Silent Running. Don Pendleton

CRUISE SHIP was met at the Cancun moorage by Diego Garcia, a small fleet of buses and a couple dozen of his Matador gunmen. Nguyen Cao Nguyen, the first man down the gangplank, was met on the dock by the Cuban.

      “Here they are, Comrade,” the Vietnamese said, “packaged and delivered as you requested. Almost seven hundred and fifty of the international community’s top medical men, their women and their children. And, as we expected, most of them are Yankees.”

      “Any casualties?” Garcia asked.

      “None.” Nguyen shook his head, referring to his own Matador team. The deaths among the ship’s crew simply didn’t count, and the passengers who had tried to resist were too few to mention, either. Since the bodies had been dumped over the side, he hadn’t been able to reconcile the passenger manifest with the head count, though. But again, a few hostages more or less wouldn’t really matter.

      “Do you have the people I asked for selected?”

      Nguyen nodded. “Of course, Comrade,” he replied. A last-minute change to the master plan was to mix the political and medical hostages. He didn’t understand the reasoning behind the decision, but it didn’t really matter.

      “Very good,” Garcia said. “Bring them out now and tell your people to keep the ship ready to sail on a moment’s notice.”

      This was another change to the carefully formulated plan he had helped put together, but again he had to go along with it. “Where?”

      “Anywhere we might have to go,” the Cuban said. “So have the fuel bunkers topped off immediately.”

      Nguyen took out a portable radio and spoke into it. “They’re coming up on deck.”

      “As soon as they’re transferred to the hotel,” Garcia said, “I’ll send some of the government hostages over to you. They’ll be easier to guard here.”

      “I’m ready for them, Comrade.”

      Under the guns of the Matador guards, the selected passengers started to file down the gangplank and onto the waiting buses. The men were grim-faced, the women visibly frightened. These weren’t people who were experienced with anything like this and their imaginations were obviously running away with them. There weren’t that many children, but they had picked up on their parents’ concern and looked dazed.

      Garcia secretly smiled as the passengers were led away. Even though these doctors were educated, privileged men and women, like the rest of the Yankees, they were soft and would be no problem for him to hold captive for as long as he wanted.

      THE TWO-SEAT, sea-gray camouflaged, Marine TAV-8B Harrier jet sat alone in a remote hangar at the U.S. Navy airbase at Corpus Christi, Texas. A squad of armed Marines secured the hangar from unauthorized visitors while the Navy ground crew gave the jump jet a final check-over. A figure in a flight suit broke away from the plane and walked to the locker room at the end of the hangar.

      Marine Captain Fred “Mojo” Jenkins was the poster-perfect picture of a hot-rock Marine attack squadron aviator. Of medium height and in his early thirties, with a cocky, nonchalant bearing, he sported the typical buzz cut. He wore a half smile and looked at the world through steely eyes. His flight suit was covered with Tiger patches. Even so, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect from his passenger on this classified flight. He’d never been involved with moving spooks before and had no idea what he’d gotten himself into. He’d made sure, though, to have his crew chief put an ample supply of burp kits in the rear cockpit.

      There was no doubt in his military mind, though, that he had to handle this guy, whoever he was, with kid gloves. The Commandant of the Corps himself had told him in no uncertain terms that the orders regarding this man had come down from the very top. That thought was foremost on his mind as he walked up to the man who, wearing an unmarked flight suit, was sitting alone in the locker room.

      “I’m Captain Fred Jenkins, Sir.” The pilot extended his hand. “Call sign Mojo.”

      “Glad to meet you, Captain.” Mack Bolan stood and shook hands. “I’m Jeff Cooper.”

      Jenkins had seen enough spy thrillers to know there was no chance that was the man’s real name. But this guy looked as though he could call himself the king of Egypt if he wanted and make it work for him. He was a big man, but not overpowering about it the way a SEAL or Recon Marine would have been. He wore his size well and projected a sense of total competence. There was nothing overtly threatening about him, but his blue eyes told you not to even think about fucking with him. All told, he looked as if he was the right guy to have at your side in a bar fight.

      The pilot turned to the gunnery sergeant who’d overseen his passenger’s suiting up. “Is Mr. Cooper briefed and ready to fly, Gunny?”

      “Yes, Sir,” the sergeant replied. “And I think he’s done this once or twice before.”

      “Very good.” Jenkins was curious, but knew better than to even think about asking questions. “If you’re ready, Sir, we should launch. It’ll be dark by the time we’re over the target.”

      Bolan hoisted his black bag. “I need this stowed in your cargo pod.”

      “My crew chief can do that for you.”

      “Let’s go.”

      JENKINS’S PASSENGER didn’t display any of the telltale signs of being a Cherry flyer and there was no doubt that he’d flown in military jets before. When the F-14s of the CAP that had been ordered to cover his flight in showed up six feet off the Harrier’s wingtips, Cooper hadn’t even flinched. Even the link-up with the tanker for a quick, couple hundred gallon fill-up hadn’t bothered him, and that was more than the pilot could say.

      After the JP-4 top-off, Jenkins dropped down to wave-top level for the high-speed sprint to the coastline of the Yucatán Peninsula. The Harrier jump jet wasn’t supersonic, but it didn’t matter at that altitude. Once he crossed over the beach, the pilot flashed his “feet dry” code to the E-2C Hawkeye AWACS monitoring his mission and went on the terrain-following radar to continue keeping it low but out of the trees and native architecture. With his GPS nav system locked onto the LZ, he had no trouble locating the small clearing in the jungle a few minutes later.

      Even so, rather than take a satellite photo’s word on its suitability for a vertical landing, Jenkins clicked in the intercom to his back-seat passenger. “I’ve got the LZ in sight, Sir, but I’d like to make a flyover to check it out before I put us down.”

      “No problem.”

      When the pilot spotted no obstacles to landing, he cranked the Harrier around, viffed his nozzles down, went into a hover and sat his plane in the clearing.

      “Thanks for the ride,” Bolan said over the intercom as he unbuckled his seat harness and raised the canopy.

      “Good luck, Sir.”

      Leaving his flight helmet and aviator survival vest behind, Bolan climbed down and shot Jenkins a thumbs-up. As per his preflight briefing, the pilot triggered the release to the cargo pod shackled under his right wing. Bolan’s black bag fell to the ground and he quickly rolled it out of the way before shooting the pilot a second thumbs-up.

      After answering with a crisp salute, Jenkins throttled up, hit his viffer control and the Harrier rose into the air. Balancing his lift, he fed in a little thrust and started forward. As soon as his air speed built to the point where the wings were generating enough aerodynamic lift to fly, he swiveled his nozzles all the way back and left town at top speed. Fortunately he didn’t have far to go to reach international waters again and the protection of the F-14 CAP over the Western Caribbean.

      He had no idea where his passenger was heading, but he wished him the best of luck.

      BOLAN WAITED UNTIL THE SOUND of the Harrier echoed away in the surrounding jungle before breaking out his gear. Along with his usual personal weapons and equipment, he was packing heavily this time. With this being an open-ended mission, he had rations for three days, a