Direct Action - 03 (20 page)

A military parachute was designed to safely carry two entangled jumpers and their equipment to the ground. This wasn't a military parachute.

They were coming in hard, their feet passing just a couple meters above the Paseo Center before they cleared it and went out over the gardens. Deckard wanted to make an adjustment to keep them out of the trees but nothing he did mattered at this point.

The ground came up to meet them. Deckard grunted as he made impact and slid on the wet grass. Rolling, his vision redded out for a second when the back of his head hit something. He felt a weight on his chest as the parachute collapsed on top of him.

He opened his eyes to see Nadeesha almost nose to nose with him. Her pink lips were next to his as they both took short ragged breaths. It was dark underneath the parachute, everything forgotten for a moment.

Nadeesha buried her face in Deckard's neck as she held on to him.

“Ho-ly she-it,” a low-pitched voice said.

“Did they come in on one chute?” another asked.

“That was some gangster-ass shit.”

Deckard tried to sit up with Nadeesha on top of him.

Bill and Ramon tore the parachute off of them. The accidental tandem jumpers were now hopelessly entangled in their parachute and the suspension lines.

“Fucking hell,” Rick said as he ran up to them. “It was like the entire rooftop blew up as you fell off.”

Zach came up and joined Bill and Ramon who were using their knives to cut through the suspension lines. Deckard sat up with Nadeesha on his lap.

“Thanks for covering our withdrawal,” Deckard said dryly.

That snapped Nadeesha back into the zone.

“Yeah, thanks for nothing you assholes.”

“I thought you were covering our withdrawal,” Zach insisted.

“We did, and were hoping you might do the same.”

“Whatever,” Bill said cutting in. “Stop complaining. You're alive.”

Nadeesha shook her way out of the suspension lines and stormed off. Deckard undid the buckles on his harness and dropped it. Police sirens were approaching in the distance. Paul was at the dropzone as well. He missed landing on the building but obviously had managed to make it down to the ground in one piece.

“Time to boogey,” Ramon said.

Deckard left the tangled parachute as they ran for the van. They didn't have time to police it up, and none of the gear could be traced back to them anyway. As the first red and blue lights came flashing up to the park, Ramon fired a burst into the hood of the police car. The cops got the message and did not pursue, opting to call for back up instead.

Liquid Sky piled into the back of the van. Ramon took the wheel and began navigating through the Manila streets as they left the gardens.

The police had already thrown up one road block heading out of the metropolitan area. Ramon threw a light jacket on over his kit. The others stayed in the back of the windowless van so they would not be seen.

“
Konting pabuya para sayo bossing
,” Ramon told the cop in Tagalog as he handed him a folded bill.

“
Salamat at magingat po kayo sir
,” the policemen said with a smile.

13

“It happened again.”

Admiral Corbett looked up from his desk and set his reading glasses down so he could see his J3 officer. The Admiral always left his door open, a literal open-door policy. Where he worked, he needed a team more than he needed a hierarchy.

“You're kidding me,” Corbett said as he sat back in his chair. “Again?”

“I'm afraid so, sir.”

“Who the hell is doing this?”

“We're about to sit down in the SCIF and try to hammer that out right now.”

Admiral Corbett left his desk and followed his right hand man down the hallway. A vault door was open which led into the Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility. This was where sensitive operations and intelligence were discussed and records stored. At JSOC, practically everything was sensitive.

“Where?” Corbett asked.

An assistant J2 intelligence officer turned to his commander.

“Manila. It was Kanor De Jesus.”

“I remember the name. He was on the SIGMA-11 target deck.”

“Yes, sir,” the intel officer confirmed. “Two TF Green attempts, one TF Blue, and local competitors tried to bump him off a couple times as well.”

“What happened?”

“We're still trying to piece it together. We have someone from The Activity on the ground working with local authorities. The police found a parachute in the park nearby which explains how the killers got off target, but no one knows how they got there to begin with. We've had the special entry troop working this problem set for months. The building is a fortress.”

“What the hell is going on? This is our third target that someone else took out in nearly as many weeks. First those guys working for Karzai that the bed-wetters in Washington wouldn't let us touch, then Hezbollah's main money man gets whacked in Dubai. Now this?”

“It has happened before. De Jesus had hits put out on him by both the NPA and Abu Sayaf. Whenever these guys carve out a piece of the local black market for themselves, there is always a competitor who wants that slice of pie for himself.”

“Too many coincidences,” the Admiral stated. “And the hits are too precise, too well-planned. The Israelis are good but they don't have this kind of reach. Besides, they wouldn't play in our backyard without a courtesy call.”

