Eyes of the Hammer (The Green Berets) (42 page)

Ariel watched the convoy a few seconds. He knew that the van contained a contingent of guards with heavy weapons. One of the two cars held the primary target. Ariel waited. He made his first decision. "The lead car."

The gunner nodded and pressed the rubber eyepiece of the sight deeper into his eye socket.

Ariel swung his binos from the convoy up along the street they were on. He made a quick calculation. "When they reach the middle of the next block. Do you see the gas station?"

"Si, senor."

Ariel waited, feeling his excitement rise. "Steady. Steady. Fire!"

There was a blast and a roar. The missile leapt out the end of the firing tube and screamed toward the target. It made an ear-piercing noise as it picked up speed and roared downrange.

Ariel was torn between watching the target and watching his gunner to make sure the man didn't screw up. He decided to keep his eye on the target. In two seconds the missile appeared in his binos as a ball of flame flying away.

"Yes!" Ariel yelled as the missile impacted in the lead car and the warhead exploded with a roar. He turned and helped the gunner as they unlatched the clamp, pulled the empty missile case out of the tube, and slapped the second missile in. By cranking down on the clamp, Ariel engaged the tracking system wires. He slapped the gunner on his back. "Up."

He peered through his binoculars as the gunner gained his next target. The second limousine had pulled off to the side of the street and stopped. That was a mistake. Guards were pouring out of the van, quartering the immediate area, looking for the source of the explosion. Ariel wanted to laugh from his perch over two kilometers away. The TOW belched and screamed as the second missile roared off.

The gunner cursed and Ariel pulled his eyes away from the binoculars in dismay. Instead of flying true, the second missile had curved and now flew almost straight up into the air.

"Keep tracking," Ariel yelled, in the vain hope the missile might turn. His military mind already knew it was too late. The missile was already too far off course to be able to correct. Something had gone wrong in its guidance system.

The 3,750-meter spool of guidance wire reached its end and snapped. The missile was a dim ball of flame that suddenly winked out, its fuel expended. Ariel was unconcerned with where it would land now.

He took a last view through his binoculars. The guards were pulling bodies out of the first limousine. It was impossible to tell who they were at this distance.

Ariel turned to his men. "Let's go." As they headed for the stairs, he pulled the pin on a thermite grenade and laid it on top of the missile guidance system nestled underneath the tripod. He turned and leapt for the stairwell. Oh well, he reasoned. It was a fifty-fifty chance they had gotten Roberto Ramirez.

BOGOTA

7:30 A.M.

Kate Westland stirred. She had a strange feeling of warmth along her back. As consciousness grew she realized that warmth was Riley curled up behind her. The realization caused her no discomfort. On the contrary, she felt quite secure in his arms. She lay still for a few minutes, relaxing and enjoying the sensation.

Finally, she slipped out of his arms and stole quietly to the bathroom. Coming back out she regarded the sleeping form for a few seconds. Riley's normally intense face was relaxed. The lines in his forehead were smooth. She stood there, hesitating to wake him.

"Makes me nervous to be stared at," Riley drawled as he cracked open one eye. "You ready for another exciting day?"

Westland shook her head. "I don't think I could take any more excitement. Especially on an hour and a half of sleep. What's on the agenda?"

Riley sat up. "First you take me out to the villa site again. I want to check it out during the daytime. Then you go and get a hold of the military attaché and try to make contact with Pike. I've got his STU-III number. Then you come back out and meet up with me sometime this evening to let me know what you've learned. Sound good?"

Westland nodded. "Ready when you are."

RING MAN'S VILLA

7:46 A.M.

Ponte stiffened as he heard the Ring Man call for him from the adjacent office. Today had not been a good one so far and it was still early in the morning. Ponte went through the connecting door into his boss's office.

The Ring Man was on the phone. He gestured for Ponte to take a seat across from his desk and paused in his conversation. "I want you to listen in. This is the type of information I like hearing." The Ring Man punched the intercom on his phone and put the receiver down. "Tell me again what you have done, my friend."

"About an hour ago I assassinated Roberto Ramirez." Ponte cringed as he heard Ariel's accent come out of the speaker.

"How did you do that?"

"I hit his limousine with an antitank missile. Completely destroyed it. From what I've been able to find out, it killed not only Roberto but his second-oldest son, Miquel."

Ring Man laughed out loud. "The Shark is fish bait now." He turned to Ponte. "Miquel was the next in line, wasn't he?"

Ponte nodded glumly. Ariel's good work made his own involvement with the mysterious American seem all that more incompetent. "The eldest, Julio, is still in the States facing trial. He's looking at a life term. That leaves the third son, Jaime, and the youngest, Carlos. I'd say the younger is the more dangerous of the two left."

The Ring Man had already turned his attention back to the phone. "What are things like there? How are Ramirez's people reacting?"

Ariel's disembodied voice floated in the room. "There hasn't been time for them to do much of anything. They've recovered the bodies and pulled back to his house on the ocean and are fortifying themselves. In my opinion they're scared. I think the time is ripe for us to move into the city here and take over. The Ramirezes will be too busy trying to protect themselves to come out and try to stop us."

The Ring Man was all smiles. "Good. Very good. I want you to come back up here. Hold on a minute." He turned to Ponte. "Is my helicopter flying yet?"

Ponte glanced at his watch. "The repairs were just completed. It will be taking off from the airport in about forty-five minutes to go up to Barranquilla."

"Have it also pick up Ariel at the airfield in Cartagena. I want him down here."

