Metzler said, “You get in, how do you snatch and grab and get out?”
“You’ve been there. What sits on the roof?”
Metzler nodded. “Raab’s chopper.”
“Exactly. With help from someone who really knows the coastal patrols, and from what Doctor Hall said, her uncle just might be the man. We make a surreptitious entry, then I can get a small team the rest of the way. I know that area and the Facility maybe better than anyone. I ran the entire security operation there for eighteen months. I was there only a few days ago. Since we don’t have an airdrop team, the boat is the only viable way in. From the Silver Strand to where we’d need to go ashore is a very short run. Come in late from out to sea and it’s doable.”
Metzler turned to Rainee. “This might be for real, if your uncle is cooperative.”
“He will be, I’m sure. He’s an old seadog. My family has always believed he’s involved in smuggling relatives of his woman in Peru into the States. Spends a lot of time there. He could tell you everything you want to know about the coastal patrols, the surveillance.”
Metzler said, “Doesn’t mean he’ll help us.”
Rainee said, “I think he’ll do pretty much whatever I ask of him. He’s still at war, never really came home. I’m the only family member who stayed in touch with him and he likes and respects me a lot.”
A moment of dead silence. It was a wild idea, maybe totally insane, but, being the only idea with big potential, it grew on them quickly.
“How many men would you need to pull something like this off?” Rainee asked Keegan.
“This is plenty right here. Fewer the better. What kind of boat are we looking at?”
“If it’s the same one he had last time I was down there two years ago—it’s a highly upgraded thirty-five-foot Sea Ray Sundancer.”
“Upgraded how?”
Rainee nodded. “It’s a three twenty with twin three-hundred-horse engines that, he likes to brag, he’s kicked up a notch or two. He says it’ll outrun most anything he needs to run from.”
Rainee turned to Metzler. “What are you thinking?”
“I like it. But your contacts have to be solid.”
“They’re as solid as they come.”
They listened to Keegan outline the plan. He knelt down and used a stick to draw the coast, an X to locate the Facility south of Tijuana. “We get ashore, the easiest way to get into the Facility and take it is with someone who can get through the sophisticated security setup. There’s a compound less than a mile away where one of Raab’s associates lives. Doctor Vereen.” Rainee said she knew him and that he’d lost his license right after the hearings. Keegan said, “Well, he’s prospering. We grab him, we’re in.”
The small, desperate commando team formed on the dark bank of the river that the Army Corps of Engineers had refused to call a river.
“We need to get moving,” Metzler said. “Some of the guys in the camp have vehicles near the park. We’ll rent from them.”
After Metzler and Keegan went to find a vehicle, Duran and Mora walked off and got into a heated discussion nearby.
Rainee went to join in. “What’s going on?” Rainee asked.
Mora said, “Duran’s not buying Keegan’s reversal.”
“I’m not saying I don’t buy it, but it happened pretty damn fast. One minute he’s their top guy, the next he’s ready to take the whole thing down. I’m just saying, something doesn’t smell right to me.”
35
“It’s pretty fast and dramatic,” Rainee agreed. “But that’s how it was at the safe house. I pushed him to a place he didn’t want to visit, but it’s what I had to do. And this is similar. He’s going through a lot. I buy it because I’ve been witnessing it. True believers are the most likely to switch allegiances, or religions, and make a radical change if there is what they perceive as a major betrayal or lie.”
Duran nodded. “I’m sure that’s right but, being a bit paranoid—”
“A bit,” Mora said. “Like they say, paranoia will destroya.”
“You aren’t a little paranoid in this world, then you aren’t conscious,” Duran shot back, then turned to Rainee. “At least let me get my negative theory out in the open. Isn’t that supposed to be good therapy?”
Rainee gave him a sardonic smile. “Depends. But in many cases, it can, I imagine, be helpful. Let’s hear it.”
“Look, I’m not—what I think doesn’t mean anything, but it’s what—”
“You going to say something,” Mora interjected, “or just make excuses?”
