“THIRTY SECONDS TO SRB STAGING.”

Something suddenly speared through the sky in the distance, darting across the windshield like a laser-bolt effect from a movie. Schwarz tensed, but the angle was all wrong for something coming after the Arcadia.

“What the hell is going on?” Cole growled.

“Darkest night…” Broome gasped. “Mission control, are you tracking that on radar?”

“We’re trying. It came within twenty-five miles of your course,” Thet said on the other end. “Its trajectory is toward the Caribbean.”

“What is it?” Cole demanded.

Lyons closed his eyes, his jaw set firmly. “It’s the opening shot. This war has reached the hot stage.”

Splintered Sky
Don Pendleton

Stony Man®

AMERICA’S ULTRA-COVERT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Douglas P. Wojtowicz for his contribution to this work.

SPLINTERED SKY

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

PROLOGUE

Near Yuma, Arizona

Sabrina Bertonni winced as she clutched her hand to the bloody gap in her side. The raider’s bullet had merely grazed her, but her clothes were soaked through from what had only been a little nick. Other than keeping her hand clamped over the injury, she didn’t move. The limp bulk of Harold Maguire slumped against her body, casting her in shadow. Maguire’s body shook violently as the raiders emptied more bullets into the group of rocket scientists who had tried to escape out the back of the laboratory.

The men were masked, clad in black from head to toe, wielding automatic weapons that made almost no sound. They moved with a similar eerie silence. Bertonni’s lucidity was hampered by blood loss and the concussion she’d received when her head smacked a rock on the desert floor with the added momentum of Maguire’s corpse, but from the way the assault force moved, it was as if they were living excerpts from her worst nightmares. Their speed and coordination, and just how quietly they had laid waste to the Burgundy Lake Testing Facility gave her the impression of shadows come to life.

Though none of the black-clad raiders had spoken, their goal was clear to Bertonni, especially since she was one of the scientists working on brand-new, high-mobility steering thrusters for precision orbital maneuvering. Compact and fuel-efficient, they would be very important in the next generation of spacecraft replacing the aging, worn-out space shuttle. The maneuvering thrusters would make the expansion of the International Space Station easier, and provide the ability to perform round trips to the moon. Bertonni had no doubt that the thrusters could provide extra maneuverability for combat-oriented suborbital fighters and bombers, or armed satellites. The military potential couldn’t be underestimated. The kind of firepower and professionalism displayed by the armed marauders lent credence to what the enemies of the United States thought of the design.

The security force was provided by the U.S. Air Force, heavily armed and trained soldiers who were responsible for protecting nuclear bomber groups. These men had trained hard against Navy SEAL Opfor units to hone their combat skills and antiinfiltration awareness.

Fat lot of good that did, Bertonni thought. In the distance she heard the blast of C-4 detonating. The ground shook under her, and Maguire’s corpse slid off her prone form. She stirred, looking around. The shadowy raiders were nowhere to be seen, but with their bombs going off, she knew that they weren’t going to stick around. She fished in her pocket for her cell phone and hit Send to 9-1-1. The lighted LED screen showed she had no bars. The remote Burgundy Lake facility had been chosen for its distance from civilization and privacy, but the administrators had set up a cell tower to make things easier for the staff. Bertonni knew that the calls were monitored through that tower, the better to prevent sensitive data from being transmitted outside the testing laboratories, but right now she needed help.

The phone didn’t ring. The raiders had been too efficient, probably taking out the cell tower first.

Bertonni pocketed the phone and crawled, scurrying deeper into the desert, away from the dormitory building. She’d gotten twenty yards when the apartment shook. She looked back to see a cloud of dust and debris swell, escaping through shattered windows and burst doors. The vomitous wave of ejecta hit her hard and knocked her off her feet. Her head swam and she stumbled on the uneven ground. She wrapped her arm around her nose and mouth, filtering out the choking dust with the cloth of her sleeve.

With a kick, she pushed herself forward and struggled to get farther from the building, hugging the ground, trying not be seen by any straggling marauders.

The air popped and crackled with weapons fire, and her instincts threw her flat to the dirt again. The cloud hadn’t dispersed, but someone opened fire into the airborne dust. It was the raiders, and they had to have seen her in the shadows just before the exploding dormitory obscured the scene.

Bertonni crawled, scurrying back toward the destroyed housing, knowing that once the dust settled, she’d be out in the open, an easy target for the brutal gunmen who had visited destruction on the testing facility. When the swirling wisps of the cloud finally dissipated, she was snugged, caked in dust, under the low remnant of a wall. Her breathing slowed, her shoulders tensed as she did her best to impersonate rubble.

A voice cut through the night. “I told you, I saw someone!”

“Fuck it, we’ve got to go. Time’s wasting,” another answered.

“But…”

“Now!” the other ordered. “We won’t be ID’d.” In the distance, she heard large trucks grinding into gear. “You want to walk to Mexico?”

There was a sigh of exasperation and then the sound of running feet.

Cargo trucks grunted and grumbled, rolling away before she could even dare to relax. She sucked in a breath of clean air, exhausted, and light-headed from blood loss.

No one was visible.

Bertonni was safe, for now, but she rolled onto her back, looking at the sky. Stars twinkled above her. She gulped air and looked at the cell phone in her hand.

She had one bar of signal. She thumbed 9-1-1 and hit send.

“Nine-one-one dispatch. What is the nature of your emergency…”

“I’ve been shot. Everyone else is dead. Burgundy Lake Testing Facility,” the woman gasped. “Help me.”

Her strength gave out and her fingers loosened on the phone. She could hear the dispatcher’s voice, tinny through the tiny speaker, and she held on, saying, “I’m awake” every few seconds until she saw the flashing glare of red lights.

CHAPTER ONE

Ten miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border

Hermann Schwarz watched the stars sprayed across the black night as Jack Grimaldi piloted the Hughes 500 NOTAR across the Texan sky. The inky-black background with the glittering field of pinpoints reminded the Able Team electronics genius of one of his lifelong dreams–to soar among the stars. And he had been one of the lucky few who had done just that.

Schwarz’s other lifelong dream was more pedestrian. He wanted to help people. Though he was one-third of one of the world’s most highly experienced and blooded combat teams, the ultimate goal of Able Team wasn’t to engage in bloodshed. It was to protect the citizens of the U.S. Schwarz had been called an assassin by various enemies, but the term “assassin” implied a callous disregard for human life. Certainly, he had a measure of ruthlessness, but it was only displayed against opponents who were demonstrably hostile and violent. While he had no qualms about shooting heavily armed men in the back to end their potential to harm himself, his partners or noncombatants, Schwarz was not murderous.

Killing was just an aspect of his job, just as much as tinkering on new electronic surveillance devices and security countermeasures. Schwarz turned from the starry night sky back to his Combat Personal Data Assistant, a compact little computer that provided the gadgeteer with a suite of powerful tools to make his work easier. He kept the illumination low on the monitor as he scanned the screen. Its powerful satellite modem, akin to the satellite phones, allowed him Internet access even without a WiFi source for miles around, even though a backup transceiver would allow him to piggyback on someone else’s modem if necessary. The CPDA was connected to Stony Man Farm, thousands of miles away in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, allowing him to be plugged into the network run by Aaron Kurtzman and the cyberwizards of his team.

“Hey, Nerd Man.” Carl Lyons spoke up, interrupting Schwarz’s reveries. “You getting this?”

“I am,” Rosario Blancanales announced, answering for his friend. He had a pair of light amplification binoculars scanning out the window. “To the north.”

“Minimal profile on the terrain radar,” Lyons answered. Sitting shotgun in the Little Bird helicopter, his hard blue eyes scanned the screens devoted to the Forward Looking Infrared–FLIR–and Terrain Looking Radar, both keen electronic sensors installed in a bulbous nose projecting from the front of the helicopter’s teardrop shape, lending it the appearance of a porpoise whose snout had been punched off center. “But we’ve got headlights on the FLIR.”

“Low-light headlights,” Blancanales said. “Probably Ultra-violet or IR illumination to make it easier for them to run dark. I didn’t see the vehicles directly, but I saw the ground lit up.”

Schwarz looked to where Blancanales was sweeping the horizon. He ran his stylus over the CPDA, popping open a window that displayed a satellite view of their immediate surroundings.

Lyons turned in his seat and Blancanales leaned over. They all saw, through the IR imaging of a National Reconnaissance Office satellite, a cone of illuminated terrain with tiny stars of light one after another.

“IR beacons so they can follow each other,” Lyons suggested.

“This way only one vehicle has to have its illuminators on, but the others can follow,” Schwarz said. “We got lucky. If you hadn’t seen the ground lit up by IR lights and given Bear a heading, we’d have completely missed them.”

Schwarz’s mind continued to race, analyzing the situation. This night, Able Team was in the air, racing to intercept a smuggling operation that the Farm had heard whispers about. Someone had been monitoring Border Patrol schedules, tailing Jeeps as if looking for holes. This was something more than just a coyote operation snooping for a gap in the defenses. The human smugglers bringing illegals across the border didn’t need to track the USBP’s agents and vehicles, and wouldn’t even dream of tickling their computer system with hacker fingers in cyberspace.

Whatever this operation was about, it wasn’t smuggling illegal immigrants. Able Team had come into conflict at the border several times before, and it could have been anything from a large shipment of drugs to nuclear weapons.

Schwarz’s headset warbled with a beep from his communicator. He keyed the com unit, hearing Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman’s voice in his earphone. He immediately switched it so everyone in the helicopter could hear their support back at the Farm.

“We’ve got a call. Someone hit Burgundy Lake Testing Facility,” the Stony Man cyberwizard said. “Nine-one-one call center got the news five minutes ago. A lone survivor says that the raiders just bugged out.”

“We believe we have their convoy in our sights,” Lyons announced. “And you already know Gadgets has them highlighted on satellite imagery.”

“Affirmative,” Kurtzman returned. “Still creepy how that little box of his keeps him plugged into our network.”

Schwarz smirked. “You know me, I’m five bucks and a nuclear weapon short of controlling the world.”

“Which is why I’ll never pay you back anything you lend me,” Blancanales quipped. “Burgundy Lake, that’s not far from the border, relatively speaking. This has got to be a part of what drew our attention down here.”

“What are they testing there?” Lyons inquired.

Schwarz tapped the CPDA screen a couple of times with his stylus. “They’re on a NASA grant. High-efficiency rocket thrusters.”

“Give the man a cigar,” Kurtzman stated. “You’ll put us out of business with that thing, Gadgets.”

“Nah. I’m just piggybacking on Carmen’s workstation. She pulled up the information a moment before she got it to you,” Schwarz stated.

Kurtzman chuckled. “So you let us do all the work, and you look brilliant.”

Lyons snorted. “It’ll take a lot of work to make Gadgets look anything close to brilliant.”

Schwarz lifted his middle finger to inform Lyons that the Able Team leader was still number one in his book. Lyons grinned and turned to Grimaldi. “Jack, see that wash down there? It’s the only path through these foothills that’ll give the convoy a quick route south. Land us right there. We’ll set up an ambush.”

“Good spot,” Grimaldi mentioned. He grimaced with regret. “Wish this thing had some guns on it.”

“Take off and pull back to an overwatch. We might need a quick pickup, but the convoy could have the firepower to deal with aircraft.”

Grimaldi swung the Little Bird around, depositing Able Team at Lyons’s suggested position. It was several miles ahead of the convoy, but still in their path. The helicopter had been set up for quiet running with engine baffles and sideways projecting speakers that canceled out the racket of the rotor by interrupting the noise with the same sound, aimed back at the rotors at a perpendicular angle. When the two sound sources crossed, they nullified each other, rendering the aircraft no louder than an idling automobile.

There was no doubt that the convoy was up to no good. A line of trucks running on “invisible” headlights and tail beacons at night were the tactics of thieves and smugglers, not of innocents. Burgundy Lake was less than twenty miles north of the border, but directly to the south there was a range of uneven hills without anything more than a goat trail wending through them to cross into Mexico. Schwarz pulled his CPDA from its pocket on his load-bearing vest, checking on the satellite view from above. Something was wrong.

Lyons looked over his shoulder at the small but crystal-clear screen. His big fists clenched and relaxed, tendons popping like firecrackers as his adrenaline kicked into his bloodstream. “They’re operating on strict discipline. The beacons have cut out. It was a refresher flash so that the convoy could maintain its formation. Only the headlights are still running hot.”

