Operation Southern Cross - 02 (27 page)

They both fell out of the copter and looked up at the hut above them. There was a long, gradual slope leading up to it, with the bodies of many gunmen strung out along it. Autry and Mungo checked their ammo magazine loads. They had no idea if they had killed all the gunmen, but they had to go up the mountain as quickly as they could. Autry was carrying a large M-60 machine gun. Mungo had an M-16 and a pistol. A lot of firepower, but would it be enough? They would soon find out.

They started to climb. Mungo was amazingly nimble of foot, but Autry kept slipping and sliding backward. Every time he stumbled, he left some of his uniform’s green jungle slime on the cold Falklands ground.

They passed one gunman who had been seriously wounded in their strafing run. Mungo casually put a bullet in his head. Another wounded gunman tried to fire his weapon in their direction. Mungo also shot him to death. Both of these men were wearing red bandanas under their hoods.

Once they were within a hundred feet of the hut, two more gunmen suddenly appeared from behind some high rocks. Autry raised his gun to fire but before he could think about it, the gunmen fired at him. Three shots cracked in the cold air. All three hit, not on his body, but on his gun. The big M-60 shattered in his hands; the impact knocked Autry back ten feet, throwing him to the ground.

He hit a snowbank, half conscious, leaving a great green splotch on the icy ground. He fell awkwardly, twisted on top of his left arm. His double-dial watch wound up right in front of his eyes. Groggy and momentarily out of it, he couldn’t help but look at the two time displays. The local time told him that, incredibly, not even a week had gone by since the first bombs landed on Pablo the supercrack king’s house.

The other dial delivered the bad news: he had less than twenty hours to get back to Atlanta to meet his wife, impossible now. Autry just laid his head back down in the snow and closed his eyes. He’d had it.

Mungo continued on alone. He was within twenty feet of the summit when he saw the killer laser apparatus for the first time. Just as the CIA had predicted, it was no bigger than a backyard telescope. Its sodium-crystal power supply was housed in nothing more elaborate than a plastic milk crate. A spaghetti strand of wire connected the two, but overall, it appeared the laser was something somebody had put together in his garage.

Mungo moved to within ten feet of the equipment. Suddenly, off to his right, a gunman stood up, as if looking for Mungo somewhere farther down the hill. The gunman was bundled up, as they all were, in the heavy-weather arctic gear, but he too was wearing a red bandana. Mungo fired at him, striking him twice in his parka’s hood, both bullets passing through to hit the man in the head. He fell over and rolled down the hill, spewing his blood on the pristine snow all the way down.

It was only then that the man actually operating the laser realized Mungo was but a stone’s throw away from him. Why he was taken completely by surprise was a mystery; Mungo and Autry had just strafed the area minutes before, and there had been some gunplay during their climb up the hill. Possibly a key satellite in the Galaxy Net system was passing overhead? One that just had to be hit?

Mungo didn’t know, and at the moment he didn’t care. Dressed in the heavy arctic gear, with a face mask and sunglasses, the man behind the killer laser turned and fired twice at Mungo with a high-powered pistol. Mungo never bothered to duck; he immediately returned fire with his M-16. Three bullets—all misses. The man fired at him again, the bullet whizzed by Mungo’s ear. Mungo pulled his trigger again…but nothing happened. His M-16 was empty.

Now the man fired six shots at Mungo. Mungo saw the puffs of smoke, heard the crack of the bullets leaving the pistol’s barrel. He was certain he’d taken his last breath. But every bullet missed him. The man’s heavy arctic gear had prevented him from aiming properly.

Now Mungo was furious. He pulled out his pistol and rushed up the last ten feet to the mountain top.

That’s when the man got his first good look at Mungo’s face and cried, “
You?
”

In that moment of astonishment, Mungo raised his pistol and fired five shots into the man. The backfire knocked Mungo on his ass, the ground beneath his feet was so slippery. But the man was dead before he hit the ice.

Mungo crawled the last few feet to the top of the mountain. He kicked the laser gun over, shattering it on the hard ice. Then Mungo reached the man’s body and ripped open his heavy arctic jacket, expecting to expose another weapon. A slew of ID cards came tumbling out instead.

