Ripper (16 page)

“What am I to make of you, Colonel?” Sarah touched Farbeaux’s cheek as he fell deeper into his bloody stupor. “You are the strangest bogeyman I have ever seen.”

LAREDO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
LAREDO, TEXAS

Niles Compton stepped from the cockpit
and nodded his head at Jack, Will, and Carl. “The pilot just received clearance from the tower to taxi. He filed a flight plan for San Antonio. We’ll circle for a bit and then declare a small-enough emergency to turn back. That means we should be on the ground here in Laredo in,” Niles looked at his watch, “exactly one hour. By that time either you’re across the border or in FBI custody.”

Jack
nodded his head and then looked toward the rear of the aircraft where two of his men were quickly coming up the aisle with two large bags. Jack accepted the first and then looked at the army sergeant who had gathered their equipment.

“This everything?” he asked.

“Yes sir. The only item on your list we didn’t have is the satellite hookup. Dr. Golding said as long as you have a cell phone they
should have no trouble with communications through our KH-11 Blackbird and Europa.”

Jack patted the sergeant on his shoulder. “That will have to do,” he said as he made one last check on the contents of the large black bag. The Blackbird he spoke of was the famous, but very old, KH-11 satellite that had come in handy on more than one occasion. All this meant that Niles was pulling in some assets
that were meant for somewhere else. He looked at Everett who was checking the second bag. “Sergeant, you and the rest of the security team stay with the director. After the plane lands back here in Laredo, no one, and I do mean
no one
, gets near the aircraft until I return. Is that clear?”

The sergeant was soon joined by another army sergeant and the two marines.

“Sir, can we—”

“No,” Jack said
and then softened somewhat. “No, Sergeant. This is a job for a small regiment, or two or three men, and I’m afraid the FBI and the Mexican government have a chokehold on the small-regiment thing today. Stay here and protect this aircraft.” The sergeant nodded his head. “Your volunteering is duly noted,” Jack said while looking at the marines also, “all of you.”

At that moment they heard the four
engines of the old and venerable 707 start up. Everett closed the black bag and then gave Jack a thumbs-up.

“Boss, thanks for this,” Jack said holding his hand out to the director.

“Get her back, Colonel, we’ll hold off discussion of anything else until we get home to Nevada—if we have a home after this.” He smiled and shook Jack’s hand and then Mendenhall’s and Everett’s. “You better get below.”

With those last words the army sergeant and the two marines tore away a section of the carpeting just outside of the cockpit and then opened a small trapdoor.

“I sure hope the pilot has it in him,” Mendenhall said as he looked down into the blackness of the avionics compartment.

“Don’t worry Lieutenant, the pilot and Ryan are flying buddies,” Everett said as he tossed the second black bag down
to Collins far below in the belly of the plane.

Mendenhall watched Everett slip down the small ladder and then looked at the director. “Is that crack about Ryan and this pilot supposed to make me feel better about all of this?”

*   *   *

Outside the aircraft the head of the Laredo FBI field office stepped from the hangar where the planning for the joint raid was being finalized. He saw the
large 707 start to roll as one of his men handed him the phone. He was connected directly to his director in Washington, who in turn was relaying information to the president.

“Yes, sir, their aircraft is preparing for takeoff. They filed a flight plan for San Antonio,” the special agent said into his secure cell phone. “No, sir, no one left the aircraft. The colonel and his men are still onboard,
yes.”

Suddenly the 707 started rolling and made a sharp turn in front of the hangar where the HRT unit and their Mexican counterpart were preparing for their raid across the border. The words of the FBI director and the president of the United States were drowned out by the piercing scream of the Boeing aircraft. With a smirking Niles Compton looking out of one of the passenger windows, the pilot
applied his brakes when the 707 was directly in front of the agents and the hangar. He throttled all four of the large GE engines to near full power, making the wings shake and flutter. The special agent in charge was pushed back toward the open hangar door as a small hurricane of wind and noise buffeted everyone in the building. Men scrambled to close the hangar doors and the agents on the outside
ducked behind the cover of the cars lining the front.

