Operation Southern Cross - 02 (14 page)

THE PLACE WAS CALLED
TRANERAS MONTANA NATURALEZA
Reserva
—the Traneras Mountain Nature Reserve. But it had a nickname:
Prehistórico Criatura Cine Parque.
Loosely translated: Movie Monster Park.

A vast nature preserve located seventy-five miles southwest of Caracas, its nickname was well deserved. The place looked so prehistoric, that back in the 1950s, Hollywood used shots of the area as background for its dinosaur movies. One studio wanted to shoot an entire monster movie in the park, but the place proved too isolated and treacherous for filmmaking.

The fifty-square-mile reservation was virtually empty of animal life. No one came near it, not Venezuelan citizens, not the Indians, as they considered it cursed. There was a volcano in its center, still smoldering after its last eruption 10,000 years earlier. The airspace above the park was off limits to civil aircraft, as the air currents from this hissing mountain were thought to be dangerous. For the same reason, the Venezuelan military rarely flew over the area.

This strange place was the destination of George Owens and the two SAS men. They arrived at the foot of the volcano after several hours of driving over some very rough roads. Parking the Rover alongside a glorified dirt path, they covered the vehicle with vegitation, just in case they’d been followed. The SAS men retrieved their climbing gear and machetes. Then, on instructions from Owens, each man tied a Union Jack flag around his shoulders. Owens did the same with an American flag. Sergeant Jordan said they looked like bargain-basement superheroes. They started to climb.

It was eerie exercise from the first step. Owens realized why Hollywood had been enamored with this place. It really was right out of the Jurassic Park. If a T-Rex or a pack of raptors were to come flying out of the jungle at any second, it wouldn’t have been that much of a surprise. Lots of vines, lots of heavy ferns, monstrous spider webs and green slime everywhere. The place was positively antediluvian.

It was already past noon by the time they began their climb, yet they were so quickly surrounded by thick jungle, it seemed like dusk had fallen already. There were no sounds around them—that might have been the strangest thing. No birds, no signs of animal life. Barely a bug flying about or insects beneath their feet. It was a jungle with no life in it. Maybe the local Indians were right, Owens thought. Maybe this place
was
haunted.

The three men were soon soaked in sweat. The grade was steep and the overgrowth so dense, it took them thirty minutes just to reach the bottom of the volcano itself. There was still jungle here, but the ground was not made of soft earth and vegetation anymore, but rather reddish rock and pumice instead.

Still Owens amazed himself by holding his own with the SAS men. His early morning jogs through the safer parts of Caracas back in the good old days had paid off—until he looked at his hands and realized they were both bleeding and covered with the disgusting green slime. So were his knees; he’d slipped and fallen more than a few times on the way up. Suddenly, it seemed like they were climbing on broken glass, and they still had a long way to go. Owens cursed himself for ever responding to Weir’s e-mail. And he vowed to take Molly’s computer away.

They pressed on. The jungle became even thicker, a vertical forest that hadn’t seen a human walk through it in thousands of years. Every step they took had to be hacked away. The three men took turns doing the machete work. But after an hour of this, their strength became sapped.

When they reached a small clearing, Sergeant Blum asked Owens, “Might be time for a tea break?”

Owens couldn’t argue. Though they had only about another five hundred feet to go to the top of the volcano, they stopped for the first time to rest.

Owens dropped his equipment, fell to his butt and wiped the sweat from his eyes. The SAS men did the same, passing a canteen around. That Owens felt he was carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders was apparent now that they’d stopped. Suddenly he felt very old. What Weir had told him about the current growing crisis was bad enough; Scarface’s document of war was even more disturbing. An unlikely actor in all this, he was happy only because the two SAS men agreed to come with him. He couldn’t imagine doing this alone.

His job was to somehow find XBat and convince them to go home. But what kind of people would they be? A bunch of real superheroes? Or so hopped up on pep pills they weren’t thinking straight? And if they were off the beam, so out of control, why would they listen to him?

