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“Oh, that was great acting,” Lyons muttered, walking forward.
“Thank you, thank you very much.”
“Did you get it?” Lyons asked.
“You mean, tall, skinny and corpse-looking?” Blancanales asked. “You betcha. I’ll see what Aaron’s crew can do with it.” He hit a button and fired off the short video clip to a secure server service that would eventually feed it into Stony Man.
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
THE E-MAIL TRAVELED with digital speed through security links and into Carmen Delahunt’s computer. Seeing the priority message beeping an alert to her, she quickly lifted her hand, encased in a sensory glove, up to her left and pantomimed clicking on the link with a finger. Inside the screen of her VR uplink helmet the short cell phone video played out.
“Just got something from Pol,” she said. “They want an ID on what appears to be a civilian who’s buddy-buddy with Venezuelan law enforcement officials.”
From behind her in the Stony Man Annex’s computer room Aaron Kurtzman’s gruff voice instructed her, “Send it over to Hunt’s station. His link to the mainframe is more configured to that kind of search than your infiltration and investigation research algorithms. You stay on trying to get into VEVAK systems through their Interpol connection. I’m still convinced that’s our best route into Ansar-al-Mahdi computer files.”
Tapping the stem of a briarwood pipe against his teeth, Professor Huntington Wethers froze the video image on a single shot then transported it to a separate program designed to identify the anatomical features on the picture then translate them into a succinct binary code. He ran the program four times to include variables for age, angle and articulation, then ran a blending sum algorithm to predict changes for bad photography, low light and resolution obscurity. He grunted softly, then fired off double e-mails of the completed project, one back to Carmen Delahunt and the other to Akira Tokaido.
“There you go,” Wethers said. “I would suggest simultaneous phishing with a wide-base server like Interpol and something more aimed, like Venezuelan intelligence.”
“Dibs on Venezuelan intel,” Tokaido called out.
Speaker buds for an iPod were set in his ears, and the youngest member of the Stony Man cyberteam slouched in his chair using only his fingertips to control the mouse pads on two separate laptops.
“That’s just crap,” Delahunt replied. “I already have a trapdoor built into Interpol. Dad, Akira’s stealing all the fun stuff!”
“Children, behave,” Kurtzman growled. “Or I’ll make you do something really boring like checking CIA open agency sources like your uncle Hunt is doing.”
“Your coffeepot is empty, Bear,” Wethers replied, voice droll.
“What?” Kurtzman sat up in his wheelchair and twisted around to look at the coffeemaker set behind his workstation. To his relief he saw the pot was still half full of the jet-black liquid some claimed flowed through his veins instead of blood.
“Every time, Bear, I get you every time,” Wethers chided.
“That’s because some things aren’t funny,” Kurtzman said. “I expect such antics from a kid like Akira, but you’re an esteemed professor, for God’s sake. I expect you to comport yourself with decorum.”
“Brother Bear,” Wethers said, his fingers flying across his keyboard, “if you ever did run out of coffee you’d just grind the beans in your mouth.”
“Bear drinks so much coffee,” Delahunt added, her hands still wildly pantomiming through her VR screen, “that Juan Valdez named his donkey after him.”
“Bear drinks so much coffee he answers the door before people knock,” Tokaido added. He appeared to be hardly moving at his station, which meant he was working at his most precise.
Stony Man mission controller Barbara Price walked into the computer room just in time to catch Tokaido’s comment. Without missing a beat the honey-blond former NSA operations officer added a quip of her own.
“Bear drinks so much coffee he hasn’t blinked since the last lunar eclipse.”
Kurtzman coolly lifted a meaty hand and gave a thumbs-down gesture. Deadpan, he blew the assembled group a collective raspberry. “Get some new material—those jokes are stale, people.”
“Bear drinks so much coffee it never has a chance to get stale,” Delahunt said calmly. She tapped the air in front of her with a single finger and added, “Hugo Campos—”
“Hermida,” Tokaido simultaneously chorused with the red-headed ex-FBI agent.
