Cody's Army
Authors: Jim Case
IN AMERICA’S WAR
AGAINST TERRORISM,
THERE’S ONLY ONE ARMY-
CODY’S ARMY
JOHN CODY.
A former Princetonian seasoned in Vietnam combat, he’s the CIA’s most amazing “mission impossible” man—and sworn to fight
terrorism by any means necessary.
HAWKEYE HAWKINS.
The tough, wisecracking Texan, he’s one of the most daring men Cody took fire with in Vietnam.
RUFE MURPHY.
The black giant whose exploits as a daredevil pilot became a legend, he saves a special hell for terrorists.
RICHARD CAINE.
Booted out of England’s crack antiterrorist strike force for insubordination, he’s the world’s greatest demolitions expert—and
one of the bravest men alive.
CODY’S ARMY: ASSAULT INTO LIBYA
Forthcoming from
WARNER BOOKS
Contents
WARNER BOOKS-EDITION
Copyright © 1986 by Warner Books, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Warner Books, Inc.
Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10017
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www.HachetteBookGroup.com
First eBook Edition: September 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-56624-7
ONE
J
ohn Cody went into a low combat crouch just short of the tree line, his M-16 held up and ready in firing position, his eyes
scanning the semidarkness ahead. He raised his left hand in a gesture that halted the five-man column behind him in the muggy,
predawn gloom.
The sticky closeness of rugged jungle terrain murmured with the incessant chatter of birds and insects.
Four of the men behind Cody assumed a loose defensive formation, assault rifles aimed outward at different angles, probing
the night for any sign of human movement.
The jungle sounds continued undisturbed around them.
Cody was a big, tautly muscled man, clad in camou fatigues and loaded for bear: in addition to the M-16 head weapon, he wore
a Browning 9mm hi-power holstered at his hip. The military webbing strapped across his chest bore an assortment of grenades,
a wire garrote, pouches with spare ammunition, and a combat knife sheathed at midchest for quick cross-draw. His hands and
face, smeared with a cosmetic blackface goo, rendered him practically invisible, one with the night.
Lopez detached himself from his four men and scrambled forward to crouch beside Cody at the tree line. He, like his men, wore
camou fatigues considerably shabbier than Cody’s, and their M-16s were the only weapons they carried.
He and Cody gazed out across the fifty-yard clearing separating their position from ten-foot-high stone walls of the mission
and country church.
A half moon shimmered in a cloudless sky, offering enough illumination for Cody to see the white stucco bell tower rising
in the night from behind the walls.
Two Soviet-made Jeep-like vehicles with government markings sat parked near the arched entrance of the mission, an armored
Soviet-built recon vehicle next to them.
Two Sandinista sentries leaned nonchalantly against the armored vehicle, their backs to Cody and Lopez, their AK-47 assault
rifles propped against one of the Jeeps.
Cody saw the red pinpoints of two cigarettes in the gloom across the clearing.
“Get your men ready,” he instructed Lopez in a low whisper. “We’re moving in.”
“Is it not as I told you
Senor
Gorman?” The contra’s hushed reply quavered with pride and eagerness. “They expect nothing!”
“Yeah, it looks that way,” Cody grunted. “Move it. Let’s go.”
“As you say.”
Lopez crept back to his men, leaving Cody alone to refocus his attention on the mission objective.
The scent of cooking drifted through the heavy air to tantalize Cody’s nostrils.
The government army patrol that had spent the past two nights inside this mission would be waking, stirring, he knew, and
the only time to hit was
now,
in that period just before dawn when the security of any such position is universally at its weakest, when the night-shift
sentries have grown bored with their lonely post, and careless.
In a high-risk situation, a commander would change his guard often enough to keep them fresh, but Cody figured the men those
vehicles belonged to would be sleepy-eyed and more or less easy pickings for the hard hit that was now heartbeats away from
going down.
The mission was situated on a single-lane dirt road that disappeared into the shroud of night in either direction.
They were less than fifteen kilometers north of San Jose de Bocay, but Cody’s group had taken more than two hours to arrive
at this spot; night driving was slow along the chaotic mountainscape, and extreme caution was necessary when traveling day
or night through this harsh region. The mangrove swamps and cotton or coffee farms that were nominally under government control
by day belonged to whomever had the strongest firepower after the sun went down.
Gorman and Snider, the two company contacts for this band of contras, had remained back with the van one kilometer behind.
The contra unit separated, Lopez silently signaling two of them further down the tree line away from Cody’s left flank while
the other two antigovernment guerillas jogged off and out of sight in the opposite direction—with barely a sound except for
their muted footfalls and the soft sigh of branches and fronds being eased aside as they withdrew.
Lopez returned to crouch beside Cody.
“We are ready.”
The contra stank heavily of b.o. and garlic. Scars from shrapnel wounds marked his throat and forehead.
Cody had little liking for the man or for any of the contras: a ragtag collection of scavenging mountain bandits who took
money and weapons from the CIA to wage a guerilla war, supposedly for ideological reasons against a revolution they felt had
betrayed them. Cody had no love for Marxists, but could discern little difference between the Sandinista strongmen running
things from Managua and these unshaven, grubby opportunists, most of them ex-Somozan thugs who had most likely been robbing
and pillaging the campesinos before the company decided to exploit them.
The Central Intelligence Agency had seen fit to utilize these “guerillas” to fight the spread of communism in Central America;
to hopefully contain the situation from ever reaching proportions that would require U.S. military intervention.
Cody worked for the CIA.
He thumbed a bead of sweat away from his left eyelid and glanced sideways at Lopez.
“In and to the right of the chapel building?”
Lopez nodded.
“The classroom. It is where the nuns have been kept since the soldiers arrived. They are interrogated there during the day
and forced to sleep on the floor during the night.”
“I want you and your men to move in the instant I take out those sentries,” Cody instructed. “No noise. Just get us those
Jeeps and that armored job and get ready to start the engines as soon as you see me. I’ll have the nuns with me.”
Lopez shrugged in an offhand manner.
“Do not worry yourself so, my
yanqui
friend. All will go as you wish.”
“Sure, it will,” Cody growled.