Operation Southern Cross - 02 (10 page)

They could have left at that point. Just taken a few pictures of Los Tripos and then gone home, leaving the SBI to wonder what the hell had happened to their work site and letting the CIA figure out what it all meant.

And as much as Autry wanted to do that, he knew he couldn’t. XBat was not just another Special Ops team. They were supposed to adapt to any situation, think quick on their feet and then take action accordingly. That’s how it was during their training. That’s how it was in North Korea. And even though Autry could feel every one of those seconds ticking down on the right side of his watch, he knew that’s how it had to be here.

That’s when they decided to go after Zampata himself.

They ambushed him at a bend in the river about a mile upstream from the village of the Acupa. Although his SBI bodyguards put up only token resistance—they were in shock to see American soldiers attacking them way out here—it was long enough to give Zampata time to foolishly jump over the side of his boat and try to swim for shore. He didn’t make it. The flesh-eating river fish had an unexpected breakfast and XBat was back to square one.

The only thing they learned, from a dying guard, was that Zampata’s boat had been headed for the meeting with Spano. XBat worked quickly and prevented the natives of Acupa from being exterminated—all in return for Spano’s laptop. But all they got from the portable PC, besides Spano’s ghoulish scorecard of how many native slaves he’d delivered to the SBI in return for oil stocks, was the name of the big boss, Dr. Rafael Luis Grazi, along with his lofty address.

By that time, Autry was convinced the cosmos was working against him. Had they just been able to uncover a drawing, a map, a plan—something showing Area 13 for what it really was, they could have flown back to the
Lex
and resumed their twice-interrupted journey home. Or had Zampata not been able to get away, they might have squeezed the information out of him. Or if Spano had possessed more information about the secret construction project other than providing free blood and bones for it, that too would have sent them winging back to the United States.

So even though more than twenty-four hours were now gone, and every second ticking was like a clang from Big Ben in his head, Autry knew they had to keep following the trail until they either found something valuable or ran out of gas, ammo or smokes.

Or until someone caught them.

That’s why they were here now.

But already, things had gone wrong. Autry left four of the six troopers who’d flown in with him on the roof to cover both Killer Eggs. Then he and Zucker had climbed down onto the bedroom’s balcony and rushed into Grazi’s apartment.

They found the doctor still on the bed, trembling, bloody, with more than just a few broken bones. McCune’s men had beaten him when they were only supposed to restrain him, but Autry couldn’t blame them. They were all hopped up, as if inside a fever dream, following orders but sickened by the SBI’s atrocities and just itching to find someone to take it out on. When the door kickers in McCune’s squad saw what was up with Grazi and the young girl…well, there was nothing in the mission statement about that either. They simply kicked the shit out of him.

From what they’d recovered on Spano’s laptop, it was clear that Grazi was the kingpin in whatever was going on in this shitty little country. And Autry was confident that XBat could interrogate the Spanish Dr. Strangelove, get some answers and still get out of the country without causing an international incident.

But for all that to happen, Grazi had to be alive and able to talk. And right now, he wasn’t looking good on either count.

Autry had Grazi hauled to a chair in the corner of his expansive living room. Two troopers stationed themselves at the elevator, still locked from up top. Others positioned themselves near the big windows, checking for opposition coming in any direction. Still others were on the roof, watching over the unit’s two Killer Egg copters. How unusual would two small copters look sitting atop Grazi’s penthouse? He was a big wig in the SBI, so maybe they wouldn’t attract too much attention. But again, there was no way they could know, especially with the sideshow of thousands of Caracas’s angry citizens rioting in the streets below. There were police and army troops everywhere, trying to suppress the uprisings. XBat had no time to waste.

Autry shoved his cell-phone viewer in front of Grazi’s puffy eyes and forced him to watch. The first video showed pictures of Area 13, empty of its impressed labor gangs, with only the SBI guards lying about, impaled with picks or having had their heads crushed by shovels. The second set of images showed the last of Captain Zampata being eaten by the hungry fish of the Los Tripos river. The last set of images showed Spano’s men after being killed by the natives in the village of the Acupa.

From there, Autry had to lay it on thick; he didn’t have the luxury of being subtle here. Still holding the viewer just a few inches from Grazi’s eyes and repeating the video images over and over again, he tried to get across to the weapons expert that this was how he’d wind up if he didn’t tell them what was being built at Area 13.

But this tack went nowhere fast. Grazi barely spoke English and Autry didn’t speak Spanish. Besides, whenever it seemed that Grazi
was
understanding him, he would just shake his head and weakly draw his fingers across his throat, indicating that he’d be killed by his own government if he talked.

