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Seismic Surge
Don Pendleton
A plot orchestrated to destabilize the Western world has its roots in a mysterious business conglomerate with ties to Chinese conspirators. And the established battleground is a volcanic island off the coast of Spain.There, an army of multinational terrorists bound by hate and violence is about to trigger a tsunami that will wash hell across two continents. While Stony Man's cybercrew runs real-time command and control, Phoenix Force and Able Team launch a multipronged ground assault on the corporation behind the planned tidal wave and its ruthless backers.
STONY MAN
When the President hits the panic button, it’s Stony Man that answers the call. An elite, covert group, Stony Man strikes before terror can gain a foothold. The warriors of freedom understand the ultimate price and—in their mandate to protect the rights of the free nations—willingly meet the enemy.
SEISMIC SURGE
A plot orchestrated to destabilize the Western world has its roots in a mysterious business conglomerate with ties to Chinese conspirators. And the established battleground is a volcanic island off the coast of Spain. There, an army of multinational terrorists bound by hate and violence is about to trigger a tsunami that will wash hell across two continents. While Stony Man’s cyber-crew runs real-time command and control, Phoenix Force and Able Team launch a multipronged ground assault on the corporation behind the planned tidal wave and its ruthless backers.
“So, not only will a tsunami wreck the U.S. East Coast...”
Hal Brognola nodded.
“But there’s also a renegade force in Norfolk, Virginia,” the President continued, “being funded and supplied by the People’s Republic of China and Saudi princes.”
“All we know right now is that an Idaho white supremacist group has targeted European tourism,” Brognola replied.
“I’ve got people keeping a lid on the La Palma volcano threat,” the President said. “But according to my staff, posts are popping up about that damn Jeopardy white paper.”
“Jeopardy is an American company, so if anything does happen, it will lead back to us. No amount of money is going to cover it up.”
“The livelihoods of millions of Americans will be destroyed by a superwave, and we’re going to take the blame for the damage.” The President narrowed his eyes. “Stony Man can fix this, right?”
Seismic Surge
Don Pendleton
www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)
Special thanks and acknowledgment to
Doug Wojtowicz for his contribution to this work.
Contents
PROLOGUE (#u78255f8a-c42b-559d-859b-c857f593c658)
CHAPTER ONE (#u472f21b4-555f-5c7b-99a9-d9d4d616c262)
CHAPTER TWO (#u1733054b-5453-592b-a71d-ae3bd35cafa9)
CHAPTER THREE (#u154738a3-7685-559b-b051-0eb8a339cfac)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ud5380890-6c98-5610-adf9-bb13af04bdb8)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
Bernie Jackson stowed the spare blank forms inside his folding metal clipboard, then adjusted the top inspection sheet until it sat squarely on the cold, bare metal. There had been a few too many incidents for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s liking at the Heyerdal Hull Company, and the Norfolk, Virginia, plant was shut down for the day, pending the results of his OSHA team’s observations.
Seven men had died already, and twenty more were injured due to mishaps at the plant. Heyerdal’s owners, the Jeopardy Corporation, had requested that they be allowed to clean their own house, utilizing one of their security contractors. These promises had held off the federal government’s agents. The fact that Heyerdal was behind some large defense contracts, developing new hulls for a low-profile patrol craft that could be used by the Navy and the Marine Corps, had been enough until the most recent “accident” left two dead and seven wounded. Local constituents were demanding in Congress that the government take a closer look.
The Jeopardy Corporation tried to muddy the waters with claims of outside interference, suggesting saboteurs or espionage agents were responsible for the mayhem and death. Jeopardy owned private military contractor companies that had provided security for the U.S. government overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as for allied Middle Eastern governments. As such, they claimed that they could deal with all of this on their own.
That suggestion bubbled up in Jackson’s memory and he had to strangle down a snort of derision.
“Like that’s going to come up kosher,” he muttered.
“I told you, these damn corporate bigwigs act like their shit don’t stink,” Gerber said. Whereas Jackson was an older African-American man, thick around the middle with the weight of advancing years and too many desserts, Gerber was in his thirties. Jackson’s partner was, in his old Virginia way of saying things, all knees and elbows with a ginger head balanced atop a skinny neck. There was a noticeable disparity between the size of his skull and his slender frame, which was further enhanced in its awkwardness by ears that stuck out like jug handles.
Jackson looked his young partner over, shaking his head. “The old military industrial complex—MIC—conspiracy again?”
Gerber nodded avidly, his serious glare looking out of place above freckled cheeks. Jackson and a few of the older men noted that the kid, by their perspective, was what could have been the love child between two timeless comic-book teenagers. Any mention of Arch or Jugs, however, had gone over Gerber’s head, the references eliciting a blank response.
Of course, knowing the history of those comics, Gerber had probably developed a selective memory loss after having been needled over the similarity from other guys in the Navy, especially his instructors.
“Collusion and corruption in those areas do still exist,” Gerber replied. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff I saw back in the Navy.”
“But if you told me, you’d just have to kill me,” Jackson concluded, rolling his eyes. The others, eight total, laughed at the end of this particular segment of the “Bernie and Gerb” show. Jackson didn’t mind Gerber’s constant conspiracy theories, and their seeming Moebius Strip of argument and counterargument added some spice and variety to a job that could end up a drudgery as it devolved into rote observation and paperwork.
“Get the camera, Gerb. Document anything you can find,” Jackson ordered. Neither Gerb nor the other cameramen on the inspection teams really needed to be told this, but it was the best way that Jackson knew to turn off his partner’s manic running commentary.
While Gerber was normally a motormouth, when he was recording footage of safety violations, he had the steady focus of a laser beam.
That professionalism, as well as Gerber’s entertainment value, went a long way to helping Jackson forgive the younger man’s many quirks.
Now it was time to go to work.
* * *
“BERNIE! BERNIE!” Gerber shouted, his big green eyes wild and wide as he rushed back to Jackson’s side. He wondered what could light such a fire under his coworker’s
ass like that when a sudden bout of stammering answered his unspoken question. Jackson could recognize the symptoms of too many ideas competing to get out of Gerber’s mouth. Something that the jug-headed man caught on camera had led him to believe that he had conclusive, documented proof.
“Look! Just look!” Gerber squawked, pushing the LCD screen of the digital camera far too close to Jackson’s face. “I knew that the MIC was behind these accidents! Heyerdal is making weapons to provoke a world war!”
Jackson reached out, trying to still the camera so that he could get a better look. “Then let me look at it, dummy!”
Distant laughter from the closest pair of inspectors reached Jackson’s ears through the excited chatter and dancing of Gerber. Finally, he was forced to snap the camera out of his partner’s hands. “What the hell are you on about, son?”
“They killed workers who had stumbled on that dilapidated old hulk,” Gerber exclaimed. “Once those men saw the submarine pens, they had to die, so they wanted to lay proof about sabotage before we got here.”
The glow of the liquid crystal display showed the interior of a gutted freighter and small docks low in the water and designed for slender craft less than a quarter of the width of the hulk. They would have gone unnoticed had it not been for all of the recent accidents and the diligence of a young inspector with a head full of ideas. The dead freighter didn’t look out of place in a boatyard, as many shipbuilders found that good, extant hulls were a basis for updated craft. However, the footage showed a hull without a keel and small hydraulic doors at the front.
“That is damn strange,” Jackson muttered. “Especially since Heyerdal doesn’t have anything in its records about designing submersibles, just light seacrafts.”
“Told you!” Gerber snapped, all excited. “Secret submarines!”
Jackson pinched the skin at the bridge of his nose. Whenever Gerber got a hair up his ass, he was nearly incomprehensible. What a secret berth had to do with a conspiracy involving the government and Heyerdal’s deck designs would take forever to straighten out in an intelligible manner. But first he had to calm Gerber down, and right now, unfortunately, the kid had a gallon of adrenaline to burn off before he could make any sense.
“Gerb! Focus!”
“This could be used to sink international ships and draw the U.S. into another stupid, bloated war,” Gerber continued. “It’s the Lusitania all over again!”
“Gerb, they must have had weeks to clear anything out. Why would they even leave that area unlocked for you to stumble upon?” Jackson asked.
Something gave the older man pause.
Their two friends, though they had only been about a hundred feet away, close enough to laugh out loud at Gerber’s renewed antics, were now nowhere to be seen. That didn’t feel right, and Jackson’s scalp tingled as if his close-cropped gray-white hairs were all trying to stand up at once.
“Hey, Jake! Ned! Where’d you two go?”
Gerber’s agitation seemed to drain away, as if someone had cut a hole in the bottom of a tub. The call to their coworkers hadn’t seemed to calm the young man, but it had silenced him for the moment.
Gerber snatched back his camera and pulled his phone from his pocket. With a device in each hand, Gerber’s left thumb flew across the touch screen, his lips moving silently as if quietly narrating his own actions. “This is bad.”
“What are you doing?”
Gerber spoke up. “They don’t want witnesses.” This time his manic energy had disappeared, and his voice was flat and serious. The thrill of discovery had been shocked into submission by the dread of some realization. “Got to get the footage out.”
“Because Ned and Jake are probably smoking on government time?” Jackson asked. Even as he spoke the words, he lost faith in his rationalization. Something could have been wrong; he could feel that in the air, even though logic dictated that the deaths or disappearance of ten OSHA inspectors would actually invite even more intense scrutiny to whatever secrets lurked in the boatyard. Such a loss would probably involve the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security, so any top-secret construction projects would simply be uncovered in the wake of foul play. They were simply too high profile to warrant any harm, even by the most desperate businessman intent on concealing his shady dealings.
Submarines? he thought to himself.
Why the hell would that be so important to kill witnesses? Sure, there were cases where companies, if they had failed at bribery, sometimes resorted to violence, but there had been no interaction between the OSHA team and the Heyerdal company. There should at least have been a man at the gate with an envelope full of cash.
As much as he tried to dismiss his fears, Jackson couldn’t quiet his nerves. He could sense a predator stalking in the shadows. No one had been allowed through the gate for the past week except for the OSHA team, not even the usual security guards hired to babysit the shipyard. He just couldn’t shake the feel of being stalked, the weight of malevolence hanging in the air.
“It’s out.” Gerber sighed with relief. “They can’t keep this shit quiet.”
“What? Where?” Jackson asked.
“App on my phone and built into the camera. It can read off the memory and then upload it to a backup site,” Gerber explained. “Better than the little piece of garbage in the usual cell. This transmits good, crisp images.”
“Why?” Jackson continued.
“Safety for us. Keeping my documentation of their secrets kills any incentive for them to do the same to us.”
Jackson looked around.
“Kill us? Try to silence us? No go,” Gerber said. He let loose a nervous titter. “Their dirt is now in the Cloud. The whole conspiracy sphere knows and is breathing this all in now.”
“Gerb, they wouldn’t kill federal inspectors,” Jackson countered. His strength ebbed, and he added in a softer, more nervous tone, “Would they?”
