Rogue Force Read online

  Still, he wished there was more time.

  The others were especially on edge since Charbonneau. They could have lost it there if another officer had occupied Crane's chair when Charbonneau had come rolling in with his report of treason in the ranks. If Crane hadn't been privy to the operation, he would certainly have launched his own investigation, carrying the word on to Falcone for transmission to the top. And then what? Would Crane suddenly have vanished, as Charbonneau had? Would they have been able to explain the disappearance of a captain with the same bullshit they had used to lose a corporal?

  There were ways and means, of course — Crane knew that going in — and the old man would know them all. A captain could be made to disappear, and while his passing wouldn't be ignored, neither would it ultimately have to be explained.

  Crane knew that he was vulnerable, and the knowledge meant as much as his commitment to ideals when it came to listing reasons for remaining on the old man's team. If Crane had cherished any suicidal urges, there were better ways to go than crossing Mike McNerney and the men behind him.

  He had never doubted for a moment that the old man had substantial backing. No one but a psychopath would try to stage this kind of operation on his own, and Crane would never have enlisted on the project if he thought McNerney was a raving wacko. There were other men behind him — in the military and the CIA, perhaps at State — and you could rest assured that none of them were lightweights. Crane would never know their names, could never prove a thing against them if he did, but you could bet your life that if he tried to rabbit, they would come down on him like the crack of doom itself.

  Crane stayed because he had no choice… but he was also a believer. He believed that communism must be brought up short before its agents devoured the western hemisphere. He was convinced that there could be no higher calling than eradication of the menace from the East. He was afraid of General McNerney, granted. But he also knew the man was right.

  He punched the intercom again and waited for a response.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Dismiss the other men to quarters and reschedule interviews for 0900 hours, tomorrow."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I need to meet with Major Falcone, ASAP. Reach out for his adjutant and make the appointment."

  "Yes, sir."

  Crane sank back into his swivel chair and closed his eyes. Falcone would know what to do about Lambretta. They would lay it out together, balancing the operation's needs against the risks and the potential benefits involved. If Tony thought Lambretta looked unstable, Crane would let it go at that. But if he liked the sergeant's style as much as Crane expected he would… well, they would have to find a way to bring Lambretta in before the operation ran its course without him.

  And it all came down to time. They had a week at most, and you could never really get to know a man in seven days. You might acquire a feeling for him, but it would take a damn sight longer to be certain that a man would stand and die on your command if he was called upon to do so.

  Frank Lambretta had already proved himself to some extent. His valor in Grenada and in Vietnam had demonstrated that he wouldn't cut and run when it was in the fan. He wouldn't flinch from combat if he understood the stakes.

  It would be Fletcher Crane's responsibility to pass upon the new man's level of sincerity, his gut commitment to a cause of which he was, at present, absolutely unaware. No easy task, but Crane had noted something in the sergeant's manner, in his eyes. And he was betting that Lambretta would enlist without a second thought. Hell, he would probably demand a piece of the action. They would have to fight to keep him out of it, once he was privy to their plans.

  And that would be the problem. The moment of exposure when their man might eagerly embrace the cause, or cut and run. If Crane misjudged Lambretta, if the sergeant cherished any hidden scruples that weren't apparent from his past performance, they would have an ugly situation on their hands.

  No. Crane would have an ugly situation on his hands.

  Lambretta was a mortal man, and there would be ways of taking him if it came down to that, but he wouldn't go quietly, like Charbonneau. Lambretta was a different breed of cat, and he would take a lot of killing. There might very well be other casualties in the attempt, and Crane wasn't encouraged by the prospect of attempting to disguise a wholesale massacre. Each man they lost before the operation actually began reduced their odds of victory, and they were missing two already.

  Frank Lambretta might be able to replace the missing warriors on his own. A two-time combat veteran, he had experience that no amount of training could supplant. There was a chance the others would mistrust him, but they would abide by orders from above.

  Crane realized that he was being premature, imagining reactions of the other troops to Frank Lambretta when he hadn't even cleared the first recruiting pitch with his superiors. Assuming that Falcone liked Lambretta's looks, it would be passed upstairs for ultimate approval by McNerney. That accomplished, Crane would be assigned to bag their man and guarantee his loyalty to the cause.

  In the meantime he would wait and try not to remember that they were all running out of time.

  12

  "Cerveza, por favor."

  Rosario Blancanales waited for his beer and paid with two lempiras when it finally arrived. Predictably the beer was warm and flat, the atmosphere inside the small cantina thick with smoke and sweat, but Blancanales hadn't chosen this particular saloon for its aesthetic qualities. In fact, he hadn't chosen it at all. He had allowed his contact to select the meeting place, and if the rendezvous worked out, Pol knew that they wouldn't be staying long.

  The bar was one of countless similar establishments that jammed the red-light district of Tegucigalpa. Prostitutes were taking care of business on the street outside, their customers consisting primarily of Americans in uniform and tourists dressed in noisy floral-patterned shirts. Patrolmen on the beat appeared to take no interest in the lively trade, but rather occupied their time by hanging out on corners and glowering at passersby. A pair of them were bellied up against the bar right now, already working on their second round of beers and whispering to one another, glaring daggers at the barkeep if he came too near before they called for more.

