Hostile Dawn

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“Close enough.”

Grimaldi pulled away from the spring, then backtracked to a large, cracked patch of asphalt thirty yards downhill. As the pilot lowered the chopper, Lyons turned to his colleagues.

“You and I’ll handle the ground search,” he told Blancanales. “Gadgets, stay aboard and keep the fly open in case we need air support.”

“Got it,” Schwarz said, throwing open the side door of the passenger compartment. Blancanales eased past him. Once Grimaldi had brought the chopper to within a few feet of the tarmac, he bounded out. Lyons followed. Both men crouched low, fanned by the copter’s rotor wash as it pulled back up into the air.

Of the retreat’s eight buildings, only three remained standing. The nearest was a graffiti-festooned, garage-size bungalow set off a flagstone pathway linking the parking lot to the hot spring where the pickup had been spotted.

“I got this one,” Lyons told Blancanales. “You take the one over there. We’ll hit the main building last.”

Blancanales nodded and cautiously advanced toward a half-scorched two-story outbuilding with two large bay openings. A late-model Dodge Caravan had been backed into one bay; the other contained the rusted-out remains of a tractor and large riding lawn mower. The van had a layer of road dust but Blancanales could see that the windshield wipers had been used recently, likely by the al Qaeda sleeper cell Able Team had been trying to track down in Barstow. It now seemed certain that Kouri Ahmet’s aborted attempt to secure portable rocket launchers had been on behalf of the Iraqi terrorist squad. Obviously the fugitive’s parachute jump from the highjacked Gulfstream had been orchestrated to bring him within range of the Iraqis. The enemy had last been spotted in Barstow, but Blancanales’s gut told him that this was their primary hideout, the one from which they were planning whatever violence they hoped to unleash on Los Angeles. If Blancanales and his fellow commandos had anything to say about it, that plan would never be carried out.

Both large-framed picture windows on the second floor of the outbuilding had been vandalized, and Blancanales was startled when several pigeons suddenly fluttered out through a break in the glass. He doubted that it was his approach that had spooked the birds, and when he glanced up he detected further movement behind the broken glass. Acting on instinct, the East L.A. native veered sharply to his right, avoiding the stream of gunfire that rained down from one of the windows, tearing up the asphalt where he’d been standing a moment before.

“Got a live one over here!” Blancanales shouted to Lyons as he rolled behind an overturned litter barrel. Bringing his M-16 into play, he returned fire, shattering what little glass remained in the window frame and perforating the wooden slats below it. He’d missed his target, however, and more rounds blitzed his way, chewing the tarmac and glancing off the trash bin. When Lyons doubled back and fired at his assailant, Blancanales welcomed the diversion and rolled clear. Once back on his feet, he zigzagged toward the building. Nearing the bay where the Dodge was parked, he peered in and spotted a gunman bounding down a back stairway leading from the second story.

Blancanales drew up and strafed the staircase, taking the gunman out at the knees. The Iraqi pitched forward, dropping his rifle and somersaulting down the steps before landing in a sprawl near the Caravan. He was still alive and crawled toward his weapon, managing to close his fingers around the stock before Blancanales finished him off with another burst from his M-16.

There was at least one other al Qaeda operative still up on the second floor, however, and after forcing Lyons to cover with an autoburst, the gunner moved to the top of the stairs and shifted his aim toward Blancanales. By then the Able Team commando had reached the building and dived forward, eluding the blasts sent his way. Scrambling past the parked van, he helped himself to the slain attacker’s carbine, a Chinese-made QBZ-95. He took aim at the ceiling and quickly emptied the weapon. Above the loud din of gunfire, he heard the unmistakable sound of a body dropping to the floor above him.

Blancanales looked out through the bay opening and saw Grimaldi drifting toward him in the OH-58C. Schwarz was leaning out of the chopper, pouring more rounds into the second story. Blancanales waited out the assault, then waved to his colleague and gestured that he was heading up the steps. Schwarz nodded and pulled himself back inside the chopper. As Grimaldi flew over the building, Blancanales cast aside the QBZ and charged the steps, taking them two at a time, M-16 in firing position.

