Read The Alpha Deception Online
Authors: Jon Land
The Alpha Deception
The Alpha Deception
Jon Land
For Mort Korn and Emery Pineo and so many others who have given so much
Contents
Part Three: Rounding Up the Usual Suspects
Part Five: The Battle of Pamosa Springs
A Sneak Peek at
Strong at the Break
THE TOWN OF HOPE
Valley died without protest.
Sunday morning dawned lazily, with the sun sneaking over the mountains of Oregon unseen by the one thousand residents who had gone to bed expecting rain. The first rays fell upon the black roads and neatly manicured lawns set between driveways complete with basketball hoops and two-car garages. A layer of dew coated those vehicles left out to bear the elements and, after negotiating a dozen lawns with papers tucked under his arm, a lone newsboy found his high-tops soaked through to the cuffs of his jeans.
The Sunday edition was by far the most cumbersome of the week, its bulk bending his bike’s twin steel cages outward, with the overflow jammed in a sack over his shoulder. The boy kick-stood his bike and padded toward the next door on his route, sneakers sloshing through the grass and then squeaking on pavement as he climbed the front steps. The paper landed with a thud that sent color ad-inserts flying into the air.
The end came before they had a chance to drift to earth.
In his last instant of life, the boy had time to register an explosion of light like that of a flashbulb that didn’t vanish with a click. A bluish-white beam poured from the sky in a moving arc across Hope Valley. It had impacted first at the town’s western perimeter. By the time the boy’s mind recorded it, a cloud of charcoal-black dust had already formed, following the beam as if attached by a leash and swallowing everything in its path.
The wind picked up fiercely, whipped up like a whirlpool tossing about the remnants of ruptured buildings with ease. At the last, the boy’s ears caught the sounds of crumbling and crackling. He was about to scream when all the breath in him was sucked out. His blood, flesh, bones, even his clothes turned to dark dust and joined the spreading black cloud as the town of Hope Valley vanished into oblivion.
Nicaragua: Sunday, nine
A.M.
“LIEUTENANT ORTIZ IS HERE,
Major Paz,” shouted the young soldier as he ran down the runway. “He’s just been checked through the gate.”
“Hurry him up, then,” ordered Guillermo Paz. “And be quick about it.”
The young Nicaraguan stopped long enough to make a semblance of a salute and ran back in the other direction.
Major Guillermo Paz too was a native Nicaraguan but no longer felt it. He had spent his late teens in the hell of the Samoza dictatorship and had seen his father tortured and killed. He had become one of many Sandinista rebel leaders, and when the revolution was over, Soviet advisers picked him out to go to Moscow to master the rudiments of true soldiering, killing, and leading. He became, in effect, a troubleshooter for them, a spy in his own country—though that was not how he saw it. Three years in the Soviet Union with some of the best military minds in the world had spoiled him. Sent back here to command a crucial air base on the Lago de Nicaragua just south of Acoyapa, Paz realized all at once how backward and infantile his country was. The soldiers were inept and unreliable. If not for the even greater ineptitude on the part of the Contras, the present government would have gone the way of the last.
Major Paz stood rigidly as the jeep carrying the latest Soviet-trained pilot approached. Although Paz was of average height, he was of anything-but-average build. A near-lifetime of weightlifting, which started with his hoisting feed onto trucks as a boy, had given him a midsection that was essentially a single solid block. He had no neck to speak of, and a tremendous chest made him an impossible fit for standard-issue uniforms. He wore his black hair never more than a quarter-inch long, in a stubble cut that showed off the thick scar which ran across the right side of his scalp. The only luxury Paz allowed himself was the thick mustache he groomed twice daily and stroked constantly. He was stroking it now as the jeep’s brakes squealed before him.
The Acoyapa base was important for its new supply of fifteen Soviet-made Hind-D helicopters, the most awesome warships in the world of guerrilla fighting. The general consensus in Moscow was that twenty Hinds could do more damage to the Contras’ jungle strongholds than twenty thousand Soviet troops. Each ship was fitted for 128 27-millimeter unguided rockets and six laser-guided antitank missiles. Add to this the six machine-gun cannons perched beneath both of the strangely curved wings, aimed by sights located in the pilot’s helmet, and the result was a truly incredible fighting machine.
