Tara Janzen - On the Loose

On the Loose

On the Loose

Tara Janzen

PROLOGUE

Peru, 115 kilometers NE of Cuzco

C. Smith Rydell refocused his spotting scope on the three men exiting a canvas-walled hut nearly hidden in the trees below.

He recognized two of the men coming out of the hut, had worked with them a few months ago on another U.S./Peruvian joint

reconnaissance mission, and no way should either one of the agents be at this remote airstrip hanging off an Andean

On the Loose

mountainside so steep it defined the word dizzying.

Halfway to heaven and headed straight to hell, he thought.

Mendez, he said, keeping his voice low. Coming out of the hut. Wearing a black shirt.

A dozen other men, all heavily armed, were working in the encampment, stacking cargo and doing maintenance on the eight

hundred-meter stretch of dirt that had been hacked out of the forest.

Old Julio Mendez? his partner asked, swinging the lens of his digital camera away from the men on the runway toward the

canvas-walled hut. A Peruvian counterdrug agent, Rufio Cienfuegos, was stretched out flat on his stomach next to Smith in

the OPobservation positiontheyd been manning since daybreak. A thick blanket of clouds hung in the air below their

hiding place, obscuring the deep green valleys of the Rio Vilcanota and giving the landscape a surreal otherworldliness. Sky

above them, glaciers off to the south, rugged mountains jutting out of a sea of whiteSmith felt suspended in air, just him

and Rufio and a full crew of narcotraficantes.

Old Julio, he confirmed. And Carlos Moreno, tan shirt, black pants.

Moreno, too? Rufio said with disgust, adjusting the focus on the camera. Yeah, thats Carlos, all right.

Too many things had been going wrong with the DEAs counterdrug operations in Peru over the last yearmissions gone bad,

information leaked, two agents killedwith the problems all pointing to a traitor somewhere inside Joint Ops Central in Lima.

Didnt Mendez put in for vacation this week? Smith asked.

Yeah, Rufio said. He was going to visit his sister in Miami, but this aint no fucking Miami.

It sure as hell wasnt.

After the last agent had been killed, Smiths former masters at the DEA had requested him to volunteer through his new

unit for a joint saturation airfield reconnaissance mission. Their intelligence had obtained credible information that numerous

undetected flights were being made between Cali, Colombia, and a series of remote Peruvian airstrips hidden in the

mountains around Cuzco. The cocaine cartel based in Cali had the lock on drug traffic in the Cuzco region. The two dead

agents had both been assigned to the Field Command Post in Cuzco.

There were no coincidences. It was all connected. Someone in Lima had been giving away everything the Cuzco post had been

coming up with to fight the increase in drug-related crime flooding the city, and people were getting killed because of it.

Find the damn traitor, find the damn airstrips, and find the damn pilot who was making the border-hugging, below-radar

flights without slamming nose first into an Andean mountainthose were Smiths orders, straight from General Buck Grant,

his boss at SDF, Special Defense Force, a group of black-ops warriors based in Denver and deployed out of a hell and gone

annex of the Department of Defense in Washington, D.C.

Pendejos, Rufio swore softly, tracking the men through his camera, taking picture after picture. Theyre going down.

Yeah, they were assholes, all right, and they were definitely going down.

Smiths bonus task on this operation, as requested by the Agency analysts, was to find the damn plane and take pictures.

The analysts were concerned that the type of aircraft performing the theorized flight profiles could not be identified in

terms of aviation industry standard production. Aircraft with the necessary service ceiling and range did not have the agility

required to negotiate the rough terrain at such low altitude. Furthermore, the analysts computer simulations indicated that

even if an airplane with all the required attributes existed, the success probability of such flights was on the order of sixty

percent. The rest of the time, according to the simulations, an aircraft attempting such profiles would either be forced up to

a radar-detectable altitude, or it would crash. No one could fly that low and stay off the rocks, not consistently, not in the

Andes. The odds of two or more pilots with such an unusually high skill level being in the same place at the same time were

even slimmer.

No, the Agency analysts had concluded. It was one person, one pilotbut who?

It was Smiths job to find out, and as soon as he nailed the bastards ass to the wall and had him behind bars, hed be happy

On the Loose

to tell him how impressed the Agency analysts were with his flying. Until then, he was looking for one helluva plane, one

helluva pilot, God knew how many airstrips, and at least one son of a bitchor he had been. Today had gotten off to a good

start, with him and Rufio up by one airstrip and two sonuvabitches.

The distant drone of a multi-engine airplane coming into earshot brought a grin to his face and drew his gaze upward, away

from the scope.

Perfect.

Make that one airstrip, two sonuvabitches, the freakazoid plane no one could tag, and whoever in the hell was flying it, he

thought.

A very good day, indeed.

Bango, Rufio said.

Smiths grin widened. Bingo, he corrected, scanning the bank of clouds stretching from peak to peak across the valley.

Wisps of the white ether rolled along the edge of the airstrip and drifted into the trees, adding a complication factor of

about a hundred to any move the pilot might make. This was going to be either one hell of a landing, or it was going to be one

hell of an explosion if the bastard finally missed. Either eventuality worked for Smith.

Unless the damn plane came down on top of him and Rufio.

His grin faded. Yeah. That could happen. It could happen in a heartbeat. When the wind kicked up, he could hardly see the

airstrip, and he was practically on top of the damn thing.

Fuck.

He scanned the clouds again and hoped the mystery pilot was on top of his game this morningway on top.

And where in the hell was he? The planes engine note reverberated in the narrow valley, growing louder, but Smith couldnt

pinpoint a direction of approach. Under the current conditions, if hed been the pilot, hed be following the valley upward,

beneath the clouds, and would try for a straight-in landing.

But he was no hotshot Cali cartel pilot getting paid in gold, land, and more money than he could count.

The sound of the engines suddenly broke free in the morning air, and Smith caught a blur of motion off his left shoulder.

Geezus. He ducked, for all the good that would do him if the pilot miscalculated anythinganything at all. But okay. Fine. The

guy had made his point. This cartel flyboy was doing things the hard way this morning, popping straight up over the jagged

peaks at Smiths back and dropping down out of the sky, right on top of the hidden airstripand on top of Smith and Rufios

OPand doing an amazing job of it.

The sleek twin-engine Piper Seneca came in steep, then leveled off and streaked along the opposite edge of the strip,

hugging the base of the slope through the clouds. The planes camouflage paint caught Smiths attention for a second, but

then blended into the mist as the pilot banked hard right, standing the plane on its wingtip and losing altitude. Smith could