Stony Man

Fighting battles few even know exist, the covert officers of Stony Man Farm are the most elite soldiers and cyber techs in the world. The team knows that if they don’t succeed, innocent victims will die.

Rebel Deception

A civil war in the Middle East is the perfect breeding ground for Al-Qaeda’s brand of terror. Taking advantage of the chaos to fuel violence between rebel fighters and government forces, Al-Qaeda’s ultimate goal is to dominate the war-torn country—no matter how many civilians they kill in the process. On the President’s orders, Phoenix Force drops in to stop the attacks before more blood is shed. Able Team remains stateside to ferret out a rebel mole who has stolen nuclear weapons from an American facility and plans to smuggle them into the Middle East. With the lines between right and wrong beginning to blur, Stony Man is sure of one thing: their only cause is the millions of lives at stake.

THROUGH THE SCOPE, DAVID McCARTER

SAW THE SNIPER’S HEAD EXPLODE

But a second later, an explosion of a different type erupted.

As if from out of nowhere, men bearing assault rifles, sawed-off shotguns and handguns shot up fifty feet farther down the line of brush and wrecked vehicles. And, unlike McCarter, they had no reason to hesitate.

“Down!” McCarter yelled. It was an unnecessary order. The men of Phoenix Force, the Special Forces soldiers and their guide had all dropped into the grass behind vehicles of their own accord.

McCarter felt his elbows sink into the damp earth behind what had once been an army jeep. He’d had no time to make an actual count. But quickly assessing the enemy, he estimated their number at roughly two dozen.

Two dozen that he could see. There could be more—many more, in fact—who had simply been slower to show themselves.

In any case, Phoenix Force and their companions were outnumbered.

Atomic Fracture

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

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

A twisted smile fell over Emad Nosiar’s face and adrenaline shot through his body as he glanced at his watch.

Quickly he moved across the carpet of the eleventh-story hotel room to the window. Far below, at the corners of Ujaama and Sadaquee streets, he could see the cars and trucks flowing freely through the busy intersection. The sidewalks on both sides of the streets were crowded with pedestrians. Mixed in with men wearing Western-style business suits were others in traditional Muslim robes. The former were, for the most part, clean-shaved. The latter had long, untrimmed beards.

The women were of a similar mix. Some were outfitted like Western whores, wearing clothes that left their ankles and calves—not to mention their bared faces and hair—exposed for all to see and lust after. But other females had remained true to the faith in their dark burkas and veils. Behind the faithful women trailed what seemed like a dozen children each, moving along the sidewalks at a slower pace as they tried to keep together.

In the reflection off the glass, Nosiar saw his smile widen even further. The busy traffic of Ramesh, Radestan, was about to come to a screeching—and exploding—halt. And it would be of his doing.

Raising the walkie-talkie in his left hand to his lips, he pressed the binoculars to his eyes with his right. Through the lenses he could make out two ancient Ford pickups, one loaded with bales of hay, the other piled high with lawn-care equipment, parked on opposite sides of Ujaama Street. Behind the wheel of the lawn-care truck sat a man wearing a khaki shirt with military epaulets on the shoulders. In the other pickup was a long-bearded man with dark brown hair falling down his neck. Both men had removed their headgear so as not to attract attention. Though he could not see them, Nosiar knew that an eight-point Radestani army officer’s cap rested on the seat next to the man in the military shirt. A more traditional Arab headdress—known as the kaffiyeh—would be next to the driver of the other pickup.

The thought added a chuckle to Nosiar’s grinning face. One of the men would don his headwear as soon as the action started. The other would remain bareheaded as they moved their vehicles into position. Which one did which depended on who came along the streets in the next few minutes.

Nosiar turned the binoculars slightly, letting them stop on a black Buick Enclave parked in an alley a half block farther down Ujaama Street. Though he could not see it from his position on the eleventh floor of the hotel, he knew another Enclave was also in the alley almost directly beneath him.

His men were ready. He pressed the transmit button on the walkie-talkie. “Ali One to Three, Four, Five and Six,” he said in Arabic.

The acknowledgments from each driver came back in the same language. But Nosiar also needed to contact his second in command; his man on the ground who would step in and take up the slack if anything went wrong. And to contact the man he would address simply as “Two,” he needed to switch frequencies.

A simple turn of the dial on the walkie-talkie accomplished that.

“One to Two,” Nosiar said into the small portable radio. The line crackled with static. Then a somewhat hoarse voice, slightly higher in pitch than Two’s usual deep baritone, answered. “Yes, One. I am in place. All is ready. At both sites.”

Nosiar smiled to himself. The tension in Two’s voice came from the stress of the operation they were about to conduct. The man would not have been human had he not been at least a little nervous. “Good,” said Nosiar. “Remember, you will have to move swiftly between the first and second sites as soon as we have finished at the first.”

“I understand,” said the man using the simple call number Two.

Nosiar was about to speak again when he caught sight of a trio of army trucks a quarter of a mile farther down Ujaama. Quickly he switched back to the frequency that connected him to the operatives below.

The three vehicles were moving toward the intersection. And they all had canvas sides covering whatever it was they were transporting. Nosiar prayed silently that their cargo was more troops—men, government soldiers—and, therefore, his enemies. He pressed the button once more. “Three targets approaching from the south,” he said. “Strike time, approximately ninety seconds.”

“Ali Three to One,” came a voice as soon as Nosiar let up on the button. “Military or People’s Secular Opposition Forces?”

“Government vehicles,” said Nosiar. He watched through the binoculars as the man in the hay pickup quickly donned his kaffiyeh and secured it in place with a double-wound cord known as an agal. The man in the uniform slumped down in the driver’s seat, hiding the military epaulets on his shoulders and leaving his head bare.

The Radestani army trucks caught a green light at the intersection before reaching the corner where the vehicles were set up. They made good time, passing beneath Nosiar’s binoculars with twenty seconds to spare on his ninety-second estimate. But his men were ready. As soon as the third truck passed the alleys, both of the black Enclaves pulled out behind them onto the street. Then, a second or so before they reached Sadaquee Street, the pickups suddenly darted out from the curbs to block their forward progression.

The technique was known as a “flying block.” And it worked almost exactly the same way every time Nosiar employed it.

The army trucks screeched to a halt.

And gunfire erupted immediately.

Dark-haired, dark-skinned men—obviously of Arab descent but wearing jeans, T-shirts and other forms of Western dress—suddenly appeared from the Enclaves behind the trucks and rose from hiding in the beds of the pickups. AK-47s, some of Russian origin, others Kalashnikov copies made in China, began to sputter out 7.62 mm bullets to penetrate the canvas sides of the military trucks. Nosiar caught himself breathing faster and deeper as his men moved forward, still firing, to surround the trucks and shred the canvas.

Emad Nosiar was pleased to see that his prayer to God had been at least partially answered. Two of the three trucks did indeed contain Radestani soldiers. While the rifle fire from his men continued, he watched through the threads of canvas as the surprised troops jerked back and forth in death throes, having no time to bring their own weapons into play.

The third truck in the small army convoy appeared to contain rations. As the men who had appeared from the Enclaves poured round after round through the canvas, Nosiar saw cans of food explode and fly through the air. Ragged metal cans and broken glass bottles became impromptu shrapnel in the assault.

The odors of canned meat, vegetables and other food—rations that would never reach the government soldiers for whom they’d been intended—rose with the wind, all the way to the eleventh floor of the Hotel Salahudden to penetrate the cracks around the window and enter Emad Nosiar’s olfactory glands.

Along with those smells came the stench of death in the form of blood, expelled feces and urine. Not to mention the screams of terror as completely innocent and unaligned men, women and children along the sidewalks fell to wildly aimed rounds.

As Nosiar continued to watch through his binoculars, a large shard of glass flew through the air. It sliced into the hoodlike covering of a woman’s black burka at the throat. Then, unseen behind the garment, it severed her jugular and slammed her to her back on the sidewalk. Nosiar turned his binoculars downward and watched as blood raised the material in front of her neck, pushing it upward with each beat of her petrified heart. When the fire-hose stream had reached its height above her neck, it splashed back down, then ran to the sides, creating huge black pools on both sides of her head.

Her burka stayed in place and she died faceless.

Breathing even harder as he watched, Nosiar wondered for a moment if it was the will of God that he take such delight in such things. Especially with a woman who was undoubtedly a fellow Muslim. But the thoughts were disturbing so he attributed them to Satan. Yes, such thoughts had to come from Satan. The great enemy of God shoved them into his mind to slow his progress in the never-ending jihad.

There was always going to be collateral damage. That was simply life in the jihad. He could not afford to worry about it. The dead in God would go immediately to paradise as martyrs. Let the demonic Westerners—especially the Great Satan America—worry about collateral damage. They were the ones who would burn in the fires of hell for all eternity.

When the woman had bled out and lay still on the concrete, Nosiar turned his binoculars back to the trucks. All but one of the soldiers in the first two trucks was now dead. Some had fallen forward onto the floor of the vehicle; some hung awkwardly out over the sides, while others had fallen to the ground. The shreds of canvas tarp that had hidden them earlier now flapped in the breeze.

The one man who remained alive had been shot in both legs. He lay sideways on the street, the OD green battle dress pants of his uniform soaked black with blood. He was trying valiantly but vainly to pull himself to the curb with both hands as sweat ran down his forehead into his convulsively blinking eyes.

Nosiar continued to watch. One of his men, wearing faded blue jeans, a plain white T-shirt and carrying one of the AK-47s, broke off from the front of the truck and walked purposefully toward the lone survivor. Through his round glass lenses, Nosiar could see a sadistic grin on the face of that man. He glanced into the glass window once more at his own face. It was smiling very much like the man below who was about to commit murder.

The man in the white T-shirt stopped next to the broken soldier. Aiming his rifle downward, he shot him first in the right elbow.

The government soldier fell forward for a second. Then he raised his head slightly and tried to scratch his way forward using his left arm.

The muzzle of the AK-47 pressed into the injured man’s other elbow. Then it jumped slightly again with recoil.

Blood, tissue and bone fragments shot out from the now quadriplegic soldier. With no way left to crawl, he twisted at the waist and fell back against the concrete, looking up at his torturer.

Nosiar’s blue-jeaned man jammed the barrel of his rifle into the soldier’s forehead. For a moment Nosiar thought the AK-47 would end the man’s life right there. But the man in the T-shirt appeared to change his mind and pulled the rifle back toward him. Instead of aiming at the head, the 7.62 mm weapon was now pointed at the soldier’s lower abdomen. A 3-round burst exploded out of the weapon and the man on the ground grimaced in pain.

The trio of gut shots would ensure the man died before help could arrive. But it also ensured a slower, more torturous and lingering demise than a head shot would have provided.

Nosiar’s chuckle became an audible laugh. He had trained his men well. The screams of the dying soldier would send a message to the civilians on the sidewalks who had survived the attack.

The gunfire was over now. The Radestani military men had been vanquished. So Nosiar raised the walkie-talkie to his mouth and said, “Ali One to Three through Five. Did we sustain any casualties?” he asked.

“Negative,” came the responses from the men below.

“Good,” Nosiar said. “Gather up all weapons and extra magazines. If the trucks are still drivable, assign drivers and bring them with you. And make sure you shout enough ridiculous PSOF slogans so the civilians hiding along the street will believe you are from the People’s Secular Opposition Forces.” He could still feel the excitement in his chest and had to force himself to breathe shallowly. “Then proceed to the second site. Team Two may need backup.”

