Greene's Calling: Seventeen Book Three (A Supernatural Action Adventure Thriller Series 3) (34 page)

It was yet another credit to Connelly’s influence that she had managed to get the Secretary of Defense and the Combatant Commander to agree to the deployment of a US Marine Corps platoon to support Conrad and his team on their last-minute mission to the African continent. Westwood had also spoken to the Moroccan king and the country’s prime minister to apprise them of the potentially explosive situation about to be played out.

The staff sergeant grabbed a couple of duffel bags by his feet and handed them to Conrad. ‘These are yours.’

They changed into the uniforms and tactical gear the Marines had provided and boarded the Osprey. The helicopter lifted off a short time later.

Khan Inc. was located in the Tindouf Basin, in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara. The oil and gas plant occupied a strategic position on a remote stretch of desert hedged on three sides by wide belts of folded rocks that spread for miles across the land. It was a considerable distance from any human habitation or highway infrastructure, and accessible by a narrow road that wound through wide stretches of inhospitable wasteland.

Avery’s ground intelligence officer, a young corporal by the name of Gibbs, showed them the infrared satellite imagery and topographic data he had obtained from their geospatial intelligence.

‘The compound is around three-quarters of a mile in length and about as wide. It’s surrounded by a double-fenced perimeter and divided into three distinct zones,’ he said into the microphone of his communication headset. ‘Zone One is the largest section, to the north. It’s the heart of the production facility and houses the drilling wells, processing plant, and storage tanks. Zone Two to the southwest is the living quarters. Zone Three to the east has a range of small outbuildings, a helipad, and an administrative office.’ He pointed out the three areas on the computer on his lap. ‘They’ve got pipes bringing in water from local aquifers outside the site.’ He tapped the touch pad and zoomed out of the main satellite image. ‘We’ve also identified these large belts of disturbed ground some two miles northwest of the site. They look like explosive craters of some sort.’

Conrad’s stomach flipped at the soldier’s words. ‘Are you sure?’ He stared at the irregular, gray depressions on the screen.

‘Yes,’ replied Gibbs.

Avery’s brow puckered at Conrad’s expression. ‘What is it?’

The immortal glanced at her, a muscle dancing in his cheek. ‘The man we’re hoping to find at this facility is a professor in explosives engineering. We believe he’s been coerced into making a new and exceedingly powerful liquid bomb for the enemy.’ He cocked his head at the computer. ‘I think we’re looking at their test site.’

Avery went still. Her staff sergeant squared his shoulders next to her. The Osprey’s rotors rumbled loudly in the stilted hush.

‘What about security?’ said Laura.

Gibbs’s gaze moved back to the computer. ‘We’ve counted five posts,’ replied the corporal. ‘One at each of the four corners of the compound, which includes the main gates to the northeast, and one in the center.’

‘We’ll drop off in a valley about a mile and a half west of the target,’ said Avery. She indicated the spot on the satellite map. ‘These ridges should shield us from curious eyes. We’ll hike to the site on foot.’ Her lips compressed into a thin line, just visible in the gloom of her helmet. ‘We’ll have approximately seventy minutes of darkness left in which to take action. Sunrise is at zero six forty.’

‘We have a small, unmanned aerial vehicle on board,’ added Gibbs. ‘It’ll give us more recon details after we land.’

Anatole raised his eyebrows. ‘You’ve got a drone? Cool.’

Chapter Twenty-Five

T
he Osprey curved some fifteen miles west of the plant before winding toward it over an expanse of windswept, undulating desert. The aircraft soon dropped altitude and followed a tortuous path along an ancient riverbed.

Conrad gazed blindly at the low outcrops and narrow canyons of prehistoric rock materializing through the nearest porthole as the helicopter weaved through a barren landscape lit by the stars and the moon. Dawn Hagen’s face kept flashing across his vision. His hands balled into fists in the dark interior of the aircraft. He hoped to God that his gut feeling turned out to be correct and that he would find her family alive.

Thirty-five minutes after they lifted off, the Osprey twisted down and landed in a shallow bowl in the floor of the desert. They exited the helicopter while its blades still spun above their heads, whipping sand and dust around them. Stars painted the heavens diamond-bright, and a cold desert wind raised goosebumps on exposed skin.

The Marines rapidly set up the ground control unit for the UAV and deployed the hand-launched device a short distance from the aircraft. They all gathered around the GCU computer. A real-time, thermal infrared video appeared on the display.

