now most on the way back home, to inform Alternate if anyone tried to interrogate them regarding their most recent overseas trip. That done, there was little else left to do. Brightling showered and walked into the bedroom and found his wife there.
“It’s so sad,” Carol observed in the darkness.
“It’s goddamned infuriating,” John agreed. “We were so fucking close!”
“What went wrong?”
“I’m not sure, but I think our friend Popov found out what we were doing, then he killed the guy who told him about it and skipped. Somehow he told them enough to capture Wil Gearing down in Sydney. Damn, we were within hours of initiating Phase One!” he growled.
“Well, next time we’ll be more careful,” Carol soothed, reaching to stroke his arm. Failure or not, it was good to lie in bed with him again. “What about Wil?”
“He’s going to have to take his chances. I’ll get the best lawyers I can find for him,” John promised. “And get him the word to keep his mouth shut.”
Gearing had stopped talking. Somehow arriving back in America had awakened in him the idea of civil rights and criminal proceedings, and now he wasn’t saying anything to anybody. He sat in his aft-facing seat in the C-5, looking backward at the circular seal that led into the immense void area there in the tail, while these soldiers mainly dozed. Two of them were wide awake, however, and looking right at him all the way while they chatted about something or other. They were loaded for bear, Gearing saw, lots of personal weapons evident here and others loaded into the cargo area below. Where were they going? Nobody had told him that.
Clark, Chavez, and Stanley were in the compartment aft of the flight deck on the massive air-lifter. The flight crew was regular Air Force—most such transports are actually flown by reservists, mainly airline pilots in civilian life—and they kept their distance. They’d been warned by their superiors, the warnings further reinforced by the alteration in the aircraft’s exterior paint job. They were civilians now? They were dressed in civilian clothes so as to make the deception plausible to someone. But who would believe that a Lockheed Galaxy was civilian owned?
“It looks pretty straightforward,” Chavez observed. It was interesting to be an infantryman again, again a Ninja, Ding mused, again to own the night—except they were planning to go in the daylight. “Question is, will they resist?”
“If we’re lucky,” Clark responded.
“How many of them?”
“They went down in four Gulfstreams, figure a max of sixteen people each. That’s sixty-four, Domingo.”
“Weapons?”
“Would you live in the jungle without them?” Clark asked. The answer he anticipated was, not very likely.
“But are they trained?” Team-2’s commander persisted.
“Most unlikely. These people will be scientist-types, but some will know the woods, maybe some are hunters. I suppose we’ll see if Noonan’s new toys work as well as he’s been telling us.”
“I expect so,” Chavez agreed. The good news was that his people were highly trained and well equipped. Daylight or not, it would be a Ninja job. “I guess you’re in overall command?”
“You bet your sweet ass, Domingo,” Rainbow Six replied. They stopped talking as the aircraft jolted somewhat, as they flew into the wake-turbulence of the KC-10 for aerial refueling. Clark didn’t want to watch the procedure. It had to be the most unnatural act in the world, two massive aircraft mating in midair.
Malloy was a few seats farther aft, looking at the satellite overheads as well, along with Lieutenant Harrison.
“Looks easy,” the junior officer opined.
“Yeah, pure vanilla, unless they shoot at us. Then it gets a little exciting,” he promised his copilot.
“We’re going to be close to overloading the aircraft,” Harrison warned.
“That’s why it’s got two engines, son,” the Marine pointed out.
It was dark outside. The C-5’s flight crew looked down at a surface with few lights after they’d topped off their tanks from the KC-10, but for them it was essentially an airliner flight. The autopilot knew where it was, and where it was going, with waypoints programmed in, and a thousand miles ahead the airport at Manaus, Brazil, knew they were coming, a special air-cargo flight from America which would need ramp space for a day or so, and refueling services—this information had already been faxed ahead.
It wasn’t yet dawn when they spotted the runway lights. The pilot, a young major, squirmed erect in his front-left seat and slowed the aircraft, making an easy visual approach while the first-lieutenant copilot to his right watched the instruments and called off altitude and speed numbers. Presently, he rotated the nose up and allowed the C-5B to settle onto the runway, with only a minor jolt to tell those aboard that the aircraft wasn’t flying anymore. He had a diagram of the airport, and taxied off to the far corner of the ramp, then stopped the aircraft and told the loadmaster that it was his turn to go to work.