It was soon time to resume climbing. Owens capped the canteen and adjusted his American flag cape. But then he realized the machete he’d laid at his feet moments before had vanished, as if an invisible hand had taken it away. He got on his knees and searched for it, but found nothing. When he looked up at the two SAS men, though, he saw their machetes were quite visible—green hands were holding them up to the British soldiers’ throats. Owens was stunned. The SAS guys were quick, but these ghosts were quicker.

Six camouflaged soldiers materialized out of the overgrowth. Heavily armed and green from head to toe, they’d been hiding in the clearing all along, waiting for the trio to make their move. That’s when Owens knew wearing the flags as capes had probably saved their lives.

He hadn’t found XBat. XBat had found him.

“I’m George Owens, State Department Diplomatic Service,” he was finally able to croak at the green faces staring back at him. “And if you men are part of TF-160’s Experimental Air Battalion, then I have an urgent message for you from the President of the United States…”

THE FIRST THING OWENS NOTICED AFTER BEING TAKEN
up and over the lip of the crater was the steam. There were hundreds of plumes rising out of the slanted ground, creating a white cloud so dense, he could hardly see in front of him.

They climbed down about a hundred feet into the crater itself, their silent captors leading the way to a very small, semi-horizontal clearing. There was still thick jungle all around them, though, especially overhead. In fact the vegetation on the inside of the volcano appeared even thicker than on the outside. At the same time, all this green seemed somehow unnatural, like one of those computer-generated pictures that looked nonsensical until the viewer blurs his eyes and sees the image hidden underneath. Owens took a good look at the flora around him—and that’s when he realized that he wasn’t staring at jungle at all, but lots of camouflage hiding a squadron of helicopters.

It was amazing. The copters’ bodies were covered with hundreds of small bushes and weeds; their rotor blades were draped with intricately interwoven vines overhead. They were positioned in such a way as to resemble just another piece of heavily forested inner crater. But between the steam and the fake jungle, Owens found it almost impossible to see the sky—and, he supposed, just as difficult for someone up high to see what was really on the ground below.

These guys are good
, Owens thought,
I’ll give them that.

While the SAS men were given water and a cool place to sit, Owens was brought to one of the large, well-hidden helicopters. Three soldiers were kneeling near the door as he stepped in. They too were painted green, head to toe, carrying massive weapons and wearing oversize helmets wired for sound. They had an S2S satellite phone on the floor in front of them. It was in a dozen pieces, and like a trio of emerald-skinned surgeons, they were trying to put it back together again.

“Don’t bother,” Owens told them. “The Galaxy Net stopped taking calls days ago.”

He was led to the cockpit of the big copter where another green soldier, older than the rest, was sitting in the pilot’s seat. He was trying to raise someone on the radio. Owens pegged this man as the unit’s CO. Even though his back was to him, it was obvious this officer was very agitated. Between making unsuccessful radio calls he was constantly checking his watch and swearing under his breath.

There were no introductions. The two soldiers escorting Owens interrupted the officer and passed the diplomat’s ID to him. They explained Owens and two bodyguards had climbed up through their defense line and that he claimed to have an important message for them.

The officer seemed surprised to see Owens here.

“Are you really a diplomat?” was the officer’s first question to him. “Or are you CIA?”

“Strictly diplomatic corps,” Owens assured him. “I’m an expert in South American agriculture, and definitely not a cloak-and-dagger guy.”

“How did you locate us, then?” was the next question.

“The CIA expected you would eventually find yourselves the perfect hideout,” Owens replied. “And what better place is there than this? Inside a piece of the jungle that no one wants to come to, not even the animals? It was the natural place to look for you.”

At this point, two more soldiers walked to the front of the copter. Owens correctly guessed they were officers as well.

“What’s this message you have for us?” the senior officer asked him, checking his watch again. “We’ve been trying to reach someone for the past two days.”

