Show of Force

by Gar Wilson

  Annotation

  Phoenix Force is sent on a sneak and peek mission to a typical Russian town. It's an easy job that sounds like a cakewalk - only this town was built in a month in the middle of a wilderness.

  And it swallowed a CIA man.

  Suddenly Katz and his men find themselves inside Cheyenne, Wyoming, USSR, a super secret training base for Russian spies.

  Just as they launch an attack-and-withdraw strategy, Katz stumbles upon an even more urgent threat: a daring KGB project calling for a racial "brain drain" of American computer talent!

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  Gar Wilson

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  Gar Wilson

  Show of Force

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Dan Streib for his contribution to this work.

  1

  "Just what the hell is Cheyenne, Wyoming, doing inside the USSR?" Yakov Katzenelenbogen exclaimed in whispered Russian.

  Neither of the two men with him spoke any Slavic language fluently, but they shared his surprise. It was eerie. They looked at the town the way they would at a coral snake with its beautiful geometric rings.

  "Bloody hell," the man to Katzenelenbogen's left said softly. "There's even a church."

  His name was David McCarter. A graduate of England's prestigious Sandhurst Military Academy and a dropout from Britain's highly decorated Glosters Army Division, he thrived on danger. He craved action the way others craved food, and he had "found himself" in Phoenix Force, America's ultrasecret five-man strike team. America's Foreign Legion, McCarter called it sometimes. The President often sent the order that put the team into action, but it was never openly linked to him or anyone else officially in the government.

  In the field the team was led by Yakov Katzenelenbogen, or Katz as his friends called him rather than attempt a tongue-tying pronunciation of his last name.

  And McCarter was right, Katz thought. They were in the heart of Russia, which, according to Party dogma, was manifestly atheist, and in the distance before them sparkled a quaint white church with a tall steeple that seemed to reach for the slowly darkening sky. The scene could have been plucked directly from a Norman Rockwell painting.

  Anywhere else the structure would stand as a symbol of peace and friendly neighbors, but there in the south of Communist Russia, it seemed to be an ominous mockery that could turn into a trap for Phoenix Force.

  "Curious," the third man said. "Quite an anachronism, a new church inside Russia. Are we to believe a revival of faith is encouraged here?"

  The third and last man in the Phoenix Force detachment was a Canadian, Gary Manning, a thirty-four-year-old plastic explosives expert.

  Two more Phoenix Force shock troopers remained behind as a reserve. They were twenty miles away at a luxurious tourist hotel designed to attract the hard currencies carried by visitors from the capitalist West.

  The two were not real tourists, of course. If Katz and his detachment did not return on schedule, the reserves would rush north to help.

  At the moment the three in the woods read a Chamber of Commerce sign on the only road leading into town: Welcome To Cheyenne, Wyoming, Where The New West Meets The Old.

  Though the trio found their curiosity piqued by the macabre scene before them, they restrained themselves. They were not the kind of men who shy away from the unknown, and they wanted to crawl closer, but common sense and experience prevailed.

  Armed guards might be hiding in the forest that surrounded the strange little clone. Trip mines or deadly electric lines might interlace in the deep underbrush near where they lay.

  They had no idea what the existence of the strange town meant.

  "I don't like it," Katz said.

  A fifty-five-year-old Jew of Russian descent, he was skeptical of almost everything inside the Iron Curtain. And he was certain that the reason for the presence of prim and neatly painted homes and the two blocks of stores and shops was anything but benign.

  Generally he took nothing for granted and observed more precautions than the other two, which was one reason he led the Phoenix Force team in the field.

  "Well," David McCarter said as he started to rise, "let's go on a gander and have a look at this bit of western prosperity in Russia's economic moors."

  Katz detained him with a touch to his arm.

  Manning shared his companion's eagerness. Neither of them was timid. They were steeped in action, and by temperament they preferred to push on. It was hard to lie on their bellies, but they would be stretching orders if they moved another yard farther.

  So they waited restlessly for Katz to train his field glasses on the scene below them. The small town that was an American look-alike was nestling under the shade of trees that spread out like a green umbrella over the buildings and the short, macadam-paved streets. He estimated that there were about a hundred houses with typical American small-town architecture, but not one of the drab walk-up apartment buildings that housed most of the Soviet citizens.

  Retail establishments stretched for two blocks that could have passed for Main Street, U.S.A.

  Several factory-type structures crowded the far edge of town. From one of the large buildings, the American team could hear a sharp pounding that sounded like rapid-action gunfire. Katz suspected it was an indoor firing range.

  Beyond that was still another curiosity. An airport? Katz wondered.

  But it wasn't exactly an airport. A hangar with open doors was empty. Three aircraft were parked near the end of the dirt runway.

  The planes confounded him as much as the town. From the distance the aircraft looked as though they had been built by the Wright brothers.

  "Komitet Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti," said Gary Manning. "It's got to be some kind of KGB insane asylum."