There were many of them, but only one seemed to be authentic—and it was a big surprise. The man was not a member of the Chinese secret service, the Russian FSB or North Korean intelligence. In fact, though he had diplomatic passes from many countries on him, it didn’t appear he belonged to any governmental agency at all.

Instead, according to the ID card, he was an employee.

Of the company that manufactured the Galaxy Net.

AUTRY WAS KNOCKED OUT OF HIS STUPOR BY MUNGO
slapping him hard across his face.

“Wake up, Colonel!” Mungo was screaming at him. “You’ve got to see this!”

Somehow Autry gained his senses and realized Mungo was sitting beside him, and next to him was a very bloody corpse, wrapped in arctic gear.

“What is this?” Autry cried, kicking himself away from the corpse. “Who is he?”

Mungo dramatically pulled the body’s hood back.

It was the spy the CIA called Superstar.

Autry couldn’t believe it.

“What the fuck is he doing here?”
he roared.

“I knew he was dirty from the beginning,” Mungo said. “This guy wasn’t a super spy, as much as he was a spy for hire. They said he was good at disguises, remember? Well, he fooled those assholes at the CIA, thinking he was something special, when all he was probably doing was taking money from the Galaxy Net’s manufacturer to dump their system, so they could sell the United States another one.”

Autry just stared back at Mungo. Everything around him seemed so unreal except, strangely, Mungo’s explanation of why they found the super spy up here on the lonely mountain on very lonely West Falkland Island.

Finally Autry was able to speak. “With everything else going on, we have to worry about this stuff too?” he said wearily. “What would you call it? Not just industrial espionage, but industrial
combat
?”

Mungo just shook his head, and for the first time ever, Autry actually saw the man smile. It was a grin of satisfaction and vindication.

“Welcome to the twenty-first century, Colonel,” was all he said.

BOBBY AUTRY’S LONG RIDE HOME COMMENCED THREE
hours later.

He was awakened from a deep sleep in the police barracks at Port Stanley, the only sizable settlement on the Falkland Islands.

He and Mungo had been picked up by two locals in a Sno-Cat just minutes after the gun battle on Mount Adam. The rest of the unit had been rescued by local constables, men who rode in trucks specially made for the harsh terrain. They’d been alerted by the CIA to be on the lookout for some U.S. soldiers practicing war games in the barren reaches of East Falkland. In the shootout that followed, all of the red bandana gunmen were either killed or, chillingly, they took their own lives.

Fuel was provided to all the working copters and the XBat troopers were brought to the islands’ capital city. They’d been told that they would be in Stanley for two days, the time it would take to get some USAF C-130 cargo planes to fly down to the Falklands to pick them up along with their copters, and the bodies of Superstar’s mercenary army. Just who these people were—and the Cuban government’s involvement in all this—would have to be cleared up later.

From XBat’s point of view, though, it was clear that by dropping Superstar off in Cuba, and risking their lives to do it, they’d simply provided a taxi service for the mysterious operative, a way for him to reunite with his posse and begin their trip down to the Falklands.

Documents found in the stone hut on Mount Adam further indicated that at least some of Superstar’s red-bandana army had been in the Falklands for some time, firing the laser at times with directions left for them. Why Superstar joined them only recently was not known. But with the fleet of spy satellites stabilized again, the Galaxy Net, or what was left of it, was back up and working again.

After learning this via a radio-phone call from Weir, Autry and the others were offered spare bunks at the police barracks, where they could finally get some rest. Half the troop took advantage of the sudden R & R, the other half headed off to one of Port Stanley’s several pubs to celebrate the end of their mission in a more typical way.

Autry had opted for sleep, intending to stay in bed until the C-130 recovery planes arrived.

But now he was being shaken awake.

Two of the constables and a man in a pilot’s suit were standing in front of him.

“Are you the guy who has to get back to Atlanta?” the pilot asked him.

THE NEXT THING AUTRY KNEW, HE WAS WALKING OUT
to the small air base located on the edge of Port Stanley.

There were still crater holes all around the place, leftovers from when the Argentine army had taken over the place and the British Royal Navy sent in its Harrier jump jets to bomb them out of it.

