America’s elite black ops team Stony Man Farm is dedicated to protecting the innocent. Acting on orders of the President, these soldiers and cyber techs are the nation’s best defense against violence and terror across the globe.

COASTAL CRISIS

Adding insult to injury, terrorists are discovered laundering money through Liberty City, an economic free zone in Grenada, sending Able Team undercover to follow the money trail. It doesn’t take long to discover the free city has provided a haven for building homemade ballistic missiles. Phoenix Force arrives just in time to provide backup, but the missiles have already been shipped to a rogue group with their sights disturbingly set on the California coast. Both teams must join forces to avert disaster, because failure could mean the death of the President and thousands of Americans.

McCARTER TOOK THE FLIGHT RECORDER AND SLID IT ACROSS THE TABLE TO PROPENKO

“Here, this is your first job. Take this and—”

Propenko’s scarred fist slammed down on the flight recorder. Bits of thick plastic armor flew in all directions. He scooped up the little black box’s innards and made a fist around them. Technology cracked and popped.

The Russian went to the sink, turned on the tap and flicked on the garbage disposal. He dropped the shattered remnants down the drain and the flight recorder of Drone 1 met its final mastication.

McCarter noted that the Russian’s leg seemed to be bothering him a lot less.

Everyone froze as the lights suddenly went out and the garbage disposal spun to a grinding, snapping halt. For a moment the only sound was the running tap. The lights of the neighbors on the surrounding hillsides and the lights of the city below didn’t flicker. Someone had cut the safe house’s power.

“Gear up,” McCarter ordered. “We’re about to get hit.”

Citadel of Fear
Don Pendleton

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

EPILOGUE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

Poland, Gulf of Gdansk

“I have movement,” Gary Manning reported.

David McCarter, leader of Phoenix Force, looked up into the scudding rain of the Baltic Sea in winter. “Able Team gets all the soft jobs…” he muttered. “What do you see, Gummer?”

Manning spoke from his sniper hide three hundred meters back. They were in Baltic marshlands and he held the only high ground, but it was barely ten meters above sea level. “Three trucks, as reported. I make them Russian civilian Zil half-tons. Canvas tops.”

T. J. Hawkins checked his weapon. He mostly approved of the Polish kit. The Beryl rifle was basically a Russian AK but sexier and built to NATO standards. The young soldier peered out into crepuscular dawn across the gulf and took in the lights of Kaliningrad across the border as they came on in the predawn. “You know, I still don’t quite get how that’s Russia.”

Calvin James checked his weapon a final time, as well. “It’s an oblast, Hawk.”

“A what?”

“An exclave federal subject of Russia.”

“You know I love it when you talk all smart ’n’ stuff,” Hawkins declared.

Calvin James waited for it.

Hawkins sighed. “Okay, what’s an exclave?”

James made the young warrior work. “What’s the difference between the Latin prefixes en and ex?”

“Ex! Like exoskeleton! Outside! Like sci-fi body armor, and bugs!”

James nodded grudgingly. “Someone give that Wal-Mart-shopping, cornbread-fed Son of the South a cigar.”

Hawkins beamed. “Yeah, but why is it Russia? I mean, shouldn’t it be part of Poland or one of the Balticstans?”

Rafael Encizo snorted. “Did he just say Balticstan?”

“That piece of property has gone back and forth more than a few times historically,” Calvin James explained. “But the last time it traded hands? The Soviets took it from the Nazis, in World War II, and they didn’t give it back. To anybody.”

Hawkins nodded sagely. “They have a habit of that.”

“That they do. It’s the Russian Federation’s only western seaport that doesn’t freeze over in winter. They aren’t going to give it back to anyone anytime soon.”

Hawkins looked to their leader. “So what are we doing here again?

McCarter watched the trucks approach down the one-lane road through the misty marsh forest. They were a dozen klicks outside the Polish city of Elbag. The land was flat, dank, forested with twisted trees right out of a horror movie and mostly undeveloped. The Kaliningrad oblast was indeed Russia’s westernmost outpost, and had a massive military presence. Not unsurprisingly, the oblast also had a massive Russian organized crime presence, and served as a launch point for Russian mafiya endeavors into Western Europe.

This stretch of coast was a well-known smugglers’ route. McCarter knew that big money was paid on both sides of the border to keep the salty, dark, cold and windswept stretch of wetlands clear of Polish state police and customs.

Phoenix Force had rather neatly stopped a terrorist attack a week ago in Prague. McCarter had been rather pleased with himself and his team. However, Stony Man Farm had picked up some very strange and seemingly related chatter within hours of the strike. Strange enough that Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, the Farm’s cybernetics genius, had used the dreaded word anomalous.

The Farm had tracked the weapons through the black market web and their path had led to the Gdansk smuggling route and Kaliningrad. All signs pointed to something going on tonight.

McCarter scowled into the misting rain. Phoenix Force had once again been reduced to sticking their necks out and seeing who tried to chop their heads off. It was the Englishman’s least favorite method of investigation.

“With any luck we’re tying up loose ends, Hawk,” McCarter replied.

“I got a feeling we’re just getting started.”

McCarter nodded wearily into the wind. “And you’re not alone in that, are you, old son?”

“He called me old son.”

“You know? One day you are going to go one right proper Charlie too far.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

James answered. “It means, young blood, that one day, you are going to be all full of piss and vinegar, and say ‘you love it when I talk all black and stuff’ to me, and our fearless leader shall sit back and laugh at what happens to you.”

Hawkins looked back and forth as every senior Phoenix Force member save Manning grinned at him in the gloom. “That’s not right. That’s wrong. I’d never say something like that.”

Phoenix Force, including Manning over the com link, spoke as a unit. “Yes, you would.”

“That’s just wrong—”

Manning interrupted him with, “One mile, within range of my rifle, waiting on green light.”

“Roger that, Gummer,” McCarter replied. “Wait on my signal unless you get sudden inspiration.”

“Copy that.”

Encizo flipped up the sight on his grenade launcher. “Three trucks, how do you want to play it?”

“Well, I suppose I could step down there, step out in front and ask for an inspection.”

The Cuban grunted in amusement. “You don’t speak Russian or Polish.”

“But I do know a lorryful of Russian swearwords, and the word stop. Then it would be up to you lot and we all play it by ear.”

James gave the Phoenix Force leader a bemused look. “Wow.”

“You’ve got a better plan, then?”

“No, not all.” James grinned. “I’m all in.”

Manning’s voice dropped low over the link. “Guys?”

The convoy had stopped at approximately three hundred meters.

Hawkins stared at the three idling trucks. “Now why do you think they did that?”

McCarter’s brows bunched. “Don’t say it…”

Encizo said it. “I got a bad feeling.”

“They know we’re here,” James confirmed.

Manning’s voice grew concerned across the link. “Does anyone else hear that?”

McCarter strained his senses over the sound of the idling trucks in the distance.

Hawkins’s head snapped up. “Aw, hell.”

McCarter heard it. It was low and sounded off in the fog, which told him that it was actually high. It sounded like a distant gardener’s Weed-Eater whirring from on high. Hawkins raised his weapon skyward. “It’s an RC helicopter”

“And it has a bloody infrared camera,” McCarter snarled. “And it bloody well has us! Fish?”

Encizo opened the action on the Pallad grenade launcher slaved beneath the barrel of his rifle. He took out the fragmentation grenade and slid in a fléchette round. “Hey, Hawk.”

“Yeah?”

“Go out in that clearing behind us. Do a little duck tolling. Maybe entice that eye in the sky to come down and take a closer look at you.”

“Oh, for…” Hawkins popped to his feet and ran at a crouch into the clearing.

Encizo shouldered his weapon. “Cal, a little light on the subject, if you please.”

Calvin James clicked an illumination-round rifle grenade over his muzzle. “Say when.”

The other members of Phoenix Force watched as Hawkins squelched across the wet glade one way and then came back the other. He suddenly crouched and ran to his left.

“Would you describe those as furtive movements?” James asked.

Manning spoke across the link. “I’d describe it as—”

“Now!” Encizo shouted and estimated the shot. “Nine o’clock!”

James snapped up his rifle and fired. The rifle bucked and the illumination round burst skyward. The low clouds, fog and predawn murk lit up and the small remote-controlled helicopter found itself starkly illuminated at five hundred feet. It appeared to be a fairly standard quad-copter with four rotors. It hovered in place for a moment like a deer in the headlights. James suspected the nonmilitary-grade night-vision camera’s lens had temporarily solarized.

The spy-copter was blind.

Like a cockroach when the kitchen lights came on, it suddenly tried to scuttle away. In this case by accelerating straight upward.

Encizo raised his weapon and fired. The 40 mm Pallad belched pale yellow smoke and sent fifty steel darts screaming skyward in an expanding swarm. The RC chopper tilted crazily as fléchettes speared into its plastic fuselage and tore apart its starboard rotors.

McCarter grunted in appreciation. “Nice shot, Fish.”

The little unmanned aircraft suddenly dipped with only its portside rotors to support it and spun violently toward the earth like a falling maple seed on meth.

“Hawk,” McCarter ordered, “be a good lad. Find that and mark it for retrieval. Everyone else hold position.”

“Be a good lad…” Hawkins muttered. Nevertheless the soldier slogged out of the slough and into the trees.

Encizo opened the smoking breech on his weapon and slid in a frag. “So what do you think they’re up to?”

McCarter kept his eyes and his muzzle pointed at the trucks in the mist. Above the tableau, the illumination grenade guttered as it descended on its parachutes. “They just lost their drone and are watching the end of the light show.”

“If I were them? I’d attack right now.”

The canvas covering of the lead truck suddenly popped off like a magic trick. The truck was armed with twin-mounted 23 mm automatic antiaircraft cannons.

Encizo shook his head. “Why don’t you just spit in the wind, Cal?”

Hawkins trotted through the trees clutching his prize. “What’s—”

“Down!” McCarter ordered.

“Jesus!” Hawkins threw himself down. “They brought artillery!”

“And aerial reconnaissance,” James reminded.

“Who are these guys!” Encizo snarled.

McCarter roared as the twin cannons hammered into life, sending high-explosive shells into the trees. Shrapnel from the high-explosive fragmentation rounds tore through the foliage over McCarter’s head. It was only a matter of moments before Phoenix Force got shredded. “Gummer!”

“Gimme a second! The cab is in the way!”

Encizo fired his 40 mm. The round detonated well off target as it hit a tree branch shrouded in fog. “Goddamn it…”

McCarter, James and Hawkins hugged mud. Encizo reloaded. The twin 23 mms thundered like giant jackhammers and continued to give the forest a haircut as they sought out human targets.

Manning did his math and found his shot. It was lost in the cacophony of cannon fire but from his little hillock his bullet drew a deadly line through the lead truck’s windshield, rear window and the cannon operator’s skull. The gunner rubbernecked and oozed out of his seat. The cannons went silent and oozed smoke. Armed men spilled out of the trucks. McCarter decided he’d had enough of this ambush. “Counter attack! By twos! Fish, on me!”

McCarter and Encizo jumped up and advanced through the trees straight at the enemy. They fired on rapid semi-auto and reaped the men deploying across the open road. McCarter dropped to one knee beside a tree as his weapon slammed open empty. “Reloading!”

“Reloading!” Encizo echoed.

“Coming through!” James bellowed.

“Coming through!” Hawkins shouted.

The two soldiers leapfrogged McCarter’s and Encizo’s positions, firing as they went. James put a burst though the window of one of the trucks as it tried to back up. The truck lurched as the driver fell against the wheel. James dropped to one knee. “Reloading!”

Encizo fired his weapon empty. “Reloading!”

“Coming through!” McCarter and Encizo advanced, relying on their optics and shock and awe. The enemy expected to chop their prey to pieces with the cannon or at the very least pin them down and then flank them. They had not expected a counter-assault. The enemy fired wildly on full auto and appeared to be in full panic mode. Manning’s sniper rifle reached out unseen for men who had taken cover behind the trucks. The rear truck was reversing and some of Phoenix’s assailants were running for their lives to get to it and get in. “Fish!”

Encizo instinctively knew what McCarter wanted. He dropped to one knee. “Grenade!” His 40 mm fired and his grenade flashed and smoked and perforated the truck’s cab and its occupants. The rear truck ground to a halt.

The enemy found themselves pinned.

McCarter was getting the feeling these guys were gangsters rather than real soldiers. His boots hit pavement and the last bullet in his magazine pushed a man into the ditch by the side of the road.

