ERUPTING FROM THE WATER, THE TEAM DREW RAGGED BREATHS

Bitter smoke billowed across the water like a woolen blanket. In the air above them, there was only noise and flames, bellowing madness mixed with pitiful screams. Then a dark shadow swept across the lock as something massive blocked out the sun and was gone.

Hawkins started to shout something, then realized Phoenix Force wasn’t alone in the lock. A cargo ship was only yards away, the rust-streaked hull rising like an iron wall alongside the men.

“Move!” McCarter shouted, lurching into a furious swim. Starting low and slow, a swell began to lift the team from the water being compressed between the ship and the wall of the lock.

A split second of panic engulfed the Stony Man team as the hull came straight for them.

Terror Descending
Don Pendleton
Stony Man®

AMERICA’S ULTRA-COVER INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Nick Pollotta for his contribution to this work.

TERROR DESCENDING

For those who fight the good fight

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

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

PROLOGUE

Provence, France

As silent as a thief in the night, a shadow moved across the lush countryside, briefly eclipsing the bright sun and casting the world into stygian gloom.

Suzette Perdue recoiled slightly as a titanic 757 jumbo jet noisily rumbled over the Marseilles Provence Airport, the thunderous wake of the rising airliner audibly shaking the unbreakable Plexiglas window of the passenger lounge.

Smiling in embarrassment, Perdue looked around, but thankfully, nobody had noticed her childish reaction. The bustling crowd was busy rushing to and from gates, buying things at the duty-free shops, eating, laughing or standing impatiently in long lines at the security checkpoints.

Uniformed soldiers of the 1st PIR—Parachute Infantry Regiment, the French Special Forces—stood alert behind low sandbag walls, some sort of double-barrel weapons held in their calloused hands. Machine gun, assault rifle, bazooka, Perdue had no idea what the bulky things were, but the weapons looked very deadly, and she timidly shied away from the burly men and women in their stark military uniforms. Swinging her cell phone toward the soldiers, Perdue saw one of them glance her way and frown. Immediately she lowered the device and timidly smiled in return until the stern man nodded in approval and looked away.

Turning her back to the troops, Perdue exhaled in relief. These were perilous times, and all of this new security was necessary to allow the nation to run smoothly. As her grandmother always said, freedom was anything but free.

“Flight 219 from Cairo, arriving at Gate 18,” a genderless voice announced over the PA system.

Excitedly, Perdue moved closer to the observation window, lifting the cell phone and switching back to the camera function to try to record the arrival of the jet. A special moment to remember forever. This was it, Jean-Pierre was coming. At any second now they would be together at last. After so many years of service, her fiancé was finally returning from war in the Middle East, along with some general famous for something she had never heard about. The city had a big celebration planned for him, but that had nothing to do with her and Jean-Pierre. While the general was wined and dined, they would be married at a small chapel downtown, and then quickly leave for their honeymoon in the motel near the lake.

Outside the window, the massive airport spread out for what seemed like miles. There were a dozen runways, wide and black, radiating in an overlapping pattern.

Suddenly voices were raised in anger from behind and she turned to see grim-faced soldiers converging on a checkpoint. Briefly, Perdue saw a fat man struggling to get away from their grasping hands, then his shirt ripped open and out poured an endless flow of glistening white powder. Cocaine, or heroin, it was impossible to say. She aimed the tiny camera lens of the phone at the scene, then lowered it. This was not going into her wedding book.

Using the butts of their rifles, the soldiers brutally subdued the drug smuggler and the limp body was dragged away. Only moments later, the line of passengers was moving smoothly again, and an old janitor arrived with a mop and pail to start cleaning the bloody powder off the smooth terrazzo floor, overseen by airport security.

Turning away from the awful sight, Perdue pressed her face against the observation window, trying to see into the misty sky, the forgotten phone clenched tightly in her hand. However, there were too many planes overhead, and it was impossible to tell which were about to land and which were streaking past the airport at supersonic speeds. Distance made the velocity of the aircraft illusory, the lower planes seeming much faster than the rocketing aircraft high overhead.

Just then a shadow moved over the rows of tarmac and a fiery explosion blew apart a baggage truck, bodies and suitcases flying skyward in a grisly volcano of death.

Recoiling in horror, Perdue raised a hand to her mouth as more explosions riddled the runway, fuel trucks detonating like a nuclear blast. A Canadian 757 airliner violently came apart, the crumpled pieces of the fuselage lifting off the ground on a writhing column of flame.

By now, multiple sirens were howling, the sounds growing steadily in volume and power as something large rumbled over the airport terminal, closely followed by a deafening series of strident detonations.

Everybody had stopped talking in the airport, and the French soldiers were quickly muttering into the mikes dangling from cords attached to their epaulets.

Unable to believe what was happening, Perdue watched the wreath of flames spread outward to engulf other planes, Russian, Japanese, American, British; in turn each erupted, chunks of wreckage and human limbs flying away in every direction.

Several more planes on the ground burst apart as they tried to taxi out of the area, adding to the tidal wave of destruction. Bricks sprayed out from the control tower as the building started to buckle in the middle, the tall structure audibly groaning as it eased over, the tons of masonry cascading onto a row of parked cars filled with screaming people.

In the sky, the arriving planes were turning away from the airport, and two of them touched for a brief second, the wings bending before they snapped off. Sharply angling around, the airliners slammed directly into each other and broke apart, the pieces and passengers tumbling downward like a rain from hell.

Steadily increasing in power and fury, the destruction of the airport continued unabated, fires raged out of control in a hundred locations. Sprawled bodies covered the tarmac. A few of the forms pitifully tried to crawl away, but the rest were ominously still.

As bright as daggers from the sun, fiery darts shot across the chaotic airport, and the distant hangars became engulfed in flames.

Galvanized into action, Perdue cast aside her cell phone and dashed for the nearby emergency exit, her every thought on reaching Flight 219. Jean-Pierre had to still be alive. He had to be! As she reached for the handle of the door, the wall changed into blinding light and something hard hit her in the back, stealing the breath from her lungs. Thrown to the debris-covered floor, Perdue tried to rise again, but her legs were numb, unfeeling lumps of flesh below her blood-splattered hem. Everything seemed to slow as she looked down to see a dark red stain spreading across the front of her dress, a long shard of the Plexiglas window sticking out of her belly like a transparent dagger. Her throat tightened, but no sob came. She felt oddly dizzy, and there was no pain. No pain at all. How very strange.

Charging through the wreckage, a PIR soldier carrying a medical bag headed toward her when the floor cracked open wide and he fell out of sight into a smoke-filled crevice. Reaching out for the soldier, Perdue felt herself starting to fall forward into a bottomless abyss.

Less than a minute later Flight 219 descended from the misty sky to flash over the charred ruins of the international airport, the crew and passengers unable to believe the devastation below.

CHAPTER ONE

Stone Man Farm, Virginia

In the spacious War Room, several people sat in the dark around a large conference table, watching a jumbled recording of the dire events that had occurred in France less than six hours earlier. Their faces were grim, and nobody moved or spoke until the last horrific scene of destruction was finally over.

Pressing a button on the remote control, Barbara Price, the Farm’s mission controller, banished the horrific images. Slowly, the room lights brightened to full strength.

“That was recovered from a dozen smashed security cameras at the Marseilles-Provence Airport,” Price said, setting the remote control on the table. “The whole attack lasted less than two minutes.”

Somebody whistled softly, and another bitterly cursed.

“That fast?” David McCarter asked, raising an eyebrow.

“This was no slapdash operation by a bunch of lunatics throwing a homemade firebomb out of speeding car,” Price replied curtly. “This was a surgical attack with military precision, highly sophisticated and extremely well coordinated.”

“These people are as ruthless as mad dogs,” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman growled, running stiff fingers through his wild crop of hair.

Everybody who saw the hirsute goliath quickly accepted his nickname of Bear. Although an expert computer specialist, one of the best in the world, the man had the shoulders of a professional linebacker and the heavily muscled arms of a stone mason, in spite of the fact that he was in a wheelchair. His face was bright and alive, his black eyes sharply intelligent.

Odd for a man living at a government base with nearly unlimited funding, his wheelchair was an older model, the metal struts badly scarred from countless small repairs. But the burly computer expert much preferred the manual chair to any motorized version, as the constant exercise of pushing himself along kept his upper body in excellent shape.

“They’re worse than mad dogs,” Price countered, taking a seat. “That kind of attack would have been random, chaotic. This was deliberate, cold-blooded efficiency, plain brutal mass murder.”

“How many are dead?” asked Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group and Justice Department liaison to the White House. A leather briefcase lay nearby with the lid raised. Inside were stacks of manila folders marked with the telltale red stripe of a Top Secret report.

“We have no idea yet of the death toll,” Price replied, opening a folder and taking out several black-and-white photographs. “Homeland Security had the NSA fly a Keyhole satellite over the area and take some pictures, but there is simply too much wreckage. NATO and the French authorities are still…assembling the bodies.”

“Do they have a rough count?” Brognola asked, glancing at the photos. There was a set of before-and-after shots to help gauge the destruction, but the pairing wasn’t necessary. The area looked like something from the Iraq war, smashed buildings, hundreds of small fires and blast craters in the pavement large enough to see from space.

Folding her hands, Price nodded. “Yes. Approximately four hundred civilians, along with about a hundred military personnel, and maybe twice that in service personnel, but with so many tourists…”

“A blood bath,” Kurtzman muttered.

“Okay, how the hell did these sons of bitches get close enough to the airport to do a bombing run?” Carl Lyons demanded, his ice-blue eyes narrowing in suspicion. “Whatever did this must have been seen on radar, or was the place bombed by a stealth plane?”

The blond giant, a former Los Angeles police detective was the leader of Able Team. Banded cables of muscles stood out on his bare forearms, and a massive .357 Magnum Colt Python revolver rode in a military-style shoulder holster. The other two members of his team were in the garage, listening to the briefing over the intercom while checking the team’s new equipment van.

“Oh, the incoming plane was seen on radar, all right,” Price countered, sliding over another report. “The killers are quite visible. We have the log of the air traffic controllers to confirm that.”

“Was Flight 219 taken over by terrorists and armed somehow?” McCarter asked, glancing at the recon photos.

Called away from a fishing trip, the Phoenix Force leader was in uncharacteristic denims and a red flannel shirt. A pack of Player’s cigarettes was tucked into his shirt pocket, and the man smelled faintly of bug repellant.

“No, Flight 219 had nothing to do with the attack on the airport,” Price said, reaching out to tap a photograph of a jetliner. “They arrived about two minutes after the bombing and were escorted by a wing of Mirage jetfighters to Bordeaux-Mérignac air base where the passengers and crew were, well, vigorously interrogated, would be the polite term, and the plane all but disassembled. However, they were innocent dupes. The terrorists merely pretended to be the flight so that they could get close enough to bomb the airport.”

“How is that possible?” Brognola asked, frowning. “Aside from the radar, there are call signs, encoded transmissions and ident signals—”

“All of which were perfectly duplicated by the invaders,” Price said curtly. “So there was no reason why the tower should not have given the fake Flight 219 permission to approach and land.”

