Brown, Dale - Independent 04 (55 page)

 
          
He
lowered his night-vision binoculars and listened for the helicopter—nothing.
“Station three, clear,” he reported.

 
          
“Copy.”

 
          
The
guard relaxed a bit, letting the scope dangle on its neck strap and crossing
the Colt AR-15 assault rifle, the semiautomatic version of the standard Army
M-16, in his arms. Bedminster had very little air traffic at night, but the
estate was just a few miles from Interstate 78 and State Route 206, so they got
visitors once in a while. Interstate 78 was the main drag between
Newark
and
Allentown
, and choppers and light planes often
followed the interstate at night when—

 
          
A
sudden sound made the guard alert. He put the AR-15 in his hands and dropped to
one knee, scanning the treeline for any hint of motion. He knew from Army
training that at night the edges of the eye picked up motion better, so he
carefully scanned the treeline. He was fully exposed where he was standing—too
far away from the house, but close enough to be illuminated by the light from a
few windows and too far from the trees to take cover. He reached for the
scope...

 
          
“What
the hell are you doing out in the open like this, asshole?” The guard was so
startled he nearly fell over into the wet grass. Tomas Ysidro had succeeded in
stepping out of the front door of the house right up beside him, and he didn’t
hear a thing. The guard shot to his feet, swinging the AR-15’s muzzle around at
Ysidro, who caught the barrel of the rifle and yanked it out of his hands.
“Jesus, Vaccarro, what’s with you?” Ysidro asked, giving the rifle back- '

 
          
“Thought
I heard a noise, sir.”

 
          
“Yeah,
it was me, burping and farting all the way from the house,” Ysidro said.
Cazaux’s third-in-command was carrying a sidearm holstered in a quick-draw
shoulder rig, but his hands were full with a burger and a mug of coffee. “Now
get the hell out of the light.”

 
          
“Yes,
sir.”

 
          
“What
about that chopper?”

 
          
“Heard
it for about thirty seconds, well to the south,” the guard said. “Didn’t hear
it approach. Big one.”       .

 
          
“Good
call—it helps to keep the whole detail on their toes,” Ysidro said. “I’ll send
one of the new guys out to spell you in about—”

 
          
This
time they both heard it—a loud
snap!
of a twig, on the treeline. Ysidro pushed the guard hard to the right to get
him out of the light, the coffee and burger went flying, and a SIG Sauer P226
9-millimeter automatic was in his hands in the blink of an eye. “Call it in,
damn it!” Ysidro said in a loud whisper.

 
          
“Station
three, intruder east on the treeline,” the guard radioed. He took cover behind
a tall bush and retrieved the nightvision scope, quickly scanning the—

 
          
He
saw a lone figure, running toward the house beside the gravel driveway. The
guard raised his AR-15, sighted with the scope—then recognized the runner.
“Mick, damn it, what the hell are you doing?” the guard whispered into his
radio. The running man dropped to the ground, waving his rifle at the treeline.
“Mick, answer up!”

 
          
“What?”
the second guard radioed back—the first guard could see him talk into his left
sleeve while holding his earpiece in his left ear. “Was that you talking,
Tommy, you asshole?”

 
          
“Was
that you on the treeline?” the first guard radioed back. He saw the guard named
Mick lower his head in nervous exasperation. He lifted his sleeve mike to his
lips. “Station three, secure. Stand by and I’ll clear the treeline.” He saw the
second guard start to get to his feet, angrily brushing himself off and
shouldering his rifle on its strap. “Mick, stay put until I clear the—”

 
          
Tommy
saw the second guard named Mick suddenly turn toward the treeline, and seconds
later he heard another sound—but this one wasn’t a twig.

 
          
An
unknown voice shouted, “Freeze! Federal agents!”

 
          
Mick
fumbled with his rifle, but he didn’t get it up to his waist to try a shot from
the hip before he heard three quick
pop-pop-pop's
from a suppressed automatic three-burst submachine gun, and Mick went down.

 
          
“Intruders,
treeline east—federal agents!” Tommy radioed. He scanned the treeline and saw
only one figure, dressed completely in black, with a military-style helmet,
ballistic face mask under a pair of night-vision goggles, black fatigues, and
black body armor with the words u.s.
marshal
on the front under a combat harness. “I only see one, treeline east! I—”

 
          
The
greenish image of the marshal suddenly disappeared in a puff of fire, and the
guard dropped the night-vision scope and rubbed the pain from his eyes. The
security supervisor inside the mansion had activated the motion-sensing land
mines that ringed the compound, and the first marshal was history.

 
          
“Lost
contact with
Davis
on the ground team at target thirteen,” the airborne assault leader
reported. “I heard a challenge, then shots, then nothing.”

 
          
“I’d
call that an ‘officer needs assistance,’ ” Deputy Chief Marshal William Landers
said. “Should’ve known it would be target thirteen—my unlucky number.” Dressed
in full body armor and protective headgear, Landers was aboard one of the three
CV-22 PAVE HAMMER tilt-rotor aircraft just outside Cazaux’s Bedminster home.
Landers was the number-two man in the
U.S.
Marshals Service, a twenty-one-year
veteran, an experienced field agent, and former commander of the Marshals’
Special Operations Group, also known as SOG. “Let’s go in using assault plan
Alpha.” The PAVE HAMMER, formerly one of the Hammerheads’ antismuggling
aircraft and still sporting its distinctive Department of Border Security high-visibility
orange markings, lifted off from the interstate rest-stop parking lot and
leaped into the sky, rotating its wingtip engine nacelles so the two large
rotors were pointing at a 45- degree angle for more forward speed.

