Phoenix Force 06 - White Hell

by Gar Wilson

  "Which brings us back to square one," Brognola said, "the over-all INLA strategy. What, exactly, are they up to? Where do they strike next?"

  "Apparently," Katz mused, "they came to Seattle for one purpose, to blow up the oil transfer terminals. Seattle's a crucial link in the Alaskan oil picture, as you well know. Knock out these facilities, and you put a kink in the overseas and national distribution program. Only we mopped up on them too soon. We were supposed to catch them in the act." He glanced to Brognola. "Sorry about that, Hal."

  "Yakov," Brognola reassured, "it wasn't your boys who overreacted. You didn't shoot up that tanker. But you sure as hell took care of the guys who did."

  "Our pleasure," McCarter said. "I'm only sorry we couldn't drag it out a bit, make those murdering bastards pay by inches."

  Manning put the conversation back on track. "If we're to assume that the terrorists won't risk another hit at the docks because of beefed-up security, then we'd best assume that now they'll shoot for higher stakes." His mouth drew to a grim line. "Alaska itself. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline. They intend to bring America to its knees one way or another."

  "That will be the day," Keio Ohara said with surprising vehemence. "Not if I . . . we have anything to say about it."

  "Christ," Encizo exclaimed, "that'll be a killer. If they blast the pipeline, our military and industrial potential will go down the tube. We'll have to put rubber bands in every car and truck in America."

  "I can't realistically see these Grey Dog people attacking in Alaska," Clark Jessup inserted. "Not in the dead of winter. The weather there is impossible. Setting up a sabotage network at this time is highly improbable. If, indeed, that is their intent. You do tend to overdramatize at times, Mr. Brognola."

  "Overdramatize?" Hal snarled. "Did that thing on the freeway sound like overdramatizing? Those bastards aren't here for the Christmas caroling, that's for sure. Even if they don't hit the pipeline, that doesn't mean they'll pull a cocoon act for the winter. They'll keep raising hell up and down the coastline until it's time for the main strike, or I miss my bet."

  Katz looked hard at Brognola, inhaling his input. Then he asked the big Fed for a good game plan.

  "For now we go on hold," Brognola said. "There'll be mop-up here, of course. We have to assume that there must be other INLA hardmen in the Seattle woodwork. If we can get a lead on a safehouse, or some such—"

  "Negative on the reserves," Katz interrupted. The six we killed, we had them staked out for three days. They never had any visitors, nor did they go anywhere other than on their harbor-area patrols. Keio bugged the phones in their rooming house. No incoming or outgoing calls."

  "A self-contained cell then," Brognola said grudgingly. "Though it seems highly unlikely. There have to be others in the area. It's inconceivable they'd leave a mission like this to so small a cadre." He shrugged. "Our intelligence net will keep us posted in any event. When something breaks you'll know it."

  "How many terrorists do you estimate?" Katz asked.

  "At least fifty. Stony Man has no hard info on that, however. Hell, if they slipped out underneath the very noses of the Provos . . . The INLA membership is up. Possibly two hundred all told. Since the old timers have laid back, the firebrand types have been flocking their way."

  "Do you suppose they've already gone to Alaska?" Manning ventured. "Maybe the main force has been there right along. This Seattle mess could just have been a feint."

  "Well," said Brognola, "if that's the case, they'll find a welcoming committee. The military, the TAP officials have been alerted of possible sabotage. They'll have security at peak, that's certain."

  "But eight hundred miles of pipe?" McCarter scoffed. "How are you gonna watch all that?"

  Brognola and Jessup spread various files and topographical charts across the grubby, oilcloth- covered tabletop. For the next hour the seven men pored over the reports, studied pipeline schematics. Main pumping stations, receiving stations, bridges, mainline gate valves, the vast tank farm terminal at Valdez, containment dikes and tanker berths, the computer microwave control centers—all came under scrutiny as possible INLA targets. Which link could be attacked with least casualty risk?

  "Jesus H. Christ," McCarter groaned, midway through the session. "It's like finding a needle in a haystack. They can hit us in a thousand different places."

  "Not all at once," Yakov smiled. "Remember, there are only fifty or so of them. Doesn't that make you feel much better?"