Clearing the last step, Blancanales saw the second assailant stretched out dead on the floor. He started toward the body, then flinched, hearing a noise behind him. A beam of sunlight glanced off the knife blade streaking toward him, and the next thing he knew, Blancanales felt the sharp edge rip through his shirt and glance off his ribs. The man holding the weapon had lunged at him, and when the two men collided, Blancanales was sent reeling backward. He grabbed his attacker and both men went tumbling down the staircase.

Blancanales took the brunt of the fall, cushioning the knifeman from the steps. By the time he reached the ground, the Stony Man commando’s wind had been knocked from his lungs. He lay, stunned, as the Iraqi rose to his knees, still clutching the now-bloodied knife. He was about to plunge the blade into Blancanales’s chest when a volley of 7.62 mm NATO rounds streaked into the service bay, eviscerating the terrorist’s midsection. The knife fell from the Iraqi’s hands as he pitched forward on top of his would-be victim.

Groaning, Blancanales shoved the man aside and gasped for breath, blinking away the stars that flashed across his field of vision. Lyons caught up with him a moment later.

“You okay?” he asked, helping his colleague to his feet.

Blancanales ripped his shirt open and inspected the bleeding gash along his rib cage. “Could’ve been worse,” he said. “Thanks for the backup.”

“No problem,” Lyons said, eyeing his teammate’s wound. “You’re going to need stitches on that sucker, though.”

“Later,” Blancanales said. He turned his attention to the two men lying dead next to them. Both looked to be in their late twenties, dark-haired and olive-skinned. Neither was Kouri Ahmet.

“Our sleeper cell guys?” Lyons said.

“Gotta be,” Blancanales said. He gestured at the Dodge Caravan. “The van matches the one that grease monkey saw up in Barstow.”

“I kinda like the irony of them driving around on American wheels.”

“They probably swiped it, same as Ahmet did that ranger’s truck.”

“Speaking of that scumbag,” Lyons said. “If we didn’t get him here, odds are he’s still out—”

The Able Team leader’s voice was drowned out by a fresh outbreak of gunfire. He and Blancanales glanced toward the bungalow Lyons had been headed for before the assault at the outbuilding. They could see another gunman standing in the open doorway of the smaller building, directing fire up at the OH-58C.

“The fun never stops,” Lyons said, slamming a fresh cartridge into his M-16.

“S WING AROUND !” Schwarz shouted at Grimaldi, bracing himself in the chopper’s open doorway.

“Gladly!” Grimaldi answered. The Stony Man pilot had just missed being hit by the slug that had punched through his side window. He dipped the chopper sharply, then brought it about-face so that Schwarz could see the gunman, who’d ducked for cover behind a flagstone wall extending out from the bungalow. Schwarz tattooed the wall, keeping the enemy pinned behind it. From the corner of his eye, he saw Lyons and Blancanales spread out so they could advance on the gunner from separate directions.

“Up a little higher,” Schwarz told Grimaldi. “Then ease in a little closer.”

Grimaldi urged the OH-58C up and forward, trying to bring the shooter back into view. As he did so, rounds from yet another gunman began to pepper the chopper’s underside. Grimaldi turned to his right and saw the enemy leaning out from a large, wisteria-choked pergola behind the bungalow.

“Three o’clock!” he shouted.

“Got him!”

Schwarz shifted position and leveled his M-16, firing before the assailant could retreat behind one of the pergola’s wooden colonnades. The rounds found flesh and the gunner keeled to the ground, his upper torso freshly embroidered.

The first shooter, emboldened by Schwarz’s distraction, rose from behind the flagstone wall and sent a fusillade whizzing through the chopper doorway before Gadgets whirled back around and nailed him.

By now Lyons and Blancanales had reached the bungalow. Grimaldi left them to raid the interior and pulled away, guiding the chopper above a meandering walkway that led back to the remaining building, a larger, one-story cinder-block orientation center with a sun-faded sign out front that still beckoned visitors with an inviting come-on: Our Spring’s Just the Thing!

