Jack Ryan 6 - Clear and Present Danger (40 page)

They reached the airport parking lot right on time.  He pulled up to Moira's car and got out to unload her bags.

“Juan . . .”

“Yes?”

“Don't feel badly about last night.  It was my fault,” she said quietly.

He managed a grin. “I already told you that I am no longer a young man.  I have proved it true.  I will rest for the next time so that I will do better.”

“When—”

“I don't know.  I will call you.” He kissed her gently.  She drove off a minute later, and he stood there in the parking lot watching her leave, as she would have expected.  Then he got into his car.  It was nearly
four o'clock
, and he flipped on the radio to get the hourly news broadcast.  Two minutes after that he'd driven the car to the return lot, taken out his bags, and walked into the terminal, looking for the first plane anywhere.  A United flight to
Atlanta
was the next available, and he knew that he could make the necessary connections at that busy terminal.  He barely squeezed aboard at the last call.

Moira Wolfe drove home with a smile tinged with guilt.  What had happened to Juan the previous night was one of the most humiliating things a man could experience, and it was all her fault.  She'd demanded too much of him and he was, as he'd said himself, no longer young.  She'd let her enthusiasm take charge of her own judgment, and hurt a man whom she—loved.  She was certain now.  Moira had thought she'd never know the emotion again, but there it was, with all the carefree splendor of her youth, and if Juan lacked the vigor of those years, he more than compensated with his patience and fantastic skill.  She reached down and turned on her radio to an oldies FM channel, and for the remainder of her drive basked in the glow of the most pleasant of emotions, her memories of youthful happiness brought further to the fore by the sounds of the teenage ballads to which she'd danced thirty years before.

She was surprised to see what looked like a Bureau car parked across the street from her house, but it might just as easily have been a cheap rental or something else—except for the radio antenna, she realized.  It was a Bureau car.  That was odd, she thought.  She parked against the curb and got out her bags, walking up the sidewalk, but when the door was opened, she saw Frank Weber, one of the Director's security detail.

“Hi, Frank.” Special Agent Weber helped her with the bags, but his expression was serious. “Something wrong?”

There wasn't any easy way of telling her, though Weber felt guilty for spoiling what must have been a very special weekend for her.

“Emil was killed Friday evening.  We've been trying to reach you since then.”

“What?”

“They got him on the way to the embassy.  The whole detail—everybody.  Emil's funeral's tomorrow.  The rest of em are Tuesday.”

“Oh, my God.” Moira sat on the nearest chair. “Eddie—Leo?” She thought of the young agents on Emil's protection detail as her own kids.

“All of them,” Weber repeated.

“I didn't know,” she said. “I haven't seen a paper or turned on a TV in—since Friday night.  Where—?”

“Your kids went out to the movies.  We need you to come down to help us out with a few things.  We'll have somebody here to look after them for you.”

It was several minutes before she was able to go anywhere.  The tears started as soon as the reality of Weber's words got past her newly made storehouse of other feelings.

Captain Ramirez didn't like the idea of accompanying Chavez.  It wasn't cowardice, of course, but a question of what his part of the job actually was.  His command responsibilities were muddled in some ways.  As a captain who had recently commanded a company, he had learned that “commanding” isn't quite the same thing as “leading.” A company commander is supposed to stay a short distance back from the front line and manage—the Army doesn't like that word—the combat action, maneuvering his units and keeping an overview of the battle underway so that he could control matters while his platoon leaders handled the actual fighting.  Having learned to “lead from the front” as a lieutenant, he was supposed to apply his lessons at the next higher level, though there would be times when the captain was expected to take the lead.  In this case he was commanding only a squad, and though the mission demanded circumspection and command judgment, the size of his unit demanded personal leadership.  Besides, he could not very well send two men out on their first killing mission without being there himself, even though Chavez had far superior movement skills than Captain Ramirez ever expected to attain.  The contradiction between his command and leadership responsibilities troubled the young officer, but he came down, as he had to, on the side of leading.  He could not exercise command, after all, if his men didn't have confidence in his ability to lead.  Somehow he knew that if this one went right, he'd never have the same problem again.  Maybe that's how it always worked, he told himself.