While this was going on, Zucker was going through a computer setup in another corner of the penthouse; his thinking was it might contain something on Grazi’s work. Banging away madly on the keyboard, Zucker kept yelling to Autry that he was hitting firewalls, but that he was able to break through many of them.

Suddenly the phone in the bedroom started ringing. Autry and Zucker looked at each other. Grazi had more than a dozen cell phones lying around his place—yet it was the hard-wired phone that was lighting up. This had to be the guards calling up to their lecherous boss. But then Zucker hit the jackpot—or so it seemed. He came upon a file that was titled simply “Shipment 41.” It was in Spanish and only parts of text were unencrypted, but what he could read indicated that an important seaborne shipment of something was due to arrive in Venezuela later that night. Though hard to interpret, there were hints that whatever was on this ship—such as a deconstructed Bear bomber—would further accelerate Grazi’s extraordinary weapons projects. Even better, the file gave the ship’s anticipated course and time of arrival.

The phone stopped ringing at that point—only to be replaced by another noise: the warning buzzer on the elevator. The guards below were signaling Grazi to turn the lift’s machinery back on. The urgent cadence of the buzzer’s sound told them the guards knew something was up.

Clearly it was time to go. Autry gave the signal for his men to start pulling back and they quickly began leaving the scene. The guys up top had the Killer Eggs’ rotors spinning; indeed they had never turned them off. The first troopers to make it back to the roof were soon lifting off, the young girl squeezed in with them, she thinking XBat was nothing less than an army of angels sent from heaven to rescue her.

Autry and Zucker would be the last to leave. While Autry tried one last time to get something from Grazi, Zucker was gathering up all the computer disks he could carry. That’s when they heard the elevator suddenly start moving. The guards had flipped the emergency switch twelve floors below and were now on their way up.

Autry or Zucker began backing out of the room, covering their own withdrawal. And everything was going well when suddenly…Autry heard a voice behind them.

“Stop!”

It was Grazi. He was holding a tiny pistol in his shaking hand.

“You
can’t
take those things,” he was saying in desperate, gurgling English. “If they find out, they kill me.
They kill my family…”

But Autry wasn’t really listening to what Grazi was saying. Instead, he was focused on the small gun in the doctor’s hands.

A derringer? Really?

In that instant, Autry knew he’d fucked up. His guys had beaten the SBI honcho so badly, it didn’t dawn on anyone to give him any more than a light frisk. As CO, though, Autry should have made sure. Now he was about to pay the price.

He heard Grazi pull the trigger. He actually saw the bullet coming right at him—headed for his skull. And this is what would have happened—if it hadn’t been for Zucker. His copilot saw what was happening too and pushed Autry to the floor while firing his own weapon at Grazi, killing him instantly.

The action saved Autry’s life.

But for his trouble, Zucker took the bullet right between the eyes.

THE SISTERS OF THE ORDER OF THE BLEEDING HEART
usually retired at sunset.

Their convent was located just outside the city limits of Caracas, in a rundown suburb nicknamed “Knife-town” for the number of stabbings that occurred there nightly.

The fourteen nuns lived inside a high-walled compound, complete with electrified gates and barbed wire. By tradition, many in their order were trained as nurses, their vocation being to help the sick and needy. But, by retiring to soundproof rooms when evening came, they were able to sleep through the violence happening on the streets around them. At dawn, the nuns would rise, pray, eat breakfast, pray, eat lunch, pray, eat dinner, pray and then go to bed, cloistered from anyone on the outside. No muss. No fuss. No patients. It was a routine only God could love.

That’s why it was so unusual that the nuns were awakened shortly after 2
A.M
. to such pounding on their back door that the racket bled through the noise-dampening foam lining their bedrooms. The mother superior took two of her junior nuns with her to the back door. They knew no one had tried to get over the walls tonight; this would have set off many alarms as well as frying any intruder caught on the electrically charged concertina wire.

So how was it that someone was now in their rear courtyard, banging on their door with enough commotion to wake the dead? Or near dead anyway?

The mother superior had one of the novices open the door. She found five gigantic soldiers on the other side. One was protecting a young teenage girl. The others were carrying a soldier who was bleeding profusely from his head. They were all wearing armbands bearing the flag of the United States.

Behind them were two small helicopters, their engines still turning, parked neatly in their compact courtyard. This at least solved the mystery as to how the visitors got into the convent grounds. But what did they want?

The stunned novice turned to the mother superior and said, “Gringo troopers.”

