Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [69]
Camp Delta is made up of six detention camps: Camps 1, 2, 3, 4, Echo and Iguana. Camp 3 is the ‘SuperMax’ facility. Only the most dangerous prisoners live in Camp 3.
Prisoners like Mullah Mustapha Zaeed.
In short, Camp Delta, nestled in the centre of the world’s most heavily fortified base, is a maze of cinder-block buildings and chain-link fences, all topped with razor-wire and guarded by stony-faced US Army Military Police.
It is a forbidding installation, one of the bleakest places on Earth.
And yet after all that, only 500 metres from the Camp’s outermost razor-wire fence is something you would find only in an American military base: a golf course.
With two heavily defended airfields to choose from, naturally West aimed for the golf course.
‘I know Gitmo. . . ’ he said, standing in the cockpit of the Halicarnassus as it roared down through the night sky, descending on Guantanamo Bay.
After a quick refuelling in friendly Spain, they had soared off over the Atlantic, commencing the five-hour flight to Cuba.
‘ . . . I went there once, after some wargames my country did with the CIEF. Believe it or not, I actually played on the golf course— Christ, a golf course in a military base. Thing is, there aren’t many trees and the last few holes—the 16th, 17th and 18th—run end-onend, separated by only low bushes. They’re wide and straight and long, about 450 metres each. About runway length. What do you say, Sky Monster? Think you can do it?’
‘Can I?’ Sky Monster scoffed. ‘My friend, give me something harder next time!’
‘Great.’ West made to leave the cockpit. ‘See you down on the ground.’
Ten minutes later, West strode into the lower hold of the Halicarnassus, dressed entirely in black and wearing his back-mounted carbon-fibre wings.
Zoe was waiting for him, also dressed in black, also wearing a wing-set. The tight form-fitting bodysuit brought out the best in her slender figure. Lean and shapely, Zoe Kissane was beautiful and fit.
‘I hope you’re right about this,’ she said.
‘Surprise is the key. Their guns are pointed at the Cubans and at their 700 prisoners. The Americans don’t think anyone is stupid enough to take Guantanamo Bay head-on.’
‘Nope. Only us,’ Zoe said.
‘Have you checked out Stretch’s satellite image of Camp Delta?’
‘Three times,’ Zoe said. ‘The intel from Mossad says that Zaeed is in hut C-12 of Camp 3, solitary confinement. Hope we can spot it in the dark. Is there anything Mossad doesn’t know?’
‘Mossad knows what my Aunt Judy eats for breakfast.’ West checked his watch. ‘We’re eight minutes out. Time to fly.’
Moments later, the rear ramp of the 747 rumbled open and they leapt out of it together, disappearing into the night sky.
Inside the Halicarnassus itself, every battle station was manned.
Big Ears, Fuzzy, Pooh Bear and Stretch all sat in the great black plane’s four gun turrets—Big Ears and Pooh Bear on the wing-mounted turrets, Fuzzy on the underbelly, and Stretch up on the 747’s domed roof.
Their six-barrelled miniguns were currently loaded with super-lethal 7.62 mm armour-piercing tracer rounds—but they had special instructions from West as to what to use later, when the battle got really hot.
Wizard, Lily and Horus had been dropped off at a safe island location nearby—it was far too dangerous to bring Lily on this mission.
The Halicarnassus thundered through the night sky.
It flew without lights, so it was little more than a dark shadow against the clouds; and it had long ago been stripped of its transponder—so it gave off no electronic signature.
And its black radar-absorbent paint, the same as that used on the B-2 Stealth Bomber, deflected any radar scans the Americans projected from Gitmo.
It was a ghost.
A ghost the American forces at Guantanamo Bay would not know existed until it was right on top of them.
In the end, it was a pair of night sentries who saw it—or, rather, heard it