“Only they didn’t land,” Lyons said. He was starting to get an idea where this was going, and liking the situation less and less by the moment.

“No, they simply dropped a maelstrom of ordnance while flying past the airport at slightly over a thousand feet.”

“A thousand feet is pretty close,” McCarter said. “Anybody get a good look at the craft? Was it a stealth bomber?”

“Good Lord, no,” Price said. “This was a much older vehicle. Smaller, and more compact. A Boeing 707.”

Startled, Brognola arched an eyebrow. “Do we have confirmation on that?”

“Yes, Hal, we do,” Price said, touching the remote control once more. “This was recovered from the smashed cell phone of a dead woman waiting for Flight 219 to arrive.” The wall screen came to life showing the blurred image of something flying high above the airport, a dotted line of black objects tumbling from a belly hatch, while fiery darts launched from weapons pods hidden between the turbojets on the wings.

“That’s not a 707,” Lyons stated with growing conviction. “Look at where the wings are positioned. That’s a B-52 heavy bomber!”

“Impossible. It can’t be,” Brognola countered, squinting at the wall screen. “There are windows along the sides. A B-52 doesn’t have any side windows. Then again, those are double engines, not singles. Barbara, is that a B-52?”

“Yes, although it was modified to resemble a Boeing 707,” Price replied, tapping a switch. The screen split into a side-by-side view of two different jet planes. “Carl was correct. It’s a B-52 bomber. Those windows are only painted onto the fuselage.” She adjusted the controls and the picture zoomed in to show a tight shot on an aft window. “See? The paint has streaked a little on a couple of them from the force of the wind shear. The hulls of the two planes are similar enough to fool even combat pilots. The B-52 is based upon the basic design of the 707.”

“Which is a tough enough bird, as it is,” McCarter added.

“But surely any trained pilot…” Brognola started, then stopped. “No, forget that. The general shape of the two planes is very similar, and any differences, wing position, double engines, would be undetectable at a thousand feet, much less ten thousand.”

“And the standard cruising height is thirty thousand.”

Standing quietly in the corner, John “Cowboy” Kissinger merely grunted at the news. The master gun-smith maintained every weapon on the Farm, along with those used by the field teams. He had nothing to add to the meeting at the present, but was already mentally calculating what kinds of explosives and specialty ordnance the field teams might need.

“Unfortunately, there’s more,” Price stated, pressing a button on the console. Silently sheets of paper slid out of slots set into the table in front of each person. “At the exact same time there were similar attacks on a civilian airport in China, as well as an American AFB just outside Nome, Alaska.”

“Any connection to the three locations?” Brognola asked tersely.

“None that we are aware of.”

“Damn.”

“Agreed.”

“So this is not just a grudge with France, but a worldwide strike on both civilian and military targets.”

Price nodded. “Yes.”

The single word sent chills down the backs of the Stony Man operatives. An attack this widespread meant a major organization, thousands of personnel and nearly unlimited funds.

“If a Chinese airport hadn’t been hit, I would have assumed they were behind it all,” McCarter said. “Any chance they hit their own territory as a diversion?”

“At the cost of billions in collateral damage?” Price queried. “No way, David. It’s not the Chinese. The Red Star wants these Airwolves even more than France does.”

“You know, I would have thought that hacking into the electronic system of a major airport, and doing it fast enough to ‘impersonate’ an arriving plane, would have been flat-out impossible,” Brognola said, thoughtfully twisting his wedding ring. “Obviously, I was wrong.”

“We all were,” Price admitted. “Nobody thought this could happen.”

“Which makes the big question, how was it done?” Lyons asked irritably.

“Something like this would require a top-notch team of samurai,” Kurtzman said, then saw the puzzled expressions, and quickly explained. “ Samurai is our term for an expert hacker, the very best in their field.”

Frowning, Kurtzman continued. “They’d also need a really good supercomputer. A Cray Mark IV might do, but I would have gone with an IBM Blue Gene or a Dell Thunderbird.”

Nobody made a comment on the bizarre observation. The best way to find a terrorist was to learn how to think like one. The tactic required a special kind of mental flexibility that many ordinary police officers simply could not accommodate. For an operative working for Stony Man, it was practically a requirement.

“All of which these wolves in sheep’s clothing obviously have,” Price said, rising from her chair to walk to the side table. The woman poured herself a mug of steaming coffee and took a sip. “Broadcasting the correct codes and ident signals, these people are, for all intents and purposes, invisible, innocently mixed in with all of the other planes until they attack.”

Lyons grimaced. “In a single day, the military has been thrown back to visually tracking incoming planes by using binoculars, and against a supersonic jetfighter no one would have a clue!”

“Even if somebody got a visual on the B-52,” Brognola said slowly. “They’d think it was just a 707, and without the flight log of the tower to check, how could anybody know the incoming flight was actually supposed to be something else!”

“Mathematics,” Kurtzman said suddenly.

Everybody turned to look at him. Hunched over, the man was feverishly working a handheld calculator.

“The math on these attacks doesn’t work out right,” Kurtzman repeated, looking up and placing the calculator on the table. “To hack into the tower, get the ident for a plane, and the flight path, then slip in just ahead of the plane, would require supercomputers.”

“You already told us that,” Brognola stated, then suddenly looked alert. “And there’s not a plane in the world large enough to carry one of those into battle. It can’t be done! A supercomputer is huge, but very delicate.”

“They also weighs tons, and require a lot of constant technical support,” Price added, setting her mug aside. “Just taking off from the ground would crash a supercomputer.”

Kurtzman nodded. “Most likely.”

“Which means the Airwolves must have a ground base somewhere,” McCarter added, grimly intent. “That might be mobile, on a ship maybe, but it gives us a target to find. Take out the computers, or even the comm sat—”

“And they’re visible again, flying in plain sight,” Price finished. “Bear, have your team start a global search. Find their satellite and backtrack it to their ground base.”

“On it,” Kurtzman stated, hitting a button on the intercom to issue some terse instructions to his team in the Annex’s Computer Room.

“You know, whatever we do, we’ll need a diversion to keep the enemy off balance and looking in the wrong direction,” Lyons said, clearly thinking out loud. “Bear, how many abandoned airports are there in North America?”

That caught the chief hacker off guard. “Let me check,” he replied, and worked his laptop for a moment. “Okay, according to the last FAA survey, there are 1643 abandoned airfields.”

“Damn. Are there any long enough to land a 707?”

In growing understanding, Kurtzman grinned and worked the keyboard again. “That would be 603, including the Nevada Salt Flats, where you could land Mt. Rushmore.”

“Hal,” Price said, “please contact the President immediately, and ask him to have the Air Force bomb those old airfields, then send in regular Army ground troops to check the ruins.”

“To make them think we’re desperate,” Brognola said with a grin.

“It’s worth a try,” she admitted.

Without a word, the man rose and went to a wall phone. “Give me a secure line to the White House,” he demanded. After a brief wait, he spoke in a subdued whisper for several minutes, then hung up the receiver.

“Done and done,” Brognola announced. “Now what?”

“What exactly did the Airwolves hit the airport with?” Lyons asked, staring hard at the pictures of destruction.

Setting aside her mug, Price checked a page on a clipboard. “Let’s see—air-to-ground missiles, rockets, cluster bombs, smart bombs and iron bombs.”

Looking up, Kurtzman started to ask what those were, then stopped as he suddenly remembered that with the creation of smart bombs, old-fashioned bombs that had no guidance systems or any electronics, had been renamed dumb bombs, then finally iron bombs. Politically correct weapons. The very idea made his butt hurt.

“Any chance the French gathered enough parts to figure out where the weapons came from?” Brognola asked. “The Sûreté has some of the best criminal forensic people in the business.”

“They do,” Price replied. “We made the missiles. Or rather they were U.S. Air Force issue. The rockets were British, the cluster bombs Russian and iron bombs from Italy.”

“Mixed ordnance,” Lyon said, rubbing his jaw. “Sounds like these bastards were using whatever they could get.”

“Or else that’s what they’re trying to make us think,” McCarter responded. “This might actually be China, or some new group trying keep hidden. Remember the Brigade, or Unity?”

Clearly, everybody in the room did, and their faces grew more stern, if that were possible.

“Okay, there is no way that we’re going to track them through the munitions,” Price stated. “Unless they’re idiots, they’ve been stockpiling for years.” Adding some sugar to her coffee, the woman stirred it slowly. “But we might be able to find them through the sales of the munitions.”

“Through the weapons dealers who illegally sold them the bombs,” Lyons said. “Armando in Ohio would be the man to check with first. He’s the dirtiest arms dealer in the U.S. We can put the squeeze on him. Maybe he’s heard something. These guys have a network. We can go in as buyers…no, as sellers, and see what we can dig up.”

“The best way to follow the money—” Brognola added sagely “—is to be the original source.”

“Damn straight.”

“Want some blacksuits for backup?” Price asked.

“Yes, a dozen should do,” Lyons said. “And Bob.”

He wanted Bob? Crossing her arms, the woman almost smiled in understanding. “Fair enough,” Price said out loud. “Good luck. Report when possible.”

Rising, the big man nodded to the rest of the Stony Man warriors.

“We’re still using Bloody Bob?” Kissinger asked incredulously.

Price shrugged. “He’s never failed us before.”

Taking the remote control, Brognola brought up the fuzzy picture of the B-52 bomber. “This is an old plane, been around for over sixty years,” Brognola said slowly, testing the words as if they were creaking wooden boards under his feet. “How many of them are still in service around the world?”

“Couple of thousand,” Kissinger said calmly.

Kurtzman scowled. “That many?”

“Unfortunately, yes.” The armorer shrugged. “The damn things fly forever, if you have enough spare parts.”

“Buy enough parts from enough different sources and you could probably build a B-52,” Brognola said with conviction, sensing a possible vulnerability in the enemy.

Suddenly alert, Price almost smiled. “And exactly where do you buy replacement parts for a B-52 heavy bomber?”

Thoughtfully, Kissinger chewed a lip. “Well, there is a place called the Boneyard out in Arizona. That’s where the Air Force stores their old, and new, B-52 bombers, along with a lot of their other off-line or obsolete war planes.”

“Sounds like the Boneyard is a good place to start a search…No, forget that,” Price corrected herself. “It’s much too obvious a source. That would be the last place the terrorists would get any parts.”

“If we’re talking about black market war planes, that would be either Miami, the Sudan or Mexico,” McCarter announced. “And Homeland Security has the Miami group so heavily infiltrated that those boys can’t sell a wing nut, much less an entire war plane, without Washington knowing about it. There is a huge market for airplane parts, especially for military planes, and even more so for jets of any kind. The money involved is so good that a lot of drug dealers have switched from heroin to smuggling airplane parts.”

“And the CIA has done the same with Sudan,” Brognola added. “Which leaves Mexico.”

“The Quintana Roo connection?” Price suggested.

“The very place I was thinking about,” McCarter said. “Out in the Yucatán Peninsula, there was an airfield built secretly during the reign of Mario Madrid, the so-called king of Cancun.”

“He was a narcoterrorist, right?”

