Final Bearing Read online

  Final Bearing

  Wallace and Keith

  Copyright © 2003 by George Wallace and Don Keith.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Published by Severn River Publishing.

  Contents

  Also by Wallace and Keith

  Figure 1

  Figure 2

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Epilogue

  Thanks for Reading

  About the Authors

  Next in Series

  Dangerous Grounds: Prologue

  Dangerous Grounds: Chapter 1

  Also by Wallace and Keith

  Dedicated to my father, Edgar Allen Wallace

  6 August 1923 - 15 September 2002

  George Wallace

  And

  Dedicated to my wife, Charlene, who still pretends

  that she doesn’t mind my maddening compulsion

  to make up stories for other people to read.

  Don Keith

  Also by Wallace and Keith

  Dangerous Grounds

  Hunter Killer

  By George Wallace

  Operation Golden Dawn

  By Don Keith

  In the Course of Duty

  Final Patrol

  War Beneath the Waves

  Undersea Warrior

  The Ship that Wouldn't Die

  Figure 1:

  Interior layout USS Spadefish SSN 668

  Figure 2:

  Beaman's trek through Colombia

  Prologue

  Sandy Holmes’ nose was practically touching the VW’s fogged up windshield. She furiously wiped at the glass with the back of her hand and squinted into the wet darkness, struggling to make out the street signs as they slipped by. The address she was looking for should be right around the next corner if she had her directions right.

  Damn the Seattle traffic! Why was every-damn-body out on this Friday night? And why wouldn’t the jerk with the blinding, bright headlights behind her just go on around?

  Okay, so the Lake Washington area was unfamiliar territory. But she owed it to herself to finally break some barriers, to explore some new ground, and tonight was the night. The computer-programming job over in Bellevue was all right, she supposed. But since the day she had been assigned her cubical and issued her desktop box and her own copy of the company employee manual, work had soaked up every drop of what little life she had. Fun was a trip to an all-night grocery for salad-in-a-bag and a pint of pistachio ice cream.

  A date? Forget about it!

  The rain dwindled now to little more than an aggravating mist. Seattle sunshine. Sandy snorted in spite of herself. What did the Seattle Chamber of Commerce say? “About the same annual rainfall per year here as they had in Washington, D.C.?” Yes, but D.C. got theirs in occasional gulps. Seattle’s precipitation was insistent, constant, and seemingly never-ending. A fitting metaphor, she often thought, for her job.

  The roadway, stretching out in front of her, glistened black beneath the streetlights. Sandy tried not to envy the happy couples that walked hand in hand up and down the sidewalk, oblivious to the weather. They were likely heading for the cozy little restaurants that lined the street and backed up to Lake Washington. Lights and fancy neon flickered invitingly in their windows. She could smell grilled fish and alder wood smoke through the Bug’s cracked open window. Those were happy aromas, associated with dates and friends and a life. She rolled the window up.

  Sandy was glad that Linda Farragut convinced her to give up an evening, to slip off work early for a change and enjoy herself. Linda was the only one at CedarTech who seemed to be any fun at all. She told her about this party so it had to be worth the drive. And not a second too soon. Sandy’s social life was for shit. It had been that way ever since she graduated head of her class from Iowa City Community College. “Number one nerd!” the yearbook had dubbed her beneath a horrid photo from back when she wore black-rimmed glasses and her hair in a tight, prim bun. So be it. The associate degree in computer science was supposed to be her ticket to success in high-techdom. So far, though, it had been nothing but a drag.

  “Stock options! Stock options!” the screen saver on the computer monitor in her cubicle shrieked at her all day, a constant reminder of why she did what she did.

  Now it was finally time for this nerd to let her hair down. The hormones had been hemmed up for too long. Nobody knew her here. Linda had even begged off at the last minute. Sandy would be as anonymous as she had ever been in her life.

  There it was! Lake Street. She made the turn abruptly with no signal and the guy with the bright headlights angrily blew his horn at her. At least his high beams were gone from her mirror and she could see much more clearly as she searched for the house.

  Now, what was it? Two blocks up, large brick on the left.

  OK, that's it. Cars in the drive and parked up and down both sides of the street. There was obviously a party there. Good to have a VW. Slide it right in there in that half-a-parking-space, behind the Lexus. She felt her heart beat a notch faster. Time to party.

  Maybe there would be a nice guy there that Mom would like. Better still, maybe one she would absolutely hate.

  She slammed the car door behind her. Sandy noticed for the first time in a while how fragrant the air was. One good thing about all the rain, the way the air always smelled clean and electric here. In the dark she could see that the aspen leaves had gone golden while she wasn’t looking and the maple leaves burning scarlet just behind them seemed to color the gray night. She was convinced she could even smell the sea, feel the fresh salt air, even though it was many miles to the west.

