The Alberta Connection (24 page)

Ryce had a call to make. He dialed Doug’s
cell number. Doug answered before the first ring had completed.

“Ryce, this is Doug. John just sent me an
email. What would you like me to do?”

Ryce smiled. “Well, if you don’t mind, I
would like you to take over the Monroe branch of the JBTF for a few
days. Tanya and I are heading back to Idaho in the morning. You
have a good idea of what is going on. I would feel better if you
were keeping an eye on things while I am gone.”

Doug assured Ryce that he would not disband
the JBTF in Ryce’s absence. Ryce flipped his cell phone closed,
clicked a couple buttons, and watched his laptop shut down. He took
Tanya’s hand, and led her to the bedroom. Tomorrow was going to be
a tightly scheduled day.

The alarm clock shattered Ryce’s dreams with
a sick chicken. Tanya had discovered an alarm clock that allowed
MP-3 files to be up-loaded. A sick chicken MP-3 file had been
loaded onto the alarm clock in retaliation for the angry chickens
on Ryce’s cell phone in Idaho. He smiled. He wouldn’t have that
thing to complain about for a few days. He swung his legs over the
side of the bed and checked his cell phone. Phil had not yet called
to announce he was nearing Paine Field.

After a quick shower, Ryce started packing
his duffle bag for the trip. He had almost completed his packing
when his cell phone alerted him that he had a call. Phil was 45
minutes from the outer marker and would be touching down in about
an hour. Ryce grabbed his duffle bag, Tanya grabbed her flight bag,
and both walked down to the main entrance of the house. Jeb was
driving them to the airport so that they would not have to leave a
car in long-term parking.

Jeb arrived at the loading ramp less than
five minutes before the G650 pulled up. A hatch opened, and a
stairway descended to the tarmac. Two black-suited men silently
walked to the vehicle, picked up the duffle and flight bags, and
returned to the aircraft. Ryce and Tanya thanked Jeb for the ride
and then walked up the stairs. As Jeb drove away, Phil was
obtaining take-off clearance.

After they arrived at transit altitude, Phil
walked back to where Ryce and Tanya were sitting. He spun one of
the chairs around, sat down, and chuckled.

“I almost lost my voice trying to talk John
and O2 into letting me go on this excursion. I am your new air
support officer. After your success rescuing Brenda, John found a
Chinook helicopter, and Pen outfitted it as a trauma center. And I
get to fly it for the first time. John found it in Great Falls, so
it is waiting for us. I hope he did not steal it from under your
friend Mitch.

“Speaking of Brenda, Pen said the surgeons
were forced to amputate two toes on her left foot. The headman at
the Blackfeet Community Hospital in Browning is someone Pen knew
when she was on the staff of the University of Chicago Medical
Center. That theory about six degrees of separation sure works with
the Pendergasts, especially O2.

“We have made a slight change of plans. We
are not flying directly to Great Falls. We are stopping at the
Ranch to switch to the Boeing Business Jet. We need a lot more
capacity than we can get from this airplane. John and O2 have
decided we will pick up a few more people and some personal toys.
We stop in Great Falls to unload you two, and then I jump into the
Chinook to continue to Babb. The Babb Airport can’t handle the G650
or the BBJ.

“When O2 explained that the team would be
totally out of touch with civilization, Ramona had a few well
chosen words for him. Then he got your email about a support group
at the campground and near the cabin. He relented and told Ramona
that she could tag along. I think he decided that Ramona might hang
him from his fingernails. He had to tell me I could go.”

Phil chuckled. “O2 sent out a general request
for ex-Rangers and ex-SEALs. He got forty-eight names. Then he had
a bigger problem. Who would he piss off the most if they didn’t get
chosen?”

Phil laughed. “Ramona wants to go because
Tanya gets to go. Marge wants to go if Ramona gets to go. John says
that if Marge goes, he gets to go. It looks like we will have more
firepower than a medium-sized middle-eastern country.”

Phil laughed again, stood, and returned to
the flight deck.

Ryce looked over at Tanya. “See what you
started?”

