“Why don’t you send a team of scouts along that route, just in case they’re on the run and need your help. If they had to leave in a hurry, they might not have had time to pick up their radio.”
“Good idea, Ben.”
“And, Buddy, keep me informed, will you? I’ll double-check with Mike Post and see if our satellites have picked up any unusual shipping activity in the area.”
“Roger. Buddy out.”
After he hung up the phone, Buddy went to the wardroom, where most of his team were having coffee and a light snack.
“Captain Stryker,” Buddy said to the leader of the SEAL squad on the boat with them.
“Yes, sir,” Stryker said, and got quickly to his feet.
“I’d like you to take a squad of men down the coast and see what’s going on there.”
Stryker raised his eyebrows. “You think Harley’s team is in trouble?”
Buddy shrugged. “Don’t know, but they’ve been out of touch for a couple of days. Wouldn’t hurt to scout around down there near the passage to the island and see if there’s any unusual activity.”
Stryker nodded. “Good. My men have been sitting on their butts too long. They need a little action to keep the rust off.”
Buddy held up his hand. “Not too much action, Matt. I wouldn’t want to tip our hand unless Harley’s team needs help.”
“Sir,” Stryker said with a hurt tone in his voice. “You know SEALs never go looking for trouble.”
Buddy laughed. “No, but trouble always seems to find you guys sooner or later.”
“Buddy,” Corrie said as she stood up from the table where she and Beth had been having coffee.
“Yes, Corrie?”
“Beth and I’d like to go along with Captain Stryker on this mission.”
Stryker shook his head when Buddy turned to look at him for his approval.
“I don’t think so, General Raines,” he said, a doubtful expression on his face. “We’re liable to run into some heavy action out there in the jungle.”
Beth jumped to her feet. “That’s nothing compared to the action you’re gonna see here, Captain, if you don’t let us accompany you!” she snarled, her face flushed red. “These people are part of our team, and I’m damned if I’ll sit on the sidelines while you go traipsing after them.”
Stryker shook his head, a grin forming on his lips. “Well, if you feel that strongly about it . . .”
“Damned right we do,” Corrie added.
Stryker shrugged. “Then it’s okay with me, as long as you think you can keep up.”
Corrie glanced at Beth and smiled. “Just watch us, Captain.”
* * *
Harley broke out of the jungle and stumbled onto clean, white sand at the edge of the island. He stood for a moment, breathing in the salty sea breeze and staring at the next step to freedom, which was a mere mile or so away. The water in the strait didn’t look too rough, and bent in swells rather than true waves. Luckily there were no storms in the area to make the crossing more difficult.
He searched the beach of the Ilha de Sao Sebastiao until he found two small wooden boats pulled up on the sand past the high-water mark. They were almost eight feet in length, and had oarlocks with wooden oars in them. Neither had water in the bottom, a good sign they were seaworthy.
He gave a low whistle, and his team appeared out of the jungle that was just yards from the beach. They slogged through sand that clung to their boots, making them pick their feet up in a quirky high-step as they ran toward him.
“Here’s two boats. They ought to get us across the strait,” he said, shoving one down toward the gentle waves lapping at the sand in the darkness.
While Hammer and Harley pushed the two boats into the water, Anna took a roll of rope from her backpack and tied the gunwale of one boat to the stern of the other.
Once the boats were floating on the waves, Coop and Jersey stumbled down the beach, their arms around each other for support, and climbed into the second boat, collapsing from the exertion of walking. Jersey was coughing almost continuously, while Coop, not quite as sick, was breathing heavily, his breath wheezing in his chest and sweat pouring from his body as his eyes looked at the others, almost as if he didn’t quite recognize them in the darkness.
Anna shook her head when she noticed the flushed redness of their faces and their quick, heavy breathing. “They’re both burning up with fever. The aspirin’s not holding them.”
Hammer dipped his hand in the water. “This water’s pretty cold. Let’s pour some over them. It’ll help lower their temperature while we paddle across.”
