Hostile Borders (4 page)

“Okay,” Santiago said. “These are static-line opening rigs. You don't have anything to concern yourself with about opening the canopy. You jump out and take up a good free-fall position. Don't look down, don't look to either side. Keep your head up and look at the horizon.

“You have to fall free for a couple of seconds to build up enough speed to open the canopy properly. Once she pops, you steer across the street. There's a good-sized patch of grass and bushes just fifty to sixty meters to the southwest. An easy drop. Steer the canopy with the toggles and keep away from the building. People do this all the time for fun.”

“You consider this fun?” Pena asked.

“Oh, this is a blast,” Santiago said. “You can tell me how much you liked it when we're on the ground. Any questions?”

“Where's the reserve?” Pena said as he looked down at his rig.

“There isn't one,” Santiago said, “and you wouldn't have time to use it anyway. Once you land, there will be a gray van waiting on the street, right next to the south end of the grass patch. The van will have the name ‘Princesa' on its side.”

“Princesa?” Pena said, “why Princesa?”

“It's the name of the other part of this ride,” Santiago said. “Now, once you get to the ground, don't try anything fancy. Just do a standard parachute landing fall (PLF). A regular PLF, understand? Don't try to land standing up, just roll with it.”

Santiago handed Pena the last item from the gear bag, a black Pro-Tec helmet.

“Ready?” he asked as Pena secured the helmet to his head.

Pena looked up at Santiago and a wide smile crossed his face.

“After you, please.”

Stepping up to the hole in the fence, Santiago wrapped the wire coming out from the pack of his parachute container to the steel pole the fence had been attached to. Snapping the flat metal clip to the wire, he turned to the edge of the wall. Leaping forward with his arms spread and his elbows bent, Santiago dropped from sight.

Falling almost a third of the way to the ground, Santiago dropped for over a second before the wire stopped playing out from the container on his back. With his head tilted up, the ex-SEAL held a perfect, stable modified-frog free-fall position as he dropped to the street below. The static line wire pulled open the container on his back and drew out the parachute canopy inside. The canopy streamed out from the container, trailing its suspension lines behind it. As the air rushed into the cells of the canopy, the 277 square feet of F-111 cloth bulged and took shape.

Less than sixty feet from the ground, Santiago's fall slowed and he took control of the parachute. Pulling on the toggles, he turned the canopy and started gliding across the street. He reached the patch of grass and missed the low bushes. The area was very dark, only the
light from a few streetlamps reached into the shadows. The fall of the parachute canopies was silent and the early hour and cold had kept anyone from being around. It was only a few minutes before six o'clock in the morning. Traffic hadn't even really started yet in the city.

Looking up, Santiago could see a second parachute falling to the ground, following roughly the same path he had. The cloth of the canopies was black and it was like watching a giant bat glide across the dark sky. The man hanging below the parachute landed with a grunt as he hit the ground with his feet held tightly together, knees bent, and body relaxed.

Falling in a controlled roll to his legs, side, and shoulder, Pena completed a PLF, spreading out the impact of his landing over the length of his body. As Santiago dropped his rig and went over to Pena, Reyes jumped off the roof in the same manner as the first two men. Then it was Falcon's turn.

With his weapon dangling from its sling, Falcon attached his static line to the same pole the other three men had. The wires from their parachutes were now hanging down along the side of the building, all but invisible in the dark. Turning to make one last look across the roof, Falcon swept the area with the muzzle of his weapon. Satisfied everything was clear, he turned and leaped from the wall. Only he was standing too close to the pole and the jagged edges of the fence wire still attached to it.

As Falcon leapt, the sharp end of a wire brushed against his pant leg and dug into the cloth. The tough Nomex of the flight suit resisted the pull of the wire
and refused to tear at first. Then, the sharp edge of the wire cut through the cloth and Falcon's leg was free. But by then it was far too late.

The small man might have survived the pull on his pant leg throwing him off balance. But Falcon made the final mistake of looking down at what had caught him. With his head turned down, he wasn't in a stable free-fall position. He tumbled forward and continued his fall. The wire of the static line kept paying out as Falcon fell, but as he dropped, he began to turn over.

