Navy Lieutenant Gordon Morrow lifted the night-vision goggles from his eyes. With this level of moonlight, his platoon wasn’t going to need them much tonight, at least if the actions stayed out of the deep bush. If everything went according to plan, they wouldn’t be going into any deep bush on this mission. Of course, in his year and a half commanding SEAL Team Ten’s First Platoon, things had yet to go according to plan. And tonight his platoon was going to take down Jack “the Ripper” Gregory, so this wasn’t likely to be the first time.
Lieutenant Morrow excelled at two things, mission preparation and mission execution. The first of these had led him to study everything known about the Ripper’s life, from the little boy who had watched his father’s beheading in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to the man who had become the CIA’s most feared killer. Then, after Jack’s own agency had turned him out in the cold, he’d built upon that reputation as a private contractor, finally attracting the attention of NSA director Admiral Jonathan Riles. Riles had successfully recruited Jack to the NSA, and subsequently attempted to harness Gregory’s talents to bring down the Rho Project. That action had spawned the sequence of events that had brought Jack and Lieutenant Morrow to this moment. Now, in a fitting twist of fate, Jack the Ripper and his protégée, Janet Price, were destined to replay Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’s final Bolivian act.
Circling his right arm above his head, Morrow brought his team in tight, so that he could pass along the perimeter in one direction while his chief went the other way, physically touching and double-checking each man, a last personal check that told them more than all the high-tech gear designed to show each man’s location and mission status could ever do.
The High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) jump had gone perfectly, landing the team in an isolated clearing a little over two kilometers from the GPS coordinates marking the location of the Frazier hacienda. When they had stowed the high-altitude breathing apparatus, chutes, and excess gear, Lieutenant Morrow had been pleasantly surprised that the night jump had yielded nothing worse than a few minor scratches to any member of his sixteen-man team.
Now they were ready, GPS coordinates marking the objective assault positions for each special operator along with the tight grouping of symbols that showed their current positions.
Tapping his chief on the shoulder, Morrow gave the signal to move out. Sixteen heavily armored warriors melted into the moon shadows.
The flashing red silent alarm brought Mark to his feet in the bedroom, his powerful stride propelling him into the hall in time to see Heather already disappearing out the front door. Although they’d rehearsed this scenario hundreds of times, somehow Mark knew that tonight wasn’t another drill.
When he reached the comm center, he found Jack, Janet, and Heather already inside. Jennifer ran up beside him as he stepped across the threshold. Reaching the weapons locker, he grabbed his M4 assault rifle, shoulder holster with its SIG Sauer P226, and backpack filled with ammo and emergency supplies. Then he moved to his station, making room for Jennifer to arm herself.
Heather had settled in front of one of the computer consoles that glowed softly in the dark room. A quick sidelong glance verified that someone had already closed all the blinds, eliminating any chance of light leakage outside the building.
“Situation report?” Jack asked.
“We’ve got sixteen electronic signatures at two hundred forty-five degrees, distance eighteen hundred meters,” Heather responded, bringing up a map display showing the slowly moving symbols.
Mark logged into his console as Jennifer reached her own station. “Are we tied into their GPS signals yet?”
“Not yet. I’m breaking the encryption now. For the moment we’re relying on triangulation from the passive antenna array to plot their locations.”
Janet moved closer to Mark. “Jen, find out what’s providing the overhead intel. It’s going to be Global Hawk or U-2. Mark, I want to know about the combat air support.”
“On it.” Mark worked the keyboard, rapidly navigating his way through a listing of satellites capable of seeing the Frazier compound from their current orbital position. Finding what he was looking for, he typed a coordinate into his subspace transceiver, activating the hard link that tied him into the eye in the sky.
Three thousand miles away, at the SEAL Team Ten op center just off Virginia Beach, Commander Eric Patterson cursed as one of his situational displays filled with static.
Heather’s blood pulsed through her heart, its heat spreading out through her arteries. She felt the oxygen filter through her lungs, replacing carbon dioxide with the heady mixture that made her feel more alive than she’d ever felt. She knew that with the awesome power of the United States government targeting them, she should probably feel a measure of fear. At this moment a team of the finest special operations soldiers in the world were moving in on their compound, backed by extensive air power that was capable of turning the entire Frazier hacienda into a roiling ball of flame. But all she felt was an electric thrill.
Off to her left, Mark spoke. “I’ve got a live satellite feed on monitor two. Not a very good one, though. I see three aircraft. Looks like a Global Hawk spy bird and a couple of others.”
Jack glanced at the display. “That outbound aircraft has to be the C-140 that did the HALO drop. That other one’s a B-52. Looks like we rate a heavy hitter, just in case the SOCOM team gets in trouble.”
“Which they’re about to get into,” said Heather. “I’ve cracked the GPS encryption. Ready to disrupt their signal.”
Jack studied the map for several seconds before reaching out to point at a spot six hundred meters to the south. “Not too much. Send them just on the other side of this hill.”
Heather nodded, her fingers entering the commands that would introduce the appropriate GPS positioning error.
“I’ve got control of the Global Hawk sensors, flight controls, and telemetry. I’m monitoring the incoming commands from the Global Hawk Mission Control Element.” Jennifer joined in. “Want me to make it go dark?”
“No,” Jack said. “But I want you to replace the live feed with the last two minutes of recorded data from the sensor. Janet and I’ll get Robby, Yachay, and the alien headsets out while you three keep SOCOM confused. Give us fifteen minutes if you can, then same drill. Loop back a recorded feed, set the explosive timers, and get the hell out.”
“We’re not going to fight?”
“If that was a B-2 up there I’d consider it. Not with a B-52 in the air. It’s so old there are lots of manual ways to get things done that we can’t override with a hack. They don’t need to be accurate with that baby and we’re so remote, collateral damage won’t cross their minds. The second they think the assault team’s in trouble they’ll blow the hell out of the whole compound.”
Heather took a deep breath. She was going to miss this place, but she’d known this couldn’t last forever. Thank God the vicious old Nazi who’d built the compound was so paranoid he constructed an escape tunnel from beneath the master bedroom to a thickly wooded ravine thirteen hundred meters to the northeast.
“Ready?” Jack asked.
“Ready,” Jennifer replied.
“Start the loopback now.”
Jennifer’s long fingers whispered over the keyboard.
When Heather looked around, Jack and Janet were already gone.