Long Caldera Run (The Police Book 1), page 1
Long Caldera Run
By Zachary and Joshua Forbes
Copyright © 2024 by Zachary and Joshua Forbes
All right reserved.
Any likenesses to people or characters in the real world or other works of fiction are purely coincidental. These characters are our own.
No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from one of the authors, except for the use of brief quotations in reference or review. No AI was used in the production of this novel.
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Cover art by J Caleb
The Police
They have many names, none of which are publicly acknowledged. They have specific objectives, none of which can be found under official record. They are an elite unit, hand-selected to carry out the most important missions the world will never know.
This is the cold war, and the rules must be broken if the world is to remain stable, if peace and prosperity are to still exist for future generations.
Before the fall, before the continuum, there was…
Episode 1:
Smoke on the Water
1.
North of Caldera, Chile
January, 1977
Flying. In all of humanity’s shows of superiority against nature, flying was perhaps its greatest. The ultimate justification as to why we’re in charge of this planet instead of any other living resident.
An ape looked up to the sky one day and saw the birds soaring overhead. Mesmerized, the ape asked the great powers in the sky to grant it such beauty. The indifferent sky said nothing. So the ape took it upon itself. It built great machines faster than a cheetah. It studied air and gravity and terminal velocity. The ape fast-tracked its own evolution to rip from the sky the same talents nature had graciously gifted the birds.
A hundred years later, Johnny was staring out the window of a Lockheed C-130 Hercules—a four-engine cargo transport intended for military use. Higher and heavier than any bird that ever existed, Mother Nature be damned.
He clung to a square pendant on his neck. It was hard and flat, with an engraving of a cross etched into it. Johnny was not religious, but he had picked up the pendant in Colombia and wore it for every mission. It stayed tucked under his clothes to avoid recognition.
Across the aisle, seated like a reflection of Johnny himself, was the first member of his HALO jump team. Officer Dick Kennedy, cigarette in hand.
Kennedy had an indifferent scowl. His face was clean and his hair was healthy, but he showed all the signs of wear. Not just physical damage either. There were mental afflictions, deep in the back of his eyes. Most men couldn’t see such things, but Johnny could. He knew the man too well to miss it, and the man knew him just the same. That’s why Kennedy wore a pair of glasses beneath his goggles. Sleek black aviators, to be exact. He knew what a man could find behind his thousand-yard stare.
But Kennedy’s thousand-yard stare was different from most, in that the man could literally see a thousand yards. He was a sniper, and a damn good one. You had to be damn good at something to make it on this team. Johnny was tough—a survivor. He’d won the Purple Heart and wore all the shrapnel scars that came with it, though any record of that had been scrapped long before his current mission.
Nobody knew he existed. Not anymore.
“Remind me again why we couldn’t take the chopper in,” another man said.
This question came from Navarro. Another member of the jump team. He had a stubbled face with tanned skin and a vaguely black buzz cut. In his left hand sat a bright red can of Coca-Cola. Liquid sugar: another product of the ape’s hubris.
Navarro was always drinking the stuff. No one knew why, but there were theories. Some said he’d once been a drug addict off the record, and this was his new fixation to cope with it. A condition of continued service. Others said it was pure American pride. Like flying into another country with the stars and stripes themselves coursing through his veins.
He never confirmed or denied any of it.
“The chopper is only for extraction,” Alison replied. “You’ll be able to make some noise on the water only after the target’s been destroyed. A stealth op doesn’t work if they hear you coming.”
“And the boat?” Navarro asked, thumbing behind him towards the cargo, which was tightly secured under rows and rows of yellow netting.
“You get some beauty sleep at the debriefing, Nav?” Kennedy growled.
Alison answered anyway. “We’re dropping you off-shore with the equipment. You are not to take it into port. Finish the mission, then get back to the boat and signal us. We’ll send the chopper for exfil a mile out. Half a mile, if the zone gets hot.”
The walls shuttered. Heavy titanium and steel bucking and swaying in the turbulence. There was a storm brewing, and the wind over the Andes always had choice words for the people of Chile.
“Approaching jump point in five,” a voice called from the cockpit, reaching up to flip a lever.
“We still good to jump in this?” Johnny asked.
Kennedy’s seat harness came loose. He stood up, sucking on his cigarette. Burning the oxygen inside a pressurized aircraft was frowned upon in any setting, but nobody dared tell him not to.
“This is the Wild West,” said Kennedy. “You don’t like the terrain, tighten up your saddle.” He eyed around the plane, blowing smoke. “We jump in five.”
Five minutes later the doors came open, and the noise of the atmosphere tumbled over everyone’s ears. A HALO was a high altitude, low opening parachute jump. It required exiting an aircraft from way up in the clouds to avoid detection, then opening the chute low enough to minimize the length of the descent. It was typical for jumps involving cargo, especially stealth jumps.
The three men shuffled up to the edge of the ramp. It was cold, and the world below was almost invisible. Thirty-thousand feet down would be an ocean. The southeastern Pacific, right off the coast of South America. They would fall like the eroded sand and dust in El Niño.
