скачать книгу бесплатно
Field glasses? Those were oversize binoculars much too heavy to carry into combat. They were only for a fixed observation point. “Think he’s Mexican Intelligence or CIA?” James asked tersely, his face lost in the cathedral of shadows caused by the moonlight through the tall sage plants.
“There’s no camera and no radio, and he’s got what looks like a…yes, that’s a Barrett Fifty slung across his back,” Encizo declared. “And there’s a Victory motorcycle parked nearby.”
“That’s no cop,” Hawkins stated.
“Not unless he recently won the lottery,” McCarter agreed with conviction. The Victory motorcycle was an expensive bike, mostly because it was one of the best in the world, which made it highly unlikely the man was a law-enforcement agent. However, the presence of the deadly Barrett was the clincher. There was no reason at all for any cop to be carrying a sniper rifle on a stakeout. The man had to be a guard, set to watch the airfield. And the only logical reason for that was to see who arrived to look for the Airwolves and to strike them down from above like Zeus, which might be to the Stony Man team’s advantage.
“Want me to take him out?” Manning asked coolly, lifting the Barrett into a firing stance.
“Not yet, we’re going to burn the rope,” McCarter said, activating the transceiver on his belt. “Rock House, this is Firebird, come in.”
“Roger, Firebird, this is Speed Racer,” a familiar voice replied. “Read you loud and clear. Ten-four.”
“Speed Racer, we need a blanket and right now,” McCarter stated roughly. “We’ve got incoming, and don’t want any outgoing. You savvy?”
There was a brief moment of static.
“Confirm, Firebird,” Kurtzman answered. “I see your Zeus on my Nasty sky eye.”
Nasty. That was this month’s code for the NSA. “Keep him safe and secure in case he rabbits. Confirm?”
“Roger wilco. Consider him deadlocked. Blanket ready to go. Duration?”
“Two should do. Repeat, two is fine.” Saying it twice, meant to hold the blanket for only half the time. If anybody was listening in, that would keep them off the air for two hours, while Phoenix Force could use the radio again in an hour. Every little bit helped.
“Confirm, Firebird. When do you want it delivered?”
“At your earliest convenience, Speed Racer,” McCarter said, but instantly a howling began to wail from his earbuds, and every member of the team involuntarily flinched, their hands racing to kill the com link.
Across the entire peninsula, no radio signals were going anywhere, every transmission killed by the powerful jamming field broadcast by Kurtzman from the equipment on board the Hercules. Not even cell phones would operate due to the additional interference of the Stony Man satellite in high Earth orbit.
Just then, a sleek Cessna Skywagon flew past the airfield, the pilot tripping the engines as identification. Down on the concrete airstrip, a bearded man waved a halogen flashlight and suddenly a double string of red lights appeared, edging both sides of the concrete to give the pilot a visual reference for a landing.
Swinging around, the Skywagon soon returned and touched down lightly, rolling to a stop near the rusty metal pole and bedraggled windsock.
Immediately a trio of armed men exited the cinder-block building. One of them was morbidly obese, while the other two resembled weightlifters, their short-sleeved shirts deliberately cut to give their bulging arms some much needed room. The pilot climbed down from the cockpit of the plane, obviously dressed for comfort in a loud Hawaiian shirt, clam-digger shorts and white deck shoes.
As the trio walked closer, he hailed them with a friendly wave, and then had a few private words with the fat man. Finally some money was exchanged and the now-smiling pilot opened the small passenger door and extracted a plastic-wrapped rectangle about the size of a shoe box. Hundreds more of the same items were stacked inside the Skywagon.
Pulling out a switchblade, the fat man clicked it into life and stabbed the thin blade into the block, then pulled it out and licked the metal clean. After a moment he nodded in acceptance, and the other men started ferrying the blocks from the plane to the garage.
“That’s heroin,” James whispered, checking the chemical scanner is his hand. The DEA device was small, but very powerful, however this was at the extreme limit of its range. The only reason he was getting any reading at all was that the blocks were packed solid with heroin, the pure quill, not yet cut to sell on the street.
