Retribution Road Jon Coon (best android ereader TXT) 📖

were the only predators on the prowl, he motioned them forward, carefully picking the placement of every step. They were about twenty meters out from a large hangar made of tenting and camo-mesh when Ray found the first tripwire.

Ray’s closed fist in the air stopped them all in their tracks, and with the night vision monocles, they could see they were about to enter a spider web of nearly invisible stainless wire.

Ray motioned them back, and when they were in a secure space he said, “If they’ve got the whole place wired, they might not need guards. And if they’ve got booby traps, they may have mines on the beach.”

“So what now?” Gabe asked.

Ray was looking up into the canopy above them. Kapok trees, at least 200-feet tall, hung with vines as thick as anchor lines on a good-sized yacht, made it the densest jungle he’d ever seen. It was so tight the sky was barely visible. Ray pointed up. “If I can get up there and drop in through the roof—”

“You want to play Tarzan?” Kurczewski asked. “So you get in and get down, but then how do you get out?”

“Once I get the trackers placed, I could hide in or under one of the subs. Then if you guys could remotely set off a couple of the tripwires, it would look like their defenses worked and whoever it was that made a run at them failed. Maybe it was just an animal that wandered in and tripped the wires. Once the dust settles, it should be safe for me to walk out, and we’re home free.”

“Assuming they don’t find the trackers,” Gabe observed.

“Yeah, there is that. I’m open to better ideas.”

Three heads shook in the wrong direction, and it was decided. Ray began stripping out of his gear. From his pack he took a coil of line and then put the trackers in the pack. “Give me a couple utility belts and your knives.” He sat on the ground and tied the knives to the inside of his boots to make climbing spikes, then hooked the utility belts together, making a lineman’s climbing strap.

He picked a tree and went up it like it was second nature. A hundred feet up, he rested on a branch, found a vine, and swung sixty feet to another vine. The men on the ground watched in amazement as Ray performed high-flying acrobatics until he was over the tent.

Ray found a tree that was close, climbed down, and crawled in under the fabric. Five subs, each thirty meters long, sat on skid frames on flatbed railroad cars. Stacked between them were sections of track on heavy timber frames. A bulldozer capable of moving them sat covered at the far end.

Ray dropped to the sand and removed the knives on his boots. He dropped the pack, removed the trackers, stowed the knives, large and small lines, leaving nothing behind.

The trackers were designed to look like marine zincs, for cathodic protection, identical to the ones on the sub from the Galveston attack. He was relieved to see the same ones on these propeller shafts.

It took longer to make the exchanges than he had anticipated, and as he was finishing the last, the sky over the Gulf was turning pink, and he knew it was time to go. He moved back to the spot he’d used to enter and was rolling out beneath the tent wall when he heard the truck.

Colonel Tom Bright had been a member of the Commemorative Air Force since his return from Vietnam in 1967, two years after the organization built its first hangar at Rebel Field in Mercedes, Texas. Begun as the Confederate Air Corps in Montgomery, Alabama in 1953, with a rich history of Southern humor and a love of American military aircraft, the organization had grown to over 12,000 members and by 1966 owned 166 aircraft, including several vintage bombers capable of making the flight to Mexico. Tom had plans for those bombers, but first he had to convince the club’s senior staff to join his assault on the cartel.

Tom stepped down from the stairway of Senator Benson’s Learjet and walked to the new national headquarters building at the Dallas Airport. He carried a message from the senator, a long-time supporter and member, and knew several of the board members were aware of the senator’s loss of his son and daughter-in-law at the hands of the cartel.

He wore a vintage bomber jacket with a CAF tribute that was a twist on the blood chits sewn into the jackets of the famous Flying Tigers, which petitioned the Chinese to give aid and cover to any American airman shot down defending the Chinese against the Japanese invaders. This CAF version read, THIS IS A CAF AVIATOR. IF FOUND LOST OR UNCONSCIOUS, PLEASE HIDE HIM FROM YANKEES, REVIVE HIM WITH MINT JULEPS, AND ASSIST HIM IN RETURNING TO FRIENDLY TERRITORY.

Tom knew that “Confederate” anything was no longer politically correct, but regretted the loss of humor that had always been a foundational element of the CAF. He also knew that while many of the older CAF members shared his view, many of the younger did not. He wore the jacket regardless.

Eight men sat at the conference table, mostly Tom’s age, mostly combat veterans, some decorated pilots. Tom was on a flight crew, “let’s play golf,” first-name basis with six, and a “let’s have a drink someday and talk about it” basis with the other two.

Tom took a seat in the only empty chair at the table. “Henry, Bill, Chuck, thanks for seeing me on such short notice. First, I have to ask that what I’m about to tell you not leave this room, and if any of you are uncomfortable with that then I’ll leave or you may. But I must have your trust and confidentiality.”

There were nods around the table.

“This is a letter from Bob Benson. As you know, his son and daughter-in-law, Bobby and Susan, died in