Tom Clancy Support and Defend

33

Just before eleven P.M. a belching taxi took them through Bocas Town, past rusty tin-roofed shacks and beat-up but brightly painted Victorian and colonial buildings. Street vendors selling handmade junk appeared at the windows of the taxi, no doubt triggered by Adara Sherman’s shock of blond hair that announced the presence of a tourist.

The taxi dropped them off at an address David had provided earlier, on the northwestern edge of the town, and the two Americans stood alone in the street in front of a small supermarket for a few minutes, unsure if they should go in or wait outside. Before they could decide, an old two-door hatchback parked in an alley across the street flashed its lights, and after a look between them, Dom and Adara began walking toward it.

A woman in her forties climbed out from behind the wheel as the Americans approached. She introduced herself only as Maria. Dom and Adara shook her hand, but they offered no introductions at all.

Dom was on guard, he looked around the alley, deciding it was secluded enough for a clandestine transaction such as this, but it was hardly a safe place to hang out for very long. He had the titanium diving knife strapped to his calf, but otherwise he was unarmed. This woman looked incredibly nervous, and that, along with the unsecure location, made Dom more than a little edgy himself.

Maria lit a cigarette, then offered one to the two Americans, who both declined. She said, “I’m sorry. I’m a little tense. I got the call this afternoon. Normally, when they need something… Well, it’s been years since they’ve needed something. And it wasn’t anything like this.”

Adara Sherman was confused, but Dom understood. “You are Sayan, right?”

“Yes, of course. You don’t think I do this sort of thing for a living, do you?”

Sayan were volunteers for Mossad, local assistants, not formal employees of the organization, but Jews living around the world ready to be called upon to perform duties on behalf of the Israeli spy service. Sayan could be doctors or shopkeepers or travel agents or truck drivers, they were normally people motivated by their duty to the nation of Israel.

Dom recognized that her anxious mannerisms were due to the fact she’d probably been pulled off her job as a lawyer or a city town administrator or something similar and then sent out to procure weapons for a couple foreign operatives. Looking at her in this light, Dom decided her anxiety was perfectly reasonable.

Adara said, “Don’t worry, Maria. You are doing great. We appreciate your help.”

Dom tried to get the meeting back on track. He didn’t want to stand here in this dark lot any longer than he had to. “You brought some things for us?”

She lifted the hatchback, revealing a large external-frame backpack. Dom opened it and pulled out a beat-up-looking M9 Beretta pistol, U.S. Army issue, and an M16 rifle that had been partially disassembled to fit inside. The rifle was U.S. military issue, as well, but Dom could tell it was very old. The military didn’t use this version of the M16 any longer and hadn’t in years. “Did you get these guns from a museum?”

Maria smoked nervously behind him. “The request was highly unusual. I did my best. We are a little island. Not many opportunities to—”

Adara said, “These will be just fine. What about ammunition?”

Maria cocked her head. “The bullets are already in the guns.”

Adara looked at Dom, then asked, “Spare ammunition?”

“What? I’m sorry. That was not specified. As I said, it wasn’t easy getting these guns.”

Dom checked the magazines in the weapons. “Both weapons are fully loaded. Ball ammo.” He ejected a round from each and looked them over in interior light in the back of the vehicle. “Really old ball ammo. U.S. military. But the cartridges seem to be in good condition.”

Dom inspected the guns over a little more. “Oh, wow. These are from the war.”

“What war?” Adara asked.

“The U.S. invasion. Nineteen eighty-nine. Jesus, lady. That was a quarter-century ago.”

The Sayan looked more annoyed than embarrassed. “I’m sure they work fine. Lots of security guards in supermarkets and banks use American guns. Again, I was given just hours to accomplish this task. I don’t just sit down here waiting to be called on by Tel Aviv to buy illegal weapons.”

“We understand,” said Adara. Her voice considerably softer and more conciliatory than Dom had made his. “There is some synthetic motor oil in the boat. We can clean and lube these tonight.”

Dom slid everything back into the pack, and he hoisted it on his shoulder. While he did this the Panamanian woman eyed Adara suspiciously. “I’m sorry, but I have to say. You don’t look like Mossad.”

