Countdown: M Day (19 page)

Terror lent speed. While the dimly seen reptile in front of him worried at the dummy mine, Bronto’s knife cut, cut—
cut, you bastard!
—through the tow rope. Once free, he began swimming—
Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, it’s gonna
eat
me!
—away as fast as he could stroke and paddle.

Fortunately for Bronto, the SeaBob was designed for human error as well. As soon as he’d been pulled off of it, and his hands from the controls, it had automatically stopped dead in the water. He almost swam past it, mesmerized, looking backwards at the gigantic twisting shadow in the water, so great was his fear. Fortunately, the control panel was still lit and, seeing that from the corner of one eye, he lunged for the sled.

Hands sought the controls.
Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my
God,
it’s gonna eat me!
Right thumb pounded the green “Go” button, and the thing took off at its top submerged speed of just under ten miles an hour.

Sadly, a crocodile can swim faster, at least in the short term.

Whereas Buz had been hungry, therefore a little grumpy, before, now he was positively angry. The damned unfairness of the thing. It acted like food; he struck; he caught; and then the damned thing refused to taste like food. All that was bad enough, but he’d broken a tooth—possibly two of them—in the process and it or they hurt.

Somebody’s gonna pay!

And I know
who.

Bronto’s teeth were so tightly clenched on his mouthpiece, and his hands on the control sticks, that both hands and his jaw would have looked white had it been possible to see them.

Of course, he wasn’t looking even at his hands. Instead, his head was turned around almost one hundred and eighty degrees where, with the combined aid of lightning flashes from the distant mouth of the Catatumbo, and his mask’s integral night vision monocular, he could just make out the dinosaur—
Gotta be a dinosaur
—pursuing him. Rather, he could just make out a head that seemed longer than he was and twin serrated rows of teeth.

Oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, it’s gonna eat me!
was way too complex a thought at that point. Instead, his mind yammered,
fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!

A sudden slush of turbulence and a sudden heavy pull on his right foot told him that the beast’s maw had closed. Since he didn’t faint from pain, and since his foot, once encased in rubber, now felt water rushing over it, he assumed the creature had just missed the foot, tearing off, instead, one of his flippers.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!

He pulled up a bit, bending his body to lauch the SeaBob for the surface.
Aiaiaiaiai! Make better time on the surface. Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck!

He broached like a small whale. Immediately he spat out his mouth piece, screaming, “Rrryyyaaannn! Rrrooohhhrrreeerrr! Helllppp meee!”

Then he splashed back into the water, the crocodile in hot pursuit.

“Did you hear something, Ryan?” Rohrer asked.

“Something like what?” the team chief responded.

“Dunno. Odd sound. Like a …long, drawn out shriek of terror. But not from anything necessarily human.”

Ryan shook his head. “Your hearing’s better than mine. Too many loud booms over the years, doncha know?

“You sure you heard something?”

“Pretty sure,” Rohrer replied. He went silent for a moment, listening carefully. “There it goes again. Maybe we oughta go look.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

But good horses with competent riders will

manage to escape even from hopeless situations.

—Xenophon,
On Horsemanship

Posada Santa Margarita, Puerto Cabello, Venezuela

Lada carried her own large handbag, into which she’d stuffed their GPS unit.

“You drive,” Morales said, tossing Lada the keys to their rental car. She snatched them from midair and started for the door. Morales then took their bags, not because the contents were particularly valuable in themselves as that anyone leaving bags behind in a hotel, not too very far from where a secret policeman was killed, was likely to come under suspicion. And they needed at least some time to put some distance between themselves and the probable investigation, and possibly as much as twelve hours to get closer to one of the prearranged extraction points.

Leaving openly but in a hurry is suspicious, too,
Morales thought.
But not as badly.

They walked with remarkable calm down to the front desk, chatted for a few moments with the matron at the desk, mentioned a death in the family, and then paid their bill. Calmly, they strolled out the garish door and round back to the parked rental. The bags were quickly stuffed into the trunk.