  Sandy Holmes felt as alive as she had in months as she boldly strode up the walkway to the neat Victorian house. She punched the doorbell. Someone cracked it open it a couple of inches, as far as the chain would allow. She could see only one eye and a deeply black face, topped with wildly spiked blonde hair. There was a dog collar around the man’s neck.

  "Yes?" he hissed.

  “I…ummm…am Sandy, Linda's friend," she answered. He looked like plenty of other twenty-somethings she saw around Seattle. This one scared her, though.

  “Linda?”

  “Linda Farragut.”

  He eyed her up and down through the crack in the door. She checked the house number again without backing off the little porch to make sure this was the right place.

  "Yeah, I know Linda. But I don’t know you."

  There was someone else behind him, someone with an easy, friendly voice, soft but still audible over the sound of a party that
drifted out from somewhere toward the back of the house.

  "Wait a minute, Jason. Where are your manners? Let the little lady in. She says she's Linda's friend. That's good enough for me."

  Jason obeyed immediately, unchaining the door and opening it wide, beckoning her in with a regal sweep of his hand and a demented grin that showed chapped lips and bad teeth.

  The disembodied voice behind him turned out to be a young, dark man with big, sad, brown eyes. He had a welcoming demeanor, a handsome smoothness that instantly had her weak-kneed. He took Sandy’s hand, nodded slightly, and welcomed her to his party.

  “I’m glad you could make it, ‘Sandy-Linda’s-friend.’ Please, make yourself at home. I’m Carlos…Carlos Ramirez…and I’m delighted to meet you. Come on back and let me show you off to the other guests.”

  There was something almost hypnotic about the man. He made her feel as if he was, indeed, profoundly happy that she had come. He held her hand in his, his arm around her shoulders as he gently guided her through the expensively but tastefully decorated home.

  They reached the source of all the noise. There were at least a hundred other people milling about the big room at the rear of the house, but Carlos seemed to be playing host only to her now. For that moment, the pretty blonde computer programmer from Iowa City was the most important guest at Carlos Ramirez’ party.

  He led her down the steps into the big open room. The other guests fell silent and looked his way.

  “Everyone, welcome Sandy!”

  They all raised their cocktails to her in a friendly enough gesture. After a polite pause, they resumed their chatter. Sandy couldn’t believe the crowd. It was as if someone had called Central Casting and asked them to send over a hundred “beautiful people” to populate the most glamorous party Sandy Holmes had ever seen.

  A drink appeared in her hand from nowhere. She put it to her lips and took a sip. It tasted sweet, strangely cool on her tongue, but warm and spicy as it went down. Carlos ushered her into the midst of the guests and soon she was talking to someone tall and dark-haired and wearing a suit that cost as much as her VW Bug.

  Thank you, Linda, she thought. Thank you for delivering me right into heaven!

  She soon lost track of Carlos Ramirez. He was standing on the party’s fringes, occasionally acknowledging one of his guests, but mostly watching this new arrival with a small smile playing at his lips.

  His dark eyes were no longer sad. They had gone stone cold evil.

  Beautiful white trash, he thought. Look how shyly she flirts. How innocent she tries to look. Soon she’ll be snorting with the rest of them. And taking back word of the delights available here to the others, just as her friend has done for her.

  I may have her before she is too wasted to appreciate it. Maybe not. Maybe I’ll allow Jason to enjoy her first. These blondes are especially good, his favorites, and he deserves the perks of the job.

  Carlos watched her as she laughed. He watched as her self-consciousness left her as she sipped the last few drops of her second drink. She was deeply involved in conversation, cozying up to one of those prancing, WASP, captain-of-industry types that he so despised. Despised even after they inevitably became his best customers. He observed the way the slight, pink flush was spreading its way up her throat now, coloring in her cheeks, adding starlight to her eyes as the alcohol did its work on her.

  That was nothing. He would soon have another refreshment to serve her and the rest of his guests. And it truly was magical.

  The plan is going precisely as Juan de Santiago promised it would, he thought.

  “Give them a taste of the new powder,” de Santiago had urged. “Once they have tasted, they are yours from now on. Yours and ours, Carlos.”

  And if the new powder worked as predicted, it would be gold.

  A snort or two and hooked for life! How was such a thing possible?

  Carlos didn’t care about the specifics. The scope of what de Santiago and the others were doing was much too big for him to comprehend. He only knew how it affected him. Basic supply and demand. This new product would take care of the demand and de Santiago swore he and the others would soon have the supply problem solved.

