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“At ease,” General Novostk commanded impatiently. “Give me a report on the outside world. Do we have any more uninvited guests today? We seem to have taken refuge in the main train station of Bratislava.” All of the other soldiers chuckled at the joke.
Not exactly sure why they were doing that, the colossal Lieutenant Gregor Vladislav merely grinned to be polite. Most people said things that he did not fully comprehend. But that was okay. His expertise was with weapons, killing came as easily to him as flying did to a bird. It was only people that he could not really understand. As a child, his father had wisely taught Vladislav that there was always somebody smarter than you in the world. Intelligence was rather like the martial arts; no matter how good you were, there was always somebody a little bit faster or a little bit stronger. The trick was to not attract attention to yourself, and then strike from behind.
“The outer perimeter is clear, sir,” Melori reported, fondly touching the delicate sensors. What his friend Vladislav did with a knife, he could do with electronics. Together, they were an unstoppable team. “Both radar and sonar show no unusual activity in our vicinity.”
“And what is the usual activity?”
“Schools of fish to the west, fishing boats to the east, a commercial jetliner to the far north, some oil tankers to the far south.”
“Very good, Sergeant,” the general said with a nod. “Let us know if anything approaches very fast. That will probably be the FSB.”
“Closely followed by the entire Russian army,” Lindquist added in a snarl.
“We can stop them, sir,” Vladislav stated in a voice of stone. “The missiles are live and ready to fire.”
The other soldiers stoically said nothing, but Melori seemed slightly embarrassed by the outburst.
“Yes, I’m sure the fight would be glorious, but in the end, a thousand will beat fifty every time,” General Novostk said tolerantly. “So until we’re safely back home, I would prefer to avoid the enemy.”
“Yes, sir, of course,” the lieutenant growled. “Pull back in a feint, then strike from behind.”
Patting the giant on the arm, Novostk smiled. “Something like that, old friend.”
Leaving the men to their work, the two officers shuffled carefully along the planks over the dark water.
“Why are we keeping that idiot alive?” Lindquist muttered.
“I have my reasons,” Novostk replied curtly. “And they are none of your concern.”
Stepping onto the conning tower, the officers found the watertight hatch already open. A clatter of noise was coming from inside the submarine, the command deck below a hive of activity.
As Lindquist stepped aside to let the general climb down first, Novostk touched his arm. “Are the scuttling charges ready?” he asked in a low whisper.
The colonel maintained a neutral expression in case somebody was watching them. “Absolutely, sir. Just give the word.”
“Hopefully, we will not have to,” General Novostk stated, rubbing the scar on his throat. “But it is always best to be prepared for the worst.”
Without further comment, the two Slovakians clambered into the old submarine and began the final preparations for their departure, and the beginning of World War III.
Boca Raton, Florida
SWOOPING GRACEFULLY out of the clear blue sky, the huge C-130 Hercules landed on a private airstrip on Miami/Dade Airport and taxied straight into a private hangar at the extreme end of the field.
As the massive aircraft came to a stop, the rear ramp cycled to the ground and out rolled a small cargo van, the windows tinted darkly. The unmarked van seemed perfectly ordinary enough, but it contained more armor than an APC, along with a small arsenal of military weaponry tucked inside hidden ceiling compartments.
Dressed in loose civilian clothing, the men of Able Team were planning on making this mission a soft recon, low and easy. But just in case of trouble, they also brought along some heavy iron.
Suddenly the radio speaker built into the ceiling crackled alive. “Sky King to the Senator,” the voice of Jack Grimaldi said over the background static. “Sky King to the Senator, ten-four?”
“Ten-two, Sky King,” Rosario Blancanales said into a hand mike from the passenger seat. “This is the Senator. Is something wrong?” Glancing into the side mirror, Blancanales watched the door to the hangar close as the building itself dwindled into the distance.
“Negative,” the pilot replied. “Just wanted you to know that I should have the Hercules refueled and ready to eat clouds in an hour, just in case we have to leave in a hurry.”
“Roger, Sky King. Much appreciated,” Blancanales said with a wan smile. “We’ll give a holler if things get exciting.”
“You do that. Tails high, brother! Ten-two.”