Within the first second of his fall, Falcon was too terrified to even make a sound. As he dropped, the canopy was pulled out by the static line, only it didn't inflate from the air pressure pushing against it. Instead, the black cloth wrapped around Falcon as he dropped and kept turning. It covered him like a shroud as he hurtled to the ground. The only final mercy that Falcon had was the fact that it took less than four seconds for him to fall the twelve stories to the ground.

The small, squeaking scream that finally made it out of Falcon's mouth was cut short at his impact with the hard concrete of the sidewalk. The thud was flat, dull, and final. Falcon was moving at more than fifty miles an hour when he hit the ground, the impact more than enough to instantly kill him in spite of the protective clothing and equipment he was wearing. The MP5K-PDW submachine gun that he had been carrying and practiced with so much was driven deeply into his chest by the impact—smashing his sternum and ribs, and crushing his heart.

Across the street, Santiago and Pena witnessed Falcon's final seconds of life. Reyes hit the ground lightly and remained on his feet. Turning, he collapsed his canopy, and heard the sound of Falcon's impact with the ground.

The loss of a man on a mission was something that just happened. Santiago had made certain that no piece of equipment, clothing, weapon, or ammunition, could be traced to him. He had paid top dollar to have the gear all sent to multiple cut-outs in order to confuse the trail to him or to Pena's organization. Where possible, labels had been removed and serial numbers cut out. Not one of the men were carrying anything that could identify them personally. And there were no witnesses to their action.

“Come,” Santiago said. “There's nothing to do for him. The van is right here.”

Parked under a small tree not twenty meters away
was a very sorry-looking van. Dented and beaten, the rear bumper of the van was tilted and looked to be held on with wire. The entire machine didn't appear to be capable of making it two blocks, let alone making a getaway from what was essentially a prison break. But the muffled sound of a well-tuned powerful engine rumbled out as it was fed some gas. The tires looked dirty and scuffed, but the treads were almost brand new. The men hastily gathered up their parachute canopies and dashed to the vehicle.

Pulling open the back doors of the van, Santiago waved Pena into the van and climbed in after him. Stepping into the van, Reyes pulled the door shut behind him. There wasn't a sound or any lights coming on in the building just across the street from where they sat.

“Go,” Santiago said.

In the front seat of the van, Jago Diaz shifted the transmission into drive and pulled away from the curb. He drove south down State Street, quickly, but not fast enough to draw any attention. The beat-up outside of the van was nothing but a cover for the very well maintained machine inside. Reaching the corner at G Street, Diaz turned right and headed toward the waterfront less than a kilometer away.

While Diaz drove them toward the water, the men in the back of the van began stripping off their harnesses, equipment, and protective gear. Reyes pulled up a barracks bag and opened it. After passing out bundles of clothing to Santiago and Pena, Reyes opened a bundle for himself and began to change clothes.

“If you can't strip out of those jail clothes fast, we'll cut them off,” Santiago said as he handed Pena a bundle.

For a mad few minutes, the three men almost rolled around the back of the van, pulling items of clothing on and off. When the van finally reached the waterfront area off Harbor Street, it wasn't two commandos and a prisoner who climbed out of the back of the van. Instead, it was the rough-clothed workingmen who manned the fishing boats—the same kind of boats that were tied up to the commercial pier in the Tuna Harbor right next to them.

Leaning back inside the van, Santiago flipped the cover back on a haversack lying on the floor of the vehicle. Choosing one of several small green cylinders inside the haversack, he lifted up the one with a tag on it that said 15. Pulling the ring of the M60 fuse igniter, he lit off the delay to the incendiary charge in the haversack. In fifteen minutes, the two AN-M14 TH3 incendiary grenades would ignite. The more than three pounds of thermate in the two grenades combined would burn at 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit, spraying molten iron as a byproduct. It would be only seconds later that the five-gallon container of gasoline under the haversack would burst into flame and completely consume the van, the equipment, and parachutes left inside it. It would be a spectacular fire.

Coming out of the van, Santiago pulled back the sleeve of his left arm and looked at his watch. Pressing some buttons on his Casio G-Shock watch, Santiago looked up at the men around him.

“We're running nearly five minutes ahead of schedule,” Santiago said.

“This is a problem?” Pena asked.

“Not really,” Santiago said, “besides, it gives us a moment to grab a cup of coffee.”

