Phoenix Force 06 - White Hell

by Gar Wilson

  "Wilco," Manning said, snugging his eyes into the sensoring scope, bringing the armored vehicle into greater magnification. "Looks like a box car," he gloated. "Can't miss from here."

  "If you do," Rafael grinned, patting the carrier, "backup."

  And when the allotted lead time had passed, Manning depressed the trigger, sending the gyro into spin. The gas generator booted the missile.

  The rear muzzle exploded with a dull roar, belching flame and debris behind Manning's shoulder. A smoke ring flared briefly at the front end, momentarily blinding him. As quickly as it dissipated, the rocket was zooming off in flat trajectory at 250 miles per hour. From his vantage point Encizo could watch the missile in flight. Its aim electronically monitored by the sighting device, it moved unerringly on target.

  Seconds later, there was an earsplitting blast as the 5.4-pound warhead connected directly amid-ships, bored through the 1.6-inch armor and tore the APC's guts to shreds. Everything was blown sky-high—gunner, gunner's mate, the Browning .50 caliber, and the diesel fuel in the bargain.

  As the APC exploded, the night was pushed back by a crimson sunburst that fixed the Irish-men—Phoenix as well—in dazzling definition.

  Hard on the terrorists' left, rifles singing a bloody kill-song, the flank party closed in. The Dragon M-47 set aside, his CAR-15 hammering, Manning also charged, using the burning tank for cover. Rafael slogged to his right, the Stoner in baying throb—the hounds of hell unleashed all at the same time.

  The terrorists did not have a chance.

  Bloody, flesh-disintegrating death, chunks of human meat flung heedlessly into the snow. One man, his head nearly severed, hanging by mere tendons, still stomped aimlessly in the snow for a few drunken steps before he collapsed. Another gathered himself into fetal position, gurgled hysterically, fighting to keep his intestines from spreading all over the ice. The other two resembled foundering, bloody blubber.

  Two men blown to hell by the Dragon's missile, the other four caught in charnel-house cross fire, it was no contest.

  Again there were no backward looks—only a headlong rush to load into the already-settling Bell Long Ranger, Manning and Encizo stopping first to recover the M-47 gear. The firing tube was discarded; the sensor-firing device swiftly clapped onto the next missile launcher.

  They caught the second tracked vehicle on the move. The chopper's racket was drowned out by the growl of the M113's diesels. It was a mere matter of setting down into a convenient swale and waiting for the poor suckers to come into range. A veteran cannoneer, Manning smiled coldly, set the scope's cross hairs and waited for the vehicle to come closer, still closer.

  And as it came over a rise . . .

  Again the flashback, the dull rumble and swoosh, the slow trip down the line. His face a study in concentration, Manning tracked the moving target expertly, deliberately locking on the driver's cockpit.

  The night detonated in a frenzy of fire, blood and death. Once more it was instant slaughterhouse, bodies arcing across the horizon like human cannonballs. Those unlucky enough to miss the ride were turned to greasy barbecue in seconds flat. Somehow one patriot managed to escape the inferno, and ran screaming across the snow, his clothes on fire. Katz raised his Uzi and put the human torch out of his misery.

  The five men stood watching the carnage, the raging firestorm highlighting their features, capturing the hard light in their eyes as they watched the enemy so satisfyingly sent to hell.

  Then, abruptly, the blocks of C-3 in the compartments were triggered by exploding rounds. They began ripping the night with ground-jarring concussion, sending steel screaming over their heads.

  Phoenix Force broke for the helicopter, climbed aboard in pell-mell rush. Grimaldi quickly jacked the bird out of danger.

  "Driver," McCarter said the minute the side hatch was secured, "take us to Prudhoe, please." And they were off.

  12

  At 0215 hours the emergency circuits—hotline from Valdez—flashed red in both of Prudhoe's master-operations control centers. And when, after five minutes, neither phone was picked up, the automatic override was activated.

  "All personnel," the speakers surrounding the nerve centers blasted. "We are registering unauthorized entry at Valdez. Repeat, unauthorized entry. The oil-movements control center has been sabotaged. All computer systems have been destroyed. We are zero functional here. Repeat, zero functional. Alternate control position must be instituted immediately. Directive 32-A supersedes all previous instructions."