Navarro tugged on his harness, his forearms flexing through the jumpsuit. He had a working man’s hands. Thick and veiny, though currently protected by dense gloves. Not because they might leave fingerprints–those would not show up on any official South American records–but because nobody wanted to risk the frigid air stealing the sensation from their palms when they needed to pull their chutes at a very precise moment.
They cut the cargo loose first. Too big and bulky to risk it falling on their heads. It would also take longer to reach the ground, and they needed to land as close to it as possible.
“You’re up,” Alison said.
Navarro gave a big, fearless smile. “It’s a great night for a swim, fellas.”
He stomped for a few steps down the platform, then lept, arms wide open, embracing whatever lay ahead. Then there were two.
“C.I. is set to meet at oh-three-hundred,” said Alison. “There’ll be watchdogs, but most won’t be attentive this early.” She cocked both eyebrows. “That being said, don’t miss the extraction window.”
Kennedy flicked his cigarette with his pointer finger, sending it out to the gray and black oblivion below. “Copy.”
“I mean it, Dick. No second chances. Our entire relationship with this country goes down the drain if we’re caught,” she continued.
He looked back at her, a thousand yards through her soul from behind a pair of lenses. “Is that all?”
Alison smiled. “Keep it professional.”
Kennedy grinned, and with a slight turn he fell backwards into the dark. Gently, like a martyr unafraid of his fate.
Johnny was the last one out. He didn’t have much to say to Alison or the pilot. They were soldiers, like him. That earned them some level of respect, but not the brotherly closeness he would’ve felt for a friend. Only the men beside him in the field had earned that much from him. No one else.
He smoothed over the folds of his harness, making sure every knot and buckle was as tight as it could be. Then he jumped. Limbs spread, face in the wind. The storm rumbled in his ears all the way down.
2.
Navarro had already found the boat by the time Kennedy got there. It was a speedboat. Something not unfamiliar to the ports of the Chilean coast, just in case it couldn’t be recovered. Obviously they wouldn’t want anything potentially identified as American. That was the point of calling in the agency–no flags. As covert as they come.
Kennedy cupped his hands and paddled a few more times in the dark waters. He had a puffy brown winter coat over regional camo garments, complete with ceramic plates in a coyote-brown chest rig. All of it kept him warm in the frigid water.
Once he was treading beside the boat, he reached up with both hands and heaved himself over. Navarro reached out with a dark green sleeve and helped pull him up the rest of the way.
“Transmissions?” Kennedy asked.
Navarro gave a thumbs up as he packed in the boat’s parachute. “Everything’s running just fine. Gear and weapons are good too. No damage from the drop. Feels like Christmas.”
Kennedy slid his goggles up over his head and tossed them onto the deck. He balled up his harness and his chute, discarding them the same way. There was a crate wrapped up in yellow netting. It sat on the rear side of the boat, tucked into a tight corner. The lid had been popped open, and the hard metal contents were calling out from inside.
Guns. Ammo.
Packed into the right side of the crate were three compact submachine guns. They were Heckler and Koch MP5SDs, ‘SD’ standing for ‘Schalldämpfer’, which translated from German meant ‘sound suppressed’. Germans knew at least two things very well: guns and chocolate. The MP5 was arguably the most common submachine gun in the world and, in Kennedy’s opinion, the most reliable. Governments everywhere had their own variant. These ones had select fire, meaning automatic, semi-automatic, or three-round, chosen by adjusting a switch beneath the receiver.
One bullet at a time, three bullets at a time, or as many bullets as possible until the finger came off the trigger.
Underneath those was a longer weapon. Kennedy’s specialty: a Remington 700 sniper rifle, chambered in .308 Winchester. A tubular titanium suppressor sat beside it.
He picked up the weapon and fixed the suppressor over the threaded barrel, then spun the cylindrical device until it tightened all the way. Ready for use.
The boat rocked, and the crew from the jump finally reunited. Johnny was climbing on board. He was wearing the same gear and fatigues as the other two, only his winter coat was black.
“We good?” he asked, sliding his soaked legs up over the edge.
“Peachy,” Navarro said with a smile.
Kennedy plucked one of the MP5s from the crate and reached it out to Johnny. He grabbed it and looked it over, checking the chamber and the magazine as he went.
They went through the ammunition next. There were six extra magazines. Two for each of them, plus the ones already with the weapons. Kennedy passed around some boxes of 9mm and let the other two start thumbing in rounds. He pulled out the Remington for himself. It came with its own magazine, longer but smaller capacity. Five-rounds, to be exact. Kennedy slung the weapon over his shoulder by the strap and fished around for the ammunition.
“There’s an alcove in the beach over there,” said Navarro, pointing off to shore. “It’ll get us closer without being exposed. Minimize time in the water.”
“Just keep us out of sight,” Johnny said.
The motor kicked to life and the boat started moving. Seawater sloshed against the front and the sides. Kennedy could feel the salt battling the ashy taste left behind by his cigarette.