As the agents sought protection from the man-made gale force winds pummeling them, they failed to see three men scramble from the nose wheel compartment of the large plane where they had just torn away the insulation from the avionics room to enter. They ducked and ran for the cover of an idle Blackhawk.

The 707 pilot, a true friend of Jason
Ryan, applied the last of his power to the four engines when one of the FBI agents braved a look over the hood of his Chevrolet. The wings were threatening to be ripped from the aircraft as they wagged up and down as if it were a giant bird. The brakes were overheating as the pilot saw three men scramble to a waiting car.

Inside the passenger compartment Niles Compton and a grinning Pete Golding
watched as Jack, Carl, and Will Mendenhall pulled quickly out of the secure area just as the pilot pulled back on the aircraft’s four throttles. He cracked his window and then waved at the agents as if in apology. Fifteen field men of the FBI’s Laredo office finally stood after the man-made windstorm had stopped.

“Where did that bastard learn how to taxi an aircraft,” the lead agent asked as
he placed the cell phone back to his ear. “Yes sir, sorry. No, their aircraft is taxiing and no one left the plane.”

Niles turned away from the small window and looked at Pete.

“Well, they’re on their way.”

Pete smiled as he took in his boss.

“Do you think I’ll be able to have access to Europa from the jail cell we’ll be sharing when the president finds out about this … again?”

“What makes
you think the president will stop at throwing us in jail, Pete? It’s more likely he’ll line us up against the wall and shoot us.”

Pete nodded his head and smiled.

“Now that’s the way to go out.”

VAUXHALL, LONDON, ENGLAND
OFFICE OF MI6

The most successful counterintelligence operations in history are conducted out of a state-of-the-art building that, thanks to the James Bond films, is currently
one of the largest tourist attractions in all of London. From the outside, American, European, and Asian visitors to London can take snapshots and wonder how such a marvelous building could house a brilliant intelligence service and not somehow be much darker because of its intent.

Housed deep in the subbasement of the giant concrete and glass structure was a small and little-known office that
housed several supercomputers that had but one function and one function only—to spy on the best friend that the United Kingdom had today—the United States of America. Certain protocols have been handed down from minister to minister over the years that have remained secret for over a century, long before America and Britain were allied together in a mutual defense mode that was brought on through
necessity since World War II. Although spying on each other has been a foregone conclusion since the beginning, no one in either government would ever say the words to confirm it—it just wasn’t Cricket.

The code-breaker section of MI6, actually titled MI1, has a sub-branch that sits off in a far corner in the darkest recesses of the basement. This section had one specific reason for operations—spying
on the cousins across the sea in their communications between law enforcement and intelligence services. It was here that three men were hustling about the room after several red-flag, coded communications from Langley, Virginia, the home of the Central Intelligence Agency, America’s version of MI6, had come in. Two key words and one name had been deciphered from five different communications
from a field operation being conducted by the American Federal Bureau of Investigation and relayed through the CIA command center. One of the three men shook his head and slapped the keyboard on his computer.

“We get a red flag on the two words and one name and there’s nothing in the computer on it,” the man said in exasperation. “And what’s this bloody icon attached to the flag? I’ve never seen
this before.”

Another man walked over with a computer printout and looked over the operator’s shoulder.

“You dolt, that flag means this whole thing gets bumped upstairs to ministry level.” The man frowned and looked closer at the icon that was flashing next to the red flag beside the two words and one name in the American communiqué. “What’s this?” he said as he reached for a book that listed
all the department numbers and their corresponding computer terminals. “This is bloody strange,” he said as he laid the large book on the desk, “it says it not only goes upstairs, but we are to copy Department 1106, that’s SIS.”

“You mean it’s connected to not only internal security, but foreign as well—the Secret Intelligence Service?”

