Eyes of the Hammer (The Green Berets) (13 page)

3:00 P.M.

Riley felt that the isolation was going well so far. Most of the team members were wading through the information Westland and Stevens had brought with them, sorting out those facts they needed for both their area of expertise and as background for the overall mission. All the maps were posted and the isolation area was internally secure. Pike had arranged with the post commander to secure the outside of the compound with military police.

Riley glanced around the isolation area a little nervously, steeling himself to go over and talk to the new detachment commander. Riley disliked personal confrontations. He'd spent his childhood avoiding conflict, and even the possibility of having to argue with someone made him nervous.

Riley hadn't had a chance to talk with Captain Vaughn one-on-one so far. Too much had happened, and Riley had been kept busy trying to get the team on track to start mission planning. Now he knew he'd have to make the time. The whole operation was moving much faster than he had originally expected. Based on the intelligence and targeting information, the first split team was projected to go on a mission in two or three days.

Riley knew it was time to start making some hard decisions regarding mission planning and organization—decisions that were technically the captain's to make. Equally important, he also wanted to get an idea of what the captain thought and felt about the whole mission.

With a sigh, Riley got up and wandered across the room in the general direction of Captain Vaughn. He hovered near the captain's desk until Vaughn glanced up and noticed him. "Excuse me, sir, but I thought we might sit down and discuss some things privately."

Vaughn nodded. "That's a good idea. I've been wanting to talk to you about the way things are going."

Riley pointed. "We can use the general's office. He's over at the Pentagon trying to coordinate some of the support we need." Riley led the way into the small room and closed the door. He figured he needed to be the one to begin things. He perched on the edge of the general's desk while the captain took a chair.

"Sir, first off, you need to know that I'm not used to working under a team leader. I've been the commander of this team since I got my warrant, going on a little over a year. Before that I was an E-7 team sergeant, so I was in control on the enlisted side then. This situation, with you in command and me being the XO, is as new to me as it is to you. I think we can work together to make the transition for the two of us and the team as smooth as possible."

Riley was trying to be nice. Although having a commissioned officer as detachment commander was new to him as a warrant officer, being in Special Forces wasn't. It was all new to the young captain. Riley was hoping that Vaughn would want to utilize his experience; in return, Riley was willing to teach and support the captain.

Vaughn's reply indicated to Riley that either he hadn't quite understood what Riley was offering or wasn't interested. "I hear what you're saying. I can understand that it might be hard for you to accept that I'm in command. But that's the way it is. I know I don't have any Special Forces experience, but I spent four years in the 82d Airborne Division and had a successful company command there. So I know what's going on. Also, I did well in the qualification course. I was the top officer graduate in my class."

Riley looked the captain in the eyes. "Sir, you're going to find things are a bit different over here than they were in the 82d. I spent two years in the eighty-deuce when I was enlisted and I know what it's like. We operate differently here in SF, and the Q-course doesn't teach you everything you need to know."

Vaughn shook his head. "I don't see the need to operate differently on this mission. It looks very straightforward to me. Just like a mission out of Ranger school. We go in, verify the target, and then call in some firepower to blast."

Riley rubbed his forehead. I'm glad my mother taught me patience, he thought. Of all the people to get saddled with—a former member of the 82d Airborne gang. Riley had found an amazing consistency among the officers from that unit. A frontal lobotomy must be part of the in-processing when a new officer reported to the division. On the other hand, the enlisted soldiers were super. They would do damn near anything they were asked. Which was part of the problem. They didn't question it when their officers told them to do something stupid. And Riley had seen a lot of stupid things ordered by the officers of the neighboring 82d Airborne Division in his seven years at Fort Bragg.

"Sir, to be frank, the first difference between here and at division is that this team operates alone. It's just you and the eleven of us. Second, things are never as clear-cut as they appear. This mission appears straightforward, but I have bad feelings about it."

Riley could see Vaughn trying to decide whether the eleven-to-one thing had been a veiled threat. Apparently he couldn't figure it out because he latched onto the second remark. "What kind of bad feelings are you talking about?"

"Sir, I tend to wonder why about things. Like in this case, I wonder why the Colombian government is fingering some cocaine labs. The intel that CIA woman, Westland, brought seems to check out with the imagery. It looks like we've got two good targets. But all the background stuff we've studied in the last couple of hours on Colombia says that the government and the drug cartel are in a sort of alliance. Kind of a 'you don't bother me and I won't bother you' arrangement. So why the change all of a sudden?"

Vaughn pondered that for a few moments. Riley expected to see smoke pouring out of the captain's ears any second. "You've got a point. But I also don't think it's likely that we'll find out. Obviously there are some internal maneuverings going on down there that we don't know about. The key thing to be worried about as far as we're concerned is getting ambushed. The first mission is going to be key. If it's a setup, that's the one that will tell."

Riley's estimation of his new team leader went up slightly. The man had hit the nail on the head. "That's exactly what's been bugging me, sir. The first one is going to be critical. Since we're going in split team I suggest we stagger these first two hits. Hold off on sending the second team in until the first one is out successfully."

Vaughn concurred. "That's a good idea. No sense in endangering all of us at the start. Kind of like sending a recon element across a danger area, like I was taught in Ranger school. I agree."

Riley nodded. "I recommend that I take in the first split team and you take the second, sir. We can work out the makeup of the split teams later today."

Vaughn agreed. "OK. When the general gets back I'll see what he thinks about it."

BOGOTA

4:3O P.M.

