I, Judas Read online

  “Fawcett transmitted that telegram on April twentieth, nineteen twenty-five, just before leaving on an expedition up the Xangu River. He had his son and a cameraman with him along with some native porters.” She turned and nodded toward the river, unseen in the gathering darkness. “They came up the water, passed here and continued onward. They made one radio contact on May twenty-ninth, reporting a position about ten kilometers above Devil’s Fork. There was a cryptic reference to the Dark One, and then they were never heard from again.”

  A short silence ensued, as each member of the team processed the information. Gates slammed a magazine into his pistol and slid it into his holster, startling the others except DiSalvo and Angelique.

  For the first time, Angelique considered whether she might be descended from Fawcett. Perhaps there was a small community up there and they were her kin?

  Gates looked at DiSalvo. “I assume we’re going to get a little more information on our target before we get there, given the poor track record of those who have gone before us?”

  “It’s late,” DiSalvo said. “I suggest we all get some sleep so we can be on the river at first light.” DiSalvo turned to Gates and Angelique. “You two will prepare the loads for each boat. If any of the rest of you has any special equipment you need to bring with us, put it over there.” DiSalvo pointed at the path to the river. “Let’s get moving, people. You’ll be grateful for these hours of sleep.”

  The group broke up. Gates went to Angelique and they began sorting through the mound of supplies the Brazilian soldiers had piled up haphazardly.

  “Water and food are key,” Angelique said. “You don’t want to drink the river water unless you absolutely have to. There are parasites in it they haven’t even named yet.”

  “Ammunition is more important than food,” Gates said. “You can go days without eating if you need to.”

  “It looks like you just did,” Angelique said.

  Gates glanced at her but didn’t say anything.

  “Are you expecting a fight?” Angelique asked as Gates opened a case of grenades and began sorting out piles.

  “You think those people you saw going up-river didn’t come back because they found paradise?” Gates asked.

  “Do you think your bullets will work on the Dark One?” Angelique asked.

  “Judas,” Gates said. “It would be better for morale if we called him that. And he’s a man, right?”

  “A man who’s been alive for over two thousand years?” Angelique said.

  “Yeah,” Gates said, “I can see where that could cause us a problem.”

  Angelique looked at Gates and realized he was smiling. It transformed his entire face and character, but just as quickly as it appeared, it was gone. Angelique shrugged as she grabbed a box of meals and carried it toward the boats.

  Gates watched her, and then turned to DiSalvo, who was looking at the screen of his satellite phone. “What’s the real reason we’re not using choppers?”

  “We’re concerned about being tracked by satellite,” DiSalvo said.

  “By who?”

  “There are groups out there who want to stop us,” DiSalvo said.

  “You’re just full of information,” Gates said. “What you don’t tell us could get us killed. We’re all committed to this mission. How about filling us in?”

  “You know what you need to know,” DiSalvo said.

  “I don’t think so,” Gates said, taking a step closer to the priest.

  DiSalvo faced the soldier. “I’m in charge.”

  “You have the official position of being in charge,” Gates acknowledged. “But I’ve learned there’s a difference between having the position of leader and being a leader.”

  “Did you learn that in Afghanistan?” DiSalvo asked.

  Gates’ face went hard, every muscle tight, the complete opposite of the man Angelique had just glimpsed. Without a word, he turned away and went back to sorting supplies.

  Indian Ocean Airspace

  The MC-130 Combat Talon was flying high, close to its ceiling, at thirty-two thousand feet. The Talon is a modified version of the Hercules cargo transport that the United States Air Force had first put into service in 1956. It was a testament to the airframe and concept that the craft was still the primary lifter for the service almost six decades later.

  The Talon was the special operations version of the plane, with sophisticated electronics that allowed it to fly at night and in limited visibility. Most of the time, this ability allowed the craft to fly very low and very fast to avoid detection. For tonight’s mission, though, the craft was staying as high and as far away from the drop zone as possible. The fact that the Mission transmitted intense frequencies had been briefed to the crew, and they wanted to take no chances of being attacked by the facilities uplink. Thus, the track of the craft was over fifteen miles away, to the southeast of Moheli.

  A red warning light began flashing, and the two men dressed in jungle fatigues detached their oxygen tubes from the central console and hooked them to the small tanks they had rigged on the front of their parachute harnesses. The men wore jump helmets with night vision goggles attached. The lower half of their faces were covered with a black balaclava. The red light stopped flashing and the back ramp slowly opened wide, the top retracting up into the high tail section, the bottom ramp leveling out, forming a platform.

  Cold air swirled into the craft as the two men lowered their night vision goggles and turned them on. They waddled to the back ramp and stood on either side, holding their position by grasping the hydraulic arm that secured the ramp. They looked like robots, not a single square centimeter of flesh exposed to chill air at altitude, and the NVGs and balaclavas removing any appearance of humanity from their faces. Their main parachutes were rigged on their backs, a reserve across their stomachs with nav-boards on top. Long, hard, plastic cases containing rifles were slung over each man’s right shoulder and tightly secured. Their rucksacks with special gear dangled against the back of their legs. Both men were so encumbered, they could barely walk.

