That didn’t matter to the people at the Cape. An Air Force public affairs officer released a statement to the general effect that the (classified) launch had not achieved proper orbit. This was verified by the Soviets, who had fully expected the satellite to take a place over the Indian Ocean when, in fact, it was now oscillating over the Brazilian-Peruvian border, from which it couldn’t even see the Soviet Union. Curious, they thought, that the Americans had even allowed it to switch itself on, but from yet another “fishing trawler” off the California coast, they monitored intermittent scatterings of encrypted transmissions from the satellite down to some earth station or other. Whatever it was sending down, however, was of little concern to the Soviet Union.
Those signals were received at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, where technicians in yet another nondescript communications van, with a satellite dish set outside, began calibrating their instruments. They didn’t know that the launch was supposedly a failure. They just knew that everything about it was secret.
The jungle, Chavez thought. It smelled, but he didn’t mind the smell so much as the snakes. Chavez had never told anyone about it, but he hated and feared snakes. All kinds of snakes. He didn’t know why – and it troubled him that fear of snakes was associated with women, not men – but even the thought of the slithering, slimy things made his skin crawl, those legless lizards with flicking tongues and lidless eyes. They hung from branches and hid under fallen trees, waiting for him to pass so that they could strike at whatever part of his anatomy offered itself. He knew that they would if they got the chance. He was sure that he would die if they did. So he kept alert. No snake would get him, not so long as he stayed alert. At least he had a silenced weapon. That way he could kill them without making noise. Fuckin’ snakes.
He finally made the road, and he really ought to have stayed in the mud, but he wanted to lie down on a dry, clear place, which he first scanned with his AN/PVS-7 night scope. No snakes. He took a deep breath, then removed the plastic canteen from its holder. They’d been on the move for six hours, covering nearly five miles – which was really pushing it – but they were supposed to get to this road before dawn, and get there unseen by the OPFOR – the opposing force – who were warned of their presence. Chavez had spotted them twice, each time, he thought, a pair of American MPs, who weren’t really soldiers, not to his way of thinking. Chavez had led his squad around them, moving through the swamp as quietly as… as a snake, he told himself wryly. He could have double-tapped all four of them easily enough, but that wasn’t the mission.
“Nice job, Ding.” Captain Ramirez came down beside him. They spoke in whispers.
“Hell, they were asleep.”
The captain grinned in the darkness. “I hate the fuckin’ jungle. All these bugs.”
“Bugs ain’t so bad, sir. It’s the snakes I don’t like.”
Both men scanned the road in both directions. Nothing. Ramirez clapped the sergeant on the shoulder and went to check on the rest of the squad. He’d scarcely left when a figure emerged from the treeline three hundred yards away. He was moving directly toward Chavez. Uh-oh.
Ding moved backward under a bush and set down his submachine gun. It wasn’t loaded anyway, not even with the wax practice bullets. A second one came out, but he walked the other way. Bad tactics, Chavez thought. Pairs are supposed to support each other. Well, that was too bad. The last sliver of moon was dropping below the top level of the triple-canopy forest, and Chavez still had the advantage of his night scope as the figure walked toward him. The man walked quietly – at least he knew how to do that – and slowly, keeping his eyes on the edge of the road and listening as much as looking. Chavez waited, switching off the scope and removing it from his head. Then he removed his fighting knife from its sheath. Closer, only about fifty yards now, and the sergeant coiled up, drawing his legs under his chest. At thirty feet, he stopped breathing. If he could have willed his heart to stop, he’d have done that to reduce the noise. This was for fun. If this had been for-real, a 9mm bullet would now reside in the man’s head.
The sentry walked right past Ding’s position, looking but not seeing the form under the bush. He made it another step before he heard a swishing sound, but then it was too late. By that time, he was facedown on the gravel, and he felt the hilt of a knife at the back of his neck.
“Ninja owns the night, boy! You’re history.”
“You got me, sure as hell,” the man whispered in reply.
Chavez rolled him over. It was a major, and his headgear was a beret. Maybe the OPFOR wasn’t MPs after all.
“Who are you?” the victim asked.
“Staff Sergeant Domingo Chavez, sir.”
“Well, you just killed a jungle-warfare instructor, Chavez. Good job. Mind if I get a drink? It’s been a long night.” Chavez allowed the man to roll into the bushes, where he, too, took a pull off his canteen. “What outfit you from – wait a minute, 3rd of the 17th, right?”
“We own the night, sir,” Chavez agreed. “You been there?”
“Going there, for a battalion staffjob.” The major wiped some blood from his face. He’d hit the road a little hard.
“Sorry about that, sir.”
“My fault, Sergeant, not yours. We have twenty guys out there. I never thought you’d make it this far without being spotted.”
The sound of a vehicle came down the road. A minute later the wide-set lights of a Hummer – the new and larger incarnation of the venerable jeep-appeared, announcing that the exercise was over. The “dead” major marched off to collect his men, while Captain Ramirez did the same.
“That was the final exam, people,” he told the squad. “Get a good day’s sleep. We go in tonight.”
“I don’t believe it,” Cortez said. He’d hopped the first flight from Dulles to Atlanta. There he met an associate in a rented car, and now they discussed their information in the total anonymity of an automobile driving at the posted limit on the Atlanta beltway.
“Call it psychological warfare,” the man answered. “No plea-bargain, no nothing. It’s being handled as a straight murder trial. Ramón and Jesús will not get any consideration.”
Cortez looked at the passing traffic. He didn’t give a damn about the two sicarios, who were as expendable as any other terrorists and who didn’t know the reason for the killings. What he was considering now was a series of seemingly disjointed and unconnected bits of information on American interdiction operations. An unusual number of courier aircraft were disappearing. The Americans were treating this legal case in an unusual way. The Director of the FBI was doing something that he didn’t like, and that his personal secretary didn’t know about yet. “The rules are changing.” That could mean anything at all.
Something fundamental. It had to be. But what?
There were a number of well-paid and highly reliable informants throughout the American government, in Customs, DEA, the Coast Guard, none of whom had reported a single thing. The law-enforcement community was in the dark – except for the FBI Director, who didn’t like it, but would soon go to Colombia…
Some sort of intelligence operation was – no. Active Measures? The phrase came from KGB, and could mean any of several things, from feeding disinformation to reporters to “wet” work. Would the Americans do anything like that? They never had. He glowered at the passing scenery. He was an experienced intelligence officer, and his profession was to determine what people were doing from bits and pieces of random data. That he was working for someone he detested was beside the point. This was a matter of pride and besides, he detested the Americans even more.
What were they doing now?
Cortez had to admit to himself that he didn’t know, but in one hour he’d board a plane, and in six hours he’d have to tell his employer that he didn’t know. That did not appeal to him.
Something fundamental. The rules are changing. The FBI Director didn’t like it. His secretary didn’t know. The trip to Colombia was clandestine.
Cortez relaxed. Whatever it was, it was not an immediate threat. The Cartel was too secure. There would be time to analyze and respond. There were many people in the smuggling chain who could be sacrificed, who would fight for the chance, in fact. And after a time, the Cartel would adapt its operations to the changing conditions as it always had. All he had to do was convince his employer of that simple fact. What did el jefe really care about Ramón and Jesús or any of the underlings who ran the drugs and did the killings that became necessary? It was continuing the supply of drugs to the consumers that mattered.