The lightweight aircraft followed the same path they would take over the land. A thousand-foot-wide gully unfurled over a ridge. Lights appeared in the center of the screen, faint at first, then brightening flares in a monochrome background.

The UAV made its first wide-angled pass over the facility. The security hut at the southwest corner of the inner perimeter fence came into view. The living quarters appeared eighty feet beyond it, a collection of one-story cabins and static mobile homes arranged in orderly rows on either side of a courtyard dominated by two larger constructions.

The UAV curved to the north. Conrad stared at the dazzling constellation of Khan Inc.’s main production plant as it grew rapidly in the distance. Oil derricks loomed among a conglomeration of flare stacks, pipes, and tanks; a metal maze sprouting from the desert. Despite the late hour, there were still workers visible on the ground and metal walkways connecting the various structures. The nightshift was in full swing.

The UAV looped half a mile ahead of the compound and turned to make its second approach. It swooped over the brightly lit main gates, the helipad, and the cluster of buildings to the east.

‘They’ve got plenty of guards,’ commented Avery.

Conrad frowned. The UAV’s camera had picked out at least two men at each of the security stations, with an extra two at the main site entrance. He detected three more figures, armed with what looked like automatic rifles, patrolling the inner perimeter to the north, south, and east.

‘If these guys are just the nightshift, we can assume there are that many, if not more, currently off duty on site,’ said Moore.

Conrad turned to the ground intelligence officer. ‘Can we take a look at those areas you identified to the northwest?’

‘Sure,’ said Gibbs. He gave the Marine operating the UAV fresh instructions.

The soldier looked down into the flight module and maneuvered the remote control stick by his right hand. The lightweight aircraft changed course once more and shot over the darkened landscape, a silent bullet speeding through the night.

The first of a dozen massive depressions appeared on the terrain moments later.

‘Holy cow,’ murmured the platoon staff sergeant. ‘What the hell have they been doing?’

Conrad’s gaze did not shift from the gigantic craters disrupting the natural contours of the desert sand and rock. Dismay flooded him when the last one came into view. It measured well over two football pitches in size and looked almost half as deep.

The UAV swung around and started back toward the plant. Troubled murmurs sounded from the assembled Marines.

‘Hagen’s made one hell of a powerful explosive,’ muttered Anatole.

Conrad suddenly froze. ‘Stop!’ he barked.

Gibbs and Avery looked at him, alarmed. The Marines shifted, their grasps tightening on their M16 rifles.

‘Can you go back?’ Conrad asked the UAV operator tensely. ‘I think I saw something.’

The Marine steered the aircraft out of its return trajectory and back toward the craters.

‘Come in again from the west,’ Conrad directed, his eyes glued to the GCU display.

They watched the desert unroll through the IR camera.

‘There!’ Conrad exclaimed. ‘At ten o’clock!’

‘What the—?’ started Moore.

The UAV angled to the northeast. The faint flare of brightness the immortal had glimpsed became more distinct. They watched silently as the aircraft dropped altitude and circled what appeared to be a contoured rise in the land.

‘Son of a bitch,’ Avery said in a leaden tone. ‘That’s clever.’

Conrad’s stomach knotted. Carefully camouflaged under a solid layer of black rock was a low-lying, dark building. Narrow windows were inset deep into its west-facing wall, under an irregular overhang that effectively made them invisible to high-flying aircrafts. There were no windows on the other walls.

The only way someone would spot the openings would be to approach the site on foot from the west, over miles of open desert and rocky terrain. A dim light had been left on somewhere inside the structure. It was the faint reflection on a glass pane that had drawn Conrad’s attention.

‘Well spotted,’ said the platoon staff sergeant gruffly.

Conrad remained silent. Sixty years in the rainforest had sharpened his senses. There were many things willing and able to kill you in the Amazon if you didn’t pay attention. A single question now dominated the immortal’s thoughts, surpassing even his concern for Svein Hagen and his family.

What’s inside that building?

‘Ready to deploy?’ Avery asked.

Conrad looked around. The Marines stood silently watching their platoon commander and him, automatic weapons and rifles at the ready.

Anticipation tightened the immortal’s muscles. They were drawing closer to the truth; he could feel it in his bones. ‘Yes. Let’s go.’

They set off briskly in a westerly direction. The Osprey’s pilots and flight engineers remained at the landing site, along with the two soldiers manning the UAV and the GCU; the drone would remain airborne during their operation. Despite having to cross a canyon and climb an incline, it took them just over ten minutes to get to within seven hundred feet of the facility’s outer perimeter fence.

