The DMZ Read online

  Then arms closed around her, and Julie felt a hard body cushion the concrete that slammed up to meet her. Winded, she lay unmoving for a moment, thankful just to be alive and still in one piece as far as she could tell. Her rescuer was masculine—the strong arms around her told her that, as did the solid muscle under the rough cloth beneath her cheek.

  One of the soldiers, she thought, and as she rolled loose and scrambled to her feet, she turned to thank him. But the words froze on her tongue as her eyes fell on the sleeved arms that were helping her up. They weren’t khaki, but the green and brown of camouflage material. Julie raised her head slowly.

  She’d never stood in the embrace of a self-confessed terrorist before, nor had she ever expected to. The younger guerrilla was bigger than she’d calculated, her own medium height reaching only to his shoulder and making little impact against the muscled bulk of his chest and wide shoulders. The longish hair and unshaven beard gave him the raffish look of a pirate or maybe a bandit in an old western, and even without the combat fatigues, Julie would have known him immediately for a dangerous man. His eyes met hers. Brown eyes, like his hair, not black, and the smoldering fire in them warned her that the anger she’d perceived earlier was still simmering.

  The eyes of a killer‚ Julie thought confusedly. Yet he had just saved her from certain injury, if not death.

  As quickly as he’d snatched her aside, he released her and strode away.

  Around her, soldiers and some of the other passengers had hurried near to see if she was hurt. It had all happened so fast, Julie was almost shocked to see that the crop duster was no longer barreling down the runway. Some quick-thinking soldier had steered an army truck into its path, bringing it to a halt only meters from the DC4. The nose of the crop duster was crumpled, and so was the side of the truck. But like herself, both were in one piece, and the fire truck was already alongside, white foam spuming from a hose to smother the flames. To her right, the broken wingtip now lay harmless on the asphalt.

  Brushing the dust from her clothes, Julie started back toward the DC4, assuring the other passengers and soldiers that she was fine.

  Ahead of her, the State Department team closed in around her rescuer. Julie felt their eyes on her as well as she passed them. The CNN crew rushed by her, cameras rolling. Julie passed Sondra Kharrazi, snapping orders to her cameraman. At the base of the roll-away stairs, she stumbled, unnecessarily. A hand reached out to steady her. “Hey, are you all right there?”

  It was Sondra’s blond hunk, though with a video camera this time instead of that enormous Bible. Julie offered him a vague smile of thanks as he released her, and she trotted up the metal steps.

  * * *

  Eyes watched Julie climb the steps to the DC4. Those same eyes had been watching with undiminished interest since Colonel Thornton had first approached her and led her off. Why would this young reporter with less than impressive credentials—a young woman listed on the passenger manifest as Julie Baker—trigger so much attention from the U.S. commander of this military operation, a card-bearing officer of the American Special Forces? What did she have to say to him? More important, what did he have to say to her? And this last incident—could it be as coincidental as it appeared?

  As the eyes watched Julie disappear into the plane, their vigilance did not diminish.

  * * *

  From beyond the soldiers swarming over the airstrip, other eyes watched Julie trot up the stairs as well. So the daughter was returning to her birthplace. The years had been long, and it had taken sharp eyes to recognize the girl in the young woman who had descended from the metal bird with the other foreigners. Was she as changed inside as well? Perhaps it would be an act of wisdom to find out.

  SIX

  WELL, IF THIS WASN’T THE biggest screw-up in a duty tour of screw-ups!

  The door hadn’t even closed behind the Our Earth reporter before Colonel Thornton had crossed his office and grabbed the phone on his desk. It was a sat-phone, a connection by satellite relay that could tap Colonel Thornton into the Department of Defense communication network at any point of the globe.

  With more force than necessary, he punched Memory 1 on the keypad. A satellite dish behind the headquarters building caught the signal and bounced it skyward to an orbiting satellite—hopefully, one that was still on the classified list—and from there down to a geographic point in southern Miami.

