“So?” he asked.
The chief tapped the nearest bombcase with his knuckle. There was an odd sound. Odd enough that Robby did the same.
“That’s not steel.”
“Cellulose, sir. They made the friggin’ things outa paper! How you like that?”
“Oh.” Robby understood. “Stealth.”
“These babies gotta be guided, though. They ain’t gonna make fragments worth a damn.” The purpose of the steel bombcase, of course, is to transform itself into thousands of high-speed razors, ripping into whatever lay within their ballistic range after detonation. It wasn’t the explosion that killed people – which was, after all, the reason to build bombs – but rather the fragments they generated. “That’s why we call it the Hush-A-Bomb. Fucker’s gonna be right loud, sir, but after the smoke clears you’re gonna wonder what the hell it was.”
“New wonders from China Lake,” Robby observed. What the hell good was a bomb that – but then, it was probably something for the new Stealth tactical bomber. He didn’t know all that much about Stealth yet. It wasn’t part of his brief in the Pentagon. Fighter tactics were, and Robby went off to go over his notes with the air-group commander. The first part of the battle-group exercise would begin in just over twenty-four hours.
The word got to Medellín fairly quickly, of course. By noon it was known that two refining operations had been eliminated and a total of thirty-one people killed. The loss of manpower was incidental. In each case more than half had been local peasants who did the coolie work, and the rest had been scarcely more important permanent employees whose guns kept the curious away, generally by example rather than persuasion. What was troubling was the fact that if word of these events got out, there might be some difficulties in recruiting new people to do the refining.
But most troubling of all was the simple fact that nobody knew what was going on. Was the Colombian Army going back into the hills? Was it M-19, breaking its word, or PARC, doing the same thing? Or something else? No one knew. That was most annoying, since they paid a good deal of money to get information. But the Cartel was a group of people, and action was taken only after consensus was reached. It was agreed that there must be a meeting. But then people began to worry if that might be dangerous. After all, clearly there were armed people about, people with little regard for human life, and that was also troubling for the senior Cartel officials. Most of all, these people had heavy weapons and the skill to use them. It was decided, therefore, that the meeting should be held at the most secure location possible.
FLASH
TOP SECRET ***** CAPER
1914Z
SIGINT REPORT
INTERCEPT 1993 INIT 1904Z FRQ 887.020MHZ
INIT: SUBJECT FOXTROT
RECIP: SUBJECT UNIFORM
F: IT IS AGREED. WE’LL MEET AT YOUR HOUSE TOMORROW NIGHT AT [2000L].
U: WHO WILL COME?
F: [SUBJECT ECHO] CANNOT ATTEND, BUT PRODUCTION IS NOT HIS CONCERN ANYWAY. [SUBJECT ALPHA], [SUBJECT GOLF], AND [SUBJECT WHISKEY] WILL COME WITH ME. HOW IS YOUR SECURITY?
U: AT MY [EMPHASIS] CASTLE? [LAUGHTER.] FRIEND, WE COULD HOLD OFF A REGIMENT THERE, AND MY HELICOPTER IS ALWAYS READY. HOW ARE YOU COMING?
F: HAVE YOU SEEN MY NEW TRUCK?
U: YOUR GREAT FEET [MEANING UNKNOWN]? NO I HAVE NOT SEEN YOUR MARVELOUS NEW TOY.
F: I GOT IT BECAUSE OF YOU, PABLO. WHY DON’T YOU EVER REPAIR THE ROAD TO YOUR CASTLE?
U: THE RAIN KEEPS DESTROYING IT. YES, I SHOULD PAVE IT, BUT I USE A HELICOPTER TO GET HERE.
F: AND YOU COMPLAIN ABOUT MY TOYS! [LAUGHTER.] SEE YOU TOMORROW NIGHT, FRIEND.
U: GOODBYE.
END CALL. DISCONNECT SIGNAL. END INTERCEPT.
The intercept was delivered to Bob Ritter’s office within minutes of its receipt. So here was the chance, the whole purpose of the exercise. He got his own signals out at once, without checking with Cutter or the President. After all, he was the one with the hunting license.
