Ted Bell - Spy

“I made it up,” Hawke said, suppressing a smile at the ensuing chuckles.

“How do you spell that?” the CNN fellow said, pencil to hand.

Hawke told him. Another hand shot up.

“Sheikhs in the jungle?” someone said. There was some more chuckling from the media contingent. “I thought they preferred desert warfare.”

“Many fled to the Amazon jungles, on the heels of the Lebanese Civil War in the early seventies. During Osama bin Laden’s 1999 visit to Brazil, he spent a good deal of time arousing the faithful. He started terror cells and left his officers in charge. The cells have grown exponentially in ensuing years. One of the men Osama left behind is named Muhammad Top. He poses, I’ve reason to believe, a threat to U.S. security.”

A good-looking newsreader from FOX raised her hand.

“Why the Amazon?”

“It’s a vast, ungovernable area. Little or no law at all. You have a lethal combination of poverty, illicit activity, disenfranchised cocoa farmers and guerillas, and an ill-equipped or nonexistent military. There are countless rural youths, all too ready to enlist. A terrorist’s idea of heaven on earth. Bin Laden knew a good thing when he saw it.”

“These terrorists you unearthed down there, Commander. Are they planning attacks on Rio, Buenos Aires? Bogotá?”

“Anything’s possible. Muhammad Top fancies himself as some modern day liberator who would free South America from the Yankee chains. To that end, he is massing armies and training them exhaustively with the latest weaponry. Attacks on the capitals you mention are a possibility. So is an attack on the United States.”

Then the CNN reporter said, his voice dripping sarcasm, “More weapons of mass destruction, Commander? I’d hate to see a replay of Iraq.”

“I can’t speak to that. I saw no WMD with my own eyes. I would certainly not be surprised to learn that they did. They have limitless resources to buy what they can’t build.”

An air force general raised his hand. “How do these armies of yours move around without attracting any attention?”

“Hidden, General. The forest canopy shields them from prying eyes. A huge labor force is building a strategic military highway. It could stretch as far as central America, and ultimately into Mexico. This highway would allow them to transport men and materiel. And, give them access to the southern borderline of the United States.”

“You saw plans for such a highway?”

“I built a portion of such a highway.”

A pretty blonde CBS news reporter raised her hand. “Commander Hawke, can you offer us any proof of this supposed collusion between Latin American countries allied against America? It’s a fairly preposterous charge.”

“As a matter of fact, I can,” Alex said. “Slide, please?”

The monitors filled with Stokely’s underwater images of the Russian-built Yakhont antiship missiles found aboard the sunken airplane.

“These pictures were shot three days ago in the Dry Tortugas. They were shot inside a downed airplane lying in thirty feet of water. This plane is located about twenty-five miles from Key West. These missiles were being transported from Cuba, where they were purchased, to an air force base outside Caracas, Venezuela.”

“Chávez is buying these from Fidel?”

“Yes, indeed. Venezuela purchases weapons from Castro, who buys them from the Russians directly.”

“How did you learn this, Commander Hawke?”

“The Venezuelan intelligence officer who actually purchased the Russian missiles in Cuba told me so.”

“Any idea what Venezuela intends to do with weapons like this?”

“As I said, every crooked strongman in Latin America sees himself as the new Simon Bolívar. Chávez’s stated goal is to reunite all South America. My source indicates he has ties to the Brazilian terror cells. His primary objective, however, is annexing Cuba.”

“What? Could you say that again?”

“Cuba is mired in Venezuelan debt. Should Castro prove mortal, I think you’ll see Chávez move to annex Cuba shortly after the funeral.”

A flurry of hands shot into the air.

“Commander Hawke, do you really think America should feel threatened by a thug like Chávez?”

“Chávez is determined to humble the Yankee imperialists. Venezuela is spending billions on rearmament. President Chávez is buying helicopters, submarines, and high-tech Su-35 fighters from the Russians. Through secret agreements with Castro, he arranges for thousands of Cuban technicians, who know Russian equipment, to relocate to Venezuela and maintain it. Chávez is Castro’s rich uncle dream come true.”

“So. We got Russian anti-ship missiles built to be carried by Russian fighter jets owned by Venezuela. Who’s Chávez going to shoot at?”

“Venezuela and her allies would use the weapons in wartime against U.S. oil shipping in the Gulf of Mexico.”

“Wartime.”

“Again. That’s what my source said. Wartime. The Venezuelan military war games America all the time.”

“Sink our tankers. Venezuela, Mexico, all of them lining up against us. The south against the north. That’s what you believe?”

“My chief concern now is that Chávez is supporting the jihadistas. He’ll use them as a test for weakness before challenging America in the Gulf of Mexico. If the jungle armies succeed—next question.”

A silence fell over the gymnasium. It was the first time anyone had said out loud what many had perhaps been hearing and thinking privately. That war in the southern hemisphere was a distinct possibility. That the Islamist terrorists could be very willing pawns to an anti-U.S. movement throughout Latin America. Then a fiery old reporter, a former Yank champ at Wimbledon named Clark Graebner, puffed himself up and spoke.

“Commander Hawke, I don’t know you from Adam. I’ll take the secretary’s word you know a little bit about all this. But what you may not know is that the U.S. Navy is stretched pretty thin right now. As is our Army. As are our Marines. Hell, we hardly have enough National Guardsmen left to stop a dogfight and most of them are headed to the Mexican border. Now you waltz in here, stirring up a whole new pot of trouble with this crazy notion of terror cells in the jungle and Brazilian war games. As if we didn’t have enough on our goddamn plate with goddamn Iraq. Now, my question is, what do you have to say about that, Commander Hawke?”

Hawke looked at the red-faced man, his own face devoid of any emotion, and gave his answer.

“Well, sir, I’d say America has fetched up somewhere between Iraq and a hard place.”

42

GUNBARREL, TEXAS

H omer reached up with the idea he would test the fire escape ladder. He wrapped his near-frozen fingers around the cold metal of the bottom rung, but hesitated before he yanked down on it. The damn extension ladder, which was supposed to slide easily down to the ground, was crusty with rust and grime. It might squeak like hell when he pulled on it.

He had to do something. He was tired of waiting here with his back pressed up against the brick wall. The smoker in the window up above him had flipped his butt out into the dark ten minutes ago.

Homer exhaled and saw his breath hang a second and crystallize in the air.

So, was the guy still up at the window, or not?

Hadn’t lit another one, the smoker, so, maybe he was just taking the night air. Hell, it was cold as a witch’s left tit out here. Maybe a little colder. He was freezing his butt off, missing the powerful heater in the Vic. Glad he’d thought to wear his rawhide gloves.

He’d crept around the building twice now, looking for another way inside the big building. There was a tall doorway at the rear, but it was sealed up tight with a heavy slab of aluminum. Padlocked. The door was heavily dented and pried open like a piecrust around the edges. He saw something useful lying almost hidden under a lot of trash. A tire iron. Somebody had tried to get in here a bunch of times over the years and failed.