Duran said, “Keegan is a very big deal. He’s the man. The Urbanwolf is what a lot of people call him. A top-drawer mission-driven operator. And he’s smart. And killing people isn’t something bothers him all that much. So this change, his suddenly getting a new religion—maybe it’s what it seems. Maybe he’s got another game behind the scenes.”
Mora said, “Here we go. Duran can never just say things direct. The man needs a prologue bigger than the goddamn novel. Get to it. We don’t have all night.”
Duran said, “Keegan’s mission was to get you to talk Metzler into coming in out of the dark. That is, getting you and Metzler to the Facility. Maybe, being the tactical guy he is, and the one putting together teams all over the country to take down the government, maybe he’s found a simple way to do it given the circumstances. He can’t just grab you and Metzler and call down a chopper. So he figured out a way that we’ll help him do his mission. Once he learned about that boat . . . ” Duran shrugged.
Mora said, “Doc, I know Duran on some level is a little nuts, as we all are, but he sometimes, not often, but sometimes makes sense. What do you think about the possibility that Keegan is gaming us big time?”
“I don’t like the idea,” Rainee said. “But it’s an interesting one nevertheless. But we really don’t have much choice but to trust him. If we’re wrong, we’re wrong. We’ll have to deal with that.”
Duran’s “paranoia” had a nasty bit of logic to it. She thought he was wrong, but she’d been around the block too many times to completely dismiss him.
“He gets us away from this camp, out of the area,” Duran said, “he can communicate in ways we can’t. He could lead us into a trap. Have a Blacksnake team waiting down the road.”
Rainee said, “I don’t think so. But Keegan is the only play we have. You can choose to go with us and accept the risks, which will be great all around, or refuse and wait until some Blacksnake team hunts you down. You’re free not to go.”
That ended the discussion.
PART THREE
36
The vehicle Metzler obtained turned out to be the home of two men in the camp, a VW van parked near the camp.
Keegan had plenty of cash in his backpack and paid the owner of the VW van a thousand dollars for its use.
The van, the owner informed them, might be forty years old but had an up-to-date registration and plates.
They followed the owner and his friend though the woods to the Maywood River Front Park a hundred yards from where the camp was.
The owner—a guy they referred to as Walrus because of his outrageous mustache—wanted them to give him a call when they were finished with the van so he could come get it. Metzler gave what they used to call a “burn” phone, but one that was untraceable and would self-destruct after a programmed number of uses. Usually two or three.
The owner and his buddy then removed their personal belongings and took down two surfboards that were strapped to the top of the van, both of them the worse for wear.
Loaded down with their worldly goods, the two men headed back to the camp and the newly formed commando squad got in and left well before dawn, Keegan at the wheel, Rainee next to him in the passenger seat, the others in back. The van smelled of old pot and bad food.
Rainee tried to call her uncle but he didn’t pick up. But with the contact made, Keegan was able to confirm he was within a fifteen-mile radius of his home on the Silver Strand. She left a message to call the number immediately.
The issue of what to do if he wasn’t there was discussed and the general conclusion was that they’d have to steal a boat from somebody.
“Let’s hope that isn’t necessary,” Metzler said. “But this is a one-shot deal. We have no alternative.”
The freeways leading into and around L.A. were already shut down around the center of town and they made no attempt to get on the 405 until they cleared the L.A. area.
They took Slauson and then turned onto Sepulveda, where, this late and with all the trouble, traffic was thin, something one rarely saw on a California street anywhere near L.A.
“What’s the best way to get around checkpoints?” Keegan asked.
“Take El Camino Real,” Rainee said. “We’ll pick up the 5 for a short distance at Del Mar Heights. Then hit the split and take the 805 all the way down through the hills east of San Diego. Then exit on Palm Avenue west. It becomes the Silver Strand Boulevard. That way, we’ll miss all the checkpoints on the 15 and the 5.”
In spite of her efforts, Rainee found herself obsessing over Keegan’s real intention. And the more she thought about it, and about how fast Keegan had suddenly come up with the idea of a commando raid, the more disturbing, as Duran’s fears now became hers. She figured Mora was equally suspect. But there was no stopping it now, whatever Keegan had in mind.
