Hostile Borders Read online

  As the Super Courier approached the calculated release point indicated on the PDA screen, each jumper went over his gear in a last-minute check. Nothing had slipped or become unattached. Attached to the jumpers’ right ankles and wrist altimeter were activated chemical lightsticks. Stripping off the shielding tape exposed the blue-green glowing sticks. On the right hand riser of each main canopy was another glowing lightstick, this one unseen inside the parachute container. The lightsticks would be too faint to see from the ground, but they would help guide the jumpers to each other through the clouds below them.

  Each man pulled down a set of AN/PVS-7B night vision goggles that were attached to quick-release fasteners on their Pro-Tec helmets. The ESS Profile NVG goggles they were each wearing had been designed to be compatible with all night-vision systems. Flipping the switch on the upper right side of the goggles turned them on. Suddenly, each man saw the inside of the aircraft cockpit become starkly bright in shades of green while looking through the AN/PVS-7Bs.

  As his last act of preparation, Santiago unwrapped a short length of ribbon he had tied around his left wrist, just above his altimeter, and wadded it up in his gloved hand. Acting as the jumpmaster, Santiago signaled to Reyes and Falcon to move to the open doorway.

  The two men were clumsy but had practiced this set of motions over and over again, first on the ground and then while sitting in the Super Courier they would be using on the jump. There was no danger of them accidentally falling through the door and out into the night sky.

  The indicator for the aircraft kept closing with the pip showing the calculated release point for the drop. Looking down out of the plane, all that could be seen was a dark rolling sea of clouds. There were no gleams of the city that was supposed to be stretched out underneath them.

  Pulling his headset off, Santiago disconnected himself from the aircraft’s intercom system and moved into the doorway. He crouched in the open door of the plane on bent legs, his hands on either side of the doorway. Looking forward, Santiago could see the pilot’s hand clearly. As the release point approached, the pilot started lifting his arm up in a chopping motion. First his hand came down with one finger pointing out, then two, then a clenched fist and the shouted command—“Go!…go!…go!”

  Immediately, Santiago jumped out of the door, pulling himself through with his arms and pushing with his legs. A few seconds later, Reyes and Falcon pulled themselves through the door and pushed away from the plane. All three men dropped away into the darkness and were instantly swallowed up by the night.

  Assuming a good modified frog position, Santiago fell through the sky in a stable drop. His legs were bent up at the knees and his hands were on either side of his head with his arms bent at the elbows. The air whistled past his ears and the changing pressure made his eardrums pop. It seemed that only a few seconds passed before he entered the top layer of the clouds.

  The impact with the cloud gave Santiago the sensation of hitting a solid surface. The water droplets that made up the cloud were not solid enough to affect his fall at all, but the sudden darkness on entering the cloud was startling.

  Moving his head only slightly, Santiago could make out the glowing lightstick attached to his altimeter. He had to turn his head more than he liked to in order to see the lightstick through the night-vision goggles, but his experience and expertise gave him the ability to maintain a stable position in spite of the movement.

  When he had opened his hand after exiting the plane, Santiago had let go of the ribbon he was holding. Now he could see the streamer of cloth as it fluttered up from his hand. The moisture in the cloud built up on the single lens of his night-vision goggles, blocking his view of the altimeter. As he carefully reached and wiped off the goggles with his hand, Santiago suddenly saw that the ribbon was fluttering directly in front of his face. The streamer was extended from his left hand straight across to his right side. Without the indicator as he fell through the clouds, Santiago would have never known he was tilting—outside of the wind, there was no sensation of him even falling. Turning his body, he straightened his position and continued to fall through the cloud.

  The darkness inside the cloud seemed to become even blacker. Suddenly, Santiago found himself breaking through and underneath the clouds. The altimeter on his wrist read just below 4,000 feet and the city of San Diego spread out below him.

  An instant later, the bulky figures of Reyes and Falcon broke through the clouds less than a hundred feet from where Santiago was falling. The ballooned drogue chute streamed behind the tandem jumpers, both men maintaining a modified frog position, Falcon having his feet sticking up between Reyes’s spread legs.