Aboard Ranger, the “tech-rep” got the encrypted message less than an hour later. He immediately placed a telephone call to the office of Commander Jensen, then headed off to see him personally. It wasn’t all that hard. He was an experienced field officer and particularly good with maps. That was very useful on a carrier where even experienced sailors got lost in the graypainted maze all the time. Commander Jensen was surprised he got there so quickly, but already had his personal bombardier-navigator in his office for the mission briefing.
Clark got his signal about the same time. He linked up with Larson and immediately arranged a flight down the valley south of Medellín to make a final reconnaissance of the objective.
Whatever problems his conscience gave Ding Chavez washed out when he did his shirt. There was a nice little creek a hundred meters from their patrol base, and one by one the squad members washed their things out and cleaned themselves up as best they could without soap. After all, he reasoned, poor, dumb peasant or not, he was doing something that he shouldn’t have been doing. To Chavez the main concern was that he’d used up a magazine and a half of ammo, and the squad was short one claymore mine which, they’d heard a few hours earlier, went off exactly as planned. Their intel specialist was a real whiz with booby traps. Finished with his abbreviated personal hygiene routine, Ding returned to the unit perimeter. They’d lay up tonight, putting a listening post out a few hundred meters and running a routine patrol to make sure that there was nobody hunting them, but this would be a night of rest. Captain Ramirez had explained that they didn’t want to be too active in this area. It might spook the game sooner than they wanted.
18. Force Majeure
THE EASIEST THING for Sergeant Mitchell to do was to call his friend at Fort MacDill. He’d served with Ernie Davis in the 101st Air Assault Division, lived right next to him in a duplex, and crumpled many an empty beer can after charcoaled franks and burgers in the backyard. They were both E-7s, well schooled in the ways of the Army, which was really run by the sergeants, after all. The officers got more money and all of the worries while the long-service NCOs kept things on an even keel. He had an Army-wide phone directory at his desk and called the proper AUTOVON number.
“Ernie? Mitch.”
“Yo, how’s life out in wine country?”
“Humpin’ the hills, boy. How’s the family?”
“Doing fine, Mitch. And yours?”
“Annie’s turning into quite a little lady. Hey, the reason I called, I wanted to check up to make sure one of our people got out to you. Staff Sergeant named Domingo Chavez. You’d like him, Ernie, he’s a real good kid. Anyway, the paperwork got fucked up on this end, and I just wanted to make sure that he showed up in the right place.”
“No problem,” Ernie said. “Chavez, you said?”
“Right.” Mitchell spelled it.
“Don’t ring a bell. Wait a minute. I gotta switch phones.” A moment later Ernie’s voice came back, accompanied by the clicking sound that denoted a computer keyboard. What was the world coming to? Mitchell wondered. Even infantry sergeants had to know how to use the goddamned things. “Run that name past me again?”
“Chavez, first name Domingo, E-6.” Mitchell read off his service number, which was the same as his Social Security number.
“He ain’t here, Mitch.”
“Huh? We got a call from this Colonel O’Mara of yours -”
“Who?”
“Some bird named O’Mara. My ell-tee took the call and got a little flustered. New kid, still got a lot to learn,” Mitchell explained.
“I never heard of no Colonel O’Mara. I think maybe you got the wrong post, Mitch.”
“No shit?” Mitchell was genuinely puzzled. “My ell-tee must have really booted this one. Okay, Ernie, I’ll take it from here. You give my love to Hazel now.”
“Roge-o, Mitch. You have a good one, son. ‘Bye.”
“Hmph.” Mitchell stared at the phone for a moment. What the hell was going on? Ding wasn’t at Benning, and wasn’t at MacDill. So where the fuck was he? The platoon sergeant flipped to the number for the Military Personnel Center, located in Alexandria, Virginia. The sergeants’ club is a tight one, and the community of E-7s was especially so. His next call was to Sergeant First Class Peter Stankowski. It took two tries to get him.
“Hey, Stan! Mitch here.”
“You looking for a new job?” Stankowski was a detailer. His job was to assign his fellow sergeants to new jobs. As such, he was a man with considerable power.
“Nah, I just love being a light-fighter. What’s this I hear about you turning track-toad on us?” Stankowski’s next job, Mitchell had recently learned, was in the 1st Cavalry Division at Fort Hood, where he’d lead his squad from inside an M-2 Bradley Fighting Vehicle.