  The green light flashed on and one man led the way, waddling off the ramp and into the dark night. The second immediately followed. As soon as they were stable, arms and legs akimbo to keep their bodies from tumbling, they pulled their ripcords. Square black canopies deployed above and the two men began ‘flying’ their chutes toward the drop zone they had picked, on the side of the mountain directly overlooking the Mission, as the Talon banked away and headed back toward Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

  The Arabian Sea

  “Bring us to launch depth.”

  The Captain of the USS Pittsburgh had given the same order many times. Most of the time it was for training purposes, but during the second Iraqi invasion the Pittsburgh had launched over twenty cruise missiles at Baghdad. Tonight, according to the coded orders they had received, they were going to launch several more.

  The Pittsburgh is a Los Angeles class attack submarine, the thirty-third of its kind. Costing almost a billion dollars, it carries twelve Tomahawk cruise missiles ready for firing in vertical launch tubes. The crew consists of twelve officers and one hundred and fifteen enlisted men, and while all worked as a tightly integrated team to prepare the ship to launch, not a single one of them had a clue what the target of their missiles would be, or even why they were launching.

  They were following orders. It had been that way during the Iraqi invasion. They’d received orders to launch, the codes on the orders being authenticated, and they’d gone through these same motions. The targeting data, scrambled, had come into the ship’s communications center and been forwarded directly to the missiles without human eyes on the ship ever looking at it. It was the way the system worked. It was designed to reduce the possibility of human error and to keep advance notice of any launch as secret as possible.

  The system was working.

  Within a minute, the Pittsburgh was at launch depth, cruising on a pre-determined path that was already pr
ogrammed into the guidance system of the cruise missiles so they would know their launch position within a few feet. Inside the twelve launch tubes were missiles that were twenty-and–a-half feet in length and twenty-point-four inches in diameter. Each one weighed thirty-five hundred pounds, and cost the US taxpayers slightly over one million dollars each.

  “I have a go authorization,” the communications officer announced, pulling the cup away from one of his ears.

  The captain turned to the weapons officer. “Launch sequence.”

  Missile hatches on the upper deck of the Pittsburgh slid open. The first Tomahawk propelled upward out of the water into the air by a solid rocket booster. At that point the shroud separated, the booster fell off, the small fins and wings on both sides deployed, and the air inlet duct opened. The missile tipped over from vertical to horizontal as the turbo-jet engine took over the propulsion. Even as the first was leveling off and heading toward Alaska, the second broke the surface. The sequence continued until there were a dozen missiles heading toward the forty-ninth state.

  Moheli

  The first of the jumpers touched down in the tiny clearing they’d selected using satellite imagery. The second landed less than ten feet away. They worked efficiently, having made hundreds of similar jumps, albeit under less strange situations, in the past.

  They unhooked from their rigs. Without a word, they quickly marched along the ridge until they reached where it dropped off. They crept around the ridge to a point where they could see the camouflaged control center for the Mission and the runway covered in trees.

  They shrugged off their rucksacks and weapons cases. Using the rucksacks as makeshift seats, they laid out the equipment they would use: from the two plastic cases they removed bulky sniper rifles—the same model Gates had used in Afghanistan—and bolted the barrels into the receiver groups. Both rifles had night scopes. Using their rucksacks, they made a solid rampart on which to place the rifle’s front bipod legs.

  ***************

  The lead cruise missile skirted the eastern coast of Africa at an altitude of one hundred feet and a speed of five hundred and fifty miles an hour. Electronically linked to four ground positioning satellites, the missile’s route was being checked constantly. As a back up, an onboard computer was also comparing the coastline below it to a map.

  *************

  The man on the left laid down the gun and unfolded a small satellite dish. He hooked the cord from it to the receptor that stuck out of the side of his backpack, attaching it to the satellite radio inside. He removed his balaclava, put on a small headset with boom mike, and then replaced the balaclava.

  While he did that, the other man pulled a laser designator out of his rucksack and turned it on.

  The man with the radio spoke the first words since they went on oxygen inside the Talon. “Hammer, this is Eyes. Over.”

  There was a moment of silence, then the small earpiece came alive. “Eyes, this is Hammer. Over.”

  “We are in position and ready to light up target. Over.”

  “Light it up. You have in-bound. Out.”

  The first man tapped the other on the shoulder and gave a thumbs-up. With a flick of a switch on the side of the designator, a laser beam was projected, pinpointing the location of the control building for the Mission. The other man then picked up his rifle.

  ***************

  Inside the Mission, Monsignor Firth calmly looked up as one of his scientists threw open the door and rushed inside.

