Operation Southern Cross - 02 (18 page)

The initial attack on the missile platforms had already commenced when the jungle palace loomed in front of the Chinooks. Autry’s mind went two places at the same time: the drug king’s mansion they’d blown up in Colombia just a few days ago—and the time he crashed during his first combat mission. It happened over Grenada, and his crash site was a very ornate, colonial building that looked like Buckingham Palace; he came down in the parking lot.

So now here he was again, bearing down on yet another tropical castle. And if there was one thing XBat had gotten good at, it was attacking expensive real estate in the middle of the jungle.

ABOUT FIVE HUNDRED FEET OUT FROM THE STRUCTURE
, Autry yanked up on the Chinook’s controls and brought its speed down to a crawl. The aircraft’s mighty engines shook from the violent maneuver, vibrating throughout the entire copter. Autry kept the big ship moving straight ahead, though.

Tucked behind Autry’s copter, Chinook 2 had slowed down too. At four hundred feet out, Autry brought his copter down even lower—not fifty feet above the ground. He took a quick look behind him. The guys in his cargo bay were holding onto the mini-MOAB with all their strength. They would let go only when he told them to. A moment later, they were directly over the rear quarter of the palace.

And it really
was
a palace—when viewed through the camo netting, up close via NightVision. Whitewashed stone walls. Hundreds of windows, dozens of entrances. Expensive crushed stone everywhere. The roof boasted many satellite dishes, rivers of cable wires and even a few ancient-looking antennae. On top of it all, the unmistakable red-and-yellow SBI flag. At this point, it might as well have been a bulls-eye.

It was strange: just about every light in the mansion was turned on. Autry could see soldiers and people in civilian clothes, crowded at the windows, looking west to where the missile platforms were just now being attacked. They were so distracted they had no idea two more copters were coming up on them.

“A complete surprise,” Autry thought out loud.

Poor bastards…

He counted down to three and then gave a mighty yell: “
Drop it!
”

His men let go of the straps and then held on for their lives as the huge improvised bomb went out the back of the copter. The four connected fuel tanks started tumbling immediately. Autry put the Chinook in a hard left bank. He craned his neck just in time to see the bomb slam into the roof of the mansion.

It didn’t explode for two seconds. Then it went off with a tremendous blast. In a flash, all the windows on the top floor of the palace were blown out by a storm of huge red sparks. Millions of them. It was like a fireworks display inside a house.

Autry went deep into a 180-degree turn now, this as the sparks were shooting into the air and coming down everywhere, including on top of his helicopter. He was already flying through the smoke the fuel bomb had created. It took a few seconds—very long seconds—but finally Autry saw what he longed to see. The entire top floor of the palace was gone and flames were spurting up from within. He couldn’t believe it. The damn bomb actually worked!

The pilot of Chinook 2 saw the same thing. He was soon over the mansion, now covered with smoke. On his call, his crew rolled the second gas-packed fuel bomb out the back of his aircraft. It went right through the newly created hole in the roof, tumbling into the middle of the conflagration. This improvised weapon hit with a combined
bang-bang!
igniting it right away. A geyser of flame erupted from beneath the roof.

Autry turned to go around again. He still had a hundred gallons of fuel, contained in ten metal water cans. At one point they’d discussed whether throwing all the gas onto the palace at once would work. The truth was they didn’t know and they didn’t have the luxury of time to find out. So this rotating bombing formation was dreamed up. And Autry was responsible for the third run.

He had the big Chinook practically on its side now, as he fought to turn the 180 into a complete 360. He was over the top of the house sooner than he would have liked, the big copter was still nearly on its side—but his crew threw five of the cans down into the fire, opening their spouts before tossing them out.

They hit with another double-bang, and on his turnout, Autry saw another stream of flame burst out of the palace’s second floor. It was coming right at them. For a long terrifying moment, the flames sought to engulf the big copter, coming right up into the cargo bay’s open door. It stayed but a micro-second and was gone again, but still scaring the crap out of everybody. Autry fought to put some distance between them and the flames.

