with Captain Ramirez close behind. Both men had their goggles on, and both moved very slowly now.
The stream they'd followed in for the last half a klick made for good drainage in the area, and that made for dry, solid footing - the same reason that someone had decided to bulldoze a landing strip here, of course. Chavez was especially wary for booby traps. With every step he checked the ground for wires, then up at waist and eye level. He also checked for any disturbance of ground. Again he wondered about game in the area. If there were some, it, too, would set off the booby traps, wouldn't it? So how would the bad guys react if one got set off? Probably they'd send somebody out to look... that would be bad news regardless of what he expected to find, wouldn't it?
Finally: noise. It carried against the breeze. The low, far-off murmuring of talking men. Though too sporadic and confused even to guess the language, it was human speech.
Contact.
Chavez turned to look at his captain, pointing to the direction from which it seemed to come and tapping his ear with a finger. Ramirez nodded and motioned for the sergeant to press on.
Next, a trail.
Chavez knelt down and looked for human footprints. They were here, all right, coming out and going back. He took a very long step to pass over the narrow dirt path, and stopped. Ramirez and Chavez were now a tight two- man formation, far enough apart that the same burst wouldn't get both, close enough that they could provide mutual support. Captain Ramirez was an experienced officer, just off his eighteen-month tour in command of a light-infantry company, but even he was in awe of Chavez's woodcraft skills. It was now post time, as he'd told them a few minutes earlier, and his were the greatest worries of the unit. He was in command. That meant that the mission's success was his sole responsibility. He was similarly responsible for the lives of his men. He'd brought ten men in-country, and he was supposed to bring all ten men out. As the single officer, moreover, he was supposed to be at least as good as any of his men - preferably better - in every specialty. Even though that was not realistic, it was expected by everyone. Including Captain Ramirez, who was old enough to know better. But watching Chavez, ten meters ahead, in the gray-green image of his night goggles, moving like a ghost, as quietly as a puff of breeze, Ramirez had to shake off a feeling of inadequacy. It was replaced a moment later with one of elation. This was better than command of a company. Ten elite specialists, each one of them among the best the Army had, and they were his to command... Ramirez distantly realized that he was experiencing the emotional roller-coaster common to combat operations. A bright young man, he was now learning another lesson that history talked about but never quite conveyed: it was one thing to talk and think and read about this sort of thing, but there would never be a substitute for doing it. Training could attenuate the stress of combat operations, but never remove it. It amazed the young captain that everything seemed so clear to him. His senses were as fully alert as they had ever been, and his mind was working with speed and clarity. He recognized the stress and danger, but he was ready for it. In that recognition came elation as the roller coaster rolled on. A far-off part of his intellect watched and evaluated his performance, noting that as in a contact sport, every member of the squad needed the shock of real contact before settling down fully to work. The problem was simply that they were supposed to avoid that contact.
Chavez's hand went up, Ramirez saw, and then the scout crouched down behind a tree. The captain passed around a thicket of bushes and saw why the sergeant had stopped.
There was the airfield.
Better yet, there was an aircraft, several hundred yards away, its engines off but glowing on the infrared image generated by the goggles.
'Looks like we be in business, Cap'n,' Ding noted in a whisper.
Ramirez and Chavez moved left and right, well inside the treeline, to search for security forces. But there were none. The objective, RENO, was agreeably identical to what they'd been told to expect. They took their time making sure, of course, then Ramirez went back to the rally point, leaving Chavez to keep an eye on things. Twenty minutes later the squad was in place on a small hill just northwest of the airfield, covering a front of two hundred yards. This had probably once been some peasant's farm, with the burned-off fields merely extended into the strip. They all had a clear view of the airstrip. Chavez was on the extreme right with Vega, Guerra on the far left with the other SAW gunner, and Ramirez stayed in the center, with his radio operator, Sergeant Ingeles.
12. The Curtain on SHOWBOAT
'VARIABLE, THIS is KNIFE. Stand by to copy, over.'
The signal off the satellite channel was as clear as a commercial FM station. The communications technician stubbed out his cigarette and keyed his headset.
'KNIFE, this is VARIABLE, your signal is five by five. We are ready to copy, over.' Behind him, Clark turned in his swivel chair to look at the map.
'We are at Objective RENO, and guess what - there's a twin-engine aircraft in view with some people loading cardboard boxes into it. Over.'
Clark turned to look in surprise at the radio rack. Was their operational intel
'Can you read the tail number, over.'
'Negative, the angle's wrong. But he's going to take off right past us. We are right in the planned position. No security assets are evident at this time.'
'Damn,' observed one of the Operations people. He lifted a handset. 'This is VARIABLE. RENO reports bird in the nest, time zero-three-one-six Zulu... Roger. Will advise. Out.' He turned to his companion. 'The stateside assets are at plus-one hour.'
'That'll do just fine,' the other man thought.
As Ramirez and Chavez watched through their binoculars, two men finished loading their boxes into the aircraft. It was a Piper Cheyenne, both men determined, a midsize corporate aircraft with reasonably long range, depending on load weights and flight profile. Local shops could fit it with ferry tanks, extending the range designed into the aircraft. The cargo flown into America by drug smugglers had little to do with weight or - except in the case of marijuana - bulk. The limiting factor was money. A single aircraft could carry enough refined cocaine, even at wholesale value, to wipe out the cash holdings of most federal reserve banks.
The pilots boarded the aircraft after shaking hands with the ground crews - that part seemed to their covert observers just as routine as any aircraft departure. The engines began turning, and their roar swept across the open land toward the light-fighters.
'Jesus,' Sergeant Vega noted with bemusement. 'I could smoke the bird right here and now. Damn.' His gun was on 'safe,' of course.
'Might make our life a little too exciting,' Chavez noted. 'Yeah, that makes sense,
'I see it. Heads up in case we have to move out.'
The Piper taxied to the end of the runway, moving like a crippled bird, bouncing and bobbing on the landing- gear shocks. The airstrip was illuminated by a mere handful of small flares, far fewer lights than were normally used to outline a real runway. It struck all who looked as dangerous, and suddenly Chavez realized that if the aircraft crashed on takeoff, some squad members would end up eating the thing...
The aircraft's nose dropped as the pilot pushed the engines to full throttle preparatory to takeoff, then reduced power to make sure the motors wouldn't quit when he did so. Satisfied, they ran up again, and the aircraft slipped its brakes and started moving. Chavez set his binoculars down to watch. Heavily loaded with fuel, it cleared the trees to his right by a mere twenty yards. Whoever the pilot was, he was a daredevil. The term that sprang into the sergeant's mind seemed appropriate enough.
'Just took off now. It's a Piper Cheyenne,' Ramirez's voice read off the tail number. It had American registration. 'Course about three-three-zero.' Which headed for the Yucatan Channel, between Cuba and Mexico. The communicator took the proper notes. 'What can you tell me about RENO?'
'I count six people. Four carry rifles, can't tell about the rest. One pickup truck and a shack, like on the satellite overheads. Truck's moving now, and I think - yeah, they're putting out the runway lights. They're using flares, just
