Clear and present danger - Tom Clancy [94]
"Bert Russo. I'm -"
"You picked a bad time to spy on the exercise, Roberto. We was ready for y'all this time, boy! I wonder if Fidel'll want your ass back… ?"
"He don't look Cuban to me, Gunny," a young voice observed. "You s'pose he's a Russian?"
"Hey, I don't know what you're talking about," Russo objected.
"Sure, Roberto. I - over here, Cap'n!" Footsteps approached. And a new voice started talking.
"Sorry I'm late, Gunny Black."
"We got it under control, sir. Putting people into the plane now. Finally bagged that Cuban snooper, we did. This here's Roberto. Ain't talked to the other one yet."
"Roll him over."
A rough hand flipped the pilot faceup like a rag doll, and he saw what the hot breath came from. The biggest German Shepherd dog he'd ever seen in his life was staring at him from a distance of three inches. When he looked at it, it started growling.
"Don't you go scarin' my dog, Roberto," Gunnery Sergeant Black warned him unnecessarily.
"You have a name?"
Bert Russo couldn't see any faces. Everyone was backlit by the perimeter lights. He could see the guns, and the dogs, one of which stood next to his copilot. When he started to speak, the dog over his face moved, and that froze the breath in his throat.
"You Cubans ought to know better. We warned you not to come snooping into our exercise last time, but you had to come bother us again, didn't you?" the captain observed.
"I'm not a Cuban - I'm an American. And I don't know what you're talking about," the pilot finally managed to say.
"You got some ID?" the captain asked.
Bert Russo started moving his hand toward his wallet, but then the dog really let loose a snarl.
"Don't scare the dog," the captain warned. "They're a little high-strung, y'know?"
"Fuckin' Cuban spies," Gunny Black observed. "We could just waste them, sir. I mean, who really gives a damn?"
"Hey, Gunny!" a voice called from the airplane. "This ain't no spy-bird. It's full of drugs! We got us a drug runner!"
"Son of a bitch!" The gunny sounded disappointed for a moment. "Fuckin' druggie is all? Shit!"
The captain just laughed. "Mister, you really picked the wrong place to drive that airplane tonight. How much, Corp?"
"A whole goddamned pisspot full, sir. Grass and coke both. Plane's like full of it, sir."
"Fuckin' druggie," the gunny observed. He was quiet for a moment. "Cap'n?"
"Yeah?"
"Sir, all the time, sir, these planes land, and the crew just bugs the hell out, and nobody ever finds 'em, sir."
As though on cue, they all heard a guttural sound from the swamp that surrounded the old airstrip. Albert Russo came from Florida and knew what the sound was.
"I mean, sir, who'd ever know the difference? Plane landed, and the crew ran off 'fore we could catch up, and they got into the swamp over yonder, and like we heard some screams, y'know… ?" A pause. "I mean, they're just druggies. Who's really gonna care, sir? Make the world a better place, y'know? Hell, it even feeds them 'gators. They sound right hungry to me, sir."
"No evidence…" the captain mused.
"Ain't nobody gonna give a good goddamn, sir," the sergeant persisted. "Just us be out here, sir."
"No!" the copilot screamed, speaking for the first time and startling the dog at the back of his neck.
"Y'all be quiet now, we be talking business here," the gunny observed.
"Gentlemen, I find that the sergeant makes a pretty good case," the captain said after a moment's contemplation. "And the 'gators do sound hungry. Kill 'em first, Sergeant. No sense being cruel about it, and the 'gators don't care one way or the other. Be sure you take all their IDs, though."
"Aye aye, skipper," the gunnery sergeant replied. He and the remainder of the duty section - there were only eight of them - came from the Special Operations Center at MacDill. They were Recon Marines, for whom unusual activities were the rule rather than the exception. Their helicopter was half a mile away.
"Okay, sport," Black said as he bent down. He hoisted Russo