  It hadn't been difficult to get in touch with spokesmen for the Contra movement. Nicaraguan exiles in Tegucigalpa had achieved the status of celebrities through media reports of their unending war against the Sandinista Front. The leaders of the movement had been publicly identified for years, but rank and file soldiers maintained a lower profile, thinking that surviving relatives in Nicaragua might be placed in danger if their counterrevolutionary actions came to light. Recruiters theoretically observed security precautions specially designed to rule out infiltration by the enemy; in practice, natural attrition had already thinned the Contra ranks dramatically, and new recruits had little difficulty finding a position in the motley ranks. There were formalities to be observed, of course, and Blancanales — aka Rosario Briones, Nicaraguan exile — knew that he would have to sell himself before the Contras would accept him.

  He had acquired a straw sombrero with a scarlet hatband to identify himself, but now, as Blancanales glanced around the crowded bar, he noted several other peasant-types with headgear similar to his. No matter. Pol had followed his instructions to the letter, right down to the time and tiny corner table. If his contact couldn't recognize him, he would be forced to scratch the meet and try again tomorrow.

  The Able warrior drained his beer and ordered another from the hard-faced waitress. He was sipping at it slowly when a slender man with pockmarked cheeks and beer in hand sat down across from him, not waiting for an invitation. He examined Blancanales for a moment, silently, and then leaned forward, speaking loudly to be heard above the din of conversation in the bar.

  "I am Raúl."

  "I am Rosario."

  His contact raised the bottle of cerveza in a toast. "Managua."

  "Soon," Pol answered, clicking bottles with the
stranger, drinking deeply after he had finished the simplistic recognition signal.

  "Come with me," Raúl instructed, rising and moving toward the exit, trusting Pol to follow him without a backward glance. Politician took his beer along; he wasn't thirsty now, but if there was an ambush waiting for him on the street outside, the bottle would do double duty as a weapon while he scrambled for the .38 revolver tucked inside the waistband of his faded denim pants.

  The well-worn side arm wouldn't have been Blancanale's choice, but Nicaraguan drifters in Honduras had no access to the high tech weaponry of Stony Man. Believability was crucial, and he had been forced to compromise, hand-picking the revolver from a cache of throwaways, then field-stripping it and testing it for accuracy on the firing range. Politician was content when he could cut a two-inch group of six from thirty yards, but he had backed up the .38 with a six-inch switchblade just in case. It was a street tough's knife, and while he would have felt more comfortable with a Ka-Bar, Blancanales knew he could do the job with what he had.

  Outside, the street was bright with gaudy lights, alive with party sounds. Raúl was waiting for him on the curb, and they set off together, Blancanales bringing up the rear, alert for any sign of treachery. They brushed past uniforms, police and military, jostled tourists and were jostled in return. The prostitutes ignored them, conscious of the fact that local peasants and assorted hard-luck drifters had no extra cash to spend on pleasures of the flesh. The profits lay with Europeans and Americans, all suet-pale beneath their gaudy clothes, who sought adventure for an evening in the willing arms of a latina tigress. Locals would be going home to wives and children, while the drifters sought a place to sleep where they wouldn't be rousted by police or washed out by the frequent rains.

  Raúl made no attempt at conversation, pacing off the blocks with Blancanales like a shadow on his heels. Soon they left the garish red-light district, plunging into mud and darkness as the sidewalks and streetlights petered out together. From skid row, they had moved on into the slums, a feature of all Third World cities. Blancanales grimaced at the stench of ancient garbage, open sewers, human bodies alien to soap and water. Scrawny animals moved in and out of shadow here; Pol hoped they were cats and dogs, but some of them bore a resemblance to enormous rats, apparently devoid of hair.

  A lifetime of experience made Pol examine every shadow as he passed along the putrid street. It was an educational experience, but one that Blancanales would have waived with pleasure. The houses here were little more than tin and cardboard. There seemed to be a good-sized pile of garbage every block or so, aswarm with children seeking castoffs that might still be edible.

  Some of these were Nicaraguan refugees, Pol knew, but most would be Honduran citizens. The yearly income for Honduran workers averaged less than seven hundred and fifty dollars, and for thousands in the cities there was no employment currently available. They lived from hand to mouth, when they survived at all, and when they died there were a hundred others waiting to replace them in the reeking slums.

  They never saw a penny of the aid dispensed from Washington, in excess of a hundred million dollars every year. That money went for national defense — the arms and uniforms and training necessary to defend Honduras from her neighbor to the south. If thousands lay down hungry in Tegucigalpa every night, at least they would be reasonably safe against invasion by the Sandinista Front.

  Their destination was a darkened warehouse, obviously out of use for years. It had been stripped of signs, the walls defaced and windows pelted out by vandals. Blancanales was relieved when Raúl kept going past the loading dock and giant doors, around the side and past the office entrance, homing on a flight of stairs affixed to the exterior in back. Above them, on the narrow landing, yet another door stood waiting, this one seemingly undamaged.

