The DMZ

by Jeanete Windle

  Julie saw Rick smother a grin of his own as he acknowledged the rebuke. “Thank you, Bernabé. I know your men know what they are doing. If you will take us, then …”

  They kept to the belt of vegetation along the swamp edge until Rick indicated they were too far for the surveillance cameras to spot them through the trees. Then Bernabé led them at a right angle from the swamp directly back into the rainforest. The other I’paa faded from sight into the trees, vanishing so completely, Julie couldn’t help wondering if they had chosen to disappear permanently rather than continue this foolhardy venture into the territory of their “white ghosts.”

  But when Bernabé stopped, they were suddenly there again. This time it was Bernabé’s sharp eyes that spotted a surveillance camera bolted to a trunk three feet off to the right. He seemed to have chosen to lay aside his distrust of the Special Forces officer because once again he addressed Rick directly instead of through Julie. “The riowa you seek are just beyond the ghost eye.”

  Rick grunted his approval. “Can you show us?”

  Bernabé shook his head emphatically. “No, we have already seen what lies there. We do not wish to see again. But we will wait here—at least until the night begins to fall. Not even for the daughter of Don Ricardo will my people agree to remain in these woods past the coming of night.”

  Rick nodded acceptance, then clapped a hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. “You have been a real friend to the daughter of Don Ricardo and to myself,” he told the I’paa hunter gravely. “We will not forget this.”

  Bernabé looked both surprised and pleased at the gesture. He made no answer but raised his spear in an unmistakable gesture of salute as Rick glided away from him through the trees. Julie saw him emerge noiselessly below the surveillance camera. Inserting another branch into the wire cage to disable it, he stepped to one side to disappear around the tree trunk. She was sure he meant to leave her behind and equally determined he wouldn’t, but a moment later he stepped back into view and motioned for her to join him.

  He didn’t glance at Julie as she slipped up behind him, his intense gaze occupied in studying their surroundings. But there were no other surveillance cameras in sight, and just beyond the next line of trees, the rampant ground growth that marked an opening in the jungle gave them further direction as well as cover. At Rick’s gesture, Julie dropped again to the ground and crawled forward behind him. Suddenly, both the ground and the vegetation dropped off in front of them, and this time Julie’s intake of breath was so audible that Rick turned a furious glance on her.

  Julie didn’t need his warning. The sudden drop revealed a military camp. Soldiers in battle fatigues were patrolling the perimeter, and others stood guard outside a huge metal Quonset hut the size of an airplane hangar. Their faces were white—by Indian standards at least.

  From their position above the embankment, Rick and Julie had a clear view of the camp’s layout. The Quonset hut sat at the edge of the road, which ended abruptly to their right. On one side of it was a smaller brick building. Julie spotted a satellite dish attached to its roof. On the other side was a trio of smaller aluminum sheds. Structures with thatched roofs and plastic walls were tucked back into the trees. Cambuches. Through the open end of the nearest, Julie could see hammocks slung. Another held stacks of boxes and burlap sacks. Supplies. The sacks looked identical to those they’d seen in the village the day before.

  There were other people too. More soldiers, lying at ease in the hammocks. A handful of what looked like native Indians wielding machetes to chop back the weeds growing between the buildings.

  As Rick and Julie watched, the door of the brick buildings opened, and a man in a white lab coat walked down the concrete steps and onto the road. He was followed by a second man who wore the same battle fatigues as the guards, but with a black turban instead of a cap. His untrimmed beard was almost as dark as the turban. Julie felt Rick stiffen with the same recognition that had struck her. Their Middle Eastern connection.

  Around the edge of the perimeter were knee-high posts like those seen on a cattle farm as an electrified trip wire to keep animals in the pasture. But here there was no wire, only some sort of electronic device attached. “Motion sensors,” Rick mouthed.