  Looking down, Santiago could see that they were dropping almost directly above the huge L-shaped federal office building just to the northeast of their target. Through his night-vision goggles, each man could see the brilliant pulsing of the infrared beacon on top of their target. As they dropped to 3,500 feet, Santiago and Reyes opened their main canopies.

  Both Ram-air canopies streamed out from their container, pulled by the small pilot chutes the jumpers had released. The dark cloth canopies trailed from the pilot chutes like long tails as they slipped through the air. The individual cells bulged from the pressure of the air that was rammed by the momentum of the fall into the leading edges of the canopies. The inflating cells curved the cloth of the canopies into flat rectangular wings, wings that could be controlled and flown through the air like a plane.

  Holding on to the toggle line controls, the jumpers steered for the top of the tall building off to their left. The night-vision goggles were no longer needed because of the bright lights illuminating the top of the building. Automatic high-light cutoff controls turned down the power of the goggles, protecting both the image tubes, and the eyes of the wearer. Watching the flag on top of the flagpole told Santiago the direction and approximate speed of the wind below them. Correcting their approach by pulling on the toggles, Santiago and Reyes turned their canopies and tracked to the wind.

  Now the jumpers silently slipped through the air toward their target.

  Watching Pena run around the circumference of the exercise area made Stevens realize even more that smoking was a bad habit for him or anyone else. He knew that he should quit, it wasn’t as though he didn’t hear that advice from just about everyone. For right now, these midnight-to-eight shifts were real killers. Coming up as he was to the last few hours of a shift, he found that a cigarette helped keep him awake. And even if they were watching just one prisoner right now, staying alert in this kind of job was a good thing.

  Turning his back to the wind, Stevens reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes along with his Zippo lighter. Tapping the pack against his finger, he popped up one of the slim white cylinders and drew it out with his lips. Flipping open the lighter, he thumbed it into flame. Tilting his head down, Stevens cupped his hands around his face and lit the cigarette.

  “You know, those things will kill you,” Pena said as he trotted by.

  “Yeah,” Stevens said, “well, just keep running. You’ll stay warmer that way.”

  Damn, even the inmates were harassing him about smoking. Fuck it. With his eyes closed, he drew in a lungful of the rich, fragrant smoke. Turning his face back up, Stevens blew out the tobacco smoke in a large, white cloud.

  “What the hell,” he thought. Suddenly, there was a sparkling red line within the cloud of smoke. The line darted about and then disappeared as the smoke was blown away by the wind. Looking down, he could now see that there was a red dot bouncing around his chest. The cigarette hanging forgotten between his fingers, his eyes were drawn up into the sky where the red light had come from. Stevens raised his hand to shield his eyes from the glare of the lights around the exercise yard and saw a red light with a suddenly flashing faint white light below it. Before he had time to more than wonder, the sledgehammer blows of the 9mm bullets striking his chest slammed him backward against the fencing.

  The
frangible copper bullets tore into his chest and shattered into hundreds of copper fragments. The shockwave of the impacts and the ripping fragments shattered his heart and shredded his lungs. The shock of the wounds was so overwhelming, there was no pain, only a heavy pressure on his chest as the bright copper taste of blood filled his mouth. Through his fading eyesight and astonishment, Stevens’s last thought on earth was that he saw the dark wings of an angel coming down toward him. And then he saw nothing at all.

  Chapter Three

  In the tandem rider position, strapped to Santiago, Falcon swept the rooftop with the muzzle of his submachine gun. His MP5K-PDW had a long suppressor screwed on to the muzzle. The beam from the laser sight above the suppressor was plainly visible to Falcon through his night-vision goggles. To reduce the already-compact size of the MP5K-PDW, Falcon had removed the folding stock and fitted the weapon with a receiver cap that had a mounting point for a sling. The sling was attached to the weapon by a spring clip, and looped around Falcon’s upper chest and left shoulder as he rode in front of Reyes on the Sigma tandem parachute system. With the MP5K-PDW pushed out against the resistance of the sling, Falcon was able to accurately aim the stubby weapon with the aid of the laser sight.

