Cut Out (2 page)

“No. I swear it.”

Guyton regarded Cobb for a minute. “I think maybe you just ought to get out and go home, Cobb. You’re starting to piss me off.”

“But I didn’t do anything wrong!” Cobb protested.

“I know. That’s why you can go home. I’ve got all I need. Besides that, you’re stinking up the back of my car.”

Cobb’s face showed his confusion and fear. “But what if they try again?” he asked.

Guyton shrugged. “It’s your ass.” He got out of the car, leaving Cobb alone to consider the reality of the situation.

The detective walked over to a man wearing a three-piece suit and carrying a clipboard. Jim O’Fallon, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Organized Crime Task Force in Chicago, was a slim young man who appeared to be a recent college graduate. He looked at Guyton in the fading daylight. “Anything?”

“He’s too scared to realize how fucked up his life is at the moment. It’ll sink in. I’m letting him squirm for a while.”

“Don’t lose him,” O’Fallon advised. “He could be a gold mine.”

“Let’s give him another hour or so and then you can make your pitch,” Guyton said. “He’ll be ready then.”

“What about his family?” O’Fallon asked.

Guyton flipped open his notebook. “He’s got a wife. They had one kid—died about a year and a half ago of a brain tumor. I got a car watching his house. She’s home there.”

“She know anything?”

Guyton shook his head. “Nope. She’s in for a big surprise.”

They both turned as Cobb got out of the car and walked over slowly. His face was twisted with conflicting emotions. “What can I do?” O’Fallon and Guyton exchanged a brief smile.

Chapter Two

OPERATIONAL AREA BEAR (OA BEAR),

UNCONVENTIONAL WARFARE OPERATING AREA PINELAND

(UWOA PINELAND)

23 OCTOBER, 11:15 p.m.

The three men crawled up to the edge of the airstrip and peered across at the old wooden hangar a hundred yards away. They were dressed in unmarked jungle fatigues and wore black watch caps. Their Ml6s lay next to them and their load-bearing equipment bristled with knives and ammunition pouches. The snout of night vision goggles poked out of the center of each man’s face.

Through the green glow of the goggles, Dave Riley, the man on the left, could clearly see the three guards armed with AK-47s who were patrolling outside the hangar. The men with Riley had been watching the hangar for the past forty-eight hours, but there had been no movement other than the eight soldiers who were camped there, switching over their guard shifts every six hours.

Riley was the smallest of the three men, at only five feet seven inches and weighing 150 pounds. His dark skin was a legacy from his mother’s side of the family—Puerto Rican; his name was his only obvious inheritance from his Irish father. His body was lean and hard, the result of working out several hours every day in the martial arts. His dark eyes were hidden behind the goggles and his short black hair was covered by the black watch cap.

“Still no sign of the prisoners,” Captain Murphy whispered to Riley.

“We’ve only got two hours until exfil,” Captain Potter muttered nervously from his position on the far end, glancing at his watch and pushing a little button to display the time.

Riley didn’t say anything. They’d been on the ground now for two and a half days, ever since parachuting into an open field twelve miles to the northwest. The other ten members of the team were back at the operational rally point six hundred yards to the rear. Riley knew his place: he wasn’t in charge here, and even though it rankled him not to be able to run things, he consoled himself with keeping his eyes and ears open and noting all that was happening.

“Look!” Murphy hissed.

In the goggles a bright light was coming from the south, along the edge of the airstrip.

“Headlights,” Potter confirmed. “It must be them.”

A twelve-passenger van pulled up in front of the hangar and parked, its headlights pointing at the large open doors. Two armed men leaped out and disappeared through the doors. From inside the van a voice could be heard yelling, “Get on your feet, pigs! Let’s go.”

A figure with his hands tied behind his back appeared in the door of the van and stumbled out, prevented from smashing his face into the ground only by the quick grab of a guard. A second figure appeared, this one a woman, her arms also tied, a guard with a loose grip on her shoulder pushing her out. She did fall, going to her knees and then slowly tumbling to her side in the dirt.

“Get up, bitch!” one of the guards screamed, kicking at the woman.

A large figure stepped out of the front passenger door of the van. “Get them inside.”

“Colonel Juncker,” Potter whispered. “I remember his picture from the intelligence briefing. He’s the counterintelligence chief for the district.”

Riley nodded. He had recognized the man as soon as he stepped out. There was no mistaking the large size or the outlandish camouflage fatigues festooned with ribbons and medals. According to the intelligence they had received, Juncker liked to stand out in a crowd. He also liked to kill, and needed only the slightest provocation.

A third figure appeared in the side door of the van.

“Who’s that?” Potter whispered worriedly. “There were only supposed to be Davis and his wife.” He turned to Murphy. “Did you get an ID on the first woman? Is she Davis’s wife?”

Murphy was peering anxiously through the goggles. “I don’t know. I couldn’t tell.”

“Well, who the hell could that be?” Potter asked again as the second bound woman was escorted into the dimly lit hangar and out of sight.

Riley remained silent, knowing that the unexpected presence of the second woman upset the carefully made plans of the team. Since he wasn’t the team leader, though, it wasn’t his place to intervene.

Murphy shifted nervously, his knee bumping into Riley’s. “What do you think, Chief?”

Riley shrugged, the motion lost in the dark. “You know you’ve got Davis—he was the first one off. That’s the key thing, isn’t it?” he asked, throwing the problem back on the team leader.

Captain Murphy was silent for a few moments, then started moving back. “I’m going to the ORP. Potter, you keep surveillance on the target.”