“The right place at the right time with the right kind of eyes,” Schwarz mused. “One thing wrong, and they would have gotten away. And we were only here because they were so professional and thorough in their planning and recon, they left enough fingerprints to make us wonder what was going on.”

“Okay,” Lyons said. “We’ve got six vehicles. One truck and several SUVs. They’re running dark and they’ve got radar-absorbent materials rendering them almost invisible. We can also assume they’ve got armor on their rides, and considering the destruction they’ve wreaked, they’re heavily armed and ruthless.”

“Bear, do we have any images of the actual assault?” Blancanales asked over his communicator.

“No,” Kurtzman replied. “We have some NRO satellites looking at the area, but we were looking at the border, not any facilities. I have Hunt and Akira scanning recordings to see if we can see the raiders in action, but nothing yet.”

“This has got to be what drew us down here,” Lyons interjected over his headset. “A hit on Burgundy Lake? Wonder why they didn’t take out the communications.”

“We received a report of a sudden blackout in the facility’s cell tower coverage. It’s still out, but somehow the survivor got a signal,” Kurtzman told him.

“Steel-framed buildings,” Schwarz said. “Usually the steel understructure isn’t preferred because it acts as too good of an antenna, pulling down all manner of interference. However, out in the middle of nowhere, the prefabricated structures are exactly what are needed to set things up on the cheap. If the raiders set explosives and blew up the place, then they undoubtedly left wreckage behind. Our survivor must have huddled among the wreckage, and a remaining girder of the freestanding superstructure formed an impromptu antenna.”

“Wouldn’t be too efficient,” Kurtzman mentioned. “The specific frequency range–”

“All you’d need was at least one bar of signal. The survivor’d be better off with a walkie-talkie,” Schwarz advised, cutting him off. “Shit…Bear, check the satellite imagery from when I first high lit the convoy. I think one’s missing.”

“Checking it,” Kurtzman said. “One beacon has cut out.”

“They’re altering course,” Schwarz told his partners. “Something’s up.”

Lyons ground his teeth in frustration. The trucks were veering back toward the north when he looked over to Schwarz and the dim glow from his CPDA screen. He then turned his gaze skyward, switching his com link to the Stony Man Farm cybernetics crew.

“Bear, check to see if you’re the only ones on the NRO’s party line. The bad guys are changing course, and they might be keyed into the same eyes in the sky.”

“Good instincts, Ironman. How’d you guess?” Kurtzman asked.

“Because we’re the only ones watching them,” Lyons returned.

“One vehicle just dropped off the grid. I can’t even find it by its illuminators,” Schwarz replied. Using a stylus, he dragged the focus of the camera, and stopped. “We’re visible to our own satellite. Damn it…”

Lyons and Blancanales returned to scoping out the darkened landscape, alert that they were literally in the spotlight, the National Reconnaissance Office satellite’s unblinking electronic eye pointing them out to the very force they had used it to spy upon.

“They’ll come in hard and fast, and we’re sitting ducks,” Blancanales replied. “At least in comparison to them.”

“We could call Jack back, but we might only expose him to fire,” Schwarz returned.

“And we’d lose track of the convoy,” Lyons snarled. “No, we get ourselves some wheels and continue the chase.”

Blancanales and Schwarz smiled. When it came to the burly blond ex-cop, the simplest solution was always his choice. There was one vehicle in the area that they could use to chase down and intercept the escaping convoy. The fact that it was filled with heavily armed gunmen was no hindrance in the Ironman’s mind. Lyons had no problem sitting on the gore-soaked bucket seats of an SUV while chasing after high-tech raiders.

Fortunately, the men of Able Team were prepared for a war. The trio had opted for DSA-58 carbines, compact versions of the FN FAL. Normally, the team utilized some form of the M-16 rifle, but with the long ranges and flat terrain of the desert they were in, they went for the 7.62 mm NATO round for the excellent reach it possessed over the 5.56 mm NATO. The smaller, lighter bullets would be blown off course by a stiff desert wind at farther than 500 meters, and at that range, a reliable kill was an iffy proposition. For the FAL, it was child’s play to cause a lethal injury at twice that distance.

The American-made FALs were supplemented by Smith & Wesson Military and Police pistols. The M&Ps were sixteen-shot, .40-caliber autoloaders in a package no larger than a 1911. Attached to Picatinny rails under the pistols’ barrels were white light and laser aiming modules, as much for recoil control as for illumination purposes. Able Team had chosen a proved border-fighting load, the 165-grain jacketed hollowpoint round, as accurate and powerful as a .357 Magnum round out to one hundred yards. The trio opted to leave the suppressors off the thread-barreled handguns, not needing stealth at the cost of increased range. Blancanales had added an M-203 grenade launcher to the forearm of his DSA-58 carbine, while Lyons wore a Mossberg 500 Cruiser pistol-grip pump shotgun in a sheath on his back. The Cruiser had no shoulder stock, but the big ex-cop had a Knox Comp-Stock installed, as well as a stabilizing single-point sling. Schwarz’s extra load had been taken up by his various electronics gear.

Lyons changed out the dutch-load of shot and slugs to go completely to Brenneke slugs, which turned the compact scattergun into a large-bore rifle spitting out devastating .72-inch slugs. Anyone coming at them would catch a face full of big bullets that hit hard.

Even though Able Team knew that a single vehicle had broken off to break their ambush, it still came as a surprise when they heard the warbling whistle of a 40 mm grenade arcing through the sky.

“Cover!” Lyons bellowed, throwing himself into a rut on the uneven ground.

Schwarz dropped behind a berm that rippled up at the base of a foothill instants before the world broke apart around him. Six and a half ounces of high explosive detonated only a few yards away, the lethal concussion wave and shrapnel deflecting off the small slope. No jagged bits of segmented wire tore through his flesh, but the powerful ripples of force coming off the detonation expanded, rolling into him.

The stars above swirled chaotically as he struggled to retain consciousness.

CHAPTER TWO

Carl Lyons saw Schwarz flop on the ground in reaction to the grenade detonation and cursed under his breath.

â€œPol! Gadgets is hit,â€ he hissed into his throat mike. â€œCover him.â€

â€œOne sec,â€ Blancanales responded. His own 40 mm launcher popped off a shell. Instead of returning fire, it threw an M-583 parachute flare into the sky. Burning at 90,000 candlepower, it lit up the general area where the enemy grenade had come from, illuminating a spot two hundred yards in diameter with night visionâ€“frying light. Even bare, night-attuned eyes would have trouble adapting immediately to the sudden blaze of white light slashing a hole in the dark.

Lyons spotted two gunners flinch from the sudden brightness, and brought up his FAL carbine, triggering a burst of high-powered rifle slugs at them across the distance. One of the enemy shooters jerked violently, crushed by the devastating 7.62 mm NATO bullets shredding through body armor and churning up vital organs. The other ducked quickly toward the cover of the uneven ground at roadside. Beyond the 650-foot circle of light descending from the parachute flare, with his DSA-58â€™s muzzle-blast dampened by an efficient flash hider, the Able Team leader had the opportunity to chase the enemy gunman with another burst as wild rounds snapped randomly through the darkness.

The enemy gunmen hadnâ€™t been ready for their night game to be cast in a high-definition 90,000-candlepower spotlight, and only seven seconds had passed in the 40-second burn of the parachute flare. Through the holographic reflex sight, Lyons picked up a third rifleman who exposed only a small portion of his head and shoulders around the side of a big rock. The sight was a quick reaction design, and didnâ€™t provide an increase of magnification, just a tiny, projected red dot in the middle of a glass screen that gave the big ex-cop a faster focus point. The projected red dot obscured the enemy shooterâ€™s head and shoulders, and Lyons milked the trigger. At 650 rounds per minute, the carbine chewed out a blistering salvo of bullets that spat dirt and stone splinters up in a cloud.

Another 40 mm grenade sizzled through the sky, and Lyons glanced back to Blancanales and Schwarz.

The electronics genius had recovered his senses, but Blancanales had instinctively hooked his arm under Schwarzâ€™s and yanked him along. Lyons bellowed, equalizing the pressure in his ears as he stuffed himself into the bottom of a gully beside the goat path.

The darkened desert shook with a thunderbolt strike, and Lyons could feel his load-bearing vest ripple as the concussion burst swept across him. Blancanalesâ€™s grenade launcher burped again while Schwarzâ€™s own DSA-58 carbine snarled a vengeful response. This time, the Puerto Rican Able Team veteran popped off an M379-A1 Airburst grenade. Instead of providing a miniature sun dangling from a parachute, the Airburst shell looped into an arc, landed on the ground and a black powder charge propelled the main grenade five feet into the air before its fuse wound down to detonation. At a height of five feet off the ground, the Airburst exploded, spraying out a sheet of lethal shrapnel that would kill anything within a sixteen-foot radius of the blast, but still could wound as far out as four hundred feet.

A wailing scream of pain as shrapnel tore through body armor and fragile flash and bone beneath provided the testimony to its effectiveness. Lyons spotted the gunman who had dodged his initial burst, clutching his shredded face and neck. Heâ€™d lost his weapon when Blancanalesâ€™s shrapnel had scythed across him, and Lyons was about to put a few mercy rounds into the gunman when Schwarz nailed him.

â€œCan you run?â€ Lyons asked over the headset.

â€œYeah,â€ Schwarz replied. â€œThe concussion wave only knocked the wind out of me.â€

â€œWeâ€™ve lost the element of surprise.â€ Blancanales spoke up, pointing to the flare as it sputtered through the last of its forty-second lifespan, burning down to a lifeless ember that flopped under its parachute on the ground. â€œThat baby was seen for miles.â€

â€œI saw their truck,â€ Lyons told him. â€œIt did its job. Gadgetsâ€¦â€

â€œIâ€™ll get Jack on station,â€ Schwarz returned.

The trio raced across the desert, wary that they might not have finished off all of their opponents.

Charging up the goat path to the SUV took only another half minute. Lyons paused at roadside for a heartbeat to pop off a single round into a sprawled corpse to ensure it would never rise again. He noted with grim humor that Schwarz had been the one to nail the enemy gunman wielding the grenade launcher.

The enemyâ€™s SUV had a guard with a compact machine pistol. The man rushed to get back behind the wheel of his vehicle, firing across the hood, but Lyons and Blancanales stitched him with twin bursts of autofire. Blown nearly out of his boots, the guardâ€™s corpse flopped in a boneless mass, door wide open.

Blancanales checked the dead man and peeled the night-vision goggles off his face.

â€œKeys are in the ignition,â€ Lyons announced, crawling into the SUVâ€™s shotgun seat.

â€œGood,â€ the Able Team commando replied. He slipped behind the wheel, fired up the engine and spun out.

Schwarz was in the back, picking up the FLIR camera feed from Grimaldiâ€™s helicopter, correlating the image with his GPS data. â€œTheyâ€™re looping around, going for a second run at the border. Theyâ€™re either certain their boys did the job, or theyâ€™re going to come in hot and heavy.â€

â€œIâ€™m not going to wait to see what their response is,â€ Lyons said. He wedged his Mossberg shotgun into the seat well and rolled down the window, providing himself with room to shoot his carbine with its stock folded. â€œNut up and do it.â€

â€œItâ€™s worked this long,â€ Schwarz agreed.

Blancanales nodded. He could see the beacons on the enemy convoy blink out, their headlights flaring to life in an effort to blind him, but they were so far away, and the wily Able Team expert was so familiar with low-light operations, he avoided any discomfort. Turning his head to observe the cast-off infrared illumination instead of staring into the â€œinvisibleâ€ light sources directly with his NVGs, he was able to keep his course to intercept the enemy trucks.

Lyons had traded his carbine with Blancanales and stuffed an M-433 HEDP shell into its grenade launcher. The SUV jostled him, rocking hard in an effort to throw his aim off, but Lyons had earned the name Ironman due to his phenomenal strength. Heâ€™d braced himself in the passenger seat, pointed at a raiderâ€™s SUV and touched off the grenade. The high-explosive, dual-purpose shell spiraled toward the enemy vehicle at 350 feet per second, smashing into the grille of the onrushing Jeep. The M-433 exploded, a spit-back assembly built into the shell focusing a blistering-hot jet of molten copper, propelled by several ounces of A5 explosive through the engine block and into the cab of the SUV. The raidersâ€™ driver and shotgun man were killed as the dashboard, speared by liquid metal and high explosives, turned to a mass of jagged, burning fragments that tore through their chests, legs and faces. Driverless, the enemy Jeep swerved into a rut and somersaulted in the air before it could bleed off speed. The men in the back seat, merely wounded by the cone of deadly shrapnel that used to be their ride, screamed for a moment before the airborne SUV slammed, roof-first into the Texas desert. The SUV had been designed to handle roll-overs, but no maker could have predicted their vehicle would be lifted up and hurled at the ground like a toy. The survivorsâ€™ screams cut off instantly as their bodies were compressed to ground beef under three-quarters of a ton of off-roading metal.

