Silent Running

“None.” Nguyen shook his head, referring to his own Matador team. The deaths among the ship’s crew simply didn’t count, and the passengers who had tried to resist were too few to mention, either. Since the bodies had been dumped over the side, he hadn’t been able to reconcile the passenger manifest with the head count, though. But again, a few hostages more or less wouldn’t really matter.

“Do you have the people I asked for selected?”

Nguyen nodded. “Of course, Comrade,” he replied. A last-minute change to the master plan was to mix the political and medical hostages. He didn’t understand the reasoning behind the decision, but it didn’t really matter.

“Very good,” Garcia said. “Bring them out now and tell your people to keep the ship ready to sail on a moment’s notice.”

This was another change to the carefully formulated plan he had helped put together, but again he had to go along with it. “Where?”

“Anywhere we might have to go,” the Cuban said. “So have the fuel bunkers topped off immediately.”

Nguyen took out a portable radio and spoke into it. “They’re coming up on deck.”

“As soon as they’re transferred to the hotel,” Garcia said, “I’ll send some of the government hostages over to you. They’ll be easier to guard here.”

“I’m ready for them, Comrade.”

Under the guns of the Matador guards, the selected passengers started to file down the gangplank and onto the waiting buses. The men were grim-faced, the women visibly frightened. These weren’t people who were experienced with anything like this and their imaginations were obviously running away with them. There weren’t that many children, but they had picked up on their parents’ concern and looked dazed.

Garcia secretly smiled as the passengers were led away. Even though these doctors were educated, privileged men and women, like the rest of the Yankees, they were soft and would be no problem for him to hold captive for as long as he wanted.

THE TWO-SEAT, sea-gray camouflaged, Marine TAV-8B Harrier jet sat alone in a remote hangar at the U.S. Navy airbase at Corpus Christi, Texas. A squad of armed Marines secured the hangar from unauthorized visitors while the Navy ground crew gave the jump jet a final check-over. A figure in a flight suit broke away from the plane and walked to the locker room at the end of the hangar.

Marine Captain Fred “Mojo” Jenkins was the poster-perfect picture of a hot-rock Marine attack squadron aviator. Of medium height and in his early thirties, with a cocky, nonchalant bearing, he sported the typical buzz cut. He wore a half smile and looked at the world through steely eyes. His flight suit was covered with Tiger patches. Even so, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect from his passenger on this classified flight. He’d never been involved with moving spooks before and had no idea what he’d gotten himself into. He’d made sure, though, to have his crew chief put an ample supply of burp kits in the rear cockpit.

There was no doubt in his military mind, though, that he had to handle this guy, whoever he was, with kid gloves. The Commandant of the Corps himself had told him in no uncertain terms that the orders regarding this man had come down from the very top. That thought was foremost on his mind as he walked up to the man who, wearing an unmarked flight suit, was sitting alone in the locker room.

“I’m Captain Fred Jenkins, Sir.” The pilot extended his hand. “Call sign Mojo.”

“Glad to meet you, Captain.” Mack Bolan stood and shook hands. “I’m Jeff Cooper.”

Jenkins had seen enough spy thrillers to know there was no chance that was the man’s real name. But this guy looked as though he could call himself the king of Egypt if he wanted and make it work for him. He was a big man, but not overpowering about it the way a SEAL or Recon Marine would have been. He wore his size well and projected a sense of total competence. There was nothing overtly threatening about him, but his blue eyes told you not to even think about fucking with him. All told, he looked as if he was the right guy to have at your side in a bar fight.

The pilot turned to the gunnery sergeant who’d overseen his passenger’s suiting up. “Is Mr. Cooper briefed and ready to fly, Gunny?”

“Yes, Sir,” the sergeant replied. “And I think he’s done this once or twice before.”

“Very good.” Jenkins was curious, but knew better than to even think about asking questions. “If you’re ready, Sir, we should launch. It’ll be dark by the time we’re over the target.”

Bolan hoisted his black bag. “I need this stowed in your cargo pod.”

“My crew chief can do that for you.”

“Let’s go.”

JENKINS’S PASSENGER didn’t display any of the telltale signs of being a Cherry flyer and there was no doubt that he’d flown in military jets before. When the F-14s of the CAP that had been ordered to cover his flight in showed up six feet off the Harrier’s wingtips, Cooper hadn’t even flinched. Even the link-up with the tanker for a quick, couple hundred gallon fill-up hadn’t bothered him, and that was more than the pilot could say.

After the JP-4 top-off, Jenkins dropped down to wave-top level for the high-speed sprint to the coastline of the Yucatán Peninsula. The Harrier jump jet wasn’t supersonic, but it didn’t matter at that altitude. Once he crossed over the beach, the pilot flashed his “feet dry” code to the E-2C Hawkeye AWACS monitoring his mission and went on the terrain-following radar to continue keeping it low but out of the trees and native architecture. With his GPS nav system locked onto the LZ, he had no trouble locating the small clearing in the jungle a few minutes later.

Even so, rather than take a satellite photo’s word on its suitability for a vertical landing, Jenkins clicked in the intercom to his back-seat passenger. “I’ve got the LZ in sight, Sir, but I’d like to make a flyover to check it out before I put us down.”

“No problem.”

When the pilot spotted no obstacles to landing, he cranked the Harrier around, viffed his nozzles down, went into a hover and sat his plane in the clearing.

“Thanks for the ride,” Bolan said over the intercom as he unbuckled his seat harness and raised the canopy.

“Good luck, Sir.”

