Chapter 28: Sparrowhawk

Sparrowhawk

The security klaxon in the bedroom jarred Matt and the girls from a deep, comfortable sleep a couple months later. Seconds later, the voice of one of the security guards came over the speaker that was installed in every room on the estate, even the bathrooms.

“This is not a drill. We have a Sparrowhawk inbound from 512. Security teams one and four, take two armored vehicles and appropriate weapons to the intercept point. All other security units, report to assigned Sparrowhawk positions. All civilians, report to your designated safe room. Contact the security office with confirmation once every assigned person is inside your safe room. Once you receive authorization to seal the room, do not reopen it until you receive the appropriate all-clear code that is currently printing in each safe room.”

“What the hell is a Sparrowhawk?” Raven asked as everyone scrambled from bed.

“Aside from a bird of prey that targets small birds, I have no idea,” Matt replied as the girls helped dress him for battle. “I’m about to find out, though,” he said, making sure his body armor was on securely. Sue had opened the armory and had his Glocks and AR-15 ready, along with a full complement of extra magazines for both--and a kiss.

“Keep your head down,” Carla said, and then kissed him.

“Stay out of the way of the security guys,” Raven insisted after kissing him.

Jodi kissed him and stuffed a small dropper bottle in one of the pockets of Matt’s combat vest.

Matt knew the women would be on their way to the safe room once he exited the bedroom. While they had body armor for everyone and a small armory in the bedroom, there was a closet with body armor and a larger armory in each safe room. The ladies would suit up and get their weapons once they were secure inside the safe room. It was one suggestion made by the security company that built the safe rooms. It saved precious minutes if the women didn’t stop to dress or put on their body armor before heading for the safe rooms. Once they were safely inside, it would take far more time for someone to gain access to the room than it could possibly take the women to dress for combat--not that they ever expected to need the armor or weapons inside the safe room. Still...

Leonard just shook his head when Matt entered the security office. “Goddamn it all to hell, why aren’t you in a safe room?” he asked angrily.

“Is everything under control?” Matt asked.

“For now,” he replied grumpily.

“I’m here to find out what a Sparrowhawk is, and to back you guys up.”

“A Sparrowhawk is when one of the government’s helos is under attack or being followed. Only a few locations can help them, and they call the closest one. The radio communication was from Sparrowhawk 512, which isn’t really the helicopter or flight number, but initiates Sparrowhawk protocols. Five-twelve means they are headed this direction from San Diego, which is point of origin number five, and expect to be near us twelve minutes after their initial contact. After Sparrowhawk and the number, we ignore the rest of their transmission. Anything else they say is just to confuse anyone listening to them.”

“How do you know they were calling us?”

“They specified ‘Three Kings Outpost,’ which is our call sign in an emergency. They used the TKO from your pen name to come up with it,” he explained.

“As for you backing us up, I thought we were here to protect you,” he said gruffly.

“Me and the women, as well as any government people when they’re here,” Matt agreed. “Still, I want to help you guys. I know I haven’t trained with you, so I’ll stay out of your way and well behind you. I’ll stay in some location that provides me with good cover yet allows me to see what’s happening. Unless everything goes to hell, I don’t intend to do anything but watch.”

“Fine,” Leonard sighed. “I don’t have time to argue with you. Move here,” he said, pointing to a spot on the large aerial photo of the estate and surrounding area. “And stay put!” he said insistently.

He’d pointed to the same spot Matt had intended to use. The spot was a complex of four pits. Aside from a thick wooden gate starting halfway up one external wall of each pit, the pits were surrounded by six-foot high concrete walls. The gardener threw everything he composted into the pits. Each enclosure was eight feet square. Unless the gardener was working with the compost, he covered it with a sheet of Visqueen and then a wooden cover.

He used night crawlers and red worms to help speed up the composting process. Birds and a few smaller four-legged critters like rats and skunks thought the worms make a tasty treat. The poor gardener wasn’t happy the first time he surprised a skunk searching for worms in his compost pile.

Matt barely made it into a compost pit before someone came on over the radio channel. “Sparrowhawk 512, this is Three Kings Outpost mobile 2. Request confirmation of instructions for tango,” they said. Matt was wearing one of the earbuds, so he could hear what they were saying.

“Three Kings Outpost mobile 2, Sparrowhawk confirms that tango is a mad hare,” they replied. Matt assumed that “mad hare” was a code phrase indicating that the tailing helicopter was adversarial.

The sound from a helicopter was coming towards Matt from the west-northwest which he thought was odd since the flight originated in San Diego. He looked expectantly into the night sky towards the sound. A flash caught his eye. Just before the sound of the small explosion reached him, the radio came alive again.

“This is Three Kings Outpost mobile 1. Tango is going down hard. Looks like it will impact the west side of the hill between us and the estate,” someone said over their radio channel.

“Team three, assist mobile teams one and two with any recovery,” Leonard radioed. “Be sure your government ID is visible. First responders have been notified. Teams one and two, make sure one team covers the tango while the second team approaches. We’d prefer someone we can interview, but don’t take any chances. Team five, man the firefighting equipment at helipad two; the Sparrowhawk helo says they were hit multiple times.”

Matt could hear a second helicopter approaching, coming in low over the golf course. Less than two minutes later, it settled on the number two helipad. Bright work lights went on immediately, so the team could check out the helicopter.

“Naturally, it’s one of mine. At least I don’t see any fire or smoke,” Matt thought.

