I, Michael Bennett

“By car, at least,” Ginther said.

“Smokey Bear,” I mumbled.

“What was that?”

I handed the commando back his camera.

“Take us down,” I said. “I think I have an idea.”

CHAPTER 99

TWO HOURS LATER, just after the sun went down, Ginther and I sat in the cab of a truck, looking out at the silent mountain twilight as we waited by the radio. We sat up when we heard the radio scratch.

“Okay, this is Rabbit. We’re in position,” came the word from the first HRT infil team.

I glanced over at Ginther as he checked his watch. We waited some more.

It took another three minutes before the second team crackled the mike.

“Okay, this is Merlin. We’re here.”

“Okay,” Ginther said back. “Pop ’em all, fellas. Everything you got.”

“Roger that, Cap,” Merlin said. “Affirmative. Fire in the hole.”

We waited, our eyes glued north, toward Perrine’s house. After a minute, we smiled in unison as an enormous column of black smoke rose into the pale, twilit sky.

But having two HRTs pop dozens of smoke grenades into the woods below Perrine’s hideout was only phase one. As the smoke billowed, Ginther made another call to the fire station at the base of West Kill Mountain’s north slope. A moment later, a blaring air horn sounded in the distance.

My last-ditch plan was under way. Perrine might suspect something fishy was up once he heard the siren and saw the smoke, but how could he be sure if it was a real forest fire or not? The answer was that he couldn’t. Because deception is basic to the art of war, we needed to cause as much confusion and chaos as possible as we went in. In fact, we needed to bamboozle the living shit out of Perrine if we were going to capture him without heavy resistance.

“Okay, buckle up. This is it,” Ginther yelled as he started one of the two fire trucks we’d borrowed from the nearby towns of Hunter and Roxbury. I slipped on a yellow fire helmet. I and the dozen other HRT members riding in the two trucks were already wearing firemen’s gear over our automatic weapons. I crossed my fingers.

Please let this work.

A second later, our blue and red lights started flashing and we were rolling along the country blacktop, sirens blaring. I held onto an overhead strap with my right hand and the strap of a borrowed M4 assault rifle with my left as the roaring, rumbling truck swung off the mountain road and onto the driveway of Perrine’s hideout.

We saw it almost immediately. After we had gone up the steep driveway for about a minute, we didn’t see just smoke anymore. Not good, I thought, staring open-mouthed out the front passenger-side window.

Tall orange flames were now engulfing the woods on both sides of the driveway. I stared out at the growing fire. On each side of the driveway, there had to be half an acre of forest already in flames as the fire climbed up the slope toward Perrine’s mountain retreat. Bits of burning black-and-orange embers were falling everywhere. Like confetti in a Halloween parade.

Our fake forest fire had somehow just become a real one!

Ginther halted the truck and lifted his radio.

“Rabbit! Merlin! This was supposed to be a pretend fire. Are you effing kidding me? What’s going on?”

“Those smoke rounds get hot, sir. Seems like too hot in this case,” replied Rabbit. “We didn’t realize how dry the forest floor was.”

Ginther shook his head at the flames, his face grim. I could almost see visions of the FBI Waco standoff dancing through his head.

The radio came alive with a metallic squawk.

“Ground one, this is air one. Do I see real fire down there?” asked the already airborne assault team.

“Man, is Smokey going to be pissed,” Ginther said, glancing at me. “Screw it. Accidents happen. Can’t worry about it now. We use it.

“Full speed ahead,” Ginther called into his radio. “All forces assault now. We’re going in. I repeat. We’re going in.”

“Through a forest fire?” I said.

“Hey, you’re the one who wanted to run this flea-flicker. Besides, worst-case scenario, we’ll exfil on the choppers,” Ginther said.

The crazy commando shrugged and gave me his all-American smile as he put the truck into gear and gu

“Come on, Mike. Get into it,” Ginther said. “This is what it’s all about. Improvise. Overcome. And by the way, welcome to HRT.”

CHAPTER 100

TWENTY SECONDS LATER, as we passed through the massive wall of flames, a hand banged hard on the roof above Ginther.

“Cap,” said one of the FBI commandos on top of the truck. “Twelve o’clock on the driveway ahead. We have a vehicle approaching.”

“Follow my lead, but be ready for anything,” Ginther said to his guys.

He didn’t need to tell them to lock and load, I knew. These elite commando types woke up locked and loaded. They probably couldn’t tell you where the safeties on their guns were.

My gaze shifted from the flames we’d just passed to the vehicle coming down the road. It was a black Jeep Cherokee with four hard-looking Hispanic men in it. It stopped in front of us.

“Private,” the driver said, waving his arms as he hopped out. “You need to turn around and go back. This is a private area.”

“Private? Are you out of your cotton-picking mind?” Ginther yelled, thumbing back his fire helmet as he stepped out onto the driveway. “See that hot orange stuff heading our way? That’s a forest fire, son. Winds are coming up from the south. You don’t have a minute to spare. You need to get yourself and anyone else up at that house off this mountain now.”

The Hispanic guys conferred quickly. One of them lifted a phone and started speaking rapidly into it.

Ginther lifted his own phone.

“Okay, Central. This is hook and ladder thirty-eight,” he screamed, loud enough for Perrine’s guards to hear. “We can’t get access to the fire site. You’re going to have to bring up the water chopper. I repeat. Bring in the water bird.”

Water chopper? I thought, remembering the already hovering HRT helicopters.

It’s going to rain in a minute around here, all right, I thought, glancing at Perrine’s thugs. It’s going to rain cops and lead.

The head Hispanic tough was putting away his phone when the four HRT commandos with us rolled off the top of the truck and put assault rifles in the bad guys’ faces. In a fraction of a second, the bad guys were facedown by their Jeep, hog-tied, with white plastic zip ties around their wrists.

“Oh, my God, Mike. Look at this,” Ginther said, showing me the back of the Jeep.

It was filled to the brim with military hardware. AK-47s, sniper rifles, three pairs of night-vision goggles, fragmentation grenades. They even had claymore mines.

“What did I tell you?” I said. “These jacks think it’s World War Three.”

After Ginther told his men to transfer all the weaponry onto our truck, he lifted each of Perrine’s thugs one by one and kicked them in the ass to get them moving down the driveway, toward the main road.

“Ándale, assholes,” Ginther said. “You have about five minutes before that driveway melts. Run, if you want to live.”

CHAPTER 101