“Coffee?” Pena said in astonishment. “You want coffee? Now?”

“What I want is for you to be seen for just a second by a witness,” Santiago said as he handed Pena a ten dollar bill. Pointing to a small coffee shop next to the docks, he told the stunned man:

“Cream, two sugars please. We'll wait here.”

Not completely understanding the situation, but trusting the man who had saved him from a probable death sentence, Pena went to get the coffee.

It was just ten minutes later that four apparently commercial fishermen walked up the dock to where the nearly fifty-year-old thirty-six-foot trawler
Princesa
lay tied to her moorings. Lights were on in the cabin of the salmon trawler and the sound of an engine could be heard rumbling softly. The men walked past another fisherman standing on the dock near a thirty-three-foot trawler that was tied up.

“Going out today?” the man said as he turned to the four walking on the dock.

“Yup,” Santiago said. “Going to try our hand at some channel rockfish.”

“Well, you're sure going to have to catch a bunch of them to pay for the gasoline that engine uses,” the fisherman said. “I can't see why you don't change over to a diesel, it's a lot safer. Cheaper, too.”

“No argument from me,” Santiago said as the rest of his men walked past him. “But the skipper says we'll get a new engine the next time this one needs an overhaul.”

“Well, good luck.”

“Thanks.”

Walking over to the
Princesa
, Santiago followed the others and climbed aboard.

“Let's go,” he said to the man standing at the wheel.

“Let go forward,” Captain Naldo Flores said as he leaned out the port to his left, “let go aft.”

Standing up on the dock, Diaz removed the last restraining line from the dock bollard and tossed it to Reyes up on deck. Then he jumped aboard. Reyes quickly joined Santiago and Pena in a small cabin aft of the wheelhouse. Going into the wheelhouse, Diaz took up a station in the back of the compartment. Where he could watch Captain Flores at the wheel.

Captain Flores was more than capable of taking the boat out on his own. He gunned the engines as he backed away from the docks and turned the bow of the
Princesa
south to the opening in the breakwater that led out to San Diego Bay.

“I can't believe you intend to make our escape in this old tub,” Pena said. “She's so old that the wood in her hull is rotting.”

“Not quite,” Santiago said. “The important parts of this boat are sound and dependable. And she was chosen in part just because of that wooden hull you mentioned.”

“Still, I can't see escaping in this slow pig,” Pena said.

“Oh, we won't get away in her,” Santiago said. “But this is a good boat for you to die on.”

Pena stared at the man standing in front of him. This made no sense, who would go to all of this trouble just to kill him. It would have been easier just to let the American legal system have its way with him.

“Relax,” Santiago said, as if he knew what Pena was thinking. “If we wanted to kill you, you would have never gotten off of that building. Those very high-priced drug lawyers you hired all said the same thing. Even if we broke you out and got you back into Mexico, you would be a hunted man. The U.S. government could bring enough pressure to bear on Mexico that they would have to do something about you, no matter who you had control of. Or, you could end up with a price on your head so high that some bounty hunter might get lucky and take you down.”

“Oh, a price on my head,” Pena said as the shock he had originally felt changed into anger, “as has worked so well for the Americans against Osama bin Laden? They're offering what, five million for his head?”

“Instead of thinking about bin Laden,” Santiago said calmly, “you would do better to think about Saddam Hussein. Or even more to the point, his two sons—his two dead sons.”

That thought sobered Pena quickly. He had not gotten where he was by acting irrationally. He well knew the value of money as a tool to make men do things they would never consider otherwise. The anger in Pena's face gave way to thoughtful consideration of the situation as Santiago watched the men. Now he
continued his explanation of what led up to his complex plan.

“As far as the lawyers on either side of the border are concerned, you have to give the Mexican government some kind of reasonable excuse not to hunt you down. You have influence over a lot of very powerful people in Mexico City as well as all over the countryside. All they need is a reason, some kind of plausible deniability they can use to ignore any American requests. The very best one is to give some evidence of your death during this escape.”

“And how do you plan to pull off this magic feat?” Pena asked. He was more than impressed with what Santiago had accomplished up to that point. It would be very interesting to see what else the man had up his sleeve.

