Jason’s inability to sleep on airplanes was catching up with him. The steady drone of tires on asphalt and the lack of anything of visual interest were tugging at his eyelids like lead weights.
This morning seemed like a week ago. He and Maria had met the charter, a single turbo-charged engine Piper Meridian with STOL capabilities to handle Saint Barts’ less than generous runway. The four-person, pressurized, club-seating cabin had been quiet, too quiet. Maria had occupied herself with a women’s magazine, a type Jason had never seen her read. After one or two efforts at conversation met with brief and frosty replies, Jason concluded that his participation in last night’s fracas was suspected, if not proven. It was almost a relief when they parted in San Juan with a kiss that might have been shared by siblings rather than lovers. She took an American flight to New York to change planes and head back to Indonesia by routing that made Jason’s head swim. An hour later, his Delta flight departed for Miami and the subsequent transfers that had brought him to Texas.
The truck up ahead was signaling for a right turn. Only seconds before Jason’s Ford left the paved surface could he see the faint trace of twin tracks in the dirt. He had seen no sign or other indication of where to make the turn.
The truck was in the belly of a cloud of dust, its taillights only marginally visible. Dirt and pebbles scratched at Jason’s windshield as though seeking admission. An occasional impact from below noted this path was better suited to a high-riding vehicle than a normal sedan.
After several minutes, the truck stopped. Jason could see its headlights reflecting from a gate in a fence that must have been fifteen feet high topped with razor wire. Although too far away to read, the lightning bolts and skull-and-crossbones on the adjacent sign made the posted and keep out notices redundant. In case a potential intruder still didn’t get the message, surveillance cameras moved back and forth atop the gate posts. This was not some ranch fence erected as deterrent to straying cattle.
Somehow, the name over the gate seemed more ironic than informative: peace and plenty ranch. Jason knew this place represented neither.
Jason got his first view of the truck’s occupant as he stood beside the open gate, motioning Jason through. Tall, with a broad-brimmed ten-gallon pulled low over his forehead. Leather vest and faded jeans stuffed into cowboy boots. All that was missing between this man and a B-grade western film was a six-shooter in a low-slung holster.
Jason waited for the man to climb back in the truck and lead the way. Minutes later, the two vehicles topped a slight rise. Below was a collection of single-story buildings that could have been bunkhouses from the same B-grade western. What no western, B-grade or otherwise, boasted was the mile-long runway Jason knew was on no aeronautical chart, or the collection of limousines that filled what would have been a real ranch’s coral but here was a cement skid pad. In the widely scattered lights, the buildings, the cars, everything took on an ephemeral, almost ghostlike appearance.
But this was not a real ranch, nor, for that matter, did it pretend to be, despite the rustic appearance given to the casual observer, had one been allowed within a half mile of the place. It was a school of sorts, a place of learning things taught in no university. It was where the world’s most skilled bodyguards came to perfect their craft. Its alumni included members of the security staff of the house of Saud, Bahrain, and a number of the other Emirates, as well as several countries where coups and assassinations played a significant role in the political process. From time to time, the U.S. Treasury Department contracted to send aspirants to the Secret Service’s presidential detail there for training superior to their own. The CIA also sent an occasional honor graduate of The Farm, its own facility, there, although to what purpose was never made clear.
“He’s in the laboratory,” Jason’s escort said from outside the car. “And he’s expecting you.”
Jason didn’t reply that, had he not been expected, he would never have gotten there.
Instead, he got out of the Ford, noting the air had taken a decidedly chilly turn. He could see his breath as he asked, “Which building is that? They all look alike to me.”
“The one with no number.”
Jason squinted, unable in the dark to see numbers on any of the structures, and turned to ask the man to point it out for him, but he was gone, disappeared into the night. Only the sound of the truck’s ignition proved he had been here at all.
Jason started down the slope, planting each foot with deliberation. This was not the time to suffer a debilitating fall. He yelped in surprise at an explosion of motion literally under his feet. Chagrinned at how easily he had been spooked, he listened to a buzz of wingbeats fading into the night. He had disturbed some prairie chicken’s slumber. Oh well, be glad it wasn’t a rattlesnake.
He was nearly startled into another exclamation when a voice came out of the dark. “Goddam, Artiste, you’re the only person I know can wander around open country and make more noise than a punk rocker playing bagpipes! Louder than a pair of skeletons getting it on on a tin roof! You been in hostile territory, you’d be KIA.”
A quick glance told Jason the speaker had somehow left the buildings and come up behind him without a sound. “Didn’t know I was in hostile territory,” Jason replied mildly. “How goes it, Chief?”
The shadow in front of him came closer. A tall man, long white hair in a braid. A hard, chiseled face that would have been at home on a buffalo nickel. And with good reason: James Whitefoot Andrews, Lieutenant Commander, USN (Ret.) was full-blooded Cheyenne. He traced his ancestry to Chief Black Kettle, who, unsuccessful in making peace with the white man through no fault of his own, was massacred by Custer at the Indians’ camp along the Washita River, along with dozens of women, children, and the elderly.
Fortunately, Lieutenant Commander Andrews, or Chief, as he preferred to be called, held no grudges.
Andrews extended a hand which Jason took. “It goes well, Artiste.” He started down the rest of the slope. “C’mon down to my laboratory, and I’ll get you a decent cup of coffee. I doubt you had one on the plane.”
Chief was either clairvoyant or had recently flown commercially.
37
Then U.S. Navy Lieutenant Andrews had come up with a proposal involving minimum military or political risk to end piracy in the Malacca Strait, a problem that was a precursor to the troubles off the Somalian coast some years later. A rescued tramp freighter ready for the salvage yard, a month of ingenious retrofitting, and a squad ten Delta Force men under then First Lieutenant Jason Peters.
The nearly weeklong trip to the eastern entrance to the Strait of Malacca provided ample time to learn the singular attributes of the refitted ship. At the single refueling stop, a small corner of the massive port of Klang, Malaysia, the civilian-dressed crew enjoyed shore leave. The country, roughly half Moslem and half Christian, had reached a unique accommodation: Alcohol was forbidden to Moslems while freely available to Christians. If there were Islamic souls aboard the Muriel, they kept their religion to themselves as the crew en masse descended on those sleazy bars that line almost every large commercial harbor in the world. The local beer became a lubricant to tongues as the crew made acquaintance with the easy ladies who inhabit such places. The word changed from rumor to truth overnight: The ship was carrying a small but valuable cargo the exact nature of which was unknown to the crew, so valuable its composition was a deliberately kept secret between shipper and the ship’s owners, who, in turn were unknown. An impartial observer might have wondered if an attack by pirates was being invited. Whether braggadocio or sheer stupidity were to blame, the value of the cargo was firmly established in the bars at well more than $500 million USD.