‘No, but it’ll slow your descent. You ready?’
30K felt the branch begin to give way, and he suddenly dropped another half meter. ‘Oh, shit. Here goes nothing!’ He reached out, seized the drone, then let go of the branch.
The quadrotors whined in protest, fighting against his considerable weight, but lo and behold, his descent slowed enough so that when he hit the ground, the reverberation that rose through his legs was mild. He fell back, on to his rump, and released the drone.
And not a second later, the primary drone plummeted from the tree and crashed to the ground, practically in his lap.
‘Sweet!’ cried Kozak. He policed up both drones, then quickly offered his hand. ‘Nice work, bro.’
30K snickered and ignored the hand. ‘You know how much beer it’ll take to pay me back for this shit? More than you can afford.’
Kozak switched on his Russian accent. ‘What is it with you, country boy? Always beer? Drink vodka! For good health.’
‘All right, Sulu. Let’s go.’
‘Chekov was the Russian guy.’
‘Whatever!’
Ross had some hard-copy photographs of Delgado tucked into his pack, and he produced them for Adamo.
‘See, have a look,’ said Pepper, hovering at Ross’s shoulder. ‘He fits the description. He’s the guy!’
Adamo thumbed through the photos, his frown deepening. ‘Gentlemen, we got ourselves a bit of a mess here.’
Pepper threw up his hands. ‘Oh, here we go. I don’t believe this.’
Ross hardened his voice. ‘Sir, I hope you can clarify, because we’re all about to have some anger management issues.’ Ross felt his cheeks warm.
Adamo returned the photos. ‘Take it easy, Captain. This intel was supplied to your group by Langley.’
‘Meaning it’s not worth shit,’ snapped Pepper.
‘Meaning it was deliberately altered by someone,’ Adamo corrected. ‘Here’s a picture of Delgado.’ He reached into his pocket.
Pepper shifted in beside Ross and cursed as he glimpsed the photo. ‘Well, ain’t that something. That’s the cabdriver we rescued. What the hell was his name? Raul?’
Ross turned to Jiménez. ‘What did you do with him?’
The man winced. ‘We let him go. He said he’d walk back to the village and get a ride back to Bogotá. We had no reason to hold him, and I couldn’t afford to leave anyone behind with him. I called the local police to see if they could pick him up, but no one answered at the station.’
Ross and Pepper looked at each other in disbelief.
Adamo slapped a hand on Ross’s shoulder. ‘Don’t beat yourself up, Captain. Your mission was a success. You rescued Delgado. You just didn’t know it — because he didn’t want you to know it. I’ve been here for nearly ten years myself, and I’ve worked with the guy quite a few times. Never trusted him.’
‘Does Mitchell know about this?’
‘I briefed him on what I know. My mission here is to work with our own DEA and the Colombian Marines to interdict these narcosubs coming out of the mangroves. Delgado was a good source of intel. Then, about six months ago, he dropped off the map. I thought they’d killed him, chopped him up, fed him to the sharks. But then he turns up, working some kind of operation with the FARC and Los Rastrojos. One of my DEA guys gets a picture of him in Bogotá meeting with a guy named Saif Hamid.’
‘That name sounds familiar,’ said Ross.
‘It should. Hamid is an old-school al Qaeda bomb maker, a High Value Target we’ve been after for a long time. He was also working behind the scenes in Afghanistan, supplying weapons to the Taliban in the Wardak Province.’
‘Are you serious?’ Ross asked, his voice dropping to funereal depths.
Adamo gave a reluctant nod. ‘The RPGs and other ordnance Hamid supplied to those bastards were used to kill your teammates from DEVGRU.’
On August 6, 2011, thirty Americans — including twenty-two Navy SEALs — had been killed when their Chinook helicopter was ambushed and shot down in Wardak Province. The SEALs had been part of a QRF, or Quick Reaction Force, en route to support an Army Ranger unit.
What was more, Ross had served with every single operator who’d died that day, and there was, in his mind, no act more evil. Some accounts noted that US forces had been tricked into the area via false intel and that the Taliban had set up a trap for the helicopter, knowing there was only one good approach into the valley. An RPG strike to the aft tail rotor assembly resulted in an entire troop of SEALs being wiped off the face of the earth. If Ross had been upset five minutes ago, he was seething now.
Adamo went on: ‘Hamid has formed a new group called Bedayat jadeda, which means “new beginnings” in Arabic. We think Delgado was acting as a liaison between all three groups.’
‘So Delgado went rogue?’ Ross asked.
‘We don’t know. The fact that they captured him would argue against that. I think his cover got blown, and I think the Agency realized they couldn’t contain the mess down here — but as always, they’re never telling us the whole truth.’
Ross squinted into a thought. ‘It can’t be that simple. Why would the FARC drag a cabdriver all the way out here unless they wanted us to believe he was Delgado?’
‘Maybe they were like us,’ said Pepper. ‘Maybe they didn’t know what he looked like. Maybe only a few of the officers had actually met him. They had their orders and just followed them. They thought they had Delgado, and so did we — and that’s exactly what he wanted.’
Ross thought back to the cocaine lab. ‘Maybe you’re right. I mean, for a cabdriver, he was pretty forthcoming, wasn’t he? He wanted us out of there so he could take off.’
‘And you know how those spooks are. They will never give up their cover,’ said Pepper. ‘Even to the good guys.’
‘We oughta know about that,’ said Ross.
Pepper rubbed the corners of his eyes. ‘I still can’t get my head wrapped around this. So whose side is that little bastard on?’
Adamo grinned crookedly. ‘I’d ask that of his entire agency. Anyway, I need to mark the location of that sub, since we plan to salvage it for study. These Marines will finish with the bodies.’
‘What about Delgado now?’
‘I’ll put out my own feelers with AFEUR and the DEA, but if Delgado doesn’t want to be found, then trust me, we won’t find him.’
‘And Hamid?’ Ross asked.
‘I think the Agency was tracking him, but I haven’t heard anything more. Maybe they lost him. Who knows?’
‘We need to find Delgado,’ said Pepper.
‘That’s up to the major,’ Ross said.
Adamo lifted his hand for a farewell shake. ‘Well, Captain, Sergeant, maybe someday we can all get together for a beer. Until then, stay sharp.’ Adamo gave them a curt nod as he shook hands, then faced the Marines and cried in Spanish, ‘What kind of disorganized dumb-ass bullshit is this? Bag up those bodies and get ’em loaded. Let’s go, Marines!’
NINETEEN
As they humped back through the jungle toward the trucks, minding their steps and the booby trap markers they’d set in place, Kozak asked Pepper to go back over the intel they’d received from Adamo:
‘So the guy who died was the cabdriver.’
‘Correct.’
‘And the guy we let go was really the package.’
Pepper sighed. ‘There it is.’
30K, who was standing beside Kozak, said, ‘That sneaky little runt. He was right there all the time. Son of a bitch!’
Pepper closed his eyes. ‘I’d like to get my hands on him for just ten seconds.’
‘Hey, it ain’t all bad,’ said Kozak. ‘Mission accomplished. The package was rescued. Our cover remained intact. And the Colombian special forces guys get credit for bringing down a cocaine lab, a narcosub, and the dry docks. Woo-hoo.’