Day of Mourning te-62

by Don Pendleton

Bolan found no sign of Grimaldi in or around the Harrier's cockpit. The pilot was not strapped into his seat. Jack had not sunk with the plane.

  The tanks strapped to Bolan's back were almost empty. Any more time spent down there would be suicide.

  Once more Bolan began to swim toward the surface, the shark gun again strapped across his back. Using his free arm and both fins, he propelled himself up and away from the ship toward the first glimmer of dull sunlight that drew closer and closer overhead.

  Bolan broke the surface on the swell of a cresting wave. He bobbed like a cork on the endless expanse of rough ocean. His face mask cleared water, and he looked around to get his bearings.

  There was no sign of Jack.

  A jet turbine Bell chopper, boasting 5.56mm mini-guns and 40mm cannons mounted externally on turrets, hovered clearly against the low grim cloud ceiling.

  A cable hung from the open door of the Huey. The cable was pulled taut by the weight of Jack Grimaldi, who was being winched up toward the aircraft.

  Bolan could make out four members of Phoenix Force crowded in the side opening of the Huey: Gary Manning, the Canadian explosives expert; Keio Ohara, the Japanese martial-arts master; David McCarter, the British brawler; and Rafael Encizo, the Cuban underwater demolitions specialist.

  That meant it was Yakov Katzenelenbogen, the Israeli-French intelligence vet, topkick of Phoenix Force, who was flying the chopper.

  Bolan glimpsed the smoldering debris of what had been another helicopter on the surface of the water. The wreckage was slowly disappearing into the hungry rolling waves.

  The boat that marked the site of the terrorist salvage operation bobbed on the stormy Atlantic.

  Bolan knew he would need decompression time aboard that boat.

  He saw the men of Phoenix hoist a very wet Grimaldi into the safety of their gunship.

  Bolan lifted a victorious thumbs-up sign to the guys.

  He punched into the tac net as he swam.

  "Is that you, Yakov?"

  "You were expecting Jacques Cousteau?" grumbled the Phoenix Force honcho from behind the chopper controls. "Get yourself onto that boat and into decompression, Striker. Then we talk."

  Bolan fought the sea toward the boat and the DC. He tugged along the nuclear device that had gotten so many men killed this day.

  There were still too many things left unexplained. They chewed at him inside, demanding action. Like a communications screwup that could only mean more trouble...

  "Yeah,'' Bolan replied grimly as he swam toward the wind-tossed boat on the rough sea. "Then we talk.''

  * * *

  One hour later, Jack Grimaldi was still wearing the widest ear-to-ear grin that Bolan had ever seen.

  "Man, I'm here to tell you," the ace pilot was telling Bolan and Yakov, "I must've aged ten years in the ten seconds it took those terrorist bastards to shoot me into the drink. I was never so glad to see one of these big Hueys coming to the rescue. Not even in Nam."

  Grimaldi was now at the controls of the Huey.

  The helicopter was in the same stationary hold it had maintained while Bolan did his time in decompression.

  Then Colonel Phoenix was pulled aboard the chopper by the same winch that had rescued Grimaldi from an Atlantic death.

  Two vessels now rode the ocean beneath the Huey. The terrorists' boat had been joined by another trawler while Bolan was in DC; a trawler that was in fact a well-disguised U.S. spy boat sailing with computerized eavesdropping capability and armed with torpedoes and missiles.

  The spy ship had been ordered from its regular course for this "accidental" rendezvous with the chopper.

  "After all the times you've airlifted this guy out of hotspots," said Katz to Grimaldi, with a nod to indicate Bolan, "I'd say you've damn well earned yourself some luck, my friend. It was our pleasure, Jack."

  "Where are the others?" Bolan asked Katz.

  He was referring to the other members of Phoenix Force. They were not aboard the Huey.

  Katz pointed down at the raging sea.

  "Rafael is supervising the cleanup inside the sunken ship," the Phoenix Force leader told the Executioner. "It's ours in accordance with open-sea salvage regulations."

  Bolan fired a cigarette. He felt good to be above water again.

  "Any idea where those Cobras were from?" he asked Katz.