The remaining three escorts for the big trucks swung out, gunners ripping off streams of autofire. Schwarz had targeted one of the Suburbans as they swung parallel to Able Team for a moment, his hammering carbine carving a bloody swathe through the open windows that the enemy gunners fired from. The vehicle that Schwarz raked swung wildly off course, a lifeless body flopping half in and out of the window heâ€™d used as a turret. Schwarz, a veteran of countless gun battles inside of a vehicle, had known to tuck himself low, using the window-reinforced door as his shield, rather than expose his head and shoulders in an effort to utilize the opening as a turret.

Blancanales swung the front of Able Teamâ€™s captured Suburban on an intercept course for a second of the raidersâ€™ vehicles, giving the wheel a jerk at the last moment to stab the corner of the front fender into the rear wheel of the passing enemy. The fender deformed on Able Teamâ€™s ride, but the rear axle of the hostile Suburban snapped like a twig under the force of the SUV hammering into it. The mysterious marauders wailed in dismay as their truck spiraled through the desert, back wheels flying off.

â€œLast oneâ€™s keeping its distance,â€ Lyons noted. â€œIâ€™m only getting glancing shots on it. Their driverâ€™s good.â€

â€œForget him for now,â€ Blancanales snapped. â€œWeâ€™ve got the main trucks to deal with.â€

Lyons glanced back at the pair of trucks. They were two-and-a-half-ton M35 trucks, and they were lumbering toward the goat path as fast as they could roll, taking advantage of the distraction provided by their escorts. The Able Team leader sneered and pushed home another M-433, then remembered the possibility that the marauders had taken captives.

Rather than risk noncombatants, he pulled his Mossberg Cruiser 500. The Brenneke slug load would be devastating in close quarters, and not as risky as buckshot to bystanders. â€œSwing up close on the lead truck. If we can stop it while weâ€™ve taken up the roadsideâ€¦â€

â€œGood plan,â€ Blancanales agreed, and he gunned the engine, zooming past the second transport truck. Schwarz scanned the back, but could only see black-clad troopers in the shadows of the canvas tarp.

Blancanales swerved between the two big M35s, putting the passenger side in close contact with the tailgate of the lead vehicle. Lyons threw open the door and launched himself from the shotgun seat, his Mossberg gripped tightly in his right fist. His beefy left hand wrapped around the top of the tailgate, and he hauled himself up as his partners veered away. Swinging over into the tarp-covered bed, he spotted a quartet of gun-toting men surrounding a pair of crates. In the corner, a coverall-wearing man, his head bleeding from blunt trauma, curled up.

Lyons evaluated the scene in half the time it took for the gunmen to react to his bulk surging over the top of the tailgate. The Knox pistol-grip Comp Stock gave the Able Team leader all the leverage he needed to swing up the Mossberg Cruiser 500 like a handgun and fire a single 12-gauge slug through the chest of the closest gunman. A .72-inch missile ripped through the raiderâ€™s breastbone, reducing it to free-floating splinters as the solid hunk of lead tore his heart from its arteries like a miniature bulldozer.

Lyons immediately shifted his aim and stabbed the next of the armor-clad raiders in the breastbone with the point of his Cruiser 500. Since Lyons had John â€œCowboyâ€ Kissinger modify the muzzle of the weapon with a Tromix Shark Brake Door Breacher, and, given his awesome strength, the shotgun became a spike-toothed spear that made ribs crunch even through body armor. The hapless enemy grabbed the shotgun instinctively, bracing the slide. Lyons thanked his opponent for playing into his hands by quickly wrenching the Cruiser 500 back and forth, his foeâ€™s grasp enabling him to pump the shotgun one-handed. A second solid 12-gauge slug exploded from the muzzle, tearing into the bruised sternum of the marauder and exploding out of his spine. The shooter behind him was bobbing and weaving, trying to get an angle on the burly killing machine attached to the tailgate when the Brenneke slug sliced across his biceps and glanced across his ribs.

This time, the gunmanâ€™s body armor protected him, if only because the deadly slug had been slowed down by the armor and torso of another person. The impact still threw the guy off balance and he let go of his grip on his rifle, one hand tearing through the canvas cover in an attempt to get an anchor to remain standing. Unfortunately for the raider, the force needed to tear through the tarpaulin had shattered several of his fingers, and with only one digit to maintain a hold, the next jolt of the truck sent him reeling across the crates in the middle of the bed.

Lyonsâ€™s legs and support arm surged with power and he hurled himself over the tailgate. He somersaulted to cushion his landing on the bed where the injured raider had fallen. As the enemy shooter struggled to bring up his rifle singlehanded, Lyons foiled his efforts at self-defense by spiking both of his heels down into the murderous marauderâ€™s chest. Aching ribs snapped under the ferocious power of the Able Team leaderâ€™s devastating kicks, and the gunmanâ€™s mouth became a crimson volcano of burbling blood and bile.

Lyons took the opportunity to rack the action of his Mossberg with his now free left hand, just in time to see the head of the last of the hostiles in the truck poke up.

â€œDonâ€™t do it!â€ the raider shouted. â€œIâ€™ll killâ€”â€

Lyons pulled the trigger on the shooter before he could even complete, let alone make good on his threat to shoot the cowering figure in coveralls sharing the carnal pit. One and three-eighths ounces of rifled lead struck the loudmouth between his eyes and popped his skull like a balloon filled with gray gelatin. It was a vicious, ruthless action, but the Able Team leader knew that the black-clad gunman wouldnâ€™t have worried about shooting either Lyons or the helpless hostage. He got to his feet and moved over to the bloody-faced man in the corner, clicking on a pocket flashlight to get some intel on who the victim was.

â€œWho are you?â€ the balding hostage asked. Just beneath his high hairline was an oval-shaped section of livid skin. Lyons recognized the injury as caused by the steel tubular butt stock of an M-4 assault rifle, just like the black-clad gunmen were wearing. He gripped the man by the chin and checked his eyes.

The pupils dilated as the flashlightâ€™s glare stabbed into them, so the head trauma was only superficial, torn skin seeping blood from a glancing impact. Lyons was glad for that, because he wasnâ€™t in the best position to deal with a victim suffering from a major concussion or slipping into shock.

â€œIâ€™m a friend,â€ Lyons answered. â€œStay here and curl up. Weâ€™re going to make certain you are safe.â€

â€œWhere are you going?â€ the man, Leon Paczesny according to his Burgundy Lake Testing Facility identification badge, asked.

â€œTruckâ€™s still moving. Iâ€™m going to schedule a stop to let you off,â€ Lyons told him. He returned the Mossberg to its sheath on his back and pulled the Smith & Wesson MP-40 from its holster. â€œSit tight, literally.â€

Paczesny nodded, tucking his knees up to his chest and resting his bloodied forehead between them. Lyons unsheathed his combat knife and sliced an exit hole through the canvas. He climbed through the tarp and grabbed onto the back of the cab.

Able Teamâ€™s captured Chevy Suburban was at Lyonsâ€™s side, Schwarz firing his DSA carbine through the back window of the armored raider vehicle at the two remaining enemy SUVs which were struggling to keep up with the racing convoy. Lyons grimaced as he heard the rip-snap of the FALâ€™s high-velocity rifle bullets spearing through the darkness. By now, all pretense of stealth had disappeared, and the Burgundy Lake raiders had switched on conventional headlights. Lyons stiff-armed his MP-40 and fired a volley as fast as he could work the trigger, six 165-grain jacketed hollowpoint rounds striking the windshield behind a pair of enemy headlights. The Able Team commander focused his fire on the Suburbans, not certain if the other truck had a hostage, as well.

Safety glass deformed and whitened under Lyonsâ€™s barrage, shocking the driver into slamming on the brakes. The second Chevy flashed forward to take up the slack, but its hood smoked, pouring out thick clouds from where its shattered radiator and shot-up V-8 burned. The fact that the Suburban continued to rattle onward to keep up with the rolling battle despite a magazine of .30-caliber bullets in it was testament the truckâ€™s engineering. Unfortunately, no amount of SUV design excellence could have provided the raiders with protection from a 40 mm buckshot grenade.

Firing the equivalent of three 12-gauge shotgun shellsâ€™ worth of number 4 buck, the M-576 turned Blancanalesâ€™s M-203 into a supershotgun. At maximum dispersal, the M-203 could put out a cone of death almost one hundred feet wide. At the range between Schwarz in the back of Able Teamâ€™s Suburban to the enemy vehicle, the spread only ensured that a seven-foot diameter hose of death collapsed the windshield and perforated the surviving gunmen in the Jeep.

The smoldering vehicle rolled on, glancing off the fender of the second M-35 cargo truck before rebounding into a ditch. As tortured steel collapsed under its own inertia, gasoline squeezed out of severed fuel lines and turned into a blossom of fire licking into the night sky.

Lyons returned his attention to the cab, only to see the shotgun rider of the lead two-and-a-half-ton truck climbing out the passenger door, a Glock in hand. Lyons swept the MP-40 back toward him and triggered a pair of slugs. The bouncing truck was too much for Lyons to maintain his aim, so the bullets went high and to the right. Only one wide-mouthed round clipped the enemy gunmanâ€™s shoulder, gouging a deep laceration through the muscle. The impact was still enough to throw the raiderâ€™s aim off, his Glock punching holes through the roof of the cab. A sudden spray of blood darkened the driver window, and the M-36 cargo truck lurched violently. Lyons tightened his grasp on the iron rib holding up the tarp, and though his feet left the thin ledge he was using as a running board, he wasnâ€™t thrown from the vehicle.

â€œHang on!â€ Lyons bellowed to Paczesny. â€œWeâ€™re going to crash!â€

The truck swerved off the road and Lyons twisted, hurling his Smith & Wesson into the bed and using both hands to haul him through the tear in the canvas. He tucked his legs up and behind him just as the two-and-a-half-ton truck lurched and skidded onto its side. The steel ribs held as Lyons flopped against the bottom of the seats. The packing crates shattered, spilling prototype motors onto the canvas where shredding tarpaulin snagged them and ground them to useless metal splinters under the coverâ€™s ribbing.

Lyons looked around for Paczesny and saw the balding, bloody-headed man holding his Smith & Wesson.

â€œHad to go and fuck up everything didnâ€™t you, Blondie?â€ Paczesny snarled, jabbing the pistol toward Lyons. The faux hostage took in a breath, but Lyons straightened his legs, using the bench he laid on as a launch pad, slamming into the gun-toting fake and knocking them both out the back of the sliding truck. The pair hit the ground, tumbling, MP-40 flying clear of stunned fingers as the second two-and-a-half-ton truck whirled past, missing them by inches.

Paczesnyâ€™s fists rained on the Able Team leaderâ€™s neck and shoulders in a futile attempt to dislodge Lyons. Without leverage, the blows were merely annoying, and Lyons whipped his forehead forward, striking the balding manâ€™s nose at the bridge, hard enough to make him see stars under the impact without doing any fatal damage. Lyons needed this man for information. Grabbing Paczesnyâ€™s wrist, Lyons twisted. The pop of joints was accompanied by a wail of pain.

â€œAre there any hostages in the other truck?â€ Lyons bellowed.

â€œPiss off!â€ Paczesny answered.

Lyons twisted even harder, and he could see the knob of his prisonerâ€™s ulna stretching the skin of his elbow. â€œWrong answer. Iâ€™ll rip this fucking thing off and feed it to you if you donâ€™t answer.â€

â€œNo. No. I was the only one with them,â€ Paczesny said.

â€œHowâ€™d you get the stock burn?â€ Lyons asked.

â€œAir Force guard gave me a whack in the head when I pulled a gun on him. My partners burned him down,â€ Paczesny said.

