October's Ghost

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE FORCES

“The advance scouts are turning south toward Juragua,” the radioman reported as he walked, the heavy radio and its whip antennae bouncing with each quick step.

Colonel Ojeda, a third of the way back in the twin columns that totaled three hundred men, considered the situation and his mission briefly before responding. “Order them to cross the highway to the east and prepare an ambush. In one hour they are to spring the trap and set up a defense to draw the loyalists to them.”

A defense? Antonio thought, the unfamiliar rifle suddenly feeling very present in his hands. With twenty-five men?

“They know, Papa Tony,” Ojeda answered, the look on the CIA officer’s face asking the question he had heard many times. Those for whom command was an unknown often expressed horror at the thought of their fellow men used in a sacrificial maneuver. Leaders of warriors, however, lived with the horror of having to do so.

Antonio switched the rifle from hand to hand and cinched the straps that held his satellite manpack snug against his back. He looked away from the colonel, focusing on the rutted dirt track ahead and trying to think of something other than the scouts. Twenty-five men four miles ahead, all about to give their lives. A hundred more immediately in front of him and twice that number behind. He found himself wondering how many would survive what was to come, and whether he would be among the living. Or would he join his father as yet another casualty in the struggle to free his homeland?

A staccato burst of fire from the front ended Antonio’s questioning. Ojeda reached out and pushed him down to the right. He fell on his side, consciously protecting the satellite radio from impact damage. Looking up, he could see the lead element of the column running left into the cane fields and right for the edge of the marsh. A half-dozen men had fallen by Antonio’s count before any fire was returned. Ojeda’s men were disciplined and knew the value of ammunition when far from their supply lines.

“Papa, get up and follow me,” Ojeda said. He led off into the marsh, the setting sun at their rear coloring the edges of the sharp grass rising from the water with a fiery brightness. Two squads of men, twenty in all, were ten yards in front of the colonel and his five-man headquarters detail.

“Jeez!” Antonio said, cringing as several bullets ripped through the thick grass above his head. The water was waist-high, already lapping at the weatherproof radio on his back. Short bursts of return fire from the two squads sounded to his front. Then more in return, and more from another direction, and all the while Antonio was moving, following the colonel, instinctively crouching into the soggy marsh as much as he could and having no idea in hell what he was supposed to do.

Ojeda’s hand came up just in front of Antonio. He followed the colonel’s lead, stopping and sinking deeper into the water until just his nose and eyes were exposed. The taste of thick, dirty water seeped through his lips, filling his mouth. He continued breathing through his nose, smelling the staleness of the marsh and the decay that was an ever-present part of its ecosystem. They stayed still, almost fully submerged, for several minutes, Antonio’s heart beating faster with every passing second.

CLICK.

The sound came from Antonio’s right. He turned his head easily to look, then back at the colonel, who was staring intently toward the direction in which his men had moved. Then back to the right.

CLICK.

Antonio ran his fingers along the body of the submerged Kalashnikov until he found the safety. Remembering the colonel’s brief instructions he moved it up one notch, to single shot, and started to bring the weapon to his eye level. He turned the rest of his body slowly right, disturbing as little of the coarse vegetation as possible as he did, causing just a few crackles as the sharp-edged blades of grass rubbed against each other, and stopping when he was facing the direction of the sound. The distinctive top of the Kalashnikov broached the surface of the water. Antonio’s eyes looked past the sights into the gently moving forest of light green blades. His eyes moved, searching, his body still except for the soft up-and-down caress his finger was giving the trigger. He watched, expecting to see someone not unlike him staring back from behind another AK-74. But there was none. No movement, no sound.

“Papa Tony.”

Antonio’s body jumped at the colonel’s voice. He let go of the trigger and stood, lifting his weapon out of the water as he did. “I heard something.”

Ojeda scanned the direction of the CIA officer’s interest and discounted the claim very quickly. “We killed three of them,” he said, looking back to Antonio. “More escaped.”

“Three? I saw at least six of our men go down.”

“We were fortunate. A well-executed ambush could have killed ten times that number.” Ojeda saw the surprise in Antonio’s eyes. “This is war, Papa Tony. Welcome to it.”