“One of the first. The son of a bitch killed hundreds of Interpol agents, CIA operatives, police, Mexican federales . It’s said that he shifted more cocaine and heroin than we will ever know. The Mexican police finally took him down.” Price smiled. “With a little help from us and Mack.”

“To keep an airfield hidden, it would have to be located somewhere out in the desert,” Brognola said. “Maybe Mack would know where, but he’s busy in Tennessee right now.”

“No sweat,” Kurtzman stated with conviction. “I’ll personally run a search through the CIA and NSA spy satellites. I’ll find the airfield for you, David, long before Phoenix Force lands in the capital city of Chetumal.”

Standing, McCarter pointed a finger at the chief hacker and shot him by dropping a thumb. Kurtzman deflected the imaginary round with a palm, and both men grinned.

CHAPTER TWO

Columbus, Ohio

Walking along the deserted streets, Armando Delacort kept an easy pace, his five bodyguards maintaining a tight formation around the millionaire arms dealer. Their suits bulged from the Uzi machine pistols slung under their jackets, and their heads were shaved in a military buzzcut, giving the men an oddly similar appearance. None of them wore jewelry, and all of them had multiple scars on their hands and faces telling of many battles fought hard and won. After the unexpected retirement the previous year of his Manhattan business rival, business had been booming.

Dressed in white linen as if this was the tropics, Delacort showed no sign of his inner demons, and coolly radiated the sort of easy affluence that only the truly rich and powerful could master. However, childhood habits died hard, and there was a switchblade knife tucked into his hip pocket, a pair of brass knuckles in his vest and a brand-new, state-of-the-art Glock 18 tucked into a tailored shoulder holster.

The weapon was a marvel, justifying the boastful claim that Glock was the premier weapons designer in the world. In appearance, it was absolutely identical to the Glock 17, a simple semiautomatic pistol. But just a touch on the trigger of the Eighteen, and it chattered off seventeen 9 mm rounds in slightly under two seconds. Two seconds! Absolutely incredible. Privately, the arms dealer was eagerly looking forward to the first reasonable excuse to use the new weapon, to see how well it did in combat.

Smiling contentedly at the sun, Delacort ambled along, savoring the clean morning air. As always, the city streets were mostly empty at this ungodly hour of the day, the sun just cresting over the top of the Hyatt Sports Stadium clearly announcing that it was barely 10:00 a.m. All of the commuters were at work, the mob of students attending the four local colleges were in class, and any shoppers were at the upscale shops located far uptown.

Whistling a tune, Delacort sauntered along the sidewalk, taking his time and almost feeling sorry for the hordes of people who had to eke out a living in the daily grind. Few people understood that life was like a fine wine—it should be savored and enjoyed, not gulped like water or guzzled like soda pop!

“Baa…baa…” Delacort said, imitating a sheep at a passing couple on the other side of the street. The man and woman gave no sign that they had heard, but they did hurry around the corner and out of sight.

Chuckling softly to himself, Delacort paused for only a second to check the oncoming traffic, of which there was none, before crossing Main Street even though the traffic light was red.

Straight ahead, on the corner of High and Main streets, the international arms dealer smiled at the sight of the Anchor Café, the green-and-white-striped awning fluttering in the gentle breeze above a score of wrought-iron tables and chairs, which were surprisingly comfortable. Taking a seat at an empty table, Delacort smiled at the other patrons, then snapped his fingers for service. For anybody else, this would only result in them being the last person in the café to get service, but Delacort was feared, and a big tipper, so the staff fought over who got to handle the Little King of Columbus.

“Good morning, sir!” a pretty young waitress said, hurrying over with a menu.

“Good morning, Susan.” The arms dealer smiled, handing it right back. “Eggs Benedict, please, with bacon on the side. Coffee, black, whole wheat toast with orange marmalade and a date tonight? I have tickets for…well, anything that would please you, my dear.”

Taking down the order on her pad, Susan giggled at the pass and calmly walked away without responding. The woman knew full well that the big man did not mean it, even if she had been interested in a brief dalliance with him. This was just a game he played with the staff to amuse himself, that was all. Which suited them fine. There were rumors about some of the other games he liked to play, and only a suicidal lunatic would go to bed with a man whose tastes ran in the direction of silk ties and whips.

Shifting his chair so that the back was to the brick wall, Delacort reached out a hand and a bodyguard passed over a folded newspaper. Nodding his thanks, the arms dealer went straight to the political page. However, there was no more information about the terrorist attack on the airport in France, so he folded the paper and placed it aside. Ah, well, such is life. He always got a vicarious thrill reading about what his clients did with the munitions he sold. The arms dealer knew it was foolish, but if he could not do the killing personally, then at least he could have a note of satisfaction that his weapons were being handled by professionals.

Just then the wail of a police siren caught his attention, and the bodyguards moved fast to close around their employer as a black SUV screeched around the corner. A blond giant was behind the wheel, another man sitting alongside apparently having trouble loading some sort of a shotgun. In the backseat, two more men were firing handguns out the open windows of the SUV at the flock of police cars in hot pursuit.

Instantly everybody in the café started to scream and run for cover, but Delacort knew professionals at a glance, and stayed where he was to enjoy the show. Instinctively the arms dealer identified each of the weapons in sight—Atchisson 12-gauge autoshotgun, Colt .45 pistol, Model 1911 and a classic 9 mm Beretta. Whomever these criminals were, they knew guns, that was for certain. Naturally, the cops were all armed with a boring and predictable 9 mm Glock. A nice enough weapon, if safety, not death, was your main concern.

Wheeling around an island in the wide street, the men in the SUV hammered the police cars with a hail of hot lead, the rounds slamming off the sides of the vehicles, smashing a sideview mirror and shattering a headlight. The cops answered back with their service-issue Glocks, the 9 mm rounds hammering the back of the SUV but failing to achieve penetration.

That piqued his interest and Delacort raised an eyebrow. The SUV had armor plating? Exactly who were these men?

As the cars raced around the island once more, one of the men in the SUV shot out a store window, showering the street with glass. But the resilient tires of the police cars went over the sparkling shards without blowing a tire.

One of his bodyguards grunted at the tactic, and Delacort agreed. It had been a good try, and his respect for these men increased. Mentally, he wished them well. Careening off the side of a parked laundry truck, the SUV fishtailed out of control for a moment, then straightened and took off down Main Street. A police helicopter appeared over the Prudential building, distracting Delacort for a split second, and when he looked back the man saw a female police officer jerk backward as blood erupted from her ruined throat. Grabbing the ghastly wound with both hands, she fell to the ground, her Glock dropping to the street and clattering away to disappear into a sewer grating.

“Sons of bitches!” another cop bellowed, thumbing a switch on his Glock before pulling the trigger.

Incredibly, Delacort thought the weapon had exploded, then he realized it was a Model 18, exactly the same as the one under his jacket. Chattering away, the machine pistol discharged in a continuous roar and the SUV, flipped up. A tire blew, a window shattered and the head of the man loading the shotgun seemed to get hit as blood splashed across the inside of the windshield.

“Good shot,” Delacort noted with a chuckle as bank bags jounced out of the open trunk to hit the pavement and break open. Stacks of bills went everywhere, and a police car plowed through them, sending out a corona of loose bills that the breeze took and began to spread across the intersection like manna from heaven.

Numerous civilians who had been crouched in hiding, now insanely charged into the street to grab whatever they could. More bundles fell from the speeding SUV. But Delacort noticed that these came from the men in the rear seat and were not the bank bags in the trunk. What in the world could those be?

Black smoke exploded from two of the bundles, and then the rest banged loudly, throwing numerous small objects across the pavement.

Plowing throw the smoke, the police cars suddenly lurched of out control as all of their tires blew at exactly the same instant. Riding on only the rims, the drivers fought to control the screeching vehicles as showers of bright sparks were thrown up behind them like fireworks. Forcing the cars to a stop, the police inside jumped out before the crippled vehicles rocked to a halt, and took off on foot. But the SUV was impossibly distant by now, and the snarling men angrily holstered their weapons. A few of them started to shout orders to the civilians dashing around, grabbing at the whirlwind of money, while older and obviously wiser cops started to speak into their radios.

Kneeling on the pavement, a policewoman with a spreading bloodstain on her arm, lifted something small and metallic-looking from the street.

“And what the fuck is this?” she demanded of nobody in particular, turning the object over to inspect it from every angle.

As his bodyguards relaxed their defensive postures, Delacort smiled in amusement, recognizing the item as a caltrop, a primitive device invented by the Romans to stop the advance of barefoot enemies, but it worked equally as well against modern-day cars. It was a small triangular piece of wood with sharp nails driven through to point outward from each side. No matter how they fell, if a tire went over one, the nails deflated it, and that was the end of the chase. Well, against the police, or the FBI, Delacort noted mentally. The CIA and Homeland had puncture-proof military tires. Against those, a thousand caltrops would be as ineffectual as throwing spitballs.

“Still, I wonder if those would sell well wholesale,” the arms dealer muttered, snapping his fingers for the waitress once more before returning to the newspaper. He was hungrier than ever now, and sure that the staff would come out of hiding eventually.

T AKING A CORNER on two wheels, Lyons angled sharply into a parking garage and took the ramp to the second level at breakneck speed. Smashing aside a row of bright orange safety cones, the Stony Man commando slammed on the brakes as the back of a huge Mack truck came into view.

Decelerating quickly, Lyons had the SUV down to only 50 mph when he hit the sloped sheet of corrugated steel leading into the open rear of the cargo truck. The front end crashed against the metal, throwing the people inside hard against their seat belts, the bloody mannequin in the passenger seat—Bloody Bob—flopping wildly. As the interior of the truck filled his sight, Lyons threw the SUV into Reverse. The transmission gave a metallic groan, then slammed the vehicle to a halt, a barrage of shrapnel blowing out the bottom as gears shattered under the abrupt change in direction.

Rocking slightly back and forth on the shock absorbers, the men in the SUV clawed at their seat belts as the blacksuits from the Farm dropped the access ramp, then swung the doors closed. Darkness descended with a strident clang.

Only a few seconds later there came the sound of a police siren racing past the truck, then fading into the distance as the cops streaked along the ramps of the empty garage, going higher and higher.

“Well, that was interesting,” Hermann Schwarz said, wiping his mustache clean with a palm. The hand came away streaked with crimson, none of it from him. “You know, I’ve had fun before, and this isn’t it.” Standing average height, and sporting plain brown hair, Schwarz was an ordinary-looking man, and there was nothing about him to show that “Gadgets” was one of the top electronics experts in the world.

“You can say that again, brother,” Rosario “The Politician” Blancanales muttered, brushing back his wavy crop of salt-and-pepper hair. Built along a more stocky frame, Blancanales had been a Black beret before joining the Stony Man team, and although an expert in psychological warfare, he radiated physical strength the way a furnace did heat.

Schwarz glanced forward. “Carl, how’s Bob doing?”

“He’s dead,” Lyons said, reaching over to shake the human-size mannequin. At the touch, more red fluid gushed from the wound in its head, and a few more plastic teeth sprayed forward to bounce off the dashboard, sounding like rattling dice.

“Damn. Don’t think I can fix him this time,” Schwarz said with a frown. “And still make him appear human.”

