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Authors: Mack Maloney

BOOK: Strike Force Charlie
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“That's got to be a bus,” Bates said, pointing to its boxy appearance and its three wheels per side. It also showed many windows and a big windshield, as well as a hole in its roof. No one could disagree with him. Though still childlike, this drawing was the most identifiable scribble on the napkin. Bates also showed him that there was some writing in the upper right-hand corner of the napkin, but that it was almost totally obscured by the massive coffee stain and the imprint of the two nickels.
Ryder just shook his head. “Well, it's got to be a mass attack on a busy airport,” he said. “O'Hare or someplace. What else could it be?”
“But assuming this might be the second bus,” Bates said, “why stage a mass attack at one airport while your mook brothers are driving around the country setting up
separate
attacks on as many as nine different airports?”
He was right. It didn't make sense—and it left them all scratching their heads. Everyone present was fairly sure that the drawing had something to do with the mysterious second bus.
But the images in the air remained very puzzling.
 
They drained the rest of the coffee and sat there in near silence, trying to comprehend all that Bates had uncovered.
Finally Hunn began to speak.
“We've got to start talking about this,” he said. “The more we avoid it, the more time we lose … .”
“So talk about it then,” Gallant told him testily.
“OK,” Hunn began again. “Look at all the shit this Rushton guy's been doing. There's no freaking way those missiles
accidentally
fell into the hands of the mooks. Rushton was behind it—all these files prove it. And that means he had to be paid off, somehow, someway. Or he's got something else up his sleeve … .”
Hunn was a good soldier. Brave, loyal, and smart. But he also had anger issues. They all did. He had already done a
number on many of the Al Qaeda operatives they'd been able to track down, a small hatchet being his weapon of choice. At this point, though, he was ready to invade France.
“And don't forget,” he went on. “This asshole general went to
great
lengths to prevent us from stopping those missiles from getting into the U.S.—and he had us locked away indefinitely to boot. He's not just some stupid ass trying to get out of his own way. He's in thick with the French
and
the mooks, one way or another.”
Everyone nodded solemnly. They knew what was coming next.
“So, are we going to do what we said we were going to do when we got up here?” Hunn asked.
A long silence. The team had given up a long time ago on the niceties of conflict. Rules of war, Geneva Convention—all that crap. They moved in a new world, a place where things happened as fast as the bings and bangs of the Internet or the speed at which a picture could be flashed around the world. Close to the speed of light. Instantaneous. That's what their world was—and that's what they had to be, too. They didn't have time for long-drawn-out investigations, or trying to explain themselves, or committees being formed, or going the standard route and allowing the FBI to fuck things up.
They had come up here for many reasons, but two of them stood out: The elimination of Palm Tree, ending his little dance once and for all. And now Rushton … .
“But we've got several problems going here,” Fox reminded them. “Sure, we've probably got the goods on Rushton. But all that means is that no one in the government is going to start looking for those buses anytime soon. And, even if we could, there's
no way
we could show all this to someone higher up and convince him that it's all true in time before those assholes out there start shooting down airliners. That shit might start happening less than a day from now.”
“It's just like at Hormuz,” Gallant groaned; he'd been there, so he knew of what he spoke. “Once again, we're the
only ones who know what's
really
going on. We're the only ones that are in a position to stop it.”
They all hung their heads. They'd been expecting this—or something like it. But that didn't make it any easier.
The buses were out there; they had missiles in them. And if the government wasn't going to stop them, then it was up to the ghost team to. Again, they had planned for this eventuality. But it still took a while for it to finally sink in.
“But not only do we have to find the two buses,” Ozzi said,
“and
deal with Rushton. We have to figure out that
other
thing.”
Ryder looked at the rest of them. They were staring back at him with sunken, tired eyes. They all looked miserable—and, he supposed, so did he.
“What ‘other thing'?” he asked. “Are you telling me,
there's more
?”
No one said a word. So Ryder just turned back to Bates, who nodded grimly.
“There is,” he finally revealed. “And this one is almost impossible to figure out, more so than the napkin.”
Once again, he started banging on his keyboard.
“I went as deep as I could go into Palm Tree's memory banks,” he went on. “And just when I thought I was at the end, I got stopped at one last file Rushton sent him. It has the absolutely tightest security regime I've ever encountered surrounding it.”
Ryder saw the file icon pop up on Bates's screen.
“This file was given even higher priority and therefore more protection than even his most obvious correspondence with Palm Tree,” Bates went on. “And notice how it's marked: ‘For Immediate Action.' Yet it's labeled ‘May 1 through 7.'”