The turn around at Pendergast Field took much
longer than the one at Paine Field. Many hard cases were loaded
into the storage bins. When they ran out of storage bins, more hard
cases were brought into the aircraft cabin. Ryce recognized ammo
cases, weapon cases, and even some shoulder launched rocket cases.
Phil was right. They were looking for trouble.

Eventually, the aircraft also had five
additional passengers. Ryce had seen some of them in the district
cafeteria or the Ranch chow hall. However, he had no names to
attach to the faces. And this group didn’t wear any name tags.

Chapter 31

Phil taxied
directly into a hanger and the doors were rolled shut before anyone
was allowed to depart the BBJ. Ryce noticed two Hummers were parked
along one wall. As he and Tanya descended the stairs, a uniformed
solder from the Army National Guard walked up, handed Ryce two sets
of keys, and then pointed at the Hummers.

“Our CO, Captain Halmers, said he got a call
from the Billings’ guard unit that you might need these vehicles.
Welcome to Great Falls.”

The drivers walked to an olive-drab sedan and
got in. Ryce overheard an onlooker remark that he would like to be
picked up by a Hummer. He was riding the bus home.

Ryce looked over at Tanya and began laughing.
“Have you ever driven a Hummer?”

Tanya replied that she had not. Ryce waved
one of his fellow passengers over, pointed at one of the Hummers,
and tossed him the keys.

“Load up that vehicle and drive it to the
Hampton Inn.”

Ryce was not actually positive how many
agents were still available at the Great Falls office, but he could
count ten people scurrying around the hanger. He did a quick
calculation. He had arrived with five, so the extra five must be
from the Great Falls office. Ryce chuckled. How many people was O2
bringing to the party?

The contents of the BBJ were laid out on the
hanger floor long before the convoy from the Ranch arrived at the
airport. The two Hummers that had been turned over to Ryce did not
have the capacity to carry the equipment and men that had been
unloaded. As Ryce wondered how everything would be transported, his
cell phone vibrated in his pocket. It was O2.

“I have a five Hummer group on the way over
to the airport. You and Tanya can head over to the hotel. Ramona
reserved about twenty rooms.”

After a brief stop at the JBTF offices, Ryce
and Tanya drove one of the Hummers to the Hampton Inn. Although
Ramona had reserved rooms for everyone, Tanya had made a special
reservation on the drive to Paine Field.

As they walked into Room 316, Tanya was
softly chuckling. “I didn’t get my way with you the last time we
were in this room.”

Ryce was careful to say nothing. He simply
wrapped Tanya in his arms and gave her a long kiss.

Ryce was walking out of the shower when the
room phone began ringing. He picked it up, answered it, and mouthed
“O2” to Tanya, who had followed him out of the shower.

Ryce listened for a few more minutes and then
said, “Give us twenty minutes.”

Ryce was chuckling when he turned to Tanya.
“O2 has more irons in the fire than anyone I know. One of his
hundreds of old SEAL friends is in the Montana Army National Guard.
O2 has gotten two combat-ready close-support Chinook helicopters
with full crews. They need flight time, and Homeland Security is
willing to pay. I think bullets are the biggest cost on those
things, and they spit out a lot of bullets.

“They are set up as small versions of Puff,
The Magic Dragon. They have a mini gun that can spit out 3,000
rounds a minute, rocket launchers and a 40 mm cannon. They are
going to follow Phil around like a pair of lost puppies. I had the
privilege of watching two of them work in Afghanistan. They
absolutely tore up the bunker they were asked to eliminate.”

As they dressed, Ryce was constantly checking
his laptop and then typing furiously. Tanya knew better than to
interrupt his focus. Ryce used his computer as if it were a legal
pad. One evening, she walked out of the bedroom completely naked,
and announced she was going for a walk. She got no response. He
didn’t even tell her there was two feet of snow on the ground, and
it was very cold outside.

At exactly twenty minutes after the call, O2
arrived, followed by Phil and two men in camo fatigues. O2
introduced the two men as former Rangers from the Sanctuary
Precinct of the Idaho State Police. They had completed Ranger
School a few months after Ryce had opted out and had heard about
the jump that had shortened Ryce’s career. They had also heard O2
describe the incident in Afghanistan.

