32
When we were still low over the jungle, but only ten minutes or so from the village of Remanso, Tyner switched radio frequencies and tried to raise his special operations team.
Nothing.
I listened to him try over and over, his voice always flat, indifferent, professional.
Still nothing.
Finally, he turned to me and said, “It’s not looking good, Commander. The Irishman may have torpedoed us,” anger evident in his tone for the first time. “My men aren’t answering.”
I said, “Two Humvees and your armored personnel carrier, plus, what? A team of sixteen? You think guerrillas could have taken out the entire platoon?”
He was tugging at his mustache. “A couple of stinger missiles, yeah, just like the one that brought down your chopper. My guys are the best, really first-rate, but they didn’t know they were driving right into a trap. The bad guys could have set up on any hilltop over the road and zapped them.” Now he rubbed his forehead, clearly distressed by the prospect of losing so many people. “Damn it!”
I was thinking about it, not wanting it to be true, hating the possibility that Amelia had suffered or been murdered because of one greedy informant-that little Irish bastard-and was now feeling a sense of desperation that was very, very close to dread.
I said, “Maybe communicating with you would compromise their position. They’re too close to the compound to talk. Do you have a squawk code?”
I could see he didn’t know what I meant. “Like in the Battle of Britain. When ground control picked up incoming planes on radar, the British fighter pilots had what they called a parrot code-just a series of taps on the mike key to tell gunners below not to open fire. Squawks. Try it. If your guys hear it, they might catch on.”
Tyner pressed the microphone key several times, always in a series of three, then waited.
Still nothing.
He was getting frustrated, and I’d all but given up hope when, through my earphones, in reply to his signal, I heard three distinct transmissions of static.
“Try it again,” I said.
Once again, he received a response: Click… click… click.
Smiling, Tyner said, “They’re so close, they can’t even whisper. That means they’re on station, locked, loaded, and ready to roll. Outstanding.”
I nodded, said nothing. But I was thinking: if the person responding is part of our team.
Matching the topographical map to GPS coordinates, the chopper pilot touched down just long enough for us to swing off the skids, then he was gone again, banking away into the night.
We were on a level patch of ground surrounded by forest, half a mile from the hacienda. I checked my watch: 2:40 A.M., on a very early morning, December 19, only six days before Christmas.
Oddly, Dinkin’s Bay flashed into my mind, what it would look like at this hour, on this morning. I could imagine the holiday lights, red, green, and blue barbering up the masts of sailboats, and outlining the roof of the marina office and the Red Pelican Gift Shop. I could picture the soft yellow light of Japanese lanterns aboard the Satin Doll and hear the sump and gurgle of bilge and bait well pumps and the whine of automatic switches. Could see the No Mas anchored in darkness and the silhouette of my tin-roofed house, built over the water on stilts, backdropped by a long ledge of mangroves.
I wanted nothing more than to be there-to be there, safe, with Amelia and, hopefully, Janet, too. Soon, very soon.
“Time to switch to night vision, Commander.”
I was following Tyner along a dirt path. The waning moon was low on the horizon, creating enough light to see as long as we were in the open. But when we stepped into the forest, it was as if we’d stumbled into a cave. I was wearing a black Tampa Bay baseball cap, and now I turned it around catcher’s style, fitted the goggles over my head, and touched the power switch.
I’d used night-vision equipment before, but never anything nearly this good. I knew that the best you could buy on the open market was second- and third-generation stuff-each generation, presumably, representing an advancement in technology. And he’d said this was fifth generation?
The cave was instantly transformed into a bright world of phosphorescent green, minutely detailed with perfect depth of field. Except for the iridescent glow and the slight whirring sound, I might have been walking in the light of midday-an illusion, as I well knew. There are two types of night-vision optics: passive and active. Passive systems amplify existing light, while active night-vision systems project a near-infrared light source, then electronically enhance the picture, so what you are actually seeing is a video image of the scene before you.
This was the high-tech active variety, and I now understood what Tyner meant when he said that, in these jungle places, he and his people owned the night.
We were in a grove of rubber trees, row after straight row. Their pale trunks were scored with silver V-shaped wounds, metallic cups fixed below them to catch the bleeding latex. I was reminded of Southeast Asia, the French rubber plantations there.
As we walked, crouched slightly, his weapon pointed left, mine right, I heard his soft voice again in my earpiece. “Ford, there’s one more thing I need to ask you. It’s time for me to know.”
“What’s that?”
“The help you got from your State Department friends, they wouldn’t do it unless they were getting something in return. These guys Stallings and Kazan, have you been ordered to kill them?”
I thought about it before answering. “Yes. Kazan.”
“So you’re back in active service.”
“Not for long. As soon as this is over, I’m out. Forever.”
His voice communicated amusement. “Really? That surprises me. My guess is, you’re like Blaine Heller. You wouldn’t be here if you didn’t like it.”
We came out of the trees from the south, through a translucent mist that seemed to boil from the rain-forest base. Ahead, I could see the hacienda’s high stone wall, wedges of it illuminated by blue security lights. The goggles I wore were so sophisticated that the scene before me dimmed and brightened automatically as I looked from light to shadow.
We still wore the voice-activated transmitters, but now we communicated with standard military hand signals.
I saw Tyner raise his hand, fist closed, and so I stopped behind him. We were both carrying MP-5 submachine guns, each made only slightly longer with sound and flash suppressors.
We waited, watching the top of the wall for activity. I could hear a dog yapping in the far distance, coming from the direction of the village. Could hear the electronic chirring of insects, but nothing else.
We waited for more than a minute before Tyner opened his hand, fingers pointed upward: Forward. We began to advance again, moving slowly through the mist. At a hedge of what may have been coffee bushes, we paused once more, kneeling.
Still no activity along the wall, and no noise from inside.
We’d discussed our plan of attack thoroughly, so there was no need for us to speak now. It seemed a good plan because it was extremely simple.
If there were hostages inside, there would, presumably, be armed guards. At our signal, Tyner’s men would open fire from a concentrated area outside the north wall to draw the attention of those guards. If possible, a first priority would be to destroy the outside transformer, and so cut off all electricity. For us, the darker it was, the better. If the transformer could not be located, the team’s three snipers would shoot out the security lights.
Human nature being what it is, we anticipated that the guards would rush to congregate along the north wall and return fire or at least to see what the hell all the noise was about. A full minute after the opening salvo, Tyner and I would then climb over the south wall, locate the hostages, and free them while the guards were busy fending off our attack from the north.
“Nothing to it,” Curtis Tyner had joked. “I’ve done this dozens of times. The trick, of course, is staying alive. But my men will do their jobs-that much you can count on.”