Gone (Michael Bennett 6)

“A DEA undercover in Cancún just drove up to a hacienda outside Real del Monte,” Emily said breathlessly as I opened it. “He got a hit on one of the Salvajes cell numbers we have. Not only that, but the CIA just learned that the estate in question used to be owned by Perrine! Word is, they’re taking this as actionable intelligence. We need to get rolling. JSOC is calling a meeting back at the base.”

I left Neves with Diaz and Bassman and raced with Emily back to the SoCal Logistics Airport. After we badged our way through the guard booth, it was obvious some fires had been lit.

It was like someone had dropped a pinball into one of those kinetic mousetrap sculptures. Uniformed soldiers were pouring in and out of the dormitories and hangars. Dozens of bearded Navy SEALs and Delta Force operators clustered in small groups, loading guns and equipment kit bags as soldiers with clipboards did flight prep on the Black Hawk and Little Bird choppers out on the tarmac.

As we walked into the task force’s war room, a video teleconference with Washington and one of the JSOC generals was under way. Beside it in the split screen was a satellite image of a compound with a huge house, a pool, gardens.

Colonel D’Ambrose, sitting at the rear of the room, cracked the door and came out when he saw us.

“They sent up a drone,” he said. “What your contact said is true. There’s an enormous amount of activity going on at the estate. Not only that, CIA is still doing some forensic work on the imaging, but they think they spotted Perrine riding a horse on one of the mountain trails. The Defense Department is in conference right now with the president. We just got word that the president wants Perrine in a body bag. We’re going in tonight under cover of darkness with everything we got.”

“We did it, Mike? We found Perrine?” Emily said as she collapsed in an office chair, rubbing her eyes.

“I don’t give a shit about him, Emily,” I said. “We need to find my family.”

CHAPTER 91

IT LOOKED LIKE THE set of a spaghetti Western, or maybe Wile E. Coyote’s stomping grounds, rolling beneath my feet by midnight that night. Below was a wilderness of windswept desert, small buttes, and mesas. All of it was tinged green through the night-vision goggles I was wearing.

I shifted my weight to wake my numb butt, perched on the cold, hard vibrating metal floor of the Black Hawk chopper. It’d taken some favor calling and even more finagling by Emily, but in the end, we were able to go on the raid on one of the supporting Black Hawks with the FBI’s hostage rescue team and some CIA personnel. Emily had emphasized my past personal contact with Perrine and my ability to ID him. I could ID him, all right, and was really looking forward to some more personal contact.

The dozen nap-of-the-earth airborne helicopters in our armada included Black Hawks and Little Birds, two Cobra attack helicopters, and even a twin-bladed Chinook filled with a contingent of first-recon marines. Far above, somewhere among the glittering stars, there was even an AC-130 Spectre gunship bristling with machine guns and mortars and Hellfire missiles to back us up.

Not knowing what to expect, the Pentagon had broken out the entire toolbox. Which couldn’t have made me happier. Perrine and his cartel were for all intents and purposes no different from an enemy army. It was finally time to deal with them as such.

It had been mostly flat desert, but as we flew, the terrain suddenly started to change. From the flat desert floor, low, corrugated hills with more vegetation began to rise. Soon the hills turned into majestic, rugged cliffs and sheer mountain-stream-filled valleys.

“We are coming in, in five,” a voice called over the radio. A minute later, we went past a ridge, and Perrine’s house was there. The Unabomber’s cabin this was not. The satellite images hadn’t done it justice. The dramatically lit, breathtaking French Second Empire mansion looked like a block someone had airlifted from the Champs-Élyssés and plunked down in the middle of the Mexican mountains. Every one of its lights was blazing on its marble steps and columns like it was an opera house on opening night.

There were soccer fields, several barns, something that looked like a racetrack. At the rear of the house were illuminated gardens that tiered down and down to a massive, magnificent, softly lit tiled pool. Beyond the pool was a runway with three corporate jets parked at its end.

No wonder the US government hadn’t told the Mexicans about the raid. How could this opulent palace so boldly exist out here in the middle of nowhere without their knowledge or consent?

The answer was, it couldn’t. Staring down at the compound, I knew the rumor that Perrine was more powerful than the Mexican president was a hundred percent true.

CHAPTER 92

AS WE CAME CLOSER, I tightened my helmet’s chin strap and checked the safety on my M4. I winked at Emily, across from me, to hide my mounting anxiety. Like me and the rest of the HR team, she was loaded for bear, dressed in black combat fatigues and strapped down with guns and gear. She winked back, then crossed herself and started praying.

As I was about to join her, an alarm suddenly went off in the forward cabin’s glowing console. It sounded like a police whistle followed by a fire alarm.

There was a lot of excited chatter over the tactical line. Before you could say surface-to-air missile, a white streak whooshed up off the slope to left. As I watched in stark, helpless, gaping horror, the corkscrewing streak connected with the forward rotor of the Chinook, at the end of our column of aircraft. There was an air-cracking boom and a b

right flash of light, and the Chinook was spinning and dropping, spiraling downward like a spinning leaf in October.

“Chalk three is hit!” came a voice over the mike. “Hard landing! Hard landing!”

Another sizzling corkscrewing missile flew up, just missing the Black Hawk across from us. Down through its wafting contrail, I could see men on the roof of a small cinder-block house perched on the edge of a ridge.

“Roof left! Roof left!” someone shouted over the line as one of the Cobra attack helicopters broke rank and dove toward the house.

I almost wet myself when its electric machine gun went off. It sounded like something caught in a shredder, or a massive industrial accident at a power plant. With an extended, sizzling, spine-tingling zap, a blinding white rope of bullets and tracers the size of Coke bottles beamed down out of the attack chopper, into the structure.

As the helicopter continued to rain lead, the second Cobra swiveled up and around on its axis like a record, and not one but two rockets sledded off from beneath its underbelly and downward in an exhilarating shower of sparks. A split second later, the guardhouse, or whatever it had been, disappeared in a blinding, three-story pa-powing blossom of white light. The concussion of the explosion that came a sliver of a second later whapped warm against my skin where I sat on the wobbling deck of the Black Hawk.

“We have small-arms fire!” someone said redundantly as from all around the well-lit house and compound, small flashes of light began to sprout. I clapped my hands over my ears when the gunner in the door of our chopper suddenly opened up with his .50 caliber. The sound of its empty brass shells pinging off the metal wall beside my head sounded like a hyped-up jazz drummer hitting the high hats.

I looked forward, behind the mansion, when I heard a tremendous thumping.