“Of the General Counterintelligence Agency,” Wethers finished for them. All humor was gone from his voice now. “The Venezuelan military intelligence agency.”
Sensing the tension immediately, Price turned toward Kurtzman. “Venezuela? What does this mean for Able?”
Kurtzman pursed his lips and sighed. “Trouble.”
CHAPTER SIX
Basra, Iraq
Phoenix Force became as ghosts.
They crossed the broken rubble of the abandoned parking lot until they could squat in the lee of a burned-out warehouse. T. J. Hawkins, who had perfected his long-range shooting as a member of the U.S. Army’s premier hostage-rescue unit, scanned their back trail through his night scope. The other four members of the team clicked their AN/PVS-14 monocular night-vision devices over their nonshooting eyes.
McCarter waited patiently in the concealed position for his natural night vision to acclimate as much as possible before moving out. A stray dog, ribs prominent under a mangy hide, strayed close at one point but skittered off in fear after catching the scent of gun oil.
The group maintained strict noise discipline as they waited to see if they had been observed or compromised during the short scramble to their staging area. After a tense ten minutes McCarter signaled a generic all clear and rose into a crouch. He touched James on the shoulder and sent the former Navy SEAL across the parking lot toward a break in a battered old chain-link fence next to a pockmarked cinder-block wall.
James crossed the open area in a low, tight crouch, running hard. He slid into place and snapped up the SPAS-15 to provide cover. Once he was satisfied, he turned back to McCarter and gave the former SAS commando a single nod.
McCarter reached out and touched Encizo on the shoulder. The Cuban sprinted for the far side of the lot, his dense, heavily muscled frame handling the weight of the Hawk MM-1 easily. He slid into position behind James and swept the squat, cannon-muzzled grenade launcher into security overwatch.
McCarter leaned over and whispered into Hawkins’s ear. “You go after me.”
Hawkins nodded and flipped down the hinged lens covers on the NXS 15X scope of his Mk 11 Enhanced Battle Rifle. He took up the EBR in both hands and slid up to the edge of the wall while Gary Manning took his place on rear security, using the cut-down M-60 machine gun to maintain rear security.
McCarter checked once with Encizo, then slid the fire-selector switch on his M-4 to burst mode. There was a fléchette pack antipersonnel round loaded up in the tube of his M-203 grenade launcher, and he had attached an M-9 bayonet just after entering his forward staging area. He got a second clear signal from Encizo and immediately sprang forward.
He covered the distance fast, feet pounding on the busted concrete with staccato rhythm, then quickly slid into position behind Encizo. The muzzle of his weapon came up and tracked left to right, clearing sectors including rooftops with mechanical proficiency.
Satisfied, he turned and caught Calvin James’s eye. He made a subtle pointing gesture with his left hand and the ex-SEAL turned the corner and scurried between the break in the fence next to the cinder-block wall. As soon as he was gone McCarter slapped Encizo on the shoulder and former anti-Castro militant followed James through the opening.
McCarter scurried up to take his post next to the breach and then gave Hawkins the all-clear signal. The man raced across the opening with his weapon up and disappeared behind the bullet-riddled wall.
McCarter waited a moment, giving Hawkins a chance to take a good position beyond the wall, then waved Gary Manning over. Trusting McCarter to cover him, the Canadian special operations soldier took up his machine gun and crossed the danger area.
Once Manning was past, McCarter scrambled backward through the opening, remaining orientated toward the open parking lot the team had just crossed, carbine up and ready.
On the other side of the breach he found the unit in a tight defensive circle. A single-story outbuilding lay inside a concrete enclosure. A metal placard in red and white showed the universal sign for electrical danger above black Arabic script. McCarter looked at Hawkins, who immediately moved to lie down and take up a position in the breach.
Gary Manning set his machine gun down and quickly pulled open the Velcro flap of a pouch on his web belt. He pulled an electrician’s diagnostic kit from the container while Rafael Encizo pulled a pair of compact bolt cutters from the compact field pack on his back.
“Right, mate,” McCarter whispered, “don’t electrocute yourself, then.”
