ENCIZO LOADED ANOTHER BOLT

Upon seeing his comrade pitch to the ground, the second terrorist dropped into a crouch and fanned his AK-47 over the horizon, while his free hand scrambled for his cell phone. Encizo triggered the crossbow. An instant later the gunner froze as a bolt jutted from his ribs.

The little Cuban checked his watch: 9:07 p.m.

Right on time.

“Two down, Cal,” he whispered into his throat mike. “Your status?”

A moment passed without reply. Then another.

“Cal? Cal?” Encizo whispered again, this time more urgently. The only thing that filled the silence was the plummeting sensation in his stomach. Before he could utter another word, gunshots rang out across the compound.

Other titles in this series:

#13 WARHEAD

#14 DEADLY AGENT

#15 BLOOD DEBT

#16 DEEP ALERT

#17 VORTEX

#18 STINGER

#19 NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE

#20 TERMS OF SURVIVAL

#21 SATAN’S THRUST

#22 SUNFLASH

#23 THE PERISHING GAME

#24 BIRD OF PREY

#25 SKYLANCE

#26 FLASHBACK

#27 ASIAN STORM

#28 BLOOD STAR

#29 EYE OF THE RUBY

#30 VIRTUAL PERIL

#31 NIGHT OF THE JAGUAR

#32 LAW OF LAST RESORT

#33 PUNITIVE MEASURES

#34 REPRISAL

#35 MESSAGE TO AMERICA

#36 STRANGLEHOLD

#37 TRIPLE STRIKE

#38 ENEMY WITHIN

#39 BREACH OF TRUST

#40 BETRAYAL

#41 SILENT INVADER

#42 EDGE OF NIGHT

#43 ZERO HOUR

#44 THIRST FOR POWER

#45 STAR VENTURE

#46 HOSTILE INSTINCT

#47 COMMAND FORCE

#48 CONFLICT IMPERATIVE

#49 DRAGON FIRE

#50 JUDGMENT IN BLOOD

#51 DOOMSDAY DIRECTIVE

#52 TACTICAL RESPONSE

#53 COUNTDOWN TO TERROR

#54 VECTOR THREE

#55 EXTREME MEASURES

#56 STATE OF AGGRESSION

#57 SKY KILLERS

#58 CONDITION HOSTILE

#59 PRELUDE TO WAR

#60 DEFENSIVE ACTION

#61 ROGUE STATE

#62 DEEP RAMPAGE

#63 FREEDOM WATCH

#64 ROOTS OF TERROR

#65 THE THIRD PROTOCOL

#66 AXIS OF CONFLICT

#67 ECHOES OF WAR

#68 OUTBREAK

#69 DAY OF DECISION

#70 RAMROD INTERCEPT

#71 TERMS OF CONTROL

#72 ROLLING THUNDER

#73 COLD OBJECTIVE

#74 THE CHAMELEON FACTOR

#75 SILENT ARSENAL

#76 GATHERING STORM

#77 FULL BLAST

#78 MAELSTROM

Promise to Defend

STONY MAN®

AMERICA’ S ULTRA-COVER INTELLIEGNCE AGENCY

Don Pendleton

To my wife, Robbie, my parents, Dennis and Anita, and my brother, Tony, without whom there’d be no writing career for yours truly. And to O. C. Hayden, who sang like an angel long before he was called to join them.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

Washington, D.C.

His face a stony mask, hands clasped behind his back, David Campbell stood at the window of the safehouse’s third-floor library, staring at the nation’s capital. Although he saw the endless rows of stately marble buildings, the throngs of people, the carpet of lights, they barely registered with him. Other things occupied his mind.

The same landscape, but consumed.

Consumed with fire.

Unspeakable carnage.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Campbell tried to banish the images, but found they only returned with a greater vigor. So be it, he thought. He was a man of vision, a man chosen to lead the nation, hell, the world, to greater things. And men of vision suffered. If that was his price, his burden, he’d shoulder it, like the good soldier his father had trained him to be.

Both his father and grandfather had been great men, laying the groundwork for all that would transpire during the next few days. Not that they ever would have envisioned it unfolding as it would, a hellstorm of blood and fire sure to shake the country to its very core. They’d been good men. No, great men. But they never could have envisioned the current circumstances that drove Campbell to do what he was about to do.

There’d be fire, but it’d be a cleansing fire, a rebirth, something that in a dozen years would be celebrated as ushering in a new era for the country. That he had been called upon to marshal such forces and channel them into this pursuit was humbling, indeed. Campbell considered himself a simple man, like his forebears. Not stupid, but simple. A man who saw things in black and white. And he knew, like the Campbell men before him, he’d do the right thing just as they would have done, were they here to see the complexities he faced in his solemn family duty.

A door opened from behind Campbell, and he whirled to greet the visitor. A thick man, his lumpy head shaved clean, entered, stood at attention, waiting for permission to speak.

Jonas Barrins was Campbell’s most trusted confidant. Like Campbell, he was dressed in crisp khakis, a black turtleneck and steel-toed boots. A 9 mm Beretta rode on the man’s left hip, the handgun’s butt jutting forward in a cross-draw position, also just like Campbell.

Other than their mode of dress and their armament, however, the two men differed greatly. Campbell towered six inches over his lieutenant. His body, conditioned by hours of exercise, dwarfed the other man’s slender frame. His steel-gray eyes, wide and intelligent, bore into Barrins’s piggish brown eyes that never seemed to blink.

“At ease, Jonas,” Campbell said, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper.

“Control is waiting.”

“For permission?”

“Yes.”

“Then all, I assume, is ready.”

“Just a word from you.”

“You realize what I’m about to do, don’t you, Jonas? The world I’m about to create? Are the men ready to do this? To take so many lives?”

“We’re ready to follow your lead. To do as you ask.”

Pleased, Campbell gave his comrade a tight smile. In the next instant, the visions—the fire, the screams, the corpses—erupted in his head. He shook them away vigorously. If Barrins caught the behavior, his impenetrable expression gave no indication. Instead he stared at Campbell like a dog awaiting another command.

“You know why I do this, Jonas,” Campbell said. “You of all people understand.”

“Sir?”

“What will happen tomorrow, I mean. I don’t want to do this. But this country, my country, leaves me no choice. I cannot sit by while it destroys itself, chasing third-world savages as a greater danger grows elsewhere. What I will do, I will do for America. The world, really. It can be no other way.”

“It can be no other way,” Barrins echoed. “You can’t second-guess what needs to be done. Or let it trouble you.”

Campbell nodded. “You’re a good soldier and a good friend, Jonas. Please. Sit,” he said, gesturing. “We must rest now, because during the next few days, we’ll be busy doing our sacred work. Our country has grown soft. It’s forgotten its purpose. We aren’t here to spread democracy to the world, but to defend only our own. We worry about the Arabs when we could crush them, turn their region into a smoking hole. We ignore the Communists while they grow stronger.”

Even seated, Barrins kept his back ramrod-straight. “It’s insane,” he agreed. “Your father would agree, if he were still here.”

Campbell’s voice grew icy. “Do not speak of my father. Or his death.”

A nervous tic pulled at the corner of Barrins’s mouth. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“What you meant is immaterial. My father is gone. I’m trying to honor his legacy. Only I may speak of him.”

“Of course.”

“They talked of him as though he were crazy, a mad dog to be put down. He tried to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen. He tried to tell them that the Communists remained a threat, despite the end of the cold war.”

“But they wouldn’t listen.”

“No,” Campbell said. “They wouldn’t listen.” Campbell shook his head, felt the anger churn in his gut as he recalled his father’s efforts to sway the government, the President, all to no avail. Swallowing hard, he chased away the memory with a dismissive gesture. “He did his best, and that’s all a man can do. You smoke, Jonas. Please have a cigarette.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Be my guest.”

Campbell watched as the other man produced a cigarette and torched the end with a flame from his lighter. Barrins made a show of turning his head to the left, blowing the smoke from the corner of his mouth so it didn’t stray close to his companion. Campbell suppressed a smile. The little kiss-ass was always so eager to please, so reluctant to make waves with Campbell or his father before him.

“I thought you didn’t like smoke,” Barrins said.

“I can make an exception, for a friend,” Campbell stated. “Especially one so close to the end.”

Barrins raised a fist to his mouth and coughed, expelling tendrils of white smoke from his mouth and nostrils. He raised his eyes at Campbell, even as he tried to clear his throat and lungs. “Sir?” he managed to choke out.

Campbell leaned back in his chair and pinned the other man with his gaze, letting an uncomfortable pause hang between them for several seconds before replying. “Please, Jonas,” he said. “We both know my father’s death was no accident.”

“Of course not, sir. He was assassinated—”

Without thinking Campbell swept an arm across his desktop, clearing it of its contents. The sudden movement caused Barrins to start.

“I told you not to speak of him,” Campbell shouted. “Or his death.”

“Of course,” Barrins said, a tremor audible in his voice.

Campbell watched as Barrins ground out his cigarette and settled his forearm on the armrest, bringing his fingertips closer to the pistol’s butt. Before it all was over, Campbell knew he’d make a play for his gun. It didn’t matter. He had the bastard dead to rights. He could’ve killed him before, but he wanted to drag it out. Toy with the little troll before taking him out.

“You’ve been with us how long now, Jonas? Ten years?”

“Twelve. I’ve been with you twelve years. I joined shortly before—” he caught himself, nearly choking on the words “—I mean, before the change,” he said, referring to the elder Campbell’s death.

Campbell leaned back in his chair, not letting his eyes drift from Barrins’s.

“The President asked that we bring you aboard, as a personal favor to him. From my father’s standpoint, that was good enough. My father trusted the Man. He trusted you. Implicitly, I might add. I trusted you, too, after he died. It was the way I honored his memory.”

“Thank—”

Campbell silenced him with a gesture. “Let me finish. What my father created, what his father created before him, is vital to national security. The Cadre is the only thing that stands between anarchy and the government’s continued operation, should the country suffer a decapitating strike.”

“I understand.”

“I don’t think you do. Many in Washington consider us a cold war relic. They believe I’ve overstepped my bounds, selling arms to raise money and assassinating those I deem a threat to national security. The President wants to pull the plug on the entire operation. Do you know why this operation has succeeded since 1954?”

“Because—”

“Because of loyalty. Unlike other covert programs, we’ve built in a certain level of loyalty—security, if you will—by keeping this a multigenerational project. Most of the men and women working for the Cadre are third or fourth generation. They’ve been raised from their youth, trained in warfare, politics, medicine, agriculture, to step in and take over the country should something happen.

“We’re what the media likes to call a ‘shadow government.’ And we maintained security by keeping to ourselves, never bringing aboard outsiders. We often went into the real world, worked at companies, fought in wars, lived in regular society, but we always came back. This system always worked. We remained a secret to all but a handful of legislators and administration officials.”

Barrins squirmed in his chair. Sweat glistened on his forehead.