Without waiting for any answers, Nosiar let his binoculars fall to the end of their strap and picked up his own AK-47 from where he had rested it against the wall by the window. Without further ado, he left the hotel room and walked down the hall to the elevator. On the way, he passed a young couple who had undoubtedly heard the gunfire outside the building. Both stared at his rifle, then closed their eyes in terror and pressed their backs against the wall to let him pass.

Nosiar walked onto the elevator and took it to the twelfth floor, then walked down another hall to the other side of the building where he had rented another room. Inserting the key card, he entered and walked directly to the window, pulling back the curtains.

Below, he saw two more streets. Another busy intersection. And more parked vehicles that he recognized. As he waited, he saw the two pickups and Buick Enclaves turn the corner, their drivers looking for places to set up again.

Excitement still filled Nosiar’s chest as the vehicles pulled into parking spaces. The intersection would again be closed, and other vehicles would pull in behind to prevent a retreat. Again, the words “flying block” crossed his mind. The term had been coined by someone in the press when it had first begun to be used in the Syrian civil war. The technique, and the term for it, had caught on all over the Islamic world.

Nosiar stared down through the window once more. There was one small difference between this assault and the one he had just orchestrated on the other side of the hotel. This time, he had received prior information that the People’s Secular Opposition Forces—or PSOF as the loosely allied, poorly organized rebels fighting the Radestani government were called—were definitely bringing a truckload of supplies down the street.

That intel proved correct.

Less than two minutes after Nosiar’s men had set up he saw the semitrailer come lumbering forward a block away. Pressing the key on his walkie-talkie again, he said, “Ali One to all units. There will be great amounts of supplies in this truck. But unless there are men hidden in the trailer, we expect only a driver and perhaps a guard in the cab.”

“Ali Four to One,” came back to Nosiar. “We left dozens of dead soldiers on the other side of the building when we masqueraded as PSOF rebels. Now that we are to play the part of soldiers ourselves, we will not create as much hatred or emotional response if only two men are killed.”

“That is correct,” said Nosiar. “So you know what to do.” He paused a second. “Do I need to spell it out for you?”

“Negative,” was the response from the man on the ground. “You have trained us to know.”

As the semitrailer neared, the pickups and other vehicles pulled into place just as they had done before. But this time the men—the same men who had emerged earlier in the clothing of the rebel PSOF—appeared wearing the military uniforms of the Radestani army. One of the men on the ground—Ali Three it appeared to be through the binoculars—fired a burst of 7.62 mm fire through the side window into the driver and another into the man riding shotgun.

Another of Nosiar’s men shot the lock off the door at the rear of the trailer, then fired his own burst of autofire into the storage area. Perhaps there had been only one man in the back of the trailer. Perhaps none at all. Nosiar couldn’t tell from his vantage point. All he knew was that there had not been enough killing to suit him. There had not been enough carnage to keep the balance of power between the government and rebels going. Nosiar stared down at the sidewalks. The men, women and children had not even had time to take cover. So he spoke into the radio one final time. “Do it,” was all he had to say.

Immediately the imposters in government army uniforms turned toward the people on the sidewalks. The AK-47s from both Russia and China spit out their deadly automatic fire, cutting down innocent civilians before they could hide.

But not before they could scream.

The massacre went on for less than sixty seconds. But to the few people on the street who survived it by diving under cars or darting down the steps to basement establishments, it would seem like hours for the rest of their lives.

When it was over, Emad Nosiar simply said, “Bring the truck,” into the walkie-talkie. Then he switched frequencies again and said, “One to Two.”

“Two,” said the voice on the other end.

“It appears that everything went well,” Nosiar said.

“Perfect,” said Two. “The rebels will blame the government and the government will blame the rebels. Both sides are weakening more every day.”

“Then God should be praised,” said Nosiar.

“Indeed,” said the man going by Two.

“I am signing off the air,” Nosiar said. “We will speak when we meet again in a few minutes.”

“We will indeed.”

Nosiar smiled as he switched the walkie-talkie off, lifted his rifle and started out of the hotel room. Adrenaline still shot through his veins and he thought of Two still on the ground at the flying block site below.

Harun Bartovi was Two’s actual name. And he had truly been a gift from God. The man had worked his way up the ladder to become Nosiar’s most competent and trusted assistant. Bartovi could be counted on not only to carry out orders but also to give them, and he had the ability to think on his feet, changing plans in the middle of an operation when the unexpected happened. No one could coordinate the flying blocks the way Bartovi did, and these last two were perfect examples of his efficiency. He had remained below as a backup, ready to take up the slack if any part of his plan fell apart. But it had not. His careful and strategic planning had meant he had not had to fire even one shot himself.

Nosiar walked down the hall to the elevator. More than a few civilians lay dead below, and he would more than likely have to step over their corpses when he left the hotel. That was unfortunate because most of them would be fellow Muslims. But as he had done before, he pushed such uncomfortable thoughts from his mind.

Casualties were inevitable. Some had to die so that others could live. And the end of the jihad would certainly justify the means. He would fight on and continue to prepare for whatever happened. Nosiar wanted the current semi-Islamic government to be overthrown. It was weak and needed to be replaced by a total Islamic theocracy. But he could not afford to let the godless rebels win, either. If they ever became organized enough to take over, they would set up a satanic democracy. For some time now, Nosiar and his fellow al Qaeda brothers had planned to do their best to keep the war going. The two sides would eventually destroy each other, and when they did, al Qaeda would take over and set up the Islamic government that God wanted.

Nosiar pushed the down button and waited on the elevator. The problem he faced was that that plan was taking too long. So he had come up with an alternate course of action. One that would speed up the process of al Qaeda’s takeover.

Or destroy Radestan altogether and provide the means for al Qaeda to start the country anew from the very foundation.

The elevator doors opened and Nosiar stepped inside.

Either way, God’s will would be done.

CHAPTER ONE

The violence had started in Syria but soon bled to Lebanon and then nearby Radestan. What had begun as political demonstrations against a repressive, semi-secular, semi-Muslim government soon turned into riots. Then the rioters quickly morphed into loosely organized private armies led by men who were charismatic leaders but seemed incapable of agreeing on anything among themselves. Joining forces, they knew, was imperative if they were to overthrow the government. But until egos could be satisfied, and some sort of chain of command put in place, they remained little more than well-intentioned brigands.

So all-out war had become the norm. Brutal and savage, as all wars are. Soon neighbors were killing neighbors, and occasionally even brothers shot brothers. Radestan became a fuzzy, confused and chaotic country. For the most part, it was soldiers versus rebels. But determining exactly who was who became impossible, for there were still citizens who sided with the government and military personnel who sympathized with, and even fought for, the disorganized PSOF rebel forces.

The cause was as old as mankind itself: should the people of a nation be governed neutrally, and be free to practice the religion of their choice, or should theocracy rule the land, creating all laws and demanding that each individual adhere to that belief system?

And to confuse things even more, there were rumors of more and more al Qaeda troops crossing the border into Radestan every day. They were reported to be pouring fuel on the fire of both government and rebel forces, lying in wait for the time when both sides had weakened each other enough to give the terrorists the chance to take over themselves.

All of these thoughts flashed through David McCarter’s brain as he free-fell through the sky just outside of Ramesh, Radestan. Below, the former British SAS commando turned Phoenix Force leader could see the capital city several miles away from where he and the other members of Stony Man Farm’s crack counterterrorist team, Phoenix Force, would land.

The city looked peaceful enough from two thousand feet in the air. What he knew to be a mixture of ancient mud-and-clay structures with more modern houses, soaring office buildings and other structures appeared now only as tiny indiscernible spots. But McCarter knew that even if violence was not in progress beyond his limited vision, it only meant the government and rebels had taken a brief respite to rest and regroup before plunging back into gunfire, explosions and other attacks and counterattacks.

McCarter turned his eyes upward as he continued to fall. The aircraft that had brought Phoenix Force to Radestan was now only a tiny speck in the distance as Jack Grimaldi, Stony Man Farm’s ace pilot, steered the plane out of the country’s airspace. McCarter shifted his eyes to four other, closer, spots in the sky. Rather than moving away from him like the plane, these spots followed a descent similar to his toward the ground.

The sight brought a hard grin to McCarter’s face. He believed firmly in the adage that a true leader led from the front—which meant he had jumped from Grimaldi’s plane first. And that fact, in turn, meant he could see the other four members of Phoenix Force still above him.

Rafael “Pescado” Encizo was a Cuban refugee who had earned the Spanish name for “fish” due to his expertise under the water.

Calvin James, a former Navy SEAL, could kill enemies faster with a knife than most men could with a machine gun.

The barrel-chested Canadian, Gary Manning, could bench press close to five hundred pounds—on a bad day—and his expertise with explosives had saved Phoenix Force and thousands of innocents countless times since the inception of Stony Man Farm.

Thomas Jackson Hawkins—better known simply as “Hawk” or “T.J.”—was the youngest and newest member of the attack team. A man with a family military history he could trace back to the Revolutionary War, Hawkins spent what little time they ever had between missions engaged in any danger sport he could find.

McCarter felt his chest fill with pride as he watched the spots in the air gradually become larger. He was proud of his men. And he loved them like the brothers that they were.

The Phoenix Force leader glanced at his altitude gauge and saw that he had a few more seconds before he pulled the ripcord and allowed the parachute canopy to shoot out and fill with air. He had chosen a HALO—High Altitude Low Opening—jump to keep his team’s entry into the war-ravaged nation as low-key as possible. There would be shooting before this assignment was over, he knew. Lots of it. But the thought of his team drifting slowly down beneath open chutes—silhouetted against the sky as clearly as shooting range targets—held little appeal to him. There was nothing, McCarter knew, more vulnerable than a paratrooper as he neared the ground.

Another glance down and the Phoenix Force leader could make out more details of the city buildings in the distance. They were approximately ten miles from Ramesh, Radestan’s capital city. He twisted his neck to look straight down and saw what was obviously a small house and a larger barn.

It appeared that Phoenix Force would be landing exactly where they’d planned to do so.

A weathered, wooden-fenced corral stood adjacent to the barn’s own aged wood, and a dozen or so undernourished cattle stood inside that fence. As McCarter dropped closer, several of the bovine heads, their mouths moving up and down, back and forth, as they chewed their cud, looked up to watch him as intently as he watched them.

The Briton didn’t have to check his altitude gauge again to know it was time to pull the cord.

The sudden jerk as air filled the canopy lifted McCarter back up in the air. Then he leveled off and began to fall again—this time much slower. He took a quick inventory of the other members of Phoenix Force to make sure they had experienced no equipment failures, and mentally ticked them off in his head as he continued to glide to the ground.

His men were fine.

McCarter flipped a switch on his belt and activated the two-way radio. The team had all tuned in to a secure frequency while still on the plane, and now he made use of it. “Phoenix One,” McCarter said into the headset microphone positioned in front of his mouth. “Sound off, mates.”

One by one, the men known on the airwaves as Phoenix Two, Three, Four and Five, checked in.

McCarter looked down again at the cattle inside the corral and immediately steered his canopy toward a flat area outside the fence and away from the barn. “I’m nearing the ground,” he said into the mike. “And I’m angling away from the animals. I suggest you blokes do the same.” No sooner were the words out of his mouth than David McCarter’s boots hit the hard dirt and sparse grass. Landing hard after the lower-than-usual opening of his parachute, the Briton automatically threw himself forward into a shoulder roll to spread the impact across his body. Then he popped back to his feet in time to watch the others return to Earth a few seconds later.

