Michael Connelly - The Black Ice

After the ground attack was underway, the three air squads would come. The two transport craft would put down on the north and east sides of the PC to drop the CLET team. The CLETs would perform initial entry to all structures. The third helicopter, the Lynx, would remain airborne and act as a flying command post.

Lastly, Ramos said, the ranch had two rovers, two-man Jeep patrols. Ramos said they followed no set patrol or pattern and they would be impossible to pinpoint until the raid began.

“They are the wild cards,” Ramos said. “That is what we have a mobile air command for. They warn us when the Jeeps are spotted coming in or the Lynx will just take them out.”

Ramos was pacing back and forth in front of the bulletin board, swinging the yardstick. Bosch could tell he liked this, the feeling of being in charge of something. Maybe it made up for Vietnam or Iraq.

“Okay, gentlemen, I’ve got a few more things here,” Ramos said as he pinned another photo up. “Our target is the ranch. We have search warrants for drugs. If we find manufacturing apparatus we are gold. If we find narcotics we are gold. But the thing we really want is this man here.”

The photo was a blowup from the mug book Bosch had looked at that morning.

“This is our main man,” Ramos said. “Humberto Zorrillo. The pope of Mexicali. If we don’t get him, this whole operation goes down the tubes. He’s the mastermind. He’s the one we want.

“It might interest you to know that in addition to his activities related to narcotics, he is a suspect in the killing of two L.A. cops, not to mention a couple other killings up there in the last month or so. This is a man who doesn’t think twice about it. If he doesn’t do it himself, he has plenty of people working for him who will. He’s dangerous. Anybody we encounter on the ranch has to be considered armed and dangerous. Questions?”

One of the militia asked a question in Spanish.

“Good question,” Ramos replied. “We are not going into EnviroBreed initially because of two reasons. One, our prime target is the ranch and we would have to initially deploy more resources to EnviroBreed if we were to make simultaneous entry to the compound and the ranch. Secondly, our CI indicates the tunnel on that side may be rigged. Booby-trapped. We don’t want to chance it. When we get the ranch secured, we’ll go in then or we’ll follow the tunnel over.”

He waited for more questions. There were none. The men in front of him were shifting their weight from foot to foot or chewing their nails or flicking their thumbs on their knees. The adrenaline rush was just beginning to kick. Bosch had seen it before, in Vietnam and since. So he approached his own rising excitement with an uneasy sense of dread.

“All right then!” Ramos yelled. “I want everybody locked and loaded in one hour. At midnight we jam!”

The gathering broke up with some adolescent howls from the younger agents. Bosch moved toward Ramos as he was taking the photos off the board.

“Sounds like a plan, man.”

“Yeah. Just hope it goes down close to the way we said it. They never go down exactly right.”

“Right. Corvo told me you’ve got another plan. The one to get Zorrillo across the border.”

“Yeah, we’ve got something cooked up.”

“You gonna tell me?”

He turned around from the board, all the photos in a nice stack in his hands.

“Yeah, I’ll tell you. You’ll like this, Bosch, since it will get him up to L.A. to face trial on your guys. What’s going to happen is that after the little fuck is captured he will resist arrest and injure himself. Probably facial injuries and they are going to look worse than they really are. But we will want to get him immediate medical attention. The DEA will offer the use of one of the helicopters. The commander of the militia unit will gratefully accept. But, you see, the pilot will become confused and mistake the lights of Imperial County Memorial Hospital on the other side of the border with the Mexicali General Clinic, which is just on this side of the border. When the chopper lands at the wrong hospital and Zorrillo gets off on the wrong side of the border, he will be subject to arrest and the American justice system. Tough break for him. We might have to put a notice of reprimand in the pilot’s personnel file.”

Ramos had that leering smile on his face again. He winked at Bosch and then walked away.

The Lynx was crossing over the carpet of Mexicali’s lights, heading southwest toward the dark shape of the Cucapah Mountains. The ride was smoother and quieter than anything he remembered from Vietnam or his dreams after.

Bosch was in the rear compartment huddled next to the left window. The cold night air was somehow getting in through a vent somewhere. Aguila was on the seat next to him. And in the forward compartment were Corvo and the pilot. Corvo was Air Leader, handling communications and directions on the ranch assault. Ramos was Ground One, in charge on the surface. Looking into the forward compartment, Bosch could see the dim reflection of the cockpit’s green dials on the visor of Corvo’s helmet.

The helmets of all four of the men in the chopper were connected through electronic umbilical cords to a center console port. The helmets had air-to-ground and on-board radio two-way and night-vision capabilities.

After they had flown for fifteen minutes the lights through the windows became fewer. Without the glare of the brightness from below, Harry could make out the silhouette of one of the other helicopters about two hundred yards to the left side. The other black ship would be on the right side. They were flying in formation.

“ETA two minutes,” a voice said in his ear. The pilot.

Bosch took the Kevlar vest he held in his lap and slipped it underneath him, onto the seat. A protection against ground fire. He saw Aguila do the same thing with the DEA loaner.

The Lynx began a sharp descent and the voice in his ears said, “Here we go.” Bosch snapped the night vision apparatus down and looked into the lenses. The earth moved quickly below, a yellow river of scrub brush and little else. They passed over a road and then a turnoff. The helicopter banked in the direction of the turn. He saw a car, a pickup truck and a Jeep stopped on the road and then several other vehicles moving on the dirt road, yellow clouds of dust billowing behind them. The militia was in and speeding toward the population center. The battle had been engaged.

“Looks like our friends have already taken care of one of the patrol Jeeps,” Corvo’s voice said in Bosch’s earpiece.

“That’s a ten-four,” came a returning voice, apparently from one of the other choppers.

The Lynx overtook the militia vehicles. Bosch was staring at open road in the night-vision scope. The craft’s descent continued and then leveled off at what Bosch estimated was an elevation of about three hundred yards. In the yellow vision field he could now see the hacienda and the front of the bunker. He saw the other two helicopters, looking like black dragonflies, set down on their assigned sides of the house. Then he felt the Lynx pull up slightly as if hovering on an air pocket.

“One down!” a voice shouted in the headset.

“Two down!” came another.

Men in black began spilling from the side doors of the landed craft. One group of six went immediately to the front of the hacienda. The six-man group from the other helicopter moved toward the bunker building. Militia cars now began pulling into the field of view. Bosch saw more figures leap from the helicopters. That would be Ramos and the backup.

It all appeared surrealistic in the scope to Bosch. The yellow tint. The tiny figures. It seemed like a badly filmed and edited movie.