It took a few minutes to get things organized, but then the huge rear doors opened. Then the MH-60K Night Hawk was dragged out into the predawn darkness. Sergeant Nance supervised three other enlisted men from the 160th SOAR as they extended the rotor blades from their stowed position, and climbed atop the fuselage to make sure that they were safely locked in place for flight operations. The Night Hawk was fully fueled. Nance installed the M-60 machine gun in its place on the right side and told Colonel Malloy that the aircraft was ready. Malloy and Harrison preflighted the helicopter and decided that it was ready to go, then radioed this information to Clark.
The last people off the C-5B were the Rainbow troopers, now dressed in multicolor BDU fatigues, their faces painted in green and brown camouflage makeup. Gearing came down last of all, a bag over his head so that he couldn’t see anything.
It turned out that they couldn’t get everyone aboard. Vega and four others were left behind to watch the helicopter lift off just at first light. The blinking strobes climbed into the air and headed northwest, while the soldiers groused at having to stand in the warm, humid air close to the transport. About that time, an automobile arrived at the aircraft with some forms for the flight crew to fill out. To the surprise of everyone present, no special note was made of the aircraft type. The paint job announced that it was a large, privately owned transport, and the airport personnel accepted this, since all the paperwork seemed to be properly filled out, and therefore had to be t
rue and correct.
It was so much like Vietnam, Clark thought, riding in a helicopter over solid treetops of green. But he was not in a Huey this time, and it was nearly thirty years since his first exposure to combat operations. He couldn’t remember being very afraid—tense, yes, but not really afraid—and that struck him as remarkable, looking back now. He was holding one of the suppressed MP-10s, and now, riding in this chopper to battle, it was as though his youth had returned—until he turned to see the other troops aboard and remarked on how young they all looked, then reminded himself that they were, in the main, over thirty years of age, and that for them to look young meant that he had to be old. He put that unhappy thought aside and looked out the door past Sergeant Nance and his machine gun. The sky was lightening up now, too much light for them to use their night-vision goggles, but not enough to see very well. He wondered what the weather would be like here. They were right on the equator, and that was jungle down there, and it would be hot and damp, and down there under the trees would be snakes, insects, and the other creatures for whom this most inhospitable of places was indeed home—and they were welcome to it, John told them without words, out the door of the Night Hawk.
“How we doing, Malloy?” John asked over the intercom.
“Should have it in sight any second—there, see the lights dead ahead!”
“Got it.” Clark waved for the troops in the back to get ready. “Proceed as planned, Colonel Malloy.”
“Roger that, Six.” He held course and speed, on a heading of two-nine-six, seven hundred feet AGL—above ground level—and a speed of a hundred twenty knots. The lights in the distance seemed hugely out of place, but lights they were, just where the navigation system and the satellite photos said they would be. Soon the point source broke up into separate distinct sources.
“Okay, Gearing,” Clark was saying in the back. “We’re letting you go back to talk to your boss.”
“Oh?” the prisoner asked through the black cloth bag over his head.
“Yes,” John confirmed. “You’re delivering a message. If he surrenders to us, nobody gets hurt. If he doesn’t, things’ll get nasty. His only option is unconditional surrender. Do you understand that?”
“Yeah.” The head nodded inside the black bag.
The Night Hawk’s nose came up just as it approached the west end of the runway that some construction crew had carved into the jungle. Malloy made a fast landing, without allowing his wheels to touch the ground—standard procedure, lest there be mines there. Gearing was pushed out the door, and immediately the helicopter lifted back off, reversing course to the runway’s east end.
Gearing pulled the bag from his head and oriented himself, spotted the lights for Project Alternate, a facility he knew about but had never visited, and headed there without looking back.
At the east end, the Night Hawk again came in to hover a foot or so off the ground. The Rainbow troops leaped out, and the helicopter immediately climbed up for the return trip to Manaus, which would be made into the rising sun. Malloy and Harrison put on their sunglasses and held course, keeping a close watch on their fuel state. The 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment maintained its helos pretty well, the Marine thought, flexing his gloved hands on the controls. Just like the Air Force pukes in England.
Noonan was the first to get set up. All the troops ran immediately into the thick cover a scant hundred yards from the thick concrete pavement of the runway and headed west, wondering if Gearing had noted their separate arrival here. It took fully half an hour for them to make their way over a distance that, had they run it, would have taken scarcely ten minutes. For all that, Clark thought it was good time—and now he remembered the creepy feeling that came from being in the jungle, where the very air seemed alive with things hoping to suck one’s blood and give you whatever diseases would take your life as slowly and painfully as possible. How the hell had he endured the nineteen months he’d spent in Vietnam? Ten minutes here and he was ready to leave. Around him, massive hardwood trees reached two or three hundred feet to the sky to form the top canopy of this fetid place, with secondary trees reaching about a third that height, and yet another that stopped at fifty or so, with bushes and other plants at his feet. He could hear the sound of movement— whether his own people or animals he couldn’t be sure, though he knew that this environment supported all manner of life, most of it unfriendly to humans. His people spread out to the north, most of them plucking branches to tuck under the elastic bands that ran around their Kevlar helmets, the better to break up the outline of their unnatural shapes and improve their concealment.