“Reloading!”

Encizo fired off three more rounds and knelt again. “Reloading!”

James and Hawkins charged forward. “Coming through!”

McCarter slammed in a fresh magazine as the twin

30 mm antiaircraft cannons suddenly traversed. McCarter swung up his rifle one heartbeat too slow. He had just enough time to see the new gunner’s teeth flash in the gloom as he smiled and told McCarter goodbye. The cannon operator tumbled out of his seat as Manning’s long-range rifle said so long first.

James and Hawkins fired their rifles empty and knelt out in the open, counting on their comrades. “Reloading!”

McCarter and Encizo advanced, firing. “Coming through! Flank the road!”

McCarter and Encizo reached the bumper of the first truck and gave covering fire as Hawkins ran across the road.

Manning shouted over the com, “Watch out! Second truck!”

Rubber screamed as tires spun against the slick road surface.

“He’s ramming!”

McCarter leaped back. Encizo was a second too late. The middle truck rear-ended the lead and moved it six feet. Encizo was at the end of the chain and the bumper sent him flying. “Fish!” The truck tilted as its rear axle snapped. The Cuban did a spectacular reverse somersault across the pavement and collapsed prone by the side of the road. “Fish!”

James burst out of the trees. He grabbed Encizo by his straps and hauled him back. Tracers flew between the tree trunks in angry streaks. James jerked three times and fell. Gears ground as the middle truck went in reverse to position itself for a second ramming attack. “Cal! Fish!”

Calvin James’s voice was ragged over the line. “We can fight!”

“Covering fire!” McCarter vaulted up the steel bumper and onto the hood of the truck. He emptied his rifle on full-auto as he went over the top and leaped to the tilted truck bed. The second truck’s tires screamed and bit in. The truck lurched forward to ram. McCarter tossed his empty rifle and swung into the gunner’s seat. He kicked the traversing pedals and brought up the muzzles of the twin cannons.

The truck driver stared into the twin 23 mms and stood on his brakes; the truck started to hydroplane. McCarter snarled and squeezed the trigger. The bastard should have stayed on course. The cannons came to life and ripped the truck apart from stem to stern. The truck was instantly reduced to burning wreckage, but the wreckage had the good taste to swerve and slam into a tree by the side of the road. This conveniently left the third truck wide-open.

McCarter gave truck number three both barrels. The truck broke apart like a beer can. McCarter traversed and scoured the underbrush on both sides of the road. He eased his finger off the trigger. The misty road was eerily lit in orange by the burning trucks. The road was littered with bodies. For McCarter the loudest sound was the ticking of his red-hot cannon barrels and the misting rain sizzling off them. The Phoenix Force leader spoke quietly into the com. “Sound off.”

Phoenix Force came back in the affirmative. James and Encizo sounded worse for wear.

“Hold positions,” McCarter bellowed like a boss. He used a choice phrase in Russian he had picked up in his travels. “Surrender or die!”

Two men hesitantly rose from the wet, their hands raised. On the other side of the road a rifle clattered out onto the wet pavement. A large, bald man came out with a pronounced limp.

McCarter kept his hands on his cannons’ firing grips. He jerked his head at the road and the three men went to their knees. “Fish, you all right?”

“I got my wind, my ribs and my lungs knocked out of me. It’ll be a miracle if nothing isn’t broken.”

“Cal?”

“I got it about one-sixteenth as bad as Fish. I took three to the chest, but my armor held.”

“Hawk, Fish, sweep the area. Gummer, hold position and keep an eye on the road. Cal, on me with our friends.”

Phoenix moved.

Cal came forward and admired the cannons. “Well played, team leader. Well played.”

“Thanks. Check our pals, would you?”

James strode up upon the prisoners. The three kneeling men regarded the large black man with mixed fear and hostility. “Anyone speak English?” he asked. Three sullen glares was the only response. James clicked the Polish-issue bayonet onto his rifle. “You boys sure?”

The big, bald, wounded man spoke. “I speak.”

“Good, that’s real good.” James shot him a winning smile. “Russian, huh?” The man’s shoulders sagged. His leg was clearly paining him. James continued to smile and continued to keep the brutal-looking man kneeling in place. “What’s your name?”

The man seemed to search for strength.

“For the next forty-eight hours you’re mine. So, what would you like me to call you?”

The man closed his eyes. “Nikita.”

“Okay, Nick. Can I call you Nick? Good.” James took a big, deep breath of the misty, salty, dank Gdansk dawn. He sighed happily. “So, how are you enjoying Poland?”

Nick’s accent was very thick. “I hate fuckin’ place.”

“Rather be back in Kaliningrad, would you?”

Nick sighed fatalistically. “Never should have left Orsk.”

“Orsk?” James grinned. “I killed a whole bunch of guys in Orsk once.”

Nick didn’t bat an eye. “I believe.”

James looked at the other two. One was tall and skinny and one was tall and fat; they looked related. “Do those two speak English?”

Nick glanced at the men. They glared back. “No.”

“Who are they?”

“Hammerhead scum.”

Hammerhead was Russian slang for low-level mafiya enforcers and, to James’s eye, they fit the bill. As had their distinct nonmilitary behavior during the entire battle. James suspected if he stripped them, the two men would be covered in Russian prison tattoos. He regarded Nick shrewdly. He had an inkling Nick wouldn’t be. “If they’re hammerhead scum, I think that makes you podryadchik.”

Nick flinched.

Cal knew he’d hit pay dirt. Podryadchik was Russian for someone who was paid to do something for someone else. It was their word for contractor. Nick was former Russian military, probably special forces of one stripe or another, and was likely in private security, and now, it seemed, private wet work.

“What were you before you got saddled with these mafiya wing-nuts? Alfa-Tsenter? Moran group? RSB?”

James studied the man’s reactions and compared them to everything he had revealed in the past sixty seconds. James started reading him like a book. “Nah, you’re a good Russian boy. You love your homeland. And that’s where you do your best work. I bet you were Viking Group.”

Nick twitched again. James knew from past experience that Viking Group specialized in private security within Russia.

“You didn’t like this job from the get-go. You knew going into Poland was a mistake. But the money was real good, wasn’t it?”

“Screw you,” Nick responded. But he didn’t seem to have much heart in it.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Nick mumbled something in Russian that sounded very fatalistic.

“You know something, Nick. I like you.”

“I do not like you at all.”

“Of course you like me. You love me. But I’m a pillar of Nubian manhood, and that’s left a boy from Orsk a little confused.”

One corner of the Russian’s mouth quirked in amusement despite himself.

“Aw, you smiled!” The black Phoenix Force pro took out a pack of Marlboros. Nick blinked. James had given up smoking long ago, but a good deal of the planet hadn’t. In many of the world’s neighborhoods a pack of cigarettes was a perfectly acceptable small bribe or gift, and as an interrogator the offer of a smoke was often very useful in breaking the ice and bonding with a subject. It was Calvin James’s experience that most Russians smoked like chimneys.

As predicted, Nick gazed upon the pack longingly.

James shook the pack with an expert hand and put a cancer stick between Nick’s lips. He put the point of his bayonet between Nick’s collarbones and his finger on the trigger as he dug out a lighter. James lit the cigarette. Nick stopped short of sagging in relief. James lit one for himself to complete the bonding experience, and hated himself for enjoying the opportunity. The two soldiers spent a few moments smoking silently in the Polish dawn.

“Nick?”

Nick breathed out blue smoke. He savored the cigarette as if he suspected it was his last. “Yes?”

“You seem like an okay Ivan to me.”

“Thank you.”

“So I tell you what I’m going to do—despite the fact you tried to blow me apart with an antiaircraft gun.”

“This was nothing personal.”

“I know. Neither was killing most of your friends.”

“These men were not my friends.”

“I know. So you know what I’m going to do?”

“No. I do not know what you are going to do. I find you very unpredictable.”

“You’re a charmer. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to patch up that leg. I’m going to give you a shot of morphine and something to eat, and I’m going to let you live. The question is, do you want me to let you live here, handcuffed to that cannon after we drop a dime on Polish state security and anonymously tell them that there has been an armed Russian incursion across the Kaliningrad border. Or…”

“Or what?”

“Would you rather come with me?”

Nick looked as though he was getting a migraine.

“Maybe see Orsk again?” James cajoled. “Me? I’m going to Sweden. Want to go to Sweden with me?”

Nick turned pale, gray, bloodshot eyes on Calvin James. “I have never been on Swedish holiday with pillar of Nubian manhood.”

James turned to McCarter. “I like him! Can I keep him?”

McCarter got on the horn. “Dragonslayer, we need extraction. One guest.”

Right now the Stony Man chopper wore civilian clothes and currently bobbed upon the waves on pontoons just outside Poland’s three-mile international limit around the Gdansk Gulf.

“Copy that, we have room. Let me warm up the engines,” Jack Grimaldi returned from the chopper. “ETA ten minutes. You got an LZ for me?”

“It should be light by the time you get here. Right next to my signal is a glade. Hawk will be standing in it waving his arms. It’s mostly muck, but with the pontoons you should be able to land just fine.”

“Copy that. How did it go?”

“They were expecting us.” McCarter glanced at the twin barrels of the ZSU-23-2 cannons. He had grown rather fond of them. “And, Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“I think they were expecting you, as well.”

CHAPTER TWO

The Game Room

“Jesus, who are these guys?” Junior Pyle leaned back from his massive, multiscreened console. Rong leaned back from his own console as he watched the men disappear into the woods with their prisoner. “Got to be the same guys as last week. Got to be.”

“No doubt,” Kun agreed.

“Yeah, no doubt.” Pyle kept his hands on the joysticks of the second drone. Drone 2 flew at a height where its rotors could not be heard and, in what was left of the gloom, not seen. Neither the Russians nor their opponents knew about Drone 2.

Pyle zoomed the camera to maximum but despite its sophistication and power, at this height the resolution was not great and the men were moving under the trees. “Listen, it’s going to be light in minutes and they’ll be able to see Drone 2 with optics. I can’t get a good picture of these guys without going low enough to let them shoot at us.” He was keenly aware of the fact that he had lost Drone 1.

“We were supposed to kick these guys’ asses. Our asses got handed to us.” Rong chewed his lip unhappily. “The Magistrate is not going to be amused.”

The three men contemplated the Magistrate’s possible ire; two with fear and one in personal disappointment. All three men were in their twenties and from Silicon Valley, Seoul and Hong Kong. Each man had run the computer world high-tech gamut from software engineer to hacker to gamer and game designer. They were some of the best cybernetic experts in the business, sought after by top-end, high-tech companies worldwide.

They had been lured, and then very handsomely remunerated, into become experts in the rapidly advancing field of high-tech mercenaries. A private army specializing in unconventional warfare and crime, including cyber crime prevention, which they found boring, and cyber crime commitment, which was proactive, fun, far more profitable and had perks two of the trio had never even dreamed about.

These men were the advantage most criminals or opponents in low-intensity conflicts did not have and could not afford. Most modern militaries had men like them, but nowhere near as good, and had much less exciting toys. However, Junior Pyle was right and all three men knew it. They had gotten their asses handed to them.

Kun smiled. The Korean was dressed immaculately in a retro, light blue suit. A 007 aficionado would have recognized it as Sean Connery’s gray, tropical-weight suit from the film Dr. No, and Kun had styled his hair to match right down to a tousled spit curl. Hardly anything Kun owned besides his high-tech equipment was not custom made and straight out of a James Bond movie. He found himself amused. “These guys are real, genuine, badasses.”

“Speaking of badasses…” Rong looked and dressed like a skateboarder. His hair was at that hedgehog look of an Asian male who had a missed a lot of haircuts but not yet grown it long enough so that it would fall over into a shag. It was a look he assiduously cultivated and had currently dyed orange. “They took Propenko, alive.”

Junior Pyle dressed as though he thought he was still in college or wanted to be the lead singer of an Emo band or both with the tattoos, piercings and black hair, black T-shirts and black jeans to match.

Pyle and Rong were certifiable, card-carrying computer geeks and Kun was a certifiable sociopath. But the three young men were all at the pinnacle of their fields and their power and, having dropped out of their civilian fields, had become urban legends. Pyle was very unhappy. “Does this mean the Russian mafia is going to kill us?”

“No.” Rong sighed. “But Propenko probably will. He looked straight into my camera before he went across the border and told me not to mess this up.”

Propenko had no idea who the three cyber warriors were or even where they were, but Propenko was a trained investigator and a very violent man. The team had chosen him for this mission and they had not picked him out of a hat.

