Read Target Deck - 02 for Free Online Page B

needed a close recce to confirm what their prisoner had told Samantha. The prisoner that Nikita had brought back had described a secret submarine base commanded by a cartel boss that they called Captain Nemo.
    Fedorchenko was one of his best men which was why he had been promoted to Platoon Sergeant after Samruk hit a black site in the middle of the Pacific a while back. When the leadership in his platoon had been killed off during the hit, he had manned up, taken control of the other men, and defeated the enemy. They had pulled off the impossible, if at a heavy price.
    Deckard gritted his teeth as he freed his Ka-Bar fighting knife from its sheath and began to cut through the heavy tarp that concealed the bay from overhead observation.
    Here we go again .
    Cutting a Y-shaped slit through the fabric, he put the blade away, and quietly swung through the hole feet first. Setting down on a slope, he let go of the tarp and half stepped, half slid down the embankment, making as little noise as he possibly could. Slowing himself, he put two gloved hands up in front of him to stop his forward movement before he slammed into a wooden crate at the bottom.
    The tarp bounced overhead, making a slight whipping sound as the sea breeze rolled across it. Underneath the covering, half of the bay had been boarded over to create a dry dock. Wooden pylons jutted from the water, connecting a somewhat haphazard boardwalk of floating dock segments. Crates and pallets were scattered everywhere. A lone guard patrolled the pallet yard in the distance.
    Ducking down behind cover, Fedorchenko was already at his side.
    Keeping their Kalashnikov rifles at the ready, their trained eyes swept the enemy hardsite, identifying key targets. At the far side of the dock they could make out the mast of the narco-submarine that Nikita's prisoner had described. It was bigger than Deckard had expected, about the size of an old Japanese midget submarine straight out of the WWII.
    On the south side of the dockyard were a couple dozen 55-gallon drums. Besides a place to off load contraband, the sub pen also served as a fuel depot where the midget subs would refuel before heading back to Colombia. Deckard sized up the operation in moment. There were no roads into or out of the remote hidden cartel base.
    The Colombian farmers would grow the coca plants and sell them to the cartels, who would refine the product in drug labs deep in the jungle. From there the cocaine would be loaded onto the locally constructed submarines and clandestinely transported north to southern Mexico. The subs would bring the drugs, off load them in the sub pen, then head home. The drugs would then be loaded onto boats to be taken to yet another location in southern Mexico for distribution where they would then be taken overland across the US border for sale.
    The sub pen was a site known as a “trampoline” by the cartels. The term normally referred to a way station between where the drugs originated, in Colombia and Bolivia, and the United States that was utilized by aircraft being flown by smugglers. Their small airplanes would need to stop somewhere to refuel on the way to Florida. The days of sky pirates were mostly over now, the Coast Guard having shut those corridors down years ago.
    Now the cartels had evolved by using submarines instead. The voyage all the way to the United States would be too taxing for the small submarines so instead they would have to sell the drugs to the Mexican cartels and let them take responsibility for moving the product to market.
    A clever set up, Deckard had to admit.
    At the north end of the dock were several connex shipping containers that had been converted into living quarters for the staff that worked at the submarine base. With the sun now hanging in the early morning sky, he knew that the staff and the rest of the base's security would be waking soon. They had arrived just in time, the night guard would be exhausted and ready for a shift change. The