The man behind the operator straightened when he saw another
icon start flashing beside the first two.

“This is far above our pay grade, mate. Look at this; it’s also to be forward to the Ministry of Defense, some office called Bluebell.”

“Why do I have the feeling we just uncorked a stinker here?” the operator said as the supervisor for the area just hung up his desk phone ten feet away from the two operators.

“Send it along to the three recipients,”
he said as he turned in his chair with a white face and worried look. “Just get the damn thing out of this office.” The supervisor turned and ran a hand through his thinning hair and then removed his glasses. “Sometimes I hate this job.”

*   *   *

The first to receive the communiqué deciphered from the Americans was the head of SIS, Sir John Kinlow. When he opened the computer package from downstairs
he didn’t exactly know what it was he was looking at. He knew because of the red flag, the special security numbers, and the key words that were passed along that this was information only available to certain members of British Intelligence. But he had never been briefed on anything such as this before in his five years on post. He knew only his computer terminal would have access to the
material concerning the two key words and one name mentioned by the CIA and the FBI.

“Well, ’tis a boring night at any rate,” he said as he entered his security code and pulled up the file. Little did the president of the United States know, he had inadvertently passed the info to the British when he forwarded the information Niles Compton had passed to him. The code breakers received the information
from the communiqués of the FBI and CIA when they informed the hostage rescue team of the history of the hacienda.

The head of the SIS read, and as he did his eyes widened. He whistled when he saw the original file date … September 3, 1900, the very turn of the century. He looked down at the key words that had set the security alarms off deep inside the code-breaking room downstairs.
Perdition
,
Mexico
, and finally the name mentioned, Lawrence Jackson Ambrose.

Sir John clicked on the heading for the file and started reading. By the time he was done it was near eight o’clock at night. While he had read the top-secret file, his secretary had buzzed several times without him answering the calls. Finally when she poked her head into his office he hastily waved her off without looking up
from his computer screen. It wasn’t until he read the file another two times that he finally looked away and shook his head.

“What in the hell were they thinking back then,” he said to no one but himself. “What kind of bloody mess did we inherit?”

Another knock sounded at the door and this time the secretary came in without waiting. She saw Sir John looking as pale as she had ever seen him.
The man had been practically euphoric for the past year since his office was instrumental in the American operation that killed the world’s leading terrorist, Osama bin Laden, and he hadn’t come down from that high for ten months—until tonight.

“Sir John, the minister of defense is on the line, and he is very adamant about speaking to you. He said it is of the highest priority.”

Sir John acted
as though he didn’t hear his secretary. She came a few steps closer into the darkened office and then jumped when he suddenly straightened in his large chair and snatched up his phone, practically slamming his finger down on the flashing button.

“Kinlow,” he said not too delicately into the phone. “Yes, I just read it, several times as a matter of fact. Just how in the hell are we to hush this
up without exposing this massive shit cake?”

The secretary watched Sir John start to rub his left temple and then he looked up and waved her out of the office as if a sudden plague had erupted at Vauxhall.

“Look, Wes, we cannot allow ourselves to be brought down by something like this. If even a smattering of this dirty business leaks out, the media would eat us alive … not counting our friends
across the ocean. Could this possibly be real? I mean, my faith in everything has just gone tits up old boy.”

Sir John listened to the minister of defense and was soon joined in conference by the head of external intelligence, who had just been on the phone to the prime minister’s office.

“Do we have a consensus as to how we handle this mess?” the minister of MI5 asked his counterparts.

“Maybe
it’s just a coincidence?” Sir John said into the phone, not believing the tale he had just read.

“Maybe the key words in the communiqué were a coincidence, Mexico and Perdition, but the name? You read the file gentlemen the same as I. Can we afford to ignore the name of Lawrence Jackson Ambrose? I think not—at least not after the horrid facts of this sordid affair. Great Britain would never live
this down.”