Paz could never help but gawk when his eyes fell upon one of his Hinds. Its ponderous-looking, squat frame gave the ship a slow, lumbering appearance—a hulking, overloaded menace which in reality was a quick and agile flying tank. Armor plating rendered it safe from anything but a perfectly placed missile. Its handling was so precise that any decent pilot could slide it between a pair of trees with only inches to spare. Its navigational system was laser-based and its turbo boosters could achieve speeds exceeding 250 knots. All this considered, Paz supposed the best thing about the Hind-D was that the Americans had nothing like it and desperately sought a prototype to copy. There were even rumors afloat that a million-dollar bounty had been offered to any man who could bring one back to the United States intact. But outside of Russia the only fifteen in existence were right here on this base, and the security employed by Paz day and night made theft or even approach impossible. Even Cuba was without the warships. Paz was not about to disappoint the Soviet “advisers” who had arranged this command for him.
The latest pilot climbed down from the back of the jeep dressed in full flying gear and approached Paz directly.
“Manuel Ortiz reporting for duty, sir.”
Paz returned his salute. “You’re late.”
“Rebels blew up another bridge. Traffic had to be rerouted.”
Paz grunted his displeasure.
Ortiz looked at him dutifully. “I could take her out over their camps if you wish,” he offered, gazing over the major’s shoulder at the Hind.
“Not authorized.”
“Who’s to know?” Ortiz returned with enough seriousness to make Paz smile with pride. There was something about this man he liked. Dedication. Professionalism. Qualities the major had seen all too infrequently since his return to Nicaragua. And this pilot was a cut above the regular troops in appearance as well. Older to start with, easily over six feet and well muscled. His beard was neatly trimmed and speckled with gray. His worn features were framed by rather long brown hair. His face was ruddy, creased, and punctuated with scars, the most prominent of which ran through his left eyebrow. Ortiz was obviously a veteran of several wars previous; maybe he was even a native Soviet. He certainly had the eyes for it: black, piercing, and empty like those of a shark. Paz looked into them and saw enough of himself to be content.
“Stick to the flight plan,” Paz instructed.
“It would be an honor to have you join me, Major.”
“Regulations insist I remain on the base for the duration of your test flight.”
Ortiz smiled warmly, standing at ease. “There was a time, sir, when we fought without regulations. Survival was all that mattered, rules no more than what our hearts told us were right for the time.”
“You’re a poet as well as a pilot, Lieutenant.”
“Late nights in the jungles, Major, make our thoughts turn inward.”
“Yes,” Paz agreed easily. Give him another hundred men like Ortiz and he’d have the rebel bastards whipped in no time.
“I’d better get moving,” said Ortiz, starting for the Hind’s cockpit ladder after another salute.
“You know the reporting procedure,” Paz advised. “Take good care of her.”
Ortiz saluted yet again. “Like a virgin on her wedding night, Major.”
Paz watched Ortiz climb into the cockpit and fire up the jet-powered engines. Seconds later, the Hind lifted gracefully, straight up with a slight list to the right. Paz held the green cap over his stubble-covered head as the ship’s huge propellers sliced through the wind, driving it straight forward. Ortiz steadied her fifty feet up and headed out over the airfield as he climbed gracefully on his planned northeasterly course.
Paz was still watching the Hind’s shrinking shape vanish in the distance when a jeep pulled up alongside him. Its single passenger, garbed in flight gear, emerged from the backseat.
“Lieutenant Manuel Ortiz, sir, reporting for flight duty,” the man announced, saluting.
The major’s mouth dropped as he looked back once more at the horizon where the Hind had already disappeared.
Blaine McCracken cut in the turbo boosters and watched the Hind-D’s airspeed indicator climb toward 250 knots. The cockpit was still strange to him. He had spent several weeks drilling on the basics of the mission, from perfecting his Spanish to mastering the Hind’s elaborate control panel from reconstructed pictures.
Damn Russians, though, didn’t know when to leave well enough alone. The control panel he was facing now was altogether different from the one he had drilled on, which wouldn’t have been so bad if not for the fact that all labels and instructions were in Russian. He had already lost critical time trying to pick up airspeed while keeping his altitude low to avoid being tracked on radar. The plan was intricate, the timing much too fine to lose even a second.
“Move it, girl,” he said under his breath, “or I’ll have to pinch your behind.”
Blaine checked his coordinates: an hour of flying time to the landing site where he would be meeting his partner on the mission, Johnny Wareagle. Blaine was heading fast for the Tuma Grande River when a warning panel he recognized as the intruder alert screen flashed with three green blips.