All except T. J. Hawkins, who had been the last to jump out of the plane, While his chute had opened fine, he seemed to have had some sort of trouble with his steering toggles. Instead of landing outside the corral with the rest of the team, Phoenix Force’s airborne ops expert touched down inside the rustic wooden fence, barely missing one of the cows.

McCarter couldn’t help but chuckle. Neither could the other three Stony Man Farm operatives who were gathering up their chutes next to him. The three men under McCarter’s command knew why their leader had suggested they sail clear of the corral.

It was ankle-deep in cow manure.

Hawkins had seen what was on the ground where he would land, too. And he’d chosen a bone-jarring “stand-up” landing over a roll-through in the cow dung. Even then, his boots sank as if he’d landed in some muddy, foul-smelling swamp.

With a look of disgust on his face, Hawkins pulled in his chute, doing his best to avoid the manure that had clung to the light material. Once he had control of the mess, he climbed over the rickety fence.

“Be sure to walk downwind of me, would you, Hawk?” Gary Manning said.

“Yeah, you probably should keep about a hundred yards behind us on the way into town,” said Calvin James. Rafael Encizo nodded and smiled.

Hawkins was irritated. “Unless things have changed since our briefing,” he said, “we’re due to change clothes anyway before we head into town.” He reached down and pinched the material of his combat blacksuit, pulled the stretchy material out, then let it snap back into place. “These things just might draw a little unwanted attention. They practically scream, ‘We’re Westerners—shoot us.’”

James sucked in a deep breath of air, which caused his nostrils to flare in, then out again. “I’m thinking about shooting you right now myself,” he quipped. “I’m not sure just changing clothes’ll be enough to disinfect you.”

“Of course every cloud has a silver lining,” said Encizo with a straight face. “If we come across any Radestani bomb-sniffing dogs, you’re sure to end their careers.”

Hawkins shook his head and stared first at James and then Encizo. When he spoke, his voice was heavy with sarcasm. “What are you two doing risking your lives with the rest of us when you could be making bundles at the comedy clubs? I mean, I can see you on Letterman, Leno and—”

Before he could finish, the creak of an old wooden door opening came from the small frame house twenty yards away. As if he had heard the conversation and realized it was time for him to make an appearance, a short man wearing khaki work pants and a woodland-camo battle-dress-uniform shirt appeared and walked toward them. The checkered kaffiyeh on his head was held in place by a red agal that rested just above his eyebrows. The two distinct “looks” appeared to contradict each other.

“Dude looks like Lawrence of Arabia guest starring on Duck Dynasty,” James whispered.

None of the men responded, but couldn’t suppress smiles. The comment even seemed to get Hawkins over his bad mood.

A light breeze was blowing through the area, and it caused the khaki-and-kaffiyeh-clad man’s long, stringy gray beard to dance as he approached. Stopping five feet from where Hawkins stood, he looked down at the Phoenix Force man’s dung-covered boots and grinned. “If that is the worst thing that happens to you during your time in Radestan,” he said, “you will be very lucky.” Then, turning to McCarter as if he somehow sensed that the Briton was in charge, he carefully pronounced each syllable of the first line of the code phrases that had been set up by Stony Man Farm.

“Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah,” the man said in heavily Arab-accented English.

“Someone’s in the kitchen I know,” McCarter answered immediately. “Someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah.”

“Strummin’ on the old banjo.” The words sounded strange with a Radestani accent.

Hawkins turned to McCarter and said in a low voice, “Did Hal come up with all that?”

The Phoenix Force leader knew he was referring to Harold Brognola, Stony Man Farm’s Director of Sensitive Operations. He nodded.

Hawkins shook his head. “He’ll have these Arabs square-dancing and making moonshine before it’s all over,” he said, again under his breath.

With their identities established, the old Arab stuck his hand out in greeting. “I am Abdul Ali,” he said. “As you can see, I was told you would come.”

McCarter nodded as he shook the man’s hand. “I understand you were once in the Radestani army?” he said.

Abdul Ali’s shoulders straightened slightly. “I was,” he said. “I rose to the rank of major.”

“So what happened?” McCarter asked. “You don’t look old enough to have retired.”

“I did not retire,” said Ali. “I simply resigned. Our government has become corrupt, and the armed forces have followed in that corruption.”

McCarter nodded. The Farm’s cybernetics genius, Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, had checked Ali out six ways to Sunday and believed the man was truly on the side of the rebels. So until something pointed him away from that view, McCarter would stick with it. “So you’ve been helping train the rebels?”

“We are trying to train them, and organize them into one central force to overthrow the present government,” said Ali. “There are also Special Forces Americans—Green Berets, I believe you call them—in Ramesh who are working with them, as well. But, of course, we are not publicizing that fact.”

“And Russia and China aren’t shouting it to the rooftops, either,” said McCarter, “but they’re supporting the current regime with money, equipment and advisors.”

“That is correct,” said Ali. “It is the same here as it is in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and elsewhere. There may no longer be any Soviet Union, but Russia is up to its same old tricks, as I believe you Americans say.” He paused and blew air out between his closed lips, making them flutter. “It is like the Cold War all over again. As if Russia and the U.S. are playing chess on a giant chessboard and Radestan is just one of the pieces.”

The two men had begun shaking hands during the brief discourse and now they dropped their arms to their sides. “How’s the training been going?” McCarter asked.

Ali rolled his eyes. “Forming the rebels into a cohesive unit has not been easy,” he said. “Most of the time I feel like a junior high school principal or an umpire at one of your American Little League baseball games. They do not take to military discipline very well and one bunch—I call them bunches because they are too disorganized to call them anything else—cannot agree with another bunch on anything past the fact that they all want to overthrow the government.”

David McCarter nodded. “Well, we’ll just have to work with what we’ve got,” he said.

“We’ll be leading the PSOF rebels into battle once we meet up with them. So I hope at least some of the training has rubbed off.”

Ali stared at the Phoenix Force leader with his dark brown eyes. “I was told to meet with you—not to take orders from you.” He cleared his throat. “I am used to being in charge myself.”

“Some wires must have been crossed along the chain of command, then,” said McCarter. “But I’m sure we can get things cleared up.” He reached over his shoulder into the backpack he’d worn during the jump. “Hang on,” he said, pulling out a sat phone and tapping the speed-dial number for Stony Man Farm.

A moment later he said, “Sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a small problem defining the chain of command between us and our Radestani contact. Would you mind speaking to Mr. Ali for a moment?” He handed the phone to Ali.

The former Radestani major looked slightly confused as he accepted the phone and pressed it to his ear. “Hello?” he said.

The expression on the Radestani’s face told McCarter that Abdul Ali was being told in no uncertain terms who was in charge and the penalties he would risk if he continued to question the chain of command. McCarter knew that Brognola could even summon the President’s personal involvement if need be. Clearly, from the look on Ali’s face, no such intervention would be necessary.

CHAPTER TWO

It had taken years of hard labor—not just regular hours but often evenings and weekends—for Mani Mussawi to work his way up the ladder at the nuclear storage facility just north of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Even though he had been hired years before the al Qaeda strikes against the World Trade Center and Pentagon, there had been some reservations on the part of his supervisors to employ him. After all, there had already been other Islamic extremist terrorist operations against the U.S. abroad, and while political correctness forbade them from openly acknowledging it, Mussawi’s name and the dark brown color of his skin had made them uneasy.

So the former Saudi Arabian subject, now a naturalized U.S. citizen, had been forced to start at the bottom in spite of his impressive MBA from Yale.

Mussawi had begun his career working for the United States’ government in the mail room, sorting the envelopes and packages that came and went each day, then pushing a clumsy cloth-and-aluminum cart around the facility to deliver each piece of correspondence to its rightful recipient. The routine had become monotonous very quickly. But Mani Mussawi had soon realized that he could not have been placed in a better position in which to begin his career.

It afforded him the opportunity to meet each and every one of the workers at the facility and to get to know them on a first-name basis. He had made a point of learning the first names of the lower-echelon employees, and made sure to always address the higher-ups as “Mr.” or “Ms.” or, in the case of the many former military men and women who worked there, by their former titles. Mussawi always had a broad smile on his face as he delivered the mail. The warm facial expression, combined with his frequent inquiries about the workers’ children, parents and other family members had soon endeared him to the staff.

Oh, Mussawi thought as he lifted the can of disinfectant that he kept by his computer screen, there would always be a few of the hundred or so men and women whom he now worked with who would always view him with suspicion.

And there had been a short period right after the Boston Marathon bombing when people had once more taken a step back from him. But eventually they had begun to regard him as one of their own again. And those in the position to continue to promote him year after year had learned to trust him once more. Or at least act as though they did.

Mussawi sprayed his keyboard liberally and began to wipe it down with a clean cloth.

By showing their trust for him, his fellow employees could then sit back in their chairs and think, See, we are not racists. Not at all. We even have a man of Arabic origin working in a position of trust.Which, considering the real reason Mussawi was working where he was, made his mission a hundred times easier.

Mussawi used the cloth to push the button that would start his computer, wondering briefly if anyone might have touched it since he’d left the day before.

As the computer worked its way through boot-up and other programs for which it was preset to utilize, Mussawi caught a glimpse of navy blue out of the corner of his eye. He looked up, smiling the congenial smile that had become second nature to him since he’d begun to work his way into the hearts of the other storage facility employees at the desks crowded into the large underground office. The smile widened further as he recognized Catherine’s blond hair and blue eyes. The woman wore a navy-blue suit, and looked far more professional than she had only a few hours earlier.

Without the suit. In his bed. But she was every bit as sexy, Mani realized, as she set a disposable cup of steaming coffee on his desk.

“I thought you might need a little pick-me-up,” Catherine said right before she took a sip from her own cup. Then, in a much quieter voice, she added, “After all, you expended a lot of energy last night.”

Mussawi stared at the bright red lipstick that had just been transferred from Catherine’s mouth to the white foam cup. In his mind, he pictured her as she’d been last night, squirming under his touch and gyrating to the rhythm of their love-making. “I have a lot of that same energy left,” he whispered back, glancing quickly around to make sure none of the other people at their desks were paying them any attention. “But a little caffeine never hurt.”

The two nuclear storage facility managerial position employees’ eyes met for a moment and Mussawi felt a combination of lust and guilt flow through his veins. Fraternization such as theirs was forbidden between the men and women who worked together in this facility. Which, of course, made an affair such as theirs all the more enticing. They had been flirting for weeks, and the former Saudi knew that the rumors about them had run rampant. But they had not consummated their attraction until last night.

And as they’d lain together afterward, with the moonlight through his bedroom window causing the Anglo woman’s light skin to glow against Mussawi’s darker flesh, she had said, “We’ll have to be extra careful now, my love. We need to distance ourselves from each other at work.”

Mussawi had shaken his head. “That is the worst thing we could do. People have talked about us for weeks now. If we suddenly start ignoring each other, they will know it has finally happened.”

Catherine winked at her new lover, jerking his mind out of the reverie. “Tonight?” she asked softy.

Mussawi nodded. “By all means.” But even as he said the words an uneasiness swept over him. American women were promiscuous. Had he picked up any germs or even some sexually transmitted disease from Catherine? He had insisted on using condoms. Still....