“Which direction?” Lada asked, as she slid in behind the wheel.

Morales whipped out a cell phone and began to type a message. “Just get us out of town while I see who’s available. It’ll be either Ryan’s team or the Spetz on the boat.”

Port of Spain, Trinidad

“Message from Lada,” Kravchenko announced. Musin was standing over his shoulder in an instant. He read off the screen quickly, it was a simple coded message: “What’s for dinner? I’m famished.”

“They need an extraction,” Musin said to Baluyev, as the latter descended into the lower, darkened cabin. “Quick as possible.”

“Who’s closer?” Baluyev asked. “Us or the team at the Gulf of Venezuela?”

“Them,” Kravcheko said, “but it doesn’t really matter. Lada and Che have a car, or they’re supposed to. So they can move to meet either of us. And we know we’ve got the message. The Americans haven’t answered yet.”

Baluyev considered that.
The whole crew is aboard. We’re not terribly suspicious, ourselves, not as suspicious as some more obvious special operations types in a small boat would be. So …how long to get to one of the linkup points? Figure at least eighty kilometers an hour for Lada and Morales, twenty for us. Sooo …Ideal linkup would be at Carupano.
He looked at the map mounted on the bulkhead and said, “Send back, ‘Borscht,’ ‘at Chez Colombo.’”

Puerto Cabello, Venezuela

“Head toward Valencia,” Morales said, after seeing the message pop up on the screen of his cell. “When we get close, start looking for the highway east.”

Lada nodded. “Where’s the pickup?”

“Carupano. It’s about two hundred and fifty miles east of here on the coast.”

“Sea or air?” she asked. She knew there was an airstrip at the town.

“Sea.”

“Damn!”

“Why’s that?” Morales asked.

“Tim Musin,” she replied. “And I don’t know what to do about him.”

Gulf of Venezuela

Rohrer was steering from the small outboard motor at the stern. Ryan, kneeling forward, had placed a set of night vision goggles over his face. He pulled them away from his eyes for a moment, blinking and not quite believing what the eyes and goggles told him.

“Holy shit!”

“Gedidawayfrommeee!” Bronto screamed, still punching the green “Go” button for all he was worth.

“What is it, Chief?” Rohrer asked.

There was disbelief in Ryan’s voice when he answered, “Biggest fucking alligator—or maybe crocodile—you ever saw. Bigger than this boat. Too big to fuck with.”

“Man,” Rohrer said, “we can’t just let it eat him.”

“No …no.” The team leader pushed the goggles back on his head, then turned and began rifling through a small kit box, mounted amidships, that came with the rental. He emerged holding a 26.5mm flare gun in one hand, and three flares gripped in the spaces between his fingers.

“Gemmeoutaherrre!”

Snivel, snivel, snivel,
Ryan thought as he used a thumb to break open the pistol at the breech. He slid one of the flares in, then bounced the barrel off of his left forearm to lock it back in place. The same forearm then served as a brace to push the goggles back over his eyes.

“Aiaiaiai!”

Shit,
Ryan thought.
I’ve never actually fired one of these things before. The Army only used the self-contained jobbies. Shit.

Using both hands, he attempted to aim the thing at the grainy crocodilian head showing in his goggles. No good,
the things focus far or near, but not both. Crap. Have to rely on instinct. I hate that.

Keeping his vision on the croc, Ryan, kneeling again, aimed the pistol as best he could guess at it, and squeezed the trigger. The recoil was something immense, compared to the .45 caliber and 9mm pistols he was used to. It rocked him back off his knees and onto his back, the sharp corner of the emergency kit digging into his flesh. Gah, that hurts. He scrambled back in time to determine that he’d missed the thing completely. The remnants of the flare were burning on the surface of the water, far past his man and the croc.

“JesusChristRyanyouasshole! Youalmosthitmeee!”