After setting up his two fire teams, he and Chavez moved out, heading around the northern side of the airstrip with the sergeant in the lead.  It went smoothly.  The two targets were still lolling around, smoking their joints—or whatever they were—and talking loudly enough to be heard through a hundred meters of trees.  Chavez had planned their approach carefully, drawing on previous nights' perimeter patrolling which Captain Ramirez had ordered.  There were no surprises, and after twenty minutes they curved back in and again saw where the airstrip was.  Now they moved more slowly.

Chavez kept the lead.  The narrow trail that the trucks followed to get in here was a convenient guide.  They stayed on the north side of it, which would keep them out of the fire lanes established for the squad's machine guns.  Right on time, they sighted the shack.  As planned, Chavez waited for his officer to close up from his approach interval often meters.  They communicated with hand signals.  Chavez would move straight in with the captain to his right front.  The sergeant would do the shooting, but if anything went wrong, Ramirez would be in position to support him at once.  The captain tapped out four dashes on the transmit key of his radio and got two signals back.  The squad was in place on the far side of the strip, aware of what was about to happen and ready to play its part in the action if needed.

Ramirez waved Ding forward.

Chavez took a deep breath, surprised at how rapidly his heart was beating.  After all, he'd done this a hundred times before.  He jerked his arms around just to get loose, then adjusted the fit of his weapon's sling.  His thumb went down on the selector switch, putting the MP-5 on the three-round-burst setting.  The sights were painted with small amounts of tritium, and glowed just enough to be visible in the near-total darkness of the equatorial forest.  His night-vision goggles were stowed in a pocket.  They'd just get in the way if he tried to use them.

He moved very slowly now, moving around trees and bushes, finding firm, uncluttered places for his feet or pushing the leaves out of his way with his toe before setting his boot down for the next step.  It was all business.  The obvious tension in his body disappeared, though there was something like a buzz in his ear that told him that this was not an exercise.

There.

They were standing in the open, perhaps two meters apart, twenty meters from the tree against which Chavez leaned.  They were still talking, and though he could understand their words easily enough, for some reason it was as foreign to him as the barking of dogs.  Ding could have gotten closer, but didn't want to take the chance, and twenty meters was close enough—sixty-six feet.  It was a clear shot past another tree to both of them.

Okay.

He brought the gun up slowly, centering the ringed forward sight in the aperture rear sight, making sure that he could see the white circle all around, and putting the center post right on the black, circular mass that represented the back of a human head that was no longer part of a human being—it was just a target, just a thing.  His finger squeezed gently on the trigger.

The weapon jerked slightly in his grip, but the double-looped sling kept it firmly in place.  The target dropped.  He moved the gun right even as it fell.  The next target was spinning around in surprise, giving him a dull white circle of reflected moonlight to aim at.  Another burst.  There had hardly been any noise at all.  Chavez waited, moving his weapon back and forth across the two bodies, but there was no movement.

Chavez darted out of the trees.  One of the bodies clutched an AK-47.  He kicked it loose and pulled a penlight from his breast pocket, shining it on the targets.  One had taken all three rounds in the back of the head.  The other had only caught two, but both through the forehead.  The second one's face showed surprise.  The first one no longer had a face.  The sergeant knelt by the bodies and looked around for further movement and activity.  Chavez's only immediate emotion was one of elation.  Everything he'd learned and practiced—it all worked!  Not exactly easy, but it wasn't a big deal, really.

Ninja really
does own the night.

Ramirez came over a moment later.  There was only one thing he could say.

“Nice work, Sergeant.  Check out the shack.” He activated his radio. “This is Six.  Targets down, move in.”

The squad was over to the shack in a couple of minutes.  As was the usual practice with armies, they clustered around the bodies of the dead guards, getting their first sample of what war was really all about.  The intelligence specialist went through their pockets while the captain got the squad spread out in a defensive perimeter.

“Nothing much here,” the intel sergeant told his boss.