Confronted by the balding manâ€™s betrayal, Lyons gave a hard final twist, then punched him in the temple. The blow rendered Paczesny unconscious, and Lyons secured his wrists and ankles with cable ties. â€œYou two get that? No friendlies are on truck two. Free fire!â€

â€œWeâ€™ve got it,â€ Schwarz answered. â€œLet me just take care of this.â€

Hundreds of yards away, Schwarz fed another magazine into his DSA-58 tactical carbine and hammered off another burst through a pursuing Suburban. Finally, despite the unstable platform of his own ride and the uneven road, he was able to score a direct hit with the autorifle. Schwarzâ€™s burst struck the enemy driver in the head and exploded his brains. The shotgun rider lunged, grabbing the wheel, but the vehicle fell back without any pressure on the gas.

Schwarz had an easier time aiming at the stilled SUV full of gunmen, burning off the rest of his 30-round magazine into the cab. One of the enemy raiders was leaning out the window, returning fire with his M-4 carbine, but his efforts were cut off by the Able Team geniusâ€™s slashing storm of high-velocity bullets. The vehicle was out of the play.

â€œOkay, the last of the escorts are done,â€ Schwarz called. â€œWish you were here for this.â€

â€œJust do it,â€ Lyons growled over the com link.

Schwarz fed another HEDP round into the M-203â€™s breech and aimed at the second M36. He pulled the trigger and the 40 mm armor-piercing round hit the grille and detonated. A small gust of flaming gases appeared around the nose of the cargo truck, a display of the impact point as the real light show went on inside of the engine compartment. The shaped charge liquefied the interior cone of copper and turned it into a flaming bullet that shredded the engine block. The twelve-cylinder motor disintegrated into a wave of shrapnel that obliterated the bellies and legs of the driver and the passenger, killing them instantly.

The vehicle skidded to a halt, kicking up dirt as it slid sideways. Blancanales hit the brakes, and the two Able Team commandos got out of the captured SUV using it as a shield.

â€œIâ€™ve got movement,â€ Blancanales announced. He opened fire at a fleeing shadow, but the enemy figure was just too fast. He disappeared into the rough, broken face of a cliff. â€œIronman, try to cut him off.â€

â€œYouâ€™re too far down, and I donâ€™t have a shot,â€ Lyons replied. â€œMore movement at the back of your truckâ€¦â€

Blancanales and Schwarz saw three black-clad marauders exit the rear of the truck, their weapons up and spitting fire, but the two Able Team operatives were ready for them. Their rifles vomited hot lead, dumping the hard men into the dirt.

Blananales returned to looking for the mystery shadow, launching another parachute flare, but the uneven ground had too many shadows, nooks and crannies for a determined fleeing opponent. The fact that he hadnâ€™t returned fire was indicative that their foe was not interested in a fight.

â€œWeâ€™ll find him,â€ Schwarz promised. â€œWhoever set this up has something planned.â€

Blancanales nodded as the parachute flare sputtered and burned out. In moments, it was as cold as the trail looked.

CHAPTER THREE

Yuma, Arizona

The aftermath of the border battle wasn’t the end of Able Team’s business. First, they had to stash Paczesny away in their safehouse. Since Grimaldi had the use of a small airfield that saw only moderate use, Lyons decided to keep him in a broom closet in the hangar that Stony Man Farm had reserved for them. Paczesny glared daggers, his mouth stuffed with a rag that was duct-taped in place. Anchoring the rag partially inside and outside of his mouth would keep him from aspirating the cloth and choking to death on it.

“We’ll talk to you when we’re rested,” Lyons said. He slapped pieces of duct tape across the prisoner’s eyes and set a pair of headphones on the man’s ears. The other end of the phones was plugged into an MP3 player that ran a twenty-minute loop of a digitally produced, low-pitched squeal. Completely blinded and deafened, the prisoner would be softened up by the time Able Team was ready to interrogate him.

The trio reported in to the Farm, giving what they knew and learning of a full-court Homeland Security press on investigating the brutal raid.

“We’ll put you on the roster to join in with the task force,” Barbara Price, Stony Man’s mission controller, told them. “You’ll be Justice Department agents.”

“Good,” Lyons said. “I’d like to get a quick look at the crime scene.”

“You’ll get as much as you want once daylight hits,” Price responded. “We’ll see what we’ve got on file about Leon Paczesny and do some forensic financial documentation on him. Whoever paid him to be the inside man at Burgundy Lake will have left a trail.”

“While Aaron and the gang play CSI Grand Cayman, don’t forget to have them let us in on parallel rocketry developments in the works,” Lyons added.

“You think this was a ploy to interrupt our ability to develop maneuvering thrusters that could compete with an enemy power?” Price asked.

“Wouldn’t be the first time we were in on something like this,” Lyons replied. “Does HS have an investigation team going to the border?”

“To pore over what’s left of the raider team that hit, yeah,” Price answered. “Fortunately, we do have the fingerprints and facials you sent us via digital camera.”

“Keep working on that. I don’t mind interagency cooperation, but HS tends to trip over its own dick when it comes to actually putting clues together,” Lyons grumbled. “We can toss them a few hints when we’re on the way home from wrecking the perps.”

“Trust me,” Price said. “You’ll be the first ones to know anything about this.”

“Good,” Lyons replied. “I’m going to get cleaned up and get some food in me. By the time I’m done, Paczesny will feel like he’s been in sensory deprivation for a whole day.”

“Don’t forget to break out your Fed suits,” Price reminded him.

Lyons wrinkled his nose. “Yeah.”

Watching him over the Web cam link, he saw Price’s face brighten with gentle but mocking humor. “Just when you thought you’d gotten away from the suit and tie look…”

“Yeah,” Lyons said, rolling his eyes. “It’s the price I have to pay to get a look at Burgundy Lake.”

“We’ll be able to reconstruct the raiders’ hit when we’re on-site,” Blancanales added. “The tactics they used might give us a clue as to who trained this group.”

Lyons nodded. “I hope they’re local. I’d hate to lose a shot at them because they’re overseas.”

“Phoenix Force is prepped and ready to move out,” Price told him. “Your job this time around is to work inside our borders.”

Lyons sighed. “Used to have the whole world as our beat map.”

“You’ve been getting more chances to step out and play, Ironman. Don’t worry. This doesn’t seem close to finished,” Price promised.

Lyons glanced toward the broom closet where Paczesny was being softened by Schwarz’s home-brewed sonic assault. “Not with Paczesny. Right now, I’m melting his brain. In a few minutes, he’s going to wish he didn’t have one.”

The Able Team leader broke contact and freshened up.

C HRONOLOGICALLY , L EON P ACZESNY was left in the sensory deprivation for only forty minutes total. However, due to the white noise and utter lack of sensation except for the tearing agony in his ruined elbow, it felt as if he were penned up in the broom closet for forty hours.

The first hint he had of the real world was when the duct tape was ripped off his mouth and eyes. Gag free, he let out a yell that was cut off when Lyons punched him just under the sternum. The blow interrupted the shout and cut off his breathing for a few seconds.

Just long enough for the Able Team commander to slide the headphones off Paczesny’s ears. Then the turncoat felt the back of his head crack against the broom closet wall, ironhard fingers squeezing his jaw until it felt as if the mandible would snap.

“Welcome back to the land of the walking dead,” Lyons snarled. “I’m the Ironman, and I’ll be your host on the scenic tour of hell.”

“You can’t do this. I’m an American citiz—”

“You, Mr. Paczesny, are nothing anymore,” Lyons growled. “You are listed among the corpses stacked like cord wood back at Burgundy Lake. As such, you are a non-entity, only useful for as long as you are giving up information. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

“I have no rights?” Paczesny asked, already knowing the answer.

“You’re acting as if I’m some kind of cop. I’m the Grim Reaper, pal. It’s just been a busy night, thanks to you, and I want to play a little before packing you off to hell.”

“Damn it, you can’t do this. You have to have some kind of authority, some rulebook…” Paczesny said. “This isn’t Camp X-Ray.”

Lyons slammed his forearm down on Paczesny’s. “Camp X-Ray? That’s amateur hour, dip shit. It’s kindergarten, while this is the graduate class. Get it?”

“Yes. Yes, sir,” Paczesny whimpered. “I got it!”

Lyons started the digital recorder, and began asking questions. Paczesny spilled his guts.

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

H UNTINGTON W ETHERS LISTENED to the download of the MP3 file that Able Team uploaded to him. Paczesny’s confession made the process of forensic accounting easier, enabling Wethers to locate the trail of funds.

Naturally, the identities of the mysterious donors remained vague. Paczesny didn’t have faces or voices, only e-mail contacts and a few shadowy meetings with men who hid their features and utilized vocal distortion technology. The trail of cash in Paczesny’s Cayman Island account also followed a tangled snarl of jumps from front company to front company, all of which were new and lacked any ties to previously known espionage or organized crime groups.

Wethers squeezed his brow as he went over the financial autopsy on the screen before him, scanning line by line for the name of a front company owner who would register on any of a thousand law-enforcement watch lists. Though the plodding, meticulous cyberdetective was utilizing his search engines to look for a familiar name, his own vast reserves of memorized information churned in his mind, working as fast as the powerful processors of the Cray supercomputers in the Annex.

For all of the technological power in the Stony Man cyber-center, the computers were still only pale duplicates of the human brain, lacking intuition or the ability to correlate something that didn’t quite match what came before.

Wethers blinked his eyes, realizing he hadn’t done so in several minutes. Tears washed over his parched orbs, flooding down the side of his cheek.

“Doing okay, Hunt?” Akira Tokaido asked from his workstation.

Wethers picked up his pipe and chewed on the stem, sitting back to allow his subconscious to digest the images burned into his retinas. “Just slow, steady work. I need to rest my eyes a little.”

Tokaido nodded.

“Nothing’s shown up yet?” Carmen Delahunt asked, stepping over to Wethers’ station.

“The money that ended up in Paczesny’s account has been immaculately sanitized,” Wethers responded. “I’ve gone over every single penny, and can’t make head nor tails of where it came from, despite all the front companies.”

“Maybe you’re looking at too large an object,” Tokaido responded. Wethers glanced over at his younger partner, gnawing on his pipe stem.

“You mean that this might have come from another source?” Wethers asked. “Someone might have found a way to pick up the fractions of pennies in interest and convert the digital leftovers into real money?”

“It’s happened before,” Tokaido replied. “But you’d have to be very good to break into that kind of a slush fund.”

“Wait…fractional cents of interest?” Delahunt asked. “Sure. Bank computers round down the interest they’re offering, keeping the leftover bit for themselves. But surely, it would take a large bank to accumulate that kind of money.”

“You’d be surprised, especially since we’re talking how many banking franchises in the U.S.?” Tokaido asked.

Wethers nodded his understanding. “So someone has a tap on banks, and they’re using that to create a clean form of money. And of course, the banks won’t say anything, because they don’t want the public to know that they’re being shortchanged. Instead of getting thirty-two point eight-five-two cents, they only get the thirty-two, and the bank keeps the slop over. In the course of a year, that can add up to ten cents an account, times however many hundred customers per branch, over the course of several years…”

“Big money tucked away for the guys up top,” Delahunt said. “And it’s completely independent of the FDIC insurance on any account.”

“So Paczesny ended up with forty grand in his account,” Wethers mused out loud. “And it’s made up of withheld interest surplus from a banking franchise, which can’t mention the disappearance of that kind of money, unless they want to pay taxes on it.”

“We’re dealing with a good hacker,” Delahunt noted. “The dummy companies that filtered those funds also have nothing much to give in terms of who set them up. Akira, think you can do something about that?”

“I’ll hit it hard,” Tokaido said, accepting the challenge. “There’s no way to make a dummy without leaving one fingerprint on it.”

“It could be that they left a fingerprint, but we just haven’t recognized it as such,” Wethers added. “Some signature that would be so obscure that while we’ve been looking at it, it just simply blends in.”

“Your fine-tooth comb has eliminated a lot of options,” Tokaido mentioned, looking at the relevant data that Wethers collected. “It’s going to take some hairy-ass cyber monkey action to break this open.”

Wethers snorted. “Thank you, Akira, for introducing an image of your hirsuteness that I shall need to gouge from my mind’s eye with a spork.”

Tokaido and Delahunt chuckled at the scholarly computer expert’s subdued shudder.

“Hunt, work with me on trying to back-trace the origin of the trucks,” Delahunt said. “It’ll be something new for your brain to work on to clear the cobwebs.”

