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“Just women and children,” Schwarz said. “Killed to smear America’s name across the headlines in innocent blood.”
Lyons shrugged. “The papers are already full of the U.S. being bloodthirsty brutes for Iraq. Like we needed any more vilification?”
Blancanales cocked an eyebrow.
“Sorry,” Lyons said. “That last caveman comment got me breaking out my five-dollar words.”
Blancanales grinned, but the smile didn’t last long. “But why UAVs?”
“It has to be linked to the mess Phoenix is investigating over in Lebanon,” Schwarz said. “And don’t forget, we’ve had our own encounters with rogue drones in the past.”
“The Farm never did figure out who supplied that Egyptian general with so many Predators,” Blancanales answered. “This might be more of the same.”
Lyons frowned, “Then we can find out who’s behind it and shut it all down.”
“Before they start a global war,” Schwarz mentioned. He looked at the files on the attack. “We just need to figure out where the drones launched from. Maybe then we could learn who made them and work our way up the food chain.”
He pored over detailed photographs of the wrecked unmanned drones that had hit the crowd at the consulate. Nothing identifiable had survived the crash of the second, and the AT-4 rocket had blasted everything to garbage.
“Nothing on the technology front?” Blancanales asked.
“Bulk, cheap Chinese electronics, rewired to handle the demands of duplicating Predator UAV technology. Some brilliant improvisation, but no evidence of who put it together,” Schwarz said. He shook his head. “Untraceable.”
“Nothing is untraceable,” Lyons retorted. “We’ll find a handle. And when we do, we’ll twist until we get some answers.”
There was a knock at the door and all three Able warriors’ hands fell to the grips of their holstered handguns. Lyons answered the door and admitted their contact, Susana Arquillo. She was a CIA field agent assigned to Panama. Her skin was darkened and bronzed by the near equatorial sun. Her hair had been long and dark in her file photograph, but in person, it was trimmed short and pulled back into a tight bun. A few strands of white feathered through it to make it seem lighter. Arquillo’s full, lush lips parted in a smile.
“Carl Ryder?” she asked.
“That’s me,” Lyons said.
“And you can confirm who I am?” Arquillo asked.
“Gadgets, run her prints,” Lyons told Schwarz. “If you’re not who you’re supposed to be…”
Arquillo’s eyes dropped to the rubber Pachmayer grips poking out of Lyons’s waistband. “I won’t be walking out of here. But what if I’m packing explosives?”
Lyons looked her over, hard blue eyes scanning the way her jeans hugged her curvaceous hips. Her blouse hung, unbuttoned and tied together at the bottom, a dark red tank top constraining her full breasts. His hand patted around her waist and found her compact 9 mm Glock on one side and a tiny .38 Special tucked away on the other. “I don’t think you could be hiding too much under there.”
Arquillo was relatively tall, five foot nine, and athletically built. She cocked an eyebrow as she pressed her fingertips to the flat scan plate Schwarz held out for her. “Ever hear of a charger?”
“You don’t strike me as the kind of woman who’d want to go out with an eighth of a stick of C-4 detonating in her ass,” Lyons said.
“Besides,” Blancanales added, holding up a portable “sniffer.” “This thing would have smelled explosive residue on you.”
“Thorough,” Arquillo noted.
“She’s clean,” Schwarz declared.
CHAPTER TWO
Gary Manning observed the unknown group on the beach, ignoring the salt drying and congealing with sand in his soaked BDUs. There would be time to change into fresh clothing later, and it was a minor discomfort. The group’s activity was clearer now from their position on the beach. It was a work crew, unloading containers from transport trucks onto a beached barge. His lips drew into a tight line.
“Unmarked containers,” he said. “But the shape is unmistakable.”
“UAV transport crating,” David McCarter answered as he lowered his binoculars. “We lucked out here.”
“Except, if we were lucky, we would have a Zodiac raft to shadow the barge to its destination,” Manning said.
“I’ll contact the Farm,” McCarter suggested. “It’ll be a breach of radio discipline, but they can keep an eye on the craft while we continue our inland push.”
