Choke Point

THIRTY-ONE

To the casual eye, everything about the warehouse appeared legitimate, from the hundreds of various-size boxes stored on rows of steel industrial shelves to the orders packed on shipping pallets with attached invoices, the boxes stacked two meters high and bound together by clear stretch wrap.

At least twenty such pallets were lined up near the loading dock doors, and these commanded Ross’s attention. He gave the signal for Pepper to lead them silently toward them, his Cross-Com displaying the current positions of the guards.

Ross had assumed that the three men inside were either ex-police or military, hired from the local population — but once they began speaking in Spanish, he concluded they were FARC troops, trucked in under cover each night to guard the shipments from the inside, thus drawing little attention from the locals. They were armed with compact Skorpion submachine guns procured from local stockpiles. They were probably aware of the clandestine shipping operation but weren’t told much else, lest they be captured.

At the moment, the men were understandably confused, arguing over whether they should remain in place or venture out to see why the power had gone down. One remarked that his cell phone no longer worked and he was concerned that something very bad had taken place, perhaps at the capitol. Perhaps something nuclear. Ross smiled inwardly. Their imaginations were running wild. They began to fight over whether or not they should contact their buddies in the next warehouse, and one said he’d run over there to see what was happening.

Ross patched his own Cross-Com’s signal into 30K’s heads-up display so that the man could see the red outlined image of the guard hustling from the warehouse and moving toward him with a small flashlight in hand.

‘Got ’em, boss. No worries.’

‘Roger, stay sharp.’

There’d been some discussion of a plan to lure the guards out of the warehouses prior to the team entering, but once again, the fewer occurrences out of the norm, the better. The power outage and subsequent EMP burst were all Ross was willing to risk. Mitchell’s intent was clear: They were to identify and tag a cargo shipment heading back to that plane and get out before these six men knew what was happening. The team needed to do that right under the guards’ noses via technology and superior tactics, a mission perfectly suited for the GST.

However, just as Ross’s confidence level was beginning to spike, Pepper, under camouflage but whose heat signature was visible in Ross’s HUD, raised his hand, the signal to halt.

One of the guards was walking straight toward them, leaning over, frowning as though he’d seen something lying on the floor. His flashlight’s batteries were weak, and the pale yellow beam barely lit his path.

Ross shifted slowly toward the shelves to his right, clearing a path down the aisle. Pepper did likewise.

Holding their breaths, they willed themselves into corpses, the camouflage steady now, reflecting the floor, the shelves, the ceiling. Pepper, who was right in front of Ross, was nearly impossible to discern.

Ross got a better look at the guard now, a man in his forties or fifties, graying beard, large eyes and slightly hunched back, as though the burdens of living in a war-torn jungle had weighed too heavily on him. Now they’d flown him around the world to do their dirty work. He’d traded in his jungle fatigues for a dark green uniform with the Fadakno logo on the breast and clutched the submachine gun in his right hand.

His quizzical look sharpening, he came to a dead stop beside Ross, who could reach out and grab his leg.

The guard swung around toward the docks and shouted to his comrade, ‘I’m going outside! Be right back!’

Ross closed his eyes and repressed a sigh.

Pepper didn’t move, not even a fraction.

No, that wasn’t just ‘close.’ That was heart-attack close.

Kozak bit his lip and cursed.

The rear door on the cargo truck was rolled down and sealed with a combination lock. Burning the lock off with a laser torch would be easy. Camouflaging the light produced by the torch might be more difficult, but –

Opening the door without making a sound? Shit, that was never going to happen.

The major had never said that as a Ghost he’d be expected to defy the laws of physics. How the hell were they supposed to get in there now? There might be many techniques for quietly killing a man, but name one silent way of tugging open a heavy cargo door without calling every FARC guard to the party.

You’re a fighter, he told himself. You do not give up yet. He was the new guy, always out to prove himself, so it was time to assess this problem and find a solution. That was what great SF operators did.