  Shortly the voice became even more panicky. "We have two fatalities here. Security forces are closing in on a three-man terrorist team. Come in, Prudhoe, do you read me? Prudhoe . . ."

  But there was no reply. There would be no reply. Because there was no personnel on hand to make a reply.

  For, at that same moment, Prudhoe itself was first awakening to the fact that it too was under siege.

  DROPPING ONTO the pumping station one airstrip at 0130 hours, the Boeing-Vertol CH 47C had received priority clearance from control. And when the eighteen armed men had debarked in leisurely fashion, all dressed in U.S. Air Force winter gear, all suspicion regarding their middle-of-the-night arrival was promptly allayed. It was well established that station one was observing security alert; these troops could be nothing other than reinforcement of the Army detachment already cluttering up the perimeters.

  Then, when the party was greeted by Captain Dan Murray, who smilingly led them onto the heated bus that would carry them the half mile to the station proper, the bored traffic controllers did an instant brain wipe. Kin folk, and let it go at that.

  It was the same with the sleepy-eyed GIs standing guard at the pumping-station entrances. A smile, a joshing comment from Captain Murray and the newcomers were passed without challenge.

  The next twenty minutes had been devoted to impromptu orientation, with Sean Toolan, Coletta Devane, Mike Kelsay and the rest of the Grey Dog squad being shown about the sprawling station to pinpoint key strike zones.

  In the two computer sections regulating the flow of crude into the pipeline proper, the skimpy night crew barely gave them a passing glance.

  Outside, spread over ten thousand acres, such oil giants as Sohio, BP Alaska, Exxon, Arco and Atlantic Richfield had set up miniature refineries, plush office buildings to oversee the splitting of the molasses-thick crude before it could flow into the TAP. The logistics of the baby pipeline alone were awesome.

  But this was of no concern to the saboteurs. They would go for the jugular, attack the heart of the Trans-Alaska. Pumping station one. Reduce it to shambles.

  As they drifted through the control rooms, the main group of the Prudhoe personnel slept else-where, content to entrust security to their "night people." Pumping station one breathed in torpid half-life, the mazelike corridors deserted. The generators, the compressor engines, the huge aircraft-type turbine pumps hammered drowsily, their thunder somehow muted.

  In the condensing rooms, the thirty-odd stacks towering fifty feet high, a skeleton crew patrolled the catwalks, climbed steel ladders to check gauges in sleepwalker movements. Outside, clouds of steam released from the thermal-pressure section turned to instant fog, mantling the building in a comforting vapor blanket, adding to the illusion of warm, snug safety within.

  Grey Dog's dirty work could have been completed in three minutes flat. But delay was integral to Grey Dog's strategy, synchronization its key-note. Everything must blow at once if they were to subvert interior security and operate right under the U.S. Army's nose up to the final countdown. Everything must happen with split-second timing.

  If they were to escape Prudhoe untouched, skim down the line to retrieve comrades at three other demolition sites, then detour to QSS 0022 to pick up the seven men there, they must generate whole-sale confusion in one fell swoop. Thus, the time bomb ticked merrily, fuse set for 0200 hours.

  They could afford to deploy slowly, carefully, with each man in key position. Lynch was responsible for the Yank soldie
rs at the entrance ways; they could not be allowed to sound alarm. Flaherty and his demolition squad would take out the master-control areas, the pumps and heat converters. Devane's party would patrol the grounds outside. On and on the assignments went.

  Minute by minute, the clock hands moved forward.

  And now, at 0148 hours, at each of the three main doorways, in identical sequence . . . "Hey mate," the fly-boys called to the GI guards. "Could you step in here for a minute?"

  Reflexes deadened by the late hour, the soldiers innocently complied. Then eyes went wide as they saw the primitive Welrod pistol, its silencer resembling a black mailing tube. And before any of them could make a retaliatory move, the antique gun coughed twice, and the soldiers were spun back, a chunk of each man's face suddenly missing.

  COLONEL KATZENELENBOGEN and his four comrades were dying by inches. Never had the Bell 206L moved more slowly; never had the minutes dragged as they were just then. It was 0140, and they were still a good sixty miles south of Prudhoe. "Grimaldi," Yakov groused, "can't we go any faster? Certainly the Irish bastards have started their countdown by now."

