Countdown: M Day (18 page)

Time for a little follow up, I think
.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

To sit back hoping that someday, some way, someone

will make things right is to go on feeding the crocodile,

hoping he will eat you last—but eat you he will.

—Ronald Reagan

Room 227, Hotel Venezia, Puerto Cabello, Venezuela

The advantages,
Lada thought,
of playing a whore rather than just a horny girlfriend are immense. For one thing, the whore comes in contact with a great many more men, and thus information. More importantly, though, men will talk to a whore—and the fools always need to talk to someone—more openly because whores don’t matter.

Dressed again, and freshly showered, she bent over the slumbering form on the bed, gave it a chaste kiss, and then stood, turned, and left the room, silently. Her “customer” hadn’t paid for, nor expected, an all night event, in any case.

Taking the stairs down, she passed through a fire door and turned toward the main entrance. Nobody seemed to spare her a second thought.

Over the clicking of her heels on the sidewalk, Lada sensed someone trailing her as she turned right on
Calle
13 Miranda for the walk back to the hotel she shared with Morales. She had a small roll of medium denomination bills tucked between her breasts, her payment from the Russian shipfitter desperate for a little taste of home. Next to the cash was a small, thin, but very sharp switchblade. Well, a working girl—even a fake one—had to watch out for herself, didn’t she?

At an intersection, she carefully looked left and right before crossing. She looked especially carefully to the left, making sure that there was, in fact, someone following her and, more importantly, making sure he didn’t notice that she did.

As her feet carried her quickly across the street, she wondered,
Criminal or cop? And does it make any difference? He looked fit, from what I could see. I doubt I can outrun him. And, even if I could, if he’s a cop he can call in backup. I dare not lead him to my hotel; then Morales and I will both be up for a slow interrogation and a quick bullet.

Lada’s eyes glanced left and right as she walked, looking for some suitable ambush position or, at least, some kind of refuge.

Okay, so worst case; it’s a cop. What turned him on to me? I’m hardly the only Russian selling her ass in Venezuela. Was the room bugged? Did they hear—hmmm, what was that shipfitter’s name? Ah, yes, Dmitri. Did they hear Dmitri telling me when the job would be finished? Seems too likely.

Again, she stopped to check for traffic before crossing an intersection. Again she saw that her tail was still there. She also saw a narrow alley, to her left front.

That’s where it will have to be.

Lada crossed the street at a normal pace, then began to run just as she reached the far side. She ran only so far as the alley she had seen. Bending, she took off her high heeled shoes and threw them as far as she could up the street. Then she ducked into the alley, her nose wrinkling at the stink of long uncollected garbage. She placed two fingers into the cleft of her breasts and pulled out her knife. Holding one palm to the device as she pressed the button, Lada then moved that palm and the gripping hand apart slowly enough to muffle both of the switchblade’s characteristic clicks.

Finally she pressed her back to the alley wall nearest the direction from which she’d come and waited, listening carefully to the rising sound of footsteps.

Lada’s heart began to beat rapidly as the footsteps neared. She ruthlessly suppressed it; forcing herself to an unnatural calm. She bent her knees, ready to spring, and waited those last few tension-filled seconds for her pursuer to appear.

And then he was there, walking swiftly with his head and eyes turned up the street. Her face a mask of pure defensive rage, on bare feet Lada pattered behind him. He seemed for a moment to hesitate, as if he sensed that he were now the quarry. If he did sense it, it was too late as Lada’s left arm snaked around his neck and the right hand drove her knife deep, deep into his abdominal cavity. She twisted the thing, searching out the kidney and ensuring her victim’s pain would be too great even for him to cry out.

His body spasmed in unimaginable agony. Still with the searching knife stuck in his back she pulled with her left arm, then pushed slightly forward, easing him down to the ground. As he sank she withdrew her blade, then stuck it into his throat, sawing her way forward until rewarded with a splash of blood, gushing away.

Posada Santa Margarita, Puerto Cabello, Venezuela

Morales’ eyes were fixed on scenes of rioting back near to what he’d come to think of as home. He was alone in the room, since Lada was out doing what she did best, trading her looks, and sometimes her body, for information.