“Where are you going with all this?” he blurted, his voice taut.

Campbell smiled. “Where? Where, indeed? As you know, I file reports with the President. I let him know where things are. I don’t tell him about the illegal weapons sales. I don’t tell him when I kill a high-ranking Chinese or North Korean official. Yet he knows these things and it puzzles me. So much so, in fact, that I had to sit back and think. I had to ask myself, ‘Who had the most to gain from betraying me?’”

Barrins’s piggish eyes began darting right, left, looking everywhere but at Campbell.

“After that, I took it a step further. My father was assassinated, I believe, by the very government we serve. And if that same government infiltrated the Cadre with a rogue agent, what might that person do. Kill me, perhaps?”

“Surely you don’t think…” Barrins protested.

“I don’t think,” Campbell said. “I know.”

He mashed a button under his desk with a boot-clad toe.

The door behind Barrins opened and a man entered the room.

His hand dwarfed the SIG-Sauer P220 he carried. Barrins clawed for his weapon. He emitted a small whimper as he realized he’d never complete the move.

The bigger man’s handgun cracked twice, the bullets drilling through the seat’s backrest and into Barrins. His body seized up and he gagged. Blood frothed at his lips as they worked soundlessly.

“You see, Barrins,” Campbell continued, as though the words still registered with the dying man. “I looked at two things, ability and motive. You had access to the most critical intelligence. I fed you some of it as a test. The rest you stole with good, old-fashioned tradecraft, particularly hacking into our most secure servers and drilling your subordinates for information. Your motive? Well, you’re a kiss-ass, a weak-willed kiss-ass and you couldn’t help but please the President. I’m sure money changed hands, too. But I think that was secondary.”

Barrins shifted around in his chair. Struggling fingers grasped his Beretta’s grip. The SIG-Sauer cracked once more and a bullet cored into Barrins, shattering his spine before exiting his stomach and lodging itself into Campbell’s armored desk.

Campbell shook his head, made a clucking noise with his tongue. “Poor, misguided bastard,” he said. “He just didn’t understand who he was fucking with.” With a gesture, he beckoned the shooter to step from the shadows and enter the library. “Ellis?”

The big man took a couple more steps into the room, holstering the side arm as he did.

“Sir?”

“Let the others know. This betrayal changes nothing. Nothing. Soon it will be a different world. I don’t care what it takes to create it, we will have a different world. Let everyone know that.”

“Gladly,” Ellis White said.

Mexico

CONCLUDING HIS PRAYERS, Hassan Salih stuffed his weathered copy of the Koran into his pocket, then checked his wristwatch. A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. It was time.

He rose to his feet. Dusting off the seat of his pants with his right hand, he hefted his canvas duffel bag and slung its carrying strap over his shoulder. After spending hours crammed inside the sweltering tunnel, breathing the dust-laden air as they sat in stony silence, the sudden burst of movement grabbed the attention of the others. They all turned to regard him.

He met their expectant gazes and said, “Come, brothers. It is time to perform God’s work.”

Still silent, the others stood, shouldering their gear bags as they rose. Turning, Salih started down the narrow passage, which was carved into the desert floor. From what he’d been told, the tunnel had been dug by a Mexican drug cartel and used for transporting narcotics into America and cash south of the U.S. border.

This night it was to be used to smuggle something much deadlier. He and his fellow warriors had come to the United States looking to draw blood from the Americans. As with many of the men accompanying him, Salih was young, just twenty-six years old. He’d graduated from university in Riyadh four years earlier, armed with a degree in Islamic studies but sentenced to a life of state-sponsored welfare. Humiliation and rage seemed to be his most constant companions as he’d searched for meaningful work, but to no avail. With nothing but time on his hands, he’d spent his days in religious schools, studying the Koran, deepening his faith, speaking with others who shared his anger and frustration over the circumstances he and his brothers faced.

Part of the blame, he knew, lay with his own country’s government. The royal family was as addicted to Western money as America was to his homeland’s oil. The Saudi rulers encouraged immigrants—men and women from Pakistan and other Muslim nations—to take jobs that rightfully should go to the Saudis.

But it was America that propped up the royal family, supporting it with weapons and money, even as the Saudi people continued sinking into an ever-deeper quagmire of humiliation and rage. Meanwhile, the royal family with its palaces, private jets and portfolios of American stocks ignored the rage simmering all around it. It continued to do business with a country that sold weapons to the Israelis, which in turn, used them to hunt and murder other Muslims in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Fortunately a few true believers within the government still understood the plight of the Arab people. They had been more than happy to give him the money he needed to travel to training camps in Afghanistan where he’d learned to shoot and fight. God had blessed him, placing him in Afghanistan as the United States had brought in its damnable weapons to overthrow the Taliban. Salih had watched several of his friends die under the onslaught of machine-gun fire and so-called daisy cutter bombs unleashed from America’s flying warships. Though a piece of him died each time a comrade fell, he’d held on to the anger, using it to fuel his battle against the Americans.

When it became apparent that Afghanistan was largely a lost cause, he’d traveled to Waziristan, the territory along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. From there he’d traveled to Iraq, only too eager to engage the enemy again. In Afghanistan, he’d found himself in the unfortunate position of battling against warriors from the Northern Alliance. But in Iraq, he’d been blessed to engage the real enemy, the Americans, face-to-face. Using a rocket-propelled grenade, his aim guided by God, he’d downed a Black Hawk helicopter, killing five American soldiers. His rejoicing had come to an abrupt end when, a few days later, he’d taken a bullet in the chest, forcing him to be smuggled out of the country and into a Syrian hospital for treatment. After that, he’d heard that his name and face had become known to the Americans, forcing him to abandon the Iraqi conflict to avoid arrest. It wasn’t that he feared death. Quite the contrary; he feared being taken alive, where he could potentially be co-opted into helping the Americans and potentially destroying all he held dear. Unwilling to let that happen, he’d moved to Paris.

During his time in Europe, he’d prayed many times a day for the chance to exact revenge on the Americans in their own land. During his time in France, he’d been approached by recruiters from the Arm of God, a group of like-minded warriors ready to exact revenge on the West for its transgressions in the Middle East. Once he’d agreed to join, things had moved quickly for him and the other recruits. There’d been more training in Somalia, not just weapons and assassination techniques, but lessons on American culture and speech training to nearly eliminate what Westerners would consider an accent.

Since he’d joined the group, he’d found a seemingly endless stream of money and weapons. For that, he considered himself truly fortunate, a humble warrior handed a once-in-a-lifetime chance.

He would repay God for the opportunity by killing as many Americans as possible and facing his own death with pride, courage.

He walked the next half mile or so keenly aware of the excitement buzzing in his stomach as he anticipated the upcoming events. As he moved, he cast the flashlight’s white beam over the narrow passage. He heard the steady, plodding footsteps of his fellow warriors and the occasional frenzied scratching of a rodent scurrying away. The light hit a wall, indicating the tunnel’s end. To his left, he saw a ladder that led into a small farmhouse on the American side of the border.

Reaching the ladder, he extinguished the light, shoved it into the back pocket of his blue jeans and grabbed for the first rung.

At the top of the ladder was a trapdoor fitted with two locks. When the top of his head came within a few inches of the door, he reached inside the breast pocket of his shirt, felt around until he located a pair of keys. Slipping one key into the lock farthest from him, he gave it a twist, but left it in the keyhole. Following the same procedure with the second lock, he felt his breath hang in his throat as he turned the key. According to his contact in Mexico, a biker named Ed Stephens, the door was fitted with an explosive charge set to detonate if the locks weren’t opened in a certain order and the keys left in place. Grasping the handle, he gingerly pushed the door open and breathed a sigh of relief when it came free without incident.

Within minutes he had exited the tunnel. His comrade, Jamal Hejazi, a short man with unkempt hair and narrow shoulders, stood at his side.

“We should look around,” Salih said, “while the others unload the equipment.”

Hejazi nodded.

Filling his hands with a Glock 17 and his flashlight, Hejazi a few steps behind, Salih exited the room and crept down the hallway. A sharp noise from outside the house brought him to a halt. He shot a questioning glance to Hejazi, who nodded in reply. Salih extinguished the flashlight beam, slipped into a room to his left and peered through a dust-laden window. A dark, bulky vehicle stood near the front porch. He couldn’t identify the brand of vehicle, but he immediately recognized the logo on the driver’s-side door: U.S. Border Patrol.

His grip tightening on the pistol, he whirled toward Hejazi, but found him gone. Salih swore under his breath and trailed after his friend. As he stepped into the hallway, he heard the front door come open, squeaking on rusted hinges. Flashlights immediately pierced the darkness, sweeping over the walls. He caught Hejazi’s shadow up ahead, flattened against a wall, his handgun held next to his ear, muzzle pointing skyward.

Hejazi gave him a look and Salih shook his head, held up his hand. Edging along the wall, he tried to bridge the gap between the two men, even as a pair of shadows overtook a nearby wall.

“U.S. Border Patrol,” a female voice said. “We saw the vehicles out front. I want you to step out here and show yourselves. Now.”

Salih felt fear and anger roiling within. Their contact had told them that he’d leave a pair of vans at the house for transportation. The Border Patrol agents had spotted them and decided to investigate. Had they called for backup? And, if so, when would it arrive? The notion that they’d come this far only to fail was intolerable to Salih. That a woman—a woman—had interfered and was shouting orders only increased the sting. They needed to act, to go down fighting, if necessary. But go down as men.

Apparently, Hejazi felt the same way.

The small man rounded the corner, his weapon rising as the flashlight beams illuminated his chest and face. The officers, their voices taut with fear, shouted for him to halt his advance. But he didn’t. The pistol cracked twice and Salih saw one of the shadows fall. A microsecond later bullets hammered into Hejazi’s chest and stomach, launching him into a backward march that ended when he collided with a wall. Unable to take another step, his limbs became rubbery and he crumpled to the floor.

Salih, Glock held high, his heartbeat thundering in his ears, approached his old friend.

“Officer down, damn it,” he heard the Border Patrol agent saying from the other room. The agent’s shadow loomed larger as he approached Hejazi’s corpse. “Where the hell’s my backup?”

Despite the vengeful rage boiling within, Salih forced himself to think clearly. They needed to get out of here before more agents arrived and they ended up making a last stand here in the desert.

The officer came into view, his handgun leveled in front of him. His eyes widened as he saw Salih. The muzzle tracked toward Salih, but he already had the American in his sights. The Glock’s report echoed throughout the corridor as a pair of 9 mm slugs caught the Border Patrol agent’s head, killing him instantly.

By the time the American folded to the ground, Salih’s fellow warriors had flocked to his side or gathered around Hejazi, checking in vain for signs of life. He didn’t wait for them to pronounce what he already knew in his heart.

“Take his body to the van,” Salih ordered. “We have no time to waste. For today, we must go, hide. But tomorrow the Americans will pay for his death and many others a thousand times over.”