The red-haired ex-Navy man pocketed his phone after frowning at its screen. “I wish I had brought my knife.”
That was all Gerber had to say for Jackson’s sake. The older man brought out his walkie-talkie and keyed it. All he received was static, unfortunately. He tried again, but the radio was working; it just wasn’t receiving or transmitting any usable signal.
“Hey! Anyone’s walkies still working?” Jackson yelled as he transferred to his own cell. “Ned?”
“All the phones are out, Bernie,” Gerber said, deadly serious.
In the distance he could hear spasmodic coughing erupt. A silhouetted form, Jackson couldn’t tell who, staggered into view, then clutched his throat and chest, toppling over. Sudden bright flares, vomitous blossoms of flame, erupted throughout the area. Smoke billowed from multiple sources, obscuring the scene as at least two men screamed their last.
“Gerb, you think you can swim?” Jackson asked, his mind racing.
“Hello! Navy submariner!” Gerber replied. He waved to the hulk, where no flames had erupted yet. “Come on!”
Jackson followed blindly, sweeping the boatyard around him for signs of impending death or onrushing danger. He hoped that Gerber, in all of his paranoia, knew what he was doing. The coughing brought to mind choking smoke, but the men appeared to be suffocating even before the flames erupted and thick, strangling clouds spread out to suck the breath from them.
Now all he could see behind him were yellow splashes of glow that burned through black roiling darkness that flowed into the air. Getting to the water was the means to get to safety, a place to duck from the fury of blaze and asphyxiation.
Jackson tabbed his phone again, dialing 9-1-1, but there was still no signal.
It didn’t make sense. Only moments before, Gerber had transmitted a call, sending data to the internet. Maybe he’d done that, or now Jackson was hot on the heels of a delusional freak, not a former military man who showed the foresight to upload conspiracy documentation.
Gerber led him to the hull of the dead freighter, and as they passed through a door, Jackson stopped cold. What he saw was something out of a James Bond movie, a wide, empty interior dock with spaces for four submarines, two on each side of the hull, with loading cranes above to supply the subs with their gear. The covered docks were empty now, but there was no other explanation for the catwalks and support equipment inside the empty ship’s corpse.
It was crazy.
Or was he just influenced, mentally contaminated by the ravings of his jug-headed friend?
Gerber pointed to the water. “We can dive out through there!”
Jackson followed Gerber, but only visually. His feet had been rooted to the spot thanks to fear and indecision.
That momentary pause extended the OSHA inspector’s life and allowed him to see that Gerber was right. The younger man tripped, having snagged a small wire.
A loud hiss erupted immediately, and Gerber folded over, agonized as he passed through what must have been a cloud of poison. Gerber coughed, kicked, gurgled, then his limbs fell still.
Behind Jackson, the boatyard was a blazing inferno, hot flames racing up the gangplank they’d left behind. On instinct, Jackson threw the hatch shut, hoping that the steel would delay the inevitable blast of heat. He then looked back at Gerber, lying twenty yards away, forever stilled by an invisible hand that crushed the life from his lungs.
Jackson looked around. Surely there must have been some other way out. He couldn’t sit still forever, but there was an unseen assassin that killed instantly in front of him, or there was the slow, agonizing demise of burning alive behind the hatch, which was swiftly growing warmer, even as he leaned against it.
There was a railing ahead and a twenty-yard drop into the water. Maybe he could make it through the invisible poison gas, swim beneath it and reach the small locks that emptied out into the harbor. Jackson had little else to choose from, so he hurled himself forward, vaulting the rail.
Instead of sailing into the water with grace and speed, an agonizing spasm contorted him in midfall, his lungs feeling as if they had been filled to the brim with hot sauce. He didn’t know how much of the gas he’d sucked in, but it didn’t matter. His change in pose, midfall, granted him one small mercy.
Dropping twenty yards to the water headfirst, without his hands breaking the surface, resulted in his neck shattering, bones driven deep into his skull.
Instantly dead, Jackson didn’t have to worry about drowning or suffocating from the effects of the nerve gas released inside. The waters also would preserve his corpse for a month as the inferno melted steel, rendering the submarine pen an utterly unrecognizable stack of twisted, deformed and charred metal. In the cold waters off Norfolk, Bernie Jackson’s lifeless form entered a long sleep, never seeing the light of day until thirty days hence.
* * *
NATALIE CHASE COULD ONLY imagine the string of luck that had got her this cruise of the Spanish Canary Islands with some of the most beautiful men she’d ever seen. She ran her fingers through her blond curls, calling attention to her face as the guys walked past. Their eyes were agog with all of the women in bikinis who were out on the deck. There must have been two dozen guys, all of them with washboard abs. Not a single extra chin in the bunch.
The crew of this yacht kept their eyes on everything, the one small hindrance to Natalie’s admonition that the way to really pick up people was to go topless, leaving nothing to the imagination. The captain of the yacht was a handsome man, if likely twice Natalie’s age of twenty-five. She couldn’t tell what kind of body he had under his uniform, but he was tall, square-shouldered, with a disciplined, finely groomed beard and piercing eyes.
He was the most tantalizing item on this oceangoing all-you-can-eat buffet of beefcake. Captain Raul Espinoza was classically Spanish, with dark hair, skin sun-burned to a pleasing even tan, and clear, cool blue eyes. He was still virile; the salt and pepper of his beard and hair gave proof to that, in Natalie’s eyes.
The young men around her were fit and trim and handsome, but there was an aloofness to Espinoza that made her feel as if she needed to get to him. He didn’t have wealth, but he had every ounce of manliness that Natalie could imagine.
There were still the other crew members, swarthy, scruffy, dark-eyed, seeming more as if they belonged in a pirate movie than working on the decks of a miniature cruise ship. They had scars, and hands that looked made more of callus than flesh and bone. Their knuckles were especially distorted, swollen with pads of skin that seemed liked the armor plate on some movie superhero’s suit than the result of working on engines and such.
“Come up to the deck,” Espinoza said, interrupting Natalie’s thoughts. “And this time, it’s captain’s orders. Everyone topless. No excuses.”
Natalie pursed her lips, trying to decide whether she was ready to walk half naked on deck. Espinoza’s voice had held the lilt of self-satisfied humor. Could she do it?
Over the past two nights, at least four men had seen the goods, and Natalie knew they hadn’t been disappointed.
Captain Espinoza was going to be there, from the sound of things. She could endure the leers of the scraggly, battered-looking pirates if she could present herself to him.
“Comin’, Nat?” Derek, one of her recent conquests, asked. His gaze didn’t meet her at eye level. He wanted a repeat performance, and Derek, all dimples and bright white smile, would be an absolutely great consolation prize. He had just the right amount of “man pelt” on his upper chest, neither a thick hair shirt nor the smooth, overly waxed self-conscious shiny pectorals. His trail was all but unbroken, from clavicle down into his board shorts.
Natalie nodded.
Derek’s smile couldn’t have been more obvious if it had been put up in neon.
Natalie reached behind her, undid the string holding her top on and slid out. It was warm, sunny, and the kiss of the sun on her not-yet-tanned tits was something new. Something fun. She could get used to this kind of attention. Natalie wasn’t going back to Indiana with a single tan line. That was it.
She got up and spotted something on the water, just past Derek’s shoulder. It was everything the yacht they were on was not. It was dirty, grunting out smoke, with rust all along its sides. She could see the nets on it. A fishing boat.
And more sea men, no doubt.
Natalie began to have second thoughts about displaying her wares for not one but two boatloads of men. Derek slid his arm around her waist, his lips brushing her cheek.
“Come on, beautiful. We have a special party to get to,” he told her.
Derek’s nearness, the strength of his arm holding her around her waist, the smell of his just-washed hair, pulled her worries away from the boat. She gave his muscular shoulder a nibble, and he reciprocated by leaning down for a warm, passionate kiss.
“Time’s wasting, beautiful people!” Espinoza announced once more.
The two jogged toward the deck.
There, Espinoza stood on a railing overlooking the party deck. All fifty of the passengers were here, and Natalie hadn’t seen such a collection of smooth, unlined faces, flowing hair and tanned skin in her life. There were more than a few with pale patches where they had avoided going topless, as well, but in those same faces, she saw the giddy excitement of an experiment with sexual freedom and the dismissal of traditional bans on nudity. One girl looked as if she were a sneeze away from ripping off the thong that covered the few inches of her flesh that weren’t exposed.
“Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to our ship,” Espinoza said. He began to unbutton his jacket, sliding out of it. The rest of the bridge crew was there. They were younger and in fairly good shape, as well, though as they peeled out of their shirts Natalie could make out the scar tissue on each of them. Captain Espinoza was especially marked up, but that only made him even more interesting. He had lived a life of danger and peril, and her imagination ran away with her.... The brave, blue-eyed captain risking life and limb, battling smugglers and rescuing half-nude maidens from wicked pirates, bringing them to the safety of his bed and the warmth of his strong arms....
“You think that you are quite lucky to be on board this ship,” Espinoza said. “But you each have been chosen to come here for one specific purpose.”
Natalie watched him, but lost herself more in his chest, broad, with salt-and-pepper hair where scars didn’t leave bare patches. He was muscled, but not overly so. Lean and tall, he had lived a life of activity, showing in how he was tightly built without taking on the obscene distortions of a bodybuilder.
He took out a small nylon pouch and began handing out syringes to his bridge crew. He pushed the needle into his pectoral muscle and squeezed the bulb. There was a slight grunt of discomfort, and then he resumed talking.
“We needed your identifications, your luggage, your general appearances,” Espinoza said.
Natalie looked to the fishing boat, growing ever closer. There were women on the deck of that ship, as well as men.
“This was an excuse to get you all together in one spot, with a minimum of cleanup,” Espinoza said.
Suddenly people to Natalie’s right began coughing, jerking spasmodically. The wave of those falling ill spread quickly through the crowd. Natalie took a frightened breath, then she lost control of her hands and arms. Her head snapped upright and she could feel her teeth tear open her tongue as her jaws clenched violently shut like a bear trap. Blood and froth oozed over her lips as her legs gave way and she slumped to the deck. Derek was beside her, vibrating as if he were some child’s doll malfunctioning. The only signs that he was even alive were the spurts of blood through his nose, broken as he’d fallen onto his face, as his lungs tried to suck in fresh breath.
Vomit burst from Natalie’s stomach, and she felt her bladder release, as well.
“The Sendero Luminoso thanks you for the donation of your lives,” Espinoza’s voice echoed in her ears. “We promise to use them well, you spoiled little children.”
Natalie winced, reaching up as Espinoza glared down at her. Her specifically. Those blue, cool eyes she’d once lost herself in were now cold, hard, angry.
Darkness settled on the girl as the nerve gas finally took full effect.
Minutes later, gloved hands would hoist her over the rail, dropping her and the other young murder victims onto the ocean floor.