He heard the lock being worked quickly. Immediately he reached one hand down into the cushion and wrapped it around the knife he’d secreted there. He hadn’t had the local “ins” to safely buy a decent firearm and, so, knives for himself and Lada had had to do. About the time his fingers began to curl the door opened and Lada stepped in.

“I was followed,” she said, as calmly as she might have observed that it was going to rain.

“How do you know it wasn’t just a rapist stalking a hot blond?” Morales asked, not quite so calmly. After all, there
were
some substantial red spots on her clothing.

She huffed, “Because when I killed him and searched him he had an ID that said
‘Dirección de los Servicios de Inteligencia y Prevención,’
that’s how. I pulled the body into an alley fairly overrun with garbage. It shouldn’t be found before morning, if then.”

“Works for me,” Morales agreed.
We can discuss the need to kill him later.
“Time to bug out.”

Lada reached into her handbag and pulled out a pistol, a Glock, in a shoulder holster with the straps wrapped around it. This she tossed to Morales. “Figured we could use this. I kept the wallet and ID, too.”

“Good girl,” Morales answered. “But get moving.”

“Do we have enough information?” she asked.

“Of what we were sent to get, yes,” he replied. “Precise early warning that the invasion is en route …someone else will have to provide.”

“Good enough,” she said, tearing off a blond wig and racing across the suite to pull out her “run like hell” clothes. If Morales’ presence caused any reluctance on her part to strip down to panties, it was tolerably hard to see.

Gulf of Venezuela, Colombian side (barely)

By the strobe-like light of Lake Maracaibo’s distant, natural lighthouse, the
Relámpago del Catatumbo,
Ryan and Rohrer helped Bronto ease himself over the side of their small, gently rocking rental craft. His Cayago SeaBob already floated in the water nearby. Just past that a neutrally buoyant lump of metal and air mattress, about the size of a small naval mine, was attached by a rope to a D-ring clipped to a belt at Bronto’s waist.

Though the frequent flashes, even at this distance, could, in theory, make the boat more visible, as a practical matter Ryan was sure that it would do more to ruin night vision than to aid normal vision.

“This is box-o-rocks stupid, you know,” Bronto said, still hanging on to the boat’s gunwale. His night vision equipped mask was perched back on his forehead. “We’ve already determined that there is no fucking way in hell for us to get from Colombia to Puerto Fijo to mine any of the ships there. Not without a sub, we can’t.”

“Yeah,” Ryan agreed, “but I want to see how far you can get on one of those things on half a charge to see if we can’t reseed the mines—assuming anybody comes up with some—that a passing merchant ship might blow. So go out as far as you can on half a charge, surface, get a GPS reading, then come back. It’s simple. And stop bitching about it.”

“Yeah,” chimed in Rohrer. “Don’t you know how much people pay for the privilege of driving one of those expensive toys?”

“Then
you
do it,” Bronto answered.

“Nah. I mass too much. Bad test.”

“Now go,” Ryan ordered. “And conserve power.”

“Fuck,” Bronto muttered, before emplacing his mouthpiece, lowering his mask, rotating the eyepiece, and swimming the few short strokes to the SeaBob.

“So what are we going to do, Chief?” Rohrer asked. “Since we can’t—no how, no way—do what we came to try to figure out a way to do?”

“Maybe we can do half of it,” Ryan said. “Maybe we can hump SCUBA gear over sixty miles of mountain, river, swamp and jungle to get to the lake to plant limpets on a few ships at Maracaibo. Maybe. As for the rest …” He looked off generally to the east, in the direction of Venezuela’s Puerto Fijo. He shook his head and admitted, “I don’t know. Maybe we get a small stockpile of mines in Colombia, so we can reseed the bay. Maybe. But the more I think about it, the more I think we’re pissing up a rope with that one, too.”

“Why?”

“Because once the initial mines are laid, any one of them might get set off at any time. What if one of them goes off while one of us is within a klick of it?”

“World class case of the bends?”

Half seen in the flash of the
Relámpago del Catatumbo,
Ryan smiled mirthlessly. “We’d get bent, in any case.

“I mean, it would be different if we could base over on that side. But we’re really obvious in a sea of Latins.”

“So what then?”

