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Eric jammed the stick forward and the PIG’s 800 horses propelled the truck at breakneck speed. Linda shifted her view to the road and spotted the PIG emerging from behind the hill.
“I’ve got target lock,” Hali said.
“Fire,” Linda ordered.
Two mortars were fired up through the PIG’s roof opening. They flew in an invisible arc until they came down on the building housing the diesel generators. The fuel tanks must have been inside the building as well because the initial blast of the mortars was dwarfed by the explosion that followed.
The lights went out for good.
Mercenaries wer
e racing in all directions looking for their attackers. It didn’t even look like controlled chaos. Just chaos.
As the fire raged, Linda could make out the approaching throb of helicopter blades. The MD 520N swooped along the lake just above the surface.
When it was a few hundred yards from its landing spot, Linda said, “Launch at target three.”
“Switching to smoke,” Hali replied as his fingers danced across the control pad. “Firing.”
Three more mortars thumped from the launcher, this time flying next to the plant to land on the side closest to the lake. They landed right on target and began pumping out dense white smoke.
Linda was impressed. Despite being put together using code on the fly, the mission actually seemed to be going according to plan. They had provided the perfect distraction, and now Bazin’s men would retreat to a defensive posture, waiting for an attack that wouldn’t be coming.
She switched her view back to the cement plant, where movement at one of the buildings caught her eye. When she saw what emerged from inside, she knew the mission was not going to continue as planned.
She quickly spoke into the radio. “Be advised, Dragonfly, Bazin’s got infantry-fighting vehicles and they’re armed with twenty-millimeter cannons.”
“Thanks for the update, Groundhog. Now tell us the bad news.”
“One of them is headed your way.”
—
Cans of Red Bull were scattered at Kensit’s feet, and the only time he’d gotten up from his seat in the last twenty hours was to open the door when one of Bazin’s men, who served as the yacht’s crew, brought him his next meal. Luckily, he had plenty of empty water bottles to make trips to the head unnecessary.
The drone jets had already taken off from Tyndall Air Force Base in Florida and were winging across the Everglades, six unmanned QF-16s escorted by two F-15 manned fighters armed with air-to-air missiles. Kensit hadn’t taken control of them yet, but the feed he was getting from the fighters’ navigation systems on his computer showed him exactly where they were at any point in time, so he didn’t need to use Sentinel.
He also knew the transponder code of Air Force Two and was tracking its movement as it flew over the West Indies. Its takeoff had been pushed up by a half hour, so his anticipated interception with the drones would now take place even earlier, at 8:30 a.m. Governor Washburn would join him to watch the destruction of the vice president’s plane.
With both sets of planes converging on one screen, he was able to follow Juan Cabrillo’s movements using Sentinel. Cabrillo, Eddie Seng, Franklin Lincoln, and Mike Trono had boarded the chopper, wearing green camouflage uniforms that matched the flora surrounding the cement plant, leaving Max Hanley and Mark Murphy as the senior staff in the Oregon’s op center. All four men on the helicopter had been heavily armed with assault weapons and several RPGs. Instead of having a close view inside the cabin where it would be difficult to listen in on the conversations because of the noise from the rotor wash, he chose to watch the helicopter from the exterior. Once it landed, he’d stay with Cabrillo to relay his movements to Bazin.
“The helicopter is headed for the eastern side of the cement plant,” he said into his headset microphone.
“I’ve got a Ratel armored vehicle going there now. But shooting him down will be difficult with all the smoke.”
Kensit sat forward. “What smoke?” Then he saw it as the helicopter spun around and flew toward the coast. Tracers from the 20mm cannon lanced across the sky, but the shots were nowhere close to the chopper.
The helicopter descended into the smoke before Kensit could close in on the cockpit. He zoomed in as it plunged into the opaque cloud spewing from the canisters.
Ten seconds later, the helicopter took off, emerging from the smoke without its passengers.
Kensit pushed his virtual camera from the neutrino telescope into the smoke, but it was like looking into a glass of milk. He occasionally saw the flash of clothing or an arm and then it disappeared again.
He rotated his viewpoint so that he was looking straight down on the landing spot, but the cloud had expanded to cover an area bigger than three football fields, all the way from the edge of the cement plant property to the lake and up the closest hillock, which was packed with enough foliage to cover a crawling person’s movements. By the time he pulled back enough to see the Ratel armored vehicle approaching the edge of the smoke, he realized that Juan Cabrillo had vanished.
Juan and Trono had to get beneath the surface of the lake before the smoke cleared or the entire operation would be ruined. If Kensit even suspected what they were planning, he would instruct Bazin to triple the number of guards inside the cave with the neutrino telescope instead of committing all of his forces to repelling a raid that was literally nothing more than a smokescreen.
With Trono’s hand on his shoulder to keep them together through the thick smoke, Juan used his phone’s receiver to home in on the tracking signal from the package that Linda’s team had planted. After skirting a few impenetrable brambles, they found it under a bush that had been carefully dug up and then replaced.