  Katzenelenbogen shook his head.

  "The spy trawler down below has a far wider radar range than this Huey, or the Harrier Jack was flying."

  "Don't remind me," groused Jack from behind the Huey's controls. "I feel terrible losing that plane."

  "Like hell, Jack," said Bolan. "You did everything you could. You nailed two of them before they hit you." He nodded to the nuclear device at their feet. "And this mission is a success." He looked again at Katz. "What did the trawler's radar turn up?"

  "A few maybes. The choppers could have come from a modified trawler like the ones below, fixed to handle the salvage crew and the choppers to ferry them around without drawing attention to the actual site. No way to check them out, though, unless you want to take the time now."

  Bolan grimaced.

  "Damn. I'd like to. But this device has got to be delivered. And there's that other thing."

  Katz stared down at the nuclear bomb.

  The hell bomb was still sealed in its innocent-appearing suitcase disguise.

  "Hard to believe that something so inconspicuous could be worth so much killing."

  "Keio might be the only one among us who can truly appreciate the horror of this little baby," said Bolan. "He lost members of his family at Nagasaki."

  "That's what makes Keio so intent on these missions," Yakov said, nodding. "He reminds us all that what happened before must never happen again."

  "Set a course for home, Jack." Bolan turned to the Phoenix Force leader. "We'll lower you now, Yakov. Thanks for flying-in this Huey."

  Katzenelenbogen shrugged off the thanks. He moved toward the open doorway, to the winched pulley rope.

  "This helicopter is modified with auxiliary fuel tanks, Striker. You'll make it to that carrier for refueling easy enough. There's a jet waiting outside Miami to take you back to Stony Man."

  Then Katz got a grip on the thick rope.

  "The trawler will see you away when you're done here," said Bolan. "Others besides those terrorists will be on their way here soon, Katz."

  "Like the European end of the deal?" asked Katz. "Able Team is working that angle right now. They could have something on it already. And there could be something more than a bomb aboard that sunken freighter. Rafael has them going over the captain's quarters, Striker. The safe, that kind of thing. If there's anything salvageable down there that we can use from an intel standpoint, we'll bring it home with us."

  "See you at Stony Man, then. Good luck," said Bolan.

  He activated the winch.

  It began lowering Katz toward the U.S. spy ship below.

  "Mack, find out what the hell went wrong on that communications blackout."

  "I intend to," said the big blitzer grimly. "That's a promise."

  When the Phoenix Force team boss was aboard the deck of the U.S. trawler, Bolan slammed shut the door and shouted to Grimaldi above the constant, high-pitched whine of the chopper.

  "Home, Jack."

  "You know it, bossman," said the flyboy, grinning.

  The pilot eased them away from the site with a gentle increase of power. The bobbing trawlers became specks on the choppy Atlantic. The Huey lifted off into the gray sky in a northwesterly course for home.

  America.

  The U.S. of A.

  A place Mack Bolan was seeing less and less of these days.

  What would he find waiting for him at Stony Man?

  The mission was successful. There were no casualties for the Stony Man soldiers and the hell-bomb device, whether it survived the ship's sinking intact or not, was on its way to the proper authorities.

  Any other time, Bolan's pulse wou
ld have slowed down by now from the adrenaline rush of that underwater action. Now he thought of home and those good people who shared the burden of these terrorist wars every step of the way: Hal, Kurtzman, Konzaki. And of course his lady, April, who made the wheels turn and was always there for Bolan with a candle in the window.

  Stony Man.

  Right.

  Everything this big warrior held near and dear.

  His thoughts were on these people now, sure. But it was not the warmth of a reunion to be anticipated. It was the nagging concern he had felt since they had first lost connection with Stony Man prior to the undersea hit.

  Bolan's adrenaline was still pumping.

  The spy trawler's computers had their own satellite linkup. An operator aboard ship had worked on the problem while Bolan was in decompression. When a connection with Stony Man Farm was finally achieved it was via a communications patch into an unscrambled phone line at the Stony Man command center.

  Bolan spoke briefly with Hal Brognola. The head Fed did not mince words or tip anything that would breach security.