  The two men had practiced their combined approach to a targeted landing zone for weeks out in the desert of northern Sonora, Mexico, less than fifty miles southeast of Nogales. That was where Santiago had them practicing to break Pena from the federal lockup in San Diego. Falcon still had bruises on his chest and legs from the practice tandem jumps that hadn’t gone well. The MP5K-PDW submachine gun had been carried in the case strapped to his chest. He had pulled it out during the approach to the rooftop.

  Loaded, the submachine gun seemed to be nearly as wide as it was long, due to the 100-round Beta C-Mag drum magazine that was attached to it. The two drums stuck out from either side of the weapon, each loaded with fifty rounds of Engel Ballistic Research’s Sky Marshal frangible 9mm ammunition. The special powdered copper/nylon matrix hollowpoint bullets would shatter if they hit a hard target, minimizing the danger of a ricochet. But they would rip deeply into the soft tissue of a human body, as Stevens had suddenly found out.

  A long silver sound suppressor was attached to the threaded muzzle of the MP5K-PDW. That was the source of the white flashing light that Stevens had seen next to the laser sight of the weapon. The suppressor had lessened the sound of the shots so much that the wind covered what little was left of the noise. The cracking zip sound of the high-velocity 9mm frangible bullets, breaking the sound barrier at the muzzle of the suppressor as they fired at 1,700 feet per second, wasn’t even recognizable as a gunshot. No sound of gunfire even reached the rooftop, or the city streets far below.

  Sweeping the area of the roof in front of him, Falcon couldn’t see any further targets. He only had a few seconds to look over the area as Reyes brought the tandem parachute rig in for a landing. One moment, the street-lights were visible more than a hundred feet below them. Then the fence line swept by only a few feet under their feet as the tandem jumpers came in on the roof.

  The incessant landing practice demanded by Santiago proved its value as both men moved in smooth unison dropping down to the rooftop. While still holding up his MP5K-PDW, Falcon lifted his legs, bending them at the hip and knee, so he was in a sitting position. With Falcon’s legs out of the way, Reyes spread his feet out to help cushion the impact of landing.

  Pulling down on both of the steering toggles, Reyes flared the canopy, causing it to stall and lose much of its forward momentum. The stalled parachute dropped the tandem jumpers almost straight down from a height of less than six feet. The wall of the machinery structure was coming up to them just as Reyes’s feet touched down on the rooftop.

  Immediately releasing the left-hand toggle, Reyes and Falcon twisted to the left as Reyes’s legs took up the pressure of hitting the roof. Both men fell on their sides, rolling with the impact. The turning motion twisted the suspension lines together, and helped collapse the huge Icarus canopy before the wind could catch it and drag the jumpers into the fence or back up into the air and off the roof entirely.

  With the canopy collapsed, Reyes reached to the toggles and pulled the quick-release catches that held Falcon to him. Rolling away, Falcon quickly scrambled to his feet, putting his back up to the nearest wall and sweeping the rooftop with the muzzle of his MP5K-PDW.

  Reyes had his hands full gathering up his parachute canopy and lines into a bundle. He wasn’t acting to recover the chute for another use, just to get it out of the way of Santiago who was coming in for a landing a few seconds later. It was Santiago who was bringing in the means of escape for them all.

  With the AN/PVS-7B night-vision goggles pushed up onto his helmet, Santiago came in fast and low, pulling his steering toggles down at what looked like the very last moment. With the toggles pulled very low, the black PD-193 canopy of his parachute seemed to almost hit an invisible wall in the air. The ex-SEAL’s feet hit the ground in unison, trotting forward to match his last bit of forward speed. Turning hard and bending forward at the waist as he released his right-hand toggle, Santiago collapsed his chute, quickly reducing it to a pile of cloth fluttering in the breeze.