The trawler had moved well out of the Tuna Harbor and was heading northwest, out toward the main channel of the bay. The fat-hulled boat was moving steadily, but still hadn't reached her maximum cruising speed of only ten knots. Even with her engines going all out, the boat could only do eleven knots. Eleven knots, little more than twelve miles an hour, was not a great speed for a getaway. But a slow trawler didn't draw much attention at a major seaport city.

Captain Flores was well aware that the hard-looking men who had hired his fishing boat weren't interested in commercial fishing. But the fishing had been poor and he couldn't afford to pass up the money they had offered. He had almost balked at giving the men the keys to his boat weeks earlier, but another handful of
dollars had convinced him. Besides, one of the few things that was paid up to date was his insurance on the
Princesa
.

The money he had received made for a good Christmas for him and his family, the first they had seen in a few years. He had ignored the large packages that he noticed around the deck and in the compartments. It was much harder to ignore the new bulkhead that cut the main hold in half. The only easy thing was to concentrate on maintaining the course and speed he was to follow. That, and ignoring the eyes of the man who was watching his back.

The bearded man who had been in the group that came aboard acted like he was used to being in charge. But it was the taller man, the one the other two deferred to, the one with the hard cold eyes, he was in command. That much was obvious for anyone who had worked with groups of men before. Flores would be glad when this job was over and he could go back to just working the sea.

As the men Captain Flores was thinking about discussed their plans, the incendiary charge back in the van ignited. The boat was too far away for him to be able to hear the explosion of the gasoline container, and then the blast from the fuel tank of the van. But Captain Flores could see the glow of the fire come in through the starboard side of the wheelhouse. He knew that whatever the trouble was behind them, it had something to do with the men he had on board.

Just a moment before Flores saw the light from the fire, Santiago had looked at his watch. The timer he
had set at the van had reached zero. Stepping out onto the deck, he could see the fire in the parking lot almost three-quarters of a kilometer behind them. It wouldn't take long for the authorities to realize that the
Princesa
had something to do with the fire—not with the name of the boat painted on the side of the van.

“Time to move,” Santiago said as he ducked his head back into the cabin. “Things are going to start happening fast now. Reyes, you're going to have to take up Falcon's station. Pena, come below with me.”

Without a word, Reyes stepped out of the cabin and headed to the stern of the boat. He crouched down behind a long crate, one of the boxes Captain Flores had noticed as now being on board.

Going over to the hatch above the central hold, Santiago lifted up what was obviously a very new steel cover. In spite of being heavily made, the hatch cover raised easily on its counterbalancing springs. There was a ladder attached to the forward bulkhead of the hold and Santiago used it to climb down into the center of the boat. Pena followed him down into the smelly darkness.

The hold Santiago and Pena were standing in stank of old fish and sawdust. Boxes of equipment lay around the hold, some of which were very familiar to Pena. There were crates of hand grenades, M26A1 fragmentation grenades according to the markings on the boxes. A long cardboard box with a side-mounted handle and webbed strapping around it had markings that said it held five M72A2 LAW rockets. There were metal ammunition cans, unmarked cardboard
boxes, and a long, low mound of something on the deck of the hold, something covered with a black tarp.

“There's enough material in here to raid the Federal Building and fight our way out,” Pena said as he looked around.

“That's what it's supposed to look like,” Santiago said. “Now help me with this tarp.”

Both men unlashed the tarp and pulled it back from four long, bulky bags. The bags were so cold that they seemed to suck the heat right out of the air. Pena suddenly felt a lot colder as he realized just what the bags were.

“Those are bodies?” he said.

“Can't have a really convincing death without a body,” Santiago said. “Now help me get these out of the bags.”

Bending down, Santiago pulled an Emerson Commander knife from his right side pocket. Thumbing open the curved black blade of the Commander, Santiago turned the blade edge-up and used it to slice open the bags. As he moved to the next bag, next to him, Pena began pulling the cloth cover off the body.

Wherever Santiago had come up with the bodies, the original occupants had died hard. The flesh was cold to the touch, but not frozen. The bodies were bent and mangled, as if they had been in some kind of a wreck. One body that was Pena's size was missing its entire face, the whole front of the head and jaw had been torn away. Even as hard as he was, Pena could feel the gorge rise up in his throat at the sight.