Clear and present danger - Tom Clancy [108]
"Okay, let's get this show on the road." PJ brought the throttle to full power, making a last check of his engine instruments as he did so. Everything looked fine. The helicopter lifted at the nose a few feet, then dipped forward as it began to move forward. Next it started to climb, leaving behind a small tornado of dust, visible only in the blue runway perimeter lights.
Captain Willis put the navigations systems on line, adjusting the electronic terrain display. There was a moving map display not unlike that used by James Bond in Goldfinger. Pave Low could navigate from a Doppler-radar system that interrogated the ground, from an inertial system using laser-gyroscopes, or from navigational satellites. The helicopter initially flew straight down the Canal's length, simulating the regular security patrol. They unknowingly flew within a mile of the SHOWBOAT's communications nexus at Corezal.
"Lot of pick-and-shovel work down there," Willis observed.
"Ever been here before?"
"No, sir, first time. Quite a job for eighty-ninety years ago," he said as they flew over a large container ship. They caught a little buffet from the hot stack-gas of the ship. PJ came to the right to get out of it. It would be a two-hour flight, and there was no sense in jostling the passengers any more than necessary. In an hour their MC-130E tanker would lift off to refuel them for the return leg.
"Lot of dirt to move," Colonel Johns agreed after a moment. He moved a little in his seat. Twenty minutes later they went "feet wet," passing over the Caribbean Sea for the longest portion of the flight on a course of zero-nine-zero, due east.
"Look at that," Willis said half an hour later. On their night-vision sets, they spotted a twin-engine aircraft on a northerly heading, perhaps six miles away. They spotted it from the infrared glow of the two piston engines.
"No lights," PJ agreed.
"I wonder what he's carrying?"
"Sure as hell isn't Federal Express." More to the point, he can't see us unless he's wearing the same goggles we got.
"We could pull up alongside and take the miniguns -"
"Not tonight." Too bad. I wouldn't especially mind…
"What do you suppose our passengers -"
"If we were supposed to know, Captain, they would have told us," Johns replied. He was wondering, too, of course. Christ, but they're loaded for bear, the colonel thought. Not wearing standard-issue uniforms… obviously a covert insertion - hell, I've known that part of the mission for weeks - but they were clearly planning to stay awhile. Johns hadn't heard that the government had ever done that. He wondered if the Colombians were playing ball… probably not. And we're staying down here for at least a month, so they're planning for us to support them, maybe extract them if things get a little hot… Christ, it's Laos all over again, he concluded. Good thing I brought Buck along. We're the only real vets left. Colonel Johns shook his head. Where had his youth gone?
You spent it with a helicopter strapped to your back, doing all sorts of screwy things.
"I got a ship target on the horizon at about eleven o'clock," the captain said, and altered course a few degrees to the right. The mission brief had been clear on that. Nobody was supposed to see or hear them. That meant avoiding ships, fishing boats, and inquisitive dolphins, staying well off the coast, no more than a thousand feet up, and keeping their anticollision lights off. The mission profile was precisely what they'd fly in wartime, with some flight-safety rules set aside. Even in the special-operations business, that last fact was somewhat out of the ordinary, Johns reminded himself. Hot guns and all.
They made the Colombian coast without further incident. As soon as it was in view, Johns alerted his crew. Sergeants Zimmer and Bean powered up their electrically