Target Acquisition

Manning and Encizo reached down and jerked the now stoned Abu Hafiza to his feet. McCarter spoke into his throat mike. “Akira, how we look?”

“Clock’s ticking. You got stubborn bad guys trying to dig their way through the burning barricade I made out of the first-wave vehicles. I’m still sitting on my last Hellfire.”

“Good copy,” McCarter said. “We’ll be rolling out the back door in about ten seconds. Why don’t you go ahead and blow me a hole out the back fence now?”

“One escape hatch coming up,” Tokaido replied.

“Phoenix,” McCarter said. “We are leaving.”

En route to Bolivia

IN THE BACK OF THE Cessna executive turbojet Able Team prepared for their mission briefing. Scrambled with their preassembled kits directed by Barbara Price, the Stony Man direct-action unit had been wheels up and flying south even before Hal Brognola had finished being fully briefed by the President.

Now, via sat link the big Fed and director of the Justice Department’s Sensitive Operations Group gave them a rundown on the situation.

“Currently FBI counterintelligence, counterterror and hostage-rescue units are scrambling to deal with a crisis. In Boliva, Juan Evo Morales holds power. A committed socialist and champion of the coca-leaf growers, he is a strong ally of the Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, and no friend of the United States.

“A plane filled with U.S. citizens has been taken hostage in the eastern lowlands where thick tracts of Amazonian rainforest carpet the topography. Officially the Morales government is helping the U.S. with the situation. Behind the scenes the government is restricting the movement, investigation and resource deployment of the FBI field team in order to maintain ‘sovereign integrity.’

“NSA has managed to discover that covertly, the Bolivian special forces, the Polivalente, are running a joint operation with Venezuela’s DISIP, or Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services. Faced with this obstruction we need you to run a simultaneous black operation to locate and free the kidnapped hostages independent from the official FBI efforts. You must infiltrate the country, acquire intelligence, perform tactical reconnaissance and execute the rescue.” Brognola paused. “Tactical specifics will be given to you once you arrive in Bolivia.”

Schwarz cocked an eyebrow and turned toward Blancanales. “Is it me or does the old man seem to be getting even more blasé as we pull off one impossible stunt after the other?”

Blancanales shrugged. “What am I going to do at my age? Start over and teach school?”

Lyons leaned forward and addressed Brognola through the sat link system. “No worries. We’re on it.”

La Paz, Bolivia

THE TAXI took Lyons away from the more affluent area and into the poorer neighborhoods, far from the Hyatt hotel, American consular branch office and the giant grocery store. Here Colombian refugees formed a strong minority, completely dominating some neighborhoods stacked with poorly constructed tenements and scattered with small shops.

This fact was punctuated to Lyons by his driver, named Jose, who spoke serviceable if broken English. At one point he noted to Lyons that they had entered an area exclusive to Colombians, a tent city from 1978 that had grown up into a labyrinth of winding, narrow streets separating concrete apartment buildings and one-room shops of every description.

After fifteen minutes of travel, the taxi entered another Colombian enclave and stopped in front of a four-story apartment building. Standing on the street, waiting for him, was Hermann Schwarz in street clothes. The American had allowed his beard to grow in under his thick mustache.

Lyons paid the driver and got out of the cab. Schwarz was holding open a steel door and he nodded and smiled in greeting.

“Que pasa, jefe?” he said, letting Lyons through the gate into a small courtyard, then directing him into the building itself. Lyons nodded a greeting and began to ask the Able Team commando a question, but Schwarz shook his head and whispered, “Upstairs.”

Lyons followed Schwarz as they climbed four stories up a narrow, bare concrete staircase. At each landing there was a large square window open to the outside. On the fourth floor the two men entered a stark, poorly lit hallway. At the end of the hall Lyons saw a woman in a traditional dark dress duck into a doorway to avoid them.

Obviously waiting for them, Rosario Blancanales, stubble-faced and dressed identically to Schwarz in street clothes, opened the door to their apartment. Lyons entered the room, shaking Blancanales’s hand once he was inside. Schwarz shut the door behind them and flipped a series of dead bolts closed.

Immediately upon entering the apartment, Lyons saw that there was a short, alcove-style hall to the left leading to an open closet and the bathroom. A U.S. Claymore antipersonnel mine was set up in the entranceway, angled at the door so the back blast would be funneled into the alcove. The ignition cord trailed down the hall, taped to the ground to avoid tripping anyone, and leading around a corner.

“What’s up?” Lyons asked. “Didn’t want anyone hearing us speak English?”

“I want to avoid it as much as possible.” Schwarz nodded. “Blancanales and I might fit in better than McCarter or Hawkins would, but nobody around here’s really fooled. English is pretty common here but it shouts ‘outsider’ in a way that makes me nervous in these Colombian ’hoods.”

