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“A zero-gravity, space-suit training tank,” James agreed. “The water duplicates the relative lack of gravity, as well as operating in a self-contained atmosphere, preparing people for extra-vehicular activity.”
“And it’s not for astronauts, because this is a second tank in addition to one for the Chinese astronauts,” Manning said. “The Chinese don’t normally send people into orbit, and when they do, it’s on the QT. Mostly, their facilities are rented out to launch satellites, but they do have their own space program, complete with a knockoff of the shuttle that’s a little better than the Russians’.”
“So they’re training terrorists for zero-gravity combat in a space suit?” McCarter asked. “That narrows down the targets considerably.”
“The International Space Station,” Hawkins concluded. “Isn’t there supposed to be a shuttle launch and rendezvous?”
“It’ll be going up in three days,” Price answered. “Take a look at this setup here…”
The photograph increased in detail, and it was a maze of tires. Utilizing computer wizardry, the picture blended with the layout of the ISS. The commandos of Phoenix Force were immediately aware of the PVC pipes that simulated the crawl-spaces between the station’s various modules.
“Still circumstantial evidence,” James stated. “It’s too thin to make a rush into the People’s Republic.”
“One more bit of evidence. We did a sweep for radiation on the scene,” Price concluded. “We picked up high-energy gamma radiation signatures.”
James winced and McCarter knew that the Phoenix Force medic had heard something terrible. McCarter checked his memory for problems that would have a high gamma radiation signature.
“Iridium 192,” McCarter stated.
“You got it, David,” James answered. “It’s a very credible threat for a dirty bomb. External exposure to Ir-192 pellets can cause radiation burns, acute radiation sickness or even death.”
“They wouldn’t need explosives,” Manning interjected.
“What do you mean?” McCarter asked.
“Iridium is a highly dense metal. We’re talking a higher friction resistance than the toughest steels around. Plop it into the atmosphere on a proper trajectory, when it hits the ground, even the pencil-size sticks of Ir-192 used for industrial welding gauges will survive and merely fragment,” Manning said. “Put it in a barrel, and reentry will heat the drum up enough that when it strikes a solid surface, like a building, it’ll pop like a balloon, spitting shards over the center of a city.”
“A radioactive shotgun round,” McCarter mentioned. “Anyone not killed by a splinter of the stuff would receive a dose of radioactive shrapnel. With the amount of casualties possible from an air burst over a city, you’ll have hundreds, perhaps thousands, suffering from both fragments and the radiation they put out.”
“They wouldn’t need a barrel, and they’d have their delivery systems on the ISS,” Hawkins noted. “Right now, our shuttle is going up to augment the ISS satellite maintenance duties. At any time, there’s a half dozen satellites docked to the station, and there are remote operating thrusters to return the satellites to their proper orbits. It’d only take a minor bit of programming to turn a satellite into a weapon, especially with a load of Ir-192 in its guts.”
McCarter took a deep breath. “When do we take off, Barb?”
“There’s not too much activity now, but the timing of the hit on Burgundy Lake with the launch of the current shuttle mission is just too suspicious,” Price told them. “If it’s Beijing looking to make an official move, or renegades at work, we need to get you in the air now.”
“What’s our ride?” McCarter asked.
“The Gulfstream’s been refueled by naval aviation, but the closest approach to the Chinese launch facility is in Thailand. The Gulfstream’s not set up for HALO, nor a stealth border crossing, so you’ll transfer to a dedicated craft in Thailand, and then infiltrate the Phoenix Graveyard, approximately 250 miles west of Canton,” Price responded. “I’ll arrange for gear to be ready when you get there. Good luck.”
“We’ll need it,” Hawkins muttered.
“All right, team, load up,” McCarter ordered.