  "Maybe it's an elaborate dacha for the Communist Party bigwigs," McCarter suggested. "They probably like to sample the good life now and again."

  Katz volunteered a reminder. "Figuring out what it's used for is outside our objectives. Headquarters wants one thing from us: a description that the spy satellites can't provide. And they want us out before we get snarled in a black widow's net of the KGB."

  "To hell with objectives. Do we go closer or don't we?" the man with the English accent asked impatiently.

  Baffled by what he saw, Katz perspired in spite of the cooling air that preceded the oncoming darkness.

  He worried about the mission.

  They had seen what they had come to decipher, and they ought to retreat while they were reasonably sure of escaping.

  Already they had bloodied a mission that was supposed to be like a tourist trip.

  Getting into Yalta had been easy. They traveled with a group of ordinary American families, and on the second day the three had slipped away from their eagle-eyed Intourist guide with relative ease.

  Finding a car had proved more difficult. They had attempted to bribe a driver into relinquishing his state-owned vehicle without a struggle. In the end they had convinced the Russian by knocking him unconscious, perhaps killing him, and rolling him down an embankment.

  Katz killed easily, but he killed only men who deserved to die or those who had to be sacrificed for the greater good.

  Their mission, with a goal that seemed trivial compared to their usual tasks, would not justify killing except in self-defense.

  But there was the faint sound of
a breaking twig, and Katz knew the mission was due to take a sudden nasty twist.

  He tapped his teammates on the shoulder. No words were necessary.

  Gary Manning, the Canadian who lived in the bush whenever he could, pressed his ear to the ground. After a short while, he held up five fingers.

  David McCarter cursed to himself. It seemed as though their cover would be blown, and it couldn't happen at a worse spot. Deep in the heart of Russia.

  Katz, rotating his head from left to right, felt the same.

  Immediately his teammates began to ease away from him.

  It was time to break and run.

  Katz, though, hated retreats, but an encounter with Russian guards could easily result in their information dying with them.

  As he mulled over the decision, he could hear the rustling of clothing against the pine trees, and knew it was too late. They would be heard or seen regardless of how good they were at evasive tactics.

  So he made the decision.

  "Start walking," he whispered. "Toward the voices."

  "Toward them?" McCarter questioned.

  Gary Manning understood. He had walked toward black bears more than once and had threatened them with nothing more than a throaty grumble. When an animal refused to back away or started to charge, he killed the beast with the.44 Magnum he carried when he went fishing. The gun was meant for protection against vengeful human enemies that he had made during his stint in Phoenix Force, but it served equally well with bears and packs of wolves.

  He wished he had the.44 now as the five men with rifles moved close enough to be clearly visible.

  They wore some type of uniform, but not the military dress that Katz and the others had expected.

  Chalk up another question mark, Katz thought. It was the damnedest mission he had ever been sent on.

  The guns carried by the approaching Russians added to the questions. They did not carry their rifles by the slings or hold them at port arms. Instead they carried them in game hunter style with the stock under their armpit and muzzle pointed harmlessly at the ground.

  But the Phoenix Force detachment continued inching apart, getting as much brush or trees between them as they could.

  The Russians froze as they finally spotted the strangers in the woods. Immediately they turned. The three in the center rather automatically selected their own targets, while the two on either side scanned for other intruders.

  That action alone indicated that they were not amateurs.

  The situation was awkward to say the least, Katz thought. With no concealed weapons, not even the.22-caliber gun he usually wore in his artificial arm, he doubted he could jump even one of the armed men before he would draw a round of shots.

  He looked for a strategy, checking the Russians' weapons immediately.

  The shortest of the five men carried an Anschutz. A custom model, it was similar to the classic design except for the roll-over Monte Carlo cheek piece and the Wunderhammer palm swell on the pistol grip. It was a.22 or.222, hardly a weapon appropriate for guard duty. Two others carried Mossbergs and two carried Redfields, which looked to be special hand-engraved limited-edition showpiece models.

  Very odd, Katz speculated. Innocent sportsmen.

  Then he glanced at Gary Manning. His face was bright with anticipation.

  The Canadian was a strange man. He had dedicated his life to fighting barbarians and crazed terrorists who constantly waged their deadly raids against the innocent and weak of the world. His dedication ranked with that of priests.

  That's why he was on the Phoenix Force team.

  But what had instilled that dedication in him was never clear.

  Katz was concerned somewhat that the situation would get out of hand before they adequately determined the type of Russian men they confronted.

  "Halt. Stop where you are." The man who snapped the order spoke in unaccented English.

  That diverted Katz for only a second.

  He broke into a broad smile, extended his good hand graciously and took several steps forward, effectively closing the distance between himself and the Russians.

  He responded in a friendly manner with a Russian greeting.

  The leader gave him a chastising look reminiscent of a stern father threatening a child. "Speak American, you fool. Haven't you been told often enough?"

