in the old Cannonball movies.”
Hutch returned from his sneak-and-peek and hunkered down next to Dillon. M*A*S*H was over that fast. Everyone shut up and waited. Dillon knew their silence was out of respect and interest, but looking at Hutch, he couldn’t help wondering if there wasn’t just a little fear tossed into the mix. As the team’s point man, and ex-Green Beret, Hutch was one of the deadliest guys in the group. Dillon had seen him take out six fully armed targets in less than a minute using nothing but his two hands and a nifty little Microtech knife he liked to call Chewy .
“We’ve got two guards out front holding heavies. There’s no road and only one way outta here. Three jet boats, one’s a hydro, down in the river, about fifty meters behind the building.”
Dillon nodded. “Okay, good. Two men outside, that puts ten inside. Wolf, Shane, you take out the guards. No noise. I don’t want the targets inside to get a heads-up until it’s too late.” And then maybe, just maybe, he’d get some new intel on Sanchez. Rafe and his brothers might very well be in Colombia, but no one it seemed, knew exactly where.
The two men nodded an affirmative and Dillon stood. “Chase, you’ve got the first thirty-minute watch. Hutch and Doug, handle the boats. The rest of you take a load off. Sleep if you can.” He looked at his men, all heavy with sweat and fatigue. “Hakuna Matata.”
After nightfall, Team One was going to take out one of the largest and most secluded cocaine labs in Colombia. They had a fair idea what they were up against, they’d all been trained for it, but somehow training exercises seldom lived up to real-life scenarios.
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Three hours later, at exactly 2100 hours, it started to drizzle. Between the light rain and the steam coming off the ground in a greenish vapor, visibility was reduced to damn near zero. Dillon sighed, adjusted his night vision goggles and listened for approaching footsteps, voices, or any other human sound. Not that his team couldn’t handle a drug runner or two roaming around, but if some rebel platoon came wandering through, not only would this op be jeopardized, things could wind up getting noisy.
But he heard nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual cacophony of sounds of a jungle after dark. Insects, monkeys, birds, some rustling of the underbrush. And the constant drip, drip, dripping coming through the canopy.
So far, so good.
His team stood in a half circle in front of him and he made eye contact with each man until he got a thumbs up from all seven men.
He nodded.
Time to let the hammer drop.
Hutch took the lead with Dillon two meters behind him. Third in line was Wolf, then Doug, Doc, Shane, Chase and Lito. They moved with such well-orchestrated precision that Dillon knew each man’s position and actions even under the cover of absolute darkness.
Faces painted green and black, the eight camouflage-clad men blended flawlessly with their surroundings as they worked their way silently through the jungle. They pressed steadily forward, their objective now at twelve o’clock, straight ahead, less than one hundred meters away.
By the time they were within eighty meters of the large, one-story stone building, Dillon’s adrenaline stepped into high gear. His mind hit the zone. Like some kind of jungle Zen, everything but his team and the lab dropped away.
Less than two minutes left.
He clicked the safety off his M4 and set it to full auto. The team moved ahead slowly. When they were sixty meters from their target, Hutch signaled for Wolf and Shane to take position.
Dillon removed his night vision goggles, then checked both the guards and the building through his rifle scope, hoping like hell things didn’t get dicey. His snipers fired, one silent round each. The instant the two guards fell, he spoke into his throat mike. “Targets down. That’s a
Debby Herbenick, Vanessa Schick