CHAPTER ONE
One month later
The cold waters of the harbor beyond the boatyard
looked inhospitable to Hermann Schwarz as he walked through the wreckage of what used to be the Heyerdal Hull Company. A month ago, this place had been torched in an act of terrorism by a radical antiwar group. The incident had been investigated thoroughly by the NCIS and Norfolk police and fire departments due to the nature of Heyerdal’s naval contracts and the extensive fire damage. Someone with a lot of skill had torched the facility, incinerating what hulls remained and leaving bodies almost completely unrecognizable in the conflagration.
Schwarz was here with his Able Team partners, Carl Lyons and Rosario Blancanales, and together the three of them were looking for connections. Across the Atlantic, thousands of miles due east, the Canary Islands were experiencing one of the most unusual hostage crisis situations the world had ever seen.
La Palma was one of a scattered assembly of volcanic islands that formed the Spanish Canaries, a dot in the Atlantic that was home to eighty thousand souls and a tourist destination for millions more. It also, strangely enough, was the lynchpin in a white paper about a mega-tsunami that would devastate the East Coast of the United States, as well as the British Isles, Spain, Portugal and potentially the nations ringing the Mediterranean.
Because Heyerdal had been owned by the Jeopardy Corporation, which had also sponsored the white paper, it was a slim lead for Stony Man Farm and its efforts to suss out the situation. While the world’s eyes were locked on a vacation paradise under siege by madmen, the men of Able Team were looking for a handle on why La Palma was the focus of such interest.
Schwarz cast around, realizing that something was wrong but unable to put his finger on it. There was wreckage extending out into the water, the most spectacular of which was a gutted freighter that had been devastated by fire. He kept being drawn back to this, and noted that Carl Lyons, a former Los Angeles P.D. cop, also was focused on the strange vibe.
Schwarz was as comfortable with the metaphysical as he was with the very solid and real world of electronics and computer systems, and one of the things he strongly believed was that the human mind was attuned to pick up data that was outside of the realm of the five ordinary senses. He had been present when Lyons spoke of “the feel” of a crime scene. This was before the popularization of forensic psychology, and Schwarz had always been certain of some more-than-standard instincts displayed by his partners.
“What do you have, Ironman?” Schwarz asked.
Carl “Ironman” Lyons, the leader of Able Team, remained still, his gaze focused on the gutted hulk. “What did they say was in here?”
“Wreckage. It was gutted by the fire,” Schwarz explained. “But you already knew that. You went over the files three times on the trip over here.”
Lyons nodded, his face a grim mask.
“And you’re wondering why someone would start a fire inside a hulk like that?” Schwarz asked.
Again the silent nod of agreement.
“They only found nine of the OSHA team, too,” Schwarz said.
Lyons looked at a temporary gangplank that had been erected for investigators to look within the wreckage. Schwarz followed him up and overlooked the carnage within. Plenty of high-definition images had been taken of the madness left over from the arson inferno.
“Did they bring in divers?” Lyons asked.
“I’m not going to be Watson to your Holmes, homes,” Schwarz quipped. “They moved in as far as they could under the docks, but the wreckage made it impossible to get inside the hull here.”
“And they didn’t drop anyone down into the water here,” Lyons muttered, looking through the doorway. There was no latticework left to stand on, though he could see a small shelf where one of the bodies had been recovered. The flames had been insanely hot, yet there remained a small bit of surviving human tissue, carbonized, that could mark the OSHA inspector’s corpse.
“Underwater metal. Not a safe place to go high diving,” Schwarz returned.
Lyons nodded. He stared at the lifeless, black reflective pool beneath. Schwarz didn’t like the intensity of his friend’s focus.
“I said...” Schwarz started, his voice rising.
That didn’t stop Lyons. He took one step through the door and plummeted into the water below.
Schwarz reached out, his throat tight as his friend splashed down, twenty yards below. A sixty-foot drop was something that was akin to making the same jump sixty feet to concrete. The standard limit for Olympic-class diving was off a ten-meter board, and while the record was 172 feet documented, he didn’t believe that Lyons had the kind of training for that, not when he was jumping into a tangle of twisted metal. For a ten-meter dive, the FINA—Fédération Internationale de Natation—recommendation was four and a half to five meters of depth to allow for a glide to a halt.
Lyons went in feetfirst, as far as he could tell. Maybe that would help.
“Carl!” Schwarz called after him.
Lyons’s head, blond hair matted dark brown against his scalp after his dunking, broke the surface and he spit out water.
“Come on in, Gadgets,” Lyons returned. “Better yet, go get a rope.”
“You are a complete freak, Carl,” Schwarz snapped. It took him ten minutes to locate some rope, by which time Rosario “Pol” Blancanales, the third member of the team, had joined him. Blancanales didn’t seem surprised in the least that their leader had done something as stupid as Schwarz claimed. Lyons didn’t think he was indestructible, but he also knew that sometimes you had to push your limits to accomplish a task.
“Brought two spools, in case you found the tenth body,” Blancanales called down.
Lyons nodded. “Toss down that rope first, then anchor it. I’ll help with bearing that weight.”
“We’ll need a tarp. He’s been down there for thirty days,” Schwarz mused.
“It’s not pretty,” Lyons said. He held something up. It was small, metallic and red. “Got a present for you.”
“Think it’ll work after a month in the drink?” Blancanales asked. “In salt water?”
“Depending on how secure the SIM card was, I could recover data from it,” Schwarz returned. “All depending. I’ve got a reader in my Combat PDA. We all do.”
Lyons surfaced once more, and both men could see that he’d tied an x-harness around the shoulders of a dead man, his skin shriveled, body seeming like a mummified prune. He then waved for the next rope.
With that, Lyons was back up after a minute of climbing the knotted line.
“How did you know you’d be all right down there?” Blancanales asked, helping their drenched partner to the top of the gangplank.
“I had my combat boots on. Reinforced ankles designed for parachuting, so I figured that if I hit anything feetfirst, the boots would at least keep my feet and shins from exploding before I flexed,” Lyons answered. “Wouldn’t have been something a dive crew leader would authorize...”
“You do realize that your health insurance, in that case, would have been a 9 mm slug through the head, right?” Schwarz asked.
Lyons shrugged, then produced the cell phone from his pocket. “Here you go, Gadgets.”
Blancanales set off to obtain a tarp for the body of the OSHA agent.
Blancanales’s jog slowed, though. A sudden deceleration that was all the warning Schwarz and Lyons would need.
An instant later the two men hurled themselves down the gangplank, diving for cover as a stream of automatic gunfire ripped the side of the incinerated hulk.
Able Team had arrived and had only incidentally recovered potential evidence of what had happened during the firebombing here at the boatyard. But now, when a shadowy group of assassins opened fire, their original plan had succeeded. Acting as nosy investigators, they had drawn conspirators out of the woodwork, conspirators who might actually have information about the deadly group who had seized control of an entire island.
Now all they had to do was to survive the hard contact.
* * *
CARL LYONS DIVED INTO a shoulder roll, bullets zipping past him. The assassins were firing high because they’d started shooting when he and Hermann Schwarz were at the very top of the gangplank, and never got a chance to catch up. As it was summer, he and his allies had been clad for the warm Virginia weather, alleviated slightly by being on the Norfolk waterfront where boatyards caught the cool breezes off the Atlantic.
Unfortunately such warmth restricted the amount of firepower each could carry beneath their windbreakers that had been emblazoned with the letters DOJ in deference to their cover as Justice Department deputies following up on an arson investigation. The size of their weaponry was limited to enticing whatever death squad was on hand into believing they had the upper hand, an overwhelming advantage.
It was a Hail Mary strategy, a blind toss accompanied by a wild prayer, and it was one that Able Team had not only grown used to, but had also perfected. As such, they had come fully prepared for a war.
As much as the trio would have loved to have kept full-blown assault rifles and rocket launchers on hand, they needed to lull the conspirators behind the Norfolk arson into believing that they were ripe and easy targets, armed with nothing more than the standard Glock 22s
issued to federal service deputies. The choices in that regard could be limited, if Able Team hadn’t had the services of John “Cowboy” Kissinger, one of the world’s best weapon smiths.
As Lyons, Schwarz and Blancanales reached their cover, the three partners made a quick visual verification that the team was whole and unharmed.
“No hits?” Lyons asked.
“Nope,” Blancanales returned. Schwarz simply grunted agreement.
“Not even on the body armor, not that we’d have been able to handle it. Those are five-five-six they’re pumping out,” Schwarz added. “They missed, but now they know how quick we are.”
“So we go sneaky,” Lyons returned, unleathering the machine pistol stored in a shoulder holster under his windbreaker. Long ago, Able Team had learned the benefits of carrying fully automatic handguns with folding foregrips for better control and utility. In the early days, these had been Beretta 93-R machine pistols. Now they opted for the Heckler and Koch MP-7. The bonus of the compact machine pistol was the fact that it not only had a vertical foregrip that could be folded to fit in a shoulder holster, but it also had an extendable stock to give it riflelike stability. Lyons wasn’t much of a fan of the MP-7’s 4.6 mm projectiles, but they moved at a blistering, Kevlar-defeating velocity and were still bigger than the rounds of a Heckler and Koch G-11 autorifle, which was much larger and bulkier
The three Stony Man warriors snapped out the collapsing shoulder stocks, folding down the forward grips. The folding iron sights were propped into place so that they resembled the precision sights of the M-4s and M-16s they normally utilized. As they did so, the team shifted among the wreckage of the arson-gutted boatyard, seeking better cover and concealment, even as enemy rifles crackled, trying to pin them down.
“These bastards are getting on my nerves,” Blancanales snarled as a spray of debris splashed against him from the impact of a dozen 5.56 mm rounds. “Especially since this seems like amateur hour.”
Lyons and Schwarz heard their partner over the hands-free communicators that they wore. Lyons spoke into his throat mike. “Confirm...low training?”
“I’m still here, and I’ve given them two clean shots at me,” Blancanales replied. “Do the math.”
“No fair, Pol,” Schwarz interrupted. “Ironman can barely do math in a classroom, let alone when he’s getting shot at.”
Lyons flipped off Schwarz. “All right. New plan.”
“Fall back and kill?” Blancanales asked over the headset.
“No. Just cover me,” Lyons said. He handed his machine pistol over to Schwarz.
“Bluejay,” Schwarz muttered.
Lyons pulled out one of his handguns, a Smith and Wesson .45, and held it between his thumb and forefinger. “Stop! Stop shooting!”
His voice was shrill, terrified. It was a completely alien sound compared to all that the other two members of Able Team had heard before, but this was completely new to the men trying to shoot at them.
“I’m just an accountant! Stop shooting!”
“Throw your gun out!” one of the shooters shouted in response.
“Paper jockey!” Schwarz snarled out loud. He waylaid his MP-7 and fired his pistol, intentionally missing Lyons, but that elicited a wave of precision covering fire immediately.
Lyons tossed the Smith and Wesson on the ground, without a care, just like an inept desk worker would. He stumbled out into the open, arms wavering in the air, his eyes cast downward.