“Let's go see the shack.” Chavez had made sure that there was no additional guard whom they might have overlooked.  Ramirez found four gasoline drums and a hand-crank pump.  A carton of cigarettes was sitting on one of the gasoline drums, evoking a withering comment from the captain.  There was some canned food on a few rough-cut shelves, and a two-roll pack of toilet paper.  No books, documents, or maps.  A well-thumbed deck of cards was the only other thing found.

“How you wanna booby-trap it?” the intelligence sergeant asked.  He was also a former Green Beret, and an expert on setting booby traps.

“Three-way.”

“ 'Kay.” It was easily done.  He dug a small depression in the dirt floor with his hands, taking some wood scraps to firm up the sides.  A one-pound block of C-4 plastic explosive—the whole world used it—went snugly into the hole.  He inserted two electrical detonators and a pressure switch like the one used for a land mine.  The control wires were run along the dirt floor to switches at the door and window, and were set as to be invisible to outside inspection.  The sergeant buried the wires under an inch of dirt.  Satisfied, he rocked the drum around, bringing it down gently on the pressure switch.  If someone opened the door or the window, the C-4 would go off directly underneath a fifty-five-gallon drum of aviation gasoline, with predictable results.  Better still, if someone were very clever indeed and defeated the electrical detonators on the door and window, he would then follow the wires to the oil drums in order to recover the explosives for his own later use . . . and that very clever person would be removed from the other team.  Anyone could kill a dumb enemy.  Killing the smart ones required artistry.

“All set up, sir.  Let's make sure nobody goes near the shack from now on, sir,” the intelligence sergeant told his captain.

“Roger that.” The word went out at once.  Two men dragged the bodies into the center of the field, and after that, they all settled down to wait for the helicopter.  Ramirez redeployed his men to keep the area secured, but the main object of concern now was to have every man inventory his gear to make sure that nothing was left behind.

PJ handled the refueling.  The good visibility helped, but would also help if there were anyone on the surface looking for them.  The drogue played out from the wing tank of the MC-130E Combat Talon on the end of a reinforced rubber hose, and the Pave Low's refueling probe extended telescopically, stabbing into the center of it.  Though it was often observed that having a helicopter refuel in this way seemed a madly unnatural act—the probe and drogue met twelve feet under the edge of the rotor arc, and contact between blade tips and hose meant certain death for the helicopter crew—the Pave Low crews always responded that it was a very natural act indeed, and one in which, of course, they had ample practice.  That didn't alter the fact that Colonel Johns and Captain Willis concentrated to a remarkable degree for the whole procedure, and didn't utter a single unnecessary syllable until it was over.

“Breakaway, breakaway,” PJ said as he backed off the drogue and withdrew his probe.  He pulled up on the collective and eased back on the stick to pull his rotors up and away from the hose.  On command, the MC-130E climbed to a comfortable cruising altitude, where it would circle until the helicopter returned for another fill-up.  The Pave Low III turned for the beach, heading down to cross at an unpopulated point.

“Uh-oh,” Chavez whispered to himself when he heard the noise.  It was the laboring sound of a V-8 engine that needed service, and a new muffler.  It was getting louder by the second.

“Six, this is Point, over,” he called urgently.

“Six here.  Go,” Captain Ramirez replied.

“We got company coming in.  Sounds like a truck, sir.”

“K
NIFE
, this is Six,” Ramirez reacted immediately. “Pull back to the west side.  Take your covering positions.  Point, fall back now!”

“On the way.” Chavez left his listening post on the dirt road and raced back past the shack—he gave it a wide berth—and across the landing strip.  There he found Ramirez and Guerra pulling the dead guards toward the far treeline.  He helped the captain carry his burden into cover, then came back to assist the operations sergeant.  They made the shelter of the trees with twenty seconds to spare.

The pickup traveled with lights ablaze.  The glow snaked left and right along the trail, glowing through the underbrush before coming out just next to the shack.  The truck stopped, and you could almost see the puzzlement even before the engine was switched off and the men dismounted.  As soon as the lights were off, Chavez activated his night goggles.  As before, there were four, two from the cab and two from the back.  The driver was evidently the boss.  He looked around in obvious anger.  A moment later he shouted something, then pointed to one of the people who'd jumped out of the back of the truck.  One of them walked straight to the shack -