Perilous Skies (Stony Man)

by Don Pendleton

  McCarter twisted the collar viciously, cutting off the man’s already labored breath.

  “Zordun?” he asked.

  The hacking stopped. The figure rolled his eyes at McCarter. Then he pushed himself away and wrenched his shirt free with a mighty effort, staggered and grabbed a wrench from the floor of the forklift. He swung wildly at McCarter, broadcasting his move well in advance, and McCarter sidestepped it and swept the man’s feet out from under him. He landed flat on the floor, but swung again at McCarter’s feet. McCarter had had enough. He lifted the wrench from the man’s hand and brought it down hard on the base of his skull.

  A man stepped from behind the forklift, covering McCarter with an old Chinese-made version of the AK-47. McCarter froze, hands in the air, and glared at the gunner.

  “I’m looking for Zordun.”

  The Chinese man sneered. “Why do you think you would find him here?”

  “It’s his factory.”

  The Chinese man did not deny it. “Get on the ground,” he told McCarter. “Hands behind your back.”

  “No, thanks,” McCarter said, and lifted the AK-47 away from the guard.

  “Only amateurs get close enough to let their adversaries take their guns,” McCarter snarled—and put the barrel of the AK-47 against the man’s forehead. The man rolled his eyes up to the barrel, then with what he likely thought a smart idea, made a grab for the barrel. McCarter lifted it away from his grasping hands.

  “Just keep your hands in the air,” McCarter commanded. “Now where is Zordun?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Because if you do not know then you are dead.”

  With that, McCarter nodded, and the prisoner looked over his shoulder. Gary Manning and Rafael Encizo were close by with M-16s leveled at his middle.

  The guard panicked and snatched an old 9 mm handgun out of his belt. What he planned to do with it would never be known. McCarter’s AK-47 cracked into his skull and his world went black.

  “They know Zordun,” McCarter said. “At least we’re in the right place. Now let’s find somebody who can give us directions to the man himself.”

  Encizo examined the wooden crates, but shook his head. “No shipping labels. Not that I expected any.”

  “They don’t need them if it’s all going to the same place and nobody else is supposed to know where that place is,” Manning said.

  “So what we need is a delivery driver,” Encizo said.

  McCarter passed into a hallway and into a small lunchroom with three tables, a refrigerator and a hotplate. No one was there.

  Across the hall, Manning yanked open the door to the restroom, found it empty.

  McCarter nodded up the hallway, where there appeared to be an office and lights were on. McCarter signaled for a quiet approach.

  At that moment, gunfire erupted from deep within the building.

  There was a curse from within the office, a chair was pushed back and a man stalked into the hallway, slapping a magazine into a 9 mm handgun. He took several steps down the hall, then stopped and spun, falling into a crouch and triggering his weapon directly into the Phoenix Force warriors. He never made target acquisition, with Rafael Encizo cutting him down with a burst from his M-16.

  McCarter jogged to the corner of the hallway and looked around.

  There were two entrances into the bowels of the plant from the loading bay—the hall and through the factory itself.

  “I got this route,” McCarter said. “You two move through the factory. Let’s make it a controlled approach. Nobody gets out to the bay. Let’s control the movement of the population. Remember, we need just one man who knows where the Zordun factory is located.”

  * * *

  ENCIZO AND MANNING jogged back to the loading bay and made their way through the industrial warehouse section of the plant, which seemed to be filled to the ceiling with empty wooden crates. None bore labels. Another forklift sat there, cold. Two men with AK-47s ran headlong into the storage area, took one look at the Phoenix Force warriors and raised their weapons. They never fired them before Encizo and Manning cut them down with quick bursts.

  Another figure ran into the storage area just in time to see his coworkers dance and die. He halted his forward momentum by grabbing the doorjamb, and fell back the way he had come. He picked himself up and unloaded half his magazine through the door, putting holes in wooden crates. Encizo slipped to the door and stepped around just long enough to deliver another brief burst that cut the man down.

