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“The place looks clean,” Blancanales said, tucking the NSA identification into a breast pocket. Then he pulled a .380 Colt pistol from a shoulder holster and dropped the clip to check the load. Easing the clip back inside, he clicked off the safety and worked the slide to chamber a round. He wasn’t expecting any trouble here. This was a simple data hunt. But no soldier went into danger without a loaded weapon.
“So let’s get going,” Schwarz said, tucking electronic items and plastique into a black nylon gym bag. There might be a wall safe to blow. But they had to stay lowkey. These people might just be civilians. Unless Himar’s “family” was actually his private army of mercenaries. Schwarz briefly inspected his own 9 mm Beretta and threaded on a sound suppressor. Better safe than sorry.
“Wait a second,” Lyons advised, adjusting the focus on the field glasses. “Something’s wrong here.”
Instantly the other two men were alert and reached for the M-16 assault rifles hidden in the false ceiling of the van.
The Able Team leader surveyed the apartment building and lawn again, the hairs rising on his nape. Something about the area had triggered a warning bell inside his head, and the former L.A. cop was trying to spot what was wrong. A few of the windows were open, admitting the cool morning air. But New Englanders had a love of cold that the rest of the nation found puzzling. Just like getting a tan in California, it bordered on a mania. There was nobody moving in the bushes or in the backyard…. That’s when it hit him. There was nobody moving at all. That dog wasn’t asleep, it was dead. And there were tiny dark shapes floating in the birdbath. Wrens?
Turning, Lyons swept the whole block. Nobody was moving around any of the other homes, either. No leaves being raked, no mail being delivered, no dogs barking, no birds in the trees. Several houses away, a man was smoking while lying in a hammock. Focusing the field glasses, Lyons saw that the fellow had once been smoking, but now his shirt was smoldering. A cigar laying on the blackened ruin of his chest.
“Get hard, people,” Lyons ordered, tucking away the field glasses. Reaching down, he pulled the Atchisson autoshotgun from the bag on the floor. “We’re the only people alive on this street, possibly in the whole damn town.”
“Why would Himar beam his own house?” Schwarz said, frowning, working the arming bolt on the assault rifle. “Unless…”
“Unless Himar really is dead, and somebody else also wants his files on Prometheus before we can get them,” Blancanales conceded, thumbing a fat 40 mm round into the M-203 grenade launcher. “Mighty easy to rob a place if everybody is dead.”
Just then the happy Indian music was cut off and a window on the fifth floor of the apartment house closed, a dark shape moving behind the curtains. In a house of the dead, somebody was still moving.
“Where did Himar live?” Lyons demanded, shrugging out of his suit jacket.
“Fourth floor, but his office was on the fifth,” Schwarz said, passing out the NATO body armor. “I’d say that we’ve got hostiles inside.”
“Could just be a street cop checking the place out,” Blancanales warned, strapping on his light-weight bulletproof vest. “Or maybe a survivor who was taking a bath. You know, safe under the water.”
Lyons clicked the safety off the Atchisson and stepped to the curb. “Let’s go find out.”
Moving across the lawn, the Stony Man operatives headed for the house, each trying not to think about the deadly satellite in space possibly pointing directly downward at their location. If the neutron cannon attacked, they would never know it, and so the soldiers banished the consideration from their minds and concentrated on the task at hand. Get in, get the files and get out.
“Stony Base, this is Einstein,” Schwarz said into his throat mike as they passed the birdbath. “Our twenty may have been neutralized. If you don’t hear from us in an hour, consider this a hot zone. Out.” It took a moment for the message to be condensed, then the radio gave a short beep as the transmission was burst back to the Farm. Unless the enemy was listening to the precise frequency, at exactly the correct moment, Schwarz knew they would never be able to detect the microsecond radio pulse. Much less break the encryption created by Kurtzman and his team.
The world seemed unnaturally still to the Stony Man operatives. Traffic could be heard in the distance, and a jet liner rumbled overhead toward Logan International. But it was almost as if they were moving through a dream. No voices, no laughter, not even birds in the trees.
“We want them alive,” Lyons whispered curtly. “But retrieving those files is more important.”
The other men nodded, their eyes sweeping for danger.
Moving onto the brick porch, the Able Team leader saw a bearded man in slippers lying crumpled behind the laurel bushes, a folded newspaper still clutched in his hand. Lyons stopped and pried it loose. It was an afternoon edition. The attack had only happened a short while ago.
The front door was closed, but unlocked, and the three men eased inside, their weapons at the ready.
The foyer was empty. There was a grandfather clock softly ticking, and a coatrack with an attached bench that Schwarz recognized as an antique from before the Revolutionary War. A brass umbrella stand was in the corner and a ceramic bowl on a small table contained car keys.
