Diana Palmer - Courageous

“Don’t dwell on the past or anticipate the future,” Grange counseled. “Take it one day at a time.”

Machado sighed. “You are right. Oh. I have a communication from an American journalist with one of the slick magazines. She wishes to accompany us …”

He handed the magazine to Grange. “Her name is Clarisse Carrington …”

“Oh, God, no!” Grange ground out. “No! How did she find out about our mission? She’s like the plague!”

“Excuse me?”

“That damned socialite met me in the Middle East, when she was doing a piece for her magazine,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t fall at her feet at some damned cocktail party in Washington, and I guess it hurt her ego. So four months ago she started chasing me, after I went to a social gathering in Washington with some friends from the military. I gave her the cold shoulder. She was livid. After that, I couldn’t go to a damned hotel anywhere that she didn’t show up at.”

“I see.”

“She thinks she’s irresistible,” Grange said coldly. “She’s not.”

“She may have her ear to the ground about you. There must have been a leak. I will of course refuse the offer.”

“Thanks.”

Grange was looking at the magazine and he frowned at one of the cover stories. He opened it to a certain page, and grimaced. “Damn!”

“What?”

“You remember I told you about the officer who claimed my battle strategy was his own and got me court-martialed? The one I testified against?”

“Yes.”

“He committed suicide.”

“Goodness!”

“This is the story that hit the wires. I’d hoped it wouldn’t, for his family’s sake. He was caught out in another scandal involving blackmail and stolen funds earmarked for equipment,” Grange read. “But his son states here that the officer who testified against him is responsible for his death—me.” He sighed. “I know about the boy. He’s been in and out of therapy all his life. His father said he was bipolar, but his drug problems seemed to me to be the worst of them. His mother was rich. She died and the son inherited it all. She didn’t leave her husband a dime.” He put down the magazine. “So the kid is filthy rich and blames me for his father’s suicide. The socialite thinks she can seduce me over war coverage.” He looked at Emilio Machado with wide eyes. “Perhaps I’m more of a liability than you can afford.”

Machado just smiled. “My friend, we all have our burdens. I think you can bear these. Now, let us speak with your men and finalize our departure.”

They had arranged passage for Grange’s handpicked fighters. Machado had a friend with an old DC-3 who transported the core body of mercs to a small city on the coast of South America, a transit point to Barrera, which was north of Manaus, in Amazonas, a city in the Amazon jungle. Other troops were massing inside the border of Barrera, organized in small groups by Machado’s friends in the resistance. It wasn’t a battle group by any stretch of the imagination. But, then, small forces with the will and means could often overthrow countries. As Machado reminded the others, a handful of his men, defecting to the political leader, Sapara, had overthrown him by stealth and surprise. They could do the same thing to his former lieutenant. It would just require precise planning and good strategy.

On the DC-3 plane, bound for a small covert airstrip in Barrera, Grange outlined his plan of battle to Machado.

“A surprise attack is going to be the most effective means of recapturing your government,” he told the general. “Here—” he pointed to the very small capital city, Medina “—is the heart of the military, in the underground HQ in the city. We have an ally with bunker-busting bombs, but we only have two of them. It means that if we have to go with an all-out military assault, we’ll have to coordinate the strike at the military communications and tactical network with the simultaneous capture of all news media outlets, airfields and the three military command centers in Colari, Salina and Dobri, here, here and here.” He pointed to red marks on his waterproof map. “These cities are smaller than Jacobsville.” He chuckled. “So taking out those command centers could be accomplished by one man with a .45 Colt ACP,” he added.

Machado sighed. “The element of surprise will be difficult, my friend,” he said. “My adversary has agents. He is no fool.”

“I know.” Grange straightened, very somber. “The hardest part is getting everyone familiar with his own role in the attack. I’ve already done that. I sent two of my men ahead to contact your former military commander, Domingo Lopez, in Medina. They’re disguised as farmers, and yes, they’ll pass muster,” he added. “They’re Tex-Mex, some of my best men, and two of them are masters of demolition. They’re ex-Navy SEALs”

“I am impressed,” the general said.

“I also sent one of my former company commanders, who’s proficient in scrounging equipment and arms from unlikely places, along with a South African merc who’s one of the best I’ve ever seen, to set up a base camp. We’ve got a Native American tracker named Carson, a merc with a bad attitude who can speak all the native dialects. They’re accompanied, among others, by an Irishman who knows electronics like his own fingerprints. He can do anything with computers, and he’s a past master at writing virus codes.”

Machado’s eyebrows arched. “Virus codes?”

Grange grinned. “O’Bailey belonged to the British military before he found his way to Eb Scott’s group. He shut down the entire military communications network in an outlying area of Iraq with an old PC running obsolete software,” he informed. He shook his head. “Got a medal for it, in fact.”

“You have good people,” Machado said. “I hope that our endeavor will not result in injury or death to any of them.”

“So do I, but most wars cost blood,” Grange said. “We’ll all do the best we can. Thing is, we may not have an immediate victory. So our priority has to be taking out their communications, their SAMs and the national media.”

“Surface to air missiles.” Machado sighed. “I got them from Russia. They’re state-of-the-art,” he added grimly. “I thought they would give us protection from dangerous enemy states nearby. It was a lack of foresight on my part, as I never dreamed they might be used against my own people.” His expression was solemn. “My former commander will not hesitate to destroy whole city blocks, along with their inhabitants. He will kill anyone to keep power.”

Grange laid a big hand on the other man’s shoulder. “We’ll do what we have to do. Just remember that many innocent people have already died. If we don’t act, many more will.”

“I know that.” Machado smiled sadly. “I know it too well.”

One of the other soldiers came down the narrow steps from the deck above. “We’ll be landing in about an hour, captain said,” he told them. “It’s a few miles from a quiet little village on the river. Nothing much is there in the surrounding area except for a small landing strip just big enough to accommodate our plane. Our intelligence indicates that Sapara built the strip to accommodate landings by an oil corporation doing preliminary investigations in advance of setting up operations.”

“Yes,” Machado said grimly, “and Sapara began killing natives to force them out of the area. Some remain, despite his depredations … a situation I hope to resolve. However, it is a good place to land,” Machado said, and his dark eyes flashed with another brief smile. “It was where I landed on the day I invaded Barrera the first time. The nearby people are sympathetic to our cause.”

Grange shrugged. “So lightning will strike twice, in this case.”