CHAPTER TWO

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

With Stony Man Mountain situated to his left, Rosario “The Politician” Blancanales stood outside the farmhouse, black eyes peering over a coffee cup’s rim, drinking in the milky orange-red line of predawn light cresting the Blue Ridge Mountains’ peaks.

Awake since 3:00 a.m., the Able Team warrior finally had surrendered to his insomnia, showering, dressing and adjourning outside to watch the sunrise, beating it by a good fifteen minutes. Sleep rarely eluded Blancanales. A trained soldier, he usually could will himself to doze, if only for a few minutes, despite time zone shifts, adrenaline rushes or anticipated danger. In the field, sleeping, like staying alert, was a survival skill one mastered as part of a larger repertoire of skills, both practical and deadly.

But between missions, burdened with time to think and remember, Blancanales occasionally found himself in his present circumstances: wide awake, mind littered with bits of wreckage from his past. Sometimes the ghosts just wouldn’t go away.

Scowling, he watched a smoky-gray blanket of fog rise above the acres of hardwoods and conifers that surrounded Stony Man Farm, the nation’s ultrasecret intelligence and counterterrorism operation. Pressing the coffee cup to his lips, he slurped it, trying at once to cool and consume it.

A voice sounded from behind. “Didn’t realize you were into sunrises.”

Blancanales turned to see Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz, Able Team’s electronics genius. Schwarz, a man of medium height and build, leaned against the farmhouse, arms crossed over his chest. Blancanales flashed his most disarming grin. “If you’d gotten here a minute later, I might have started writing poetry,” he said.

“Or yodeling.”

“God forbid. I leave the loud, unearthly sounds to Ironman,” Blancanales said, referencing Carl Lyons, Able Team’s third and final member.

“Good choice.”

“How’d you find me?”

Schwarz held up the coffee, made a face. “I figured either you or a hog farmer cooked up this swill. I didn’t see you in the house, so I figured you might be outside.”

“You need something?”

Schwarz shook his head. “Nah, just nosing around. I was already up. Up all night, in fact. I got caught up in hotrodding my laptop. I added more memory, upgraded the wireless fidelity capabilities, added some dandy new encryption software.”

“Have my eyes glazed over yet?” Blancanales asked, grinning.

Schwarz arched his upper lip in mock disdain. “Savage. My great genius cannot be appreciated by one such as you.”

“Right.” Blancanales swallowed more coffee.

“So you dodged me long enough. What the hell are you doing out here?”

“Not sleeping.”

“And not answering my questions.”

Blancanales opened his mouth to reply, but a vibration on his left hip cut him off. In almost synchronized movements, he and Gadgets unhooked their pagers from their belts, brought them closer to their faces and studied the liquid-crystal displays.

“War Room,” Blancanales said.

“Not good,” Schwarz replied. “Not at this hour.”

Blancanales nodded his agreement. A tickle of excitement passed through his stomach, followed by a sense of relief. Just what he needed—a little action to distract him. He gestured toward the house. With a nod, Schwarz pivoted on his heel and started for the front door. Blancanales fell into step behind him.

ENTERING THE WAR ROOM, Blancanales swept his gaze over its occupants, smiled at them. Barbara Price, Stony Man Farm’s mission controller, Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman, chief of Stony Man’s cybernetics team and Lyons were seated at the oval-shaped table. Price, her honey-blond hair pulled back in a ponytail, skin bare of makeup, and Kurtzman, thick body settled in his wheelchair, big hands wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee, returned Blancanales’s smile. Lyons looked up from his coffee long enough to nod at his teammates before returning his attention to the mug’s swirling contents.

Hal Brognola stood at the head of the table, arms crossed over his chest. His white cotton dress shirt was open at the collar, the sleeves rolled up to the middle of his forearms. An unlit cigar jutted from between the big Fed’s lips.

“Nice breakfast, Chief,” Blancanales said as he dropped into a chair.

“Beats your coffee,” Brognola shot back.

“Oh, Lord,” Blancanales said. “Hal’s tossing out jokes. Isn’t that a sign of the apacolypse?”

“Could be in this case,” Brognola said.

“Okay, you’ve got our attention,” Lyons said. “Elaborate.”

Plucking the cigar from his mouth, Brognola studied it for a moment as he collected his thoughts. When he spoke, his voice sounded weary. “Within the past few hours, the country took a double-barreled gut shot. Both home and abroad. I have Phoenix Force working things overseas. I need you folks to defuse the homeland threat.”

“Which is?” Schwarz asked.

“Nothing short of mass murder,” Brognola said. He turned and looked at Price. “Barb?” She pressed a button on her laptop and an image of middle-aged man with black hair and a dark complexion came into view on the wall screen.

“Name’s Abdul Rashid,” Brognola said. “He heads a lovefest called Arm of God. As far as terror groups go, it’s fairly new, surfacing a year ago. But it seems well connected and well funded. And, as of this morning, it moved to the top of our must-hit list.”

“How so?” Blancanales said.

“Some of Rashid’s men seized our embassy in Liberia this morning,” Brognola said. “They have a couple dozen hostages, including a handful of Marines working security at the facility. From what we’ve gathered, Rashid’s not there.”

“Casualties?” Blancanales asked.

“Six dead. All Marines. They went down defending the place.”

“How could this happen?” Schwarz asked, his face flushing with anger. “I mean, a dozen Marines in a walled compound ought to be able to kick serious ass. I take it these guys didn’t just scale the walls and storm the building.”

Brognola nodded. “Right. Initial reports indicate that someone lobbed a live hand grenade over the wall. When it exploded, some of the Marines went to investigate, while the rest tried to secure the embassy.”

“Divide and conquer,” Schwarz stated.

“Precisely,” Brognola said. “At least two Marines were shot inside the embassy, even as the others were going outside to investigate the blast. And the terrorists didn’t need to scale the wall. The gate was open, a dead guard lying next to it. The smart money says that someone inside the embassy either opened the door or at least left a key under the mat, so to speak. The State Department security guys are checking the staffers again, looking for possible traitors. But if they didn’t find them during the initial screening, they probably won’t now, either. Our cyberteam is doing likewise, but again, I’m not too hopeful.”

“I beg your pardon?” Kurtzman asked.

“Sorry, Bear, but my guess is that, if it was an inside job, then that person covered his or her tracks pretty well. Embassy security hasn’t exactly been lax since the World Trade Center attacks. These creeps probably coerced someone into helping, someone without previous ties to the group, making them harder to trace.”

Kurtzman nodded. “Makes sense. Just the same, we’ll keep bird-dogging this thing, in case someone else missed something.”

“I’d expect no less. I sent Phoenix Force to handle the embassy seizure. The group was already in Africa, fresh off another mission, and I could have them there within a matter of hours. And, according to our intel, Rashid is hanging his hat somewhere in Africa. So we’ll likely send Phoenix in to take him out, once they free the embassy.”

“So you got us out of bed why? To tell us that Phoenix Force will be late for dinner?” Lyons said.

Brognola gave Lyons and the others a weary smile. “I wish. Unfortunately we have trouble here on the home front, too. That’s why I’m depriving all of you—especially you, Carl—of your much-needed beauty sleep. From your standpoints, the African situation is necessary background for what needs handled in the United States. Barb will explain.”

“The point, finally,” Lyons muttered. Draining his mug, he stalked over to the coffee machine to refill it.

In the meantime Brognola fell into his chair, chomped on his cigar while Price got to her feet. Price hit a button on her laptop and a new picture flashed on the projection screen on the far wall. As everyone took a moment to study the image, she wordlessly handed out mission packets to Able Team.

Flipping through the file folder, Blancanales came across a photo of a man sprawled on his back, his uniform shirt darkened by blood. Most of his head had been torn away, apparently by a bullet. Blancanales recognized a U.S. Border Patrol insignia on the guy’s shoulder patch. In a second photo, he saw a woman patrol agent, her throat savaged by a bullet, curled up on a floor. Her pistol lay several inches from her fingers.

Blancanales held up the pictures. “Where did this happen?”

“California-Mexico border,” Price said. “Near Tijuana, Mexico. The exact location is listed in the mission packet. The woman’s name was Jennifer Drew. She was thirty-two and been with the patrol for six years. Single mother, two little girls. Going to law school in the evenings. According to her records, she wanted to be a prosecutor when she got out of law school.”

“Damn,” Blancanales said. “What about the guy?”

“Jon Copper. Joined the patrol three months before. No immediate family. He’d just been discharged, honorably, of course, from the Marine Corps. Served one tour in Iraq where he earned commendations for bravery and a purple heart. The bad news is that the killers were gone before backup arrived.”

“The good news?” Gadgets asked.

“Apparently either Drew or Copper nailed one of these bastards before they could escape. Investigators found blood at the scene, splattered on a wall, pooled on the floor. They were able to collect that, some hair samples and other forensic evidence. Not to mention shell casings from the killers’ guns.”

“That stuff tell us anything?”

“Surprisingly, yes. The shell casings had been wiped clean of any prints. But the blood and hair yielded some DNA evidence that helped us identify one of the shooters. His name is Jamal Hejazi.”

“Or was,” Schwarz replied. “Hopefully, anyway.”

“Most likely. Judging by the amount of blood, bone fragments and other physical evidence at the scene, this guy should be riding a horse through Sleepy Hollow, carrying a pumpkin under his arm. We’re still waiting on the rest of the forensics reports to come in, but we’re guessing that Hejazi was wounded by the Border Patrol agents and one of his own people ‘retired’ him with a bullet to the head.”

“Why do that?”

Price shrugged. “Probably didn’t want to risk taking him to a doctor or hospital.”

“Makes sense.”

“What do we know about Hejazi?” Blancanales interjected.

Price leafed through the file’s contents until she found what she was looking for. “He was a Saudi national. About ten years ago, he lived in the United States on a student visa. He was studying medicine. During that time, he came up on rape charges.”

“Charges he hotly denied, I’m sure,” Lyons said.

“Of course. The court forced him to submit DNA evidence. They swabbed him for saliva and matched the DNA with stuff collected at the hospital’s E.R.”

“Surprise,” Lyons said, his voice indicating anything but.

“Once that information went to the grand jury, Hejazi decided to leave the country. Without the court’s permission, of course. He went to Sudan.”

“Double surprise,” Lyons said wearily. As a police officer, he’d seen the same script played out to the letter too many times.

“I guess the victim’s family had some money, too. They hired a bounty hunter to chase after him and drag him back to the United States. He went underground until the family’s money ran out. Once he learned he was off the bull’s-eye, he crawled out from under his rock and decided he wanted to fight the Great Satan. Judging by his record, he’s otherwise pretty unremarkable.”

“Hey, give the guy his props,” Blancanales said. “He is an international fugitive, after all.”