Blancanales made a noise and gestured to the left.
In the living room, the shapely legs of a teenage girl stuck out from behind the couch in the living room. A cat lay lifeless next to a ball of yarn, a goldfish floated upside down in a glass bowl. But more importantly, there was a ten-gallon can of fuel sitting in the middle of the living room with a radio detonator attached to the side.
Tightening his grip on the autoshotgun, Lyons tried not to curse. The Prometheans, as Price had dubbed them, weren’t here to steal the files, but to burn the place down to make sure nobody else got them! And they weren’t going to take any chances on missing some papers hidden in the wall or under a floorboard. That firebomb would reduce the whole house to rubble. The neutron cannon could kill from space, but the deadly beams would have no effect whatsoever on computer disks and simple paper. Those had to be destroyed by hand.
Shouldering his M-16, Schwarz went to the colossal firebomb and pulled the wires free. As he turned, the electronics expert grimaced at the sight of a second firebomb in the kitchen. There was another firebomb at the foot of the stairs.
Fast and silent, the team moved through the first floor, deactivating the explosive charges. Reaching the cellar door, they paused for a wordless conference, but then heard footsteps upstairs on the wooden floor.
Separating into a one-on-one defense formation, the Stony Man commandos walked up the old stairs, carefully keeping to the outer edges where the wood would be the strongest and least likely to creak and betray their presence.
The second and third floors proved to be the same as the first, and the team quickly neutralized the bombs.
Reaching the fourth floor, Lyons paused alongside the railing. He could hear murmuring voices, and somebody was happily whistling. A fierce rage swelled within the man. The bastards were enjoying themselves!
“Hey!” a man shouted. “What the fuck are you doing, asshole?”
Able Team froze, swinging up their weapons for the expected attack. Heavy footsteps stomped closer.
“I wasn’t doing anything, George,” another man replied. But the man was cut off by the sharp smack of a slap, and a rustling sound was made by some small items scattering across the floor.
A glassine envelope went over the edge of the landing, and Blancanales made the catch. Opening his fist, he scowled at a tiny packet full of blue crystals. Interesting.
“You’re a fucking liar, Troy!” the first voice snarled angrily. “I saw you stuffing packs in your pockets!”
“Hey, I only figured—”
Another hard slap sounded, then two more. “If Ravid sent us two pounds of crystal meth to sprinkle around the place, then we use every ounce!” George ordered brusquely. “That son of a bitch knew enough about our strongarm operations to send us to Wadpoole prison for the rest of our freaking lives!”
That caught the team by surprise. These were street toughs blackmailed to plant evidence of a drug lab in the house before burning it down. If the local police found traces of the deadly narcotic in the ashes, their investigation of the blaze would stop right there, assuming it was just case of the drug makers falling out over the business. Ravid. They would remember that name.
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Troy mumbled. “I was only just—”
“Shut the fuck up,” George snarled. “Hey, Mike, you wanna remind me why we brought the feeb along?”
“Had to. He’s my cousin,” Mike mumbled. “And don’t call him that word again, get me?”
“Go screw a rolling doughnut,” George replied. “Okay, Troy, get the rest of this crap and meet us on the fifth floor. He said they were all to be strewed around the office.”
“Sure, no problem, eh?”
“Did you put the tanks of ammonia in the basement?” a fourth man demanded. “Nobody’s gonna believe this was a crystal meth lab unless there’s lot of ammonia.”
“Sure thing, Jeff, did that first off,” Troy replied quickly. “Ah…do they really make meth from ammonia?”
“Oh, for the love of…Just pick up the envelopes!”
“Right away! Sure, no problem. Hey, you know me…”
The other men tromped away, and there came the sounds of somebody crawling across the floorboards, sweeping up the packets in their hands. Soon, a bald head appeared over the edge of the fourth-floor landing, and Troy gasped at the sight of the Able Team looking back up, their arms full of military ordnance. The man went pale and froze motionless.
Shaking his head, Lyons pressed a finger to his lips for silence, while Blancanales and Schwarz aimed their assault rifles.
“I surrender!” Troy cried, raising both hands, casting a deluge of packets upon the Stony Man commandos. “Don’t shoot me!”
Muffled curses came from the fifth floor, and all of the arming lights on the cheap detonators strapped to the fuel canisters started blinking.
Furiously, Lyons charged up the stairs and fired. The Atchisson ripped off a short burst, and Troy stumbled backward from the barrage of 12-gauge stun bags.
“Freeze! This is the FBI!” Blancanales shouted, adding a long rip from the M-16 assault rifle into the ceiling. With any luck, the hardmen would simply surrender.