CHAPTER FOUR
Yuma, Arizona
Leon Paczesny was turned over to federal Marshals, glad to be away from the big, menacing blond cop who liked to pound on his arm. It had only taken a gentle reminder, dozens of color photographs of the corpses Able Team had created the night before, to ensure that Paczesny was going to keep their part in the apocalyptic border-crossing quiet. Hal Brognola had a Justice Department detachment, independent of the Burgundy Lake investigation, take care of the turncoat. The deal was a simple one. Paczesny would eventually be turned over by Brognola’s baby-sitters, and the traitor would confess to his part in the operation.
In return for not contesting his espionage charges, he’d get to live. It would be an existence in an eight-foot-by-five-foot cell until he was old and decrepit, but it would be life. Any deviation from the deal would result in pieces of Paczesny being mailed to all of his living relatives, each part harvested from his screaming body.
Lyons told the traitor that they had excellent life support machines. He amended the threat with a story of the last fool who blew his free pass to continued existence. With grudging respect, Lyons noted that the turncoat had survived until he was trimmed down to an eyeless, earless, noseless head attached to a torso that had been carved down to just above the navel.
“It was the most incredible six months of my life, slicing a traitorous bastard up like lunch meat,” Lyons confessed.
It was all a lie, but Paczesny didn’t know that.
“Intimidation has a name,” Schwarz quipped after Paczesny left in the back of a Justice Department SUV. “Lyons. Carl Lyons.”
The Able Team leader snorted. “This isn’t a game, Gadgets.”
“No, you sure talk a good nightmare,” Schwarz answered.
“I don’t like it, but when it comes down to saving noncombatants and breaking apart some thug who’s in on a bunch of deaths I can prevent…”
“The needs of the many, bro,” Schwarz replied. He bopped the ex-cop on the shoulder.
Lyons looked at his watch. It was just after dawn. “Please. It’s too early for that Star Trek crap.”
“Speaking of which,” Blancanales interjected, “what’s the plan? Stick around poking at any support structure for the mercenaries who hit Burgundy Lake, or do we go to Florida?”
Lyons frowned. “We’ll spend a few hours here snooping around. We might hit something, but I doubt that the raiders’ backup would stick around longer than sunset.”
“That’s including the guy who ran off,” Blancanales reminded him.
Lyons nodded. “Our mystery opponent took off, and we still haven’t assembled much in terms of ranking on this group. Chances are, the escapee was either the highest ranking, or the most experienced in the marauder party. Either way, that will make him valuable enough to be useful in Florida.”
“A hit on Cape Canaveral would be insane,” Schwarz stated. “The security forces on hand are well-trained.”
“So were the Air Force guards at Burgundy Lake. Besides, we’ve penetrated NASA security before, too,” Lyons countered.
“Okay. We hit the bricks and try to catch our boy on the way out of town,” Blancanales said. “I’d make it a safe bet he’d try a charter flight.”
“Check on it,” Lyons told him. “I’ll be at the battle site. Gadgets, check out the warehouse where the combined task force has the wreckage. A closer look at the stolen technology might tell us if this was an effort to steal and reverse-engineer the thrusters, or just getting it out of the way.”
“Knowing the state of international rocketry research, it’s a good bet that they already have their own version of the operating thrusters Burgundy Lake was working on,” Schwarz agreed. “And where will you be?”
“You don’t run into anything larger than a few homes or a roadhouse until you reach the coast,” Lyons replied. “The north is the eastern suburbs of Yuma, so there’ll be airports, but the only major airfield in Mexico is pretty deep behind the border, about halfway to the coast.”
“Your Spanish sucks, Ironman,” Blancanales mentioned.
“I know enough to get by. I’m just going there to see what they’ve got set up. Bear took a look on satellite and saw only single seaters, but these engines are supposed to be small maneuvering thrusters, so they can’t take up a lot of space on something like a ninety-nine-ton shuttle. Transporting a few examples via a puddle hopper won’t be difficult,” Lyons surmised.
“What about the mercenaries?” Schwarz asked.