The mother superior stepped forward now and confronted the soldiers, at the same time secretly hitting a button that opened the rear gates, a necessity should the police have to get in. But at the first sight of the top nun, the young girl being protected by the soldiers spun around and ran at top speed across the courtyard and out the gates. For whatever reason, she wanted no part of this.

The troopers let her go. They had other things to worry about.

“Is there a problem?” the mother superior asked them in thick English.

One of the soldiers stepped forward. He was obviously the man in charge.

He began stuttering a long explanation: Our friend has been shot. He might be dying, we can’t tell. We are in a tight situation and we are running out of time. We can’t do anything for him now but we can’t risk leaving him at a hospital either. We were hoping that you respect the tradition of sanctuary and that we could leave him in your care.

The mother superior looked them all over, up and down, then motioned for them to carry the wounded man inside.

They did as instructed, laying the bleeding man on the floor of the convent kitchen. Then the mother superior shooed the rest of the soldiers out of the building. The man who had spoken earlier tried desperately to thank her for her kindness and also her hoped-for silence. By honoring the concept of sanctuary, the nuns would be bound not tell the authorities anything. But she just gave him a quick sign of the cross and closed the door in his face.

The nun watched through a small kitchen window as the men climbed back into the helicopters, all of them giving one last look back at the convent. Once they were belted in, with some of them sitting on benches hanging off the side of the copters, the aircraft quickly lifted off, going straight up in the air until she could not see them any longer.

The mother superior returned to the back door and made sure it was locked. Then she hit the button that closed the courtyard’s rear gates.

Then all three nuns stepped over the wounded man on their kitchen floor, returned to their bedrooms and were soon fast asleep again.

THE UNUSUAL STRETCH OF WATER WAS CALLED
Enola Shallows.

It was located about twenty miles west of Aruba, the popular resort island found off the northwest coast of Venezuela. As the name indicated, the waters here were relatively shallow, just a hundred feet deep in some places, due to many barely submerged islands in the area. Because of the unusually slight depth, the water temperature in Enola Shallows was always higher than in the deeper water around it, frequently causing monstrous fog banks. While Enola Shallows was still used as a regular shipping lane, passing through it made for some tricky navigation. Flying through it was just about impossible.

Yet, this was where XBat was heading now, for one reason only: According to the computer disks taken from Grazi’s apartment, at that moment, somewhere in the gigantic fog bank, a cargo vessel carrying a very mysterious “Shipment 41” was steaming toward Venezuela.

After leaving Caracas in such a rush, Autry and the other Killer Egg had set down on a small atoll a few miles off the Venezuelan coast, part of the uninhabited Los Roques group. The rest of XBat was waiting for them here, having transited out from a hideout they’d established earlier that day deep within the Venezuelan forest.

There had been no time for small talk at this island rendezvous. The rest of the squadron was briefed on the Zucker situation and what the advance teams had found inside Grazi’s computer disks, essentially the existence of Shipment 41. Then they all switched helicopters. Autry left his Egg and climbed into the lead DAP Penetrator, aka the “boss gunship.” McCune traded places with one of the Chinook pilots, while Mungo and Crowbar Cronin took command of the Killer Eggs. Those troopers who’d been flying the KEs’ benches reported back to their regularly assigned helicopters. All if this took less than five minutes. Then the unit took off and headed north.

Riding in the lead DAP, Autry was at the tip of this spear. He had the unit aligned in their Eagle
V
formation: the three DAP gunships up front, in a tight chevron, followed by the three Special K troop trucks and the four Chinooks flying in a diamond pattern behind them. Bringing up the rear were the pair of nimble Killer Eggs. Though roaring along at 170 mph, the unit never rose above fifteen feet during the entire trip out.

It was a good thing that they knew where they were going. The meteorological information on their flight computer told them that the fog banks around Enola Shallows were such a hazard to flying, the place had become its own little Bermuda Triangle. Aircraft went in, but sometimes they didn’t come out.

XBat had a secret weapon, though: McCune’s Chinook was the unit’s AWACS ship—and the good news was the Galaxy Net seemed to be working again. Their S2S phones were still out, but the satellite-assisted navigation, GPS and visual acquisition capabilities essential for the mid-sea interception were still there. In its current mode, McCune’s specialized Chinook would be using the Galaxy Net’s special radar to spot targets on the surface of the water many miles ahead, no matter what the climatic conditions.