  One of the Indian laborers drifted toward the perimeter edge beyond the sheds. The closest guard immediately raised his weapon and shouted at him. The words were not Spanish nor any other language Julie recognized, but the Indian understood his intentions, because he scuttled back toward the others.

  As a military base, the place wasn’t large. Julie counted no more than two dozen occupants, including the indigenous workers, though there might be more inside the buildings. Still, it was a mind-staggering construction project to have gone up undetected in the middle of this triple-canopy jungle, where every scrap of material would have to be brought in by boat through jungle rivers and across that fetid swamp out there. How was it possible that it had remained undetected by the surveillance flights and satellites that regularly scanned the Amazon Basin for drug activity?

  As Julie’s scrutiny traveled upward, she saw how it was possible. Her eyes opened wide in stunned disbelief. The construction crew had been careful to remove only as many of the huge trees as was necessary to make room for the buildings, leaving the others as pillars between the cambuches and sheds and on either side of the Quonset hut, just as the guerrillas did in their jungle camps. Over any remaining holes torn in the jungle canopy, enormous camouflage nets had been strung on steel cables stretched between branches as big around as the average tree trunk.

  The entire mesh between the cables was overgrown with lianas and the other broad-leafed vines and parasitical plants that knit together so much of the jungle canopy. The stretches of mesh had been placed on different levels, fifty, seventy, even a hundred feet off the ground. Over time—and perhaps with some human intervention—the vines had spilled from one level to the other, creating a living canopy that from above could have been distinguished from the real thing by only the closest examination.

  The process had been repeated above the road, an even more incredible feat across that wide stretch of concrete. But here the very height of the hardwoods came into play because the spreading umbrella of their branches spanned more than half the gap, and again, the heights of the netting below them had been staggered to create a realistic rise and fall in the canopy.

  The whole effect was that of a long, green tunnel, and from where she lay, Julie could see the full straight length of it, ending at a wall of vegetation that had to be more camouflage, since she knew the roadbed ended in the swamp. The road itself seemed a particularly senseless effort. It wasn’t long—perhaps five times its width—and something about that very width nagged at Julie. Altogether, the very amount of effort and time involved staggered her.

  “I can’t believe it!” Julie whispered, appalled. “It’s all so much work!”

  “So much hate!” Rick replied softly against her ear. “Look!”

  Rick had been less impressed than Julie by the technical details of the encampment. While unique in its scope, it was a fairly standard application of military camouflage techniques. His gaze was concentrated instead on the human contingent of the base. Julie followed the jerk of his head toward a flurry of activity that had erupted at the first aluminum shed, just past the Quonset hut. This had been the destination of the turbaned soldier and the man in the white coat with him, and while Julie had been looking at the canopy, the door of the shed had slid upward. In the open doorway, a pair of soldiers were lifting a large wooden crate onto a trolley. Behind them, Julie could see that the shed was full of similar crates.

  She could see something else too. A white mist drifted out of the shed to disperse around the legs of the soldiers. The “ghost cloud” of the I’paa!

  Julie had no problem recognizing what it was—air-conditioning hitting the warm, humid air of the jungle. Which meant that those crates contained no mere supplies such as she’d seen in the cambu
ches. Not if they warranted costly ferried-in fuel for an air-conditioner and a generator to keep it running.

  The turbaned soldier was evidently some sort of officer. As he snapped his fingers, the other two soldiers backed hastily away, allowing Julie a clear view of what Rick must have already seen. Though she couldn’t read Arabic, Julie had a trained journalistic eye and an almost photographic memory that had served her in good stead in school days, and she recognized immediately the graceful flow of lines on the side of the crate. They were the same that Rick had deciphered for her on that deadly metal canister back in the carnage of the Indian village. The Lightning Bolt of Allah. Saddam Hussein’s pseudonym for his biological warfare program!