Adara just smiled. “And that, Maria, is the key to my success.”

They made it back to the hotel before midnight. Dom wanted to grab another drink in the tiny and empty lobby bar, but Adara talked him out of it, insisting they needed to clean the guns and get some sleep before tomorrow’s operation.

In the room, Adara stripped and lubed the M16 while Dom worked on the Beretta M9. Dom didn’t have much experience with this particular pistol, but it broke down and operated similarly to most all of the other semiautos he shot, both with the FBI and in his clandestine work with The Campus.

Adara, on the other hand, had been issued an M9 in the Navy, but in Afghanistan she’d carried an M16 not altogether unlike the one she now cleaned. This model in front of her was the A2, and she’d shot the A4, but internally they looked virtually identical.

After the weapons were ready for action, Adara excused herself and disappeared into the bathroom for a few minutes. She came out wearing a gray T-shirt with NAVY written across the chest, and a pair of sweatpants with VIRGINIA in orange running down the left leg. Her short hair was in a ponytail, and she wore eyeglasses, which Dom found extremely appealing.

He also stole a few glances at her body as she got ready for bed; then he went into the bathroom to change.

Five minutes later Dom came out wearing plain black boxers and a plain white tank top. Adara had all the lights off except for a single lamp by the bed.

She said, “I’ve got an alarm set for oh-five-thirty.”

“Sounds good,” said Dom, and he began walking toward his side of the bed.

Adara raised an eyebrow, and Dom noticed the gesture. He smiled confidently. “Don’t worry, Sherman, I’m a gentleman.”

She returned his smile, then said, “Glad to hear it,” before grabbing a pillow off the bed and tossing it on the wicker sofa. “I saw a blanket in the closet. I’d shake it for bugs if I were you.”

Dom stood in the middle of the room for a moment. He looked at the good-looking blonde on the big bed. And then he looked at the uninviting sofa. “Really?”

Adara nodded. “Really. Night, Caruso.”

Dom grabbed the blanket out of the closet, gave it a few shakes, and headed for the couch as Adara Sherman flipped off the lamp by the bed.

“Night, Sherman.”

Adara and Dom headed down to the dock at six-thirty a.m. A cool early-morning rain shower kept the streets even emptier than they would have normally been at this time of day. They carried full backpacks and more gear in bags under their arms, but it still took two trips to the boat to get everything loaded.

Once on board Dom pulled the pieces of the M16 out of the backpack Maria gave them and assembled the rifle, which he stowed it in a large cooler under the row of seats on the boat’s bow.

Adara was surprised. “You aren’t taking the rifle with you to your hide site?”

“I wish I could, but with everything else I am hauling, a forty-inch-long, ten-pound M16 is going to be more than I can deal with. I’ll just take the pistol. You keep the rifle on board the boat in case you’ve got to come pick me up in a hurry.”

“There is another option,” she said.

“I’m all ears.”

“I can leave you in the water at the waypoint we decided on, then head around to the other side of the island. I’ll find a secluded place to drop anchor, then I can make my way to you overland with the rifle. It might take me a few hours, but I’ll get it done.”

Dom shook his head. “I appreciate the spirit, Sherman, but I’d rather have you and this boat together at all times. There are a lot of unknowns on this operation, so I’m not giving up the option to run away.”

Adara fired the engines of the MasterCraft at seven a.m. Even though a light rain continued to fall, boat traffic in the channel was picking up. Small cargo vessels running between the islands, ferries, fishing boats, dive boats heading to fuel up for the day, it seemed to Dom that every third vessel around Colon Island was already out of its slip and on the water.

Adara stood at the helm and piloted the boat with confidence. Once they left the transportation lanes she pushed the throttle forward and the two 5.7-liter engines churned up more of the dirty canal water, the stern lowered deeper and the bow rose as the twenty-five-foot vessel picked up speed.

Dom sat on the deck at the stern and donned his scuba gear, then he checked and rechecked the rest of the equipment he’d be taking onto the island with him. His backpack was fully laden with water and gear, enough to last him forty-eight hours if necessary, and he’d wrapped all the items inside the waterproof pack in a layer of garbage bags to keep everything dry while diving.