Mussawi sprayed more disinfectant on his hands and rubbed them together. It was too late to worry about that now, he thought as Catherine turned and disappeared behind one of the dozens of dividers that separated the office cubicles from each other.

Mussawi’s computer was now ready and he tapped in the complicated set of codes to access the facility’s inventory lists. He began a second set of carefully encoded entries that would eventually lead him to the whereabouts of several hundred small, easily portable nuclear bombs. “Backpack nukes,” he whispered under his breath, thinking of how very American the nickname was. He was about to access the list when Jason Hilderbrand suddenly appeared at the side of his desk. “Morning, Mani,” the man said. Hilderbrand wore a button-down collared shirt beneath a V-necked sweater-vest, and shining brightly at his throat was a silver Christian cross. “How’s it going, my man?”

Mussawi shook his head slightly. “It will be a boring day, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Inventory, you know.” Without thinking, his hand rose to his neck and he grasped the cross dangling from a silver chain around his own throat. It had been given to him by Hilderbrand soon after he’d expressed an interest in Christianity.

Hilderbrand smiled and Mani could tell that his eyes had dropped to the cross. “And how about the other thing?” he said. “The revival is still going on at my church. Great evangelist they’ve brought in. Patsy and I’d be honored to take you with us tonight.”

Mussawi thought briefly of the hot, stuffy, tent meeting to which Hilderbrand was referring, then of the soft white flesh now hidden beneath Catherine’s navy-blue work suit.

“I am sorry, Jason,” he said. “But I have a previous engagement.”

Now Hilderbrand reached up and touched his own cross. “But you’ve thought about it some more, right?”

Mussawi didn’t want to pour it on too strong. So he said, “Yes, Jason. I do think about it. A lot. But it is very difficult to reject things you have been taught since birth.”

Hilderbrand nodded. “I understand,” he said. “But keep thinking about it, okay? Sooner or later, the Holy Spirit will bring you the Truth.”

“I am doing my best,” said Mussawi, his mind still on Catherine.

“I know you are.” Hilderbrand smiled. He patted Mussawi on the shoulder, then walked away.

Mussawi returned to his computer screen and keyboard and pulled up the page listing the backpack nukes. The page had been flagged, and when he hit the icon to open his top-security interoffice email, he found an order to transfer an even dozen of the small nuclear devices to another secret storage site in the Florida Keys.

The smile that covered his face now was not for anyone else’s benefit. It was for him, and him alone. He had kept up with the ongoing hostilities in both Central and South America and had suspected for several days now that he’d get an order such as this.

Just because they were called backpack nukes didn’t mean they had to be carried to a detonation site like a college student on his way to English composition. They could be dropped from an airplane or encompassed in the nose of a rocket just like any other bomb. For that matter, they could be rigged with a timer and simply left somewhere.

Mussawi closed the email and began the next long, tedious series of codes and passwords that would get the ball rolling for the transfer. He knew the United States had no intention of using the small nukes as a first strike against any of the countries south of Mexico. But they had to be prepared for the unlikely event that Iran, or North Korea, or one of the other “axis of evil” nations with nuclear capabilities but short-range delivery systems could cut a deal to launch at the U.S. from a closer site.

After all, it was hardly a secret that the rebels in South and Central America were being backed by America’s enemies. And considering the unstable leaders who ran such countries, the decision to attack the U.S. could come based on nothing more than a sudden whim.

Mussawi stopped typing as another form appeared in his peripheral vision. He looked up to see John Karns standing patiently next to his desk. “How about lunch today, Mani?” John was a retired Marine drill sergeant who had let himself go somewhat since leaving the service. His white shirt hung over his belt both in front and on both sides.

Mussawi beamed again. “Sounds good, Sarge. But it’s your turn to pay and my turn to pick.”

Karns shook his head and chuckled. “That’s a hard one to guess,” he said. “You never want to go anywhere but McDonald’s.”

“I like Burger King, too,” said Mussawi. “But McDonald’s... It always just seems more...American.”

Karns leaned over the desk and rested both hands next to the keyboard. “Can I tell you something, Mani?” he said, whispering almost as softly as Catherine had done.

“Of course,” Mussawi said, letting his eyebrows furrow slightly to show concern.

“It’s a little embarrassing,” Karns said, then cleared his throat. “But I didn’t like you much at first. I suppose I was something of a bigot. Especially after 9/11, I looked at all Arabs with suspicion. Even hated them.” He coughed a little nervously, then went on. “But we’ve been pals for what now? Ten years or so?”

“Something like that,” Mussawi said. He feigned interest. He’d heard the same no-longer-a-racist speech from several other men and women who worked at the facility, and knew practically word for word, what was coming.

“Well,” said Karns, “you’ve changed my attitude.”

And now I know we’re all brothers under the skin, Mussawi mentally predicted would be the man’s next words.

“You’ve made me realize we’re all the same no matter what we look like,” said Karns.

“We’re all individuals regardless of our ethnic backgrounds. Some people are good, some bad. But we’re all brothers and sisters.”

More elaborate than usual, Mussawi thought, but essentially the same self-serving speech. “That is a great compliment, Sarge,” he said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Karns said before walking away.

Mussawi returned to his computer screen and keyboard. As quickly as he could, he moved through the next complex set of checks and balances to access the twelve backpack nukes that were to be shipped to Florida.

Twelve. An even dozen. Mussawi’s hand moved to the cross suspended around his neck. Twelve was also the same number as the apostles of the Jesus that Hilderbrand kept trying to sell him on.

Mussawi made several more entries to the file. And one deletion. And when he was through, only ten of the original dozen nuclear weapons had been cleared for shipment from the Colorado Springs facility.

The other two had simply disappeared, as if they’d never existed.

Mussawi sat back and clasped his hands behind his head, stretching his back as his most genuine smile of the day curled his lips upward. It was impossible to completely erase the trail he had left in his wake. His deception would be discovered. But today was Friday, and it would be Monday—at the soonest—before the backpack nukes would be missed. And by then he would be long gone from this facility in the side of the mountain.

With the two missing nukes. On his way home to Radestan.

As if ordered by God himself, Ralph Perkins—Mussawi’s direct supervisor—walked past as Mussawi closed his files and made his screen go black. “Ralph,” he said, his voice sounding slightly weak. “I am not feeling so good.”

Perkins stopped in his tracks, then took a slight step back from Mussawi’s desk. “What are your symptoms?” he asked.

“Nausea. Sore throat. And it feels like a headache’s coming on.”

“There’s a lot of flu going around,” Perkins said. He glanced at an air duct in the ceiling. “Get out of here before it circulates through the vents and makes everybody else sick, too.”

Mussawi nodded, stood and started toward the door. He wanted very badly to smile again. But it would not fit the illusion of pain and illness he had just created. So he looked down at his feet, shuffling slightly as he walked.

In his heart, however, he celebrated.

Now it was time for the final leg of his mission. The fulfillment of the destiny God had for him. He had been placed here as a mole more than fifteen years ago. To do exactly what, he had not then known. His job had been to lie low and wait for orders when the correct opportunity arose.

And finally that opportunity had arisen. The insane political correctness and tolerance of all belief systems that had infected America like the HIV virus had made it possible. Political correctness had been the most crucial element in the sham he had just pulled off.

Americans were so afraid they might offend someone that they opened themselves up to all manner of attack.

Mussawi reached the elevator in the hallway and pressed the up button. As he waited, he thought of a passage he had read in a philosophy class years before when he’d still been an undergraduate student at Yale. It had been by Friedrich Nietzsche, an atheist who God would banish forever into the tortures of Hades. But like all nonbelievers, Nietzsche had mixed truth with blasphemy to confuse the righteous. And one of those truths came back to Mussawi now.

Mussawi could not quote the philosopher verbatim but essentially Nietzsche had said that when a nation reaches a certain level of power it begins to feel sorry for, and sympathizes with, its enemies.

Which was exactly what the United States of America was doing right now.

As the elevator doors opened and Mussawi began what would be his final exit from the nuclear storage facility, the irony of it all struck him and, now alone, he laughed out loud. For years the Americans had worried that nuclear weapons might be smuggled into their beloved country. What was about to happen, however, was just the opposite.

Mussawi was about to smuggle two nukes out of the United States. They would go to Radestan. One would be set off in the desert as a demonstration of power. The other would then be used as a bargaining chip. A big bargaining chip. His Islamic freedom-fighting brothers would threaten to detonate the other backpack nuke in downtown Ramesh if the current president did not immediately step down and turn the country over to al Qaeda.

The mole rode upward in the elevator, watching the numbers above the door light up, then go dark again as he passed each floor. The situation would never get to the point where Ramesh had to be destroyed; Emad Nosiar had assured him of that. The current government was weak, and the president would give in. There would be no need for the second bomb. No innocents would die.

Mussawi whistled the “Star Spangled Banner” softly as he walked toward his car. Nazis, Communists, Islamic terrorists—none of them could ever really bring down the United States. Not completely, anyway. But his adopted country was about to implode when it was discovered that the nukes going to Radestan had come from America.

Because Nietzsche had been right. The U.S. felt so guilty that they were successful that they tried to make up for it with political correctness.And political correctness would be the downfall of the United States.

Blue Ridge Mountains, Virginia

AARON “THE BEAR” Kurtzman grasped the arms of his wheelchair and swiveled it slightly as he picked up the telephone next to the computer. Stony Man Farm’s number-one cyber expert pressed the receiver to his ear. “Yeah, Hal?” he said into the mouthpiece.

“I’m on my way in,” Brognola advised in his familiar, deep, level voice. In the background Kurtzman could hear the rotor hum of what he knew must be a helicopter.

“I’ll be here,” Kurtzman said, then hung up the phone.

Fifteen minutes later Hal Brognola came through the door to the Farm’s Computer Room and walked up the wheelchair ramp that led to Kurtzman’s long bank of computers. Clamped between Brognola’s teeth was the stub of a well-chewed cigar—one of his trademarks.

The atmosphere at the top-secret counterterrorist facility known as Stony Man Farm was serious but familiar. Each individual who worked out of the Farm was a top expert in his or her field, and everyone else was aware of that fact. So while there was still a sort of paramilitary order to be followed, the warriors—both on the home front and in the field—were on a first-name basis with one another thanks to mutual respect.

So when Kurtzman said, “Hello, Mr. Director,” over his shoulder without looking toward Brognola or stopping his fingers, which were flying across the keyboard, it came out sounding more like a nickname than a title.

“Ah,” said Brognola as he stopped next to the wheelchair at the top of the ramp. “We’re being formal today, are we?”

“Why not?” said Kurtzman. “It might class this joint up a little now and then.” Strands of his wild, prematurely white hair had fallen over his forehead and he swept them back with one hand.

“Okay, then, Mr. Bear,” the director said, referring to Kurtzman’s nickname earned for his massive physique. “What have you got for me?”

“A lot. And not much.”

“Maybe I should address you as Mr. Dickens, then,” Brognola said. “That sounded an awful lot like, ‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’”

Kurtzman whirled the wheelchair almost 180 degrees to face the man. “There’s internet chatter like crazy among the crazies,” he said matter-of-factly. “Almost an eight hundred percent increase in what we’re used to.” He inhaled a deep breath. “So we’ve got to assume something bigger than usual is in the works.”

“But you don’t know what it is?” Brognola chomped down a little harder on the cigar stub.

Kurtzman nodded and more strands of hair bounced on top of his head. “Precisely,” he said. “Which I guess would fall under your Dickens’ quote as being in the ‘worst of times’ category. However I did pick up the word nuke encoded in one email. But for the most part, they—whoever they are—have gone to a whole new software program.”

