Choke Point

EIGHTEEN

Four Colombian patrol boats from the Naval Base ARC Bahía Málaga in Buenaventura came whirring down the river, their pilots throttling down as they drew closer. A half dozen heavily armed Marines stood in each vessel, and the barrels of .50-caliber machine guns extended from bow and stern. The lead boat slowed enough to bump the dock and allow a man wearing a black baseball cap, fatigues and a heavy Kevlar vest to hop out. He strode down the dock, undaunted by the wind or rain, and marched across the shoreline toward Ross and Pepper as, behind him, the rest of the Marines prepared to come ashore.

Why he wore aviator sunglasses in a rainstorm was beyond Ross, but if you stayed in the military long enough, you got used to the eccentricities and superstitions of operators who were all, admittedly, just a little off center. That came with the territory.

The man stopped before them and tugged off the sunglasses to expose the deep scar running from his nose, beneath his right eye, and down toward his earlobe. His mustache and soul patch were patterned after the old rocker Frank Zappa but were pure white, and his eyes were a brilliant blue. Whether he was bald or not would remain a mystery, as his baseball cap remained fixed on his head. He proffered a hand and said, ‘You’re Captain Ross, aren’t you?’

‘That’s right,’ said Ross, taking the hand. ‘They call you Adamo?’

‘Yes, sir. And don’t let my present company fool you. I’m an old ex-Army colonel. Seems like a lifetime ago, but I was on an ODA team myself. Maybe you heard of them: Triple Nickel?’

Ross’s eyes widened. Hell, yeah, he’d heard of them. ODA-555 was one of the first Operational Detachment Alpha Special Forces teams to deploy in Afghanistan after 9/11, and their work there had become legendary among all SF operators. ‘Well, then, sir, it’s an honor,’ Ross answered. He introduced Pepper and Jiménez.

‘I already know Captain Jiménez,’ Adamo said with a knowing grin. He added quickly in Spanish, ‘The captain and I have been working these mangroves for a long time.’

Jiménez gave a weary grin. ‘Too long.’

Adamo finished shaking hands, then regarded Ross. ‘Mitchell needs good people like you. Don’t get discouraged. Now, let me see what you got here.’

Adamo turned away and crouched down over Delgado’s body. He muttered something to himself, studied the man once more, then lifted his voice. ‘Just what I thought. This ain’t him.’

‘What?’ asked Pepper.

Adamo got to his feet. ‘That’s not Delgado.’

‘Bullshit.’ The word came out of Ross’s mouth before he could stop it. ‘We got intel. That’s our man.’

Adamo shook his head.

The branch had cracked, sending 30K sliding forward, but he managed to maintain his grip, even as his legs came swinging around. Now the branch acted like a vine, and he crashed into the trunk with a heavy thud.

When he looked up, he realized he was dangling by a splintering thread, and if he didn’t find better purchase, he was going down the hard way at a rate of 9.8 meters per second squared, according to the math guy who had invented gravity — what was his name, Carl Sagan?

Wise-ass thoughts like that kept him from panicking, he assured himself, but Kozak wasn’t helping matters, screaming for him to hang on. Yes, his ‘little brother’ had an absolutely keen eye for the obvious.

‘Reach out and grab that branch right there,’ hollered Kozak.

30K saw the second branch in question, tried to grab it, couldn’t. ‘Get under me,’ he ordered.

‘What?’

‘I said get under me!’

‘Why?’

‘’Cause I’ll let go, and you’ll catch me.’

‘Are you nuts?’

No, he wasn’t. Those were just more wise-ass remarks to punish Kozak, whose eyes threatened to explode.

‘Dude, wait a minute. Wait a minute.’ Kozak worked the controls on the remote, got the secondary drone back up in the air, and brought it close to 30K, the quadrotors humming loudly in his face. ‘Grab hold in the center.’

‘That thing can’t hold me up,’ 30K shouted.

‘No, but it’ll slow your descent. You ready?’

30K felt the branch begin to give way, and he suddenly dropped another half meter. ‘Oh, shit. Here goes nothing!’ He reached out, seized the drone, then let go of the branch.

The quadrotors whined in protest, fighting against his considerable weight, but lo and behold, his descent slowed enough so that when he hit the ground, the reverberation that rose through his legs was mild. He fell back, on to his rump, and released the drone.

And not a second later, the primary drone plummeted from the tree and crashed to the ground, practically in his lap.

‘Sweet!’ cried Kozak. He policed up both drones, then quickly offered his hand. ‘Nice work, bro.’

30K snickered and ignored the hand. ‘You know how much beer it’ll take to pay me back for this shit? More than you can afford.’

Kozak switched on his Russian accent. ‘What is it with you, country boy? Always beer? Drink vodka! For good health.’

‘All right, Sulu. Let’s go.’

‘Chekov was the Russian guy.’

‘Whatever!’

Ross had some hard-copy photographs of Delgado tucked into his pack, and he produced them for Adamo.

‘See, have a look,’ said Pepper, hovering at Ross’s shoulder. ‘He fits the description. He’s the guy!’

Adamo thumbed through the photos, his frown deepening. ‘Gentlemen, we got ourselves a bit of a mess here.’