Price smiled. “I won’t grace that with a response. Obviously our big concern here is that a known terrorist snuck into the United States. He’s dead. But we know for a fact that he didn’t come alone. Before they entered the house, Drew told her dispatcher that a pair of vans was parked outside the house. She also radioed in the numbers for the license plates, both of which were stolen. By the time their backup arrived, both vans were gone.”

“So we have a couple of carloads of terrorists touring the West Coast,” Blancanales stated.

“And, while we can assume they’re here to launch an attack,” Brognola said, “we have no other specifics. That’s where you guys come in. I want you to beat the bushes, find out what these bastards are up to. We’re expecting a big bang. We just don’t know when, where or how. Your mission packet contains plenty of background on these guys. And we have a couple of contacts for you to look up, including one in San Diego. There’s a plane waiting on the landing strip. While we’ve been talking, a team of black-suits has been loading it full of weapons and equipment, all your usual favorites. I want you guys in the air and ready to hit the West Coast within an hour. The Man is worried. So am I. We need you to hunt these guys down and to find out what they’re up to. He’s also been very explicit as to how you deal with them once you accomplish those tasks.”

“Exercise our full diplomatic authority?” Blancanales queried.

Brognola nodded. “Exactly. Kill them.”

CHAPTER THREE

Monrovia, Liberia

David McCarter navigated the van through the throngs of soldiers, bystanders and journalists gathered two blocks from the American embassy.

The van bore the symbol of a humanitarian organization, an effort by Phoenix Force to disguise its approach. If his opponents were smart enough to seize a well-guarded embassy, McCarter figured they also were smart enough to station observers among the crowds gathered outside the perimeter. Wheeling the panel van to the curb, he brought it within thirty yards of a rug store that had been evacuated and converted into a command center. The embassy lay straight ahead, its top floors visible over the security fence. At least one terrorist was visible from the rooftop, watching the approaching vehicle through a pair of binoculars.

“Ever get the feeling you’re being watched?” asked Gary Manning, who was riding shotgun.

“Hope the bastard gets a good look,” McCarter said. “Pretty soon, one of us is going to be the last thing he sees.”

Shifting the van into park, McCarter and Manning disembarked. Motion in a second-story window caught the Briton’s attention. Glancing up, he saw a figure fill the embassy window, watching his every movement. Two more sentries, brandishing AK-47s, faces swathed in brightly colored scarves, also were visible through the bars of the security fence surrounding the embassy compound. The brazenness didn’t surprise McCarter. He knew the terrorists assumed they’d be safe so long as they had hostages. Their threat had been clear: for every terrorist harmed, two hostages die.

He averted his gaze and proceeded to the back of the panel van.

As he moved, he took in the burned-out or bullet-pocked buildings, leftovers from a civil war that lasted nearly a decade and killed hundreds of thousands of Liberians. Rounding the rear of the van, he saw the other three members of Phoenix Force—Calvin James, Rafael Encizo and T. J. Hawkins—disembarking, carrying with them coolers and insulated boxes used for transporting food. Stony Man pilot Jack Grimaldi had remained at a nearby airfield, ready to provide air support, if necessary.

McCarter grabbed one of the boxes, lifted it. He felt a hand clap him on the shoulder as he came to his full height.

“’Bout time you decided to join the working people,” Hawkins drawled.

“I’ll be happy to do just that, mate,” McCarter said. “If I ever find them.”

Laughing, Hawkins hefted a cooler and started to walk away from the van.

A pair of U.S. Marines stepped into their path, their M-4 rifles held in easy reach. McCarter and his crew had already been through two other checkpoints, and the Briton was starting to lose his patience with all the security hoops being forced upon him.

“Halt and identify,” the first Marine ordered.

McCarter set his cooler at his feet. Fingering an ID card bearing his picture and fake credentials suspended by a small chain around his neck, McCarter held it up for the soldier to inspect. “Rick Cornett,” he said, using an alias supplied by Stony Man Farm. “Your man should have alerted you to my arrival.”

The soldier studied the ID for another moment. He nodded over his shoulder. “Mr. Colvin’s expecting you. He’ll see you immediately. I’ll show you inside.”

“Bloody decent of him,” McCarter growled.

Stepping inside the shop, the Phoenix Force warriors stripped away their white coveralls, revealing black combat suits. Opening the coolers and insulated food bags, they emptied their contents—weapons and equipment—onto the floor, each man arranging his gear in a neat pile. Five Marines donned the coveralls and hats. In about five minutes, they’d load up in the van and leave, their faces hopefully obscured by the hats and the coming dusk.

McCarter and the others readied their weapons. The Briton heard footsteps moving in clipped cadence approaching from behind. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a slender man, about five feet eight inches, his white hair trimmed close to his pinkish skin and flat on top, moving toward them. He halted about ten feet away and scrutinized each member of Phoenix Force with a hard gaze, saving McCarter for last. Scowling, he crossed his arms over his chest and stared at the Phoenix Force leader.

“So you’re the hot-shit commandos the White House made us wait for,” he said. “God, give me strength.”

“He just did, mate,” McCarter said, “in spades. You got a name?”

“Colvin. Steve Colvin.”

“You’re State Department?”

Colvin nodded. “Diplomatic Security Service. And you’re Justice Department.”

“Rick Cornett,” McCarter said, using his alias. He didn’t bother to introduce the other men. He didn’t plan to start a long-term relationship with Colvin.

“You with the FBI? Hostage Rescue Team maybe?”

“No.”

“Delta Force?”

“No.”

“Care to elaborate?”

“No.”

His cheeks reddening, Colvin glowered at McCarter for a stretched second. Despite his rising impatience, the Briton didn’t avert his own gaze. Colvin reached into his breast pocket, extracted a crumpled pack of cigarettes and tapped one into his palm. Replacing the pack, he lit the smoke with a disposable lighter, inhaled deeply and gestured with a nod at the space behind him.

“All right, Cornett,” the State Department man said, “why don’t you drag your Limey butt over here and I’ll brief you.”

He turned and headed toward a table topped with a pair of laptops and three satellite telephones.

McCarter glanced at Manning, who grinned. “‘Limey butt?’” Manning asked. “Not very diplomatic for the State Department, eh?”

“He’s sizing me up,” McCarter said. “It obviously hurts his professional pride a little to have Washington send in outsiders to handle this mission. Probably wants to see whether we’re up for the job.”

“Think we passed his test?”

“I couldn’t care less,” McCarter said.

Manning shot him a grin and they fell into step behind the State Department man, following him to a makeshift briefing area set up in the rear of the store. A table topped by laptops, architect’s drawings and scattered papers sat in the middle of the converted storeroom. Three technicians, two women and a man, all dressed in civilian clothes, were positioned around the table, working at computers.

“Lynn,” Colvin said, “show us the layout.”

A thirtysomething brunette nodded. She tapped a few keys and moments later an architect’s drawing of the embassy filled the screen. McCarter noted several X’s situated at various points on the image. A small laser pointer in his grip, Colvin rested the device’s red dot on a large rectangular room.

“This is the first-floor lobby,” he said. “According to early security camera images, there were at least eight shooters in this area. Unfortunately the latter information is dated. Within thirty minutes of taking the embassy, they’d shut down the surveillance feeds to our satellites. Doing so creates a closed system. They can monitor every inch of the place, but we can’t see a damn thing. We can still track people by their body heat, but we can’t tell whether they’re the good guys or the bad guys.”

“What about the second floor?” Encizo asked.

Colvin nodded at the computer operator, who with a few keystrokes, changed the picture again. “Flyovers indicate a great deal of body heat here. And it’d make the most sense for them to keep hostages here. They can herd them into rooms, most of which have no windows, for security reasons, making it easier to guard the prisoners.”

“What are your negotiators telling you?” McCarter asked. “What do these blokes want?”

“Typical terrorist crap—release certain members of their group, cut U.S. aid to Israel, withdraw troops from the Middle East.”

“In other words, the impossible,” McCarter said.

“You got it. Frankly, I think they’re stalling. These guys may be fanatics, but they aren’t stupid. They have to know we don’t negotiate with terrorists. Especially in today’s climate. I don’t understand what their endgame is here.”

“Probably doesn’t matter at this point,” McCarter said. “The only endgame I envision for these bastards is to go horizontally. How many hostages do we have inside?”

“About fifty, including the six Marines killed during the initial fighting. When they seized the place, they let a lot of the locals go. Some of the staff was out of the compound, doing other things.”

“The locals tell you anything?”

“Depending on who you believe, they have anywhere between two dozen and thirty fighters in there. We’ve had U2s winging over the compound all day, snapping off surveillance photos. Near as we can tell there’s between a half dozen and ten terrorists patrolling the grounds or stationed on the rooftops at any given moment, just daring us to take them out. According to the people who got away, everyone else was herded into the main building.”

“What other ways are there into the building?” asked James, the lanky former Navy SEAL.

Colvin’s associate changed the screen again. A split-screen image pictured the embassy’s rooftop in one frame and a boarded-up hotel in the other. McCarter remembered seeing the hotel as they’d approached the embassy. His face must have betrayed his curiosity because Colvin immediately jumped in to explain.

“Liberia was a damn mess for years,” he said. “A corrupt government, a civil war, drug-crazed rebels. At the same time, al Qaeda has hammered embassies on this continent and has more than its share of followers running around. Place is a security man’s nightmare.”

“Only more so today,” James said, running the tip of his index finger along his pencil-thin mustache.

“Sure. Compound that with other events like the attacks on the WTC and the takeover of our Tehran embassy in the 1970s, and you know the State Department’s been waiting on something like this to happen for years. We didn’t necessarily expect it here in particular, but we did expect it.”

“The point?” McCarter asked.

“The point is that we have more entrances into the embassy than we let on. The thinking was that we needed a way to get our people out of here in case of an emergency, an escape hatch, if you will. To do that, we built a tunnel that connects the embassy to this burned-out hotel.”

“Get out,” James said. “You’re saying there’s actually a secret tunnel leading into the embassy?”

“Of sorts. But it’s secure as hell. It stretches about three hundred yards, with battleship-steel doors every seventy-five yards or so. It also has a boatload of cameras, motion detectors and other protective measures installed. We designed it to get people out, but also to sneak commandos in.”

“Any way they could know about it?” McCarter asked.

“Only an idiot would guarantee that it’s foolproof.”

“Then that’s the way we’ll go, at least some of us. I want to hit these SOBs from more than one direction. So I’ll need at least two volunteers.”

MAJID JASIM CURLED his fingers under the edge of his ski mask and peeled it away from his face, discarding it with a careless toss. He noticed a few of the hostages, all bound by ropes but not blindfolded, sneak looks at him, maybe memorizing his features in case they were rescued. Or just to satisfy their own morbid curiosity, a look at their executioner, perhaps. He allowed himself a smile. Let them look.

He mopped his forehead with his handkerchief, replaced it in his pocket and unconsciously smoothed the hairs of his mustache with the thumb and forefinger, raked back his thick black hair with the fingers of the same hand. At five feet ten inches, he had a wiry build of a welter-weight boxer and the ramrod posture of a soldier. He’d been both for many years, but that was before he’d lost everything and been forced to change professions.

