Starfish Prime (Blackfox Chronicles Book 2) (7 page)

As United States policy expanded to include counterterrorism training, Colombia, with its active counterinsurgency war and

global drug cartels, became ground zero for the effort. The

United States Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) was the major joint forces headquarters responsible for the area. Special Oper
ations units from SOUTHCOM were currently training and equipping a counter-narcotics (CN) brigade. This included the fielding of Black Hawk helicopters and training CN troops in counter-narcotics operations. 

MARSOC was also participating in joint mobile training teams that provided military training and support missions, as well as providing continual support to the Department of State’s military related programs. Therefore, Colombia was already in

MARSOC’s backyard. 

The MARSOC Commander called in a chit and got a raid team and a Blackhawk. Called a drug deal, in the somewhat p
eculiar vernacular of the Army, it referred to a deal done under the table—outside official military channels.

McElroy had served with a particular Army Special Forces colonel during Operation Just Cause when he was assigned as a

Special Forces liaison to the then-Captain’s Recon Company. The Green Beret was a staff sergeant at the time and received a direct commission some time later. They had crossed paths at various times during their careers, once at a seminar on multinational terrorism at the War College, and again during Operation Iraqi freedom, when the newly promoted SF major served as SF liaison to the Marine Expeditionary Brigade McElroy commanded. 

The colonel was now commanding the Seventh Special For
ces Group and was providing support to the Colombian Counter-Narcotics Brigade. The details of the drug deal were unknown. 

“We’re about ten
nauts out,” cackled the voice in the Chief Warrant Officer’s headset. He was technically on an evaluation ride, grading the Blackhawk’s crew on night operations, including navigation and landing. 

An SF master sergeant would be grading the team in the back on conducting a counter-narcotics raid. The unit’s normal hea
dquarters was at the Larandia Army Post, a military base located in Caqueta, southern Colombia. 

After the UH-60A had closed to within five
nauts, the American master sergeant nodded at his Colombian counterpart, a captain, who screamed “Bloqueo y carga” to the raid team, a hand-picked group of eight sergeants standing in for the actual team being evaluated. They were all dressed in camouflage battle dress uniforms, Kevlar protective headgear with eye protective visors, and individual bullet resistant vests. 

The Blackhawk had flown directly from Bogota, where the CN Unit was undergoing MOUT training, as its four external extended-range fuel tanks negated the need for refueling prior to reaching their LZ. The pilots wore NVGs supplied by the SF c
adre, but serious limitations in the ability to accurately perceive depth made the devices a mixed blessing. 

The Blackhawk was an export version and as such lacked most of the modern electronic enhancements that increased situ
ational awareness, such as a Forward Looking Infrared Thermal Imager (FLIR). To compensate for this shortcoming, the SF master sergeant carried a small handheld infrared camera in a pouch on his load-bearing vest. The camera allowed him to spot heat signatures from behind covered locations― he could literally see through walls. 

The copter circled the island once and located the yacht.

While the Blackhawk hovered, the master sergeant brought the IR Scope to his eye and scanned the boat. He noted that the engines were cold and he noticed no other heat signatures. He spoke into his microphone and a few seconds later, the crew chief opened the right side troop door and kicked out a heavy rope. Two troopers filed towards the thick white line, gripped it with heavy gloves, and descended to the dock. Once they were both on the ground, they quickly disappeared on board.

The Blackhawk continued towards the center of the island and the pilot selected the FOB’s slightly overgrown airstrip for a landing zone. The young pilot slammed the Blackhawk down
hard enough to earn a withering look from the chief warrant officer, and reactively shrugged his shoulders as if to apologize. 

Michael and Ramos were alerted by the distinctive, rapid, throaty
wump of the Blackhawk’s arrival. Blackfox jumped to his feet and stared off in the direction of the noise.

“Marines?”

Ramos shook his head, “No, we use mostly UH1s for transport. Aside from you gringos, the only one with Blackhawks is the Counter-Narcotics Brigade.”

“We need to go,” said Michael while shaking Char awake. 

“Why? They are probably just doing some training,” said Ramos
reassuringly. 

“If you want to stay,
then stay. Maybe they can drop you off in Turbo, but we’re leaving.” Char awoke and heard enough to know things had taken a sudden turn for the worse. He jumped to his feet and grabbed his bag. 

“Okay, we go,” said Ramos. 

They all heard the distinct high-pitched whistle of illumination flares rocketing skyward.

“Bad news,” said
Char.

“Tell me something we don’t know,” answered Michael. I
nstinctively, they hit the deck, while Ramos took shelter beneath the crawlspace under the cook shack, opened the trap door, and boosted himself inside. 

Char and Michael looked at each other as if to say, “No shit” and quickly followed. They silently hunkered down below the four-foot walls of the hut and watched the slowly descending flare flood light through the tall screen windows. 

No voices betrayed the raiding party’s presence, but there was the sound of soft footfalls on the hard packed earth that surrounded the C-Huts. The team approached the FOB with the SF master sergeant in the lead. He scanned the buildings as they approached and aside from the still smoldering grill, found no other heat source. 

He began scanning the sides of each plywood building, looking for a heat signature that indicated the presence of their prey. 

Michael heard a soft explosive pop followed by a loud one and assumed the raid party was systematically using small explosive charges to blow the padlocks securing the C-huts, then throwing in a flash-bang grenade to stun any defenders.

Ramos duck walked over to Michael and whispered som
ething. An intense murmured negotiation ensued, punctuated by several softly spoken curses in both English and Spanish. 

“Don’t worry, Michael, no one gets hurt. I just want to get their attention. I owe you that for Iraq,” whispered Ramos. 