“Cessna Stationaires hold six passengers. They dump their assault load out, and they can pack on two thruster prototypes a piece with the 180-pound luggage capacity. I saw only four in the one truck, so given the two we found in the other, we can count three Stationaires, eighteen mercenaries and six thrusters in the air toward the coast,” Lyons pointed out. “That accounts for half the force we eliminated. Don’t forget that in Mexico, whatever flight-plan paperwork exists is literally on paper, not something we could get with a hacker.”
“That’s quite a distance,” Blancanales noted, looking at the aerial photo map Lyons pointed to. “One man, doing it on foot, that’d be a hump, even to the nearest road, which would be Route 8, cutting from Sonoyta to Puerto Penasco.”
“You or I could do it,” Lyons replied. “A disciplined soldier could make Route 8 by sunrise, and there is traffic on the road.”
Schwarz spoke up. “And if he and his buddies thought ahead, they could have had a spot to dump off the heavy vehicles and transfer to less conspicuous rides before they got to the airport.”
He summoned up a satellite map on his PDA and began calculating distances from the previous night’s battle and the road to the coast.
“Foothills?” Lyons asked.
“Yup. Found it. Seriously broken ground where you could stash a used car lot and keep it invisible from the air,” Schwarz answered. “I’m going to check on the thrusters, but I think I’ll talk to Dr. Bertonni. Something tells me that she’s not out of danger yet.”
Blancanales thought for a moment. “Give me a few minutes on the phone, then I’ll hop out with you and Jack to the airfield to check it out.”
“Good plan,” Lyons replied. “The less dicking around we do here, the less chance we have of losing our wayward punk.”
“Good hunting,” Schwarz told his partners.
“Thanks,” Lyons answered. “This guy looks like he’s dangerous game.”
S ABRINA B ERTONNI DIDN’T feel any more comfortable after having her side stitched shut, but she was alive, and no longer bleeding.
She was tired, having been up for a long time, but the investigative team looking into the Burgundy Lake raid had brought her to the warehouse where recovered hardware and wreckage from the battle scene were assembled on long tables to be examined in depth for forensic traces. After a grueling inventory, the exhausted rocket scientist took a seat on a bench in a corner. A deceptively baby-faced, mustached man with a mop of unkempt brown hair and sparkling brown eyes held a bottle of cold cola out to her.
Bertonni took the bottle with a smile and he sat next to her, opening his own drink. “Thanks.”
He wore a badge naming him as Henry Miller. Sabrina raised an eyebrow as he took a seat beside her without drilling her with questions.
“You look like you could use the caffeine,” Gadgets Schwarz told her.
“Thanks, Deputy Miller,” Sabrina replied.
“Call me Gadgets,” Schwarz replied. “Deputy makes me sound like I belong in a Western.”
“Gadgets,” Bertonni repeated. “So you’re a tech-head?”
“Ever since I was a kid,” Schwarz replied, taking a sip. “I’m mostly electronics, programming and robotics, but I’ve dabbled in rocket science.”
Bertonni nodded, drawing a sip from her soda. “So what department are you with?”
“The Justice Department,” Schwarz answered. “But I’m more a tech-head than a field agent, despite the gun on my hip.”
“So I don’t have to dumb down answers to any questions you have?” the woman asked.
Schwarz shook his head. “Nope. Though I already know about the basics of your compact hydrogen cell.”
“How much do you understand?” Bertonni prodded.
“Enough to be impressed at your fuel to energy conversion formulas,” Schwarz responded. “I’m more solid-state technology, but I’ve got a solid grounding in chemistry and physics. The important thing we need to know is, how recoverable are the engine parts?”
“The thrusters were made to withstand considerable shake, rattle and roll. These were going to be tested out on the next ISS mission. We had everything set up to transport today,” Bertonni said. The words caught in her throat. “It’s so hard to believe that only a few hours ago…”
Schwarz rested his hand on her shoulder. Bertonni gulped, trying to dislodge the constriction in her windpipe, but her voice still crackled with tension.