Rong’s and Pyle’s grommets tightened at the idea of a displeased Magistrate and the big Russian filled with thoughts of revenge.

Kun contemplated the Walther PPK in his shoulder holster happily. He still hadn’t gotten around to shooting anybody with it yet. As with the best of sociopaths, Kun genuinely wasn’t afraid of anything or anybody, but he did have certain goals and objectives that he wished to achieve. He was a realist in these matters, and being on the wrong side of Propenko qualified as a genuine obstacle and not one to be taken lightly. “Money makes Propenko come. Money makes him go away.”

“Unless he goes surly Russian on us,” Pyle countered.

“Well…” Kun smiled again. Pyle was blissfully unaware of the fact that Kun disliked him intensely and intended to skin him alive. “They have our drone.”

Rong regained his good humor. “So how do you want to play it?”

All three men were genuine geniuses. All three men knew that Kun was the one who could think outside the box. Both in cyber warfare and in the outside world, which neither Rong nor Pyle functioned all that well in.

Kun contemplated. He liked Rong. Rong, like Pyle, was equally unaware that, because Kun liked him, he intended to kidnap Rong, shackle Rong, encase Rong in latex and do unspeakable things to him. Kun was already secretly interviewing replacements for both his partners in cyber space.

Kun returned to the matters at hand. They had several options. “The copter is programmed to return to its launch point if it loses contact. We have to assume these assholes know this. We will need to move. However, I do not believe they have the tech to open her up and read her programming on them at the moment. They will need to go to a safe house first.”

Pyle’s equipment peeped and a window popped up on one of his screens. Data started rapidly scrolling south. “Polish state security channels are lighting up. I think these guys actually made the call themselves.”

“Interesting,” Kun mused. “They were ambushed outside Kaliningrad—and they do not know how—and it is they who have called the state police. They will want to get out of Poland without flying across it, and they certainly will not want to fly east. I think they’ll head straight north. It’s a short shot across international waters into Sweden. They’ll have something cozy set up there.”

Rong grinned. “Sweet.”

Kun considered the equipment he had personally installed in Drone 1. “Let’s play a game.”

Pyle actually raised his hand as if he were in school. “What about the Magistrate? Who’s gonna tell him?”

“The Magistrate has been watching our feed the entire time and listening to our conversation.”

Rong and Pyle collectively dropped their jaws.

“I will speak with him later and give him a full debriefing.” Unlike his compatriots, Kun was not afraid of the Magistrate. Kun loved the Magistrate as his personal god.

Kun rose and walked to the end of the Game Room. He opened the door and looked down the steps at a pair of security men smoking and watching the sunrise. Kun lit himself an unfiltered Turkish cigarette and watched the sun rise for a moment, as well. From the outside, the Game Room appeared to be a standard container vessel. The Game Room currently sat mounted on the trailer of a Russian Kamaz tractor-truck. “Hey, guys?”

The two Russian gangsters turned.

Kun nodded at the sun rising over Kaliningrad. “Let’s get back into Russia.”

* * *

Kalmar, Sweden

“NIKITA PROPENKO.” Aaron Kurtzman made an impressed noise over the link. “You landed yourself a real, genuine, Russian badass.”

McCarter sat in the master bedroom of the safe house with a laptop and satellite rig. “Right. Viking Group.” McCarter allowed himself a little smugness. “We know.”

“Right. But do you know what he did before he went private?”

“Spetsnaz?” McCarter proposed. “He’s a tough son of a bitch, I’ll give him that. The only thing he wasn’t immune to was Cal’s charms.”

“Who is?” The Stony Man cybernetics genius’s voice held a chuckle. “But your boy Propenko was Saturn Detachment.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.” McCarter frowned. “Saturn Detachment sounds a bit dark, then, doesn’t it?”

“Dark is one word for it. Saturn Detachment was the Moscow Department of the Federal Penitentiary Service—FSIN. Saturn is FSIN’s special-purpose unit.”

“The Russians have a penal special-purpose unit?” McCarter asked.

“Saturn Detachment was formed in 1992 as part of the Moscow Department of Punishment Execution, the UIN, under the Ministry of the Interior.”

“Department of Punishment Execution?” Most days McCarter woke up thinking nothing could surprise him anymore. Leading Phoenix Force and having conversations with Aaron Kurtzman consistently proved him wrong. “You know? The Soviets did have a certain Orwellian sense of style about them. I’ll give them that.”

“Well, when the Soviet Union fell, like a lot of Soviet organizations, the UIN changed their name and shuffled ministries. They’re still known by everyone as Saturn, but they were officially renamed the Federal Penitentiary Service and operate under the auspices of the Russian Ministry of Justice.”

“That does sound a little less Kafkaesque, but I intend to work this guy, Bear. Short version, what is Saturn?”

“They’re nickname in Russia is Jail Spetsnaz.”

“Jail Special Forces?” McCarter found himself surprised again. “Now there is something you don’t hear every day.”

“You are aware of the reputation of Russian prisons?” Kurtzman queried.

McCarter had fought the Russian mafiya many times. From everything he knew or had gleaned, Russian federal penitentiaries were a nasty place to be.

David McCarter thought he had an inkling but asked, anyway. “So just what does Jail Spetsnaz do, exactly?”

“Their official tasks are preventing crimes in detention facilities, antiriot actions in detention facilities, hostage rescue in detention facilities, counter terrorism actions in detention facilities, high-value prisoner transfers, personal security for Ministry of Justice and court officials, and—here is where it gets interesting—search and arrest of escaped criminals. Think of them as the most violent, messed-up version US Federal Marshals imaginable.

“By the way, your boy Propenko? For a number of years he did undercover operations in several Russian federal detention facilities. I leave it to you to decide what kind of balls a man has to have to go undercover in a federal prison.”

McCarter knew one man. His name was Mack Bolan. And no story Bolan told about the experience had been pretty. “Right. So Propenko is a real, genuine, Russian badass, then.”

“He’s airborne-trained, specifically to parachute into a prison in a riot situation, and the Russian police equivalent of a designated marksman. After the third time he was shot he took some time off and acted as UIN academy hand-to-hand-combat instructor. Turns out he was a Russian sambo champion. He was going to go to the Olympics in Sochi but he got shot again.”

“The man has a résumé.”

“You have no idea. He also earned the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Justice’s maximum achievement certification in penal psychological warfare.” Kurtzman paused at that. “You be the judge of what that means…”

“It means I’m glad I shot him and even gladder that he fell in love with Cal.”

“Yeah, that was for the best…” Kurtzman agreed.

“Right, going to go make our Captain Penal Power an offer he can’t refuse, then.”

“David, this man has operated undercover in Russian supermax prisons. I want you to consider the fact that he may have deliberately decided to let himself be captured so that he could find out who you and Phoenix Force are, kill the entire team except you, torture you for everything you know and then extract back into the Russian Federation and report to whoever is running him.”

“The thought had occurred, but thanks. I’ll be right back.”

McCarter walked down the narrow, wood-paneled stairs. For giant Viking people, Swedes had strangely narrow homes. Nonetheless the house just about fell off the hillside and had a panoramic view of the black Baltic nighttime sea, which was pretty spectacular with the full moon reflecting off it.

James and Propenko sat in the kitchenette playing speed chess. Propenko seemed to be halfway through a bottle of Swedish black market brännvin, wood-cellulose “burned wine.” McCarter raised an eyebrow at the Chicago native. “Is the prisoner drinking wood alcohol?”

“Yeah, for the past hour, mixed with morphine I gave him.” James sighed heavily at the chessboard. “I only won my first game five minutes ago. I think the drugs are kicking in.”

“Ha!” Propenko finished his move and slammed the timer. His injured leg was bound and stretched out on a chair; his right hand was handcuffed to the sink. The Russian’s words were definitely starting to slur. “American pussies…”

James raised one hand to the side of his face and mouthed, “We may need another bottle.”

McCarter nodded. “How you doing, Nick?”

Propenko scowled at James. “Nubian has admirable qualities.”

The black Phoenix Force medic nodded demurely, made a move and tapped his timer.

The Russian lifted a grudging chin at McCarter. “I have always admired English.”

“Good to know.”

Propenko scowled down the stairs behind him. “Fish chained me to sink. I do not like Cubans.”

McCarter smiled. “My apologies.”

Propenko grunted. “Gummer is sniper. I have not met rifleman I have not liked.”

Manning called down the skylight from his perch on the roof. “Thanks!”

“And Hawk?” McCarter asked.

“He is too good-looking to be soldier.” Propenko made an extremely bold move with his knight and nearly broke the chess timer as he slammed it down. “Maybe he is not hawk. Maybe he is fruit rabbit.”

Hawkins’s head snapped up from the dining-room table. As the most tech savvy member of Phoenix Force he was doing a preliminary disassembly on the enemy drone. “Hey!”

James raised a diplomatic finger. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

McCarter smiled at Propenko, but he wasn’t fooled. Not for a minute. “Listen, old son, I like you.”

“I am liking you, too, English.”

“So let me tell you how I see it… I think you have a liver the size of a fifty-year-old speed bag with the cracks and scars to match. I think you’re going to be dead in five years, but right now I think you’re still a nasty piece of work, and in your line of work you are at the prime of your powers.

“You’re a right bloody charmer, and not a quarter as sodding drunk as you’re pretending to be. I think you might have it in mind to snap that handcuff after me and my friend there are slightly more relaxed and do something terrible. Then you do the rest of us up a treat and start rooting around for intel. And, I think you’ve done it before.”

The palest, coldest, soberest Russian eyes McCarter had ever seen regarded him unblinkingly. “So?”

“So convince me to keep you around.”

“And if I do not?”

McCarter drew his pistol. Phoenix Force had been forced to toss their weapons into the Baltic when they’d entered into Swedish airspace. Sweden was a neutral country with their own cottage arms industry and, unlike many European nations, was not awash in surplus or black market weapons. The CIA had managed to get them some very archaic armaments that had “disappeared” from a Swedish reserve armory. McCarter pointed something that looked strangely like a German Luger at Propenko’s right leg. “Then I shoot you in the other leg and I still keep you around.”

Propenko sipped wood alcohol.

McCarter pushed. “So?”

The only thing colder and clearer than the Russian’s eyes was his smile. His voice was suddenly cold and clear, as well. “So convince me to let you keep me around with one wounded leg rather than two.”

McCarter gave a grudging noise of admiration. “Who do you work for?”

“That information is confidential.”

“Do you still work for them?”

Propenko gave a very Russian shrug. “I believe the contract terminated when you smashed mission.”

“But you were paid?”

“I was. Half in front. Mission did not succeed. Back half will not be—” he belched “—be forthcoming.”

McCarter allowed himself a smile.

Propenko eyed the bottle of brännvin ruefully. “Swedish fire-piss, I must be getting old.”

“And you won’t help me in my mission against your previous employers?”

“Do I work for you? Do I have contract?” Propenko swirled the wood alcohol in his teacup and pursed his lips judiciously. “Have I been paid?”

Hawkins made a noise. “The balls on this guy…”

Propenko slowly turned his head to regard Hawkins. “Would you like to see them, Fruit Rabbit?”

“If he calls me Fruit Rabbit one more time…”

“Dah. And?”

McCarter brought the conversation back on line. “So your job was to kill us?”

“Sustain your attempted ambush, destroy you and collect information.”

“Collect information?”

“You would be interrogated.”

“By you?”

“By me. But I would start with Fruit Rabbit.”

Hawkins shot to his feet. “That’s it!”

Propenko kept his eyes on McCarter. “All evidence collected since Great Patriotic War says that with English? It is being more effective to make him watch torture of one of his men, then torture English himself.”

“Lovely. Right, then. Listen, I’m in a bit of a hurry. How much?”

“How much what?” Propenko asked.

“To put you on the payroll.”

“The payroll?”

“My payroll. You contract is terminated with these people after I smashed your mission and captured you. You’re currently unemployed, Nick. You want a job or do you want to go back to Orsk?”

Propenko’s pale eyes narrowed. “You wish to employ me against former employers? This is not strictly honorable.”

“They’re terrorists. Work against them or for them.”

“I am not aware of this.”

“I’m betting on that, Nick.”

“I am willing to entertain these ideas, but I must warn you. People I worked for apparently had ability to mint own money,” Propenko replied.

“Fine. Then double.”

Propenko blinked. “You do not know yet how much I am paid.”

“Make up a number—but, be a good lad and do try not to go stark ravers about it.”

