BLACK WATER TRIBUTARY TEN MILES ASTERN OF TEACHER
Mendez had bided his time. He was a patient man when it came to killing. That was where his former partners in the drug trade had failed on a monumental scale. Targets and places of assassination were to be chosen with expert precision and never, ever was the decision to be made hastily. Mendez and his operatives knew when the iron was hot enough to strike. Why place the blame of murder upon yourself, when you can make people believe the illusion of someone else’s doing the dirty work?
In the darkness he could see the Frenchman in the wheelhouse talking with that fool of a captain. Santos was an annoyance that he would soon tire of, along with Farbeaux. He lit a cigar. The flare of the match momentarily illuminated his features as he caught Rosolo’s eye. Mendez nodded and then turned away toward the stern of the boat.
Captain Rosolo made sure Farbeaux was still occupied by Santos, then he followed his boss to the gunwale at the far end of the boat. Once there, he removed a small cylinder from his coat pocket and found the trigger. He held the device up and out away from the Rio Madonna and aimed it through a small break in the overhead canopy where stars could be seen. To the rear, they could clearly make out the trailing barge as it silently cut the river into two white slices. Rosolo turned and gestured to one of his men just below the wheel-house. The man held up a portable radio and switched it to the Madonna’s frequency. Then he pushed the squelch button, with the volume turned all the way up. Inside the wheelhouse, they heard the radio come to life with the most godawful squeal imaginable. At the same time, Rosolo pulled the string at the end of the tube and the bright flash of a flare shot out and through the small opening in the tree canopy. The light breeze quickly pulled the telltale smoke away from the boat and into the surrounding jungle, just as Farbeaux made an appearance on the bridge wing to admonish the man below for making so much noise with his radio. Rosolo smiled as the Frenchman didn’t even look their way. He stepped back into the now silent bridge.
“Well done, my friend.” Mendez puffed on his overly large cigar as the pop of the flare sounded three hundred feet above the canopy.
Five hundred feet above the trees and thick jungle, the lead pilot of a flight of two Aérospatiale Gazelle attack helicopters, once owned by the French army, circled. The bright flash of the red flare arched out of the forest below and the two pilots knew they had a mission. They were mercenaries hired by Mendez, and their specialty was airborne murder.
The pilot in the lead Gazelle had forgone the hiring of a weapons officer for this well-paying opportunity, out of greed. The two pilots would share their reward with no one. After all, they were only going after a slow-moving river craft. They could handle the attack themselves.
He called his wingman and gave his instructions. He reached out and turned on his FLIR radar. The forward-looking infrared system activated and showed the coolness of the jungle and trees below. Then as they crossed the winding and unseen tributary below, the target they were seeking came into full view. It was marked clearly through the canopy of trees as a long, very bright ambient red color as it churned away slowly below. The fools would never know what hit them. He pulled the safety cover from his trigger mounted on the control stick, and selected his guns. He had elected not to bring the missiles he had stored in Colombia because he felt it would be a waste; they would have trouble penetrating the trees below. But twenty-millimeter rounds wouldn’t have that problem, as they would smash their way through any protecting wood surrounding their target.
The lead pilot smiled as he brought his Gazelle to full power and made his turn for the dark jungle below. His unsuspecting target didn’t know it yet, but they were about to be destroyed by a lightning strike from heaven.