He watched as one of his security guys approached the helicopter and spoke with the pilot as four other guards leveled their weapons at it. “All clear,” Leonard finally announced. That meant the pilot knew today’s password.

Two minutes later, Matt was glad that he didn’t have any travel plans as the two pilots and three other men from the Sparrowhawk helicopter boarded the helicopter that Matt kept here at the mansion. One person from the Sparrowhawk helicopter accompanied a two-man security team as they escorted what appeared to be a prisoner from the attacked helicopter to the on-site jail. The second helicopter lifted off and headed for the crash site.

They were back forty-five minutes later with two stretchers and a body bag. Matt wondered where the stretchers and body bag had come from. The two stretchers were taken to the estate’s small medical building.

The “medical team” consisted of two retired Navy Corpsmen who were part of Matt’s security team. Ten minutes later, another helicopter landed on the grass near the first two. One person exited, carrying what appeared to be a pair of medical bags. They headed for the small medical center and the new helicopter left.

“Matt, report to the medical center,” Leonard radioed.

“Knew it,” Matt chuckled quietly to himself, glad that Jodi had remembered to give him the Dart. He radioed back and asked Leonard to have Sue and Carla join him if he was being paged to do an interrogation.

By the time Matt climbed out of the compost pit and made his way to the small medical center, the two girls were already there, as was CC. They still wore their body armor and helmets, and carried their weapons. Leonard had sent one of the security guys to get them, driving them in one of security’s electric carts.

Inside they found two battered and heavily bandaged men, who were well shackled to their gurneys. They lowered the gurneys as close to the floor as they could. Matt didn’t want either of the two men to rock and tip the gurneys over trying to escape, not that either man looked physically capable of it just then. Then they added more zip ties that the girls had brought, binding the two prisoners even more securely.

“You don’t take any chances, do you?” The top guy from the attacked helicopter asked.

“Let’s just say that I try to limit the chances I take to things that are beyond my control,” Matt replied as Carla pulled off her body armor and blouse, making the top guy’s eyes bug out.

“The distraction makes it harder for whomever I’m interrogating to concentrate on not answering me or on lying to me,” Matt explained as he ushered the agent out of the small room. The girls pulled the privacy curtains around both patients and scanned the room for audio or video recording equipment before they began.

Once they were sure there were no bugs, Matt gave each man a drop of Dart, and then exited the room to give the Dart time to take effect. “Done already?” the head guy, who introduced himself only as “Rick,” asked.

“Nah, the pressure point I use affects some part of the brain that I don’t understand about. The first pinch starts releasing some natural chemical stored in the brain. I have to let enough of that chemical build up before pinching two different pressure points to start the interrogation process,” Matt explained.

“Sounds crazy, but I’ve heard crazier, and I heard that you always get answers,” he replied.

After five minutes, Matt went back inside with Rick’s list of questions to ask. Once he had answers to those questions, he let Rick in to ask any follow-up questions.

“That’s absolutely amazing,” Rick said when they finally finished, and Matt’s security guys were helping load the two injured captives aboard another helicopter--another one of Matt’s that had arrived after the doctor had been dropped off.

Since Matt had gotten such good results with the first two captives, despite their injuries, Rick asked him to interrogate the original prisoner. Matt and the girls headed for their jailhouse.

Matt recognized the prisoner immediately. His picture had been in the news off and on for more than a year as U.S. and Colombian authorities hunted and closed in on him.

“Sweet,” CC said with a grin, assuming that she’d soon be busy tracking down and emptying his bank accounts.

This interrogation took longer than the last two as CC carefully extracted all the information she wanted about his operation and his finances. Then Rick gathered lists of his lieutenants. Next, he got locations where his people manufactured and stored drugs that were ready for shipment, as well as how they smuggled the drugs into the country. Finally, he asked for a list of the guy’s hiding places and for the names of judges and prominent officials who were on his payroll.

“That explains how he escaped from jail in Colombia so quickly the first two times he was captured,” Rick said after the prisoner finished reciting the names of people he had bribed or threatened into working for him.

“Give him two and a half shares of this one,” Rick told CC as he pointed at Matt. “He can split one share with his security team as a bonus and use the rest to repair his helo that got shot up.” Matt didn’t bother to explain that the government paid for any necessary repairs.

Half an hour later, Matt and the girls were back in bed--except they were wound up enough that they had to exercise together in bed before they could finally go back to sleep.

The government covered up the Sparrowhawk incident with a news story of two helicopters colliding in the night. One managed to land at a nearby privately owned helipad. A doctor was flown in to treat the passenger aboard the craft that landed. The two injured pilots from the second helicopter were flown to the same location since they’d receive medical care much sooner than if they’d been flown to the closest trauma center.

Epilog:

It didn’t take long for Matt’s fleet of helicopters and jets to expand far beyond Bill’s original plan. Matt now owned helicopters based at forty airports across the country. Airports that were close enough to the estate that the helicopter could reach it without refueling each had two. Matt also owned confiscated jets at the same forty airports. The government operated everything for him and he showed an annual profit of right around $100,000 each year.

Given the value of the equipment, that amount was peanuts. No company would continue operating on that slim of a profit margin. They’d sell the equipment and invest the money. Still, the profit was simply the government’s way to justify Matt’s ownership of the aircraft charter service, even if it was operated by the government, who got a big chunk of that $100,000 back each year via the IRS.

Matt’s fishing boat was now a three-boat charter fleet based out of Newport Beach. Friends of the first captain operated the other two boats. Any of Matt’s people could go out for free but needed to make arrangements at least two weeks in advance.