Operation Southern Cross - 02 (22 page)

Autry opened his radio link. He was soon talking to the pilots of the Special K. The pilot asked him: “Should we shoot our way in?”

Autry hesitated. He just couldn’t give the order; but again, he could not leave his men to die. He keyed the mike to tell the Special K to prepare to open fire, at the same time yelling back to his own guys to get ready on their weapons.

The crowd was right up on the crew of the stricken helicopter. Some were armed with pieces of wood, some had pipes. Some had guns.

Autry buzzed the crowd again, but it seemed to have little effect. He tried letting off a barrage from his front gun’s dwindling ammunition supply, impacting high on a wall near the crash site. It stopped the crowd from advancing, but only for a few seconds. Then they started surging forward again.

Then the strangest thing happened. A gang of people barged their way through the crowd. These people, maybe a hundred in number, were not dressed like the others. There were wearing odd hats and colored shawls.

They quickly ringed the stricken helicopter as if it was going to be their pleasure to kill the wounded crew. But then, the big surprise: the people in the weird hats and the colorful shawls turned on the crowd itself, linked arms and stopped them in their tracks. Some of the strangers began signaling to Autry and the Special K pilots to come down and pick up the wounded crewmen.

Who were these people? Autry couldn’t tell, and at the moment, he didn’t care. He dropped his copter down through the smoky air, landing on the street with a thump. His guys were quickly out of the aircraft; some with weapons ready, others picking up the three wounded crewmen on one side. Meanwhile, the Special K came down on the other side of the copter and its crew picked up the three wounded guys there.

Autry had his M-16 short stock sticking out the window all this time, covering the flank. He got a fair look at the group of strangers that had so unexpectedly helped them out. Their backs were to him, and only the occasional glimpse as one looked over his shoulder gave him a clue as to their identity.

They had darker skin than the others as well as different clothes. From the look of the people in the mob who were still surging forward in places, it was clear that they didn’t want to tangle with these unexpected Good Samaritans.

It was total confusion for about thirty seconds. Finally Autry’s guys got the three wounded crewmen on his copter; the other three had been loaded onto the Special K as well.

Before he even thought about it, Autry pulled up on the controls and the copter went straight up at full power, shuddering down to its last rivet.

Only then, when they were finally airborne, did the people who’d helped them turn around and he could see their faces clearly.

Indians.

There was no doubt about it. It was a group of indigenous people, in Caracas, maybe for market day, that had not only saved the downed gunship’s crew, but had prevented a massacre by North Americans of South Americans.

But which Indians were these? The people XBat had freed back at Area 13? Or their friends, the Acupa? Or the Indians who’d witnessed the death of the supercrack king Pablo? All of them? None of them? Did those people even come into the cities?

Autry didn’t know.

And again, at the moment he didn’t care. He didn’t even bother to look at his watch this time.

He just kept flying straight up, as fast as he could, rotor blades pointed toward heaven.

CAPTAIN JUMBO ELIOT HAD BEEN GOING IN CIRCLES
for forty-eight hours.

Cruising twenty miles off the coast of Venezuela, he’d been waiting for XBat to return. Even though he hadn’t heard from the Special Ops unit since they had left the
Lexington
two days earlier, Eliot’s last order from the CIA had been blunt and simple: As no other assets were available, he was to stay on station and be prepared to recover rotary aircraft. And that’s exactly what Eliot had been doing: circling endlessly and waiting…

Two hours earlier that morning, everything had changed. That’s when a lone Killer Egg had banged aboard the ship, flying in low and taking everyone by surprise. Behind the controls was the officer named Mungo, a guy Eliot knew only from the brawl he’d been involved in with the Superstar spy before the unit dropped him off in Cuba.

Mungo had somehow found the
Lex
coming out of its latest 360-degree turn, just over the horizon from Caracas. He had just fumes in his gas tanks and no ammunition in his guns when he landed. No sooner was he down though, when he scrounged the last few gallons of aviation gas onboard, as well as some ammunition taken from XBat’s old copters before they were dumped over the side. Then he took off again.

In the few minutes he was onboard, Mungo told Eliot as much of the Area 14 saga as he could, including the diplomat Owens’ report that the Venezuelans had declared war on the United States. Then the copter pilot made a bold request: He asked Eliot to bring the old Navy ship even closer to the Venezuelan coastline. Why? Because the rest of XBat would be trying to get out of the country soon, and they would all be low on gas too.

Eliot agreed, using one of the fog banks drifting down from the notorious Enola Shallows to cover his big ship’s approach. He stopped three miles off the coast, just outside the international limit, and began circling again. Eliot waited on the bridge, eyes looking south, expecting to see a gaggle of black shapes coming over the horizon at any minute. But as the daylight grew, so did his fears that all this was an exercise in frustration.

Maybe XBat wasn’t coming back.

