Before insertion, Ramirez had thought that the mission had been exquisitely planned, with every contingency thought out – as it had, but halfway through their planned stay they were being yanked out, and the plan had been trashed. What dickhead had decided to do that?
What the hell is going on? he demanded of himself. His men looked to him for information and knowledge and leadership and assurance. He had to pretend that everything was all right, that he was in control. It was all a lie, of course. His greater overall knowledge of the operation only increased his ignorance of the real situation. He was used to being moved around like a chess piece. That was the job of a junior officer – but this was real. There were six dead men to prove it.
“KNIFE, this is NIGHT HAWK, over,” his high-frequency radio crackled.
“HAWK, this is KNIFE. LZ is the northern edge of RENO. Standing by for extraction, over.”
“Bravo X-Ray, over.”
Colonel Johns was interrogating for possible trouble. Juliet Zulu was the coded response indicating that they were in enemy hands and that a pickup was impossible. Charlie Foxtrot meant that there was active contact, but that they could still be gotten out. Lima Whiskey was the all-clear signal.
“Lima Whiskey, over.”
“Say again, KNIFE, over.”
“Lima Whiskey, over.”
“Roger, copy. We are three minutes out.”
“Hot guns,” PJ ordered his flight crew. Sergeant Zimmer left his instruments to take the right-side gun position. He activated the power to his six-barreled minigun. The newest version of the Galling gun of yore began spinning, ready to draw shells from the hopper to Zimmer’s left.
“Ready right,” he reported over the intercom.
“Ready left,” Bean said on the other side.
Both men scanned the trees with their night-vision goggles, looking for anything that might be hostile.
“I got a strobe light at ten o’clock,” Willis told PJ.
“I see it. Christ – what happened here?”
As the Sikorsky slowed, the four bodies were clearly visible around what had once been a simple wooden shack… and there was a truck, too. Team KNIFE was right where it was supposed to be, however. And they had two bodies as well.
“Looks clear, Buck.”
“Roger, PJ.” Zimmer left his gun on and headed aft. Sergeant Bean could jump to the opposite gun station if he had to, but it was Zimmer’s job to get a count on the last pickup. He did his best to avoid stepping on people as he moved, but the soldiers understood when his feet landed on several of them. Soldiers are typically quite forgiving toward those who lift them out of hostile territory.
Chavez kept his strobe on until the helicopter touched down, then ran to join his squad. He found Captain Ramirez standing by the ramp, counting them off as they raced aboard. Ding waited his turn, then the captain’s hand thumped down on his shoulder.
“Ten!” he heard as he leaped over several bodies on the ramp. He heard the number again from the big Air Force sergeant, then: “Eleven! Go-go-go!” as the captain came aboard.
The helicopter lifted off immediately. Chavez fell hard onto the steel deck, where Vega grabbed him. Ramirez came down next to him, then rose and followed Zimmer forward.
“What happened here?” PJ asked Ramirez a minute later. The infantry officer filled him in quickly. Colonel Johns increased power somewhat and kept low, which he would have done anyway. He ordered Zimmer to stay at the ramp for two minutes, watching for a possible aircraft, but it never appeared. Buck came forward, killed power to his gun, and resumed his vigil with the flight instruments. Within ten minutes they were “feet-wet,” over the water, looking for their tanker to top off for the flight back to Panama. In the back, the infantrymen buckled into place and promptly began dropping off to sleep.
But not Chavez and Vega, who found themselves sitting next to six bodies, lying together on the ramp. Even for professional soldiers – one of whom had done some of the killing – it was a grisly sight. But not as bad as the explosions. Neither had ever seen pictures of people burning to death, and even for druggies, they agreed, it was a bad way out.
The helicopter ride became rough as the Pave Low entered the propwash from the tanker, but it was soon over. A few minutes after that, Sergeant Bean – the little one, as Chavez thought of him – came aft, walking carefully over the soldiers. He clipped his safety belt to a fitting on the deck, then spoke into his helmet microphone. Nodding, he went aft to the ramp. Bean motioned to Chavez for a hand. Ding grabbed the man’s belt at the waist and watched him kick the bodies off the edge of the ramp. It seemed kind of cold, but then, the scout reflected, it no longer mattered to the druggies. He didn’t look aft to see them hit the water, but instead settled back down for a nap.
A hundred miles behind them, a twin-engined private plane circled over where the landing strip – known to the flight crew simply as Number Six – was still marked by a vaguely circular array of flames. They could see where the clearing was, but the airstrip itself wasn’t marked with flares, and without that visual reference a landing attempt would have been madness. Frustrated, yet also relieved because they knew what had happened to a number of flights over the previous two weeks, they turned back for their regular airfield. On landing they made a telephone call.
Cortez had risked a direct flight from Panama to Medellín, I though he did place the charge on an as-yet unused credit card so that the name couldn’t be tracked. He drove his personal car to his home and immediately tried to contact Escobedo, only to discover that he was at his hilltop hacienda. Félix didn’t have the energy to drive that far this late on a long day, nor would he entrust a substantive conversation to a cellular phone, despite all the assurances about how safe those channels were. Tired, angry, and frustrated for a dozen reasons, he poured himself a stiff drink and went off to bed. All that effort wasted, he swore at the darkness. He’d never be able to use Moira again. Would never call her, never talk to her, never see her. And the fact that his last “performance” with her had ended in failure, caused by his fears at what he’d thought – correctly! – his boss had done, merely put more genuine emotion into his profanities.
Before dawn a half-dozen trucks visited a half-dozen different airfields. Two groups of men died fiery deaths. A third entered the airfield shack and found exactly what they’d expected to find: nothing. The other three found their airstrips entirely normal, the guards in place, content and bored with the monotony of their duties. When two of the trucks failed to return, others were sent out after them, and the necessary information quickly found its way to Medellín. Cortez was awakened by the phone and given new travel orders.
In Panama, all of the infantrymen were still asleep. They’d be allowed to stand down for a full day, and sleep in air-conditioned comfort – under heavy blankets – after hot showers and meals which, if not especially tasty, were at least different from the MREs they’d had for the preceding week. The four officers, however, were awakened early and taken elsewhere for a new briefing. Operation SHOWBOAT, they learned, had taken a very serious turn. They also learned why, and the source of their new orders was as exhilarating as it was troubling.
The new S-3, operations officer, for the 3rd Battalion of the 17th Infantry, which formed part of the First Brigade, 7th Infantry Division (Light), checked out his office while his wife struggled with the movers. Already sitting on his desk was a Mark-2 Kevlar helmet, called a Fritz for its resemblance to the headgear of the old German Wehrmacht. For the 7th LID, the camouflage cloth cover was further decorated with knotted shreds of the same material used for their battle-dress uniform fatigues. Most of the wives referred to it as the Cabbage Patch Hat, and like a cabbage, it broke up the regular outline of the helmet, making it harder to spot. The battalion commander was off at a briefing, along with the XO, and the new S-3 decided to meet with the S-l, or personnel officer. It turned out that they’d served together in Germany five years before, and they caught up on personal histories over coffee.
“So how was Panama?”
“Hot, miserable, and I don’t need to fill you in on the political side. Funny thing – just before I left I ran into one of your Ninjas.”
“Oh, yeah? Which one?”
“Chavez. Staff sergeant, I think. Bastard wasted me on an exercise.”