“We’re still going into Lebanon?” Hawkins asked.
“These things were delivered somewhere. And we still have to touch base with Unit 777 and the Mossad. They’ve been noticing some unusual activity in Lebanon.”
“UFO sightings,” Calvin James muttered. “If they weren’t one of the crack units in the region, I’d have thought they’d gone nuts.”
“Unidentified aircraft aren’t always spawned by little green men, hermano ,” Rafael Encizo chided his partner. “And some of those UFOs might have dropped chemical weapons into Syria. I’d still like to keep a tail on them.”
McCarter lowered the satellite radio. “Barb has a Keyhole watching the barge. The Farm isn’t going to lose track of it.”
James nodded. “Which means we can concentrate on keeping up with the trucks.”
“Not necessarily,” Manning interjected. McCarter and James regarded their partner quizzically as the brawny Canadian observed the convoy through his sniper scope. “The trucks aren’t moving.”
McCarter ran a mental tally of the enemy vehicles. There were three tractor-trailer combinations and half a dozen pickup trucks. The pickups had six men a piece, and who knew how many crewed the eighteen-wheelers, but the Phoenix Force commander figured between forty and fifty men for this operation. The rules of engagement for this mission had nominally been to avoid enemy contact, and any unavoidable conflict had to be undertaken with a maximum of stealth. Five against fifty was not going to be a silent struggle, no matter if all of their weapons had been suppressed. The element of surprise only went so far.
“Even more bad news,” Encizo noted as he lowered his scope-equipped MP-5. “That barge didn’t go more than five hundred yards out into the water.”
McCarter glanced back, then watched the trailers. He swept them with his binoculars, eschewing optics for his machine pistol. He lowered them. “They set up a transmission antenna.”
James looked out toward the barge. “We only saw them unload one of the trailers onto the barge, with workers who had come out of the back of a second.”
“The third is a control center,” Hawkins said. He took a deep breath and lifted his binoculars to watch the barge along with James and Encizo. “It’s parked?”
“Looks like they’re setting up to launch the UAVs,” James noted.
“Get on the horn to the Farm,” McCarter said. “We’ve got a major emergency. Rafe, Cal. Time to hit the water.”
Encizo grimaced. “Both of us?”
“I appreciate the offer, but that barge has to be put down before they can launch,” McCarter ordered.
Hawkins looked up from his satellite phone. “Got the Farm.”
“Barb?” McCarter asked.
“What is it, David?” Barbara Price asked.
“Have the Israeli air force go on alert. We’ve stumbled on another bit of provocation,” he told her. “That barge is a floating launch pad.”
“Should we get someone scrambled out to you?” Price asked.
“Syria is on full alert as it is. Any friendly aircraft who’d hit this place would only provoke them and their allies in Lebanon,” the Briton explained.
“What kind of enemy forces are you looking at?” Price continued.
“Thirty to forty ground troops. Lord know how many in the trucks, but a group went out on the barge,” McCarter explained.
Price covered the mouthpiece on her end for a moment, then spoke to McCarter again. “An air strike might make Damascus squirrelly, but we have a way around that.”
“What’ve you got?” McCarter inquired.
“An artillery unit in northern Israel. They lob some explosives across the border into Lebanon every so often,” Price mentioned.
McCarter frowned. “We’re danger close, and I’d like to take one of the trailers intact. If we can get hold of the hardware and servers used to operate their drones, we could slip you chaps into the back door for some deep-down digging.”
“Ten to one’s tough odds, David,” Price said.
“Worse than that,” McCarter admitted. “I sent Cal and Rafe to the barge to sink it.”
“We drop one shell in the vicinity. It’ll cut the odds, and less likely to blow everything to hell.”
The Briton handed the phone to Hawkins and contacted James and Encizo on his Los Angeles SWAT Headset—LASH. “How soon to the barge?”
“Another two minutes,” Encizo said.
McCarter took the phone back from Hawkins. “How far is the artillery site from here?”
