Chapter 35
El Salvador
The thundering storm made for a harrowing trip, but provided excellent noise and visual cover for the Oregon’s AW tilt-rotor.
True to his word, Hali deployed the Cray supercomputer and the Sniffer to piece together a spoofed GPS map that fed into each of the three vehicles of the fentanyl convoy.
The final destination the Chinese had chosen was a village near the San Vicente volcano, a region of hidden valleys, remote farms, and isolated villages.
Hali and Stone fed the AI program a series of prompts, explaining exactly what they wanted it to accomplish.
The AI program quickly determined a route that took the convoy off the main road and into the mountains, convincing the Chinese the longer, more remote, and tedious route was still the fastest by peppering their maps with fake warnings of road constructions, lane closures, and traffic accidents.
The Chinese bought it—hook, line, and sinker.
Based on the available terrain, Juan and the other four operatives carefully selected their ambush points, kitted up, and piled into the AW with Gomez on the stick.
He set the AW down in a cyclone of rotor wash on a rain-soaked field a half mile from their destination some thirty minutes before the convoy would pass by.
The half-mile march over steep mountainous terrain in the pouring rain would eat up at least fifteen more minutes.
The powdery fentanyl-neutralizing absorbing agent was packed into three sacks of fifty pounds each on the backs of three men. Waterproof covers protected the liquid-absorbing materials from the deluge of rain.
Linda Ross carried a fourth sack with the remaining thirty-five pounds under protest that she wasn’t being treated equally.
But her verbal complaint turned into silent gratitude as she ascended the first steep, rocky embankment.
Her pack straps dug into her shoulders and lactic acid fried her thighs on the forced quick march up the slippery mountain path.
Cabrillo led the way with Eddie hot on his heels.
Dr. Littleton, the Oregon’s best mountain-wall climber and former high school all-American wide receiver, easily kept pace with the trained operators despite the extra fifty-pound burden on his heavily laden back.
Linda was right behind him acting as sweep.
MacD, the former Army Ranger and Oregon Gundog with the honey-sweet Cajun drawl, cut a separate trail heading for a different location.
The team badly needed their comms beneath the roar of rain pelting their headgear. The mission required the utmost speed, stealth, and timing—and they only had one chance to pull it off.
★
The driver of the rear guard vehicle in the convoy swore violently as the thick rain nearly blinded him.
The Suburban’s wipers slapped furiously across the windshield, but were unable to keep up with the deluge.
Yet the driver’s orders were clear and the security protocols set.
He had to keep pace with the container truck no matter what.
The three other guards sat in stoic silence, their hands clenching whatever secure holds they could find.
The thunderous cracks of lightning overhead were nearly deafening, but the gut-wrenching sound of an erupting tire was unmistakable.
The red-faced driver cursed furiously as the wheel jerked in his hands.
He pumped the brakes and pointed the nose of the big SUV toward the side of the narrow one-lane road, finally bringing it to a shuddering stop.
The man riding shotgun, the unit supervisor, snatched up his cell phone and called to the other two vehicles, informing them they had blown a tire.
A voice from the lead guard vehicle crackled on his radio. “Do you want us to stop? Come back and lend you a hand?”
“Negative! We can handle a flat tire.” The supervisor had to shout over the din of rain pummeling the Chevy’s roof. “Proceed to the final destination. We’ll be back on the road in fifteen minutes and catch up.”
“Affirmative.”
The two men in the front seat exchanged a glance. Neither wanted to get out in this storm. The supervisor turned around toward the two junior gunmen in the back seat.
“Well? What are you waiting for? Get out there and fix that tire.”
★
The Chinese MSS officer in the lead SUV dropped his radio back into the tray.
If his boss said to keep going, they’d keep going, but he didn’t like it.
He preferred the team to stay together, but this was an unusual mission, and it was very high priority.
He wasn’t going to make any decisions that could put it at risk.
If something went wrong, it would be on the team leader, not him.
Just as with the vehicle in the rear, the SUV driver struggled to see through the windshield in the sheeting downpour. But maintaining speed was essential. Their orders were clear—they had to arrive at a specified time. Arrangements had been made. No alteration to the time schedule was permitted.
The incredibly bad traffic and road problems on the planned route were unanticipated. The new route provided by their excellent GPS service helped avoid those difficulties but extended their travel time beyond acceptable limits if they didn’t maintain speed.
As lead vehicle, their primary responsibility was to scout ahead of the container truck for poor road conditions or, worse, armed resistance, such as thieves or foreign agents, that might be foolish enough to attempt to steal the invaluable contents of the truck.
Other than the circuitous rerouting over small, rural mountain roads and the poor weather, the mission was proceeding as planned.
The GPS map pointed them up the narrow mountain road, indicating a sharp hairpin turn just ahead. The nervous driver followed the little blue arrow on the screen, leaning forward and squinting through the water cascading across his windshield, careful not to slow down, as per his orders.
He could barely see the climbing road as it disappeared around the sharp bend of rock up ahead.
For an instant, he thought a patch of fog had suddenly risen to hide the thin ribbon of asphalt in front of him.
But the sickening feeling of free fall in his gut and the sudden lifting of his body up out of his seat and against his restraints told him the vehicle had gone airborne.
The four men screamed as the Chevy tumbled down the side of the mountain, unaware the Oregon’s AI program had erased the “Road Closed” sign from their digital map.
★
Unaware of the events in front of and behind him, the container truck driver kept his foot on the gas and rumbled forward despite the slashing rain and poor visibility.
The young guard next to him sat unflinchingly in his seat, the only other passenger in the vehicle. This was his first foreign field assignment.
