20
Warren Nicols crossed the Texas border at Big Bend National Park and entered Mexico a few minutes after ten in the evening. He had no problem fording the shallow Rio Grande, which here barely came up to his chest. Pushing the dirt bike on its inflated raft was a snap. On the far side he deflated the bag, buried it in the sand, shouldered his MAC-10 machine pistol and kit bag — containing a Handie-Talkie capable of transmitting and receiving via the CIA’s communications satellite, his night-vision spotting binoculars and high-speed camera, and his provisions — and headed away from the river.
There were no roads here. The nearest paved highway was more than twenty miles to the east, across the low Sierra de la Encantada mountains. Overhead the stars shone as brilliant, hard points in the crystal clear desert air. Nicols concentrated on driving without lights. To have a serious spill here on the open desert would almost certainly mean death. He would not be listed as missing for a full seventy-two hours, though his first transmission via satellite to Langley was scheduled in barely six hours.
He had spent the past four days camped in the park with a Boy Scout troop from Joliet, Illinois. They were background noise. No one would officially miss him for the next three days. Nor would anyone from the campsite miss him until breakfast in the morning. By then, however, if everything went as planned, he would be back.
The 75-cc dirt bike with long-range tanks, a specially designed engine shroud and hi-tech muffler to minimize noise, and a highly sophisticated satellite-navigation system by which he could pinpoint his location anywhere on earth within ten meters, was capable of open-road speeds in excess of seventy miles per hour and nearly the same across open country provided the track was reasonably smooth and the driver had the guts and stamina to hang on. Nicols had both.
He followed a general line along the base of the mountains, which according to the analysts and planners would make him hard to spot either from direct surveillance or from the ground scatter radar the Russians probably employed in the region. If he painted at all, he might look like a wind devil, a fast-moving desert hare or perhaps even a low-flying bird.
Nicols was a large man, over six feet tall without boots and two hundred pounds. He had returned three months ago from Afghanistan, where he had distinguished himself in the field not only because of his strength, stamina, and courage, but because of his intelligence and understanding. At forty he wasn’t a spring chicken, but what he might lack in youthful zeal he more than made up for in experience and reliability. He was married and had three children who all adored him because he was a kind and gentle man.
He had spent the past two weeks at the Farm outside Williamsburg preparing for this assignment. Nothing the instructors or planners had come up with, they had finally decided, could work effectively for him as a cover story. Americans armed with equipment such as he had simply had no business in the Mexican desert — except to spy. At the last they had allowed him to pick whatever weapon he wanted. The MAC-10 seemed correct. It was light, reliable, and deadly. In addition, he carried a World War II bayonet in a sheath taped to his chest beneath his shirt. It had been his father’s. He was an expert with it.
For the first few miles he ran on underinflated tires because of the loose sand and sand dunes which rose and fell like swells on the open ocean. Farther away, however, the desert smoothed out to a hardpan. He stopped long enough to inflate the dirt bike’s tires and then continued, pushing harder, driving at times at an almost reckless forty miles per hour, yet in the next instant having to slow to a bare crawl because of rocks, in a few places ancient lava flows, and in eight places in one mile washouts from desert flash floods.
In one long stretch of at least five miles, the going was comparatively easy and Nicols was able to engage in the luxury of thinking. As had been the case over the past few weeks, his thoughts automatically went to the briefing he had been given by the DCI himself.
“The Soviets have armed Siberia to threaten our northernmost borders. They tried in the south to arm Cuba with offensive weapons and failed, and now we think they are trying again in northern Mexico.”
Nicols had been stunned. It wasn’t possible. Mexico was our friend. He was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas. In addition to being fluent in Russian and Chinese (from college), he was also fluent in the romance languages (from his boyhood chums) — Spanish, French, and Italian. It was a facility of his, languages.
“But we are not sure, Warren. Not one hundred percent certain,” Powers had admitted. They were alone, seated across a coffee table from each other in the DCI’s office.
“What can I do, Mr. Director?” he’d asked.
“Someone has to go across the border and see them firsthand. Take some photographs from the ground.”
“Of the installation?” Nicols said naively.
“Of the installation, yes, that too. Ideally we’d like to have photographs of the missiles themselves. Their serial numbers.”
Nicols had smiled. He suddenly saw the entire operation and beyond, like a long, clear highway out to the horizon. “We can invent a satellite-surveillance photograph, but not a serial number, sir.”
Powers laughed out loud, but then he suddenly sat forward, an intense look in his eyes. “I don’t want you to get yourself shot up or captured, Warren. If someone — I don’t care who — should happen to get in your way, it’ll be too bad for them. Whatever happens, whatever you do, you will have my personal backing. Is that perfectly clear?”
It had been perfectly clear then, and it was clear now. The situation was not the fault of the Mexicans. They’d been taken in just as so many other poor nations had been. Soviet influence was like quicksand he’d been told over and over again by the Afghan rebel leaders. Get your leg caught in it and you have troubles. Jump in or slip in with both feet — no matter which — and you’re dead.
As he drove he began to think about what would happen within the next few hours. He began to hope that he would run into someone. A guard. An engineer. An officer. His fingers tightened on the handle grips.
He slowly picked his way across a dry riverbed and on the other side maneuvered the bike to the top of a rise, where he stopped a moment to check his position. Far to the south he thought he caught a glimpse of a light, but then he wasn’t sure. It had to be over the horizon from him, at least fifteen miles away. The SatNav gave his position in grid coordinates. He opened the panel, flipped a couple of switches, then compared the readings with a plasticized chart he carried in a leg pocket of his black coveralls. The suspected Soviet-built missile installation was directly south of him, about eighteen miles away.
The land flattened out on the other side of the rise, and as far as he could tell no one had come this way for a very long time. There were no tracks anywhere. He had studied the satellite surveillance photographs that had been overlaid onto a topographical map of the region. The missile installation, which was still under construction but apparently nearing completion, was nestled between parallel ridges in the mountains, the rises about three miles apart. The land in between was perfectly flat, forming a natural amphitheater with good protection on three sides, open only to the southwest toward the open desert. The construction was meant to look as if a large oil exploration project was underway. It had not fooled the agency’s analysts, nor would it fool anyone who came for a closer look, except perhaps for the farmers in the area. But they would be of no bother. They were very poor. A few pesos would guarantee their complete cooperation.