“What about Langley?” the J3 said as he rolled his eyes.

“They are ready for a tele-conference right now,” the J2 said.

“Put them on,” the Admiral said as he sat down at the long table in front of a projection screen.

The screen came on showing a bald headed CIA officer in a suit sitting next to a Army Officer in his Class A uniform, a Special Forces liaison officer detached to Central Intelligence.

“Hey Russ,” the CIA officer said, addressing the JSOC Admiral by his first name. Technically, they were of equivalent ranks but they also had a working relationship stretching back to the first days of the War on Terror.

“Francis, I need some help here.”

“I heard. Someone is working your target deck.”

“Talk to me.”

Francis shook his head. The Special Forces officer clasped his hands in front of him on the table.

“It's not us, brother.”

“You know I don't believe in coincidences.”

Admiral Russ Corbett sat back in his chair. He didn't ask questions that he didn't already have the answers to. He knew Francis was telling him the truth because the CIA had hired dozens of former JSOC operators to do their dirty work. Those operators had loyalty to the home team and kept JSOC informed of everything the agency was up to around the world. He was simply hoping that Francis could help him unravel this puzzle.

“I hate to say it Russ, but do you think someone over there is saying some things they shouldn't to some people they shouldn't be talking to?”

“SIGMA-11 is locked down. We can do an informal 15-6 just to snoop around but the CI around that program is air tight.”

“I hope so,” the CIA officer said. “Because I agree with your assessment. Someone is working your target deck and for both our sakes, we better find out who it is fast before this shit blows up in both our faces. You know how this works. Our fingerprints are on SIGMA, so we'll take the fall for whoever these chuckleheads kill.”

“It could jeopardize other programs as well.”

They both knew what programs he was referencing. Collection and sabotage in a country whose name started with an I and ended with a ran.

“Get this done, Russ. I'll let my people know to help you however they can.”

“Thanks Francis, I appreciate it.”

The screen blacked out as the teleconference ended.

The Admiral took a deep breath.

Someone was working their target deck, but it wasn't Special Operations, the CIA, or even an allied country. It was time for the Admiral to make a phone call to an old colleague. He had been his predecessor as the commander of JSOC. A General who had been publicly disgraced and removed after a series of revelations in the newspapers. It was known to those in the know that the General could get more done on the outside through his commercial endeavors than he ever could as military officer.

It was time to call General McCoy and see what he was up to these days.

14

The exfil was more like an all expenses paid vacation. Liquid Sky quickly forgot that they were still on a mission, relaxing on the pump boats that ferried them south. All of their kit had been sunk to the bottom of the ocean the moment the opportunity presented itself. Their pilot had headed for the South China Sea, where he could hide out for a while. The assault team took a separate route, using a ratline that Ramon had established prior to them arriving in the Philippines.

They were called
banka
boats, and were used for fishing and as water taxis between the various islands in the Philippines. The Liquid Sky mercenaries sipped on beer and worked on their tan while they were transported in a lazy, winding path that took them generally south. Unlike air travel or even vehicle traffic, maritime transportation was the least monitored, and allowed for low-visibility movements over long distances.

After a week of cruising alongside some of the most beautiful beaches in the world, they island-hopped over to Sabah in Malaysia, where their pilot met them on an airfield in his Twin Otter. From there, they flew back to Darwin, Australia.

Back at the staging site, Bill ordered his two non-performers to tear apart the mock-up of the objective. Rick for failing in the simulator and Paul for failing to make it to the target during the mission. They grudgingly went about their task. The others prepared for an epic beer blast. The pilot and the technician who ran the simulator for them were both invited.

That night all the wood from the mockup was piled up and set ablaze.

The technician was coerced into drinking a bottle of vodka. Zach was less successful in coercing Nadeesha to give the tech a lap dance but eventually she relented. Cheers went up as she began grinding on his crotch. The beer and liquor was flowing, and everyone was finally relaxing for the first time in weeks. The technician promptly stood up as Nadeesha was rubbing his face in her cleavage. She fell into the grass as the gentlemen stood with a big dumb smile on his face and projectile vomited a half gallon of vodka into the bonfire.

That got even more cheers than the lap dance.

Their pilot was buzzed out of his mind from smoking marijuana and could only muster a half-assed applause.

“Deckard, I need to talk to you,” Bill said as he walked up to him.

They walked off to the outer edge of the fire while the party continued. Bill snorted through his nose and spat a snot ball onto the ground. When he turned to Deckard, his face was half concealed by the dark, the flickering light of the fire lighting the other half of their faces.

“I didn't want to talk to you about operational details until we were back to safe ground. That was some ballsy shit you did back there.”