The night was deathly still, the sounds of cars rumbling along the highway a kilometer to the east barely audible. The two-story mansion was set well away from the other buildings on the winding road, a sign of the money and power of the man who owned it. A concrete wall with a locked gate surrounded the spacious grounds. A light flickered in the doorway of the building inside-the guard there lighting a cigarette.
Squatting just inside the wall, Hawkins scanned the building carefully, listening to the muted hiss of the radio in his ear as his team members reported in.
"Puma ready. Out."
"Tiger ready. Out."
"Leopard ready. Out."
Hawkins's mind was calculating. Jaguar had thirty seconds. Then he would give the go with or without that element's participation.
"Jaguar ready. Out."
Hawkins stood, his tall, rangy build clad in black fatigues covered by a combat harness bristling with killing devices. His face was obscured by a black balaclava and the stubby snout of AN/PVS7 night vision goggles. The silenced MP5-SD submachine gun was intimately comfortable in his left hand. The stock of the weapon was collapsed and the thick metal tube of the suppressor followed in short arcs wherever his eyes went. He spoke into his boom mike as calmly as if he were reporting the weather. "Angel, this is Cheetah. Ready to roll. Over."
"Cheetah, this is Angel. You have final clearance. Go. Out."
Hawkins's face was expressionless beneath the cloth covering it. "Break. Mother, what is your status? Over."
The muted sound of helicopter blades sounded in the background of the transmission.
"Holding at eight klicks. All clear. Ready. Over."
"Mother, start final approach. The party's starting. Break. All elements, this is Cheetah. Start in ten, on my count." Hawkins moved forward, the three other men of his cell moving in perfect coordination with his vector toward the front door. He was taking the most dangerous way in-it was the way the commander should go.
"Five," he whispered. In the green glow of his night-vision goggles he could clearly see the muted glow of the door guard's cigarette as if it were a brightly lit flashlight. The man was turned sideways to their approach, ignorant of the coming storm.
"Three." He brought up his submachine gun. "Two. One."
His burst of 9mm subsonic bullets splattered the guard against the door, the gun giving off only the muted sound of the bolt working. One of his men leaned over the body and placed explosives just above the lock. They stepped back and ducked. The blast was brief and then they were sprinting in. The power went off as Hawkins charged through the door, and everything inside went dark. Through his night-vision goggles Hawkins could clearly see the confusion as the guards blindly reacted.
Hawkins fired a sustained burst at a group of men to his right, sending them tumbling. His three men fanned out as they proceeded to clear the first floor. He stayed off the radio, listening to the progress of his other teams. Puma had already secured the field in back for Mother. Tiger and Leopard were working the second floor from opposite ends, having rappelled from the roof into the hallway windows. Jaguar was watching for any outside interference, providing sniper support after having cut the power. He could see what his team-Cheetah-was doing.
"Tiger. Two down B-four." Hawkins knew that meant that Tiger element had killed two people in the room they had designated as B4. He heard the crump of explosions as more doors were blown in. No sound of firing yet. That was good-his men were all silenced, so that meant no return fire. They were three quarters of the way through the first floor when the deep-throated roar of automatic rifle fire split the silence-the first opposition.
A laconic voice came over the radio. "Ah, Jaguar, this is Leopard. We got us one in B-seven. We took the door down but he's stitching the wall here and I'm holding for a sec on going in. Do you have anything in there? Over."
"This is Leopard. Negative on NVG. Going thermal." There was a short pause. "Roger, Leopard, we got him. One hot." Hawkins tilted his head slightly as a deep shot sounded from outside the building. There was no way to silence the fifty-caliber sniper rifle-not if it was going to shoot through walls.
"Leopard, this is Jaguar. Room clear. Over."
"Roger. Going into B-seven.”
Hawkins' assistant team leader came out of the last room on the first floor with a thumbs-up. All clear down here. Hawkins spoke into his radio for the first time. "Mother, this is Cheetah. Status? Over."
"This is Mother. On schedule. Two miles out. Over."
Hawkins turned and ran for the stairs. Tiger was outside B11. Their target was inside that room. "Jaguar, this is Cheetah. What have you got on thermals in B-eleven? Over."
"Still just two hot. Looks like they're hiding near the bed. Over."
A new voice cut in. "This is Tiger. Going in. Over."
As Hawkins turned on the second-floor landing, he was momentarily blinded as the blast taking out the door to that room overloaded his goggles.
"We got him!" An exultant voice came over the radio.
Hawkins ran into B11. Two of his men had cuffed and blindfolded their target: a fat, naked, blubbering old man. Hawkins looked at the second occupant of the room-a young woman. She lay there on the bed, covers pulled up to her neck, her eyes fearfully dashing from one dark masked figure to another.
"Get him out of here!" Hawkins brusquely ordered. Two of his men lifted the man off his feet and hustled him out the doorway, heading for the pickup zone.
"All elements. This is Cheetah. Pull back. Pull back. Over."
Hawkins swung the boom mike away from his lips and took a deep breath. Tiger team leader hustled his men out of the room and then came over to Hawkins. He didn't ask the obvious. He looked from the woman to Hawkins and then back to the woman, who was slowly sliding toward the far side of the bed, away from the invaders. "I'll take care of it, boss."
Hawkins flicked the selector switch on his MP5 and answered Tiger team leader's suggestion with one round through the middle of the woman's forehead, spraying brain and blood over the headboard. Hawkins stepped forward and ripped aside the sheet, uncovering a small derringer in the woman's right hand.
Hawkins briefly looked at Tiger team leader and shook his head. The two turned and ran for the stairs and out the back door.
The MH-53 Pave Low helicopter settled onto the lawn exactly on schedule and the members of Orion loaded smoothly, throwing their bound target in first. The back ramp closed as the bird lifted and they were winging for the coast, an Air Force escort of Stealth fighters flying cover overhead. The helicopter pilot kept them down in the treetops, using his terrain-following radar to keep off the Colombian Armed Forces radar screens. They would be back on board the carrier before anyone in the country even had an inkling of what had happened.
Hawkins walked to the center of the cargo bay where the old man lay, the red night lights on the ceiling reflecting off the pale skin. He'd fouled himself already, shitting all over his pudgy thighs. Hawkins slid up his night-vision goggles and slowly pulled his black balaclava down, exposing chiseled features and slate-gray eyes. He knelt down next to the man and stared. He knew the professional interrogators were waiting on board the carrier and they would extract everything from the man's memory, but he'd paid a high price to get this man and he'd been on the hunt now for two weeks. He wanted to know. His executive officer-Richman-who'd been Tiger team leader on the assault, knelt next to him.
"Did you buy one?"
The man looked at him in confusion. "What?" he replied in Spanish.
Hawkins shifted to that language and spoke just barely above the whine of the engines. "Did you buy one of the nuclear bombs?"