“Unfortunately, Able Team didn’t leave much in terms of trace evidence on the vehicles,” Wethers lamented, looking at Delahunt’s notes. “And what Carl and the lads didn’t wreak, the marauders themselves contributed. VIN plates removed, and no accumulation of personal items that could betray origin. Even the odometers were taken out.”

“Thorough,” Delahunt agreed. She took a deep breath, returning to her workstation. “With the odometers, and a rough estimate of the distances traveled, we could have at least narrowed down the trucks to wherever they were stolen or purchased.”

“How about the electronics?” Wethers inquired. “Surely the IR illuminators should have betrayed a point of origin.”

“Chinese military equipment, top of the line for special forces,” Delahunt said. “It doesn’t show up on any catalogs, but we’ve had enough dealings with the Security Affairs Division to know what their gear looks like.”

Wethers observed the screen, looking at the night-vision equipment that had been photographed by Schwarz. Images of the complete unit, then dissected, were displayed. Chinese knockoff transistors were in the design. “It’s pretty damning. Red China is the only concurrent power to the United States to have a burgeoning aerospace industry devoted to orbital craft.”

“We’ve also got an international mix of operatives among those bodies not burned or mutilated beyond the point of recognition,” Delahunt mused. “China does have the kind of budget to…”

Wethers glanced over to her as her train of thought trailed off. Her green eyes flickered and Wethers knew she’d hit a hunch.

“Akira, put the bank search on hold,” Delahunt noted. “Take a look at brokers who make large dollar to yuan conversions.”

Tokaido nodded slowly. “Why didn’t I think of that in the first place?”

“That’s why we’re a team, Akira,” Wethers admonished. “Still, what would the PRC benefit by this? This kind of activity could result in trouble for them once an astute investigator figured this out.”

“You think that this is circumstantial evidence left to implicate Beijing?” Delahunt asked.

“It’s a possibility. Or, it could be a double-blind. The U.S. wouldn’t believe China to be so arrogant as to leave these traces, and thus waste energy confirming such a setup,” Wethers explained.

“One step at a time,” Delahunt said. “We find the evidence, and then see where it points. As setup or as genuine.”

“Fair enough,” Wethers stated. He went to work, going over transistor lots and equipment manufacture manifests. Though it looked as if he were in a trance, mentally slowed to a stop, his brain raced at the speed of light.

In the back of his brilliant mind, the eldest member of the Stony Man cybernetics crew wondered if the speed of light was still too slow to prevent Armageddon.

Midway Island, U.S. Naval Cleanup and Reclamation Center

P HOENIX F ORCE HAD BEEN returning from an operation in India when they received the alert to go on stand-by due to another crisis. David McCarter waited in the hangar at what was a covertly operating Naval Air Station, stubbing out a Player’s cigarette. The U.S. Navy had been publicly ordered to clean up the contamination of the Midway Station National Wildlife Refuse, but there were still low-profile facilities available for the United States Special Operations Command to use as forward staging areas. Phoenix Force was taking advantage of the top-secret station to recuperate from the first half of a long flight when they’d received a stand-by alert.

“Thank you, David,” Rafael Encizo said, waving the fumes away from his face.

McCarter winked and pulled another from its pack, lighting up. “Anytime, mate.”

Encizo rolled his eyes. “This is Hawaii. Fresh air, crystal-blue water, verdant green…”

“Yeah. But I’m workin’ as fast as I can to fix that,” McCarter joked.

“Give me strength,” Encizo groaned. He walked out onto the tarmac. The breeze blowing spared him from suffering McCarter’s secondhand smoke. “Think we’ll have time to head home, or will we have to resupply here?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” McCarter answered. “But I’m betting that it’ll be a little while until we’re back at the Farm. Hope you didn’t have any hot dates waiting.”

Encizo shrugged. “You know me, David. A girl in every port.”

McCarter didn’t know whether that was an exaggeration or not, but he didn’t particularly care. The Cuban had his relationships that had survived the social-life-strangling strains of covert operations, as McCarter had his own.

“We’ve got an update,” T. J. Hawkins announced. The youngest member of Phoenix Force had been manning their satellite uplink-equipped laptop, waiting for news.

McCarter crushed the half-smoked cigarette and joined Encizo beside Hawkins, Calvin James and Gary Manning to observe the electronic briefing from where they’d been occupying themselves.

“Currently, all we have is circumstantial evidence,” Barbara Price announced on screen. “But put together, it’s pretty damning. We’ve got several million dollars missing from People’s Republic of China banks. The money disappeared from facilities that were converting dollars to yuan and vice versa.”

“Added to the SAD-style night vision, it does look damning,” James, a former San Francisco police officer, agreed. “But circumstantial evidence doesn’t hold up. We need something stronger.”

“Try this image we’ve got from an NRO satellite,” Price added. An image appeared on the screen, a photograph of a launch facility. The image enlarged and focused on a corner of the launch campus. “It was observing a facility referred to in the records as the Phoenix Graveyard.”

“Glad I’m not superstitious,” McCarter muttered.

“Looks familiar,” Gary Manning said, cutting off his friend’s gloomy proclamation. “The same kind of terrorist combat training facilities that litter Asia from Syria to Pakistan.”

“Too disorganized to be conventional army barracks, and this tank,” Encizo mentioned. “I recognize that kind of water tank. There’s one at Cape Canaveral.”

“A zero-gravity, space-suit training tank,” James agreed. “The water duplicates the relative lack of gravity, as well as operating in a self-contained atmosphere, preparing people for extra-vehicular activity.”

“And it’s not for astronauts, because this is a second tank in addition to one for the Chinese astronauts,” Manning said. “The Chinese don’t normally send people into orbit, and when they do, it’s on the QT. Mostly, their facilities are rented out to launch satellites, but they do have their own space program, complete with a knockoff of the shuttle that’s a little better than the Russians’.”

“So they’re training terrorists for zero-gravity combat in a space suit?” McCarter asked. “That narrows down the targets considerably.”

“The International Space Station,” Hawkins concluded. “Isn’t there supposed to be a shuttle launch and rendezvous?”

“It’ll be going up in three days,” Price answered. “Take a look at this setup here…”

The photograph increased in detail, and it was a maze of tires. Utilizing computer wizardry, the picture blended with the layout of the ISS. The commandos of Phoenix Force were immediately aware of the PVC pipes that simulated the crawl-spaces between the station’s various modules.

“Still circumstantial evidence,” James stated. “It’s too thin to make a rush into the People’s Republic.”

“One more bit of evidence. We did a sweep for radiation on the scene,” Price concluded. “We picked up high-energy gamma radiation signatures.”

James winced and McCarter knew that the Phoenix Force medic had heard something terrible. McCarter checked his memory for problems that would have a high gamma radiation signature.

“Iridium 192,” McCarter stated.

“You got it, David,” James answered. “It’s a very credible threat for a dirty bomb. External exposure to Ir-192 pellets can cause radiation burns, acute radiation sickness or even death.”

“They wouldn’t need explosives,” Manning interjected.

“What do you mean?” McCarter asked.

“Iridium is a highly dense metal. We’re talking a higher friction resistance than the toughest steels around. Plop it into the atmosphere on a proper trajectory, when it hits the ground, even the pencil-size sticks of Ir-192 used for industrial welding gauges will survive and merely fragment,” Manning said. “Put it in a barrel, and reentry will heat the drum up enough that when it strikes a solid surface, like a building, it’ll pop like a balloon, spitting shards over the center of a city.”

“A radioactive shotgun round,” McCarter mentioned. “Anyone not killed by a splinter of the stuff would receive a dose of radioactive shrapnel. With the amount of casualties possible from an air burst over a city, you’ll have hundreds, perhaps thousands, suffering from both fragments and the radiation they put out.”

“They wouldn’t need a barrel, and they’d have their delivery systems on the ISS,” Hawkins noted. “Right now, our shuttle is going up to augment the ISS satellite maintenance duties. At any time, there’s a half dozen satellites docked to the station, and there are remote operating thrusters to return the satellites to their proper orbits. It’d only take a minor bit of programming to turn a satellite into a weapon, especially with a load of Ir-192 in its guts.”

McCarter took a deep breath. “When do we take off, Barb?”

“There’s not too much activity now, but the timing of the hit on Burgundy Lake with the launch of the current shuttle mission is just too suspicious,” Price told them. “If it’s Beijing looking to make an official move, or renegades at work, we need to get you in the air now.”

“What’s our ride?” McCarter asked.

“The Gulfstream’s been refueled by naval aviation, but the closest approach to the Chinese launch facility is in Thailand. The Gulfstream’s not set up for HALO, nor a stealth border crossing, so you’ll transfer to a dedicated craft in Thailand, and then infiltrate the Phoenix Graveyard, approximately 250 miles west of Canton,” Price responded. “I’ll arrange for gear to be ready when you get there. Good luck.”

“We’ll need it,” Hawkins muttered.

“All right, team, load up,” McCarter ordered.

CHAPTER FOUR

Yuma, Arizona

Leon Paczesny was turned over to federal Marshals, glad to be away from the big, menacing blond cop who liked to pound on his arm. It had only taken a gentle reminder, dozens of color photographs of the corpses Able Team had created the night before, to ensure that Paczesny was going to keep their part in the apocalyptic border-crossing quiet. Hal Brognola had a Justice Department detachment, independent of the Burgundy Lake investigation, take care of the turncoat. The deal was a simple one. Paczesny would eventually be turned over by Brognola’s baby-sitters, and the traitor would confess to his part in the operation.

In return for not contesting his espionage charges, he’d get to live. It would be an existence in an eight-foot-by-five-foot cell until he was old and decrepit, but it would be life. Any deviation from the deal would result in pieces of Paczesny being mailed to all of his living relatives, each part harvested from his screaming body.

Lyons told the traitor that they had excellent life support machines. He amended the threat with a story of the last fool who blew his free pass to continued existence. With grudging respect, Lyons noted that the turncoat had survived until he was trimmed down to an eyeless, earless, noseless head attached to a torso that had been carved down to just above the navel.

“It was the most incredible six months of my life, slicing a traitorous bastard up like lunch meat,” Lyons confessed.

It was all a lie, but Paczesny didn’t know that.

“Intimidation has a name,” Schwarz quipped after Paczesny left in the back of a Justice Department SUV. “Lyons. Carl Lyons.”

The Able Team leader snorted. “This isn’t a game, Gadgets.”

“No, you sure talk a good nightmare,” Schwarz answered.

“I don’t like it, but when it comes down to saving noncombatants and breaking apart some thug who’s in on a bunch of deaths I can prevent…”

“The needs of the many, bro,” Schwarz replied. He bopped the ex-cop on the shoulder.

Lyons looked at his watch. It was just after dawn. “Please. It’s too early for that Star Trek crap.”

“Speaking of which,” Blancanales interjected, “what’s the plan? Stick around poking at any support structure for the mercenaries who hit Burgundy Lake, or do we go to Florida?”

Lyons frowned. “We’ll spend a few hours here snooping around. We might hit something, but I doubt that the raiders’ backup would stick around longer than sunset.”

“That’s including the guy who ran off,” Blancanales reminded him.

Lyons nodded. “Our mystery opponent took off, and we still haven’t assembled much in terms of ranking on this group. Chances are, the escapee was either the highest ranking, or the most experienced in the marauder party. Either way, that will make him valuable enough to be useful in Florida.”

“A hit on Cape Canaveral would be insane,” Schwarz stated. “The security forces on hand are well-trained.”

“So were the Air Force guards at Burgundy Lake. Besides, we’ve penetrated NASA security before, too,” Lyons countered.

“Okay. We hit the bricks and try to catch our boy on the way out of town,” Blancanales said. “I’d make it a safe bet he’d try a charter flight.”

“Check on it,” Lyons told him. “I’ll be at the battle site. Gadgets, check out the warehouse where the combined task force has the wreckage. A closer look at the stolen technology might tell us if this was an effort to steal and reverse-engineer the thrusters, or just getting it out of the way.”

“Knowing the state of international rocketry research, it’s a good bet that they already have their own version of the operating thrusters Burgundy Lake was working on,” Schwarz agreed. “And where will you be?”

“You don’t run into anything larger than a few homes or a roadhouse until you reach the coast,” Lyons replied. “The north is the eastern suburbs of Yuma, so there’ll be airports, but the only major airfield in Mexico is pretty deep behind the border, about halfway to the coast.”