“Fair enough. He’s ready for permanent retirement,” Blancanales agreed, placing his Colt 1911 on the seat. “Let him rest in peace.”

“Rest in pieces, you mean,” Schwarz said, chuckling as he reached under the seat to extract a briefcase.

In the front seat, Lyons merely grunted at the feeble joke as he pulled the Atchisson shotgun from the stiff fingers of the mannequin and started wiping the weapon down with a damp cloth to remove the sticky theatrical blood. Personally, Lyons was glad the charade had come off without a hitch. Time was short, and with no other place to start an investigation, this desperate plan was their only way to try to find the Airwolves, and their pretend streetfight could have gone wrong in a hundred different ways. Thankfully there had been no real accidents. The cop who had died in the police car chasing them had only been the sister of Bob, Dyin’ Donna, operated by Schwarz by remote control.

In a muted rumble, the big diesel engine of the Mack truck lumbered into life, revving a few times to build power before smoothly moving forward.

Now that the team was in motion once more, Schwarz opened the briefcase and tucked the partially loaded Beretta into the soft gray foam, followed by the Colt. Then the man extracted a duplicate pair of weapons, only these were adorned with tiny splotches of yellow paint to mark them as real weapons. Passing the Colt to Blancanales, Schwarz briefly inspected the Beretta before slipping in a magazine of live ammunition.

Rubbing off the yellow paint, Blancanales did the same to his Colt. Long ago, the team had learned that using blanks in their weapons to simulate a firefight would not fool professionals. The guns looked the same and sounded the same, but the blanks shot out a feeble spray of sparks from the end of the muzzle instead of a hot lance of flame the way a live round did. That was the kind of mistake that could easily cost lives. So for these kinds of maneuvers, the Stony Man operatives used theatrical weapons acquired from a Hollywood production company.

The safe weapons were identical to real guns, but the interior of the barrel was throttled down to only a slim passage so that the quarter-charge of powder in the cartridges sent off a very realistic-looking muzzle flash. There was even enough of a kick to operate the complex loading mechanism and cycle in the next round. Which was how a studio had its pampered movie stars dramatically fire off machine guns in a film without them looking foolish, or worse, accidentally killing somebody. Blanks sent off wads of cardboard, supposedly harmless, but under the right conditions, they could break bones, and occasionally the cheap brass in the cartridges shattered, sending out a deadly spray of razor-sharp metal that killed every bit as easily as hot lead.

With a jounce, the truck exited the parking garage and started along High Street, heading northward. The police cars howled in the distance, moving east along Main Street.

“Mighty nice of the local cops to help us out on this,” Schwarz said, threading a sound suppressor onto the barrel of his Beretta before holstering the weapon.

“Anything to help Homeland Security,” Lyons replied, inspecting the Atchisson for last vestiges of the fake blood. When satisfied, he eased in a drum of 12-gauge cartridges and clicked on the safety. “Besides, they hate Delacort with a passion that can only be measured in kilotons.”

“The enemy of my enemy, eh?” Blancanales asked, tucking the Colt into a shoulder holster. “Come on, let’s get out of this filthy car and get dressed. I’m covered with fake brains.”

Grinning wickedly, Schwarz opened his mouth to speak.

“Not a fucking word, Gadgets,” Blancanales warned sternly.

The man feigned shock. “Who, me?”

Exiting the battered SUV, the team retrieved duffel bags from restraining straps on the walls of the truck and pulled out designer suits, expensive Italian shoes, Rolex watches and fat plastic containers of moist towellettes. Stripping to the skin, the men washed off the fake blood and began to get dressed again, starting with imported silk shorts. They needed to appear rich, and there was no telling how detailed a search Delacort might have his bodyguards perform.

“So, who are we this time?” Schwarz asked, splashing on some expensive French cologne.

“We’re mercenaries called Red Five,” Lyons replied, slipping on a designer shirt. “We’re a radical splinter group of the Aryan Nation.”

Pulling up his pants, the man stopped. “We’re stinking Nazis?”

“Aryans,” Blancanales corrected. “Not Nazis.”

“The difference being…?”

“I’ll get back to you on that.”

“Swell,” Schwarz muttered, buckling his belt.

“How long before we contact Delacort?” Schwarz asked.

“This evening,” Lyons replied, sliding on a pair of sunglasses. “Any sooner and he might become suspicious. We get only one chance at this, so we have to play it low and slow.”

“And if he doesn’t know anything about the Airwolves’ military ordnance?” Blancanales asked, sliding a gold signet ring onto his hand. Clenching his fist, the ring blossomed into a flower of razor blades. Easing his hand, the ring snapped shut, returning to the appearance of mere jewelry.

“Then we convince him to find out,” Lyons said coldly.

CHAPTER THREE

Quintana Roo, Mexico

Swiftly, the massive C-130 Hercules airplane glided through the clear sky like a winged mountain. David McCarter had turned off the huge engines as the coastline of Mexico came into sight, and was now dead-sticking it, flying the colossal warplane with his hands on the yoke, directed by instinct and years of training.

Strapped into the copilot’s seat, a tall, lean man in a military jumpsuit was using both hands to operate a military image enhancer. More than merely magnifying a view of the ground below, the device also scanned in the ultraviolet and infrared spectrum. Boasting window-in-window capability, the display screen showed a real-time view of the ground below, plus a series of static shots, the view constantly shifting as the cameras focused briefly on anything hot enough to register as a potential threat.

Thomas Jackson Hawkins had been raised in Texas, and was outlandishly proud of the fact. A genial man who smiled a lot, Hawkins spoke slowly, but moved with lightning-fast reflexes when it was time to kill. A former member of the elite Delta Force, Hawkins was trained in quiet kill techniques, but much preferred a thunder and lightning blitzkrieg.

“Okay, thermals read clean again. Aside from a campfire some kids built, there’s nothing down there but a coyote. No sign of any motorized traffic or other campfires.”

“Good to know,” David McCarter stated, putting his full attention on the stygian darkness ahead.

The former SAS commando knew that the bustling city of Cancun was only a few miles to the east, but the electric glow of the famous vacation spot was completely swallowed by the sheer distance, along with the endlessly shifting mountains of rolling sand dunes. The Phoenix Force leader felt like he was flying with the windows painted back, the night was so dark. His muscles were starting to ache from the strain of being constantly ready to dodge an outcropping.

The peninsula of Quintana Roo was mostly wild desert that stretched to white sandy beaches, occasionally punctuated with the crumbling ruins of Mayan temples perched atop low rocky cliffs. But that was Mexico; Cancun was as peaceful as Quintana Roo was savage.

“Time,” Hawkins reported, not bothering to check the watch under his sleeve.

Without shifting his sight, McCarter reached out to flip some switches, feathering the propellers and dropping two of the four airfoils. Instantly the huge plane slowed as if plowing into a wall of gelatin.

“Hundred feet…eighty…sixty…” Hawkins read off the altimeter. “Watch out—the freaking temple!”

“I saw it,” McCarter growled, speeding past the stone building and then dropping the last two flaps.

“Guess so, since we didn’t just eat sandstone,” Hawkins snorted, hitting a button on the intercom. “Hold on to your asses, boys, this is it. We’re going in!”

Fifty feet away, in the main body of the huge airplane, past a short flight of stairs, three men sat strapped into jumpseats, their camouflage-colored uniforms covered with military equipment.

“Roger that, Taxes.” Calvin James chuckled.

Over the intercom set into the arm of the jumpseat, Hawkins’s reply consisted mostly of four-letter words.

“Only if you buy me dinner first.” James laughed, a strong Chicago accent announcing his own native city.

Over six feet in height, the lanky man was classically good-looking, although oddly sporting a pencil-thin mustache like a movie star from the Roaring Twenties. Ready for battle the instant they touched down, James had an MP-5 submachine gun strapped across his chest and night-vision goggles at his side. A sleek 9 mm Beretta rode high on his chest in a combat holster, and a Randall Survival knife was at his side, the telltale blade of a Navy SEAL. Unlike the others, his camouflage paint was dull gray to mix with his naturally dark skin.

Surrounding the members of Phoenix Force were large pallets bolted directly to the deck, the stacks of equipment trunks lashed tightly into place. Parked fifty feet away at the rear of the plane was a Hummer, the heavy military vehicle tightly cocooned in a spiderweb of restraining belts. Ready for desert combat, the Hummer was painted a mottled array of dull colors, the headlights covered with night shields, and a M-249 SAW machine gun already attached to the firing stanchion, the breech open, the attached ammo box ready for action.

“And…welcome to Mexico!” McCarter announced over a wall speaker.

Instantly the plane shuddered as the wheels bounced off the hard desert sand. A spray of loose particles peppered the aft belly as the C-130 Hercules airplane rose slightly only to touch down once more. The plane shuddered again, then jerked hard and began to crazily jerk around as it bounced along the irregular ground. Everything loose went flying, and the three men in the jumpseats held on for dear life, not fully trusting the safety harnesses.

The noise of the sand hitting the underbelly of the plane grew to hurricane force, then the brakes engaged and the violent shaking rapidly eased until the gigantic craft came to an easy stop.

“Well, I’m delighted to see that correspondence course in flying is really working out well for David,” Rafael Encizo commented, working his jaw to see if any teeth were loose.

Gary Manning grinned, shrugging off his harness and pulling on a black knit cap, trying not to smear his tiger-stripe combat paint in the process.

Standing, Manning swung around a massive rifle. The bolt-action .50-caliber Barrett was a sniper rifle with a range of over a mile, the monstrous 700-grain bullets were the size of a cigar and fully capable of shooting through a brick wall. Many professional soldiers considered the deadly weapon a piece of field artillery, instead of merely a rifle.

“Good news, people,” McCarter announced from the top of the metal stairs. “Bear hacked into a Quest-Star comm sat and found the airfield. It’s five klicks due east, so leave the Hummer, we go on foot.”

“Low and quiet, just the way I like it,” Hawkins stated, appearing from the flight deck. An MP-5 was in his hands, and the plastic tube of a LAW rocket launcher was slung across his back. These days, many soldiers liked the reusable Armbrust, or SMAW, but the Stony Man team much preferred the one-shot LAW. Afterward, they simply tossed away the empty tube, which saved them a lot of time and trouble. Their covert missions were usually fast, furious and short. There was no supply line. They carried everything, which made every ounce saved vitally important.

Going to the side door, McCarter checked outside through the small observation port, then turned to nod at James. He killed the internal lights and McCarter swung open the door, going from darkness into the night. The others quickly followed, readying their weapons.

Gathering outside, the team members listened to the sounds of the desert for a moment, trusting their ears to tell them if anything hostile was in the vicinity. Silence in the middle of a forest or wild glade always meant the immediate presence of humans. Or a major predator. But savage men hidden in the desert were to be feared a lot more than any mountain lion or poisonous reptile.

Slowly, the insect life recovered from the rude arrival of the Hercules, and began to sing their songs once more. An owl hooted in the distance.

Swinging down his night-vision goggles, James dialed for infrared and scanned the vicinity, while Encizo did the same using the Starlite function. That mode augmented the natural illumination of the stars until the operator could see everything as clear as if it was day. The one drawback being that unless the surge protector was engaged, somebody lighting a match or turning on a flashlight, could blind the operator for several minutes until his eyes recovered, leaving him temporarily helpless.

