Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (39 page)

 
          
For
aircrew members, the eight-week TDY to Navy Fallon is a mixed blessing.
Although the base facilities are first-rate, the surrounding town is so
isolated and small that, apart from the temptation to visit one of the many
legal brothels nearby, there was little to do in Fallon for relaxation or
enjoyment. But it was a good opportunity to prepare oneself for a long
deployment at sea, where the facilities and chances for rest and relaxation
were even less available, and it was definitely some of the best flying around.
Crew members actually looked forward to Fallon’s open skies, big ranges, plenty
of live ordnance, and the chance to show the brass what you can do with the
Navy’s most modem
warplanes.                                                                       
.

 
          
It
was also a weapons smorgasbord for arms dealers and smugglers, if you had the
money and the right connections.

 
          
After
a flight into Fallon Municipal Airport, five miles northwest of the Naval Air
Station, Gregory Townsend, Henri Cazaux’s third-in-command and chief of plans
and operations, signed a lease for a large hangar, the flight crew fueled and
prepared their aged de Havilland C-8 Buffalo cargo plane for departure, and
Ysidro and his crew made preparations for their meeting.

 
          
Just
after
midnight
,
they heard the sounds of heavy truck engines approaching outside the hangar.
After an hour-long wait, undoubtedly so their counterparts could move toward
them and surround the hangar, Ysidro and Townsend were met by several men in a
Navy Humvee. Six men emerged from the big vehicle, all armed to the teeth with
M-16 rifles and military-issue Beretta automatic pistols. Two men wore Navy
utility uniforms; three others were in civilian clothes but had military
haircuts; and one, who stepped out of the front passenger side of the Humvee
and looked like the leader, looked like a civilian all the way. While two men
stood before Ysidro and Townsend, armed with M-16 rifles, two of the gunsels
herded the smuggler’s crewmen inside the de Havilland to watch them, and two
others stationed themselves at the front and rear hangar doors.

 
          
Both
Townsend and Ysidro were frisked, and their weapons taken from them. Ysidro was
heavily armed with an automatic submachine gun, two pistols, and two
knives—those were taken from him—but he was allowed to keep the aluminum
briefcase he carried, after a careful inspection. Inside the suitcase was
U.S.
cash in twenties, fifties, and one
hundreds, along with Swiss and German bearer bonds. “They brought the cash,”
the soldier reported to the civilian after checking the case for hidden
weapons.

 
          
“We’ve
been doing business a long time,” Townsend said to the leader. “We want it to
stay that way. We’ll play fair with you in return for good service. Cash for
quality goods.”

 
          
But
even then, reassuring words did not tone down the rough search he had to
undergo. Townsend carried only one gun, a Colt .45 auto pistol, along with a
Tekna three-cell flashlight—which was carefully inspected, even to the point of
unscrewing the butt cap and sliding out the batteries—and, to the gunsel’s
surprise, a sixteen-inch Bowie knife in a sheath strapped to his back, handle
down so he could draw it easily. After showing the huge knife to the others,
the gunsel rasped, “Like fuckin’
Crocodile
Dundee
.
What’s this for, bobbie?”

           
“Skinning snakes,” Townsend spat
back. “Be careful with it. It has special sentimental value.”

 
          
“From
your mother, I suppose.”

 
          
“My
father beat up and killed my mother when I was a child,” Townsend said in a
conversational, matter-of-fact tone. “I took that knife from Mohammar Kaddafi’s
bedroom during a botched SAS assassination mission. Three of my best soldiers
were killed on that raid, and the bastard wasn’t even home.” He leaned forward,
and in a low, ghostly tone of voice, said, “I was so upset I resigned from the
SAS, returned home, got drunk, and sliced off my father’s head with that
knife.”

 
          
The
soldier didn’t know if Townsend was telling the truth, but one look at his
crocodile’s smile and he decided not to make any more smart comments. He placed
all the weapons and gear inside the front seat of the Humvee and backed away
without further comment.

