laptop computer.
“Yes, of course I am. The signal from Petty Officer Ledford’s sat phone has not moved. It is still in room 310 in the Hacienda Hotel. The tracer button on her belt shows that she is still there, too. This fellow is taking his time.”
“He is waiting on something specific. We’ll know soon.”
KYLE’S SAT PHONE FINALLY buzzed, shortly after two o’clock in the morning, startling everyone. They looked at it as if it were a live thing, and Kyle picked it up. “Swanson.”
“Take down these coordinates,” came the harsh order from a male voice; Curtis.
“Go,” Swanson said, flicking his eyes to meet the others. Bill Curtis read off a string of numbers, then Swanson read them back. “What now?”
“You get in a Humvee and drive down from 29 Palms and arrive at that position at exactly 5:42 A.M. The approach is a narrow road in an ocean of sand, and I will have a perch with a clear view for miles around. Come alone, and stop when I call and tell you to. Then get out of the car, take off your shirt, and walk up the path that you will find marked by flags directly in front of you. It will take you east, up the ridge where the women will be strapped together, wearing dynamite vests, with my finger on the detonator. One suspicious move by you and I press the button. Clear?”
“Clear.” There was no use asking the condition of the two captives; either they were alive or they were not.
“Give me a cell phone number to call,” Curtis said, and Swanson did so. “You have about three and a half hours to drive there from where you are in 29 Palms, so I suggest that you get on the road. That time is absolute, drop-dead certain. Don’t be late.”
“OK. I’m on the way,” Kyle said, keeping his voice level. He had every intention of being on time.
They closed the connection.
THERE WAS NO FLURRY of action, or jumping for guns or cars, or a yelling of orders. In this moment of stress, the professionals took time to exchange glances, and all around the table the faces looked like a bunch of hungry wolves that had just found a rabbit. Bill Curtis had made his first mistake, allowing his adversary too much time to plan a response.
Swanson spoke to the Lizard in Washington. “Can you bring up a map of those coordinates, please, Liz?”
Almost instantly, a detailed map of Southern California came on the big screen against a wall, and Commander Freedman zoomed in on the specific numbers Curtis had given; a desolate desert position near the Arizona line, just north of the U.S. border with Mexico. “Imperial Sand Dunes Rec Area. Dune buggy heaven,” observed the master gunny.
“How about matching that with the three-and-a-half-hour drive he mentioned from the Stumps.”
The map expanded in size, and a straight blue line bloomed from 29 Palms to the desert location south of the Gordon Wells exit on Interstate 8. “Almost perfect, based on driving sixty miles per hour,” the Lizard said.
“And the time, precisely at five forty-two?”
“Dawn.”
“Ah.”
“Gunny?” the Lizard called out. “The tracking signal on Petty Officer Ledford’s sat phone is still stationary in the hotel room, but the one on her belt shows movement. I hacked into the hotel’s security cameras and have a visual on all three of them leaving. The women seem to be OK.”
“Roger that, Liz. Keep us in the loop. How far does he have to travel?”
There was a clicking of a computer keyboard before Freedman answered. “About one hundred and twenty- five miles to El Centro, then add another half hour to that exit. Say two and one-half hours, plus or minus. Which would put them on the spot about an hour before you, if you drove from 29 Palms.”
“Thanks.”
Now the men at the table changed from watching the screen to facing each other and writing on the legal pads. The MARSOC lieutenant colonel said, “The first thing is pretty obvious, Kyle. This guy doesn’t want to go face-to-face with you. He would be a fool to let you within fifty feet.”
“So the instruction to take off the shirt and walk up the path is bullshit?”
“Probably just a distraction, to keep you thinking that you can go up and rescue the hostages.”
“And the daybreak time? What’s that about?”
“He wants you coming from the west, looking into the rising morning sun.”
The master gunnery sergeant wrote the capital letters
“Ouch.” Kyle agreed with the possibility and turned to the staff officer. “We need a hero, sir. A volunteer who is an IED expert, someone with experience, and about my size. If he wears a full body armor suit, and can use an MRAP, he could soak up the explosion and walk away. Take some balls, but it can be done.”
“I’ll shop it out with the engineers,” the major said. “They actually enjoy this sort of thing. Driving a blast- resistant V-bottom truck that weighs fourteen tons through a mine field helps measure the size of their dicks at beer call. We can lift one of them straight down to the El Centro Naval Air Station by helicopter, along with the driver.”
Kyle turned to the master gunny. “That works, and I need to chop a pair of sniper teams to me. Not for shooting unless I give the call, but to flank the position and feed me information. Let’s go ahead and do their insertion by air right away. Take along their ghillie suits, establish hides, and report. Sooner the better.”
The MARSOC officer had a question. “You think this Curtis guy understands that we do desert warfare training up here all the time? What edge does he possibly believe he can obtain just by going into the dunes?”
“It’s probably based on his planned egress route,” answered the master gunny. “This is only a few hundred yards from the international border in the middle of a wasteland, so once he does the deed, he hauls ass across the line. Obviously he has been there before to stake it out and plan this, and he thinks he has control; he has the hostages, the dynamite, and a handpicked position and is calling the orders. Want to bet that he’s got an off-road vehicle stashed nearby?”
The staff officer made a note. “We can lay on an Osprey right now to take you and the sniper teams down so you can all can hump in, and it can hang around out of sight, then be a medevac when it’s all done.”
“Sounds good, sir, but I’m not going in with the sniper teams. I’ve got to invade Mexico first, and faster than an Osprey can move. Time is critical. Can you line me up with a Citation down to Calexico?”
As the other three men were running checklists through their heads, Swanson called for the Lizard again. “I’m out of here, gang. See if Sybelle can arrange a priority call for me with the Fuerzas Especiales unit of the Infanteria de Marina in Tijuana; particularly I need to talk to Capitano Miguel Francisco Castillo. Last I heard, he was running a platoon of Special Forces against the cartel in Sonora, right along the area where we will be working. I’ll be in the air, but the Stumps can patch the call through.”
The master gunnery sergeant gave a wicked grin. “We trained those Mexican marines. Good, solid fighters, although they do prefer that piece of shit Heckler & Koch MSG-90 for a sniper rifle.”
Swanson was up and moving. “I helped train Mickey myself, back when he was still an enlisted man, so he can be my spotter. His weapon, Master Gunny, doesn’t matter, because I’ll be taking my own.”
CAPTAIN MICKEY CASTILLO WAS waiting at the Calexico International Airport when Kyle came in aboard a Cessna Citation V; he escorted Swanson through the border crossing with his gear, then drove to the Taboada International in the mirroring town of Mexicali. In minutes, they were aboard a Eurocopter Panther AS-565 helicopter churning east along I-8, paralleling the border, and were dropped off three miles south of the line. A following helicopter dumped out a dozen Marines who spread out to form a broad half-moon defensive position and protect the rear of the position for the unusual sniper team of Swanson and Castillo.
Kyle knew he had won the race. Curtis would still be on the road, believing he was ahead of the curve and would have about an hour to set up his trap atop a giant sand dune. Swanson, meanwhile, would be in a hide two