  The hallway was empty but McCarter heard several men approaching together, talking on top of each other, nervous and agitated. He risked glancing around the corner and found the men entering one of the rooms off the hallway. He heard the opening of chests and the distinctive and familiar sounds of weapons being readied. That room was an armory, and a large number of reinforcements was about to be added to the guard at the factory.

  But not if McCarter could help it. He snatched a flash-bang from his belt, primed it, then stepped into the hall and rolled it into the armory. It clanked across the concrete floor noisily.

  McCarter sprinted back the way he had come and ducked around the corner, where the cinder-block wall was some protection. He fell into a crouch, squeezing his eyes shut and putting his fingers in his ears.

  He still saw the flash, and he still heard the raucous screech of the grenade. As soon as the noise and the light show were done he ran back to the armory, where the would-be reinforcements were staggering out, holding their heads. The grenade would have temporarily blinded and deafened them.

  But one of the men must have inadvertently avoided the flash, because his eyes were open and his gaze was locked on McCarter.

  McCarter had his submachine gun pointed directly at the man. He shook his head. The gesture said, “You can’t win.”

  The man raised his own weapon, regardless, and McCarter cut him down. The other men went into a panic, a pair of them stumbling down the hallway, feeling along the wall. A man staggered out, shoulder falling against the doorjamb, his red eyes forced open, trying desperately to find the attacker. He swept his AK-47 across the hall, cutting down one of the fleeing men before McCarter put a burst of submachine-gun fire into his rib cage.

  McCarter stepped to the door of the armory and found another man waiting in the corner for him. The man was completely blinded still by the flash-bang, but that didn’t stop him from triggering his own weapon at the door when he heard McCarter’s footsteps. His aim wasn’t good. McCarter’s was. The man flopped to the ground.

  With one eye watching the hallway, McCarter took a quick inventory of the armory. There was nothing noteworthy about the lineup of old Chinese-made weapons. McCarter dropped an explosive grenade into the weapons cabinet and left in a hurry. He strode down the hall and grabbed the last conscious figure, who seemed to finally be regaining some of his sight. He recoiled from McCarter’s approach, and when the HE round detonated inside the armory, he yelped and pleaded for his life.

  As his eyes finally focused again, the man looked up to see a commando in black, wreathed in smoke, the bodies of his comrades strewed around him. McCarter terrified him.

  “Where is Zordun?”

  The man answered in Chinese.

  McCarter shook his head. “Speak English.” It was not a question.

  “I do not know Zordun.”

  “If you do not know where Zordun is then you are no good to me alive.”

  The man spoke rapidly in Chinese, shaking his head vigorously, and he was saying the name Zordun again and again. For not knowing the man, he certainly seemed to be familiar with the name.

  It was as if he was more afraid of Zordun than he was of the commando standing in front of him.

  Gunshots came from the far end of the hall, and a pair of starbursts showed two gunners shooting from around distant corners. McCarter dragged the Chinese man by the biceps, but the man shouted in fear, pulled away and ran into the AK fire. The gunners at the end of the hall ta
rgeted the man and he withered to the floor.

  * * *

  THE GLASS FRONT DOORS to the materials plant were locked. It would’ve taken Calvin James seconds to punch through the glass, reach in and unlock the door from the inside. It took only a few more seconds for T. J. Hawkins to slip the lock. And it was quieter. The entrance room inside was dusty, and looked as if it had not been used in some time, but behind that was a series of lockers and showers, including a decontamination shower. They passed through and found themselves in a laboratory. There was a curious collection of equipment, some of it obviously sophisticated and expensive, but shoved into the back of the room and grimy with dust. Only a few pieces appeared to be in use. There were test bins containing strips of fibrous material. There was also a bin containing fragments of solid material. Hawkins absently grabbed a few pieces and pocketed them before they left the lab and ducked into the CMC processing room.