As Ponte listened to Ring Man relay this information to Ariel, he realized that Ariel wasn't coming down here just to get a pat on the back. Job security wasn't exactly the highlight of Ponte's position. Ring Man himself had sat in Ponte's office prior to assassinating Ahate. Although Ponte knew that the Ring Man didn't consider him a threat, his boss might consider Ariel to be even less of a threat. Ariel, as a foreigner, could never rule in the cartel in Colombia.

The Ring Man startled Ponte out of his self-absorbed thinking. "Do I have to tell you again? Get moving on the call to the pilot."

Ponte scurried out of the office, half of his mind on what he had to do and the other half on what he needed to do to survive.

BARRANQUILLA

9:53 A.M.

Ariel enjoyed flying in helicopters. He'd had the pilot fly low over the coast on the short run from Cartagena to Barranquilla. He could see the bulk of the city farther up the coast as the aircraft banked right and headed down onto a dirt runway. Ariel had heard about the aborted attack by the Americans on this lab site. He wished he had been there. The thought of meeting one of these American commandos piqued his military interest.

The pilot didn't want to shut down his engines so he had radioed ahead for the guards to have the prisoner waiting. As the skids of the Bell Jet Ranger touched down, four guards rushed forward, dragging a hooded and shackled figure. Ariel opened the back door and helped them position the man inside and lash him into the seat with the safety straps. The helicopter lifted and turned to the south.

Ariel reached over and removed the hood from the American. The prisoner blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light. Ariel could see that although the man's face was unmarked he was in some degree of pain. Ariel assumed that the sicarios had amused themselves with beatings while keeping in mind the Ring Man's instructions not to mark the face. Also, Ariel knew that the man had been knocked unconscious by a grenade blast during the firefight—but not before he had killed several of Ring Man's men. Ariel wanted to talk to this man who had shown such bravery and military prowess.

The Israeli grabbed the extra headset and plunked it down over the American's ears, positioning the boom mike in front of his lips. The prisoner regarded him with dark, angry eyes. Ariel knew he would have his hands full if this bear of a man got loose. There was little chance of that, though: The Colombians had shackled his wrists with two sets of steel handcuffs, and his feet were held with two rings welded to an iron bar that was tied into the floor of the helicopter.

"Can you hear me?"

The man's gaze swung around.

"What is your name?"

The man shook his head.

"You can talk. You have a hot mike. I'm interested in what you thought you were doing when you tried to attack this facility."

The man just glared.

"My name is Ben Ariel. I might be able to help you. I'm a professional military man just like you."

That brought a reaction. "You call yourself a professional, working for these scum? You're a hired killer. You're lower than whale shit."

"Ah, I see you can talk." Ariel smiled. "Yes, I do call myself a professional. I am just like you. I get paid to provide military services. I just do it for an individual instead of a government. I don't see much difference between the two."

The American shook his head. "You work for the money. I do it for my country. I would think you'd understand that, seeing where you come from if I read your name right."

Ariel shook his head. "I don't do this for the money. I do this because I am good at it. Just this morning I set up a beautiful ambush. You would have been impressed. Destroyed an enemy vehicle at almost two thousand meters. Do you have a name?"

The man shook his head. "You get no information out of me."

Ariel laughed. "If we wanted it, we'd get it. No one is immune. Everyone breaks. There isn't anything you could tell us that we don't know already. We're just keeping you alive in case we need you as a chip on the table later on. How does that make you feel? Just a bargaining piece, and not a very valuable one, I might add, since your government is still denying it did anything and is sticking to its air crash story."

"My feelings don't matter."

Ariel considered the man. He felt a certain empathy for him. From the report he had received the American had been captured by sheer luck. He'd been moving south along the coast when he'd run into one of the patrols Ring Man had ordered out after he'd received word from Maria on the impending raid.

"It is a shame that we have to waste your talents. The Americans have at least admitted that the dead men were from the 7th Special Forces Group. I'm impressed. I have heard good things about you Green Berets. Not as good as our commandos in Israel but still a potent force."

The man didn't rise to the barb. Ariel tried another tack. "Maybe I can talk to my boss about you. Would you be interested in working with me?"

The man turned and carefully spit into Ariel's face. In a fit of fury the Israeli pulled out his pistol and cocked it. The copilot in the right front seat had been following the conversation and now yelled, "Put that away! What do you think you're doing? You can't fire that in here. Besides, the Ring Man wants the American alive."

Ariel slowly regained control of his temper. He pushed the muzzle of the pistol into the man's temple. "You will pay for that. Maybe not now, but later."

The American looked at Ariel and smiled. "Fuck you. Fuck your mother. Fuck your father. Fuck your—" The rest of the tirade was lost as Ariel tore the headset off the man. That didn't stop the American, though. He rocked in the web seat as much as the restraints would let him and shouted profanities at the top of his lungs.

Ariel spent the rest of the flight pressed up against the door, as far as he could get from the crazy American, thinking of things he would do to him if the Ring Man let him.

UNITED STATES EMBASSY, BOGOTA

10:05 A.M.

Westland looked across the desk at Lieutenant Colonel Turrel, the army military attaché to Colombia. Turrel returned her stare with a look that ranged somewhere between amusement and concern.

His amusement came from having watched Westland fight off Jameson. The CIA man had nearly had a fit when Westland appeared in the Marine Corps' guard post in the embassy, demanding to see the army military attaché. Jameson had hustled her into the embassy and tried to steer her into his office. Westland had sabotaged that plan by the simple tactic of not getting on the elevator with Jameson and watching the door shut in his surprised face. She'd then climbed the stairs to the second floor and presented herself to Turrel. Before she could talk to him, Jameson had stormed into the room, ordering her to his office. Westland had stubbornly refused, and Jameson had just left in a huff, threatening her, telling her he was going to call Virginia and ship her ass back on the first thing flying.