The colonel turned and headed back out of the marsh. Antonio looked once more over his shoulder, still expecting to see someone with the means and the desire to kill him lurking among the vegetation but finding only that which scared him more: the unknown. He turned and followed Ojeda, his right hand squeezing the Kalashnikov’s rear grip more tightly than he’d thought possible.

The first unit of the 106th Guards Air Assault Division to leave its base northeast of Moscow was the reconnaissance company. In wartime, after having been inserted in the enemy’s rear by airdrop according to the still-followed Soviet doctrine of battle, the two hundred officers and men of recon would be tasked to seek out and identify the enemy units in their area. This morning, however, the objective was not elusive, and they expected no resistance to their advance.

Just after the witching hour, in the bitter chill of the ever-longer Russian nights of autumn, a single Russian Army staff car rumbled through the main gate and turned south onto the M8 highway. Twenty BMD-3 Infantry Combat Vehicles of the recon company followed their commander’s vehicle but would not even attempt to keep up. Unlike in battle, his job was to announce their presence before they would strike. Next came ten BMP-2s, the larger and slower cousins of the lead element, and these were followed by 160 trucks that would stagger their departure in groups of five every few minutes. By the time the last of the division had passed through the brown-painted gates, adorned with the blazing white parachute emblem of Russian airborne forces, the lead elements would be a quarter of the way to Moscow, and their commander would be well on his way to deliver the requisite message to the president.

Force, after all, was most effective when employed as a threat.

“We’re going where?” Frederico Sanz asked.

“The Cape,” Chris Testra answered, still trying to figure out the call from the director.

“To do what?”

“Didn’t say. He said we’d be briefed once we got there by someone named Drummond.”

“Drummond?” Sanz let the name roll around in his head for a minute. “Drummond. You don’t mean…?”

“I don’t know,” Testra said. “So don’t think it yourself. If the director didn’t tell us, maybe we ain’t supposed to know.”

Sanz closed the hard case that held their recording gear and started for the van.

“Don’t lock it up, Freddy,” Testra directed his partner.

“Why?”

“Because we’re supposed to bring some stuff with us.”

Sanz looked down at the silver suitcase. “This? I hope someone has a warrant.”

“Don’t need one,” Testra said. “Remember where we’re going?”

Lieutenant Duc brought the Pave Hawk down to eight hundred feet after an easy two-hundred-mile cruise out to sea at three thousand. A hundred miles east of Great Abaco Island, a crescent-shaped finger of land at the northern end of the Bahamas chain, he nosed the helicopter to starboard, making his course just east of due south. They would be meeting up with the Combat Shadow in two more hours off the eastern tip of Cuba. Until then, the plan called for staying away from the more inhabited land masses and skirting shipping whenever possible.

“Yo, Cho. Look.”

Duc heeded his copilot’s direction and shifted his attention briefly left, looking over the Pave Hawk’s instrument panel to the white capped sea below. He scanned the scene for a few seconds, then pressed the intercom switch on his yoke. “Major, take a look to port. Coming up off about a hundred yards.”

Sean undid his safety belt and crouch-walked past his team members to the port-side gunner’s door, the coiled wire of his headset dragging and sagging behind. “What is it?”

Duc took another brief look. “Looks like a debris field to me. Got some orange floaters down there, a few pieces of something, but I don’t know what from.”

Sean took a pair of binoculars and stared past the minigun to the sea. “A whole bunch of stuff, Cho. No oil slick, though. Anything about a plane going in?”

“Not that I’ve heard. Nothing about a ship either.”

Well, something had either sunk, crashed, or blown clean up, and there were no people in any of the dozen or so life vests bobbing in the swells. No bodies, either, as far as Sean could see. But that didn’t mean none were down there. “Cho, better report this over SATCOM. Just to be safe.”

“Gotcha.”

Sean swept the area once more with the glasses. Still no sign of life. Hopefully a closer look would find someone. If the Pave Hawk hadn’t been fitted with the most sophisticated communications suite possible, that closer look might never come. To report it in that case, they would have had to broadcast on the standard radio, giving off an omni-directional message of “Here I am.” SATCOM, which bounced its directional signal off a satellite, was far less likely to reveal their position, and then only if someone was looking for them. The latter was not in the cards.

Sean went back to his place on the rear-facing bench seat and put the thoughts of the people who might be below away for the moment. His mind had to focus on what was just four hours away, and on keeping the men surrounding him alive.