Manning didn’t look up as he quickly assembled his gear. “Do I tell you how to act like a complete jackass?”
“Not once,” McCarter admitted, but the corner of his mouth crept upward.
“Then perhaps you can let me do my job wisecrack free?”
“Not a chance, mate,” McCarter replied with complete seriousness. “Your ego’s already too well developed for my liking.”
Manning stopped what he was doing and looked at the Briton. “My ego?”
“Hey, now,” McCarter protested, “if you’re still mad about that little waitress in Barcelona—”
“Perhaps later would be a better time for this discussion?” James cut in, voice as dry as the Iraqi air.
Manning looked up and nodded toward Encizo. “Ready.”
Encizo quickly used the bolt cutters to snap the locking arm of the rusted old padlock connecting the panel access doors. The muscles on his forearms jumped out in stark relief like cables running down to thick wrists. The lock popped free with a sharp crack and dropped to the ground at his feet. Encizo picked up his MM-1 and scooted quickly back.
James helped him put away the bolt cutters as Manning replaced Encizo in front of the access panel. He reached up and pulled the metal hatches apart to reveal a wall of exposed wires, relay switches and conduit housings.
From behind them, T. J. Hawkins suddenly hissed a low warning.
McCarter instantly moved to his side and sidled down low to present a minimal profile as he eased around the corner. Beside him the former Army Ranger lay his finger in the gentle curve of his trigger, taking up the slack. Out on the parking lot a dry wind pushed dead weeds and loose trash around. The area was an island of dark between two illuminated areas of population so the headlights of the approaching vehicles were easily visible.
Hawkins lay the scope on the convoy, quickly working the dampener on his scope’s light amplifier to compensate for the illumination of the vehicle’s high beams. The images of the Iraqi police squad in three Dzik-3 armored personnel carriers filled the crosshair of his reticule. M-2 .50 caliber machine guns were mounted on the roofs.
“Who the fuck are those guys?” McCarter demanded. “That wanker Anjali’s boys? This isn’t part of the plan.”
Hawkins carefully zeroed in his scope and scanned the crew as they parked their vehicles in a wedge formation facing the abandoned warehouse Phoenix Force had used to shield their initial movements after disembarking from the first wheeled APC minutes earlier.
“They’re police for sure,” Hawkins answered. His voice was grim. “But to a man they’re wearing green insignia shoulder epaulets.” He removed his eye from the sniper scope and looked over at the former SAS commando. “David, they’re Shia militia. Muqtada al-Sadr’s boys.”
“Bloody hell!” McCarter swore.
Caracas, Venezuela
“GODDAMN IT to hell!” Lyons swore. “We’re in country ten fucking minutes and we’ve got Chavez’s head spook nosing up our asses.”
His big hand slammed the steering wheel of the rental SUV, a black Ford Excursion. His eyes darted up to the rearview mirror, scanning the flow of traffic behind them for any obvious tails or suspicious patterns. Caracas was a teeming, modern city of three million people and the streets were packed with automobiles, motorcycles, service trucks and pedestrians. Around them, skyscrapers of steel and glass rose in prototypical urban canyons. They would have to be sharp if they were going to spot a surveillance team in that kind of environment.
“At least the Farm was able to get us the information quickly,” Schwarz pointed out as he slipped his PDA into a pocket. “It’d be much worse if we weren’t aware el douche was hot on our ass.”
“Having Venezuelan internal security meeting us right there at the airport is a bad, bad sign,” Blancanales said. He sat in the back using a PDA of his own to download a software upgrade created by Schwarz into the vehicle’s GPS system. “Something got SNAFUed right from the beginning.”
“We can’t roll on the VEVAK agent till we get to the safehouse,” Lyons said. “But we can’t lead a team of Chavez’s secret police right to a U.S. safehouse, either. Freakin’ fine mess.”
“I guess we have to identify the shadow unit, then outdrive them.” Schwarz shrugged. “I mean, the CIA does everything the CIA can do. The Farm does what the CIA can’t.”
