Twelve Mile Limit df-9 Read online

  It was a while before I realized Tyner and I were alone with the pilot in the helicopter. Behind me, the cargo area was empty. Where was McCauley?

  I had removed my earphones, so I was out of contact-didn’t want to listen to anyone’s chatter-but now I put them on again. “Sergeant? You there?”

  The response was immediate: “Roger that, Commander. I thought you were asleep. Couldn’t hear a thing. Or were maybe just lovesick and didn’t feel like talking.”

  I said, “Neither. But I just checked the cargo area. What happened to the Irishman?”

  I heard Tyner laugh and cover his microphone as he said something indistinguishable to the pilot.

  I repeated the question: “What happened to the IRA guy?”

  “Well… our bomb-making friend has gone native,” Tyner replied. “He seemed confused when I told him he’d make an excellent necklace. Kind of smiled, like we were dropping him off at camp to learn arts and crafts.”

  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.”

  Now, hiding behind bushes, waiting in the silence, I thought to myself: Please let his men be there.

  In my earphone, I heard Tyner signal to his team leader, and then say in Spanish, “Red Team, we are in position. Let’s make some bacon.” He was telling them to open fire.

  If Tyner expected a reply, he was disappointed because there was none.

  We waited through a silence that seemed to originate in some dark place within me-the place where fear resides, perhaps-and that silence ballooned out into the night, permeating shadows and magnifying the vibrations of air molecules. The inner ear bridges an ancient barrier between land and water, taking sound waves and translating them into waves of liquid before the brain can then read them as electrical impulses.

  That yapping dog-why didn’t someone in the village silence the damn thing?

  In my earpiece, I heard Tyner repeat his order-“Red Team, we’re in position…” Then, long moments later, I heard him whisper, “Shit,” convinced they could not hear.

  He stood, about to signal some command to me… and that’s when the world around us began to explode.

  Tyner’s men were out there, all right. No doubt about that now. Possibly, there’d been a delay because of a bad detonator fuse. No way of knowing, but the first signature of attack was a series of three powerful explosions to the north of us that filled the night sky with volcanic showers of sparks and flame.

  Then all of the lights in the hacienda compound blinked out.

  In my earphones, I heard Tyner say in English, “It’s about time, boys.”

  Then there was the rattle and whistle of small-arms fire, concentrated on the north end of the property, followed by shouts and one shrill scream from the direction of the main house.

  I was standing and didn’t even realize it. Was already moving toward the wall. Full of adrenaline, full of an overpowering desire to find Amelia and Janet, I’d completely blanked on our battle plan until Tyner caught me from behind.

  I felt his small hand grab my shoulder. “Steady, Ford. We’re going to give them the full minute. Let the guards clear our area before we go in.”

  Now, very close, I could hear answering gunshots from inside the compound. Automatic rifles and pistol fire. The guards had rejoined forces, apparently, and were fighting back.

  Tyner threw the thick rubber pad he was carrying up so it hung over the wall-in South America, the tops of nearly all walls are protected by shards of broken bottles cemented in place-and he said, “Give me a stirrup up. I’ll go in, secure the inside of the wall. When I whistle, follow me. I’ll go left, you go right.”

  I was so chemically charged, so eager, that I nearly threw the little man over the barricade when he put his boot in my hands. I heard a burst of three rounds from his weapon, distinctive because of the sound suppressor- phuuut, phuuut, phuuut -then a shrill whistle. I vaulted up onto the top of the wall, rolled off the pad, and came to my feet.

  Through the night-vision goggles, I could see scattered whitewashed buildings in a broad courtyard. Ahead was the main house, a massive place with an ornate, tiled roof-probably red. To my right, or the east, was a grove of citrus trees and a couple of big mangos. To the west was what might have been a small horse barn, but it had been fortified with bars on the windows. There was a heavy concertina-wire fence connected to it.

  The layout matched the satellite intelligence that Harrington had provided.

  My heart was pounding so hard, the skin on my chest and neck was vibrating, and I could feel the rush of blood in my brain. If they had brought Amelia here, and if Janet were still alive, they would probably be inside the barn.

  Tyner was to my left, kneeling over what I realized was the body of a man. Whispering into his transmitter, he said, “He was a runner, trying to get out of fighting. Deserters. These are the ones you’ve got to watch out for because they’re never where you expect them to be.”