The Bluejay ploy was a simple one. One member of the team would feign injury or incompetence to call the attention of the enemy away from the others. So far, the three of them were aware that their opponents were only pretending incompetence on their own. Lyons’s use of himself as bait had not drawn enemy fire because they had some other agenda. When the prisoner that offered himself had come under fire from Schwarz, their precision shot up to deadly levels of effect.
Whoever these conspirators were, they were sharp and alert, but they were also curious about the trio of men who stumbled around the boatyard in Norfolk. That meant that they wanted and needed answers. If Lyons could get close, he might have a chance to take one while they were still in prisoner-acquisition mode.
And if not, well, Lyons still had his Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum in its shoulder holster. Lyons was an old-school LAPD officer, and his side arm had been a grandfathered revolver, either a Colt Python or its Smith and Wesson counterpart. Sure, the Colt 1911 had a lighter trigger and a faster reload, and it sat flatter beneath his concealment garments, but Lyons had a trigger finger that was trained for fast and deadly double-action revolver shooting. This wasn’t just any .357 Magnum, either, it was a Military and Police R8. It not only had the unusual five-inch, Picatinny-railed barrel, but it also was fed from an eight-round cylinder—matching the capacity of a 1911, but not the .45 auto he’d discarded, and was rendered portable by an alloy frame.
Recoil in rapid-fire with his preferred 125-grain jacketed hollowpoints was quite easy, thanks to a set of rubber finger-grooved grips and “enough” mass. Lyons could draw and fire the R8, a name referring to its being an 8-shot revolver, and put all eight hits inside of a playing card at fifteen feet, or hit four different targets twice in the space of five seconds.
It still wouldn’t help much if he were directly under the gun, but Able’s version of the Bluejay ploy counted on a full team effort.
Right now, Lyons could tell that there were three sets of sights on him directly, but judging by the hail of fire that started this off, the rest were pretty well out of his line of sight, at least since his hands were up.
Fortunately for him, he had two highly trained combat veterans on his side, and thanks to his earpiece, he was picking up the pings from their laser “painters,” which gave him a relative range and position for each of the enemy crew.
There were nine of them, three for each team member, at least those who were in sight. Lyons figured on at least two more drivers, plus security guns for their vehicles. His best guess put thirteen against them. It wasn’t the worst that Able Team had faced, but if this death squad was worth its salt, Lyons was in for one hell of a fight and he was going to start it standing out in the open.
“Who the hell are you?” the commando who had addressed him previously snarled.
Lyons kept his hands up at the level of his ears, his face wrinkled and masked in fear. He could only imagine the ribbing that he would receive later from his partners about his acting. That didn’t matter. Lyons simply had to confuse the enemy for a few more moments, not win an award for best actor.
“I’m just an accountant, I told you that already! Please just let me go.”
In the open, Lyons could better make out the uniforms of the gunmen and the gear they were packing. The man who was talking to him wore a dull, nonreflective helmet with bullet-resistant wraparound goggles. So clad, he was relatively safe from a head shot. The rifleman’s torso and shoulders were no less vulnerable, polycarbide shells shielding his shoulder joints and the heavy load-bearing vest betraying its built-in trauma plates. Whoever had sent these men to ensure that the Norfolk boatyard’s secrets remain buried beneath ash and submerged in the cold waters of the harbor was not taking any chances by sending the killers in with secondhand weapons and armor.
Blancanales’s voice hissed through the earpiece of Lyons’s hands-free communicator. “All right, Ironman, we’ve got the measure of these assholes. It’s all up to you. Give us the signal and we mop these idiots off the deck.”
Lyons simply nodded, maintaining his facade of fear. Thanks to the observations of Schwarz and Blancanales, he had a good idea of where the enemy had set themselves up. Right now he knew that there were two killers just out of his line of sight but in position to pop up and riddle him with bullets. However, since they had been sighted by his partners, they were far less of a threat simply because either Blancanales or Schwarz already had them targeted. The hidden gunmen were only a secondary threat compared to the grim, armored figure who was already addressing him.
This was going to have to be done the old-fashioned way. “My arms are getting tired, can I put them down please?” Lyons whimpered as he spoke.
“I don’t want any funny business from you, motherfucker,” the cleanup crew killer snarled in warning. He didn’t lower the muzzle of his rifle, a SIG 556 folding-stock assault rifle. Lyons knew that his body armor couldn’t take a point-blank volley from the killer; Kevlar might just as well have been gossamer for all the good it would do him. “Leave your damn mitts in the air.”
Lyons noticed a jutting steel I-beam that had the mass and durability to deflect the storm of rifle fire, and it was just within a few yards of his position. Just to be certain, Lyons mentally measured the distance once more, and then with an explosion of power he leaped into the shadow of the I-beam. Even as he dived for cover he clawed the N-frame .357 Magnum from its hidden holster. The enemy commando opened up with his SIG, but Lyons was no longer where the muzzle of the weapon was pointing as he pulled the trigger. A swarm of buzzing hornets whipped through the air, close enough that one of the bullets plucked at the sleeve of his windbreaker. Regardless of how close the enemy’s fire had come to ending his life, Lyons was shielded and down once again.
From his right, Schwarz and his MP-7 entered the fight, the little machine pistol’s 4.6 mm bullets zipping to catch one of the ambushers in the back of his head. The gunman’s helmet deflected much of the glancing burst, but the single projectile hit dead-on, its reinforced point punching through the Kevlar helmet and into the skull of the would-be murderer. An explosion of skull fragments, glass and spongy dollops of brain matter sprayed to the air close enough to Lyons that it peppered the left shoulder of his windbreaker.
Lyons didn’t mind brain stains on the Department of Justice windbreaker. He was far more concerned with the rifleman who was trying to burn him out of cover with extended bursts from an assault rifle. Lyons must have annoyed the killer because he had abandoned fire discipline and was shooting without regard for how much ammo he had in the weapon. In only a few seconds the sniper would run out, and once there was a lull in the firing, Lyons was poised to make his move.
The enemy rifle went silent and Lyons could hear a muffled curse coming from the angry commando. Too late the shooter realized his error and was torn between fumbling a new magazine into the weapon and ducking behind cover himself. That pause allowed Lyons the time he needed to whip around the I-beam, center the front sight of his Magnum on his enemy’s goggles and milk the trigger of the revolver. Punching out of the barrel at over 1500 feet per second, Lyons’s shot smashed into the tough ballistic glass of the killer’s eyewear, breaking through it and crushing the forehead beneath.
From Lyons’s left, Blancanales had already entered the battle with a quieter opening gambit. The wily old Able Team warrior had fast-balled a fragmentation grenade hard enough at the head of the third assailant that it popped straight up into the air over the dazed gunman. As the handheld bomb reached the apex of its bounce, it exploded. A sheet of fire and shrapnel rained down, scything into the helmet and shoulder armor of the man. Heavily protected, the gunner was unharmed by the fragments thrown off by the grenade, but the pressure wave struck him like a baseball bat and even the protection of his helmet couldn’t keep him from staggering dazedly into the open.
Blancanales hated that he had to be so ruthless toward the stunned foe, but the armored assassin still had a firm grip on his weapon and would recover his senses within a few moments. Taking aim, Blancanales opened fire and peppered the gunman’s chest with a full-auto salvo. While the action was tactically sound, despite its ruthlessness, Blancanales was not being unnecessarily cruel. He was simply stopping a would-be killer from continuing to target federal investigators.
Just because Able Team was undercover as Department of Justice employees didn’t mean that they weren’t actual Feds. This was as much self-defense as rooting out the truth behind who initiated the assassinations of the OSHA investigators. Nine innocent men, all unarmed, had died by fire to keep a secret here in the Norfolk boatyard.
Clearly the shooters who had arrived and immediately opened fire were not police officers. Furthermore they would definitely know what was going on and who had likely been behind the others’ deaths.
Blancanales held off moving on to another target, keeping cover between himself and the other gunmen. These shooters were wearing armor, so he waited to be sure that the 4.6 mm bullets from his machine pistol had been able to punch through to his enemy’s vitals.
It turned out that Blancanales had made the right choice, because the staggered killer scrambled back to his feet a second time, but he wasn’t standing still to be the target for further full-auto hammering. Even as the gunman retreated, two more riflemen opened up, their rifles chattering and pelting the hunk of rubble that Blancanales used as a shield. Unfortunately for them, they missed, bullets smashing against mass too dense for their 5.56 mm rounds to penetrate, and Blancanales had mapped out a line of retreat in case he was attacked from that vector.
Blancanales paused just enough to unclip another of his grenades from a small fanny pack. He plucked the cotter pin and released the spoon, igniting the blaster’s fuse before hurling it toward the rattle of enemy weapons. There was a brief pause in the shooting, accompanied by an almost comical cry of “Shit!”
The humor of the moment was punctuated by the earth-shattering roar of the grenade’s detonation, body parts spiraling away from the source of the well-placed blast. A distant explosion hadn’t been able to shred through a steel helmet and trauma plates, but the enemy commandos didn’t have that kind of hard shell on their legs. Even if they did, a sheet of kinetic force severed the limbs where the joints in the armor were weakest.
“We’re hoping to get one or two alive, remember,” Schwarz said grimly.
“Acknowledged,” Blancanales replied. “Let’s hope they have the same orders.”
The stunned and wounded gunner, having survived two attempts at putting him down, became Blancanales’s focus. He was leaving a blood trail, which meant at least one of the prior attacks had caused him injury. Once hurt, he’d be easier to take down.
With his target in sight, Blancanales rushed forward, keeping out of the fields of fire of the enemy gunners, zagging toward the downed commando. He reloaded the MP-7 on the run, the magazine-in-grip design making it easier for his left hand to find the well that his right was wrapped around. It was so easy he could do it blindfolded, and since he hadn’t run the SMG into slide-lock, he knew he had a round chambered.
A gunman edged into the open in front of the wily veteran commando, looking to cover his fallen friend. He also happened to have a device that was decidedly not an assault weapon in his hands. Blancanales only barely had a few instants of warning before he dived beneath the twin barbs of an underbarrel-mounted Taser. The wires fell across his shoulders, but as they were insulated to contain the voltage that had been directed toward whatever had been stuck by the pair of darts, the charge in the slender threads was impotent against him.
That couldn’t be said for the weapon atop the Taser, an M-4 assault rifle. The killer figured that if he couldn’t take Blancanales as a prisoner, then he’d simply open fire and remove him as a threat. Blancanales didn’t sit still for this, however. He rolled onto his back, getting himself out of the path of the initial burst of rifle fire, triggering the H&K MP-7 at the man’s shins. The 4.6 mm bullets didn’t contain a lot of mass, but as they were composed of dense slugs launched at more than 2400 feet per second, they struck the enemy gunner hard, splintering bone and muscle everywhere between his knees and ankles.
Without the ability to stand, the gunman collapsed onto his stunned friend, going from rescuer to restraint.