  It’s finally my time, Carlos thought.

  After the struggles of the last few years, the small-time marijuana business, the miniscule-margin cocaine distribution, he was ready to reap the bounty this new, powerful powder of de Santiago’s promised.

  The noise level in the room confirmed that his party guests were ready, too. Carlos stepped through the double doors and signaled to Jason.

  It was time to bring in the new refreshment.

  1

  Juan de Santiago was a man who insisted that his world rotate smoothly on a well-oiled axis, that his organization operate as a properly maintained machine. He knew how the tiniest overlooked detail could derail an operation. The smallest unobserved defect in a propeller could crack a bearing and seize up a perfectly good engine. A minor flaw in an otherwise perfect plan could doom the efforts of hundreds.

  And Juan de Santiago was not a man who would tolerate imperfection.

  Now, on this beautiful morning here in his beloved mountains, he could only watch helplessly as the awful result of some unknown minor flaw in an otherwise faultless plan played out below him.

  “Bastard Americans!” he spat, his hot, angry words barely audible over the strident buzzing of the giant black insects that danced above the mountain field below him. “And that son of a dog, El Presidente Guitteriz!”

  The smaller man standing beside him took a short, strategic step backward. He wanted to be out of his leader’s reach. He could feel the heat of the man’s fury. He knew only too well how that rage could sometimes manifest itself.

  Roaring flames raced through Juan de Santiago's best coca fields. The crop, mere weeks from harvest, was now little more than a fog of thick, black smoke, being shoved up the mountain slopes and into the jungle by a gentle tropical breeze. That breeze would usually bring him the fragrance of the wild orchids that grew among the trees below the field.

  Not today. There was the foul odor of the imperialists’ destruction.

  The fragrance was one reason de Santiago loved to make the long, treacherous hike through the mountains over the ancient Inca trail from his base camp. This was his boyhood home. It rejuvenated him to come here.

  He would often trek to this high clearing just before the harvest. He could see for himself the bounty God had sent him to help him free his people. He could watch some of those people as they worked below. He would go down and join the peons, walk among them, honor them with his presence, embrace each of them, thank them for their sacrifice and loyalty.

  He now watched as a half dozen Black Hawk helicopters reloaded the Colombian troops and their American advisors. Their morning's work was completed. There was no mistaking where the choppers came from. The U. S. flag unashamedly marked each of them. Four Apache ‘copters still buzzed overhead. Guarding the men below, they scouted about in the surrounding jungle for any rebel troops that still lurked there.

  Most of de Santiago’s men had fled at the first thumping of the approaching helicopters. They had taken to the thick underbrush. Their loyalty to the Marxist cause and to their leader had given way to self-preservation. Their leader angrily kicked at the dirt. His perfectly polished boots now covered with dust, he spouted a continuous litany of deep-throated oaths. His swarthy face grew even darker with rage as a tic contorted his right cheek and eye.

  That was not merely a cash crop going up in smoke down there. The fields represented the financing he needed to continue the revolution. It was a war that he was convinced would eventually return this beautiful land to him, to his people.

  The Americans and their “war on drugs” had taken on a ferocious new intensity in the last year. It seemed El Presidente had unlimited resources. With the help of the yanqui military and their fancy machines, the president seemed to have the strength to break both of de San
tiago’s backbones, his revolution and the coca fields that financed it.

  He had received the reports from Cartagena. He had heard the breathless reports from the mouths of those who had seen it for themselves. The Americans filled every wharf with their heavily laden ships, unloading more troops, more weapons and more supplies every day. In only a few months, their advisors had transformed El Presidente's ragtag troops into an effective fighting force, putting the rebels on the run as they torched the coca fields. Even more disheartening was the word of the surveillance satellites overhead that were now trained on de Santiago’s precious jungle mountains, never blinking, never missing anything.

  De Santiago would build a processing factory. Build it even in the most remote jungle clearing, and the government troops would be there before the first shipment of silvery powder was prepared. Government troops and their American advisors met many truckloads of ammunition as if they had been sent an invitation. Or if the rebels sowed a field in some remote mountain valley and carefully nurtured it, they would soon see the fine coca devoured by flames when it was so tantalizingly close to harvest.

  His people in Bogota whispered of some new organization he had never heard of. Something called the Joint Drug Interdiction Agency, a seamless coalition of the imperialists who had finally come together to fight those who would use the coca to win the righteous war of the people. Beyond the name, little was known about this alliance. If it weren't so obvious that the Americans and their allies were doing something radically different, de Santiago would have dismissed this JDIA as simply a myth. If one could not see it, feel it, smell it, it likely did not exist.