He finished loading his weapons, then secured the MP5 over his vest. The Andes mountains were bulwarks on the horizon, impossible to hide even through darkness and fog. The smaller rocks along the shore became visible as the boat drew nearer. Navarro had been right–the alcove was perfectly hidden. They were probably a mile or two away from the compound. Nobody would notice if they anchored.
They stopped the boat far enough out not to beach it, but close enough to minimize further time in the water. Kennedy fished four headsets out of the crate. He passed one to each of the others, and wrapped another around his own neck. The fourth would be for the C.I. The ‘confidential informant’. A man affiliated with the cartels or the local police who wanted his own freedom in exchange for cooperation. These types of people usually came about when their leaders started falling off the deep end, or at least when the informants themselves started to realize it.
If your boss is paranoid enough to kill you at any moment, even if you did nothing wrong, it might be a wise decision to resign. And the United States was always looking for new resumes.
They dropped off the side of the boat, geared up and ready for action. The water was still freezing. Just thinking about it made Kennedy’s body tense up. He distracted himself with Alison’s instructions from the debrief. They came back to him in her usual concise tone.
The mission had been simple: infiltrate a Chilean cartel compound, burn down everything in sight, and exfil with their lives. It was the details that made it messy.
Chile was an oddity in the Latin American space. It was ruled over by a right-wing dictator, Augusto Pinochet, who had taken power in his country during a military coup. America didn’t like dictators, but it hated communists more, so it helped put Pinochet in power, figuring he’d do better to keep the Soviets from getting a foothold in the region than anybody else.
This was the cold war, after all, and every moral calculation came down to keeping the other side away from your dominoes. The western hemisphere belonged to the United States. No other major power was to set foot there for any reason. It was the unspoken rule established since the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. That’s part of why the Cuban Missile Crisis had nearly ended in nuclear war.
As an added bonus, Pinochet had been a nightmare for drug trafficking. His secret police, referred to as the DINA, marched into the mountains and executed many of the manufacturers themselves. In a lot of ways, this was good for America. It kept the traffickers in select places like Colombia and Mexico and Panama. Chile was effectively removed from the list of potential trouble-makers.
Until it wasn’t.
About nine days prior to this operation, a brave whistleblower from the regime came forward, claiming Pinochet himself had accepted bribes on behalf of one particular cartel. This cartel had some vast resources behind it, and apparently the balls to make such an offer in a place where the mention of bribes could get you killed.
Of course, Augusto would never admit this to his ‘allies’ in the United States. Not when cocaine was pouring over the southern border and crawling up into the noses of Americans in every state. Nor would the Americans promote this idea after fighting so hard to get their man in office. So the public story died quietly, and it was up to the CIA to do the investigating.
Someone at the CIA decided to look inward, and two days before this operation they discovered some major red flags. Red flags with Ben Franklin’s face on them. A huge sum of money had been transferred through the Chilean embassy in Washington D.C. It had come from various accounts at various different times in various different countries, but all the accounts belonged to ‘shell companies’, AKA covers for criminal activity.
The amount was in the billions.
One billion is a big number. Bigger than most people realize. You could only count to one billion if you had 32 years to spare. So 12 billion dollars was not something most cartel men would drop on a whim, especially to bribe politicians in a foreign country. It was enough to pay for a continent’s supply of cocaine. It was half of what the world’s largest cartel could produce in an entire year. Whoever funneled this money through the embassy had either unified a collection of cartel resources under one roof, or they alone had more resources than anyone in the Colombian game.
But why the embassy? Who or what could be connected to it that would spark such an insane pool of money to make its way across national boundaries? Something big, that’s what.
So the CIA did the smart thing and traced the shell companies without raising any alarms. No press, no military, no congressional hearing. Not yet. What they found was a shipping company out of a port just next to Caldera, Chile. None of the shells led to any other in-country location. Only this one.
Then they found a C.I.
This ‘confidential informant’ was apparently a member of the DINA who had been accepting bribes on behalf of the cartel, and he wanted out. So he staked out the compound and helped set up some radio surveillance. Long story short, the CIA decided with absolute certainty that this was the place where whatever mountain of drugs that money was meant for had been kept. And they needed a team to go in and burn it all down. Whatever money, drugs, blackmail, or anything else they had stashed away needed to be dealt with swiftly. If the big man himself wouldn’t do it, America would. Quietly.
That’s why they called the Police.
The three men reached the rocks. Kennedy first. He looked back at the others, then flipped his wrist over to check his watch. They were right on schedule. He clambered up over the rocks and let the moisture drip from his coat. It left little dark splatters beneath him. Then, out of the blackness ahead, he saw a rifle take shape.
Aimed straight at his face.
3.
Johnny and Navarro were quick to raise their weapons. Good training, put to use.
Kennedy raised a hand. “Stand down.”
He saw the rifle’s barrel waver. It bobbed up and down in the mist. A SIG SG 510–the service weapon of the Chilean armed forces. Behind the weapon stood a dark man in a blue camouflage uniform.