  “Yes?” The voice did not identify itself. If you didn’t know who you were talking to on this line, you had no business calling.

  “That you, Keith?” Colonel Thornton demanded curtly. “Jeff Thornton here in San José. Get me the boss, would you?”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but he’s out of town right now. Up in Washington.”

  This was no big surprise. General Brad Johnson, commander of Southern Command, was not a man for hanging around the office.

  “Fine, then get me Crawford.”

  Colonel Thornton drummed his fingers impatiently through an instrumental rendition of the Stars and Stripes. Colonel Winston Crawford the Third, of the original Charleston Crawfords and inordinately proud of it, was new as the general’s executive officer.

  A supercilious drawl came on the line. “Jeff, what can I do for you? I’m sitting here watching CNN. Looks like you’re building up to quite a party down in your area.”

  “A party is right! Crawford, are you aware of who just blew in here? I’d like to know who the idiot was who gave Bill Shidler the heads-up on that one.” At least Colonel Thornton could speak his mind with Crawford in a manner that would have been injudicious to a superior officer. “You are aware,” he continued, “that this is a restricted fly zone? And a Colombian military facility, not one of ours. Colonel Serano is still screaming up the lines to headquarters. To add fat to the fire, neither he nor I got word this crowd was coming through until they were already in the air. You just tell whatever moron handled this up there that next time they want to run a mission through my base of operations, I’d appreciate being asked.”

  “Well, actually, I was the moron.” The rejoinder was cool and totally unapologetic. “Shidler called up this morning and asked if they should route their flight plan over San José. Perhaps we might have run it by you, but this whole mission has been a last-minute scramble, and I had no reason to think you’d have any objections. After all, we’ve got UN and State Department personnel on that mission, as well as a good number of American citizens, which means we’ve all got an obligation to do anything in our power to ensure its success. Anyway, I don’t know why you’re getting so hot under the collar. You’ve had visitors down there before.”

  Thornton gritted his teeth. “Sure, embassy personnel. Special Forces TDYs down here on a duty tour. Congressmen wanting to see where their dollars are going. People with security clearances. But not reporters! These guys carry cameras, for crying out loud! I’ve just spent the last half-hour chasing them away from our gear. They were all over the TPS70, and some of them had their research done. That stuff is supposed to be classified. Maybe it has escaped your notice that we’re running a counter-narcotics operation here, not a State Department tour!”

  Crawford’s condescending chuckle did nothing for Thornton’s rising blood pressure. “Haven’t you got it, Jeff? Nothing’s classified anymore. At least not much. Thanks to something called the Internet, for those who’ve entered the twenty-first century. If people want to know what’s going on, they will. And why shouldn’t they? The public has a right to know what we’re getting our boys into. Besides, there’s nothing less than aboveboard in the aid we’re offering the Colombians down there. Or is there something you’ve left out of your reports, Jeff?”

  “Of course not!” Thornton’s tightened jaw was beginning to ache. “But does your ‘right to know’ include offering a guided tour for the bad guys? Narcos watch the news too, you know! For that matter, this whole operation is a crazy idea to start with, as I informed you in the very lengthy report I sent you yesterday. Did you even b
other reading it? We’re not talking a neutral zone down here. We’ve got a shooting war going on! What if those wackos in the DMZ change their minds and decide your planeload of VIPs is a whole lot more valuable bunch of playing chips than this PR stunt of theirs? Are you guys going to gamble those people’s safety on the goodwill of a bunch of terrorists?”

  The shrug on the other end was almost audible. “Our intel analysts don’t foresee any problems. The guerrillas need our cooperation a lot more than we need theirs right now, and we have no reason to question their sincerity. This might even be a breakthrough in the peace negotiations—something I’d think you’d be happy for, Jeff. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life spreading poison on other people’s crops. Either way, the call’s been made. You were informed through the proper channels, however belatedly, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Except pass your complaint along to General Johnson—something I wouldn’t advise. He hasn’t been in the best of moods lately.”

