Scott Roarke 03 - Executive Command (42 page)

“Mr. President,” Vice Admiral Gunning asked from MacDill, “We’re reassessing.”

“Say again?” Morgan Taylor demanded over the scrambled line.

“Reassessing, sir.”

“What in hell does that mean?”

“Enterprise acquired Sidekick.” The rest remained unstated.

“Oh no.” Taylor shook his head sensing Katie’s eyes burning into him. He turned away from her, but she figured out the situation.

“Jesus. He’s still after him,” she said.

Katie wanted to leave, but was too angry to do so. Angry at the president for putting Roarke in the field. Angry at Roarke for taking on the hunt.

“For God’s sake, help him,” she pleaded.

The best the Cheetah could do was keep Cooper’s Zodiac in view, not catch up. With less than a few kilometers to Ciudad del Este and no support, it seemed likely Cooper would get away—again.

Two minutes in, Roarke and D’Angelo saw the lights ahead on the Friendship Bridge which linked Brazil and Paraguay. D’Angelo sharpened the focus on his binoculars. Cooper’s craft was angling closer to the shore.

“Got any suggestions?” the CIA agent asked.

“Yes. Kill him.”

D’Angelo laughed. “Don’t count on it. He’s a nuclear cockroach.”

Roarke kept his attention forward, fully aware that D’Angelo was right. They couldn’t possibly catch up.

Suddenly a whirring sound came up on and over them. Water churned almost violently, which was nothing compared to the ear shattering volley that spit out Black Hawk Two’s side-mounted M60D machine gun.

At first the aim was short, but Captain Frome brought the UH-60 nose up, and the next rounds hit the Zodiac’s motor dead on, which ignited the fuel and created an explosion that lit up the dock that Cooper was only yards away from reaching.

Satisfied, Frome banked the Black Hawk toward the Brazil side of the Paraná and waved good-bye.

“Enterprise, proceed to Farmer’s Daughter for reunion.” The order came from B.D. Coons who was observing from one thousand feet in Black Hawk One. The order was to tie up with two other SEALs who attacked the country club entrance before the national military tightened exfiltration routes.

“Roger, One,” D’Angelo responded.

Roarke disagreed. “You said he’s a nuclear cockroach. Get us closer.”

“One pass. But let’s lighten up.”

They tossed their tactical vests, helmets, and heavy weapons in the middle of the Paraná and washed the grease off their faces.

D’Angelo steered around the debris and burning rubber. Pieces floated where there had been a whole craft. Nothing else.

“We’ve gotta go, Roarke. Sorry.”

Roarke continued to look for signs of a swimmer; or any remains.

“He’s gone, buddy.”

Gone,
Roarke thought. He reached for D’Angelo’s binoculars. “Give me those.”

D’Angelo handed them over. Roarke brought them up to his eyes and scanned the water ahead, then swept farther up river.

“We’ve got to…”

“Damnit! Give me one more minute!”

The binocular images were transmitted back to MacDill where an extra pair of eyes jockeyed between the video monitor and a computerized waveform monitor that distinguished objects Roarke might not.

“General, check out the incoming vid from Enterprise,” Seaman Garrett Dettling requested.

Gunning looked up at the video feed in the op center. There was nothing significant to his mind.

“What?” he asked.

“I’ll give you playback in slo-mo, sir.”

Dettling typed in time-code from thirty seconds previous. The hard drive instantly cued to the image the $10,752-a-year enlisted man had viewed before.

Dettling crept the video forward. “Coming up.” He froze an image. “See?”

“Enterprise, subject on the move. Forty-five degrees off your nose. Two hundred twenty feet.” The transmission immediately got D’Angelo’s attention.

“Get your eyes up there and hold on!” D’Angelo yelled. He revved the engine and speeded to the riverbank. Roarke nearly lost his footing. “You just might have another shot, buddy.”

Roarke trained the binoculars on the embankment. “There!” he shouted loud enough for Richard Cooper to hear.

D’Angelo could see him now, too, Cooper was slightly illuminated by the reflection of the city lights in the water.

Roarke yelled, “Faster,” though he didn’t need to. D’Angelo was already at top speed, closing the distance to the swimmer.

