Cobra Clearance

Cobra Clearance Read Free Page B

Book: Cobra Clearance Read Free
Author: Richard Craig Anderson
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the border drug wars. Conversely, a pleasure boat day-trip from San Diego would not arouse that much suspicion. Besides, there weren’t enough harbor policemen to stop them.
    The sloop sailed into a fishing town thirty miles down the Baja coast without incident and tied-up to a lonely pier. Minutes later the most televised man in the world stepped unchallenged from the boat, and a waiting sedan whisked him away.
    Amahl checked into the Rosarito Beach Hotel. His expertly forged U.S. passport identified him as Yoni Shochat, and listed Israel as his place of birth. As he walked beneath the lobby’s timbered ceiling and signature fresco to the elevator, a Yorkshire terrier with atiny red bow in its forelock leaped from a frail woman’s arms and landed with a yelp in Amahl’s path. He bent down and held out his hand. “What a noble animal,” he said to the woman, while using the opportunity to note all possible escape routes. He gently picked up the dog and cradled it in his arms, then ran his fingers through the animal’s silky hair while he scanned the area again. “Very nice.” After handing the pet to its mistress, he turned and walked away.
    Once inside his room he drew the drapes and lay on the bed. The 9mm Beretta in his waistband pressed against the small of his back but he didn’t care. In the darkened room he closed his eyes. All had gone as planned. The men? The woman and her child? They served his purposes and now he was rid of them. As for Melchior? Amahl had not known such pleasure in too long a time. Even now he could feel the grit of the knife against bone, the power he felt as the blade sliced through. He relived the scene again, then once more.
    Amahl pushed the thoughts aside and evaluated his plan. He would remain here for three days. Leaving sooner would draw attention. Next, he would travel by car to Mexico City and let the multitudes swallow him up. Then he would return home by a circuitous route and begin the next phase. What would follow, God willing, would make what he had accomplished seem like the doings of foolish children. It was simple. First cut off the head, then butcher the body. And he had a plan in mind.

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    H eath Baker knew about Amahl and briefly wondered where he was. Then he dropped it. He had a meeting to attend, and afterward he would go to Fannex. His team was already en route, but they would wait for him.
    Baker wore multiple layers of flannels, wools and twills permeated with tobacco smoke. He peered at a dismal sky and tapped the spent contents of his favorite pipe—a GBD Tapestry made by the venerable but now defunct British company—into a container at the Treasury Building side entrance. A Secret Service agent standing inside the door led Baker through a short hallway and down a set of steps to the basement, where they encountered a locked steel door guarded by two Secret Service Uniformed Division officers. The officers passed them through and Baker found himself inside a familiar ten foot wide, seven foot tall tunnel. After a brief walk they stepped inside a subbasement beneath the East Wing of the White House. The mansion was closed to tourists while the body of President Melchior lay in state beneath the Capitol Rotunda, so they proceeded through public areas overflowing with staffers. Two minutes later he stood outside the closed door of the Oval Office.
    A large man, Baker had a ruined potato sack of a face where every one of his sixty-two years had settled. He had retired from the Army as a colonel soon after his fourth tour in Viet Nam, where time after time he ventured into the mountains to recruit Montagnardsin the fight against the Viet Cong. Baker’s exploits remained the stuff of legend within the Green Beret four decades later.
    He returned to the United States with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star with a V-device for valor, and a Purple Heart with two oak leaf clusters. The medals were colorful but they didn’t

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