Lyons and Gadgets saw the puffs of smoke in the field. They covered their ears, put their faces in the dirt.
Eight concussion/ flash charges popped into the air, then exploded with a mind-shocking flash and roar.
The Cuban near the Cessna and the wounded Arabs, all fell semiconscious.
The Cessna's windows shattered. At the other side of the pasture, car windows fell in sheets of sparkling cubes.
As one, the three warriors of Able Team rushed the Cuban. Running across the field, Lyons dropped the spent magazine from his modified Colt and snapped in another mag. A moment behind him, Gadgets came from the banana trees. Blancanales reached the plane first.
Crawling, temporarily blind and deaf, the Cuban groped in the grass for his pistol. Blancanales place-kicked the man in the solar plexus, the kick throwing the guy onto his back, gasping and choking.
Gadgets went to the open door of the Cessna and glanced inside. Then he went to one knee and watched the field while Blancanales slipped plastic handcuffs on the Cuban.
Lyons stopped short of the plane. Gadgets pointed to the woman. Lyons nodded, approached the tangled crowd of dead and wounded in the center of the field.
A wounded teenager reached for an AK. Lyons kicked the rifle away and pointed his pistol at the teenager. The boy raised his hands, begging Lyons for his life. Lyons did not fire, continued on instead. He kicked rifles from dead hands.
He heard the woman moaning. A soldier sprawled on her, as if covering her nakedness. As Lyons approached, he finally saw why the woman could not move her arms.
Bayonets crucified her, the spike blades of several AK rifles pinning her arms to the earth, one spike through her right forearm, two through her left palm and upper arm. Lyons dragged the dying soldier off her to observe her wounds.
They had cut her clothes away. Slashes streamed blood over her chest and abdomen. Even as he knelt to check her pulse, he saw her dead, staring eyes.
Methodically going from man to man, he shot each in the head. The wounded teenager whom he had spared raised his hands. Lyons shot him in the forehead.
Gadgets and Blancanales watched Lyons kill all the wounded, then shoot all the dead again. Finally Lyons jogged over to the plane, changing magazines as he ran.
"We got one of them," Blancanales called out. "But the other Cuban's dead."
"I'm going back for the boy I brought in." Lyons started for the banana rows.
"Hey, bad man!" Gadgets shouted. "Let him slide. He didn't have anything to do with that. Besides, we need him."
"Nothing's going to happen to him. I promised him he'd live. I keep my word."
"Where are the other two?" called Gadgets. "The ones you captured on the other side of the hill." "Gone." Lyons jogged into the trees.
Blancanales and Gadgets knew what Lyons meant. They exchanged a look. Gadgets chuckled ironically. "Glad Lyons likes me."
The Iranian teenager walked from the banana rows, Lyons one step behind him.
He questioned the boy as they walked. "Who's back at the truck?"
"My friend, Abbas."
"Is he your officer?"
"No. Soldier."
"Who's your officer?"
The teenager turned toward the center of the field. For the first time, he saw the sprawled corpses of his comrades. He stopped in midstride, a wail of fear and grief starting low in his throat.
Lyons grabbed his collar to lead him to Blancanales and Gadgets.
The boy cried, pleaded in English, sometimes lapsing into Persian. "No, I only soldier. They take me from village. They shoot me, they shoot mother, family if I no come—"
"Saroush, quit it. You'll live. I keep my word." Lyons forced the boy to sit down. "Stay there. You're going to America—"
"America? Prison in America?"
Blancanales laughed. "Probably a taxi. All the Iranians I know started off driving taxis."
"I tell truth. I only soldier."
Gadgets motioned his partners to the side. They stepped away from their prisoners where they could not be overheard. "Dig this, we're operating in mystery land here. The Cubans spent years building up their dope trade. There's ten- and twenty-million dollar dope deals happening in Miami and La Paz. But this one's a surprise—the Cubans have ripped the dopers for only a million. Why not wait till they got five, ten, twenty million? And why do they import a kill-squad of PLO and Iranian teenagers as backup?"
