02 Avalanche Pass

A JESSE PARKER MYSTERY

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2010 by John A. Flanagan.

Cover photo of
Helicopter
© by Purestock/Getty Images;
Avalanche
© by Denis Balibouse/Corbis.

Cover design by Brad Foltz.

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PRINTING HISTORY

Random House Australia Bantam book trade paperback edition / 2010

Berkley Prime Crime trade paperback edition / February 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Flanagan, John (John Anthony)

Avalanche pass : a Jesse Parker mystery / John A. Flanagan.

p. cm.

EISBN: 9781101559918

1. Hostages—Fiction. 2. Mercenary troops—Fiction. I. Title.

PR9619.4.F63A96 2012

823’.92—dc23

2011039750

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Fifty-Two

Epilogue

T
he ground below was a black mass.

By daylight, it would be a rolling ocean of hills and mountains, covered in featureless green jungle. Here and there, the brown snake of a dirt road would wind its tortuous way through the green. The occasional building would be visible—farmhouses, for the most part. And one large sprawling house with a group of outbuildings surrounding it. But now it was just a sea of almost unrelenting black.

Almost.

The F-117 Nighthawk was flying itself up to the final waypoint and Major Nathaniel Pell, call-sign Stalker, took a moment to peer out of the small triangular windows, trying to make out some detail on the ground below him. Far off to starboard, he could see the lights of a small city looming in the darkness. Closer, he saw a group of lights in the sea of black, maybe seven miles ahead of him. Target, he thought.

It was warm and comfortable in the cockpit. With the F-117 set on autopilot he had little to do. At sixty percent power—cruise setting—the twin turbofans behind him provided a subdued, almost soothing background rush of air over the canopy. He yawned. His biggest danger was falling asleep.

Then, almost as he had the thought, a discreet chirp from his instruments brought him wide awake.

The radar warning receiver was glowing in the top right quadrant, the glow slowly fading as the radar beam slid on by, over the Nighthawk. Stalker’s eyes narrowed as he watched the instrument. His forefinger went to the stopwatch control on his wrist chronometer, ready for the next warning chirp and flash.

There!

He hit the stopwatch and the sweep hand started around the
watch face. When the chirp and flash came again, he stopped the watch and checked the time.

Twenty-three seconds. That was the time it took for the radar antenna below him to rotate through a full circle, flicking its beam over his aircraft each time it passed. He wasn’t surprised to find a search radar out here in the boondocks. Knowing what was down there, he would have been surprised not to find it. And there were almost certainly SAMs as well—surface to air missiles ready to deal with any intruder that might be detected. For the moment, however, they posed no risk to him. The Nighthawk was invisible to the radar. Those below had no idea he was here.

Neither did too many people back home. Since he’d been seconded to this black operations group, he’d breached foreign air spaces half a dozen times without more than a handful of people knowing about it. His orders came in a convoluted chain from the highest authorities. The NSA, the CIA, the DEA, even the White House on occasion, would tell his superiors what they required without ever questioning how it might actually be accomplished. Deniability, he thought, smiling grimly behind his oxygen mask.

The radar passed over him again and he realized he was getting close to the business end of the night. He shifted in his seat to make himself more comfortable, rolled his shoulders to ease out the stiffness of sitting strapped in for four hours and keyed the transmit switch on his radio.

“Showboat,” he said. Just one word. The reply came almost instantly.

“Footlights.”

He flicked a switch, turning on the forward looking infrared viewer—the FLIR. After a few seconds, an image faded up, enhanced by computer so it resembled a normal TV picture, rather than IF imaging. A large square building, two stories high, without windows or visible doors, it was flat roofed and solid looking. Not solid enough for what it was about to receive, he thought grimly.

With his left hand he reached to the row of weapons selection switches and hit two of them. The display panel lit up to show two laser-guided weapons, ready to drop. He selected a ripple of two
and, finally, dialed a separation of five seconds into the system. Now one pressure on the bomb pickle would release the first bomb immediately, with the second rippling off five seconds later. He frowned for a moment. The twenty-three second window between radar sweeps wouldn’t be enough to open bomb doors and release both weapons. And when the bomb doors were open, the F-117’s low radar signature was seriously degraded. That meant the people below would know he was here.

He shrugged. Knowing it and doing anything about it were two different things. They might see him briefly but they’d have no time for a SAM launch before the bomb doors closed again and he disappeared from their screens. He armed another switch and a set of crosshairs appeared, superimposed over the image of the building. The aim point was a little to the left and below center so he steered the sight to the center of the flat roof with a miniature joystick.

He smiled grimly. “Footlights” was an appropriate call sign. Somewhere in the dark jungle below him, a two-man Special Forces covert team was concealed, illuminating the building with a laser designator. The laser energy reflected from the building would guide his bombs to their final target, as long as the designator was switched on. All he had to do was center the crosshairs, pickle the bombs, orbit gently while they both released, and then get the hell out of Dodge. The laser seeker head on the bombs would do the rest, slaving them to the laser sparkle, so that they steered themselves right into the center of the roof.

And he could watch it all on TV while he headed for home.

O
n the ground below, Roberto Modesta yawned and rubbed his eyes as the radar completed another sweep. Then, abruptly, he sat up, staring at the scope as a small blip appeared, held, then faded after the indicator line had swept on.

Modesta hesitated. Had he really seen a blip or had it been his imagination? After three hours of watching and seeing nothing, he was prepared to believe that his eyes were playing tricks on him. He knew he should call Alvarez, head of security here at Monte
Verde, and report what he had seen. But what had he seen? He decided to wait for another sweep, and confirm that the blip was still there.

Anxiously, he watched the radial line of light creep around the scope, willing it to go faster.

There! It was there again. But faint. Fainter than any return he had ever seen from a plane before. Even the little Piper Navajo that had strayed above the compound some weeks back had put out a more solid echo than this. Still, there was something there.