It was a ten-minute run across the channel before Adara cut speed and began trolling along Bastimentos Island. There were a few little eco-lodges on the shoreline, but the farther south they traveled, the less development they saw. They approached the mouth of a wide inlet, the water was calm other than the effect of the raindrops on the surface. She consulted with a printout from EagleView a few times to check the distance to the Venezuelan compound so she would be sure she didn’t get any closer than she had planned.

When they were close to Caruso’s planned ingression point, Adara cut all power. The light rain had picked up to a driving downpour, Adara wore a baseball cap that kept water out of her eyes, but otherwise she was soaked. Dom, on the other hand, was all suited up and ready to go diving, so the rain was inconsequential to him.

He said, “Head straight back to the hotel, but be ready to come pick me up at all times.”

“I’ll gas up and stay close to the boat. If you call for extraction, I can be back in the area in less than twenty-five minutes.”

“Good. I will check in every other hour by sat phone. If I miss two checks, bring the boat back here and try to raise me on the walkie-talkie. If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to swim out to you. Whatever happens, I don’t want you landing this boat and coming ashore yourself. Are we clear about that?”

“Fine. But if things get dicey and you want to rethink that plan, just let me know.”

Dom attached his backpack to a piece of rope tied around his waist, then donned his mask and sat on the portside edge of the boat. He put on his fins, slipped regulator’s second stage in his mouth, and held on to his mask to keep it in place. With a nod to Adara Sherman he rolled backward, his fins flipped up in the air as he disappeared over the side. Once in the water he gave Adara an “okay” signal, let some air out of his vest, and he disappeared below the surface.

Adara waited for a few minutes, then started the boat’s engines and turned back for Bocas Town.

Dom wore a belt with twenty-five pounds of lead weights to counter the buoyancy of both his wetsuit and BCD, as well as his watertight bag of gear. With the weights he descended easily to a depth of thirty feet. There he pumped air into his vest to give himself just enough buoyancy to glide over the sandy and grassy bottom. He swam into the center channel of the inlet so that the bubbles from his regulator would not be visible from shore. With the rain he felt confident it would be hard to detect a single diver from the surface, but he was alone, with no easy avenue of escape if he were discovered, so he didn’t plan on taking any unnecessary chances.

He swam to the east, keeping just above the seagrass on the surface of the brackish inlet, using the compass built into his watch to orient his route to the Venezuelan safe house. The current was with him, and he found himself moving much faster than he’d expected. After only twenty minutes he chanced a slow ascent to the surface. He was right where he wanted to be, so he went back down, left the center of the channel, and headed to shore.

He remained near the bottom all the way to the shore, pushing through tall grasses, spooking fish that kicked up sand, and then negotiating his way through thick mangrove under the surface. When he thought he was in position, he lifted his head out of the water slowly and looked around in all directions. He quickly realized he’d made a miscalculation.

He’d arrived at the shore, and it looked much as it did in the EagleView image, but there was a problem. The mangrove was so thick on this part of the shoreline, Dom knew he wouldn’t be able to get through it without a chain saw.

He took a moment to try and pick another location to come ashore. After a minute he saw a tiny cove ahead that might have dipped deep enough into the mangrove to allow Dom to fight his way through, so he put the second stage of his regulator back into his mouth and went back under the water.

He swam to the middle of the inlet, again to prevent his bubbles being obvious to anyone on the shore, but as he arrived he heard the unmistakable sound of a boat’s engine.

He stopped where he was, hovering twenty-five feet below the surface, rising and falling slowly as he took breaths from his tank that filled his lungs and made him more buoyant and then blew them out again.

He saw the hull of the boat now, directly overhead and trolling slowly. He put it at about thirty feet, it was hard to discern anything about the type of craft from his view below it, but as he watched for a few moments he got the impression the objective of those on the boat was some sort of a patrol. They didn’t seem to be fishing because it was moving through the channel, and they certainly weren’t hauling cargo or ferrying people because of their slow speed.

Dom worried the boat was somehow tied to the Venezuelan safe house, and he knew if his concerns were valid, getting out of the area in a hurry was going to be even more difficult than he’d imagined.