“Your Spanish sucks, Ironman,” Blancanales mentioned.

“I know enough to get by. I’m just going there to see what they’ve got set up. Bear took a look on satellite and saw only single seaters, but these engines are supposed to be small maneuvering thrusters, so they can’t take up a lot of space on something like a ninety-nine-ton shuttle. Transporting a few examples via a puddle hopper won’t be difficult,” Lyons surmised.

“What about the mercenaries?” Schwarz asked.

“Cessna Stationaires hold six passengers. They dump their assault load out, and they can pack on two thruster prototypes a piece with the 180-pound luggage capacity. I saw only four in the one truck, so given the two we found in the other, we can count three Stationaires, eighteen mercenaries and six thrusters in the air toward the coast,” Lyons pointed out. “That accounts for half the force we eliminated. Don’t forget that in Mexico, whatever flight-plan paperwork exists is literally on paper, not something we could get with a hacker.”

“That’s quite a distance,” Blancanales noted, looking at the aerial photo map Lyons pointed to. “One man, doing it on foot, that’d be a hump, even to the nearest road, which would be Route 8, cutting from Sonoyta to Puerto Penasco.”

“You or I could do it,” Lyons replied. “A disciplined soldier could make Route 8 by sunrise, and there is traffic on the road.”

Schwarz spoke up. “And if he and his buddies thought ahead, they could have had a spot to dump off the heavy vehicles and transfer to less conspicuous rides before they got to the airport.”

He summoned up a satellite map on his PDA and began calculating distances from the previous night’s battle and the road to the coast.

“Foothills?” Lyons asked.

“Yup. Found it. Seriously broken ground where you could stash a used car lot and keep it invisible from the air,” Schwarz answered. “I’m going to check on the thrusters, but I think I’ll talk to Dr. Bertonni. Something tells me that she’s not out of danger yet.”

Blancanales thought for a moment. “Give me a few minutes on the phone, then I’ll hop out with you and Jack to the airfield to check it out.”

“Good plan,” Lyons replied. “The less dicking around we do here, the less chance we have of losing our wayward punk.”

“Good hunting,” Schwarz told his partners.

“Thanks,” Lyons answered. “This guy looks like he’s dangerous game.”

S ABRINA B ERTONNI DIDN’T feel any more comfortable after having her side stitched shut, but she was alive, and no longer bleeding.

She was tired, having been up for a long time, but the investigative team looking into the Burgundy Lake raid had brought her to the warehouse where recovered hardware and wreckage from the battle scene were assembled on long tables to be examined in depth for forensic traces. After a grueling inventory, the exhausted rocket scientist took a seat on a bench in a corner. A deceptively baby-faced, mustached man with a mop of unkempt brown hair and sparkling brown eyes held a bottle of cold cola out to her.

Bertonni took the bottle with a smile and he sat next to her, opening his own drink. “Thanks.”

He wore a badge naming him as Henry Miller. Sabrina raised an eyebrow as he took a seat beside her without drilling her with questions.

“You look like you could use the caffeine,” Gadgets Schwarz told her.

“Thanks, Deputy Miller,” Sabrina replied.

“Call me Gadgets,” Schwarz replied. “Deputy makes me sound like I belong in a Western.”

“Gadgets,” Bertonni repeated. “So you’re a tech-head?”

“Ever since I was a kid,” Schwarz replied, taking a sip. “I’m mostly electronics, programming and robotics, but I’ve dabbled in rocket science.”

Bertonni nodded, drawing a sip from her soda. “So what department are you with?”

“The Justice Department,” Schwarz answered. “But I’m more a tech-head than a field agent, despite the gun on my hip.”

“So I don’t have to dumb down answers to any questions you have?” the woman asked.

Schwarz shook his head. “Nope. Though I already know about the basics of your compact hydrogen cell.”

“How much do you understand?” Bertonni prodded.

“Enough to be impressed at your fuel to energy conversion formulas,” Schwarz responded. “I’m more solid-state technology, but I’ve got a solid grounding in chemistry and physics. The important thing we need to know is, how recoverable are the engine parts?”

“The thrusters were made to withstand considerable shake, rattle and roll. These were going to be tested out on the next ISS mission. We had everything set up to transport today,” Bertonni said. The words caught in her throat. “It’s so hard to believe that only a few hours ago…”

Schwarz rested his hand on her shoulder. Bertonni gulped, trying to dislodge the constriction in her windpipe, but her voice still crackled with tension.

“A plane was supposed to be coming in to pick up the test modules at Burgundy Lake this morning,” she explained. “Burgundy Lake…Stupid name for the test facility. There wasn’t anything for forty miles that was inhabitable, let alone moisture. Flat desert with just that compound, and the outskirts of Yuma safely shielded behind a mountain and…”

Schwarz gave her a gentle squeeze as she began to ramble. Bertonni wiped a tear and smiled gently at him. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Schwarz said. “It’s going to be all right.”

He frowned, then pulled his CPDA. An aerial view of the compound betrayed a landing strip not a mile away. “You didn’t happen to see what went down at the airstrip?”

“No, but explosive charges were placed around the dormitories for the staff, as well as the testing and administrative buildings. All we knew was that the trucks rolled up, and then my partners started…started…”

Schwarz gave her shoulder a reassuring pat. She rested her hand on his, smiling at the gesture. “You need to get some sleep. I’ve got a pair of well-armed federal Marshals who will keep you safe.”

“Could have used them six hours ago,” Bertonni said with a sob. “You’re going to make sure whoever did this won’t get away with my friends’ murders, won’t you?”

“Someone already took care of most of them,” Schwarz informed her. “The killers are smeared across a five-mile stretch of desert along the border. They’ve been shoveling bodies into bags for identification.”

Bertonni nodded. “I thought I’d have felt better, knowing that the men who did this are dead…”

“It doesn’t take the pain away. It rarely ever does. But later on, you’ll know that the monsters behind this won’t hurt anyone else again,” Schwarz replied.

“And the guys who put them up to it?”

“They’re going down. I’ll see to it.”

Sonora, Mexico

S PEEDING OVER THE S ONORA desert in a Bell JetRanger, Carl Lyons heard his cell phone warble.

“What’s up, Gadgets?” the Able Team leader asked.

“Lot of shit’s not adding up, Ironman,” Schwarz responded. “There’s an airfield right by the test facility, call it a mile away, but with an access road. And a NASA transport was scheduled to pick up the test modules that the marauders stole. They could have hit the airstrip this morning and taken the transport if they’d only waited a few hours.”

Lyons frowned. “They have the pilots, especially if they intended to use any airstrips in Sonora. And the NASA crew wouldn’t notice bullet holes in the test facility. The raiders could have hit the plane, then taken it through one of the regular dope smuggling flight routes, and refuel it for a dash to a port or to an island refueling station.”

“Carl, Gadgets,” Blancanales interjected. “I just got off station with the Farm. The Justice Department forensics team going over our leftovers have reported in. It’s an international crew. It’s a mix between Europeans, Orientals and Semetic operatives.”

“Hired mercenaries, or perhaps a sanitized strike group assembled by a major power,” Lyons muttered. Outside his window, the sands of Mexico rocketed past at well over 100 miles an hour. “How soon till we reach the first of the airfields I looked at, Jack?”

“About ten minutes,” Grimaldi answered.

The terrain rippled, and Lyons was heartened by the fact that it would be difficult to even use a dune buggy or a motorcycle to cross it. The wrinkled furrows would make any rapid progress a stomach-churning, neck-snapping journey. The unmarked tops of windswept dunes showed no tire tracks, and both Lyons and Blancanales used their binoculars to scan for tracks or dust clouds of any sort. Frustration gnawed at Lyons’s gut as he hunted for clues. Then he spotted a glimmer against the pale blue sky in the distance.

Jack Grimaldi had seen it, as well. “An Ultralight.”

“Pushing the limits of its range,” Blancanales noted. While he didn’t have a PDA to calculate distance, the wily veteran was as good with a map and compass as any highly trained soldier. “He probably resorted to gliding to conserve fuel, which is how we caught up with him this far.”

“If it’s him,” Lyons countered. “Jack, get us closer. We can resume the search pattern if it’s a false alarm.”

“Got it,” Grimaldi replied.

“We’re closing in on the first airstrip,” Blancanales stated. On his map was a marker of a position that had been provided by Lyons’s contacts within the U.S. Border Patrol. “And he’s circling for a descent.”

“Doesn’t mean anything,” Lyons replied. Still, he reached for the DSA-58 carbine he had stashed under his seat. He kept its stock folded, for better maneuverability inside the confines of the helicopter. He idly wished for the nose sensors on the Hughes 500 NOTAR they’d utilized only a few hours before, but the JetRanger had the kind of speed and range Grimaldi required to ferry them on their search of the desert. The airstrip was quiet and still, but camouflage netting could have concealed a small battalion from unaided eyes. FLIR and Terrain Radar would have given them a better heads-up. He clicked on his open line to the Farm.

“Bear, got anything on satellite?”

“The sun’s been baking the area enough to make any thermal imaging a mess. Radar shows you following something, but its signature is faint and indecipherable,” Kurtzman answered. “It’s an ultralight?”

“Yeah,” Lyons confirmed. “It could be made of any one of a dozen materials that wouldn’t show up well on a radar scan. Even its engine would be masked by the superstructure. Are there any vehicles in the area?”

“Anything outside is probably covered,” Kurtzman told him. “The signal isn’t coming back clean, so it’s possible that someone’s got camouflage netting with radar-absorbent material in it. Expect trouble, but I don’t have any magic figures for you.”

“I’ve got the outline of a hangar,” Blancanales called out. “It looks large enough for half a dozen Cessnas. It’s covered in camouflage netting, and low profile to blend into the hills.”

Lyons squinted. There was motion near the airstrip as the Ultralight suddenly banked hard, powering into a climb to push above the altitude of the JetRanger. Grimaldi was watching their aerial quarry, but the movement on the ground was fluid motion of fabric tossed aside.

“Ironman, we’ve got signatures!” Kurtzman shouted. “Looks like…”

“Machine guns,” Lyons bellowed, jolting Grimaldi into a hard juke to one side. Spearing tracers burned through the air only inches from Lyons’s window, twin streams of glowing streaks confirming the dual-mounted .50-caliber machine guns raking the sky. Another position fluttered to life farther down the strip, and Blancanales shoved his folded FAL’s barrel through the window port, holding down the trigger for half of the 30-round extended magazine.

With Grimaldi engaging in evasive action, the Puerto Rican’s fire only swept the machine-gun nest with a few glancing shots, but it was enough to force the antiaircraft position to miss the JetRanger. Still, Blancanales was satisfied with the results of his suppression fire.

Lyons had his DSA-58 burping out rounds to harass the other antiaircraft nest, but he knew that there wasn’t much of a chance of scoring an easy hit, not with Grimaldi weaving through the sky. “Jack, we need to get out of here. At least set us down out of range of the twin mounts.”

“Make me a hole, guys,” Grimaldi said.

Blancanales thumbed a round into the breech of his grenade launcher and fired. The shell hit, spewing a noxious-looking green cloud that obscured one of the machine-gun nests. In the meantime, Lyons unslung his Mossberg Cruiser 500, ejecting its load of Brenneke shells and quickly thumbing in a load of ferret rounds. The 12-gauge shell spit a tear-gas bomb toward the other twin-mounted Fifty. Being a solid round, the shotgun tear-gas shell had the range to pepper the enemy gunnery position. By tromboning the slide as fast as he pulled the trigger, Lyons saturated the nest with a blinding, stinging caldron of capsicum gas. The machine gunner, his sinuses and respiratory passages swollen in reaction to the horrendously hot-pepper extract, held down the spade trigger on the heavy machine gun, firing uncontrollably. His tear ducts felt as if they were filled with scalding hot acid, and he swept the half of the sky that was empty.

Blancanales’s smoker was followed by a second, thickening the turgid green cloud, giving the helicopter room to maneuver.

“Put us down,” Lyons told Grimaldi. “If we back off, they won’t stick around.”

“Roger,” Grimaldi answered. “Luckily, Pol laid down a good landing marker.”

Lyons looked to see that the ace Stony Man pilot had swooped the helicopter over Blancanales’s thick green fog. The rotor wash pushed away the cloud, and Grimaldi let the aircraft drop right on top of the second machine-gun nest. The starboard landing skid hit the frame of the twin mount and tore it from its moorings, digging it into the sand.