Scowling, he gripped his weapons belt with both hands and hitched it higher up on his hips. He rested his right hand on the worn grip of the Heckler & Koch VP70 pistol, one of the few things he still possessed from his former life. He’d been a commander in Saddam Hussein’s fedayeen army, had lived comfortably with the government salary and an endless supply of money, food and sex extorted from civilians. He’d provided a good life for his family. But all that changed after the Americans invaded the country and Baghdad fell. He’d stood and fought, both during the invasion and as an insurgent in the ensuing occupation. He’d pretended it had been out of a sense of nationalism, a conviction that the infidels wouldn’t sully his homeland with their damned occupation. In reality, though, he just had hoped to wear the Americans out, make them go home. As that possibility had become increasingly distant, he’d fled the country and journeyed to Syria where it had been all too easy to parlay his military talents into mercenary work.

That’s how he’d met the American, David Campbell. The man had sought him out, wanting him to help pull off an impossible mission. And when it had come time to discuss price, Campbell had—how did the Americans say it?—made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. So he hadn’t.

The sound of footsteps pulled him from his thoughts. He looked and saw another man, face wrapped in a scarf, approaching. He held an AK-47 by its pistol grip, let the muzzle point at the floor. Although the wrap obscured most of his features, Jasim could see the man’s furrowed brow, his narrowed eyes, all telegraphing his concern.

The man—Tariq Hammud, who Jasim considered his closest adviser—kept his voice barely above a whisper, addressing him in Arabic.

“Sir, you expose your features to these people. Is that wise?”

“Is it wise to ask such a question?” Jasim countered.

“I mean no disrespect. But I was told we must keep our identities secret. At least, that’s what the American said. Has all that now changed?”

“Have I said it’s changed?”

“No.”

“Do you take orders from me, or from the American? Are you now a loyal subject of the infidel?”

The creases in Hammud’s brow deepened and his voice took on a cold edge. “Of course not.”

“But you suppose that I am a loyal subject of the American and should follow his orders to the letter. Am I understanding this correctly? Or perhaps that I should behave like a woman and cover my face in public. Is that it?”

“Never,” Hammud said, his voice rising in volume. “To suggest such a thing would be an insult.”

“My point exactly. We are agreed, then, that I may expose my face as I choose, rather than when given permission?”

“Of course. I was in error to suggest otherwise.”

Jasim suppressed a smile as he watched the other man squirm. “Did you come only to harass me about this?”

Hammud shook his head. “No, we found Fisher. He wants to speak with you.”

“He has news?”

“He says so.”

“We’ll see. Have we secured the grounds? Nightfall is only a few hours away. We will be at our most vulnerable.”

“We’re taking the necessary precautions.”

“Fine. Tell Fisher I will meet in him the library.”

“I’ll have him taken there.”

Jasim grabbed the suitcase that stood next to his ankle. He strode past the hostages, making a point to meet their gazes as he passed. As expected, most of them looked away. However, he caught one man, a Marine dressed in camouflage fatigue pants and matching T-shirt, glowering at him as he walked by. His hands were bound behind his back, his legs tied at the ankles, his boots removed and discarded.

The Arab halted and stared into the American’s pale blue eyes, held his gaze for several seconds. Another Marine, secured in a similar fashion, was situated several feet away.

“What are you looking at?” Jasim asked.

“You killed my sergeant, you piece of shit,” the Marine replied.

“Tom, let it go,” the second Marine warned.

Jasim smiled. “You should listen to your comrade. He has the right idea.”

Color spread through the first Marine’s neck and inflamed his cheeks.

“Kiss my ass,” Tom said.

With lightning-quick movements, Jasim fisted the VP70 and aimed the weapon at the second Marine, the one who’d uttered the warning. Jasim stroked the handgun’s trigger, unleashing a 3-shot burst that reduced the man’s skull to a crimson spray. The remaining Marine’s eyes bulged with anger and shock, while other hostages gasped or screamed.

“You son of a bitch.” Despite his bonds, Tom struggled to come to his feet. Jasim watched the man’s struggle with amusement.

Jasim swept the gun around the room. Hostages screamed and flinched, some were paralyzed with fear while others balled themselves up to form smaller targets.

“I made it clear from the beginning that heroics would cost lives. Resistance would cost lives. That includes your incessant yammering. For every ill word you speak, someone dies. So choose each word carefully.”

The Marine’s face beamed pure hatred. The Marine’s lips had tightened into a bloodless line and his skin had turned an angry scarlet. After a long pause, Jasim said, “Nothing else to say? Good.”

Holstering his weapon, he spun on his heel and started for the library, whistling as he went.

A few minutes later he stood in the library, smoking a cigarette. The door handle rattled, grabbing Jasim’s attention. Turning, he saw a slender, pale man with unkempt hair enter, escorted by a pair of Jasim’s men.

Jasim gestured toward a nearby chair. “Mr. Fisher, sit.”

Fisher did so. Lacing his fingers together, he set his hands on his knees and studied his thumbnails while Jasim looked down at him. Fisher, a low-level embassy worker, had been feeding Jasim and the others intelligence on the embassy for months. From what Jasim understood, the American had been frequenting underage prostitutes in Monrovia’s slums. When confronted with photographs and promises of cash, Fisher had been all too happy to betray his own country.

“You killed somebody else,” Fisher said.

“You have an issue with that?”

Fisher shrugged his narrow shoulders. “I have no issue with anything.”

“Good,” Jasim said. “You had something you wanted to tell me.”

“One of the women, Barb Kendall, she’s CIA.”

Jasim felt his gut twist into a knot. Heat radiated from his face. “Why am I just now learning this?” he asked.

Fisher tensed visibly, anticipating a blow. “I just found out. I overheard her discussing it with the ambassador. I always thought she was a public-information officer. I guess that was a cover.”

“I will deal with her. Anything else?”

“She says that there’s a tunnel, a way out of here. Which means, a way in.”

Jasim scowled. “This tunnel, where is it?”

Another shrug. “I asked, but she wouldn’t say. I didn’t want to force the issue. I figured she’d get suspicious. I did all right, right?”

Jasim looked at the guards. “Return him to his cell. And bring me Kendall. I want to speak with her. We need to find this entrance before it creates a problem for us.”

MCCARTER HELD his sound-suppressed Heckler & Koch MP-5 at hip level as he moved through the concrete corridor leading to the embassy. Like his fellow commandos—Manning and Hawkins—he scanned his surroundings through night-vision goggles, which bathed the area in pale green. The DSS agents had extinguished all tunnel lights, an effort to give McCarter and the others an advantage should their approach be discovered.

“Crawling through tunnels like a bunch of bleedin’ rats,” he groused. “I can’t believe we flew halfway around the world for this.”

“Three minutes without a complaint,” Manning whispered. “I think that’s an all-time record for you.”

“Feel free to kiss my arse,” McCarter said. “How much farther?”

“Another 150 yards or so,” the big Canadian said. “Then we hit the third door. Two more after that and—bang—we’re in the basement.”

BARBARA KENDALL FELT fear gnaw at her insides as the guards led her up the embassy steps to the second floor. They had untied her feet, but had left her hands secured behind her back. The captor to her right dug his fingers hard into her bicep, causing white lancets of pain to emanate from the area. She ground her teeth, suppressing a pained yelp.

“Watch it, asshole,” she said in flawless Arabic.

The terrorist raised an open hand, ready to strike her. The guard on her left, a short, barrel-chested man, yanked her toward him. “Stop it,” he said to the other man. “We do not strike this one without Jasim’s approval.”

Hesitating, anger still flaring in his eyes, the first man finally let his hand drop. “You’ll die before this all ends,” he said.

We do not strike this one without Jasim’s approval.

Her captor’s words troubled her. Considering the abuse being heaped on the other hostages, why not strike her? And why was she being summoned in the first place? In the best-case scenario, they wanted her, as the public-information officer to communicate with the outside world, perhaps to put an American voice to their demands. But, a dyed-in-the-wool cynic, Kendall put little stock in best-case scenarios. Did they know that she also was an intelligence agent? The possibility chilled her to the core, but she knew she couldn’t dismiss it. If so, she could face torture, or even death, she thought, suppressing a shuddering.

Arriving at the library door, they stopped. Her heart hammered against her chest as she waited. The guard who’d nearly hit her took out his aggressions on the door, striking it hard with his knuckles. A heartbeat later she heard someone call for them to enter. She heard the metallic click of a handle, the almost-imperceptible squeak of the door swinging on its hinges, then a hard shove to the middle of her back stole her breath and sent her stumbling into a room.

She scanned the library and saw three hardmen positioned throughout the vast area. A fourth man, seated to her right, cleared his throat and she turned toward him. The Arab wore a pistol on his hip and he had an AK-47 propped against a table within easy reach.

“The tunnel,” he said, “where is it?”

A cold rivulet of fear coursed down her spine. He knew, she thought. How the hell? She tried to keep her face impassive, then gave him a confused smile. “What? What are you talking about?”

His features hardened. “The tunnel leading out of the embassy. I know of it. I have people searching the grounds even as we speak. It’s only a matter of time before we find it. It will only help you to help us.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, letting her voice sound uncertain, confused.

“You are an agent of the CIA.”

In spite of herself, Kendall tensed. Her mind raced as she tried to figure out how he knew this and how she should respond. Other than the ambassador, no one else knew of her role here. She’d played her part to the hilt, or so she’d thought. Did he really know something or was this a game the bastard playing?

She laughed nervously. “CIA? I’m with the State Department. I’m a public-information officer. I write press releases and talk to reporters. I have nothing to do with the Central Intelligence Agency.”

“I hear otherwise.”

“You’ve heard wrong. Ask anyone here. They’ll tell you otherwise.”

“Excellent idea,” he said. The man looked past her. Nodding at one of the men behind her, he said, “Go get the ambassador.”

She spent several minutes standing in front of the terrorist, his gaze cold and unreadable, pushing against her like an unseen force. Relief washed over her momentarily when the door flung open, grabbing the seated man’s attention. The sense of relief immediately dissolved when Ambassador Bruce Hughes tumbled through the doorway, shoved forward by one of his captors. A sick feeling twisted at Kendall’s gut as she watched the man, hands tied behind his back, struggle to come to his feet. A tall man with long hair and a patchy beard rewarded Hughes for his efforts by striking him repeatedly in the kidneys and spine with a rifle butt. Kendall winced in sympathetic pain as she watched the red-faced man struggle to regain his breath. Kendall felt anger burn hot through her skin as she witnessed the cruelty.

“What the hell do you want?” Hughes asked.

“What do you know of this woman?” Jasim asked.

Hughes’s eyes rolled up at Kendall, caught her gaze. She felt an urge to look away from his reddened, pained expression. But she tightened her lips into a bloodless line and forced herself to hold his gaze.

