“I’m good. Let’s do it.”
DeSantos hit a large green button on the wall and the hangar doors rolled open. Beyond them was the Black Hawk, its still rotors drooped in repose. The group high-fived each other, then moved off. One of the larger men stared Uzi down as he brushed past him on the way out.
“Just a crazy question,” Uzi asked, appraising the helicopter from a distance. “Our FUBAR scenario. Every part of that bird is traceable. Not to mention our team.”
DeSantos shook his head. “We’ve got complete deniability. None of these guys will show up in a print or biometric database. All taken care of by a techie holed away in the bowels of the Pentagon. As for the bird, it was decommissioned five years ago. The guts have been totally stripped, completely changed out with untraceable parts. Not a fingerprint to be found anywhere. Officially, no one owns this thing.”
“I’ve seen some of those aftermarket parts,” Uzi said, his voice staying level despite the whine of the helicopter’s engines starting up. “Not very airworthy.”
“It’ll fly. For a mission like this one, we should be fine.”
Uzi’s head whipped over to DeSantos. “Should be?”
“A lot’s gone into making it a deniable craft. OPSIG wouldn’t be too happy if they lost it.”
“They’re landing outside their property line, right? You’re sure Hot Rod won’t hot dog it.”
“Man, you worry too much. Yes, outside the property. Despite what I said to the team, Hot Rod’ll make it as nonthreatening as he can. He’ll be walking a fine line, but I’ve put my life in his hands lots of times. He knows what he’s doing.”
DeSantos received a thumbs up from Rodman, who was now settled into the pilot’s seat. DeSantos acknowledged the sign, then slapped Uzi in the chest with an open hand. “You ready?”
Uzi looked his partner in the eyes, trying to read them while disguising his own. He wasn’t picking anything up other than a squint of deep focus. He pushed his residual doubts about DeSantos from his mind and nodded. “Ready.”
The chopper was over its position twenty minutes later. Uzi and DeSantos rappelled into forested land a mile outside the compound. They would hike their way to the perimeter while Rodman moved off, returning when DeSantos signaled that he and Uzi were nearing their target.
Aside from his stint in the Israel Defense Forces, Uzi had never been on a mission in which he had to dress in military garb. He had always operated in the backstreets, alleys, and shantytowns of the Middle East and Europe, wearing whatever the natives wore, his first objective being to blend in with the locals, to be invisible. Here, his goals were the same, with an important distinction: he needed to be not only figuratively invisible, but literally as well. He and DeSantos couldn’t be seen by anyone. Hence the need for stealthy infrared- and light-absorbing clothing.
They carried nothing that could identify them in any way. Of course, if they ran into Nelson Flint or his lieutenant, Rodney McCourt, identity would be the least of their problems. Uzi and DeSantos were banking on their assumption that the men in charge would be busy at the main gate with Rodman and his group.
Their equipment was sparse as well; they were unarmed except for a multi-purpose Navy Mk III Combat Knife. A versatile weapon capable of surgical incisions and slicing through bone as well as cutting through brush, its stainless, black-coated finish was both durable and anti-reflective. The knives were concealed by a slim resin sheath that strapped to the outside of their left thighs. While Uzi usually carried a Puma tactical knife, as well as a Tanto around his neck and a smaller boot knife — habits from his days with the Mossad — this mission demanded a versatile weapon that could be explained away.
From this point forward, they would employ only commercially available two-way radios, using their squelch bursts as a crude form of code. It was far from ideal, and from Uzi’s high-tech perspective a throwback to the dark ages of the fifties or sixties, but it was a wise precaution. If they were captured by roving guards, any high-tech gadgets would put them in Flint’s crosshairs regardless of what Rodman was doing — and perhaps because of it. Should their movements be detected, they felt confident they could split up and each successfully make their way to a predetermined location two miles from the perimeter of the ARM compound where, earlier in the day, DeSantos had left an unmarked car.
Aside from their low-tech squelch code, the mission demanded silence going forward, so all close-contact communication would consist of hand and arm signals. While they had been able to evaluate ARM’s video surveillance capabilities from the heavens, they did not know what other security measures the compound sported. This was the part that bothered Uzi most. They were taking calculated risks and making educated guesses, but they were risks nonetheless.
Twenty-five minutes later, they approached the South fence, along the back end of the property. They pulled black ski masks over their heads and settled nonreflective infrared sunglasses over their eyes. The glasses would not only block shine and sparkle, but the lens coating focused all available light to brighten the visual field. While they were not nearly as effective as NVGs — night vision goggles — to the untrained eye, they were indistinguishable from regular sunglasses, preserving their low-tech look. Of course, wearing sunglasses and neoprene tights at night might raise some suspicion, but anyone detaining them would be more concerned about their presence and assessing their potential threat than their odd clothing or eyewear.
DeSantos signaled Rodman with three short commo bursts followed by a long one. To anyone listening in, it would merely sound like background static. Ten seconds later, Rodman responded with two short bursts.
Per their plan, Uzi checked the fence for anticlimb sensors like the ones he had seen at the front gate. Because of the expense of deploying such technology over miles of land, he did not expect to find them — and as suspected, they were absent. He signaled that they were free to proceed, and then reached into the rucksack DeSantos was wearing and pulled out a coarse, densely woven fiber roll they would use to traverse the barb-tipped fence.
Inside Uzi’s pack was another low-tech solution to the ten-foot chain-link walclass="underline" a homemade device consisting of a wood dowel with protruding nails. The nails served as hooks, providing Uzi and DeSantos purchase while they positioned the fiber roll over the barbed wire.
Three minutes later, they were grasping their makeshift claw hooks with one hand while holding the fiber roll with the other. DeSantos used a bungee cord and holes in the fiber to secure it in place, then nudged his partner. Uzi would go first. He shifted his weight carefully, trying not to cause too much shake and rattle in the chain link. Noise of any sort was their enemy.
While Plan B would have involved using a bolt cutter to peel away a section of the fence, their goal was to leave the grounds without any physical evidence of having been there.
Uzi hooked his homemade claw around the chain links, and boosted his right leg up and onto the fiber sheath covering the barbed wire. He maneuvered his left leg over the fence, then steadied himself while DeSantos repeated the movements Uzi had just completed.
They had done this once before over a decade ago in Estonia, when Uzi was with Mossad. The stakes were far greater then, as they were attempting to snatch-and-grab a Russian scientist who was threatening to provide the Iranians with blueprints and enough enriched uranium to construct their own nuclear reactor. Although Uzi and DeSantos were successful, Iran eventually obtained their information and materials through other means.
This particular mission also carried far-reaching implications: if ARM was involved in the attempted assassination of the vice president, they had vaulted onto another plane of domestic threat— with no limit to what they would try next.