Operation Southern Cross - 02 (7 page)

Finally he too jumped onboard. Autry yanked up on the controls and the Black Hawk began to rise, even as McCune was still in the act of climbing into it. Another line of tracers came up at them, but Autry hit the controls and the gas at the same time, and the line of gunfire began popping along the landing strut, just inches away from the open cargo bay and cockpit. He put on the rest of the gas and they went straight up into the smoke, long lines of tracers following them, licking at their heels.

While all this had been going on, Zucker activated the copter’s digital camera set up on the control column in front of him. Other copter pilots were recording the battle too. It was important that they get the rescue on tape, to help future members of 160 and XBat learn how to do it right. Plus, all kinds of surprising things could be picked up during a battle—if their cameras were pointing in the right direction, that is.

Now that Autry’s copter had cleared the area, the rest of XBat really went to work. They broke from their tight circle and began annihilating what was left of the camp. First the other DAP gunships went in, nearly a dozen weapons firing from each one, tearing up what would be considered the main street of the encampment. They were followed by the Black Hawk troop ships, each man on board firing their personal weapons out the sides and perforating buildings on either side of the burning street.

Then the Chinooks came in, one behind the other, all mini guns and cannons, laying down a spectacular wash of fire that destroyed everything in its path. Behind them, the two Killer Eggs added their mini guns to the mayhem. Then it was the Black Hawks’ turn again.

It went on like this for nearly five minutes, an eternity for someone on the ground being fired at. There was return fire for a minute or so—tracers coming up to meet the copters in scary multicolored back-and-forth spray patterns. But gradually all resistance ceased. All that remained were the flames and XBat’s exercise in moving the rubble.

Autry flew over the moving barrage, surveying the target. It was clear their work was done here. He radioed the message that the unit was to egress, toot sweet. The remaining copters fell into a loose formation behind him and they all turned to the west—all except Mungo, that is. He headed in the opposite direction. In seconds he was over the south beach of the lake, the place where the spy had emerged from his midnight swim.

Mungo pulled up sharply and directed his own spotlight on the jungle below. Here he found the super spy cowering, or simply hiding, in the underbrush. Mungo was flying so low, their eyes met.

And then the spy got to his feet and started running deeper into the forest, looking over his shoulder more than once to see if Mungo was in pursuit.

The next morning

AUTRY HAD NEVER HAD WHISKEY ON CORNFLAKES
before…but there was a first time for everything.

He was sitting in the USS
Lexington
’s dingy officers’ mess, staring into a bowl of cornflakes and Jack Daniels. The flakes were courtesy of the carrier’s slowly depleting food supply; the Jack was courtesy of the ship’s captain, Jumbo Eliot.

Autry took a huge first bite—it didn’t taste half bad. But at that point, after nonstop action for the last week on little sleep, anything would have tasted good.

At the table with him were McCune, Eliot and XBat’s chief flight engineer, an officer named “Crowbar” Cronin.

Everyone was eating flakes and booze, between draining cups of the ghastly coffee. The three XBat guys were in a rare good mood. They were finally going home. The
Lex
was now heading to Pensacola, Florida. Once it reached port, XBat would fly off, refuel and proceed to their base in the swamps of Georgia.

To this end, Cronin was reciting the post-combat report for the team’s eight remaining helicopters. All but one of XBat’s twelve original aircraft had been lost during the North Korean operation. This second batch had been drawn from spares belonging to TF-160’s other battalions. They were standard-issue Nightstalker helicopters. High-tech cockpits, powerful engines, airframes jammed with secret stuff, including the latest in weaponry.

Considering what they’d gone through in the past few days, their aircraft were in pretty good shape. One Black Hawk’s engine was heavily damaged from shrapnel over El Tapos. Another’s primary flight controls had been blown away by a small shoulder-launched missile. And every copter had some bullet holes in it. Autry’s own DAP had so many perforations that, when Cronin flashed a light on one side of it, several dozen points of light came out the other. Bottom line, they had a couple hundred more holes to fill. Every ship was battered, but still airworthy.

Captain Eliot poured more Jack for them—it even made the
Lex
’s coffee taste good. Autry was slowly climbing to cloud nine. Despite some unexpected twists, the unit had successfully completed two missions in less than a week. And as in past operations, what had gone on before was already heading for the scrap heap in his mind. There was an instant “been there, done that” element to all special ops. What was that spy’s name again?
Superfly
? And
Pablo Escoban
? Autry could barely remember who he was.

Best of all, now he was sure he’d make the meeting with his wife. But before that, Autry was looking forward to some more immediate gratification: sleep. By his order, XBat would spend the fifteen-hour trip up to Pensacola in the racks, snoozing. As it was, he could barely keep his eyes open now.