  "Not that you'd notice." He paused, came back with a new avenue of conjecture. "Just who in hell's backing these bleedin' bastards, anyway?" "I'd put it at the doorstep of one of the Saudi sheikhs," Brognola said. "A couple million here, a couple million there. Who's to miss it? The INLA has it both ways. They settle a score with the U.S., and clear a dandy little profit besides. If they ever return to the Emerald Isle alive, that is." Brognola went on to detail the snowballing profits to the OPEC nations that the destruction of the TAP could bring. It would take at least six months to repair the damage the INLA strike force could inflict. If OPEC was to declare a shut down immediately upon crippling the Alaska pipe-line, American reserves would be depleted within forty days. After that it would be all gravy—the sky, pricewise, would be the limit.

  "And the sheikhs will enforce it," Brognola stressed. "No cut rating by marginal oil producing nations this time. I wouldn't doubt they've already got terrorist groups lined up all over the globe, each cell waiting for the first hint of embargo violation. They'll blow that tanker, the tanker berth off the face of the earth in a minute flat. Just one incident like that and no oil would move anywhere. The world would come to terms, or else.

  "I'd bet any kind of money that there are Irish enforcers already on retainer, just waiting for someone to blow that first whistle. Not INLA, but other Irish terrorists. A spin-off, a bonus, sort of, for INLA's larger part in their whole scheme. The rotten bastards."

  "Lovely world we live in, eh, mate?" McCarter muttered.

  "Names, Hal?" Katzenelenbogen asked, falling back in his chair, the curved prongs of his prosthetic device clicking nonstop, as they always did when he was perturbed. "Who are we fighting, anyway?"

  "Names, yes. But confirmation? No. The INLA leadership's been seesawing ever since Seamus Costello was wiped out in a gang assassination back in 1977. They don't exactly publicize their latest topcock. He wouldn't come stateside anyway. They'd send a second- or third-in-command. So far we've got a guy named Sean Toolan, another called Bryan Cafferty. Which is boss man? Your guess is as good as mine. Oh, yes. One other, a Collie Devane, but we have just a name on him, nothing more. This Toolan character is one tough hombre, we hear, a paranoid type who kills for the sake of killing.

  "You just made my day," Yakov said.

  A short time later Hal Brognola called the briefing to a close. But there was a final adjuration after Clark Jessup had already excused himself and left the room.

  The item in the news about an 'opposing force' that was observed yesterday. It couldn't be helped, considering the circumstances. On behalf of Colonel Phoenix I must remind you that, no matter what, your identity must never be revealed; is foremost in our over-all program. Should the press ever get hold of names and descriptions, our effectiveness would be destroyed."

  His jaw went taut, the cords in his throat became prominent. "Do I make myself clear?" To a man Phoenix Force nodded silently.

  "You guys... and Able Team... and Mack, of course...are the last hope of a world that is on the edge of being flushed down the tube. You cannot fail. Because if you do, our country's last, gasping breath will likewise be snuffed out. So remember how sacred a mission yours is."

  He spoke very slowly now, his voice emotional. ''Know of Mack Bolan's respect for you, his pride our work, his...love and gratitude for the fact that you're willing to lay your lives on the line for him, for his cause."

  Then he was gone.

  Afterward it seemed the silence would last forever, each man deeply lost in his
thoughts.

  It was Keio Ohara who breached the impasse. Turning away abruptly, he returned to the M-2 he had been tinkering with and began dismantling it.

  As if mesmerized, the others watched Keio fieldstrip the weapon he had liberated from Tom Harker's grasp. Shortly they were assisting, advising him when the components did not readily disengage. They marveled at the pride of workmanship exhibited in its knurled handgrip, the walnut trigger handle, in the careful, precise machining. They lamented the fact that, due to pettifogging politics over caliber variance, the gun had never gone into mass production.

  "Wonder where that Paddy got it," McCarter said, minor awe in his voice. "A damned museum piece is what it is. I'd wrap the bloody thing up, send it home to my mum if it was mine."

  For the moment the serious words of Hal Brognola—the weight of the holy trust he had just laid upon them—were forgotten. Almost eagerly the men allowed themselves to become engrossed in the beauty of the captured assault rifle. It became a convenient way to wriggle free from the sense of impending doom. Once again they lost themselves in the business at hand.

  In the business of war.

  The business of death.