He turned just in time to see another huge explosion rock the palace. The flash of light was so intense, Autry had to look away. When he was able to adjust his eyes again, he saw that the huge fire had now engulfed the top two floors of the mansion and was growing even larger. Their plan had worked. The fire had turned into an inferno.

Chinook 2 began its second run. About two hundred feet away, there was a huge explosion somewhere in the middle of the palace—its shock wave was so powerful that it literally threw Chinook 2 more than a hundred feet into the air.

Still their fuel canisters came tumbling out.
Bang! Bang!
They all went through the roof, passed through the top three floors and exploded somewhere down near ground level. This time it seemed like the entire structure rose a foot off the ground. The last canisters from Chinook 2 had hit something very volatile. The result was the mother of all secondary explosions.

But had the fire reached the basement, where they believed any warheads would be stored? This was something unknowable. And that meant that they were to continue with the plan. Autry tipped the Chinook on its rotors again. He was going to take his third run.

He turned level and went in clean. But a hundred feet away, he too was hit by a shock wave—not from an explosion, but from the tremendous amount of heat coming up from the burning structure.

Autry knew this was a sign to climb—heat could fry some very important things on the outside of the souped-up copter. He went up quickly—but the heat followed him up. He climbed more, lowering his speed. Still, the hell wind rose with him. Suddenly he was right over the burning structure itself and was thrown up another two hundred feet. Outside the cockpit window, Autry saw not just flames and smoke, but also pieces of the house itself streaming by them. Broken doors, shattered window frames, even furniture—flaming debris rising quickly, as it if were on its way to heaven.

That’s when Autry knew they’d completed their mission: The inferno had now reached its extreme.

XBat had created a firestorm.

Autry immediately turned off, putting the Chinook into a steep left-hand turn.

Dropping any more fuel on this fire would be like adding a teacup of water to the ocean. What was once a huge jungle palace was now simply one large sheet of flame. Their work here was done.

Autry’s new heading put him nose-on to the simultaneous attack on the launch platforms. And it was at that moment that he saw what the attacking force saw—all of the missiles had been destroyed except one, and it was in the process of blasting off.

Autry stared at the missile as it hung in the air, just a few feet from clearing the launch platform. The flame coming from the other destroyed sites was bathing this one workable missile in a bright yellow light. Its nose cone was gleaming.

What the hell is inside that thing?
he wondered now. A nuke? Obviously nothing big had detonated over the missile site, at least not yet. Could the warhead be filled with germs? Or anthrax, to be exploded over a wide area? Or was it stuffed with radiological waste—a missile-delivered dirty bomb?

There was no way to know.

But where was it going?
Toward the United States, of that Autry was sure. Exactly where, really didn’t make any difference. It was on its way, and there was nothing XBat could do about it.

So they had failed…

Right?

Wrong.

Because at that moment, Autry realized he was looking at something even more astonishing than this missile rising on its trajectory to wherever.

Every copter in the site attack force had turned as one, and started flying toward the rising missile—their guns blazing. And just like that, Autry started chasing it too. They all rose together, tracers lighting up the star-filled night, vying with the glow of the flames below for dominence.

The problem was the missile was rising faster than any of the copters could hope to. It would be out of their range in microseconds.

What if this thing is heading to Atlanta? To where his wife was?

That thought went through Autry’s mind like a knife. But then, just when it seemed stopping the missile would be impossible, one of the tracers found its mark. Who fired the magic bullet? They would never know. But the luminescent round went through the missile’s skin, slammed into its rocket motor, severing its fuel lines, igniting them…and blowing the missile to smithereens.

The resulting explosion turned the night into day. No flame, no smoke, just a pure white light. Autry was sure that this was a nuclear detonation and he’d been killed, and he was seeing the white light people talked about upon facing death. It was only when WSO Winters let out a hoot that actually stung his ears did Autry realize that he was still alive and that he’d better pull the Chinook out of the way of the spectacular explosion before they were brought down by the tons of debris now falling all around them.

Autry put the Chinook into such a violent maneuver, he nearly turned it completely over. Ferrari-like or not, these aircraft just weren’t built for such things, and that was almost the end of all of them right there. But with Winters’ help, Autry managed to right the ship, and just missed colliding with two other of the unit’s aircraft.