The fog bank swirling around the shallows this early morning was very large, though. It stretched for miles in every direction, rolling right up onto the western beaches of Aruba itself. That’s why everyone was relieved the Galaxy Net was up and humming again. Grazi’s files gave the time coordinates for the mystery ship’s entire trip; all XBat had to do was punch this information into the Galaxy Net and—
voila!
—they had a flight plan that would allow them to intercept the ship exactly where and when they wanted to.

Still it would take a bit of flying, with Autry in the lead. He was pissed off about what had happened to Zucker, pissed off at the Venezuelans in general. What these people were into was no less evil than what the Nazis were doing in the late 1930s, or the Serbs in Bosnia in the late 1990s. Civilization, stuck in reverse.

This latest action would be the end of the string, though. Autry had already made that decision and was firm on it. XBat had gone above and beyond what they’d been sent down here to do, seeking out as much intelligence as they could, both to make the trip worthwhile and to keep intact their reputation for being able to operate almost autonomously—which was a good talent to have, as they still hadn’t been able to call back home and report anything.

But they were reaching their bingo points, thank God. The new copters were fuel efficient, but they couldn’t run forever. Plus, they’d already taken the “quiet” mission to its limit, KO’ing Los Tripos and Spano’s slave squad and leaving a mess at Grazi’s apartment. So, they would do this one more thing; they would secure whatever the hell Shipment 41 was—or sink it if they couldn’t—then clean up a few details and
finally
head for home. And
that
at least made Autry happy. He might make that date with his wife yet.

But he had to pay attention, here and now. Being the pathfinder in the Eagle
V
formation, he really had to have blind faith in the Galaxy Net to tell them where to go. But that wasn’t the only problem. He was working with WSO Winters as his copilot, a first, and it was not an especially clear night, meaning their star-encrusted paint jobs really wouldn’t be of much use. As for their new X-ray vision capability, that too was almost a distraction. To one side, they were picking up the glare of the bright lights of Aruba. To their left, there was the blankness of the lower Caribbean, dark as ink. And ahead of them, only fog. Mixed all together in the emerald world of NightVision, these conditions made for a very eerie flight.

Still, they pressed on. Twenty miles out from the target, the arrowhead of copters hit the cloud bank. It was like flying into a wall, the ghostly fog was that dense. Now they were relying strictly on data from the Galaxy Net to get them through in one piece. It was like flying blind—at three miles a minute. But all indications were that the Galaxy Net was in sync with their copter-borne gear and could be relied on to guide them every step of the way.

Once inside the fog bank, McCune turned over the controls to his copilot and climbed into the back of his aircraft. Everyone else onboard was crowded around the Galaxy Net console, the thing that looked like something out of NASA’s Mission Control. On its huge screen they could see what the Galaxy Net was pumping down from outer space: reams of data, thick as static, to be translated into VR (virtual reality) images when the time was right. As soon as McCune arrived, a system lamp stated blinking green. Someone punched a button and the big screen began to clarify itself. It took a few seconds, but then, there it was: Surrounded by thick layers of fog ten miles ahead was, according to Galaxy Net, the ship they were looking for.

McCune radioed Autry right away. “We’ve got the target on lock. It’s right where we thought it would be.”

“Give me the live take,” Autry told McCune. With the touch of another button, what McCune was seeing popped on to Autry’s flight-control screen. And now he could see it too: Plowing through the emerald ethers at just under 12 knots, was an extremely rusty cargo ship.

Now what?

The first part of Autry’s plan called for intimidation. Once they got a true visual on the ship, the DAPs and Special Ks would start circling it, throwing off their sound dampeners and making lots of noise. Then one of the Chinooks would swoop in and fire two warning shots across the ship’s bow with its brand-new IAC light howitzer.

At that point, Autry’s flight engineer would engage their copter’s psych-ops loudspeakers and call down to the ship that it should prepare to be boarded. Autry’s hope was that the freighter’s crew was made up of hired hands, non-Venezuelans who might be unwilling to get flattened for the likes of the SBI. That would be the ideal situation.

They were soon just a minute away from getting a visual on the ship. Autry radioed the rest of the team to get ready to change formation, reminding each aircraft of its part to play, and telling them, most important, to be ready to get in and out quick. Then he told his own aircraft’s crew to get to their battle stations and check their weapons and ammo.

Thirty seconds away from what the Galaxy Net promised would be a true visual, the fog got thicker, if that was possible. Each copter did a radio check and confirmed their position via their GPS gear. Each pilot also called in an aircraft status report. Though low on fuel, all of the new copters were running fine.

Fifteen seconds out, Autry told WSO Winters to turn on the external digital cameras. No matter what happened, it would be important to get the encounter down on film. Then Autry called back to his engineer to turn on the loudspeaker system. A squeal through his headphones told him this was working too.

