“Who are you, sir?” the skinny man with the thin black tie asked. Franklin told him as he flashed his shield, climbed up a step to hand the piece of steel to him. “Where’d he find it, Sheriff?”
“Near the crater. He’s a White House K-9 dog, name of Dutch. That sticky stuff on the other side there’s probably bomb residue, way he’s acting. I’d take him seriously if I were you. He’s pretty good.”
“We’ll add it to the pile. Check it out when we can. Thank you, Sheriff.”
“I was thinking. Those letters? R-O-L-E? Could be the middle of a word. Chevrolet.”
“Chevrolet. Well, that’s an interesting idea. But hardly likely. There were two vehicles involved in this explosion. We’ve seen the tread marks. A Ford Crown Victoria and a Peterbilt tractor trailer rig riding on Goodyear. That’s confimed all the way to the top.”
“Well, you may be right.”
“Thanks again.”
The man turned to go back inside the crime van.
“There could have been a vehicle inside the truck,” Dixon said to his narrow white back.
“What’d you say?”
“I say there could have been another vehicle inside the truck. Truck that big, could have been two vehicles inside of the trailer. Two Chevrolets.”
“Two Chevrolets.”
“I rode in one just this evening. Over to the White House to meet with the President. Big black Chevy Suburban belonging to the Secret Service. You know the ones I’m talking about?”
“I know the ones.”
“I’ve been seeing a lot of them since I got up here to Washington. All over town. I guess for the Inauguration?”
“I guess.”
“All with blacked-out windows.”
“Right.”
“A lot of busted black glass on the ground over there. I found this piece down the road a ways.” Franklin handed him the piece of glass he found.
“Will you look at that? Huh.”
“Well. It’s just an idea. Add it to the pile.”
Dixon turned and headed back to the crater to find Agent Rocky Hernandez, Dutch trotting happily along right beside him.
Good dog.
77
THE BLACK JUNGLE
S tokley Jones stuck the flat of his hand in the air. His patrol froze at the signal. Ten minutes had elapsed since the squad’s insertion into extremely dense terrain. Two-hundred-foot trees loomed above their heads; he’d never seen anything like it. The squad was moving out carefully in patrol formation. They were moving much too slowly for Stoke, but there wasn’t much he could do about that.
It was raining up there somewhere. The water streaming down from above made the jungle floor a boggy mess. And there were tripwires everywhere.
Stoke was acting as point man, followed by Froggy, who’d been designated patrol leader. Right behind them was the radioman/grenadier, now using a back-up PRC 117 emergency VHF radio providing instant communications with the boat; he was giving Stiletto’s fire control officer the exact coordinates of the squad’s location. He could call for fire support if needed, but he didn’t want shells landing in his own backyard.
Behind the radioman was the first of three heavily laden M-60 machine gunners whose job it was to lay down a base of fire of 7.62 rounds if the squad got hit. His objective was to use the heavy machine gun to keep the bad guys with their heads down until the squad either flanked the enemy or got the hell out of there. Bringing up the rear was another M-60 man and a second point man covering the squad’s six. Should they need to reverse direction, he automatically became the new Point.
It was rough going, wet and muddy, but Stoke felt good. If there was a tougher, better trained, meaner Hostage Rescue Team on earth, Stokely had yet to hear of those lying sons of bitches.
Stoke had a CAR-15 with an M-203 grenade launcher slung over his shoulder. He was also carrying a Mossberg shotgun loaded with buckshot. It would give him a broader kill zone in the tight confines of jungle combat. The shotgun could also come in handy clearing foliage in the event of a firefight. Each man also carried a machete to hack through the dense undergrowth. All were wearing identical woodland cammies, jungle boots, and floppy bush hats.
“Tripwire,” Stoke said softly into his lipmike. It was the fifth one he’d seen in the last ten minutes. They were all over the place, slowing them way down. Some of them were even strung with little Voodoo dolls and spooky artifacts so you couldn’t miss them. Keep the natives from bothering Papa Top, he figured. Problem was, some of these little trinket clotheslines were real live wires. Blow your bottom half off. Some were not. So you had to take them all very seriously.
Froggy, the designated PL, was maybe 20 or 30 yards behind him. He was carrying a GPS handheld as backup navigation; his job right now was to keep them moving in the right direction. The Frogman also had a CAR-15 with grenade launcher. Like every man, he was carrying an NVD or Night Vision Device. As the PL on this mission, he was trying to use it sparingly so as to give his eyes time to maintain his natural night sight.
Stoke was the true eyes and ears of the squad. It was up to him to alert the squad of impending danger. Not that he could see much of anything in this shit. The combination of rain, fog, and foliage made it so you couldn’t see your nose in front of your goddamn face.
“Alors,” he heard Froggy say in his headphones, “Merde and merde again!”
Well said, Froggy. Shit and double shit.
It was a good thing he’d stopped the squad in their tracks. He heard something mechanical, caught a glimpse of a foot patrol of heavily armed guards approaching at double time along a narrow trail just below the ridge that the squad was descending. Looked like maybe an eight-man squad. They were preceded on the trail by two of the weirdest looking war machines Stoke had ever seen. Had to be the Trolls, remote controlled tanks Brock had told them about. Moving slowly, just in front of the enemy patrol. Out looking for his squad probably.
Stoke made a slashing motion across his throat and stepped lightly as he could over the tripwire. The men behind him carefully did the same and began moving down the hillside sloping down to the twisting trail. The darkness, foggy rain and thick vegetation provided all the cover they needed. Stoke’s flat hand shot into the air again when they reached a spot twenty yards above the muddy trail.
“Get down,” he said, dropping to one knee and pulling two grenades from his belt. He set the timers on sixty seconds, checked his sweep second hand, and heaved the grenades underhanded. Plop-plop, into the muddy center of the trail. The two robot vehicles and the goon squad were still double-timing toward them. Using hand signals, Stoke directed his guys to move into ambush formation.
Thirty seconds remained on his dive watch. The Troll tanks were advancing rapidly now, the barrels of the twin machine guns up front swiveling toward the incline where Stoke and his men waited, low in the undergrowth. Had they been seen? Sensors, maybe, on the jungle floor. Stoke moved the selector on his assault rifle to full auto and waited. He saw the first tank come around the bend, treads slogging through the thick brownish mud.
C’mon, c’mon.
Stoke’s two grenades exploded almost simultaneously. The two tanks were blown off their treads and over- turned. The enemy patrol scattered, diving into the thick underbrush on either side of the trail.
“Boomer! Bassman!” Stoke shouted to the two machine gunners, “Move up!”
The M-60 is a very heavy weapon and each man carried nearly a thousand rounds of linked 7.62 ammunition adding to his burden. Normally, they don’t move too quickly because of that load. This time they did. Boomer and Bassman, both seasoned veterans and ex-Navy SEALs, raced to the position indicated by Stokely and laid down a murderous wall of fire on both sides of the trail. There was no possibility that anything had survived. The
