Eyes of the Hammer (The Green Berets) (41 page)

Riley climbed one of the taller trees and settled himself down on a forked limb. It wasn't comfortable but would have to do. He scanned the grounds.

He could easily see over the ten-foot stone wall into the interior. The house was well lit with floodlights pointing down from along the edge of the roof. The main house was two stories tall with one-story wings on either side. A large oval swimming pool was behind the house. The driveway and circular parking area in the front were bordered by an extensive garden that stretched out to the walls on the front third of the grounds. The helipad was barely in sight over the east wing of the house.

Riley carefully watched the grounds and gradually started locating the guards. They moved in seemingly random patterns about the grounds. Whoever set up the pattern obviously had more of a security than military background. It would have been more effective to have hidden the guards in good defensive positions. There were six in the outer grounds that Riley could spot. Four were assigned one to each side of the compound; the other two roved the entire perimeter, one in each direction. It was a good system in that these two could quickly spot whether any side guard was no longer at his post.

Riley couldn't see down into the parking circle in the front so it was impossible to tell how many vehicles were parked there. From what he could see of the house, it was hard to ascertain whether or not there were interior guards. After an hour and a half of observation, Riley deduced that there had to be some sort of security command post inside the house. He had watched several of the guards talk into shoulder-mounted mikes attached to radios on their belts. He'd been unable to see any of the other outside guards reply. It would make sense to have them report to someone inside, and Riley also figured it would make sense to have a reaction force of at least the off-duty guards inside sleeping. He estimated that there were probably several more guards awake inside as a second line of defense and also as an immediate reaction force if an attack came.

The apparent lack of a roadblock or anti-armor weapons led Riley to assume that probably at least one ambush was set up along the one-lane drive that came up from the highway to the villa. No worthwhile security man would fail to defend that obvious avenue of approach.

Riley gave it another hour of watching and then climbed stiffly out of the tree. He waited a few minutes to let the blood circulate back into his legs and then set off downslope to link up with Kate.

BOGOTA

5:48 A.M.

Kate handed Riley another cup of coffee. "What do you think?"

Riley rubbed his eyes wearily. "I don't know. I've ruled out going into that place. I wouldn't last five minutes. If the Ring Man goes outside during the day to either the pool or elsewhere in the back, I could get a good shot at him from the knoll where I was doing the surveillance. Even then I'm not sure I could escape, since I imagine they'd react pretty swiftly. I'd have to make it from the firing point down to the road, and they would beat me there."

"What about hiding in the mountains after you shoot?"

Riley shook his head. "This is their territory. They'd have a better chance of finding me, or having one of the locals turn me in, than I would of being able to evade."

"What about using Spectre or the gunships? I could probably get a hold of Pike through the attaché in the embassy."

Riley shook his head dubiously. "It's worth a shot, but I doubt that either our government or the Colombians would be too willing to try anything like that after Nail Three and the video being released. I'm also not sure what Pike's status is right now. You said the task force had been disbanded. They've probably shoveled the colonel off into his old job, although if I know him as well as I think I do, he probably made quite a ruckus about Powers getting abandoned. Hell, he may even be out of the army by now." Riley didn't add the information about the phone call he had made prior to their flight departing from New York.

He got up, went over to the bed, and flopped on it. "I'm too tired to think straight right now." He wanted to let himself drift off, but his mind was still swirling, trying to find an answer. Plus, he still had no line on Powers.

He cracked an eye open at Westland, who was slumped wearily in the armchair. "It might be worthwhile for you to talk to the attaché later today. Let's grab a couple hours of rack time and then you can head over to the embassy."

Riley patted the bed next to him. "Come on over. I don't bite. I'm too damn tired to do anything more than sleep anyway."

Westland got up and slid into the bed, still wearing her outfit from the previous evening. Within five minutes she was breathing gently and rolled over with her back to Riley, knees tucked up into her stomach. Just before Riley succumbed to the weights on his eyelids he curled up around Westland's warmth.

RING MAN'S VILLA

6:00 A.M.

The attack at the warehouse wasn't discovered until 5:10 a.m., when a new shift of guards showed up for duty. Ponte had taken the report with a certain degree of regret. He wished he hadn't gotten up so early and been present when the phone rang. The Ring Man wasn't going to like the bearer of these tidings.

Ponte ran the information through his mind one more time, summarizing it so he could be prepared for his boss's questions. The Ring Man normally swam laps in the pool at six in the morning but had been talked out of that routine by Ponte, based on the increased threat of attack. So now Ponte went down into the west wing, where a complete set of Nautilus equipment was set up. The Ring Man was already halfway through his first iteration. Ponte walked over to the biceps machine, where the Ring Man was working out. The ever-present young girl was wiping his forehead with a towel. Ring Man waved her off when he saw Ponte. "What is it?"

"The warehouse on route 46 was attacked last night."

Ring Man dropped the weights with a loud clang. "Tell me what happened."

"Someone must have hit it between ten last night and this morning. It was just discovered by the new shift of guards. All five guards were killed. Four were shot and one had his throat cut out."

"Maria?"

"She was killed also. Shot."

"What about the American DEA agent?"

"He's dead too. At least we think it was him." Ponte hastily explained as Ring Man frowned at him. "Maria had him booby-trapped in case something like this happened. There's, the remains of a body that the guard who called in says is Stevens."

The Ring Man threw his towel across the room and stalked out. Ponte meekly followed him to his office along with the girl. The Ring Man sat behind his desk and for almost five minutes stared out the bulletproof windows at the mountains stretching off to the north. Finally he turned to Ponte. "We must find this American. Do you have anything further on him?"