“She’s our PIO,” Hughes said. “Didn’t she tell you that?”

“What she told me and what I believe are two different things,” Jasim said. Fisting his side arm, he raised it and leveled it at Hughes. Kendall opened her mouth, but the weapon cracked once, the sound causing her words to catch in her throat. A 9 mm round drilled into the floor next to the ambassador’s face. A moment later the stench of human excrement filled the room.

“The ambassador seems to have fallen for your lie,” Jasim said through clenched teeth. “I’m not so stupid. Are you CIA or not? Give me the wrong answer and I’ll kill him. Then I move on to the next hostage.”

Kendall felt her resolve drain away. She looked downcast. “Yes, I’m CIA.”

“And there’s a tunnel leading into the embassy. Is that correct? Look at me.”

Kendall felt anger and frustration constrict her throat. She looked at Jasim, saw the stony expression on his face. She knew at that moment there’d be no negotiating with this son of a bitch. His next words only verified it.

“For every minute that passes without a satisfactory answer, I will kill a hostage, starting with the ambassador.”

“Yes,” she said, her voice barely audible, “there’s a tunnel.”

Jasim holstered his weapon and leaned back in his chair. He looked at the two terrorists flanking Kendall and barked orders to them in Arabic. She understood every word.

“I want that door found and wired with explosives. I want anyone coming through it killed.”

“As you wish,” one of the men said as he grabbed Kendall by the arm and spun her around.

CLAD HEAD-TO-TOE in black, Rafael Encizo crept through the blackness of the alley, a crossbow held steady and sure in his grip.

His nose unconsciously wrinkled against the stench of rancid meat and vegetables emanating from a nearby trash can. Dropping into a crouch, he set the crossbow at his feet, rolled up his sleeve and checked the illuminated dial of his diving watch. It was 9:05 p.m. He rolled his sleeve back down, obscuring the watch. Another sixty seconds and things would get very interesting indeed.

Grabbing his crossbow, he remained in a crouch, but moved to the alley’s mouth. The stifling heat barely registered with him. He was accustomed to such temperatures and, in fact, found them more comfortable than the cool evenings that sometimes prevailed in Virginia at Stony Man Farm.

He returned his attention to the problem at hand. Peering around the edge of the building, he stared at the embassy grounds and saw a pair of men, each carrying an AK-47, walking the grounds.

He felt a new rush of anger as he watched them swagger through the compound, faces obscured by scarves. They walked in the open, apparently unafraid, while they held innocent people inside, terrorizing them and the free world as they held the hostages.

Calvin James’s voice sounded in his earpiece.

“Rafe?”

“Go.”

“I’m in position. You?”

“Affirmative.”

“Fifteen seconds until they cut the power.”

“Then it all goes by the numbers, my friend.”

“Swift and silent.”

“Damn straight.”

The radio went silent. Encizo waited another moment until streetlights and the large halogen spotlights illuminating the embassy winked out, plunging the compound into darkness. When they did, he slid his NVGs down over his eyes, crept out from the alley and darted for the embassy grounds.

In less than a minute he came to rest a few yards from the fence, his approach obscured by the hip-high concrete walls used to stop truck and car bombers from hurtling into the compound. Chancing a look over the barrier, he peered through the gate and spotted a pair of terrorists separating from each other and sweeping the muzzles of their assault rifles over the horizon as they evaluated the power outage. Rising from behind the barrier only as much as necessary, Encizo locked the crossbow’s sights on the nearer terrorist and triggered the weapon. The shaft drilled into the man’s throat. Gurgling, stumbling backward, the man’s weapon fell from his hands as he grabbed for the bolt protruding from his throat. A moment later life left his body and he folded in on himself.

Staying low, Encizo turned at the waist and loaded another bolt. Upon seeing his comrade suddenly pitch to the ground, the other terrorist dropped to a crouch and fanned his AK-47 over the horizon, his free hand scrambling for a cellular telephone. Encizo triggered the crossbow. An instant later the terrorist froze as a bolt jutted from his ribs, the razor-sharp tip tearing through his heart. Even as his corpse pitched toward the ground, power returned to the embassy compound, probably thanks to the emergency generators. External lights kicked back on, flooding the grounds with white as lights winked back on inside the main building.

Encizo checked his watch: 9:07 p.m.

Right on time.

“Two down, Cal,” he whispered into his throat mike. “Status?”

A moment passed without reply. Another second—this one more agonized—came and went, too.

“Cal? Cal?” Encizo whispered again, this time more urgently. All that filled the silence was the plummeting sensation in his stomach. Before he could utter another word, gunshots rang out from within the compound.

CHAPTER FOUR

San Diego, California

Carl Lyons checked the load in his .357 Colt Python, then returned the revolver to shoulder leather. Scowling, he stared at the nondescript building across the street from him and watched for the black Mercedes coupe he hoped would come soon. He leaned his left shoulder against the exterior wall of a convenience store and checked his watch for the fourth time in three minutes.

“You think that son of a bitch knows?” he growled into his throat mike.

“Negative,” Blancanales replied. “You’re just getting impatient.”

“Damn straight I am,” Lyons said. “We’ve been waiting for forty-five minutes and the guy still hasn’t shown. He’s the best link we’ve got at this point.”

“Hang loose, hombre. He’ll be along.”

“Maybe he knows that we’re looking for him.”

“You think Hal called and tipped him off?”

“All right. Point taken.”

“Relax,” Blancanales said. “He’ll be along any minute.”

They’d come looking for Abda Hakim, a Saudi Arabian who, according to classified reports from the Treasury Department, raised money for Arm of God and funneled it back to the group’s overseas operations. The current site housed a fairly sophisticated money-laundering system that tapped into dozens of overseas banks. In addition, it backed into a warehouse containing stacks of counterfeit CDs, DVDs, software and video games shipped from overseas and sold in the United States.

A fairly sophisticated operation, Lyons grudgingly admitted. For a hairball. Having lost the terrorists’ trail at the border, Able Team had decided that Hakim made the best point of contact for the killers once they moved into the country.

That put him at the top of Able Team’s list.

Increasingly impatient, Lyons returned to his full height and brushed the brick dust from his shoulder.

As he did, three young men dressed in gang colors swaggered past, eyes boring into him, unsuccessfully trying to intimidate him. Lyons, his mouth a hard line, his eyes hidden by mirrored sunglasses, held their stares behind the shades and let his scowl deepen. The stakes of the mission in front of him and the other members of Able Team were high, and he was in no mood to indulge in a contest of wills with a pack of gang bangers. The first two either lost interest or sensed they were outclassed; the third let his hard stare linger, apparently waiting for the moment when the former L.A. cop would back down. It didn’t happen.

As the final gang banger walked on, Lyons noticed a tremor pass through the guy. He allowed himself a tight grin.

Blancanales’s voice came over his earpiece. “Ironman, you still got it.”

“Bet your ass I do.”

Schwarz, who was watching the rear of the target building from a nearby rooftop, broke in. “Look alive. We’ve got Hakim’s Beemer pulling in.”

“Roger that,” Lyons said. “He have help?”

“Right. Two, no, three hard-looking guys. Probably bodyguards.”

“Probably,” Lyons said. “Or walking corpses. Depends on how they want to play it. Let’s move.”

Lyons crossed the parking lot and waded into traffic. Irritated drivers honking their horns and shouting obscenities barely registered with him as he crossed the street. From his peripheral vision, he saw Blancanales exit a surveillance van disguised as a bakery truck and approach the office building from the right.

The men met at the building’s entrance, a pair of glass doors. Lyons slid his hand inside his jacket. His fingers encircled the Colt’s grip, but he left it in its holster. Driving a shoulder into the door, Lyons entered the lobby with Blancanales a step behind him. Moving in lockstep, they strode across the room. A pair of heavies, one dressed in a suit, the other in jeans and a T-shirt, lounged at what Lyons guessed was a guard station, a steel desk topped by a telephone and a sign-in sheet attached to a clipboard.

The bigger of the two men, the casually dressed guy, rounded the desk, his face a hard mask of anger. His exposed arms a mosaic of ropelike muscles, veins and stretch marks, he stepped between Lyons and the elevator.

Snapping off his shades, Lyons stepped to within a hair-breadth of the guy and locked eyes with the bigger man. The guard stank of perfumed hair gel and apparently had bathed in a mixture of anabolic steroids and cologne before work.

“You are here to see who?” the man in the suit asked.

“As I was about to explain to your lady friend here,” Lyons said, “we’re here to see Hakim.”

“You got an appointment?” the suit asked.

“You work for Hakim?” Blancanales asked.

“I ask the questions around here,” the suit replied.

“I beg to differ.” Blancanales produced his fake Justice Department credentials and flashed them at the man.

Scowling, the guy studied their credentials. He reached for the telephone. “I got to call the man.”

Blancanales shook his head. “Wrong. You and Mr. Anabolic here are going to cop a squat off the premises and wait until we’re done with our business. Comprende?”

The guy stared at Blancanales for a long moment, nodded his head. “Sure, man. We can do that. Anything for the Justice Department.”

“Much obliged,” Blancanales said. “I trust you won’t call your boss?”

“Wouldn’t think of it.”

Lyons heard footsteps slap against the floor behind him. Staring over the body builder’s shoulder, he saw a reflection of Schwarz stepping into view, a dart pistol in his hand. The pistol whispered twice as he swept it over the two men, planting tranquilizer darts into the bigger guard’s neck and the smaller man’s left shoulder. Lyons watched as the big man’s face contorted with anger and confusion. He slapped at his neck, trying to find the source of the pain. Lyons drove an open-palmed strike into the man’s sternum, knocking him back. The guy hit the floor. He tried to bring himself back up, but found his muscles going slack. Within moments, he’d fallen unconscious.

“So much for negotiating in good faith,” Blancanales said. “How long will they be out, Gadgets?”

“Hours.” Intel had it that Hakim used contract security for the building, so the team had opted for nonlethal weapons.

They dragged the men out of sight, hiding them in a vacant office. Blancanales and Schwarz took the elevator to the fourth floor, while Lyons used the stairs. According to intel provided by Stony Man Farm, Hakim occupied the entire top floor of the building, which was only accessible from a single elevator located further within the building.

The men converged on the fourth floor and fanned out. The elevator opened into a large waiting area filled with cushy chairs and potted palms. A pretty Latina sat behind the reception desk. Flashing his own Justice Department ID, Lyons jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

“Jackpot time, lady,” he said. “You just got the day off. Go home.”

The woman gave him a quizzical look and started to reach for the phone. Lyons put his hand on hers before she could lift the receiver.

“What do you say we do this smart? Your purse. Home. Now. Understand?”

The woman cast a glance over her shoulder at her boss’s office, but nodded and began to gather her things. When she palmed her mobile phone, Lyons shook his head.

“Uh-uh,” he said. “Leave the phone. You can pick it up later.”