  3

  Christmas Eve on a U.S. Army base is pure hell.

  Bad enough to be stuck in camp at the festive time in a stateside military installation. But to be isolated in the fierce winter of Alaska—at Fort Greely in particular—that is piling misery atop misery.

  It was 1400 hours, and already the base was almost entirely deserted. Everyone who could rangle a pass for the holidays had checked out shortly after noon, heading for Anchorage, Fairbanks, even the Yukon. Action of any sort was better than sitting in camp watching frostbitten fingers fall off one by one. Booze, bright lights, girls, even a good fistfight was preferable to slow suffocation at Big Delta.

  Such were the thoughts of PFC Eddie Gorman as he sullenly marched guard duty, his post encompassing the modest ordnance buildings the base boasted. It was a half-mile tour around the six-foot-high fence surrounding the three cement-buildings, and though the weather was mild an even zero—the wind was harsh and cutting.

  Gorman wore the regulation one-piece, white, down-lined winter issue and carried an M-16, muzzle down, on his shoulder. His feet were clad in boots that were developed during the Korean campaign, and protected to eighty degrees below zero. Even with his parka pulled snug, the long fur already iced from breath vapor, the chill still managed to work through.

  Perhaps it was not so much cold as it was nostalgia that gripped Gorman most. In truth, it was his first Christmas away from home, and he was homesick. The Sony Walkman secreted inside his hood, drawing plaintive Christmas carols from a Fairbanks FM station, did little to help. Listening to music while on guard was definitely verboten, but Gorman risked it. Screw them, he thought. If they can shove me out in the snow, turn down my pass request on Christmas Eve, the least they can do is allow me music while I walk my post.

  Even more galling, he thought, was the pointlessness of the duty. What was he guarding? Who was going to bother Uncle Sam's lousy, two-bit guns on Christmas Eve?

  And should anyone decide to seize the crap, what good would he and his backup, Mungo Harris—they were spelling each other, two on, two off—do? Before he could activate his two-way, secure help, the enemy would be long gone. The men inside the armory, he was sure, would offer no resistance to speak of.

  Even if he got out a Mayday. Gorman snorted, who would respond? The camp was an absolute ghost town.

  There were lights inside the ordnance buildings, bright pinpricks in the murk, where a skeleton crew—fifteen to twenty men at best—had pulled special duty. Also denied holiday liberty, they were involved in round-the-clock repair and maintenance in preparation for upcoming field exercises scheduled for mid-January.

  Suckers, Eddie Gorman gibed inwardly. Welcome to the club.

  His Sony served up "White Christmas," and he was stabbed with sadness. His bitterness returned. They could have this white Christmas, he thought. What I should be guarding is Betty, over in Fairbanks. Sure as hell she'll get all bitter-ass over my being confined to base on Christmas.

  Though it was now 1415 hours it might as well have been dusk. Or dawn—it was all the same. Either way, visibility was almost nil. The Alaskan winter solstice upon them, the sun had sunk beneath the horizon for good a few days ago; it would not poke up its rosy-red face for two weeks.

  Caught in the craggy embrace of the Alaska mountain range to the south, the eternal twilight became ever darker at Fort Greely. The mere act of lighting up a cigarette, another no-no, which Eddie blithely flaunted, came on like a minor flash fire, the lighter flame almost blinding in the depressing gloom.

  There had been a smattering of milky light to the south at noon. Things had gone downhill since then.

  Staring through the vapor-frosted window his parka provided, Gorman could see no landmarks beyond two hundred yards. A fog that was not a fog. The eerie half-light turned everything flat, made outlines vague. The C Company barracks in the next block were dim, indefinite blobs, even the window lights somehow watery, faded. The mountains themselves were amorphous, a smudge more than anything else. Had he not known where Mount Hayes was, he easily could have mistaken the brooding mass for a low-hanging cloud.

  Abruptly Gorman faltered in mid-stride as he heard a helicopter, swinging in swiftly at ten o'clock. He searched the murk for its running lights and was puzzled when he saw none. There had been another, flying low, at 1300 hours, just as he had come on duty.

  He was not unduly alarmed. In the Arctic, aircraft were commonplace at any time of day or night, and in winter choppers and ski planes were the main mode of transportation.