Out on the runway sat a very unusual aircraft. It was a Lockheed SBJ-100, essentially a business jet that could fly at supersonic speeds. It looked not unlike a Lear business aircraft, except it featured an inverted
V
attachment to its wings and tail, a device that muted the jet’s sonic booms. The plane was painted in the colors of the U.S. executive branch—red, white and pale blue—like the White House’s own fleet of aircraft.

Autry climbed aboard to find a second pilot at the controls. While the man who had fetched him strapped into the copilot seat, the pilot told Autry: “We’re doing this as a favor for your friend Gary Weir. He told us you had to get back to the States in a hurry. We can’t work miracles, but we can try.”

Two minutes later, they were in the air, heading north.

THE ODYSSEY TOOK AUTRY FROM THE FALKLANDS TO
the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, this with four aerial refuelings along the way.

The top-secret SBJ could not fly over the continental United States, so Autry was put on a Navy plane that carried him to Jacksonville, Florida. From there, he caught an Army Short cargo plane for a flight up to Hunter Airfield, near Savannah. He had no idea how Weir had known about his personal plans, but at this point, heart beating out of his chest, Autry thought he actually had a chance to make the meeting with his wife, now just two hours away. He had two problems though: He was still lugging around a couple pounds of Venezuelan jungle slime, and he needed a new set of clothes.

Inside of twenty minutes though, he was showering at the visiting pilots’ billet, ready to step into a new set of casual officer threads—dark green slacks and a white shirt. He dressed without underwear and socks, borrowing a pair of fresh pilot boots. He was also able to borrow $100 from the VPB’s bar fund.

By the time he was clean and clothed, his two-faced watch had ticked down to less than an hour. It was now 6
P.M
. E.S.T. He had to meet his wife at seven. And Atlanta was more than 200 miles away.

But Autry had been in Army Air for twenty-five years, a lot of it spent right here at Hunter Airfield, and he had a lot of friends here. Plus, he was a colonel in the famous Nightstalkers, and that carried a little weight. He rushed over to the small TF-160 training squadron that was based here and spoke to the CO. Inside a minute he’d made arrangements to accompany two of the Green Squadron’s newest pilots on a training mission, which just happened to include a flight up to Atlanta.

Ten minutes later, Autry was strapped into the back of an elderly UH-1 Huey copter—with two rookies doing the flying. The top speed of the Huey was supposed to be about 130 knots, but at times Autry glanced down at Route 16, the major highway going to Atlanta, and he swore that the cars were moving faster than he was.

They finally reached their destination, though: Atlanta International Airport, or more specifically, the small Georgia Air National Guard base located in one corner of the huge airport.

It was now 6:35
P.M
. He had twenty-five minutes to get to the restaurant.

He ran across the tarmac and entered one of the terminals, intent on getting out to the curb to grab a taxi. The crowd in the terminal was enormous, and all going in the opposite direction as he. It took him five precious minutes to get to the taxi area—only to find several hundred people waiting in line in front of him.

His heart plunged to his feet. He now had just twenty minutes to get to the restaurant, which wasn’t that far from the airport.

But with no taxis, what could he do?

He looked off the side of the overpass where the taxi line originated from and saw, on the roadway below, several taxis with their drivers obviously taking smoke breaks. Autry was back inside the terminal and down the escalator in a flash. He had the $100 in his hand, five crushed $20 bills. There were six cabbies in all—none of them appeared American. Five weren’t interested in interrupting their coffee break.

The sixth man agreed to drive him to the restaurant, though—ten miles, for $60.

Autry dove in the back of the cab, urging the man to hurry. The driver—his name was Saheeb—moved very slowly, however. It seemed to take him forever to say goodbye to his friends, to extinguish his cigarette, to get in the cab, to start the cab, to adjust the air-conditioning, to write the fare in his destination book and finally to put the vehicle in gear.

Once they started moving though, the guy drove like a bat out of hell. They roared down the access ramp and out into the flow of cars leaving the airport. He began weaving in and out of the traffic, moving at 70 mph while everyone else was crawling along at less than half that.