“Or the FBI,” Blancanales agreed. He caught Schwarz’s eye in the rearview mirror and winked. “Or the LAPD,” he added, voice casual.
Lyons, an ex-LAPD detective, stiffened in response to the inclusion. “Finest police force in the world. You can go to hell. Only reason I left is because SOG has a better dental plan.”
“No, no. This is true,” Schwarz said. “Absolutely. In fact, if you were to do an unbiased comparison of the three organizations I would say it’s obvious the LAPD comes out on top.” His voice was completely deadpan as he continued. “This is a no bullshit story, heard it right from the big Fed, Hal, himself. The LAPD, the FBI and the CIA were all trying to prove that they are the best at apprehending criminals. The President decided to give them a test. He released a rabbit into a forest and each of them had to try and catch it.
“The CIA goes in. They place animal informants throughout the forest. They question all plant and mineral witnesses. After three months of extensive investigations they concluded that rabbits do not exist.
“Then the FBI goes in. After two weeks with no leads they burn the forest, killing everything in it, including the rabbit, and they make no apologies. The rabbit had it coming.
“The LAPD goes in. They come out two hours later with a badly beaten bear. The bear is yelling, ‘Okay! Okay! I’m a rabbit! I’m a rabbit!’”
“Ten will get you one that bear had done something,” Lyons fired back as his two teammates laughed.
Instantly, Hermann Schwarz stopped laughing. “Pol, does that qualify as an actual joke from the Ironman?”
“Close enough, as far as I’m concerned,” Blancanales replied in a sober voice, sounding slightly bewildered.
“Screw you both,” Lyons replied. He then promptly ran a red light. “Got the bastards! Green current-year Impala, looks like three of them in the rig.”
Blancanales turned and quickly looked over his shoulder. “I got ’em. Looks like three in the vehicle,” he repeated. There was a sudden blare of horns, squealing brakes and a chorus of angry shouts around them in the intersection. “They just ran the red, too,” Blancanales added.
“We’re on now,” Schwarz said. “Of course if we actively loose these ass clowns then they’ll know we’re up to something and we’ll have to go completely black instead of trying to maintain cover.”
“Good,” Lyons muttered, and pushed the accelerator to the floor. “I was getting goddamn tired of all the bullshit sneaking around we’ve been doing.”
“Oh, yeah, we’ve been real below the radar.” Schwarz smirked. Then he put his seat belt on.
Basra, Iraq
DAVID MCCARTER scooted quickly backward, leaving T. J. Hawkins in his low-profile overwatch position. Once away from the opening he turned to check on the rest of the team’s progress. Gary Manning was coolly using a stylus to work the touch pad on his diagnostic server.
“How we coming, mate?” McCarter asked.
“More time,” Manning replied.
“We kind of have company.”
“Look, I’ve got to uplink this substation to the coalition power grid, then trace the connection to our neighborhood before I can shut out the lights. I need more time.”
“Right.” McCarter turned to the rest of his men. “Encizo, get into position next to Hawkins. If T.J. decides he needs to take a shot I want you to bring the noise.”
“Copy.” Encizo nodded. The Cuban lifted the MM-1 grenade launcher and slid in next to the prone Texan.
McCarter lifted his left hand and pointed at Calvin James. “We’re advancing the plan by ten minutes,” he said. “I want you to open the sewer entrance right now and hold the position until we can get Manning through this sabotage gig.”
“They’re rolling this way.” Encizo spoke up for Hawkins. “Moving slow, but it seems obvious they’re spooked and looking for something, not just patrolling.”
McCarter turned back to the massive Canadian. “Gary?”
“Need time.”
“Right, then.” He twisted around. “Hold the line,” McCarter whispered to Encizo, who leaned over and relayed the information to Hawkins. The Phoenix leader turned toward James and nodded once.
The former SEAL rose into a crouch and glided into the narrow space between the relay station Manning was working on and the cinder-block wall that encircled the work area. McCarter heard the whisper of cloth and leather on the concrete, then James was over the top of the far wall and gone into the night.
