Jack Beck opened the door and stepped from the wavering heat into the cool interior of the mobile home. “Why all the glum looks?”
“Colonel Wilson and his men are pulling out,” Alon said. “They just received orders.”
“Not good. I just found out these new drones are equipped with satellite-guided auto-pilots. They can fly anywhere you want … they just can’t land without a pilot guiding them.”
“They won’t be landing,” Alon said with a straight face.
Beck blinked back at him with a sudden realization. “Decoys?”
“You got it.”
“When do you want them?”
“Tonight,” Lev said.
“Whoa … that’s a tall order. I’ll ask their tech guys if it’s possible on such short notice.”
“You know where we’re going, don’t you, Jack?”
The squat CIA officer looked back at Lev and hesitated for a moment before opening the door and disappearing into the darkness outside.
“Think we can trust him?” Leo asked. “Acerbi has spies everywhere. How do we know this Beck guy is who he says he is?”
“Because I called Danny. Turns out Jack has worked with us before in the Middle East. Apparently, he’s one of the best in the business.”
“I wonder what he’s up to now,” John said, glancing out the window. “Hey, the lights are on in the hangar across the field.”
“They must be working on the drones,” Leo said, peering through the glass. “Why do I have the feeling our CIA friend has been working behind the scenes for us all along?” Leo looked at his watch. “It’s almost midnight. Let’s head over to the hangar next door and see if Ben and his men are ready to go.”
Alon stood and strapped on his pistol. “Drones or no drones, we’re going in anyway. Ben’s team won’t be able to wait any longer. Radar just picked up a passenger jet landing at Acerbi’s airstrip.”
One by one, the men filed outside, squinting in the darkness as they walked toward the hangar past a rattling sound in the brush nearby.
“What’s that noise?” Leo asked.
John poked Lev in the side and grinned. “Rattlesnakes.”
“What?”
“Snakes, Cardinal. They’re all over the place out here.”
Leo stopped in his tracks as he looked down at the ground around his feet. “Great … serpents.”
Leo heard snickering in the darkness as they all stepped up their pace toward the hangar. Rounding the corner, the men stopped dead in their tracks. All of the American choppers were still in place, and Ed Wilson was walking straight toward them.
“There you all are,” Wilson said. “I was just coming to talk to you boys.”
Lev placed his hands on his hips as he puffed on his cigar and eyed the tall pilot. “I thought you were pulling out, Colonel.”
“We are.” Wilson winked. “They told me I had to pull out, but they didn’t say when I was supposed to do it. Maybe we can all pull out together.”
The men stared at Wilson with the unspoken respect shared between warriors, and then, as if someone had given a command, the sound of motors roaring to life began drifting across the field.
Wilson jerked his head toward the distant hangars. “What’s going on over there?”
“Drones,” Alon said. “Jack just told us they can fly on autopilot. Sounds like they’re warming the little buggers up.”
With a huge grin spreading across his face, Colonel Wilson tossed his hat in the air and let out a loud whoop. “Well alright. Let’s get this show on the road, boys!”
Over the course of the next thirty minutes, the darkened airfield began to sound like a giant bee hive. One by one, the drones were taking off. They would climb and circle the field at stacked altitudes until they were all in the air, then begin streaking toward their predetermined target in mass.
Around the hangar, activity swelled to a frantic pace. Under the glare of the overhead lights, American and Israeli soldiers could be seen running back and forth, hauling their battlefield gear out to the waiting choppers before climbing onboard and strapping themselves in.
The scheduled launch time for the attack against Acerbi’s compound had been set for one o’clock in the morning. At exactly five minutes to one, the intense, bee-like sound of the drones overhead began to fade away as they were electronically released to fly in a wedge-shaped formation toward their target in the Mexican desert.
As soon as the drones were on their way, twenty Blackhawks and three MH-47 Chinook helicopters full of Special Forces soldiers lifted off. After waiting on the ground another thirty minutes until the slower moving aircraft were almost to the target, five Israeli F-15 fighter planes streaked down the runway and hugged the desert floor as they passed over the border. The mission to obliterate Rene Acerbi and his compound was under way.