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“Unfortunately, there’s more,” Price stated, pressing a button on the console. Silently sheets of paper slid out of slots set into the table in front of each person. “At the exact same time there were similar attacks on a civilian airport in China, as well as an American AFB just outside Nome, Alaska.”
“Any connection to the three locations?” Brognola asked tersely.
“None that we are aware of.”
“Damn.”
“Agreed.”
“So this is not just a grudge with France, but a worldwide strike on both civilian and military targets.”
Price nodded. “Yes.”
The single word sent chills down the backs of the Stony Man operatives. An attack this widespread meant a major organization, thousands of personnel and nearly unlimited funds.
“If a Chinese airport hadn’t been hit, I would have assumed they were behind it all,” McCarter said. “Any chance they hit their own territory as a diversion?”
“At the cost of billions in collateral damage?” Price queried. “No way, David. It’s not the Chinese. The Red Star wants these Airwolves even more than France does.”
“You know, I would have thought that hacking into the electronic system of a major airport, and doing it fast enough to ‘impersonate’ an arriving plane, would have been flat-out impossible,” Brognola said, thoughtfully twisting his wedding ring. “Obviously, I was wrong.”
“We all were,” Price admitted. “Nobody thought this could happen.”
“Which makes the big question, how was it done?” Lyons asked irritably.
“Something like this would require a top-notch team of samurai,” Kurtzman said, then saw the puzzled expressions, and quickly explained. “ Samurai is our term for an expert hacker, the very best in their field.”
Frowning, Kurtzman continued. “They’d also need a really good supercomputer. A Cray Mark IV might do, but I would have gone with an IBM Blue Gene or a Dell Thunderbird.”
Nobody made a comment on the bizarre observation. The best way to find a terrorist was to learn how to think like one. The tactic required a special kind of mental flexibility that many ordinary police officers simply could not accommodate. For an operative working for Stony Man, it was practically a requirement.
“All of which these wolves in sheep’s clothing obviously have,” Price said, rising from her chair to walk to the side table. The woman poured herself a mug of steaming coffee and took a sip. “Broadcasting the correct codes and ident signals, these people are, for all intents and purposes, invisible, innocently mixed in with all of the other planes until they attack.”
Lyons grimaced. “In a single day, the military has been thrown back to visually tracking incoming planes by using binoculars, and against a supersonic jetfighter no one would have a clue!”
“Even if somebody got a visual on the B-52,” Brognola said slowly. “They’d think it was just a 707, and without the flight log of the tower to check, how could anybody know the incoming flight was actually supposed to be something else!”
“Mathematics,” Kurtzman said suddenly.
Everybody turned to look at him. Hunched over, the man was feverishly working a handheld calculator.
“The math on these attacks doesn’t work out right,” Kurtzman repeated, looking up and placing the calculator on the table. “To hack into the tower, get the ident for a plane, and the flight path, then slip in just ahead of the plane, would require supercomputers.”
“You already told us that,” Brognola stated, then suddenly looked alert. “And there’s not a plane in the world large enough to carry one of those into battle. It can’t be done! A supercomputer is huge, but very delicate.”
“They also weighs tons, and require a lot of constant technical support,” Price added, setting her mug aside. “Just taking off from the ground would crash a supercomputer.”
Kurtzman nodded. “Most likely.”
“Which means the Airwolves must have a ground base somewhere,” McCarter added, grimly intent. “That might be mobile, on a ship maybe, but it gives us a target to find. Take out the computers, or even the comm sat—”
“And they’re visible again, flying in plain sight,” Price finished. “Bear, have your team start a global search. Find their satellite and backtrack it to their ground base.”
“On it,” Kurtzman stated, hitting a button on the intercom to issue some terse instructions to his team in the Annex’s Computer Room.
“You know, whatever we do, we’ll need a diversion to keep the enemy off balance and looking in the wrong direction,” Lyons said, clearly thinking out loud. “Bear, how many abandoned airports are there in North America?”
That caught the chief hacker off guard. “Let me check,” he replied, and worked his laptop for a moment. “Okay, according to the last FAA survey, there are 1643 abandoned airfields.”
“Damn. Are there any long enough to land a 707?”
In growing understanding, Kurtzman grinned and worked the keyboard again. “That would be 603, including the Nevada Salt Flats, where you could land Mt. Rushmore.”