Leaving his flight helmet and aviator survival vest behind, Bolan climbed down and shot Jenkins a thumbs-up. As per his preflight briefing, the pilot triggered the release to the cargo pod shackled under his right wing. Bolan’s black bag fell to the ground and he quickly rolled it out of the way before shooting the pilot a second thumbs-up.

After answering with a crisp salute, Jenkins throttled up, hit his viffer control and the Harrier rose into the air. Balancing his lift, he fed in a little thrust and started forward. As soon as his air speed built to the point where the wings were generating enough aerodynamic lift to fly, he swiveled his nozzles all the way back and left town at top speed. Fortunately he didn’t have far to go to reach international waters again and the protection of the F-14 CAP over the Western Caribbean.

He had no idea where his passenger was heading, but he wished him the best of luck.

BOLAN WAITED UNTIL THE SOUND of the Harrier echoed away in the surrounding jungle before breaking out his gear. Along with his usual personal weapons and equipment, he was packing heavily this time. With this being an open-ended mission, he had rations for three days, a pair of two-quart canteens, a larger than usual med kit, satcom radio gear and extra ammunition. He quickly got into his gear and loaded his weapons.

The pod had been sanitized of all U.S. military markings and could be safely left behind along with the equally sterile flight suit. By the time anyone found them, he’d have Hal Brognola back and they’d be long gone. At least, that was the mission profile, and until he knew something different, that’s what he was going with.

He and Brognola had a history together that spanned almost his entire career, so when the President asked him via Barbara Price to try to extricate the big Fed from whatever was going on in Cancun, he hadn’t hesitated.

Beyond their long friendship, Brognola was the leader of the nation’s most secretive, clandestine operations organization known as the Sensitive Operations Group. When the nation needed a completely off-the-screen response to a threat or simply wanted to get some payback against evil-doers, Brognola’s action teams were the President’s first choice to take care of it.

Because of that, Brognola rarely traveled outside of the United States. And, on the rare times that he did, he was usually accorded Stony Man Farm black-suit protection. This time, though, he’d figured that since he’d be in the company of the top cops from the entire hemisphere, personal bodyguards wouldn’t be necessary.

That the President needed to get Brognola back as soon as possible went without saying. The information he carried in his head went beyond merely being damaging to national security. If the details of SOG were found out, it would be months, if not years, before the damage could be repaired. Bolan knew that Brognola was tough, but the risks of interrogation could never be underestimated, and it all hinged on him being able to stick to his established cover job. If Hal could force his kidnappers away from concentrating on breaking into that, Bolan should have enough time to get him out before it was discovered who he really was.

What should have been a simple hostage rescue operation was being complicated by a severe lack of intelligence. All communications with the region, even cell-phone traffic, had been cut and no one had any idea what was going on in the resort town. But if it had anything to do with what was happening in almost all of the rest of Mexico and the border states, the worst was feared.

The little information that had made it out of Mexico via satellite phones and TV hookups indicated that the nation was caught up in a bizarre revolution. The presidential palace in Mexico City had been taken over, along with most of the state governments. The armed forces were apparently also in the hands of the revolutionaries, as well as most of the major industries and services. That this was more than a traditional Mexican change in government “Pancho Villa style” could be seen in the reports of American business facilities being stormed and destroyed. Other foreign interests were being taken over, as well, but the main concentration seemed to be against U.S. property.

No one had any idea yet who or what was behind the sudden eruption of social unrest south of the border. It was as if the entire country had suddenly gone insane and the insanity was rapidly spreading northward into the United States. The famous border crossing at Tijuana had been stormed by tens of thousands of Mexicans and completely destroyed. The token Border Patrol and Customs police detachments had been overwhelmed and killed before reinforcements could be sent in.

The initial county and California Highway Patrol police units that sped to the scene had fared no better. Most of them, though, had managed to escape with their lives. When their guns hadn’t been able to slow the hordes, they had wisely retreated back down the freeway hoping to put up roadblocks farther north.

Right before Bolan had taken off, he’d received a scrambled update reporting that the invaders had fanned out into the communities around the California border, hijacking vehicles and looting businesses. Police choppers were trying to keep track of them, but it simply wasn’t doable. There were too many incidents to be tracked, much less stopped.

Adding to the problem was that other border crossings areas in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico were also being stormed and penetrated. Florida, Alabama and Louisiana were being invaded from the sea with the same success. If this wasn’t brought under control immediately, the southern half of the United States was in danger of being overrun.

The President had called a state of national emergency and was federalizing all of the National Guard and Reserve units in the southern half of the country and sending them to secure the border. But it would be some time before any semblance of order could be restored to the thousands of miles of border and coastline. Even when that was accomplished, rounding up and deporting all the invaders would take even longer, maybe years. With more than eight million illegals living in the States already, finding and removing this new influx of invaders wasn’t going to be easy.

Against that backdrop of pending national collapse, Bolan’s job seemed simple. Go to Cancun, find Hal Brognola and bring him back.

THE HARRIER’S LZ had been plotted far enough away from the inhabited areas around Cancun so the jet couldn’t be heard, thus Bolan faced a two-hour hike to reach his objective. An H&K 5.56 mm assault rifle ready in his hands, he checked his GPS, snapped his night-vision goggles in place and set out into the unknown of a world suddenly gone mad.

Bolan kept to the jungle for the first hour before coming across a dirt road that ran in the direction he was going. There was no traffic at this hour, so he used it to make better time. With his night-vision goggles in place, he had little fear of stumbling into an enemy patrol in the dark.

The dirt road intersected with the Yucatán Highway right outside the little village of Cancun. A few hundred yards farther on, he hit the first of the shacks on the outskirts of the village and stopped.