Sure enough, the icon's label seemed to indicate something having to do with the first seven days in May.
Ryder shook his head wearily. “But it's June,” he said.
Bates just shrugged. “I know,” he said. “Makes it even more screwy, doesn't it?”
“Can't you get
anything
out of them?” Ryder asked,
looking at the frozen screen that represented the dead end Bates had run into.
“Very, very little,” he replied. “But the trace I was able to suck out looked like orders for troop movements, moving air assets around, things like that. But that's all I can see right now.”
“What could he be hiding
more
than the fact that he's working with the French and Al Qaeda to shoot down a bunch of planes in his own country?” Ryder asked incredulously.
It was a good question. But no one had a clue as to what the answer might be. Another long silence. The world was back on their shoulders.
“So, what
are
we going to do?” Hunn asked again. “The clock is ticking here, and suddenly it looks like there isn't enough minutes in a day for us … .”
Fox finally spoke up: “I say we proceed like we were going to anyway. This added complication with Rushton isn't that big of a surprise, though personally I never thought he'd go so far as to
actively aid
the mooks with that low-grade-threat order on ground transport.
“But we'll just have to deal with it while we are on the move. Getting an ID on those buses, figuring out what's on that napkin, and stopping the mooks from shooting down airplanes is what we have to fix first. If not, we let a lot of people down. The whole country, in fact. And a lot of people will die, too. So, let's get our stuff together, and whoever is leaving, let's get to it.”
More silence. They were all tired, hungry, and miserable. No one wanted to move.
Then Ozzi said to Fox, “But what about Li?”
Fox thought for a very long time. He looked over at Ryder, the senior man, who just shrugged.
Finally Fox said, “Bring her in here and let her read everything, including those first two e-mail files. We're going to need her help more than we thought. And we can't keep her in the dark, not if she's going to put herself at risk.”
Then he looked back at the two files
“Fast Ball”
and “
Slow Curve,”
which Bates had brought back onto the screen.
“And tell her she can stop looking for Bobby Murphy, too,” Fox added. “Because I think we just found him.”
The Sky Horse
There's a full moon up there, somewhere
, thought Master Chief Eddie Finch (Ret.), watching the low clouds blowing over his head.
At least I think there is
… .
He was on his knees, a large flashlight in one hand and a pair of hedge clippers in the other. A small hatchet was close by, too, but he was woefully unprepared for the job that lay ahead of him. He was cutting down weeds, hundreds of them, poking through the cracks in the old CG airstrip. Some were the size of small trees, thus the hatchet. But he'd been at it for nearly four hours now and he was still only a third of the way up the 3,600-foot runway. A very strange way to spend a Saturday evening.
It was almost midnight. Finch was cold, and it was dark without the moon, and, at 62 years old, he knew this was going to leave his knees in agony for weeks. Still he kept pulling and chopping. The job had to be done, because an old friend had asked him to do it.
An old friend named Bobby Murphy.
Cape Lonely Air Station was the most isolated CG base on the Atlantic seaboard. It was built on a cliff nearly 300 feet above the ocean. Six hundred acres, held in by a rusty chain-link fence, the road to get here ran two miles through a thick pine forest. A wildlife preserve bordered the station on
the north; a 20-mile stretch of empty sand dunes and beach lay to its south. The closest highway, old U.S. Route 3, was more than 35 miles away.
There was a time, though, when Cape Lonely was the
busiest
Coast Guard station on the East Coast. CG aircraft from all over came here for engine change-outs and maintenance checks. New pilots endlessly practiced touch-and-go landings on its extra-wide runway. But that was back when the Coast Guard not only rescued people in peril but also searched for Russian submarines. Ten years ago, the base had been downsized to the point of nonexistence. It was like a ghost town now.
The only two things of value left at Cape Lonely were a small lighthouse and a Loran radio navigation positioning hut. Both ran automatically. An administration building, some support huts, and four dilapidated aircraft hangars were the only other structures remaining of the once-bustling air station. Behind the hangars was an aeronautical junkyard, a place where old CG aircraft had come to die. Airframes, big and small, wings, tail sections, landing gear assemblies, all rotting away, many leaking nasty fluids into the soil. No surprise, Cape Lonely was a hazardous waste site, too.
The wind was really starting to blow now and Eddie Finch knew rain might not be far away. He yanked up a milkweed that was the size of a small conifer. He was amazed at the size of some of the plant life up here.