“Hal,” Price said, “please contact the President immediately, and ask him to have the Air Force bomb those old airfields, then send in regular Army ground troops to check the ruins.”
“To make them think we’re desperate,” Brognola said with a grin.
“It’s worth a try,” she admitted.
Without a word, the man rose and went to a wall phone. “Give me a secure line to the White House,” he demanded. After a brief wait, he spoke in a subdued whisper for several minutes, then hung up the receiver.
“Done and done,” Brognola announced. “Now what?”
“What exactly did the Airwolves hit the airport with?” Lyons asked, staring hard at the pictures of destruction.
Setting aside her mug, Price checked a page on a clipboard. “Let’s see—air-to-ground missiles, rockets, cluster bombs, smart bombs and iron bombs.”
Looking up, Kurtzman started to ask what those were, then stopped as he suddenly remembered that with the creation of smart bombs, old-fashioned bombs that had no guidance systems or any electronics, had been renamed dumb bombs, then finally iron bombs. Politically correct weapons. The very idea made his butt hurt.
“Any chance the French gathered enough parts to figure out where the weapons came from?” Brognola asked. “The Sûreté has some of the best criminal forensic people in the business.”
“They do,” Price replied. “We made the missiles. Or rather they were U.S. Air Force issue. The rockets were British, the cluster bombs Russian and iron bombs from Italy.”
“Mixed ordnance,” Lyon said, rubbing his jaw. “Sounds like these bastards were using whatever they could get.”
“Or else that’s what they’re trying to make us think,” McCarter responded. “This might actually be China, or some new group trying keep hidden. Remember the Brigade, or Unity?”
Clearly, everybody in the room did, and their faces grew more stern, if that were possible.
“Okay, there is no way that we’re going to track them through the munitions,” Price stated. “Unless they’re idiots, they’ve been stockpiling for years.” Adding some sugar to her coffee, the woman stirred it slowly. “But we might be able to find them through the sales of the munitions.”
“Through the weapons dealers who illegally sold them the bombs,” Lyons said. “Armando in Ohio would be the man to check with first. He’s the dirtiest arms dealer in the U.S. We can put the squeeze on him. Maybe he’s heard something. These guys have a network. We can go in as buyers…no, as sellers, and see what we can dig up.”
“The best way to follow the money—” Brognola added sagely “—is to be the original source.”
“Damn straight.”
“Want some blacksuits for backup?” Price asked.
“Yes, a dozen should do,” Lyons said. “And Bob.”
He wanted Bob? Crossing her arms, the woman almost smiled in understanding. “Fair enough,” Price said out loud. “Good luck. Report when possible.”
Rising, the big man nodded to the rest of the Stony Man warriors.
“We’re still using Bloody Bob?” Kissinger asked incredulously.
Price shrugged. “He’s never failed us before.”
Taking the remote control, Brognola brought up the fuzzy picture of the B-52 bomber. “This is an old plane, been around for over sixty years,” Brognola said slowly, testing the words as if they were creaking wooden boards under his feet. “How many of them are still in service around the world?”
“Couple of thousand,” Kissinger said calmly.
Kurtzman scowled. “That many?”
“Unfortunately, yes.” The armorer shrugged. “The damn things fly forever, if you have enough spare parts.”
“Buy enough parts from enough different sources and you could probably build a B-52,” Brognola said with conviction, sensing a possible vulnerability in the enemy.
Suddenly alert, Price almost smiled. “And exactly where do you buy replacement parts for a B-52 heavy bomber?”
Thoughtfully, Kissinger chewed a lip. “Well, there is a place called the Boneyard out in Arizona. That’s where the Air Force stores their old, and new, B-52 bombers, along with a lot of their other off-line or obsolete war planes.”
“Sounds like the Boneyard is a good place to start a search…No, forget that,” Price corrected herself. “It’s much too obvious a source. That would be the last place the terrorists would get any parts.”
“If we’re talking about black market war planes, that would be either Miami, the Sudan or Mexico,” McCarter announced. “And Homeland Security has the Miami group so heavily infiltrated that those boys can’t sell a wing nut, much less an entire war plane, without Washington knowing about it. There is a huge market for airplane parts, especially for military planes, and even more so for jets of any kind. The money involved is so good that a lot of drug dealers have switched from heroin to smuggling airplane parts.”
“And the CIA has done the same with Sudan,” Brognola added. “Which leaves Mexico.”
“The Quintana Roo connection?” Price suggested.