Brognola’s eyebrows lowered. “We can thank that little weasel Edward Snowden for that,” he said. “I’d like to get my hands around his throat. He’s the reason our enemies have changed software and everything else they can.” He clamped down harder on his cigar, then changed the subject slightly. “Nuke, of course, is our abbreviation for nuclear. Do you mean—”

“Yes,” Kurtzman interrupted the big Fed. “Most everyone in the world, regardless of language, calls nuclear weapons ‘nuclear weapons.’ And they use the same shorthand version of the word—nuke—just like we do. The atom was first split by men who spoke English and so the word has become integrated, without change, into just about every culture on Earth.”

“Was the word used in any sort of context you could make out?” the director asked.

Kurtzman shook his head. “Negative. But keep in mind it’s also a word that gets kicked around all the time in cyberspace slang. It could mean our worst fears—some terrorist group has gotten its hands on a nuclear bomb and is planning to use it somewhere in the world. But that’s not necessarily the case. There’s a lot of bragging, and posturing, and bring-on-the-jihad-high-school-pep-rally-type crap thrown around between the terrorists these days, too.”

“Now I see what you mean by having a lot and having nothing,” Brognola said. “But we’ve got to always assume it could mean something disastrous.”

Kurtzman nodded. “Of course we do,” he said. “The bottom line is that I just don’t know exactly what’s going on at this point.”

The SOG director stared the computer genius straight in the eye. “You aren’t telling me you can’t decipher this new software cyber babble, are you?” he asked, a puzzled look on his face.

Kurtzman almost smiled. He did his best to remain modest about his abilities with what he often referred to as his “magic machines.” And most of the time he was successful in that modesty. But he also knew there was no one in the world quite as skilled in both the science and art of cyberspace as he was. That wasn’t his ego speaking, either. It was just the way it was. Or as Yogi Berra had once said, “It ain’t brag if it’s true.”

“No, Hal,” the man in the wheelchair said, “I’m not telling you I can’t decipher it. I’m just telling you that because of all of the intelligence information Snowden leaked about how we follow terrorists, they’ve gone to whole new programs and it’ll take a little while for me to figure them out.” He paused and took another deep breath. “The terrorist groups—all of them—are getting much better at covering their tracks than they used to be. There are so many of them, and they’ve linked up with dozens of Third World countries in the Middle East and Africa. Which means they’ve gained access to more sophisticated electronics than they used to have.

“They’re also getting more and more help from former Soviet computer experts who hire themselves out as sort of cyber mercenaries.” The Farm’s cyber genius shook his head slowly as he scratched the side of his face. “It’s a lot like the difference between what we were when Stony Man first started and where we are today. In the beginning, we were lucky to have computers that could even access the internet, send email, whatever. And now...” He turned slightly and swept a hand across the front of the dozen or so computers to which he had access. “We’ve progressed,” he said. “But so has the enemy.”

A thin smile curled the corners of Brognola’s mouth and the cigar stump rose at a steeper angle between his teeth. “In the old days we were lucky to have two-way radios with face transmitters and headphones,” he agreed. “So yeah, we’ve come a long way.” The cigar stub had almost disappeared inside his mouth now and he took it out and dropped it into a trash can just to the side of Kurtzman’s desk.Then, reaching inside his jacket, he pulled out a leather cigar carrier, slid the top off and produced a fresh stogie—which wouldn’t be smoked any more than the last one had been. Sticking the cigar in his mouth, he returned the case to his pocket and said, “But the world was a safer place in those days, overall. I never thought I’d miss the old Soviet Union. But at least they were more practical when it came to things like nuclear warfare.” He chomped down on the cigar. To Kurtzman, it looked as if he was only a few tobacco leaves away from biting the cigar in two. “Moscow knew that a nuclear strike would mean nuclear retaliation, and be disastrous for both countries and the whole world. These terrorist organizations either don’t realize that or don’t care. They think they’re on a mission from God.”

“They’re about as much on a mission from God as the Blues Brothers were on Saturday Night Live,” Kurtzman said.

Brognola chuckled. Then his eyebrows lowered and his voice turned serious. “Okay,” he said. “I’d better get going. I’ve got to track down Able Team. They’re test-firing some new weapons with Kissinger off-site, and I think we’d better get that done right away. Because when you decipher this chatter flying back and forth across computer land I suspect they’ll be on an immediate flight out of here to...wherever.” Kurtzman turned back to his keyboard. “Will do, Mr. Director,” he said as his hands once again flew across the letters, numbers and symbols with lightning speed.

“Thank you, Mr. Bear,” Brognola said as he started walking away. He had gone only a few steps when a computer in the bank in front of Kurtzman suddenly rang out with a siren not as loud, but not unlike an emergency tornado warning in the suburb of some Southwestern U.S. city. Kurtzman wheeled to it, then tapped a few keys and stared at the screen.

Brognola stopped and turned back.

A moment later Kurtzman’s head swiveled and he stared at the big Fed. “You know that ‘wherever’ you said Able Team would be flying off to, Hal?” he said.

Brognola nodded.

“I know where it is,” said Kurtzman.

CHAPTER THREE

Carl “Ironman” Lyons raised his hands to cover his ears as soon as the first shot was fired. In his peripheral vision, he could see that John “Cowboy” Kissinger—Stony Man’s chief armorer—had done the same. Kissinger wanted to test some new weapons not just on the Stony Man firing range but under more realistic battlefield conditions, so had arranged for a visit to a “kill house” used by SWAT teams both local and federal.Covering their ears had been an instinctive reaction to the thunderous noise. Even coming from inside the enclosed walls of the kill house the outside effects of the explosions were painful. Not unlike synchronized swimmers, each man outside the house ensured their earplugs and coverings were secure before the next round was fired.

More shots exploded inside the walls and the Able Team leader pictured Rosario Blancanales—better known to his fellow Able Team members as “Politician” or simply “Pol”—making his way through the rooms of the practice range. The kill house had three levels and each room, hallway and staircase was equipped with “pop up” targets that featured good guys, bad guys, hostages and innocent bystanders—all of whom had to be shot or passed by with less than a second’s consideration by the brain.

More shots rang out. Now that his ears were covered, Lyons dropped his hands to his sides and moved quickly to where Kissinger stood, leaning against one of the pickups in which they had arrived. The Stony Man armorer held a laptop computer in front of him, and on the screen the Able Team leader could see the interior of the house. Blancanales was making his way cautiously up the steps to the second floor. In his hands was a Yankee Hill Machine Company’s Model 15.

A head and shoulders—then two arms holding an AK-47—suddenly appeared at the top of the steps and Blancanales fired one shot directly through the forehead. A ragged hole appeared in the paper face of a terrorist wearing a turban. Then the target disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.

Lyons continued to watch as Blancanales made his way through the rooms on the second and then third floor, carefully picking out the good guys from the bad and putting holes through the paper images of the enemy targets. The Able Team leader noted, however, that each time his fellow warrior pulled the trigger, he winced slightly.

The Yankee Hill Model 15’s short ten-inch barrel combined with powerful 6.8-caliber rounds, was loud even outside the facility. It had to be deafening for the man inside.

Almost as if he’d read Lyons’s thoughts, Blancanales suddenly stopped and turned around. On the screen, Lyons saw him flip the short-barreled carbine’s selector to the safe position. Then, the YHM held barrel down, the Able Team member retraced his steps and exited the building without completing the course.

As soon as Blancanales emerged, he shook his head in what looked like an attempt to clear the ringing in his ears, then walked swiftly toward the pickup where Lyons and Kissinger stood. Handing the YHM-15 to Kissinger, he said, “It shoots great. But if I’d finished the course I’d have been as deaf as my ninety-year-old grandfather.” He shook his head again. “Give me the standard M-16 A2 anytime.”

Kissinger smiled, and Lyons sensed that the armorer had anticipated just such a reaction. Turning, he set the YMH in the bed of the pickup. When his hands came back in sight, he held a similar-looking rifle. But this weapon bore a long tubular device on the end of the barrel and there was a small scope mounted in the top of the receiver.

“Try this one, Pol,” Kissinger said, extending the rifle in front of him. “I think you’ll find it a little gentler on the eardrums.”

Blancanales took the weapon and looked down at it. “Sound suppression,” he noted.

“Right,” Kissinger agreed. “And while you won’t be able to appreciate it fully here in the daylight, it cuts down considerably on the muzzle flash from the short barrel.”

Blancanales nodded. “I’ll go back and give it one shot,” he said. “But if it isn’t quiet enough...” His voice trailed off for a moment. “I’m not sacrificing my hearing for it.”

“I think you’ll be happy with it,” said Kissinger. “Yankee Hill’s making some with permanent suppressors. But I’ve altered several so you can take them off if you want to create noise and confusion.”

Blancanales lifted the rifle slightly in his hands. “Not much heavier than the unsuppressed model,” he said. “The suppressor titanium?”

Kissinger nodded. He cradled the laptop in his left arm long enough to hold his other fist to his mouth and cough. “Adds about eight inches to the barrel length. You put that on the end of the standard M-16 and you’ve got 22 to 24 inches beyond the receiver. That’s bumped the weapon up to sniper length—without sniper rifle accuracy.”

Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz, Able Team’s electronics expert, joined the group and studied the look on Blancanales’s face.

Blancanales wasn’t convinced. “It doesn’t look like a problem on this 10-inch barrel,” he said. “It’ll still be relatively easy to maneuver inside tight spaces. But a 10-inch tube means a sacrifice in sight radius.”

“That’s what the optics are for,” Kissinger said, pointing to the scope.

Schwartz smiled and said, “You suppose the boys over at the BATFE would approve?”

“Alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosives? Of course not,” Lyons growled. “But luckily we don’t answer to those Bureau yo-yos.”

Blancanales stared down at the new rifle as he retraced his steps toward the entrance to the kill house.Lyons watched Kissinger tap several keys on the laptop’s keyboard and knew the armorer was changing the pop-up targets to give his fellow teammate a new challenge. A moment later he saw Blancanales appear on the screen at the starting point.

Kissinger pressed a button on the chronometer on his wrist and shouted, “Go!”

Blancanales carefully navigated his way through a mock laundry room without incident. But as soon as he stepped through the door to a hallway, a full-size target popped into view as if from out of nowhere. Blancanales swung the sound-suppressed weapon that way but didn’t fire.

A little girl stood holding a lollipop to her lips less than ten feet to Blancanales’s left. A second later, the paper target disappeared.

Blancanales moved on, his back against the wall as he navigated the corner past where the girl had stood. The screen in Kissinger’s hand changed again and Lyons could see a large bedroom just ahead of his fellow Able Team warrior. Blancanales had just stepped into the room when another target—this time a criminal-looking guy wearing a striped T-shirt, appeared. He held a large revolver in his right hand. His other arm was wrapped around the neck of a woman whose face looked terrified.

This time Blancanales tapped the trigger and three rounds of 6.8-caliber hollowpoint ammo spit from the weapon. The sound of each round was barely audible over the microphone Blancanales wore in front of his mouth. But three holes appeared in the hoodlum’s face, two inches above the frightened hostage’s head.

When Blancanales said, “Much, much better, Cowboy,” his voice seemed loud by comparison.