Must be all that chemical crap in the ground
, he'd thought more than once.
He finally stopped for a much-needed breather; he hadn't worked this hard since he'd retired 10 years ago. He checked his watch. It was a few minutes past twelve. He looked down the remaining length of runway and groaned. God, did he still have a long haul ahead of him!
He was not up here alone at least. Not exactly anyway. Way down in Hangar 4A, he could see a very dull light peeking out from beneath the huge rusty door.
You'd think a couple of those guys would come out here and help me pull weeds
, he thought. But then again, they had their jobs to do as well.
Finch put his head down and got back to work. But suddenly from behind him came a strange sound. Even though he was alone on the old runway moments before, five armed men had materialized out of nowhere and were now standing over him. They were clad in weird black suits and ski masks and carrying rifles. Each man was also wearing a black rain poncho, all five blowing mightily in the wind. They seemed frightening, dangerous even, if a little frayed around the edges. Like a SWAT team that had lost its way.
Finch just looked up at them, though, and said, “Oh, it's only you guys … .”
It was the ghost team minus Hunn and Ozzi—Fox, Puglisi, Bates, Gallant, and Ryder—and all five were still miserable. It had been a long, hot trip down here in Li's very small car, with all their gear. They hadn't eaten anything of substance really and were down to rationing cigarettes. Except for a few interrupted naps, none of them had slept much since busting out of Gitmo seven days ago. Add in the headful of stuff they'd just learned up in D.C., the result was they were all feeling punchy.
They trooped inside the admin building now. It was a four-story cement block structure, its white paint all but chipped away, located on the other side of the landing strip from the cliff. Finch led them down to the large mess hall, a reminder of the former glory of this place. The interior looked like something from a time capsule, though, right down to the yellowed recruiting posters falling off the walls. An old Coleman lantern provided the only light these days. Finch produced a pot of coffee and five paper cups but then said, “Sorry, we're outta cream and sugar.”
The five men collapsed into metal folding chairs set up around a cafeteria-style table. “Just as long as it's hot,” Fox mumbled.
They'd just taken their first tentative sips of the coffee when, far at the other end of the mess hall, another door opened and eight very elderly men, dressed as if they had just come off the golf course, filed in and sat down. This was strange … . The old guys exchanged glances with the team members, but there was no formal greeting.
Finch finished pouring coffee for the team, then walked across the mess hall and had a brief conversation with the group of elderly men. When he returned, he had a bag of doughnuts with him. He passed them out to the ghosts.
“Those old boys hate to see anyone go hungry,” Finch told them.
Finch himself looked like a trim Santa Claus. White hair, white beard, Saint Nick after a year on Atkins. An NCO in the Coast Guard Reserves, he'd been stationed here at Cape Lonely, off and on, from 1964 until it went nonstatus a decade ago. A bit stooped over, with very thick glasses, he could have been mistaken for a retired grocer or a banker.
But he'd been a godsend to the ghost team. And not just for the coffee and doughnuts.
If not for him, they would all probably be back in prison.
“I won't ask you how it went up in D.C.,” he said to Fox now. “I'm just glad you made it back in one piece.”
“We're not staying very long this time, either, I hope,” Fox replied, checking his watch. It was almost twelve-fifteen. By his reckoning, they were already three hours behind schedule. “We've got to get moving as soon as possible.”
Finch just nodded toward the elderly men at the other end of the mess. “We're ready on this end,” he said. “All of use … .”
Fox took a huge bite of a doughnut and washed it down with a gulp of coffee.
“Why were you out there pulling weeds on the runway?” Fox asked. “It's a little late for that, isn't it?”
Finch rubbed his aching knees. “‘Our mutual friend' said that we might be needing the airstrip again soon. Not for you guys. But maybe for something else. That would make it twice in about twenty years.”
Fox thought about this for a moment—
why would they be needing the runway again?
he wondered. But then he just went back to his doughnut. He already had enough weirdness floating around his head; he didn't need to be thinking about something else.
The others ate and drank their coffee, too, but their respite
would indeed be brief. Between bites, Puglisi checked over the team's small cache of weapons, now minus the hunting rifle. Gallant meanwhile had been carrying most of their ammunition in a backpack. He now laid it all out on a nearby table, making sure none of the rounds had come apart or got wet. Right beside him, Bates unwrapped his laptop, plugged it into an ancient phone jack, and was soon on-line. As for Ryder, he had other things to do. He drained his coffee quickly, lit one of his last cigarettes, then grabbed a flashlight and headed back outside.