  “We’re picking up SATCOM transmissions close by, Monsignor.”

  Firth nodded but didn’t say anything, surprising the scientists.

  “Sir, it sounds as though we are being targeted in some manner.”

  “I would not worry about it, my son,” Firth said.

  The scientist was confused and flustered. “But, Monsignor, our mission. The Great Commission?”

  “All is going quite well,” Firth said. “Have faith, my son, have faith.”

  The scientist turned and ran into the control room. Firth could see all the others who worked here gather around the man. There was an argument. Firth shook his head. This would separate those who had true faith from those who didn’t. It would be the first of many such occurrences around the world.

  ***************

  The lead missile reached the African coast at the border between Tanzania and Mozambique, and the guidance system made a third targeting check with the laser beam locked onto the command center. Triple redundancy. There were to be no mistakes on this mission.

  It turned left, heading over the ocean. It gained more altitude now, as programmed.

  Within a few minutes, it went feet dry over the shore of Moheli.

  ***************

  Inside the command center, Firth was standing at the window looking out over the Mission. He spread his arms wide. Out of the corner of his eye he could see two Range Rovers driving away on the gravel road. The faithless. From the control room he could hear the chanted prayers of those who truly believed.

  Firth bowed his head. “Thank you for allowing me to serve, my Lord.”

  ***************

  The cruise missile was at an altitude of slightly more than one thousand feet AGL— above ground level—when it tipped over and headed straight down. It hit directly in the center of the roof of the command center, punched through and was passing through the second story, when the thousand-pound conventional warhead in the nose cone exploded.

  The man with the designator shifted to the bunker holding a Blackjack bomber.

  The second through eleventh missiles were programmed to arrive in thirty second intervals. The warheads in the nose cones were bunker busters, designed to blast through reinforced concrete. In rapid sequence, the bunkers, with the planes inside, were destroyed.

  The twelfth cruise missile was targeted for the command center, which was little more than a smoking hole. Redundancy again. Always hit something twice, just in case the first one missed.

  The twelfth missile struck, making a larger crater.

  *************

  On the hillside the man turned off the infrared designator and picked up his rifle. Then both men turned their attention to the two Range Rovers spitting gravel from beneath their wheels, racing away.

  “I’ve got lead,” the first jumper called.

  The second man acknowledged by edging the muzzle of the .50 caliber Barrett toward the second four wheel drive vehicle. He centered the reticules on the engine block and pulled the trigger. The rounds the men were using were specially designed with depleted uranium cores. The bullet passed through the sheet metal on the side of the SUV as if it wasn’t there, ripped into the engine block, and continued out the other side.

  The first man fired immediately after the second. His round had the same effect on the lead Range Rover. Both vehicles rolled to a halt, their engines dead. Men piled out of both vehicles, confused as to what had happened.

  The confusion ended as both snipers began firing.

  The last of the men who tried to escape made it as far as a hundred meters away from the trucks, desperately running, when the bullet hit him in the back, ripping his heart to shreds and sending the body tumbling.

  The snipers spent several minutes scanning not only the area where the trucks had ground to a halt, but the entire airstrip and the smoking hole that had been the command center, using thermal technology to search for any signs of life. Satisfied there were none, they broke down the weapons and placed them back into the plastic cases.

  The first one keyed the satellite radio. “Hammer, this is Eyes. Mission accomplished. Request exfiltration. Out.”

  The Xingu River, Amazon.

  Kopec powered up the satellite radio, using a small lantern to provide light. The others were asleep, having prepared for the departure until just a couple of hours ago. The metal case was handcuffed to his wrist, as it had been ever since leaving Atlanta, and he used it as a platform for the satellite radio. Ge
tting a strong signal, he sent the confirmation code word to Atlanta indicating the team was on the ground and ready to go. Satisfied he had done his official job, he looked about furtively, then pulled a small burst transmitter out of his pocket. A message had already been data encoded in it. He transmitted the information in less than half a second. He turned off the radio and slipped away, back to his tent.

  Twenty feet away, invisible in the darkness, Gates sat cross-legged, his MP-5 across his knees. His eyes had tracked everything Kopec did, but otherwise he did nothing. Waiting a few a minutes, he allowed his chin to drop to his chest and fell into a very light sleep, a combat sleep, one he was very accustomed to.

  Airspace, Indian Ocean

  The Tu-160 Blackjack that had projected the downward burst went ‘feet wet’ over the Indian Ocean just as the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile exploded in front of the wings. The crew died as the plane disintegrated, showering wreckage over dozens of miles of ocean.

  The F-22 Raptor that had fired the missile was already tracking the second Blackjack. The crew of that bomber had less than 10 seconds to note the disappearance of the other plane before another AIM-120 locked on to it. The electronics officer had been well trained in the Russian Air Force and kept up to speed on his training once hired by The Brotherhood. He immediately activated the bomber’s jammer.