The first of the SWAT ground units had begun to materialize from out of the vegetation surrounding the orientation center. Wearing flak jackets over their camo fatigues, they spread out, encircling the building. From Grimaldi’s aerial perspective, he could see that the main entrance was still boarded up, but a side door was ajar. As he watched, two of the SWAT officers approached the entryway, one brandishing a MAC-10, the other a semiautomatic Benelli M-1 shotgun. They were within ten yards of the door when it suddenly flew open. A short, wiry man dived out headfirst, rolling on impact with the ground and scrambling quickly to his feet, a 9 mm Heckler & Koch MP-5 cradled close to his chest. He managed to fire a killshot into the face of the SWAT shotgunner before being brought down by the other commando’s MAC-10.

As the rest of the SWAT team converged on every available opening to the O-building, Grimaldi brought the chopper up higher in the hope of gaining a vantage point from which Schwarz could effectively lend fire from the air. The maneuver was a fortuitous one.

Seconds later, with a deafening roar, a series of explosive charges detonated inside the building, blowing its cinder-block walls outward and turning the roof into a frag shower that hailed upwards, pelting the OC-58’s skids and underbelly. Had Grimaldi not just changed his position, the flying shrapnel would have likely sheared his rotors, bringing the bird down. As it was, the flyboy was hard-pressed to keep the chopper aloft when the blast’s shock wave tossed the craft about.

The jolt caught Schwarz off guard and threw him out the Bell’s open doorway, M-16 flying from his grasp. If not for his martial arts training, the Stony Man warrior would likely have plummeted sixty feet to certain death on the flagstone walkway below. Instead, with nimble instincts, Schwarz was able to throw out his right arm and break his fall by grabbing the chopper’s right skid. His fingers clamped tightly around the cold metal, buying him the time needed to raise his other arm and secure a firmer grip.

“Still here!” he shouted through clenched teeth.

Grimaldi couldn’t hear Schwarz over the rotors and the din of the explosion, but when the displaced weight pitched the chopper to one side he realized Schwarz was still aboard and quickly compensated, righting the aircraft and then slowly bringing it down.

Lyons and Blancanales had been knocked to the ground by the blast, but by the time the OH-58C had dipped to within ten yards of the pathway, both men were on their feet. They scrambled over and grabbed Schwarz’s dangling legs, allowing him to let go of the chopper’s skid. As they eased him down to solid ground, the helicopter floated off, bound for the parking lot where the whole ordeal had begun.

“Nice stunt,” Lyons told Schwarz. “You had us going there for a minute.”

“Tell me about it,” Schwarz said, flexing the life back into his numbed fingers. “Don’t try this at home, kids.”

The team’s levity was short-lived, giving way to a grim silence as they made their way to the debris-filled crater that had once been the orientation center. The blackened, smoldering hellhole was nearly twenty feet deep, flames consuming any trace of the explosives that had created it. Lying on the perimeter like tossed dolls were the members of the SWAT team, most of them dismembered by shrapnel, none of them breathing.

“What the hell did they have stored in there, World War III?” Lyons wondered, gazing past the bodies into the crater.

The blast had caught the attention of the rest of the backup teams, and by the time Grimaldi joined his colleagues, the other two choppers were headed toward them. Sirens wailed to life out on the road as a pair of CHP Crown Victorias pulled out of their barricade positions and raced toward the parking lot along with one of the SWAT Hummers.

“They’re a little late,” Schwarz said.

Blancanales had ventured over to the enemy gunman who’d dived from the building shortly before the explosion. He turned the body over, then looked at his partners.

“It’s not Ahmet,” he reported.

Lyons glanced at the crater and shook his head. “If he’s in there, it’s gonna take more than dental charts to ID him.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

“They had a couple choppers on their tail in the homestretch but made it to Israel in one piece,” Barbara Price said, clipboard in hand as she paced the Annex Computer Room, apprising the Stony Man cybercrew on Phoenix Force’s mad dash for a safe haven after taking out the Hezbollah training camp in the Bekaa Valley. She’d just gotten off the phone with David McCarter, who’d called from a covert Mossad medical facility near Nahariya. “We lost a Company op and Calvin needs to be threaded up where some briars tore his leg open, but everyone else pulled through with nicks and scratches.”

“Is Manning coming down from Damascus to hook up with them?” Huntington Wethers inquired.

“No,” Price responded. “He’s rebounded from the concussion but it looks like he has a separated shoulder, so he’ll be out of the combat loop awhile.”

“Looks like?” Delahunt interjected.