He took off his cap, filled it with cool saltwater, and poured it over Jersey and Coop’s recumbent forms lying in the bottom of the boat.
Coop sat up, sputtering and shivering from the cold water. “Goddamn! What are you trying to do? Drown us?”
“Keep your voice down, Coop,” Anna said in a low, soothing tone. “It’s for your own good. We need to get your temperatures down before you fry your brains.”
Coop wrapped his arms around his chest and shivered almost uncontrollably. “Okay, okay, but hurry and get us across, will you?” He glanced at Jersey lying next to him, concerned that the frigid water had caused little reaction from her. “She won’t last much longer.”
Hammer and Harley each took an oar and began to paddle out into the ocean, with Anna sitting between them, the rope to Coop’s and Jersey’s boat in her hands.
It took the two big men almost an hour to paddle the mile across the strait since the current was sideways and they had to struggle to keep the boats on course for the opposite shore. They were sweating profusely when they arrived at the other side, in spite of the coolness of the evening air.
Once on the beach, after Coop had helped Jersey climb from their boat and they’d lain propped up against a driftwood log near the jungle’s edge, Harley pushed both crafts out into the ocean and let the current pull them out of sight into the darkness.
“No need leaving any traces of where we came ashore,” he said.
He used a small hand flashlight to check his compass, then pointed southward into the jungle and led the team off, threading his way through the dense undergrowth as fast as he could.
“It’s a damn shame we didn’t have time to pick up our radio,” he murmured to Anna, who was walking behind him.
“Yeah, we could’ve radioed Buddy to have someone meet us here and help us back to the ship.”
* * *
It took them almost an hour to find the one trail heading south through the jungle. It was a wide, double-rutted path that showed signs of heavy use by both vehicles and animals. The jungle grew right down to the ruts on either side, and grew almost together overhead, giving the illusion of traveling through a long, dark tunnel in the greenery.
Hammer put his hand on Harley’s shoulder. “You think it’s wise to use this trail?” he asked. “That helicopter is bound to have let some men off to set up an ambush.”
Harley shook his head. “Can’t be helped,” he said. “There’s no way Jersey and Coop could make it if we stayed in the brush. This is our only chance to get them back to the ship before they die.”
Hammer unslung his SPAS and jacked a shell into the chamber. “Let me take point a few hundred yards ahead,” he said. “That way, when we hit the ambush, you’ll have a chance.”
Harley stared at his friend. “That won’t give you much leeway, pal,” he said.
Hammer grinned. “I won’t need much. These clowns don’t know enough to set up an ambush without me being able to see it first.”
Harley nodded, hoping Hammer was right. Otherwise, he’d be the first to get it when the mercs opened fire.
Hammer took off at a slow lope up the trail, his eyes coursing back and forth, looking for signs of enemy presence in the bushes and dirt of the trail.
Just before he got to a bend in the path, Hammer spotted a crumpled-up cigarette package beside the trail. He squatted and picked it
up. It was a German brand. His lips curled in a half smile. “Stupid bastards,” he murmured to himself. He raised his nose and sniffed softly. He could smell mold, mildew, animal musk, and, yes, the faint smell of hot tobacco up ahead.
He crept back down the trail toward Harley and the others, holding up his hand in the signal to be quiet as he approached. He winced, hearing Jersey’s cough from fifty yards away in the quiet of the jungle night, and knew that the mercs would have heard it too and would be ready for them.
“They’re up ahead, about two hundred yards,” Hammer said in a low voice to Harley.
“Any idea how many?”
Hammer shook his head. “No. I couldn’t see ’em, but I sure as hell smelled ’em.”
“What’s the layout?”
“The road makes a bend to the right at about a hundred and fifty yards. My guess is they’ve straddled the trail just beyond the bend and are waiting for us to walk right up to ’em.”
“You see any signs of mines or booby traps?”