Price gave the coordinates.
“A minute and a half flight,” McCarter figured.
“That’s what we figured. Coordinates?” Price asked.
McCarter handed the phone to Manning, who had been observing the operation. The Canadian read off coordinates he figured through his map skills. Manning’s mathematical skills and navigational abilities were second to none, and if anyone had a chance to spot for an artillery shell fired from dozens of miles away without benefits of laser targeting, it was him. Manning gave the Briton the phone.
“Your artillery is on its way,” Price promised. “It’ll be there by the time the others make their move on the barge.”
“What can we expect?” McCarter asked.
“We have a reserve unit dropping some payback on a Palestinian group. You’ll get a 155 mm Copperhead from a Doher,” Price said.
“Cover your heads, lads. It’s going to get loud,” McCarter promised.
Manning slung his sniper rifle and drew his Glock 34. He’d eschewed a machine pistol for the precision rifle, but compromised by carrying two of the chosen sidearm for this mission. The second Glock was set up for close-quarters combat, equipped with a blunt four-inch suppressor, a 20-round extended magazine and, on a rail under the barrel, a mounted gun light. The suppressor provided a semblance of stealth without sacrificing stopping power for the hollowpoint rounds within, and the light, even if it wasn’t activated, served as a means of steadying the already mild recoil of the G-34 in rapid fire. The Glock was also one of the most accurate and easy-to-shoot handguns on the planet, second only to McCarter’s own beloved Browning Hi-Power.
McCarter relegated his MP-5 to a backup role, drawing his Browning in anticipation of a fast, nasty mop-up. And it would be quick and nasty. While an artillery shell would take out a good number of the enemy force, no barrage would ever completely obliterate opposition. But it would soften them up. Hawkins stuck with his MP-5, not trusting his skill with a handgun to be as high as Phoenix veterans Manning and McCarter.
The Briton looked out over the water.
The two minutes that James and Encizo had estimated were almost up.
K NIFING THROUGH THE WATER like they were born to it, Rafael Encizo and Calvin James closed on the barge. The Phoenix Force pair drew their fighting knives in anticipation of first contact with the crew of the barge, but their observations showed that the men on board were busy preparing unmanned aerial vehicles for launch. Just before they reached the hull, they noted canisters labeled with the universal symbol for biohazard.
Encizo and James shared a nervous, knowing glance as they realized the implications of their failure. Whoever these men were, they were planning to launch an attack, utilizing a similar lethal contamination that devastated the Syrian camp. Four UAVs sat on the deck of the barge, laden with four canisters each on underwing mounts normally meant for Maverick antitank missiles. The size of the containers promised a potential of death for thousands if they struck in a metropolitan center.
Both Phoenix force commandos realized that Israel had many port cities that would provide tempting targets for the airborne death-bringers.
On the shore, a thunderclap split the air, which served as the starting gun for their assault.
Encizo gripped the rail of the barge with one hand and hauled himself onto its deck, staying low. In his off hand, the Cold Steel Tanto Combat knife was held in an icepick grip, the chisel-pointed, razor-sharp blade shielded against his forearm so it wouldn’t reflect the work lights on the deck, even though he had the concealment of a crate. James surfaced and crawled onto the barge fifteen feet away, also behind a transport container. The barge itself was twenty yards long, but much narrower by a factor of four to one, five yards wide. It was a garbage scow that had been pressed into service as an aircraft carrier to launch the drones. Since the UAVs were designed for short takeoff and landing, even with underwing payloads, the length would be enough for the launching task.
The engines on the first one strummed to life and Encizo realized that if it started moving, tragedy would fall on an Israeli city. The stocky Cuban sheathed his combat blade and shouldered his machine pistol, quickly detaching the suppressor on the MP-5, knowing that he’d need every ounce of power to damage even the relatively flimsy and disposable aircraft.