“It’s like in my old neighborhood when I was growing up,” Rosario Blancanales added. “Everybody knows who belongs in the ’hood. Cops try to send in a plain-clothes and he was always spotted. The gangs know if a guy comes from three streets over, let alone from out of town. We look like the Bolivian version of lost tourists come to the big city as long as we don’t open our mouths.”

“It’s only going to get worse once we make our final approaches,” Lyons observed.

Blancanales shrugged. “Like I said, Gadgets and I are better than McCarter or Hawkins and in crowded markets or just out and about we’ll move easier. We knew it was going to be tough. You look like the giant gringo you are, my friend.”

They led Lyons deeper into the cramped four-room apartment. The walls and floor were of the same bare concrete as the staircase. Lyons realized there would be no insulation, though the windows at least had glass in them.

“Plumbing okay?” he asked.

“Toilet and shower are weak but working. Don’t drink the water,” Blancanales answered.

“How’s it going?” Lyons asked, meaning the surveillance operation.

Blancanales led him to the large common area at the rear of the apartment. Lyons saw a battered old futon next to a kerosene stove and several battery-operated lanterns. Schwarz and Blancanales had put down foam mattresses and sleeping bags on the concrete, with an additional one meant for Lyons.

A Soviet Dragunov 7.62 mm sniper rifle with the standard PSO-1 scope mount was set up on a bipod in the middle of the room. Against the wall were three AK-104 Kalashnikov carbines. On a card table near the couch and stacked weapons sat a VINCENT sat-com unit, a laptop, two Nikon cameras—one digital and one 35 mm—as well as a satellite phone.

“The Bureau set us up good,” Blancanales said. “Your wish list for weapons and equipment was waiting for us when we got here. They got us Jordanian pistols instead of the more generic Makarovs, but since they’re used by the Bolivian army I didn’t bitch.”

Lyons grunted. The Viper JAWS—Jordanian Arms & Weapon System—had a great reputation for a 9 mm pistol, especially when compared to the older Soviet Makarov and Tokarev, and was the product of a joint American-Jordanian effort. He supposed that with the weapons going into service with the Royal Jordanian Army it was feasible that some would have made it out onto the black market. The fact that the Bolivian military services had all been outfitted with them only helped matters.

“Good enough. What about our good Juan Hernandez?” Lyons asked.

“Take a look for yourself,” Schwarz said, and indicated where the Dragunov had been set up.

The designated infantry support weapon was set up on the ground on a foam shooter’s pad. It was pointed out of a sliding-glass door that opened up on a railing around a patio that extended about six inches out. The glass door opened up on a narrow alley, and Blancanales and Schwarz had hung drapes, keeping them only open a few inches, to avoid being seen by anyone across the way.

Lyons settled into position. The PSO-1 scope was angled through the wide-set wrought-iron bars of the balcony and out toward the mouth of the alley, which opened up on a busy avenue. The crosshairs of the sniper rifle were focused on a balcony across that street, the fifth one up from the bottom and two over from the left edge of the target building. The balcony there was as narrow and unadorned as the one attached to Able Team’s own safehouse.

Inside the apartment Lyons could clearly distinguish the front door through his sniper scope. A battered old television with a rabbit-ears antenna played what Lyons took to be a local soap opera. He had a clear image of the back of a large, balding head facing away from the open balcony.

“Looks like our guy,” Lyons said. “I guess. The FBI triangulated the communications of the Bolivian army commander in charge of the rescue to here?”

“Yep exactly. Akira did a computer enhancement match on photos we took. It came up on an NSA data file. The guy is a communications officer for Colombian intelligence. He’s working as a scramble relay for Caracas.”

“Ugly bastard,” Lyons grunted.

“Got him?” Blancanales asked. “Good. Now come here. I want to show you our little glitch.”

“Christ,” Lyons muttered as he stood. “There’s always a glitch.”

Blancanales led Lyons to the edge of the drapes covering all but two inches of their apartment balcony. Lyons stood at the edge of the curtain and looked out. He heard the sounds of the street, smelled exhaust fumes from the cars. In the distance he could hear a radio blaring latino music through cheap loudspeakers. Heavy carpets aired out over balconies. Clotheslines filled the space above the street between buildings, draped with laundry.

On the street women in traditional blouses and skirts hustled by on errands while men in dirty jeans and battered old sandals rode in threes and fours in the open backs of pickup down the narrow avenue. He saw street vendors selling vegetables and cutting meat from hanging carcasses.

The unemployed lounged in little clusters and argued and laughed with animated hand gestures. School-age children kicked grimy soccer balls in the gutter. Rebar struts stuck from the unfinished corners of old buildings.

“Look down, against the wall, across the alley. See him?”