“Over and out,” Blancanales replied, returning the mike to its clip.
“‘Tails high’?” Schwarz asked from the rear of the van, stuffing tools into his belt pouch from a small worktable bolted to the wall.
“Hermann, not even I understand the humor of pilots,” Blancanales sighed, opening a ceiling compartment to take down an M-16 M-203 assault rifle combo.
Broad and powerful, the man radiated charm the way a furnace does heat, only the salt-and-pepper hair suggesting his true age. A master of psychological warfare, Blancanales had talked his way out of more hot spots than could be easily counted, and had earned his nickname of “the Politician,” a thousand times over.
“I think the thin air makes them crazy,” said Carl “Ironman” Lyons from behind the wheel, shifting gears to accelerate the van. The Able Team leader was a stocky man with short blond hair and cool blue eyes. “Or rather, it makes them even more crazy,” Lyons amended, turning onto an access ramp. “All pilots are odd to begin with.”
Schwarz was busy tucking a U.S. Army laptop into a black shoulder bag. Even though the battlefield laptop was sheathed in bullet-resistant titanium, the bag was a ballistic cloth resistant to fire, knives and most small-caliber rounds. If anything, Schwarz believed that planning for a disaster was the best way to achieve success.
A stocky man with short brown hair and full mustache, Schwarz had a friendly, smiling face and bright, intelligent eyes. An expert in electronic warfare and countersurveillance, “Gadgets” Schwarz designed most of the communications equipment for the Farm. Barbara Price had been known to joke that Schwarz could chew a toaster and spit out a cell phone. The man could make, repair or alter anything that used advanced electronics, including high-explosive booby traps.
Chuckling in agreement, Blancanales closed the grenade launcher, then eased a clip of 5.56 mm hardball ammunition into the receiver of the assault rifle. Before Able Team left for the mission, John “Cowboy” Kissinger had tried to persuade Blancanales to take along one of the XM-8 assault rifles that would soon be replacing the old M-16 as the standard weapon for the entire United States military. But Blancanales had declined, at least until the Pentagon removed the “experimental” prefix from the sleek weapon. The XM-8 looked great on the gun range, but the difference between that and actual combat was often measured in the length of a dying soldier’s prayer.
Still sitting at his small workbench, Schwarz began to whistle as he opened a wall compartment and removed an XM-8 assault rifle. The new weapon gleamed with oil and polish. Working the arming lever, Schwarz inserted a plastic clip. The 5.56 mm HEAT rounds inside were clearly visible through a clear plastic window.
“Had a little talk with Cowboy, did you?” Blancanales asked mockingly.
“Why not? We’ve got to field-test these things sometime,” Schwarz stated, checking the 40 mm grenade launcher attached to the side of the XM-8 assault rifle.
So far, he approved of the new weapon. The XM-8 had excellent balance, an oversize ejector port to reduce jams, ambidextrous safety and was a good two pounds lighter than an M-16. That didn’t sound like much, but after a twenty mile run through the jungle, that measly two pounds could feel like half a ton. Two pounds lighter, yet it had greater range and was significantly quieter.
“Five miles to the cemetery,” Lyons announced, checking the navigation unit clipped to the dashboard. “Better get those out of sight.” Near his sneakers was a long box marked with the name of a local florist. It was tied with a ribbon and smelled slightly of gun oil.
“Anything on the radar?” Blancanales asked, working the slide on his Colt .380 automatic. The weapon was equipped with a bulbous acoustical silencer. That made it harder to draw fast, but the acoustical silencer would last forever, unlike a conventional silencer, which only worked for a few rounds.
“Passive is clear,” Schwarz reported, checking the machines. “We had a ping before, but it was just a traffic cop checking our speed.”
“Are you sure?” Lyons demanded, signaling to change lanes.
“Hell yes, I’m sure,” Schwarz snorted, crossing his arms defiantly. “The day I can’t tell the damn difference between traffic radar and a missile getting target acquisition, please shoot me.”
The other men accepted that, and settled in for the long ride. There were small airports a lot closer to the Bonaventure Cemetery that the commercial one they had used, but none of them were quite large enough to accommodate a C-130.
