20
Kilmara had arranged for the Bear to act as jumpmaster on Fitzduane's C130 on the inward flight.
It was a good move. There was something vastly reassuring about the Bear's presence and about exchanging tall tales as they flew. It helped to counteract the long buffeting ride in the Combat Talon and the smell of puke in the aircraft and the suppressed terror as they hooked up and prepared to jump into the darkness.
To step from safety into space was an unnatural act, and even though Fitzduane had done it before and his brain told him it could be done, his very being cried that two hundred and fifty feet was too low! The parachute would not open in time. Could not open in time. The pilot would misjudge the height. Something would go wrong.
The incredible relief as the canopies blossomed – each and every one. And then the silence as the sound of the aircraft receded and they lay there, weapons loaded and ready, getting used to this new environment and listening for any sign that the DZ that was supposed to be safe and empty was occupied and dangerous and they were about to die.
As they flew in, the DZ had been scanned by sensors that could detect a snake changing its sleeping position, but still he worried. There were things you knew and there were fears that impinged regardless of the logic.
But the sensors had been right. There was nothing. Just backbreaking work as the vehicles were unpacked from their drop pallets and loaded and readied. And then more work as the pallets and ‘chutes were buried. That was the toughest part, and really only possible because each Guntrack came equipped with a miniature bulldozer blade in front of it. The primary role of the blade was to enable to vehicle to dig itself in, but in this case it was used to conceal the evidence of the incursion. No ground patrol would pass by, but from the air one glimpse of a ‘chute would be enough to raise the alarm. The burial process was thorough.
A final meticulous check of the DZ. Nothing could be seen.
The column moved off.
When dawn came up, it was as if Task Force Rapier had vanished into the rocky shale and packed, reddish clay of the plateau.
Nothing could be seen.
Underneath the camouflage nets, a quarter of the team manned sensor units and other passive detective equipment, while the balance ate and slept and cleaned weapons.
The heat steadily increased until by midday the whole plateau seemed in shimmering motion.
In the shade, leaning back against the side of a Guntrack, Al Lonsdale once again gave thanks to the designer of the Guntrack for building copious water tanks into each vehicle. He had been trained to survive on a couple of canteens, but dehydration got to you in the end no matter how good your endurance. Here each track carried enough water to last a couple of weeks. This was special-forces soldiering in comfort. The tanks were even muffled and baffled inside to eliminate the sound of water sloshing as they moved.
A helicopter patrol passed by in the distance, tracked by a Starburst missile team and one of the SAS on a GECAL – just in case. The pilot was flying nice and straight and was about 3,000 feet up. He was obviously an unworried man. He was also a lucky one.
"What a hellhole," said Lonsdale, wiping his face with a towel and then draping it loosely around his neck. "No people, no water, no greenery. Just sun like a flame out of hell, and snakes and scorpions and terrorists. No wonder they call it the Devil's Footprint. He must have thought he was home."
Fitzduane yawned. "You're forgetting oil," he said sleepily. "Tecuno has not got much else, but it has got oil."
"Oil and the devil seem to run together," said Lonsdale lazily. "That's my insight for the day."
Fitzduane did not reply. He was asleep.
Madoa Air Base, Tecuno, Mexico
General Luis Barragan's naked body was not responding to Reiko Oshima's ministrations.
Her tongue explored his groin and plowed little damp trails through his plentiful and already sodden pubic hair, but to no avail. The supergun might be ready to test-fire in a few days, but Barragan's personal weapon was down for maintenance.
Privately, he was of the opinion that he had more than done his duty. He had taken her twice over the last three hours and had brought her to orgasm in other ways. That really ought to be enough for any woman, but Oshima did few things in moderation.
He wondered about her upbringing. What had caused a middle-class Japanese brat like Oshima to reject her upbringing and turn to a philosophy that was little more than destruction turned into a religion? Upon reflection, he decided he did not really care. It was too hot and she was phenomenal in bed and she served her purpose. The fact that her schoolteacher had exposed himself to her when she was seven – or whatever had set her off – was of little consequence. Probably, it was as simple as a severe case of repression. All that Japanese social obligation and enforced group behavior was enough to drive anyone nuts. Though was Oshima insane? Not in a legal sense, he thought. She was rational in her way and certainly was aware of the difference between right and wrong. So it could be argued that she was insane. But she was certainly warped. Seriously sick was another way of putting it. And obsessive.
Whatever Reiko did, she did obsessively.
An evil woman? By conventional bourgeois standards, without question. But a great lay. And in this kind of heat, what else was a man to do in the middle of the day. Apart from rest.
He did not like admitting it even to himself, but right now rest was decidedly the preferred option.
Distraction was required or Oshima was going to wear away parts of his body he was rather attached to. She had a tongue like velvet sandpaper, a penchant for marathons – and the stamina to go with it. But fortunately she had a strong sense of duty, which she exercised to excess like everything else. And General Luis Barragan was, at least nominally, her superior.
Mention work and she hopped to it. Of course, she had her own long-term agenda, but right now she had done what she had been hired to do extremely well. Security at the Devil's Footprint was as tight as one could wish. The only slipup had been Patricio Nicanor, and frankly that had been Barragan's error in the first place in hiring a Zarrista. Well, who would have expected such idiocy in his own family!
But Oshima had redeemed the Nicanor situation before any damage was done. An incredible operator. Hard to control, but worth the effort.
Oshima's relationship with Edgar Rheiman remained a worry. Both, ideally, were needed if the project was to be brought to completion, but the reality was that whereas Oshima's security talents were incredibly useful, Rheiman's scientific skills were essential.
With Rheiman, the whole Devil's Footprint project would not have been possible, and without a weapon such as the supergun, breaking Tecuno away from Mexico would have been much more hazardous. The supergun meant they could thumb their noses at Mexico City. Tecuno would become an independent country, and from then on the possibilities were endless.
Oil profits, drug profits, money laundering, forgery, arms trading, the fast-growing area of electronic piracy, the counterfeiting of branded goods. There were so many opportunities to exploit if you ran your own country. Because who was to touch you when you were the law?
God knows the Mexican elite had proved that very point over the years. It had not done much for the population as a whole, of course, but no intelligent man really gave a fuck about the masses. There would always be a very few who ruled and prospered – and General Luis Barragan intended to stay one of them – and the rest were a resource to be used.
Idealism: nice if you were a middle-class adolescent.
The practicalities: what most people concerned themselves with.