Lyons and Blancanales snapped out of their harnesses and were out the chopper’s doors in an instant. The Able Team leader paused only long enough to ram the pistol grip of his Mossberg into the jaw of one of the antiaircraft crew they’d landed among. Bone shattered under the impact, the gunner’s head flopping loosely on a rubbery neck. Blancanales’s FAL carbine burped out a short burst, churning 7.62 mm slugs through the intestines of a second gun crewman.

Lyons didn’t have to tell Grimaldi to take off, as the helicopter popped into the sky like a cork. Already the tear gas was wearing off on the first machine gun nest. “Pol!”

Blancanales whirled, feeding his M-203 again. Snapping the shoulder stock straight on his rifle, he triggered the grenade launcher. A 40-mm round spiraled through the air between the two antiaircraft positions, the shell’s travels seeming to take forever as Grimaldi struggled to gain altitude. When it felt like the first crew of enemy gunners could have recovered and taken a nap to sleep off the effects of the tear gas, the grenade landed at their feet. Six-point-five ounces of high explosive converted from solid potential chemical energy into a thunderclap of pressure and heat. The twin-mounted machine gun was shorn into its component parts by a wave of force that turned its crew’s legs and lower torsos into a rocketing halo of jellied meat. Their top halves were simply lobbed out of the sandbag ring, bouncing on the tarmac.

Lyons traded his Mossberg for the DSA carbine to deal with a group of newcomers to the battle, teams of men exploding through two doors of the hangar, brandishing automatic weapons. Lyons’s full-auto fire lanced into the squad, stitching torsos with high-velocity bullets that exploded through bone and vaporized tunnels through muscle and organ tissue.

“Damn it! Get them!” a voice shouted. Lyons narrowed his eyes and spotted a short, balding man with lean, cruel features, tripping a memory in the Able Team commander’s mental mug book. He dismissed his familiarity with the enemy leader, swinging his DSA’s chattering stream of automatic fire toward his slender opponent. The enemy leader charged ahead of the scything arc of supersonic lead, saving his own life, but causing Lyons to mow down three of his forces.

Blancanales added his autofire to the conflagration, but the fleeing leader was inside the protective walls of the hangar. Rather than being deterred, the Able Team grenadier stuck an M-433 HEDP round into his launcher and fired. When the dual-purpose round touched the wall of the hangar, its copper armor-penetrating shrapnel charge spit out the prefab wall material and molten metal in a cone of lethal devastation that slashed through whatever defenders stood on the other side of the door. Screams of agony split the air.

Lyons emptied his DSA through the hole, then transitioned to his six-inch Colt Python. The airplane access doors groaned ominously and buckled as a thunderous force exerted itself. Moments after the doors deformed, they toppled over, concussive force shearing them from their moorings. Inside, a Cessna Stationaire idled, its propeller sucking smoke from the detonations into spirals of inky grayness. The dark-clad, blond figure stood in a half-open door and brought up a pair of flashing Uzi submachine guns.

Lyons and Blancanales dived for cover as a salvo of 9 mm slugs stabbed at them. The Able Team leader grunted as his body armor stopped a pair of slugs, and he triggered the Colt Python, knowing it wouldn’t be enough to stop the prop plane. He missed the twin-machine-pistol-wielding enemy leader as the Cessna shot forward. Another plane closed its access door and followed the lead plane, but having started later, it was slower, enabling Blancanales to cut loose with his FAL rifle.

The engine belched smoke as 7.62 mm slugs tore into it. The high-velocity bullets shattered the pistons, freezing up the propeller. Lyons let the Python drop to the tarmac and he unslung his Mossberg 500. Tromboning the slide, he hammered a blast of slugs into the fuselage and passenger cabin. Twelve-gauge missiles punched through fiberglass and flesh, tearing into the gunmen jammed into the back of the plane.

Blancanales’s grenade launcher chugged loudly, a third Cessna disappearing in a cloud of flame and splinters.

All the while, Lyons watched the lead plane, and the enemy commander, the same slender figure who’d raced into the darkness before. The Cessna climbed until it was a tiny speck in thousands of miles of empty sky. It was out of eyesight in a minute, but it was not out of sight of the satellites that the Farm had watching the airstrip.

“That’s twice you’ve gotten away,” Lyons snarled. “But we’ll see where you’re going. There won’t be a third time.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The Pacific, en route to Thailand

As they were making their preparations for the penetration into China, there were a few things on Phoenix Force’s side.

The first was the requirement that orbital launch stations be as close to the equator as possible, which limited the facility to being on the southern coast of the nation, far closer to the equator than even NASA’s launch center in Cape Canaveral. While Florida was below the 25th Parallel, the south China coast was well below the 20th Parallel, the Tropic of Cancer. The nearness to the equator added to the facility of getting to orbital velocity by using the Earth’s rotation for help. Since space vehicles orbited simply by missing the Earth’s surface and atmosphere in their million-mile “fall,” it required less energy to attain the altitude necessary to enable that skillful task of throwing themselves at the ground and missing.

Considering the nature of Stony Man Farm’s previous conflicts with the Chinese government in their sponsorship of terrorism and espionage against the United States, Phoenix Force and the Farm had developed dozens of infiltration protocols to get into the nation, contingencies that had been set up for other enemy nations that sponsored the atrocities McCarter and his men spent their lives fighting against. Actually using one of those contingency plans wasn’t something that McCarter relished, but there was the chance that this operation might be coming to the Chinese government’s rescue.

McCarter mused on that for a moment as he reassembled his CZ P.01 pistol. A modern update of his favored Browning Hi-Power, with its safety replaced by an easy-to-reach decocking lever, it had the same ergonomics and high capacity as his preferred Browning, but its Czech origin meant it wouldn’t be traced back to the U.S. if it was lost in the heat of battle. He’d field-stripped the gun to ensure the mechanism was sound, with no burrs on any springs or bearing surfaces that could have compromised reliability. He loaded a 13-round magazine into the butt of the gun, racked the slide, thumbed down the decocker and holstered it. The P.01s were Czech police issue, but used 9 mm ammunition available around the world, including China. The same went for Phoenix Force’s Type 95 assault rifles. The compact bullpups were ugly, and oddly balanced, but they were tough, reliable and used Chinese military ammunition, the 5.8 mm cartridge easily garnered from enemy forces. His and Calvin James’s rifles were fitted with 35 mm under-barrel grenade launchers, while Gary Manning eschewed the compact bullpup for the NORINCO Type 79 self-loading sniper rifle. The Phoenix Force marksman preferred having a long-range weapon, and the 7.62 mm round had an effective range of 1300 meters.

There would be no disguising their appearance, so the team was decked out with a variant of the Land Warrior combat suit. Stony Man Farm had helped them out with the camouflage pattern that would match the area they were inserting into. The Land Warrior suits were complex weaves of Kevlar and Nomex that T. J. Hawkins and Gary Manning were currently stenciling camou patterns onto. The rifles were being color detailed with camouflage paint by Rafael Encizo while Calvin James went over his medical kit to ensure that they were ready for whatever infections and injuries they could incur. Radiation poison inoculations were also being set up, given the chance of external exposure to lethal Iridium-132. The dense, radioactive metal could cause gamma radiation burns and poisoning.

A layer of charcoal filtering underneath the Land Warrior suits would provide some protection, but gamma radiation was of a powerful, high-frequency energy wave that required high-density materials, such as lead aprons, to stop it. Unfortunately, that kind of protective covering would prove too bulky to wear into a stealth operation, and would hinder movement to such a degree that a firefight would leave them as practically stationary targets.

McCarter’s satellite phone warbled and he picked it up. “News?”

“We’ve been digging into SAD internal communiqués. We ended up with a few discarded, zero-filed memos in their trash,” Barbara Price announced. “Someone’s keeping information in SAD from getting out about anomalies in their military launch programs. The higher-ups are not getting discrepancies in field reports on their threat matrix because someone’s deleting them.”

“I knew it didn’t make sense for the Chinese to try something big against the International Space Station,” McCarter said. “It’s too risky a move that could start a nuclear exchange.”

“Renegade factions inside Chinese intel?” Price mused. “Or someone who tapped into them?”

“We’ll have a chinwag with the blokes running the joint when we drop in, Barb,” McCarter returned.

“We’ll keep tracing SAD communications to see if there’s evidence of a larger conspiracy within the government,” Price said. “So far, the way they’re smoke stacking the information, it looks like it might just be a small cadre involved, probably reinforced by international support.”

A beep sounded, distracting Price. She put McCarter on hold for a few moments.

“We’ve got confirmation of activity in Mexico,” Price broke in. “Able encountered a group of enemy soldiers in Sonora, utilizing an airstrip. They reinforced it with antiaircraft machine guns and a full squadron of aircraft on hand.”

“Any escapes?” McCarter asked.

“Carl has confirmed that the same one who got away from them at the border was at the strip. He took off under a wave of suppression fire, but he was the only one who did,” Price said. “We’ve got satellites tracking their plane.”

McCarter rubbed his chin. “Then he won’t get away.”

“You sound doubtful,” Price noted.

McCarter looked at the satellite photographs of the Phoenix Graveyard launch facility. “They obviously have to know that their activities are being watched by us. We’ve got enough eyes in the sky—”

“Image failure,” Price interrupted. “Bear’s reporting that we’ve lost satellite imaging on your insertion point.”

“Looks like the Chinese have found their own copy of the antisatellite laser that Striker took out a while ago,” McCarter commented. “It’s no surprise that the Chinese ‘borrow’ technology from the Russians, whether Moscow wants them to or not.”

“Damn it!” Price exclaimed. “Bear, we need to get on the horn to NRO now. Shift orbits for their birds over Sonora now.”

“It’ll take time to shift aim to take out anything in the sky over Mexico,” McCarter stated. “We’re talking vastly different orbital arcs.”

“Not necessarily,” Price returned. “So far, our flyer is heading due south and skimming the dune tops, hoping to lose himself in ground clutter through Mexican airspace. Obviously, our boy will have a refueling point somewhere in his operational range, and the time it takes to reach that distance, the laser might be recalibrated and ready to take down those satellites.”

“Do you have anything else?” McCarter asked.

“We’re monitoring VOR and local airfield radar, but again, he’s flying nap of the earth,” Price stated.

“He’ll keep his radar footprint faint until the satellites are knocked out,” McCarter grumbled.

“Have you prepped for insertion?” Price asked. “Maybe you could figure out where the laser came from.”

“The camouflage paint will cure on the rifles and gear during the flight,” McCarter replied. “There’s nothing on the ground in China indicating a laser with the kind of reach to knock out a satellite. The Skysniper was a huge piece of machinery, the size of a railroad car, and it needed a lot of power. I don’t see anything indicative of such a system.”

“Maybe not on the ground in China,” Price said. “Though I wouldn’t put it past the Chinese to have a laser system.”

“What about the plasma engine missiles? Striker destroyed their production facility, but perhaps enough technicians survived who remembered the basic layout. Those things had enough energy to reach escape velocity.”

“We’re scanning for possible launch sites in Southeast Asia,” Price returned. “So far, nothing matches any signatures that we’re familiar with. The missiles were fast, but that kind of velocity produces sonic shock waves. Listening posts are directed across mainland China to see if there have been such devices still in service, but we’re talking a large land mass, with plenty of valleys to hide those tests.”

“So it’s up to us to go up to our elbows, sifting through the entrails,” McCarter stated. “All while the Chinese government might be setting up a trap for us by making it look like they don’t know about this.”

“Watch your back, David,” Price admonished.

“I will, Barb,” McCarter returned.

The transport plane had given the signal. They were going to take off on a route toward Thailand. Along the way, Phoenix Force would disembark, provided they weren’t blown out of the sky by Chinese interceptors or antiaircraft installations. Then there was the Phoenix Graveyard itself, full of armed guards and potential terrorists.

All of this taking place on a deadline that, by every indication, would run out when the next shuttle from NASA was sent up to the International Space Station.

In one way or another, the stars were going to be bloodied. Whether that blood would drip like venom across the Earth was up to the warriors of Stony Man Farm.

Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral, Florida

C APTAIN J ORDAN B ROOME went over the preflight checklist, looking for the slightest discrepancies that could ground the shuttle flight. The loss of Colombia due to broken heat shielding was proof of the fact that every detail had to be gone over with a fine-tooth comb. Even before the other shuttle disasters, the NASA crews performed “belt and suspender” checks to back up maintenance technicians.

