The lighting scheme shifted to red, the best choice under the circumstances. Red light released less energy and was harder to detect from a distance.
“How long do we have until we take off?” asked Farrington.
“The pilot wants us rolling within thirty minutes,” the loadmaster replied. “I’ll give you a heads-up when it’s time to gather the flock.”
Farrington nodded and joined the last of his operatives waiting to get out, checking the satellite phone. No signal. Castillo stepped through the hatch, her deep red form bathed in silver moonlight. His phone buzzed twice, indicating he had a voice message. It buzzed again, once. A text. He read Sanderson’s words twice, fighting the urge to immediately scan his surroundings. Fuck. Maybe they had landed in Guantanamo. How the hell would he know the difference?
Farrington poked his head through the hatch, scanning the moonlit tarmac and the buildings beyond. It didn’t look like Guantanamo, even in the darkness. He saw nothing in the distance beyond the base. Facing the hangars in Guantanamo at night, you could see lights from the towns outside the base perimeter. He suspected nothing but Atlantic beyond these buildings. Headlights appeared in the fuel farm on the edge of the tarmac, followed by a long truck.
“Fuel’s inbound. No smoking, obviously,” said the loadmaster.
Something’s inbound, he thought.
His paranoid mind was taking over after reading Sanderson’s message. He glanced toward the SEALs, who now sat on top of the pallets of double-stacked Pelican cases, which contained the taskforce’s primary weapons and gear. They talked and laughed quietly, appearing to have no interest in leaving the aircraft. Nothing felt off to him. The SEALs didn’t have the numbers or weapons to take down his team. Everyone carried a pistol, a condition Sanderson had insisted on. Primary weapons would be removed from the cases and issued to the team infiltrating by parachute later in the flight.
The SEALs all carried rucksacks, which could contain a few surprises, but Farrington’s team had a few spoilers hidden in their personal gear just in case. Satisfied that nothing was immediately amiss inside or outside the aircraft, he backed up and approached Gosha, who looked surprised to see him.
“Back so soon?”
Farrington lowered his voice. “Sanderson wants us alert during the refueling. Didn’t say why. Any chance they hid another team on this thing?”
“We checked before takeoff in Buenos Aires. Lower deck and lavatory were empty. Flight deck had two pilots in the cockpit. The rest empty. If we have a problem, it’s going to come from the outside.”
“That’s what I was thinking. What about our friends over there?” he asked, without glancing up at the SEALs.
“DEVGRU is good, but not that good. If something went down, my guess is they’ll disappear right before it happens,” said Gosha, cocking his ear. “Fuel truck?”
“I hope so.”
“Maybe one of us should keep an eye on it,” Gosha suggested.
“That doesn’t sound like you’re volunteering.”
“Wouldn’t it look suspicious if I suddenly developed an interest in leaving the aircraft?” said Gosha, smirking.
“Put your earpiece in. Primary tactical channel.”
Before heading back, Farrington pulled a wired earpiece free from a Velcro hook hidden in his collar and pushed it into his left ear. On his way out the door, he heard Gosha joking about kosher MREs, the team’s previously agreed upon code to watch their hosts very closely. When he got to the bottom of the stairs, he tapped a reply to Sanderson’s message.
LANDED IN RIGHT PLACE. ALL KOSHER HERE.
The reply came instantly: MSG FROM FLT DECK WHEN UR BACK IN AIR.
He pressed K, followed by SEND.
“Aleem, Gosha said he’s going to fight you over the kosher MREs,” said Farrington.
“He’s about as kosher as my Saudi grandmother,” replied Fayed, pausing a few moments before walking a little further out onto the tarmac.
Nobody immediately reacted to Farrington’s use of the code word, but over the next several seconds, the operatives casually spread out from the hatch.
Chapter 51
Jared Hoffman dug through his pack, removing what was indeed a kosher MRE from the depths. His hand brushed the pistol grip of his MP9 on the way out. He placed the tan plastic pouch on the seat next him and pretended to rearrange the contents of his pack, instead maneuvering the compact submachine gun into a readily accessible position. The weapon was loaded with a twenty-round magazine to keep it concealable. An additional thirty-round magazine lay flat along the left side of the weapon, kept in place by a magnetic strip attachment. A few more magazines had been hidden in various external pouches on the pack. It was one of their insurance policies. He had others.
The fuel truck arrived, its squeaky brakes audible through the aircraft hull behind him. The loadmaster slid out of his seat and peered through the window in the emergency exit hatch next to his station.
“Fuel’s here!” he announced.
Hoffman nodded politely, and the loadmaster went to work on the switches.
“Gosha,” said Ashraf Haddad, grabbing his attention.
Two of the SEALs headed in their direction, one of them stretching his arms and yawning while walking, the other yapping about a new rifle he’d fired. He resisted the urge to put his hand inside his pack, secure in the knowledge that all seven Black Flag operatives were thinking the same thing and were ready to respond in the blink of an eye. The de facto leader of the SEALs spoke to them for the first time since Sanderson’s team boarded the aircraft.
“Headed up to the flight deck, gentlemen,” said the leader. “Take a look at this dump from the cockpit so I can tell my kids I saw it. You’re welcome to join us.”
Hoffman held up the tan pouch. “I have a date with a kosher MRE. Maybe later.”
“Not much to see up there anyway,” said the commando.
They passed through the small knot of Sanderson’s operatives and climbed the stairwell without saying a word to the loadmaster. Hoffman casually glanced at the red, monochromatic forms of the two remaining SEALs, not detecting any change to their behavior or posture. He relaxed a little, giving the MRE some thought. Chicken and black beans didn’t sound so bad right now.
Hoffman reached for the MRE, and the cargo bay went dark. Before he got the MP9 out of his pack, suppressed gunfire rattled from the top of the stairwell, striking one of his teammates with a wet thud.
Hoffman launched backward, gripping the submachine gun and his pack, the next tightly spaced pattern of bullets zipping through the space he’d moments ago occupied. He hit the metal deck hard and rolled onto his left side to face the source of gunfire, his MP9 firing at the top of the stairwell a fraction of a moment later. A weapon clattered down the stairs, indicating his burst had been accurate, but it was immediately replaced by more gunfire from the same location.
A warm splash hit the back of his neck, followed by suppressed and unsuppressed gunfire from the rear of the aircraft. A body dropped behind him, momentarily shielding his back from the new threat. Deafening gunfire from the team’s nearby pistols echoed off the cargo bay walls, the muzzle flashes lashing out toward the front and rear of the aircraft. Bullets struck the body behind him again. Someone was desperate to put his MP9 out of action. They couldn’t win this fight. Not caught in a crossfire with nowhere to maneuver.
He reloaded the MP9 with the attached magazine and dug through his pack again, retrieving a flashlight. While the sharp reports of his team’s pistols slackened, he unscrewed the top and shook a flash-bang grenade onto the deck, tossing the flashlight shell aside. The grenade’s safety lever released automatically, the device’s pin pulled before it was squeezed into the flashlight.