Moore had supplied Conrad’s team with head-mounted, enhanced night vision devices employing the latest in multi-spectral fusion technology. The Marines had similar monocular scopes fixed to their helmets and mounted on rails atop their rifles.

Conrad experimented with the toggles on the device as they covered the uneven terrain. By the time he sank to the desert floor next to Avery, he had started to get accustomed to viewing the world in the faint green, phosphorus light of the image enhancement, as well as the black and white screen of the thermal imager through his non-dominant eye. Stevens was not faring as well; he had already stumbled twice.

‘Target closing in, seven hundred feet and eighty degrees to the left,’ said the platoon scout sniper quietly through his throat mike a short distance away. The Marine gazed steadily through the integrated infrared laser rangefinder on his riflescope, his finger on the trigger guard.

Conrad turned his head and adjusted his night vision device to fuse the thermal imager with the low-light image enhancement. The guard’s figure became a crisp, bright shape in an eerie background.

The man was smoking a cigarette and strolling casually alongside the inner fence toward the southwest corner of the compound. He passed under one of the security lights mounted on tall steel posts positioned at four hundred feet intervals along the perimeter.

Conrad’s gaze shifted to the security hut. He saw the head of a single guard through the glass window. A background light fluctuated against the walls above the man; he was watching TV.

‘Ready for the decoy?’ murmured Avery beside him.

Conrad took a deep breath and rose into a low, starting-block position. He glanced to his right. Laura, Anatole, and Stevens were also up in crouches. The immortal nodded at Avery.

‘Go for decoy,’ the platoon commander ordered into her communication headset.

The scout sniper fired a single shot at the security light behind the ambling guard. The suppressor screwed on the end of the Marine’s M16 rifle silenced the sound and muzzle-flash of the discharge.

The bulb burst with a low crack of breaking glass. Shadows deepened over a hundred-foot-wide circle across the ground. The guard stopped in his tracks, cigarette frozen halfway to his lips. He looked over his shoulder and hesitated, before turning and heading back toward the fresh pool of darkness.

A thrill coursed through Conrad. Their attempt at misdirection had worked.

‘In three,’ warned Avery.

Conrad’s pulse jumped.

‘One, two,
three
!’ hissed Avery.

Conrad bolted across the ground toward the security perimeter with the two immortals and the Secret Service agent.

During their flight in the Osprey, Conrad and the platoon commander had decided that his team of four would infiltrate the facility first to try and determine the location of the missing professor and his family. Although Avery had initially been less than keen on the idea, her staff sergeant had advised her to agree to Conrad’s suggestion. The Marines would only intervene if the Hagens could not be extracted without drawing the attention of the security guards.

They dropped down by the outer chain-link fence. Rolls of barbwire topped the ten-foot-high barrier. They had decided to go through it rather than over it.

Anatole and Stevens used small wire cutters to create a man-sized breach at the bottom of the fencing. They rolled the three-sided section up, crawled through the narrow opening, and pinned the cut edge to the sand-covered dirt with hooked tent stakes.

Conrad glanced to the left. The guard had reached the broken light. He was staring at the glass on the ground. They crossed the twelve-foot gap to the inner fence and repeated their procedure. Less than ninety seconds after the scout sniper had shot the security light, Conrad and the others were inside Khan Inc. They melted into the shadows and raced toward the southwest corner of the compound.

The security post was housed inside a small concrete structure with a single door to the south and two windows, one to the east and another to the west. The blare of the TV reached Conrad’s ears as they closed in on the hut. He backed up against the wall, flicked up his night vision device, and peeked through the west-facing window.

The guard was sitting on a swivel chair with his back to them. His feet were up on a table and his eyes were glued to the small TV in front of him. He threw his head back and laughed at something on the screen.

Conrad signaled to the others and dropped to a squat. He scuttled beneath the window ledge and stopped at the corner of the building. Light washed across the ground to his left from the doorway. He located a suitably sized piece of rock and tossed it some ten feet in front of the opening. The rock thudded dully onto the ground. Conrad glanced over his shoulder.

Stevens peered through the window and shook his head. Conrad bit back a curse. The guard had not heard the sound.

Avery’s voice came over the immortal’s headset. ‘You have twenty-five seconds before the second guard reaches you,’ she warned.

‘Copy that,’ Conrad murmured into his throat mike. He looked around and grabbed another rock. He was about to throw it when he saw Anatole gesture from the other side of the doorway, where he lurked in the shadows alongside the building. Conrad hesitated and looked past the immortal. Laura shrugged behind Anatole. Conrad sighed and nodded once.