 
          
Relieved
of his weapons and gear, Townsend took a moment to carefully study the men
around him. They all looked like professional soldiers, although he noticed how
quickly and easily they relaxed when Ysidro’s and his own weapons were
confiscated. If the gunsels knew anything about unarmed combat, they would know
that a professional soldier never relaxed, even with ten-versus-two odds. Two
of the Navy men in uniform were known to Ysidro and Townsend, but the rest were
strangers, which Townsend didn’t like. “Who the hell are these blokes? We
agreed only us four at the setup.”

 
          
“That
was before you asked for the
heavy
stuff, Townsend.” Crenshaw laughed. “Our first deal was easy—six thousand
pounds of waste ammonium nitrate and perchlorate. Hell, the Navy dumps at least
six thousand pounds a day of waste chemicals and explosives into open pits out
here—drink the well water around here for a couple years and if you fart you
blow your ass off.”

 
          
“All
right, let’s get on with it,” Townsend said impatiently. “Perchlorate and
hydrazine we can get anywhere—the state of
Nevada
practically gives the shit away. You got
the rest of it?”

 
          
“What
I’m telling you, bobbie, is that the prize is gonna be worth the price.”
Crenshaw turned to the guard at the front hangar door, who made a signal with a
flashlight. Soon two five-ton utility trucks, painted Navy gray with
desert-camouflaged canvas tops over the cargo beds, rumbled toward them. When
the trucks pulled up to the group and the hangar doors were closed, Crenshaw
stepped behind the first truck and flipped open the canvas cover on the back,
and Townsend jumped up on the back of the truck to examine the contents. There
were eight 55-gallon drums marked
high
explosive,
and four drums marked
flammable.
He found an opener tool in the bed of the truck and opened each screw
opening of the first eight drums, and the unmistakable acidic-aluminum-blood
smell of aluminum perchlorate filtered out. He inspected the last four drums,
this time mixing two ounces of the liquid in the second barrel with a pinch of
the powder in the first set of barrels in a small plastic tube. After swirling
the mixture in the tube, he carefully held a lighter to the opening of the
tube, and a long cylinder of blue fire shot out with a loud
pop
.

 
          
He
repeated the test with all four barrels, satisfied that he had the good stuff.
Hydrazine and aluminum perchlorate were two highly explosive compounds all by
themselves, but mixed together they formed a thick, unstable vapor that, mixed
with oxygen and ignited with a spark, created a huge, violent explosion
hundreds of times more powerful than gasoline or TNT. “Drove all this way
across the desert at night with simple nylon ropes securing these barrels, did
you?” Townsend asked as he stepped out of the truck. He knew that there was
enough aluminum perchlorate and hydrazine in that truck to once and for all
bring down one of the
World
Trade
Center
towers. “You’re either braver or stupider
than I suspected.”

 
          
“Not
as stupid as you two are, Townsend,” Crenshaw said, motioning with glee at the
twin-engined de Havilland cargo plane. “We got here in one piece. Let’s see how
brave you two are when you gotta fly outta here in that piece-of-shit cargo
plane. You opened the drums. One wisp of hydrazine lingering in the air or near
those engines when you start them up—
poof.
You blow the hydrazine, scatter the perchlorate, make an even bigger boom.” Townsend
had to nod at that last remark—yes, it was going to be tricky going.

 
          
“These
are the real prizes, gents.” Crenshaw stepped over to the second truck and
opened a canvas flap, revealing several different oddly shaped weapons. There
were eight devices in all, all about four to five feet long. “Took some time
collecting these bad boys,” he said proudly. “All Gulf War veterans, all fully
operational. Three Mark-77 napalm canisters, three CBU-55 fuel-air explosives
units, and six CBU-59 cluster bombs units. Best stuff in the arsenal.”

 
          
“Very
good,” Townsend said. It was indeed an impressive haul—perhaps too impressive.
The Navy didn’t let ordnance like this just lie around. Crenshaw was a top
munitions maintenance man, but even he had to carefully account for stuff like
this. “My flashlight, if you please?”