"World's full of surprises," Lyons offered. "But what we have to do is airfreight these prisoners back to Stony Man. And quick."
"Let Kurtzman think about it," Blancanales agreed. "He gets paid for it—"
Lyons cut off the conference. "We gotta move. Otherwise the next surprise could happen to us."
Without another word, they jerked their prisoners from the marshy pasture and marched them into the darkness.
7
Santa Barbara, California
Thursday
11:00 p.m.
(0700 Greenwich mean time)
A CIRCLE OF BRILLIANCE crowned the hill in the night shrouded wilderness of the Santa Ynez Mountains.
His hand gripping the door latch, Senator Bradford Harper waited for the helicopter to touch down on the estate's mountaintop landing pad. In the distance, grids of sparkling blue marked the cities of Coleta, Montecito, Santa Barbara. Beyond the cities, the scattered lights of oil platforms jewelled the Pacific.
The pilot eased the executive helicopter from the sky. It floated to rest on the concrete helipad. Senator Harper threw open the door as the rotors derevved. A young man in a three-piece suit ran aross the pad to help the senator down.
Senator Harper had flown from Kansas at the invitation of his old friend and political ally, the President.
The Man waited in the night shadow of a wide-branched oak. "Brad, I'm glad you could make it. How's Bette? The kids?"
"Never better. They wanted to come, too. But I told them it wasn't that sort of get-together."
"It isn't. I asked you to come West because we can talk here without all the news services speculating on what's going on. You had an ... incident in Rosemund yesterday morning."
They walked through the darkness, a quarter moon lighting the hillside path. The senator noted that his friend wore faded denims and hiking boots. The President pushed aside fragrant branches of flowering sage. The young man followed several steps behind.
"You were right not to believe what the FBI told you," the President continued.
"They said it was an environmentalist protest gone wrong," the senator snorted. "Who are they kidding? We don't have any of those kooks in my district. We sent them all out here—"
The two friends laughed.
"But what did happen?"
"I need to make a decision," the President said. "Even with your security clearance, I would not tell you any of this if we didn't go way back. Does the Armed Forces Committee keep up with developments in international terrorism?"
"When it concerns the military."
"This concerns the military. But it's nothing we can stop with the Army or the Navy." The President stopped and turned to the aide. "Bill, show him the note."
The young man stepped forward. He flipped open a folder, snapped on a flashlight. The beam illuminated the first page.
Centered on the page, the senator saw a column of eight numbered notations and names. Numbers 1 through 3 listed latitudes and longitudes. Numbers 4 through 8 listed cities: New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Washington, D.C.
Another word appeared at the bottom of the page, like a signature: HYDRA.
"What does it mean?" asked the senator.
"Number one is a latitude and longitude in the Salmon River Mountains," replied the President. "Two helicopter pilots working for a lumber company saw a stand of dead trees. They landed, apparently, to check it out. They died almost instantly. It was a combination of Agent Orange and something called Agent VX. Do I have it right, Bill?"
The aide nodded. "Yes, s
ir. The senator has of course heard of Agent Orange, the defoliant. Perhaps, however, the term `VX' requires explanation. Agent VX, known to organic chemists as one/ two trimethylpropylmethylphosphorofluoridate," the aide quoted, "is a binary chemical weapon in our military arsenal and is exceedingly lethal. One milligram kills."
"A nerve gas?" the senator interrupted. "Terrorists have that? But why out in the forest?"
"A demonstration," the President sighed bitterly. "To show us what they had. The nerve gas to threaten us, the defoliant to mark the spot."
"But they didn't mean to kill the two men," suggested Senator Harper. "They only meant it to be a threat. They can't be completely insane."
"The second latitude and longitude was Rosemund," the President continued. "That was another demonstration. And another murder."
"He was a night watchman," Harper pointed out. The three men were walking again. "He caught them and got killed. Maybe he panicked them. Maybe one of them is a hothead or a psycho."