Only when they’d put some distance behind them did Autry dare to look back. It was an image he’d never forget: the jungle palace still blowing up from secondary explosions, with the missile’s sparkling debris hanging over it like some incredibly massive fireworks display. Large chunks of debris were tumbling back onto the missile site itself, touching off more fuel explosions, destroying what was left of the other missiles and their launchpads and finally finishing the job of obliterating the target once and for all.

Autry was sure all this commotion could be heard and seen for miles, but he didn’t care. A small nuke? Germs? Anthrax? Radioactive waste? Just what was contained in the warhead they blew up was irrelevant now. Whatever it was, it was falling back to earth over Venezuela, and not the United States. And at the moment, that’s all that mattered.

He smiled darkly and banged fists with Winters.

“That’s what you get,” the copilot declared, “when you fuck around with us!”

THE STRIKE FORCE RETURNED TO THE
TRANERAS MONTANA
volcano in triumph, but it wouldn’t be a long stay.

All they needed to get here was the last of their fuel; gas they’d stolen at Legos, and put in extra drop tanks as reserves. The plan from there was simple: Each copter would top off its fuel load, and then get ready for the next step, the one last detail they had to sew up. Then, finally, would come the ride home.

The copters landed on their assigned marks inside the crater. Their crews quickly began moving fuel around, not even bothering to shut down their engines. Leaving Jurassic Park before the Venezuelans arrived was one reason for the haste. Just as important, they didn’t want to get doused by the fallout from whatever they just blew up over Area 14. A huge white cloud was still climbing over the target; the XBat troopers could see it from the top of the crater. It would be just a matter of time before it blew in their direction.

Once the rest of the unit was down, the AWACs Chinook took off. Its fuel tanks already full, the radar-equipped copter climbed to five hundred feet and started a long, slow orbit around the volcano. The crew techs inside didn’t even bother to switch on the Galaxy Net. They activated their own long-range radar sets instead, and began sweeping the sky for 150 miles in every direction.

Inside of thirty seconds, their readout screens showed them exactly what they wanted to see: air activity over the vast CaracCo oil refinery just a few minutes flying time north of the volcano, air activity over the country’s other major refineries as well. They tracked no less than six squadrons of Venezuelan jet fighters circling around the country’s handful of oil facilities. So many VAF planes were dedicated to the defense of the refineries, none was seen flying anywhere near the
Traneras Montana
Reservation. Their diversion had paid off in spades. It had kept the VAF away from Area 14, and might even help the copter unit in their escape.

That was the good news. The bad news was a little more mysterious: Though the AWACs could see nearly fifty VAF fighters on their long-range screens, no blip the size of a Killer Egg was picked up. The AWACs guys did sweeps for ten straight minutes, looking in every direction, checking every altitude.

But try as they might, they could find no sign of Mungo or his helicopter.

IN THE CRATER BELOW, THE FUELING OPERATION WAS
quickly completed.

Autry’s Chinook was the last aircraft to refuel. He’d overseen the gas-up himself, this while absorbing the news about Mungo. Like any casualty situation during a combat operation, he would have to think about it later. There were just too many other things he had to do.

He checked his watch. It was 0330 hours. XBat had stuffed more adventure and mayhem into the past few hours than some Special Ops groups did in a decade. And still the sun was not up on one of the longest nights of Autry’s life. But clearly it was time to go. Or at least, time to get off the prehistoric crater.

Autry climbed back into his Chinook, and started quick-booting his flight computer. The successful assault on Area 14 had taken just ten minutes, less than half the time he’d guessed. The final refueling operation had finished up quickly too; every copter was now ready to go. He wasn’t sure how it happened, but at that moment, they were actually
ahead
of schedule in their attempt to get the hell out of the country.

Goddamn
, Autry mused, adjusting his helmet’s intercom system. If things finally started falling his way, he might get back to Atlanta to meet his wife after all—with a few minutes to spare.

But no sooner had the thought gone through his head when he looked out the cockpit window and saw two of his gunners running through the steam, waving their arms at him. A shadowy figure was running between them.