“You do not work for British Intelligence,” Propenko declared.

McCarter sipped liquor.

“You do not work for American Intelligence.”

McCarter neither confirmed nor denied.

“Who are you?”

McCarter spit in his palm and held out his hand. “Your boss.”

Propenko slammed his hand into McCarter’s. The Russian had a grip like a clam but he stopped just short of the bone-breaker. “Unless you move, you must expect attack before dawn. I am surprised it has not happened already.”

“How much?”

“We talk money later. Now? I will be needing to lose handcuffs and get gun.”

“One condition.”

“And, so?”

McCarter nodded toward Hawkins. “His name is Hawk.” He tossed the Swedish M-40 pistol onto the table. “Uncuff him.”

CHAPTER THREE

The War Room

Aaron Kurtzman observed as T. J. Hawkins operated on the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle thousands of miles away in Scandinavia. Kurtzman would have preferred to have done the surgery himself, but security protocols dictated the little UAV helicopter traveled no farther until they could make sure they weren’t bringing a Trojan horse into the Farm’s precincts.

Kurtzman secretly wished Hermann “Gadgets” Swartz was in the operating theater, but Hawkins wasn’t bad. The UAV was a standard quad-motor helicopter with four equidistant rotors on stalks sticking out of the main body. This one had a very powerful and sophisticated camera that was night-vision capable. Hawkins had separated the motors and the camera; they were amazing pieces of technology.

“Here we go…”

Gummer leaned in carefully. He was the team’s explosives expert and this was the point where everyone wondered if the UAV would blow sky-high. Hawkins carefully separated the two halves of the fuselage as if it were the shell of a crab.

Kurtzman leaned forward in his wheelchair and peered at the feed from Sweden on his screen.

The guts of the UAV were extremely interesting.

Much like a crab shell, nothing was attached to the top. All the good stuff was attached to the bottom half.

Hawkins looked into the camera. “Bear, I don’t know what half this stuff is.”

Gary Manning sat back, nodding to himself. “I don’t see a booby trap. If there are any explosives in there, they are tiny and made to wipe the equipment instead of kill anyone who might be tampering.”

“Wait a minute, before you two touch anything else.” Kurtzman took control of the camera on his end and began panning and scanning the UAV’s internal organs.

The power supply system was easy to spot and very impressive. It was a flat stack and Kurtzman suspected this UAV would have double the range and endurance of a standard commercial model of comparable size. He had to admit he had never seen a CPU like the one he beheld mounted in a UAV like this. Most similar models were equipped with a simple GPS that allowed them to return to their launch point if they lost contact with their human operator. The sophistication of this drone’s CPU implied to the Stony Man cybernetics whiz that the drone was capable of making a number of decisions autonomously and could operate in independent search, patrol or mapping functions.

Kurtzman was also willing to bet that this machine was capable of being operated by, or cooperating with, other autonomous drones operating as autonomous units. In effect, this baby was capable of engaging in independent small- and large-unit actions without the benefit of a human operator in control.

It was an incredibly sophisticated piece of machinery.

Kurtzman leaned back in his chair. It was a very strange thing to be shot down out of the sky during an engagement with Russian mafiya thugs. Of course the mafiya thugs had showed up with antiaircraft artillery. It all led to the inescapable conclusion that there was a much larger game afoot.

Hawkins pointed his screwdriver at a small, yellow, rectangular casing that almost seemed off in a corner by itself. It didn’t appear to be connected to the UAV’s power supply, CPU, engine or guidance units. “What do you figure the little yellow box is?”

“I figure that little yellow box is the little black box.”

“A flight recorder?” Manning offered. “On a little rig like this?”

“You’re right,” Kurtzman agreed. “You don’t usually see that on a UAV this size. But it’s not attached to anything and it hasn’t blown up. A drone is the same as any other vehicle. You don’t want the flight recorder attached to anything else in the system. You want it to independently record what happens in case the vehicle gets lost, shot down, captured or, most important, hacked and hijacked.”

“So it’s on right now?” Hawkins asked.

“I suspect its transponder is pinging away.”

As a demolitions man, Manning knew something about electronics. He eyed the little yellow box. “So the bad guys know where we are? Even here?”

“Depends on the range. That is a pretty small unit and you have flown it across the Baltic. It’s not like you left it where it fell in Gdansk. Then again? Just about everything inside that rig appears to be about ten times more powerful than any standard, comparable commercial model UAV. Heck, a lot of its electronics are more sophisticated than similar-size stuff the United States military issues to our troops, including Special Forces. This fellow is not standard issue anywhere. It’s made to look like a commercial rig, but it was made custom from top to bottom, to customer specifications, and that customer had money to burn.”

“So the bad guys know where we are?” Hawkins asked again.

Kurtzman made a judgment call. “Normally, I would say no, unless of course the bad guys have their own satellite talking to it.”

McCarter leaned in to the conversation. “You think these guys have their own satellite?”

“I would bet they have one. Or, given the level of sophistication, they can access someone else’s satellite and the owners don’t know about it.”

Hawkins tried one more time. “So the bad guys know where we are?”

“Oh, I’d bank on it,” Kurtzman confirmed. “Speaking of which, did you get the guns?”

Hawkins had taken the elite trajectory from United States Army to United States Army Ranger to Delta Force before he had taken a meeting with Mack Bolan and company. All of his life, guns were artillery pieces. Firearms were weapons. He had given up trying to explain this to Kurtzman. Hawkins often had to remind himself that despite the man’s utter brilliance, Kurtzman was, and always would be, a civilian. “The guns arrived, Bear. Swedish steel is good steel.” Hawkins made a face. “Too bad they’re fifty years old…”

“Short notice?” Kurtzman vaguely milled his hands. “Sweden?”

“They’re charmingly retro,” quipped Calvin James from where he sat in an armchair assiduously cleaning and oiling his weapon. “I’ve met some old-timers at the SEAL meets who’ve told stories about being issued Swedish Ks.” He made a face that matched Hawkins’s. “In Nam—”

“Retro is right,” Hawkins grunted.

The Swedish K submachine guns had no optics, laser designators, suppressors or tactical lights. They looked as though they belonged in a Bond film; nothing later than early Roger Moore, and Sir Roger probably would have scowled at them. They only operated on rock and roll and didn’t even have a safety. Though that part Hawkins perversely kind of liked. He also kind of liked the fact that the models the CIA had procured were so old they had the original adapter for Finnish 50-round magazines. Hawkins got back to the matter at hand. He turned to McCarter. “So, boss. Do I do anything about the black box or not?”

McCarter leaned over the table and peered at the little yellow question of the day. “Bear, what do you think?”

“My guess is they have been able to track you, and they had all day to cross the Baltic or organize something in your neighborhood. If you want to move, they’ll be able to track you. Maybe you want to do that and set a trap? Or you could remove it, put it on a train to nowhere and send the bad guys on a wild-goose chase, then maybe we can take a stab at tracking them.”

It wasn’t a bad plan and McCarter had considered it. However, in his opinion, Phoenix Force had already frittered away a day crossing the Baltic and hanging out in Sweden. He had to admit the food and rest had been welcome and that as an asset Nikita Propenko got more interesting by the minute. “Or I could destroy the black box right now, let our opponents know we found it and force the bloody sons of bitches to act before they lose us.”

“There is that,” Kurtzman conceded.

McCarter decided. “Hawk, gut it.”

Hawkins unbolted the little yellow box from the UAV fuselage. He held it up and almost dropped it as it made a single, plaintive, electronic peep. “Bear?”

Kurtzman sighed. The cat was out of the bag. “If I had to guess, someone, somewhere, is now aware that the flight recorder has been removed from the UAV body.”

“Then the jig is up and an attack is imminent.” McCarter took the flight recorder and slid it across the table to Propenko. “Here, this is your first job. Take this and—”

The bottom of Propenko’s scarred fist slammed down on the flight recorder like a hammer. Bits of thick, weather-sealed plastic armor flew in all directions.

McCarter nodded. “And do something like that.”

Propenko scooped up the little black box’s innards and made a fist around them. Little bits of technology cracked and popped. The Russian rose, went to the sink, turned on the tap and flicked on the garbage disposal. Propenko dropped the shattered remnants down the drain and the flight recorder of Drone 1 met its final mastication. McCarter noted that not only had the Russian’s English gotten better but his leg seemed to be bothering him a lot less.

Everyone froze as the lights suddenly went out and the garbage disposal spun to a grinding, snapping halt. For a moment the only sound was the tap water trickling. The lights of the neighbors on the surrounding hillsides and the lights of Kalmar below didn’t flicker a single watt. Someone had cut the safe house’s power. Propenko turned the tap off.

“Gear up,” McCarter ordered. “We’re about to get hit.”

Phoenix Force’s armament might have been archaic but they still had their mission night-vision gear, armor and com equipment.

Jack Grimaldi’s voice shouted across the link. “Two choppers just flew by! Low and fast and inbound on your position. They have door gunners and they are not Swedish Coastal Patrol!”

Encizo spoke from his lookout point in the loft. “I see them. Coming in hot.”

McCarter spoke into the com. “Jack, get airborne.”

Grimaldi was on the beach. He had flown Phoenix

Force in illegally below Swedish air control radar and was three klicks south. He was about to rise and announce himself to Swedish airspace. “ETA five!”

McCarter nodded to himself. Phoenix Force was going to have to take the shot. He highly suspected the enemy ground teams were already on top of them. “Well, lads, they didn’t sick the local bobbies on us, so it looks like they’re spoiling for a fight. Let’s knock one down! Backyard! Everyone except you, Fish. I think they’ll sweep the main level.”

“What if they sweep the loft?”

“Then you’re screwed, mate!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…”

“All right. Backyard! Behind the chimney! Brick and mortar are our best friends! Watch your leads. They’ll be flying over the house and nap of the earth up the mountainside. We might get a good shot. Go for the second bird!”

Phoenix flowed out the back door. The safe house’s backyard was little more than a carved-out flat space with a brick barbecue attached to the chimney and a hot tub and a sauna. Beyond that the mountain ran almost straight up. The sound of rotors beat against the hillside. Multiple machine guns ripped into life and echoed over Kalmar. Bullets tore through the little mountain house, shattering glass and ripping wood. McCarter smiled as the rotors beat overhead. The enemy wasn’t hovering and firing. Someone had told them what had happened in Gdansk. They were making fast gun runs.

The two choppers swung up the mountainside in echelon bare meters above the treetops of the near-vertical forest.

Grimaldi’s voice came over the link. “These boys aren’t bad.”

“Screw ’em,” Hawkins snapped.

“Rear target!” McCarter bellowed over the overwhelming rotor noise overhead. “Fire!”

Six stone-cold soldiers opened up. The two choppers were little more than thundering shadows save that they were commercial copters and their running lights flying straight up the mountain and barely overhead made for perfect target frames.

The chopper flying wing position took three hundred and fifty 9 mm rounds up his ass in the space of three seconds. The helicopter slewed and made a stuttering whirp-whirp-whirp noise as broken engine parts and severed hydraulic lines failed. The lead chopper summitted and disappeared into Sweden.

“Up yours, dude,” Hawkins swore. He and the rest of the team slammed in fresh 50-round magazines.

The stricken copter nosed up to apex in the starlight. It suddenly auto-rotated and nosed downward. Sparks and smoke belched out of it and the helicopter began wildly swinging down the mountainside, still barely above the tree line and suicidally straight at the safe house.

Hawkins reassessed. “Aw, damn…”

Behind them Phoenix Force heard glass and wood breaking as the enemy team hit the house.

Fire exploded out of the kamikaze helicopter as it came on like doomsday.

McCarter roared. “Forward! Forward! Forward! Hug trees!”

Phoenix Force ran forward. Olympic synchronized swimmers would have admired how they vaulted the hot tub and the tiny, motorized-current lap pool. As a unit they each found a beautiful pine tree, ran just past it and then fell against it.

The burning helicopter plowed into the back of the safe house. Rotors snapped, fuel tanks ruptured, the house’s natural gas tank detonated and the world went orange. McCarter had ordered his teammates to hug trees. They were mostly cringing as heat washed up the mountainside and black smoke followed in billowing waves. James had taken cover behind the sauna but the sauna was now on fire. Encizo burst from the house and was vaguely smoking as he ran out and hurled himself into the stationary lap pool.