“We will have to deal with the Hundred and Sixth,” Colonel Belyayev said in Russian. The American air-defense commander, standing just behind, did not need to hear.

“Of course we will,” Kurchatov said without surprise. The husband of Natalie Shergin, sister of the Voyska PVO commander, would not wish to disappoint his brother-in-law. He owed his job to the man, after all.

“They are the closest to Moscow,” Belyayev pointed out grimly. “No one is between them and the city.”

“How long?”

“Three more hours,” Belyayev answered after a quick calculation.

Before the sun would rise. The thought of Moscow waking to another test of leadership made his stomach want to turn. There had to be a way to stop this. “Why couldn’t his damned division be based in Irkutsk?”

“That would matter little. They could simply do as trained and float from the sky.”

“Yes,” Kurchatov responded. There was not much one could do to keep paratroopers from their objective. Not much at all. Not much indeed, he thought, a smile of discovery coming to his lips. “Yes.”

Belyayev heard the difference between the marshal’s twin uses of the word. One was spoken with resignation, the other with hope. “Marshal?”

Kurchatov smiled fully at his aide, then looked up to a bemused CINCNORAD. “How do you say, General Walker? We shall fight fire with fire.”

CINCNORAD hadn’t the slightest idea what the Defense Minister meant by the remark, but it obviously had pleased both him and the colonel. That, he could tell plainly as the marshal picked up the phone and was connected immediately, via an amazingly rerouted series of switches, with the Russian Army’s main communications center just outside Moscow.

At another communications center, five thousand miles from its dissimilar cousin in the Russian capital, the captain in charge of the Miami Coast Guard Station was wrestling with his own dilemma of force.

“Navy says no, sir,” the bosun’s mate reported as he hung up the phone.

“For Christ’s sake, what do they expect us to do our job with?” The captain noticed his grease-pencil-marked status board. They couldn’t even give him the simplest of computers to keep track of his meager forces. And then they took those! “Looking for God knows what!”

“That’s the Navy, sir.”

The captain snarled at the reminder from his subordinate. They might have the bigger boats — those ugly gray things — but that did not give them the right to appropriate his entire SAR force. Except when his boss, a full admiral, said to do so. “What the fuck are they looking for that’s so important that they need all our ships and our birds? Can’t they do a search on their own?”

The bosun’s mate glanced at the heavily marked status board. The captain wasn’t exaggerating. Everything was gone. Cutters, choppers, and the 2 C-130s. All heading north to the Atlantic off Virginia, and leaving them nothing with which to check out the report relayed to them via the Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. One of their special-ops planes returning from a training mission had flown over a possible crash site northeast of the Bahamas but was unable to remain on station because of their fuel status. So it was up to the Coast Guard to take a closer look. But with what?

“Damn,” the captain swore, allowing himself a final spurt of disgust before turning to the business of finding a solution to the problem. “All right, what commercial ships are out there?”

The bosun’s mate looked at his log, which carried notations from radio traffic and from the last pass of a Coast Guard plane five hours earlier. “A Japanese bulk carrier, a hundred and fifty miles north.”

“At fifteen knots — if the bastard would waste the extra fuel — it’d be tomorrow before they get there,” the captain observed, discounting option one. “Next.”

Next was nothing. That was the closest commercial ship. Well, the closest truly commercial. “Just a Russian trawler loitering about sixty miles east.”

“Waiting for bluefin, no doubt.”

“Right,” the bosun’s mate agreed sarcastically. “They just call ‘em in with those antennas.”

The Russians obviously hadn’t lost interest in the launches from the Cape, one of which, a fully military one, was set for the following week. “Well, he’s out there, and as a commercial vessel, he has a responsibility to respond to a ship or aircraft in trouble.”

“It’ll piss him off,” the bosun’s mate observed.

“Reason number two to do it.” Reason number one was the seaman’s code. “Get word to him.”

“Aye, sir.”

Art pulled through the intersection of Twelfth and Vermont and stopped at the motel with more control than he had the last time he’d approached the place. The car used at that time was just being pulled, flat tire, bent rim, and all, onto the back of a tow truck. He walked right past it to his partner.

“How are you?”

Frankie had seen him coming and had noticed that kind of walk he was using. It was his “We gotta do something” stride. “I’m fine.”