The words had barely left his mouth when two new targets raised their heads above the other side of the bed. The first showed only the face and neck. Blancanales passed it by. But the second target rose higher, exhibiting shoulders wearing a desert-tan camouflage BDU blouse. Blancanales turned the YHM that way but hesitated again.

A split second later the target rose slightly higher and the butt of a folding rifle stock could barely be seen. It was still impossible to ID the target as friend or foe, and the Able Team operative held his fire as another second passed.

Then the target behind the bed rose higher and began bringing the weapon up toward the Able Team warrior. Finally, he was clearly the enemy, and Blancanales put a 3-round burst into his head. The camouflaged target dropped down behind the bed.

Suddenly the first target began to rise. It wore the same style BDU desert-tan blouse. But when it rose, Lyons could see that its hands were empty.

Blancanales let it live.

The Able Team warrior moved on through the kill house, shooting the bad guys and rescuing the good. Each new room, each hall and stairway, presented new and increasingly confusing targets. But by the time Blancanales had finished clearing the third floor of the house he had a perfect score.

And while he had not set a new personal record with the unfamiliar weapon in his hands, he had come close.

Lyons was about to speak when the Farm-secured cell phone in the belt holster behind his Colt Python .357 Magnum began to vibrate. Drawing the phone much like he would the revolver, he looked at the screen. He pressed the answer button and held the device to his ear. “Yeah, Hal?” he said.

“If you’re finished playing Cowboys and Indians, I need you back at the Farm,” the Stony Man director said. “I’ve sent Jack to pick you up.”

“What have we got?” Lyons asked.

“Two backpack nukes have disappeared from a nuclear storage facility in Colorado,” Brognola said.

“Okay,” said Lyons. “We’re on our way.” He holstered the cell phone as Blancanales appeared from the kill house and walked forward, holding his new YHM and grinning ear to ear.

The man known as Ironman looked up at Kissinger. “Yankee Hill Machine has made an incredible weapon, here, Cowboy,” Lyons said. “And you’ve made it even better. We’ll take three.” Outside Ramesh, Radestan

* * *

THE MEN OF Phoenix Force and Abdul Ali kept away from the blacktop highway, using the trees and brush lining the roadway to hide them as they made their way toward Ramesh. But along with the natural concealment, they passed a seemingly endless stream of wrecked and burned-out military vehicles representing both sides of the conflict in Radestan. Old and broken-down jeeps—looking as if they’d been left over from World War II and repeatedly repaired—lined the ditch every hundred feet or so. Most still bore the spray-painted eagle-and-scimitar seal of Radestan.

But other vehicles looked more civilian in nature. Well-worn pickups and bullet-ridden sedans—many so old that the paint had worn off and the dull gray primer had become their principal color—were also lying dead in the grass and weeds. All were unmarked and David McCarter reasoned that these had belonged to private citizens before being pressed into service by one of the PSOF rebel factions.

The men of Phoenix Force had each thrown on an abat—the traditional Arab robe common throughout the Middle East—over their blacksuits, and kafiyyehs covered their heads and necks. Led by Abdul Ali, who now carried an AK-47 that rested just beneath his long black-and-gray beard, they slowly made their way through the wrecks and weeds alongside what passed for a highway.

Hawkins had been able to clean enough of the cow manure off his boots to make them wearable again and, for the most part, the snide remarks and needling from the men who had been fortunate enough not to land inside the corral had ceased.

The men from Stony Man Farm and their Radestani guide walked in silence, only speaking when some small anomaly needed to be pointed out, and then in small, hushed voices. In several of the vehicles they passed, corpses still sat behind the steering wheels and in the shotgun and rear seats. Many were upright, their heads partially blown off by enemy gunfire. Those that still had eyes stared blankly into the distance, their souls long gone from their earthly housings. Other bodies were almost headless, while still more appeared to have been burned alive, their blackened arms clawing at the handles inside the vehicles in vain attempts to escape their fiery coffins.

The corpses in the vehicles, and the semi-burned vegetation growing up around them, gave the area an eerie, otherworldly ambience.

While the ground upon which they tread was flat, across the blacktop in the distance stood a high mountain range. Around McCarter’s neck hung a pair of binoculars, which the Phoenix Force leader lifted occasionally to scan those mountains and the terrain in front of them.

The group was roughly a mile from the city when a glint of sunlight flashed from the mountains. The reflected glow lasted only a split second. But McCarter had seen such flashes of light far too many times in the past to not immediately identify its origin.

The reflection had come from the front lens of a scope. A scope mounted atop a rifle held in the hands of a shooter too inexperienced to know that he should keep the scope covered until the last few seconds before firing.

Or a rifleman who did know his business. And actually was only seconds away from squeezing the trigger. The Phoenix Force leader called for an immediate halt. “Sniper,” he said in a quiet voice because sounds, he knew, traveled far in such terrain. Raising the binoculars again, he zeroed in on the spot where he’d seen the flash. The field glasses included an automatic range finger, and they measured the distance at 642 feet. Not a long shot by any means. Even for a slip-shod Radestan regular or a semitrained rebel.

Through the lenses, McCarter could just make out the outline of a man. The sniper’s hide had been set up behind a boulder at the foot of the mountain. It was crude but sufficient to disguise the man in the distance from all but the most highly trained eye.

As he watched the still figure, the Phoenix Force leader thanked God that he was one of those highly trained eyes.

Quickly swinging the binoculars away from the sniper, McCarter moved them downrange to make it appear as though he had not spotted the enemy. With the eyepieces still pressed to his forehead, he said, “Act busy with your equipment.” Then he quickly dropped the binoculars to the end of their strap. “I don’t want him to know I’ve spotted him.” Then, to no one in particular, he added, “Can you see him?”

Calvin James had pulled the twelve-inch blade of his Crossada fighting knife from the Concealex sheath he wore on his left hip. The Crossada was a spear-pointed blend of Bowie knife and Arkansas Toothpick, and one well-placed thrust could drop a man at close range faster than a 12-gauge slug through the middle of the chest. But as McCarter watched, James began pretending to cut away some of the brush in front of him. “I can see something up there,” the former Navy SEAL said in a hushed voice. “What do you want to do?”

McCarter had swung his Rock River LAR-15 Hunter from his shoulder and pretended to be checking the magazine. The weapon sported a unique anodized finish to the aluminum hand guard, upper and lower receivers, trigger guard and charging handle. Referred to as a WYL-Ehide camo finish, from a distance it appeared to be a bronze color. But looking at it closely, the Phoenix Force leader had to smile at its furlike appearance.

The special camouflage had been digitally adopted from an actual photo of a real coyote’s hide.

Designed originally for coyote hunting, McCarter knew the RRA LAR-15 and its 5.56 mm NATO rounds worked equally well when hunting men. And it was far more accurate than the common AR-15/M-16 rifles on the market.

Especially after John “Cowboy” Kissinger finished his own tune-up.

McCarter glanced over to where James was still cutting brush. “I want you to get ready,” he said, finally answering the knife fighter’s question. “I don’t know if he’s government or rebel. But he’s definitely got us in his sights and could start pulling the trigger on us anytime.” Extending the LAR-15’s six-position stock, he kept the barrel aimed at the ground as he pressed it into his shoulder. “I’m going to take him out. But I’ve got a feeling he’s not alone.”

“Affirmative,” James said, transferring the Crossada to his left hand and continuing to swing it at the tall grass. Casually, his right hand moved to the Beretta 92-SB 9 mm on his other hip.

McCarter watched as the others silently nodded their acknowledgment of the order.

“Do you want—?” Rafael Encizo started to say.

McCarter knew there was no time for manners. “Quiet,” he said bluntly.

Encizo was a professional, too. He immediately stopped speaking.

Abdul Ali was the only man not covered by an abat. He didn’t need one to blend in. Still wearing his khaki pants, woodland cammo BDU blouse and checkered kaffiyeh, he came hurrying up from McCarter’s rear. “If he is with the resistance,” said the man with the long gray-streaked beard, “he will recognize me.”

“And if he’s not on our side and he recognizes you?” McCarter said.

Ali shrugged. “It is a chance I must take,” he said.

It was one heck of a risk, McCarter knew. Every second that passed was another second during which the sniper might fire and kill one of them. But the Phoenix Force leader knew it was a risk they had to take. He waited another full second, using the time to take in a deep breath and let half of it out again.

This could not be a common countersniper shot, the Phoenix Force leader thought as he prepared to act. They were lucky that the man in the mountain had created such a bad hide to begin with, and even luckier that he hadn’t caught the Phoenix Force leader staring back at him through the binoculars. If he had, he’d have already fired at least once, then moved. And if he saw McCarter’s LAR-15 Hunter barrel aimed his way, it would tip him off just as readily.

Taking too much time after he’d aimed the rifle would definitely cause the sniper to change positions.

Slowly, McCarter adjusted the red-dot scope on the top of the LAR’s Picatinny rail. Ali’s presence had not resulted in action by the sniper so the Phoenix Force leader waited no longer. Suddenly and without further ado, he swung his rifle barrel up and toward the mountain 642 yards away. He could see only the blurry outline of the would-be sniper’s head, shoulders and whatever rifle he held in his hands. Sighting in on the middle of the dark figure, he squeezed the trigger and felt the Hunter jump slightly in his hands.

Through the scope, McCarter saw the sniper’s head explode like a watermelon dropped from a ten-story building.

But a second later an explosion of a different type took place.

As if from out of nowhere, men bearing a variety of assault rifles, sawed-off shotguns and handguns suddenly shot up fifty feet farther down the line of brush and wrecked vehicles. And, unlike McCarter, they had no reason to hesitate.

The first dozen rounds or so seemed to come at exactly the same time, sounding like one gigantic explosion.

“Down!” McCarter yelled. It was an unnecessary order. The men of Phoenix Force and Ali had all dropped into the grass behind vehicles of their own accord.

McCarter felt his elbows sink into the damp earth just behind what had once been a Radestani army jeep. He’d had no time for an actual head count of the enemy, but a quick skim caused him to estimate roughly two dozen.

Those were the adversaries he could see. There could be more—many more, in fact—that had simply been a little slower rising and showing themselves.

In any case, Phoenix Force and their companion were outnumbered. Greatly.

But that was hardly a new situation for the men from Stony Man Farm.

John “Cowboy” Kissinger had performed his weapon-smithing magic on the Rock River LAR-15 and given it the capacity to shoot semiauto, 3-round burst or fully automatic fire. McCarter switched the selector to the latter mode as he rose briefly and held the trigger back, spraying the men farther down the roadway with a hailstorm of 5.56 mm rounds. It was not the wild firing act of panic or frustration to which less-seasoned warriors might have resorted. McCarter simply wanted to open the show with a bang. Or, more precisely, with a lot of bangs. And to make sure the enemy knew they were in for a fight.

Two of them died learning that fact as the Hunter’s barrel swept across the mass of men.

McCarter ducked into the weeds, his shoulder against the rear of a jeep as return fire flew over his head. Around him he could hear the roar of the other men’s rifles as they, too, maintained their assault on the enemy. For a brief moment his mind traveled back to the firing range at the Farm where the men of Phoenix Force had tested and evaluated dozens of rifles and add-on combinations before choosing what they liked best. All of the test weapons had been variants of the AR-15 that had been made by different companies and tailored to fit specific needs, likes and dislikes. Each had its own subtle—and sometimes not-so-subtle—differences from the others.