“Ironman!” Blancanales called. “Cover me! Two prisoners at four o’clock.”
Lyons would know that Blancanales would always put his position at two hours fast; it was one way that Able Team was able to engage in out-loud communication of their location without actually betraying where they actually were in relation to each other. Lyons opened up with his big .357 Magnum, firing three shots rapid-fire, drawing heat away from his partner even as his rounds tagged an enemy in his body armor. Trauma plates deflected the more lethal portion of Lyons’s salvo, but it was enough to convince the gunman to retreat back behind cover.
Lyons grimaced as he snapped open the cylinder, ejecting his spent brass and feeding in a special 8-round .357 Magnum speed-loader. The gun was back in action in two seconds, but before he left cover, Schwarz was at his side, handing him the MP-7 he’d ceded earlier.
“We don’t need to use kid gloves anymore. Punch through the armor and finish this fight,” Schwarz said.
Lyons smirked. “Never would have thought of that myself.”
He snapped open the stock and folded down the foregrip on the machine pistol. A 20-round magazine sat flush with the bottom of the grip, so he dumped it and slid home a 40-rounder. “What’s the estimate on how many left?”
Schwarz scanned around. “Three here, but there are still the drivers and vehicle security who could be coming in as backup.”
“That’s why you dropped off my MP-7,” Lyons said.
“Gonna head them off,” Schwarz said.
With that, the electronics genius disappeared from sight. Whatever the brilliant Schwarz had in mind, it would be explosive and deadly.
“They secure?” Lyons asked Blancanales through his headset.
“Roger that.”
“Keep your head down, too,” Lyons ordered.
With that, he lobbed a pair of flash-bang grenades in the direction of the enemy’s fire. They had split up, two in one group with a long gunner trying to flank. Lyons knew that he wouldn’t have much of an opportunity, even with the blinding and deafening force of the twin shock bombs. The headgear they wore would mitigate much of the force, but Lyons’s throws had been true. He was counting on a close-range burst of light and sound to buy him a few seconds.
He was up and firing, catching a fleeting touch of the bang. The two gunners he’d targeted as one clump were staggered where they stood, and Lyons poured on the heat from his machine pistol. The 40-round magazine disappeared in the space of seconds, but the Able Team commander had found every weak point in his opponents’ armor, punching bullets deep into their vitals. The lifeless men dropped their weapons, slumping to the ground.
As they fell, the last of the gunners was recovering from the concussion grenade that had rocked him. That mercenary was on Lyons’s flank, right in his blind spot. With a clear shot and no other enemies in sight, the rifleman took an extra moment to line up on the “vulnerable” Lyons when the thunder and bellow of Blancanales’s Smith and Wesson .45 erupted from ground level.
The shooter dropped his weapon as two 230-grain slugs struck him in one hip, shattering bone and snapping his pelvis. The twin slugs mushroomed on impact, going from just under half of an inch to a full three quarters of an inch of blossomed lead and copper. The duo of hammer blows tore an ugly, brutal channel through the gunman’s groin, breaking his other hip on the way out.
Paralyzed, he collapsed, almost face-to-face with the prone Blancanales.
One more stroke of the trigger, and the ambusher’s face disappeared, imploding under the thunderous impact of a third .45-caliber round.
Lyons knew that Blancanales had a line of sight on the last of the gunmen, having dealt with the men he’d take prisoner before backing him up.
In the distance, the unmistakable roar of plastic explosives split the air.
“You done there?” Lyons asked Schwarz via the headset.
“Grab a prisoner and rendezvous,” Schwarz answered. “We toss our guys into the back of our van, and Pol drives it to the safe house. We grab the other vehicles and bring them in and rip them apart for forensic evidence.”
“Sirens,” Blancanales said. “We made a hell of a lot of noise.”
“Grab one of these fools and let’s go,” Lyons suggested. “Hopefully the Farm’s screwing with police communications so we have a route out of here.”
“If so, good. If not, I’ll cut us a path without hurting any cops,” Blancanales replied.
“I’m counting on that.”
With that, Able Team rushed away from the Norfolk boatyard, prisoners in tow. They were gone with only seconds to spare when the police arrived, looking upon the carnage wrought by their explosive presence.
In the upcoming days, the Norfolk Police and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service would wonder what caused this brutal spat of violence, but would soon be distracted by yet more violence. Able Team was on the case, and they were up against a deadly conspiracy that was bringing far more to the fight than just guns.
CHAPTER TWO
Calvin James and Rafael Encizo checked over the scuba kits of the three partners, David McCarter, Gary Manning and T. J. Hawkins, even as the silo the five men stood within filled with seawater up to their knees. James was a scuba expert thanks to Navy SEAL training, while a lifetime of maritime salvage employment had honed Encizo into a master diver. As such, they took it upon themselves to perform safety checks on the rest of the team’s equipment. It was almost paranoid the way that they double-checked their partner’s preparations, but neither man wanted to take a chance with the lives of their dearest friends.
“All right, Mom!” T. J. Hawkins quipped as James manhandled his scuba tank. “If you fuss any more over me, I’ll miss the damn bus and you’ll have to drive me to school yourself.”
“Language, motherfucker!” James snapped back. “I’ll wash your fucking mouth out with soap.”
This back-and-forth solicited chuckles from the others even as they clamped the nozzles of their bubble lists’ self-contained breathing systems between their teeth. The packs that the five men wore were larger than standard scuba gear, but the extra bulk would prove to be worth its weight. Not only would the scrubber chamber in the system recycle their air, allowing for nearly limitless time under water, but the lack of bubbles would also lower their profile, making any approach from beneath the waves even stealthier. Under water, the extra mass would be less of a burden. Any additional effort would be further alleviated by the Swimmer Delivery Vehicle or SDV, an underwater equivalent of a convertible sports car meant for cutting through the depths with the “top down” at a speed far faster than any man could swim.
The silo was full of water now, and the pressure inside was equal to that outside of the submarine, making it easier to open the hatch and less of a shock when the five men exited the nuke sub to reach the SDV. The undersea craft from the U.S. Navy had brought them close to the hospitable island of La Palma, one of the most popular tourist spots in the Spanish Canary Islands. The sub had powered across the Atlantic at its maximum speed after picking up the members of Phoenix Force when they had been transferred from a helicopter launched from an aircraft carrier just off the coast of Virginia.
For now the rest of the United States Navy was still organizing an emergency blockade around the vacation spot besieged by terrorists. Both the United States Marine Corps and U.S. Navy SEALs were on full alert and ready to engage in hostage rescue, but were held at bay by the threat of deadly charges set in volcanic fissures on the caldera that made up the heart of the island. Local hotels were also packed with thousands of captive tourists rigged to explode. In the White House, the President knew that any conventional military intervention would result in lost lives, and the same threat stayed the hands of British and Spanish amphibious forces. Fortunately for the President of the United States, he was aware of the one group capable of being able to move in quietly, with all the training and flexibility to overcome even insane odds. That was the agency known as the Sensitive Operations Group, a top-secret facility stationed at Stony Man Farm, which boasted one of the most incredible cybertechnology information-gathering services in the world and two of the most elite combat teams ever to engage in warfare—Able Team and Phoenix Force.
The five Phoenix Force operatives swam to their stealth sled. The fifteen-foot-long craft looked like a torpedo whose center had been peeled open. The two aquatic jet engines were contained in the belly of the SDV, which could push through the depths at upwards of twenty-five knots. Because of that relative speed, a huge nosecone and windshield were in place to keep the water from pushing on the riders with great force. Ordinarily the SDV was meant for Navy SEAL commandos, so James and Encizo had stowed their armaments in purpose-built compartments on the vehicle. Both Phoenix Force divers were already familiar with the controls and operation of the SDV.
The La Palma terrorists had warned that if any covert-
operations teams were sighted on the island, and harmed any member of their force, the hotel jammed with upward of one thousand frightened tourists would be demolished.
Phoenix Force needed to plan their infiltration with extreme care. Though they brought with them suppressed submachine guns for later use, when hard contact was unavoidable, their most important weapons would be Manning’s air rifle, an assortment of knives and impact weapons and a pair of Barnett commando crossbows. Of these so-called silent weapons, Manning’s air rifle was the quietest. Unless they had disarmed the explosives threatening the tourists, any gunfight would be the absolute last resort. The darts fired from Manning’s air rifle were loaded with Thorazine, which would almost instantly put an enemy to sleep. This would allow them to have live prisoners to interrogate. However, if things tended toward a worsening situation, Manning also had a supply of deadly poison darts.
James slid behind the controls of the SDV, and with a jolt the impulse jets kicked in.
Gary Manning, due to his expertise in demolitions and engineering, had been among the group of Stony Man geniuses who had run equations regarding the consequences of a detonation. The other members of the scientific team had included Hermann Schwarz, Aaron Kurtzman, the Farm’s cyberteam leader, and several other Stony Man Farm experts. Every physics simulation, every math equation and every program told the same story. A detonation in the right spot along the cliffs making up the outer ring of the volcanic caldera would create a mammoth landslide, which would drop into the Atlantic with more than enough force and momentum to unleash a hemisphere-wide seismic event. Coastal cities would be flooded as far inland as fifteen miles, and any harbor facilities would be destroyed beyond repair.
During the 2011 earthquake in Japan, the world had seen the raw, unmitigated power of the tsunami against the modern coastline. Entire towns and cities had been carved from the land, either bulldozed miles inland or sucked into the Pacific. The tsunami that would be unleashed by the landslide in La Palma would be like that, except that it would stretch to England, Spain and Portugal, and from Maine to Florida. It would be the tragedy of Japan multiplied many times with no fewer than twenty-two million estimated casualties in the United States and Canada alone.
The terrorists hadn’t said what they wanted in concrete terms, just the hell that would be unleashed if a rescue attempt was initiated for the hostages. The tidal-wave plan had been discovered by Stony Man Farm only after hours of intensive search to identify the island’s tactical or strategic value. Nothing else could have motivated such a hostile takeover.
All of this data had come in the form of a white paper that postulated the deadly tsunami. Written by the Jeopardy Corporation, the paper was discovered by Hal Brognola, the Farm’s director and White House liaison. Brognola had the job of giving the President the vital news about the actual purpose behind the takeover. Now, the leader of the free world faced two problems, balancing the lives of thousands of tourists, many of them American, against the lives of millions of Europeans
and billions of dollars of infrastructure that would be damaged. Either way the blow delivered would be catastrophic.
The Man couldn’t choose to let either the hostages or the nation come to harm, so he had turned to the Sensitive Operations Group based at the Stony Man Farm. Led by Brognola, the counterterrorism teams could strike around the globe, neutralizing threats to the entire Free World.
* * *
PHOENIX FORCE RODE their SDV beneath the waves, heading into the jaws of death. Their counterparts, Able Team, were back in the United States checking the damage wrought upon the Jeopardy Corporation by an unknown force, most likely the same one that was at work at La Palma.
