Brown, Dale - Independent 02 (63 page)

 
          
“He’ll
be outta here and gone before you know it,” Mario said. “These Cuchillos don’t
come in slow—they haul ass all the way.” He was watching the yellow light when
he heard a voice on the radio call out, “Mario, this is
Duncan
. Mario, come in.”

 
          
Mario
picked up the small microphone and clicked the button: “You got problems,
Dune?”

 
          
“I
hear choppers,” the voice on the other end reported. The trailing lookout
sounded nervous. “Maybe two, maybe more.”

 
          
“Are
they following the plane?”

 
          
“I
don’t know, I can’t tell. I’d bug out if I were you.” The connection went dead.
Mario and Girelli knew that that was what
Duncan
was doing right now.

 
          
“Some
lookout,” Girelli said. “The fucker’s worthless.”

 
          
“So
what do we do?”

 
          
“We
stay,” Girelli said. He raised his rifle, an M-16 with an M203 grenade launcher
attached, buckled a bag full of ammunition clips and 40 millimeter grenades
onto his belt. Mario had his own M-16 slung over his shoulder ready to go. “Two
choppers, we can handle.” He turned to Debeauchalet. “Tell your boys to get
ready.” The old Cajun guide turned and made a motion to the nearest bass boat,
and the message was quickly, wordlessly passed along. Most of Girelli’s
soldiers had small wireless radios and had already heard the brief warning
message from
Duncan
.

 
          
The
drop seemed to come out of nowhere. The smugglers heard a dull roar of engines
at high speed, then a huge, dark green shape seemed to crash out of the dark
stormy sky directly at them. They caught a glimpse of two huge propellers and a
large squat fuselage before the plane screamed overhead, barely thirty feet
above the swamp. They felt a blast of warm air, heard a loud snapping of trees
and a rush of sound—at first they thought the plane might have crashed. But
then they saw an object hit the murky water right at the very edge of the
target island, skip twice onto the bog and flip end- over-end until it came to
rest on the island. The object had a dim flashing strobe light and a long
orange streamer attached to it, but they weren’t needed—the drop was dead solid
perfect, almost in the exact center of the island. The huge plane pulled up
steeply just before hitting a grove of trees, the tree branches whipping and
snapping, and then it disappeared into the turbulent skies. Seconds later the
drop was over.

 
          
“They
did it!” Girelli said. “They hit the island dead on. Get the boys movin’,
Mario.”

 
          
Mario
was already in action . . . “Move,” he ordered into the microphone, then shut
down the radio. Girelli motioned with his rifle toward the island, and
Debeauchalet started the airboat engine up and steered the craft over to the island.

 
          
The
Fiberglass case was cracked but intact. Mario used a KA-Bar assault knife, a
leftover souvenir from his
Vietnam
days, to cut open the steel bands around
the case. Not bothering to count the heavily taped bags of white powder inside,
he quickly tossed two bags to Girelli, who stowed them in a gym bag in the
airboat. As men quickly moved in toward the tiny island, Mario began tossing
bags out to them.

 
          
“We
did
it.” Girelli was laughing. He
felt a rush, almost like a cocaine high itself. The first few bass boats
skittered off into the downpour and the darkness, moving off to pre-arranged
hiding places until the rendezvous time. Girelli was shouting orders, laughing,
oblivious to the rain pouring down on them . . .

 
          
...
And to the sound of heavy rotors moving closer until they were only a few
hundred yards away. Suddenly several five-thousand-watt searchlights stabbed
out of the maelstrom and illuminated the tiny island.

 
          
“Hammerheads.
All of you, stay exactly where you are.” The voice came over a loudspeaker. A
huge white-and-orange aircraft resembling a cargo plane but with helicopter
rotors hung over the island just fifty feet above, the rotor downwash beginning
to stir the swamp water up into a froth. And now the entire area was filled
with rotor- craft, a few black conventional-looking choppers with U.S. CUSTOMS
SERVICE emblazoned on the side, others with U.S. BORDER SECURITY FORCE and
illuminated FOLLOW ME lights on the sides. Two choppers veered off and roared
into the swamps, tracking some of the bass boats that had already picked up
their loads and were trying to make a quick getaway.

 
          
A
searchlight from one of the weird-looking choppers was on the airboat and
another was sweeping around the island—for a moment, Girelli was in total
darkness. He was stunned, amazed that the Hammerheads had moved in so quickly,
so silently, that they had surrounded the island so fast. One chopper was
moving closer, getting ready to land on the island—if he let that happen they’d
be overrun by agents. He dropped a 40-millimeter grenade into the breech of his
grenade-launcher and cocked the action.

 
          
“You
with the rifle,” the loudspeaker barked. “Drop it and stand up. Hands on your
head. Now.”

 
          
These
guys didn’t need searchlights—they must have had cameras that could see in the
dark.

 
          
For
a moment he sat frozen with indecision. He couldn’t let that chopper land . . .
All right, they could see him, but could they stop him . . . ?

 
          
Girelli
leveled the M-16 at the chopper and squeezed the trigger .. .

 
          
Aboard Lion Two-Six, the Lead Hammerheads
AV-22

 
          
Rushell
Masters had been switching back and forth between the infrared scanner’s view
on his helmet visor screen and the regular view—every time the Customs’
NightSun searchlight swept across his line of sight it wiped out his vision.
But when the Black Hawk moved further down the island to find a landing spot he
was able to use the scanner without interference. He swept the area with the
infrared scanner and found the load of drugs and a couple of smugglers crouched
near it. Both men were armed, but only one of them had raised his rifle.