“Clear,” James subvocalized into a throat mike, the word repeated in the earbuds of the rest of the team.

Turning off his goggles, Encizo gave a thumbs-up to the others.

Satisfied for the moment, McCarter flipped up the lid of the compass on his wrist to check directions, then snapped it shut and started off at a run.

The kilometers passed in total silence, the only sounds the soft patting of their combat boots on the dry sand. As expected, the Mexican desert was very chilly at that time of night. The terrible heat of the day had completely radiated away, leaving the landscape bitterly cold, and soon their breath began to fog. There were small chemical packs sewed into the lining of their ghillie suits that would start to generate a soothing warmth for hours if slapped. But the U.S. Marine Corp hot-packs would make the team members light up a thermal scan like fireworks, so the Stony Man operatives simply ignored the low temperatures and concentrated on moving across the desolate and inhospitable Quintana Roo peninsula.

Reaching a low dune, the team went flat and covered the next hundred yards on their bellies. Cresting the top, the Stony Man commandos tried not to disturb the young sage plants that grew thick from the sand, and looked down the other side using monoculars. The world turned black-and-white, the view crystal clear and wire sharp.

“Bingo,” McCarter whispered into his throat mike with grim satisfaction.

Spreading out in front of the men was a wide area of land that had been cleared of all plants. Off to the side were some old cinder-block buildings, the doors were riveted metal, the windows merely ventilation slits, and lots of sand, rocks and plants were piled high on top on the flat roof. Obviously it was protection from an aerial search.

More importantly, just outside the armored door a fire was crackling inside a fifty-five-gallon oil drum, holes cut into the sides to allow the light and heat to escape. Sitting on folding chairs, there were a couple of men in ponchos talking and smoking stubby cigars, assault rifles leaning against the cinder-block wall nearby. One of the rifles was a brand-new AK-101, the other was a much older AK-47. Obviously, one of the men was new and not given the better, more expensive weapon until having proved his worth.

However, the team members still frowned at the sight. Both of the Russian assault rifles were equipped with 30 mm grenade launchers and infrared night scopes, which could be real trouble.

The sound of metal hitting metal came from another cinder-block building; streamers of light escaped from the canvas sheet blocking the wide front door. More fifty-five-gallon drums were situated under a canvas awning, along with a small electric generator. The Stony Man commandos marked it as the garage. Then they spotted another canvas lump and identified it as the proper size and shape for a heavy machine gun, or maybe an auto-mortar. However, there was no way of telling where they were.

A small wooden shack was set off by itself, clearly identifying it as the outhouse. Several yards distant was a bare metal flagpole, the tattered remains of a windsock dangling limply. Even though it was reduced to rags, the old cloth could still give an incoming plane vital information on wind direction.

Just past the flagpole, cutting across the cleared area, was a wide strip of concrete, as incongruous a sight as a buffalo in a ballet. Smooth and flat, the disguised airstrip reached out of sight, and the members of Phoenix Force nodded in admiration at the sight of pictures of more plants and rocks painted onto the landing strip. Clever. More protection from visual tracking. The team could only see the concrete because of the angle and the silvery moonlight. Otherwise, it would have been nearly invisible.

“Hidden in plain sight,” Hawkins muttered, shifting his grip on the MP-5 to screw on an acoustic sound suppressor. “Same as the Airwolves.”

“How come so many criminals are smart enough to make more money honestly, than they ever would as crooks?” Encizo asked softly, attaching a suppressor to his own machine gun.

“Irony?” Manning replied coolly, now moving the crosshairs to mark his targets.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” James replied, sliding a fat 40 mm shell into the launcher attached under the main barrel of his MP-5 weapon. His heart was beating hard in his chest, and the soldier tried his best to regain a professional calm.

“Gary, get me a number on the runway,” McCarter asked, tucking his monocular into a cushioned pouch on his web belt.

“In a second,” Manning replied. Focusing the telescopic sights of the Barrett on the extreme end of the clear strip of land, the tiny digital display on the bottom of the scope gave him the precise distance. Now sweeping the crosshairs to the other end, he added the two readings.

“Ten thousand four hundred and nine feet,” Manning replied grimly, lowering the sniper rifle. “More than enough for a B-52 to land.”

“Or anything else this side of a NASA space shuttle,” Encizo agreed, leveling his MP-5. “Doesn’t mean they’re the terrorists, though. Might just be some drug smugglers.”

“David, want me to put a 40 mm shell into the fuel drums and set the place on fire?” Hawkins asked, resting a finger on the trigger of the grenade launcher.

“Think they’re stupid enough to store the fuel by itself,” McCarter asked skeptically, “and not mixed with the water supply to retard any fires?”

Lowering the weapon, Encizo almost smiled. “Maybe. We’ve seen it done before.”

Reluctantly, McCarter had to concede the point. A few years ago, Phoenix Force had encountered a splinter group of the Libyan Army of God and had put a warning shot into the fuel depot merely to start a blaze as a distraction. However, the previously unknown stockpile of ten thousand gallons of high-octane aviation fuel ignited, blowing the whole base off the map in a writhing fireball of gargantuan size. A genuine one-shot battle. It was a freak event, but the team members remembered it fondly.

The soft purr of a single-engine plane suddenly came from the north.

“That sounds like a Cessna,” Hawkins announced.

“From the sound of those two engines it can’t be much larger than a Skywagon or a Crusader,” James said with a scowl.

“Check the hills to the west,” McCarter brusquely ordered over the throat mike.

“Yep, good call, David. There’s activity in those foothills,” Encizo said, dialing for maximum computer augmentation on the monocular.

“Reinforcements?” Manning asked, swinging the ungainly Barrett in that direction and looking through the nightscope.

“No, just one guy…and he’s looking through Zeist field glasses at the airfield.”

Field glasses? Those were oversize binoculars much too heavy to carry into combat. They were only for a fixed observation point. “Think he’s Mexican Intelligence or CIA?” James asked tersely, his face lost in the cathedral of shadows caused by the moonlight through the tall sage plants.

“There’s no camera and no radio, and he’s got what looks like a…yes, that’s a Barrett Fifty slung across his back,” Encizo declared. “And there’s a Victory motorcycle parked nearby.”

“That’s no cop,” Hawkins stated.

“Not unless he recently won the lottery,” McCarter agreed with conviction. The Victory motorcycle was an expensive bike, mostly because it was one of the best in the world, which made it highly unlikely the man was a law-enforcement agent. However, the presence of the deadly Barrett was the clincher. There was no reason at all for any cop to be carrying a sniper rifle on a stakeout. The man had to be a guard, set to watch the airfield. And the only logical reason for that was to see who arrived to look for the Airwolves and to strike them down from above like Zeus, which might be to the Stony Man team’s advantage.

“Want me to take him out?” Manning asked coolly, lifting the Barrett into a firing stance.

“Not yet, we’re going to burn the rope,” McCarter said, activating the transceiver on his belt. “Rock House, this is Firebird, come in.”

“Roger, Firebird, this is Speed Racer,” a familiar voice replied. “Read you loud and clear. Ten-four.”

“Speed Racer, we need a blanket and right now,” McCarter stated roughly. “We’ve got incoming, and don’t want any outgoing. You savvy?”

There was a brief moment of static.

“Confirm, Firebird,” Kurtzman answered. “I see your Zeus on my Nasty sky eye.”

Nasty. That was this month’s code for the NSA. “Keep him safe and secure in case he rabbits. Confirm?”

“Roger wilco. Consider him deadlocked. Blanket ready to go. Duration?”

“Two should do. Repeat, two is fine.” Saying it twice, meant to hold the blanket for only half the time. If anybody was listening in, that would keep them off the air for two hours, while Phoenix Force could use the radio again in an hour. Every little bit helped.

“Confirm, Firebird. When do you want it delivered?”

“At your earliest convenience, Speed Racer,” McCarter said, but instantly a howling began to wail from his earbuds, and every member of the team involuntarily flinched, their hands racing to kill the com link.

Across the entire peninsula, no radio signals were going anywhere, every transmission killed by the powerful jamming field broadcast by Kurtzman from the equipment on board the Hercules. Not even cell phones would operate due to the additional interference of the Stony Man satellite in high Earth orbit.

Just then, a sleek Cessna Skywagon flew past the airfield, the pilot tripping the engines as identification. Down on the concrete airstrip, a bearded man waved a halogen flashlight and suddenly a double string of red lights appeared, edging both sides of the concrete to give the pilot a visual reference for a landing.

Swinging around, the Skywagon soon returned and touched down lightly, rolling to a stop near the rusty metal pole and bedraggled windsock.

Immediately a trio of armed men exited the cinder-block building. One of them was morbidly obese, while the other two resembled weightlifters, their short-sleeved shirts deliberately cut to give their bulging arms some much needed room. The pilot climbed down from the cockpit of the plane, obviously dressed for comfort in a loud Hawaiian shirt, clam-digger shorts and white deck shoes.

As the trio walked closer, he hailed them with a friendly wave, and then had a few private words with the fat man. Finally some money was exchanged and the now-smiling pilot opened the small passenger door and extracted a plastic-wrapped rectangle about the size of a shoe box. Hundreds more of the same items were stacked inside the Skywagon.

Pulling out a switchblade, the fat man clicked it into life and stabbed the thin blade into the block, then pulled it out and licked the metal clean. After a moment he nodded in acceptance, and the other men started ferrying the blocks from the plane to the garage.

“That’s heroin,” James whispered, checking the chemical scanner is his hand. The DEA device was small, but very powerful, however this was at the extreme limit of its range. The only reason he was getting any reading at all was that the blocks were packed solid with heroin, the pure quill, not yet cut to sell on the street.

Impressed, Encizo stopped himself from whistling. There had to be thirty or forty million dollars’ worth of narcotics in the decades-old Skywagon. No wonder the smugglers kept the airfield staffed 24/7.

“Not good enough for a court of law, but good enough for us,” McCarter declared. “Gary, keep Zeus off our back. Everybody else, let’s go make some noise.”

Hefting the Barrett, Manning nodded. “Got your six, Chief.”

Then, as silent as ghosts, the rest of the team eased down the sand dune to merge with the shadows. Skirting around the dune, the Stony Man commandos separated, each going for a different target. McCarter and Hawkins headed for the Cessna, James the garage, and Encizo the main building.

Nearing the outhouse, Encizo went motionless as the door swung open and a big man exited, zipping up his pants. The Cuban slipped up behind the criminal and thrust a knife into his head directly behind the ear. The bearded man went stiff, galvanized motionless from the incredible pain. Then Encizo twisted the blade and the man slumped, dead before he reached the dusty ground. Retrieving his knife, Encizo moved on and quietly dispatched another man standing nearby smoking a cigarette, obviously waiting for the first fellow to finish and get his own turn in the outhouse.