Things got hairier about thirty minutes after the
Lex
reached its new station. No sooner had the ship started circling again when four Venezuelan Air Force MiGs showed up. They started off by flying high overhead, but on five occasions, two came down very low, in obvious attack profiles, and loudly buzzed the ship. It was ear-splitting and nerve-rattling every time, but Eliot held his position, keeping his men up on the deck and trying to maintain the illusion that the
Lexington
was something more than just an old floating museum.

The cavalry finally arrived around 0800 hours. It came in the form of four F-15s of the Texas National Guard. Called to action by SOC, they’d tanked up aerially five times, just to get there. As soon as the four U.S. aircraft began circling the
Lex
, the VAF MiGs went away.

A few minutes after that, XBat finally showed up.

ONE OF ELIOT’S BRIDGE OFFICERS PUT IT BEST. ON
spotting the bedraggled copter unit’s approach, the officer said, “Haven’t we seen this movie
twice
already?”

He was right. Once again, just about all of the copters were trailing smoke or flames. Some were shot up, some were having mechanical failures, others were sputtering due to bottomed-out fuel reserves—just like the last two times the secret unit had landed aboard the
Lex
. If possible, these returning XBat copters, new when they had left the ship just a few days before, looked worse than the unit’s old copters that had been thrown over the side.

One thing was clear though: Had Eliot not pulled the venerable carrier closer to the coastline, all of the copters would have wound up in the drink.

Still directing things from the bridge, Eliot was ready for the copters this time. He’d had his fire teams suited up and waiting, with the deck itself covered in the last of the ship’s fire-suppression foam. The rest of the crew was standing by as well, ready to help with the wounded if needed.

The entire copter unit slammed onto the deck almost simultaneously, sending up sprays of the sudsy fireproof foam. Troopers began falling out of the copters right away. Some celebrated like kids on the last day of school, slipping on the wet deck, overjoyed to have made it back alive. Others looked like they were still in a state of shock, not believing that the hell of Venezuela was actually behind them.

One copter was carrying three civilians; Eliot knew they were Owens the diplomat and his family. They were quickly taken below. This copter was also carrying the pilot named Zucker. When Eliot’s men first lifted his stretcher off the Black Hawk, the Navy captain was sure the man was dead. His uniform was covered with blood; so was his face and hair. Yet the wounded pilot was awake and moving as the sailors rushed him to the sick bay below.

No sooner had the last copter banged aboard when Eliot ordered the
Lex
to turn about and exit the area at full speed. Then he left the bridge, intent on getting down to the flight deck to greet the returning heroes. Just as he was going down the bridge ladder, though, one of his communications guys handed him a message. Transmitted from CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, the number of codes and time stamps on its prefix indicated the message had made many stops before reaching the e-mail box of the
Lexington
. Still, it was only about thirty minutes old.

It had come from an extremely modest diplomatic channel within the Venezuelan government, the same place, Eliot would learn later, that the low-key declaration of war had originated. Eliot read over the message—and then laughed for what seemed like the first time in years. Yet, weird as it seemed, he knew the scrap of paper was actually a historical document. Message in hand, he resumed his climb down to the deck.

He arrived just as Autry was climbing out of his own beat-up copter. The XBat CO quickly walked up and down the deck, taking a head count of his men. While no one in the unit had been killed in the operation, several besides Zucker were seriously wounded, including the crew of the Black Hawk that had crashed into the street in Caracas. But the
Lex
’s men were already carrying the injured troopers below.

Autry and Eliot greeted each other warmly.

“How fast can this ship go north?” Autry asked the carrier’s captain. “And if I gave you a million dollars could you make it go faster?”

“We’re at full speed now,” Eliot replied. “I don’t think we’ve gone this fast since World War Two.”

They looked up and saw the F-15s still above them. “And those guys?” Autry added. “I’ll have to buy them a few kegs of beer, I guess.”

“Getting rescued can be an expensive thing these days,” Eliot chided him. He handed Autry the message he’d just received. “This might brighten your day, though.”

Autry read the message—and he laughed too. Its topic was Venezuela’s low-level declaration of war on the United States just two days before. But this message referred to the previous one as a “misunderstanding in communications and translation,” and apologized to the U.S. government for any confusion. It also called for U.S. and Venezuelan diplomats to get together as soon as possible to discuss “subjects of mutual interest.”

“In other words?” Autry asked Eliot.

The Navy officer smiled broadly. “I think what they’re trying to say is, ‘We surrender…’”

ONCE ALL THE WOUNDED WERE SECURED BELOW FOR
treatment, any XBat trooper who could still walk filed down to the mess hall for his first real meal in days.

Autry, McCune, Eliot and Mungo were there, sitting with the men, Mungo quietly telling them about his travels after he buzzed the CaracCo oil plant. The “unimportant” target he’d blindly fired on turned out to be an electrical substation for the facility. And while Mungo’s attack had little effect on CaracCo’s refining process, it did knock out about 90 percent of the plant’s exterior lighting. Once the glare of all those halogen lights was gone, Mungo found it easy to slip away from the too-high, too-fast Venezuelan jet fighters.