On the one hand, Autry appreciated the man’s fearlessness—on the other, he really didn’t want to have come all this way just to be killed by a crazy cabbie.

They went up another access ramp that twisted like an amusement ride toward the main exit of the airport. Autry looked at his watch. He had about eight miles to go and eight minutes to get there. With this driver, that didn’t seem to be a problem. So, for the first time since receiving his wife’s letter weeks ago, Autry actually felt confident that he would make the meeting.

That was a mistake.

Because after going over the hill, they happened upon a crowd of police cars waiting at the airport’s main exit. They had a number of cars pulled over and were searching their insides. Autry’s cab was traveling so fast, there was no way the cops could let it go by. They motioned to his driver, ordering him to pull over.

The cop came up to the window, took one look at the foreign cabbie and said, “Random security check. Could you both please step out of the car?”

AUTRY HAD NO IDEA HOW LONG THE COPS KEPT
them there, at the side of the road, flashing their badges and parading around in their polished black boots.

His driver didn’t have the right ID, didn’t have a taxi license, didn’t have a green card. The cops searched the cab, not once but twice. They questioned Autry, who had even less ID on him than the cabbie, but clearly they were more interested in Saheeb.

Autry was tempted, for a few moments anyway, to tell the cops exactly what he’d been doing for the past week. How’d he’d prevented the country from being flooded with supercrack, how’d he’d help fix the country’s gazillion-dollar eavesdropping system, how he and his men had fought a war against a corrupt, immoral, ICBM-armed South American country—and won, single-handedly.

But what was the point? They wouldn’t have believed him anyway, plus all those activities, in this, his personal Hell Week, were totally classified. Even if the cops had the ambition to contact Higher Authority in Washington, they would have denied everything Autry told them.

So, he didn’t even get into it. Instead he just sat on the curb, head in hands, while the cops grilled his driver and the minutes ticked by.

Through it all, Autry never looked at his watch.

WHEN THEY WERE FINALLY LET GO—DESPITE ALL HIS
infractions Saheeb’s taxi wasn’t packed with bombs—the cabbie decide it was wise to stick to the speed limit. They hit every red light between the airport and the restaurant, and every old lady out for a 20-mph drive that evening got in front of them.

They finally reached the restaurant, though, a place close to the Red Point section of town. Autry jumped from the taxi, and as promised, threw the driver the three $20 bills.

Then he looked at the place his wife had selected for their meeting. The restaurant had changed in the years since he’d been there last. What was a simple family burger joint back then had been turned into a foo-fee fern bar. Autry froze in his tracks. He was horribly underdressed; no tie, no socks, the cuts and bruises on his arms and face subtracting from any panache he might have had.

Still, he pressed on. He made his way up to the front door, past the candlelit entranceway, past the long line of people waiting for tables. Back when the restaurant was just a burger place, there was a small outdoor patio that overlooked a small lake in the rear. That patio was supposed to be their meeting place.

Autry looked over the sea of diners and was heartened to see that, yes, the patio was still out there. Of course now it was a deck with flaming Tiki torches and lots of people wearing J. Crew milling about. He barged through the dining room, taking the shortest route to the deck. He finally looked down at his watch. The minus time readout he’d consulted for the past seven days was now reading in the plus mode.

He was more than an hour late.

He burst out onto the deck. The table they’d shared on their first date had been in the far corner. Autry tried to straighten himself out—hard to do—and walked across the expanded patio, which was a sea of gin and tonics and designer beer. Every table was occupied out here—except one. The one in the corner, closest to the lake.

Their table.

And it was empty.

Autry felt all the life just go out of him. It began to rain—strange, as the night had been so clear up to this point. There was a stampede of boat shoes and flip-flops as the patrons tried to get out of the shower, but Autry stayed, just staring at the empty table.

He caught a young waiter hurrying by, a menu covering his head.

“Was anyone sitting at that table recently?”

The kid stopped and thought a moment, then said, “Yes, an older lady,” quickly adding, “but a fox…”

Autry brightened a bit.

“That’s her,” he said. “Is she still here?”

The waiter shook his head, and started to move out of the rain.

“No, sir,” he called over his shoulder to Autry. “She left a long time ago.”