Eliot had just finished pouring out the last of the Jack when the door to the mess swung open. Everyone looked up to find Mungo standing in the doorway, staring back at them, laser beams for eyes. Autry knew exactly what Mungo was thinking. The booze. The flakes. The coffee. Here was
another
party he hadn’t been invited to.

Everyone stiffened in their chairs. Mungo was a walking buzz-kill and he was working his magic now. He ignored the empty bottle on the table and laid a packet of photographs in front of Autry. He was acting as if he and the XBat CO were the only ones in the room.

“What are these?” Autry asked him.

“The photos from the El Tapos raid,” Mungo replied. “Good close-ups on some of the guys we greased. More pictures of others we didn’t. It looks like our celebrity spy made it away OK. All pretty standard stuff. Except…”

“Except what?” McCune asked.

Mungo pulled one photo from the stack. It showed a building that the unit had blown in two right on the edge of the Wild West town. It wasn’t a barracks as a lot of the other buildings turned out to be. It was a warehouse. There were stacks of cardboard boxes and wooden crates within, some of which were on fire, but some that were not. And the mystery was what was in those boxes.

They were filled with arctic wear. Parkas. Boots. Gloves. Even ski poles and skis.

“What the fuck is
that
stuff doing down there?” McCune asked boozily. “They’re in the tropics…”

Mungo just shook his head.

“You tell
me
,” he said.

IT TOOK AUTRY FIFTEEN MINUTES TO MAKE HIS WAY
two levels below to the carrier’s executive officer’s cabin. The whiskey was doing the walking for him by now, that’s why he got lost twice. He eventually found the place, though, and when he opened the door, it looked better than a room at the Ritz. Four gray walls, a porthole and a bed. Finally, a place where he could lie down, close his eyes and just go to sleep.

This he did, as soon as his head hit the dirty pillow. He immediately started to dream about his wife. At their old home near Hunter Airfield in Georgia. At the beach, on their honeymoon. At the school dance where they’d first met. Then she was lying beside him in bed, smiling and gorgeous, backlit by a technicolor rising sun. She was about to say something to him, when suddenly her words were drowned out by a horrendous sound. It was so loud, even in sleep Autry blocked his ears.

He woke up just in time to see one of the unit’s helicopters fall past the porthole’s window.

“
What the hell?
”

He was off the bunk in a flash. Just as he reached the small porthole and looked outside, another of the team’s Black Hawks went by. Not in flight—it was going into the sea.

Autry actually slapped himself. Was he still asleep? He wasn’t sure. Then one of the Killer Eggs went by. It hit with a great splash just below him. After that, there was no doubt this was real.

Someone was throwing XBat’s copters off the deck.

HE WAS UP TOP SECONDS LATER. MANY OF XBAT’S
guys were standing near the carrier’s control island, watching something on the other side, just out of Autry’s sight. Joining them, he saw what they saw: members of the
Lexington
’s crew were pushing XBat’s battered helicopters
over the side
of the ship.

What the hell was going on? His men were as much in the dark as he. Then Autry spotted Weir standing nearby and felt his fists tighten. Only the CIA could be responsible for this. He wiped his eyes, hard, and started off toward Weir.

The agent saw him coming and began waving a yellow sheet of paper above his head. On its top was written, E
XECUTIVE
O
RDERS
, T
OP
S
ECRET
. W
HITE
H
OUSE
.

“It just came in,” Weir told Autry. “Read it for yourself.”

Autry studied the security codes splashed across the page. They contained all the right passwords, all the right alpha-numeric symbols. And there it was: halfway down the page, the order to “remove TF-160’s Experimental Battalion’s aircraft from the inventory immediately.”

But why would the White House want XBat’s aircraft destroyed? Had they fucked up
that
much during the El Tapos operation? Or was this their punishment for Mungo beating up the super spy?

“Does this mean the unit is over?” Autry asked Weir in disbelief.

“Hardly,” the agent told him. “They’re just making room—and your old stuff is too hot, too secret, too fucked up to get a good repair. So…”

He pointed to a spot over Autry’s shoulder. The pilot turned and saw nothing at first except the clear blue sky.

But slowly, a dozen tiny specks came into view. They grew larger and larger, and in a matter of seconds turned into helicopters. They were soon above the carrier, going into a perfect circle at five hundred feet before landing two at a time on the forward deck. It made for an impressive sight.

Four Chinooks, six Black Hawks and a pair of the AH-6 Killer Eggs—the exact make-up of the XBat’s air squadron. But these aircraft were not retreads or ramp whores like their last batch. These were hot off the assembly line, the most advanced versions possible of the three venerable rotary designs. They looked
so
new, they were actually gleaming in the morning sun.