As the SDV powered toward the hostage island, James kept it low, close to the ocean floor to avoid being seen on sonar. They were at a depth so that even the noon sun was dimmed to the point where it was like dusk. They needed headlights, but were able to use them unseen from the surface due to the massive water above them. The Phoenix Force warriors were watching for signs of other undersea craft or magnetic antiship mines when they saw the grisly collection of figures on the seabed.
James and Encizo knew that the corpses hadn’t been down here very long as there was still tissue on their bodies. Meat, especially carrion, on the ocean floor often ended up in the bellies of crustaceans or fish. Indeed, the lifeless bodies were identifiable as men or women.
The estimation of the time that the bodies had been down here was undermined by the stilled forms of crabs and small fish scattered around the bodies. The corpses had nibbles, small bites in them, but once it was learned that others who ate from the carrion died instantly, the rest of the undersea scavengers avoided the deadly meals.
This was an ominous indication of how the poor souls had died. Somewhere, likely while they had been moored on tranquil waters just above their current position, the collection of dead had been afflicted by nerve gas, most likely a type that was absorbed through skin. The deadly toxins would make the corpses a lethal last meal for the carrion eaters who normally seized upon fresh flesh drifting to the bottom.
McCarter tapped James on the shoulder, then pushed himself from his seat. James grimaced, teeth clenched around his mouth gauge. The rules of extravehicular activity on the SDV had been decided beforehand, and first among them was that no more than one diver would be apart from the sled at a time. This was a just-in-case policy, something that would reduce the risks to the Phoenix Force swimmers. McCarter’s lone probe into the strewed corpses and poisoned sea life could only be supported by the swivel lamp mounted next to Encizo.
The only consolation that James had was that the SDV could linger, thanks to the oxygen recycling in the bubble-less systems.
McCarter was able to make out more detail as he swam closer to the dead. He could tell that they were all relatively young, in their twenties and thirties, and to a body, none of them wore a stitch of clothing above their waists. In life, they must have been fit, beautiful, though the cold waters had lent a bloated complexion to each of them as he took images with his underwater digital camera. He was also able to peg their nationalities as predominantly American, mostly thanks to the fact that the men wore “board shorts,” surfing wear that was loose, airy and comfortable, as opposed to the European preference for tighter, more revealing swimwear.
The dead had also come from a private cruise, since the women were all topless, yet with American males. It had been a party among friends, where the girls had felt confident enough and comfortable in baring their breasts to one and all. That hadn’t kept them from showing some modesty as several had gossamer-thin wraps tied around their waists.
McCarter grunted, feeling a dark consolation that these poor kids had passed quickly, thanks to the nerve gas. They undoubtedly died in agony, but they hadn’t been molested before or after their demise. The bodies of the women were free of bruising indicative of rape or post-mortem activity, further evidence of the dangerous toxins absorbed through their bare skin.
He swam to the bodies of the men and began searching through pockets after he took digital photos of their slack, cold faces. One of them might have had the presence of mind to pack a wallet or some other form of identification, but instead he found seawater-corroded cell phones and unopened foil packets of condoms. It had taken five tries to get a good, old-fashioned wallet, and he also found a more modern design, a stainless-steel model that sealed money and cards inside, safe from sweat or immersion while surfing or swimming.
Having found some ID, McCarter returned to the sled, not quite happy, but nor was he despondent. The Navy would be directed to these GPS coordinates to recover the lost and perhaps bring them home for proper burial. Right now, however, he had the means of giving closure to the families of the dead.
With grim resolve, McCarter buckled into his seat. He no longer saw the victims of La Palma as an abstract. There were faces, and those faces could be turned to names. The victims of the hostage takers, no matter what their incentive for violence, had been slain in the prime of their lives. He’d seen them, touched them and knew that they were gone forever, even if their remains were pulled from the cold, dark depths at the bottom of the Atlantic.
They had come here in life, looking for joy and camaraderie and romance. Instead, they had been murdered.
It wouldn’t be up to him to piece together names and faces caught on his digital camera, but he could only imagine what horrors had befallen them in the last moments of their lives.
McCarter grit his teeth tighter around the mouthpiece of his rebreather. The murderous bastards were going to pay. He may not have been the raging berserker Carl Lyons of Able Team, but he sure as hell had come close in his days before assuming the responsibility of leading Phoenix Force. Even though he was calmer now, he still held a spot in his heart for anger, loathing, soul-crushing rage against those who slaughtered helpless innocents. And he’d squeeze all of that out in bloody retribution against these killers.
CHAPTER THREE
The three men of Phoenix Force surfaced along the western coast of the island of La Palma in darkness. They paused to give the shore a good scan with binoculars and laser range finders that were carried on the SDV. Over their satellite link to Stony Man Farm, they double-checked their position and sought a real-time infrared photograph of the rocky shore ahead of them. The shore was in a province of the island called Tazacorte, which was fairly sparsely populated. There was only one post office and one school for the whole area, as well as a port, which they had surfaced near. Most of the province was unreachable thanks to a sixty-meter elevation where the cliff fell off rapidly into the ocean, but that wouldn’t be a hindrance to Phoenix Force.
They were still going to land a mile to the south of Tarajal, which was a popular marina for tourists and locals alike. They wanted to stay out of sight of the native population and the mercenaries, if they were active in this part of the island. That meant that they would climb a rocky cliff and cut across the sparsely populated banana plantations that topped the oceanfront cliffs.
There were tourist-oriented beaches, such as the Playa del Puerto. A seaside promenade with restaurants and beach facilities was present. Farther south, there was Los Guirres o El VolcГЎn, which was wild in nature, isolated, but a favorite spot for surfers who wanted to get off the beaten path. All along, they could make out the black volcanic sands that made the island so well known and striking.
McCarter joined in on the scan of the Spanish marina. “Looks like a lot of the locals got in their boats and took off.”
“I don’t see much in way of an armed presence either way,” Encizo said.
“That means bugger all. We’ve got a submarine loaded with guns and explosives, and we look like bumps on the waves,” McCarter countered. “And don’t forget that a cruise ship turned out to be a missile-launching Q-ship that took over Santa Cruz harbor.”
“That’s over the spine of the island,” Encizo said. “But they might have some kind of presence here, especially since we’re that much closer to Cumbre Vieja.”
None of the team had to double-check the map that they had memorized. Cumbre Vieja volcano was the subject of the Jeopardy white paper about how a catastrophic volcanic landslide could result in a mega-tsunami. La Palma, seen from orbit, looked something like a yolk-up egg, except that the dome was actually the depressed caldera of an ancient but recently geologically active volcano. Most of the tourism was concentrated along the lower level, southern coasts of the island.
James’s frown was ever present as he checked the forearm-strapped com link that kept him in touch with Stony Man Farm. Still nothing about the identities of the bodies seen below the waves.
McCarter noticed the grim look on James’s face. “You put a few clues together to get something disturbing.”
“Those were tourists dropped off shore,” James returned. “We haven’t gotten anything solid back from the Farm, but who else would they be?”
“And that marina is a good place for a yacht full of terrorists disguised as vacation-goers to pull in,” Encizo added.
“You don’t have to tell me twice,” McCarter said. He had been right there, looking the corpses in their lifeless faces, getting digital photographs to upload to the Farm. “So they could have parked, leaving behind spotters.”
“And they could have women terrorists on hand,” James threw in. “So we can’t be sure of who we’re looking at, if we run across some tourists.”
“Which is why we’re avoiding any contact until we’re sure who we’re dealing with,” McCarter said.
James nodded.
“You’re not going to get cold feet about shooting a woman, are you?” McCarter asked.
“If they have a gun and they’re trying to kill me, not a chance,” James answered. “We’ve encountered enough murderous ladies, and I’ve never flinched from that.”
“This is also Spain, where gun laws aren’t like America. It’s not bloody likely that we’ll run into a lady with a concealed carry pistol,” McCarter added.
“And that was what I’d worry most about,” Encizo said, nodding to James in agreement with his unspoken doubts.
“Just keep your eyes peeled,” McCarter warned.
The three men swam back to the submerged vehicle, turned it to the south and continued on toward the rocky shore.
* * *
HAROLD BROGNOLA LURCHED from the couch in his office, grimacing as he felt the pinch in his neck caused by sleeping with his head on the armrest. While he was aware of the Farm’s accommodations for guests—soft, comfortable beds—Brognola was more of a mind to avoid sleeping there. The couch was its own quiet alarm, its lumps and painful armrest rousing him from slumber after only an hour. If he were on a schedule that would allow a full night’s sleep, he’d drag himself to a guest room and snore happily.
Awake, he made his way to the Stony Man Farm War Room, looking at the gigantic map on the wall. The display was made of several interlocked plasma screen televisions, enabling different panels to be pulled up for individual windows containing pertinent information. Right now, the screens showed a blockade around the island of La Palma in the Atlantic Ocean. Forty-eight hours earlier, the western port of the island, Santa Cruz, became ground zero for a wild, unprecedented explosion of violence, literally.
A cruise ship, what appeared to be a cruise ship more precisely, suddenly fired anti-shipping missiles from its deck and shattered the hulls of two ocean liners so that they were left malingering in the path of any other large craft attempting to get away. With the sudden blasts, smaller craft were suddenly set to flight, two speed boats with vacationers accelerating out of the harbor as quickly as humanly possible.
As they fled, smaller missiles were launched. They easily caught up with the civilian crafts and blasted them out of the water.
All of this was caught on video camera and transmitted to the rest of the world with its grim, ominous warning.
“Send forces ashore, and we shall kill thousands.”
The group called itself Option Omega, and they were railing against the G8 and its interference with the natural economy of the world. Governments mismanaging taxes and regulations, they had said, were leading the world to the brink of financial collapse.
Option Omega wanted to show the world’s governments how weak they truly were. La Palma was a tourist mecca, a wide-open maw for tourist revenues that kept Spain solvent.
Option Omega intended to show Spain and the other European members of the G8 simply how weak they were when it came to pushing the people under the wheels of their insane economic policies.
Brognola knew that this group was borrowing the vague, half-assed rhetoric of Occupy Wall Street and the even older Tea Party movement—two groups of American
citizens who had legitimate gripes about American financial and fiscal woes—and was regurgitating it with elements of both groups’ ideals. It was a hodgepodge jumble that had garnered them a modicum of “I admire your sentiments, but not your actions” lip service on left- and right-wing squawk boxes.
He proceeded to where Barbara Price, the Farm’s mission controller, was working at her station, collating information as quickly as it came in.
“Anything new?” Brognola asked.
“Gunfight in Norfolk,” Price told him matter-of-factly, not hiding the annoyance in her voice. “Small consolation is that it was far from bystanders, though the whole waterfront heard machine guns and grenades for miles.”
“How’s the Virginia news handling it all?” Brognola asked.
“They’re reporting that it might be gang violence. They brought up the fire that gutted the boatyard a month ago,” Price said. “And then they skimmed away when there was a fresh tweet from that actress trapped on La Palma.”