Impressed, Encizo stopped himself from whistling. There had to be thirty or forty million dollars’ worth of narcotics in the decades-old Skywagon. No wonder the smugglers kept the airfield staffed 24/7.
“Not good enough for a court of law, but good enough for us,” McCarter declared. “Gary, keep Zeus off our back. Everybody else, let’s go make some noise.”
Hefting the Barrett, Manning nodded. “Got your six, Chief.”
Then, as silent as ghosts, the rest of the team eased down the sand dune to merge with the shadows. Skirting around the dune, the Stony Man commandos separated, each going for a different target. McCarter and Hawkins headed for the Cessna, James the garage, and Encizo the main building.
Nearing the outhouse, Encizo went motionless as the door swung open and a big man exited, zipping up his pants. The Cuban slipped up behind the criminal and thrust a knife into his head directly behind the ear. The bearded man went stiff, galvanized motionless from the incredible pain. Then Encizo twisted the blade and the man slumped, dead before he reached the dusty ground. Retrieving his knife, Encizo moved on and quietly dispatched another man standing nearby smoking a cigarette, obviously waiting for the first fellow to finish and get his own turn in the outhouse.
At the garage, James scratched on the door, and gave a low meow. Muttering something in guttural Spanish, somebody inside tromped over to the door and threw it open, a heavy Stilson wrench brandished in a dirty fist. Seeing the Stony Man commando crouching in the darkness, the mechanic registered shock for only a microsecond before the silenced Beretta chugged twice, sending the man reeling back into the workshop. Moving fast and low, James followed close behind, catching the wrench before it fell. As the door swung shut, the commando was inside. The Beretta coughed several more times, and then silence.
“W HAT WAS THAT ?” a guard sporting a scraggly beard demanded, feeding some scraps of loose wood to the fire in the oil drum.
“Nothing. Shut up,” the bald guard replied, opening the plastic wrapping on a granola bar.
“No, I heard something,” the first guard said uneasily, dropping the rest of the scraps into the drum.
“Probably just the boss chatting up the pilot,” the bald man replied curtly, biting off a piece of the bar. Chewing for a moment, he frowned, then swallowed. “He likes to get the news from home fresh.”
“I don’ think so, amigo,” the guard said, grabbing the AK-101 and working the arming bolt.
Instantly a weapon coughed softly, and both men jerked as their lifeblood splashed onto the dirty cinder-block walls. They staggered into each other and the Kalashnikov discharged a short burst, the 7.62 mm hardball rounds punching through the chest of the dying bald man and coming out the other side.
Unexpectedly there came an answering grunt of pain from the direction of the outhouse, and Encizo staggered into the dim firelight, his hands clutching a red belly just underneath his NATO body armor.
“What the fuck was that?” the fat man demanded loudly from beside the Cessna.
Instantly the pilot drew a huge Redhawk .44 revolver from within his Hawaiian shirt, and the two weight lifters each produced a Steyr machine pistol, clicking off the safety with a thumb.
Realizing the need for stealth was over, McCarter and Hawkins fired their silenced pistols at the guards, and the criminals staggered backward, but did not fall. Then they returned fire with the Steyrs, the muzzle-flashes of the little machine pistols strobing the night.
“It’s a raid!” the fat man bellowed, casting aside the brick of heroin and pulling a Colt .45 automatic pistol into view. “Sound the alarm!”
As if that was a cue, the garage suddenly erupted into flames, the door flying off from the force of the detonation of the C-4 satchel charge set by James.
The blast’s concussion was still moving across the airfield when McCarter and James appeared once more, firing their MP-5 machine guns. The barrage of 9 mm hardball ammo hammered the two musclemen backward, until they tumbled onto the concrete, twitching into death.
Wildly cursing in Spanish, the fat man leveled his Colt and started banging away.