His desk phone rang, and Broome picked up.

“Jordie? We’ve got a problem with the upcoming flight,” Dr. Alexander Thet, the ground control coordinator for the upcoming mission, spoke hurriedly into the line. “Could you pop over to my office?”

“You can’t tell me over the phone, Xander?” Broome asked.

“Your office doesn’t have a secure link. Mine does,” Thet answered.

“Secure link?”

“That bad. And the man on the other end doesn’t want to run up a phone bill,” Thet told him. “Move it.”

Broome hung up and rushed down the hall to Thet’s office. Thet was a small, pale man with a receding hairline and washed-out blond hair, so light it could almost be white. In comparison, there was a large, burly guy in a rumpled suit.

“Jord, Hal Brognola. Hal, Captain Jordan Broome,” Thet said by way of introduction. He gestured to the video monitor with a small camera on the top. “I suppose I don’t have to introduce the President, do I?”

Broome shook his head. “What’s wrong?”

“Around midnight, there was an incident at a scientific testing facility in southern Arizona,” the President said.

“The new hydrogen cell maneuvering thrusters?” Broome asked.

“Exactly. We lost the shipment,” the President told him. “Mr. Brognola is going to be my liaison to you on this. We believe this might be more than just a sabotage attempt against technology.”

“Why not handle this through Dr. Griffey?” Broome inquired.

“I appointed Stewart to manage the scientific end of things. Hal, here, is one of my most trusted associates in regard to matters of national and international security,” the President said. “He is my right hand, and he can make any decision as if it were under my authority.”

Broome nodded and offered a hand to Brognola. “It’ll be good working with you.”

“I hope so,” Brognola answered. “But I rarely show up at pleasant circumstances.”

“I’ll leave the important details to Hal,” the President told Broome and Thet. “I just wanted to make certain that there is no ambiguity as to how important Mr. Brognola’s input is going to be.”

The pair nodded, and the screen went dark.

“We have a feeling that there might be a problem on the International Space Station,” Brognola announced, getting right to the point. Broome frowned at the implications as he looked at aerial photography of a Chinese launch facility. Broome could tell what it was because of the effort to duplicate the NASA facilities, as well as the equipment. If there was one thing that the Red Chinese could do, it was to replicate “borrowed” technology, and it was in full evidence here.

Brognola pointed to a training camp off to the side, and a scale-model layout of what could only be the ISS. “It’s not concrete evidence, but we’ve been running this particular mock-up against every other facility, and nothing but the ISS matches it. And because it’s a tire house, we can only assume that combat training exercises are being conducted inside.”

“Can’t be firearms based,” Thet stated. “This isn’t like an airliner where one bullet only adds another vector for depressurization. We’d be talking a major atmosphere leak, as well as a weakening of the station integrity.”

“What’s this that you have circled?” Broome asked.

“Those are deposits of Iridium-192,” Brognola replied. “Whoever is responsible for the training camp setup—”

“It’s not the Chinese?” Broome interrupted.

“We’re digging. And while there might be elements of Red Chinese security involved, we don’t believe that they are acting alone,” Brognola stated. “Which is why I want to make a substitution on your shuttle crew.”

Broome raised an eyebrow. “At the last minute?”

“He’s a highly trained asset,” Brognola told him. He handed over a file, heavily edited. Broome picked it up, looking over the dossier for “Henry Miller.”

“I’m going to have to take some time on this,” Broome replied. He glanced at Brognola. “He had been previously cleared for a shuttle mission?”

“Two in fact. Only one incident was meant as a ruse. The shuttle never launched,” Brognola explained.

“So he’s experienced. I do want to meet him. There’s only so much that a piece of paper can tell me, and in case you haven’t noticed, Mr. Brognola, we’re going into space. Even if he’s somehow managed to get on a shuttle before, this ‘Miller’ cat had better be on top of his game,” Broome said. “I know you’re only an administrator…”

“Hands on,” Brognola countered. “And I am well aware of unit integrity. Ideally, we’d have loved to have Miller gain more experience with your crew, so that you could operate together more fluidly, but we just don’t have the luxury to do so. As it is, he will be arriving here inside the hour.”

Broome nodded. “We’ll have to have Komalko sit this one out then, Xander.”

The administrator nodded. “At least this guy has the creds to sit in for him.”

“On paper,” Broome retorted.

“That’s another thing,” Brognola said. “The crew going up to the ISS check out well on paper. But have you been getting any bad vibes from them?”

“Bad vibes? The crew is full of U.S. military personnel who have passed extensive background checks, Mr. Brognola,” Broome protested.

Brognola sighed. “I know it seems like I’m insulting people, but in my line of work, I’ve run across a lot of sinners posing as saints.”

“And in my line of work, you have to have good instincts about your people and your equipment,” Broome countered.

“So no one on your crew has made you suspicious,” Brognola surmised. “Good. That’s all I wanted to know. Just keep your eyes and ears open for anything that might be suspicious.”

Broome relaxed. He realized that it wasn’t the Fed’s intention to offend, that he was looking at every possible angle on how the opposition might want to damage the International Space Station. “I’ve got a shuttle to go over from nose to engine cones,” he replied, the anger drained from his voice. “It’s hard enough being suspicious of circuits and frame welds when you have to add in possible terrorists posing as astronauts.”

“I know. That’s why I’m bringing in Miller. He’s not only qualified to ride with you, he’s got a good sense for whoever might want to sabotage this mission or help hijack the ISS. Besides, you’ll need someone with training on the station in case this group does launch a takeover attempt from China,” Brognola explained.

“Takeover?” Broome asked. “You mean they’d send up a shuttle full of soldiers to take over the ISS? Why not just blow it out of the sky?”

“Because otherwise, they’d have no way to drop large amounts of highly radioactive isotope with a high resistance to reentry on the cities of the world,” Brognola answered.

“Iridium 192…It’s an externally hazardous material, but doctors use it all the time to treat certain forms of cancer,” Thet advised. “Because it’s so dense, however, it passes through without leaving trace amounts.”

“But as shrapnel, it’d be hazardous because it would be embedded in the environment, giving off gamma radiation to irradiate survivors,” Broome concluded. “Externally it produces radiation burns and induces radiation poisoning.”

Brognola spoke up. “That’s a dichotomy I’m having a little trouble wrapping my brain around. You’d think it’d be more hazardous inside a human body.”

“We’re talking different amounts,” Thet replied. “The seeds that are ingested are tiny seeds. Internal radiation burns could occur in the digestive system if a quantity of industrial pellets were ingested. It’s not completely harmless inside the body, otherwise it wouldn’t be used to burn out cancer. As a shrapnel injury, exposure would be far worse.”

Brognola nodded, understanding. His teams had had several close calls with various forms of radioactive material, and so far, they had all gotten through without major incapacitation. The foes of Able Team and Phoenix Force usually weren’t so lucky, and the head Fed had seen the results of massive radiation exposure.

Thet’s phone rang and he picked it up. “Miller’s about to land,” he said after hanging up.

Brognola looked to Broome. “Want to come meet him? Or do you still have checks to run?”

Broome shook his head. “It can wait a few minutes. I do want to meet your man and see if he’ll fit in with the team.”

“Can we get a driver, Xander?” Broome asked.

“I had one on standby when Mr. Brognola told me he was coming. I called before you came in,” Thet explained.

“Thanks,” Broome said. “I don’t want to waste too much time.”

“I certainly hope it is going to be a waste of time,” Brognola stated. “Because if it isn’t, the next few days are going to be hell.”

Broome nodded in agreement, believing that the big Fed was correct.

“I KNOW YOU’RE NOT in love with the idea that we’re splitting up,” Schwarz told Lyons over his satellite phone as they approached to Cape Canaveral, “but Hal needs someone inside the shuttle.”

“Yeah,” Lyons mumbled. “I remember the last time we were an official part of the shuttle crew. That was a plain fucked mission. I just wish we still had you on the streets with us.”

“There’s always a chance the launch will be scuttled,” Schwarz offered.

“I don’t think so,” Lyons replied. “They’ll need someone up there. Right now, you’re the best option. Shoving all three of us on the shuttle will make things too crowded, and will tip off any infiltrators at NASA that we’re on to them.”

Schwarz sighed, knowing that his friend was right. “Just be careful out there.”

“Careful gets you killed, Gadgets,” Lyons returned. “I’ll just have to put a little more ball to the wall to make up for you not being at my back.”

Schwarz chuckled through a nervous shudder. “You been holding back all this time, Ironman?”

“Just watch your ass. We’ll be fine,” Lyons admonished.

Schwarz hung up and looked out the window as the plane taxied to a halt. A silver Hummer with blue trim rolled up to the tarmac, and he saw Hal Brognola looking out one of the back windows.

Sabrina Bertonni stirred in her seat, looking up at him. “We’re there?”

Schwarz nodded, grabbing his gear. “Yup. Are you sure that you’re up to this?”

Bertonni shrugged. “Someone has to implement the upgrades on the samples we sent on ahead. Besides, I’m not the one riding tons of thrust into space.”

Schwarz rolled his eyes. “When you put it that way, it sounds scary.”

The scientist’s lips tightened. She’d been brought into this knowing there was the possibility of sabotage or infiltration on the flight to the International Space Station. There was a good chance that this flight would end up in flames, just like the Challenger and Columbia. Instead of voicing her doubts, she picked up her bag and disembarked with Schwarz. They clambered down the roll-up steps as Jordan Broome and Brognola got out of the NASA Hummer.

“Captain Broome, this is Henry Miller,” Brognola introduced. “Miller, Captain Jordan Broome, the commander of the USS Arcadia. Have you met Dr. Sabrina Bertonni, Broome?”

The astronaut nodded. “On a few instances, usually while going over testing protocols for the thrusters.”

Schwarz offered his hand. “Permission to come on board, Captain?”

Broome took the offered hand and shook it, a moment of challenge rising as he applied a strong grip. Fortunately, the Able Team electronics genius was used to such testosterone-soaked rituals. His own hand was tight, and Broome’s efforts to make the handshake uncomfortable were foiled by his own strong grasp. “Permission granted, Lieutenant Miller.”

Schwarz grinned. “Call me Gadgets.”

Broome nodded. “Kind of figured that Miller wasn’t a real moniker.”

“Oh, it is. But people keep wanting me to recite from Tropic of Cancer. ”

Broome chuckled. “So, how is June?”

Schwarz winked. “I’m sure you’ve seen the movie, Captain Broome.”

The astronaut laughed. “Call me Jordie.” His tone returned to seriousness after a moment. “You’re going to have some trouble. The rest of the crew isn’t going to like Pie Komalko being kicked to have you put in.”

“Is there an official explanation as to why?” Schwarz asked Brognola.

“You’re one of the few Burgundy Lake survivors in any condition to work with the experimental prototypes that survived the assault,” Brognola replied. The big Fed glanced at Sabrina Bertonni, whose expression had darkened at the mention of the incident that had claimed the lives of so many colleagues.

“Right. A few had been sent on ahead,” Schwarz replied with a nod, giving Bertonni’s hand a reassuring squeeze. Her green eyes flicked to him, and her mouth turned up in the closest thing to a smile she could manage. Schwarz sympathized with her. “We’ll work on upgrading the test samples to meet the current generation that was lost.”

“We?” Broome asked. “So the nickname fits. You can work on the thrusters?”

“I’ve been discussing the work with him on the flight over,” Bertonni noted. “He’s a quick study, and assisting me, we’ll get everything running better than the modules you were going to take up.”

“Of course, that’s between my preflight responsibilities,” Schwarz noted.

“Komalko will help you out with that. With the two of you working on it, you’ll be able to halve the time needed for the checks, freeing up room for the module upgrades,” Broome stated. “But first, you’re going to have to meet the rest of the crew.”

Schwarz nodded. His introduction as an outsider would leave him vulnerable to anyone in NASA who could have been a turncoat. If the enemy had been able to slip an insider into Burgundy Lake, a top-secret facility with only a small staff, the sprawling Cape Canaveral could potentially be a minefield of danger.

That was Schwarz’s job, though. To flush the enemy by setting himself up as bait. Glancing at Bertonni, he realized that she would be under the gun, as well, so he had more than his own life at stake.

Staring into the bright blue Florida afternoon, he knew both of their lives were on the line to keep the sky from falling.

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