Choke Point

FIVE

‘Aw, hell,’ grunted Ross.

At least fifty plastic gasoline containers lined the shack’s rear wall. To the right were bushel baskets brimming with almond-shaped coca leaves, stacked as high as refrigerators. Six or seven wheelbarrows filled with what might have been salt or limestone were parked across from the stacks, and at least twenty or more oil drums formed two rows down the center of the shack, as though they were stacked on the deck of a cargo ship. Still more containers with labels that read SULFURIC ACID and SODIUM PERMANGANATE sat on wooden shelves buckling under their weight. Beneath them were piles of brand-new microwaves still in their boxes.

‘Well, they ain’t making burritos,’ said 30K.

Ross knew all about the infamous cocaine labs of Colombia and how these guys needed about 1,000 kilos of coca leaves to yield just a kilo of paste or 2.2 pounds. That’s why they needed so many bushels of leaves, and the process for making cocaine was painstaking, the materials highly flammable. Drawing gunfire, let alone tossing in a grenade, might send them all into low earth orbit.

‘Kozak, get the drone over here, crawler mode.’

Even as the UAV came over the rooftop, quadrotors humming, a rustling along a rise to their south had Ross scanning the tree line, where his Cross-Com showed the blue silhouettes of the AFEUR troops, establishing a perimeter. Nothing would leave the shack, nothing that remained alive anyway.

‘Ghost Lead, Pepper. We’re secure out here. Clear to do your thing.’

The drone landed not a meter from Ross and rolled toward the doors. 30K opened one door wide enough for the crawler to roll through.

‘Show it to me, Kozak.’

A window opened in Ross’s HUD, and the camera view and data bars from the drone crackled to life. Superimposed over the video was a wireframe representation of the shack, with dimensions displayed and the drone’s coordinates scrolling below as it advanced.

‘Good,’ said Ross. ‘Put me on the speaker.’

‘In three, two, one, and you’re live,’ announced Kozak.

Ross cleared his throat and spoke in Spanish. ‘Listen up, boys. Your comrades have gone home for dinner. We have this area secured. You can’t run. So you know the drill. Put down your weapons and come out slowly with your hands behind your heads. You do that, and you won’t get hurt. You play games, and I’ll kill you.’

The crawler rolled farther into the shack, past the stacks of oil drums to an open area beyond, where in the light of a single flashlight sitting on the floor appeared a figure sitting in a chair, hands bound behind the back, a cowl of some sort pulled over the head. The image was too grainy to make any further distinctions. At either side of the prisoner were the guards, one with a pistol to the man’s head.

‘Ghost Lead, Kozak. What do you think?’

‘Get in a little closer.’

Kozak complied, advancing another meter with the drone.

‘Hold on a second,’ said Ross, getting a better look at the prisoner.

‘Don’t come any closer,’ shouted one of the rebels, a clean-shaven man with thick eyebrows and several missing teeth. ‘You know what we’ll do!’

‘Kozak, get the drone out of there.’

‘Say again?’

‘You heard me. Back off.’ Ross faced 30K and shook his head. ‘That’s not our guy. Too small. This is a bullshit diversion to stall us. Our package is already on the move …’

‘Either way, they got a prisoner. Intel said our CIA guy wasn’t the only one in the car.’

As the drone rolled out of the shack and past them, Ross knew they were out of time.

‘Ghost Lead, Pepper. I dropped another sensor just outside the shack. Signal’s clean. I can take out the guy with the pistol — right through the wall.’

Ross smiled inwardly. This was why he’d become a Ghost — to work with aggressive, creative operators from all branches of the service who could teach him their tactics, techniques and procedures, the good old TTPs of any good operation. Like him, Pepper was an old salt who’d mopped up bloody operations in Sangin, hunted bomb makers in Waziristan, and danced around the conflicting orders between higher and intelligence offices like the CIA. His experience had taught him to always be thinking ahead and keep the mission tempo high by not succumbing to the deep bitterness and cynicism that could easily rule your life.

‘Pepper, this is Ghost Lead. You’re the man.’

‘Roger that.’

Ross looked at 30K but continued speaking to Pepper. ‘Now can you count to three?’

Pepper gave a snort. ‘No problem, boss.’

‘Okay, then. Here we go.’