Incredibly, the pilot pivoted at the hip and shot the fat man in the back. Slammed hard by the brutal impact of the heavy Magnum round, the dying man haplessly spun the Colt still firing. The pilot flipped over backward, drilled by a .45 hollowpoint round, most of his face gone, teeth and eyes sailing down the landing strip.
“Man down!” James called from the direction of the cinder-block house.
Turning in that direction, McCarter and Hawkins broke into a fast run. But they were only halfway there when a second man appeared from behind the plane, working the arming bolt on a Uzi machine pistol. As he opened fire, McCarter and Hawkins dived apart, and came up shooting their MP-5 machine guns. The 9 mm rounds tore into the Cessna, and aviation fuel gushed onto the concrete. The second gunman shouted in anger, the Uzi raking the darkness, then the window shattered and his head exploded. A split second later, there came the rolling thunder of the Barrett sniper rifle.
As the body dropped, something round and metallic rolled under the Cessna.
Hitting the ground, McCarter and Hawkins barely had time to take cover when the grenade went off. But instead of an explosion, there was a brilliant flash, closely followed by a searing wave of heat that increased geometrically with every passing heartbeat.
“Thermite!” McCarter cursed, protecting his face with a raised hand. “Bastards are burning the drugs!”
“Kind of a moot point now,” Hawkins drawled, dropping an empty clip and reloading the MP-5 with practiced speed. Then he frowned. “Or do you think—”
A dozen men carrying military ordnance burst out of the cinder-block house firing wildly in every direction. They spread out fast, taking advantage of what little natural cover there was, but the man passing by the outhouse suddenly jerked, the handle of a knife sticking out his neck. Dropping the Webley, the gunner grabbed his neck in both hands, trying to staunch the flow of blood. But the effort was proving to be futile.
“Blue nine!” another man shouted. “Blue nine!” The X-18 grenade launcher in his hands began thumping steadily, sending out a salvo of 30 mm rounds. The canisters hit the ground and rolled, spewing thick volumes of smoke.
Firing their machine guns at the fresh troops, McCarter and Hawkins exchanged a brief look. The drug smugglers used battle codes? Clearly the fat man had not been in charge, but was merely the chemist sent to check the purity of the heroin.
“Black Three!” a burly man shouted, triggering an AK-101 in a long burst.
Crouching, McCarter and Hawkins listened to the noise, getting his position, then triggered their weapons through the weeds. The burly man cried out in pain, and the Kalashnikov stopped firing.
“Two one!” another man cursed, a Remington pump-action shotgun blasting into the billowing smoke at chest level. “Two one!”
Man down, McCarter translated, pulling the pin on a grenade and flipping off the arming lever before throwing it toward the voice.
While the explosive was still counting down, Hawkins peppered the area alongside the building, trying to force the others toward the sphere. A few seconds later, the grenade detonated and several men shrieked in pain.
“Black Five,” a different man shouted in an oddly feminine voice, then added the belching roar of the 30 mm grenade launcher.
The sage brush disintegrated under the assault, and a cactus was pulverized, but nothing much else happened. Then an MP-5 chattered briefly in savage counterpoint and the drug smuggler crumpled over sideways.
“They got Uncle Chollo!” another weight lifter snarled, insanely marching out of the protective smoke. “Gonna kill you—”
Which was as far as he got when there came the sound of distant thunder from the Barrett. His khaki shirt ballooned out the back as his chest erupted, the fabric splitting apart as his internal organs sprayed into the darkness.
“Red ten!” the first man shouted, and the X-18 began chugging shells into the sky. The rounds came down whistling like bombs and hit the ground to form fiery geysers that banished the artificial cloud cover and laid waste to large patches of the sandy desert. Dead bodies flipped into the air, along with rocks and plants.
Trying to drive the gunner into view, James laid down a barrage from his MP-5. But the smuggler stayed within the roiling smoke and continued to pump out high-explosive death.