McCarter watched the tail rotor of the enemy chopper slowly turn as heat rose through it. The chopper’s blackened tail boom tilted through the roof of the burning house where the chimney used to be. The house was burning out of control. McCarter spoke into his link. “Jack, do we have movement?”

“You have ashes settling,” Grimaldi returned. “Flawless victory.”

“Phoenix, sound off!”

Everyone complied from behind their smoldering tree. Encizo rose from the lap pool and shot a thumbs-up.

McCarter surveyed his team. “Where’s Nick?”

James and Manning snapped up their K guns to watch their flanks.

Propenko limped out of the burning safe house, the enemy UAV’s fuselage halves clamped beneath his arm trailing scorched wires and guts. “I am figuring you are still wanting this.”

“You bet, bubba!” Hawkins said.

McCarter was duly impressed but stayed on mission. “Jack?”

“Lead chopper is gone. I wanted a piece of him but he has headed straight north into the Swedish hinterland. You want me to pursue or do you want extraction?”

There was very little way Phoenix Force could wander down the mountain after a gunfight, ghost helicopter crash and a flaming cabin. McCarter could already hear police and emergency vehicle sirens down in Kalmar proper.

“Jack? We need extraction now.”

“Where to? Swedish police channels are blowing up, much less Swedish air traffic control. My range is severely limited. Norway? Denmark? Pick a Baltic republic. They are all about incursions!”

“Poland,” McCarter decided.

Grimaldi was unusually flabbergasted. “You want me to fly you back across the Baltic into Poland?”

“Right back to Gdansk,” McCarter affirmed, and he felt good about it. “It’s the last thing any idiot we are dealing with will ever expect.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The Annex, Stony Man Farm

“Wow!” Akira Tokaido proclaimed. “Just…wow.”

The insides of the little UAV Phoenix Force had captured in Gdansk were even more impressive in person. Phoenix Force had managed to get the unmanned vehicle’s remains delivered to the United States Embassy in Stockholm and a private courier jet had gotten them to the United States in just under twenty-four hours. Tokaido, Kurtzman, Huntington Wethers and “Gadgets” Schwarz might as well have been in an operating theater.

The slightly scorched and smoke-stained patient had taken half a dozen steel fléchettes, but the damage had done nothing to mar the UAV’s majesty in the eyes of everyone assembled. Save one. Able Team happened to be in-house and Carl “Ironman” Lyons stood like a stone Buddha as the geek talk flew fast and thick. He finally began to lose patience with all the oohing and ahhing.

“So, can Phoenix trace any of it?” Lyons inquired. The Able Team leader was the one Stony Man member who had been a policeman rather than a soldier before he had been tapped by the Farm. He had risen to the rank of detective, and he was very good at it. “Can I?”

Wethers stood tall and stretched from all the hunching over the table. The distinguished, brilliant, black university professor was a key member of the Stony Man Farm cybernetics team. If you were one of the bad guys, Hunt Wethers turning his mind upon you and your operation as a problem that needed solving probably meant your ass. “Not exactly, Carl.”

“What do you mean, not exactly?”

“It means, technically, these components are untraceable.”

Lyons blinked. “What, it’s a People’s Republic knock-off and there are no serial numbers? We’ve dealt with that before. There’s a factory someplace that manufactured this stuff, and they will have left their stink all over it.”

Wethers shook his head. “Not this time.”

“You’re saying there’s no factory?”

“Not precisely, no.”

“It wasn’t manufactured?”

“No.”

Lyons shrugged. “You’re saying some closet-case, geek genius just built it in his garage out of pipe cleaners, bubble gum and baling wire? Hunt, even pipe cleaners, bubble gum and baling wire have a trail. I know, I’ve followed them.”

“You’re exactly right, Carl. Except that this exceptional little machine was not manufactured or cobbled together by some—” Wethers rolled his eyes “—geek genius in his garage.”

“You’re saying it was conjured out of thin air?”

“Exactly!” Wethers smiled happily as if Lyons were a student who was slowly but surely bringing his grades up and just might graduate on time. “Every last piece of that UAV, from stem to stern, motors to rotors, GPS, CPU—you name it—guidance, flight controls and the fuselage itself, were all conjured out of thin air.”

Lyons’s blond brows slowly bunched as he chewed all this over. “You’re saying it was printed.”

“Carl, you get an A.”

“Thanks, Prof.” The Able Team leader surveyed what he considered to be a shot-down toy helicopter. He was aware of the burgeoning world of 3-D printing, but mostly over the hysterics surrounding the idea of people being able to print their own guns. He hadn’t found the single-shot, .22-caliber zip guns the size of a small megaphone all that impressive, but he knew the technology involved was growing by leaps and bounds and revolutionizing a lot of industries. “The whole thing?”

“Every component save the wiring was put together one micron-thin layer at a time.”

“So we can trace the wires?”

“Oh, yeah.” Tokaido nodded absently as he tried to make the UAV’s CPU communicate with his laptop. The young hacker frowned. The CPU’s encryption was fighting him. To his chagrin it was holding its own. Whoever had designed the CPU, its programming and encryption was starting to disturbingly remind Tokaido of himself. “The wires came from China.”

“That’s a start?”

Schwarz looked at his Able teammate wryly. “Carl, do you have any idea how many meters of wire the PRC manufactures per year?”

“Millions?” Lyons ventured.

“Billions.”

“Oh.”

“This specific component wire could have been bought in any Radio Shack in America or, for that matter, any place that sells wire on planet earth. I myself happen to own reams of it. Trying to trace the wire is a nonstarter, buddy. Sorry.”

Lyons gazed down upon the remains of the immaculately conceived UAV. The detective part of his mind had already leapfrogged past the wire. “So this was an expensive proposition?”

Kurtzman shook his head at the wreckage in admiration. “Carl? You have no idea.”

“Give me an idea.”

“All right. The United States military has all sorts of unmanned vehicles, aerial, terrestrial and aquatic vehicles both surface combatant and submersibles. But this baby? Every last piece is custom designed and printed. You could not get Congress to pass a spending budget that included something like this. The Europeans? Forget it. The Chinese or the Russians? Maybe, just maybe, if they were really that motivated, but they would probably have to subcontract the work and why bother? They’ve got their own unmanned vehicles, not as good as ours—at least not yet. But again, why wouldn’t they just use commercial parts and if the UAV got captured just deny everything? It’s what they do. Someone cared enough to make this baby from scratch.”

Lyons leaned over the table. “Cal shot this bird down over Gdansk, and it was watching a bunch of Russian mafiya assholes that had been sent to wipe out Phoenix, except they didn’t know who Phoenix was or they wouldn’t have been so stupid.”

Kurtzman agreed. “Exactly.”

Lyons’s instincts spoke to him. “This is a private venture, a very well-funded private venture, and they’ve got an agenda we haven’t even begun to fathom.”

“That sounds about right,” Wethers agreed.

Lyons nodded to himself. “Somewhere there is a money and a technology trail. Whoever these guys are they used Russian muscle in Gdansk. That’s where the money trail starts. Where’s David and Phoenix now?”

Barbara Price, Stony Man’s mission controller, stepped into the room. “They’re about to sneak into Russia.”

* * *

Kaliningrad, Moskovsky District

IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL, sunny day in the Russian Federation oblast. The past three days of misting rain had stopped and the sun had broken out.

McCarter, Manning and Propenko were not in a very beautiful part of town. The Kaliningrad oblast was almost the Russian version of Okinawa. The exclave was a small landmass overloaded with naval bases, air bases and army bases. That many military men crammed into such a small amount of acreage required a great deal of off-duty entertainment.

In the Moskovsky District the strips that provided neon-lit clubs with strippers and liquor quickly gave way to the back streets that provided prostitutes and drugs. Those gave way to the rotting back alleys that provided shooting galleries and the worst of streetwalkers.

McCarter and his two-man team walked through the worst part of town at high noon. The area, much like most of its denizens, was decidedly unattractive in direct sunlight. Spent needles and cigarette butts littered the gutters. Russia did not believe in recycling, so no bums collected the sea of empty liquor bottles. Garbage and human sewage was openly dumped in the streets, and snarling, sprung-ribbed mongrel dogs ate the parts they could digest. Given the smell and the swarm of flies, McCarter was fairly certain one of the soiled-newspaper-covered bums they had passed was dead.

The plan was fairly simple. Phoenix Force had deliberately left Propenko’s two remaining associates alive and sent an anonymous call to Polish State Security forces. The Polish State Police had arrived to find a fairly massive, recent battleground, a sea of bodies and weapons, and two Russian mobsters handcuffed to a truck. Polish gun-control laws were fairly lax compared to a great deal of Europe, but owning and operating antiaircraft guns was strictly illegal. Poles as a general rule had very little love for Russians, much less Russian gangsters without visas but with automatic cannons. The Polish state justice system was not particularly known for its leniency; it was, however, known for being utterly corrupt.

Neither Phoenix Force nor Propenko was surprised to learn that Ilya and Artyom Gazinskiy had made the Polish equivalent of bail and disappeared. Using Occam’s Razor, the obvious answer was that whoever had bailed them out had most likely had them killed. However, Ilya and Artyom were Kaliningrad mafiya born and raised. They would have connections and, for a short time, possibly even people who would protect them. The question was where would they go to ground?

Propenko had not hired the Gazinskiy brothers. Rather, they had been bequeathed onto him by money-hemorrhaging parties unknown. Still, he had run the Gazinskiys in the Gdansk operation, listened to them drink and shoot their mouths off, and he felt as though he had a pretty firm idea of where they might be found if they were to be found at all.

That would be the worst part of the Moskovsky District.

Walking across the Polish/Russian Federation oblast border and walking to Kaliningrad had been a very bold move, but even in a militarized area like the oblast, borders were mostly long and unguarded things. In the city of Kaliningrad the team was simply three very dangerous-looking men in a very dangerous part of town. No one gave them a second look. In fact, most of the local denizens immediately cast their gaze down and refused to make eye contact.

Propenko pointed at a sagging, grimy, prewar, three-story tenement. All the windows were boarded up. It didn’t have a neon sign or even a red light. However, over the door faded red paint in a very sloppy version of western graffiti read $$$Luffy-Land$$$.

“Luffy?” McCarter inquired.

“Ilya and Artyom brag about how they are ‘pimping large’ when not kicking ass. This is establishment. Luffy-Land.”

Manning stared at the hideous, rotting building. He could almost swear the spavined structure was staring back, malevolently. “Why is Luffy written in English instead of Cyrillic?”

Propenko kept a remarkably straight face. “Classier.”

“I thought you said they didn’t speak English,” McCarter mentioned.

“I lied. They speak better than me.”

“Thanks.”

“This serves, easier for you to interrogate, and I lied for them. This may be enough to make them trust for a few minutes. Gives us advantage. They only dealt with Nubian. Gummer was sniper, not seen. You, English, were mostly being smoke-obscured man behind cannons. We may be able to be lying our way in.”

Manning nodded reluctantly at McCarter. “He keeps making sense. I’ll give him that.”

“How’s your leg, Nick?” McCarter asked.

“Not bleeding again yet. Nubian does good work.”

McCarter once again reconsidered that Propenko had marched twenty kilometers with a hole in his leg. “That he does.”

The Russian gave McCarter an interested look. “What is plan?”

McCarter was pretty sure Propenko had a plan but the Russian was interested in seeing what his new boss was made of. “Oh, let’s just walk right in.”

“That was my plan, also.”

McCarter walked up the short flight of sagging steps. Manning and Propenko fanned out to either side to form a three-man wedge. The establishment was mafiya-owned and protected and it was the middle of the day. The door wasn’t locked and no bouncer guarded the entrance. McCarter and his team walked through the tiny foyer and entered Luffy-Land. Manning had seen the insides of bad bordellos from Bangkok to Tijuana. He looked around and was appalled.

“Oh, for God’s sake…” Manning muttered.

Propenko nodded. “Yes.”

It wasn’t just that it was a bad bordello. Luffy-Land was an affront to all five senses. If Manning had possessed a sixth sense he was pretty sure the place’s aura would be urine yellow and thrown-up lime green, and he was pretty sure he could feel it pulsing against his skin, and sticking. The smell reminded Manning of a rugby locker room if the players mostly didn’t shower but wore perfume and smoked unfiltered cigarettes.

An interior wall had been knocked down to form the main “hospitality area.” The decor consisted mostly of old torn movie posters taped over old torn and peeling paisley-pink wallpaper and old tattered couches. There were a few stolen Russian military folding tables and chairs for drinking and playing cards. Bad Russian rap with too much bass thudded from somewhere deeper in the building, and some sort of Slavic soap opera played on a big-screen TV on the wall.