Autry just shook his head.
What the fuck is this…?

He unstrapped from his seat and quickly went out the forward hatch. It was only when the trio arrived in front of him that he realized the third person was Owens, the U.S. diplomat who’d visited them earlier.

He was crying.

“They took my family,” he gasped, his face pale, barely able to catch his breath. He was covered with cuts and scrapes and bruises, his clothes further soaked in the green slime.

“
Who
took them?”

“Those bastards in the SBI,” he wailed. “They kicked in my door while I was up here the first time. They confiscated my daughter’s computer, then took her and my wife away. They
arrested
them.”

But Autry was already having trouble processing the information; a few moments ago he was ready to bid this place goodbye forever. Now, this.

He let Owens sit on the edge of the Chinook’s open bay. A lot of the unit members gathered around.

“What excuse did the police give for arresting them?” Autry asked the diplomat.

“That I went into an Internet porn room,” Owens sobbed. “That’s where I talked to Weir. It was the only place we could discuss how to find you guys. But in Venezuela, porn sites are illegal. If you’re caught in there, you can be arrested.”

He put his head in his hands. “But I know it was just an excuse,” he went on. “They knew I was up to something. And now they have my family…”

He looked up at Autry. “I had nowhere else I could go but back here,” he said. “Caracas is in chaos. The rioting is totally out of control. Everyone I know has already left. Even the Brits pulled out as soon as we made it back. I had nowhere else to turn.”

Autry couldn’t believe this was happening. “Do you know where they are, at least?” he asked the diplomat.

“A place called Carabozo,” was the reply. “It’s a top-secret military prison, about fifty miles west of here. It’s off-limits to just about everyone. But everyone knows it’s a very bad place to be.”

Owens was trying hard to compose himself. He wiped his eyes. “Can you help me, Colonel?” he pleaded with Autry. “I have to get them back. My wife. My daughter. Those bastards will kill them…”

Autry looked up at McCune standing nearby. The young officer just shrugged. He was of the opinion that, just like Mungo, they were
never
getting out of Venezuela.

“OK,” he finally said to Owens. “Tell us where we have to go.”

TEN-YEAR-OLD MOLLY OWENS HAD NEVER HEARD OF
Carabozo.

Neither had many Venezuelans. Built around a small city located in the Trullio River Valley, it was off-limits not just to ordinary Venezuelans but to most members of the Venezuelan military as well. Only persons cleared by the SBI were allowed through its gates, those and the ones who arrived in handcuffs. Prisoners, political opponents, innocent women and girls—many who went in never came out.

Molly was crying now. So was her mother. They were sitting in a very dirty room that had a small jail cell in one corner, an old table and chairs in the middle and a window that looked into the next room. They’d been brought here after the police took them from their home, placing bags over their heads and telling them they would never see the United States again. As for her father? The police said he was already dead.

There was some kind of police captain in the room with them now. He was fat and his breath smelled awful. Two police soldiers were guarding the only door. There were three more soldiers in the room next door; Molly could see them through the window. All of these people were angry at Molly and her mother. Angry at something her father had done. But in the five hours since they’d been taken, the police had never really come out and said exactly what it was.

Molly knew her father had something to do with helping the U.S. government get things done in Venezuela, even though her classmates at the American School teased her that he was really a CIA spy. And she knew that Venezuela and America weren’t exactly friends these days. But she couldn’t imagine what had gone so wrong that these men would kill her father and now scare her and her mother so much. It didn’t make sense.

The police captain was maybe the angriest of them all. He looked like the sort of person who enjoyed being angry. He’d come into the room an hour ago, and since then he hadn’t stopped accusing Molly and her mother of all kinds of things: hating Venezuela, hating Venezuela’s president and even being spies.

The police captain directed most of this anger at her mother, who was sitting just out of reach of Molly in a very squeaky chair, one that seemed to be irritating him as well. He was screaming at her mother, his face just a few inches from hers, telling her that in Venezuela, all spies were shot. Even though she was absolutely petrified, Molly couldn’t imagine how bad it was for her mother, especially since this man had such terrible breath!