“There was a problem with the X-ray machine where he was treated,” Price said. “They went with a best-guess diagnosis and have him in an arm sling. He insisted on pitching in somehow, so we’ve got him flying to Hong Kong to see if he can find out what Kassem’s up to.”

“Are our guys dedicated or what?” Kurtzman marveled.

“Back to the camp raid,” John Kissinger said. “How’d the Snake fare?”

Kissinger, the Farm’s tall, broad-shouldered weaponsmith, had pulled up a chair next to Aaron Kurtzman’s computer station and helped himself to some of Bear’s infamous coffee. The ex-DEA field agent usually didn’t bother with mission briefings but he’d made an exception for this one, anxious to hear how his TCD-100 had performed in its first true test.

“T.J. says you’d better hurry to the patent office,” Price told him. “He says the Snake aced everything it’s programmed for.”

“Uh-oh,” Akira Tokaido sniggered from across the room. “Watch, Cowboy’ll land himself one of those monster defense contracts and that’ll be the last we see of him.”

“You wish,” Kissinger laughed. “It’ll take more than a windfall for you guys to get rid of me.”

“With James and Manning out, we could always ship you out to help Phoenix Force pick up the slack,” Kurtzman suggested.

“No problem there,” Kissinger said.

“We might actually take you up on that,” Price stated.

“Just say the word.”

“Let me get through this first.”

“Sorry,” Kissinger said. “Go ahead, fire. I take it there was more upside to that raid than giving the Snake a thumbs-up.”

“As far as firming up the link between Ahmet and Kassem, there was no hard evidence at the camp, but Phoenix took a couple prisoners and hopefully they’ll get something out of them when they’re questioned.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Wethers said. “And I don’t think we’ll want to know the specifics about the interrogation.”

“You’re probably right,” Price said. “But even if nothing comes out of that, it looks like we might’ve found a few more pieces to the nuclear puzzle.”

“You mean, the rogue state conspiracy?” Delahunt asked.

Price nodded. “Before they took off from the camp, Phoenix managed a quick sweep of the command post and some of the tunnel bunkers,” she explained. “Looks like Hezbollah was storing equipment needed to convert enriched uranium into weapons material.”

“Is it their own equipment or Iran’s?”

“No confirmation yet,” Price replied. “One of the Company ops photoed the equipment. CIA’s going over the downloads as we speak. It won’t surprise me if at least some of the gear is traceable back to Tehran.”

“Sounds like that reporter was on the money, then,” Delahunt said.

“This raid might put us a step ahead of him in terms of breaking it all down,” Price responded. “Besides the equipment, there were plans for an underground UE lab. It might be that Hezbollah was going to do more than just hold on to Iran’s contraband.”

“I take it ‘was’ is the operative word there,” Delahunt said.

“I think so,” Price said. “If you figure Ferris was kidnapped in hopes of keeping a lid on this whole collusion story, these rogue states are out of luck. The cat’s out of the bag, and whatever Ferris doesn’t go public with will probably wind up being ‘leaked.’ There’s no way they’ll be able to proceed. At least not on the sly.”

“You got that right,” Kurtzman ventured. “I can think of at least a couple neighboring countries that’ll take exception to having nukes cooked up in their backyard.”

“It won’t be just them,” Price said. “NATO and the UN will likely weigh in and give the IAEC a lot more teeth in terms of nosing around, and they won’t be just looking at Iran now.”

“What happened to the equipment?” Wethers asked. “I’m guessing there was no room to store it on that Huey Phoenix flew out in.”

“They set charges in some of the key bunkers,” Price said. “They took out the equipment along with a cache of Israeli B-300s,” Price said. “I know they’re inferior to the weapons Ahmet tried to score in La Paz, but I’m surprised they didn’t try to smuggle those into the States instead.”

“It’s a long haul from Lebanon to L.A.,” Kurtzman surmised. “They were probably afraid Mossad would sniff them out before they got them more than a few miles past the border.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Anything else?” Delahunt asked.

Price was about to respond when Hal Brognola entered the Computer Room, looking haggard and agitated. The SOG chief had a cigar out and had apparently already snapped off one end from working it too hard between his fingers. Price had conferred with him prior to briefing the others about the Bekaa Valley operation, so she was concerned there was some new fly in the ointment.