 
          
From
other staging areas nearby, two more CV-22 tilt- rotor aircraft lifted off at
the same time and raced for the estate. There were several large homes in the
Bedminster area described by the unknown informant during his brief phone call,
so the Marshals Service had immediately dispatched several agents from the
New York City
,
Philadelphia
, and
Newark
offices into the area to start surveillance
on each suspected residence. Unfortunately, it had taken the apparent death of
a marshal to find the right one. Now, the three CV-22 aircraft, each carrying
ten fully armed SOG agents, were encircling Henri Cazaux’s mansion in the hopes
of capturing the world’s most wanted criminal.

 
          
Landers’
CV-22 took only two minutes to approach the estate. Flying low and slow, the
hybrid airplane-helicopter slowed by swiveling the rotors to full helicopter
position. When it was about five hundred yards from the mansion, it activated
its bank of four 3,000-candlepower NightSun searchlights and turned them onto
the front door of the mansion. Landers, standing between the pilot’s and
copilot’s seats, watched their approach through the CV-22’s telescopic TV
camera. At two hundred yards, Landers clicked on the public address speaker:
“Attention. This is the
U.S.
Marshals Service. We have a federal search
warrant and demand entry. Come out of the house immediately with your hands
up.”

 
          
“
U.S.
Marshals, my ass,” Tomas Ysidro said to
Henri Cazaux. “Let’s take care of those motherfuckers ourselves, Henri.”

 
          
The
two terrorists finished donning their own assault uniforms—skin-tight
protective black body suit, Reactor combat gloves, balaclava hood, black Hi-Tec
trail sneakers, and a combat ALICE harness laden with pistols, knives,
grenades, and other tools and devices. “Can’t risk it, especially not with
assault aircraft out there,” Cazaux said.

 
          
“We
play it right, one of those choppers could be ours.”

 
          
“I
said, we cannot risk it,” Cazaux snapped. “The time to play action hero will
come, Tomas, and I want you with me when it comes. But for now, we need to
survive to execute the rest of our plan. Execute the escape plan and we will
meet in the Catskill ranch in six hours. We’re going after a prize much greater
than a few tilt-rotor aircraft,” Cazaux said, extending a hand. Ysidro took it,
then they embraced.
“Bonne chance
,
mon ami. ”

 
          
“Fuck
you too, my friend,” Ysidro said in return. He pulled up his balaclava, then
turned to his security supervisor. “Deactivate the land mines for ten seconds
after you see the
door open
light,
then turn ’em back on.” His eyes flared for an instant, punctuating his last
order: “And I want to hear plenty of fireworks out here or I’ll come back and
stuff your nuts down your throat. Hear me?”

 
          
“I
heard an explosion, then lost contact with
Davis
,” one of the other ground agents reported.
“I’m thinking the place is mined.”

 
          
“Shit,”
Landers said. “That entire front lawn might be mined—that takes care of our
landing zone.” He turned to another person watching the scene below next to
him. “Thoughts, Agent Harley?”

 
          
U.S.
Secret Service Agent Deborah Harley, wearing the same body armor and assault
gear as the
U.S.
Marshals— except her body armor said
treasury agent
on the front— studied the TV image carefully. “I
don’t see those guards on the rooftop anymore—we’re going to have to assume the
roof and that balcony over the front entrance are booby- trapped too. Let’s—”

 
          
“Unit
One, this is Three, four motorcycles leaving the house at high speed,” one of
the other CV-22 pilots radioed. “One each cardinal direction.” Harley and
Landers picked up one of the motorcycles barreling northbound, going at least
sixty miles an hour straight for the woods.

 
          
‘Try
to stop them without killing them!” Harley shouted.

 
          
“All
units, clear to engage riders, try to interdict only, do not shoot to kill.”
Landers knew it was a useless command—anytime a weapon was used during a
mission like this, death was always a possibility, especially with the weapons
the CV-22s had. Trying to wound someone with a weapon designed to destroy an
armored vehicle or a building was sometimes just not possible.

 
          
The
pilot of Landers’ CV-22 pulled the trigger on his control stick to the first
detent, which activated the gun camera and slaved both the tilt-rotor
aircraft’s Hughes Chain Gun and the thermal sight in the CV-22’s nose to the pilot’s
line-of-sight—the forward-looking infrared sight followed the pilot’s head
movements, and the Chain Gun slaved itself to the aiming crosshairs
superimposed on a clear glass reticle in front of the pilot’s right eye. When
the crosshairs settled on a spot just a few feet in front of the motorcycle’s
tires, the pilot pulled the trigger to the second detent. A fifty-round burst
of cannon fire that sounded like a chain-saw blade cutting through the
aircraft’s aluminum skin rattled through the PAVE HAMMER aircraft.

 
          
The
motorcycle rider obviously saw the Chain Gun’s muzzle flash, because he veered
hard left as soon as the cannon fired. The motorcycle skidded on the slippery
grass, and the rider threw himself clear as he went down. The motorcycle
skidded straight ahead and was instantly turned into scrap metal by cannon
fire.

 
          
The
CV-22 pilot swooped lower. The rider rolled along the ground for several feet
before coming to rest in a halfsitting, half-prone position, shaking cobwebs
out of his head. He was wearing a dark skin-tight suit with a mask— Harley or
Landers couldn’t recognize him. “Turn facedown and spread your arms and legs,”
Landers shouted over the PA speaker when they hit the rider with the spotlight.
To the pilots, Landers said, “Hover right over him, guys. We’ll fastrope right
over him and haul him up with the rescue winch. We’d just better hope he’s not
laying right on top of a mine or we’ll—”