  "Weil, yes," Katz replied, but he couldn't figure out what was going on. What was wrong with speaking Russian?

  The eyes of the hunter narrowed to slits as he looked at Katz again. "Who are you anyway?" he demanded. "Newcomers?"

  Katz answered, "Da. I mean, yes. Just got in today."

  He took another step forward, feeling that he could take out the apparent leader, which left two apiece for Manning and McCarter.

  They were on the move, too, but he could not see what steps they were taking to defend themselves. It was important that they avoided any shooting. Shots heard below in the village could bring an army of inhabitants into the game.

  "I'm Jerry Swanson," Manning said. He extended a friendly hand to the man nearest him.

  "Fred Hansen." McCarter smiled engagingly. He did not offer to shake hands, but Katz could see what he was doing. He had brushed a sapling aside and was using his body to hold it back like a slingshot.

  Katz took a deep breath.

  The Russian in front of him scowled.

  "No one came in today. The bus is not due for a week."

  "Well, you see…"

  The Russian's expression blended a bit of surprise and a heavy dose of anger. "You lie… you…" The man raised his rifle an inch. It was as far as any of them got before the Phoenix Force team went into action.

  McCarter ducked and let the sapling whip forward. Leaves and small branches slashed across the faces of the two men nearest him. They dodged and raised a hand to protect their eyes.

  McCarter leaped right behind the branch. With his head down, he rammed his skull into one Russian's belly. Already off balance from the branches, the man staggered backward. The Briton easily wrenched the rifle from the falling man's hands. His other adversary, still adjusting to the surprise attack, was an easy target. McCarter swung the confiscated rifle like a cricket bat, shattering the man's right knee and swinging back for a crack at his face.

  McCarter jackhammered the rifle butt into alternate skulls. Dazed looks and collapsing bodies announced the effectiveness of his technique.

  Manning took a different tack. He held up his hands as if in surrender, but before the rifles could be raised to cover him, he snapped two dead limbs from the tree above him. He sprang at the men, taking a hockey goaltender's stance and driving between the Russians.

  "Suppertime, gentlemen," he yelled.

  He caught each of them at the waist, toppling them as they tried to raise their rifles. When they fell, Manning was on top of them. He thrust a six- to ten-inch stub into each man's open mouth.

  They lost all capability to fight back. With both hands, each man fought to do one thing, to clear his air passage, but Manning, with a final thrust, finished them off.

  An expert rifleman, self-taught in Canada's vast wilderness, he preferred to kill at a great distance, but the Russians had left him no choice. The act had been a bit bizarre, and reminded him of peasants dispatching vampires.

  Manning looked away for a second, then his eyes found McCarter, who finished his work.

  So had Katz. The "old man" of the group had finished his single opponent with relative ease. He had slashed a cross-body karate chop with one hand to knock the rifle barrel out of position. At the same time his prosthetic arm speared at the man's face. It jabbed the Russian's eye, driving it back into soft brain tissue.

  In his agony the Russian tried to pull the hook from his face, ignoring the other hand that was clamped like a vise on his throat. He was still fighting to get the thing from his eye when he breathed his last.

  When it was over, the three survivors surveyed their body count.

  They did not cel
ebrate.

  In other missions, the justification was clear, but this assignment had seemed so trivial.

  Thinking back, Katz remembered that it had started without the usual sense of danger. Now they were in the midst of serious trouble.

  2

  As he stood in the center of the minimassacre on the fringe of the phony Cheyenne, Wyoming, Katzenelenbogen remembered how different the mission had sounded in the beginning…

  In fact, the assignment had sounded like a vacation. Katz had been summoned to a mission briefing at Stony Man Farm. The message was cryptic and had intrigued him.

  You are cordially invited to spend this coming weekend at Stony Man Farm as the guest of Mr. Hal Brognola. Dress: casual. R.S.V.P.: not necessary.

  Katz had received the puzzling summons while engaged in the Middle East in a reconnaissance that was strictly involved with gauging the potential success of a certain future mission. He'd mused about his life then, about how he'd thought of America as his home. He'd been born of Jewish parents who'd fled to France from Russia during the Bolshevik pogrom and was the last of his entire family to survive the Nazi fanatics of World War II.

  As a teenager he had fought to establish an Israel that Jews everywhere had craved for centuries. He had helped win, but he'd also left an arm there and acquired scars and wounds that would go with him into the grave.

  He'd lost his wife and child, too, eventually replacing them with Phoenix Force. Stony Man Farm became the old family home, and there was no question where his loyalties lay. He had made arrangements to fly back in short order.

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  Having flown at nearly Mach 2 on military aircraft, he suffered jet lag as the Harrier put him down on the short runway at the Farm's camouflaged airport.

  From there he walked past the Farm's collection of rustic buildings set amid a dense hardwood and conifer forest. Beyond stretched the grassy meadows of the Blue Ridge terrain, lying under the benevolent surveillance of Stony Man Mountain, one of the highest peaks in the region.