Clear and Present Danger

shoots right quick.'

'It did that plane like a chainsaw.'

'That's the idea, sir. I could have been a little faster on the trigger, but you want me to try 'n avoid the fuel tanks, right?'

'That's correct.' The cover story, in case anyone saw a flash, was that there was a Shoot-Ex out of Eglin - exercises killing target drones are not uncommon there - but so much the better if no one noticed at all.

Bronco didn't like the secrecy stuff. As far as he was concerned, shooting the bastards down made perfectly good sense. The point of the mission, they'd told him during the recruiting phase, was that drug trafficking was a threat to U.S. national security. That phrasing made everything legitimate. As an air-defense fighter pilot, he was trained to deal with threats to national security in this specific way - to shoot them out of the sky with as much emotion as a skeet-shooter dispatched clay birds thrown out from the traps. Besides, Bronco thought, if it's a real threat to national security, why shouldn't the people know about it? But that wasn't his department. He was only a captain, and captains are operators, not thinkers. Somebody up the line had decided that this was okay, and that was all he needed to know. Dispatching this Twin-Beech had been the next thing to murder, but that was as accurate a description of combat operations as any other. After all, giving people a fair chance was what happened at the Olympics, not where your life was on the line. If somebody was dumb enough to let his ass get killed, that wasn't Bronco's lookout, especially if he happened to be committing an act of war against Bronco's country. And that was what 'threat to national security' meant, wasn't it?

Besides, he had given Juan - or whatever the bastard's name had been - a fair warning, hadn't he? If the asshole'd thought he could outfly the best fucking fighter plane in the whole world, well, he'd learned different. Tough.

'You got any problems to this point, Captain?' the senior one asked.

'Problems with what, sir?' What a dumbass question!

The airstrip at which they had arrived wasn't big enough for a proper military transport. The forty-four men of Operation SHOWBOAT traveled by bus to Peterson Air Force Base, a few miles east of the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs. It was dark, of course. The bus was driven by one of the 'camp counselors,' as the men had taken to calling them, and the ride was a quiet one, with many of the soldiers asleep after their last day's PT. The rest were alone with their own thoughts. Chavez watched the mountains slide by as the bus twisted its way down the last range. The men were ready.

'Pretty mountains, man,' Julio Vega observed sleepily.

'Especially in a bus heading downhill.'

'Fuckin' A!' Vega chuckled. 'You know, someday I'm gonna come back here and do some skiing.' The machine- gunner adjusted himself in the seat and faded out.

They were roused thirty-five minutes later after passing through the gate at Peterson. The bus pulled right up to the aft ramp of an Air Force C-141 Starlifter transport. The soldiers rose and assembled their gear in an orderly fashion, with each squad captain checking to make sure that everyone had everything he'd been issued as they filed off. A few looked around on the way to the aircraft. There was nothing unusual about the departure, no special security guards, merely the ground crew fueling and preflighting the aircraft for an immediate departure. In the distance a KC-135 aerial tanker was lifting off, and though no one thought much about it, they'd be meeting that bird in a little while. The Air Force sergeant who was load-master for this particular aircraft took them aboard and seated them as comfortably as the spartan appointments allowed - this mainly involved giving everyone ear protectors.

The flight crew went through the usual startup procedures, and presently the Starlifter began moving. The noise was grating despite the earmuffs, but the aircraft had an Air Force Reserve crew, all airline personnel, who gave them a decent ride. Except for the midair refueling, that is. As soon as the C-141 had climbed to altitude, it rendezvoused with the KC-135 to replace the fuel burned off during the climb-out. For the passengers this involved the usual roller-coaster buffet which, amplified by the near total absence of windows, made a few stomachs decidedly queasy, though all looked quietly inured to it. Half an hour after lifting off, the C-141 settled down on a southerly course, and from a mixture of fatigue and sheer boredom, the soldiers drifted off to sleep for the remainder of the ride.

The MH- 53J left Eglin Air Force Base at about the same time, all of its fuel tanks topped off after engine warm-up. Colonel Johns took it to one thousand feet and a course of two-one-five for the Yucatan Channel. Three hours out, an MC-130E Combat Talon tanker/support aircraft caught up with the Pave Low, and Johns decided to let the captain handle the midair refueling. They'd have to tank thrice more, and the tanker would accompany them all the way down, bringing a maintenance and support crew and spare parts.

'Ready to plug,' PJ told the tanker commander.

'Roger,' answered Captain Montaigne in the MC-130E, holding the aircraft straight and level.

Johns watched Willis ease the nose probe into the drogue. 'Okay, we got plug.'

In the cockpit of the -130E, Captain Montaigne took note of the indicator light and keyed the microphone. ' Ohhh! ' she said in her huskiest voice. 'Nobody does it like you, Colonel!'

Johns laughed out loud and keyed his switch twice, generating a click-click signal, which meant Affirmative. He switched to intercom. 'Why spoil it for her?' he asked Willis, who was regrettably straitlaced. The fuel transfer took six minutes.

'How long do you think we'll be down there?' Captain Willis wondered after it was done.

'They didn't tell me that, but if it goes too long, they say we'll get relief.'

'That's nice,' the captain observed. His eyes shifted back and forth from his flight instruments to the world outside the armored cockpit. The aircraft had more than its full load of combat gear aboard - Johns was a firm believer in firepower - and the electronic countermeasures racks were gone. Whatever they'd be doing, they wouldn't have to worry about unfriendly radar coverage, and that meant that the job, whatever it was, didn't involve Nicaragua or Cuba. It also made for more passenger room in the aircraft and deleted the second flight engineer from the crew. 'You were right about the gloves. My wife made up a set and it does make a difference.'

'Some guys just fly without 'em, but I don't like to have sweaty hands on the stick.'

'Is it going to be that warm?'

'There's warm, and there's warm,' Johns pointed out. 'You don't get sweaty hands just from the outside temperature.'

'Oh. Yes, sir.' Gee, he gets scared, too - just like the rest of us?

'Like I keep telling people, the more thinking you do before things get exciting, the less exciting things will be. And they get plenty exciting enough.'

Another voice came onto the intercom circuit: 'You keep talking like that, sir, and we might get a little scared.'

'Sergeant Zimmer, how are things in the back?' Johns asked. Zimmer's regular spot was just aft of the two pilots, hovering over an impressive array of instruments.

'Coffee, tea, or milk, sir? The meals for this flight are Chicken Kiev with rice, Roast Beef au Jus with baked potato, and for the weight-watchers among us, Orange Ruffy and stir-fried veggies - and if you believe that, sir, you've been staring at the instrument panel too long. Why the hell don't we have a stewardess along with us?'

' 'Cause you and I are both too old for that shit, Zimmer!' PJ laughed.

'It ain't bad in a chopper, sir. What with all the vibration and all...'

'I've been trying to reform him since Korat,' Johns explained to Captain Willis. 'How old are the kids now, Buck?'

'Seventeen, fifteen, twelve, nine, six, five, and three, sir.'

'Christ,' Willis noted. 'Your wife must be some gal, Sarge.'

'She's afraid I'll run around, so she robs me of my energy,' Zimmer explained. 'I fly to get away from her. It's the only thing that keeps me alive.'

'Her cooking must be all right, judging by your uniform.'

'Is the colonel picking on his sergeant again?' Zimmer asked.

'Not exactly. I just want you to look as good as Carol does.'

'No chance, sir.'

'Roger that. Some coffee would be nice.'

'On the way, Colonel, sir.' Zimmer was on the flight deck in less than a minute. The instrument console for the