“The very place I was thinking about,” McCarter said. “Out in the Yucatán Peninsula, there was an airfield built secretly during the reign of Mario Madrid, the so-called king of Cancun.”
“He was a narcoterrorist, right?”
“One of the first. The son of a bitch killed hundreds of Interpol agents, CIA operatives, police, Mexican federales . It’s said that he shifted more cocaine and heroin than we will ever know. The Mexican police finally took him down.” Price smiled. “With a little help from us and Mack.”
“To keep an airfield hidden, it would have to be located somewhere out in the desert,” Brognola said. “Maybe Mack would know where, but he’s busy in Tennessee right now.”
“No sweat,” Kurtzman stated with conviction. “I’ll personally run a search through the CIA and NSA spy satellites. I’ll find the airfield for you, David, long before Phoenix Force lands in the capital city of Chetumal.”
Standing, McCarter pointed a finger at the chief hacker and shot him by dropping a thumb. Kurtzman deflected the imaginary round with a palm, and both men grinned.
CHAPTER TWO
Columbus, Ohio
Walking along the deserted streets, Armando Delacort kept an easy pace, his five bodyguards maintaining a tight formation around the millionaire arms dealer. Their suits bulged from the Uzi machine pistols slung under their jackets, and their heads were shaved in a military buzzcut, giving the men an oddly similar appearance. None of them wore jewelry, and all of them had multiple scars on their hands and faces telling of many battles fought hard and won. After the unexpected retirement the previous year of his Manhattan business rival, business had been booming.
Dressed in white linen as if this was the tropics, Delacort showed no sign of his inner demons, and coolly radiated the sort of easy affluence that only the truly rich and powerful could master. However, childhood habits died hard, and there was a switchblade knife tucked into his hip pocket, a pair of brass knuckles in his vest and a brand-new, state-of-the-art Glock 18 tucked into a tailored shoulder holster.
The weapon was a marvel, justifying the boastful claim that Glock was the premier weapons designer in the world. In appearance, it was absolutely identical to the Glock 17, a simple semiautomatic pistol. But just a touch on the trigger of the Eighteen, and it chattered off seventeen 9 mm rounds in slightly under two seconds. Two seconds! Absolutely incredible. Privately, the arms dealer was eagerly looking forward to the first reasonable excuse to use the new weapon, to see how well it did in combat.
Smiling contentedly at the sun, Delacort ambled along, savoring the clean morning air. As always, the city streets were mostly empty at this ungodly hour of the day, the sun just cresting over the top of the Hyatt Sports Stadium clearly announcing that it was barely 10:00 a.m. All of the commuters were at work, the mob of students attending the four local colleges were in class, and any shoppers were at the upscale shops located far uptown.
Whistling a tune, Delacort sauntered along the sidewalk, taking his time and almost feeling sorry for the hordes of people who had to eke out a living in the daily grind. Few people understood that life was like a fine wine—it should be savored and enjoyed, not gulped like water or guzzled like soda pop!
“Baa…baa…” Delacort said, imitating a sheep at a passing couple on the other side of the street. The man and woman gave no sign that they had heard, but they did hurry around the corner and out of sight.
Chuckling softly to himself, Delacort paused for only a second to check the oncoming traffic, of which there was none, before crossing Main Street even though the traffic light was red.
Straight ahead, on the corner of High and Main streets, the international arms dealer smiled at the sight of the Anchor Café, the green-and-white-striped awning fluttering in the gentle breeze above a score of wrought-iron tables and chairs, which were surprisingly comfortable. Taking a seat at an empty table, Delacort smiled at the other patrons, then snapped his fingers for service. For anybody else, this would only result in them being the last person in the café to get service, but Delacort was feared, and a big tipper, so the staff fought over who got to handle the Little King of Columbus.
“Good morning, sir!” a pretty young waitress said, hurrying over with a menu.
“Good morning, Susan.” The arms dealer smiled, handing it right back. “Eggs Benedict, please, with bacon on the side. Coffee, black, whole wheat toast with orange marmalade and a date tonight? I have tickets for…well, anything that would please you, my dear.”
Taking down the order on her pad, Susan giggled at the pass and calmly walked away without responding. The woman knew full well that the big man did not mean it, even if she had been interested in a brief dalliance with him. This was just a game he played with the staff to amuse himself, that was all. Which suited them fine. There were rumors about some of the other games he liked to play, and only a suicidal lunatic would go to bed with a man whose tastes ran in the direction of silk ties and whips.