“We’re just about done, Art,” Omar said. The narrative portion of the report was several pages thick already.

“Well, it’ll have to wait. Frankie and I gotta do something.”

Frankie smiled slightly. Getting to know how Art Jefferson operated hadn’t taken long. He wasn’t a complicated person, really. That was sort of nice in a man and made working with him as a partner an enjoyable, bullshit-free experience.

Omar reacted with surprise. “Art, this is required procedure when this happens.”

“I know, but required can wait in this case.”

“What’s going on?” Lou Hidalgo asked as he walked up. The rise in Omar’s tone had alerted him.

“Lou, Frankie and I have to do something. I can’t tell you what, but it’s”—Art hushed his voice a bit—“on orders from the White House. And the director knows about it.”

The White House? Hidalgo saw Art’s steadiness. It didn’t surprise him anymore, but it did merit notice. “When did you become so fucking important?”

Art snickered. “This old pavement pounder? Get outta here, Lou.”

The group of four agents looked up and to the north as an Aerospatiale helicopter of the LAPD approached, preceded as always by the rapid chopping pulse of its rotors. It descended and landed a half-block north on Vermont, which had already been closed for its arrival by the police.

“Our ride,” Art said.

The Aerospatiale’s rotor continued to turn at speed after setting down. Its crew had been told that this trip had to be made fast, and sitting there didn’t take any time off the journey. “Let’s go,” the pilot said over the external loudspeaker.

Lou reached out and gripped Art’s shoulder. “Whatever you’re doing, be careful.”

“Piece of cake, Lou,” Art assured him above the noise. “Come on.”

The pair trotted off to the helicopter, instinctively ducking lower as they passed under the main rotor. They climbed in the passenger compartment and were handed headsets by the police-department observer, which they slid on, pulling the boom microphones close to their mouths.

“What’s this all about, partner?”

“We’re heading south.”

South could mean a lot of places. “Mexico?”

“No,” Art answered. “My old stomping grounds. The Deep South.”

The whine of the turbines rose quickly and massively above their heads, the helicopter responding to the increase in power with a gentle jump from the ground. Seconds later it was climbing above the buildings, gaining more altitude as it banked slightly left. “Los Alamitos in about twenty minutes,” the pilot announced.

“Why Los Alamitos?” Frankie inquired.

“We have to be there fast, and the military has the things that move,” Art answered, looking out the left side of the helicopter to the midday city below. The blight that was prevalent at street level almost disappeared when looking from above. L.A. from a thousand feet actually looked nice.

“Art,” Frankie said, nudging him. “What are we going to do?”

“To nail the guy who could have prevented all this.”

Prevented. “All of this?”

Art looked at his partner. “Yeah.” He said no more, but he could tell she was reading ‘And Thom might be alive’ from his statement.

The familiar feeling of the previous days passed through her again, lingering briefly as a heaviness in her chest, then faded away when it found there would be no eager host as before. Vengeance had come, and it had gone. What remained was a job to finish.

“Let’s go get him,” Frankie said, caring not at all who the man was.

Lieutenant Duc brought the cyclic back a hair and lowered his collective, slowing the Pave Hawk while maintaining its altitude. The maneuver backed the helicopter out of contact with the flexible drogue boom through which they had just topped off their tanks from the HC-130 Combat Shadow. The tanker accelerated and turned forty-five degrees to the right, heading almost directly into the setting sun low on the southern horizon. The Pave Hawk made the big bird’s course its own, following like a good little chick. The next and final tanking wasn’t far off, and after that they’d be on their own. Almost.

“Raptor is on station,” Duc’s copilot reported after switching from the SATCOM back to intercom. Raptor was the AC-130U Spectre that would be in the area to provide a little muscle if it became necessary. “On station” meant off the southern coast of Cuba, dead ahead of them, loitering at a discreet distance.

“What about the AWACS?” Duc asked.

“Sandman is there, too, fifty miles west of Raptor. We’ve got good coverage.”

All that remained was word that the rebel ground force tasked to provide assistance was in position. “Raptor and Sandman are in position, Major.”

“Good,” Sean answered back. Only Anderson looked up when he spoke, and Sean gave him a reassuring thumbs-up, which sent the civilian back into his trance. The major saw his shoulder muscles bulge upward as Joe tightened and released them repeatedly, but they were smaller than when he had last watched the man perform the same limbering exercises. The disease was taking its toll.