“I’m thinking a one time, direct action. Cross from Colombia. We can get Zodiacs, I think. So we cross on those, low, slow, and quiet. We land. We attack. And we basically smash the shit out of the oil storage facilities, refineries, and maybe the pipeline. Then we get the hell out of dodge and maybe get ourselves interned in Colombia.”

“Arms and explosives?” Rohrer asked.

The team chief shrugged. “Buy ’em off FARC? Bribe someone in the Colombian Army to shit us some? Get one of the teams from the U.S. Army working in Colombia to get them for us, on the sly? Have them landed by night by a passing ship? Not really my problem. Yet.”

“You know,” Rohrer said, “if we did that there’s no saying that a couple of us couldn’t SCUBA to Puerto Fijo and put limpets on a couple of random ships. While the main attack was going on, I mean.”

“Even if we didn’t do it but said we would, that would have one distinct advantage,” Ryan replied.

“What’s that?”

“The asshole—whoever it was—that came up with the idea of using limpets to supplement the real mines wouldn’t be embarrassed, so would be less likely to fight us over it.”

“I could see that.”

The rope leading to the mine simulator tugged at his waist.

I can’t see
shit
in this muck,
thought Bronto as he moved forward under the power of his Cayago SeaBob. He was perhaps a fathom below the surface.
Even
with
the frigging night vision device in front of my eye I
still
can’t see shit. Well …that’s not entirely true. I can see the control panel. But only because the SOB is illuminated and right in front of my face. And I can see the surface. But only because of the lightning flash reflecting from the clouds.

Slow, the man said.
Bronto’s left thumb pushed a red button, causing the SeaBob to slow to comparative crawl. The tug of the towrope immediately lessened.

A combined compass and GPS was strapped to the SeaBob, just below the control panel. The GPS was useless enough down here, but the compass was critical. Bronto paid attention to that to keep himself on a due east bearing.

In the Gulf of Venezuela, one of the larger specimens of
Crocodylus acutus,
the
American crocodile,
rarely worried about his bearings. Where food was, that was a good direction to head in; where food wasn’t, wasn’t. Since he couldn’t see any better than Bronto could, and in the absence of any particular notice of food, one direction was pretty much as good as another.

This particular crocodile—his mother had never bothered to name him, of course, though he usually thought of himself as “Buz,” from the sounds made by the flock of winged minions who followed him adoringly whenever he was on land—was moving generally westward in a slow, sinuous, almost snakelike, swim. Buz was a particularly handsome specimen of his sex and race. All the girl crocodiles said so. At least they would have said so, Buz was sure, if they could have said anything.

Of course, in crocodile terms, handsome was somewhat relative and largely driven by the concept of BIG. And Buz, at nearly seven meters, and just at a metric ton, was quite large indeed.

Buz was also quite hungry.

While Bronto couldn’t see much beyond his control panel, he couldn’t help but notice both the shadow passing above and the turbulence that shadow created. Still keeping his hands on the control levers, he lifted his head as far back as he could without risking the current tugging off his mask.

And Bronto saw …and he saw some more …and he saw …

And then his mind screamed, DINOSAUR!

Buz was somewhat distantly aware of the strange creature passing a tail or so below him. It didn’t sound like food. It didn’t smell or taste like food. And, since it didn’t run, like nearly any sensible food creature would have, Buz assumed, not unreasonably, that it probably wasn’t food.

He intended to ignore it. But then it took off like a …
Well …Buz dunno. But run like food; must be food.

Buz was not only big for his species, but also a veritable genius. That’s how he’d gotten to be so big. He pointed his snout down and made a twisting lunge for what seemed to be the tail of his prey.

Bronto’s right thumb frantically worked the green button to get to top speed as fast as possible. Sadly, a SeaBob hauling a man and a dummy mine are not necessarily faster than a dinosaur that didn’t know it was supposed to be extinct. Before the machine could get up to speed, Bronto was literally pulled off of it by the rope around his waist. Worse, he felt himself being tugged backwards in sharp, skin-ripping jolts.

Desperately, on autopilot, his right hand sought the knife he kept strapped to his leg. It had to be done on autopilot, since his mind was screaming,
Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, it’s gonna eat me!