At the garage, James scratched on the door, and gave a low meow. Muttering something in guttural Spanish, somebody inside tromped over to the door and threw it open, a heavy Stilson wrench brandished in a dirty fist. Seeing the Stony Man commando crouching in the darkness, the mechanic registered shock for only a microsecond before the silenced Beretta chugged twice, sending the man reeling back into the workshop. Moving fast and low, James followed close behind, catching the wrench before it fell. As the door swung shut, the commando was inside. The Beretta coughed several more times, and then silence.

“W HAT WAS THAT ?” a guard sporting a scraggly beard demanded, feeding some scraps of loose wood to the fire in the oil drum.

“Nothing. Shut up,” the bald guard replied, opening the plastic wrapping on a granola bar.

“No, I heard something,” the first guard said uneasily, dropping the rest of the scraps into the drum.

“Probably just the boss chatting up the pilot,” the bald man replied curtly, biting off a piece of the bar. Chewing for a moment, he frowned, then swallowed. “He likes to get the news from home fresh.”

“I don’ think so, amigo,” the guard said, grabbing the AK-101 and working the arming bolt.

Instantly a weapon coughed softly, and both men jerked as their lifeblood splashed onto the dirty cinder-block walls. They staggered into each other and the Kalashnikov discharged a short burst, the 7.62 mm hardball rounds punching through the chest of the dying bald man and coming out the other side.

Unexpectedly there came an answering grunt of pain from the direction of the outhouse, and Encizo staggered into the dim firelight, his hands clutching a red belly just underneath his NATO body armor.

“What the fuck was that?” the fat man demanded loudly from beside the Cessna.

Instantly the pilot drew a huge Redhawk .44 revolver from within his Hawaiian shirt, and the two weight lifters each produced a Steyr machine pistol, clicking off the safety with a thumb.

Realizing the need for stealth was over, McCarter and Hawkins fired their silenced pistols at the guards, and the criminals staggered backward, but did not fall. Then they returned fire with the Steyrs, the muzzle-flashes of the little machine pistols strobing the night.

“It’s a raid!” the fat man bellowed, casting aside the brick of heroin and pulling a Colt .45 automatic pistol into view. “Sound the alarm!”

As if that was a cue, the garage suddenly erupted into flames, the door flying off from the force of the detonation of the C-4 satchel charge set by James.

The blast’s concussion was still moving across the airfield when McCarter and James appeared once more, firing their MP-5 machine guns. The barrage of 9 mm hardball ammo hammered the two musclemen backward, until they tumbled onto the concrete, twitching into death.

Wildly cursing in Spanish, the fat man leveled his Colt and started banging away.

Incredibly, the pilot pivoted at the hip and shot the fat man in the back. Slammed hard by the brutal impact of the heavy Magnum round, the dying man haplessly spun the Colt still firing. The pilot flipped over backward, drilled by a .45 hollowpoint round, most of his face gone, teeth and eyes sailing down the landing strip.

“Man down!” James called from the direction of the cinder-block house.

Turning in that direction, McCarter and Hawkins broke into a fast run. But they were only halfway there when a second man appeared from behind the plane, working the arming bolt on a Uzi machine pistol. As he opened fire, McCarter and Hawkins dived apart, and came up shooting their MP-5 machine guns. The 9 mm rounds tore into the Cessna, and aviation fuel gushed onto the concrete. The second gunman shouted in anger, the Uzi raking the darkness, then the window shattered and his head exploded. A split second later, there came the rolling thunder of the Barrett sniper rifle.

As the body dropped, something round and metallic rolled under the Cessna.

Hitting the ground, McCarter and Hawkins barely had time to take cover when the grenade went off. But instead of an explosion, there was a brilliant flash, closely followed by a searing wave of heat that increased geometrically with every passing heartbeat.

“Thermite!” McCarter cursed, protecting his face with a raised hand. “Bastards are burning the drugs!”

“Kind of a moot point now,” Hawkins drawled, dropping an empty clip and reloading the MP-5 with practiced speed. Then he frowned. “Or do you think—”

A dozen men carrying military ordnance burst out of the cinder-block house firing wildly in every direction. They spread out fast, taking advantage of what little natural cover there was, but the man passing by the outhouse suddenly jerked, the handle of a knife sticking out his neck. Dropping the Webley, the gunner grabbed his neck in both hands, trying to staunch the flow of blood. But the effort was proving to be futile.

“Blue nine!” another man shouted. “Blue nine!” The X-18 grenade launcher in his hands began thumping steadily, sending out a salvo of 30 mm rounds. The canisters hit the ground and rolled, spewing thick volumes of smoke.

Firing their machine guns at the fresh troops, McCarter and Hawkins exchanged a brief look. The drug smugglers used battle codes? Clearly the fat man had not been in charge, but was merely the chemist sent to check the purity of the heroin.

“Black Three!” a burly man shouted, triggering an AK-101 in a long burst.

Crouching, McCarter and Hawkins listened to the noise, getting his position, then triggered their weapons through the weeds. The burly man cried out in pain, and the Kalashnikov stopped firing.

“Two one!” another man cursed, a Remington pump-action shotgun blasting into the billowing smoke at chest level. “Two one!”

Man down, McCarter translated, pulling the pin on a grenade and flipping off the arming lever before throwing it toward the voice.

While the explosive was still counting down, Hawkins peppered the area alongside the building, trying to force the others toward the sphere. A few seconds later, the grenade detonated and several men shrieked in pain.

“Black Five,” a different man shouted in an oddly feminine voice, then added the belching roar of the 30 mm grenade launcher.

The sage brush disintegrated under the assault, and a cactus was pulverized, but nothing much else happened. Then an MP-5 chattered briefly in savage counterpoint and the drug smuggler crumpled over sideways.

“They got Uncle Chollo!” another weight lifter snarled, insanely marching out of the protective smoke. “Gonna kill you—”

Which was as far as he got when there came the sound of distant thunder from the Barrett. His khaki shirt ballooned out the back as his chest erupted, the fabric splitting apart as his internal organs sprayed into the darkness.

“Red ten!” the first man shouted, and the X-18 began chugging shells into the sky. The rounds came down whistling like bombs and hit the ground to form fiery geysers that banished the artificial cloud cover and laid waste to large patches of the sandy desert. Dead bodies flipped into the air, along with rocks and plants.

Trying to drive the gunner into view, James laid down a barrage from his MP-5. But the smuggler stayed within the roiling smoke and continued to pump out high-explosive death.

Unable to proceed in that direction, McCarter and Hawkins separated to try to get around the incoming barrage. But as they did, there came an unexpected explosion from the burning garage. Sounding like a crumpling soda can, the sheet metal roof buckled, then the walls shattered, cinder blocks tumbling away to expose a raging inferno with some sort of machine sitting in the middle on the conflagration, the chassis completely covered with flames.

Ducking behind a cluster of cactus, McCarter recognized the charred wreckage as a Russian T-80, one of the toughest vehicles in existence. The Stony Man commandos couldn’t have stopped the juggernaut if it had managed to get rolling. It was a good thing that they had taken out the garage in the opening strike.

Listening closely to the sound of somebody trying to get a cell phone to work, Hawkins simply could not get a definite fix, so he pulled out a grenade and threw the unprimed sphere in the most likely direction. It hit the ground and rolled into some tall weeds, near a sand dune. A split second later several men abruptly appeared, scrambling to get away. Ruthlessly, Hawkins mowed them down, then grunted from the impact of incoming lead from the other direction. Outflanked! However, the NATO body armor held and the hardball rounds did not achieve penetration.

Badly bruised, but still breathing, Hawkins fired a single round, then began to curse, and started working the arming bolt as if his weapon had jammed. Almost instantly a dark form appeared from within the smoke, rushing his way. But as he cleared the protective smoke, the Barrett spoke once more, and the man doubled over, unable to stand with most of his spine removed.

Realizing the battle was not going their way, the gunner dropped the exhausted drum from the X-18 and fumbled in a bag at his side to produce a spare one when James rose from the smoke to fire the MP-5 only once. Hit in the head, the gunner staggered, and the Stony Man commando was gone before the criminal fell.

“Two one, two one!” a tall man shouted, firing short, controlled bursts from his AK-47 into the thinning smoke. “Delta ten!”

Now the remaining criminals started retreating to the cinder-block building, their assault rifles hosing the smoky darkness in wild desperation. Keeping their backs to the blockhouse, they dropped spent clips to quickly reload when Encizo stepped into view from within the building, holding his MP-5 in both hands. Without a word, he cut loose, the weapon chattering nonstop and chewing the criminals into hamburger until the clip ran empty.

“C-clear…” Encizo panted, then dropped the weapon and collapsed.

Rushing over to the man, McCarter scowled at the sight of fresh blood welling from underneath the commando’s body armor.

“Cal, man down!” the big Briton bellowed, ripping the vest open to inspect the damage. There was a line of holes right along the man’s abdomen. He grimaced, but said nothing.

Suddenly, James and Hawkins arrived with weapons at the ready. At the sight of the blood-soaked Encizo, both men scowled. Then Hawkins assumed a defensive position while James knelt to lay aside his gun and look over the wounds before ripping open a med pack to sprinkle the wounds with sulfur.

“These are pretty bad,” James stated, rummaging inside a medical pack to extract a field dressing and press it gently to the man’s bloody abdomen. “There’s nowhere near enough blood showing.”

Which meant internal bleeding. McCarter had thought so, but hoped he was wrong. “Okay, what do you need?”

“Fast transportation to a decent hospital,” James replied, pulling out a syringe and checking the contents. “The medical supplies that we have in the Hercules won’t do for this kind of injury. He needs immediate surgery.” He injected Encizo’s thigh, the pale man giving no response.

“Done.” But starting to reach for his throat mike, McCarter cursed in frustration, then looked around. “There! Take the Cessna and fly him to Chetumal Airport near Cancun,” he directed. “We’ll race back to the Herc, kill the jamming field and radio the doctors to let them know you’re on the way.”

“T.J., lend a hand,” James commanded. He lifted the unconscious man in his arms and took off at an easy run across the littered desert.

Shouldering his weapon, Hawkins charged over the fallen bodies and blast craters to scramble into the plane and start the engine. It caught with a sputtering roar, and then smoothed to a sustained purr. Working together, the two men gently placed the unconscious Encizo on top of the packaged heroin, then they clambered inside. James stayed with his patient, while Hawkins took the controls and immediately began taxiing along the runway for a fast takeoff.

Turning away, McCarter started around the dune when Manning appeared from the darkness.

“I’m faster,” he said bluntly, the Barrett resting on a broad shoulder. “I’ll meet you there.”

“No, I’m going back to the plane,” McCarter countered, already in motion. “You stay with our friend in the hills, and don’t lose him! Keep with him at all costs.”

Confused, Manning narrowed his eyes in annoyance, then realized that if there was any trouble, a Barrett was the only weapon that stood a chance against another Barrett. Accepting the inevitable, Manning broke into a sprint, heading deeper into the desert to approach them from the side as the Cessna lifted off the ground and McCarter disappeared behind the sand dunes.

Gradually, the sounds of the engine and boots faded into the distance, and the desert airfield was still once more, the cooling corpses illuminated by the moon and the crackling blaze in the ruined garage.