A short lull came to the firefight, and McCarter recalled each of his team’s favorite rifle. Manning had liked the Bushmaster. Encizo had stuck with his tried-and-true Colt. James had fallen in love with the titanium Nemo—a rifle that cost one hundred thousand dollars on the open market and was worth every penny. And Hawkins had cast his vote for a Spike’s Tactical.

But McCarter had known they would be on their own, and Murphy’s Law always applied: things would go wrong. Equipment, no matter how well made, sometimes broke down and carrying spare parts for five different weapons was out of the question. So he had chosen the LAR-15 for all of them. And none of the Phoenix Force warriors had objected very much. After all, they knew that it was a case of men fighting men—not specific weapons fighting other weapons. And the men of Phoenix Force were more than capable with any rifle placed in their hands.

So now the coyote-hide-camo rifles began throwing massive amounts of jacketed hollowpoints down the road toward the men who had sprung the sudden attack.

But were they hitting anyone? McCarter wondered. And if they were, were they killing government soldiers or People’s Secular Opposition Forces rebels?

There was only one way to find out. Keep fighting. And do your best to stay alive. And in the end, it really made little difference. While there was an attempt being made to train and unite the scattered PSOF factions, at the moment some of them were every bit as much the enemy as the Radestani regulars. Each faction had its own selfish agenda. And if any of them actually took over the government, they would immediately begin a campaign of genocide directed at the other factions.

McCarter had seen similar situations in other parts of the world. And he knew they could not allow that to happen here.

Rising again, the Phoenix Force leader aimed his new weapon over the jeep and peered above the scope. Phoenix Force’s war in Radestan was, and promised to continue being, an extremely confusing situation. But then all wars were confusing, McCarter reminded himself. And as he fired at the attackers, one man near the front finally gave away their identity by screaming out, “Allahu Akbar!” McCarter was slightly surprised but hardly shocked. The men attacking them were not government soldiers. But they weren’t one of the rebel factions, either. The men trying to kill the warriors of Phoenix Force and Abdul Ali were part of the al Qaeda terrorist faction Phoenix Force had been warned was waiting in the wings, preparing to take over the country as soon as the regulars and rebels had killed each other off.

McCarter cut loose with a 3-round burst from the Hunter, secure now that he was shooting at a faction of “bad guys” in this strange three-way war. Yes, all wars were confusing. This one just happened to be more so.

It was totally, one hundred percent, completely screwed up.

The Phoenix Force leader fired again and a trio of rounds ripped into the chest of the man who had yelled. A terrorist wearing a brown cloth safari-style hat took all three of the Phoenix Force leader’s rounds in the face, all but eliminating his head. For a second, the hat seemed to hover above the neck in midair. Then it fell straight down to land on the man’s shoulders before the body slumped out of sight and into the tall grass.

Around him, in the grass and behind the trashed vehicles, McCarter could hear the return fire from the rest of his team and Abdul Ali. Phoenix Force’s RRA LAR-15 Hunter rounds were easy enough to distinguish from the AK-47 explosions from both Ali and the al Qaeda shooters opposing them.

McCarter fired another burst, then dropped to his knee again behind the abandoned jeep. Following the time-proven strategy that you never showed yourself to the enemy more than once in the same place, he knee-walked his way to the right bumper. Leaning his face around the edge, he kept the rest of his body behind the vehicle and extended the LAR-15 at arm’s length. His body still completely covered, he risked only his hands and arms as he used his thumb on the trigger, firing a long full-auto burst blindly in the general direction of the enemy.

McCarter jerked his arms and the rifle back out of sight, immediately edging his face around the jeep’s bumper. His blind assault had done the job he’d wanted it to do, causing the enemy combatants to shrink back into hiding long enough for him to make a quick survey of the situation.

One man, however, had not been intimidated by the full-auto blast. He had dark skin and wore a bright red shirt that looked as if the sleeves had been chopped off at the shoulders with a machete. McCarter switched the selector on his LAR-15 to 3-round burst and squeezed the trigger again, this time with his eyes fixed on the center of the man’s chest.

Black holes appeared in the red cloth of his shirt as the man danced like a marionette on the end of the strings of a mad puppeteer. As he fell to the ground, another attacker—this one wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt—caught more rounds from one of the other Phoenix Force men. The AK-47 in the man’s hands flew up into the air as one of the hollowpoints apparently hit a nerve, causing his arm to rise. Red blotches appeared on the white shirt—two in the chest and one in the shoulder—as he joined his red-clad comrade in death.

Blood seeping from the bullet wounds in the red shirt had made black splotches. In the white shirt, the holes had turned red. But white or red, either way, someone needed to teach these attackers something about camouflage. Red and white did little for concealment in an environment made up of green-and-brown vegetation and rusted-out vehicles.

McCarter took a deep breath as the firing around him continued. As safe as could be expected behind the old jeep’s engine block, his eyes flashed 180 degrees through the tall grass in the vacant spaces of this automobile graveyard. As was the case in so many Third World countries, vehicles so old or used that no American would have them anymore had been shipped to Radestan. Here, locals had brought them back to life using everything from home-manufactured replacement parts to bailing wire in an effort that was, ironically, called “Yankee Ingenuity.” But even the work of such desperate mechanics had its limits, and eventually the scraps had been abandoned.

McCarter caught himself shaking his head in dismay. It seemed that everywhere he looked he saw a make and model of automobile he had not seen since he’d been a child. Other vehicles had ceased being produced before he had even been born.

As he prepared to lean around the jeep and fire again, the Phoenix Force leader saw James rise slightly behind the remnants of a 1965 Dodge Dart GT. A few spots of gold paint could still be seen on the old car’s body but ninety percent of the vehicle now sported nothing but gray primer. James’s big Crossada was back in the sheath on his hip, and the former Navy SEAL was leaning over the GT’s hood with his LAR-15. Sputtering 5.56 mm rounds through the barrel, the Hunter danced slightly in his hands as he fired a full-auto stream across the car at some target that was out of McCarter’s vision.

Dave McCarter’s attention was focused so intently on the enemies in the tall grass in front of him that he almost missed the crunching sound of footsteps to his rear. But instinct and training took over, and before he even realized what he was doing he had whirled around. Still on his knees, McCarter caught a glimmer of blue through the brown-and-yellow stalks behind him. And in less time than it would have taken to write it up in a report, he knew that no one on his team, nor Abdul Ali, had been clad in anything blue.

His finger pulled back on the trigger.

McCarter’s Rock River rifle choked out rounds and a trio of hollowpoints disappeared into the grass. He heard a low, guttural grunting sound, then the fleck of blue descended beneath the dead foliage. As the explosions from the AK-47s and Phoenix Force’s LAR-15s died down, the former British SAS man slung his rifle across his back, drew his Browning Hi-Power and crawled forward.

By the time he reached the body with the blue T-shirt, the gunfire had stopped completely. Behind him now, McCarter could hear the quiet chatter of his own men. They were moving slowly through the grass and around the abandoned vehicles, checking to make sure there were no survivors to “pop back to life” and kill them.

The man in blue who had crept toward the Phoenix Force leader from the rear had been gut-shot, then fallen facedown in the mud. McCarter had to have passed by him to the side as he’d moved forward. But the shooter had gone unseen in the underbrush. At some point, he’d regained enough strength to rise and attack from the rear.

The Phoenix Force leader knelt and checked him out closer now. An exit hole the size of a softball gaped upward from between the man’s shoulder blades. Multicolored masses of flesh, blood and bone had exited and some of it still lay on the man’s back as if dumped there. The Phoenix Force leader reached down, grabbed the shooter’s shoulder and rolled him over onto his back. He frowned slightly as he saw that two of the three rounds he had fired at the grass-hidden blue seemed to have missed.

But that didn’t matter much. One bullet had found its mark dead center in the middle of the T-shirt. It was far smaller than the one in the dead man’s back, as was to be expected for an entry wound. But between the two holes in the man’s body, the 5.56 mm hollowpoint had done its job.

The heart had to have been mangled beyond recognition.

The roar of the rifles on both sides of the skirmish was now a thing of the past. McCarter rose, turned around and walked back to join the rest of the men who had regrouped around an ancient Dodge Charger. “Everybody okay?” he asked.

Everyone nodded.

“Good,” said the Phoenix Force leader. “Then let’s get on in to Ramesh.” He paused and wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of his sleeve. “The real fighting’s about to begin.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Charlie Mott, Stony Man Farm’s second pilot, was almost as good with wings as Jack Grimaldi. At least he was good enough to get the men of Able Team from Stony Man Farm to Colorado Springs, Colorado, in what might well have been record time—even for a Learjet.

If the flight had been official. But of course it wasn’t. There would be no record of the trip since as far as the vast majority of the world knew it had never taken place. To everyone outside the Stony Man Farm family, except for the President of the United States, there wasn’t even an Able Team in existence. Just as there was no Mack Bolan or Phoenix Force or Stony Man Farm in general.

Carl “Ironman” Lyons, Able Team’s former LAPD detective, felt himself smile inwardly. In a weird way, the whole Stony Man Farm crew—Mack Bolan, the teams, the blacksuits and the specialized computer, forensic and other support staff—reminded Lyons a bit of J. Edgar Hoover’s attempt to convince the public that there was no such thing as the Mafia. Of course there were three major differences.First, the now deceased FBI director’s nonexistent Mafia had boot-legged countless gallons of illegal liquor, then billions of dollars of illegal narcotics throughout the country. And they’d been responsible for more murders than could be counted. But Hoover’s propaganda had been put out over a half century earlier—at a time when the general public still had at least a little faith that some politicians were honest. Faith in politicians—be they Democrat or Republican, conservative or liberal—had all but vanished in recent years.

The second difference was that keeping Stony Man Farm a secret had actually worked.

Third—and most important of all—was that unlike the Mafia, the crew at Stony Man Farm worked for the good of mankind rather than conscienceless monetary profit.

Lyons glanced over his shoulder at the two men behind him in the jet. Like the Able Team leader himself, the men wore dark business suits. Blancanales was decked out in a deep navy-blue. Schwarz wore his usual gray. Lyons himself had chosen a black suit with gray pinstripes. He had never been high on bling. Nor was the Able Team leader the type to laugh out loud very often. Even his smiles were few and far between. But the sight of his fellow warriors masquerading as FBI agents instead of wearing blacksuits or BDUs made the corners of his mouth curl up slightly.

As the jet’s wheels hit the tarmac Lyons’s thoughts turned to Hal Brognola. As the Director of the Sensitive Operations Group, the covert operations arm of the U.S. Justice Department, Brognola worked as Stony Man’s liaison to conventional law enforcement. So, wearing his DOJ hat, he had called ahead to make sure that two real FBI agents out of the Colorado Springs field office would be waiting for them when they landed.

Now Lyons saw them off to the side of the runway, both leaning against the doors of two near-identical Chevrolet sedans.

The Learjet rolled almost to a halt before making a sharp left turn and taxiing onto a concrete access road. A moment later Mott stopped the plane just in front of the waiting men and cars.

Lyons, Blancanales and Schwarz said goodbye to Mott as they dropped down from the jet. Lyons moved forward toward a man who might have been the poster boy for an FBI recruitment ad. He had short, blond, brush-cut hair and broad shoulders. Even more telling was the way he moved, combining the balance of a tiger on the prowl with the apparent strength of a grizzly as he stepped up and extended his hand.

The Able Team leader gripped the man’s hand and immediately noticed two things. First, the man was a weight-lifter. FBI work could be dangerous and sometimes strenuous. But it didn’t put calluses on a man’s hands like the ones Lyons felt as they shook hands.