Hardly anyone was around. A few of the ladies of the house sat drinking straight vodka and watching television just in case some soldier or sailor managed to sneak off base for some afternoon delight. If one’s idea of love in the afternoon were middle-aged, Baltic women’s rugby players in pancake makeup spilling out of 1980’s vintage Jane Fonda workout wear, right down to the headbands and leg warmers, Luffy-Land might just be heaven. The working girls instantly picked up on the fact that the three very dangerous-looking men were not clients. They gave McCarter and his team a few heartbeats of bored and exhausted interest before returning to the TV and liquor.

“Gazinskiy brothers, pimpin’ large,” Manning mused.

Propenko made a noise. “Yes.”

McCarter walked right up to the zinc bar. A huge, bald, sagging bull of a man in a white tracksuit sat watching a European League basketball game on a small TV. He had sleepy eyes but eyed McCarter with keen interest. His right hand disappeared under the bar. “Dah?” he grunted.

McCarter grunted back. “Ilya. Artyom.”

Propenko took a cigarette from a pack of CCCPs lying on the bar without it being offered and lit up. The bartender looked as if he might say something and then thought better of it. Manning just leaned against the bar and glared. McCarter gave the bartender a dead “don’t make me repeat myself” look. The bartender nodded again. “Dah.” He jerked his head at one of the girls. “Roona!”

Roona sighed and scratched what looked like bed bug bites. She rose with a sigh to do the bartender’s bidding. The bartender’s right hand reappeared empty. He rose and took three cans of Baltika beer out of the cold case. He looked at the trio before him, frowned and reached up for some rather cleaner glasses and poured. The music in the back of the building suddenly got louder as a door opened. Ilya and Artyom Gazinskiy emerged, accompanied by three men even larger and goonier-looking than themselves. McCarter was bemused that both men wore $$$Luffy-Land$$$ logo T-shirts and he thought about acquiring one for Hawkins. Ilya’s eyes bugged at the sight of Propenko. Ilya’s fatter brother, Artyom, fired off a stream of surprised swearwords.

Propenko snarled. “Speak in English.”

The Gazinskiy brother blinked.

“We want no one besides us to understand this conversation.”

Ilya shrugged and spoke with a thick accent. “Hey, Nika, whatever you say, man. What happened to you? I thought you are maybe being in Guantanamo, or dead. And who are these guys? Friends of yours?”

McCarter and Manning drank beer and continued to stare at the Gazinskiy crew as though they were bugs.

“Mission went very bad, Ilya. I got shot and I have lost great deal of money.”

“Hey, man. Hey!” The fat Gazinskiy held up his hands placatingly. “We all lost money! Me and Ilya? We lost friends!”

“I lie for you. Tell them you are idiot hammerheads not speaking English. You get picked up and slapped around a bit by Polish police. Then you make bail and twenty-four hours you are back in Luffy-Land dripping in beer and whores. Me? I had to kill some people and walk back. My leg hurts and I hate Poland.”

“Hey, Nika. Me and Arty fought hard. We did not give up until they turned our own damn cannons on us.”

“This I know. How you made bail when you are found at battle scene hand-cuffed to antiaircraft cannon in Poland? This I do not know.”

McCarter glanced around Luffy-Land dryly and managed a TV-worthy Russian accent. “Girls did not pass hat.”

Manning laughed unpleasantly.

The Gazinskiy brothers pulled back slightly. The Gazinskiy goon squad bristled and glanced back and forth at each other. They did not understand what was being said but they did not like seeing their bosses intimidated. Artyom was becoming both scared and angry. “Hey! Who are these guys?”

McCarter continued. “You did not make call. You were surprised. Who is bailing you out?”

Artyom stabbed out an accusing finger. “Listen! You—”

“I am listening, but I am not hearing answer.”

Ilya grew some backbone. “You don’t come into our place! Make us speak English!”

McCarter smiled without an ounce of warmth. “I already have.”

The brothers Gazinskiy blinked in unison.

Propenko’s already gravelly voice dropped a dangerous octave. “Who bails you out?”

Artyom made an unhappy noise. “We were told not to talk about it.”

“Yes.” McCarter nodded at the wisdom of this. “Who told you not to talk about it?”

Artyom threw a desperate look at Propenko. “Listen, I do not think you want to be screwing with these people.”

Propenko glanced at McCarter and Manning and spoke the truth. “I know for fact you do not want to mess with these men.”

Manning noted that Ilya was staring at McCarter, and the Russian’s brows slowly knitted as if he was mentally doing long division counting on his fingers. It had been a decent ploy, but things were about to go FUBAR. Manning smiled and punched Ilya in the throat.

Gazinskiy the Elder did a short, remarkable imitation of a seagull squawk-and-flap and fell to the grimy floor. Propenko instantly followed suit. He shot the heel of his hand forward and made a credible attempt to shove Gazinskiy the Younger’s nose into his brain. The Gazinskiy bullyboy brigade seemed to have spent more time stomping drunken sailors and looking tough than in getting in real fights; seeing their bosses fall in the space of two seconds left them hesitating for one more. It cost the one closest to Manning a kneecap. It cost the one closest to Propenko a left eye.

The last remaining goon screamed something defiant in Russian. He pulled up his tracksuit jacket with his left hand and went for his gun with his right. McCarter slapped a hand over each of the Russian’s wrists and gave him the Danish Kiss.

McCarter was happy to acknowledge the English had not invented the head butt, but he was rather insistent that they had perfected it. English soccer hooligans would have squealed in delight as a cranium of the United Kingdom met a skull of the Russian Federation and the hammerhead dropped like a cow that had just reached the end of the slaughter chute.

McCarter ignored the dancing lights as he caught motion behind him. The bartender swung. McCarter had known a lot of bartenders who kept baseball or cricket bats behind the bar. He had about one heartbeat to note that this was the first bat he had seen that had been scored with shallow, cross-hatching saw cuts and filled with several dozen safety razor blades. He stepped into the blow, caught the bartender’s wrist and heaved his sagging bulk over the bar. He kept the weapon as the barman landed badly in a clatter of bar stools.

McCarter regarded the hideous bludgeon he had acquired. “Nice hate stick, old son. You just earned yourself an appointment with your old Doc Marten, and the doctor is in.” McCarter gave the bartender his boots until the big man was reduced to twitching, bleeding and wheezing.

The floor of Luffy-Land was a sea of broken, moaning, screaming Russians. None of the girls had moved an inch or batted an eye, much less screamed. They seemed to have found the spectacle slightly more interesting than their soap opera. They watched avidly to see what might happen next.

McCarter turned to his team and held up the razor-enhanced baseball bat. “Did you see this?”

Propenko grunted. “I have seen this. In Vladimir Central Prison. It was used for rectal purposes.”

Manning gazed heavenward. “Could have gone my whole life…”

Propenko held out his hand.

McCarter handed him the hate stick. The Russian went and took a knee on Artyom’s chest. “I told you. You do not want to screw with these men. Now, answer their questions.”

Artyom bubbled and gasped around his shattered septum and the blood filling his mouth. “Listen, Nika, we can—”

“Do not talk to me.” Propenko glanced back at McCarter. “Talk to him.”

Artyom babbled. “Christos…”

“Do not talk to Jesus. These men are your god. God helps those who help themselves.” The Prison Spetsnaz officer spit on the razor club meaningfully. “Help yourself, Artyom. Help your brother. While you still can.”

Artyom Gazinskiy whimpered and began helping himself and his brother.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Annex

Akira Tokaido sang to himself. “Money, money, money, muh-nee… Money!”

Kurtzman and Wethers exchanged weary looks of mutual sympathy.

“Boy couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket…” Kurtzman muttered.

Wethers glanced over at the young Japanese-American hacker. One of these days someone was just going to have to tell him that ponytails for computer geeks had gone out of fashion. “And he has exactly as much rhythm as one would expect…”

However, Kurtzman admitted to himself, Tokaido’s instincts were correct. When you lacked a face, a fingerprint or a smoking gun—though Phoenix had rather boldly latched onto a pair of smoking automatic cannons—you followed the money trail.

The brothers Gazinskiy had told a fascinating tale and almost none of it made any sense. It would have been clear to a child that the Gazinskiy boys were tools and nothing more. No one would miss them.

Nikita Propenko was a power tool—a tool of a higher order—but even if he died badly and in public, little more would happen than a few dangerous men in Moscow drinking a shot of vodka in his name, shaking their heads and muttering “He never should have gone into Poland.”

Propenko had been offered a big fee, big enough to tempt him from his lucrative private work in Russia and its former republics. They had hired a small army of hammerheads but they had also hired a very dangerous and disciplined man to run them. The cannons had been his idea and he had enough pull to buy artillery on the black market. Anyone other than Phoenix Force would have been wiped out, captured or extracted, taking heavy casualties every step of the way. Propenko had demanded cold, hard Euros.

The Gazinskiy brothers, besides being low-rent muscle and peddlers of extremely low-rent flesh, were also low-rent cyber criminals. They had a fairly lucrative sideline running online scams in former stan-suffixed Russian republics where entire rural areas were just starting to explore the internet and connectivity.

The Gazinskiys had accepted bitcoins as payment.

The Central Bank of the Russian Federation had issued a statement stating that it considered the exchange of bitcoins for goods, services or currencies a “dubious activity.” This was a veiled threat, but both an admonition and an admission that the Russian Federation currently had almost no ability to regulate it or control bitcoin transactions.

Bitcoins were the first, real, online alternate currency and, despite many national governments trying to crack down on their use, they were still the choice of cyber geeks who wanted their transactions off the grid, as well as cyber criminals that wanted the same.

The Gazinskiy brothers had used their massive infusion of bitcoins to buy and sell drugs in Kaliningrad without the Russian mafiya “made men” above them knowing about it. Bitcoins were the currency of the cyber savvy; the technology behind them and the people running it continuing to evolve faster than governments and traditional financial institutions could adapt. The jury was out as to whether they were an abomination, the way of the future or little more than a temporary blip on the world economic radar. What they offered was anonymity and transactions at the rate of high-speed cable that left regulators scrambling.

Akira Tokaido was the kind of man who left entire intelligence agencies, state security services and militaries scrambling in his wake. This was just his game. His current problem was that he was not cracking government agencies, terrorist cells or databases; he was fighting people exactly like himself.

He was relishing the challenge.

“Money, money, money, muh-nee…” Tokaido howled tonelessly. “Money!”

“Akira?” Kurtzman asked.

“No, these guys are good, really good.” Tokaido stared at the lines of code scrolling down his massive main screen. His cursor moved across the streams like the planchette of an Ouija board. “This is going to take a while.”

“No, Akira, I mean—”

“Could you shut up?” Wethers finished.

Tokaido gave Wethers a vaguely hurt look and shoved in his ear buds. He went back to examining data and began nodding his head. Without thinking his lips started moving. “Money, money…”

Kurtzman stared at Wethers helplessly. “Phoenix still at Luffy-Land?”

Wethers cracked his first smile of the day, and it had been a long day. “Word is they’re getting us T-shirts.”

“Didn’t know it was a franchise.”

Wethers considered the file they had compiled on their subjects. “Mrs. Gazinskiy raised herself some ambitious boys, if not bright ones.”

“Phoenix has put the Gazinskiys to work. They’ve put out the word that Propenko is alive, very pissed off and wants either payback or to get paid.” Kurtzman grinned. “Now we wait to see who comes knocking and whether they’re carrying checkbooks or more automatic cannons.”

“They’ve worked with less,” Wethers pointed out.

Kurtzman was very well aware of that, but Kaliningrad was a bad neck of the woods to get caught in.

The exclave was very nearly a militarized city-state and while Phoenix could run roughshod over the local criminals, if police and military got involved they would be met with an overwhelming force that would take a very dim view of them if they were captured. Calvin James would stick out like a sore thumb. They had snuck him in under cover of night, but if he stepped out in daylight it would be like a unicorn sighting. The Kaliningrad oblast was one very white wood.

Wethers knew exactly what the Stony Man cybernetics chief was thinking. He was thinking it, too. He was also trying to think positively.

“Plus, the bad guys absolutely got shut down in Sweden. Propenko is claiming to have killed some people and escaped. He is the only solid lead they have to work with at the moment. Whoever hired him will be very interested in debriefing him.”

“Which may include torturing the living hell out of him and his new friends.”