  The man in the lab coat lifted the lid off the crate. With a kick, the turbaned officer knocked down the nearest crate wall, then followed with the other three. Styrofoam filler spilled out onto the ground, leaving a metallic object that even in the dappled shadows managed to glint silver. It was many times the size of the canister Julie had seen in the village, and shaped like a cross between some sort of bomb and the gas cylinders the Bakers had used for their cookstove back in San Ignacio days. Even without the Arabic characters swirled across the smooth metal, Julie, like Rick, had no doubt what it contained—and the sheer hatred it represented.

  A cold chill gripped Julie’s stomach. That tiny canister had annihilated a whole village. There had to be enough in that shed to wipe out half the world! What had Rick said—that fifty kilos could wipe out Washington, D.C.? Then that thing alone could annihilate all of Bogotá!

  One thing was for sure: this was far too extensive an undertaking to be aimed at the small American contingents scattered across the country. Then what? Did the FARC’s unholy alliance with these terrorists include genocide of their opponents? And how? Could these people possibly have a way to haul that huge metal object down these rivers and roads and into some city without being seen?

  Again that absurdly wide tunnel of a road nagged at Julie. No, not a road! An airstrip. Julie’s stomach chilled further as she studied the road. It was the same concrete surface that served many a rural airport across Colombia. She would have recognized it earlier were it not for the tangled ceiling of the jungle canopy overhead. But that canopy was high enough to permit a small plane to lift into the air. With the camouflage net removed from the far end, a plane need only get airborne by the time the concrete gave way to the swamp. Then it would have all the open water of the swamp to gain altitude and clear the trees.

  But no. The chill in her stomach eased a fraction. Not even Dr. Baker’s Cessna could clear a runway as short as this. Certainly not with the weight of the metal object she was seeing down there.

  And if it was a pontoon?

  No, that wouldn’t explain the airstrip, road, whatever! And with the stumps of that drowned forest Julie had glimpsed out there, a pontoon plane could barely maneuver, much less pick up enough speed to lift off. Besides, Bernabé knew well enough what a plane was—he’d grown up with the Bakers’ Cessna—and he had categorically stated there was none here.

  Just a big bug!

  That wry thought died in Julie’s mind as a new commotion drew her attention. The huge front entrance panel to the Quonset hut was rising. A billow of white vapor rolled out from under the door as it rose. More costly air-conditioning.

  Then slowly, like a black phantom materializing from the mist, it emerged, and Julie’s hopes withered with it. She knew now the meaning of that too-short runway—and why Bernabé had insisted there was no plane. This was like no aircraft the I’paa hunter would have ever glimpsed.

  Julie herself wouldn’t have likened it to an insect, but she could see how the hard black carapace, the sharp-edged nose with its sword-shaped protrusions like questing feelers, and the butterfly-wing double tail like two antenna above the body would suggest to a jungle native a beetle or black-shelled cockroach. To Julie, it looked more like a bat, its slitted eyes the dark, rectangular vents on either side of its dorsal spine. Or with those back-slanted wings, something out of Star Wars—something flown by the evil Empire.

  She, like Bernabé, had never seen such an aircraft before, but it wasn’t unfamiliar. She had seen its likeness on countless news programs and war documentaries. Horribly and clearly, she recognized its implications even as her mind fought to reject the impossibility of what she was seeing.

  “But that’s one of ours!” she whispered blankly. “Only it can’t be!”

  “It’s ours all right!” Rick’s grim reply grated against her ear. “The F-117A Nighthawk. A U.S. Air Force stealth fighter!”

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE DOOR OF THE QUONSET HANGAR clanged down as soon as the F-117 had taxied out onto the runway, abruptly cutting off the billows of fog. It braked to a stop lengthwise across the airstrip, and soldiers ran forward to swarm around it, allowing Julie to grasp for the first time its full dimensions.

  It was huge. The length alone covered more than half the width of the runway, and the top of the cockpit canopy was twice the height of the running soldiers. The pilot, if he had a mind to, could look straight across to the top of the embankment where Julie and Rick were lying. Julie froze as the flight helmet inside the cockpit swiveled in their direction. Could he see through these weeds?