  "Negative, chief," Grimaldi snapped. "A hundred forty's all she's got. I'm risking malfunction to hold her there. Rotors'll be going on without us if I push her any harder."

  "Any chance we can head 'em off?" Manning asked, his cold eyes feverish for a change.

  "I doubt it. They're most likely blowing things sky-high right now." His grimace was cruel. "But we might just catch them at work. We can take it out of their hides, at least."

  Grimaldi then caught sight of what they were looking for. "Coming up, dead ahead."

  There was gradual brightening on the horizon, a flat orange glow. Then, minutes later, pinpricks of red, as the tips of hundred-foot-high "blow pipes" edged across the earth's curvature. Natural gas was being fired off at well rigs as far as the eye could see. And dead ahead, a flat blur of white light, the pumping station itself, floodlit twenty-four hours a day. An oasis of light in the heart of a universe of darkness.

  "Christ, what a waste," Rafael said referring to the burn off. "We got poor folks freezing to death back home."

  Yakov then moved into a swift recap of their attack plan. Time running out, there was no room for cautious approach; they must launch themselves into the teeth of the enemy and hope that the element of surprise would give them the crucial winner's edge.

  "We hit the condenser section," Yakov snapped. "Land on the roof of the main building, execute a probe for a hatch of some sort. If there's nothing there, then we go over the side with the same rope that got us down. Got that?"

  Everyone nodded, expressions grave.

  "Rafael and Gary, you've got the control center. Keio and David, back me up in the pumping rooms. Jack, can you hold position and disconnect the cable at the same time?"

  "No problem, Yakov," the pilot grinned. "What about the Army boys? They're supposed to be running patrols down there. What if they take you guys for more of the terrorist gang?"

  "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it." Again he brushed in his reasons for the air drop. They might be sitting ducks, but there was still a three-hundred-foot margin of safety they would not have in a similar ground approach. And with the terrorists shooting straight up—it was a highly defensible risk.

  As the chopper took a wide, curving swipe at the huge, square building, swooping down like a hungry falcon, Yakov instructed Rafael, "Make that rope fast."

  Grimaldi then steadied the Long Ranger, descending in gradual steps. Encizo took a balanced stance, splayed the two-hundred-foot coil of mountaineer's rope in precise array, snapping the anchor clevis into the chute pull ring over the hatch. "Everybody cover," Katz went on. "But no shooting unless Gary draws fire from below." He signaled to Keio to begin sliding the door aside.

  A blast of frigid air lashed them. Weapons were adjusted, last-minute tuggings and buttonings of winter gear seen to.

  With a decisive, fluid move, Manning clamped the choke collar onto the line and jammed gloved fingers into the spring-tensioned handle. A last shrug-over with the CAR-15 strap. Then, he stepped off the edge of the bulkhead and grunted as his right arm took sudden strain. Swiftly he dropped from sight, plummeting at a dead-drop of twenty feet per second, using the line braced under his butt as a braking device—grabbing and releasing in jarring stops and starts. It was a maneuver they had spent long hours practicing at Stony Man. Then, as he neared the roof .

  "Hold steady, Jack," Yakov shot. "Drifting to the west. Back off ten feet."

  They saw Manning drop off, roll and bob back to his feet. Sheets of vapor drifted past just then, obscuring their view. Then Manning was in sight, sending an all-clear, throwing his shoulder into the rope to steady the next man down.

  "Rafael," Yakov said, not even looking, his eyes scanning the roof, the ground, for sign of Grey Dog counteraction. Rafael reflexively crossed himself, dropped, the rope singing in the wind.

  Katz was next, wrapping his left hand in the D rings, balancing with the hooks of his right as he whizzed down, moving faster than any of the others. Still there was no ground fire. Obviously the terrorists were busy with more important things at the moment. Even the earsplitting racket of an alien helicopter could not deter their bloody purpose.

  "Off we go, into the wild blue yonder . . ." McCarter sang tunelessly as he went over the side. Keio was last man down.

  Above them they saw a glimmer of movement, Grimaldi at the clevis. Seconds later, the rope was floating down. The chopper lifted up as if it was attached to a pulley and stood by to the west, holding at an even three thousand.