The second thing of which he took note was the lining of the man’s suit coat as it briefly appeared when the man extended his arm. As soon as he saw the striped material Lyons remembered that somewhere, sometime, someone had told him that striped lining inside a man’s suit meant expensive. Not being particularly interested in such things, he’d forgotten who and when. After all, he wasn’t a model for Gentleman’s Quarterly or James Bond on his way to a Monte Carlo casino. Able Team was not here to pose for men’s clothing photos or to play cards.

They had come to find out what had happened to a pair of nuclear bombs. And to kill anybody who got in their way.

“Special Agent Arthaud,” the broad-shouldered man said as he let loose of Lyons’s hand.

“Taylor,” said the other agent. He was taller and thinner. The fact was he looked more like a marathon runner than the wrestler, power-lifter or body-builder that Arthaud appeared to be. He wore an olive-green sport coat and khaki slacks.

“We have orders to supply you with a car,” said Arthaud. “Then to stay out of your way.” His smile looked genuine and it didn’t appear that he resented not knowing anything more about the men who had just arrived via Learjet.

“Thanks,” Lyons said simply. He pulled open the door of the plane’s cargo hold and he and the other men of Able Team unload their equipment bags. Their new Yankee Hill Machine Company 6.8 mm sound-suppressed rifles were in obvious padded gun cases complete with extra magazine pockets on the outside of the main compartment. When Arthaud saw them, he said, “Looks like you’re expecting something serious.”

“We always expect something serious,” Lyons said as he hefted a duffel bag in one hand and a rifle case in the other before carrying them both to the trunk of one of the Chevy sedans.

“You guys Hostage Rescue?” Taylor asked.

“Sometimes,” said Lyons, which left a quizzical look on the face of the man who had asked the question. A moment later they had finished transferring the equipment and closed the trunk. Lyons turned back to Arthaud. “Can you give us directions to the storage facility?” he asked.

Arthaud smiled again. And again it seemed genuine. “I can do better than that,” he said. “I’ve already set your GPS to take you there.”

“Ugh,” Blancanales said. “That means we’ve got to listen to that computer-generated female robot all the way there.” His voice climbed two octaves and he mimicked, “Turn right in one quarter mile. Proceed ten miles to intersection.” Then, shaking his head, he said, “And if we don’t follow directions we hear, ‘You have left the route—’” Hermann Schwarz hadn’t been nicknamed “Gadgets” for nothing. He loved, and seemed to understand instinctively, every new bit of technology that came along in a computer world that progressed at lightning speed. “Don’t worry,” he said, grinning at his partner. “I’ll dumb it down to your level and explain it to you as we go.”

Arthaud laughed and then said, “Tell you what. We’ll lead you there. Sound okay?”

“Sounds fine,” said Lyons. “But I’m afraid the front door is as far as you get. Nothing personal.”

Arthaud shrugged his big shoulders. “No problem,” he said. “It’s pretty obvious that whatever you’re here to do is highly sensitive. I mean, after all, we know the kind of stuff they’ve got stored at that facility.”

“Thanks for understanding,” Lyons said.

Arthaud chuckled. “I’m not being completely altruistic,” he said. “The bottom line is what we don’t know won’t hurt us. Meaning that if we know what you’re doing, and you screw something up, we’ll be tied up for days, maybe weeks, being interrogated ourselves as if we were criminals or terrorists.”

“Good thinking,” Lyons said. And typically bureaucratic, he thought but didn’t voice. Arthaud and Taylor both seemed like nice guys. But as happened with so many in government jobs, they had lost much of the ambition they had probably had when they’d first signed on with the FBI. They had come to know that promotions were more likely to go to agents who never made waves and had no complaints in their personnel files rather than those who worked hard, took chances and cracked major cases. And the best way to stay out of trouble was to avoid as much knowledge and work as possible.

The men of Able Team piled into the Chevy where they’d stored their gear and followed the other FBI car toward a gate in the fence that surrounded the airport. Lyons was behind the wheel. Blancanales had taken the backseat. From the shotgun seat next to the Able Team leader, Schwarz said, “Did anybody catch the other Fed’s name?”

“Taylor,” said Blancanales. “He seemed like the quiet type. Might help you to listen a little closer, old buddy, instead of always drifting off into that computer world of annoying beeps and buzzes and flashing lights.”

Behind the wheel, Lyons silently shook his head. He loved Schwarz and Blancanales like brothers, and had faced death by their sides far too many times to remember. And he knew their jabs at each other were all good-natured. When it came right down to it, any one of the three men of Able Team would lay down his life for the others. Without a thought. But sometimes the frequent friendly bickering got on his nerves.

“You could both learn something from Special Agent Taylor,” Lyons said as he pulled the Chevy through the gate and onto the highway.

“How’s that?” Schwarz said.

“Talk less and listen more,” Lyons said. “Pol had a point, too. Every once in a while you could pull your head out of that world of gadgets that earned you your nickname and take a quick look around at the real world.” He paused, then glanced up into the rearview mirror to catch Blancanales’s eyes in the reflection. “And it wouldn’t hurt you, Pol, to take a little bigger step into the twenty-first century. A lot of useful electronics have been invented since the pinball machines you played as a kid.”

Blancanales laughed. “Hey,” he said, “I played ‘Pong’ when I was a kid.”

Schwarz laughed out loud. “Pol, you do realize that saying you played ‘Pong’ is paramount to saying you played football in the days of leather helmets with no face masks, don’t you?”

He got no answer.

The Able Team leader drove on, keeping a close eye on the FBI car ahead of him and following the directions of the robotic voice of the GPS.

The highway had begun to climb upward and the Able Team leader could already note the difference in the amount of oxygen in the air. The lead FBI car took an exit, came to a four-way stop, and then turned onto an asphalt road. Now the gradual climb upward became even steeper. In the distance, Lyons could see the snowcapped tip of Pike’s Peak. They passed a sign pointing them back down the mountain where they’d find the Garden of the Gods and drove on, at first passing aspen trees, which grew at the lowest altitude that would sustain them, then encountering thicker groves as they continued to rise.

Fifteen minutes later the car carrying Arthaud and Taylor slowed, then turned onto a gravel road. Dust blew from the rear tires, rising into the air in a steady cloud as Arthaud led them around a sharp curve. Almost as soon as Lyons had made the curve in the second vehicle, he saw the gate.

Armed and uniformed men stood immediately in front of it. And through the window of the guard shack in the middle of the road they could see the heads of more guards.

Arthaud brought his Chevy to a halt and Lyons pulled in behind him as one of the guards moved forward toward the driver’s window. From a distance, it appeared to Lyons that he wore a standard flak jacket in woodland camo with front-mounted ammo pouches. On his head was a black beret but the insignia was on the far side of the slanted hat and all but invisible. He carried a clipboard in one hand, a ballpoint pen in the other, with his M-4 slung over his shoulder. The carry was more comfortable than the assault position, but took longer to bring into play. But the man’s hands were busy with a clipboard and a ballpoint pen anyway, and he was relying on the other guards to keep them covered until their identities had been established.

And keep the men in the Chevys covered, they did. At least a half dozen 5.56 mm carbines were pointing directly toward the two vehicles. The Able Team leader knew that in less than half a second they could be blasted into more pieces than the Titanic when it finally sank.

The conversation between Arthaud and the guard was brief. A second later Arthaud exited his car and walked back to Lyons.

The Able Team leader pushed the button, lowering the window at his side.

“Looks like you were right earlier when you said this is as far as we go,” the burly man in the high-dollar suit said. “They’ve got orders to let you guys in. But not us.”

“Thanks for leading the way here,” Lyons said.

“No problem,” said Arthaud. “Nice change from pushing paper.” His smile still looked as if he meant every word he said.

Lyons waited as Arthaud got back in his car and pulled through the gate. As the automobile that had brought them here to this first line of defense made a U-turn, he pulled up to the guard house. The same man in the black beret stepped forward as Arthaud and Taylor drove out on the other side of the guard shack.

Now, as the uniformed man leaned down toward the open driver’s side window, Lyons could see the patch of the U.S. 75th Ranger Regiment on his beret.

That slightly surprised the Able Team leader. The 75th had seen its share of action during World War II, Korea, Vietnam and other, smaller wars. But it had been redesigned in 1973 to be a highly mobile light infantry unit capable of operating in any part of the world at a moment’s notice. They’d been active most recently in Bosnia, then Iraq and Afghanistan.

Guard duty, it seemed to Lyons, even at a nuclear storage facility, was a waste of talent and training. It was like putting an NFL coach who’d won the Super Bowl in charge of training a junior high football team.

Carl Lyons might have been less loquacious than his fellow Able Team warriors but he had never been the timid sort. As he held up the FBI credentials supplied by Brognola, he said bluntly, “That patch tells me you’re 75th. So I’ve gotta ask. Why are you guys even here? You’re pulling guard duty any rent-a-cop could manage.”

The Ranger had taken Lyons’s credentials and was studying them. But the comment made him laugh. “We just got here yesterday,” he said. “All we know is that something extraordinary has happened. We’re on high alert. And my guess is it’s the same thing that brings you guys here, Special Agent Coffman.” He handed the credential wallet back through the window. “Care to share that intel with me?”

“Sorry,” Lyons said as he replaced the black leather case inside his suit coat. “I hate to sound like the typical, pompous FBI jerk-off who wants everything you know, then answers all of your questions with, ‘We’re not at liberty to disclose that information.’ But I’m afraid that’s what I’ve got to do.” He waited for a reaction, remembering how badly he’d wanted to punch out several arrogant FBI agents when he’d still been a LAPD detective. There had been one Fed whose face he actually had smashed in. That had bought him a seemingly endless stream of interrogation by both the FBI and the LAPD Internal Affairs goons, and almost made him wish he’d just knocked himself out instead of enduring the tedium brought on by the cops who go after cops.The Ranger nodded. “No problem,” he said. “That’s pretty much the answer I was expecting,” he said, grinning. “And you’re right.”

Lyons returned the facial expression with one of his own rare smiles. But he was soon to find out that he’d misinterpreted the other man’s words. “Thanks for understanding,” he said.

“Oh, I didn’t say I understood,” the Army Ranger said. “I was just agreeing that you’re a typical pompous FBI jerk-off.”

Lyons didn’t feel the rush of anger he might have expected to overcome him. Instead he felt sympathy—no, empathy—for the Ranger at the gate. He had walked in that man’s combat boots and knew how they felt.

“Okay, then,” said the Ranger. “You’ve still got retina and facial recognition to go through at the front door of the main offices. But I’ll have a man lead you there.” He straightened and Lyons rolled up his window. The Able Team leader pulled through the gate as a green Army jeep, driven by another man wearing Ranger regalia, pulled out in front of him. Next to him, he could see Schwarz. In the rearview mirror, Blancanales’s face stared back at him. Both looked as if they were doing their best not to laugh.

“Ever think about switching to the diplomatic corps, Ironman?” Schwarz asked. “You’d be a natural. If I was President, I’d like, make you ambassador to North Korea or Iran or someplace where your smooth and disarming charm would end the world’s problems.”

“I thought he controlled himself pretty well,” said Blancanales. “Considering what we both know was going through his mind.”

Lyons shook his head as he followed the jeep. “That’s enough,” he said. “We’ve got a mission ahead of us. Let’s get our minds on that.”

The dirt road took a sharp curve and suddenly the front of a structure built into the side of a mountain appeared.

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