CHAPTER FOUR

Patagonia Desert

A cold wind blew across the frozen land, carrying away the last vestiges of heat. Pristine white snow frosted the ground and the small lake was a solid sheet of ice. Along the curve of the horizon, rough mountains rose in jagged peaks as if they were new and not yet completely finished. Majestic condors flew among the craggy tors, forever on the hunt for anything edible.

Standing near the edge of a cliff, a woman in a brightly colored parka was setting a camera onto a tripod when she heard the crunch of snow under boots. Out there? A stranger was approaching from the direction of an old jeep, the heat visibly radiating from the engine.

“Hello,” she said hesitantly, a hand going into a pocket to touch her cell phone.

“Goodbye,” the man replied, raising a gloved hand and firing.

Hidden inside the glove, a silenced .22 Remington snapped off six fast shots, the tiny bullets almost leaving through the same hole in the quilted material.

Recoiling as if hit by sledgehammers, the woman staggered away from the camera, blood gushing from her ragged throat. Clutching the ghastly wounds with her own gloved hands, she tried to yell and only managed a rough cough, warm red fluids filling her mouth to spill over her lips and down the front of her insulated parka.

Reaching the edge of the cliff, the woman suddenly realized her location and started away from the abyss. Craig Rexton shot her twice more, then kicked the photographer in the stomach. Air and blood exploded from her mouth, and the dying woman went sailing over the cliff. It seemed to take her an inordinate length of time to disappear into the misty darkness, but, then, it was more than nine hundred feet to the base of the cliff.

Grunting at the sight of the messy impact below, Rexton nodded in satisfaction, then began to toss the woman’s boxes of supplies over the cliff. Especially that damn camera. He was not overly familiar with the model, and cracked the plastic shell getting to the film, which he exposed to the weak sunlight.

Producing a grenade from his parka, Rexton pulled the arming pin, released the handle and then threw the grenade down the cliff. He turned and raced for the Jeep, and was about halfway there when the bomb detonated. Done and done. If anybody ever found the body, which was highly unlikely, there was nothing to connect the death to his people.

And certainly not in enough time to do anything. Rexton smirked. It was a pity there were no wild predators in the vicinity. But then, nothing was perfect.

Visitors to Patagonia were few and very far between. Wanted by nobody, but claimed by both Chile and Argentina purely for political reasons, Patagonia was rife with impossibly steep mountains, live volcanoes, molten lava, acrid deserts and glaciers larger than most cities, making it the most inhospitable land on the planet. There were no native inhabitants, no outposts nor even roads. Most people called Patagonia the edge of the world.

It was early spring and the yearly thaw had not yet begun to release the long winter’s accumulation of snow and ice. Even the waterfall extending from the side of a granite cliff was still a solid mass that reached straight down to the barren shoreline of smooth rocks. Aside from the condors, nothing moved, even the clouds seemed quiescent.

For now, Patagonia was a desolate world of bitter cold and black rocks, void of any useful minerals, ores or even natural beauty. It was a vast and sterile land of no conceivable use to anything or anybody.

Aside from the paramilitary group known as Genesis.

Entrenched just to the south of the dried mud lake was a flat expanse of gleaming white concrete. Set off safely to the side was a series of massive fuel tanks, and on the opposite side of the airfield were several concrete bunkers, the rooftops bristling with radar, optical scanners, dish microphones, squat Vulcan miniguns and SAM launchers. An acre of strong canvas stretched between two outcroppings covered several B-52 bombers parked on the ground. One was partially disassembled, and another had been reduced to a mere skeleton, every salvageable part already removed, but the others were in perfect condition, the fuselages gleaming with fresh paint, their bomb bays heavy with deadly cargo.

Encircling the entire airfield was a double row of burnished steel rods that hummed softly whenever a condor flew overhead or a leaf fluttered past the finely tuned proximity sensors. Buried between the rows were land mines of every conceivable type, some automatic, others remotely controlled. Many of them were linked together. There was no gate or access road. The only way to reach the base on land was through the mines. Setting off one would cause a score of others to detonate, spreading a wave of destruction that would herald a corona of deadly shrapnel. Some mines were hidden outside the row of sensors, an additional trap for any possible invaders foolhardy enough to risk approaching the somber headquarters for Genesis.

Jouncing over the irregular terrain, Rexton held tightly on to the steering wheel, the hood of his parka flipping backward to reveal his starkly handsome features. The man looked like an aging movie star using plastic surgery to hold on to the last few years of beauty, but that was merely his natural countenance. The plastic surgery would come later, after the fall of America.

As the vehicle came into visible sight of the base, the weapons on top of the bunkers instantly locked on to the moving target, the multiple barrels of the Vulcans automatically spinning to a blur as they prepared to fire.

Heading for the bunkers, Rexton touched an electronic device strapped to his wrist and the Vulcans promptly powered down and returned to their ready status.

Knowing that any variation in speed would trigger the live mines, the man maintained a steady course through the defensive barrier and safely reached the other side without undue incident. He barked a laugh at that as if gaining access to the base was some sort of minor victory.

Passing a low dome barely visible above the ground, Rexton waved in greeting to the armed guards inside the kiosk. A thin layer of concrete covered the muzzles of the old German 88 cannons, and anybody who did not wave, with the left hand only, was killed on sight. Some of his people complained about all of the complex security regulations, but the leader of Genesis was fully aware of what sort of violent countermeasures the brutal American government would take if it ever learned who was behind the bombings of the major airports. They had to be ready at all times for a full-scale invasion, both from above and from the ground. At least they were safe from the river, as it was frozen solid for most of the year, and even when warm, it was hardly of sufficient depth for the U.S. Navy to send in an attack submarine or even a squad a SEALs.

No, the base was secure, the terrorist noted mentally. We’re well protected in every direction. Genesis would be safe here, until the coming war was over, and sanity finally returned to the world.

Braking to a halt in front of an unmarked bunker, Rexton killed the engine and stepped out of the Jeep to plug an electric cord into an external socket. If the vehicles were not kept constantly warm, the engines would freeze and refuse to start until the motors were disassembled and thoroughly cleaned. He hated to waste electricity, the group tried to be ecologically aware, but such was the price to pay for saving the world. A garage would have served the same purpose, but those were always a prime target for a commando attack. So the bunker marked as the garage was actually just a solid dome of concrete.

Let the fools hit it with all the missiles they wanted, Rexton thought proudly. It would accomplish nothing. Everything had been taken into account. The battle plan was perfect. Perfect! And there was nothing America could do to stop them this time. Greenwich would be avenged!

Heading for the front door of the bunker, Rexton blew into his gloved hands, privately wishing that they could have been heated electrically like his jacket and boots. But the danger of a short-circuit had been too great. Pity, because it was exceptionally cold this day, but slowly getting warmer. Winter was over, and there was a sense of spring in the air. Life was returning to the frozen landscape. A more than fitting analogy. Soon Patagonia, the most remote spot on the globe, would become the center of a new civilization. His civilization. A society of peace and love and tolerance.

After we kill off all of the warmongers, that is, Rexton admitted privately. Back in 1774, Thomas Paine had said it plainly enough in his book Common Sense. Occasionally the tree of liberty had to be watered with the blood of patriots. Sad, but true. Though in the thousands, no doubt, the killings would be kept to an absolute minimum. He was no madman, just the savior of humanity. But if anything went wrong, then St. James would have no choice but to use the Dragon. At which point, he thought grimly, God help us all.

But that was a worst-case scenario, and so far everything had gone off strictly according to schedule. It had taken Genesis more than thirty years to build the base, and almost that long to acquire the three B-52 bombers needed for the operation. And then, buying the bombs had taken almost every last dime Genesis had accumulated. Their fathers had started the Great Project, but they wanted to be the generation that brought it to fruition. To end war, every war, all wars, forever! There was no higher or more noble goal. It was just like performing surgery to remove cancer. He could kill the cancer, to save the patient. True, it was a pity that so many people had to die to achieve worldwide peace, but such was life.

Way back in the 1960s a group of students called Genesis had tried to save America by forcing the government to end the war in Vietnam. They had some limited success, but then the full might of the FBI was turned against the fledging group, and the main leaders were either slain by police bullets or sent to prison. Only a handful of followers escaped, along with most of the cash the freedom fighters had liberated from numerous banks. Once situated safely here in Chile, they took new identities and stayed low, far from public scrutiny, and they invested wisely in oil and steel, then communications and finally advanced computer software.

Now worth millions, the children of Genesis had decided to finish the war for independence started by their parents. They hired mercenaries to teach them how to fight, and they studied the art of war in colleges, and psychology at universities, across the world. Unfortunately, America had grown fat over the decades, and once more was waging political warfare, trading blood for oil, a conflict that was certain to escalate horribly out of control when some terrorist group finally managed to build a hydrogen bomb and started a nuclear world war that nobody could win. Many years sooner than planned, Genesis was facing the end of the human race and had been forced to rush their plans into completion. But now, at last, they were ready to force peace upon the world no matter what. Victory or death.

Tapping an access code into a small keypad, Rexton waited a few seconds as the heavy door slid aside. Then he tapped a second code into the pad, and the door closed, then opened once more, this time with the antipersonnel mines buried inside the jamb deactivated.

Stopping at an alcove, Rexton luxuriated in the waves of heat pouring from a wall vent while he hung up the heavy parka and ski mask, the tattered remains of the glove going into a waste receptacle. Pounds lighter, the man proceeded deeper into the bunker, vainly adjusting his cuffs and collar.

Seeking the approval of the staff and the pilots, Rexton always came to the command center dressed in sneakers, blue jeans and a red flannel shirt. The clothing of a humble working man. It helped him to stay focused on the goals of the group, to free the people.

Smiling at a security camera high in the corner of the ceiling, Rexton nodded in passing to an armed guard sitting in a small alcove.

“Welcome back, brother,” the guard said, smiling, then it vanished. “Were those noises just more ice coming off a glacier or…” He left the sentence hanging.

“Just a penguin,” Rexton replied stoically.

Sagging slightly, the guard sighed. Penguin, that was the code word for civilian. “Then may God guide their spirit into the next world,” he whispered, touching his heart, lips and forehead, in an ancient blessing.

Gripping the man by the shoulder, Rexton squeezed hard, as if the death of some nobody had actually bothered him. After he was satisfied by the amount of guilt demonstrated, Rexton moved onward, eager to get back to work. When would these people ever learn that death was the only act that changed the world?

Impatiently lengthening his stride down the hallway, Rexton placed a palm to a glowing plate set into the wall alongside an armored door. He felt a faint tingling as an electrical current surged through his hand to verify whether he was alive, or merely a disembodied limb stolen by enemy forces to gain entrance. Their chief scientist, Professor Dimitri Oughton, was an electronics wizard who had both Genesis bases prepared for any possible contingency.

A technical genius, “Dizzy” Oughton could have easily run the entire operation himself from Lightning Base, which was why Rexton maintained strict control of the supercomputers down here in Thunder Base. The microsecond delay between the two bases was considered an acceptable danger. The other members of Genesis might think the organization was a democracy, as it had been in the days of their parents, but that was a polite fallacy. Rexton ruthlessly maintained an iron control over absolutely everything. If it became necessary to invoke the final option, there would be a rebellion, and he was ready to kill the rest of the staff to achieve victory. A thousand would die to save six billion. What did the military call that again? Oh yes, a soldier’s burden.