The driver flinched as the engine lights suddenly all winked on and the truck shuddered to a halt. “Call ahead,” the driver told the guard. “Tell them what happened. I’ll check the engine.”
The guard nodded curtly and grabbed his radio.
The driver muttered a curse under his breath as he pulled on his raincoat and jumped out of the cab into a puddle, then slammed the door shut behind him.
The rain-soaked driver unhooked the rubber latches on the fiberglass hood, lifted it up, and planted his feet on the catwalk step.
Gripping the edge of the frame for balance, he leaned over to peer into the engine compartment.
The massive diesel engine ticked with heat, its intricate web of belts and hoses still as the grave.
He jerked and pulled at various wires and connections but couldn’t figure out what was wrong.
Something stung his face like hot grease. He lifted one filthy hand to wipe it away, but his world was shrouded in unfathomable darkness.
Utterly unconscious, he fell backward into a puddle with a muddy splash.
★
Still inside the cab, the young guard riding shotgun became increasingly nervous.
He attempted to radio his supervisor, but there was no response.
He could hear the driver lifting the hood and feel the cab shifting under the man’s weight as he climbed up to inspect the engine compartment.
But without the windshield wipers working and with the windows fogging up, he couldn’t see a thing.
The guard then changed radio channels and tried to reach the rear vehicle, but his unit only squelched and squawked, no doubt affected by the storm.
He slapped it a few times, but to no avail.
The other SUV wasn’t responding, either.
The inexperienced guard didn’t realize the area was now blanketed with a jammer.
The sudden lurch of the cab and the heavy thudding sound of a body hitting wet ground raised an alarm in the young man.
He called out to the driver, but he could hardly hear his own voice over the roar of the rain pelting the cab’s steel roof. There were no more sounds of the driver tinkering with the engine.
Something was definitely wrong.
He pulled his pistol and pushed the passenger door open, his gun at high ready. No sooner had he opened the door than a couple of pellets struck him in the neck and face, and within seconds, he, too, lay in the middle of a muddy puddle—face down.
★
The four Oregon operatives broke out from their concealed positions and raced toward the back of the container truck.
“We’re burning daylight, kids,” Juan whispered in his comms as he flipped over the guard he’d dropped with his tranq pistol.
No point in letting the man drown, Cabrillo thought. He had killed plenty of men in fair fights over the years, but never relished it—he cherished life. Letting this guard drown in a puddle of mud would be no less an act of needless killing.
“I’ve still got eyes on,” MacD said in his comms. His sniper rifle had shredded the front tire of the trailing SUV. “These boys back here will be on the road in six mikes, and they’re about two mikes behind you at full speed.”
“Copy that,” Juan said. “Keep us posted if anything changes.”
Eddie Seng broke out his trusty bolt cutters and broke the bolt seal. He and Cabrillo flung the doors open.
Dr. Littleton was first into the truck, respirator and gloves pulled on. He quickly unsealed the steel fentanyl tank and emptied the contents of his bag into it. The Gundogs brought up their respective rucksacks.
“Last lug nut affixed,” MacD reported over their comms. “You guys need to hoof it.”
After Littleton emptied the last bag of absorbant, he took a handheld electric drill with a paint-mixing paddle attachment previously wiped for DNA and fingerprints, submerged it into the tank, and pulled the trigger.
The absorbant would do the job without his help, but he wanted to accelerate the process.
“You hear that, Doc?” Juan said.
“Just give me a second.” Littleton stirred the paddle as it spun around. The granules swirled and dissolved, thickening almost immediately. Within minutes the fatal liquid would be polymerized into an unyielding gel.
“Okay, second’s up. We go—now.”
Littleton detached the mixing wand and let it fall to the bottom of the tank rather than fish it out and risk splashing the poison on himself or, worse, one of the others.
Leaving it behind didn’t matter. The Chinese would figure out soon enough their priceless shipment of fentanyl had been sabotaged.
Littleton scrambled out of the truck and the doors were slammed shut. Another fake set of barcodes was placed on the replacement bolt seal and the team melted back into the forest, heading for the AW. They made good time, their backs no longer burdened by the weight of the absorbant.
As the team plunged back into the tree line and headed for the tilt-rotor waiting for them, Eddie called out, “Hope that ketamine does the trick.”
“Might not matter,” Linda said. “We were in and out of there before they knew what hit them.”
Seng was referring to the tranq gun pellets, which were a brand-new combination of tranquilizers.
The original formulation had a proven record of knocking people out almost instantaneously.
But the addition of ketamine was a new twist. Ketamine was a drug long used by anesthesiologists during surgery, and had the beneficial side effect of completely wiping out the patient’s memory of the surgery, along with the pain.
The hope was the new tranq gun formulation would have the same effect on their targets as with the audio hypnosis.
The guards would wake up as muddy, wet messes, but with absolutely no idea of what had just happened.
That would hardly exonerate them, though, and they would no doubt be blamed for the ruined fentanyl, their fates dangling perilously in the hands of their ruthless superiors.
But the new pellet formulation was only part of today’s plan C.
The container truck had been stopped with a temporary disabling device, a variant of the Oregon’s electromagnetic pulse technology.
Littleton assured the team the absorbant would do the trick within minutes, and MacD was almost as good behind a rifle scope as Linc.
The lead vehicle had been both spoofed onto the new route and then separately re-spoofed over the edge of the washed-away mountain road. Whether or not their tumbling encounter was fatal was up to God.
MacD was already in the tilt-rotor when the rest of the team arrived.
Gomez lofted them into the air in a low, sweeping arc, out of eyesight from the rear guards now scouring the crime scene.