Only a few minutes later, they reached Boca Raton. The cemetery was located outside town, safely behind some tree-covered hills, and thus out of the sight of the most-elderly townspeople so as to not impolitely remind them of their own mortality.
Sculptured hedges divided the different sections, and an artificial waterfall splashed down from a central hillock to form a shallow stream that meandered through the lush greenery. The sprawling cemetery was a rich green, the perfect condition of the smooth expanse almost resembling a golf course. On the crest was a stand of oak trees with a tiered fountain splashing playfully inside the cool shade. Only the neat rows of orderly headstones marred the sylvan expanse. Only a few monuments stood amid the others, along with a row of garish mausoleums.
A high stone wall completely encircled the cemetery, and the front gates were simple affairs of wrought iron, thick enough to stop a Mack truck.
“Very impressive,” Blancanales muttered as they drove through. “I’ll bet they have very little trouble with grave robbers here.”
“This is Boca, you idiot, not Transylvania!” Schwarz snorted in amusement.
“No, Politician is right. Lots of rich folks live around here,” Lyons agreed, driving along the curved roadway. “And most of them want to be buried wearing their favorite gold watch or diamond jewelry. A fast man with a shovel could make a small fortune if he struck right after the funeral of a millionaire.”
Disgusted, Schwarz frowned. “When I die, just drop me into the sea with my dog tags and a rock for ballast. You can keep everything else.”
“And the way you play poker,” Blancanales added, “that’s all there will be—tags and a rock.”
“Bitch, bitch, bitch, that inside straight paid for your new plasma screen, didn’t it?”
“For which I thank you, in high definition and Dolby stereo.”
“You’re welcome, old buddy.” Schwarz chuckled, patting the other man on the shoulder, then his face tightened. “Oh, shit, this is a trap.”
“Yeah, I know,” Lyons growled, slipping a hand inside his windbreaker to loosen the Colt Python in his shoulder holster. “I just spotted it a second ago.”
The other men needed no further encouragement to ready their weapons for combat. The van was filled with the soft metallic clicks of working arming bolts and safeties disengaging. Every car in the parking lot was dusty, and badly needed to be washed, as if they had been there for days without moving. This was exactly the sort of detail that a street cop looked for to spot an abandoned vehicle parked along a busy downtown street. Now, a grieving family might leave a car here for a few hours, or even overnight, but certainly no longer than that, and not ten of them. That was way beyond the limits of probability. These cars were merely window decorations to make the place look more inviting and less empty. Which meant the entire cemetery was a trap. But was it for them or somebody else? Did the enemy know Able Team had arrived, or were they still waiting for a target? Only one way to find out, and that was to go ask them, face-to-face.
The loose gravel of the parking lot crunched under the tires of the cargo van as Lyons casually headed into the far corner and stopped well away from the other cars.
“Get hard, people,” Lyons said, pretending to adjust his collar to activate the throat mike hidden underneath. “If this is not for us, they will not want to damage the van and give away the show. Whoever this is, they’ll wait until we step outside and then take us down hard.”
“Blood on the gravel being a lot easier to disguise than a burning car wreck,” Blancanales added, adjusting the flesh-colored radio bud in his ear. Unless the entire cemetery was mined to blow, any snipers would have to wait for the Stony Man operatives to reveal themselves to become targets. The soft recon had just gone hard.
“Especially this one,” Lyons said, brushing away the top of the flower box to extract a massive Atchisson autoshotgun.
“Confirmed,” Schwarz stated, looking through a scope of the new XM-8 rifle. “We’re already painted with a UV laser from somebody in those trees on top of the hill. I can see it sweeping back and forth, waiting for us to step outside and say welcome.”
Tugging on a dark baseball cap to cover his blond hair, Lyons started to reach for the hand mike, but stopped just in time. Even if the sniper was scanning the EM bands, he’d never be able to decipher the encoded transmission, but the mere fact that there had been a transmission would tell him far too much. The last thing they could do was call for help, because it would literally be the last thing they ever did. Their pilot, Jack Grimaldi, was on his own.