Unable to proceed in that direction, McCarter and Hawkins separated to try to get around the incoming barrage. But as they did, there came an unexpected explosion from the burning garage. Sounding like a crumpling soda can, the sheet metal roof buckled, then the walls shattered, cinder blocks tumbling away to expose a raging inferno with some sort of machine sitting in the middle on the conflagration, the chassis completely covered with flames.
Ducking behind a cluster of cactus, McCarter recognized the charred wreckage as a Russian T-80, one of the toughest vehicles in existence. The Stony Man commandos couldn’t have stopped the juggernaut if it had managed to get rolling. It was a good thing that they had taken out the garage in the opening strike.
Listening closely to the sound of somebody trying to get a cell phone to work, Hawkins simply could not get a definite fix, so he pulled out a grenade and threw the unprimed sphere in the most likely direction. It hit the ground and rolled into some tall weeds, near a sand dune. A split second later several men abruptly appeared, scrambling to get away. Ruthlessly, Hawkins mowed them down, then grunted from the impact of incoming lead from the other direction. Outflanked! However, the NATO body armor held and the hardball rounds did not achieve penetration.
Badly bruised, but still breathing, Hawkins fired a single round, then began to curse, and started working the arming bolt as if his weapon had jammed. Almost instantly a dark form appeared from within the smoke, rushing his way. But as he cleared the protective smoke, the Barrett spoke once more, and the man doubled over, unable to stand with most of his spine removed.
Realizing the battle was not going their way, the gunner dropped the exhausted drum from the X-18 and fumbled in a bag at his side to produce a spare one when James rose from the smoke to fire the MP-5 only once. Hit in the head, the gunner staggered, and the Stony Man commando was gone before the criminal fell.
“Two one, two one!” a tall man shouted, firing short, controlled bursts from his AK-47 into the thinning smoke. “Delta ten!”
Now the remaining criminals started retreating to the cinder-block building, their assault rifles hosing the smoky darkness in wild desperation. Keeping their backs to the blockhouse, they dropped spent clips to quickly reload when Encizo stepped into view from within the building, holding his MP-5 in both hands. Without a word, he cut loose, the weapon chattering nonstop and chewing the criminals into hamburger until the clip ran empty.
“C-clear…” Encizo panted, then dropped the weapon and collapsed.
Rushing over to the man, McCarter scowled at the sight of fresh blood welling from underneath the commando’s body armor.
“Cal, man down!” the big Briton bellowed, ripping the vest open to inspect the damage. There was a line of holes right along the man’s abdomen. He grimaced, but said nothing.
Suddenly, James and Hawkins arrived with weapons at the ready. At the sight of the blood-soaked Encizo, both men scowled. Then Hawkins assumed a defensive position while James knelt to lay aside his gun and look over the wounds before ripping open a med pack to sprinkle the wounds with sulfur.
“These are pretty bad,” James stated, rummaging inside a medical pack to extract a field dressing and press it gently to the man’s bloody abdomen. “There’s nowhere near enough blood showing.”
Which meant internal bleeding. McCarter had thought so, but hoped he was wrong. “Okay, what do you need?”
“Fast transportation to a decent hospital,” James replied, pulling out a syringe and checking the contents. “The medical supplies that we have in the Hercules won’t do for this kind of injury. He needs immediate surgery.” He injected Encizo’s thigh, the pale man giving no response.
“Done.” But starting to reach for his throat mike, McCarter cursed in frustration, then looked around. “There! Take the Cessna and fly him to Chetumal Airport near Cancun,” he directed. “We’ll race back to the Herc, kill the jamming field and radio the doctors to let them know you’re on the way.”
“T.J., lend a hand,” James commanded. He lifted the unconscious man in his arms and took off at an easy run across the littered desert.
Shouldering his weapon, Hawkins charged over the fallen bodies and blast craters to scramble into the plane and start the engine. It caught with a sputtering roar, and then smoothed to a sustained purr. Working together, the two men gently placed the unconscious Encizo on top of the packaged heroin, then they clambered inside. James stayed with his patient, while Hawkins took the controls and immediately began taxiing along the runway for a fast takeoff.