The front door of the building was unlocked, Gearing found, amazed that this should be so. He walked into what appeared to be a residential building, entered an elevator, punched the topmost button and arrived on the fourth floor. Once there, it was just a matter of opening one of the double doors on the corridor and flipping on a light in what had to be the master suite. The bedroom doors were open, and he walked that way.
John Brightling’s eyes reported the sudden blaze of light from the sitting room. He opened them and saw—
“What the hell are you doing here, Wil?”
“They brought me down, John.”
“Who brought you down?”
“The people who captured me in Sydney,” Gearing explained.
“What?” It was a little much for so early in the morning. Brightling stood and put on the robe next to the bed.
“John, what is it?” Carol asked from her side of the bed.
“Nothing, honey, just relax.” John went to the sitting room, pulling the doors closed as he did so.
“What the fuck is going on, Wil?”
“They’re here, John.”
“Who’s here?”
“The counterterror people, the ones who went to Australia, the ones who arrested me. They’re here, John!” Gearing told him, looking around the room, thoroughly disoriented by all the traveling he’d done and not sure of much of anything at the moment.
“Here? Where? In the building?”
“No.” Gearing shook his head. “They dropped me off by helicopter. Their boss is a guy named Clark. He said to tell you that you have to surrender—unconditional surrender, John.”
“Or else what?” Brightling demanded.
“Or else they’re going to come in and get us!”
“Really?” This was no way to be awakened. Brightling had spent two hundred million dollars to build this place—labor costs were low in Brazil—and he considered Project Alternate a fortress, and more than that, a fortress that would have taken months to locate. Armed men—here, right now—demanding his surrender? What was this?
Okay, he thought. First he called Bill Henriksen’s room and told him to come upstairs. Next he lit up his computer. There was no e-mail telling him that anyone had spoken with his flight crews. So, nobody had told anyone where they were. So, how the hell had anyone found out? And who the hell was here? And what the hell did they want? Sending someone he knew in to demand their surrender seemed like something from a movie.
“What is it, John?” Henriksen asked. Then he looked at the other man in the room: “Wil, how did you get here?”
Brightling held up his hand for silence, trying to think while Gearing and Henriksen exchanged information. He switched off the room lights, looked out the large windows for signs of activity, and saw nothing at all.
“How many?” Bill was asking.
“Ten or fifteen soldiers,” Gearing replied. “Are you going to do what they—are you going to surrender to them?” the former colonel asked.
“Hell, no!” John Brightling snarled. “Bill, what they’re doing, is it legal?”
“No, not really. I don’t think it is, anyway.”
“Okay, let’s get our people up and armed.”
“Right,” the security chief said dubiously. He left the room for the main lobby, whose desk controlled the public-address system in the complex.
“Oh,
baby, talk to me,” Noonan said. The newest version of the DKL people-finding system was up and running now. He’d spotted two of the receiver units about three hundred yards apart. Each had a transmitter that reported to a receiving unit that was in turn wired to his laptop computer.
The DKL system tracked the electromagnetic field generated by the beating of the human heart. This was, it had been discovered, a unique signal. The initial items sold by the company had merely indicated the direction of the signals they received, but the new ones had been improved with parabolic antennas to increase their effective range now to fifteen hundred meters, and, by triangulation, to give fairly exact positions—accurate to from two to four meters. Clark was looking down at the computer screen. It showed blips indicating people evenly spaced in their rooms in the headquarters/residential building.
“Boy, this would have been useful in Eye-Corps back when I was a kid,” John breathed. Each of the Rainbow troopers had a GPS locator built into his personal radio transceiver, and these, also, reported to the computer, giving Noonan and Clark exact locations for their own people, and locations also on those in the building to their left.
“Yeah, that’s why I got excited about this puppy,” the FBI agent noted. “I can’t tell you what floor they’re on, but look, they’ve all started moving. I guess somebody woke them up.”
“Command, this is Bear,” Clark’s radio crackled.
“Bear, Command. Where are you?”
“Five minutes out. Where do you want me to make my delivery?”
“Same place as before. Let’s keep you out of the line of fire. Tell Vega and the rest that we are on the north side of the runway. My command post is a hundred meters north of the treeline. We’ll talk them in from there.”
“Roger that, Command. Bear out.”