“Amazing” was Yakov’s take on that.
“And we’re not alone.” Turcotte slid his finger along the paper. “This dark blue square is the other wall of the prison. This building inside has people in it.” There were about a dozen red dots on the paper. “And the guards at the dock and people on both boats.”
Turcotte frowned. “The chopper is red. The engine is still hot.”
“You think they have already delivered the payload to Kourou?” Kenyon asked.
“I don’t know,” Turcotte said. “You said they needed to keep it refrigerated. Let’s hope they haven’t taken it out yet. I’d say if the boats are still here, the Black Death is still here.”
“So what do we do now?” Yakov asked.
“We wait for just a little while, then we go visiting.”
“I will stop those rockets from taking off at Kourou no matter what,” Yakov vowed once more.
“Let’s start here,” Turcotte advised.
Lisa Duncan was walking a fine line. She had told no one other than Turcotte about Kopina’s action in destroying the shuttle Endeavor. She wanted to stay clear of the official reaction to that event and the destruction of Columbia by the talon. With one fell swoop, two-thirds of America’s space fleet was gone; only the shuttle Atlantis, currently being refitted, was left.
She’d arrived in Area 51 and was now in the Cube, coordinating all the forces she had set in movement. Major Quinn was helping her, his military experience invaluable, his links to intelligence networks critical.
The progressives were using the events to further their own cause, as were the isolationists. China firing a nuclear weapon within its own borders had the world’s governments fixated on that event and how it affected their own little backyards.
Now that she had a slightly better view of the playing field, Duncan had to wonder how much of that was due to the influence of the Guides. The Ones Who Wait, and the Watchers.
Meanwhile, from Quinn’s intelligence, Duncan knew the Black Death was spreading in the Amazon rain forest and the four rockets were set to launch at Kourou in less than six hours.
“They have to have a Level Four biolab somewhere in there,” Kenyon said. “We’ll find it,” Turcotte promised. He cocked his head as the SATPhone gave a very low buzz.
“Turcotte,” he spoke in a low voice.
“Mike, this is Colonel Mickell. We’re en route.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mickell gave him the satellite radio frequency they would be working on and the call signs that would be used.
Turcotte switched from the phone to the more secure radio. “Eagle Leader, this is Wolf Leader. Over.”
The reply from Mickell was immediate. “This is Eagle Leader. Go ahead. Over.”
“Roger, we’ve got the prison under surveillance. One thing — we’ve got to recover a cure for the virus inside the prison, so tell your people to be careful who they shoot and what they blow up. Over.”
There was a moment of silence on the other end. “Roger. Over.”
Turcotte knew the Delta Force men with Mickell had no idea that they were here outside the normal chain of command. And if they knew, they wouldn’t really care — as Colonel Mickell hadn’t cared — given the urgency of the mission.
The trend in Special Operations over the past two decades had been for fewer and fewer people to be informed and involved in actual operations. The after-action report on the debacle at Desert One had shown up glaring faults in the number of people who were actively involved in the decision-making process, from the President on down. The military had pushed for less outside involvement and more autonomy for the leader on the ground. It also allowed those on the inside to use Delta Force for this mission without having to inform everybody and their brother about what was going on and having the chance of a Guide becoming involved. After what had happened to Endeavor there was most definitely a need for keeping this in close.
“They’ll keep the cure with them,” Kenyon said. “If they move the payloads with the Black Death, they’ll move the cure.”
“Why?” Turcotte asked.
“If you were going to handle snakes, wouldn’t you keep your antivenom kit close at hand?” Kenyon asked.
Sergeant First Class Gillis signaled to the pilot. “Crank her up, Corsen.”
The pilot started his helicopter. The aircraft was an OH-58, the military version of the Bell Jet Ranger. The twin-bladed helicopter could hold only the pilot and the three men of Tiger element. They were flying out of the airfield at St. George’s in Grenada, where, as members of the Seventh Special Forces Group, they were always on standby for counterdrug operations. Gillis was glad to be doing something other than chasing drug runners for once, even though the plan looked half-assed at best.
The four men were dressed similarly, all in black, including black balaclavas that left only their eyes exposed. Night-vision goggles hung around their necks, and each man wore a headset for communication among the team and with the other elements. They wore combat vests with the various tools of their trade hanging on them.
The single turbine engine started to whine as Corsen began his start-up procedures. Gillis glanced at his watch just before getting in and taking the left front seat, next to the pilot. Since the OH-58 was the slowest aircraft involved in the operation, it would leave first, even though it was two hundred fifty kilometers closer to the target than the Eagle element currently in the air. Just a few hours earlier they had received a real mission tasking and the Delta Team had worked out a rough plan with them over the radio. The plan depended on split-second timing from the various elements involved.
As soon as Corsen had sufficient engine speed, the blades started turning and the aircraft began rocking. Gillis looked over his shoulder at the two men seated in the back. Shartran and Jones both gave him a thumbs-up. Their guns were between their knees, muzzles pointing down.
Gillis pulled out the acetated map with their flight route on it. Written in grease pencil along the route were the time hacks for the various checkpoints on the way in. A stopwatch was taped to the map. Gillis checked his watch. Corsen lifted the aircraft to a three-foot hover. When his second hand swept past the twelve and the watch indicated 5:41, Gillis indicated “go” and clicked the stopwatch. Corsen pushed forward on the cyclic and they were on their way.
Four powerful turboprop engines drilled the night sky, pulling the Combat Talon troopship. Inside the cramped cargo bay, Mickell sat as comfortably as his parachute and equipment would allow on the web seats rigged along the side of the aircraft. He wore a headset connected by a long cord to a SATCOM radio nestled in among the electronics gear in the front half of the bay. The other members of his team were spread out in the rear half.
They had an hour and forty-two minutes to their infiltration point. Since they were coming in over the ocean, the Combat Talon was going to rely on something besides its terrain-following ability for this flight. The electronic-warfare people in the front were sending out a transponder signal indicating that the Talon was a civilian airliner en route to Rio de Janeiro. The aircraft would fit this profile except for the brief one-minute slowdown over the infiltration point for the drop.
Mickell’s ears perked up when he heard the radio come alive.
“Eagle, this is Hawk. I have lifted and am en route.” Mickell checked his watch: 8:44. The HH-53 Pave Low helicopter had lifted from the USS Raleigh off the coast of Panama on time. All the pieces were moving.
Turcotte waited at the base of the tree with Yakov and Kenyon.