The next four hours were focused on planning
the insertion at the cabin, and who would provide support at the
campground and at the stream. O2 had arrived in a convoy of six
vehicles. Five Hummers had been sent to the airport and had been
loaded with the men and material flown in on the BBJ. They would be
driven to the Army National Guard secure compound where they could
be placed under guard for the night. Four of the Hummers would be
stationed at the Babb airport with Phil to be used as support and
emergency vehicles.

Ryce was concerned about immediate response
if something happened while he was at the cabin. Anyone parked at
the stream could provide a five-minute or less response time. A
high-speed drive from the campground down dirt roads would take
twenty minutes or more. Phil could be in the air in less than three
minutes, and at the cabin eight to ten minutes later. However, if
the team got into a firefight while they were on the trail, all
bets were off. Coaxing a Chinook into the mountains to retrieve
wounded personnel would be slow and tedious.

Ryce pulled a legal pad from the coffee table
and began running down a checklist. When he got to the support
group at the stream, Tanya raised her hand.

“I think Ramona and I can appear to be
fishing at the stream as well as anyone.”

Ryce sat for a few moments and considered the
request. With a smile, he shook his head “yes.”

About half way through the meeting, someone
knocked on the door. Tanya answered it and discovered John, Marge,
and Ramona standing in the doorway. John explained that he had a
meeting he had needed to attend and had left the Ranch later than
O2’s group. Ramona had stayed to sign-off on a delivery of
commercial kitchen equipment and ensure that things were stored
properly until she returned.

The subsequent plans included twice as many
people as Ryce had envisioned, but was considerably simpler than O2
thought it should be.

Ryce, with five SEALs/Rangers would be the
main cabin assault group, while O2 and the remaining five
SEALs/Rangers would be the trail observation group. Gary Temple,
the Great Falls FBI agent-in-charge, owned a 41 passenger retired
school bus he had modified for camping. He would drop the cabin
assault team off at the stream at least a mile away from the cabin.
The bus was already parked at the campground that Ryce was planning
to use as a support base. It would not be out of place on the roads
leading to the cabin. The primary problem would be to load the bus
with twelve heavily armed men without alerting everyone in the
campground.

John had the solution for loading the bus. He
had driven to Great Falls in what he called his “Party Hummer,” an
H1 with a highly modified camper installed in the very short cargo
box. The camper length was doubled with a slide-out, and it had a
tent structure that extended twenty feet beyond the camper shell.
He and Marge would be setting up the Hummer in the same campground
as the bus. If the assault team prepositioned their equipment, the
bus could be backed up to the tent and loaded without prying
eyes.

O2 had only one objection to the plan. He
wanted more than Ramona and Tanya providing support from the
stream. He added the two ex-Rangers who had accompanied him to the
group camping in the Suburban. Both Tanya and Ramona were excited
about their intended location. Ryce had caught several trout in
that stream. Tanya knew how many, and she wanted fishing
points.

When one of the Rangers asked if the women
would be safe with them, O2 started laughing so hard he was forced
to walk to the bathroom to get a glass of water.

Marge looked over at the Ranger and said, “I
would worry more about you two being safe with the ladies. Ramona
can outshoot O2 on his best day and her worst day, and Tanya is
married to the guy who has actually outshot both of them.”

Marge turned to O2. “What are you taking with
you?”

O2 smiled. “A third will be heavy, the rest
will be close support.”

O2 grinned at the confused look on Tanya’s
face. When Tanya wanted to know what a heavy was, O2 looked at
Ryce, and told him to explain.

Ryce chuckled.

“I don’t know if it is different in the
SEALs, but in the Rangers, weapon categories are divided into the
caliber of the bullet they use. A close support weapon is usually
chambered for something less than 10 mm, so there is not as much
recoil. This includes the 5.56 and 7.62 NATO rounds. Of course, the
AK-47, using a 7.62 x 39 cartridge, is definitely a close support
weapon. It is the most manufactured assault rifle in the
universe.

“A heavy weapon is anything above 10 mm. That
covers the .50 caliber or larger sniper bullet. I know O2 is
planning to take four Barrett M82A1 sniper rifles, although I am
not sure that something in a pink gun case is considered a heavy
weapon.”