Shifting his chair so that the back was to the brick wall, Delacort reached out a hand and a bodyguard passed over a folded newspaper. Nodding his thanks, the arms dealer went straight to the political page. However, there was no more information about the terrorist attack on the airport in France, so he folded the paper and placed it aside. Ah, well, such is life. He always got a vicarious thrill reading about what his clients did with the munitions he sold. The arms dealer knew it was foolish, but if he could not do the killing personally, then at least he could have a note of satisfaction that his weapons were being handled by professionals.
Just then the wail of a police siren caught his attention, and the bodyguards moved fast to close around their employer as a black SUV screeched around the corner. A blond giant was behind the wheel, another man sitting alongside apparently having trouble loading some sort of a shotgun. In the backseat, two more men were firing handguns out the open windows of the SUV at the flock of police cars in hot pursuit.
Instantly everybody in the café started to scream and run for cover, but Delacort knew professionals at a glance, and stayed where he was to enjoy the show. Instinctively the arms dealer identified each of the weapons in sight—Atchisson 12-gauge autoshotgun, Colt .45 pistol, Model 1911 and a classic 9 mm Beretta. Whomever these criminals were, they knew guns, that was for certain. Naturally, the cops were all armed with a boring and predictable 9 mm Glock. A nice enough weapon, if safety, not death, was your main concern.
Wheeling around an island in the wide street, the men in the SUV hammered the police cars with a hail of hot lead, the rounds slamming off the sides of the vehicles, smashing a sideview mirror and shattering a headlight. The cops answered back with their service-issue Glocks, the 9 mm rounds hammering the back of the SUV but failing to achieve penetration.
That piqued his interest and Delacort raised an eyebrow. The SUV had armor plating? Exactly who were these men?
As the cars raced around the island once more, one of the men in the SUV shot out a store window, showering the street with glass. But the resilient tires of the police cars went over the sparkling shards without blowing a tire.
One of his bodyguards grunted at the tactic, and Delacort agreed. It had been a good try, and his respect for these men increased. Mentally, he wished them well. Careening off the side of a parked laundry truck, the SUV fishtailed out of control for a moment, then straightened and took off down Main Street. A police helicopter appeared over the Prudential building, distracting Delacort for a split second, and when he looked back the man saw a female police officer jerk backward as blood erupted from her ruined throat. Grabbing the ghastly wound with both hands, she fell to the ground, her Glock dropping to the street and clattering away to disappear into a sewer grating.
“Sons of bitches!” another cop bellowed, thumbing a switch on his Glock before pulling the trigger.
Incredibly, Delacort thought the weapon had exploded, then he realized it was a Model 18, exactly the same as the one under his jacket. Chattering away, the machine pistol discharged in a continuous roar and the SUV, flipped up. A tire blew, a window shattered and the head of the man loading the shotgun seemed to get hit as blood splashed across the inside of the windshield.
“Good shot,” Delacort noted with a chuckle as bank bags jounced out of the open trunk to hit the pavement and break open. Stacks of bills went everywhere, and a police car plowed through them, sending out a corona of loose bills that the breeze took and began to spread across the intersection like manna from heaven.
Numerous civilians who had been crouched in hiding, now insanely charged into the street to grab whatever they could. More bundles fell from the speeding SUV. But Delacort noticed that these came from the men in the rear seat and were not the bank bags in the trunk. What in the world could those be?
Black smoke exploded from two of the bundles, and then the rest banged loudly, throwing numerous small objects across the pavement.
Plowing throw the smoke, the police cars suddenly lurched of out control as all of their tires blew at exactly the same instant. Riding on only the rims, the drivers fought to control the screeching vehicles as showers of bright sparks were thrown up behind them like fireworks. Forcing the cars to a stop, the police inside jumped out before the crippled vehicles rocked to a halt, and took off on foot. But the SUV was impossibly distant by now, and the snarling men angrily holstered their weapons. A few of them started to shout orders to the civilians dashing around, grabbing at the whirlwind of money, while older and obviously wiser cops started to speak into their radios.
Kneeling on the pavement, a policewoman with a spreading bloodstain on her arm, lifted something small and metallic-looking from the street.
“And what the fuck is this?” she demanded of nobody in particular, turning the object over to inspect it from every angle.