Owens launched into the speech he’d been rehearsing since leaving his house that morning. He told the officer he knew all about XBat and why the unit had been sent to Venezuela. He explained that he’d spoken via the Internet with their CIA handler, Gary Weir, and that it was Weir who’d sent him on this mission.

“And frankly,” Owens went on, “Washington is in a state of shock at what you boys have been doing down here. They watched you attack that air base. They saw you take the aviation fuel. They know you hit the bridges and the cell-phone towers. Anytime this Galaxy Net thing decided to turn itself on, they found you doing something else.

“You were sent down here to see what was happening at this Area 13 place. Your orders said nothing about attacking the Venezuelan navy, or bombing the Venezuelan air force. You weren’t supposed take any aggressive actions at all.

“While Agent Weir understands that your communications equipment is probably not working, and that you are supposed to operate under strict radio silence anyway, unless it’s an emergency, he doesn’t have the slightest idea what you’re up to. All he knows is that the U.S. is trying to keep its fingers in a bunch of dikes around the world—and that starting something down here is definitely not the thing to do.”

A deep breath.

“So the message I’m carrying is this,” Owens concluded: “You must cease all operations and leave Venezuela as quickly as possible.”

The senior officer listened to Owens’ speech—and then laughed darkly. So did the other two officers.

“If only it was that simple,” one of them said.

The senior officer just shrugged. Then he said, “We can’t.”

“Can’t what?” Owens asked him.

“We can’t leave,” he replied, again nervously checking his watch. “I’m sorry you had to come all the way out here, but we can’t go home. As much as I’d like to, believe me.”

Owens wasn’t prepared for this. These Special Ops guys
always
followed orders, didn’t they?

“But your bosses are expecting you to pull out immediately,” Owens told him. “What explanation do I give them? They’ll
want
to know.”

Silence. For ten long seconds. It was clear the senior officer was torn about what to do. Then one of the younger officers spoke up again.

“Don’t tell him,” this man said, betraying a Boston accent. “
Show him
. Show him exactly how we got here, and why we hit those targets, and why we can’t leave.”

“But what would be the advantage of that?” the older officer asked. “So more people will think we’re nuts?”

“No,” was the younger officer’s reply. “Because if none of us makes it back, at least we’ll have someone who can explain what we were doing up here—or trying to do, anyway.”

The senior officer thought about this—then reached under his seat and pulled out a pack of computer printout photographs. He put the pack in front of Owens.

“The whole story is right there,” he said starkly. “What those pictures show could change the world, maybe forever—if we don’t do something about it.”

Owens stared at the pack of photos. When he woke that morning, he’d thought the most important thing he had to do was create a price-graph analysis on cocoa bean futures. How the hell did he get from there to here?

The senior officer pulled out the first photo. It showed a ground-level shot of a half-finished construction project in the middle of the jungle.

“Is that the Los Tripos project?” Owens asked. “The place where they thought the Venezuelans were building the Bear bomber base?”

“That’s the place,” the senior officer replied. “The Venezuelans call it Area 13. We took this picture when we first made it into the country. Work has come to a standstill there lately, though. Labor problems.”

A closer examination of the photo showed several large poured concrete-slab foundations scattered around a clearing hacked out of the jungle. But the layout of the place made no sense—at least not for an air base.

“Those aren’t runways,” Owens said. “Are they?”

The senior officer shook his head no.

“So what are they?” Owens asked.

The officer didn’t reply. Instead he put another photo in front of Owens. It was a heat-sensitive infrared aerial view showing a clearing cut out of the jungle almost exactly like Area 13; it was even hidden from above by the same kind of camo netting as Los Tripos. And it also showed beneath the netting the same kind of cement foundations. But there were more of them and these were connected by roadways.

“Believe it or not, the Venezuelans call this place Area
14
,” the senior officer explained. “It’s about twenty miles from here, deeper into this freaky nature preserve. That’s the punch line to all this, by the way. We came here because we didn’t want anyone to find us. The Venezuelan SBI came here for the same reason.”