 
          
“Suit
yourself,” Crenshaw said, motioning to one of his men, who handed Townsend his
flashlight. Townsend jumped up onto the truck, placed the flashlight in his
teeth, and carefully examined each weapon.

 
          
The
Mark-77 was little more than a large blunt-ended gas tank filled with chemical
beads, which Townsend checked. Once filled with gasoline, the beads dissolved
to form napalm, which could blanket nearly an entire city block with a sheet of
fire. The CBU-59, with the words
contents:
live loaded blu-77/b
stenciled on the sides, were metal containers that,
when released and opened by a barometric nose fuze, scattered seven hundred
APAM (anti-personnel, antimaterial) bomblets across a four-hundred-foot oval
swath. The one-pound baseball-sized bomblets were filled with steel dartlike
projectiles that could mutilate anything—or anyone—in their path. Some of the
bomblets exploded on contact, while others had timer fuzes which would detonate
them minutes or even hours later.

 
          
The
real prize was the fuel-air explosives bombs. The CBU-55 canisters were simply
very large fuel tanks that would be filled with the hydrazine and aluminum
perchlorate, the stuff in the other truck. Behind the endplate of each canister
was a dispenser holding three BLU-73 bomblets. When released, the two compounds
would mix, the canister would automatically spray the target area with a large
cloud of explosive gas, and then the parachute-retarded bomblets would ignite
the gas—the resulting explosion would be equivalent to ten 2,000-pound bombs
going off at once. Pound for pound, the CBU-55 was the most powerful
non-nuclear bomb in the American military arsenal. In limited service in the
Vietnam War because the dense foliage dissipated its explosive effects, it was
the weapon of choice in the wide-open deserts of
Iraq
. Officially it was used only to “clear
minefields,” but it was used with terrible effect on large masses of Iraqi
troops, squashing and incinerating anything within five hundred yards of ground
zero. Its devastating killing power was considered -unethical, almost on a par
with chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons.

 
          
“Very
impressive, Crenshaw,” Townsend said, swinging the flashlight beam into
Crenshaw’s face, then snapping it off. Acquiring the fuel-air explosive weapons
would make Cazaux very happy indeed. “I hope bearer bonds are acceptable. They
have been in the past.”

 
          
“As
long as you got my share in U.S. greenbacks in there, I don’t care about that
shit,” Crenshaw said. “The officers want the fuckin’ Kraut bonds, not me. Now
get the fuck down and—”

 
          
Distracted
by the flashlight beam, Crenshaw didn’t see what Townsend was doing until he
had nearly finished doing it—he had unscrewed the butt cap off the three-cell flashlight,
removed the two rear D-cell batteries, screwed them together, and aimed it at
him. Before Crenshaw could raise his submachine gun, Townsend pressed a button,
and with a barely audible
pufff,
a
two-inch razor-edged arrow pierced his chest, sliced through his heart,
deflected off a rib, and ricocheted around inside his body like a pinball,
slicing up blood vessels and lungs in the blink of an eye. He turned and shot
darts into the first truck driver and two more gunsels standing nearby, then leaped
off the truck. Everything had happened so fast that the driver of the first
truck was still idly sitting behind his wheel when Townsend ran over to his
door, put the weapon to his left temple, and fired a bolt into his brain.

 
          
Ysidro
disdained the use of any sort of fancy James Bond-type weapons. As soon as he
saw Crenshaw go down, Ysidro was on the move. He bashed the heavy metal
briefcase into the soldier nearest him, grabbed his gun as he went down, and
started pumping bullets at anything that moved, remembering not to shoot toward
the explosives- laden trucks and counting on Townsend to kill anyone near him.
The massacre of the three soldiers near him was complete in a matter of
seconds. The guard at the rear of the hangar took off running as soon as he saw
Ysidro sprinting after him, but luckily the back door to the hangar was locked.
Ysidro dropped him with a bullet in his chest from fifty feet, then stepped up
to him and put a second bullet in his brain.