  However belatedly! The man talked like a lawyer’s manual. Or maybe it was that Southern blue blood of which he was so proud. “Yeah, well, that’s your assessment, not mine. And I’m the one sitting down here with my rear on the line. So next time you decide to include my zone in an operation, you talk to me first. This happens again, and I will take it up with General Johnson.”

  “You do that, then.” Crawford didn’t sound at all intimidated. “Because I’ve just talked to Bill Shidler and suggested he stop through there for refueling on their return flight this evening. We don’t want our people depending on those guerrillas down there in San Ignacio for a fill-up. We’re not totally insensible of the security risks.”

  The force with which Jeff Thornton hung up the sat-phone couldn’t have been good for that piece of sensitive equipment. All that from a guy whose aristocratic rear had been parked in an office chair since boot camp!

  Unfortunately, however, the man had a point. What good did it do to try to keep anything confidential these days when the average citizen could find out more in an hour’s research than the colonel usually managed to squeeze out of intel? Blame the Internet for that—something he did know how to use, despite Crawford’s derision. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, there’d always been a lot more data floating around out there than those responsible for his country’s defense found comfortable. But the very difficulty of gathering and piecing together that data had been its own safety valve.

  Not anymore. Not when the click of a mouse could search out and correlate more data than the CIA once had available at their fingertips. One thing was for sure: if a female reporter still wet behind the ears could figure out the holes in his defense, the narcos wouldn’t be far behind.

  The girl was right on the money, Colonel Thornton told himself moodily. Only three years ago, U.S. radar coverage of the Caribbean and Andean areas had been so tight it had virtually destroyed the air bridge bringing in coca and coca paste from Bolivia and Peru to Colombia and processed cocaine from there on to the United States This, of course, had simply forced the narcos to stay on the ground, using alternative routes by water and land. But for a little while, at least, there was a check on the flow of cocaine and heroin flowing north.

  Then came the turning over of the Panama Canal along with the closing of the American military bases there. Colonel Thornton had been on TDY—temporary duty—in Panama during the handover. “A showpiece of international relationships,” the politicians had bleated.

  What wasn’t mentioned was that the Panamanian authorities had begged the Americans to remain, and that Colombian guerrillas had promptly capitalized on the withdrawal of American troops by crossing the border into Panama.

  At the same time, radar coverage dropped by two-thirds after Southern Command relocated its headquarters from Panama to Miami. The distance from Colombia was now too great for quick response. The drug smugglers were taking to the air again.

  And if this Julie Baker could plot a ground radar detection range, so could they!

  “Coronel Thornton?” At the door connecting his office with the communications station in the next room, a soldier had rapped a polite knock. He was one of the Colombian Air Force pilots in the coca eradication program. “The other planes and the Hueys are ready for lift off,” he reported. “What is it you have chosen to do?”

  The colonel glanced out the window that overlooked the airstrip. The base’s remaining contingent of aircraft had been gearing up for their own morning run when word came of the SAM ambush. There were three of them, elderly Turbo Thrush spray planes. Their escorts—two combat helicopters—were warming up their engines, and the ground crews were pulling the hoses that snaked from the Turbo’s wing tanks to the two huge metal tanks containing herbicide.

  The herbicide they were using was glyphosate, a common weed killer in the United States It was nontoxic and left no permanént damage to the soil, for all the squeals of the environmentalists, but it killed any vegetation that came under its acid blast.

  The Colombian pilot addressing Thornton reeked of the stuff. It was a smell the colonel had come to hate. Despite the insinuations of that reporter, he didn’t enjoy seeing the rainforest stripped away or the patches of parched earth where herbicide had withered the vegetation.

  Still, he wasn’t the one ripping out the forest to plant a crop designed only to bring misery to millions and immeasurable wealth to the few. The problem was, you don’t always get to choose between best and worst. Sometimes your only choice is between bad and badder. And as far as he was concerned, the guerrillas and their narco protection racket were the badder. Drive them out, and maybe the land would have a chance to heal.