  Hal spoke seven words over the staticky connection, saying nothing to ease Bolan's concern or slow the adrenaline down.

  "Come home, Striker. ASAP. There's big trouble. "

  5

  Andrzej Konzaki was in a coma.

  The Stony Man armorer lay struggling for life in the emergency sick bay of Stony Man Farm. Mack Bolan and April Rose stood next to an armed man in uniform on the other side of an observation window in the hospital facility.

  Konzaki was enshrouded in an oxygen tent. Tubes ran to him from two bottles.

  A nurse beside the bed monitored a cardiograph machine that registered a very weak pulse.

  The tough-looking man in uniform who stood next to Bolan was Captain Wade. He was in charge of the security force that patrolled the perimeter of Stony Man Farm.

  "He was reported missing at 1400 hours, sir," Wade reported. "We instituted a search immediately."

  All Farm personnel made voice contact with one of Kurtzman's central computers every two hours. A security precaution.

  "Was he missing before or after the explosion?" asked Bolan.

  "Before, sir."

  April spoke up.

  "Why do you think Konzaki wasn't killed, Mack?"

  "Being in a wheelchair probably saved Konzaki's life," growled Bolan. "At least, so far."

  Wade picked up the thought.

  "The angle of the blow. Sure. Whoever slugged him wasn't used to chopping down at that angle. The blow that meant to kill Mr. Konzaki caught him at the wrong angle."

  April's lovely features were taut with an inner rage she could not conceal.

  "A man in a wheelchair — "

  "Do you have anything else to report, Captain?" Bolan asked Wade.

  "No, sir, I'm afraid not. No signs of penetration anywhere along the perimeter. The ground is soft this time of year. But there were no signs of footprints where Mr. Konzaki was attacked."

  Bolan had heard enough. He could do no good for Konzaki standing there.

  "Captain Wade, return to your men. April, let's see what Kurtzman has for us."

  It was twenty minutes after Grimaldi had set them down on the Stony Man airstrip in the F-14 Tomcat jet that had flown them to Washington from Miami.

  At this moment, the pilot was at the airstrip's camouflaged hangar, ensuring that the jet would be ready if needed on short notice.

  The brain center of the Farm was a sprawling collection of rustic buildings set amid a dense forest of hardwood and conifer and the occasional grassy meadow like the one that surrounded the ordinary-looking "farm buildings."

  In fact, the buildings and the underground facility beneath them housed the brightly lit, modern headquarters of the Executioner's Phoenix world.

  The Blue Ridge terrain was dominated on the far horizon by Stony Man Mountain, one of the highest peaks in the region.

  The weather was unseasonably warm, but the mountain was wreathed in low-hanging clouds that gave the spring day a grim, foreboding look.

  Bolan felt the same way inside.

  He had known Andrzej Konzaki only by the man's work in the Stony Man program. In that regard, Bolan ranked the Farm's armorer at the absolute top, and he now regretted not having gotten to know Konzaki better.

  Konzaki was officially with the Special Weapons Development branch of the CIA, unofficially attached to Stony Man shortly after the inception of the Phoenix program. Konzaki, legless since Vietnam, was one of the most innovative armorers in the world, a master weaponsmith. His CIA profile read: "trust him."

  Konzaki had never let Bolan down.

  And now the guy lay in a coma with a less than fifty-fifty chance of pulling through. With the identity of his assailant locked up inside where it would stay forever if a good man named Konzaki died.

  Aaron Kurtzman was waiting for Bolan and April at the polished conference table in the briefing room, down the corridor from where Andrzej Konzaki lay.

  "All of our computer-satellite linkups are totaled," grumbled The Bear. "Someone got inside the terminal housing at the back of this building. My guess is they used some form of plastique."

  "How long to repair?" asked Bolan.

  "The necessary component replacements are on their way," Kurtzman reported, "but it's still taking time, too much damn time, because Stony Man Farm supposedly does not exist. For that same reason we can't go through any of the standard channels."

  Bolan stood up and began to pace about the briefing room as he put the thing together aloud. An urge for action had him restless.

  "Wade's men didn't find any signs of penetration. That could mean there was no penetration."

  April frowned.