  The room was dominated by some sort of a mixing bin on one side and a gleaming stainless-steel oven on the other.

  A pair of men, busy scooping material out of the mixing barrel, dived for cover the moment they saw the Phoenix Force warriors. They had weapons conveniently staged near the barrel, but by the time they grabbed them James had cut both down, while Hawkins covered two surprised-looking men working the huge oven.

  Hawkins gestured with his M-16, and the two men put their hands in the air. Hawkins backed to the wall, then mounted a few steps to the raised platform they were standing on. He could see through the access window, into the interior of the oven. There was a circular machine operating under the fiery glow of heating elements.

  The access door had not even been closed all the way, and heat seeped out, burning his skin. The heat was so intense that it must be about to ignite the clothes on the two workers’ backs.

  “Shut the door.”

  The worker nodded, backed slowly to the door and nudged it closed with his foot. It latched in place and instantly the room cooled.

  Hawkins touched his headset, and adjusted the lipstick cam mounted at his temple.

  “Stony, are you seeing this?”

  “Yes,” Price said. “Hold on. Can you give me a better look at the nameplate?”

  Hawkins detached the camera from his headset and held it close to the nameplate on the equipment. He touched a button that lit an LED on the lens mounting.

  “Got it,” Price said. “That is exactly what we were looking for. I do not believe that there are any further doubts that this is the source of the material.”

  “Understood,” said Hawkins, whose own doubts were satisfied long ago. “We’re shutting it down.”

  He waved the men off the platform and marched them across the room, but they were intercepted by more gunmen. Hawkins and James fell back and triggered around their captives, but the enemy fired first, and fired without discretion. The prisoners were cut down.

  James and Hawkins blasted them as their own men dropped. One of the gunners fell dead. The second grabbed his side, letting his AK rattle on the concrete floor.

  Calvin James would never understand the mind-set of murderers who could kill the very men they worked with, who had no respect for the lives of their own comrades.

  He grabbed the wounded man, marched him to the hatchway of the oven and quickly bound his hands to the handrail with plastic cuffs.

  The man looked through the fiery red window into the oven’s interior, then at Calvin James’s dark, sweaty, grim expression.

  “I’ll let you go when you tell me where to find Zordun.”

  “I won’t do that.”

  James shrugged and walked away, then turned abruptly and fired his weapon. It missed the prisoner, but smashed into the red window. Raw burning heat poured out, and the prisoner wrenched as his clothing burst into flames.

  * * *

  “CAL? T.J.?”

  “We’re here,” James replied. “We’ve identified the equipment. We’ve got material samples. We can use them to positively ID this as the Zordun material source, if needed.”

  “What we need,” relayed McCarter, “is an address for Zordun.”

  “Nobody here was very helpful,” James said bitterly.

  “Phoenix,” Barbara Price radioed, “your driver says you have got a truck coming to the dock.”

  “All right, Stony,” McCarter said. “Let’s go have a talk with the driver.”

  * * *

  GARY MANNING, THE DEMOLITIONS expert, met up with Hawkins and James and wasted no time planting a packful of explosives throughout the material processing room. He avoided the heat blasting from the centrifuge oven window, and the grotesque burned corpse, and calmly planted his plastique on the base of the oven.

  The three of them left the plant quickly, emerging at the loading bay. A second truck was now parked there, and the driver sat calmly on an empty wooden crate, under the watchful gaze of Encizo. Manning distributed more plastique charges throughout the finished-goods warehouse, and McCarter called for their ride.

  As Cello pulled up the Mercedes SUV, Encizo shrugged his shoulders.

  “Our friend is not exactly cooperative.”

  “He speak English?” McCarter asked.

  “He claims not to,” Encizo said. “But he does.”

  “I’ll talk to him,” Cello said, emerging from the SUV and almost skipping up the ramp. She was in well-worn formfitting jeans, and she slipped a strand of dark hair behind one ear as she sat on the crate next to the prisoner and chatted easily with him in Chinese.