Nothing the president could say would have mattered to Katie Kessler. Roarke and D’Angelo were determined to get Cooper.

Moments earlier they had all been relieved that the assault was over. Now they were compelled to listen to the drama. No more pictures from Roarke’s POV camera. That went into the river along with his tac vest.

“The two Bobs.” The president got the attention of his FBI Director and Secretary of State.

Taylor motioned with his index finger for them to come around. Bob Huret, a member of his cabinet from the beginning, kneeled next to Taylor. The FBI Director stood.

“Yes, Mr. President,” Secretary of State Huret said for both of them.

“Alarms have got to be going off down there. It’s time to get Gutierez on phone.”

“Absolutely. When?”

“Five minutes. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts you’re not the one to wake him up.”

Huret agreed. By now, the president of Paraguay was certain to be very busy and very confused.

Cooper scrambled up the slope that rose from the Paraná. At the crest, more woods, then the bustling streets, market venders, and shopping malls of Ciudad del Este. A perfect place to escape even at this hour.

First, get lost in the crowd.
Cooper thought as he ran.
Then lose whoever was following him.
But he had a strong feeling he knew who it was.

Roarke leaped off the bow of the craft milliseconds before D’Angelo beached it. Inertia gave him a boost up the hill but no direct shot.

Cooper made the street thirty feet ahead of his hunter. He bumped into hawkers still selling perfumes, cell phones, cigarettes, tents, and suitcases. He careened off one merchant, knocking him into stacked boxes of hot flat screen TVs. They came crashing down and bought him a few extra seconds of space.

Roarke had to jump over the boxes.

Cooper smashed into a makeshift gate holding fifty or more multicolored soccer balls. The structure collapsed and the balls bounced into the street and sidewalk giving him more broken field running room.

Roarke dodged and slipped. When he rose, Cooper was gone.

“Mr. President, I’m sorry to call you at this hour,” Morgan Taylor began.

“I’m a little busy. Would this have anything to do with it?” the Paraguayan chief executive replied in a completely unfriendly tone.

“I will be direct, President Gutierez. Tonight the United States acted unilaterally in defense of its national interests. In the most specific of terms, Special Forces, under orders of the president of the United States, located the terrorist known to be behind the attacks on this country. This action occurred within Paraguay outside of Ciudad del Este. The terrorist’s guards were
dealt with
and our enemy was removed.”

Taylor kept to the truth, but avoided detail.

“We are currently extracting our men and we will cover the actual cost of physical damage to public and private property. Any interference, Mr. President,
any
will be considered collusion in the unmitigated attack on the peoples of the United States of America. Conversely, your cooperation will be noted in our ongoing discussions.” He intentionally left out promises.

“I will turn further dialogue over to Bob Huret, in anticipation of the questions surely to follow from the press.”

Morgan Taylor stopped, not to invite dialogue but to end the conversation.

“Mr. President, I must ask,” Gutierez began.

“I’m sorry, my first duty is to my men. Secretary of State Huret will be calling back within the hour. Thank you, President Gutierez.”

Taylor hung up.

He was becoming someone else—fast. Cooper quickly grabbed a short-sleeve shirt off a rack, a baseball cap, and a blue backpack and paid the indignant shopkeeper a hard right in his gut for the goods.

Roarke searched left and right. He removed slower people from those moving faster and people who weren’t trying to be invisible from one who was.

Around a corner Cooper ripped off his wet shirt, put on the new one, then slung the backpack over it. The hat rounded out the quick change. Ahead, in front of the Americana Mall, were rows of parked yellow motorcycles and a few arriving and departing.

He made a wide sweep around them, blending in with the pedestrians, and identified a biker who was going to lose his bike.

Damn!
Roarke narrowed his focus.
Where are you?
The sounds were impossible to filter. A cacophony of music emanating from ramshackle apartments interspersed with the malls and shouts of “coke!,” which is easily available and definitely not in a can. His training told him to stick with the motion and look for someone trying to blend in.

Roarke stepped out into the street. Little chance of being hit by a car. Traffic was backed up. The only things moving were the motorcycles. He searched again left, right, and straight ahead. Cooper was a tad taller than most, so he looked above the heads. That’s when he caught a figure in a garish shirt and a baseball cap moving quickly amongst the late-night shoppers and hookers.
Not him.
But just as Roarke was about to shift his attention elsewhere, he saw a man ever so slightly casting about as if he were checking for something. Checking for an escape route.