Hesitating, the woman regarded Lyons for a moment, then nodded. Clutching her purse, she came to her feet and rounded the desk, giving the men an uncertain look as she did.

Lyons lightly gripped her upper arm, stopping her. “Anyone else on this floor besides Mr. Hakim?” he asked.

She shook her head no. “He sent everyone home yesterday, telling them to take the weekend off. He asked me to come in and answer phones. He promised me double time and I figured, what the hell? I’ve got a baby at home, you know, and the money—”

“He have any visitors?” Lyons asked.

She paused, chewed at her lower lip and scrutinized Lyons with a lingering stare. Finally she shook her head. “This morning. A group of men. In the conference room. I heard them, but Mr. Hakim never let me see them. They were speaking a foreign language. Not Spanish. I’d know that if I heard it.”

“Arabic?” Blancanales ventured.

The woman shrugged. “Could be. Mr. Hakim always speaks English around me.”

“Those guys gone?” Lyons asked.

“Yeah.”

“When?”

“Ten this morning. I take a break at ten-fifteen and they left just before that.”

“Hakim alone?”

“Just his usual guys.”

“How many?”

“He had two with him when he came in a little bit earlier. He always has the same couple of guys trailing after him every day. Says they’re his cousins or some such. They never say anything. They just skulk around the office, stone-faced, staring at everyone. I thought maybe something was going on, like Hakim was gay or something, the way these guys followed him around. But one of them started staring at me so I started to think otherwise. Is Hakim in trouble?”

Lyons nodded over his shoulder at the door. “You’re not. That’s all you need to know. Go.”

“I’m not sure,” the woman said. “Mr. Hakim asked me to stay after work. Said he had something he needed to discuss with me.”

Blancanales flashed a winning smile. “My guess is he wanted to terminate your employment, so to speak.”

Lyons watched the woman’s expression change from confusion to grave understanding as the meaning behind Blancanales’s words sank in. Swallowing hard, she grabbed her things. The click of her heels receded quickly as she distanced herself from the office.

“And they say I have no tact,” Lyons groused.

Reaching inside his jacket, Lyons palmed the Colt, his most trusted weapon. Blancanales and Schwarz each produced micro-Uzis from under their jackets. Lyons knew both also carried Beretta 92s in hip holsters.

Crossing the room in quick strides, Lyons stepped up to the door leading into Hakim’s network of offices. Kurtzman had supplied the team with layouts of the office space used by Hakim as well as the penthouse located on the building’s top floor. According to the plans, four offices lay on the other side of the door as well as the private elevator leading to the Arab’s penthouse.

With Schwarz and Lyons on either side of the door, Blancanales tried the handle and found the door locked. The Beretta spit two subsonic rounds into the lock, shredding it. Blancanales stepped aside to avoid retaliatory fire. When none came, he cocked his leg back and drove a booted foot into the door, knocking it inward.

Lyons rounded the corner in a crouch, the Colt extended in front of him in a two-handed grip. The corridor split into two directions. Ahead lay three rooms, doors closed, two to the left, one to the right. Blancanales was right on his tail. A glance over his shoulder told him Schwarz had headed in the opposite direction to check the rooms at Lyons’s back.

The blond commando edged along the wall, listening for signs of danger. He reached the door to his right first. Crouching, he passed under the pebbled glass window that took up the door’s upper half. Reaching the other side, he came to his full height, grasped the doorknob and twisted. The door came free and swung inward. He tensed for a moment, waiting for a fusillade of hot lead to lance its way through the opening. When none came, he chanced a look around the doorjamb and scanned the interior.

He flashed Blancanales hand signals indicating that he wanted cover. Blancanales gave him the okay. Lyons rounded the doorjamb, sweeping the room with the Colt. The office was nondescript, outfitted with a steel desk topped by a PC, a row of brown filing cabinets, a small roller table and a four-cup coffeemaker. He checked behind the desk, the only possible hiding place, found no one there, and gave his friend the all-clear signal.

Checks of the other two rooms yielded similar results.

Schwarz rejoined his teammates, shaking his head. “Nada. You guys?”

“Same,” Blancanales said. “Time to hit the penthouse?”

Lyons nodded. As the three moved for the penthouse elevator, the Able Team leader switched the Colt for the micro-Uzi he carried in a custom shoulder rig underneath the windbreaker. He stopped several paces short of the doors, a scowl creasing his features.

He turned to his comrades. “Nothing like boxing ourselves up for an easy kill,” Lyons said. Before the others could reply, motion registered from the corner of Lyon’s eye and he spotted a pair of thugs, each armed with submachine guns, stepping into the corridor.

In almost the same instant, the beating of chopper blades sounded in the distance, growing louder with each heartbeat.

The thugs spread out across the hallway, each man’s weapon spitting long tendrils of orange-yellow flame. Bullets sizzled the air around Lyons and the others before slamming into walls. Lyons felt everything slow down around him as he came under attack. His noticed his comrades each responding, Blancanales flattening against a wall, firing his chattergun with one hand. Schwarz dropped into a crouch, his weapon chugging out an angry swath of 9 mm death as three more men poured through the door.

CHAPTER FIVE

One of the attackers lunged forward, flattened against the floor and tried to draw a bead on Lyons, who knew he was a nanosecond from death as the stream of bullets slashed toward him like a cutlass sinking in a downward stroke.

A guttural cry welling up from within, Lyons stroked the Uzi’s trigger. The volley of slugs closed the gap between him and his attacker, pounding into the man, eliciting a crimson spray as the man jerked under the Uzi’s onslaught.

Swinging his weapon forty-five degrees, Lyons squeezed off a second burst that ripped through another terrorist’s white button-down shirt and pulped his chest. The bullets whipsawed the man until Lyons eased off the trigger and turned his attention elsewhere. The man folded to the ground in a boneless heap.

A third man, weapon at hip level, came into view, but withered quickly under relentless blasting from Blancanales, never getting off a shot.

At the same time the door of Hakim’s private elevator slid open behind them, revealing another trio of hardmen. From the corner of his eye, Lyons saw Schwarz turn to meet the threat, his Uzi up and ready. The stout weapon stuttered out a searing line of 9 mm slugs as Schwarz hosed down the elevator car’s interior, cutting down the men before any could squeeze off a shot. One of the men pitched forward from the automatic door squeezing and releasing his body as it tried to close.

Lyons stared through the thick haze of gun smoke that clung to the air. He strained his ears, listening for more attackers, but heard only the roar of blood thundering through his ears and the muffled beating of helicopter rotors.

As the din of gunfire died down, he looked at Schwarz, who shot him a grin. “You think they know we’re here?” the electronics genius asked.

Schwarz let his micro-Uzi fall free on its shoulder strap. Wedging himself between the corpse and the elevator door, the Able Team warrior grabbed the corpse by his belt and shirt collar and heaved him into the corridor. A moment later he again fisted the Uzi while propping open the elevator door with his hip, waiting for the others.

His teammates boarded the elevator. Schwarz punched the penthouse button and the elevator lurched to life. All three men ejected spent or partially spent magazines from their weapons and inserted fresh ones. Lyons also fisted the Colt Python.

Holstering his Uzi, Schwarz withdrew a pair of grenades from special pockets in his jacket. As the elevator came to a stop, all three men crouched low, figuring they’d face an almost-instantaneous onslaught of weapons fire when the door opened.

They were right.

The angry chatter of submachine guns sounded and weapons fire lanced through the doorway, splintering the elevator’s interior, a few of the rounds ricocheting around the confined space. Schwarz armed the flash-bang grenade and rolled it into the room while Blancanales and Lyons returned fire from prone positions, their shots shredding upholstering, chewing through wood and showering the room with shredded stuffing.

The first grenade exploded, filling the room with a sudden white flash and a crack of thunder. The thugs’ weapons fire became more sporadic and less focused as men fought to reorient their senses after the startling explosion.

In the meantime, Schwarz activated the second device and tossed it through the doorway. The cylindrical object skittered across the mirror-finished hardwood floors before banking off a table leg and coming to rest next to a large vase. Plumes of gray smoke poured from the grenade, shrouding the room in a seemingly impenetrable haze.

The Able Team warriors used the cover to exit the elevator, crawling on their stomachs, propelling themselves forward on their elbows.

Lyons was the first on his feet, coming up in a crouch. He glided along the wall, using it as a touchstone while he waited for the smoke to clear. The big man had walked about twenty paces when a thug spilled out of the smoke, hacking, rubbing his eyes with one hand, but searching out a target with the muzzle of his handgun. Lyons snap-aimed the Colt, squeezed off two shots, planting both into the man’s center mass. The force shoved his body into a nearby hutch, shattering the etched-glass windows and showering the floor with bits of china, glass and blood.

Motion to his right caused Lyons to whirl. He spotted a second shooter drawing down on him with an automatic pistol. The big ex-cop bent at the knees, aiming the Uzi and triggering it within the span of a heartbeat. As Lyons fired, the Arab shooter triggered a quick burst of autofire that cleaved the air a foot or so above Lyons’s head. In the same instant, a reply from the Able Team leader’s Uzi hammered into the man’s midsection. The gunner emitted a short cry of pain as the rounds drilled into him and dumped him in a heap.

The rattle of weapons fire to Lyons’s right caught his attention. Whirling toward the source, he spotted Blancanales pinned down behind an overturned dining-room table. Concentrated autofire from assault rifles wielded by two of Hakim’s killers shredded the wooden barrier.

The shooters were positioned at twelve and three o’clock from Blancanales’s position. The Able Team commando was curled up behind the table, reloading his Uzi, as rounds from the twin AK-47s pierced the table and sizzled the air around him. Fear for his friend’s safety quickly morphed into white-hot rage.

Lyons brought the Colt into target acquisition, trying to nail the guy closest to him even as he brought the Uzi around to gut the second thug trying to kill his teammate. As he did, a third man sprinted from the hallway, pistol in hand as he ran up on Blancanales to get a clear shot.

“Pol!” Lyons yelled.

As the warning escaped his lips, Lyons caught the vague impression of a lithe shape, little more than a blur, thundering toward him. A second later, someone struck him with a flying tackle. He felt air explode from his lungs as he lost his footing and tumbled over. As he went down, his senses trying to identify this latest threat, he heard gunshots from near Blancanales’s position, followed by an anguished cry.

AS THE SMOKE from his grenade began to clear, Schwarz saw a shape cross the hellground of Hakim’s penthouse, apparently heading for the glass double doors that led onto the rooftop that doubled as a patio and helipad.

Uzi held at the ready, Schwarz threaded between bits of furniture savaged by the fighting and closed in on the fleeing figure, hoping to get a better look. As the door slid open, the gale-force breeze whipped up by a helicopter’s rotor wash exploded through the doorway, the whining of the turbine engines overtaking the crackle of gunfire. The smoke thinned to little more than a haze and Schwarz saw Hakim silhouetted for a moment in the doorway as the man passed through it and onto the rooftop.