  But not today. A few more hectares of destroyed coca wasn’t worth the lives of his men or the lost aircraft that too many of his superiors would consider more urgent. For today, the narcos—and the guerrillas—had won another reprieve.

  “No, too much risk,” he answered. “Tell them everything’s grounded until we get some backup and find out just what’s going on out there.”

  “Colonel Thornton!” The urgency in the call from the next room had the colonel out of his seat and through the door into the communications office.

  “One of the Turbos is in, but it’s taken a hit. They’re saying it’s pretty bad. I’m not sure about casualties. Can’t get any sense out of …”

  Colonel Thornton was already out the door. One swift glance at the runway showed him the crumpled crop duster and the battered army truck.

  Breaking into a sprint, he snatched a hand radio from his belt. But it wasn’t necessary, he saw immediately. His emergency response force was proving worthy of their training. He nodded approval at the blanket of foam, the ambulance racing toward the spray plane.

  Then he took in the news crews swarming over the scene, and his jaw tightened. Spotting Bill Shidler on the runway, he ran to him, gripped him by the shoulder, and spun him around.

  “I don’t have time for this!” he gritted through his teeth. “You get your people on that plane and in the air, okay? You’re cleared to leave!”

  The colonel pounded up to the crop duster just as the medics were helping the pilot out of his seat. He was American and a seasoned veteran of Third World projects—one of the civilians contracted by the U.S. government, along with the whole Turbo Thrush fleet, to carry out the coca fumigation project.

  He was pale with shock as he climbed down from the cockpit but seemed otherwise unhurt. His Colombian copilot was less fortunate. The medic unit was already lifting him onto a stretcher. Blood had turned one leg of his khaki slacks to muddy purple.

  Color flooded back into the pilot’s face when he saw the colonel. “I’m out of here,” he announced with an overloudness triggered by the temporary deafness of being exposed to too many decibels. “I didn’t bargain for a shooting war out there! You said we’d have protection.”

  “What happened?” Colonel Thornton demanded urgently. “Where’s the other Turbo? And where are your escorts? There
were two more Hueys, blast it!”

  The pilot swallowed visibly and hard. “The Hueys … they just blew up! Both of them! Some kind of rocket. They just—blew up! All those men. I saw one fall …”

  Colonel Thornton cursed silently as he gripped the man’s shoulder. In actuality, the pilot had more protection than anyone else flying from here. His half of the cockpit had been reinforced with armor shielding, but it proved too heavy to add to the copilot’s side as well. The Hueys had no armor at all.

  Still, they’d been more than a match for the AK-47 assault rifles that until now had been the guerrillas’ only defense of their crops. This morning’s attack was unexpected. Sure, there’d been rumors that the FARC was now sporting portable surface-to-air missiles. But those babies were costly, and no one would have anticipated the guerrillas would waste them on routine crop protection.

  “But what about the Black Hawk?” the colonel asked. “We dispatched it your way. Where was it?” He had deployed their newly arrived Black Hawk combat helicopter for the first time that morning.

  The pilot spat angrily, the moisture making a sizzle on the hot asphalt. As a civilian, and one whose salary was several times Colonel Thornton’s own hazard pay, he had no obligation to show respect to the head of operations—one more thing the colonel disliked about Capitol Hill’s policy of hiring outsiders to do what he considered a soldier’s job.

  “That Black Hawk isn’t worth the spit holding it together! The guns jammed on the first run. They just sat there and watched that Huey go down! I called it quits for the other Turbo myself. There it comes now.”

  A drone that had been at the edge of Colonel Thornton’s hearing grew into the roar of approaching aircraft. Colonel Thornton swung around. Yes, it was coming in—and hovering above the crop duster, like a mother eagle anxiously guiding her eaglet to its first landing, was its remaining escort, the sleek, gray shape of the Black Hawk. From the ominous forward tilt in the helicopter’s nose, Colonel Thornton pinpointed its problem immediately.