The other members of the team were universally silent, spending the last hours before the show began in their own private contemplations. Then, of course, there was Antonelli. He had left the Walkman at Bragg, this time, but had remembered his new favorite toy, a handheld arcade simulator from some upstart company that made the games from the big names look archaic. Next to Sean, Buxton was staring at the floor, past his open paperback, thinking about whatever. Makowski, strangely, had his small Bible closed but held it tightly in both hands. Prayer, Sean thought, ready to accept any help Delta could get. The rest were very quiet, very still, all their eyes closed, though none was asleep. That was impossible this close to going in.

“One more time.”

Sean looked left. It was Buxton, leaning in close to speak over the noise. “And they pay us to have fun.”

The captain smiled. His former squad leader, now XO of the entire unit, was a damn good guy, and a hell of a soldier. “How long you gonna do this, Maj?”

Sean didn’t expect the question, and it was somewhat strange considering what he’d been thinking of in recent months. “I don’t know. Can’t very well settle down and have a normal family life if you’re flying off all over the world to smoke bad guys.”

Buxton’s eyes flared open. “Settle down. You mean…?”’

Sean couldn’t help the smile that came to his face. It happened whenever he thought of her. “Mary’s been an angel, Bux. She’s waited a long time.”

“Man…” The captain was surprised but not shocked. He’d never considered that the major would be out of uniform; he was the kind of guy you figured had the khakis tattooed on.

“My tour’s up in a year and a half,” Sean said. “I figure I’ve done my time. Going out on a high note is the way I’ve always wanted it.” Being XO of Delta was higher than he’d ever thought possible.

Buxton smiled again and nodded. It was a blessing of Sean’s decision from a comrade, and that mattered more than anything.

“One for the road, Maj.”

“Hopefully the last.”

Major Guevarra and the commander of the Cuban Army unit securing the Juragua Nuclear Generating Facility hurried to the small building that was known as the command bunker, though neither knew why such a small structure out in the open would be termed such. General Asunción was waiting for them outside one of the two doors.

“Colonel, the enemy has cut the highway north of here.”

“What?” the Cuban commander asked with disbelief, his eyes narrowing to slits. “We already have a force to the north. A large force and they are engaging the rebels.”

“To their north, yes, but the bastards have slipped into their rear,” Asunción said.

“How many?” Guevarra asked.

“No reports, but however many there are, they are fighting like wild men.” Asunción turned back to the commander of the ground troops. “Colonel, take your force and secure the highway between us and the rebels. Send a unit to attack and destroy them once you have.”

“But the plant, General.”

“Leave a small unit here. We will have Major Guevarra remain to react if any more rebels have slipped through.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Major,” Asunción began as the colonel moved off. “I want you ready to defend this facility at a second’s notice, is that understood?”

“Yes, General Asunción!” Guevarra saluted smartly, then trotted back to his helicopter and its ground crew. “Prepare to fly, quickly!”

“We have a target?” Sergeant Montes asked hopefully.

“Possibly. If it shows itself, then we must be ready.”

The crew chief approached the major. “The weapons load, sir. What do you wish?”

Guevarra analyzed what he might be asked to do. Rebel forces slipping behind the lines. They would have light weapons and would be able to scatter themselves quickly. He would need weapons that could attack a large area with lethal results. “A full load of thirty-millimeter ammunition for the cannon.” He paused. “And eight rocket pods, all with flechette rounds.” Flechettes, small, needlelike spears, were packed tightly ahead of a burster charge in the warhead of each unguided rocket, essentially creating a massive shotgun shell that would fire after launch. The effect, as had been proved in battles from Vietnam to Afghanistan, was utterly devastating on troops in the open. Precisely where Guevarra hoped to find his targets.

“But, Major, you need protection from aircraft,” the crew chief implored. “Let me load two air-to-air missiles.”

“What aircraft?” Guevarra demanded angrily. “Our targets will be running, on the ground, not up with us. We rule the sky, my friend. Now load the weapons which I have told you. They will be of use.”

“Yes, sir.”

Guevarra watched his crew chief hurry back to begin the job, which would take but a half hour. He then looked up to the darkening sky and listened. The sound of nothing was just what he wanted to hear.