Schwarz proceeded for the door at a dead run, vaulting overturned chairs and coffee tables as he closed in on his quarry. At this point, the bastard was their best bet for finding the other Arm of God killers running loose in America, their best bet for preventing a possible terrorist strike, mass murder in America.

That meant escape wasn’t an option for Hakim. At least not while Schwarz and the others lived. One of Hakim’s killers crossed Schwarz’s path, the muzzle of his pistol fast locking on Schwarz. The Able Team warrior fired from the hip, the Uzi stuttering out fire and lead that thrust the man back against a wall, body jerking until Schwarz eased off the trigger. The man slid down the length of the wall, leaving a bloody smear in his wake.

Schwarz barely acknowledged the death as he darted through the doorway. Instantly the transition from indoor light to the brilliant San Diego sun caused him to squint for a moment as his eyes readjusted. He made out the vague impression of Hakim’s silhouette as the man sprinted for the chopper. He considered firing low, raking Hakim’s feet and ankles with bullets, hobbling him and ending his escape plans all at once. He dismissed the idea for the moment, at least until his eyes adjusted. He couldn’t risk shooting too high and killing rather than wounding his quarry.

The men in the chopper had no so such limitations when it came to nailing Schwarz. Gunfire lanced through the air around him as he darted for the fleeing man. Someone was firing upon him from inside the helicopter. Running in a zigzag pattern, the Able Team commando covered the distance between himself and his quarry, his breath growing ragged under the stress of dodging live fire.

A bullet scorched the air next to his cheek. Ducking, he spotted the source, a man crouched in the chopper’s door, a pistol in his hand. The hard guy squeezed off a second shot, but in the same instant, the hovering chopper lurched forward, throwing off his aim, causing the round to slice through the air above Schwarz’s head rather than into his face. Cursing, the warrior lunged forward, landing hard against the fake grass carpeting the patio. The Uzi ground out a quick burst that stabbed into the chopper, driving the man under cover, but not striking him.

In a heartbeat, Schwarz was again up and running across the roof. Reflexively, he squinted against the rotor wash, the incessant beating of the blades tousling his hair, causing his clothes to ripple. The shooter in the helicopter came back into view, exposing a sliver of his face, a shoulder and a knee.

Not much.

But, in this case, maybe enough.

Schwarz tapped out a sustained burst from the Uzi, the shots pounding into the chopper’s skin just next to the crouched shooter. The bullets rent steel, penetrating it before slamming into the terrorist. The guy’s eyes widened and his mouth opened, apparently in a scream. The man’s limbs went rubbery and he pitched forward, his body hanging half in, half out of the chopper, suspended by the harness. His pistol fell to the ground.

Schwarz closed in on Hakim, who, after taking a brief spill, was back on his feet and darting for the helicopter. Schwarz raked his Uzi over the ground at Hakim’s feet. However the slugs caught dead air as the terrorist sprang through the door. In the same instant, the submachine gun clicked dry.

Shit. It would come down to this, Schwarz thought.

Reloading as he ran, the Able Team commando vaulted an overturned table, ducking reflexively as he closed in on the chopper with its whirling blades. Engines whining, the craft lifted off the rooftop, its skids about five feet off the ground.

Springing forward, Schwarz caught the landing skid by looping an arm around it. With his free hand he grabbed the elbow suspending him from the skid, hoping to fortify his position.

The chopper continued its ascent. Suddenly, Schwarz’s world became one of deafening engine noise, nauseating fumes, buffeting winds and the steely pull of gravity. Muscles straining, burning, he freed his hand from his elbow and closed it around the skid, tried to pull himself onto it, his body held back by the rotor wash’s unseen force. He kicked once, twice, unsuccessfully trying to loop his leg over the landing gear.

He chanced an upward glance. Two things registered with him, Hakim’s face contorted with rage and a pistol muzzle tracking in on his head.

BLANCANALES SPOTTED a pair of hardmen pushing through the sliding doors leading from the rooftop patio and fanned out across the luxurious living room. A third man popped out from a kitchen door, molding himself around the jamb and trying to acquire Blancanales as a target. The commando dropped into a crouch and raked a punishing, waist-high burst through the room.

Blancanales’s initial volley of slugs chewed through plaster, slicing and dicing the midsection of the man hiding out in the kitchen. The man uttered a strangled cry accompanied by a stuttering protest from his AK-47 as his trigger finger tightened reflexively in death.

The other two men parted and went to ground, each unloading his assault weapon at Blancanales. Bullets scorching the air around him, the Stony Man warrior pressed his attack. He swept the stammering Uzi in a horizontal line, dropping a hard rain of fiery lead on his opponents.

His weapon clicking empty, Blancanales ejected the machine pistol’s clip as he dived forward. Skidding to a stop underneath a large oak table, he drove a foot into the table, tipped it onto its side, grateful for the cover as he reloaded his weapon. He heard the dull thump of bullets smacking into the furnishing, ripping its finely crafted, curved edges into a jagged line, like a mouthful of broken teeth.

He rolled onto his stomach, peered around the table’s curved edge and poked the Uzi through the opening. He caught one of the hardmen breaking cover, assault rifle snug against his hip as he closed in on Blancanales for the kill. The second shooter was firing sporadically at Blancanales’s position.

He targeted another hardman delivering a blistering volley of 7.62 mm slugs from his AK-47. The commando heard glass shattering overhead, felt shards raining down upon him. He snapped off a short volley of slugs that came within a hairbreadth of slaughtering the gunner.

His combat senses crying out, Blancanales thrust himself to the right before his mind understood why. A chandelier plummeted to the floor, hitting the spot he’d just vacated. The glass light fixture struck the ground and exploded, littering the air with shards that bit into the exposed skin of his face and hands. He shut his eyes, protectively wrapping a forearm around them and riding out the assault of splintered glass.

Blancanales popped open his eyes in time to see his opponent drawing a bead on him with the AK-47. Snap-aiming, he fired the Uzi. The swarm of 9 mm slugs speared through the man’s lower stomach, shoving him back as the bullets devastated his internal organs.

Ears still ringing with gunfire, Blancanales nevertheless sensed motion to his left. He spun and caught another shooter, this one armed with a sawed-off shotgun, popping up from behind a chair. Blancanales stroked the Uzi’s trigger as he swept the SMG in a figure-eight pattern that lanced through the overturned furniture and drilled into the man’s center mass. In a last act of resistance, the man triggered his shotgun, the weapon unleashing a thunderous blast that tore into the ceiling.

Getting cautiously to his feet, Blancanales traded the Uzi for his Beretta. The thrumming of the helicopter sounded from outside. The aircraft’s noise combined with their distance from the street made it impossible to tell whether the police, sirens blaring, were descending upon the building. But he knew it was only a matter of time before the local cops hit the scene. Scanning the room, he took in the battlefield littered with corpses, shattered glass and shredded plaster. He couldn’t help but mutter an oath under his breath.

Lots of carnage and no information.

From behind a couch, he heard a grunt that unmistakably belonged to Lyons.

At the same time he also noticed that Schwarz was nowhere in sight, and a cold sensation traveled down his spine. Where the hell was he?

“C’mon, lady, give me a break here,” Lyons said.

First things first.

The Beretta leading the way, he rounded the couch and found Lyons tussling with a woman. She was dressed in black jeans, fashionable boots and a cranberry-colored, long-sleeved shirt. He couldn’t see her face, but her glossy black hair had spilled over the floor. From her profile, he could tell she was Asian. She also was giving Lyons a pretty fair tussle. Lyons had straddled the woman at the waist. He held her wrists in his big hands, but the woman continued to struggle.

“Get your hands off me, you bastard,” she yelled. Blancanales recognized the voice in an instant, felt his heart skip a beat. Shit! What was she doing here?

“Relax, lady,” Lyons was saying. “You jumped me, remember?”

Shaking off his surprise, he closed in on the pair, each step intensifying the squeezing sensation on his heart. In an instant he recognized the woman from her brown eyes and full, coral-colored lips, to the fiery temper that seemed to emanate from every pore.

It was Donna Ling, a woman from his distant past. And they had a history.

WITH GRAVITY TUGGING at his feet and the punishing wind of the rotor blades smacking into him, Schwarz knew he had only one chance for survival.

He raised the Uzi and fired the weapon at Hakim, dragging it across the man’s exposed knees. Hakim’s eyes widened in shock and the pistol fell from his fingers as 9 mm slugs tore through flesh and bone. He stumbled forward. At the same moment the pilot gave the chopper a hard jerk, an apparent attempt to knock Schwarz from the landing gear. The sudden motion caused Hakim to pitch out the door, his face instantly morphing from shock to fear as he went forward.

Schwarz looked down, saw the distance between himself and the roof. He guessed a good twenty feet already separated him.

Hell.

Letting go of the landing gear, he watched as the rooftop rushed up to meet him.

THE PRESENCE of someone approaching from behind had caused Lyons, his face red with anger and exertion, to glance over his shoulder. When he saw Blancanales, he rolled his eyes, but his teammate barely noticed. In the same instant, Blancanales’s gaze intersected with Ling’s and they stared at each other. He watched as the anger and fear fueling her struggle drained away to be quickly replaced by shock, the same emotion roiling inside him.

“Let her go, Carl,” Blancanales said.

“What?” Lyons shouted. “Are you crazy?”

The woman stopped struggling, whipped her head toward Blancanales. “Pol?” Ling said.

“I can explain,” Blancanales said to Lyons.

“This ought to be good,” Lyons fired back.

More gunfire crackled outside, followed by the sickening thud of something heavy hitting the roof. Almost immediately, the chopper’s whine grew louder and the sound of the aircraft’s engine more distant.

Gadgets!

Blancanales was sprinting for the door. Lyons was on his feet and following, the Colt Python gripped in his right hand.

The Able Team warriors burst through the door. Blancanales swept his gaze over the rooftop. He saw a man, Hakim, writhing on the ground, his pant legs stained dark with blood, his flesh rent by bullets. Schwarz stepped into view, his Beretta held in front of him, muzzle aimed at Hakim as he closed in on the Arab. He was shouting for the man to stay down.

The thrumming of the chopper’s engine grew louder. Peering up, he saw the craft circling and coming back for another pass, its side door pulled open. A hardman cut loose with a burst from the AK-47. The volley of rounds slammed into Hakim, causing him to convulse wildly. A half-dozen geysers of blood erupted from his torso.

Schwarz dropped into a crouch and fired upward. A trio of bullets sailed through the aircraft’s door, driving the man inside. The chopper grabbed altitude almost immediately and left.

“Damn!” Lyons yelled.

Able Team converged at Hakim’s body. Schwarz already had moved to the terrorist’s side and was examining him for a pulse. He looked up at the two men and shook his head.

“Need a séance to interrogate this guy,” he said.

“Wonderful,” Lyons commented. “I guess we’re back at square one.”

Blancanales looked over at Ling. “Maybe not.”

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