If the police captain’s intent was to make them both cry even more, he was doing a good job of it. He’d been berating them nonstop and was showing no signs of letting up. And it was the same things, over and over again: how bad the United States was, and how criminals were executed for their crimes in South America, no matter how old they were. But Molly knew that her mother wasn’t really hearing much of it because she was crying so much and asking the man over and over, “
Please don’t hurt my daughter
.”

But then suddenly, her mother stopped crying. For a moment, she was more angry than scared. She looked up at the police captain and said: “Why do you hate women so much?”

The man’s face turned beet red. He reached into his holster and pulled out a pistol. Even the two soldiers standing guard at the door looked shocked by this. Molly saw them through her tears. The police captain first raised the gun over her mother’s head as if to strike her, but then he thought better of it and pressed the barrel against her temple. Her mother started crying again, and tried to reach over to touch Molly, but there was too much room between the chairs.

The captain pulled back the gun’s hammer and wrapped his finger around the trigger. Molly knew that in just a few seconds, her mother was going to die, and that she was going to die too. But it was at that moment, when Molly was the most frightened of her life, that she looked through the glass into the next room and instead of the Venezuelan soldiers who’d been standing there, saw three other men. They were wearing black uniforms and huge black helmets and were carrying the biggest guns Molly had ever seen. Her eyes went wide, twice as wide as normal at least, as she just stared at these three strange soldiers. They looked like they were from a
Star Wars
movie.

But who were they?

One of them caught her attention. First, he put his finger over his lips—he wanted her to be quiet. Then he put his shoulder up to the window to show her a patch he was wearing. It was the flag of the United States, the stars and stripes. Molly felt her eyes go wider still.

Oh, my God
, she thought.
They’ve come to save us.

She would always have a hard time remembering what happened next. The last motion the soldier made to her was covering his eyes with his hands for a second. Molly had to think a moment about what he was trying to tell her. Then she got it.

She put her hands over her eyes and shut them tight. A second later she heard a very loud
bang!

She heard her mother scream and then many voices yelling at once: “
Get down! Get down!
”

Then she heard gunshots—lots of them, but only for a few seconds—and then everything was quiet again. She kept her eyes shut even though now they were beginning to hurt. And she heard her mother crying, but she sounded different this time—not as scared. And then there were even more voices, coming from the American soldiers, Molly was sure, telling her mother that everything was OK, and for Molly to keep her eyes shut and that they were all getting out of there.

Then Molly felt someone very strong pick her up in his arms.

And they started running.

ALL HELL HAD BROKEN LOOSE ON THE ROOF OF
Carabozo Prison.

Autry was up here, at the controls of a Black Hawk DAP gunship. Sergeants Staples and Bell were in the back, firing the side-mounted M-60s like madmen. Autry was firing his own M-16 out the side window of the copter, all this while hovering two feet above the flat roof, with Autry turning the copter this way and that, and the rounds from the three powerful machine guns going everywhere, all around them.

This was good, because SBI soldiers were coming at them from all directions. They were climbing up the vent shafts of adjoining structures, and over walls to reach them below. They were even leaping from the roofs of other buildings nearby.

All the firing lit up the dark of the early morning; there were so many tracers flying around, it was nuts. Every time Autry squeezed his trigger, the muzzle report was so bright it almost blinded him. But he had no choice: they had to keep firing or the SBI soldiers were going to eventually reach the roof, jump on the struts of the copter and pull them back down. And that would be the end of them all.

There were two other copters up here with them, both Special K troop trucks. One had transported the so-called doorbreakers; the guys who’d actually gone down into the prison. The other was filled with XBat’s best marksmen, and they were firing in all directions as well. The three copters had arrived only two minutes ago, but it got hot quick—and was getting hotter by the second.

“
Where the fuck are they?
” Autry finally screamed in frustration.

“Right here!” he heard Staples cry out.

Autry couldn’t believe it. But a second later an attractive middle-aged woman was literally thrown into the rear bay of his copter. Next came one of the Special K guys with a young girl in his arms. The rest of the XBat rescue team dove in right after them.