“Be careful of lights and speed,” Metzler said, his voice a bit more of a command than a suggestion.
Keegan didn’t respond immediately. Then he said, “Hey, it’s not like I’m going to threaten any land-speed records with this thing.”
The idea of getting stopped by police, the van filled with armed ex-soldiers who believed they couldn’t afford to get taken in for any reason, was something Rainee tried not to imagine.
But every time a motorcycle approached from behind, or at an intersection, that even resembled a cop, she got tight.
Rainee began to process the madness of the past twenty-four hours. The rabbit hole was deep. Getting kidnapped by her former patient only to discover not only was he majorly enhanced, he was part of something very big—something Lester Raab was a major part of.
And now she, too, was part of it. And she was finding out that her missing patients were involved and apparently many had been trained up as snipers to be used in their own country!
Witnessing the killing of Keegan’s “assets,” the shootout on their way to L.A., the bloody confrontation with Blacksnake, and seeing the underground army was like adding shock on top of shock.
Rainee asked, “Is Vereen involved in the Z implants?”
Keegan said, “Yes. He’s the way through the recognition system, which is state of the art. It reads your eyes, your biomarkers, skeletal measurements. It’s not something you can fool. We need somebody with access. Otherwise, we’ll have to shoot our way in and that’ll bring security forces from all over the area.”
The Silver Strand, a three-mile stretch of condos and houses with beachfront on the ocean and bay sides reaching from Coronado Island south nearly to Baja, also connected the US Naval Amphibious Base to the US Navy Communication Station.
The slow ride back to San Diego, the men behind Rainee listened to the men behind her quietly discuss how the operation might go, asking Keegan questions from time to time about the current security profile, the way they would get in from the beach, what they might run into.
Keegan knew everything about the place. He’d been there only three days ago. “Our biggest problem is getting there.”
“Hopefully my uncle will be home and his boat available,” Rainee said. “Besides, on the boat he’ll have all kinds of equipment and knowhow as far as getting undetected to the Baja coast.”
As they drove, having not slept in nearly twenty-four hours, Rainee felt herself fading. She was beyond exhaustion, yet neither Keegan nor the others showed a fall in energy or cognitive alertness.
Keegan wanted to know more about her uncle.
“Troy is one of my mother’s brothers. He’s something of the black sheep in the family. He had a rough time when he got back from the war, then disappeared for a long time. Spent some time in a prison in Costa Rica according to my father.”
“You see him often?”
“Maybe two, three times in the last five years. He’d come up to La Jolla and I’d meet him for lunch at one of his favorite restaurants.”
“What was that?”
“On the Rock. A sushi place he liked. Last time was seven or eight months ago. He’s a tough old bird with a passion for the sea and boats and he loved taking me out fishing. He was married once, maybe ten years ago. ”
They exited at Palm and then headed north from Imperial Beach as Palm turned in Silver Strand Boulevard.
It was a couple hours before daylight when they parked in a small visitor’s spot half a block from her uncle’s.
She left the van and walked to her uncle’s and rang the door bell. Nothing. She went around back to where his boat would be docked and it was gone.
“Shit!” Rainee said, staring at the empty boat dock.
Rainee was so exhausted, she knew she needed to get a nap. She went back to the van to deliver the bad news.
Keegan was there doing something on one of his devices. The others were out on some kind of recon, scouting no doubt for another boat in the event her uncle was a no-show.
“He’s probably out fishing or something. I’m going to crash for a little while. I’m wiped out.”
“We need a boat pretty quick.”
“Give him an hour or so.” She hated the idea of them stealing a boat; even worse, the chances of getting on and getting much lead time before everyone from the Coast Guard to the NSA was looking for them.
Keegan said, “I have some pills that—”
“No, thanks. I’m not good with pills.” She put the seat back and closed her eyes. “Doctors, especially combat doctors, learn early how to catnap anywhere anytime.”
“You’re going to have to take them,” Keegan said. “We need everybody at a high cognitive level for the duration of the op.”
“I will, but right now, I need ten minutes.” She got comfortable and didn’t give him any time to argue with her.
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