Autry turned back to the VR screen on his control panel. They were all still flying at just fifteen feet, but the fog was so thick, it was like they were passing through high cumulus clouds. He studied the virtual reality image of the target ship. Nearly pristine in its clarity, the image was actually a radar profile of the ship being scanned by a Galaxy Net satellite overhead, beamed down to the set on McCune’s Chinook and then bounced over to Autry’s control panel, all in a matter of nano-seconds.

Amazing,
he thought.

At ten seconds out, on his command, the rest of the unit broke formation and began slotting into their positions for the carousel around the ship. Autry could hear their mighty engines accelerate as half the squadron roared by him to get into place.

At five seconds out, Autry still didn’t have a visual on the ship. Just their luck—the fog was the thickest yet. Eyes glued to the VR screen, he continued following his instruments, slowing up dramatically while rising slightly, to about thirty feet.

Four seconds…

Three…

Two…

One…

Autry looked up and there it was, right in front of them. A tramp steamer plowing its way south through the soupy fog, doing 12 knots.

The Galaxy Net was right on the money.

He jerked his copter into a moving hover as the rest of XBat’s Black Hawks reappeared out of the mist and began their noisy orbit around the cargo ship. Chinook Number 3 then descended from the thick cloud, and right on cue, fired two illumination shells across the ship’s bow. At this, Autry brought his copter down next to the fog-enshrouded ship. His engineer began broadcasting their message via the external psych-ops loudspeakers. Speaking in English, he told the crew that the helicopters represented the United Nations, and that the request to board her was strictly routine.

Autry drew in a little closer, trying to catch a glimpse of the ship’s crew. Then he looked back down at the Galaxy Net screen—and nearly felt his heart stop. Suddenly the screen wasn’t showing just a single cargo ship but three other ships around it. And these were not cargo ships. They were naval frigates, flying the Venezuelan flag. At that same moment, a message began blinking on the VR screen:
GN update. Full screen approved
. Autry couldn’t believe it: This was Galaxy Net language for, “We fucked up. What you thought was real wasn’t. Here’s the real image.”

In other words, instead of locating one pokey cargo hump, they were now facing three heavily armed warships.

And the anti-aircraft weapons on those warships were going hot.

“I can’t believe this,” Winters cried once he realized what had happened. “I can’t believe the G-Net screwed us!”

Autry couldn’t either. The question now was, what to do? Autry’s mind was going at warp speed, his Juicy Fruit chewed down to nothing. They
had
to land on the cargo ship. That’s the only way they could find out what Shipment 41 was. To let the ship get away now would scotch the whole mission.

But helicopters against frigates?

As it turned out, the people on the frigates solved his problem for him. Not two seconds after appearing out of the fog, anti-aircraft guns on all three warships opened up on the circling helicopters. Suddenly the thick mist was alive with the streaks of tracer rounds and shells exploding.

“Star Break and defend!” Autry yelled into his chin mike, another quick decision made. They’d taken hostile fire in the course of a mission. Just like over El Tapos in Cuba—when someone shot at XBat, they shot back. Translation: They would do an armed landing
and
fight the frigates.

Even before Autry’s words were out, the other copters in XBat began falling away from their orbiting formation, gaining height and arming their weapons. The next ten minutes of combat might have been the most confusing ever experienced by a US helicopter unit.

Not to mention the Venezuelan Navy.

Autry and one of the Special K troop trucks slammed onto the deck of the cargo ship seconds later. The ship’s crew knew they were coming. In fact they had scattered as soon as Winters started talking over the loudspeaker.

The two copters hit simultaneously, the troop truck banging in on the stern and Autry’s copter coming down on the forward cargo deck. Their troops began spilling out onto the deck almost immediately.

The ship itself was a mess, a typical tramp steamer, all rust and dried salt, with webs of ropes and chains crisscrossing its main deck. A nasty place to land a helicopter. It had a recessed control house, meaning the first two thirds of the ship was taken up by its cargo hold.

The XBat troopers started firing their weapons in every direction, trying to spook the crew. The noise alone was tremendous, fire and sparks and tracers ricocheting everywhere. The pyrotechnics worked. Crewmen started popping up from everywhere. Hands raised, many were screaming,
No mas!

The Special K troops quickly corralled the crew, identified the captain and ran him over to the boss gunship. Autry was just climbing out of his copter, and like the rest of the landing party was in full battle gear. He told the captain that he and his crew had two choices: tell them what was so important aboard on the ship or go over the side now.