Piranha

He also knew the transponder code of Air Force Two and was tracking its movement as it flew over the West Indies. Its takeoff had been pushed up by a half hour, so his anticipated interception with the drones would now take place even earlier, at 8:30 a.m. Governor Washburn would join him to watch the destruction of the vice president’s plane.

With both sets of planes converging on one screen, he was able to follow Juan Cabrillo’s movements using Sentinel. Cabrillo, Eddie Seng, Franklin Lincoln, and Mike Trono had boarded the chopper, wearing green camouflage uniforms that matched the flora surrounding the cement plant, leaving Max Hanley and Mark Murphy as the senior staff in the Oregon’s op center. All four men on the helicopter had been heavily armed with assault weapons and several RPGs. Instead of having a close view inside the cabin where it would be difficult to listen in on the conversations because of the noise from the rotor wash, he chose to watch the helicopter from the exterior. Once it landed, he’d stay with Cabrillo to relay his movements to Bazin.

“The helicopter is headed for the eastern side of the cement plant,” he said into his headset microphone.

“I’ve got a Ratel armored vehicle going there now. But shooting him down will be difficult with all the smoke.”

Kensit sat forward. “What smoke?” Then he saw it as the helicopter spun around and flew toward the coast. Tracers from the 20mm ca

The helicopter descended into the smoke before Kensit could close in on the cockpit. He zoomed in as it plunged into the opaque cloud spewing from the canisters.

Ten seconds later, the helicopter took off, emerging from the smoke without its passengers.

Kensit pushed his virtual camera from the neutrino telescope into the smoke, but it was like looking into a glass of milk. He occasionally saw the flash of clothing or an arm and then it disappeared again.

He rotated his viewpoint so that he was looking straight down on the landing spot, but the cloud had expanded to cover an area bigger than three football fields, all the way from the edge of the cement plant property to the lake and up the closest hillock, which was packed with enough foliage to cover a crawling person’s movements. By the time he pulled back enough to see the Ratel armored vehicle approaching the edge of the smoke, he realized that Juan Cabrillo had vanished.

Juan and Trono had to get beneath the surface of the lake before the smoke cleared or the entire operation would be ruined. If Kensit even suspected what they were pla

With Trono’s hand on his shoulder to keep them together through the thick smoke, Juan used his phone’s receiver to home in on the tracking signal from the package that Linda’s team had planted. After skirting a few impenetrable brambles, they found it under a bush that had been carefully dug up and then replaced.

The equipment all specifically designed for cave diving had been prepacked so that it could be do

The Ratel was randomly firing its ca

In less than two minutes, they had the gear on and were stepping into the water. They sunk their clothes in the lake, leaving nothing behind to reveal where they’d gone. With weapons slung across their backs, they slipped underwater.

Juan was glad Linda had understood his coded instructions. On a mission in Indonesia, he had snuck into the Karamita ship-breaker yard by scuba diving underneath the gigantic door that admitted the cargo ships in to be illegally sawn apart for scrap. She knew he intended to do the same thing at the cement plant, swimming through the now submerged cave entrance to approach the neutrino telescope cave from the unprotected rear.

Juan was taking a big risk with this method of infiltration. Finding the cave entrance in the lake was going to be challenging, not to mention navigating through the flooded caverns to find the right passage leading to the telescope. He didn’t even know if they had enough air to make the journey.

Any chance of success hinged on complete surprise. Being outnumbered inside a cave was a recipe for disaster, and retreat wouldn’t be an option.

Finding the cave entrance might have taken them days under normal circumstances, but Juan was depending on the same device that had let them unearth the tin of photos. He took out the Geiger counter and descended to forty feet, the depth they estimated the cave to be below the lake’s surface. They were hoping that radiation from particulates in the cave carried through the water would lead them in the right direction.

Poor visibility from the silt made it harder to see more than twenty feet in front of them, but that also made it impossible for anyone to see them from above the surface. The Geiger counter, which had been tuned for maximum sensitivity, didn’t register anything above the level of the natural background radiation.

Based on the photo, Juan was sure that the cave was near the cement plant, so he kept swimming in that direction. He swept the counter back and forth, looking for even the most modest uptick.

They had traveled another hundred feet when Juan saw a slight bump in the reading. He stopped and moved the Geiger counter up and down.

There it was, ten feet above them. He kicked and a gaping maw rimmed by rocks that looked unca

—

Linc, who had been hiding under a bush, waited until the Ratel was only a hundred yards away. At this range, he couldn’t miss. He lifted the RPG-7, so commonly seen in newcasts around the world, and triggered the weapon. The rocket-propelled grenade shot from its tube and made a direct hit on the armored vehicle, igniting the ammo inside and setting off a huge fireball.

“One down, three to sizzle,” he said, dropping down prone again.

“Nice shot,” Eddie said as they crawled away, “although my grandmother couldn’t have missed from this distance.”

Linc paused to reload the metal tube with their one remaining RPG. “I didn’t know your grandmother had a Navy rifle marksmanship medal, too.”

“Oh, she’s quite skilled,” Eddie said, gri

Using the cover of some trees and the lingering smoke, they sprinted to a low hillock, where they found a depression.

Another Ratel was coming their way. The driver must have seen their new position and was pumping 20mm shells into the dirt in front of them, making it impossible for either of them to rise up and take the Ratel out with the RPG.

“A little help would be much appreciated,” Eddie said into the headset radio identical to the one Linc was wearing. “We’re right about where the Ratel is plowing a new field with its weapon.”