“A plane was supposed to be coming in to pick up the test modules at Burgundy Lake this morning,” she explained. “Burgundy Lake…Stupid name for the test facility. There wasn’t anything for forty miles that was inhabitable, let alone moisture. Flat desert with just that compound, and the outskirts of Yuma safely shielded behind a mountain and…”
Schwarz gave her a gentle squeeze as she began to ramble. Bertonni wiped a tear and smiled gently at him. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay,” Schwarz said. “It’s going to be all right.”
He frowned, then pulled his CPDA. An aerial view of the compound betrayed a landing strip not a mile away. “You didn’t happen to see what went down at the airstrip?”
“No, but explosive charges were placed around the dormitories for the staff, as well as the testing and administrative buildings. All we knew was that the trucks rolled up, and then my partners started…started…”
Schwarz gave her shoulder a reassuring pat. She rested her hand on his, smiling at the gesture. “You need to get some sleep. I’ve got a pair of well-armed federal Marshals who will keep you safe.”
“Could have used them six hours ago,” Bertonni said with a sob. “You’re going to make sure whoever did this won’t get away with my friends’ murders, won’t you?”
“Someone already took care of most of them,” Schwarz informed her. “The killers are smeared across a five-mile stretch of desert along the border. They’ve been shoveling bodies into bags for identification.”
Bertonni nodded. “I thought I’d have felt better, knowing that the men who did this are dead…”
“It doesn’t take the pain away. It rarely ever does. But later on, you’ll know that the monsters behind this won’t hurt anyone else again,” Schwarz replied.
“And the guys who put them up to it?”
“They’re going down. I’ll see to it.”
Sonora, Mexico
S PEEDING OVER THE S ONORA desert in a Bell JetRanger, Carl Lyons heard his cell phone warble.
“What’s up, Gadgets?” the Able Team leader asked.
“Lot of shit’s not adding up, Ironman,” Schwarz responded. “There’s an airfield right by the test facility, call it a mile away, but with an access road. And a NASA transport was scheduled to pick up the test modules that the marauders stole. They could have hit the airstrip this morning and taken the transport if they’d only waited a few hours.”
Lyons frowned. “They have the pilots, especially if they intended to use any airstrips in Sonora. And the NASA crew wouldn’t notice bullet holes in the test facility. The raiders could have hit the plane, then taken it through one of the regular dope smuggling flight routes, and refuel it for a dash to a port or to an island refueling station.”
“Carl, Gadgets,” Blancanales interjected. “I just got off station with the Farm. The Justice Department forensics team going over our leftovers have reported in. It’s an international crew. It’s a mix between Europeans, Orientals and Semetic operatives.”
“Hired mercenaries, or perhaps a sanitized strike group assembled by a major power,” Lyons muttered. Outside his window, the sands of Mexico rocketed past at well over 100 miles an hour. “How soon till we reach the first of the airfields I looked at, Jack?”
“About ten minutes,” Grimaldi answered.
The terrain rippled, and Lyons was heartened by the fact that it would be difficult to even use a dune buggy or a motorcycle to cross it. The wrinkled furrows would make any rapid progress a stomach-churning, neck-snapping journey. The unmarked tops of windswept dunes showed no tire tracks, and both Lyons and Blancanales used their binoculars to scan for tracks or dust clouds of any sort. Frustration gnawed at Lyons’s gut as he hunted for clues. Then he spotted a glimmer against the pale blue sky in the distance.
Jack Grimaldi had seen it, as well. “An Ultralight.”
“Pushing the limits of its range,” Blancanales noted. While he didn’t have a PDA to calculate distance, the wily veteran was as good with a map and compass as any highly trained soldier. “He probably resorted to gliding to conserve fuel, which is how we caught up with him this far.”
“If it’s him,” Lyons countered. “Jack, get us closer. We can resume the search pattern if it’s a false alarm.”