  Standing almost directly under the men as they flew in over the building’s east wall, Pena just stared for a moment in admiration and awe. He had been a skydiver himself for years, but this was a demonstration of daring and skill rarely seen by anyone. Even in the military, jumping into a cloud-covered night sky and landing on an area the size of a rooftop would be considered something extraordinary. To do it into a crowded city with no special beacons showing on the landing zone wouldn’t even be considered possible, let alone practical. And here three men had done it for him.

  As Santiago was gathering up his parachute canopy and shedding his Vector 3 M-series harness, Pena walked up to him. In spite of his wearing a bright orange prisoner’s garb, his approach to Santiago caused a reaction Pena did not expect.

  In a fast, smooth motion, Santiago dropped his harness and pulled out his Glock 19 pistol from its Omega VI holster on his thigh before the whole rig hit the rooftop. Pena’s eyes were pulled to the parachute rig as it fell, when he looked back up, he was staring down the muzzle of a pistol not a dozen feet from his face. Instantly, he realized he was looking at a man who was more used to dealing out death than even Pena himself was. For only a second, there was a view of what could have been fear in Pena’s eyes—then the look was gone.

  “You are Santiago?” Pena said after a moment.

  “No names please,” Santiago said. “But you were possibly expecting someone else?”

  “No, of course,” Pena said, “but my lawyer only told me that you would be coming to release me, not how you would enter the building.”

  “He didn’t have a need to know,” Santiago said, “besides, he didn’t want to know. He did what he was paid for and took almost no risk for it, that was enough for him.”

  “But how are we going to get out of this building?”

  “We already are outside of the building,” Santiago said. “The trick now is to get down from here.”

  “You brought rappelling ropes and equipment?” Pena said as he looked at the cloth bags strapped to Santiago.

  “Too far and too slow,” Santiago said. “Besides, rappelling wouldn’t get us away from the building fast enough. I was told you were an experienced skydiver, Jefe. It’s time for your first BASE jump.”

  The use of the “chief” honorific softened the lack of respect Pena noticed in Santiago’s tone. But the man was something of a legend in the very select circles of the men who made their living running tons of narcotics into the United States. He could be excused because of the pressure of the moment. But a BASE jump (Building, Antenna, Span [bridge], and Earth)?

  “Time,” Santiago called out.

  “Thirty seconds,” Falcon said from across the rooftop.

  Falcon and Reyes were over by the cattle chute gate. As F
alcon looked to Santiago for a signal, the leader of the breakout nodded his head.

  With a short, snarling burst of fire, Falcon blasted the locking mechanism from the gate. The frangible 9mm projectiles from the EBR Air Marshal ammunition smashed into the lock. In spite of each bullet only weighing eighty-five grains, their power was evident as the steel lock broke into pieces. After they had delivered their energy against the lock, the frangible powdered copper and nylon bullets broke into dust from the impact. Reyes jerked open the door and the two men entered the fenced corridor.

  At the far end of the cattle chute, past the elevator door, was a second gate. Again, Falcon’s submachine gun spit out 9mm projectiles at a rate of 900 rounds per minute. The sound of the burst was reduced to a stuttering thudding sound by the stainless-steel suppressor screwed to the muzzle. A half-dozen bullets removed the second lock from the equation, and the gate was open.

  On the far side of the gate was a ladder leading up to the top of the machinery structure. As Santiago stripped off the cloth bags he had strapped to his legs, he looked to Pena.

  “Is there anyone else up here?” he asked.

  “There’s a second guard,” Pena said. “He’s the one who normally escorts me up here but I haven’t seen him since we got up here.”

  “Two!” Santiago called out.

  Falcon looked at Santiago and nodded. With Falcon leading the way, his MP5K-PDW pointing forward, Reyes and Falcon went up the ladder to the roof of the machinery structure. No one was visible during a quick look around, so both men approached the guard shelter. With his Glock in his hand, Reyes made ready to open the door to the guard shelter. Falcon held his submachine gun at the ready and nodded. Reyes pulled the door open and Falcon sprayed the inside of the shelter as soon as it was exposed.