"The man from the Embassy Cafe who originally met him says that the American told him he was from New York City and that he had just flown in on Tuesday night with his wife. He gave the name Martinez."

"Have you checked the manifests from all flights from New York that night?"

"There was only one flight. There was no Martinez listed."

The Ring Man looked up in disgust. "You idiot! Did you check every couple that flew in? Do you think the man would be stupid enough to tell you the right name? Did the man say anything else?"

Ponte was shaken. "He said he was looking for a child to adopt. He said his wife couldn't have children and that's why they were down here. He also said that he'd heard about Maria from his brother, who had been told by a marine from the embassy that she could help."

Ring Man shook his head. "Maria never dealt in babies." He slammed his desktop and stared hard at Ponte. "I want you to go through the manifest of that flight from New York and track down every couple that came and find out where they are. Hell, track down every man on the plane, in case the story of a wife was a hoax too. Get the man at the bar to give you a better description and also keep a hold of him to identify the people when you find them. There can't be that many off that flight."

Ring Man stood up and went over to Ponte, grabbing his face between his fingers. "You'd better not fuck this up, my friend. You have already done too much with your incompetence."

CARTAGENA

6:40 A.M.

Ariel felt alive. The thought of upcoming action sent the adrenaline flowing and dried out his throat. In his opinion this was better than being with a beautiful woman knowing you would soon bed her. Much better.

He peered once more through his tripod-mounted binoculars from his aerie on top of the Citizens Bank office building. The twenty-four-story building, tallest in this section of the city, afforded him a superb view. Most importantly, it gave him a lengthwise view of the main road that ran down the center of the city.

Still no sign. Ariel pulled his eyes from the binoculars and scanned the rooftop, ensuring that his local security was in place. He felt confident that their presence had not been leaked, even though Ramirez effectively controlled the city. His men had broken into the building two hours ago and covered any signs of the intrusion. Ariel had ten sicarios on the roof, four deployed guarding the staircase entrance, and one on each corner scanning the adjacent roofs and sides of the building. The last two were next to him. One had a U.S. made Redeye antiaircraft missile in the unlikely event they were spotted from the air and attacked from that direction. The other was the gunner for the bulky weapon they had hauled to the roof with great effort.

The Hughes BGM-71 TOW was designated as a heavy antitank weapon manufactured for use by the U.S. Army. TOW stood for tube launched, optically guided, wire command linked missile. The entire system had five parts and totaled 172 pounds without the missile. Each rocket weighed 42 pounds. Set up, the system consisted of a tripod with a fiberglass tube into which the missile was inserted. An optical sight with clamp was on the left side of the tube. A missile guidance system, MGS, in the form of a large black box was connected to the sight by a heavy black cable. Having been fielded since 1970, the TOW was the most widely used antitank weapon in the world. Ariel had purchased this system and two missiles from a source that had dealings with various governments in the Middle East.

Ariel was somewhat concerned because he wasn't sure of the shelf life of the two missiles he had. The little indicator window on them still showed blue, meaning the warhead was good, but Ariel's experience in Israel had taught him that missiles that sat in the depot too long sometimes developed faults without tripping the indicator.

He was also concerned with his gunner. The man had never fired the weapon before. In some ways, firing the TOW made video games seem difficult. Basically, the firer centered the cross hairs of his sight on the target. He pulled a trigger and the missile used a quad boost motor for a recoilless launch. The missile coasted briefly, then a rocket kicked in and flew the missile to its target. The key was that the gunner had to continue tracking his target, keeping it in the cross hairs. If the cross hairs were on the target when the missile arrived, the result was devastating. The warhead held 5.3 pounds of high-explosive shaped charge. It would be more than sufficient for the target Ariel had in mind.

His surveillance of the last two days had revealed a pattern. Patterns were dangerous things for men with enemies. His target left his strongly defended seaside home every morning and drove into the city to meet with his subordinates in the city infrastructure.

The target's security chief wasn't totally foolish, however. Although the timing was the same every day, the route varied. This had led Ariel to throw out the idea of an ambush or mining one of the roads with a command-detonated charge.

The bottom line, however, was that the target left one place and went to another at the same time of day. With those three constants in mind, Ariel had come up with his present plan. He checked his watch one more time. Any minute now.

The earphone running from the radio on his belt crackled. "Target is moving. Taking route B."

Ariel twisted his binoculars in the indicated direction. There they were. Two limousines trailed by a van. Ariel knew that the two limousines was another trick thrown in by the target's security chief. The main target was in one of the two, but because of the dark windshields it was impossible to tell which. An attacker might destroy one and miss his intended victim. Ariel felt a passing moment of respect for his adversary. Supposedly the target had hired a former West German commando officer to serve as his security chief.

Ariel thought that was amusing in a way. An Israeli against a German in a South American country. What a twisted world, he laughed to himself. He reached over and grabbed the shoulder of his gunner. The man had shown the steadiest hands in Ariel's testing. Now he would have a chance to put them to use. "Do you have them?"

"Si, senior."

"Good. Wait till I tell you." Ariel wanted to make sure his gunner didn't fire when the vehicles might be in a position to go out of sight before the missile completed its flight. The missile flew at about 620 miles per hour once it got up to speed but, including the launch time, it would still take almost five seconds from leaving the tube to impact. The missile was connected to the launcher by a thin metal wire that relayed instructions from the guidance system to the warhead and fired small maneuvering rockets that changed the missile's course to keep it on target. If the target went behind a building or power lines crossed the missile's path in that flight time, the shot was wasted.