He focused on the engine cowling, situated two feet above and away from the biohazard canisters mounted underwing, and opened fire as soon as he had a clear sight picture. The German-made machine pistol chattered out its popping death song. Men on deck dived for cover at the sound of Encizo’s attack, shocked at his sudden appearance. The engine cowling perforated in a dozen places as full-metal-jacketed bullets smashed through the pistons running its propeller.
The Predator knockoff lurched forward a few feet, smoke pouring from the damaged engine, but it rolled to a halt as the propeller caught and froze on broken pistons.
James moved from behind cover as soon as Encizo opened fire and concentrated on two of the enemy who were reaching for their weapons. All the men on the barge were armed with at least handguns, and the two who were reacting had AKM folding-stock assault rifles. James ripped a burst of suppressed fire into one of them, stitching him through the face and shoulders. The other man had gotten to his knees and fired a quick salvo from the hip that missed the black Phoenix Force pro by inches. James tucked down deeper and sliced the rifleman from crotch to throat with a half dozen Parabellum slugs. The enemy gunner flopped over the side of the barge, disappearing into the Mediterranean.
Encizo scurried behind the cover of his crates, keeping one step ahead of the handgun fire that chased him. The Cuban took a few potshots, but was hampered by the fact that four drones were parked on the deck laden with poison-packed containers. He didn’t want to risk dumping contagion into the Mediterranean to have it wash ashore in a populated area.
Saving one city would have been a waste if other civilians were sacrificed because of sloppy work. He still fired a few shots, high and wide, to keep their attention on him and give James, who had a better angle on the defenders, a chance to take them out.
James didn’t envy Encizo’s position as human target, and he ripped off more bursts from his machine pistol, tagging every enemy target he could find. Unfortunately the enemy had realized that as long as they cowered behind the biohazard containers, they were relatively safe.
James disabused them of that concept by dropping prone and targeting legs and feet with his machine pistol. Bullets smashed violently through tarsal bones and kneecaps with equally devastating and crippling results. The conspirators crashed helplessly to the deck, falling away from the lethal cylinders of contagion that they sought to use as shields. Flat on their backs and bellies, they were easy targets for James and Encizo to finish off.
The Cuban crouched behind a crate and swept fallen survivors with submachine-gun fire. It was a cruel and callous effort, gunning down the injured, but these men still held handguns that they could use in a last-ditch effort to breach one of the bioweapon containers as a final act of revenge.
“All clear?” James asked, moving swiftly around the bodies of the dead and the inert drones.
“No movement,” Encizo answered.
“We can’t leave these things,” James stated, looking toward the shore.
“No,” Encizo agreed, “but we can take them with us.”
James looked at the deckhouse. “I’ve got it.”
“Maybe we won’t be too late to help out,” Encizo concluded as the barge turned toward the shore.
I T WAS NO DIFFICULT TRICK to misdirect a laser-guided 155 mm artillery shell utilizing a broadcast pulse from a satellite slaved to Stony Man Farm’s control. The M-712 Copperhead was one of the first and most successful of laser-guided, cannon-launched munitions, with a range of ten miles, and carrying nearly fifteen pounds of Composition B as its warhead. With a velocity of detonation at 8050 meters per second, 1100 meters per second faster than TNT, the Copperhead shell possessed awesome destructive ability. Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman distracted the single Copperhead round from a flight of twenty aimed across the northern border between Israel and Lebanon against a Syrian-backed militia. Well within the ten-mile range of the laser-guided shell, the M-712 altered its guide path and split off from the main flight.
Kurtzman continued to track their hijacked shell in flight, painting Manning’s target via a satellite-mounted laser. The computer genius took into account atmospheric refraction, but he held his breath as the warhead, loaded with the equivalent of fifteen pounds of TNT, was dropped, as McCarter had noted, “danger close” to the men of Phoenix Force. One variation in humidity or air temperature and there was a strong possibility that there wouldn’t be enough left of McCarter, Manning and Hawkins to scoop up inside a matchbox.
The satellite registered the detonation of the Copperhead, and Kurtzman looked at his screen for the IFF codes on Phoenix Force’s LASH communicators.