“No, but that doesn’t mean anything. The dirt is so soft along there, they could’ve planted almost anything.”
As Jersey doubled over in another coughing fit, Hammer glanced at her. “I heard her from up there, so my guess is they did too. They gotta know we’re close, Harley.”
“That means we don’t have much time to plan anything. If we don’t show up soon, they’re gonna come looking.”
“You think we can flank ’em, come at ’em from the sides?” Hammer asked.
Harley shook his head. “Not in this jungle. They’d hear us coming before we got close enough to attack.”
“That means we gotta draw them out of their hiding places to us.”
Harley smiled. “You got it. They think we’re trapped between them and the squad that was following us. How about we start a little commotion back here and make them think the other squad’s caught up with us?”
“Sounds good to me,” Hammer said.
Harley looked around at his team. “Okay, guys, here’s how we do it. . . .”
Ronald Watanabe stuck his head out from the tree he was hiding behind and stared down the trail. The darkness was unrelieved even by starlight.
“Where the hell are they?” he whispered in a hoarse voice to Lieutenant Johnson a few feet away.
“I dunno, Ron,” Johnson answered. “I heard ’em not ten minutes ago. They should’a been here by now.”
Watanabe was nervous and scared. He remembered how they’d been snookered by this group before, and he could smell his fear-sweat over the dank, musty smell of the jungle.
“Shit! They’re up to something, Larry,” he said.
“You don’t think they’re trying to get around behind us, do you?” Johnson asked.
Suddenly, from up the trail they heard an explosion of small-arms fire and two grenades going off, sending bright, yellow reflections of fire coursing through the darkness. In the distance they heard a high-pitched scream of terror, followed by more explosions of machine-gun fire.
“Goddamn!” Watanabe hollered. “LaFite and Blandis must’ve caught ’em from behind.”
Lieutenant Johnson burst from his cover, his M-16 held out before him. “Shit, Ronny, let’s go! We don’t want Jean to get all the credit for killin’ those bastards.”
“Come on, men!” Watanabe shouted. “They’re trapped up ahead. Let’s go get ’em!”
The fifteen men with Watanabe and Johnson boiled out of the jungle like ants from a disturbed nest, and began to run down the path, eyes alight with blood lust for the upcoming kill.
Running at the front of the pack, Watanabe thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye and slowed, just as a fragmentation grenade came floating out of the darkness and bounced once on the trail in front of him.
He had time to say, “Oh shit!” and to realize he’d once again been fooled, before the grenade exploded in a fireball of molten metal and flames, taking both his legs off at the knees and killing him and Johnson and five men behind them in the wink of an eye.
Two huge figures stepped from the jungle behind the group, SPAS shotguns held at waist level, the figures’ teeth visible in the darkness as they grinned and opened fire.
The booming shotguns cut men down like a scythe going through grass, and were joined by the higher-pitched chatter of an Uzi as Anna stepped out onto the trail and raked her automatic weapon back and forth as if she were watering a yard.
The remaining ten men didn’t get a shot off as they were blown off their feet and danced under an onslaught of bullets thick as a swarm of killer bees flitting among them.
The air was redolent with the acrid odor of cordite, blood, and human waste as seventeen men were killed in less time than it takes to tell it.
After it was over, Anna trotted back down the trail to find Jersey and Coop where they were sitting, backs against trees, as they fired into the air to distract the ambushers.
Anna shined her flashlight at them in the prearranged signal it was all over.
Coop and Jersey dropped their weapons and leaned back, exhausted by the efforts the ruse had taken on their weakened bodies.
Anna stood as close to them as she dared. “Come on, guys. It’s clear sailing ahead now.”
Coop glanced at Jersey, and knew she wasn’t able to go on. He took a deep breath and climbed laboriously to his feet, then reached down, grabbed her arm, and heaved her up over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
He turned toward Anna, who couldn’t believe he’d found the strength to lift Jersey to his shoulder like that.