  But as a soldier heaved a portable ladder against the side of the stealth fighter, the pilot turned his head away. Another pair of soldiers ran forward with a fuel line. The turbaned officer snapped his fingers, and the two soldiers with the trolley began to trundle the crate’s contents over to the plane. As though this were a signal, two panels below the belly of the aircraft popped open. Bomb doors.

  We have to stop them! We have to do something! Julie looked blankly at Rick as he tugged sharply at her sleeve and began to wriggle back. How could he think of retreating when people were going to die?

  She saw the F-117’s canopy pop open, and the pilot clamber out and down the ladder to the ground. The aircraft wasn’t going anywhere right away. Sliding carefully back from the embankment, Julie worked her way after Rick until he rose to his feet and pulled her up beside him.

  Rick didn’t release Julie’s hand as they threaded back through the hardwoods. She waited only until they were beyond range of the surveillance cameras to tug her hand loose and swing around on him.

  “We can’t leave here,” she told him. “There’s no time to warn anyone. That plane! When it takes off—” The horror of the thought choked her.

  “I’m well aware of that!” Rick answered tightly. “We’ll have to stop it, somehow! If it gets across our borders—”

  “Then, I’m right! That stealth fighter—it isn’t anyone in this country they’re after.” Julie swallowed hard. “It’s the United States! They’re going to try to cross the border with that thing!”

  The cold, dangerous look was back on Rick’s face. “Not if I have anything to do with it! We’ve spent all this time wondering what Islamic terrorists wanted down here in Colombia. I guess now we know. Their goal is the same as it’s always been—the destruction of the U.S., their Great Satan. They’ve just modified their launching point.”

  Julie glanced around, suddenly aware that the I’paa were still not in sight. Had their Indian guides abandoned them? Just then Bernabé slipped into the open, and Julie saw shadows coalesce into painted bodies as other I’paa began to drift out of the trees.

  Bernabé stalked up to the two Americans. “So, you found the great evil you were seeking?”

  Julie took a deep breath to calm herself before swinging around to face the I’paa warrior. “Yes. Yes we did.”

  The sideways flicker was back in the black eyes as Bernabé looked from one American’s face to the other, and Julie could only guess what he was reading in their tense expressions. “Then you will now destroy this evil?” he asked doubtfully.

  He looked poised to vanish at the snap of a twig, and Julie did her best to infuse confidence into her voice. “We’re working on it, Bernabé. Would you
please have your people keep watch? The riowa and I need to consult now on what we have seen.”

  At the barest movement of his spear, the other I’paa faded back into the trees. Bernabé moved off a few meters, though his eyes didn’t leave the two Americans. Julie swung back to Rick.

  “But—I don’t understand, How could these people have one of our stealth fighters? And just who are they?”

  Rick shook his head. “I don’t know, but I can make a few guesses. The F-117s were the backbone of the war effort back in the Gulf War. They got in and took out the Iraqi command centers ahead of the rest of our forces, making it possible for us to go up against the fourth most powerful war machine in the world and take them out with just a handful of casualties. They won us the war.

  “They told us we never lost a bird. Other planes, yes—but not the F-117s. I guess they weren’t telling us everything, because those crates came from Iraq, and I’m betting the stealth fighter did too. It must have been sitting over there since the war. There’s no other explanation for its presence here.”

  “Then the Iraqis have been plotting ever since the Gulf War to use that stealth fighter against the U.S.?” Julie asked incredulously. “But why wait until now?”

  “It wouldn’t have been so easy. The F-117 couldn’t fly to the U.S. from Iraq. Not without refueling tankers and support craft and other things we’d have spotted in a minute if they’d tried. Not to mention that Iraq has to be the closest-watched spot on the planet—and has been since the war. We have surveillance planes and radar everywhere. Which is probably why he had to find an ally.”