President Alegre, throughout the bustle of the day's business, had kept one thought in the back of his mind—the situation with the Ring Man. He considered the recent developments. The Americans had the locations of the first two targets by now. They had to act quickly. Laboratories moved occasionally. The facilities were just a collection of shacks. Keeping drugs worth many millions of dollars in one location too long was a risky proposition in Colombia. The country had the highest crime rate per capita in the world.

Alegre shook his head as he considered the larger picture. He truly believed the drugs were the Americans' fault. It was their organized crime that controlled the overseas market, and the American people who created the demand. Alegre felt his people were just trying to make a living. Unfortunately, the use of drugs among Colombians was growing at an alarming rate. The international political fallout was also damaging. The Americans had never stopped putting the pressure on his administration to do something. Alegre knew he could have ignored the American pressure and nothing significant would have happened, but he had other factors to consider.

In four days the United Nations was going to vote on the border dispute with Venezuela over the Gulf of Venezuela. Although the gulf was almost entirely enclosed by Venezuelan land, Colombia still maintained a claim on a third of it by nature of Colombian territory on La Guajira peninsula. The potential oil and mineral rights from the ocean bottom there were forecast to be in the billions. With the backing of the United States, Colombia might be able to ram its claim through the United Nations.

With the economic boom that claim would bring, Alegre felt that Colombia could finally throw off the money leash the drug cartel held on the people. Without the carrot of mining rights in the Gulf of Venezuela to offer the economy, he knew he would never be able to fully destroy the cartel.

Another factor, of a more personal nature, was the fact that if the cartel was willing to gun down schoolchildren in America, they wouldn't hesitate to kill a president in Colombia. Alegre knew he was in office only at the tolerance of the drug cartel. He didn't like that setup. He believed the best defense was a good offense. Since being elected, he had bided his time until the situation was right, placating the cartel. The time to fight back appeared to be now.

For the present, Alegre would work with the Ring Man. Their immediate goals were the same. Alegre shivered briefly. If the Ring Man knew Alegre's ultimate objective, there would be blood spilled in the presidential palace.

Alegre sighed. It was all so complicated. Playing people against each other. Trying to manipulate the situation for the country's good. There was a price to be paid for everything.

FORT BELVOIR, VIRGINIA

8:30 P.M.

Alone in the small, two-man room they shared, Powers sat on his bunk unperturbed by his friend's agitation. "It's his neck. Let him hang himself."

Riley shook his head in exasperation. "Come on, compadre. That isn't the way it's supposed to work."

Powers leaned back on his bunk contentedly. "Listen, Dave. Stop worrying about everyone else's problems for a minute. If the little Napoleon wants to split the team up into the new and old guys, that makes sense to me. I'd rather go in with you than with him."

Riley had had a feeling that Powers wasn't going to be too upset with Vaughn's proclamation on the makeup of the split teams. Vaughn had split the twelve-man team in half. The six old members of 055 would go together under Riley's command on the first mission. The six new additions would assume the second mission under the captain's command. What really irked Riley was that the captain hadn't even consulted him. He thought they had had an understanding after their conversation earlier this afternoon. Obviously, he'd been wrong about that.

Riley knew that Powers was also less than pleased with the captain's leadership technique, or rather lack of it. In Special Forces the team sergeant as a minimum should have been consulted before such a decision was made. Riley and Powers had always worked together, bouncing ideas off of each other, consulting the rest of the team where feasible. The idea was to maximize the considerable brainpower every team possessed. With his solo decision Vaughn had acted as though he was still in the 82d Airborne.

Powers continued. "It splits the MOSs exactly. Each split team got one medic, one commo man, one engineer, and one weapons man." Powers sat up and looked at his old friend. "And one officer."

"You know that the team sergeant is supposed to go with the team leader," Riley retorted.

Powers began getting irritated. "Bullshit. That's not written anywhere. Technically, the team sergeant always takes the other half of the team from the captain."

"That's before we had warrants, and the XO was just a lieutenant who couldn't find his ass with both hands."

Powers slammed his hand on the desk next to his bed. "Goddamnit, Dave! Listen. Alexander is a good man. He can take care of the captain. This gives our split team a much better survival chance. We got the guys we worked with all year. Everyone knows the SOPs."

"What about the other guys going with the captain?"

"So what do you want to do? Reduce the survivability of both split teams?"

Riley paused and reconsidered. Powers did have a point there. Riley sighed. What was he getting so worked up about? Deep inside he was happy to have people he knew and trusted on his part of the split team. Plus it opened up more possibilities for infiltration.

Powers wasn't through and was obviously thinking along the same lines. "The bottom line on it is the infiltration. You seem to be forgetting that. Alexander's the only free-fall parachutist out of all the new guys. And he's not free-fall jumpmaster qualified. I'm the only free-fall jumpmaster you got and, since we're thinking of going in from thirty thousand feet on the first mission, I think you're going to need me. The second mission just about calls for going in by Combat Talon with their ass in the grass at two hundred fifty feet. All the new guys can handle that, but they sure as hell ain't going to be able to HAHO in on the first one. Anyway, you ain't got no choice, partner. It's got to be the way the captain set it up."

Powers reconsidered. "Well, maybe it doesn't have to be that way and I don't like the way he did it either, but the end result would have been the same even if he did consult with you or me."

Riley nodded reluctantly. Looking at it from that perspective he realized he was more pissed at the lack of respect the captain had shown him than at the actual decision. He decided to put this one in the past and drive on.