  Following Raúl, Pol reached the landing in another moment and found the metal door to be a relatively new one, painted gray to match the drab warehouse exterior. Before he got around to knocking, Raúl turned back to face Politician. He was good, the Able warrior had to give him that. The automatic pistol had appeared from nowhere, with its muzzle aimed directly at his forehead.

  "You are armed?"

  There seemed no point in lying, after he had come this far. "I am."

  The pistol didn't waver as Raúl searched out the .38, examined it and tucked it in his belt. He found the switchblade on his second pass and slipped it into the pocket of his faded dungarees. When he was satisfied, the Contra runner made his automatic disappear and rapped a coded signal on the warehouse door. It opened silently a moment later to reveal a hard-eyed sentry leveling an Uzi submachine gun. He ignored Raúl but scrutinized Politician closely, spending nearly half a minute on his scan before he stood aside and let them pass.

  The door banged shut behind them, double locked, and they were lost in darkness. Blancanales stood rockstill until the lights came on around him, naked bulbs suspended from the ceiling in a narrow corridor that seemed to run across the whole rear of the warehouse. A line of doorways opened on the left, in the direction of the warehouse proper, and he trailed Raúl along the corridor until his contact found the one he sought.

  "Wait here," Raúl commanded, disappearing through the doorway. Pol was left alone with the impassive sentry, conscious of the Uzi's muzzle leveled at his spine. Too far to reach in an emergency, but maybe with a backward roundhouse kick…

  His train of thought was interrupted by Raúl's emergence from the room. The Contra runner nodded toward the open door. "Inside," he ordered.

  Blancanales found himself inside a Spartan office. Plate glass windows overlooking the expansive warehouse had been boarded up, securing the room and any occupants from chance discovery by squatters camping out below. The desk and filing cabinets had been shoved against one wall, a wooden table flanked with folding chairs positioned in the center of the room.

  One chair was empty, facing toward the other three and waiting for Politician to arrive. He sat down gingerly, examining the Contra warriors even as they studied him.

  The central figure was a rigid military type with rugged features, back-combed hair revealing gray around the temples. On his right, a slim, athletic-looking man regarded Pol with evident hostility, his deep-set eyes suspicious, angry. On the leader's left, a striking woman met the Politician's gaze with cool directness, hesitating for a moment, then finally permitting the suggestion of a smile. All three were decked out in civilian clothes devoid of any rank insignia, but Blancanales knew that he was looking at the leaders of the local Contra cell. He also knew, without a second glance, that he was in the presence of a sensual, well-built female.

  "Name?" the leader asked.

  "Rosario Briones."

  "You are Nicaraguan?"

  "Sí." He volunteered no information, making his interrogators work for everything they got.

  "Your village?"

  "Agua Verde. Ten kilometers below Granada. It was leveled by the Sandinista pigs four years ago." That much, at least, was true.

  "Your family?"

  "Wiped out."

  "How many?"

  "Seven."

  "You escaped." It didn't come out sounding like a question, but he read suspicion in the Contra's tone.

  "I had gone in to market," he explained. "The thing was done when I returned, but I had no idea who was responsible. When I sought help from the authorities, I was arrested and thrown in prison."

  "Where you stayed until last June."

  "Correct. They took me on a work detail with thirty, forty others, all in open trucks. I saw an opportunity and ran."

  "You were pursued."

  "A short way, yes. I managed to avoid them in the forest, and I started walking north."

  "How long have you been in Tegucigalpa?"

  "Thirteen days."

  "You wish to join us?"

  "I will kill the pigs who massacred my family. If you would like to help me, fine. If not, I do the job alone."

  "You are impertine
nt," the slender Contra snapped.

  "Silencio," the leader cautioned both of them. Again to Pol, "Do you have military training?"

  "Sí. I spent four years with General Somoza's civil guard."

  The leader raised an eyebrow, obviously pleased and curious. "You did not flee the Sandinistas with Somoza and the others?"

  "Agua Verde was my home. Why should I run away from animals?"

  "I am Luis Machado," the commander said. "You have already met Raúl Gutierrez. Esperanza is his sister and a loyal combatant for the cause." He turned back toward the slender, scowling figure on his right. "My second-in-command, Anastasio Ruiz."

  Pol shook hands with each in turn, beginning with Machado and moving down the line. Had he imagined that the woman pressed his hand a bit more firmly than was absolutely necessary? There was no imagining the anger radiating from Ruiz; he scarcely touched Pol's hand, and Blancanales caught the burning look that Anastasio directed toward the woman. Careful there, he thought. It would be dicey if he stepped into some kind of love triangle while pursuing other goals, and yet…

  The woman could be useful to him. She had the leader's ear, and there was every chance that she might have some knowledge of a Contra linkup with the rogues from Special Forces. If he could insinuate himself into her confidence, he might gain access to that information and place himself in a position to disrupt the hypothetical connection.

  Careful.

  Love and honor were regarded by Hispanics with the utmost seriousness. If he tried to put a move on Esperanza — or respond to any moves the lady might initiate — he would be dealing both with a potential jealous lover and the woman's brother. It was risky, sure… but risk was what Plan B was all about.