Blow the mission or lose one of my men? Screw it; the mission’s impossible anyway.
Turning backwards, Ryan shouted, “Stand by to put us near alongside the croc, then to make a run for Bronto.”

Ryan flipped the goggles off his head and let them fall into the bilge. Screw them, too. Again he broke open the flare gun and inserted a round. He pointed the thing up and pulled the trigger. This time he was ready enough and balanced enough not to be knocked over.

The flare flew reasonably straight and true before blossoming into a bright red sun. While it was flying, Ryan reloaded and waited. As soon as the flare lit off, he shouted, “Hard left,” to Rohrer, and, “ahead, slow.”

As the boat turned, then steadied on a course roughly parallel to Bronto and the croc, the team chief took aim again. He delayed for a few seconds, judging the rocking of the boat. Just as the light overhead began to die out, he pulled the trigger.

“Now sprint it for Bronto!”

Buz might have been a genius among crocodiles. This still made him a fairly dumb creature. When he felt the impact of the flare in the water, and saw the bright red flame, he snapped at it.

What he thought, when his jaws closed on the solid fire, was impossible to translate into English, and unprintable if it could have been.

“Left …left …right …left …straight.” Ryan perched himself, just back from the bow, and waited as the boat drew near the bucking SeaBob. The croc was writhing in a pretty good simulation of agony as they passed it. Ryan thought he saw red light gleaming from between the creature’s rows of teeth.

“Match speed!” Ryan shouted, then reached out and grabbed Bronto by the regulator of his tank. He pulled the man off the device, which dutifully stopped. Then, bending low, he pulled Bronto to the side of the hull. “Get in, godammit,” he commanded, as he helped haul the man over the side.
Screw the SeaBob.

“Now get the fuck out of here! To shore! Fast!”

Now Buz was
really
annoyed. He saw the boat screaming away to the west.
I’m tired and it’s moving too fast,
he thought. The frustration was really more than a crocodile ought to have to bear. Then he saw the SeaBob, sitting there on the surface unmoving.
Hah, it must be more tired than I am. Well, I’ll sure show it a thing or two.

Savoring the prelude to his revenge, the croc swam in a leisurely fashion. As he neared, he opened his massive jaws wide to encompass the sea sled. At precisely the right moment, he slammed them together, smashing the SeaBob and incidentally letting water at the batteries.

Boom.

   *   *   *   

“What the fuck was that?” Rohrer asked, as the explosion a hundred meters behind the boat roiled the water.

“Dunno,” Ryan answered. “And who cares? Just get us to shore.”

“Who …cares?” Bronto echoed, breathlessly. The poor bastard was still shaking. “And …I …am …never …getting …into …the water …near here …again. Not. Ever.”

Can’t say I blame you, Ryan thought. But we’ll be back, even so. So I suppose I’d better leave two men at the apartment and pay a few months’ rent in advance.

Highway 9, Venezuela

Lada kept her speed down to just above the posted limit. There was no sense in attracting attention from the police, which both obeying the limit and flagrantly ignoring it might have invited. Caracas and its lighted skyline were well behind them now. The highway, beginning to need repair, rumbled below them.

“What’s Tim’s problem?” Morales asked. “Does he blame you for what you do for the regiment?”

“He would if he let himself think about it, maybe,” Lada answered. “But if he’d let himself think about it, he’d realize I’m poison in
any
dose. So he doesn’t let himself think about it.”

Morales grinned. “Well …none of us do. Men, I mean. Frankly, we can’t stand being in the same room, maybe even on the same planet, as someone who’s had the woman we love. We are not entirely—which is to say, not at all—rational about matters of love and sex.”

“I know,” Lada said. She shook her head, despairingly. “But Tim …ah, hell; he’s such a nice guy, so sweet. He deserves a lot better than me.”

“He is a good guy,” Che agreed. “Good soldier, too.” He laughed.

“What funny?” Lada asked, her hackles rising.