“The numbers are falling, brothers,” Blancanales stated, draping a bandolier of clips and shells around his neck. “If we take too much longer, the sniper will know we’re wise, and then all hell breaks loose.”
“For him,” Lyons whispered menacingly, easing open the driver’s side door and slipping quietly outside.
Crawling on their bellies into the flowering shrubbery, the three men snaked along the wood chips covering the dark soil. The smells of nature surrounded them, but their focus was on the copse of oak trees on top of the distant hill.
Entering a thick growth of laurel, Schwarz swung up the XM-8 and looked through the built-in telescopic sights to try to find the source of the UV laser. The beam entered the shadows in the crown of the tree and vanished. He knew where the sniper was located, but could not get a clear view.
“This could be a friendly,” Schwarz whispered, shifting position in the greenery. “The Feds or even Homeland.”
“Unlikely,” Lyons began as a flash of light came from within the oaks and a fiery dart raced down the hill to violently explode on the side of the van.
The strident concussion seemed to shake the world, it was so loud, and the car alarms on the other vehicles in the parking lot began hooting, whooping and blaring.
Swirling around, a thick cloud of smoke masked the van as a soft rain of shrapnel sprinkled the gravel. But as the dark fumes cleared, the cargo van was still there. A side panel had been burned completely clean from the explosion, and the bare armor underneath now exposed.
“Well, he knows who we are now. Go, go, go!” Lyons commanded.
The Stony Man operatives broke cover to charge across the open field of gravel and dive for safety behind some granite headstones.
Almost instantly, there came the hard chatter of a powerful machine gun, and the headstone shook from the arrival of hot lead, sharp chips flying off from the hammering impacts.
Recognizing the sound of a FN Mini-Mi, called a M-249 SAW by U.S. troops, the Stony Man team waited until the 200-round belt cycled empty, then they moved again, fast and in different directions. Only a suicide gave an opponent a group target.
As the SAW lurched back into operation, Blancanales and Schwarz took refuge behind a tall hedge, only to recoil from a pungent reek. Looking around, they spotted the tattered body of an old man in work clothes next to a lawn mower, his dried blood splattered over the machine. The hedge had hidden the corpse from them in the parking lot. Filled with a cold certainty, the Stony Man operatives knew in their guts there would be more corpses scattered around the beautiful cemetery.
Carefully aiming between the body of an angel and her outstretched wings, Lyons cut loose with a long burst from the Atchisson, the sustained discharge briefly sounding louder than the rocket attack. The leaves in the copse of trees shook wildly from the arrival of the steel buckshot, but there was no answering cry of pain or spray of blood.
Chattering away once more, the SAW probed the hedges randomly, and Lyons responded with another barrage, letting Blancanales and Schwarz jump ahead several rows. Racing behind a hedge, they fired short bursts from their own weapons into the air. Both of the grenade launchers could reach the trees by now, but the team wanted the man alive. This mission was still basically a recon, and hard intel was the goal, not revenge.
Slapping in a clip of rubber-tipped stun bullets, Schwarz angled a long burst at another obelisk near the top of the hill, and he managed to get some of them to ricochet into the trees. The SAW stopped firing, but only for a moment. Blancanales tried the same tactic from a different direction, but the results were sadly the same.
“Hollywood to Sky King,” Lyons subvocalized into his throat mike, firing a short burst into the trees. “We have a guests at the party. Repeat—” A strident squeal erupted in his earbuds, and the man bit back a curse as he turned down the volume. The radio signal was being jammed.
As if focusing on the brief transmission, the SAW rattled the headstones around the man, the 5.56 mm rounds annihilating more flowers and bushes. Blancanales and Schwarz answered on full automatic as Lyons sprinted for the protection of a granite bench. He made it just in time, a single round plowing through his shirt to glance off the body armor underneath.
Once more the M-249 roared into life, spent brass tumbling from the crown of the tree like hot autumn leaves. The billiard-table-smooth field of grass churned from the arrival of the hollowpoint rounds, and several headstones were knocked over, leaving a large gap in the neatly trimmed hedges.
Sending back a full drum of cartridges in reply, Lyons cursed at the realization that the sniper was creating a shatter-zone, an open space that Able Team would not enter without getting torn into pieces. Smart. Too damn smart.