Pepper threw up his hands. ‘Oh, here we go. I don’t believe this.’

Ross hardened his voice. ‘Sir, I hope you can clarify, because we’re all about to have some anger management issues.’ Ross felt his cheeks warm.

Adamo returned the photos. ‘Take it easy, Captain. This intel was supplied to your group by Langley.’

‘Meaning it’s not worth shit,’ snapped Pepper.

‘Meaning it was deliberately altered by someone,’ Adamo corrected. ‘Here’s a picture of Delgado.’ He reached into his pocket.

Pepper shifted in beside Ross and cursed as he glimpsed the photo. ‘Well, ain’t that something. That’s the cabdriver we rescued. What the hell was his name? Raul?’

Ross turned to Jiménez. ‘What did you do with him?’

The man winced. ‘We let him go. He said he’d walk back to the village and get a ride back to Bogotá. We had no reason to hold him, and I couldn’t afford to leave anyone behind with him. I called the local police to see if they could pick him up, but no one answered at the station.’

Ross and Pepper looked at each other in disbelief.

Adamo slapped a hand on Ross’s shoulder. ‘Don’t beat yourself up, Captain. Your mission was a success. You rescued Delgado. You just didn’t know it — because he didn’t want you to know it. I’ve been here for nearly ten years myself, and I’ve worked with the guy quite a few times. Never trusted him.’

‘Does Mitchell know about this?’

‘I briefed him on what I know. My mission here is to work with our own DEA and the Colombian Marines to interdict these narcosubs coming out of the mangroves. Delgado was a good source of intel. Then, about six months ago, he dropped off the map. I thought they’d killed him, chopped him up, fed him to the sharks. But then he turns up, working some kind of operation with the FARC and Los Rastrojos. One of my DEA guys gets a picture of him in Bogotá meeting with a guy named Saif Hamid.’

‘That name sounds familiar,’ said Ross.

‘It should. Hamid is an old-school al Qaeda bomb maker, a High Value Target we’ve been after for a long time. He was also working behind the scenes in Afghanistan, supplying weapons to the Taliban in the Wardak Province.’

‘Are you serious?’ Ross asked, his voice dropping to funereal depths.

Adamo gave a reluctant nod. ‘The RPGs and other ordnance Hamid supplied to those bastards were used to kill your teammates from DEVGRU.’

On August 6, 2011, thirty Americans — including twenty-two Navy SEALs — had been killed when their Chinook helicopter was ambushed and shot down in Wardak Province. The SEALs had been part of a QRF, or Quick Reaction Force, en route to support an Army Ranger unit.

What was more, Ross had served with every single operator who’d died that day, and there was, in his mind, no act more evil. Some accounts noted that US forces had been tricked into the area via false intel and that the Taliban had set up a trap for the helicopter, knowing there was only one good approach into the valley. An RPG strike to the aft tail rotor assembly resulted in an entire troop of SEALs being wiped off the face of the earth. If Ross had been upset five minutes ago, he was seething now.

Adamo went on: ‘Hamid has formed a new group called Bedayat jadeda, which means “new beginnings” in Arabic. We think Delgado was acting as a liaison between all three groups.’

‘So Delgado went rogue?’ Ross asked.

‘We don’t know. The fact that they captured him would argue against that. I think his cover got blown, and I think the Agency realized they couldn’t contain the mess down here — but as always, they’re never telling us the whole truth.’

Ross squinted into a thought. ‘It can’t be that simple. Why would the FARC drag a cabdriver all the way out here unless they wanted us to believe he was Delgado?’

‘Maybe they were like us,’ said Pepper. ‘Maybe they didn’t know what he looked like. Maybe only a few of the officers had actually met him. They had their orders and just followed them. They thought they had Delgado, and so did we — and that’s exactly what he wanted.’

Ross thought back to the cocaine lab. ‘Maybe you’re right. I mean, for a cabdriver, he was pretty forthcoming, wasn’t he? He wanted us out of there so he could take off.’

‘And you know how those spooks are. They will never give up their cover,’ said Pepper. ‘Even to the good guys.’

‘We oughta know about that,’ said Ross.

Pepper rubbed the corners of his eyes. ‘I still can’t get my head wrapped around this. So whose side is that little bastard on?’

Adamo grinned crookedly. ‘I’d ask that of his entire agency. Anyway, I need to mark the location of that sub, since we plan to salvage it for study. These Marines will finish with the bodies.’

‘What about Delgado now?’

‘I’ll put out my own feelers with AFEUR and the DEA, but if Delgado doesn’t want to be found, then trust me, we won’t find him.’

‘And Hamid?’ Ross asked.

‘I think the Agency was tracking him, but I haven’t heard anything more. Maybe they lost him. Who knows?’

‘We need to find Delgado,’ said Pepper.

‘That’s up to the major,’ Ross said.

Adamo lifted his hand for a farewell shake. ‘Well, Captain, Sergeant, maybe someday we can all get together for a beer. Until then, stay sharp.’ Adamo gave them a curt nod as he shook hands, then faced the Marines and cried in Spanish, ‘What kind of disorganized dumb-ass bullshit is this? Bag up those bodies and get ’em loaded. Let’s go, Marines!’