Final Winter

Bravo Tom seemed to blush at that. Monty knew that his friend had been stationed with a secretive group that was tasked to provide quiet and clandestine support to the US Border Patrol and Customs. There were very strict rules against the use of military resources in domestic law-enforcement affairs — rooted in the old concept of the posse comitatus — but since a certain day in September 2001, rules were pretty much what whoever made them — and who could get a Federal judge, usually in secret, to sign off on them — wanted to make them. Officially, Bravo Tom’s group was known as the Border Support Task Force and, using Kiowa helicopters and cut-down armored Humvees, they worked both the Canadian and Mexican borders to interdict smugglers of drugs and smugglers of people. But since their job was, as some wise-asses had noted, to protect the purity and sanctity of the nation, their unofficial name was the Hymen Squad.

So far their work had gone well. They’d intercepted nearly a dozen teams trying to infiltrate, said teams either being killed in vicious firefights never reported in the news media or captured and sent to the tender clutches of the rapidly growing prison system in Guantanamo Bay.

Bravo Tom shrugged at the question and said, ‘Hymen Squad’s doing all right, I guess. I’m going on a thirty-day leave this weekend and, let me tell you, I am counting down the hours.’

Monty lowered his beer bottle to the table. ‘Leave? You’re going on leave?’

‘Sure. Why not?’

Monty looked at his friend to see if he was joking but there was no humor there. He said, ‘You’re going on leave. For thirty days. Tell me, you guys spun up about anything coming down in the next couple of weeks?’

Bravo Tom shrugged. ‘Nope. Everything’s about as normal as it can be, Monty. Some training down in Lower Baja, and some work going up north with the Aussie Special Forces, out in Montana, but that’s it.’

‘Regular schedule? Regular ops?’

‘Yeah. Hey, no offense, mind telling me what the fuck is going on?’

Monty toyed with the edge of the Sam Adams label. His fingers felt cold, his feet felt cold, the whole damn room felt cold. ‘Bravo Tom, you ever hear of something called Final Winter?’

His friend thought about that for a moment and said, ‘Nope.’

‘You sure?’

‘Damn sure I’m sure. Look, pal, I know who you are. Your name is Monty Zane. You sure as hell weren’t named for a street, but you should have been, ‘cause the traffic’s all been one-way. And if you don’t start yapping, I’m moving to a friendlier table.’

Monty was stuck but he knew that fair was fair. At this level of classification, Bravo Tom didn’t have a ‘need to know’, but Monty sure as hell needed to know what was going on with his buddy’s unit. If that meant horse-trading with information, so be it.

Still toying with the beer label, he said, ‘My Tiger Team has been riled by something coming up in a couple of weeks. Something known as Final Winter. Major attack on a number of cities. Those doing the attack are supposed to be Syrians, infiltrating through the borders. I did some background work, passed my recommendation up the usual and customary chain of command. Thought for sure you guys would be heading up any response. I can’t fucking believe you’re not at high-level alert.’

Bravo Tom said, ‘Sorry, pal, we’re not And if we were, I’d know about it.’

‘Shit,’ Monty said.

Bravo Tom said, ‘Looks like somebody in your group has some explaining to do.’

Monty nodded, saw that his plate of ribs was coming over, carried by a male airman wearing BDUs. ‘You better fucking believe it,’ he said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Vladimir Zhukov sat next to the Arab boy as he drove the tractor-trailer truck through the confusing maze of roadways and parking areas of the Port of Vancouver. There were three terminal areas that handled container cargo — Deltaport, Centerm and their destination, Vanterm — and Vladimir was pleased enough to let Imad do the driving and dealing. The place was filled with parking areas, service stations, railway yards, and long lines of belching tractor-trailer trucks, coming out with their containers firmly fastened at the rear.

Imad was singing some high-pitched tune that grated on Vladimir’s ears, but he let the boy go on. Even though Imad probably weighed no more than sixty or seventy kilograms and looked like such a child behind the wheel of the Freightliner he handled the massive truck with ease. Between them was a metal clipboard with a sheaf of papers and documents, and Vladimir smiled at the memory of crossing the US Customs station not more than an hour ago. The Americans didn’t care who was leaving their benighted nation, and Canada was only too eager to allow tradesmen and businessmen and truckers through. Their papers had gotten a perfunctory glance and then they’d been on their way, passing from US Route 5 to Canadian Route 99. Imad commented immediately on the rougher roadway.