  But when the whirlybird executed a wide turn, dropped to five hundred feet, began circling the ordnance shops and angling for the abbreviated motor-pool area just behind the fence a hundred yards at a jump, he was alerted. They were going to land.

  Momentarily the nineteen-year-old kid froze, panic jamming up into his throat like a fist. He fumbled for his walkie-talkie, feverishly thumbed the transmit button.

  "Hey, Mungo," he blurted, ignoring radio procedure, "get your ass over here. Get the C.O., tell him somebody's landing a chopper in the motor pool. It looks like a raid or something. Mungo, do you read me?"

  Huge, billowing clouds of powder snow churned up in a small blizzard as the phantom copter adjusted and carefully began settling down in front of the eighteen-foot loading doors at building one. As it neared touchdown, the doors slammed open on both sides; dark garbed figures dropped into the snow and charged toward the building. As the snow calmed somewhat, Gorman could see their assault rifles at ready, the muzzle-flashes watery orange, the reports partially muffled by the growl of the idling chopper.

  "Hey," he called, reacting in stupid, childlike reflex. "Halt. Identify yourselves." When the attack force ignored him, he snapped off the safety on his M-16 and slapped in a magazine containing six rounds. "Halt. Do you hear?" Terror closing his throat, he touched off two slugs in the single-round mode.

  As the tumblers screamed through the air, splatted off a concrete wall, the intruders took heed. Instantly two of the enemy spun in their tracks and sent a half-dozen rounds each in Gorman's direction. Two 7.62mm projectiles smashed into Eddie's chest, turned his heart and lungs to chopped meat and exited through his back, leaving a hole as big as a cantaloupe.

  The fuzzy-cheeked kid flopped backward, his hands high. He dropped with a thump, his head cracking on the roadway. He spasmed once, twice and died.

  Kneeling to the right of the copter, about fifty feet from the armory door, the INLA leader tugged down the hood of the camouflage-design parka, fighting the rotor backwash. "Back, men," the voice snarled. "Give Martin room to blow that door."

  Inside the building heads began bobbing up in the windows, the work crews inside curious about the commotion. An AK-47 and a Sten Mark 6 casually took out the glass, mangled an American soldier's head. The o
ther rubberneckers instantly dropped out of sight.

  Martin, the demolitions expert, did his job. Twenty seconds later the plastic explosives detonated. It was a small charge, the muffled roar not carrying any farther than three hundred yards. The door collapsed inward, small sheets of flame licking upward.

  "Let's get 'em," Sean Toolan bellowed, his fearlessness infectious. "Clean out the Yank bastards." His Sten stuttered, the high-velocity rounds tearing a second door to tatters, killing anyone unlucky enough to be standing behind it.

  "Fast about it," Toolan's second-in-command barked. "Before the Americans can gather their bloody wits. In the name of sweet Jesus, Flaherty. Will you move your fat, girlish ass!"

  The eight-man team charged forward as one, Toolan leading the attack through the small door, Collie Devane in the forefront as the rest poured through the gaping hole in the loading entrance.

  An Army ten-ton truck was parked in the loading bay. To the right the gun compartments, protected with heavy steel doors, came into view. "Martin, me lad," Devane exhorted, "you've got your work cut out for you. Get to it. We'll go forward, do a bit of head-hunting."

  With an impatient motion, Devane tossed back the hood of the constricting cold-weather jump suit. As the parka fell, a cloud of long, red hair burst free and was flung wildly to clear it from the fur lining. Large, luminous, green eyes, a thin, high-boned face, the slightest slash of lipstick at the cruel mouth revealed Devane to be a woman—a tough, hell-for-leather woman.

  As she surged forward, the twenty-eight-year old female railed at her troops anew. "Dammit, Rory—" she gave one sluggard a vicious shove "—will you be forever waiting for a woman to take the lead?" She brought up her AK-47, and Rory Swaine scurried on ahead. It was difficult to discern which he feared most: the unknown American strength before him, or the russet-haired firebrand behind.

  A wide corridor, flanked by cubbyhole offices and spare-part storage areas, led into a vast repair room. In that room, large steel-sheeted work-benches, each shielded by steel plate partitions, took up one wall. A labyrinth of steel shelving—parts storage for armament in repair—stretched away at the far end. Here, partially protected by heavy steel of sorts, the six remaining GIs had chosen to make their stand.