Page 36 of Enemy of My Enemy

Nope. Not going there. Never again. He wouldn’t even think it.

Gathering his men, Adam pointed out their route through the Brazilian forest and where they’d cross the border to Paraguay. It was a section of the forest used by drug runners that had been taken down by the Brazilians, and the rest of the smugglers were convinced it was being monitored by the authorities and refused to go near. In reality, it was an empty stretch of nothing, and only monkeys, deer, and the jungle birds traversed the border.

Their mission had changeden route, and Adam had received new orders from Director Reichenbach when they switched planes in Sao Paolo. A clandestine base in north Paraguay, hometo a special operations detachment, had gone dark. SOCOM couldn’t raise the base and they couldn’t send in a drone to check it out. Adam’s orders were to head straight there and see what was going on.

He laid out the plan for his team. At a good pace, they’d get to the base in five hours.

Time to move.

* * *

Northern Paraguay

Pennants fluttered in the wind,staked at the end of the hard-packed dirt runway the SOCOM soldiers used to fly in and out of their clandestine base. One had fallen down and rolled across the dirt.

A door banged, blown open and then falling closed.

One of the base guards lay facedown on the ground with a bullet through the back of his head. Sticky blood dried in the dirt beneath his face.

Silently, Adam and his men moved through the base’s entrance, ducking from point to point and slipping into the scattered buildings within the small compound. A central facility, a listening post, a drone operation, and a large runway. The base housed two drones and two heavy transports. About twenty-five SOCOM soldiers were stationed there at any given time.

Five bodies were in the kitchen, all shot dead. Another three in the communications room. Four scattered on the tarmac. And, in the base commander’s office, the colonel in charge sat at his desk, sprawled back in his chair, a single bullet hole above his closed eyes.

Drawn on his desk, smeared in the colonel’s own blood, was a circled M.

Madigan’s calling card.

The armory had been cleaned out. All weapons, all ammunition. The Humvees and jeeps parked in the motor pool were gone. Computers had been smashed, communications equipment destroyed, and all radar and tracking systems had been shot to pieces.

Eleven SOCOM soldiers were missing, including the base’s executive officer.

So were the drones and the heavy transports.

Adam ordered his men to sweep the base again, making sure they hadn’t missed a thing while Doc and Sergeant Shawn Wright gathered the bodies together in the mess.

He called back to DC on the satellite phone the CIA had sent down. A direct line to Director Reichenbach had already been programmed in.

The phone clicked on the second ring.“Reichenbach.”

“We made it to the target. It’s a slaughterhouse. Fourteen confirmed dead, including the commander. And we’ve got Madigan’s calling card.”

“Fuck. And the other eleven?”

“No trace. All transports are gone, along with all weapon systems.”

Across the sat phone, Director Reichenbach cursed again.“Hang tight. We’ll pull up the satellite imagery overhead and try to find those planes. Is the runway intact? Can you use them?”

“Yes, sir. The base is ours. They must have used the planes to fly out, so they needed those runways. But some may have left overland in the Humvees.”

“We’ll search for those too. Stay near the phone. I’ll call back as soon as I have something.”

* * *

“As soon as Reichenbach had something”turned out to be hours later, after the White House had ordered the CIA and NRO to deliver all satellite recon imagery of the base for the past forty-eight hours. They found what they were looking for on the satellite feeds from twelve hours prior: planes taking off from the base, two in a row, hours before the base failed to check in with SOCOM.

Adam reviewed the images on his secured laptop as he talked with Reichenbach on the sat phone. The sun was setting and howler monkeys skittered in the trees, screeching at the top of their lungs. The cries were like nails scratching down Adam’s bones.

“We have to follow them.”Reichenbach sent another file over their secured sat link, and a new picture appeared on Cooper’s laptop.“Turns out the NRO doesn’t monitor the empty South Atlantic all that well. We only have spotty intel on where they may have gone. Analysts have been checking our overflights of all airfields and airports Madigan may have gone to. Countries that hate us, or where he’s got some kind of potential connection.”