Brognola grimaced. “She’s still posting to the internet?”
“Nobody can get out of the hotels, but they have some pretty good internet connections,” Price told him. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they were letting hostages have access to social media in order to keep the world watching.”
“Social media, but they’re pretty good at only putting their video out,” Brognola mused.
“Even smartphone video has a pretty large footprint to be intercepted,” Price suggested. “Aaron told me that it would be easy for someone to monitor and purge video footage or digital photos from the stream.”
“Meanwhile, social media posts adding only 140 characters at a time can get through because there’s no way that a strike team could use a status update to plan an assault,” Brognola grumbled.
Price nodded. “Aaron also said that our satellite coverage of the Spanish Canaries is being assailed. We keep getting spikes of interference, which means they are intent on keeping the outside world blind but not deaf.”
Brognola sneered. “It’s like poking a wounded hostage so that their screams weigh on rescuers, but they keep the drapes drawn so we can’t take a shot in.”
“But we did take a shot,” Price said. “We sent in Phoenix.”
Brognola nodded. “You don’t sound happy.”
“We got an upload of a few dozen photos over satellite laser link. They’re of preserved corpses in the waters off of Tazacorte,” Price said. “That was a few minutes ago, but they’re of young people. We’re trying facial IDs, as well as tapping some SIM cards that survived being at the bottom of the ocean.”
“Tourists?” Brognola asked.
“McCarter and James both suggested that in texts to us,” Price answered. “Mode of dress was summer casual, very casual. Everyone was topless.”
Brognola grumbled at this suggestion. “Meaning that if they were on a boat, they left the majority of their clothing and personal identification in their state rooms.”
Price nodded. “James sent that as a follow-up after they came up. There were some yachts still docked at the marina in Tarajal.”
“What have we got on those faces and cards?” Brognola asked.
“Still checking on it,” Price told him. “But we’ve got the fastest fingers on the East Coast working on this.”
Brognola looked immediately over to Akira Tokaido, who was running through multiple images on his computer screen. They were flashing through too fast for Brognola to follow, but Tokaido had been born with a nervous system that seemed to have a quad-core processor. Brognola was still in abacus world when it came to technology, and he barely knew what quad-core meant, but it was fast, and Tokaido was that quick. He could look at those faces and run through code at lightning speed.
There was a quick whoop as Tokaido made a connection. “Barb! I have IDs.”
“That was fast,” Price said. Brognola accompanied her over to his station.
“We’ve been looking for signs of trouble since the first explosions,” Tokaido said. “That meant going back months.”
“So missing persons reports?” Brognola asked.
Tokaido nodded. “A bunch of twenty-somethings gone missing, but they said that they were staying on some extra time.”
“Email contact?”
“And new photos and videos up on social media,” Tokaido added. “So that’s allaying most of the suspicion.”
“Who isn’t buying this?” Brognola asked.
“Young lady, Cathryn Lopez. She was due to ship out after her vacation,” Tokaido said.
“Where?” Brognola asked.
“Marines. When a female Marine doesn’t report in for duty, it raises some flags. Especially if she’s still posting online,” Tokaido said. “As her last port of call...”
“The USMC is doing part of our intel for us,” Brognola mumbled. “There was a face in that batch?”
Tokaido shook his head. “But Lopez was on the same boat with Bryce Jennings. And his SIM card was recovered by McCarter.”
“Bryce Jennings?” Price asked. She shook her head. “Was he a porn star or something?”
“No, it was his real name,” Tokaido said.
“They slipped ashore disguised as tourists,” Brognola murmured. “Does our satellite coverage have identification on any of the boats?”
“We’re getting interference,” Tokaido returned. “And any IFF we have on the ships show nothing on the yacht that these kids were supposedly on.”
“So they’re anticipating us,” Price mused. “They’re anticipating something.”
“Are we getting anything at other marinas on that side? Or just Tarajal?” Brognola asked.
“No fine details in Tarajal, so that means that particular marina has some craft inside that’s jamming us,” Tokaido mused.
“And keeping watch on that coast,” Price added.
“You can fit a bit of surveillance equipment on a yacht,” Brognola said. “Radar, telescopes, satellite communications...”
“And Option Omega scouts,” Price noted.
“Option Omega has very little history except as an Idaho-based splinter of a white-supremacist militia,” Huntington Wethers, another member of Kurtzman’s cyberteam, interjected. “As to being a splinter, we’re talking a top membership of a dozen.”
“No other references?” Brognola asked. “Because—”
“I’ve been quite thorough,” Wethers told him. “Option Omega has the computer skills and resources to launch attacks on any other group usurping their name. I’ve tried a couple of runs at their main website, and they are not only pro-La Palma takeover, but they are vehemently anti-G8.”
“Idaho is a long way from Norfolk,” Brognola said. “And it’s even farther to the Spanish Canaries.”
“Traffic to their site has risen exponentially,” cyberteam member Carmen Delahunt advised. “As has the mention of them on BBSs. They appear to have been recruiting heavily.”
“Appear?” Brognola asked, aware that Delahunt was referring to computerized Bulletin Board Systems.
Delahunt shook her head. “It doesn’t feel right. Especially since they ratcheted back their angry militia rhetoric and pumped up the antigovernment bile.”
“Like they switched horses midstream,” Price mused.
Brognola nodded. “Someone either usurped the leadership or is influencing them.”
“So Option Omega has become a sock puppet,” Wethers offered. “Maybe they were inspired by the supremacists who threatened the G8 before, utilizing orbital launched rods. I can’t see much in way of La Palma’s significance as a strategic target, outside of the Jeopardy Corporation’s white paper.”
“If they’ve got enough resources now to transform cruise ships and assemble a large enough army to control an island, they’re going to have some kind of money trail,” Price said to the distinguished African-American cybernetics professor. “Dig deep, Hunt. If anyone can find even an infinitesimal trace of outside influence, it’s you.”
Wethers took out his pipe, then clenched it between his teeth. “I shall be thorough.”
Wethers was an educated man who had been working with computers for decades. He had the appearance of a college professor, and many of the mannerisms of a highly intelligent, cultured man. One thing, however, that made the job worthwhile at Stony Man Farm was fighting against groups that victimized innocents. On those occasions when they went up against intolerant bigots, he took special satisfaction in being of assistance in slamming the lid on their plans and machinations. Especially against white supremacists, men who considered him no more than a talking ape, rather than a brilliant mathematician and programmer.
He turned his attention back to his workstation and dived in deeply.
At the same time, Carmen Delahunt took her cue to return to her work, checking for Option Omega’s links to prior white-power groups that Stony Man had recently encountered.
There had been a sudden surge in activity among the Christian Identity and White Power movements, where lots of money had been raised. The most violent of the groups’ splinter elements had been involved in multiple other crises, which meant that there was someone who wasn’t putting their eggs in one basket, or maybe some manipulators were seeing the near success of others as their chance.
With the right words, the right equipment and the right money, things could be attempted that could rock the world, to the benefit of one or another cabal.
Either way, the monsters behind the scenes were nearly as insidious as the general thugs who were manipulated into committing murder for the profit of their puppet masters. In some ways, even worse, as they rarely caught the full attention of law enforcement, or were well hidden behind the shields of treaties and diplomatic immunity.
Brognola grumbled this time, and knew that he was going to have to do something to bring down the headmasters of this particular escapade in terror.
He pulled Price aside and spoke with her in confidence.
This was going to be one instance where the plotters would bleed, as well.
* * *
“WE’VE GOTTEN WORD from the Farm. Your assumptions were pretty good,” T. J. Hawkins said after closing the satellite-linked field laptop that put them in uninterrupted contact with the Sensitive Operations Group headquarters back on Stony Man Farm.
“Tourists murdered so that the terrorists could take their place,” James murmured grimly. David McCarter’s
grimace was readily apparent.
“We were expecting this,” James whispered to him. “Don’t let this distract you from the lives we have to save.”
McCarter narrowed his eyes, glaring at James. “I’m in control. We rescue the hostages, and stop the detonation that will cause the La Palma landslide.”
The Briton grit his teeth, eyes alight. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy giving it to whoever we manage to catch hold of.”
Manning winced, but let that flash of the old David McCarter pass. Even at his worst, the feisty ex-SAS man was hardly cruel, and was only ruthless to the point of ending a battle before it could harm bystanders. He might shoot a man in the back of the head, but only to keep a stray shot, or an intentional salvo of bullets from slaughtering innocents. When it came to handling murderers and other assorted thugs, if there was a personal bent toward McCarter’s duty, he was willing to go beyond the doctrine of using the minimum force necessary to end a conflict.
“All right, does everyone have their assignments?” Manning asked.
Officially, McCarter was the team leader. But Manning had a better bedside manner with teammates, and was generally the British warrior’s scientific adviser and the cooler head off which he could bounce ideas. Every member of Phoenix Force was a close friend to his teammates, but Manning and McCarter were especially close friends thanks to their cultural similarities—Canada and Britain sharing an allegiance and a loyalty to the Royal family, as well as both being original members of Phoenix Force. While Encizo, the other original veteran of the team, joked that the two bickered like an old married couple, it was their similarities and the sharp contrast of temperaments that made the two of them an effective team.
McCarter didn’t look particularly happy, but he nodded at Manning, thanking him for focusing on the present.
“We’ve got ’em,” Hawkins said.
“T.J., I’ll need you to delay in hooking up with Cal and me,” McCarter said. “Head to Tarajal and scope out the scene there. You can coordinate and reunite later.”
“Why not me?” Encizo asked.
“I want this done from land. Someone who could fit in,” McCarter said. “You’re a little too memorable. T.J., on the other hand, can be completely nondescript and act the role of someone new stumbling into town.”
Hawkins shrugged. “I’ll take care of things. Take my weapons bag with you. If it goes sideways, I don’t want to be tempted to risk overkill.”
“Pistols and knife, just in case,” McCarter admonished. “We’ll keep a hold of the bigger stuff. If you need something with more oomph...”
“Y’all are doing it wrong,” Hawkins concluded with his wry Texas grin.
McCarter nodded in assent. “We hold off on the shooting, at least until we get the lay of the land. That doesn’t mean we can’t kill any of these Option Omega bastards, but we do it quiet. Broken necks can be made to look more like accidents than bullet holes.”
Hawkins nodded.
“One last word of advice, though.” McCarter paused. “We’re planning to keep a low profile. But you know what military planning is...”
“It’s what you have in mind until you actually run into the enemy,” Hawkins answered.
“Stay sharp, lads. This is going to get bloody.”
CHAPTER FOUR
The men of Able Team had bound and separated their two prisoners, isolated from each other by nothing more than a strip of duct tape over eyes and mouths, preventing communication between them. Rather than immediately asking them questions, the three Stony Men preferred to work smart, letting them speculate on their own about their fate.
Thanks to fingerprinting and analysis of their equipment, the trio were able to gather some useful information on the two gunmen. They got names.
