Primary Valor, Jack Mars [black female authors .txt] 📗

and equipment,” Maxsaid. “I’ll need an airport without much scrutiny, preferably one not that farfrom here. And I’ll need a detention facility.”

The man with the DWI shirt lookedat him earnestly, eagerly. “This is Dark Waters,” he said with pride. “I canget you all that stuff. We have all the men you need, highly trained combatvets, no nonsense, at a moment’s notice. We have our own airport. We havearmored vehicles, including a prisoner transport vehicle. We have a detentionfacility in Dania, unmarked, very secure, state of the art.”

The man was making a sales pitch,as if any of that was necessary.

Max nodded. He had long ago givenup wondering why private companies had all these things. The world had changed,and was continuing to do so. You could either change with it, or let it run youover.

But the man wasn’t done with hispitch. “We already have existing blanket non-disclosure agreements withagencies represented in this room. We are, quite literally, the most capableand the most discreet security organization in South Florida, and we areavailable.”

“Good,” Max said. “You’re hired. Justmake sure everybody does what I tell them.” He looked at the retired general. Inthe past few minutes, it had become clear that the general was the one incharge here. That hadn’t been clear before, at least not to Max.

“What if they fight?”

The general shook his head. “Bringoverwhelming force. They won’t fight.”

“What if they do?”

The general waved his hand, as ifdismissing the entire idea.

“Just get rid of them.”

CHAPTER FORTY TWO

4:35 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

Big Cypress International Airport (Abandoned)

Florida Everglades

 

 

“Should be just a few minutes now,”the driver said.

Max took a drag on his cigar andnodded. The smoke wafted slowly into the air. He was tired. Four cups of coffeehadn’t really put a dent in it. In the old days, he would have taken somethinga little stronger.

“Good,” he said.

He gazed out at the darkness ofthe steamy deep Southern night. It must be close to a hundred percent humidity.This was not a quiet spot, not by a long shot. Somewhere nearby, there must beabout a billion tiny frogs, peeping and cheeping.

An entire motorcade was parkedhere, in a line. There were fifteen vehicles, mostly armored SUVs, but also acouple of Jeeps, and one armored truck. All were black, with no markings of anykind. The guy from Dark Waters had put this all together very quickly, as if he’dhad the whole thing on standby. Then he handed the team over to Max, noquestions asked.

 The guy was hungry. Max likedthat.

The armored truck was a sort ofpaddy wagon, once used by the U.S. Marshals Service to transport prisoners. Apparently,it had been purchased by Dark Waters at auction, re-armored and retrofittedwith the latest radar, GPS, and cloaking technology. It was still used to holdprisoners, but not your typical bank robbers or other felons.

The vehicles sat in the weedsalong the edge of a gigantic, pitted and broken concrete runway at an oldairport deep in the heart of the Everglades. The runway was two miles long. Theentire airport was this runway and an empty control tower that squatted in thedarkness about half a mile away. The runway and control tower were all that hadever existed.

They were going to have the oldsupersonic Concorde SST fly in here once upon a time. The plane was too loud tofly in and out of Miami, with the sonic boom from breaking the sound barrier,so they built this place out here in the swamp. Then the Concorde had a coupleof high-profile disasters, and they decided to scrap the whole thing. So nowthis place just sat here. And Dark Waters had bought it, too.

Dark Waters International owned anairport.

It was a perfect place for aninterdiction. It was a perfect place to take personnel into custody. It was aperfect place for a disappearance. If it came to that, it wasn’t even a badplace for a shootout. The company owned hundreds of acres around here, and itwas all closed to outsiders.

Max smiled.

If the police came here fromMiami, or anywhere to the east, they’d have to find someone to remove theconcrete barriers on the roadway and open the gate for them. This time ofnight? Good luck.

It was very unlikely the cops knewabout the back entrance, across gravel roads, coming from the west. And it wasvery unlikely they’d come from that direction. Not much but vast wetlands,alligators, and Burmese pythons out that way.

Max sat up front in the shotgunseat of the lead vehicle, a Jeep. The driver was a crew-cut, stone-faced stormtrooper type. Max liked no-nonsense types like this. The guy was certainlyex-military. He had probably seen combat. If Dark Waters had hired him, he’dprobably been up to his neck in it at one time or another. Whatever happenedout here, he probably wouldn’t lose much sleep over it.

The driver had a laptop wedgedbetween him and the steering wheel. The laptop itself was steel-plated,armored, and sealed inside of hard, pressurized, watertight plastic. You coulddrop that laptop to the bottom of a swimming pool. You could run it over withyour car. You could throw it against a wall.

Max approved of the laptop. Heliked things that were hard to break.

In the glow of the computer, thedriver was watching a blinking light against a dark background. The blinkinglight had just moved inside a concentric circle at the center of the screen.

“It’s coming in,” he said.

“We sure that’s the one?”

The driver nodded. “Its identifieris Apex Digital Management. That’s it. That’s our target.”

Max picked up the communicationsradio handset from the dashboard and depressed the TALK button. The vehicles wereon their own, closed and encrypted network channel. The radio would talk toevery man on this mission, coming straight out of the stereo speakers.

“Listen up,” he said. “This isMax. As you know, I am your commanding officer tonight. The plane is coming. Missionis green light. Here’s your refresher course for slow learners. As soon as theplane is down and stopped, B team takes up positions blocking its furtherforward movement, with all guns trained on the cockpit. C team takes uppositions blocking rearward movement, guns trained on tires, wings, and rear ofthe fuselage. Wait for my signal,