  "An inside job? That's... almost unthinkable, Mack. Everyone at the Farm has been screened so thoroughly."

  "Determine the key people in this area and screen them again," said Bolan. "Start with Captain Wade."

  "As you say," agreed April.

  "What about the saboteur?" asked Kurtzman thoughtfully. "Whether the damage was done by a man or woman inside the Farm or by infiltration, we still don't have any point to start from."

  "We narrow it to categories," said Bolan. "Someone has tried to sabotage our operation. Is our enemy domestic or foreign? How did they learn about us? Bear, I want you to backtrack over every possible security leak point you can think of in the program."

  "Roger."

  "I ordered Wade to double his security force as soon as Konzaki was reported missing," said April.

  "Good work," said Bolan. "Now triple it. And I'll want to review the defense with you and Wade after it's been revised."

  "Defense?" echoed Kurtzman. "Sounds as if you expect an attack."

  "That sabotage was a soft probe to test our reflexes," said Bolan. "And I'd say everyone here reflexed right on the money."

  "That means," added April, "that if someone is planning to attack the Farm, they'll hit us with a sizable force." She stood, tall, lush-bodied.

  "When they hit, we damn well better be ready for them," she said. "I'd better get on it."

  There had to be time for that one brief brush of lips against his cheek. Her nearness always tantalized Bolan.

  Then she was gone.

  Dear April. So damn efficient.

  "What's the status on Able Team?" Bolan asked Kurtzman. "Yakov told me they were homed in on the European end of that terrorist deal I just squashed."

  "Lyons, Blancanales and Schwarz are poised to strike at the headquarters of a man they've identified only as 'The Dragon.' The Dragon runs his show from a mountain fortress in the Hindu Kush, almost inaccessible except by helicopter."

  "The Himalayas," Bolan commented. "Fourteen-thousand-foot mountains between Pakistan and Afghanistan. A smugglers' route for thousands of years."

  "The Dragon is the biggest broker we've been able to identify," said Kurtzman. "If we stop him, we could practically dry up the flow of arms to all the terrorist gro
ups. And maybe give us the next link in the chain to who pulls the big strings.''

  Sure. Bolan knew well. Anyone who thought that the various terrorist groups functioned solely on empty rhetoric simply did not know the truth. Activities such as kidnapping, extortion and robbery netted millions of dollars per year for those unknowns who bathed in the blood of innocent victims.

  And now the men of Mack Bolan's Able Team were halfway around the world, ready to make one of the biggest hits of all in this new war against terrorism. Dry up their arms supply.

  Able Team was a three-man unit: Carl Lyons, a former LAPD cop who'd been a Bolan ally since the early days of the Executioner's former Mafia war, Rosario "Pol" Blancanales and Hermann "Gadgets" Schwarz, two more combat specialists who had shared the hellground experience with Mack Bolan as part of the Executioner's Able Penetration Team in that long-ago war.

  Three exceptional fighting men.

  Yeah.

  Three men.

  Against who the hell knew what?

  The Dragon was a new one to Bolan.

  He voiced a thought that had been with him since his arrival at the Farm.

  "Where's Hal?"

  A phone at Kurtzman's elbow buzzed.

  Kurtzman picked up the receiver, listened, then extended the phone to Bolan. "You want him, you got him. Mr. Liaison himself."

  Bolan took the receiver.

  "Hal?"

  "Welcome home, Striker."

  "Where are you, Hal? You should be here."

  "Would you believe the White House?" said Brognola.

  "And what's cooking at the Man's place?"

  "We're waiting on Colonel John Phoenix."

  "We?"

  "The president, Striker. And a guy named Lee Farnsworth."

  "And what are we waiting on Colonel Phoenix for?" asked Bolan.

  There was a pause, as if Brognola did not want to reply.

  "Farnsworth wants the president to disband the Stony Man operation."

  "What?"

  "You know who Farnsworth is?"

  "CFB."

  "Right. The Central Foreign Bureau. He says we've stepped on CFB's toes with one of our operations. Got two of their men killed. He claims it's happened before."

  "Hal, is my presence there absolutely necessary? The blackout tonight could've been a probe for something else."