Or at least that was his story.

About halfway through the feast of warmed-up MREs and the ship’s abysmal coffee, one of Eliot’s guys walked in and handed another message to the ship’s captain. It was a news story picked up by the ship’s communication room. It contained a single paragraph, issued by the Venezuelan interior ministry. It stated that a volcano in the midsection of the country had displayed some seismic activity shortly before dawn that day. This activity had since settled down; however, the Venezuelan government would not be allowing any foreign seismologists to visit the scene anytime soon, due to “security concerns.”

“I guess the SBI finally got wise to what happened at Area 14,” Autry said, after Eliot had passed around the document. “Had to explain that big hole in the ground some way.”

McCune was chugging a cup of the ship’s awful coffee like it was whiskey.

“Makes you wonder, though,” he said, still not quite believing they’d all made it out alive. “We took care of Area 13 and Area 14. But what the hell is happening at Area 12 or Area 15? Or Area 1, 7 or 20? Who knows how many places like that those guys are building?”

Autry poured the rest of his muddy coffee into McCune’s cup. “I refuse to think about that right now,” he told the young officer.

With that, Autry got up and bid them all a good night. Even though it was barely 10
A.M
., he was going below to get some sleep.

That was the plan anyway. Instead, when he got to his cabin he took out a pen and paper pad he’d stashed earlier and started writing. Not his report on what had just happened in Venezuela, or a line-by-line list of all the things wrong with XBat’s new choppers. Instead, he was writing a letter to his wife.

It was something he would ask her to read before they said one word at their reunion, and he thought it was a good idea at first, a great way to break the ice. But no sooner had he put pen to paper when he realized writing the letter would probably be the hardest thing he’d done in the past 5 days.

He didn’t know where to begin, never mind how to end it. His first attempt started with a list of all the bad things he’d done during their fourteen-year marriage, some of which she knew about, some she didn’t. He was about halfway through this when he wised up, tore the letter to shreds and threw it out a porthole, one piece at a time, insuring that no one would ever be able to reconstruct it again. That was definitely
not
the way to go.

His second attempt came from the opposite angle. He began with a list of all the good times they’d shared in those dozen-plus years, the tent poles of their marriage. But when he really thought about it, he didn’t have enough stuff to hold up a pup tent. Their wedding day was like something from a storybook—except he was late getting to the church because he’d gotten drunk with his copter buddies the night before. Their honeymoon was tropical bliss on Maui—until he cut it short to volunteer for a hush-hush mission to Chechnya. The list got even worse after that.

It was his third attempt at the letter that held the most promise. It went further back in the time machine to their first date. It was a hamburger joint in Atlanta. He was just starting ROTC; she was still a senior in high school. They’d known each other for years, but this had been their first official romantic meeting. Autry could remember exactly what she wore that night, what they talked about, even where they sat. It was a special night in his life, before all the top-secret hero bullshit started, and was special to her too, as this was the place where she wanted them to meet.

This memory was what he wound up writing about—and even after ten pages, he was still going strong. Around page thirteen, though, he finally put his head down on the desk, just for a rest, and quickly fell asleep. In the dream that resulted, his wife liked his letter so much, she turned it into a best-selling book and then a movie.

Autry would never really know just how long he slept like this, pen still in hand, head on the love letter, his last smidgen of gum hanging halfway out of his mouth. But he knew what woke him up: the sway of the big carrier suddenly turning. It was so dramatic, it startled him back to reality.

He rubbed his eyes and stuck his head out the porthole. The sun was not as high above him as it should have been by now—that is, if they were heading back to the United States. Actually, it was behind them.

This meant only one thing: The
Lexington
was no longer steaming north.

Instead, it was most definitely going south.

AUTRY RAN AT TOP SPEED BACK UP TO THE FLIGHT
deck, clunking his knees against bulkheads, whacking his shoulders on doorways. When he got to the top, sitting right next to the control island was the last thing he wanted to see.

Weir’s all-black Textron helicopter.

Son of a bitch.

Not again.

Weir met him coming out of the hatch. He’d been waiting for Autry to arrive.

“I’m not going,” Autry told him firmly. “I’m not going. My men aren’t going. You might as well turn the ship around again, because if you don’t we’re just flying off—like we were
promised
we could do. And if you want to shoot us down or lock us up, that’s fine with me. But wherever it is you want us to go this time, we just
ain’t
going.”

Weir wasn’t hearing it, though. “You
have
to go, Bobby,” he told Autry.

But Autry was adamant. “No more ‘have to go,’” he said. “No more ‘want to go.’ I’ll resign my commission. I’ll close down the unit. My guys are in no shape to do anything else but sleep for about a week. And look at those copters. Swiss cheese doesn’t even begin to describe them.”