“There is that, but Propenko has a very heavy reputation. I think there is a decent chance they might even rehire him, and his new friends.”

* * *

Kaliningrad, Luffy-Land

CALVIN JAMES REPORTED from the roof. “We’ve got company. A limousine and she’s riding low. I’m saying she’s armored. Two SUVs riding escort on the limo’s twelve and six.”

“Copy that,” McCarter replied. “It’s showtime.”

While Phoenix had waited, they had checked on the apartment Propenko had been renting. Nothing was missing, but the Russian reported that someone with a fair degree of skill had searched the place. Propenko had filled a bag with clothes and guns and gear.

Kaliningrad wasn’t exactly the fashion capital of Paris or Milan, but he’d bought the most expensive off-the-rack suits available for Phoenix Force. McCarter, Manning and Propenko looked decently dapper and decidedly dangerous. McCarter had decided to stay with the three-man team he had presented to the Grazinskiys and to keep James and Encizo as unseen aces in the hole.

The limo pulled to a halt outside. Two men each jumped out of the backs of the SUVs and one man raced to open the limo’s door. A man about six feet tall and nearly five feet wide emerged.

Propenko grunted as he peered through one of the boarded-up windows.

“Someone of note?” McCarter asked as he peered through his opening.

“Gospodin Gaz,” the Russian affirmed. “Minor mafiya royalty.”

McCarter had operated with and against Russians many times and this was far from his first time operating on Russian Federation soil. He knew a fairly extensive range of Russian words and phrases. Gospodin Gaz roughly translated into “Mr. Gas.”

McCarter considered the brutal, Mack-truck-built man emerging from the limo. “Glorified bagman,” he mused.

“Correct. Gaza has moved far up food chain from simple collections.”

McCarter was fairly certain he didn’t want to know but asked, anyway. “Why do they call him Mr. Gas?”

“Back in day, when collection proved difficult? They send Gaz. He comes with a can of gasoline. Perhaps for place of business. Perhaps for house. Perhaps for you.”

“Nice,” Manning commented.

“He did five-year stint in Siberian maximum hard-labor colony. He ran it for four and a half.”

McCarter eyed Propenko. “You two have run into each other before?”

“We are acquainted.” The Russian blew cigarette smoke and shrugged. “Gaz also known for loyalty and dealing square. Sometimes he is called in as third party during difficult negotiations.”

McCarter watched the Russian mobster, flanked by his five men, lumber up the steps. None of the guards wore tracksuits or gold chains. They dressed well and smelled more ex-military than musclemen or hammerheads. Save one, who was smaller, wiry like a terrier and seemed as agitated as one.

“So this could be a positive development.”

Propenko lit himself a CCCP. “Perhaps.”

The doorbell rang.

McCarter glanced at the brothers Gazinskiy. They sat forlornly on a couch. The ladies of the establishment had been sent home and the hammerheads had been carted off to a non-licensed infirmary that dealt with these kinds of situations. Ilya wore a neck collar and the shattered remnants of Artyom’s septum were held together by medical tape. McCarter nodded at Artyom.

The nasally impaired gangster got up and went to the door. McCarter and Propenko went to the bar. Manning stayed off to one side and smiled at Artyom.

“Not one word,” Manning warned.

Artyom flinched and answered the door. Gaz’s men flowed into Luffy-Land, forming a skirmish line. Gaz ignored the Gazinskiys and walked up to the bar. Propenko slid the pack of cigarettes down the zinc bar. “Let us speak English.”

Up close, Gaz was a very ugly man. Someone had flattened his nose the way Manning had flattened Artyom’s, but he had never had it fixed. His thick-fingered hands were red and scarred. The mobster’s ugly face was blotched from years of heavy drinking. His thick, gray hair was Soviet-era cosmonaut. He smiled to reveal yellowed, crooked teeth and shrugged as if the matter was of no importance. “Sure, Nika. If it pleases you.” He lit a cigarette. “You look good.”

“You look as I remember you.”

“I will take this as compliment. Piles are killing me.”

“Too much easy living?” McCarter asked.

The Russian eyed McCarter.

McCarter noted that the Russian seemed utterly unperturbed and didn’t ask Propenko about his new friend.

Gaz grinned but his eyes were cold. “I had plenty hard labor in Siberia. Enough for lifetime.” Gaz deigned to glance at the Gazinskiy brothers sitting obediently on the couch. The mobster waved his cigarette to encompass Luffy-Land. “Speaking of soft life, you boys going into business? I tell you, Gazinskiys not made-men. Never will be, but they are paid up. Not sure Luffy-Land is worth headache for you.”

McCarter glanced around Luffy-Land’s dubious charms. The wiry guy was mad-dogging him but McCarter ignored him. “No, but it got us a meeting with you, Gospodin.”

Gaz made a noise. McCarter had just called him “sir.”

“Call me Gaz. my friends do.”

“Offer you a beer, Gaz?”

“Always!” Gaz raised a scarred eyebrow. “Unless there is something stronger?”

McCarter went behind the bar and poured three shots of Absolut. His was barely a splash. The three men downed them amiably.

Gaz smacked his lips. “So, Nika, word is you are unhappy.”

“None of us are happy,” McCarter remarked.

The young, skinny, agitated Russian took a step out of the skirmish line. “Who is this guy? Who cares if he is unhappy? He owes us money! He owes us blood!”

McCarter gave Gaz a patient look. Gaz sighed and spoke too low for the skinny man to hear. “That is the Pan Dory.”

McCarter nodded sympathetically. Pan was an ancient Slavic honorific for “royalty.” Dory was the diminutive for the Russian given name Dorofei. Russian honorifics and given name diminutives were never mixed, except with great affection or even greater condescension. Gaz had just sneered and called the man “The Little Lord.”

McCarter began to see the situation very clearly. “He is supposed to be learning from you?”

“Supposed to be. Father ranks rather high in certain circles in Kaliningrad.”

“And Luffy-Land is part of the little kingdom his father has given him,” McCarter concluded.

“Yes. I am afraid Gazinskiy brothers earn for Dory. You have taken Luffy-Land. As I say, we have slight problem.”

“Slight problem?” Dory stalked forward. “We have big problem! Who are these pricks?”

Manning stepped forward and intercepted him.

“And who is this smiling…” Dory trailed off.

McCarter was smiling at Dory. It was the special smile he reserved for intimidating unpleasant people. The smile that convinced very bad people that he was considering killing them and the deciding factor would be the next thing that came out of their mouth.

Dory met Manning’s gaze, blinked first and closed his mouth.

Gaz started dropping knowledge. He nodded at Propenko. “You know this man, and his reputation, Dory?”

“That is Nika—”

“Yes. Well, Nika Propenko is now mercenary and now doing jobs outside Russian Federation. Things went bad in Poland, and I am thinking he call upon his new Western friends.” Gaz put his hands on his chest and made an attempt at looking personally hurt by this development. “Instead of calling on old friends and homeboys.”

Propenko dragged deeply on his cigarette. “Hard to know who to trust.”

Dory regained a tiny amount of outrage. “Propenko brings foreign mercenaries into a place I control?” He shot a nervous, angry look at Manning. “And this smiling asshole is—”

Manning spoke the German he had been raised with. “Your worst nightmare.”

Gaz’s head snapped around. “German?”

Manning smiled menacingly. “Jah.”

McCarter watched wheels turn in Gaz’s mind.

The Berlin Wall had officially fallen in 1989. Before it had, East Germany had been an Orwellian nightmare. Their secret police and border guards had made the same services of their Soviet overlords look like mild-mannered milquetoasts, and in the Eastern bloc, East German organized crime was the worst of the worst and feared out of all relation to their numbers and actual influence. In Russia, even to this day, German was the language of the enemy. In Russian criminal circles, a smiling man speaking German was the Slavic version of the white devil.

Propenko had been doing work for criminals and parties unknown of late, and the fact that he had escaped from Poland, come back and kicked ass in Kaliningrad was causing shock waves. That he appeared to have a Nazi devil on a leash only added to the wampum he was walking with.

“Nika, my friend,” Gaz asked, “what is it you and your friends want?”

“Money,” McCarter suggested.

“Payback,” Propenko snarled.

Manning dropped the dead smile and shrugged. “A job?”

Gaz shoved out his shot glass and McCarter poured. The Russian leaned in and spoke low. “Listen, despite certain discrepancy and—” he looked back at Dory “—disrespect,

we can make this work out.” Gaz looked at McCarter warily and turned back to Propenko. “Forgive me, Nika. But you act like this man is your superior.”

Propenko simultaneously lied through his teeth and told the stone-cold truth at the same time. “The last time I took job from man in West?” He lifted his chin at McCarter. “I worked for him. He got me out of jam.”

Gaz chain-lit another cigarette. “I believe you. Your reputation is known. You say you want payback?”

“I was shot, captured and interrogated. Torture was amateurish, lightweight, Western. But as fighters these men were unbeatable.”

“You say you escaped?”

“I got myself out of that situation and made it across border. It beat being handcuffed to truck and waiting for Polish police.”

“I am a middleman, Nika, but I have been informed that certain parties would like to know much more about what happened in Poland. It was suggested that perhaps I scoop you up and bring you to them, or perhaps even show up with can of gasoline. I suggested I talk to you first.”

“Thank you.”

Gaz glanced at McCarter and Manning. “I am thinking I made correct choice. Tell me, Nika. These men who captured you and interrogated you… You think you can find them again? It will be worth great deal of money.”

“Perhaps. But if I can’t?” It was Propenko’s turn to glance at McCarter and Manning. “These men can.”

* * *

War Room, Stony Man Farm

“SO WE’RE BAIT,” Carl Lyons concluded.

It was a simple plan, but from where Lyons sat it sucked. Able Team was to go to Europe, to essentially pose as Phoenix Force to fool the enemy, while the real Phoenix Force led the enemy straight to Able Team.

“That’s about it,” Price confirmed. “I discussed it with Hal, and he agrees we’re boxed in.” Price was referring to Hal Brognola, Director of the Special Operations Group. Brognola was fully engaged running interference in Washington, DC, but was in constant touch with his mission controller. “Risky, yes, but it’s our best bet. And he’s got the President’s go-ahead.”

Rosario Blancanales shrugged and looked at Schwarz. “Wouldn’t be the first time we’re the cheese in the mousetrap.”

All three members of Able Team were seated at the War Room conference table with Price and Kurtzman.

Price outlined the plan. “When the bad guys went after Phoenix the first time, they had eyes in the sky. We think they will again, and we think they are going to make one hell of an attempt at capturing you. Whoever is behind all this is extremely well-funded, has access to the absolute latest technology and seems to be up to something. The good news is we are as much a mystery to them as they are to us. And, after Gdansk and Karmal, the first two rounds go to the Farm. Whoever these people are, they must be in pretty desperate need to find out who we are and fast. The flip side of that is we have to expect the next fight to get real nasty.”

Schwarz considered the technology he had been examining for the past twenty-four hours. “This sure stinks like a trap.”

“A trap within a trap within a trap,” Kurtzman agreed. “It’s very Russian. The advantage we have is that it is a trap on both sides, and Phoenix Force will be sort of a reverse Trojan horse on the inside. I think the most likely scenario is that Phoenix and whomever the bad guys send along with them will be cannon fodder and a diversion. You need to expect to get hit by a second force, and expect them to come in with overwhelming force. Given the tech they put in their UAVs, we have to expect they have access to satellite imaging and absolutely top-notch ground surveillance. So will we. It will be a question of who catches who watching who first.”

Blancanales thought it was the worst plan in the world except that no one was coming up with anything better. He turned to his mission controller. “What is Phoenix’s disposition going to be?”

Price started laying out details. “David is sticking with a three-man team of him, Manning and Propenko going in. The good news for you is that Cal and Hawk will be seconded to Able Team.”

Schwarz pumped his fist. “Yes!”

“Jack will involve Dragonslayer and he will be armed. The bad guys must think we are some sort of clandestine operation—they probably won’t be expecting a gunship. Of course, given what happened in Karmal, we have to expect they may have air power, as well.”

Blancanales perked up hopefully.

“Does that mean we get Rafe, as well?” Lyons asked.

“You do. We have reason to suspect the Russian force they give Propenko will be considered expendable. When it hits the fan, we think there is a good chance they will follow Propenko wherever he leads. So you and Phoenix may end up with a small army of your own. And, yes, Encizo will be on your team.”

Lyons brought up the question of the day. “There was already a mysterious battle on the Polish-Kaliningrad border. Don’t you think the Polish police and border patrol are pretty stirred up as it is?”