  "Over here," Manning said, stopping Encizo's rope-coiling chores flat. "We've got a transom here. Now if we can just get it open . . ."

  It was at that moment that Coletta Devane, trailed by two green-suited guncocks, emerged from a side door, fanning out in the yard below. Staring up at the departing hover bird, unaware that she had just missed a crucial interplay, she considered firing upon it, then changed her mind, not wanting to draw attention.

  McCarter, standing watch while the rest struggled to pry the roof hatch open, saw the trio and felt his heart kick. "Hey, Yakov," he called softly. "Get this. GIs. Maybe we're not too late after all."

  As Katz sidled over and took a furtive peek, one of the hardmen called to his partner, the brogue a dead giveaway. McCarter stiffened then moved to poke his AK-47 over the edge of the roof, blast them to hell. A touch on the sleeve, and his fury was reined in; he was reconciled to playing team ball.

  "Of all the dumb stunts," he cursed himself. "Right ready to give 'em the old 'hi, mate' I was."

  Soft mutter carried from their right, and they hurried back to find that Keio and Manning had forced the door. Stealthily Manning cracked it several inches, placed a wary eye to the narrow opening.

  "Nothing but machinery down there," he reported. "I don't see a soul. Let's go."

  Phoenix Force frantically clambered down the iron ladder leading from the emergency exit, the sound of their booted feet masked by the heavy throbbing of the half acre of engines within. Assault rifles at kill position, they spread out on the first catwalk, straining for sight of Irish liberation troops below. But there was only a forest of condenser stacks, a mishmash of piping and controls, the cooling stills, a line of pressure tanks that stretched two hundred feet into the distance. Heat swarmed in stultifying clouds; clothing was quickly loosened, cartridge belts and body leather adjusted. Encizo freed his knife.

  But as they vigilantly worked their way to lower-level catwalks, they found they were not alone after all.

  Ahead, blood dripping through the grating in steady flow, the body of a pumping-station worker was sprawled on the ramp. Three slugs had punched away the better part of his groin. And beneath him, still huddled over his desk, another man, his head welded to his paperwork with gore and brain Bell. Then at the far right, near one of the three doorways, two more bodies, lying in tangled crisscross, their eyes grotesquely pu
ddled with blood.

  Cold dread descended. Time to quit fooling themselves. They had arrived too late.

  "Dirty, murdering sewer slime," McCarter exploded.

  "Freeze," Yakov warned, ducking back behind a perforated steam screen. "Somebody's coming."

  From separate hiding places along the catwalk they stole glances at the two men entering at the far end of the plant, small boxes in hand. Totally confident, the terrorists looked neither up, down, right, left. They had mind only for the big bang they were in the process of building. Crouched before a central control bank, they talked softly, taping small packs of plastic explosive at vital spots.

  Manning trained his CAR-15 on them and held the pose. Katz waved Encizo and Ohara forward. "Go over the top," he whispered. "No noise if at all possible. If we have any advantage it's that they don't know we're here."

  "It will be easy," Keio grinned. Instantly they were stripping off their belts, depositing the rifles upon them. Knives were taken from respective sheaths.

  Then they were flitting swiftly down the catwalk.

  The others saw them climb atop the catwalk rail and balance momentarily. Then they dropped down, lethal sandbags.

  The terrorists never knew what hit them. The air commandos brought their knees into the demo team's backs, breaking ribs as they flattened them. There was a muffled set of whoofs, the beginning of a terrorized outcry.

  But these died aborning. The Gerber and the long blade rose then flashed down in an air-sizzling blur. Once. Twice. Into the back, into the right side, just beneath the armpit.

  Keio and Rafael were still standing over their convulsing victims when the rest hurried down to join them. Encizo leaned and wiped his Gerber on the hardman's uniform. Keio followed suit.

  Rafael absently strapped on the belt, shouldering the Stoner that McCarter handed him.

  Manning was busily inspecting the half-finished explosive hookup. "No exterior detonators," he said thoughtfully. "Which means chemical detonation. Disengage the shield, and you've got time before the chemicals burn through to the plastique, setting off the whole thing."