Turning away, McCarter started around the dune when Manning appeared from the darkness.
“I’m faster,” he said bluntly, the Barrett resting on a broad shoulder. “I’ll meet you there.”
“No, I’m going back to the plane,” McCarter countered, already in motion. “You stay with our friend in the hills, and don’t lose him! Keep with him at all costs.”
Confused, Manning narrowed his eyes in annoyance, then realized that if there was any trouble, a Barrett was the only weapon that stood a chance against another Barrett. Accepting the inevitable, Manning broke into a sprint, heading deeper into the desert to approach them from the side as the Cessna lifted off the ground and McCarter disappeared behind the sand dunes.
Gradually, the sounds of the engine and boots faded into the distance, and the desert airfield was still once more, the cooling corpses illuminated by the moon and the crackling blaze in the ruined garage.
CHAPTER FOUR
Patagonia Desert
A cold wind blew across the frozen land, carrying away the last vestiges of heat. Pristine white snow frosted the ground and the small lake was a solid sheet of ice. Along the curve of the horizon, rough mountains rose in jagged peaks as if they were new and not yet completely finished. Majestic condors flew among the craggy tors, forever on the hunt for anything edible.
Standing near the edge of a cliff, a woman in a brightly colored parka was setting a camera onto a tripod when she heard the crunch of snow under boots. Out there? A stranger was approaching from the direction of an old jeep, the heat visibly radiating from the engine.
“Hello,” she said hesitantly, a hand going into a pocket to touch her cell phone.
“Goodbye,” the man replied, raising a gloved hand and firing.
Hidden inside the glove, a silenced .22 Remington snapped off six fast shots, the tiny bullets almost leaving through the same hole in the quilted material.
Recoiling as if hit by sledgehammers, the woman staggered away from the camera, blood gushing from her ragged throat. Clutching the ghastly wounds with her own gloved hands, she tried to yell and only managed a rough cough, warm red fluids filling her mouth to spill over her lips and down the front of her insulated parka.
Reaching the edge of the cliff, the woman suddenly realized her location and started away from the abyss. Craig Rexton shot her twice more, then kicked the photographer in the stomach. Air and blood exploded from her mouth, and the dying woman went sailing over the cliff. It seemed to take her an inordinate length of time to disappear into the misty darkness, but, then, it was more than nine hundred feet to the base of the cliff.
Grunting at the sight of the messy impact below, Rexton nodded in satisfaction, then began to toss the woman’s boxes of supplies over the cliff. Especially that damn camera. He was not overly familiar with the model, and cracked the plastic shell getting to the film, which he exposed to the weak sunlight.
Producing a grenade from his parka, Rexton pulled the arming pin, released the handle and then threw the grenade down the cliff. He turned and raced for the Jeep, and was about halfway there when the bomb detonated. Done and done. If anybody ever found the body, which was highly unlikely, there was nothing to connect the death to his people.
And certainly not in enough time to do anything. Rexton smirked. It was a pity there were no wild predators in the vicinity. But then, nothing was perfect.
Visitors to Patagonia were few and very far between. Wanted by nobody, but claimed by both Chile and Argentina purely for political reasons, Patagonia was rife with impossibly steep mountains, live volcanoes, molten lava, acrid deserts and glaciers larger than most cities, making it the most inhospitable land on the planet. There were no native inhabitants, no outposts nor even roads. Most people called Patagonia the edge of the world.
It was early spring and the yearly thaw had not yet begun to release the long winter’s accumulation of snow and ice. Even the waterfall extending from the side of a granite cliff was still a solid mass that reached straight down to the barren shoreline of smooth rocks. Aside from the condors, nothing moved, even the clouds seemed quiescent.
For now, Patagonia was a desolate world of bitter cold and black rocks, void of any useful minerals, ores or even natural beauty. It was a vast and sterile land of no conceivable use to anything or anybody.