Fifteen minutes after the trolling boat disappeared, Dom returned to the shore less than two hundred yards from the edge of the lawn than encircled the Venezuelan safe house. He ended up infiltrating a little closer to the target than he would have liked, but after seeing how dense the jungle was around here he decided to chance it, not wanting to risk spending the entire day moving into position.

As soon as he was out of the water and into the trees, he took off all his scuba gear, closed his tank to preserve the remaining air, and hid everything under thick ferns that grew below the canopy of crabwood and guariuba trees. From his pack he pulled a dark brown shirt and camouflage pants, and a pair of black sneakers. Very little of the rain made it through the trees down to him, but he hoped the heavy cloud cover would continue throughout the day to keep him cool. He stuck the M9 pistol into his waistband, slipped the backpack onto his back, and he checked his location with his GPS. He added a waypoint to the device’s computer, pinpointing the exact location where he stowed his scuba gear, fully expecting to exfil from the target the same way he’d ingressed.

Before he began moving toward his intended hide site he heard the rumbling of a boat again passing through the inlet. He dropped down on his belly and moved behind the ferns, then peeked between them. In front of him he saw a thirtyfoot Panamanian police boat with four men on board, and a .50-caliber machine gun jutting from the bow. From its size and its speed Dom felt certain this was the vessel he’d swam below earlier. Now it was back — the boat seemed to be on a regular patrol and not hunting for anything in particular, but Dom didn’t like that fact it happened to be cruising around this narrow inlet. He could swim under the patrol boat with no problem if he had to escape, but in case Adara needed to retrieve him from the shore for some reason, he knew the police in the bigger, faster, and much more heavily armed boat could pose a serious problem.

Once the patrol boat had moved on up the inlet, Dom turned and left the bank, pushing his way through the thick foliage. He moved purposefully but without rushing, doing his best to keep an eye out for snakes and spiders and other creatures that could ruin his day.

This was typical tropical rainforest. Ferns and flowering plants along the ground, proliferating in the wet air and low light below a triple canopy of oak and guava and sandbox trees. The way forward was arduous, but at least the ground was flat and only moist, as opposed to muddy. Dom made good progress, and took special care to check his GPS repeatedly to avoid accidentally popping out of the jungle and stumbling into the Venezuelans.

It took him an hour and twenty minutes to travel two hundred yards, but by nine forty-five a.m. Dom caught his first glimpse, through the rainforest, of the back of the big colonialstyle Venezuelan safe house.

He stopped, lowered himself down to his hands and knees, and found a fair hiding spot at the edge of the tree line. He secreted himself and his gear tight against the trunk of an oak tree surrounded by viny epiphyte and wild fern, and he slid his brown pack in front of his body to disrupt his outline. Only when he was comfortable that he was secure in his location did he pull out his binoculars and scan the property in front of him.

The rain had stopped and the sun had come out, cooking the water in the air and making for oppressive humidity, especially here on the floor of the rainforest. Dom had trouble focusing his optics through the haze, but after some work he saw two big and old black Ford Expeditions parked on a dirt drive and facing away from the main house. Dom knew there was no paved road system on this island, but from EagleView he’d seen a few crisscrossing dirt tracks running through the jungle.

Two men stood at the dock that jutted out into the inlet. Next to them, a pair of white speedboats bobbed in the water. The men wore light khaki shorts and linen shirts, but Dom could see big black Heckler & Koch G3 rifles hanging from their shoulders. Another pair of men strolled the grounds in the distance, and they also wore G3s.

Dom felt certain there would be a lot more than four armed guards, but he had only a three-quarters view of the rear of the property.

On the far side of the colonial mansion and only barely in view from his position in the trees to the east, he saw a kennel with large dogs inside. He thought they were German shepherds or Belgian Malinois; either way, he was certain they were part of the property’s defense.

His initial scan of the windows of the building had turned up no signs of Ethan Ross, but from the defensive posture of the location, he had a strong suspicion the Venezuelans felt the need to protect something inside the house.

He checked in with Adara on the satellite phone, swatted at some bugs crawling up and down his arms, drank some warm water from his canteen, and settled in to his hide. He fully expected to be here at least twenty-four hours, so he tried to make himself as comfortable as possible in his hide site next to the oak tree.