Riley followed Murphy, crawling on his belly until they were into the concealment of the woods, and then he got to his feet. They wound their way through the labyrinth of tree trunks and undergrowth until they arrived at the objective rally point (ORP). The other ten members of the team gathered round as Murphy passed on the information about the captives arriving and being taken into the hangar.

“How many extra guards?” one of the men asked.

“Two exited the van and went inside. Another came out with the second woman. And Colonel Juncker got out too.”

“What about the driver of the van?”

“He didn’t get out,” Murphy replied.

“Is the van still there?”

“Yes.”

There was a short silence. Then Murphy began to lay out the adjustments to the plan the team had worked out in isolation after being alerted for this mission. Riley listened, his mind considering the variations and what they would mean. When Murphy finished, he again pressed the button on the side of his watch and checked the time. “We move forward in twenty minutes.”

Riley leaned back against his rucksack and tried to relax, slowing the flow of adrenaline that had begun to pump through his veins when the van appeared with the prisoners. No matter how many times he went out on an operation, or what type of mission it was, he still got wired. It didn’t bother him though. Once, when his team was aboard a Combat Talon on the way to Panama, one of his teammates, wedged into the cargo webbing seat with his 50 pounds of parachute and 120 pounds of gear, had turned to Riley with a strange expression on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Riley had asked.

“I’m not scared,” the soldier replied. “And that really scares me.”

Riley had known exactly what he meant; it was the flow of adrenaline that gave you the edge you needed for anything dangerous. Time seemed to slow down in a parachute jump. The four seconds from going out the door until the parachute finished deploying seemed like an eternity—an eternity in which, if something did go wrong, you felt you had time to take corrective action. Riley felt that way now as the seconds ticked by in the darkness.

“Let’s move!” Murphy uttered quietly.

Riley slipped on the shoulder straps of his rucksack and stood up, taking his place right behind the team leader. They moved through the darkness, the night vision goggles illuminating the way. Sixty yards short of the tree line, they all shrugged off their rucks, leaving them in a pile, one man staying behind to guard the equipment. The rest moved up to where Potter was still watching the target. Riley peered out—the van was gone; Potter reported that it had taken Colonel Juncker and two guards with it. That was a loss, Riley knew. Juncker would have been a valuable secondary target.

They could hear muted yells from inside the hangar, and only one guard now stood outside. The others must have gone inside to watch the prisoners. Riley hoped that was all they were doing.

“It’s time,” Murphy whispered. The team broke up, melting away into the darkness to carry out their assigned tasks. Riley followed Murphy as the main assault element crept along the wood line, to a point just behind the hangar. The guard was on the other side, peering out at the runway, as if a threat could possibly come from that direction.

One of the team slipped forward and placed a charge on the battered door of the hangar. He crawled back and the team stood and waited, twenty feet away. With a bright flash and loud bang, the door blew open. A machine gun roared out of the trees to the team’s far right; it was the support element firing across the front of the hangar, taking down the guard and creating a diversion.

The assault element sprinted forward, Riley in the trail, and burst through the door. There was a brief exchange of gunfire, and team members screamed for the prisoners to get down. Riley took in the scene as he stepped inside. Six guards lay on the floor, unmoving. The three prisoners also lay on the floor, a team member astride each of them, re-securing their wrists in front with plastic quick-cinches.

The male prisoner, Davis, began yelling and twisting on the floor, trying to free himself. “Who are you? What do you want?”

The team member straddling him leaned over. “We’re U.S. Army. We’re here to rescue you.”

“No!” Davis screamed, still struggling. “You’re here to kill us. Why else would you tie us up?”

“It’s for your own safety.” The team member continued to reassure Davis as the others searched the bodies of the guards and the rest of the hangar, looking for anything that might be of intelligence value. The two women were pulled to their feet. Davis finally stopped struggling long enough for two of the team members to help him up also.

“What about our children?” Mrs. Davis asked suddenly, her eyes darting fearfully from one dark figure to another in the dim light cast by Coleman lamps.

“They’re safe, Mrs. Davis,” Captain Murphy assured her. “We need to go now to meet our transport to get us out of here.” He stepped past her and looked at the other woman—the unexpected third party. “Who are you?”

“She’s Mary O’Bannion, our nanny,” Davis answered. “She has to go with us.”

Murphy shook his head. They’d already spent too much time on the target. The firing would have been heard. “My orders are to take only you and your wife, sir.”

“If she doesn’t go, then I don’t go,” Davis insisted, a flat expression coming over his lined face.

Murphy looked at Riley, who kept his face impassive. This was the captain’s problem, not his. Riley made a show of looking at his watch.

The captain turned back. “All right. She goes with us. Let’s move. Now!”

With one team member guiding each captive, they moved out of the hangar across the tall grass that bordered the landing field. Within a quarter mile, they were on the edge of a dirt runway that extended off into the night in both directions. A guide from the marking party stood there, ushering them into an assembly area. The team knelt in a loose circle, and Murphy grabbed the handset attached to the radio on the commo man’s back.

“Eagle, this is Bear Six. Over.”

The only sound was the hiss of squelch as Murphy let up on the transmit button. All eyes were turned to the sky, watching for the plane that was to pick them up.

“Eagle, this is Bear Six. Over.” Murphy waited only a few seconds this time, then re-pushed the send. “Eagle, this is Bear Six. I say again, this is Bear Six. If you can read me, break squelch twice. Over.”

Silence.

“What frequency do you have that set on?” Murphy asked the commo man.

“Forty-six oh-six. Like we were briefed.”

Riley was squatting in the dirt next to Murphy. He pulled back the cover on his watch and glanced at the luminous hands; the four-minute window for the exfiltration aircraft to pick them up had just begun.