Cooper!

The assassin rammed his elbow into the solar plexus of the twenty-four-year-old tourist from Denmark who had just bought some of the street coke and was now ready to drive back to his hotel. It was such a natural movement that no one noticed it came with near lethal intent. The man doubled over; the wind knocked out of him. Cooper saved the motorcycle and let the young man fall face first onto the pavement and into his own vomit. Cooper skipped the yellow helmet and gunned the throttle.

That caught Roarke’s attention even more. Everyone else had a helmet. He cut across a line of cars, back into a street vender, and knocked down a display of Black Market Bobbi Brown cosmetics under a red, blue, green, and yellow umbrella. The merchandise broke, releasing the powerful perfumed scents into the marketplace. When Roarke found his footing again, he drew a forty-five-degree bead on Cooper. A clear shot. But a boy, likely no older than twelve, stepped out in front of him. He held a Smith and Wesson .380 semiautomatic on him.

“D
etener!
” the boy yelled. “Stop.” From barely ten feet, he aimed his pistol at Roarke’s stomach, a bigger, easier target than his head. He wasn’t the only one armed on the street. Other vendors—men, women, and children—had shotguns. The small semiautomatic was just easier for the kid to handle.

Roarke froze. A child with a gun; a child who spoke no English and who thought he could earn some street cred for stopping this thief, was not someone to tempt.

“
Por favor. Que el hombre
,” Roarke said in his best Los Angeleno Spanish. “Please, that man.” He motioned to the motorcyclist barreling down on them.

The kid would have nothing of it. He had his own man, the one who had just destroyed hundreds of dollars of merchandise.

Roarke was pushed forward by the pedestrians who made way for the motorcyclist.

“Detener! Detener.”

Roarke found his footing. It didn’t seem like the boy would.

To him, Roarke was big, strong, and very threatening. The child steadied his grip with the standard two-hand stance. He obviously had trained for this moment. The safety was off. Adrenaline coursed through his veins.

“No!” Roarke shouted.

The child had seen others do it. Aim and fire. A rite of passage for many others who had also grown up in the most dangerous environment imaginable. A lawless city, a throwback to the old West where guns spoke the loudest and young people proved their worth by using them.

Roarke cautiously angled his body to give the boy a narrower target. “No, mi amigo,” he said.

It wasn’t enough to deter the child from his defining moment.

He fired, but his aim went high as a form that seemed to come out of nowhere tackled him. A much bigger force. Vinnie D’Angelo.

“Get going!”

Roarke turned to see if he could catch Cooper on foot, but he’d already put too much room between them. Then he remembered the other motorcyclists. He changed direction, ran to the parking rack, and with even greater urgency than Cooper, also commandeered a motorcycle.

“
Por favor
. Sorry,” he said to the young woman he left stranded. Roarke gunned the engine, circled, and tore off after Cooper. He caught a glimpse of D’Angelo helping the kid up and screaming at the others to calm down. His Spanish was far better and more authoritative than Roarke’s. He was also one hundred times more lethal than anyone congregating near him now.

Roarke saw Cooper ahead about fifty yards. He maneuvered straight for the Friendship Bridge which linked Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, with Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil. Even while steering through the traffic, Roarke wondered why Cooper would abandon a crime capital where he could easily disappear for a border crossing and military guards. But the thought vanished when a car sideswiped him. Roarke went down. He was okay, but the motorcycle was not. Fortunately, there was no shortage of others on Avenida da San Blás. He yanked another driver off one, this time without an apology.

Cooper crossed over to the main bridge road, Route 7. He looked back and didn’t see Roarke.
Breathing room.

Roarke’s new bike was just a little bit faster, and he began to close the distance. Once again, he searched for Cooper. The streetlights helped. He spotted him. Cooper raced along a parallel road that would soon put him on the bridge.

Not waiting for a proper turn, Roarke darted across a greenway, leaning sharply to his right, then to his left. He straightened his bike, swerved around a Jetta, and merged onto the bridge access road.