“Fuck you, cops!” George yelled, and a pair of black metallic globes sailed over the railing to hit the fourth-floor landing and bounce away.
“Grenades!” Lyons roared, diving aside, his teammates only a heartbeat behind.
The team was still airborne when the charges cut loose, filling the landing with thundering flame. Still kneeling with his arms raised in surrender, Troy was blown apart by the double explosion.
As they hit the floor, there came a sharp patter of antipersonnel shrapnel smacking into the doors and walls. In a bathroom, a plastic fuel canister ruptured, the pink fluid gushing out to spread along the wooden floor, heading dangerously close to the burning ruin of the smashed landing.
Charging into the bathroom, Schwarz tackled the canister, shoving it into the bathtub. Heading into a bedroom, Blancanales ripped the arming wires off a firebomb and went in search of another.
Rising up from behind the fire, Lyons dropped the drum of stun bags and slapped in a drum of fléchettes just as Jeff jumped down the stairs to land heavily on the splintery wood. Grinning fiendishly, the Boston muscle swept the entire fourth floor with an AK-47 assault rifle, the 7.62 mm rounds slamming into pictures, bookcases and the still bodies of the former occupants.
Ducking behind a wingback chair, Lyons fired a short burst from the Atchisson, the hellstorm of steel slivers tearing Jeff apart, arms and legs going in different directions.
Bracing against the recoil, Schwarz fired a 40 mm round up the stairs. The charge detonated against the ceiling, spraying down a hellstorm of plaster and wooden splinters. Somebody screamed, the noise becoming a demented howl as Mike staggered into view. His upper body was riddled with holes, red blood pumping out in a ghastly spray from the ruptured arteries.
Mouthing obscenities, he sprayed his twin Ingram MAC-10 machine pistols, the 9 mm Parabellum rounds hammering down the stairs in crisscrossing streams of glowing tracers and hot lead. From the bedroom, Blancanales peppered the banister, the 5.56 mm rounds chewing a path of destruction along the polished wood. Still shooting, Jeff retreated to the fifth floor. But just as he disappeared, George appeared and fired a line of tracers rounds directly into the pooled gasoline, dripping over the landing. With a whoosh, it ignited and wild flames raced along the floor going straight into the bathroom and up the wallpaper. Standing in the bathtub, Schwarz turned on the shower and angled the spray onto the walls, but the water did little to hinder the lashing orange conflagration.
“You men up there, get the hell out!” Blancanales shouted, slapping in a fresh clip. “The house is on fire!”
“Lead the way, cop!” George retorted from somewhere above. “I’m not going back to Wadpoole! I’d rather die here with you!”
Lyons shot his friend a hard look and Blancanales frowned from the doorway of the bedroom. It sounded crazy, but many men who had spent decades in jail swore death before returning to the rigid discipline of government cellblocks.
“We need those files,” Lyons ordered, touching his throat mike. He burped a short burst up the stairs. “Think we can cut a deal?”
“No way,” Blancanales replied, cracking the breech of the grenade launcher. He dumped the 40 mm stun bag and thumbed in an AP round. “We have to take them out.”
Another grenade bounced down the ruined stairs and disappeared below. A moment later there came a muffled whomp and then a welling aura of hellish light. Lyons cursed. The grenade had ignited the canisters of fuel! The ground floor, maybe even the second, was on fire, and soon the flames would reach the other canisters. They only had a few minutes before the entire building was an inferno. With us trapped on the top level, he thought.
Turning the Atchisson upward, Lyons emptied the entire drum of 12-gauge fléchettes directly into the ceiling. The fusillade chewed open a gaping hole, and Blancanales and Schwarz instantly triggered 40 mm rounds. Once more, the shells exploded on the next ceiling, and men screamed.
Charging for the stairs, Lyons swept the room at waist level, blowing apart office furniture, computers, blackboards and both of the stumbling hardmen. But as they fell, a skinny blond man hit a radio detonator clipped to his bloody belt.
“Not going back…” George said, then went still.
A split second later, a muffled series of blasts erupted in the lower levels of the house, and the closet across the office was brightly illuminated from within, the door blowing off as the expanding fireball of the hidden incendiary charge cut loose. The only desk was coated with a sheet of flame, the DOD security documents vanishing into ash from the volcanic heat.
Rushing to a file cabinet, Lyons yanked the top drawer open, then quickly backed away as a secondary charge set the gasoline-soaked folders ablaze. In grudging admiration, Lyons was forced to admit that was exactly how he would have done it. They were amateurs, but not fools.