One was Stephen Baxter, drummed out of the U.S. Army Reserve for selling equipment out the back gate of his base. He then worked as hired muscle for Tonberth Security. There was little surprise to the fact that Tonberth was a contractor for the Jeopardy Corporation. However, the guns and communications were not linked to any purchases made by Tonberth, and Baxter was no longer employed by the company, having been let go for the same reason as his dismissal from the USAR.
The other gunman was Emmanuel Rosca, a Mexican national, although his fair skin and blue eyes painted a picture of him as someone from a family of pure European blood. Lyons knew this kind of man, especially if he were a violent, gun-toting thug. Able Team had once fought a conglomerate of Latin American racists, the Fascist International, who felt it their birthright, by dint of their European blood, to command those who were descended from the native Central and South American Indians or those who had “sullied” their whiteness by lying down and creating generations of “mud people.”
The group had considered itself the Reich of the Americas, and Able Team had waged a long, brutal war with this particular breed of bigot.
It was no surprise to Able Team, then, when Rosca’s background turned up a series of dropped charges of violence or convictions on lesser crimes in Mexico, always avoiding prosecution for hate crimes or terrorist acts. Rosca had been rumored to have been a lieutenant in Los Soldados Blancos, the White Soldiers, but it was nothing that the Mexican authorities could actually pin on him. He’d disappeared about a year ago.
The correlation of the White Soldiers to Option Omega, a connection established by Stony Man Farm, was only cause for more concern.
“What’s the approach?” Lyons asked Blancanales.
Rosario Blancanales had been called the Politician, or Pol for short, because of his way with words and ability to convince people to follow his suggestions, not because he was a liar who slung mud. Blancanales was one of Stony Man’s best interrogators, showing an uncanny skill at delving into someone’s wants and fears and utilizing diplomacy to open doors that even Carl “Ironman” Lyons couldn’t kick down. “I’m going to start with Rosca.”
Lyons glared at the Mexican bigot as he squirmed, wrists and ankles bound, eyes and mouth sealed off with duct tape, ears rendered numb by headphones pumping white noise.
“I know,” Blancanales added, reading the enmity that Lyons held for Rosca’s predecessors. Lyons had been captured, tortured and brainwashed by the Fascist International, a month-long ordeal that occurred in the wake of one of his best friends being murdered by those self-same “liberators.” “Carl, I know that this is one group that you wouldn’t mind resorting to killing with a thousand cuts. But we need answers.”
Lyons nodded. “Don’t worry about me. I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t even feel like executing the bound-up little bitch. Killing helpless prisoners isn’t my way.”
“I know that,” Blancanales said. He glanced at Rosca. “Though, mind if I let you build up a head of steam before I begin chatting him up?”
Lyons smirked. “Oh, I don’t need to build up a foul mood. I installed a tap for that years ago.”
Blancanales chuckled. “I figured as much. Gadgets and I’ve been getting pints off of you for years.”
“The fear of a psychopath, ready to rock,” Lyons growled. His good humor only added a frenzied mania to his angry appearance.
It was time for Blancanales to begin his work at dismantling the White Soldier’s defenses.
* * *
HERMANN SCHWARZ WASN’T called Gadgets as an ironic statement of his technical ineptitude. The man was an electronics engineer and innovator, having done much of the development of some of the surveillance and communications systems that kept the teams in constant communication with their headquarters in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
Having gotten hold of the communications carried by the mercenary team that had attacked them, Schwarz was on the job. This wasn’t a toil for him, either. His was the kind of inquisitive mind that had dismantled and reassembled everything from the smallest robot toy to the most complex, top-of-the-line personal computer ever since he’d developed the coordination to operate a screwdriver.
The one SUV that Able Team had captured was fitted with electronics that Schwarz could tap into. The GPS unit from the SUV was one of the best bits of intelligence that he could have collected. He was able to backtrack the path that the hired guns had taken from their starting point to the Norfolk shipyard. Schwarz downloaded everything from the unit’s hard drive, gathering every destination that the vehicle had gone to and from.
While he was plotting out thousands of miles of road travel for the vehicle—he made special note of the fact that it wasn’t a rental—he went to work on the communications systems that the men carried.
They were fairly standard electronics, mass-produced in Southeast Asia—Vietnam to be exact. It didn’t quite jibe with the SIG 556 rifles, but Schwarz took a closer look at the assault weapons that had been utilized against them.
They were Brazilian IMBEL Model LCs, not SIGs, though there were considerable similarities between the two weapons that could cause confusion at a distance. The fineries of weapon identification hadn’t mattered in the heat of combat, just that they could tell the unique sound of a high-velocity .22-caliber round and how easily it could penetrate body armor but not solid cover. The Brazilian firearms were going to be difficult to track, but that was the point, Schwarz assumed. The electronics were similar, and he would have to rely on the skills of the Stony Man Farm cyberteam to look for elements inside of the programming for these GPS units, just in case they were utilizing proprietary software. He noticed that there were downloaded updates of coordinates that had been recently entered into the electronics, new paths updated on the fly.
Only two of the men had smartphones with them, at least as far as Schwarz could recover. He took the SIM cards from those phones to shield them from any long-range, remote nullification of the information in them. The phones themselves were just housings; the SIM cards held the most vital information for each of the mercenaries’ normal use. These were business phones, though, and had very little personal information as far as he could tell.
It didn’t matter, thanks to the Location Area Identity entries into those cards. Now, in conjunction with the GPS, Schwarz could track their movements for several days.
Right now, he was uploading the data from the devices to Stony Man Farm after gathering some preliminary notes. If anyone could discern what patterns the opposition were keeping to, it would be the techno-wizards at the Farm.
In the meantime, he was going through the memory on the two smartphones that had been recovered. Memos and notes had been erased, but Schwarz had them plugged into his laptop, and he brought up a drive “unwiper” that could recover lost data easily.
Blancanales rapped on the door to the room that Schwarz had set up as his tech lab. “Gadgets?”
He looked up to his oldest, dearest friend. “What’s going on?”
“Carl’s hit a brick wall.”
“Poor wall. Or do you mean figuratively?” Schwarz asked.
“Figuratively,” Blancanales replied. “You’d have felt the safe house shake if he’d actually punched a wall.”
Schwarz nodded. “I’ve collected a lot of data already, on movements, on people called. Is he going to try to force admission?”
Blancanales grinned. “It helps to be able to say we’ve got someone where they’ve been. We need to know as much about them as possible.”
“Here’s the background and records pulled up from the Farm, too,” Schwarz replied. “Lots more dirt on our prisoners.”
Blancanales accepted the small file folder, looking it over. His lips were drawn tightly, and Schwarz could see the glint in his eyes as he was filling his brain, memorizing everything he could about the two men in their custody. It was a typical tactic, not only of police detectives, but of carnival mentalists who gave “cold” readings of their subjects.
The foreknowledge of answers to questions was a means of breaking down bricks in whatever wall the subject erected to deflect a questioner. If the questioner could provide answers to his own questions, it made any effort at keeping secrets seem more and more futile. Such a regimen was generally successful, even with the grimmest and toughest of subjects.
Interrogation—the most successful and adept interrogation—didn’t come from torture or from terror. It came from shattered spirits, from the truth that nothing could be hidden from those interrogating them.
“Carl and I have gotten about half of this,” Blancanales admitted. He looked up. “But we can still use this.”
“Good. I’m still working with the Farm to dig deeper,” Schwarz said. “Aaron’s already on top of the forensic accounting for these two thanks to the smartphone work.”
“That’ll prove interesting,” Blancanales mused. “Not enough for me to sit and watch it, but the results would be pretty damning, and useful for breaking our shooters.”
“Right now I’ve done all that I can. I’m going to be sitting on my thumbs for a good bit,” Schwarz said.
“Can’t grab a catnap?” Blancanales inquired.
Schwarz spread out all of the information he’d accumulated. “Data overstimulation. I’m running things through the back of my mind subconsciously, so I’m not going to get much toward sleep.”
“Multilevel intellect.” Blancanales sighed. “You’ve usually got at least three or four things working in that brain of yours. I’m surprised you can ever get to sleep.”
“Meditation which duplicates REM sleep generally gets me through,” Schwarz answered. “That or caffeine crash. Coffee actually makes me sleepy.”
Blancanales chuckled. “So what’s your plan? Hit up a coffee shop?”
“Unless...”
Schwarz looked down at one of the smartphones, then powered it back up.
“We nullified all of the GPS-locating soft- and hardware, didn’t we?” Blancanales asked.
“I triple-checked all of that,” Schwarz replied. “But you know...”
“Hang out as bait? That usually works best if you’re in a team,” Blancanales countered.
“You and Carl are busy. And Mack Bolan does the solo stuff all the time,” Schwarz answered.
Blancanales shook his head. “We’re not that guy. He’s too experienced, too skilled. He’s on a whole different level than we are.”
“He plans ahead, he lays traps,” Schwarz returned. “He thinks on damn near as many levels as I do. And he doesn’t have a trunk full of nasty technology like I do.”
“So double the technology and a few points of IQ will make your little ploy as survivable as him?” Blancanales asked.
Lyons entered and took the file folder from Blancanales. “Gadgets wants to suck in some more bad guys?”
“Not necessarily to get into a rumble, but I can trace them while they’re tracing me,” Schwarz said. “And if things do get violent, I have a plan and the awareness for all of that.”
Blancanales looked to Lyons for support.
“You can’t stop him,” Lyons said. “His brain is afire. He’s got an idea, and when he gets that, he’s like me with a lead or you with an interrogation. We don’t let go. We’re driven.”
Blancanales looked at Schwarz again, worry still present in his eyes. “At least tell me you have something that can minimize the danger. Something to even the odds.”
Schwarz grinned. “I’ll have Schrödinger’s cat with me.”
Lyons tilted his head. “That’s from quantum physics, right?”
“Look at you, Ironman. Where’d you pick that one up?” Schwarz asked.
Lyons shrugged, a little embarrassed “There’s a comedy about four scientists... Highly illuminating about guys like you, Hermann.”
Schwarz’s grin grew, even though Lyons was gently gibing him about his first name. Lyons continued. “What I don’t get is what your �cat’ is all about. How does a layman’s explanation about observation and uncertainty help with a group hunting you elec...”
Schwarz nodded.
“The Schrödinger’s cat thing is an explanation of how the act of observation has an effect on what is being observed,” Lyons said. “You’ve found a means of making equipment more sensitive to observation. Part one is going to be something about cloning one of their smartphones into a device with that kind of sensor.”
Schwarz laughed. “Careful, Carl. I might have to have you trade in your jock card.”
Lyons gave his friend a one-fingered salute. “Don’t fit me for a pocket protector yet. I’m learning a lot off of you, but I couldn’t build your little cat tablet.”
Blancanales spoke up, a wry grin on his face. “Looks like you just buy one of those Pads, then put a kitten sticker over the fruit logo.”
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