Morales laughed again. “I spent a good chunk of my life training to kill people like him. I thought of them as good troops, but never as good guys. Strange what being in the same outfit will do to one’s perspectives.”

“At least if I accepted his courting me, he wouldn’t have to worry about my screwing someone in the regiment.”

“That would be a plus,” Morales agreed. He hesitated, then asked, “If you don’t mind a personal question …?”

She didn’t wait for it. “I do it because I love the sense of power it gives me. For the sex, who cares? I usually feel nothing …well …nothing but weight. But when I can use it to control a man, and with the added benefit of doing my job?
That’s
better than a blinding orgasm. For one thing, the satisfaction lasts.”

“Fair point,” Morales conceded. “Though it doesn’t help you with your Tim problem.”

She nodded, dimly visible by the instrument lights glowing on the panel in front of her. “I know. I don’t know if there is, or even can be, any help there.”

“Have you tried talking to him?” Before she could reply, Morales changed the question to, “Let me rephrase that; do you care enough about him to talk to him about it?”

“I care about him too much to talk to him about it.”

“Well …maybe even more so in that case; I think you should.”

“Maybe,” Lada half-admitted. “Maybe I should. Ummm …Che, we spent quite some time in a hotel room together, both this trip and the previous one with Eeyore. Why didn’t you ever …?”

“Come on to you?” Again, he chuckled. “I can’t say about Antoniewicz, but for me, while most men are hard wired to youth, you just look too young. Sorry, Lada, but everything about you screams ‘jailbait.’ Yeah, I know you’re not fourteen. But you still look fourteen, fifteen at the outside, and I just …couldn’t.”

The light from the dash was too little to see her faint smile. She thought,
You’re a good man, too, Che.

Carupano, Venezuela

A fifteen-foot Zodiac undulated in the waves next to the Bertram sport fisher, the latter being anchored perhaps six hundred meters from the beach. The inflatable rubber boat, itself, was a veteran of the first operation in Punt, some years prior. In shade, the boat was as black as a pawnbroker’s soul. A small electric motor was mounted to the stern. A midnight-clad Kravchenko sat in the Zodiac, ready to move on command. Musin and Litvinov, likewise in black, stood on the Bertram’s deck, scanning, waiting with Baluyev for the recognition signal from the shore. In both Musin’s and Litvinov’s hands were grasped pistols with suppressors, retrieved for the occasion from a very difficult to find hide that appeared to be part of the fuel tanks. You just never knew what might be waiting on shore. All three, Baluyev, Musin, and Litvinov, wore civilian model night vision goggles hanging by the straps around their necks.

Lada twisted the wheel, then slammed on the brakes, at a parking lot parallel to and very near the shore. The sea was visible for a good distance out.

Almost as soon as the car stopped, Morales dug the GPS out of Lada’s handbag, flicked it on, and waited for it to give a valid position. Time was more important than secrecy, this close to pickup. As soon as he had the grid coordinates he messaged it to Baluyev’s Spetz. An acknowledging message was returned almost instantly. Somewhere not too far out to sea, a marine engine growled to life.

“Far signal,” he told Lada. Immediately, she flicked the car’s beams to high three times.

He was about to get out of the car to retrieve the bags, when Lada put a restraining hand on his arm. “Kiss me,” she commanded.

“Wha’?

“Just do it. Cop.” She leaned over to him.

With a resigned sigh, Morales went along.
Maybe the cop will do the decent thing and disappear. And …it’s not …exactly … .ummm …unpleasant.

“Go,” Baluyev ordered, as soon as he saw the lights ashore flash three times. As Litvinov untied the rope, Musin fairly sprang over the gunwale and into the Zodiac, causing it to shudder violently. Kravchenko started the near silent electric outboard, holding the craft against the Bertram while Litvinov boarded. Once everyone was seated, he reversed throttle and backed away, then returned to forward thrust, guiding the rubber boat around its mother and heading it to shore.

Morales backed off just enough to leave space for the Holy Spirit. “Cop still there?”