“If it comes down to a pitched battle, you will have to expect Polish security forces to come in fast and hard,” Price admitted.

Blancanales spoke for himself and the team. “This sucks.”

“This is our best shot to get something real on the bad guys—on the ground, eyes in the sky or in cyber space. The good news is we are positioning you absolutely primo gear. The bad news?” Barbara Price stared fondly at her boys. “You need to be in Poland in twelve hours.”

CHAPTER SIX

Kaliningrad. Warehouse District.

Propenko snapped his team to attention. He scowled over the nine men standing in line as if he might just condescend to let them lick his boots, but only the soles. He shook his head in disgust and pointed at McCarter. “This man is God! I am prophet! Do you have any questions?”

None did.

Manning smiled and spoke low to McCarter. “Nice touch.”

Gaz the Bagman had turned out to indeed be a bag of money.

Rather than accept bully boys from Moscow, Propenko had taken the money and privately gone shopping. It had been a risk, but McCarter had gone along with it. Propenko had used his personal connections and found ten Russian military policemen of the Western Military District, special oblast unit, who were more than willing to make some cash on the side. Save that one was missing; McCarter was pleased with the transaction.

All of the assembled men had the Russian Federation equivalent of fast-reaction-team training and all of them spoke English. Several were local boys and spoke Polish. All had proved themselves as tough, capable and utterly corruptible soldiers. Being utterly corrupt military police in Fortress Kaliningrad, they had easily been able to acquire high-quality weapons and gear. They had brought a truckload of body armor, night-vision goggles, com gear and stubby, Kashtan submachine guns with sound suppressors and red-dot sights. As well, there was an assortment of grenades, though, the Phoenix Force leader knew, they were less than lethal flash-stuns and sting-ball, blunt-trauma weapons.

McCarter and Manning had helped themselves. It was good kit, but it was light, “slender gear’” as McCarter’s father would have said.

Every scenario the group had run ended up with the real enemy force coming in hard and heavy. Phoenix Force would have to rely on the reinforced Able Team and Dragonslayer to make up the difference.

Propenko strode up to McCarter and saluted. “They are ready for your inspection.”

“You said you’d hired ten.”

“I did.”

“Where is our missing military policeman?”

“Do not know. Missing man is youngest. Perhaps he is late, or screw up getting off duty tonight.”

“Well, then, we’ll just have to make do, won’t we?” McCarter scanned his squad. “They seem likely enough, I’ll give them that.”

“Good news is they are Russian boys. They have seen far too many action movies and shows on cable television. Trained from childhood to think officer with English accent is best of best. They will think you are James Bond or General Montgomery or both if you let them believe. I suggest you do.”

“Right.” McCarter strode forth and stopped just short of being a Monty Python skit as he laid it on thick. “Right! Listen here, you communist heathens!”

Several of the men smirked.

McCarter allowed it. He wanted cohesion and camaraderie on this one. Propenko could instill blind fear and obedience if the situation warranted. “The situation is simple. There happen to be some right bloody bastards in Poland who don’t belong there, and there are men in Moscow with money. Manna from bloody heaven, amounts of money, my lads!

“The pricks in Poland, who are squatting there quite unreasonably, have given the men in Moscow grief, added insult on top of injury, and cost them blood and money. The men in Moscow have shown the infinite good taste and wisdom to hire me. I have sent forth Mr. Propenko, and he has hired you. I am informed you are all Military Police—Voennaya Politsiya, VP—Western District, special unit. The best of the best! You know how to conduct a raid, how to kick ass and know how to take prisoners and collect evidence! The money men in Moscow would dearly love to speak with these men, so alive if possible. I am informed we will have satellite and ground level intelligence.”

The Russians nodded and made affirmative noises.

“You are all being issued communication gear. All battle instructions will be in English. This is Operation Red Wolf. We are Wolf Pack.”

The Russians liked the sound of it.

McCarter snarled. “Wolf Pack! Sound off!”

The Russians shouted out in domino effect. “Wolf One. Wolf Two. Wolf Three. Wolf Four, Wolf…”

“Memorize it,” McCarter ordered. “From now on we have no names. I am Alpha.” McCarter snapped his head toward Propenko. “He is Lobo.”

Wolf One was a black-haired, bearded, buff individual and he gave Manning a wary look. “Him?”

“He is Werewolf. He will be operating independently, with the biggest bloody rifle you have ever seen. If all goes well, we go in tonight. Until then, I am told we have been given unlimited privileges at Luffy-Land.”

Several Wolf Pack men made smothered throw-up noises. Others laughed.

“Right!” McCarter nodded at a table covered with steaming aluminum takeout dishes. “We have cots and Kazak barbecue. I personally recommend you stay here, eat your fill, check your weapons and sleep if you can. If we get the go-ahead? It will all happen very fast.”

The men nodded and started to break up.

Propenko roared something Old Testament in Russian. The nine men snapped to attention.

McCarter gazed long and hard at his squad. The nine men absolutely refused to meet his gaze. McCarter suddenly pumped his fist and bellowed as only an old-school British Officer could. “Wolf Pack!”

The squad roared in return. “Wolf Pack!”

“Right! Fall out!”

The men fell out nodding and making enthusiastic noises. They seemed excited about the plan and thankful to be a part of it.

Outside the warehouse a motorcycle screamed to a halt. A lanky, blond young man came running in breathlessly laden with two heavy, bulging, XL gear bags. Propenko already had a face like a skull. Filled with fury, it was a death’s head to behold. He rounded on the young VP soldier. He didn’t yell. The young man went pale as Propenko read him the riot act in a guttural hiss only the two of them could hear.

“Mr. Propenko!” McCarter shouted.

Propenko snapped around. “Dah!”

“Bring that man to me!”

Propenko escorted the man into McCarter’s presence. McCarter nodded at Gary Manning, who drew his pistol. Propenko shoved the man to his knees. The nine Russians stared in sudden shock and apprehension at their young comrade.

“Mr. Propenko. Who the bloody hell is this and what is he doing in my warehouse?”

“The late one.” Propenko glared bloody murder at the young man. “The…how do you say? The rookie!”

McCarter’s voice suddenly dropped to a frighteningly conversational tone. “And where have you been, my good man?”

Manning pointed his pistol at the young man’s head.

The young man gulped. “Ukov, Maksim. Reporting for duty! Regretting delay!”

“You weren’t talking to someone, were you? Perhaps telling them you were coming here?”

“No, sir. I am told we are perhaps performing raid. Perhaps snatch-and-grab. I was acquiring materials.”

“What materials?”

Maksim Ukov shrugged off his pack straps and opened one of the bags. “Gas masks and—”

“What the bloody hell do I need gas masks for?” McCarter thundered, though he was secretly grateful for them.

Ukov showed some guts and managed a sly look. “In case we use these?”

The young Russian opened up his other bag. It was full of light blue grenades the size and shape of tallboy beer cans and covered with Cyrillic writing.

Propenko squinted at the munitions and made a noise of approval.

“Mr. Propenko?” McCarter inquired.

Propenko showed a rare smile. “Blue Blitz.”

McCarter was aware of it. “Knock-out gas.”

Manning lowered his pistol.

Ukov grinned hopefully. “Thirty cartridges, if it pleases?”

McCarter gazed down at the young Russian. “Well, you romantic schemer, you.”

* * *

Gulf of Gdansk

ABLE TEAM WAITED, along with three members of Phoenix Force, for the imminent attack. Carl Lyons looked over their defenses one more time. The situation wasn’t as bad as it could be. Barbara Price had once again done very well for them with very little. The Polish duck-hunting lodge was more than a hundred years old. The walls were made of heavy stone-and-mortar masonry. The windows were narrow, could almost be described as firing slits and had heavy shutters to resist Baltic storms. The front, side and back doors were incredibly thick, iron-bound oak that looked as if they might be petrifying rather than weathering. Most of the house was bulletproof up to .30 caliber. The main approach to the lodge was a bit of raised single-lane road with wetlands overgrown with small trees on either side. The house sat on an acre or two of raised land with larger willows and alders forming a tiny forest. Behind the house the land fell away into a genuine fen that turned into a duck hunter’s dream of a swamp that drained into the gulf.

It was cold and wet and wretched, but it was defendable.

The lay of the land was in the Stony Man team’s favor, and out in the fen sat Jack Grimaldi in Dragonslayer. The chopper still wore her pontoons but she had machine guns slaved atop each one of them and rocket pods on stalks on either side of the fuselage. All of the equipment was mounted with explosive bolts and could be ejected into the marsh with the press of a button.

Encizo had built a cheery fire and his teammates chewed duck jerky and dunked black bread into steaming mugs of black tea with lemon and honey. Lyons lifted his chin as the wind moaned against the shutters. He almost felt bad for Calvin James. The Navy SEAL was somewhere out there in the wind, rain, darkness and muck watching the main approach to the lodge. It was a shit detail, but of course that was what SEALs did.

Lyons clicked his com unit. “How’s it hanging, Cal? Cold as a well digger’s ass?”

“Gdansk is God’s country,” James replied dryly. “I’m coming back.”

“Copy that.” Lyons looked to Schwarz and checked his watch. Schwarz sat by his laptop and a small array of communications and security gear. He’d spent the day putting surveillance gear and some unpleasant surprises for trespassers around the manse. “How are we doing?”

“We have two more hours of satellite window, then we are going to have a half-hour gap before the Farm can get eyes on us again. We’ve—” Schwarz sat straight as his computer pinged a message from McCarter.

Coming in hard

“We’ve got Wolf Pack on the way!” Schwarz announced.

Lyons strode over and messaged back.

Come and get it

Kurtzman’s window popped up on Schwarz’s screen. “Able. Be advised. You have major movement to the north and south.”

Lyons leaned over and looked at the satellite image. They had heat signatures, and a lot of them. “Wolf Pack is coming in from the east.”

“Affirmative.”

“Where the hell did these guys come from?”

Kurtzman wasn’t happy. The bad guys had snuck under his radar. “It’s like they popped up out of the earth.”

Lyons wasn’t happy, either. The bad guys had managed to get into the swamp behind them. “So we have to assume Wolf Pack has been compromised.”

“We always did.”

“And they are heading into cross fire.”

“That is correct. I already informed them.”

“Tell Jack to get airborne, message McCarter and tell him to plan B as hard as he can.”

“Copy that.”

The Able Team leader took up his weapon. “Able! Gear up! Here it comes!”

* * *

The Game Room

PYLE SAT HUNCHED in front of his massive screen. His fingers hammered his keyboard. “They’re communicating!”

“With whom?” Kun asked.

“It’s scrambled. They have to be bouncing it off a satellite.”

“How many satellites could be giving them real-time imaging and intelligence?”

“No. It’s communication. It could be being bounced from multiple—”

“That is not what I asked you.”

Pyle flinched and, nervous habit, tugged at his nose ring. “You think they’re piggy-backing?”

“Currently, somewhere on this planet,” Kun stated what to him was completely obvious, “there is a room much like this one. Inside it there are men, much like us. They are our real enemies. We are not taking advantage of poor native criminals or guerilla fighters in Africa or a ‘Stan’ country. We have encountered another genuine player. I am not sure whether they are state-sponsored, rogue or deniables. Regardless, we have a real game on hour hands.”

Pyle called up his file on all satellites and their orbits. “Checking.”

Rong sat in front of three screens swiping his fingers across them to pull up and expand images. This was the action, and absolutely the part of his job he loved. It was a cross between a strategy game and a first-person shooter, but the blood and the stakes were real. Not for him, but nevertheless it gave him a thrill as none other. Seventy-two hours ago, the first Battle of Gdansk, as Rong liked to call it, was the first battle he had ever lost since moving from online gaming to gaming with human lives in the Game Room. That loss still stung. A lot.

He watched the enhanced thermal images of Propenko and the meat shields sweeping toward the lodge in a very professional manner and felt a glimmer of foreboding. “I don’t like this Alpha, International Man of Mystery bastard, him or his Wolf Pack. I don’t like them at all.”

Kun watched his screens. He didn’t like Alpha and his Wolf Pack, either, except for the fact that he loved them. Kun loved challenges. He lit a cigarette, reached into his mini-fridge and mixed himself the single vodka martini he would allow himself until the battle was over. Kun normally didn’t care for alcohol or its effects, as it dulled his senses for the experiences he enjoyed the most, but in battle the prop was important to him. His team perked up at the sight of him mixing it.

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