 
          
“I’ve
got the cannon,” he told his copilot as he selected control of the M230 Chain
Gun and slaved it to his infrared scanner. He zoomed in on the tense body of
the smuggler, centering the crosshairs on the largest heat mass in the
picture—the man’s chest. The man was facing the Black Hawk helicopter watching
it as it eased in for landing. Then Masters saw him drop a cartridge into a
breech on the bottom part of this M-16 rifle and cock the knurled handgrip pump
action.

 
          
“You
with the rifle,” Masters called over the loudspeaker. “Drop it, stand up with
your hands on your head. Now.”

 
          
Masters
could see him look toward the AV-22 Sea Lion, the rifle still upraised toward
the Black Hawk. Masters changed from the loudspeaker switch to the command
radio button: “
Omaha
One-Seven, one suspect at your
two o’clock
, sixty yards, with a rifle and what looks
like a small grenade launcher. Shut off your light and move clear ...”

 
          
The
warning blared in Masters’ mind when he saw the smuggler with the rifle twist
one shoulder toward the Black Hawk—he was going to fire . . . He spared a few
seconds to shout, “Omaha, move
clear,
” on the radio, then reached down with his thumb to lift the safety guard on
the control stick-mounted trigger button and mashed the Chain Gun’s trigger.

 
          
But
Masters was a moment too late. Just as he lifted the safety- guard lever off
the trigger, the smuggler pulled the trigger on his rifle’s grenade launcher.
There was a bright flash of light and a round cloud of white smoke as the
weapon fired—a split second before the first thirty-millimeter shell from
Masters’ Chain Gun drilled through the smuggler’s chest.

 
          
The
grenade hit squarely on the nose of the Black Hawk helicopter, exploding on
contact and blowing the whole cockpit section into a cloud of fire. The chopper
pitched upward and to the right, flipping over backward in an impossibly tight
looping arc until the main rotor knifed into the bog on the opposite side of the
island, and the helicopter exploded.

 
          
Masters
fought the abrupt overpressure and concussion from the exploding helicopter but
was pushed down and away from the island by the blast. He managed to keep the
Sea Lion out of the swamp but his right nacelle hit a clump of trees and the
big forty-foot diameter rotor sliced through the rain-soaked branches. Masters
applied full power, tried to swing the nacelle away from the trees, but his
twin- boom tails were also looping through some nearby branches. He managed to
stabilize, hovering only a few feet above the murky water, then slowly nudged
the AV-22 clear of the trees and out into the open.

 
          
“All
Omaha
and Lion units, this is Lion Two-Six,”
Masters called over the command radio. “
Omaha
One-Seven is down. Repeat, One- Seven is
down. Two-Six is beginning rescue efforts. Suspects in the area, armed and
dangerous. Out.”

 
          
Now
hovering several dozen yards away from the island, Masters activated the
searchlight and scanned the area for survivors, but it was obvious that even if
some of the Customs agents on board had managed to jump clear, they would be
engulfed in flames that now covered almost the entire bog. He gained a bit more
altitude and began to move closer, searching the edges of the island for
survivors.

 
          
One
smuggler had pushed the body of the rifleman off the cargo case and was
dragging it to the edge of the bog, trying to get it on board an airboat
floating nearby. Masters hit him with the searchlight and slaved the Chain Gun
sights to his helmet visor sight-pointing system. As soon as the searchlight
beam hit the man he rolled over to his right side facing the Sea Lion and
raised his hands in surrender. But Masters also saw the rifle looped over his
shoulder, and was not going to hesitate again—he pulled the trigger, sending a
hundred rounds of metal-piercing shells into the man, letting loose until his
frustration was vented, his copilot yelling at him to stop, and the smuggler an
unrecognizable lump of flesh mixing with the mud. A dozen bags of white powder
could be seen ripped open and scattered about, covering the bloody corpse with
a fine white dust.

 
          
Masters,
totally exhausted, managed to withhold his fire and allow the other survivors
to crawl onto the mud island. The fires had all but died out from the destroyed
Black Hawk helicopter, and it appeared that no oil or fuel had spread on the
water. “Prepare to launch the RHIB,” Masters said, and stowed the scanner ball
and lowered the Sea Lion to the water’s surface. The rigid-hull inflatable boat
along with two Border Security Force I-Team members and three Customs Service
investigators was launched off the aft cargo ramp and a detailed search for
more survivors began.

 
          
As
Masters looked out over the devastation on that tiny island he thought back to
before the Hammerheads were formed, back to the incident that sparked the
creation of the Border Security Force. This was the second lethal firelight
that Masters had been involved in during the last few years, he thought wryly,
and even with the added firepower of the Hammerheads working for them, death
always seemed to hover over them . . .

 
          
The
first group of I-Team investigators moved up to the cargo case where Masters
had shot the two smugglers. The Customs agents had four men lying on their
stomachs, using plastic binders to tie their wrists. He could see the I-Team
member kick the rifles away from the bodies, as if the corpses would somehow
reform themselves and pick them up. “Two dead here,” the I-Team investigator
radioed back to Masters on his helmet communicator. Under the glare of the
AV-22’s searchlights the investigator scooped a bit of the white powder up from
the shattered cargo case into a vial of cobalt cyanimide, broke the capsule
inside, shook the contents and held it up to the light.