The truck’s rear door was shut, yes, but he noted something curious: the hood had been left open, as though repairs or service were being made.

A thought took hold, one too obvious to be true, but he needed to follow his gut anyway. He held up his index finger to 30K: Wait. They huddled down behind a row of six pallets of boxes near the back of the truck.

There, Kozak removed the portable X-ray device (PXD) and accompanying wedge from his pack. Each two-man team was equipped with one. The X-ray itself was no larger than an old digital camcorder, the kind Kozak’s mom had used to film his basketball games back in the day. The imaging wedge was about the size of a fifteen-inch notebook computer with a handle on the top. You held the wedge behind the object you wanted to X-ray, fired up the device, and zap, you got a digital image sent wirelessly to your Cross-Com. US Customs and Border Protection agents loved these little beauties.

30K seized the wedge, nodding to indicate that he understood what Kozak had in mind: X-ray the damned truck first before going through the hassle of breaking in.

The front door swung open, and in burst that guard from Ross’s warehouse.

Time to play statue again. While the FARC troops were hardly geniuses, they were still formidable, if only because they each had a pulse and pair of eyes — and if any of those eyes were to catch a glimpse of them …

Nope. Kozak wouldn’t let that happen. He was tense but not nervous as the guards lapsed once more into a rapid-fire debate. Two said they should go find another cell phone or gain computer access to see if anyone else had information. The others agreed, and during the commotion of their exit, 30K and Kozak slipped behind the pallets, reached the truck, and with excruciatingly slow movements, he stood on the driver’s side of the truck, with 30K on the passenger’s.

With a shudder of anticipation, Kozak aimed the X-ray at the truck, threw the switch, and doing his best to turn his back on the guards and have the PXD’s status light concealed by his active camouflage, he began taking images of the cargo box’s interior, with 30K holding up the imaging wedge. The distance between the PXD and the wedge was beyond normal parameters, but Kozak only needed to confirm the presence of cargo, and even the blurriest or most unclear images would suffice.

He almost snorted in disbelief. His hunch had paid off. The images glowing in his Cross-Com’s HUD were clear enough: the damned truck was empty, hadn’t been loaded yet — perhaps because the truck’s engine hadn’t been fully serviced?

Kozak craned his neck, eyes widening.

The intended cargo might be sitting right behind them.

With his breath quickening, he steered himself back toward the pallets, hunkering down behind the two rows, the boxes rising to just above his head.

That these shipments were rectangular shaped and much larger than any others in the warehouse had not struck him as odd, not at first anyway, but the reason for those oversize boxes became abundantly clear as he and 30K X-rayed the nearest one. He gasped and took a second X-ray to be sure.

There was no mistake.

Holy shit, he thought. Mother lode.

Footfalls now, along with a flickering light.

Kozak switched off the PXD, and both he and 30K lowered to their haunches as the remaining guards muttered to one another, their voices growing nearer.

Suddenly, 30K deactivated his camouflage, his face appearing from the darkness and glowing in Kozak’s night-vision lens. He mouthed the words: What did you see? Then he pointed to the boxes.

Kozak opened his mouth, just as the guard with the flashlight strode alongside the truck.

‘Did you hear something?’ the guard asked his comrade.

‘No.’

‘I thought I heard something. I did. Right here.’

Kozak’s hand went for the suppressed pistol in his holster, and in the next few seconds he saw it all fall apart in his mind’s eye:

The guard’s eyes widening in shock a second before he blew the man’s head off, the other guard escaping, the whole clandestine operation going to holy hell as Ross and the major screamed at him, busted him out of the Ghosts, slapped him with a dishonorable discharge from the Army –

And now he was an alcoholic and flipping burgers back on Knickerbocker Avenue, not even making enough money to buy comic books, his mother crying herself to sleep every night because her son was a capital-L Loser who’d failed a mission and allowed terrorists to take over the world.

All because he twitched a fraction of an inch and was spotted.