  He had what looked to be surgical scissors in his hands, and he was doing something with the dead man’s fingers. When I realized what, I turned away.

  “Don’t go soft on me now, Ford. You think the Colombian government takes my word for the casualties we inflict?”

  I said, “You couldn’t wait and do that later?”

  “Absolutely not. We’ve got no guarantees we’re going to secure this place. Money’s money.”

  I was already moving toward the barn.

  33

  Because we were separated from the plantation’s north wall by the main house, we were protected from the main line of fire. Even so, I could hear the whistle of spent rounds ripping through the trees and ricocheting off rock walls. Ahead, there was a lot of screaming in garbled Spanish and some kind of Persian language, perhaps Pashto or Dari. When Tyner had caught up with me, I began to jog toward the barn.

  “You see the light?”

  I did. The back windows of the hacienda were suddenly illuminated by what must have been one or more kerosene lamps.

  “If Kazan’s here, the turban, that’s where he’ll be. Inside the big house, probably crapping his bloomers he’s so scared. Now’s the time to take him. Before the shock wears off.”

  I replied, “I don’t give a damn about Kazan. He’s his own punishment. I’m going to find those girls and get the hell out of here.”

  “You got it back-assward, Commander. We pop the bad guys, then we snatch the hostages. Standard operating procedure.”

  “No way. I’m not going to risk it. My friends are more important than your damn head count.”

  “I’m warning you. Now’s the time, not later. What about your orders?”

  I ignored him and kept moving, even as he added, “You’re making a mistake if you don’t waste that guy now. A mistake. Trust me.”

  The barn was enclosed by common chain-link fence and topped with razor wire. At the gate was a heavy section of chain, which was padlocked. How the hell were we going to get that open?

  When Tyner stepped toward it, I said, “Tell me you’re not going to try to shoot it off. You’ll kill us both. We’re going to have to find a way to climb over it.”

  “No, we won’t.” From one of the cargo pockets, he pulled a metal device the size of a ratchet arm, fixed it onto the lock’s shackle, and began leveraging the handle. I waited for a minute, no more, though it seemed longer, before he finally said, “Bolt cutter,” and pushed the gate open wide. “Out here, when you knock on a door, lots of times people won’t answer.”

  The barn was empty, though there was no doubt that it had served as a combination dormitory and prison. At one end, set inside a series of horse stalls, were a total of seven canvas cots, two or three to a stall. At the other end, in a larger stall, were two more canvas cots.

  I remembered the intelligence provided me by Harrington: Seven women and two men had been photographed in a fenced area. This was the place. Presumably, the men had lived in one part of the barn, women in the other. The numbers added up. More telling that this place had been a prison, though, w
as its stench. It stunk of human waste, garbage, a festering unhealthiness. At each end were plastic five-gallon buckets. One had been spilled. The contents explained much of the stench.

  To Tyner, I whispered into the transmitter, “Where are they? They were here. Hostages, their prisoners, they obviously kept them here. Where could they be?”

  He was shaking his head. “Gate’s locked. It doesn’t make sense. Why would they lock an empty guardhouse?”

  “I’m going to take a closer look around.”

  Tyner had stationed himself at the door. “Make it fast. It’s been a little over eight minutes, and we only have a fifteen-minute window. My guys are going to start moving. They’re going to spread out and close in. We don’t want to be inside this place when that goes down.”

  I returned to the area where the majority of cots were located, what I assumed to be the woman’s wing of the little prison. I ducked into one of the stalls. On the wooden walls, as if marked by a nail, was a calendar, the days marked off in columns of fives. Someone had been here for more than fifty days.

  Couldn’t be Janet, and it certainly wasn’t Amelia.

  Inside the second stall was another calendar, and a few blankets. The third stall, which contained three cots, was equally sparse. There was no calendar, no obvious method of keeping track of the days, but there was some graffiti: Love Is God

  Humanity Rules

  Both were carved into the walls in big letters, the wood still raw.

  I had to kneel to read a longer passage written over the bunk:

  This Evil stands no chance against my prayers!

  I reread the maxim more slowly, letting the words sink in, my memory banks scanning for some connection. It was familiar. I wasn’t certain why. Who had I heard speak that phrase before?

  Beneath the cot was a thin blanket, a metal cup, and a spoon. I removed them and inspected them individually, looking for some kind of distinguishing characteristics, but there was none.

  As I did, that phrase repeated itself in my brain.