The clouds above were still heavy, and fast moving, but the moon was finally poking through in a few places. He walked to the edge of the cliff, for a moment looking down at the sea crashing against the rocks below. Finch had told them earlier that when the government finally closed this place sometime in the coming year it was going to be developed for luxury condominiums. Three levels, ocean views, very private location.
Nice place to live
, Ryder thought.
If I had a million bucks
…
He power-dragged the cigarette to its end, then flicked the expended butt over the side of the cliff, watching the tiny orange glow all the way down. Then he started across the wide, broken runway.
The four old hangars were all the same size, and all four were in the same state of disrepair. Ryder walked up to the first hangar and examined its padlock. He took a key from his pocket and tried to put it in, but the lock would not cooperate. He tried again—still no luck. The lock was rusty even though it had been placed here just a week before. The salt air had already corroded it.
Maybe not such a good place to live
, Ryder thought.
The key finally slipped in and the lock popped open. It was so suddenly unleashed, though, the door abruptly swung out a foot, nearly knocking Ryder on his ass. He managed to push it back in place and roll it open. Then he turned on the flashlight and pointed it into the hangar.
That's when he saw the airplane again. The Transall-2
turboprop special. The cargo plane from hell. Former owner: the Iranian Air Force.
The plane was a mess. There were small trees still wrapped around its wings, clumps of weeds still stuck in its engines. It was covered with sea salt, some of it thick as mud. All of the wing-mounted landing lights had been shattered, as were two of the eight cockpit windows. Of the 16 tires on the craft's landing gear, a half-dozen were flat.
It looked like a shitbox on wings, but it had carried them here, somehow, from Cuba, so from that point of view it wasn't a shitbox at all. In fact, it had played a very crucial role in their escape. Busting out of Guantanamo, was one story. It was getting
here
that had been the really hard part.
Using purloined weapons and shackle keys they'd hidden in the crotches of their prison uniforms, the ghosts had taken control of the transfer plane as soon as it lifted off from Gitmo. The three Iranians onboard took a swim for Allah—considering their no-win situation, it would have happened to them sooner or later. With Ryder and Gallant flying the plane, they'd climbed to 7,200 feet but not any higher, a wise choice, as it turned out. The Transall-2 was not
that
difficult a plane to fly, in good weather, that is. But at night, in the middle of a small hurricane, it proved a bitch. The fierce storm had been their one and only cover, though, and it topped out at 7,500 feet. As bumpy as it was, they'd been forced to stay in the thick of it if their escape plan had any chance of succeeding.
Just seconds after they'd reached 7,200 feet, Bates plugged a small handheld device called a signal diverter (slipped to him by one of the Marine guards) into the plane's flight computer. With just a few buttons pushed, Bates was soon manipulating every primary control on the airplane except steering and throttles. He then began punching commands directly into the flight computer itself, intentionally overloading it. It actually made a sizzling sound before it finally went
kaput
. At this point Ryder and Gallant had to start flying the plane manually, no hydraulic assists, no autopilot, just muscles and wires. Then Bates pushed one last button,
sending a barrage of false signals to the plane's safety control systems: its environmental suite, its temperature sensors, and most especially its flight data recorder. These bogus signals were designed to do one thing: mimic a sudden explosive fire aboard the aircraft.
At that moment, Ryder and Gallant put the plane into a gut-wrenching dive, this while the others onboard held on for their lives. Ten seconds into this plunge, Bates administered the
coup de grâce
, blacking out all communications, both electronic and radio, from the plane. To anyone monitoring the flight, like the air traffic controllers at Guantanamo, it appeared the Transall had suffered a massive short-circuit, then a fire, then an explosion that literally blew it out of the sky. Even the air safety computers in the Gitmo control tower had been footled. Automatically clicking into a search and rescue program, one studied the last signals from the plane and concluded that not only would nothing bigger than a seat cushion be found at the crash site but also the storm would scatter the wreckage for miles.
It was only because Ryder and Gallant were able to pull the plane out of its death dive at 500 feet that some kind of crash
didn't
occur. The plunge had rattled every nut and bolt onboard and had shattered most of the interior lights as well. Once level, though, they'd brought the plane down even
lower
, right to the wave tops, below any radar net they knew of, U.S., Cuban, or otherwise.
Only then did they turn north. Toward America. If they remained at this altitude, they thought, and the weather stayed awful, they just might be able to sneak up the East Coast and reach their destination in just a couple hours. At least that was the plan.

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