Behind them an unmarked CH-54 Sea King helicopter landed. As each of the new copters set down, its pilots would kill their engines, climb out and head over to the Sea King, which was nothing more than a ferry aircraft. As soon as it was full, it took off. Time on the
Lex
’s deck: less than a minute.

The members of XBat slowly gathered around the newly arrived aircraft. The copters looked sleeker, more streamlined than their previous aircraft. They were also bristling with weapons, bomb racks, missile ramps and winglets to carry extra fuel tanks or even more weapons. If their old copters had been considered Corvettes, then these were Ferraris.

Autry peered into the cockpit of one of the new Black Hawk gunships. The control board looked like something from a
Star Wars
movie. All flash screens and touch panels, the weapons suite held an astonishing variety of armaments.

The copters boasted the latest in night-vision capabilities too. According to Weir, things would be clearer, sharper, more distinct when viewed through their new NV goggles, to the extent that they would experience the illusion of X-ray vision. As far as the AWACs-equipped Chinook, its replacement had all new Galaxy Net gear installed as well: navigation systems, advanced GPS, virtual reality readouts that would be available to every copter in the unit with the push of a button.

Even their copters’ paint jobs were cool. At the moment, the aircraft appeared solid gray. But according to Weir, at night they turned a sinister black. Because they were infused with thousands of tiny magnesium nodules, under the right conditions, when these nodules would heat up and illuminate themselves, they could create a sparkling effect that mimicked the stars in the night sky. With copters able to literally get one with the stars, XBat would become more stealthy, more quiet. Almost invisible.

McCune finally turned to Autry. “Do these things really belong to us, sir?”

Autry was still in a stupor. “That seems to be the case,” he said. “The question is, what do they want us to do with them?”

That’s when Weir pulled out another set of yellow sheets.

“Damn—
new
orders?” Autry asked him.

The agent nodded. “I’m sorry, Bobby,” he said. “But something else has come up.”

THEY WALKED TOWARD THE END OF THE FLIGHT DECK,
away from the rest of the unit. Autry grew more pissed off with every step.

“What’s with this crap?” he asked Weir harshly. “You, above all people, should know we haven’t had a break for
weeks.
And I’m not just talking about time in training, but doing
actual
missions. We just ran two in five days, for Christ’s sake. Some Special Ops teams don’t run two missions in a year. We can’t keep going on forever. I’ve got to get these guys home.”

Weir stopped and confronted Autry. “Don’t you think I’d like to go home too, Bobby?” he asked him angrily. “That would be a dream come true for me right now. But I can’t go—you know why? Because the whole fucking world is falling apart and I’m a guy with a pack of Band-aids trying to keep it together. That’s the business
I’m
in—and it’s the business
you’re
in. And there’s nothing our friends in Washington can do about it either—except give you all new equipment for your new mission.”

Another
mission, Autry groaned inside. Their third in less than a week. Could his guys take it? Could
he
?

They resumed walking and finally reached the end of the flight deck. Weir lit a cigarette and threw the expended match overboard. They’d both calmed down a bit.

“Things are getting very strange out there,” Weir said, indicating the world beyond the old carrier. “There’s some weird shit going on, all around the globe, yet no one can put their finger on
what’s
happening, exactly.”

He took a long drag of his cigarette then let out a cloud of smoke.

“I mean, the problems with the Galaxy Net are one thing,” he went on, “though I’ve been assured that all your new gear will work OK. But it’s more than that. Every hot spot around the world got a little hotter just in the past week. The Middle East. Southwest Asia. Northeast Asia. The Taiwan Straits. The shit you guys ran into the other night only added to the problem. It’s like a box of hand grenades, all with their pins pulled, ready to go off at any moment.”

Another drag. Another cloud of smoke.

“Plus, like I said, every other black ops team is booked heavy somewhere else, and…”

But Autry was already tuning him out. He didn’t give a damn about the world falling part. The world was
always
falling apart. All he wanted was to get home and see his wife again, plain and simple, with maybe a little down time beforehand so he could get his shit together. He looked at his watch. He had just six days and a couple hours before his rendezvous with her. A typical Special Ops mission lasted about three days, so there
was
a chance he could do this new job and still get back up to Georgia in time to meet her. The trouble was, few Special Ops missions were typical.

He snapped out of his haze. “So where the hell do they want us to go this time?” he asked Weir.

The CIA man smiled darkly. “Weren’t you listening? I just told you they’re giving you a chance to get a little revenge.”