"Brad, you're hoping they're not capable of doing what they say they will. Listen to me, they hit Rosemund because they know you're the chairman of the Armed Forces Committee. And they know we're friends. First they demonstrated they could hit anywhere in the country, now they've demonstrated they can wipe out whole cities. They parked a semi-truck on the Bay Bridge. A high-pressure sprayer shot a chemical hundreds of feet into the air. You have the details, Bill."
"Yes, sir. The truck contained approximately one thousand gallons of water mixed with a chemical called OPA, which is a combination of isopropyl alcohol and isopropylamine, in a five-percent solution, that is, approximately fifty gallons of OPA diluted with one thousand gallons of water. The wind spread the spray's mist over an area five miles in diameter. Isopropylamine is one element in the binary agent, GB. If the terrorists had combined undiluted OPA with the other element, methylphosphonic difluoride, everyone in that area would have died. It would be unwise to believe this group does not also have methylphosphonic difluoride in its possession. If they were to strike a city with GB or VX, we could expect millions of casualties."
"Oh, dear God," Senator Harper groaned.
They stopped in silence on the moonlit trail. A gentle wind swayed the oaks and sage, carrying the scents of dust and pines.
An electronic tone buzzed somewhere in the darkness. A low voice answered. Two men in midnight black appeared.
Senator Harper spun his head in surprise. The President gave the two Secret Service men a nod.
"Good evening, sir," they responded simultaneously. Then they passed on, only the faint, almost unheard sound of their foam-soled boots on the pathway's sand betraying the patrolling agents.
The senator waited until the men disappeared before he spoke again. "What do the terrorists want?" he asked.
After hesitating a moment before answering, the President spoke so quietly the senator had to lean forward to hear every word. "They want me to go on television, to broadcast worldwide via satellite, to announce that we will unilaterally withdraw our military forces from every allied nation on Earth. Every soldier, military technician, advisor. They want us to abandon every ally, every commitment. Total surrender."
"Tell them to go straight to hell."
"At what cost, Senator? They've proved what they can do. You read the list. New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Washington. We surrender, or else millions of Americans die. That's what we face."
"We can do something," spluttered Harper. "Something. We have the best soldiers in the world!
We spend billions on the Rapid Deployment Force, the CIA, the FBI, the NSA—all of them. We can't surrender without a fight!"
The President put his arm around his friend's shoulders and led him away from the young aide, who did not follow the two senior statesmen.
When the President knew he would not be overheard, he asked: "You know the phrase, 'Dirty War'? If we fight them, it will be merciless. We cannot honor the Geneva Convention. We cannot respect national borders. Maybe we can keep it a secret, maybe we can't. But I cannot do anything without the support of every responsible congressman and senator. I won't even be able to tell most of them why, but I will need their unconditional support. Because I'll tell you this. I won't go on television and surrender. I won't do it. So, you with me?"
"Come hell or high water, one hundred and ten percent."
"Good," beamed the President. "There's an Air Force jet waiting at LAX. It'll take us back to Washington tonight. Tomorrow we start a war. And I pray to God no one will ever know."
8
Eastern Mediterranean
Friday
8:30 am.
(0630 Greenwich mean time)
IN A BUSINESS SUIT, carrying a briefcase, Mack Bolan strode through the mechanics and technicians in the hangar, then marched across the service apron to the executive jet.
He ran up the aluminium stairs and stepped smartly Into the United States Air Force plane marked with a corporate logo. A Lebanese worker slammed the cabin door shut.
Bolan smelled the cigar before he saw his friend.
Hal Brognola, the President's liaison to Stony Man Farm, waited at a forward conference table. Bolan seated himself in a leather swivel chair across from the head Fed. The fuselage trembled as the pilot powered the engines to taxi for take-off.
"I monitored your report," Brognola told Bolan, an unlit stogie clamped between his teeth. "Show me the photos."
Snapping open the attaché case, Bolan found the envelope containing the thirty color exposures, enlarged to eight-by-ten by a Mossad photo lab.
Brognola flipped through the prints.