Michael nodded, afraid he might never see Ramos again. They embraced with two quick pats on the back, and Ramos silently scurried into the kitchen while Michael signaled his father to follow him to the trap door. “Run to the boat as fast as you can, when I tell you,” he whispered. 

From a squat, Ramos reached up to the windowsill where the hose from the propane tank entered through a hole in the screen. He turned the dial on the regulator, allowing the flow of propane to the lightweight field stove they had used earlier to cook the lobsters. He then turned both burners to full, retreated behind the plywood wall that separated the kitchen from the living area, and waited. 

Michael could smell the scent imparted into the otherwise odorless gas waft into the hut. The assault team better get here soon, otherwise, Michael, Char, and Ramos would die of gas poisoning instead of getting blown up, thought Michael. 

There was a loud explosive pop that shattered the lock on the wood slat door. Someone wrenched it open and a beer-can-sized object clattered across the wooden floorboards. 

A second later, the entire front of the C-hut exploded in a hot eruption of flame and noise as the grenade ignited the propane, flinging the bodies of the assault team onto their backs and showering them with splintered wood from the destroyed kitchen. Smoke billowed out from the source of the explosion and hung in the air above the prostrate bodies of the raid team. 

Michael and Char dropped through the hatchway and crawled to the far side of the building just as it exploded. The sound was deafening and the front of the C-hut evaporated in a fireball fo
llowed by billowing clouds of black smoke.
Holy shit
, thought Michael,
I hope Ramos didn’t kill anyone
. He signaled his father with a slap on the back and the two sprinted to the dock. 

Ramos peeked out from behind the plywood wall and cursed.
Too much gas
, he thought. The entire front wall of the C-hut was missing and the edges were on fire in places. Pieces of smoldering wood were scattered about the front of the hut. Someone was loudly shouting for a fire extinguisher. Ramos could see all the members of the entry team unsteadily get to their feet, and he figured they were shaken up and possibly angry, but otherwise okay. He was damn sure not going to stick around and catch a beating. Ramos expeditiously low-crawled across the wood floor and slipped down through the trap door. 

The soldiers on board the yacht heard the loud explosion and became concerned. They had huddled in the pilothouse, knowing this would be the first place the drug smugglers would head. Now they thought perhaps the team had been ambushed and wondered whether they should go to assist. The senior sergeant ordered his subordinate to stay put and exited the boat just as Char and M
ichael reached the dock. 

The Colombian brought his weapon up to fire, but Michael plowed into him at full speed while he simultaneously jammed his forearm into the man’s chin, one of the few areas not protec
ted by ballistic armor. The blow took the man off his feet and his M16A2 clattered onto the dock a few feet from his right arm. Michael grabbed the weapon, chambered a round, and scanned the boat just as the second soldier exited the main cabin onto the stern.

Michael took up a good sight picture on the other soldier’s midsection and shouted,

“¡Suelta el arma! Shouted Michael; ordering the man to drop his weapon. The soldier stared at him, but did not move. Char decided they didn’t have time for a Colombian standoff—he quickly mounted the stern, approached the soldier, and snatched the weapon from the smaller man with such violence that it knocked him off his feet. 

Char expertly opened the receiver, removed the bolt, and threw it off into the distance, figuring the soldier should be able
to find it come sun up. He handed the now useless rifle back to the soldier and said, “Salga la lancha! Get off the boat.” 

Michael removed the bolt from his M16, threw the bolt in the same direction as the last one, and handed the gun back to the soldier he had knocked on his ass.

“Muevelos!” Char said loudly as he herded both men off the dock in the direction of the FOB. When he was sure that they had left the area, Michael quickly untied the lines while Char re-boarded the yacht and headed to the bridge to fire up the engines. 

Ramos was a few minutes behind the others, but he was a well-conditioned athlete and arrived just as Michael was ushering the two soldiers off the dock. “They’re okay―it just shook them up a bit.”

Michael nodded. “Get aboard. We’re off like a prom dress.” 

The
Good as Gold
reversed slowly away from the dock, and Char executed a slow sweeping turn to starboard to point the bow north and away from Colombia. International waters were normally considered to be twelve miles out, but Char wasn’t about to stop there. He slowly throttled up the engines, hoping the calamity at the FOB would keep the raiders occupied. 

Michael and Ramos stood on the bridge on either side of Char as he stood transfixed by the horizon, silently praying they would reach international waters before whoever was after them got their second wind. 

“Four nauts to go,” said Char, and then they all heard it, the rapid repetitive sound of dual turbine rotor engines. The sound grew louder and they felt, rather than saw, something dark and loud pass over the port side of the yacht. Char powered up the engines, still hoping to make a run for it, when the aircraft’s position lights turned on, illuminating a Blackhawk about one hundred meters ahead, hovering about thirty feet off the surface directly in their path. Char turned to port to avoid the aircraft, but the bird rapidly adjusted its hover and again placed itself directly in the boat’s path. This time, the aircraft turned and it aligned its open troop door with the bow of the accelerating yacht. A stream of tracer rounds flowed out from the door and impacted in the water immediately in front of the bow. 

Char powered down the engines and waited. After a few minutes, the marine radio cackled to life. “Ahoy, the
Good as Gold
, return to your last location. Fail to do this and we will sink your boat. Acknowledge.” 

Char picked up the mike, replied, and executed a slow turn back toward the island. 

Six soldiers from the raid team waited at the dock, weapons at the ready. Three of them had small bloody cuts on their faces and the team as a whole seemed to seethe with barely contained rage. A tall Latin American wearing a sanitized MultiCam patterned uniform boarded and entered the bridge, closely followed by two of the Colombian soldiers.