Westland appeared relieved to get off the subject of Langley. "We've got another two. They came in this morning. One is up near Bogota and the other is on the coast near Barranquilla. The general has already broken them down. You get Nail Three, which will be the one near Barranquilla. Captain Vaughn's team gets the other one, Nail Four. The general also wants to run the two concurrently. He thinks it will improve security for the team by doing them on the same night."
Riley considered this. "When do Three and Four go?"
"Monday night."
Damn, that was cutting it tight, Riley thought. Especially for the other team. Only two days of preparation. In reality, though, there wasn't that much to plan other than infiltration and exfiltration. He was tired and all this thinking and worrying was giving him a headache. He turned for the stairs. "I'm going to rack out. I'll see you later."
He stopped as he felt Westland's hand on his arm. She looked into his eyes. "Get some good sleep. Let me do the worrying for a little while, OK?"
Riley replied without thinking. "As long as it's my men's lives on the line, I'll be worrying."
Seeing the hurt reaction in her eyes, he realized he'd been too abrupt. He lightly touched her hand on his arm. "Hey, I'm sorry, Kate. I didn't mean that I didn't trust you. I'm too tired to think straight. Let's talk when we're both up to working speed."
Westland let go of his arm and nodded wearily. "All right."
Stevens was exhausted. Even his newly rejuvenated libido couldn't keep him going. Just a quick stop across the street to say hi to Maria and then he would try to get some more sleep before having to monitor the radio tonight.
He shuffled across the street to the Embassy Cafe. He peered around the darkened interior looking for the girl. He spotted her uncle behind the bar. Stevens hoped the uncle didn't know what was going on between the two of them. If he was like most of the greasers around here, he wouldn't approve of her being with a gringo. Stevens tentatively walked over to the bar. "Is Maria around?"
Maria's uncle spared him a neutral glance. "Are you drinking or are you only asking questions?"
Stevens cursed to himself. He glanced around the bar to see if anyone who knew him from the embassy was present. There was no one. "I'll have a beer and shot of tequila."
The barman placed the drinks in front of the American and then stepped back and regarded him. "Maria does not come to work tonight until six. Who should I say is asking for her?"
Stevens savored his beer. "Tell her Rich."
"Rich? As in has a lot of money?"
A beaner smart ass, Stevens thought to himself. "No. Rich as in Rich Stevens. That's my name. Tell Maria I'll give her a call tonight here at the bar."
The barman regarded the American distrustfully. "If I remember, I tell her."
"Thanks," Stevens said. For nothing, he thought. He finished his tequila and turned for the door. Time for a few hours of rack time before having to be bored to death sitting in front of the radio in the comm room. As he walked out the door, he saw Maria coming down the street. He waited for her under the awning in front of the cafe.
When she caught sight of him her face lit up with a wide smile. "Rich! How are you?"
"I'm fine. Well, actually I'm a little tired. I was up all night."
Maria looked concerned. "You are working too hard. I was sad we could not be together last night." She smiled coyly. "We can make up for that tonight."
Stevens shook his head reluctantly. "I have to work tonight, too."
"What is all this work! It is not right. You work much too hard. Will you be working all night? No time off at all to see me?"
Stevens calculated in his mind. "Pretty much the whole night. I should be done around three in the morning, but that's too late for you."
Maria shook her head. "No, it isn't. I can be there."
"But I can't get you in the gate that late."
Maria smiled. "Then I'll go in now and wait in your room."
Stevens protested weakly. "I thought you had to be at work at six."
"My uncle will understand. I'll tell him I'm not feeling well."
The MC-130E banked steeply to the left and headed due east toward the shore of Colombia.
The aircraft, designated as the Combat Talon, was a modified Lockheed C-130. From the outside some of the modifications were obvious. The nose of the airplane had a large bulbous protrusion under the cockpit where many of the additional navigational devices were housed. Another noticeable feature was the extra fuel pods slung under the wings, which increased the aircraft's range.
Two eight-foot prongs scissored out from the bottom of the nose, forming an inverted V along the direction of flight. These snares were for the Fulton recovery system. A cable, pulled up by a balloon, was snatched between the prongs; the cable was clamped in the center and then the speed of the aircraft drew the cable up along the belly of the plane. Hanging off the open ramp in the rear another clamp caught the cable and rotated it into a winch inside the aircraft. Once the winch was activated the cable was pulled into the aircraft, reeling in whatever had been on the ground end of the balloon cable. That whatever could range from a bundle to one or two personnel. It made for an interesting ride.
Inside the aircraft, the members of Eyes Two were pressed deeper into their seats as the aircraft turned and headed for the Colombian coast. The interior of the aircraft was the same size as the one that had infiltrated Eyes One, except that the front half of the cargo area was taken up with banks of electronic equipment, which was constantly being monitored by several air force officers. A black curtain separated the team in the rear half of the cargo bay from the electronic warfare people in the front half.
The most significant changes to the aircraft were not visible except to the electronic warfare personnel and the pilots. The pilots' greatest allies were terrain-following radar and precision ground-mapping radar. These two combined presented the pilots with a visual display of the terrain ahead regardless of the weather and outside light conditions. It was sort of like flying by television. Flying low to the terrain enabled the Talon to avoid radar.
In the complex modern world of radar and sophisticated air defense systems, the Talon's ability to defeat electronic detection was its key. To aid in that battle the electronic warfare specialists in the cargo bay manned a variety of electronic countermeasures designed to foil enemy radars. The Talon crews thought it was ironic that the air force was willing to spend billions on the Stealth bomber while continually trying to cut funds for the ungainly transport plane that had already proved it could beat radar systems and had led the way in every American military operation since the end of the Vietnam war. The big joke among the Talon drivers was that they could up their funding by loading a few nukes in the cargo bay and redesignating their aircraft the B-130.
At the present moment the aircraft was skimming barely fifty feet above the tops of the waves. A darker line on the horizon indicated the Colombian coast coming up. The Talon hit the coast at a hundred feet and the pilot gradually raised the altitude to two hundred fifty feet as they headed into the foothills of the Cordillera Occidental mountains, a small range of the Andes.
The loadmaster turned to Alexander and held up both hands, fingers extended. Alexander nodded, stood up, and turned to the team. Raising both hands, he screamed: "Ten minutes!"