A grenade came sailing out of the trees, arching high into the clear blue sky. Quickly jerking up the Atchisson, Lyons emptied an entire drum of 12-gauge cartridges, and the grenade detonated harmlessly over a reflection pool, the halo of shrapnel hissing into the water.
Crouching behind a marble statue of Venus, Blancanales sharply whistled to catch the attention of the other men, then he raised a fist, splayed his fingers and flashed two. Silently, Lyons and Schwarz nodded in agreement.
As the other men opened fired with their weapons, Blancanales stepped to the left, then spun around and sprinted to the right. His heart pounded savagely in his chest, and he almost tripped at the startling discovery of a young woman lying dead in the grass. Jumping over the body, Blancanales did a shoulder roll and took cover behind a wide obelisk. Forcing himself to ignore the deceased civilian, the soldier concentrated the M-203 on the distant trees.
Running low behind the hedges, Schwarz discovered more bodies, a family this time, including a swaddled infant. Snarling, the soldier stood and fired the grenade launcher. The 40 mm shell sailed up the hill to arc between the oaks and slam into the tiered fountain, blowing debris in every direction. Softly, somebody cursed in pain, and a large machine gun tumbled out of the branches to smack onto the sodden ground. It looked like an M-249 SAW.
Suspecting a trick, the three Stony Man operatives patiently waited, reloading their weapons. A moment later there was a powerful boom from within the trees and a headstone violently exploded, throwing out a corona of broken granite. When the smoke cleared, the headstone was gone.
That had been a Barrett 25 mm rifle! Blancanales realized, blood trickling down his face from a cut on his temple. Bolt-action, 5-round clip and way too accurate for this short a range. We’ll have to do something about that double-quick.
Another headstone detonated, closely followed by a statue of Jesus, and Schwarz grunted from an impact on his body armor as he fired the XM-8 assault rifle. However, there was no feeling of a spreading warmth, which meant there had been no penetration. Level Five ballistic cloth was a foot soldier’s very best friend. Tomorrow his bruises would hurt like hell, but right now his job was to keep low, move fast and stay alive.
With the stink of propellant and old blood in his nostrils, Lyons spit the foul taste from his mouth, and eased in his last ammo drum from the Atchisson. After this, he would be down to the Colt Python. Even worse, these last cartridges were all fléchette rounds, stainless-steel razor blades would mince a grown man into hamburger in a split second. Not exactly what he would have chosen to capture an opponent. However, that gave him pause. Fair enough.
Drawing the massive handcannon, Lyons dashed sideways, triggering both weapons. The sniper attempted to aim the Barrett just ahead of the running man, and make him run into the deadly blast, but Lyons constantly changed direction until he reached the temporary safety of a headstone, only to roll into the shallow runoff from the waterfall. Half a heartbeat later, the headstone detonated like a bomb.
Thumbing in a fat HE shell, Schwarz launched it high into the sky and it hit on the far side of the hill, the roiling blast achieving zero results.
Taking a moment to catch his breath, Blancanales spun around the granite slab to fire his own grenade launcher. The 40 mm stun bag disappeared into the trees yielding no effect. But a large swatch of leaves was gone, leaving a deadly gap in the protective cover of the lush greenery.
Understanding what the man was doing, the other Stony Man operatives now attempted to do the same, their stun bags ripping away the leafy boughs until something metallic was seen nestled amid the thinning foliage.
Thumbing in a loose cartridge, Lyons scowled at the sight. Son of a bitch, that was an Auto-Sentry! With the knowledge that there was no living opponent in the tree, he unleashed the full might of the Atchisson. Leaves exploded into the air in a whirlwind of destruction, and something man-size fell to the ruins of the fountain.
Giving the fallen machine a wide berth, the Stony Man operatives warily checked for any other Auto-Sentries in the trees and bushes on the hillock. When satisfied that they were alone, the men approached the Sentry. They scowled in open disapproval at the sophisticated device. The video camera was still attempting to aim the lethal Barrett toward them, a LAW rocket launcher clicking futilely. The antenna was gone, so the deadly machine was merely attempting to perform the last command it had received.