With a soft pneumatic sigh, the heavy door slid aside and Rexton entered the busy control room.

“Morning, brothers,” he called, heading for the master console.

Everybody looked up at the arrival, several of the women smiling widely. He did the same in return. Rexton knew that he was good-looking, although some thought he was almost too handsome. Clearly, his face was the result of delicate plastic surgery performed by experts. His father had dearly wanted Rexton to fly the planes that would awaken America, but after his second crash, that had proved to be impossible. The teenager simply had not possessed the lightning-fast reflexes of a combat pilot. Instead, he studied tactics, and eventually assumed the job of leading Genesis.

Situated in the exact middle of the heavy dome, the control room was wide and spacious, the ceiling arching overhead. Truncating the room was a wall of double-thick Lexan plastic, behind which the massive IBM Blue Gene supercomputer hummed softly, the rows of blade-class servers chilled by liquid nitrogen to temperatures far more deadly to human life than the icy glacier outside.

Across the room was a curved row of consoles facing a huge plasma-screen monitor. At the moment, it was divided into four sections, with a scroll across the bottom giving constant reports on their stolen satellites. The staff was dressed in heavy jumpsuits as protection from the chill coming off the Lexan wall separating them from the supercomputer.

“What is the current situation?” Rexton asked, easing into a chair. The leather was old and cracked, but it settled around him like an old friend.

In the center of the main screen was a vector graphic of the world, tiny blue triangles showing the locations of the three B-52 bombers, along with a dozen green squares, computer-generated shadows. Professor Oughton was firmly convinced that no hacker in the world could figure out which were the real planes, and which the fake, in time to do anything. So far, he had been proved correct.

“Good and bad,” Oughton replied from a section on the monitor. “ Greenwich ’s captain reports they received some damage from flak during the strike on NATO. But they managed to escape into the civilian traffic over the Channel.”

“Any pursuit?” Rexton asked, tapping a few buttons on the console to briefly review the monitor readout on the progress of the B-52 bombers.

“None worth mentioning,” Oughton replied. “NATO put a dozen planes on the hunt, but each is heading in the wrong direction. They have no idea where the Greenwich went.”

“Excellent,” Rexton said, a hand brushing across his perfect cheek. The physical scars were gone, but the memories of the fiery crash remained inside his mind. The former pilot had never flown again since his last crash, and did not even like to review the paint jobs on the B-52 bombers that made them resemble a Boeing 707. Even if it meant his own life, Rexton would never again set foot inside a plane. End of discussion.

“Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the rest of the fleet,” Alyssa Dean announced tersely, swiveling away from her console. Weighing less than a hundred pounds, the tiny blonde had a slim, almost boyish figure, but she possessed the face of an angel even without any cosmetics. A steaming cup of coffee sat dangerously near the keyboard of her console, and a long-barrel Uzi .22 conversion hung across the back of her chair, a space clip attached to the leather strap.

“Report,” Rexton said in a whipcrack tone.

“Captain Tomashevsky in the Berkeley is en route to Eastern Europe. He stopped at our Tunisia base for refueling, and took on a full load of ordnance, so no problems there,” Dean stated brusquely. “Unfortunately, Captain Whitehorn in the Detroit has reported finding a fuel leak. They’re down to quarter tanks, and will never reach our refueling depot in the Caicos Islands in time.”

“Dizzy, can you send them a tanker?” Rexton asked, looking at the picture of Oughton.

“Not halfway around the world,” the professor said. “Sorry, but there’s nothing we can do to help.”

Sitting back in his chair, Rexton glanced at the clock on the curved wall. This was intolerable! How could they have possibly lost a bomber this early in the fight?

“Captain Whitehorn could risk landing at a commercial airport in South Carolina,” Dean offered hesitantly, making a vague gesture at the main screen. “The professor could fake them an ID easily enough, and I can transfer all the funds needed to a local bank. However—”

“However, if anything goes wrong they could be detained by the local police,” Rexton finished for the woman. “Or worse, captured by American Special Forces who would turn our brothers over to the CIA to be brutally tortured until they revealed the location of our two main bases.”

“The bastards can’t catch us, we’re mobile,” Oughton stated defiantly.

“But we are not,” Rexton countered. “Millions of dollars, and years of hard work, would end in total failure, which in turn would spell disaster for the rest of humanity.” Leaning forward, the man sat upright in his chair. “Okay, give me options.”

Neither Oughton nor Dean spoke for a minute, then they shook their heads.

“Anybody?” Rexton asked the room in general.

There came a negative chorus from the staff.

“I see,” Rexton growled. “Then we have no choice. Alyssa, have the Detroit head out to sea. We’ll need to hide the wreckage. Do they have a raft onboard?”

“Parachutes, but no rafts,” Dean replied grimly. “And any water landing would be immediately investigated by the Coast Guard.”

“We all knew how the mission could end, sir,” Oughton said, his face a grim mask.

Sir? Hearing the honorific, Rexton understood. “Then so be it, we at least spare them the horror of being interrogated by the madmen of the CIA,” he said, taking a chain from around his neck. There was a small key attached, and he slipped it into a slot on the console, first twisting to the left, then sharply to the right. Off by itself, a red light began to glow.

“Goodbye, old friends.” Rexton sighed, placing a finger on the button.

“No, wait!” a woman shouted from the door.

Lifting his hand, Rexton turned to scowl at the rapidly approaching woman. Tall, with a cascade of ebony hair that reached past her trim waist, Dr. Carolina Barry was wearing a white medical jacket over a winter-camouflage ghillie suit. A stun gun was holstered at her side, a medical bag slung over a shoulder in case of an emergency.

“What is it, Carolina?” Rexton demanded.

“Marshall,” the physician replied. “Land them in Marshall, to refuel on the ground.”

“Is the airstrip long enough?”

“For a landing, certainly. But they’ll need some JATO units to take off again.”

“They have those on board,” Dean said, a note of hope back in her voice.

“But what about the fuel?” Rexton asked suspiciously.

“Marshall is near a major airport,” Barry countered. “It shouldn’t be very hard for them to buy, or steal, enough fuel to allow them to reach Tornado Base for a proper refueling.”

“That just might work,” Dean muttered, bending to work out some figures on her keyboard calculator. “Yes, they can do it!”

“But if they’re caught…” Oughton began.

Crossing her arms, Barry scoffed. “At an abandoned airstrip, in the middle of a cornfield?”

“It’s worth a try,” Rexton said, turning off the remote destruction button. Slowly, the red light died away. “However, I want them to get some protection. Send along some mercs to guard the crew until they’re safely back in the air.”

“Not a problem, we have lots of friends in that area,” Dean replied. “However, once the mercs hear about what happened at Brussels, they’ll know who we are and try to blackmail us for more money.”

“Or sell us outright to the Pentagon,” Oughton snapped over the video screen.

“Then have Whitehorn blow the airfield off the map once he’s flying again,” Rexton stated coldly.

“Not a problem,” Dean said, swinging back to her console, her fingers dancing across the keyboard. “But once the word of our betrayal spreads, we’ll never be able to trust any mercs again.”

“After tomorrow, there will be no need,” Rexton replied, going back to studying the map of the world on the main screen.

CHAPTER FIVE

Columbus, Ohio

Ghosting out of the darkness, a large black Hummer rolled along the cracked asphalt of the city street. The windows were darkly tinted, the license plate splattered with dried mud, and the VIN plate on the dashboard innocently covered with a folded map. To a casual glance, this was just an expensive car. But a trained observer would have noticed that the car was riding too low and there was no manufacturer’s name on the tires. The Hummer was illegally armored, and riding on bulletproof military tires. For all intents and purposes, the vehicle was a private tank.

Lounging on a street corner near a closed gas station, a group of older teenagers were industriously doing nothing, drinking beer from oversize cans and smoking an assortment of cigarettes and joints.

Listening to the rock music coming from down the street, their casual conversation stopped instantly at the appearance of the Hummer as it cruised around a burned-down grocery store. Immediately drawing weapons, mostly cheap pistols and old revolvers, they eased back into a nearby alleyway merging with the blackness. A car like that, in this neighborhood, could only mean customers for Delacort, and they wanted no part of his business. Some hardass enforcers from the Cincinnati mob had tried to hijack one of his shipments, and the next day the men were found dead, stripped naked, castrated and nailed to a billboard sign along Route 465. The crazy gunrunner had crucified them and left the bodies in public view! After that, even the cops were hesitant to bother Armando “Crazy Mondo” Delacort.

Passing a bar, the music from inside rattling the windows, the Hummer took the next corner and left the paved road to start along a ragged pathway of busted concrete and weeds. The streetlights were soon left behind, and the armored car moved through the darkness, accompanied by the soft purr of its engine and the crunch of the tires over the loose gravel and shards of old glass beer bottles.

Concrete pylons appeared in the gloom, the thick pillars rising to reach the beltway high overhead. Fifty feet above the ground, Route 270 encircled the entire city of Columbus.

Past the beltway, the Hummer turned on halogen headlights, the brilliant beams helping the driver to maneuver through a maze of railroad ties, K-rails and mounds of refuse that probably would have been unnamable in broad daylight.

Beyond the wall of garbage, the people in the Hummer saw the dark outline of the old canning factory dominating a flat empty field. Weeds ruled the landscape, with huge rusting machines of some sort standing about and gradually decaying back into the soil from which they had been originally mined.

Reaching the sagging remains of an electrical substation, the Hummer’s driver parked the vehicle and killed the lights before sounding the horn twice, then twice more. Moments later a light answered from the murky factory, the beam blinking the same pattern in reply.

Turning off the engine, Carl Lyons stepped down from the Hummer and straightened the collar of his Hugo Boss suit. “Keep control of your fucking temper, Knuckles,” he growled, looking sideways at Schwarz. “We’re here for business. Savvy?”

“Yeah, yeah, stop stepping on my dick, will ya,” Schwarz replied with a snort, lifting an M-16/M-203 assault rifle combo from inside the Hummer. Working the arming bolt on the 5.56 mm rifle, he checked the load in the 40 mm grenade launcher, then rested the dire weapon on a shoulder. Ready for instant use, but not pointing in anybody’s direction.

“We shoulda left the ape behind,” Blancanales rasped in displeasure, drawing his Colt .380 automatic pistol and clicking off the safety before holstering the weapon again. “Somebody might offer him a banana, and he’ll go all postal on us.”

“Blow it out your ass, clotheshorse,” Schwarz retorted, not even looking in the direction of the man. “Gotta have one real man along to do any heavy lifting.”

“Which would be me,” Blancanales said loftily. “So what are you here for again, landfill?”

“Shaddup, the both of ya,” Lyons ordered, smoothing down his hair with both hands before starting forward at an easy walk. His .357 Magnum Colt Python was resting in a belly holster, but the former cop felt oddly vulnerable without easy access to his Atchisson autoshotgun. But that didn’t fit into this role for this night. Instead he was carrying a soft leather briefcase, the kind that a lawyer would use to tote mounds of paperwork. The contents bulged slightly and felt heavy.

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