  She looked up, like a young girl who just found herself inside a grand cathedral, but the man shook his head. She nodded and responded almost brightly, as if she was saying that’s okay in Chinese.

  Manning returned from the finished-goods warehouse, holding a complicated remote detonator control. Cello popped up and spoke urgently with Manning in private, and then she returned to the truck driver.

  She asked another question. He responded again, tersely, shaking his head.

  She smiled brightly and nodded her head at Manning. He touched a button on the remote. The processing room on the far side of the facility was obliterated and the impact of the explosions seemed to rock the foundation of the warehouse.

  She turned to the man, got close to his face, and spoke in a very quiet voice. His smile was somehow tainted.

  He shook his head slightly, but before the words were out of his mouth Cello turned to Manning again.

  He activated the second batch of explosives. The long hallways and the laboratory were ripped apart by plastique charges. They heard a rain of debris flying into the finished-goods warehouse just behind them, and even before it settled, she turned on the prisoner, grabbed him by the lapels and pulled his face close to hers and demanded an answer. She was vicious and snarling. It was an amazing transformation.

  James rolled his eyes at the others and mouthed the word freaky.

  “Think I’m in love,” Manning muttered to Hawkins.

  Hawkins shook his head. “I saw her first.”

  The driver was still obstinate, but he visibly flinched when she grabbed him by the wrist. She walked him quickly into the finished-goods warehouse, accompanied by Manning. She yanked out a pair of plastic cuffs, which she looped through the cuffs already on his wrists. She attached the old man to the forklift.

  One of the plastique charges was three steps from where he was standing.

  “Ready?” she said.

  “Sure,” Manning said.

  “Let’s go.”

  As soon as they were out the door the man began screaming and pleading.

  Cello tapped her foot.

  “Is he ready to spill?” McCarter asked.

  “He just did. But he ticked me off. I am letting him stew a little.”

  “He’s stewed enough. Where?”

  Cello translated the name of the place where they would find Ali Zordun.

  The prisoner was retrieved, marched to the rear of the Mercedes and piled into the back. Just bef
ore they closed the hatch, Manning flipped the switch that detonated the final set of charges in finished-goods warehouse. Flame belched out of the loading bay.

  The man’s eyes went wide.

  “Good decision,” Manning said, and closed the hatch in his face.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  His computer beeped to signal an alarm. An important video stream had ceased. It was the video stream from his second Malaysian stealth jet.

  Ali Zordun played back the GPS signal, time-synced to the end of the stream. The stealth jet had ceased to send its video signal while still over water, probably within sight of Taiwan. The GPS had ceased simultaneously.

  Zordun played back the last few minutes of the video. From the three exterior cameras, he saw nothing of interest. Water. Land coming closer. And then suddenly darkness. The video stopped functioning.

  He played the video from the interior of the aircraft. He saw the pilot, almost nodding off after so many hours in the cockpit, then perking up slightly as land came into view. Then the pilot became excited. He saw something. He was leaning forward, trying to peer up through the cockpit window. There was something above him.

  There was another aircraft tracking him.

  Then the pilot made a gasp and the video ended.

  Zordun thought carefully. He must not jump to conclusions, but all evidence indicated that this aircraft was shot down. The pilot had seen something directly above him. This was not an impact. It was something that deliberately destroyed his aircraft.

  How could that be?

  He replayed the video, and replayed again. He learned nothing new.

  He went back to the video from the previous night. His first Malaysian attack plane had flown over the valley and wiped out Chinese soldiers by the handful. Then those Chinese bastards had unleashed an antiaircraft gun on him. The video revealed the weapon just as he fired.

  That craft, its video feed, had ceased to exist the moment the first antiaircraft round slammed into it.

  He switched immediately to the time sync of the second stealth aircraft. It had been flying over the jungle in large circles, and the camera on its nose caught a glimpse of the dramatic destruction of the first stealth jet.