Ramming the stock of his M-16 into a computer, Blancanales smashed the machine into pieces. Using a knife, Schwarz pried loose the hard drive and shoved it into a pocket.
Flames licked out of the stairwell, and the crackling fire raced along the ceiling and walls, the updraft from the hole in the floor feeding the growing blaze.
“Let’s go!” Lyons shouted as a thick cloud of pungent smoke rose up the stairwell. House on fire, files rigged, the book case empty of any technical journals, there was no place left to search in the scant time remaining. Besides, every soldier knew the danger of fighting in civilian homes. The carpeting often gave off toxic smoke that could kill a person.
However, Lyons had barely taken a step when his nose caught a sharp aroma. It was actually rather pleasant, and the man felt oddly good, almost drunk, his heart beating wildly.
“Don’t breathe!” Blancanales cried, exhaling as hard as possible and slapping a hand across his nose and mouth.
With sleepy movements, the Stony Man commandos stumbled away from the hundred melted bags of crystal meth sizzling on the charred floorboards. The fumes were making them feel woozy, almost light-headed. A strange lethargy stole the strength from their bodies, their weapons suddenly feeling as if each weighed a million tons….
Fighting off the weakness through sheer force of will, Lyons aimed the Atchisson carefully, and triggered a long sustained burst at the flaming stairs until the smoky wood was torn into wreckage. It dropped away with a strident crash, and the heat in the office decreased slightly.
“Okay, that bought us a few minutes,” Lyons said, coughing raggedly. He fumbled to reload the autoshotgun with clumsy fingers. “But we have to leave fast—or die.”
More dull explosions sounded from below, the rising smoke becoming thicker, the floor growing hotter beneath their civilian shoes.
Snarling in rage, Blancanales fired from the hip, blowing out the rear windows. Rushing to the sill, he drank in the fresh air and momentarily his head cleared.
Firing to the left, then the right, a coughing Schwarz took out both side windows. The thick smoke thinned immediately, but the roaring fire noticeably increased.
Shuffling to the left window, Lyons saw only a gazebo on the ground five stories away.
Firing the M-16 nonstop, Schwarz blasted away at something outside the right window, then grunted in victory. “This way!” he shouted, slinging the exhausted weapon over a shoulder and hastily climbing through the opening.
Quickly joining their friend, Lyons and Blancanales saw Schwarz grab a dangling power line, a telephone pole at the corner of the property sparking and snapping. Wrapping the thick cable once around his waist, Schwarz rappelled down the side of the apartment building to land hard on the roof of the garage.
As he rushed along the sloping expanse of shingles, Blancanales arrived, then Lyons. Going to the edge, they jumped into the rosebushes, uncaring of the thorns, and fought their way to the front lawn. A heartbeat later, the roof of the garage collapsed, writhing flames licking at empty sky.
Returning to the van, the bedraggled Stony Man commandos piled inside and divested themselves of weapons before driving away. Oddly, there was no wail of incoming fire trucks, police or ambulance. The men solemnly realized that was because there was nobody alive in the neighborhood to report the mounting blaze.
Breaking out bottles of water, the men of Able Team drank deeply, clearing their sore throats, the clean air pouring through the vehicle slowly washing the stupefying effects of the cooking drug from their brains.
“At least we got this,” Schwarz croaked, inspecting the hard drive.
“And even if that is blank,” Blancanales wheezed, “we now have a name. Ravid.”
“Any terrorists called that?” Lyons asked, lowering their speed as he headed for Logan International.
Tucking away the hard drive, Schwarz shrugged. “None that I know.”
“I do,” Blancanales said, pouring water into his open palm and rubbing his face clean. He shook himself dry like a dog coming out of the rain. “Two, actually. There’s a Ravid in Hamas and another in Tiger Force. But it couldn’t be them. Neither group has resources to put a satellite into orbit.”
“Unless they got some major-league assistance,” Lyons returned, settling back into the seat. Anybody who hired thugs to do their fighting, might also have been hired as mercenaries in the first place. Hamas or Tiger Force, were they the real foe? Or was Stony Man facing a cartel of terrorist organizations this time? That would be a nightmare come true. And there was no way to know for sure until the hard drive was downloaded. Hopefully, that could be done on the Hercules.
Changing his mind, Lyons angled onto a highway and went straight past Logan to head for downtown Boston. If they could find the office where George and his crew worked before the word spread of their demise, Able Team might be able to find out exactly who Ravid was. Definitely a long shot, but worth the effort.
Merging with the thickening flow of honking traffic, the Able Team leader just hoped that Phoenix Force was having better luck at the Wake Island laboratory.
CHAPTER SIX
Wake Island, Pacific Ocean