“Let’s go, girl,” he said, attempting his usual grin. “We got a date with a doctor.”
NINETEEN
Sergei Bergman picked up the phone after being told it was from his commander.
“Yes, Herr Bottger?”
“I have bad news, Sergei. I have been unable to raise either team we sent into the jungle after the spies.”
Bergman sighed. He was not surprised after the way the spies had easily handled his best men at the training camp. “I see,” he said simply.
“That means you must press the attack as fast as you can. We must take Mexico City before any word of . . . our secret weapon leaks out.”
“I am sending the first teams out by helicopter today, Herr Bottger,” Bergman said. “I will instruct them that speed is of the essence.”
“Good. I should be there to join you within the week with the remainder of our forces and equipment. Have you had any further trouble with Perro Loco’s men?”
“No. Now that they’ve given me our assignment, they seem content to let me maneuver our troops in any manner I see fit.”
“Excellent. I’ll see you in a few days, Sergei.”
“Good-bye, Herr Bottger.”
General Enrique Gonzalez shook his second in command’s hand. Lieutenant Colonel Pedro Vega was to be the field commander for the forces being sent against the Mexicans.
“Colonel Vega, I wish you the best of luck,” Gonzalez said.
Vega nodded, eager to be off to prove himself in battle. He’d been in a rear echelon during the previous battles, in charge of supplies, and now hungered for the taste of battle. “Thank you, General. I will do my best to bring honor to you and Perro Loco.”
He whirled on his heels and left the office to climb into the brand-new HumVee with his colonel’s colors on tiny flags on me fenders. He took the microphone off the hook under the dash and said into it, “Head out! Forward to Mexico City!”
The column of light tanks, half-tracks, and armored personnel carriers cranked up their diesel engines and began to roll out of the Navy base toward the Pan American Highway a few miles distant.
The invasion of Mexico was once again afoot.
At the same time, Bergman saluted Herman Bundt, who was to lead Bottger’s forces on the western front. “Good luck, Herman,” he said.
“Thank you, Sergei,” Bundt answered. Then he climbed up into the lead Chinook and made a circul
ar motion with his hand over his head to indicate the pilot should take off.
The Chinook, followed by fifteen others fully loaded with troops and equipment, all lifted off. There were four Bell OH-58 Kiowas accompanying them, flying point to protect against any aircraft the Mexicans might send up against them. It would be an uneven match, for the only choppers the Mexican government had were ancient Hueys of Vietnam vintage. The brand-new Kiowas could fly at 120 knots, and were armed with 20mm Miniguns as well as antitank missiles. They would make short work of any Huey that dared to challenge them.
Bundt was taking this first load of a little over six hundred men directly to the port cities of Salina Cruz and Luchitan in Oaxaca near the Gulf of Tehuantepec. Loco had specified those cities should be taken first, for then the Mexican Navy wouldn’t be able to use their ports to stage a surprise attack on his flank.
An additional benefit, if the ships in the port could be captured, would be to use them to supply Bundt’s troops by sea as they moved up the coast, a much simpler exercise than relying solely on aircraft for resupply.
In the jungle, Harley Reno and his men brought their guns up to port arms as several bright lights silhouetted them on the trail.
“Yo, Harley,” Captain Stryker called.
Harley relaxed the grip on his SPAS and turned his head. “It’s all right, people, it’s friendlies.”
Stryker and the SEALs, along with Beth and Corrie, ran up to them on the trail. When they got there, Stryker looked around at the dead men lying everywhere on the trail and in the fringes of the jungle.
“We heard sounds of a firefight and thought you might need some help,” he said, “but I can see now you did just fine by yourselves.”
“Yes, sir,” Harley said. “But we’ve got a couple of sick troops and we may need some help getting them back to the ship.”
Stryker leaned over and glanced past Harley to look at Coop, near the rear of the group, still carrying Jersey on his shoulder.
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