As the jet accelerated over the asphalt of Beirut International Airport to soar into the clear morning sky, Bolan looked down at traffic-jammed boulevards and artillery-shattered camps. The plane banked away from the city, and its shadow raced over beaches to the open waters of the Mediterranean.
The horizon returned to the window as the pilot eased out of the wide turn and started to gain altitude.
"I wanted to take that European, Russian, whatever he was," Bolan told Brognola. "But it didn't happen. He got clear of the gas, then the boy who tackled him tore his anti-contamination suit. The gas killed them both."
Nodding, Brognola divided the stack of photos by subjects: all the prints of the Russian in one group, the photos of an Air Cuba flight attendant in another, the photos of the Palestinians in the last group. He flicked his lighter's flame at the cigar stub.
"Able Team got one of the Cubans in Jamaica. He's on his way to Stony Man now. Would've got both but things went wrong—"
"Casualties?"
"Not on our side."
"What went wrong?"
"Twenty PLO 'front-line fighters' showed up. Lyons took one of them alive."
"Palestinians in Jamaica?"
"Hard to believe. But we have an explanation now."
"What's the explanation?"
Brognola did not answer. He picked up an eight-by-ten showing the Russian in profile and compared it to a frontal angle of him. "You had a good photographer. Kurtzman will love this—"
"What's the story on the Palestinians?" Bolan insisted.
"How much gas do you think they had in the trucks?"
Bolan shrugged impatiently. "Four trucks. Hard-men in one, the others carried the oil drums. Work it out on your calculator, Hal. They had a forklift to move the stuff to the plane. Now give me an answer on those Palestinians."
"Not until I have clearance—"
"What! C'mon, Hal . . ."
"Where do you think that gas was bound for?"
"Ask Fidel. What's this about clearance? You know I have highest authorization."
"Look at this one here—" Brognola held up a photo of one of the Air Cuba crewmen. "Doesn't look like a Cuban. Chinese? What do you guess?"
"Could be any nationality—sign up with the Kremlin, see the world. I want to know exactly what's going on, my friend. Since when do you fly to the Middle East
to debrief me, Hal?"
"This isn't a debriefing. Like I said, I monitored your report."
A buzz sounded from the door to the cockpit. Brognola unlocked the door. The co-pilot stepped into the cabin and placed a slip of paper on the conference table.
"The message you expected, sir."
"Thanks." Brognola relocked the door before taking a code pad from his coat pocket. The pilot had pencilled two short columns of numbers on the paper. Brognola decoded the numbers into two words that he wrote on the paper. Then he tore up the code pad. He pushed the paper across the table.
"Here it is, Mack," grunted Hal. The two words on the paper stood out in their capitalized isolation. "This is my authorization. This commands me to brief you on your immediate next mission. It is also your go-ahead to initiate the mission."
Hal Brognola pointed a chubby finger at the two words on the paper. DIRTY WAR.
9
Offshore New Jersey
Friday
4:45 a.m.
(0945 Greenwich mean time)
TEN MILES SOUTHEAST of the Port of New York, the Atlantic stank of oil and sewage.
Their collars turned up against the chill predawn wind, Rafael Encizo and Gary Manning gripped the guardrail of the bucking tug as the old workboat hugged through the rolling swells.
A mile to the west, a line of lights defined the black form of a freighter, the Tarala .
Voices came from the tug's pilothouse as the Stony Men's commander, Colonel Yakov Katzenelenbogen, argued with the Coast Guard captain. They heard only snatches of words over the wind and engine noise.
" . . . two hours. . . extreme difficulty . . . endanger. . ."
" . . . not your concern!"
Encizo glanced at the luminous numbers of his watch. "We could have had it done in the time they've talked. "
Since sunset of the previous day, the old tug had drifted in the Atlantic as the three men of Phoenix Force waited for the arrival of the Panamanian registered freighter from the open sea. The Tarala was due early in the night. But the rusting freighter arrived eight hours late.
Super Bolan - 001 - Stony Man Doctrine Page 5
